Faraj sighed, and didn’t let himself glance toward Irfan as he said, “It is a struggle, I confess.”
“If you ever want a more pleasurable god to embrace your devotion, I’m sure both Menas and Upaja would be delighted to welcome a true-seeing prophet to their priesthood.”
Faraj bowed slightly. “Thank you for your care for my happiness, O most blessed among Hathor’s daughters. But my faith is my own, as is my debt of service to my brother’s Empire.”
She smiled, and leaned closer to whisper into his ear, in a good mimicry of seduction. “I’m just too much of a woman toentice you myself, aren’t I. Let me pry Neferkamin from yourhajib’swatchful snare and set him to wooing you.”
“That really won’t be necessary.”Or helpful,he thought, but couldn’t say, not even to merry, playful Anuket. She knew he couldn’t afford for too many to speak aloud of his preferences in august company. The God-Emperor’s court expected him to at leastattemptto support the polite fiction that he might yet wed an heiress and sire a legitimate heir with prophetic gifts, to spare them the search through the Empire for the nextnadhirprophet.
“Necessary? Who said anything about necessary?” She plucked an olive from the nearest side table and popped it into her mouth. “It’ll beentertaining,is what it will be.”
“Entertaining for whom?” Faraj let himself ask, to hear her laugh again.
“Will you so cruelly deny a mother-to-be such simple joys in her life?”
“Anuket, it is notsimplefor a man in my position to host an event this complex with Neferkamin being— being even more excessive at me. Pray find the mercy in your soul with which your goddess nurtures the young and helpless.”
“Ah, but happily for me,youare nicely mature and quite powerful.”
“At times I do not feel it,” Faraj sighed.
Her chuckle caught short, and where she had pressed herself against him, he felt the brief tightening in her belly that had distracted her.
“Anuket,”he said, as firmly as he could around the flutter of his concern. His foresight was blessedly quiet and gentle when he looked at her, presenting him with no greater disaster than a laughing toddler who had escaped her diaper and her minders; but even if he was certain that Anuket would be safely delivered,he fretted at the thought of her pains. “If you will not let me bring you to bed and?—”
“Oh, you promise?” she teased, still a bit breathless. “Take me to your bed, yes, please.”
“—If you will not let me bring you toyour childbed,with aphysician,” he amended hastily, feeling heat burn in his cheeks that had nothing to do with the brazier’s warmth. “Then at the least you will sit and rest and gather your strength for what is to come.”
He tucked her arm through his and took a step towards his own seat, and for once Anuket didn’t laughingly resist; she accepted his support and his hands, leaning upon his arm as she knelt to settle upon the silken pillows.
One of the Priests of the Assessors of Maat made a sound of shock. Faraj ignored it; if he kept Anuket by his side through the evening, he could keep her seated, and could watch and listen for any pains she might otherwise try to conceal. And if nothing else, at least it might counterbalance some of the rumors about which of the pair of them he found most appealing.
“You are too compassionate for your own good,” she told him, rubbing the small of her back against the aching there. “If you weren’t so renowned a prophet, I would be concerned for the advantage the unscrupulous might take of you.”
“You’re not alone in that concern,” Faraj said. Neferkamin had slipped past Irfan’s defenses and was striding across the courtyard, and Faraj thought it was notonlybecause of his concern for Anuket, because he would not have such a provocative roll to the hips if it were. “But, O peerless jewel among Hathor’s devoted, surely you have noticed how difficult I am to take advantage of. You and Neferkamin have both been trying to take advantage of me without notable success for several years now.”
Anuket threw her head back and laughed so loudly that Bastet’s High Priestess pinned her ears back with a grumble.
“Oh, do share your pleasures,” Neferkamin said, crouching on his heels at her side. “And what is this I hear about advantages to be taken?”
“His Highness informs me that we should not fret for the vulnerability of his compassion; his heart is carved of such stern stone that he boasts of how long he has resisted us both,” Anuket told him, chuckling. “And also I cannot have the pride of carrying my belly to flaunt at the Greater Convocation. Truly his Highness is stern with us this evening.”
“Well, I am just as fond of a masterful hand,” Neferkamin said, smiling at Faraj with the blazing confidence of a bonfire’s heat. “Particularly fond of a masterful hand clenched in my hair. Or on my?—”
“Yes, I know,” Faraj said wryly. “You have informed me. At length.”
“And breadth,” Neferkamin agreed, arching his brows. “And depth. And vigor.”
“In your dreams,” Anuket told him merrily. “In both our dreams, alas. But at least I can console myself that my breasts will bemagnificentfor the Convocation.”
“Your breasts are always magnificent, my dear. Do they feel underappreciated? Let me grope — ah, that is to say, let meadmirethem.”
“Not right now, please,” Anuket said, and waved off his theatrical shock. “I don’t presently need to hasten the birthing pains. Tomorrow evening, perhaps, if she’s still dawdling by then.”
Neferkamin dropped the innuendoes like a scalding rock. He stared first at Anuket, then at Faraj, calculating rapidly.
“She will be well, or you would be more greatly upset,” he said. “But she will be well, so you did not foresee this either.”
