“Sitamun, stand aside!” Aunt Tiye commanded. “Would you throw your own family to the crocodiles? We must take every precaution to defend the security of our royal house. Even a hint of scandal could become a weapon for our enemies.” She turned toward me. “Even if you swore a thousand oaths, the scribe must be questioned, and the slave—the freed slave girl, too.” Her eyes never left my face.
The noises from outside the royal apartments had subsided; dawnlight was seeping in through the high, narrow windows. I was weary of Aunt Tiye’s game-playing, wholly drained by the events of the night, too worn-out to fight anymore. And how could I fight when she’d just shown me she held Nava in the palm of her hand?
All I wanted was peace.
“Will you swear a new oath, Aunt Tiye?” I asked softly. “You know as well as I that Nava and Henenu are blameless. Will you promise to leave them alone if I—if I give you what you want? Promise that, and I swear that before another month passes, Thutmose and I will be—”
“No!” The word resounded through the queen’s chamber with the might of a lion’s roar. “Don’t do it, Nefertiti. Marry my brother when you want, not an instant sooner!” Amenophis strode across the room on those gawky, comical legs to stand beside Sitamun, barring Thutmose’s path, facing his mother’s fury. “I won’t let you twist her arm like this, Mother. If you complain to Father that Henenu’s done something wrong, I’ll go to him myself and testify that the scribe is innocent.”
“You’d lie for this girl?” There was a dangerous note in Aunt Tiye’s voice. “The gods will condemn you for that. Ammut the Devourer will have your heart if you defy me.”
“Then let her! You’re always talking about how important it is for us to stay loyal to our family, to protect our family, to work for what’s best for our family. Are you forgetting that Nefertiti’s part of our family, even if she never marries Thutmose? Yet you’re willing to bully her into something she doesn’t wa—isn’t ready for, and you don’t care if you destroy innocent people to do it.”
“You stupid child,” Aunt Tiye spat. “Apologize to me at once!”
Amenophis folded his arms and said nothing.
“You heard Mother!” Thutmose grabbed his brother, spun him around, and knocked him to the floor with a backhanded blow. “You need more than one lesson in manners. Get up. Get up, if you’re a man.”
“But I’m not. Didn’t you hear what Mother said?” Amenophis’s fleshy lips parted in a provoking smile. He clambered back to his feet, blood trickling from his nose, and told his brother: “I’m a child. If you want me to fight you so that you’ve got an excuse to beat me, you’ll be waiting a long time. You’ll just have to do it with no excuse at all.”
Thutmose let out a hoarse bellow and struck him again. This time Amenophis staggered but didn’t fall. Thutmose was about to throw himself on his brother when Aunt Tiye stepped between them.
“Are you my son or are you Set the Destroyer? Let your brother be.” She surveyed the room. Sitamun looked ready to fight the next person who said a cross word to her. Her sisters, on the other hand, had withdrawn into a corner and were chattering in undertones among themselves, their eyes darting from Amenophis to Thutmose to their mother. As dearly as I wanted to collapse from carrying the weight of my bones, I forced myself to stand tall when she looked at me.
The queen sighed. “This isn’t what I wanted. Go, all of you. No one will be questioned. Nefertiti, it’s true that I owe you my thanks for having told me about those creatures and their plot. It was pure luck that you discovered it, but luck is a precious gift. The gods must love you and I … I must respect that. My oath before Amun still stands, but hear me: Your part of it does as well. Two more years, girl. Less, if you get the sense to wake up and recognize your opportunity. Now go.”
We all did as she commanded, most of us looking thankful to be making our escape. Thutmose stamped off down the hall without a backward look, cursing as he went. Sitamun’s sisters scurried away in the opposite direction like a spooked covey of quail. Sitamun, Amenophis, and I didn’t say a word to one another, yet somehow we agreed to walk away together until we found ourselves back on the humble rooftop where Henenu had his unofficial classroom. The sun was a thin slice of gold on the horizon.
“I wonder what will happen to them,” I said very quietly, sitting in my usual spot. The rooftop was still cool from the night’s chill.
“Who?” Sitamun asked.
“The Ugarit women. The nobleman who was going to help the pretty one. The other one’s child.”
“Father’s going to laugh about the whole business and give each of them a handful of gold and a vineyard or two in the country. What do you think will happen to them, you straw-head?” Sitamun snapped.
I knew she spoke so sharply only because she was as tired as I was and her nerves were frayed, but her harshness still hurt. Tears spilled down my cheeks. “They’ll all be put to death, won’t they? Even the boy?”
“Not the boy.” Amenophis squatted next to me, looking like a gigantic grasshopper. “He’s still Father’s son, no matter what his mother’s done. There’s even a chance that Father will show mercy to those women, exile and imprisonment instead of death. The man, though—his treachery to Pharaoh can’t be forgiven; his punishment can’t be lessened.”
I covered my eyes with one hand. “I wish I’d never overheard that conversation. I mean—I wish I’d never told Aunt Tiye about it. I should have gone directly to Pharaoh, or the vizier, or—or anyone else. But I thought that if I told Aunt Tiye first, she’d be so indebted to me that she’d let me go home. Instead—” I raised my head and looked at the fresh marks on Amenophis’s good-natured, homely face. “I’m sorry you were hurt again because of me.”
He laughed. “I was hurt because my brother’s got the temper of a wild jackass.”
“That’s being kind about it,” Sitamun said with a smirk. Her good humor was returning.