“Mmph?” The Habiru child answered me around a mouthful of bread.
“Please bring Amenophis something to eat, too, and let me have those goatskin bags. If we’re fortunate, at least one of them is full of wine. I remember Mother using that as well as honey to clean wounds.”
I gave thanks when I discovered that though the larger of two goatskins held watered beer, the smaller did hold wine. Together, Nava and I bustled about, assembling all the rest of the things I wanted to use for treating Amenophis’s sting.
When we were done, his foot was clean and comfortably swaddled in linen bandages. He regarded it with a wry smile. “It’s too bad that only men can serve as embalming priests in the House of Beauty. You’ve done a marvelous job of wrapping my foot.”
“Don’t praise me until you’ve tried putting weight on it again,” I said. “The people brought to the House of Beauty are all done with feeling pain. Here, put your arm around my shoulder and let’s see.”
With me helping him stand up and Nava helping him keep his balance, Amenophis took a few tentative steps before joyfully declaring that his foot no longer hurt.
“Well, not too much,” he added when I asked him to swear to it. “But it’s really much better. I can walk on it, I promise! And you don’t need to support me like this; I can get around on my own.”
“I hope you’re right,” I said as Nava and I lowered him to the ground. “We’ll leave this place as soon as we’ve eaten.”
“Now? But it’s almost full daylight.”
“Your brother knows we’re near. It’s no use trying to hide from him anymore. Now we have to outdistance him.”
“Then should we waste time eating when we should be moving?”
“I think—I hope—I bought us enough time for this meal. Thutmose’s hunters won’t come after us until he commands them, so unless he gives them orders in his sleep, we’re safe.”
Amenophis looked doubtful. “Look at the light, Nefertiti. Thutmose must be awake by now. My brother has never slept late in his life.”
“He will this morning,” I said with a self-satisfied smile. And while we enjoyed our first adequate meal in days, I told Amenophis and Nava what had happened in Thutmose’s camp.
“Would you really have set him on fire, Nefertiti?” Nava asked, her eyes as round as drinking cups.
I could not lie. “I don’t know. I would never want to do something like that to any human being, but when so much was at stake and I had so few choices …” I sighed. “I never want to face a decision like that again.”
We finished eating and took stock of our new supplies. Nava and Amenophis were happy to have clothing that wasn’t half dirt, half rags, though it took some clever folding and tying to get one of Thutmose’s garments to fit Nava. Once she was outfitted, I sent her to the stand of dead sycamores to see if there were any fallen branches that Amenophis could use for a staff. The only one that came close to being the proper length was still too short for him, but it would have to do.
“I’ll be as curved as a shepherd’s crook if I lean on this too long,” he joked as he tried it out.
“Do you want me to look for a different one?” Nava asked eagerly, and scooted away before we could stop her.
“I don’t think you’ll have to worry about getting a bent back from using that staff,” I said. “You can’t walk very far, even with something to lean on.”
“You’re right.” His face fell. “Nefertiti … I think you and Nava should go on alone.”
“What? No!”
“I mean it. If we stay together, I’ll hold you back and my brother will catch us all. But if you leave me behind, you’ll have a better chance of reaching my father. He’s the only one who can help you against my brother. Don’t worry about me; I’ll get myself to Thutmose’s camp and turn myself in. The official reason for his search is to find me, right? Well, once he has me, that’s that; he’ll have to go back to Thebes.”
“Thutmose believes there’s nothing he has to do except have his own way in everything,” I countered. “He’ll find some excuse to continue the hunt, and if he has you”—I closed my eyes—“he has me.”
“What are you say—”
“Nefertiti! Amenophis! Look what I found!” Nava’s high, sweet voice demanded our attention. The Habiru girl came running toward us with a small, familiar creature bounding playfully at her heels.
“Orow!” Ta-Miu declared as she outdistanced Nava and leaped to the top of one tumbledown wall.
“Bast witness this, she must have followed me!” I cried. “Why would she do that?”
“You’re nicer than the bad prince,” Nava said. “She knows that.”
“Rrrr.” Was that the cat’s way of telling us she agreed with the child?
“Not even the priests and priestesses of Bast can explain why cats act as they do.” Amenophis scratched Ta-Miu on the white blaze marking her brow. The star shape was much sharper; the cat must have been washing herself. “But I think Nava’s right. This is good, Nefertiti. If we have Thutmose’s cat—the cat you ‘killed’—we have the proof that will clear your name and make my brother pay for all his wrongdoing. It’s no longer just our word against his.”
I stood beside him and rested my cheek on his shoulder. “This is a sign from the gods. They’ve sent us Ta-Miu to help us restore Ma’at’s balance of truth when we speak to Pharaoh. If you let Thutmose have you now, it’s the same as throwing the gods’ gift back in their faces.”