“Can’t, not won’t,” I said fiercely. “Do you think I’m a gift or a reward or the prize that Amenophis has to drop into your hands if he wants to buy your heart? No one has that power over me.”
“Not even you, O beautiful one?” Thutmose smirked. “Just think of all the good that you could do if you stopped your stupid games and accepted the fate that was always meant for you. Come with me tomorrow to my father’s council. Declare before Pharaoh and his most trusted men that we are husband and wife. From that moment on, I swear by the crown of the Two Lands, I will love, cherish, honor, and respect my brother Amenophis above all other men. I will raise him up as high as he cares to go among the powerful of my realm. There will be everlasting peace between us, and I will make his life so sweet that the most gifted poets and singers of the Black Land will be left mute when they try to describe it.”
“All you would need to do is call him brother,” I said.
“Fine. I don’t mind getting off cheaply.” He laughed at me. “Does this mean you agree to my terms? I must warn you, though: Once I wear the crown, you won’t be my queen. You’ve been a public spectacle and an embarrassment to me far too often. How would it look if Pharaoh Thutmose rewarded such unwomanly behavior? But don’t worry, you’ll live a very comfortable life as one of my junior wives. I’m sure your family will be pleased. Come, let’s seal the bargain.” He tried to take me into his arms.
I thrust the oil lamp between us at eye level and he recoiled, calling me a stream of revolting names. I waited until he had to catch his breath, then spoke:
“Let me go, Thutmose,” I said. “Let me return to Akhmin. I can never be your wife, but if you consent to heal the break between you and your brother, I promise that I will never be his.”
“Fresh trickery.” His lip curled. “You both want me dead; you both want to wear the crowns of the Two Lands! He’d never let you push him aside, and you’d never give up the chance to be Great Royal Wife to a man you could lead around like a tame baboon.”
I made such a loud noise of sheer frustration that it was a miracle Uni didn’t risk his master’s displeasure and come running to see what had happened. “Which is it?” I exclaimed. “With one breath you say Amenophis is a mountain of strength who won’t let me leave him; with the next, you insist he’s mine to control. What will it take to reach you, Thutmose? Say the word and Amenophis and I will stand in the house of Amun, Isis, any god you care to name, and publicly swear that we mean you no harm, that we’ve never betrayed you, that we’ve never coveted the throne of the Two Lands, and that your brother loves you faithfully, truly, and much more than you deserve!”
“An oath.” Thutmose’s snicker made my skin itch. “An oath before the gods. We both know what that’s worth, don’t we, Nefertiti? Empty air. Why go to the temple when you’d accomplish the same thing by shouting your words into a jar? The houses of the gods house nothing.”
“You don’t believe in them?”
“You do?” he countered. “If they exist, they don’t dwell in the piles of stone we build for them. If they can hear us at all, their voices are too weak to answer us. Perhaps they used to touch the lives of men, once upon a time, but now they’ve grown old and weak, too weak to raise their voices or their hands when the priests claim they can buy and sell divine favor or displeasure. Fools and children may still believe in them; I am neither.”
“Then I must be a fool, Thutmose,” I said. “I believe that something greater than myself exists in this world.” And in my thoughts, I added, I just don’t know if that power belongs to the gods I’ve known since childhood, or to Nava’s faceless One, or to something—someone—else entirely. But I feel that presence as surely as I feel the sacred river’s flow, the winds from the south, the life-bringing rays of sun. It’s there; my heart tells me it’s there.
“Oh, what fine, solemn words! ‘Something greater than myself’ indeed.” He mocked me in singsong. “Of course you can believe in something greater than yourself. Look at you! You’re a mere girl. Nearly everything I can name is greater than you.”
“Then I suppose I’m right to believe,” I said.
My calm reply annoyed him. “Why so much faith? Because Ma’at spoke to you? Don’t you know her so-called voice is a fake? A priest speaks for the goddess! A priest I paid”—he scowled—“though obviously not enough. The loathsome insect took his bribe and hasn’t been seen since.”
He doesn’t know who replaced that priest as the voice of Ma’at, I thought. Good. Amenophis did it to save me, but Thutmose would just see it as more evidence that his brother is against him.
“Why don’t you worship me, Nefertiti?” he went on. “When I’m pharaoh, I’ll be the god-on-earth, and I’ll have more real power than the so-called gods. When someone offends me, I will strike them down. But the gods? If Ma’at was more than an empty image, surely she would have punished me by now for having invaded her sanctuary with a dagger! Yet the only penalty I’ve suffered has come from my father’s hands. Even that is slowly being withdrawn. Why should I believe in something I don’t need to fear?”
“All right, Thutmose, I tried,” I said. “You won’t accept a sacred oath as proof that your brother’s not your rival. You won’t accept my offer to give him up and leave the court so you can reconcile. Will you even accept Ta-Miu, or will you choose loneliness and isolation because you’re determined to spite me? It’s late and I’m leaving. Just tell me whether I should take her with me when I go.”