Anubis Nights by Gary Jonas

violence that seems to rain on my parade all the damn time is that we all need friends. We need to belong to a group. It’s just how humans are wired. My group was mostly Kelly, Brand, Esther, and Rayna at the moment, with a bunch of friends on the outer circle who sometimes helped or needed help. Loners are aberrations and they tend to not live long once life starts punching them in the face.
    I knew Kelly needed some privacy so she could either rest or pull herself together, and I was happy to give it to her, but I suspected this was a deeper problem, and I hoped she’d let me help. For the time being, I wandered around the complex, which consisted of a number of buildings within the enclosing wall. We were staying in one of the suites in the royal residence. There were other private rooms in that residence, each with its own courtyard and pool and portico. I didn’t enter Tut’s private residence. However, I did walk past a harem. I wasn’t sure if Tut partook, but there were some mighty attractive women in those rooms, and I suspected some of the higher-ups might help themselves occasionally. Seeing those women sure made me miss Rayna. I hoped she was all right.
    I needed to remain focused. I didn’t know nearly as much about Egypt as Kelly did, and even her knowledge was spotty and superficial, but I did know pharaohs often had multiple wives and mistresses on the side. Tut had married his half-sister to have claim to the throne. They shared the same father, Akhenaten, but had different mothers. Ankhesenamun was the daughter of Nefertiti, Akhenaten’s Great Royal Wife. Tut and Ankhesenamun were the last of the royal bloodline.
    I wondered about their childhood. In my time, one did not marry one’s sister, even if you lived in rural Arkansas. But that sort of thing was common among pharaohs where the royal bloodline was so important to keep Egypt together. The pharaoh was considered a god. There I go again with the word pharaoh. Too many mummy movies, I guess.
    A few servants passed me in the hall as I moved past the kitchen. The scent of bread and spices hung in the air. Some kind of meat was roasting. I wasn’t hungry until I smelled the food. As I wasn’t sure about the etiquette of sneaking a meal, I went outside and crossed another courtyard. Palm trees grew here and there, and the next building housed what looked like offices to me, but I didn’t investigate because the people there seemed to be busy.
    The building north of the offices held the festival hall, where the servants bustled about, setting things up for the evening meal. I didn’t want to interrupt them. I was simply getting the lay of the land. To the west, I saw another building with a long ramp leading to a doorway. A few people stood outside the door, so I moved toward them.
    A man walked down the ramp toward me. He wore a kilt and nothing else save a few amulets, but his kilt extended outward so while he could walk in it, it certainly wasn’t practical to work in. As with most of the people I’d seen, he wore a lot of makeup.
    “Excuse me,” I said.
    The man turned toward me, looked me up and down. My jeans, Nikes, and button-down shirt no doubt struck him as alien. He hesitated then started to kneel.
    “You don’t have to kneel,” I said. “It’s all right. Can you answer a few questions for me?”
    “I shall try.”
    I wondered if he heard the English words as well as the Egyptian words or if the spell erased my native tongue and projected only his own language. That didn’t seem like a good thing to ask him, though. “What’s this building?” I asked instead.
    “This is the audience hall. The vizier settles the occasional dispute here, or sometimes the king will address people here.”
    “What do you do?”
    “I am a scribe.”
    “Excellent. What’s your name?”
    “I am Neferhotep. I was so named because my parents claim direct lineage with the great Neferhotep.”
    I’d never heard of the guy. “I’m Jonathan,