He’s still my father.
The king beckoned them closer. Mery and Sita moved to kneel on one side of the bed, Kenna on the other. The king glanced at them each in turn, a sense of wonderment on his withered face.
“My children,” he said with a chuckle. “I remember the night of your birth like it was yesterday. What a surprise that was! Not a single priest foresaw that there would be three of you. For all their visions and their Heka, it took three dancers from Amun-knows-where to predict your arrival.”
Sita nodded. “One of them is here in the palace, Father. She said she came to pay her respects.”
The king’s eyebrows shot up. “You’ll have to tell Nebet. She was convinced the women were goddesses incarnate, come to earth to usher in a new dynasty.” He scoffed, then paused. “It’s a nice sentiment, and believe me, I ran with it. It was a great story to tell those fools who challenged my place on the throne. Three children born to three goddesses! A triad within a triad! I couldn’t have written it better myself. Still, one would think that Isis,Nephthys, and Heqet would have better things to do than attend to a squalling woman during a rainstorm.”
Sita sat back on her heels, remembering. Nebet sometimes referred to the three women as dancers, but other times, she had told Sita that they were three goddesses.Isis was the fair one, Nepthys the dark one, and Heqet was the short one with the…
She gasped.
With the warts.
Heqet… compared to Isis and Nepthys, she was a lesser-known goddess, but Sita remembered her tutor explaining she was the frog-headed goddess of fertility and rebirth. Heqet was also the consort of Khnum, a god represented either as a ram-headed man or occasionally, a lamb, and otherwise known as the Divine Potter, who formed man out of clay on the Great Wheel.
Sita thought about the strange old woman in her bedchamber and what she’d said about her husband.
Everyone knows him! Or rather, he knows everyone.
He’s a potter—always at the wheel.
The earth tilted sickeningly beneath her.
It couldn’t be…could it?
“You’ll need to wrangle the viziers,” the king was telling Mery as Sita snapped back to attention. “They’re a bunch of nags. They’d tie up this kingdom in endless bureaucracy if given the chance.”
The king paused, his breath labored and shallow. “Take one of my lesser wives as your own—perhaps Tadia. She’s young and ripe, she’d suit nicely for your Great Wife.” He patted Mery’s hand. “Rule as I have, son, and Khetara will continue to flourish.”
“You have taught me much, Father,” Mery replied. It sounded like a compliment, but Sita was sure he didn’t mean it that way.
Then, the king turned to Kenna.
“Bakenamun, you’ll oversee the embalming ritual and the completion of my tomb. I’m depending on you to get it right.Only the best of everything, understand? Sematawy’s should look like a pauper’s tomb compared to mine.”
Kenna frowned as if he’d tasted something bitter, but he nodded. “As you wish.”
Satisfied, King Amunmose licked his dry, peeling lips with a pale tongue. “You know,” he muttered, his voice heavy with irony. “We spend so much of our lives thinking about death, imagining how glorious it will be when we reach the Duat, we never stop to remember that no one has returned to tell us what it’s really like!”
He laughed and was seized with a horrible fit of coughing. When it finally abated, his eyes were wet and red.
“Let me tell you,” he gasped, “from someone standing at the border between here and there… that dying is absoluteshit.” He grinned. Mery was the only one who smiled with him.
“What about me, Father?” Sita asked. She knew she should stay quiet, but she couldn’t help herself. “What do you wish me to do?”
King Amunmose shifted his head to look at her. He lifted a skeletal hand to caress her hair, as one might admire a flower in a garden. “Marry well.”
Sita waited for more, but none came. And just like that, her fragile grief was smothered before it could take its first breath.
“I’m… tired,” King Amunmose murmured, his voice weaker than before.
On cue, both Mery and Kenna stood.
Kenna bowed his head. “May your heart be light, and your westward journey be swift, Father. All of Khetara will join in celebrating your ascension to the House of the Gods.”
Kenna’s words echoed in Sita’s mind.
