House of Illusions (24 page)

His harper in the corner of the room now filling with warm shadows outside the flickering circles of the lamplight began to play, and a general exchange began. Talk ebbed and flowed. Servants laden with steaming trays moved unobtrusively to and fro and the wine in our cups was replenished several times, yet beneath the laughter and chatter ran an undercurrent of anxiety. I ignored it, filled as I was with a gladness to be there. My mouth remembered the skill of Hui’s cook. My veins ran hot with Hui’s wine. All around me his house whispered to me of my past, and surely if I moved my hand just so, closed my eyes just then, let my thoughts drift aimlessly for one moment, I would come to myself knowing that Men’s house was but a dream of the future and above me, in her elegant room, a young girl knelt before her window, waiting eagerly to see the guests leave.

But gradually the night deepened, appetites were assuaged, and the servants placed a newly opened jug of wine at Hui’s knee and departed. The harper picked up his instrument, bowed at our smattering of applause, and the door closed quietly behind him. Harshira took up his post, arms folded, before it. “Now,” Hui said, “you summoned us with an unholy speed, Kaha. What is the reason?” I glanced at him, aware of all their eyes suddenly upon me, but in his red gaze I saw that he at least did not need his own question answered.

“I think that you, Master, and the General, know already why we are here,” I said. “Seventeen years ago we spent many evenings like this. Although I was not an instigator of the hope that brought us together, I was a willing participant in its execution, and when it failed I knew myself to be more vulnerable to exposure and punishment than the rest of you. I am not a noble. I have no influence in high places, save through your good graces. Discovery would have meant death to me but not necessarily to you. I took the greater risk, and so I left this house and distanced myself from all that had happened. Yet I have kept faith with you. I still do. I am here because a new threat has arisen. None of you cared to wonder what befell Thu’s son by Pharaoh when she was exiled. Perhaps you believed that to enquire into his fate would have invoked suspicion. Perhaps you simply did not care.”

“I certainly did not care,” Hunro broke in. “Why should I? Why should any of us? She was a grubby little peasant from nowhere without a scrap of gratitude or humility in her and the muddy blood in her bastard’s veins surely negated any influence Pharaoh’s seed might have.”

“All the same, she was extraordinarily beautiful,” Paiis murmured. “I would have given a great deal to plant my seed in her, and I warrant I could have given her more pleasure than that lumpish man. She still haunts me like a half-remembered dream.”

“You speak harshly of one who was your friend,” Hui broke in mildly, his eyes on Hunro, and she sneered.

“That upstart? I too was young and full of optimism. I did my best to befriend her at your request, Hui, but it was hard. Her arrogance knew no bounds, and in the end she bungled everything and got precisely what she deserved.”

“If she had got what she deserved and what we hoped for her finally, she would not still be alive to trouble us now,” Paibekamun’s reedy voice came from the shadows. “I understand your panic, my Lady. After all, you knew what was in the oil Thu gave to poor little Hentmira to anoint Pharaoh with. You were there when Thu handed it to the unsuspecting girl. Who knows what voices in the harem could be awakened to speak against you?”

“And what of yourself, Butler?” Hunro shot back. “You retrieved the empty pot with its traces of arsenic mingled with the oil. You gave it to the Prince as Hui ordered you to do, when Thu believed you would destroy it. No suspicion fell on you because we all lied to implicate her and her alone!”

“Peace!” Hui said. “All of us lied. Any one of us could damn the others if he so chose. Thu was sacrificed to keep us free. She was a loss to me, although you, Hunro, may not think so. I picked her up out of the Aswat dung. I trained her, disciplined her, saw to every detail of her education. I made her. She was mine. Such an undertaking leaves its scars. I did not throw her to the jackals lightly.”

“No indeed, my brother,” Paiis said softly. “And you missed her with more than your heart, didn’t you?” Hui ignored the remark.

“Let Kaha continue,” he commanded. I nodded and put down my cup.

“Thu apparently wrote an account of her dealings with us,” I said, “and as you all must know, she has spent years trying to persuade those unfortunate enough to put into Aswat to take her story to Pharaoh. Foolishly of course, because all she accomplished was a reputation for insanity. But now our safety is challenged from another direction. Her son has discovered his true parentage. He has spent the last sixteen years as the adopted son of my present Master, the merchant Men. Three days ago he managed to read the scroll denoting Pharaoh as his father and Thu of Aswat as his mother, and now he has disappeared. I believe he is on his way to Aswat to meet her. Who knows what plan of retribution they may concoct together? He will persuade her to leave her exile and try to confront Pharaoh.”

“And so?” Paiis drawled. “What of it? They have no more evidence of any plot together than Thu had alone. After you read the contents of her ridiculous box, Hui, you burned it all. It is still her word against ours.”

“Perhaps,” Hui returned thoughtfully. “But you sent the young man south with an assassin on nothing but the merest chance that he was aware of the contents of the box. You did not want to take any chance, however remote, that he could do us some damage. I do not think he opened the box. Those knots were either undisturbed or had been retied by someone who had learned them from me. No. I believe that Thu did not trust to one copy of her justification alone. There is another.”

“Which Kamen has probably read,” Paiis cut in. “He lied to me four days ago when he told me that both the assassin and the woman had vanished. I did not commit myself to doubt until I had questioned his crew. I discovered from them that Thu was brought on board by Kamen and delivered by him to the prisons here in Pi-Ramses. Therefore he must have deduced the identity of the man travelling with him and disposed of him in some way. An enterprising young officer.” He turned his lazy gaze on me. “So you are mistaken, Kaha. Kamen is not running off to Aswat. He is in hiding somewhere in the city and so is Thu. If he had taken up his post at my door, I would have had him arrested at once, but he was too clever for me. Temporarily, anyway.”

“So you knew who he was!” I exclaimed. “How did you know?”

“I told him,” Hui said quietly. “Kamen came to me some time ago for advice. He was being plagued by a dream he could neither interpret nor drive away. I agreed to look into the oil for him because Men and I do business together occasionally. Kamen suspected that the dream had to do with the woman who gave him life and I thought so also.

When I commanded a vision, it was Thu’s face I saw. Thu.” He paused, swirling the wine around in his cup before taking a deep draught. His red eyes met mine and he smiled wryly. “The shock was immediate, but my gift does not lie. The sober young officer with the square shoulders was none other than the child Ramses threw away. Of course once I knew, I could see both of them in him. He has the shape and colour of Pharaoh’s eyes and his build closely resembles that of Ramses when he too was a young and vigorous king bent on war. But the sensuous mouth is Thu’s, and the uncompromising nose, and the set of the jaw. I taunted him. That was my mistake.”

“But why didn’t you tell me?” I asked sharply. “You knew I was under his father’s roof!”

“How would that have helped?” Paiis said. “You left my brother’s house out of your own fear. It was kinder not to implicate you further.” I did not like his tone.

“I left because I did not, and do not, believe that Ramses commuted Thu’s sentence out of sentiment,” I responded hotly. “He knows something about us, has always known it, though the knowing has not been enough to haul us before the courts. I had no desire to become the target of a secret palace investigation.”

“You must forgive us then,” Paiis said without a trace of apology. “But I still do not believe any such thing. We have walked free for nearly seventeen years. Hui still treats the royal family. I am still a General. Hunro still comes and goes from the harem, and Paibekamun still waits on his Majesty every day. You were a victim of your own fantasies, Kaha.”

“Paiis proposed the elimination of both Thu and Kamen,” Hui said. “It was only a matter of time before Kamen found her and as you say, Kaha, as a team they could be dangerous. But Kamen managed to foil the attempt on their lives and so now we must decide yet again what to do.”

There was a hint of pride in his voice, almost as though he was recounting the exploits of a son, and I looked at him curiously. The warmth of the night and the wine he had drunk had produced a thin slick of sweat on his body. He lay back on his cushions, a wilting garland of flowers across his thighs, his heavy-lidded eyes half-closed, and it came to me forcibly that he was in love with his victim, that at some moment in the past his mystery, his aloofness, had succumbed to the lure of both her beauty and his complete domination of her. It had not made him weak. I did not know if it had even wounded him when he had engineered her disgrace. But it was there nonetheless.

The General also knew. He was watching his brother levelly, a half-smile on his lips. “We have two options,” he said. “We can try again to murder both Thu and her son. They will not be difficult to find. Or we can finally make an end of Pharaoh, although to do so now at the end of his life seems foolish. He has already designated the Prince Ramses as his official heir, and Ramses is far more aware of the needs of his army than his father ever was.”

“I say kill them all,” Hunro broke in with a drunken vehemence. “Ramses because it is past time for a new administration and Thu and her spawn because I need not remind you that the Prince was charged with the investigation into our last attempt on his father’s life and he is an honest man. It will matter little whether Thu and Kamen whisper into the ears of the dying Horus or the fledgling in the nest.” Paibekamun leaned forward into the lamplight. His shaven skull gleamed and the shadows of his long, knotted fingers moved like twisted spiders as he spoke.

“This is insane,” he said. “There is not a shred of new evidence against us. What if Thu and her son do succeed in winning their way into the presence of the One? She has no new words to say and nothing to show. Ramses is infirm and often ill. He may pardon her, but if he does, it will be because of past passion and not as an expression of her innocence.” I was surprised to hear the Butler’s words, for both he and Hunro had shared an arrogant dislike for Thu out of a sense of their own superiority. Hunro’s noble blood was enough to explain her disdain, but Paibekamun’s ancestry was muddy, and like all ambitious upstarts he betrayed his insecurity by denigrating those he regarded as inferior. “Besides,” he went on, “Banemus has a right to be consulted before any move is made.”

“My brother has softened over the years as you, Paiis, must know,” Hunro said scornfully. “He has spent his whole life as Pharaoh’s General in Nubia and it no longer irks him to expend his military talents so far from the centre of power. With our failure so long ago he lost interest in the cause. I see him seldom. He would share your counsel, Paibekamun, to leave all as it is.”

“And you, Kaha,” Hui said, lifting his cup to me in a half-mocking, half-respectful salute. “You could have kept your news to yourself but you called us all together. What is your opinion? Shall we kill them all?”

You are a terrible man, I thought, looking into the face that was always as white as salt. Your mouth seldom speaks the message that your eyes convey. You know already how I feel, what words will come from my lips, and you have already judged me. “I agree with Paibekamun,” I said. “Such slaughter is needless. Ramses is dying. Whatever comes of Kamen’s discovery it cannot touch us, although it will doubtless wreak havoc within Men’s family. Thu has suffered enough at our hands. Let her seek her pardon in peace. As for Kamen, he is innocent of all save the misfortune of having been born of Ramses’ blood. Leave him alone!” One of Hui’s pale eyebrows rose.

“A dispassionate and impartial summing up,” he said sarcastically. “We have two extremes here, my unscrupulous friends. Clemency or doom? Such an intoxicating choice, is it not? Do you relish the taste of such power? Are you willing, any of you, to take the gamble that no one at court will listen or care what Thu screams from the palace roof? For scream she will. I know her better than any of you. Given her chance she will curse and rant and shake her fists until someone pays attention. For whether we like it or not she is one of us, stubborn, wily, deceitful and unscrupulous. Those dubious attributes can be used in the cause of right as well as wrong and Thu, my very dear partners in regicide, will pursue the righting of her particular wrong remorselessly. If we do not eliminate her she will find a way to mow us all down.”

There was a deep silence. Each of us sat or lay immobile, staring at the floor, but I was aware of the growing tension. Hunro’s chin was in her painted palm, her eyes glazed. Paiis was entirely prone. He lay on his back with his eyes closed, his wine cup balanced on his chest, its stem resting between two of his beringed fingers. Paibekamun had retired into the shadows.

Hui also was still, sitting with one knee raised and both hands folded on it, but when I glanced up, he was watching me steadily. You have already decided, I thought. You are going to sacrifice both of them on the altar of your safety. You love her and yet you will see her die. Such an inner control is almost inhuman. Are you human, Great Seer? What fills your mind when you enter the nothing world between sleep and waking? Are you vulnerable then, or does your will reach even into those mysterious realms? You will see her die.

He inclined his head once, his gaze still on me. “Yes,” he whispered. “Yes, Kaha. I gambled once. I am too old to allow the dice to fall where they may a second time.” He straightened and clapped his hands. All but Paiis started and stirred. “She dies,” he said loudly. “I regret the necessity, but there is no other way. Are we agreed?”