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19

Sita

“Tell me what you want.”

Femi’s voice curled like smoke into her ear, the words winding their way into the fruitful garden of her fantasies. Sita had tended it in secret for years, but she’d only begun to taste what grew there.

She lay on the soft woolen rug in her bedchamber, and he knelt before her like a supplicant. They’d just started and already he’d begun to sweat—his moist skin glistening in the moonlight streaming in from the window. She watched a single bead of perspiration roll from the hollow of his throat, down his bare chest and stomach, and along the deep trench of his pelvis. Sita couldn’t resist darting forward to lick it away.

Femi inhaled sharply at the touch of her tongue to his skin.

That sound, that gasp—it was teeth biting into ripe fruit, it was honey-sweetness dribbling down lips. It threw open the gates to her secret place and invited everything inside.

Sita reached out and pulled him to her, cupping the back of Femi’s neck with her hand, wrapping herself around him until his heavy body pressed her into the floor.

“This,” she murmured as he kissed her neck, her collarbone, her shoulders. “This is what I want. What I need.” There was something about the weight of him, the way his bulk held her fast to the earth, that made her feel safe. Like she was grounded, no longer in danger of being caught up in the swirling maelstrom of her life.

She felt his heart quicken at the sound of her words. He looked up and met her eyes, his pupils dark and full of adoration.

She wondered if he loved her.

She worried that he did.

Femi was no fool. Certainly, he must know the folly of a palace guard imagining a future with a princess—but that might not stop his heart from dreaming. From breaking.

Perhaps his resistance to lovemaking wasn’t only for her sake, but for his own. Perhaps he was doing everything he could to keep her from imprinting on his soul.

Still, she wondered how much longer either of them could resist the temptation.

She wanted to stop.

She couldn’t stop.

How many lives will I destroy along this cursed path? she wondered.

Instead, she held him tighter. Dragged her nails across his broad, sweat-slick back, and spilled herself into him until they were both drowning, gasping for breath—

A ragged wail split the night.

Sita pulled away, mid-kiss. She waited, dread dropping like a stone in her belly. Her fingers still dug into Femi’s back, but now it was for a different reason.

“What was that?” Femi whispered.

Then they heard it again. A woman’s voice. A cry of such total despair that it sent a bolt of terror down Sita’s spine.

She was on her feet in an instant, pulling a robe around her body and running out the door with Femi at her heels.

“Sitamun, wait!” he said quietly, grabbing her wrist. “Someone might see!”

“I don’t care if they see,” Sita said, and jerked her hand free. “We’re going.”

Femi’s expression changed when he heard the commanding tone in her voice. “Allow me to go first then, Princess,” he asked. “In case there is danger ahead.”

“All right. But we must hurry.”

The intimacy between them was gone. It existed only within the confines of her bedchamber—it couldn’t survive anywhere else.

They started down the hall, which had broad windows on one side and flickering torches lining the other. One of the palace cats sat on a ledge, its golden eyes curious as they followed Sita and Femi’s passage.

The wailing continued, a chilling, tortured keening.

Like someone’s heart is being ripped out , Sita thought with a shiver.

She rushed toward it, pushing Femi to go faster. They passed sleepy courtiers and their wives emerging from their rooms, blinking and bewildered. Finally, Sita pushed past Femi and ran.

The closer they got to the sound, the more certain Sita became about who was making it. And why.

Her dread intensified.

Please , she prayed, not that.

Bile rose into Sita’s throat as she slowed and then stopped at the door to Maet’s room.

Oil lamps and incense burned inside, but it did nothing to mask the sour smell that permeated the room and flowed out of it like a curse. In the dim light, Sita saw Maet’s mother on her knees at her daughter’s bedside. She was rocking back and forth, wailing, crying, tearing the hair from her head. The sight of her was like a physical blow. There was no air to breathe. The world had suddenly become a void filled with nothing but suffering.

Sita turned away.

She didn’t want to look.

If she didn’t see, maybe it wouldn’t be real.

You don’t deserve to be spared this pain. The voice in her mind was harsh, but it spoke the truth. This is on your hands.

Look.

Look at what you’ve wrought.

With effort, she dragged her gaze to the small, still form lying in the bed.

“No,” she murmured. “Maet…”

The blanket had been pulled up to the girl’s chest, clearly smoothed by a mother’s desperate hands, helpless to do anything else. Maet lay with her head turned toward the door, her eyes open and staring. Her lips were slightly open too, as if she were about to call out.

See-see …

I’m scared, See-see …

Why didn’t you help me, See-see?

Sita’s legs gave way beneath her.

Femi caught her before she could fall. “Sitamun, are you all right?”

He sounded far away, and it was several minutes before Sita regained her bearings and was able to stand again on her own, swaying unsteadily on her feet. She touched her face and found tears there.

Others arrived. Priests, courtiers, guards—and soon, the wailing was overpowered by the hum of prayers and hushed conversations, of arrangements being made.

Montuhotep appeared, assessing the situation. He looked unusually disheveled, and there were dark circles under his eyes. Frustration coloring his face, he pushed his way past the crowd into the bedchamber.

“Out of my way,” he said. “I should have been the first to know about this—the first!” Without addressing Maet’s mother, he stood over the bed and began to speak. “Praise to you, O Amun, Lord of All, mysterious of form,” he recited, “Take this child into thine arms, for she is ready to go West; make her heart as light as air, so that she may be judged and found worthy to enter the Field of Reeds—”

Suddenly the queen appeared in the corridor, her eyes filled with panic. Sita was surprised at the strength of her emotion—Maet wasn’t her blood, after all—until she spoke, and everything changed.

“The king!” Queen Bintanath exclaimed. “No one can find him! He’s vanished from his chambers. He was there moments ago…”

Father is missing? Sita could hardly wrap her mind around this new information.

At the queen’s pronouncement, the crowded hallway became even more chaotic, and Femi was pulled away by other guards to launch a search for the pharaoh.

“I’m sorry,” he said to Sita before disappearing down the hallway.

“She has told no lies, O Amun,” Montuhotep droned on, “nor has she closed her heart to the suffering of the innocent—”

Maet’s mother seemed oblivious to both the high priest and the news about the king. She continued her mournful cries, the strands of her black hair falling to the stone floor as she ripped them free. They collected around her in a soft nest of pain, one Sita imagined she would sit in for the rest of her life. She might fly from it from time to time, but she would always return to brood there, in her profound, unspeakable loss.

Sita felt cold. She knew she’d allowed the girl to die. Keeping Mery’s secret had been no different than feeding Maet the poison herself. Somehow she’d imagined that the girl might still pull through, that she’d refuse to eat any more of the cakes, that her youth would save her.

She’d been wrong, of course. And Maet had died, a lamb sacrificed on the altar of Mery’s grand plans for the kingdom.

Sita watched Maet’s mother, alone inside her grief.

Was it worth it? she wondered.

Her eyes suffused with tears, she tore away her gaze, taken by a sudden desire to make herself useful. I should help them search for Father.

She walked briskly back down the hallway, past her own chambers, until she reached the palace’s main hall. Several guards were already there—one interrogating poor Ineni about how the king could possibly have slipped away—but they took no notice of her.

Something soft brushed past her legs, and she looked down to see the striped cat. She snaked around Sita’s ankles, her tail erect, but when it was clear Sita had no treats nor affection to offer, she moved on, making her way on silent paws toward the pleasure garden.

Sita found herself following.

Outside, the lotus was in full bloom. The fishpond was black and still, the white flowers dotting its surface like stars on a night sky. All around, the trees huddled in shadow, and from within their boughs the nightjars sang. Kroo, kroo! Kroo, kroo! The green herbaceous smell and the quiet beauty of the garden seemed incongruous with everything happening inside the palace walls.

Then she saw someone sitting on a bench across the way, under the sycamore tree. A thin, huddled apparition.

“Father?”

The figure didn’t move. Sita hurried under the tree’s canopy, blinking until her eyes adjusted to the darkness.

King Amunmose sat on a stone bench flanked by jasmine bushes, staring past her to the garden beyond. He wore a fine white tunic, edged in crimson thread, which draped loosely over his body. He wore neither a crown nor a headdress, and his wispy, elderberry-dyed hair, the color of an old bruise, shivered in the breeze. Shadows clung to his jutting cheekbones and the hollows of his eyes. He didn’t react to her arrival.

“Father?” she repeated.

He turned to her then, his eyes luminous and somehow too large. For a moment, he didn’t speak. Then: “I had the dream again.”

His voice was dry and so soft that Sita thought she might have imagined hearing it.

“What dream?” she asked.

He raised an unsteady hand to his forehead. “The snakes. The red and the black. The one that bites, and the one that…” He looked at Sita, actually focused on her, as if he were seeing her for the first time. “I trusted the priests. I followed their instructions. I did… everything. ” The last word came out choked with impotent rage.

Sita grimaced. Ever since the Bast Festival, she’d avoided being in her father’s presence. She knew if she spent too much time with him, if she allowed herself to stop thinking about Mery’s reasons for doing what he was doing, if she for one moment forgot about the future and remained in the present, if she allowed herself to feel— her weak heart could destroy everything.

You’ve come this far. You can’t turn back now.

“Please, Father,” Sita said, moving closer to him. “Let me take you back to your chambers. Everyone is looking for you, and—”

“She’s gone, isn’t she?”

Sita paused, breathing into the silence.

“I’m sorry, Father.”

The king’s head dropped.

After a long while, he spoke. “I know I have done wrong,” he said, staring once again into the middle distance, speaking to everyone and no one, and Sita least of all. “I know I have fallen short of greatness and that a host of malevolent spirits may have brought this condemnation upon me, for both what I’ve done and what I’ve failed to do. But why…?” His voice broke, and his shoulders crumpled. “Why did they have to take her ?”

Sita thought of Maet’s little body cooling in her bed. She didn’t deserve any of this.

Still, she couldn’t stop the horrible, selfish thoughts from spilling out of her. All the things she wished to say, but never did.

Would you cry this way for me, Father? she wondered as he gasped and shook with despair. I’m not innocent and pure—not anymore, but I am yours! Your flesh! Your blood! Maybe I wouldn’t be so broken, if only you’d loved me!

With a shudder, the king collapsed, tumbling forward off the bench and onto the soft, loamy ground below.

Sita stared at him, feeling once more that her anger had materialized into a weapon and struck down its target. She took a step back.

“Father?” she whispered.

Only the nightjars replied. Kroo, kroo!

Sita turned on her heel and ran into the palace, screaming for help.