King and Goddess (56 page)

No, this uproar was not for her. She had never heard
anything quite like it. She left the army where it was, safe in its patch of
sun, and found that Huy had done the same with his papyrus. She did not know
why, but she slipped her hand into his as she came up to him. His fingers were
thin and surprisingly cold. They went out together to see what there was to
see.

~~~

It was a messenger, a man with a white and haunted look,
and his arm bound up in a filthy bandage. He had come down the river in a boat,
running from something terrible. Iry knew him. He was her father’s master at
arms, Pepi who liked to bounce her on his knee and sing her silly songs. There
was no silliness in him now.

“Lost,” he was saying to the people in the courtyard just
inside the outer gate, “all lost. We had Avaris, and the Lower Kingdom. We had
it. But the Retenu were too clever for us. They sent word to their allies in
Nubia, away to the south of Thebes, and had them start a war there, a greater
one than we could wage here. The Great House had to turn back or lose it all,
Upper Kingdom as well as Lower. He’s fighting his way south.”

“But maybe,” said Teti the steward, “if he leaves his lords
who are of the Lower Kingdom behind, and lets them fight—”

“No,” said Pepi, with sharpness he might not have used to a
man of Teti’s rank, but he was clearly exhausted. “We’re not enough.”

“At least,” said Teti’s wife, “we’ll have our lord and his
sons back. Maybe the Retenu won’t notice that they were gone. Maybe—”

“The Retenu know,” Pepi said. His voice was flat, so flat
the words seemed to have no meaning. “They’re dead. All of them. They died in
the retreat from Avaris. A company of chariots caught us on our way to the
boats. It mowed them down. The rest of us who survived were allowed to retrieve
their bodies. The embalmers have them. When the embalming is done, they’ll come
back. The Retenu don’t mind giving honor to enemies who have fallen. And
giving—” Pepi’s voice broke. “Giving their belongings to the one whose chariots
killed them.”

Huy’s hand gripped Iry’s so hard she nearly cried out. But
she bit her lip and kept silent. Not everyone understood what Pepi had just
said. But Huy did. He said it for them all. “All of us. All of us here in the
Sun Ascendant—we belong to the Retenu?”

“To a Retenu lord,” Pepi said. “When our lord comes back in
the funeral boat, the Retenu will bring him. He’ll see to the burial. He’ll
take the holding. He’ll be our new lord.”

“We can’t do that,” Teti’s wife Tawit said in her strident
voice. “That’s ridiculous. We were never conquered—we were left alone, except
for the tribute.”

“That,” said her husband dryly, “was before our lord took
arms against the foreign kings. We’re booty now—captives.”

“I won’t be,” said Tawit. “I refuse. I’ll leave.”

“And go where?” Teti asked.

That quelled her, though she stood and simmered, and Iry
knew she would burst out again later. But not now. Everyone was asking
questions, battering poor exhausted Pepi with words. He answered as much as he
could, but none of it mattered to Iry except the one thing, the main thing.
Father was dead. Her brothers, Kemni—dead. There was a new lord coming. A
foreign lord, a bearded and scowling Retenu, whom she could not kill as she had
killed the wooden charioteer.

She could try, she supposed. She was only a child, and only
a girl, but her will was strong. Everybody said so. Headstrong, they said, and
stubborn. She was not going to give in to the foreigners, any more than Tawit
would.

Or Mother. Mother was in the women’s house still, because
Mother would not come out in the court like a vulgar servant. She must know
what Pepi’s message was. Mother knew everything. Mother would not give in to
the Retenu. No, not ever. Nor would Iry. Not in her heart, or in her spirit.
Not anywhere that mattered.

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