And in the moment it took him to smile, I grasped the obsidian knife with both hands, and with one absolutely silent motion, the blade cut through the dark air, and through his flesh and bones as if they were insubstantial as a spirit’s. His torso remained standing, his arms moving as if in apology or confusion; his blood pulsed out of his neck in gushes that quickly lost their strength, until his body slipped over and fell to the ground. It jerked a few last times, and then lay still.
His head had rolled away; I scrambled to find it, then ran into the street with it still warm, still full of secrets, in my hands. I held it up, dripping, by the hair, in the last of the moonlight. His eyes were open wide, staring, as if he had seen something that truly surprised him.
‘
But his features were changing again. Slowly, and in death, I could once more recognize not Obsidian, but Nakht, the man I had called friend nearly all my life.
I walked to the Great River. The vast waters were black under the late-night sky. I sat down, and studied the head: this simple skull, with its once-mutable, lively face, had contained secrets, and languages and ideas, and the knowledge of the stars and the Gods; it contained brilliance and mercilessness, crimes and cruelties, and somewhere, somehow, even love. But those things were all gone now. With the last of my strength, I threw the head as far out as I could. It landed with a faint splash, and vanished.
I stayed there watching the great mysteries of the perpetual waters running by me in the last of the darkness of the night. I was shivering uncontrollably again. The opium sang in my blood, demanding to be satiated. But I would never take it again. I had to face myself before I could return home. I felt unclean. So I stood in the Great River, and began to pour its waters over myself, over and over, scrubbing at the agony in my flesh, and heard myself begin to scream.
42
Horemheb’s divisions occupied the city the following day. Before dawn his ships sailed into the harbour in silence. As Ra rose upon a new day, his regiments moved through the silent streets quietly and efficiently. There was no resistance. There was no disorder. Shops remained closed, and people stayed at home, afraid, waiting to see what would happen, hoping the storm would break and pass into a new peace. The Medjay submitted obediently. My old foe Nebamun remained at the head of the force, and was ready and waiting for the general himself, offering his congratulations. Horemheb’s officers marched into the bureaucracies and the temples, and new men, who swore their loyalty to the army, were given positions of authority. Those who were associated with the old regime were marched out, under arrest, in daylight, to await their trials in the jails of the city. But no one disappeared in the dark of night. There was no violence. There were no summary executions. Elite men hid in their mansions, and waited to see what would happen. Horemheb’s reign began, as he had said it would, with the restoration of order. And the next day the shops opened, and people returned to work.
I visited the general, and gave him the location of the merchant’s warehouse. That night, after the fall of the new curfew, he commanded his most elite squad. They took their positions along every street and every alleyway in the moonlight, armed with axes, staves, swords or spears. Up on the rooftops, archers waited, poised and silent. But instead of breaking down the great wooden doors with a battering ram, Horemheb commanded the archers to fire arrows dowsed in flaming bitumen into the compound of the warehouse. These hissed up into the night sky, brief shooting stars, and arced down into the unseen interior. After a moment, there were shouts from within as fires sparked; then another round of arrows shot up into the sky, and down into the warehouse. As the fires took hold, smoke began to rise up, and a glow could be seen inside the building; the shouts of men trying to rally their forces came clear over the high walls. A third shower of arrows lit up the sky, and now fierce red flames took possession of the warehouse, shooting up above the walls.
Horemheb nodded, and his foot soldiers gathered before the doors. A figure suddenly appeared at the top of the high wall, his tunic and hair on fire, dancing in agony, and dropped to the ground; instantly the back of his skull was dashed by Horemheb’s men. There were more shouts within, and then the great wooden doors began to open; thick smoke billowed out, and a gust of heat and flame, and men, blinded and staggering, many on fire, ran screaming towards Horemheb’s men, and were swiftly dispatched with blows to the skull. Quickly there was a long line of dead bodies laid out neatly in the street, and the fire burned on, lighting up the night sky; but Horemheb had imposed a curfew, and no one dared to come out to see what was happening.
By dawn, the fire had gutted the warehouse, and burned itself out. Horemheb strode among the ruins, and I followed him, taking in the carnage and chaos around me. Many more bodies, burned into twisted, inhuman shapes, lay scattered about. We looked at the ashy remains of cages and cells, where kidnap victims must have been held; we found the storage rooms where the opium would have been kept; and finally we stood in the treasury, where the vast golden profits of Nakht’s opium trade, tarnished by the heat of the fire, spilled across the floor. There was enough gold there to buy a new army. Horemheb kicked at it, contemptuously.
‘And they thought they could destroy me with this?’
I said nothing.
‘Where is “Obsidian”?’ he asked, suddenly, turning on me. ‘I have a feeling he is not here, and that you know where he is. Do not lie to me.’
‘He is dead. I killed him.’
Horemheb’s sword blade was suddenly sharp and cold against my throat.
‘I gave very clear orders he was to be taken,’ he said.
‘He killed my closest friend. He betrayed me. He left me for dead. And he had my family, living in his house,’ I said. ‘He was my prize, and he was about to kill me. I don’t regret what I did.’
‘Who was he? Name him…’ he insisted.
For some reason, perhaps the last traces of loyalty to the memory of a former friend, I hesitated for a moment. But I wanted the world to know the truth.
‘His real name was Nakht.’
Horemheb laughed briefly, like a jackal, at the cruel irony.
‘How perfect. The Queen’s royal envoy turns out to be the spider at the heart of the dark web of secrets. I suppose he would have exposed and disgraced me, and then proposed himself as leader, as the restorer of order after the time of chaos.’
‘He wanted to start a new age. Without kings, without Gods … the errors of the past all purged away. He thought he could make the world perfect in his own image. He thought he was incorruptible. But he wasn’t. He discovered he liked killing…’ We stood in silence for a moment. ‘All his secrets died with him. No one else knows the truth about Obsidian, and the opium-smuggling within the Seth division,’ I said.
‘Except you,’ he replied.
‘Yes.’
I supposed he would now have me arrested, and sent bound like a captive to his darkest prison, never to return. But instead he reached into a leather purse, and produced a fine gold ring.
‘Here. Recompense,’ he said.
I held it in my palm. ‘I don’t want it,’ I replied, and flicked it carelessly into the great mound of gold before us.
Horemheb looked genuinely surprised.
‘Then what do you want?’
‘I want you to release Simut. I want you to allow the Queen to live out her life in privacy. And then I want to go home.’
For a moment, he considered.
‘Even now, when you should be grasping your rewards, you remain loyal to that disastrous dynasty…’
‘I am loyal to
He stared at me.
‘Your loyalty is commendable. But I’m afraid you must mourn her. She is dead. She died by her own hand.
