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“Be sure to keep your wits about you tonight,” Queen Bintanath said as she hurried Sita through the palace’s main hall toward the women’s quarters. Shafts of sunlight arced in through high square windows, illuminating the richly painted walls, columns, and broad-leafed palm trees planted in the center of the hall. Around them, servants and nobles went about their business, nodding respectfully as they passed.

One of the palace cats sauntered by, a black-striped one that reminded her of a female tabby she’d had as a baby. It couldn’t have been the same one, though—that was so long ago. The cat wore a jeweled collar and looked sleepy and well-fed. Like all the other cats, she was probably getting special treatment on Bast’s special day.

“People come from all over Khetara for the festival,” the queen went on, “And not all of them share our values. They’ll take you to the sea and bring you back thirsty if you let them—princess or no.”

“Uh-huh,” Sita said, noncommittal. The queen had many skills, the foremost of which was sucking the pleasure out of almost anything.

“I’ve tasked Mery with keeping an eye on you,” Queen Bintanath said. “He attended the last festival, so you should be fine if you remain together.”

Sita grumbled under her breath. She was still annoyed that her brother had been allowed to attend last year’s festival and she hadn’t, despite them being the exact same age. It wasn’t surprising, though—what with him being a boy and Mother’s favorite.

Mery the beautiful.

Mery the brilliant.

Mery the future king.

Still, she wasn’t going to let her brother’s watchful eye prevent her from having a good time.

“What about Kenna?” she asked.

The queen sighed. “Bakenamun wishes to spend the evening at the temple, alone with his scrolls.”

“Truly?” Sita couldn’t hide the note of disappointment in her voice. Her other brother had always been a studious, dour boy, but she still wished he would share in the celebrations. Studying with the Sem priests seemed to be the only thing he was interested in of late.

“I tried to convince him, but he claims to be ‘busy.’ Too busy to live, it seems!” The queen sucked her teeth. “Calling himself a ‘Man of Anubis.’ There are families suited to that”—she grimaced—“position… but ours is not one of them! I’ll never understand why your father puts up with it.”

Sita looked away. She felt sorry for Kenna. As the only daughter, she was granted a slice of the queen’s favor, even if Mery had the lion’s share. But their small quiet brother had never felt the warmth of their mother’s light shine on him, not ever. It was no wonder he preferred the shadows of the temple.

Just then, the hustle and bustle of the main hall seemed to slow. Queen Bintanath stopped, and Sita nearly ran into her.

“Well,” the queen said, “You bring up the cat and it comes jumping. Here’s your father now.”

Sita peered around her mother’s shoulder as the king’s palanquin approached. It was one of her father’s everyday palanquins—carried by four servants instead of the standard twelve he used for festival days—but it was still a chair fit for a pharaoh. Bedecked in gold, the sides of the throne were engraved with a parade of supplicants kneeling before Amun, and the armrests were the heads of two rearing cobras. King Amunmose reclined in the throne, his head resting on one fist. He wore a green pleated schenti and gold sandals, and had a leopard-skin pelt tossed over one shoulder. Sita saw that the leopard’s fur was patchy in places, and that the king’s clothes, which once stretched over a thick, well-fed body, now draped loosely over him. A simple gold circlet, embellished with a jeweled serpent’s head, fit over the green-and-gold-striped headdress that hung down either side of his face. His vivid garments were in sharp contrast to his sallow face, which the dark lines of kohl and green eye paint did little to improve.

He looked hollowed out, like a skin without a snake.

The change had happened gradually, and at first, she hadn’t noticed it. No one had. But soon it became more and more apparent, not only to her, but to everyone who laid eyes on him. Her father—who had last season been his portly, gregarious, and famously inappropriate self—was not well.

Despite his attempts to keep the illness a secret, whispers had spread through the palace corridors, growing louder and more numerous with each passing day. It was impossible to ignore his repeated absences from meals and social gatherings, the frequent visits from the physician-priests, or the increasing number of healing amulets strung around the king’s neck.

Just that morning, Sita had overheard her attendants talking quietly as they swept the floors of her bedchamber. “I heard Pharaoh is in the grip of a demon,” the girl had said. “I heard the priests have tried everything, and still, he gets worse and worse.”

Sita dismissed their idle talk. The servants loved nothing more than a good bit of gossip, though such blasphemy would have brought a whip to their backs if anyone besides Sita had overheard it. She saw no reason to report it herself, though. After all, the attendants were simply concerned.

Sita thought perhaps she should be worried too, but then again, she had no reason to doubt the power of the priests. They were the best in the world. Besides, it was ridiculous to think that her father, the god-king of Khetara, would ever allow such a paltry thing as disease—demonic or not—to keep him from the throne.

So, Sita tried to ignore the way he looked, just as she tried to ignore the way he treated her, because that was what a good daughter was supposed to do.

Queen Bintanath leaned close to her husband. “Aren’t you meant to be meeting with the viziers about the grain tax?” She spoke quietly enough to keep the conversation private.

King Amunmose swatted at the half-moon-shaped fan that a servant was waving at him and looked at her with disinterest. “Greetings to you too, wife of mine. As a matter of fact, I just came from that meeting. It was very short. The viziers said, ‘My king, there is not enough grain,’ and I, in my great wisdom, told them—‘Then grow more.’” He glanced at a passing maidservant and winked.

Sita saw the muscles in Queen Bintanath’s jaw twitch. “Now, imi-ib,” the queen said sweetly. It was a term of endearment her mother often used when she was furious. “Far be it from me to contradict your judgment, but I have heard that the situation in Low Khetara grows more dire by the day. And things here in the north are hardly any better. My messengers tell me the village markets in Per-Amun and Menef are struggling, and Bubas follows right behind them. You should have seen the scant supplies I received from my last shipment coming upriver. Skinny cattle, uninspiring produce, and barely a dozen pots of ochre and bottles of oils to go around.”

The king’s eyebrow arched. “You’re telling me some limp lettuce is cause for alarm? My dear, I’m sorry the delicacies and eye makeup you ordered were not to your liking, but I’m not going to start a war over it.”

The queen closed her eyes, as if to summon the necessary strength to continue. “I am not suggesting you start a war , my king,” she said, with exaggerated patience. “What I fear is that these issues are symptoms of a larger problem, a problem that could grow if left untreated. I am merely suggesting that, perhaps, a bit more consideration might be appropriate? After all, without the word of the pharaoh, the viziers are but legs without a head to lead them.”

“ Perhaps ,” the king replied, mimicking Queen Bintanath’s tone, “your ears should choose what they consume more carefully.” There was an edge to his voice. “The viziers are frightened of their own shadows. Low Khetara is under control. It has been so since the beginning of my reign, and it shall remain so until the end.” He spoke the last word with finality.

Then his expression softened, and he smiled. “Really, Binta, on the night of the Bast, this is your concern? Today is a day of worship! Of celebration!” He nudged one of the litter bearers with an elbow. “And for raising the skirts up! Isn’t that right, Tabu?”

The litter bearer smirked. “Yes, Pharaoh.”

“You see?” King Amunmose said heartily, slapping the man on the back. “Even Tabu knows what’s really important in life. And it’s not the viziers and their cursed grain tax.”

Queen Bintanath closed her eyes, her lips pressed into a thin line. “As you say, my king.”

Her father’s gaze flicked to Sita. “I bet you’re looking forward to the day you’ll go to the festival. Isn’t that right, Sitamun?”

Sita blinked. “But I am attending the festival tonight, Father,” she said. “It will be my first time.”

The king stared back at her strangely, as if seeing her anew. “No,” he balked. “Is it possible so much time has passed already?” The words were nostalgic in meaning, but the tone behind them held something akin to dread. Sita had the feeling that her father wasn’t really thinking of Sita’s growth, but of the passage of his own life.

The king had never paid much attention to his children. He was usually too busy seeking out life’s various pleasures—food, drink, sport, women. Queen Bintanath was his Great Wife, it was true, but the palace was teeming with lesser wives, concubines, and the issues that came from his coupling with them all. He clearly enjoyed the women’s company, but dealing with their complaints was a task the king felt was better left to other people. So although Sita had the honor of being the single most important woman in the palace—the woman with the purest royal blood—even she rarely attracted her father’s interest.

“Yes, my brothers and I turned seventeen during Peret,” Sita said, before adding, “I pray that tonight I may honor the goddess and earn her favor.” She could at least put on the appearance of a proper daughter, even if her mind was busy with her own life’s pleasures—particularly those found in the garden.

The king eyes grew soft as he gazed into the past. “Ah, yes,” he mused. “I remember well the night you three were born. ‘And the storm turned the dry land into a sea, and the priests and nurse went through the flood on foot, and when they arrived at the palace, they rejoiced in what they found there: not one child, but three, delivered to the kingdom from the hands of the gods.’”

Sita smiled at the familiar words of their birth story. Ever since she was a little girl, Nebet had regaled her with the tale of that night, when Khetara was struck by a storm unlike any other before or since. They’d come into the world at the beginning of her father’s reign, and the story had taken on a legendary quality—many believing the three dancers who’d helped their laboring mother were goddesses themselves. The whole kingdom fell in love with the triplets and their seemingly divine birth, which in turn, helped her father’s credibility considerably.

He’d needed it too. The previous king, the Great Sematawy, had united the Two Lands and died in battle—a hero with no living heirs. Her father had been Sematawy’s chief vizier, and although it made sense for him to take the throne, he had no royal blood. To follow a legend, Amunmose had needed a legend of his own.

The triplets gave him one.

King Amunmose shook his head and chuckled. “How much of it is memory, I wonder, and how much is simply the story we’ve always told ourselves? Maybe it doesn’t matter. We say something often enough, it eventually becomes the truth.” He paused, contemplative. “It reminds me of something that happened many years ago, just after you were born. A desert priest requested an audience with me. He went on and on about some ancient oracle, and how it was related to your birth. None of the priests of Amun had ever heard of him or his family name, just some pretender looking for an avenue to power. We threw him out, of course. But he didn’t stop raving about death and destruction until he was outside the palace gates. He really believed that nonsense.” The king leaned down from his palanquin and grabbed Sita by the shoulder, pulling her close. The smell of his breath made her nose wrinkle. It was heavy with wine, and something else. She recognized it from when one of the lesser wives had died in her quarters overnight, only to be discovered, stiff and cold, the next morning. It was a sour smell, the smell of rot.

“Those are the most dangerous sorts of people, Sitamun. Remember that. The people whose belief is so great that it blocks their mind from reason.” He pulled one of the amulets from his neck and pushed it into her palm. “Here, take this,” he said. “You need it more than I do.”

Sita looked at the carved piece of malachite in her hand. It was a scarab beetle, no different than the thousands she’d seen people wearing all her life. Why was he giving this to her now?

“Do you know what the scarab means, daughter?” he asked.

Sita thought back to what she’d learned from her tutor, who had spent years teaching her how to read and write the gods’ words, about Khetaran history and its stories and gods. Memorizing kings’ names and coronation dates bored her to tears, but she enjoyed the rest, even if her mother thought her mind was better filled with other things.

“It’s a symbol of transformation and rebirth,” she said. “The scarab beetle rolls her ball of dung and lays her eggs within, just as Khepra rolls the morning sun across the horizon, creating life anew each day.”

The king wagged his head, as if he was only partially satisfied with this answer. “Yes, yes, that is true. But what I want you to remember about the beetle is this: When you’re in really deep shit, you must seek something unexpected inside you. Only there will you find an answer.” He narrowed his eyes. “Do you understand me, Sitamun?”

Sita could feel her eyebrows arching. “Um…”

Her father’s solemn face broke into a grin. He laughed until he was seized with a coughing fit, and sat back in his throne, taking a long drink from the cup of wine at his side. “Did you like that, Tabu? ‘Deep shit.’ Pharaoh is a man of a thousand talents, is he not?”

“Talents immeasurable, my king,” Tabu agreed.

Queen Bintanath squinted at the angle of sun outside the windows and tapped her foot on the ground. “I’m sure Sitamun appreciates your gifts of wisdom, imi-ib,” she said. “But she really must get dressed for the festival.”

Ignoring this, the king craned his neck as a pretty little girl ran through the hall with a young woman at her heels.

“Is that Maet?” he called. “Is that my little plum?”

The little girl squealed and dashed toward the palanquin, her sidelock bouncing. She was quickly scooped up by one of the litter bearers and placed on the king’s lap. Maet was the daughter of one of his lesser wives, and a personal favorite.

Sita tried not to be jealous. After all, Maet was only six.

Maet took the king’s face into her tiny hands and stared at him very seriously. “You look funny, Yati,” she pronounced.

The king stuck out his tongue and crossed his eyes. Maet giggled. “Come now, kitten,” he said. “Let’s find something delicious to eat, shall we?” He turned back to Sita. “Enjoy the festival tonight, Sitamun,” he said, then spared a glance for his wife. “Binta,” he said, and then promptly gestured for his servants to proceed.

Sita watched as her father’s palanquin continued its slow journey through the hall, feeling slightly disquieted by his ramblings. He’s ill and probably drunk , she reasoned . What kind of medicines were the priests giving him, anyway? Were they to credit for his strange talk?

“Come along now,” Queen Bintanath said, pulling her away. “We’ve wasted too much time already.”

***

“Sita? Sitamun!”

Sita sat up abruptly, sloshing floral-scented bathwater over the edge of the alabaster basin. “What?”

Her middle-aged attendant sat by the edge of the water, wearing an indulgent smile. “If you’re finished, you should get out. The water is getting cold.”

“Oh. Yes. Sorry, Nebet.” Sita rose from the water, her copper skin coated with a glossy sheen of olive oil.

“Careful now.” Nebet offered her hand to help her out of the bath, taking care that Sita didn’t slip on the tiled floor.

The woman’s hand was strong and familiar, more so even than her own mother’s. Nebet had been with Sita—nursing her, watching over her, and tucking her into bed—ever since she was born. Her once dark hair had turned gray, and no matter how many times Sita said she could dye it brown again with juniper berries, Nebet always refused. For all the time and effort Nebet spent on Sita’s appearance, she spent none on her own. Whenever Sita brought up the topic, Nebet liked to pronounce that she had “earned” her gray hairs, and no one was going to take them from her.

Nebet picked up a soft linen cloth from the stool where she’d been sitting and used it to pat Sita’s body dry. “Daydreaming about tonight?” she asked.

“I was,” she said, though exactly what she was imagining was far too embarrassing to admit to Nebet. It involved Femi, and activities similar to the ones she’d witnessed in the pleasure garden.

After calling the other attendants to clean up the bath and prepare Sita’s attire, Nebet sat the girl down in front of a brass mirror that hung on the wall of her chambers. In its reflection, Sita watched Nebet begin to weave her wet hair into plaits, lacing thin golden cylinders onto each one.

“You should enjoy yourself at the festival,” Nebet said after a while, her voice thoughtful. “But don’t forget its true purpose, for it is not for your pleasure alone.”

Sita blushed at the word pleasure , as if Nebet had somehow seen the images of Femi floating through her mind. “But Bast is the goddess of pleasure,” she replied, recalling the lithe cat-headed woman she’d seen on scrolls and palace walls. “The more we celebrate, the more we honor her, isn’t that right?”

“It is,” Nebet agreed. “She sees our music, our dancing, and our celebrations as a testament to life, and she rewards us with her protection. But has your tutor not taught you Bast’s other name?”

Sita’s brow furrowed. Nebet was a very devout woman. Sita’s bedtime stories, in addition to the one about her birth, had always been about the gods and their adventures, and Nebet never once forgot to make her daily offerings. So Sita wasn’t surprised by the question, but she was a little embarrassed that she didn’t know the answer.

“I guess he hasn’t,” she admitted.

Nebet sucked her teeth. “We insult Bast with this harmless vision of her power. Imagine, a cat with no claws! You cannot shine a light on one side of something without casting darkness on the other.”

Sita was taken aback by the sudden the passion in the woman’s voice. Nebet was usually so soft-spoken, so tender. “What do you mean? What is Bast’s other name?”

Nebet stopped her braiding and glanced up, meeting Sita’s eyes in the mirror. “She is the Lady of slaughter. Defender of the innocent, avenger of the wronged.”

Sita swallowed.

“It is she who protects a home from evil spirits,” Nebet went on, pulling the brush through Sita’s hair a little too roughly. “Spirits like the one that sickens your father. You would do well, my girl, as you dance and drink tonight, to pray to the goddess to deliver him from that demon, before… before…”

“Before what?”

Nebet was silent for several moments. Her face had gone pale.

“I apologize, Princess,” she said, laying a hand on Sita’s shoulder. “I don’t know what came over me. I’ve been overcome by this terrible feeling lately… this dread. But it’s no excuse. I’ve overstepped my bounds. If you want to dismiss me, I’d understand.”

“No, no, it’s all right,” Sita quickly replied, putting her hand over Nebet’s. She didn’t like the deference in her attendant’s voice. “You’re only trying to help. I would never send you away, not for anything. I promise to do my best to honor the goddess, for Father’s sake.”

“And for yours,” Nebet added quietly. “It’s you I care about the most.”

Just then, the other attendants returned. “Your dress, Princess Sitamun,” one of them said.

Sita stood, wearing nothing except the Isis knot and scarab amulets, while the girls draped a sheath of gossamer white linen over her head. The fabric was so thin that the shadow of her naked body was still visible beneath it. Over that, the girls slipped an elaborate bead-net dress that reached all the way to her ankles, made up of thousands of red, blue, and black ceramic beads arranged in a diamond pattern. Next, they latched a wide beaded collar, featuring a golden scarab, around her neck—along with a golden cuff for each wrist. While one of the girls fitted two golden hoops into her ears, the other painted her eyes with kohl and her lips and cheeks with red ochre.

Nebet stood back from the flurry of activity, her arms crossed over her chest, only stepping in to adjust a plait here, a fold there.

“You’re sure this is what you want to wear tonight, Sitamun?” Nebet asked. “It is lovely, but a bit…”

“I’m seventeen now, Nebet,” Sita replied, tilting up her chin. “I shall dress as the woman I am.”

“As you wish,” Nebet replied softly.

She was touching Sita’s temples and the hollow of her throat with rose petal oil when the blade of a shadow sliced across the floor from the direction of the corridor.

Sita turned to see a man leaning against the doorway, the blaze of the setting sun at his back. He wore a white knee-length schenti, belted with an ornamental pendant that hung between his legs. The finely crafted pendant was made from the same obsidian and ostrich-shell beads that decorated his collar, which he wore over a sheer, loose-fitting blouse that revealed his bare chest underneath. His hair, like Sita’s own, was thick and black, and fell to his shoulders in shining waves. He regarded her with eyes not unlike the ones she’d been staring at in the mirror a moment before. Eyes full of fire and mischief, just as they had been since they were both babes in arms.

“Greetings, sister,” Meryamun said, his voice honey smooth and honey sweet. “Are you ready to go?”

Sita stood, her golden plaits tinkling like bells. Her attendants moved away, their heads bowed. Sita stole a look back at Nebet. The older woman returned it with a small smile, but it didn’t reach her eyes.

“The goddess awaits us,” the prince said.

Sita grinned, her excitement overtaking her annoyance at having a guardian, and the wary feeling that clung to her since the strange encounter with her father. Was she ready to leap into the night? Into whatever wild and delicious wonders the festival might bring? Was she ready to drink this life until it ran over her lips and down her throat and spread like fire across her skin? Was she ready to abandon herself? To forget her manners, to fall into the arms of a lover, to scream into the sky, to dance until dawn?

“Yes!” she exclaimed.

“Well then…” Mery crooked his arm toward her.

Sita stepped into her golden sandals and out the door.