The Pharaoh Contract

Chapter 6

Nisa, favored daughter of the King, reclined on a divan. Blue Hellsilk covered the cushions; looking down, she admired the contrast between that vivid color and the smooth flesh of her naked body. “Sweet,” she said with a sigh.

Her favorite bondswoman, Delie, rubbed her feet, slow warm strokes that sent pleasurable chills up Nisa’s legs. Allabab, her favorite bondsman, massaged scented oil into her shoulders. His hands were strong and careful, and Nisa gave herself to the delight of the moment.

Allabab spoke softly. “Will there be lessons today, Princess?”

Nisa turned her head so that she could see the cool greens of the King’s gardens, visible through an open casement window. The sound of running water came luxuriously to her ears, and she was suddenly very glad to be a princess. “Perhaps,” she said. “Perhaps we’ll have a lesson in the garden.”

Allabab’s hands stiffened, became slightly less cunning. But after a moment he resumed his skillful attentions. “That might not be safe, Princess. The garden has unfriendly ears. Sometimes.”

Nisa laughed a little. “I’m the favored daughter. Who’d dare listen?”

“As you say, Princess.” His voice warmed with anticipation, and his hands moved down her body, as Delie’s moved upward — to meet in pleasurable cooperation.

“Oh,” Nisa said, dreamily. “It’s so nice to be Nisa.”

Nisa took lunch on the highest terrace of the palace. A cooling breeze ruffled the white canopy over her lounge as she looked out over her father’s capital. The palace rose from the crest of the hill on which the city was built, so that she could see beyond the city’s high walls, far out into the waste.

She ate sweet pinkmelon and little triangles of spiced meat in pastry. The wine was a pale green Sestale, so good that she drank more than she had intended.

After a while, a bit tipsy, she fell to musing on the circumstances that had made her life so wonderful.

Long ago, in the First Days, her ancestors had chosen to travel from place to place entertaining the struggling First People with grubby little illusions — instead of applying themselves to the hard necessities of wresting a living from the ungenerous soil of Pharaoh.

She went to the parapet and leaned against the stone. “You weren’t very smart,” she said to all the anonymous folk below, the faceless ones who labored to make her life good. “We were.” How odd to think that those long-dead vagabonds and their cheap tricks had founded the dynasty of her glorious father — Bhasrahmet, King of Kings, Paramount Lord of all Pharaoh.

But, how amusing!

She laughed. A good thing, she thought, that in the First Days the conjurors hadn’t yet grown skillful enough to attract the attention of the gods. Else her ancestors might have been carried to the Land of Reward, and Nisa never born.

“Such a shame that would have been,” she said. She set the porcelain goblet on the edge of the parapet and looked down. Far below, small shapes bustled across the courtyard — servants on errands, tradesmen, soldiers.

For a moment, the courtyard cleared. Nisa put her finger to the goblet and gave it a tiny push.

It fell, tumbling slowly in the harsh sunlight, sending back flashes of white.

She turned away before it struck.

The nightmare began in the garden, an hour later. She was instructing Delie from a book of fables, correcting her bondswoman’s pronunciation. Allabab watched over Delie’s shoulder, waving a fan in slow distraction.

“‘Bhas watches from below,’” said Delie, carefully, pronouncing the god’s name in the proper aspirated manner.

A cold presence seemed to come into the garden; it chilled Nisa’s back. For a moment, she thought it was the mention of the dread god’s name, and was amused at her reaction. Then Allabab gasped and fell facedown, dropping his fan. Delie made a small cry and turned away.

Nisa looked over her shoulder, to see the thin frozen face of the Paramount Priest, watching through the fronds of a pitcher fern. His obsidian eyes were fixed on the book of fables that lay open on her lap. She closed the book, feeling the first touch of fear.

The Paramount Priest stepped from his place of concealment. “So, it’s true,” he said heavily. Three of the King’s personal guard emerged from the bushes, eyes averted.

Nisa could think of nothing to say, so she lifted her chin and waited for the Paramount Priest to speak again.

He sat on the bench, close to her. “Nisa, your father will be sad.” He gestured; the King’s men jerked her bondservants to their feet and led them away. Allabab went silently and Delie stifled a sob. Nisa could not seem to take her eyes from the Paramount Priest.

He patted her knee with one frail hand. “I’m sorry it’s come to this, Nisa, but what choice have I? No one objected to your taking lovers from the underpeople; a woman of your station is entitled to her pets. But one mustn’t give those pets the means to power. You knew better. What evil impulse drove you to teach them to read?”

Her throat was almost too dry for her voice to come out. “I’m not sure. It seemed harmless… I thought they might enjoy reading the fables themselves; they loved to hear me tell the old stories.”

The Paramount Priest shook his head sadly. “First the fables. Then the lore books, then the slaves learn how to break the cisterns and we all dry to death. Surely you were instructed in this progression, Nisa.”

“Yes… but they were more than slaves. They were friends.” Her voice broke, and suddenly she could look away from the Paramount Priest. She looked at the garden, with its deep greens and softly colored flowers, its cool sweet damp, and the tiny lovely sounds of the birds that hopped and flitted through the shadows. She felt a sharp tearing pain in her heart. All gone now. Not mine any longer. How could I have been so foolish, so arrogant? she thought.

“Now I must order your ‘friends’ given to the desert. A pointless waste of expensive stock. And I must give you to Expiation, which grieves me, and will break your father’s heart. But I must.” The Paramount Priest looked genuinely mournful, and Nisa was moved to pat his hand and smile.

“I understand,” she said. But she did not.

Criminals generally awaited Expiation locked in the iron boxes that stood in the Place of Artful Anguish; this torture was part of their punishment. They died in Expiations of standardized form. One whose crime or station was especially notable would be housed in the Temple, under the care of the priests, until a suitably instructive Expiation could be arranged. Nisa’s crime and station were both great, and so she was locked up in the Paramount Priest’s personal dungeon.

Her cell was austere, but not uncomfortable. Twice a day, she was given a plain meal, and twice a week she was allowed to bathe, using a basin and a rag. The jailers were courteous but silent. Loneliness displaced some of her fear. She received no visitors.

Occasionally her rest was disturbed by the screams of other prisoners being questioned in the room at the end of the corridor. As she had freely admitted her guilt, no such attentions were considered necessary in her case, and so she had much time to reflect upon her follies. She quickly developed a great contempt for the person she had been. Had she acted out of a desire to improve the lot of her bondsfolk? No, she thought bitterly. She was teaching them to read not from some noble purpose, but out of the same idle urge to amusement that might cause her to teach a pet dustlizard to stand on its hind legs and beg for sweetmeats.

A month passed, and then another.

At some point she began to hope, to believe that her father would never let her die a hideous death. She was, after all, Nisa.

But he never came. And one day the Paramount Priest arrived, ancient face stiff with resolve, to convey her to the conjurors who would perform her Expiation.