“Maybe I’ll just get turned to salt,” I said, and gave Nava a wink that made her giggle. The guard scratched his head in puzzlement the rest of the way to the palace.
I was given my old rooms in the women’s quarters, but my former servants were gone. In their place were two scared, skinny, self-conscious girls who didn’t look much older than me. They refused to give me their names and avoided speaking to me at all unless it was absolutely necessary. I presumed that Aunt Tiye had handpicked them because they were the two palace servants who would serve me the worst. They were the clumsiest girls I’d ever seen. They tripped over their own feet, dropped things, and stepped on the hem of any garment they carried.
I didn’t mind having servants who were not much better than having no servants. Nava and I were used to taking care of ourselves. The girls discovered that they had fewer and fewer chores to do and promptly took advantage of it. When they weren’t breaking, tearing, or losing things, they were sleeping in corners or—so Nava told me—stealing off to the kitchen to flirt with the younger cooks.
The only time that those two managed to act like real servants instead of failed jugglers was when Princess Sitamun came to visit me. I sent the girls to fetch refreshments, all of which promptly landed on the floor when one tripped over the doorsill and the other let the wine flask slip through her hands.
My friend surged to her feet and gave the slip-fingered girls such a harsh tongue-lashing that it seemed as though sweet-natured Sitamun had shed her skin, revealing Aunt Tiye at her most scathing. The maids squealed in distress, raced away to bring us more food and drink, then dashed off to hide in some dusty corner until my guest was gone.
“Whew! I didn’t know you had that in you, Sitamun,” I said, with nothing but admiration for the plainspoken princess.
Sitamun pursed her lips primly and raised one eyebrow. “Hmph! If you don’t tell servants what to do in a way that says or else, they’ll sit around all day eating dates and spitting the pits in your eye.”
“They don’t do that,” Nava said. “They don’t do anything. We take care of ourselves.”
“What? That’s not acceptable! Nefertiti, I know that you’re being kept here as a prisoner until Ma’at’s high priest says the goddess is ready to hear your plea, but you’re of noble birth! A princess! You shouldn’t be doing servants’ work.”
I laughed. “I’m only linked to the nobility because of Aunt Tiye, not by birth, and if you ask her, she’ll tell you that I’m the fool who threw away my one chance to become a princess! So I guess I’d better get used to doing my own work, because once my trial before Ma’at is over, your mother’s going to send me home on the fastest ship she can find.”
“Then I know someone who’ll be on that ship with you,” Sitamun said with a subtle smile. “He’s told me everything. I’m very happy for you both.”
I lowered my eyes. “Even if—even when—I’m free again, what’s going to become of him and me? Your mother hates me for not living my life according to her choices. She’ll have Amenophis walled up alive before she’ll let us be together.”
“Then you’d better learn how to use a chisel.”
Even Nava laughed at Sitamun’s joke. “I don’t care if those girls don’t help us,” the Habiru child announced. “I like it better this way, with them hiding from their chores all the time. It keeps them away from us, and that means they can’t go tale-bearing about who comes to visit and what they say.”
“What a smart little girl,” Sitamun said. She handed Nava a plump fig as a reward. “Tell me, O daughter of Thoth the wise, how would you make sure that those two stayed far away from these rooms for a long time?”
Nava chewed the fig while she thought this over. At last she replied, “Can I have another fig?” Sitamun passed her the entire plate. Between bites, the child said, “I’d give them a big, complicated job to do, but it would have to be something they couldn’t do in these rooms, or even in the women’s quarters.”
“Laundry!” Sitamun exclaimed. “Do you have any pleated linen sheaths, Nefertiti?”
“I had at least two,” I said. “I haven’t bothered to see if they’re still where I stored them.”
“Never mind if they’re not; I’ll send you a basketful of mine, and you can pretend they’re yours. Do you know how long it takes to wash and bleach and repleat those things? Your maids will be gone for half a day!”
“A whole day,” Nava said. “Half a day to do the work, half a day to do whatever they want, but they’ll tell you they were working the whole time.” She ate the last fig contentedly. “They’ll think they fooled you. It will make them very happy.”
Sitamun leaned her head closer to mine and grinned. “Oh, do let’s make them happy, Nefertiti.”
I narrowed my eyes. “What are you up to, Sitamun?”
She only smiled.
The basket containing Sitamun’s badly wrinkled linen sheath dresses arrived in my quarters the following morning, and I turned it over to my maids. I never said the dresses were mine, just that they needed to be washed and the pleats refreshed.
“This will take us a long time, mistress,” one of them said.
“A long, long time,” the other added.
“Take the whole day, if you like,” I said casually. “I don’t think I’ll need you for anything else until tomorrow morning.”
“Oh, we’ll be done before that,” the first one said.
“Maybe.” The second one moved close to her companion, and I thought I saw her pinch her. “We want to do a good job, don’t we?”