The Sacrifice #3
We had been presented as a pair for our first sensual dance years ago, already in love by then and not wanting to be separated.
We knew we had to play our parts perfectly for that to remain true.
We had to dance flawlessly, every time, so our watchers preferred keeping us together, even if they only took one of us while the other bore witness.
Even as Pharaoh's current favorites, we didn’t dare fail to satisfy him or others.
We were still slaves and had to always, always please our masters first.
If we could continue to do that until our beauty faded, we would be rewarded as trainers for the next generation, allowed to live out our days together in peace.
That was all we wanted. All we were allowed to want, but it was something.
It was ours. All we had to do was survive until that future came.
“Mer!” Nakht’s lips tore from mine. He was close, and as I had sworn, he was going to come first.
I curved my spine in such a way as to lick the length of him without dislodging from inside him and flicked my tongue up over his weeping slit.
“Meryt!” Nakht came, and I caught as much of his nectar on my tongue as I could.
I rutted faster, relishing in his continued moans.
“H-ow… do you do that?” Nakht croaked.
One more thrust, two, thr—
I released, and as I sank down against my beloved, I whispered, “Talent.”
He laughed.
If I was being honest, it was these moments directly after being together, with heartbeats and breaths slowing, feeling tingly and content to simply hold one another while still connected, that I loved most.
“You must be blessed by Osiris to contort yourself like that.”
Now I had to laugh and took Nakht’s teasing as my cue to disentangle us.
We had some spare linen I used to wipe us down, but we were hardly clean. We’d slip off to the baths soon enough before succumbing to sleep. The bathing chamber was private for us dancers too, since we were expected to always be pristine when called upon.
“Perhaps I am blessed by Osiris.” I tucked myself beside Nakht on our small bed. “He does have the best love story.”
“I could do without the dismembering part.”
I laughed again. What I liked about that story wasn’t Osiris being slain by his brother Seth, but that his wife, his consort, his beloved Isis could not bear a world in which he did not exist and brought him back from the dead.
Nakht kissed the side of my face. “Whether you are blessed or not, just like our great goddess Isis, I will love you, Meryt, even beyond death.”
I faced Nakht and kissed him on the lips. Once. Twice. Then a third time more deeply before saying, “Beyond death and anything and everything that might separate us, I—”
An unexpected weight by our feet startled me into silence.
“Pasht!” Nakht laughed at the arrival of one of the palace’s resident cats, this one being particularly fond of the dancers’ quarters, especially when we rehearsed, and especially me and Nakht.
We had found her when she was a kitten, trapped beneath a chest, and she had endeared herself to us ever since.
She was our near-constant shadow, whether day or night, often ending up in places we might be other than the dancers’ quarters, but always appearing at some point once we retired to our room, as if it was hers as much as ours, and her claim on it—and us—couldn't be questioned.
She was the most beautiful of Pharaoh's cats, in my opinion. A perfect pure white, flecked with black markings, with black lining her eyes as though she had used the same kohl as we did. Her eyes themselves were so green, they may as well have been made from jasper.
“Mrrow?” Pasht chirped, and when I reached for her, she bucked into my hand.
Nakht’s continued chuckling littered his words. “While we appreciate you blessing our union, oh sacred emissary, now is not the best—”
Pasht jerked from my pets suddenly, spinning toward the door with hackles raised and an uncharacteristic hiss, prompting Nakht and I to lurch upright.
One of the dancers who had been with us in the hall stumbled into our room as if pushed.
She clung to the archway, trembling. It seemed as though a dozen men were storming down the corridor, but all of Pharaoh’s elite were in the hall or off in bedrooms by now, with only a handful of guards keeping watch in the direction those men were headed.
Rana, the other dancer, looked at us in terror, and I bolted off the bed.
“Meryt!” Nakht hissed, grasping my wrist to stop me. “What are you doing?”
“We can’t sit idly by and hide!” I yanked free of him to join Rana at the door, first to check that she was unharmed, then to peer out into the corridor.
Others were also glancing out of bedrooms. A few had clearly been thrown around like Rana and were sprawled on the floor. I could still see the men rushing down the corridor to my right, wearing dark clothing with heads and faces covered. All had khopesh swords, daggers, or spears.
A coup? They must have chosen this night knowing the people most suited to protect Pharaoh would be distracted, their numbers reduced.
“Meryt.” Nakht grabbed me by the shoulders, pulling me back inside the room. Rana, in her fear, had fled into the corner, and Pasht was backing into the other, still atop the bed. “Are you mad? We have to leave this to the guards.”
“You mean the guards who are asleep, drunk, or outnumbered?” I argued. “There has to be something we can do.”
“What? Those raiders will kill anyone who gets in their way.”
“I’m not saying we fight them, but we need to warn someone at least, or it’ll be a bloodbath before they’re stopped.
” I peeked back outside, weighing our options.
We knew every corner of the palace that was open to us, and there were many entrances to the great hall, which made up the center of Pharaoh’s stronghold.
That had to be where the raiders were headed, and they were taking the most direct route, but it wasn’t the fastest. “We could circle around the other way, out of harm’s reach, and warn some of the guards before they’re attacked. ”
Nakht opened his mouth to protest further, but looking at the frightened Rana and Pasht, and then out into the corridor as I had at so many others who didn’t know what to do other than wait it out and hope, he worried his lip. He knew I was right.
If it was a coup and the raiders were successful, a former master’s slaves were rarely treated kinder by usurpers.
“Fine,” Nakht spat like it was a curse he didn’t want lingering on his tongue. “But you do not leave my side.”
Taking hold of my hand to drag me along after him, Nakht raced out of our room in the opposite direction from the raiders.
He might be the quieter, gentler one between us behind closed doors, but he was far braver than he would ever admit to himself, and in the end, he always did what was right. It was part of why I loved him.
The way we ran had more winding corridors and bedrooms for household slaves, but nearer to the great hall were also some of the rooms housing guards. We wouldn’t need to reach the hall itself if we could find someone awake and not amorously involved.
The first detour in that direction was a sharp turn past one of the palace entranc—
Nakht slipped, nearly dragging us both to the ground in his attempt to steady himself, only for me to start slipping too.
Quick handholds of the walls were all that kept us from falling.
Whatever we had slid through was so much slicker than spilled wine, but I was not prepared for what it actually was when I looked down and saw red.
And the body of a guard with his throat slit.
I clapped a hand over my mouth to keep from screaming. The men had gone the other way. They had clearly entered near here and taken out the guard, but they were far away now. We were safe. We had to keep going.
“I’ve got you.” Nakht squeezed my hand, guiding me slowly out of the blood spill. “I’ve got you,” he said again. “Always.”
“And I you,” I answered.
We continued, quickening our pace toward the guard rooms and the rear entrance into the hall.
As we passed empty room after empty room, however, I feared there was no one we could turn to in time—just as two patrolling guards came from left and right of the great hall doors and turned about face to begin patrolling the other way.
“Wait!” Nakht and I cried.
The guards spun to face us, instantly on alert.
“There were armed men!”
“Heading past the dancers’ quarters to the other side of the hall!”
“You have to hurry!”
“Pharaoh and the guests are in danger!”
Nakht and I were well-liked by the guards, for we had performed for many of them, and even those who preferred a female slave in their bed respected our status. The pair turned without question, weapons ready to enter the hall.
We had made it. We had done all we could.
“Now can we go back and sit idly by?” Nakht asked, teasing but anxious.
“Yes. I just needed to—”
The doors burst open before the guards could reach them, and pandemonium ensued with an eruption of bodies. The raiders had beaten us and were already attacking, meaning everyone from the hall was either fighting or fleeing—and they were headed right toward us.
Nakht and I tried to flee too, but we were engulfed by a cavalcade of dancers, nobles, soldiers, and raiders.
And Pharaoh. Our lord Pharaoh was in the midst of the escapees, his personal guards and other attendants trying to protect him, but the raiders pushing through the crowd were clearly set on reaching him, consequences be damned.
The first sight of one of the khopesh swords slicing into someone, a spear into another, and daggers plunged into backs had me certain I was going to be sick. They all wielded their weapons so callously. Even the guards, defending the rest of us, used their weapons without hesitance or fear. How?
How was it so easy to take a life?