The closest serpent, the one who struck the priest, darts at the screaming boy. But the boy, surprisingly fast for his soft pudginess, scurries out of the way. He flings something limp and ropelike in the serpent’s face — a cold, dead snake. The squat woman seizes him, pulling him back as if to hurry him to safety.
“Murderers!” shrieks the shapelier woman, she of the exquisite beauty garbed in sheer, thin linen. “Murderers and thieves!”
Another coil whips toward her. She dodges with a dancer’s grace. It misses wrapping her slender neck; its tip splits the skin of her shoulder. Blood runs down her arm. She shrieks again, as much in outrage at her marred perfection as in pain.
With a lunging leap, the priest-killing serpent is upon the shorter woman. The curved fangs plunge again. Her last act is to shove the boy through the doorway, to almost throw him in a final desperate burst of strength.
From rooms around the courtyard come the sounds of waking query, confusion, concern. On high in the sun-tower, the chanting abruptly stops. Burnished mirrors swivel, casting sunbeams of false day over the commotion. Shadows leap stark and strange against the walls and pillars, against the ruined visages of gods.
The fangs draw blood. The coils constrict.
A staff swings. A serpent twists aside; the rounded blade’s bronze edge shears through scales and flesh in a long but shallow cut. It swings again, up-around-down in a whistling arc. Heavy wood cracks on flinty head, on bone. The serpent drops, stunned… or worse.
Releasing her was as difficult as he’d expected, and he’d expected it to be all but impossible.
Khemet stepped back, every sinew feeling drawn tight as a bowstring, his body surging like the rising Nile floodwaters.
Breathless, yes, she was breathless. The carefully-daubed carmine of her lips had become a rich, red smear.
“You will be queen,” he said.
Sia gazed up at him, eyes hazed with desire, heavy-lidded in a slow cat’s blink. Her cheeks were flushed, her intricate braids in disarray. The fine-pressed pleats of her linen garment hung rumpled and askew.
The way she had melted against him, molded to him, melded, her own kiss as fervent, her own hunger as intense… in the privacy of that rushlit passage, unseen, unknown, they could have…
“You will be queen,” Khemet repeated.
Then he turned, striding perhaps not silent but still swift. He dared not linger, dared not wait for her to speak. Dared not tempt himself further.
In a matter of moments, he had reached a sunlit alcove overlooking a bustling crafter’s yard. Potters and painters, weavers and carvers, and others of such normal trade went about their business. The bright air rang with voices — chattering, haggling, laughing. Children ran about, side-locked naked boys just as he and Mahenef had once been, getting into mischief. He smelled pan-bread frying in oil, fish and water-fowl roasting on spits.
Life, this was life, ordinary daily life. And here he was, apart from it. Squinting; his vision, like his spirit, more accustomed to the dark.
With the ease of much practice, he slung a loose fold of his black shoulder-wrap to drape around his head. A lozenge of polished onyx, set with chips of flint and two small green gems, weighted the cloth at his brow.
He made his way through crowded streets and marketplaces, avoiding contact, being avoided in turn. Those who happened by chance to notice him were quick to divert their attention elsewhere.
At the river’s edge, a small boat waited, likewise studiously ignored by most along the docks. The serpentine design woven into its reed construction was subtle, as was the stitching in its shade-awning. The men waiting with it wore garments similar to Khemet’s, their shaved and oiled heads similarly covered.
They nodded as he approached, picked up their steer-poles as he boarded, and pushed the small craft off into the wide and smoothly rippling waters.
They are five now.
Five, and more guards are coming.
Charging from the barracks, some with tanned-hide breastplates hastily buckled, having grabbed shields and spears, brandishing khopesh-blades. Many priests run into the courtyard as well, priests carrying bronze knives or torches.
And, beyond the wooden gate, others have begun to gather. Workers. Merchants. Sentries. Slaves. The builders and people of Sefut-Aten, calling out to one another, shouting with confused consternation. Most are men, strong men, builders, arming themselves with whatever tools they find most handy.
The last of the leopard skin-clad warriors has fallen. A serpent has snared the beautiful woman in his Coils. Pharaoh’s mistress, his favored concubine, his Lily-of-the-Nile. She struggles and spits and scratches like a cat. She curses them with vile language for presuming to lay their hands upon her.
Then the boy, the irksome and obnoxious child who’s caused them all this hardship, comes running back out. Demanding they release his mother, promising them the burning deaths of a thousand angry suns, do they know what they are doing? Do they not know who he is?
He snatches up the dead priest’s dropped candle. Before any of the serpents can stop him, he hurls its guttering flame into a broken bale of straw. The dry and brittle stuff ignites with a gusty flare. The boy’s next action is to heave all his pudgy weight at an oil-cask, which overturns.
Two serpents seize him by the arms, haul him off his feet, carry him suspended between them. He is visibly shocked by this, astounded, as if he earnestly believed they could not touch him.
But the damage has been done; the spreading spill of oil feeding hungry fire, hastening its appetite for wood and rope and scaffolding.
In a mere span of heartbeats, the entire courtyard is ablaze.
The sun had set into cooling darkness by the time Khemet and his men emerged from their hidden stronghold in its deep river-carved caverns below the desert.
He chose six to go with him, six of his best, six of his fellow Sons of Apophis.
Instead of their simple tunics and shoulder-capes, they wore the Scales. The close-fitting armor covered their entire bodies, made from supple oiled hide to which small overlapping pieces of stiff black leather and greened copper had been sewn. On their heads were helm-caps covered with angled wedges of flint.
At his waist, each man carried the Fangs, twin knives with narrow, curving blades and needle-sharp points. Around their wrists and forearms were tied the shorter sets of Coils, sturdy lengths of cord suitable for binding or strangling. The longer Coils, loops of limber rope-whips, hung on their backs, snakeskin-wrapped handles within easy reach.
“To betray our king,” one said, in a musing, thoughtful tone.
“To save Egypt,” another replied.
“By any means necessary,” added a third.
“Even the shedding of royal blood?” the fourth asked.
“No crime greater,” said the fifth.
“No crime more certain to weigh the heart heavy as stone,” the sixth agreed.
“I will not put so great a burden upon you,” Khemet said. “No, that task I shall take upon myself, and answer for it to Anubis and Ma’at.”
They rode for Sefut-Aten on the dark winds of the night.
“Now you are done for, you wretched crawling snakes!” says Lily-of-the-Nile, as the fire grows and the guards advance. “Pharaoh will flay you alive and leave your corpses for the jackals.”
She is terrified, but she is also furious. Her shoulder is a sheet of pain where the whip split her flawless flesh. They’ve bound her wrists behind her back and hold their knives poised at her throat. Her most faithful slavewoman and half a dozen of her hand-chosen warriors are dead.