Book One

WAKING WITH A SHARP CRY, HE FELT HIS heart thump madly before he realized that he was on his pallet in his brother's house. Once again, he had dreamed of his wife, Naia, slaughtered before the eyes of his wandering night's spirit. He sat up in the dark, rubbing his forehead. Every time he had the dream, his old wound stung.

Throwing his mantle over his shoulders, he slipped from the courtyard gate. He had taken to walking the Theban streets late at night when he could not sleep, which was most nights now. Turning from the Avenue Khnum, where the bonfires of Amun's Great Temple blazed, he slipped into a dank and twisting alley behind a riverfront warehouse. Picking his way through the rot and refuse, he came at last to a tavern. The sign hanging above its door depicted a hippopotamus besieged by hunters.

It was very late and many of the patrons were snoring over their cups. The Wounded Hippo was a venerable dockside haunt, centuries old, and its brick walls were crumbling to pieces. Unfortunately, the current owner's apparent devotion to the antique did not extend to the vintage he served.

He trod silently to his usual corner and signaled the tavern's owner.

"Wine," he said. "Red."

At the hearth, the innkeeper poured some wine into a terracotta bowl and gave it to his serving wench. "See that man over there?" he asked, keeping his gruff voice low. The woman was recently hired, and unfamiliar with the tastes of the tavern's regular patrons.

She turned her head discreetly, whispering in the same guarded tone, "A gentleman!" Her posture perceptibly straightened so that her breasts might be displayed to better advantage beneath her tight linen sheath. "What's he doing here, I wonder?"

The innkeeper ignored the unintentional slur to his establishment. "Every night he comes in and wants the same thing."

"Well, that's hardly strange—not much to choose from, is there?" The wench laughed, which she often did these days, proud of her new teeth made of elephant ivory and wired into her mouth with copper bands. "I mean, it's either white or red, now, isn't it?"

"That's not the point." The man's voice fell to a whisper. "He never drinks it."

The woman caught herself in midchortle. The idea of a man coming into a tavern and not drinking struck her as odd, somehow, almost obscene. "You're joking," she said.

"May my Day of Pain come tomorrow if I am," the innkeeper said. "Just stares at the bowl all night, and never once brings it to his lips."

The woman peered suspiciously at the man. "He's not a ghost, is he? They say ghosts can't eat or drink, but still they pine for it terrible." She shivered. "I won't serve ghosts."

"He's alive all right—though Egypt would've been better off if he wasn't. A 'follower of Set,' he is. He's the one accused all them at the conspiracy trials last year."

"That's Semerket?"

The innkeeper nodded. They stared.

Semerket's aggravated voice abruptly cut through the room. "Must I wait for the grapes to be harvested?"

The innkeeper looked down at the bowl still clutched in the wench's hands. "Better take it to him. Don't want my name on any list of his."

The wench swept her mass of braids away from her face and crossed the room to where Semerket sat, her generous hips swaying as she walked. She placed the bowl at his side.

"Your wine, my lord."

Copyright © 2006 by Brad Geagley