“It’s a bit more complicated than that,” Karim replied.
“Morecomplicated?”
It took until the sun was melting into the horizon for Karim to relate all that had happened since he’d left the Jackals. He didn’t tell hereverything, but enough for her to understand the magnitude of the situation they faced. His mother went about her daily chores while she listened. When his story was finished, Karim expected Nour’s first reaction to be about the oracle, or Setnakht and his army, or his own newfound powers. Instead, she asked, “You really love this girl?”
Karim scoffed.Leave it to my mother.
He considered the question. He and Sitamun had never spoken so baldly about the subject and never said the words—they’d expressed it in, well,otherways. He couldn’t speak for Sitamun, but his own answer came easily.
“I do.”
Nour blew out her cheeks. “A Khetaran…and what’s more, aprincess! If only your father were here. He would have the shock of his life!”
Karim took up the scarab amulet Sitamun had given him and rubbed it between his fingers. “I suppose Father would have forbid it. He hated the Khetarans even more than he hated the Shass.”
His mother shook the sand from a blanket and folded it with care. “I think he would have come around. If Babu can see the sense in making peace rather than war, then I should think your father would have been capable of that too.”
It was a comforting thought.
“Do you know which girl Djet admired?” he asked after a long moment.
His mother sighed, heavy with sadness. “Yes. She still mourns his loss. Sweet thing.”
Karim rummaged in his pack and pulled out a fine golden bracelet studded with lapis. “Could you give her this? Tell her it’s a gift from Djet. Tell her…that he wanted to give her the world.”
His mother accepted the bracelet. She ran her fingertips over the blue stones, thoughtful, before asking, “What will you do now? I’m guessing you aren’t staying.”
Karim grimaced.How does she always know?
“You want to go to her, yes? This girl you love?” She poked at the fire she’d started in preparation for the evening meal. “I assume you’d like my blessing. And my forgiveness.”
Karim gazed into the distance, where he could see Gamil, his sisters, and a few of the Hudjefa children playing what had to be the seventeenth round of sheeza with little stones in the sand. Already he could feel the rope tugging him, urging him to keep moving. He felt bad about leaving them again, but that didn’t make the feeling go away. “Yes.”
Nour sighed, the firelight catching on new lines that had developed on her face. “You may have both—on one condition.”
“What’s that?”
She gave him a hard look. “This power of yours, this…invulnerability. Don’t let it turn you into someone I wouldn’t recognize. Something came over you today; I saw it. The way you struck Babu again and again. If I hadn’t stopped you, would you have stopped yourself?”
Karim didn’t reply.
“However this power has come to you—whether it be through Khetaran magic or God himself—it has a cost.” She laid her smallhand over his. “Promise me you won’t forget who you are. No matter where this journey takes you.”
“I promise,” Karim said, giving his mother’s hand a reassuring pat.
He made the vow honestly. He just hoped he wouldn’t have to break it.
25Rae
“Well, what do you think?”
Rae studied Tam’s reflection in the surface of the water, dimly lit by firelight from the braziers at the entrance to the palace’s pleasure garden. They sat next to each other by the fishpond, whispering so that the guards who passed by at intervals wouldn’t overhear their conversation. Below the floating white lotus, luminous in the thickening dark, Rae could see the silver flash of fish swimming through the water.
Tam wrinkled her nose, perplexed. “You’re sure there’s no way Nefermaat could have known about your chance meeting with that Red Lander back in Sakesh? You didn’t mention it to anyone since we arrived?”
“I know I’m a bad spy, but I’m notthatbad.”
“It could be a trick of some kind. The other servants told me that the young priestess has been given access to magic scrolls from the House of Life. Who knows what she’s capable of?”
