I decided that was absolutely the only thing I had going for me. Nobody knew what I really was. Khufu had said so himself.
“Vizier,” Khufu began.
“Shut up,” I said.
“You dare speak to me like that?” he asked, his voice rising to its former heights.
“I’ll speak to you however I wish,” I replied. I pressed the point a tiny bit further into his throat to emphasize my resolve.
“I am about to offer you a deal, Khufu,” I said. “I recommend you take it.”
“A deal?” he repeated, shocked.
“Spare her life and I will spare yours.”
He scoffed at the notion. “In a moment this room will be full of guards, and you will be dead. You are in no position to bargain.”
I pressed the tip of the spear forward a bit more, opening a pinhole in his throat. “Your guards cannot kill me,” I said. “Now make the deal.”
“All right,” he whispered.
I looked at Nampheta. “Go,” I said to her. “The king’s word is his bond, now run. Leave this place and never return.”
Hesitating only momentarily, she fled the chamber. If I was very, very lucky she wouldn’t alert the guards for at least a few more minutes.
“I would not have had her killed,” he insisted. “She’s done nothing wrong.”
“We disagree,” I said. “And after you let me go, you will need someone on whom to target your wrath.”
“After I let you go? Lord Vizier, you have truly gone mad.”
“My real name is Seth,” I said, trying hard to sound as sinister as I could. “Why don’t you try calling me that instead?”
He laughed, but only for long enough to decide I wasn’t joking.
It’s hard to overemphasize the hold the old myths had over the people of Kemet. Try to imagine a society of fundamentalist Christians and then imagine that the Bible included a thorough plan for a system of government and you’d be close. In order for the king to hold onto his power, the old stories had to be essentially factual, otherwise, the whole king equals god thing would have to be untrue as well. And if it were possible for the king to be the living incarnation of Horus or Osiris or Re, then it was also possible for the living incarnation of Seth to walk the Earth.
As the legend had it, Seth—god of the desert, god of violence, basically god of everything unpleasant—betrayed and then slew Osiris and chopped his body up in a million pieces, scattering the remains all over Kemet. Osiris’s wife—Isis—eventually found all the pieces (except, interestingly, his penis, for reasons I’m unclear on) and restored her husband.
Kings associate themselves with one god or another, sometimes Re, but generally Osiris or his father Horus. It’s not unlike popes picking the names of earlier pontiffs with whom they feel a kinship. Khufu—and this was good news for me—believed himself to be the living incarnation of Osiris.
So you can imagine how he felt being told that the man holding a pointy thing to his neck was the god Seth himself.
“I don’t believe you,” he said defiantly. His tone said he wasn’t so sure.
“Believe what you see, Khufu. You see what I did to your guards. You see that I have not aged a day since we first met.” I pulled myself up to his ear and pressed the blade a bit harder into his throat, because it seemed like a good and sinister thing to do. “Believe that all you will do by striking me down today is anger me,” I whispered, laying it on as thick as I thought I could. “And if you do, when I return I will not be interested in honoring the deal we made today.”
“Deal?” he whined.
“Your life for hers,” I repeated. “You remember?”
“Oh… yes.”
I could hear footsteps from outside the chamber. We were cutting this close.
“Consider yourself lucky, Khufu,” I said, trying to pick up the pace without being too obvious about it. “I keep my word. Escape my wrath today—let me leave freely—and you shall live a long life.”
“Halt!” shouted about a dozen guards, more or less simultaneously from behind me.
I released Khufu, stepped off the stage, and tossed down the spear half. A trickle of blood had escaped the small wound I’d put in his throat. Immediately I was grabbed by three guards, my arms pinned. I watched Khufu.
Reflexively, he reached down and touched his throat, discovering the blood. I hoped the little twerp wasn’t the type to faint at the sight of it.
Two more guards joined in to wrestle me to the ground and there was a good possibility I had only a few seconds left to live.
“Khufu!” I barked. He was testing the royal blood’s texture, looking rather out of sorts. “Remember what I said!”
A particularly large palace guard stepped in front of me with a sword, looking prepared to remove my head on the spot. Drawing the king’s blood was customarily an immediate death sentence, so that was probably precisely what he had in mind. I’d hoped that brazenly wounding Khufu would lend credence to my claim of godhood, the big drawback being the instant execution thing.
“Stop,” Khufu said a bit too quietly. “I said STOP!”
Everybody froze.
“Release him.”
Reluctantly, they did just that. Nobody had a word to say, either. That’s another thing presumed divinity will buy you.
Khufu stood. There was a matter of saving face that still needed taking care of. “I have decided to let this man live,” he said grandly. “He is to be exiled immediately. Unharmed. Is that clear?”
The lead guard bowed his head, meaning he understood. No guard dared speak directly.
“I thank you,” I said, bowing myself. “My king.”
Not willing to push my luck any further, I walked as calmly as possible from his throne room and headed directly for the nearest exit, escorted by the entire palace guard.
I didn’t stop until I reached the coast.
* * *
It would be several centuries before I returned to Egypt again, and it was long after Khufu and his entire bloodline had died out, and long after Nampheta had passed on. I never learned what happened to her, but I hoped she took my advice and fled to someplace safe.
I noted, with some amusement, that Khufu managed to get his pyramid built, although I understand it took him twenty years—about ten years longer than expected. (Again blazing the trail for modern public works programs.) The damn thing is huge and still standing. It’s the big one at Giza. It has been completely looted, of course, which is what happens when you announce to the world precisely where you and all your worldly possessions have been buried. I believe I even told Khufu this would happen. That’s what he gets for not listening to me.
Chapter 18
I guess one of the reasons they keep bringing me into the lab and trying out new tests on me—and I swear, these lab guys are more creative than Torquemada when it comes to designing things to do to the human body—is because of cancer. Seems their issue is I haven’t ever had it, and this is some kind of problem. I never gave it much thought before, but I’m not a scientist, am I?
The problem is that cancer isn’t something the immune system can fight. This was news to me, and please don’t ask me why or how this is the case, but apparently it is. I’m taking their word for it.
Viktor was abuzz this morning because someone named “Warren” had had a brainstorm the night before. (I don’t know which one Warren is. I can barely tell most of them apart outside of Viktor.) The solution is amazingly simple. If they’d asked me the right way, I probably could have figured it out for them. The answer—I’m older than cancer.
That’s only half of the solution, because it only explains genetically acquired cancer. Cancer via exposure to a carcinogen is a different problem. Still, pretty funny, no? After all those tests?