The Shepherd Kings by Judith Tarr Page B

straight
enough, if you but ask.”
    He had steered boats enough, balancing the oar with a
mingling of strength and delicacy that had been natural to him since he was a
child. This was somewhat like it. But a boat was not a live thing, though it
might often feel so. Horses had minds of their own, more by far than wind or
water.
    It was more difficult than he had ever imagined, and yet he
could feel that, with time, it might become easy. If he had such time. If the
gods gave him the gift.
    The horses had dropped to a walk while he struggled in the
tangle of reins. That was a mercy of theirs, and he was glad of it. He found
that he could steer well enough, at that slow pace. He could stop, too, and
make the horses go again, with Ariana’s guidance.
    She stopped him then, though he would have gone on and on.
“Enough,” she said. “Tomorrow we go on.”
    She would not be shifted. Her will was as strong as that
slender body of hers. Nor was she done with her instruction. The horses must be
unharnessed and rubbed down, the chariot put away in what must have begun its
life as a cave, but had been shaped and built and raised until it was a rather
well-hidden but capacious stable and storehouse. There was much to do indeed,
and when that was done, she took him with her into a palace that, somewhat to
his surprise, had come alive.
    Maybe it was only that he had not been taking notice. There
were people everywhere, of every station, on every imaginable errand; and of
course the inevitable idlers and hangers-on, loitering in comfort and
pronouncing judgment on the world as it passed them by. The palace in Thebes
had been much the same. The people here wore different fashions and spoke a
different tongue, but they were indisputably courtiers.
    Kemni, in the company of one who was a great priestess and
perhaps a queen, could not but attract notice. He recognized the signs:
sidelong glances, veiled murmurs. Within the hour, he had no doubt, the
intrigues would begin.
    People would court his favor. Factions would swirl and shift
about him. He would be expected to play the game as it was played in every
court of the world.
    Ariana must know this. Her taking him through these most
public portions of the palace could not but be a signal, and a message that
courtiers could well interpret.
    It had begun, he thought: the dance that he had come for. He
drew a breath and straightened his shoulders and did his best to put on a brave
show. He could do no less for his king, or for Egypt.

VIII
    Kemni, who had spent his first evening all alone amid the
strangeness of Crete, advanced toward his second as the new darling of the palace.
So quickly a man’s standing could change, when a great lord or a queen made him
a favorite.
    He knew. He had come to Thebes the battle-brother and
protected friend of Gebu the prince. It seemed to be his fate, to ride the wake
of princes.
    Here, that served his purpose well, and would, he hoped,
further his king’s cause. He set himself to be pleasant, and to learn names and
faces, as many as his head could hold. They all seemed to know who he was and
why he was there. So: that was not to be a secret here. He had wondered, when
he was left to his own devices, if he should lie low and take care not to be
seen.
    But people were frank in their questions, and remarkably
well apprised of matters in Egypt. They knew of the Retenu, and of the Great
House, and of the need that Egypt had for allies to win back the Two Lands from
the conquerors.
    “They have no power on the sea,” said a lord of the same age
and stamp as Naukrates. “All their wars have been fought on land, with
chariots. If a fleet came at them up the river, and another down it, with an
army embarked on each, they might be caught in the pincers. Then Egypt would
belong to its own king again.”
    “So my king thinks,” Kemni conceded. “And yours? Would he
agree?”
    The lord shrugged. “Minos takes his own counsel. We can only
advise.”
    “So it