“My son …” Pharaoh sounded weary. “My son, I sympathize with you, but it’s a common thing for girls and boys to let love make them do cruel things. Sometimes they don’t even realize they’re hurting others. What you’ve described to me is no scheme against you.”
“Isn’t it?” Thutmose spoke with sudden, fierce intensity. “Then why has she used every bit of her powers—beauty, cunning, ambition—to make me look like a madman in your eyes? Why? So that you will set me aside and give the crown to my brother—her devoted, doting slave!” He ticked off point after point on his fingers: “She conspires with Amenophis, who’s like wax in her hands. Together, and with the help of that brat”—he jerked his chin at Nava, who cringed tighter against me—“they created and planted all the evidence of Ta-Miu’s death. I would give a double handful of gold to know how they forced Meketre to be a part of their scheme. Bribes? Threats? Both? They manipulated me so that I had no choice but to condemn her, but before the sentence could be carried out, she escaped! She cast a sleeping spell over her guards with the help of her Habiru brat—”
“What spell?” I snapped. “It was a potion in a jug of wine!”
Thutmose ignored the interruption. “My love-struck brother helped those two flee across the river, but not before they whisked Ta-Miu from her hiding place and took her away with them. Now they’re here, claiming that Ta-Miu is living proof of Nefertiti’s innocence when her true purpose is to prove that I’m not fit to rule! Father, you chose me to govern Thebes in your absence. You proclaimed that I was as capable as you to see that justice was done. Everything that Nefertiti has done to overthrow me strikes at you. The people will hear—the peasants, the merchants, the soldiers, the nobles, the priests—and they will ask if Thebes was given into the hands of someone who condemned a guiltless girl for a crime that never happened. Then they’ll ask, ‘Who put someone so witless in power in the first place?’ ”
Without warning, Thutmose dropped to his knees and prostrated himself at Pharaoh Amenhotep’s feet, then raised his head and said, “I love you because you are my father. I respect and obey you because you are my king. But I worship you because you are the god-on-earth, as great as Amun himself! To doubt the power and wisdom of the gods is blasphemy. My lord—and you, holy priests of Hathor—in your wisdom, what name will you give to the crime of plotting to make a living god look like a fool before all his people?”
The priests’ response rang through the chamber at once—“Blasphemy! Blasphemy! Blasphemy!”—and every one of them was glaring at me with loathing and malice. They hadn’t even waited to draw a breath before attacking me or to spare an instant’s thought considering whether Thutmose’s words held truth or air. To question the gods was to question the men who made their living from the gods, like dogs under a rich man’s table. Amenophis’s objections were drowned out by their shouts. Nava yowled in panic. Aunt Tiye burst into tears, wailing that it would kill her poor brother when he heard what his daughter had become.
Only Pharaoh remained calm. With Ta-Miu still in his hands, he restored order with a low but audible command. “My son, I confess that your words have left me on a tangled path in a strange land. I find it hard to believe such things about this girl”—he nodded in my direction, then sighed—“but I also find it hard to doubt your word. You are my son and the heir to my throne. You were raised to honor Ma’at’s sacred balance from the start.”
“So was I,” I said softly. Pharaoh’s sorrowful face turned toward me. “So was I, my lord,” I said more firmly. “Great one, my father is one of your most trusted servants. My first mother died while attending your Great Royal Wife. My family is loyal to you—so loyal that if I am found guilty of the schemes Prince Thutmose describes, they would be the first to call for my death. My lord, you are the god-on-earth. Let me put my fate in the hands of your sister goddess, Ma’at, whose Feather of Truth stands in the balance against every human heart!”
“How do you propose to do that, Nefertiti?” Pharaoh asked.
“By returning to Thebes and from there to the great sacred place, Karnak. I will stand before the goddess herself—”
“In the Palace of Ma’at,” Pharaoh finished my thought for me. He was smiling again, though it was a melancholy smile. “Yes, of course, I should have thought of that myself. An oath of truth in the presence of Ma’at, in the heart of her house—so be it.” He raised his voice and proclaimed, “We leave tomorrow! Make everything ready for our departure. Find worthy lodgings for my son Prince Amenophis, for the lady Nefertiti, and for …” He cocked his head at Nava, who had stopped crying but who still hung on to me like a baby monkey to its mother. “Well, Nefertiti, if this little one is your slave, I must say you are the most tolerant mistress in all my kingdom.”
“Nava is no longer a slave,” I said. It felt good to reveal a happy truth. “I gave her freedom before I left Thebes. She is …” I paused. What was Nava to me? No longer a slave but not a servant, either. We were too close for that to be the right name for her. A friend? Yes, but more than that. “She has become my sister.”
I thought I would die then and there, squeezed to death by all the hugs, deafened by the cries of joy, and robbed of breath by all the kisses from the Habiru child in my arms.