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Neff

Neff had never known such quiet.

Since the king’s death the night before, it was as if a mourning shroud had been thrown over the Temple of Amun. Priests went about their daily tasks, speaking in whispers, their heads bowed as they moved from place to place. The Wabet had disappeared from the women’s chambers in the early hours to begin the lengthy preparations for Amunmose’s funeral ceremony, which would take place in exactly seventy days. Even the birds in the pleasure garden seemed to sing in muted tones.

Through her reading, Neff had learned that the time between the death of a pharaoh and the crowning of a new one was fraught with peril. The currents of time continued to flow, pulling Khetara toward an uncertain future. But until the prince’s coronation, there was no man at the prow, no one to navigate the kingdom through dangers that might lie ahead.

Perhaps this was why the priests were so hesitant to raise their voices. Perhaps they feared attracting the attention of evil forces that roamed the land, emboldened by the king’s death.

In the silence, Neff daydreamed about home. She imagined waking up on her mat, going upstairs, and seeing her mother sweeping the sand off the roof in the morning sun. She imagined sitting down at the breakfast table and telling her father that she’d met the king. That she’d been summoned to the palace, and he’d asked her to interpret his dream.

I knew he was going to die , she imagined saying to her father, but I was afraid to tell him. So I lied. I lied to the king and now he’s dead.

She pictured the horror on his face. The disappointment.

Her father’s words before she boarded Bast’s boat echoed in her mind. His voice and the voices of the gods melded together into a great cosmic condemnation.

Nefermaat.

Perfect justice.

That’s you.

You’re going to make us proud.

Every word stung like vinegar in an open wound.

Master Montuhotep and the chief scribe were busy with preparations for the king’s funeral and Prince Meryamun’s coronation, so Neff was excused after her daily tasks were complete. With the day to herself, she found herself back in the women’s quarters, alone. After washing her hands and face in the basin, she knelt on her sleeping mat and prayed, sending her plea to the goddess who had brought her to this place.

“Help me, Bast. What do I do now? How can I make it right?”

She waited for a sign, but none came.

After a while, she moved to get up and heard a couple priests coming down the hallway.

“Thank Amun the natron delivery came yesterday,” one said as he passed. “The embalmers will surely need it now.”

Neff blinked. She’d seen the natron delivery—the man from her vision, Karim, had snuck into the temple with the natron vendor and his donkey. News of the king’s collapse and death had pushed the events in the House of Life from her mind, but now they came rushing back.

The mysterious pharaoh named Setnakht. The Oracle of the Lamb.

Ancient forces had drawn her to this place, and then had drawn Karim to her. When she’d first seen him in the courtyard, she’d felt it—like an invisible cord pulling them together. She’d felt a similar sensation when she’d seen Princess Sitamun the night of the Bast Festival but hadn’t realized its importance at the time.

One wore a crown …

If she, Sitamun, Karim, and the Sakeshi farm girl he’d mentioned were the four figures in her vision, then the oracle was truly coming to pass.

A deep dread grew within her. It spoke of events beyond her knowledge, events that had already been set in motion.

It was all too much to keep inside. She needed to talk to someone, to stop feeling so alone. After giving thanks to Bast, she left her rooms to seek out the only person she could trust.

***

Kenna was easy to find. All Neff had to do was follow the sound of the commotion to the embalming chamber, where his voice rose above the others, its volume jarring among the overwhelming silence. Curious, she crept to the open doorway and peered around the edge, hoping to get a peek inside without being spotted.

The prince stood facing half a dozen Sem priests, his face flushed and his arms akimbo. Neff had never seen him that way before.

“Please, my prince,” the oldest Sem priest said, his expression pained. “Our only desire is to assist you with the king’s embalming ritual. You know as well as anyone that this isn’t a one-man job, and for a pharaoh , it’s—”

“He’s not merely the pharaoh,” Kenna said, his voice cutting through the other man’s like a blade. “He is my father. No one shall touch him but me. Do you understand? This is my duty. I must do it alone.”

The elder priest’s shoulders fell. “As you wish,” he said, and gestured for the others to follow him out.

Neff leaped back from the door and slid behind a pillar until all the Sem priests had gone. In the wake of their departure, silence washed back over the hall—so completely that Neff began to wonder if Kenna had gone with them. But then he spoke.

“You can come in now, Neff.”

She emerged from her hiding place. “How do you always know?” she asked as she entered the chamber.

Kenna stood in the center of the room, his head bowed over a familiar form that lay across the two stone pedestals where the old woman’s corpse had once been. It had been obscured by the crowd of priests when she’d first looked in, and seeing it made her heart leap into her throat.

The king.

Neff stopped, covering her mouth with one hand.

Amunmose’s thin, ravaged body was naked aside from a fine linen shroud draped over his waist. The last time she’d seen his face, it had regarded her with hope, begging for a message from the gods that he felt had abandoned him. She’d offered him lies, and now he was gone.

“I’m so sorry,” Neff blurted. It was both a condolence and an apology.

Kenna looked up at her, his eyes red-rimmed but dry.

“Thank you. We weren’t close, my father and I,” he said, his gaze drifting back down to the body. “But unlike Mother, he never objected to my decision to join the priesthood. Father thought people should do what they wanted.” He paused. “ He certainly did. Perhaps putting desire over duty made him a poor king, but… I owe him this final honor for allowing me my freedom.”

He went to the table where his tools lay waiting.

“I should let you be alone,” Neff said, taking a step back toward the door.

“No, wait.” Kenna sighed and turned, and Neff noticed just how tired he was. He must not have slept much since the king’s collapse the night before.

“The priests’ company would have been burdensome. Yours would be a comfort.” He pressed his lips together in a thin line. “I should warn you, though. The embalming ritual isn’t for the fainthearted. Do you think you’ll be all right?”

Neff bit her lip. Kenna was a prince. He could have commanded her to stay if he wished it—but he wasn’t commanding. He was asking. And despite her apprehension at witnessing a harrowing process she’d only heard tales of, Neff couldn’t abandon her adopted brother in his time of need.

“Of course I will,” she replied.

Kenna studied her face, and seemed to reconsider. “No—I cannot ask this of you. You’re just a girl, and this… it’s important and necessary, yes, but it’s very unpleasant if you’re not comfortable with the dead.”

“I want to stay,” Neff assured him. She sounded more confident than she felt. In truth, she was already feeling queasy, but she was determined to be there for him. “I’ll learn so much by helping you. It can be… part of my education as a priestess.”

Kenna brightened. “Yes, that’s very true,” he said, taking to the idea. “It is extremely illuminating. Not simply the ritual itself, but what it can teach us about the body and how it functions. I’d be happy to explain the process as I go, if you think it would be useful.”

Neff swallowed. “I do.”

“Then let’s begin.”

Kenna seemed more relaxed as he returned to his tools and assumed the role of teacher. He plucked the long pointed metal shaft from the table and placed it on his father’s chest. Neff forced herself to move closer as he tilted the king’s head back and braced it with a small curved piece of wood.

“First we must extract the organ inside the skull,” he said, taking the shaft in his hand. “It’s essential that all moisture be removed from the body to prevent putrefaction. The dead must retain their physical bodies in the Duat, so it’s our duty to make sure they are perfectly preserved.”

With that, he inserted the sharp end of the shaft into the king’s nostril until it could go no farther. Then, with a swift, forceful motion, he forced it through with a dull crack.

Neff made a small squeak as she felt her breakfast threaten to reappear.

Kenna glanced up at her. “All right?”

“Fine,” Neff replied weakly.

Kenna nodded and resumed his work. He moved the shaft around in slow circles inside the skull before sliding it back out, slick with dark blood. Next, he set the tool back on the table and picked up the shaft with the spoon end.

“Now that the organ has been carved into smaller pieces,” Kenna said, “we can remove it without damaging the skull.”

Neff watched as he reinserted the shaft into the king’s nostril and began systematically pulling out spongy globs of gray matter with the spoon, dumping it into a clay bowl with horrible wet noises.

“I thought…” she managed, swallowing the bile rising in her throat. “I thought you were supposed to preserve everything.”

“Yes, everything except that.” Kenna grimaced as he attempted to scoop out the last bits of flesh. “The organ inside the skull is of no use. We remove and preserve the lungs, stomach, liver, and intestines in Sons of Horus jars—only the heart remains inside, to take with him on his journey West. It’s as the embalmer said in that old letter we found in the House of Life. At the moment of judgment, the heart is weighed against the feather of Maat, and if it’s lighter than the feather, he is welcomed into the Duat. Without a heart, he cannot face judgment and is doomed to wander the earth for eternity.”

“Is that next? Removing everything except the heart?” she asked, unable to keep the dread from her voice.

“Yes,” Kenna replied, wiping a sheen of perspiration from his brow as he finished the extraction. He set the bloody tool aside and took up a clean cloth. Gently, he moved his father’s head back to a resting position and began cleaning the spattered gore from his face. As he did this, Neff saw something change in Kenna’s serious expression. A subtle flare of the nostril, a quiver in the corner of his lip that betrayed his grief.

He must have sensed her watching him, because he cleared his throat and tossed the soiled cloth in the bowl with the rest of the viscera. He turned away, leaning on the table with both hands for a moment before coming back to the body with a shard of obsidian.

“Now we open the abdomen and remove the vital organs. Once that’s done, we pack the body with natron and wait seventy days for the preservation process to be complete.” He glanced over at Neff, his emotions roiling just under the surface. “Are you still with me, little sister?”

Neff didn’t want to see more. In fact, she wished she could wipe what she’d already seen from her memory. But staying felt like the first step in making amends for what she’d done. If she was ever to find forgiveness, she’d have to be brave. She’d failed the king; the least she could do was be there for his son.

“I’m with you.”

Kenna gave her a crooked smile and nodded. Then he lowered the blade to the left side of his father’s belly and pierced the soft flesh. He dragged the blade down, slicing the skin open like Neff had seen fisherman do at the market. He cut all the way to where the cloth covered his father’s waist.

“There,” Kenna said, inspecting the incision. What little blood oozed from the cut was torpid and dark. The prince took a deep breath and pushed his left hand through the opening.

“Bring me a bowl,” he grunted, indicating one of the clay vessels on the table. “The largest one, please.” Neff scurried over to retrieve it and bring it to his side. A moment later, Kenna began pulling a long pink tube from the body, more and more of it, until it almost overflowed the bowl.

“Another bowl,” he said, and reached in again, this time extracting a thicker curved organ, cutting it free from its bonds with the obsidian blade, and depositing it into the second vessel. Neff held her breath as she transported the viscera back to the table, trying desperately not to inspect its contents too closely.

What emerged next was a massive cone-shaped organ, nearly too large to fit through the incision. It was an angry, violent-looking thing—dark, brownish red, and unexpectedly heavy. Kenna gave it a curious look before depositing it into the bowl.

“What’s wrong?” Neff asked him.

Kenna shook his head. “Probably nothing. Strange, though…” He turned back to the body, steeling himself. “One more,” he murmured, and reached deeply into the body, nearly up to his shoulder.

With effort, he pulled out two more spongy organs, one identical to the other. They were surprisingly light in comparison to the one before, and marred by several odd growths on their surface. Curiosity overwhelming disgust, Neff peered closer. The growths reminded her of a fungus that sometimes grew on old food left too long in the dark—whitish and soft and edging toward rot.

“Kenna…” Neff said as the prince got up to wash his arm in a basin of clean water. “What is that?”

Kenna inspected the growths, his expression shifting from interest to suspicion.

“Let me see,” he said, and brought the bowl over to the other three lined up on the table.

He examined each one in turn, growing more agitated with every passing second. Taking up his blade, he sliced the curved organ open and poured its contents onto a shallow dish. What came out was a grayish-brown mash.

The smell of it nearly made Neff swoon, but she gripped the edge of the table and forced herself to focus.

Kenna sniffed the gray pulp gingerly, and then set it down. His expression thoughtful, he put both palms flat on the table, leaned forward, and cursed.

Neff stood next to him, her earlier dread growing stronger. “What is it?”

Kenna took a deep breath. “About a year ago, a man was brought in for embalming after it was revealed that his wife had poisoned him. She’d taken her time about it, adding a little bit of the stuff to his dinner each night until he’d sickened and died. She almost got away with it, but had been betrayed by a neighbor who’d overheard her discussing her plans with her lover. The woman had hoped to run away with him after her husband’s death.

“Once she was confronted with the truth, the wife confessed and was executed, and after that, her husband’s family paid for a proper embalming. It was one of the first rituals I performed myself, so I remember it very well.

“During the extraction, I noticed curious things about the man’s viscera. His liver, for example”—here, Kenna indicated the heavy dark organ—“was swollen and much larger than normal. Much like my father’s.”

Neff became very still. No , she thought. Please, don’t let it be true.

Next, Kenna pointed to the spongy organs. “I also noticed that the man’s lungs were spotted with decaying growths, much like these here. And the food inside his stomach had an odd smell that didn’t match what he’d eaten that day.” He indicated the gray mash—the contents of the king’s belly. His last meal.

“That is the half-digested remains of a honey cake,” Kenna said. “But the smell is more like garlic. It’s not right, Nefermaat. None of this is right.”

Neff stumbled back. “Amun forgive me,” she whispered.

Kenna did not seem to hear her. His long fingers, the nails still encrusted with blood, curled into fists. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I don’t think my father died from some plague or curse. I think he was murdered.”

Neff closed her eyes, the sick feeling in her stomach intensifying as the words she hadn’t said came tumbling from her lips. “‘He is betrayed by those closest to him. He will die at the hand of one, while the other bears silent witness.’”

Kenna whirled on her. “What did you say?”

Neff felt a sudden surge of fear, but knew she had to tell him the truth. “When your father called me to the palace to interpret his dream, that was the message I received. But I was too afraid to tell him what I saw, so I told him something else. I didn’t know this would happen. I didn’t think anything I said would matter.”

Neff sniffed, her eyes suddenly suffused with tears. “I’m so sorry.”

Kenna’s face went slack. “‘Betrayed by those closest to him… silent witness…’” He stared at the ground; then his mournful expression turned to anger as a single word slid from his lips, as sharp as the obsidian blade.

“Mery.”

He banged his fist against the table, causing the tools to rattle. Kenna moved to straighten them, his breath coming in short bursts. Neff could feel the fury radiating off him, and it frightened her.

He’ll hate you for what you’ve done . You’ll be thrown out of the temple. You’ll be a disgrace to your family. You’re a liar and a coward and you’ve ruined everything.

She suddenly recalled the conversation she’d had with Prince Meryamun that day at the palace. She’d told him about her vision! She’d promised him to keep it to herself!

I’ll make sure that the king is taken care of , he’d said.

And he had.

I’m so stupid , Neff thought.

She started to cry. “I’m sorry,” she said again, her head in her hands. “I’m so sorry.”

Kenna touched her shoulder. She winced, but his hand was gentle.

“Dry your tears, little sister,” Kenna said, his voice calm once again. “None of this is your fault. If anything, it’s mine.”

Neff’s brow furrowed. “What do you mean? How could this be your fault?”

“Sita tried to tell me something was wrong at the palace. She practically begged for my help, hinting that there was something suspicious about Father’s illness. But I didn’t want to listen. I thought it was just her imagination…” He turned to look at his father’s body, emptied of all its secrets. “I should have listened to her.”

Neff’s breath still came in halting gasps, but she was relieved he wasn’t angry at her. “What are you going to do?”

Kenna shrugged. “What can I do? Mery is poised to be crowned. If I know my brother, he’s already gathered support from the viziers and the other priests. Father had enemies in his own administration who would jump at the chance to swear allegiance to a bold new pharaoh. In fact, I’d wager that some of them were in on this plan. If I cast accusations at him, I’d only be endangering myself and those around me.”

Neff thought of the fierce young prince she’d met in the palace, so different from his gentle brother. She thought of him seated on the throne, his radiance so dazzling that it blinded people from seeing who he truly was.

With that thought came a sudden rush of impending doom, and the doleful voice of the lamb from her dream.

Beware, for soon the Great River of Khetara will turn to blood.

“Mery has won,” Kenna continued.

Take heed, Thonis, Great House of Amun! Beware of what is unseen among you!

“There’s nothing I can do but move on.”

Sorrow and ruin to the Children of the Two Lands!

Neff gasped.

“Are you all right?” Kenna asked.

“You must stop him,” she said.

“I can’t.” His tone was apologetic. “The throne is his.”

Numb, Neff watched Kenna move the sack of natron over to the body and begin packing salt into the king’s empty torso.

It can’t end this way , she thought. But if a prince can’t do anything, what can I do? Why would the gods choose someone as powerless as me for this task?

“I’ll get you some fresh water,” Neff offered, taking up the basin. She needed an excuse to get some air.

She turned to leave and saw a cat sitting in the doorway, sniffing the air. It was old and striped, probably one of the palace cats that roamed freely. Its eyes narrowed as it took in the strong scents, and the fur on its back stood on end. Then it padded away, to a place where the air wasn’t so heavy with death.

Or maybe it was more than that. Maybe the cat sensed the dark portents hanging over her, over the room and the body, over the young priest who believed in gods and rituals but not in himself, over the chaos that would stem from his silence.

She followed in the cat’s wake, holding the basin tight to her body as if to give her the courage she didn’t feel. Someone had to act. And in the absence of another option, that someone would have to be her. She still didn’t understand why Bast chose to bring her to this place, chose to lay this challenge at her feet, but then again, who was she to question the will of the gods?

Show me what I must do, goddess , Neff thought, and it will be done. I will be silent no longer.