Tabubu was standing at an angle to Khamwas, watching Patjenfi take the brush and fastidiously try to straighten its splayed bristles on the flat of the palette. Her fingertips were massaging the front of her dress, working slowly downward from her navel.
"You'll regret this, my brother," said Pentweret as he took the brush in final turn. "But it won't be undone. It can't." He sighed and turned away.
Pre was touching Samlor, rubbing him with feather-light fingers the way Tabubu massaged herself. His vision was blurring. Khamwas's brothers were trudging down the stairs with lowered heads, but reflections from the surface of the wine kept staining their image in Samlor's eyes.
The scribe had squatted again to roll his inked seal behind each signature on the deed.
Tabubu was kneeling beside Khamwas' couch. She allowed him to kiss her as if the prince were a rambunctious puppy whose affections were too cute to be degrading.
"My lady," said the scribe, holding out the completed document.
Tabubu rose as she took it and slapped Khamwas' hand with the rolled paper as he reached for her.
"You can't deny me now!" Khamwas bleated. His tone made it obvious that he knew she could-and that he expected her to do so.
"Deny you?" said Tabubu, snapping the scroll open angrily. "It's you who're denying me!"
Samlor had not heard an order to the servants, but they were returning up the stairs with-
"Your children haven't signed this yet!" Tabubu was saying. Her voice was as cold and hard as the walls of the crater where Nanefer fought the worm. "Do you think I don't know what will happen? When you're gone, they'll take everything away from me."
"Daddy, what-" said Serpot. She took a quick step toward Khamwas, past a servant whose reaching hand halted when the child and the child's words stopped at Tabubu's glare.
Serpot hopped back beside Pemu. The boy was as stiff as a soldier being cursed by his superior. Tears rolled down Serpot's cheeks although she tried to hold them back with closed eyelids.
"You see?" Tabubu hissed. "They'll ignore any agreement you make!"
Samlor kept seeing Star rather than Serpot facing Tabubu in blind misery. He wanted to get up and hurl a smirking servant through the window to the crocodile pond beneath. . That would show this bitch what the real power was in,this world where women were only toys for men.
He didn't move though, couldn't move, because Pre had given the cup to another of the servants. Now, as she caressed Samlor with one hand, she rubbed her own groin with the other.
"Tell them they must sign the deed," Tabubu ordered as she dropped it on the little desk the scribe carried. He bore it to the children as he had to Khamwas' brothers. His face showed no more emotion than the paper did.
"Father?" said Pemu. His hands were gripping his thighs as if to keep themselves from being dragged upward toward the waiting brush.
"Don't speak, Pemu," Khamwas said. He lay on the couch with his eyes closed and his fists clenched.
"Tell them they have no inheritance!" Tabubu said. Her voice was chilled steel, but her belly thrust and withdrew rhythmically a few inches from Khamwas' face. "Tell them you have beggared them for life and that they must sign their agreement to what you've done!"
"Da-" Serpot pleaded.
"I can't bear your voice!" Khamwas screamed in sudden anger. "Sign it! Sign it! Don't make me hear your voice!"
"I will do as you order, Father," said Pemu stiffly. His cheeks were flushed with embarrassment, at the scene and at his father's behavior.
Serpot turned to hide her open blubbering, but a liveried servant stood behind her and she whirled around again. "I can't," she wailed. "I can't write, I can't I can't I can't!"
As Ahwere couldn't write the symbols that would have protected her, thought Samlor.
Pemu wrote his name with the careful certainty of a child who is well taught but as yet lacks the practice which makes the motions instinctive.
Prince Nanefer had been a scribe and a scholar without equal in his time, and he was dead as surely as Ahwere. Samlor wanted to say that to Khamwas, but only a sigh of pleasure escaped when he opened his mouth.
"Your brother will sign your name, child," said the bland scribe. "Just make a mark on the paper."
Serpot could not prevent her eyes from dripping as she took the brush from Pemu, but she dabbed the tip against the paper with queenly disdain which belied her sobs of a moment before.
They were good kids, royal in the best sense of the word, but Samlor hil Samt couldn't move a muscle to help them. He was kneading Pre's breasts. The crocodile hide was coarse against the backs of his hands, while the skin beneath was as smooth as finest silk save for the erect nipples.
"My lady," said the scribe coolly as he returned the document to Tabubu after sealing the new signatures also.
Tabubu sat on the couch, her hips to the curve of Khamwas' lap just as the maid sat with Samlor across the table. Her right hand played with Khamwas' hair while the left gently waved the scroll in his face. Khamwas was trying to pull the woman prone onto the couch with him, but only the dimples in the silk beneath his fingers suggested that she resisted him.
Samlor had expected Pemu and Serpot to be led away. They still stood by the window looking doubtful, frightened-and as resolute as children could be in the face of unspoken threats.
"You've really tried to provide for me, dearest, flower of my life," said Tabubu as she leaned slightly closer to Khamwas. Instead of icy hectoring, her tone was a lover's in the moment following a splendid climax.
"But you can't, you see, darling-" her voice was as soft as the breast which dangled just low enough to brush Khamwas' ear " – so long as the brats are alive. You saw how your brothers hate me. If you were gone, they'd snatch everything away from me and give it to-"
"But they're my children," Khamwas whimpered. His eyes were open, but Tabubu's pendant hung too closely before them for him to be able to focus on it.
"I can give you children," Tabubu murmured, "and I can give you much more."
She leaned still further forward. Samlor thought she was whispering into Khamwas' ear, but instead she was nibbling it. Her tongue was very pink against her teeth for an instant. Then she smiled and purred, "Much more, little flower. Bat first you must kill them."
"Daddy," Serpot cried.
"Silencel" Khamwas shouted back. His face was livid with strain. "I told you to be silent, didn't I?"
"You see how they obey you," said Tabubu, her lips inches from Khamwas' ear. The words drilled through Samlor's brain, but he did not try to move.
"Do the abomination that you demand, then," Khamwas said past the hand that he had thrown over his eyes.
"N-" Samlor stammered, "N-n-"
"No, heart of hearts," said Tabubu. Her hand touched Khamwas' and softly guided it to her quivering breast. The agony of his uncovered expression smoothed to chalky emptiness. "Your man must do it. Otherwise the act will be laid to me. Order him."
"No," said Samlor. He got to his feet, though he could not feel anything below the pulse throbbing in his groin 'Wo."
"You heard her," said Khamwas without emotion. Men in scarlet robes held Pemu and Serpot, but the children refused to demean themselves with vain struggle.
"You can't order me!" Samlor shouted. He had drawn his long dagger. If there had been a servant behind him when he flashed around a fierce glance, the watered steel blade would have disemboweled the man. There was no one.
"Samlor, I beg you," Khamwas whispered. "For our friendship-please. You must understand. .»
Someone did stand behind Samlor now. His motion as he turned seemed as slow as wax melting in the sun. Pre's hands teased open Samlor's sash. She was nude. Her pubic hair had been hennaed to a startling shade of red.
Pre pressed her body against Samlor and kissed him with her whole naked length. "Now. .," she murmured, turning him with her fingertips on his shoulders and the memory of her warmth consuming all choice but obedience to Tabubu's will.