Prologue #2
Amare forced a smile. “I have the entire army to help me fight,” he said, making it sound as if it were nothing at all. “But your mother does not command an army. She has a few servants, but you two are her very best warriors. Will you please do this for me?”
Essien nodded solemnly, but Addax was still hesitant. “She has Bobo and Rani to help her,” he said. “But you need me.”
He was referring to the old women who served his mother, but Amare nodded sincerely. “Indeed, I do need you,” he said. “I will always need you, Addax, and right now I need you to take care of your mother. Promise me.”
Addax sighed heavily before finally nodding.
Essien, who had the attention span of a mosquito at this age, stuck his finger up his nose and began to turn around, looking for his mother, looking at the people who were hovering on the fringe of the room.
Men who had served his father for many years.
He recognized them. As his father spoke to Addax about a dragon-headed dagger, Essien reached a small hand out to his mother, tugging on her gossamer skirt.
“Maman?” he said. “Maman, I am hungry. Can I have cheese?”
Kiya, who had been listening to Amare explain the significance of the dragon-headed dagger carried by every Kitara king back to the beginning, knelt down to speak quietly to her youngest son.
“Not now,” she said, tightening up the little belt he wore to secure his trousers. “We must leave, and then I shall find you some cheese.”
Essien watched her as she fussed with his clothing. “Maman?”
“What is it?”
“Why do you weep?”
Kiya came to a halt, lifting her eyes from the belt to his little face.
Essien had always been her intuitive child, the one who could see beyond the facade, beyond the words that one spoke or the gestures one completed.
He was interested in people. Though she’d not wept in front of him, he could see it in her eyes.
She couldn’t lie to him.
“I weep because I am afraid,” she said honestly. “I weep because I worry for you and your brother and your sister.”
Essien cocked his head thoughtfully. “But you should not worry,” he said. “We will be safe soon and I will eat cheese.”
Kiya grinned. “You shall, indeed,” she said. “But we must go on a journey first, before you will be safe. Do you remember the journey we took on the boat in the summertime? When we saw Jido?”
She was referring to the journey they’d taken across the sea.
It had taken half of the summertime to reach a port where her father, Shadhi, the hereditary but deposed ruler of Cairo, had met her and her children.
He’d never seen them before. Shadhi had taken great delight in his daughter’s offspring, and in particular Essien, because he bore the characteristics of someone born in Kemet.
Egypt. He had fine, sculpted features even at his young age and eyes the color of a tiger’s eye stone.
In fact, he looked strikingly similar to his jido, or maternal grandfather, and Shadhi had naturally taken to him.
Essien remembered it well.
“He called me Horus,” he said. “He gave me sweets.”
Kiya laughed softly. “He did, indeed,” she said. “And your first name is Horus, in honor of the land of my birth. That is why he called you by the name.”
“Adda calls me Essien.”
Kiya nodded, still smiling. “Because that is the name from the land of his birth,” she said.
“You are Horus Essien Nazimuddin Mei al-Kort. You are named for the falcon-headed god of protection and healing. You are destined to protect, Essien. That is what you must do now—you must protect your sister and your brother, but you must never let them know.”
“Why not?”
“Because Addax would not take kindly to being protected by his younger brother,” she said. “But that is why you were put on this earth, my love. To protect and thrive. The gods of ancient Kemet watch over you, even now. They will see you safely through this.”
Essien had to think about that. He didn’t exactly understand all of it, but he felt proud knowing he bore the name of a god of protection. But behind him, his father and Addax had finished their conversation and Amare interrupted Essien’s moment with his mother.
“Where is Adanya?” Amare asked.
Kiya looked up from her youngest son. “She is already at the river with her nurse,” she said softly. “She is so young. She would not understand this parting. But the boys…”
Amare nodded quickly, for there was no reason for her to continue. It would be the last time their sons faced their father, so it was more important for them. And more important that Amare say what he needed to say.
“Thank you, my love, for allowing me to bid them farewell,” he said.
Then he cupped her face with one hand and gently kissed her mouth.
“You must hurry. I sent word to your father when the army from the north approached. He will not receive the missive for some time, but you must be on your way so his ships can meet yours. The captain of your ship knows the way, and by the time your ship reaches the Red Sea, your father should be on his way to meet you. You and the children will be safe in Cairo.”
Her tears started to come. “And you, my darling?” she whispered. “What about you?”
He forced a smile, kissing her again. “I must do what I was destined to do,” he said bravely. “What I was meant to do. I will burn Lankara to the ground, and when there is only smoke and ashes left, I will kill my brother.”
“What if he kills you first?”
Amare shrugged. “Then I will see you in paradise,” he said. “But know… know that you have made my life paradise on earth, Kiya. No man has ever loved a woman more than I have loved you.”
“And I love you with every breath I take,” she murmured. “That will never stop, not in this world or any other.”
“I know, mere jaan.”
“Promise me, Amare. If you can escape to Egypt, promise that you will come to us.”
“I promise. But if I do not… this farewell was well made. It has given me courage.”
She started to weep. Weeks of being strong had reached the breaking point.
But Amare shushed her softly, turning her around and hustling her toward the servants who were waiting for her.
Essien grabbed her hand, holding it tightly as they rushed along.
Amare took them to the secret palace exit, where tunnels would take them to the river beyond, where ships awaited, and then the river would take them to the sea and westward.
At the exit, Amare came to a halt and kissed his wife one last time, kissed Essien, and took a moment with Addax as the boy faced him.
“Be strong, my son,” he whispered, struggling not to weep. “In the face of whatever this life will bring you, be strong, be honest, and be loyal to those you love. Promise me.”
“I promise, Abba.”
Amare smiled weakly. “Good,” he said, turning him to his mother and the rest of the escort bound for the tunnels. The servants were already dressing Essien in a disguise as a servant’s child. “Hurry, now. I will see you soon.”
Even as Addax was facing the reality of the night with his father, Essien was watching it all carefully.
His mother was worried, his father was being brave, Addax was focused on the blade in his hand, but Essien was simply drawing it all in.
He still felt fear, but there was trust there, also.
He trusted his father and his mother. Trust in the servants who were dressing him in smelly, unfamiliar clothing.
The idea that this was a permanent situation had never occurred to him because he’d never known anything other than the Lankara Palace.
To Essien, this was just some big adventure.
He never thought he wouldn’t return. As the servants began dressing Addax, Essien went to his father.
“Will you come?” he asked.
Amare smiled at his youngest boy who so favored his mother. “Soon,” he said. “I will come soon.”
“When?”
There was no time for a child’s questions. Amare kissed his boy on the forehead. “Jab tak ham dubarah nihen malin ge,” he whispered. “Until we meet again.”
And that was the last Essien saw of his father.
On that dark, terrible night, Essien, his mother, brother, and sister, along with several loyal servants, fled, out to sea.
But all did not go well.
A storm on the second night at sea pushed their convoy of three ships off course and into a gulf, where they were forced to dock at the city of Abu Samra.
That was when the captain, who had been loyal to Amare for years and had established trade routes for him, decided to demand favors from Kiya.
He’d never had a queen before, he’d said, something that confused Addax and Essien, but they knew instinctively that it wasn’t good.
When Kiya refused, he struck her. That was when Addax rammed the dragon-headed dagger into the man’s kidney.
Protect your mother, his father had said. So, he did.
After that, it was chaos.
Kiya and her children fled with her servants onto the streets of Abu Samra, but they became separated in the chaos.
Dust and wind and terror swirled about them, and the group fractured further.
The two old women, Bobo and Rami, fell afoul of a man they’d run into, and he threw them both into the sea.
After hiding out for a day and a night, Addax and Essien searched for their mother and sister for days and days, until they found an old fisherman who said he’d seen a screaming woman and her infant daughter taken aboard another ship.
Distraught, the hungry and exhausted boys had no idea what to do when they came across one of the male servants who had accompanied them, only the man had been in a fight and left to die in an alley.
He told Addax and Essien that, indeed, their mother and sister had been captured by the crew of the murdered captain and taken back aboard the ship. Now, the ship was gone.
So were their last links to their family.