hips.
Taita, I am much displeased with you.' Nefer said.
'I am distraught.' Taita made a deep obeisance. 'In what way have I given you offence?'
'You have been avoiding me. Whenever I send for you they tell me that you are gone on a secret mission to the Hyksos, or that you have returned to the desert, or some other such moonlit tale.' Nefer scowled to mask his delight at being with the old man again. 'Then suddenly you pop up from nowhere, as though you had never left, but still you ignore me. You did not even look in my direction during the ceremony. Where have you been?'
'Majesty, there are long ears about.' Taita glanced at the hovering guards.
Immediately Nefer turned upon them wrathfully. 'I have ordered you more than once to be gone. If you do not go this instant I will have you both strangled.'
They withdrew unhappily, but not too far. Taita could still hear their murmurs and the clink of their weapons as they waited in the passage beyond the curtain. He jerked his head at the window and whispered, 'I have a skiff at the jetty. Would Your Majesty like to go fishing?' Without waiting for his reply, Taita hitched up the skirts of his chiton and hopped on to the window-sill. He glanced over his shoulder. Nefer had forgotten his anger and was grinning delightedly as he ran across the cell to join him. Taita jumped down on to the terrace outside and Nefer followed him nimbly. Like truants from the classroom, they sneaked across the terrace and down through the date palms to the river.
There were guards at the jetty, but they had received no orders to restrain their young Pharaoh. They saluted and stood aside respectfully as the pair scrambled into the small fishing skiff. Each took up a paddle and shoved off. Taita steered into one of the narrow passages in the banks of waving papyrus, and within minutes they were alone on the swamp waters, hidden from the banks in the maze of secret waterways. 'Where have you been, Taita?' Nefer dropped the regal air. 'I have missed you so.'
'I will tell you everything,' Taita assured you, 'but first you should tell me all that has happened to you.'
They found a quiet mooring in a tiny papyrus-enclosed lagoon, and Nefer related everything that had happened to him since they had last been able to talk in private. He had been held on Naja's orders in a gilded prison, without being able to see any of his old friends, not even Meren or his own sisters. His only distractions had been his studies of the scrolls from the palace library, his chariot drills and arms practice under the coaching of the old warrior, Hilto.
'Naja will not even let me go out hawking or fishing without Asmor to wet-nurse me,' he complained bitterly.
He had not known that Taita was to be at the welcoming ceremony in the temple courtyard until he had seen him there. He had believed him to be at Gebel Nagara. At his first opportunity, when Naja and Asmor were locked in the truce conclave with Apepi, Trok and the other Hyksosian warlords, he had browbeaten his guards and blustered his way out of the quarters to which he had been confined to come to Taita.
'Life is so dull without you, Taita. I think I might die of boredom. Naja must let us be together again. You should cast a spell on him.'
'It is something we can consider,' Taita avoided the suggestion adroitly, 'but now we have little time. Naja will send the whole army out to search for us once he finds that we are missing from the temple. I must tell you my own news.' Rapidly, in simple outline, he told Nefer what had happened to him since their last meeting. He explained the relationship between Naja and Trok, and described how he had visited the scene of Pharaoh Tamose's death and the discovery he had made there.
Nefer listened without interruption, but when Taita spoke of the death of his father his eyes filled with tears. He looked away, coughed and wiped his eyes on the back of his hand.
'Now you can appreciate the danger you are in,' Taita told him. 'I am certain that Naja had much to do with Pharaoh's murder, and the closer we come to the proof of it, the greater that danger becomes.'
'One day I will avenge my father.' Nefer vowed, and his voice was cold and hard.
'And I will help you do it,' Taita promised, 'but now we must protect you from Naja's malice.'
'How do you plan to do that, Taita? Can we escape from Egypt as we planned before?'
'No.' Taita shook his head. 'Naturally I have considered that course, but Naja has us too securely imprisoned here. If we tried to run for the frontier again we would have a thousand chariots hot behind us.'
'What can we do, then? You are in danger also.'
'No. I have convinced Naja that he cannot succeed without my help.' He described the false divination ceremony at the temple of Osiris, and how Naja believed that Taita could share with him the secret of eternal life.
Nefer grinned at the Magus' cunning. 'So what do you plan?'
'We must wait until the right time either to escape or rid the world of Naja's evil presence. In the meantime I will protect you as best I can.'
'How will you do that?'
'Naja sent me to Apepi to arrange this peace conference.'
'Yes, I know that you went to Avaris. They told me that when I demanded to see you.'
'Not to Avaris, but to Apepi's battle headquarters at Bubasti. Once Apepi had agreed to the meeting with Naja, I was able to convince him that they should seal the treaty by a marriage between you and Apepi's daughter. Once you are under the protection of the Hyksosian king, Naja's knife will be blunted. He could not risk plunging the land back into civil war by voiding the treaty.'
'Apepi is going to give me his daughter as a wife?' Nefer stared at him in wonder. 'The one in the red dress whom I saw at the ceremony this morning?'
'Yes.' Taita agreed. 'Mintaka is her name.'
'I know her name,' Nefer assured him vehemently. 'She is named after the tiny star in the belt of the Hunter constellation.'
