Chapter Two
stalked past the stone sphinxes that flanked the entranceway to the palace. Basins filled with lotus flowers lined the hallway. The heat of the afternoon had turned their sweet scent sour, wilting and bruising their leaves.
From that day on, even the freshest of lotus flowers brought back that smell of decay, carrying my mind to this moment: legs slick with seawater, cold granite beneath my feet, the throne of Egypt ahead of me.
I left wet marks on the tiles as I made my way to the heart of the palace. I was careful not to slip. Pothinus would take advantage of any weakness to soil my reputation—a mere fall could burgeon into a rumour that I was born with a scorpion tail to bring poison to the heart of Egypt.
No, I would not let him tarnish my rule.
Father would not want that. At the thought of him, my steps faltered but I did not fall. Shock had not yet given way to the full extent of my grief.
There was a sound in the corridor ahead of me and I looked up to see an ibis in flight. Its white wings were tipped black as if it had flown through ink.
The ibis flew low enough that for a moment I thought it might strike me, its curved beak angled down as if to peck at my scalp. Ibis are not aggressive birds, but this one shrieked and cawed as it flew by.
A giggle fluttered through the corridor like the rustling of palm fronds.
“Arsinoe!” I called my younger sister’s name with mock annoyance.
For where Qar flew, Arsinoe was not far behind.
The ibis had come to her on her seventh birthday. Since then, she had become bonded with the creature as only one blessed by the god Thoth could. As the scribe of the gods, he had granted her the language of the birds.
I tried not to be jealous when I watched them, heads together. It was difficult, when once it had been my brow against hers as we spoke our secrets to each other.
It is not just sound, it is more than that, she said to me once when she caught me trying to parse Qar’s chitters. What more is it? I asked. But she only shrugged.
Arsinoe appeared at the end of the hallway. Though her laugh still lingered on her lips, I could see her eyes were red from crying. I opened my arms to her, and she ran to embrace me.
At fourteen, she was four years my junior, though she was taller than me by at least a palm’s width. She wore her curling hair in a twist at the side of her neck. The knot pressed into my throat as she held me.
We stood together for a little while before she said, “Where are your clothes?”
I released her. “Charmion has them. I swam from the lighthouse.”
“So you were at the lighthouse.”
“Did you tell Pothinus to find me there?”
Arsinoe tilted her head to the side. “Yes, he asked, and I thought you would want to know…about…” Her words stuttered to a stop and her eyes filled with tears.
“Where is he?”
“They have laid him out in Ihy’s temple.”
I had suspected that I would find him there. The temple would soon become his tomb. “Let us go together.”
I looped my arm in hers with the pretence that I was lending her strength. But the truth was, it was I who needed hers.
We walked through the palace gardens towards the necropolis where Ihy’s temple rose up from the earth. As we approached the entrance, something scuttled across my feet and I jumped back.
“Quell.” Arsinoe’s voice rang out loud and clear. The command was for Qar and the ibis was quick to carry it out. He swooped down, his long beak snapping the neck of the rat before dropping the carcass at Arsinoe’s feet.
She picked it up as if it were no more than a fallen leaf and threw the dead thing towards the sea.
I watched her casually dispose of the rodent and my stomach roiled. I would like to say that my father’s death made me more sensitive to the sight of a corpse, no matter how small, but the truth was death had always unnerved me.
I see the irony in that now.
We reached the entranceway to my father’s tomb, marked by red granite pillars. The cool stone grazed my leg as we passed, and for a moment I stood between two hard things: my sister and the pillar.
“You are too soft.” My father’s words came to me like the unwelcome cloud of dust from behind an old chest. Musty and best ignored.
“I am as the gods will it,” I had retorted in response.
Father’s fever had been high, and his words looser than usual. It was rare he picked at the flaws of my character so deeply.
“Soft and powerless,” he had insisted.
“I am not.”
And then, like a serrated knife drawn back against my skin, he said, “I should have dealt with you like I did Berenice.” He had not spoken her name in many years.
“Do not say these things, Father; you cannot mean them.”
“Did you say something, sister?” Arsinoe’s question brought me back to the present.
I shook my head, releasing the last plume of dust from the memory.
“No, I am fine.”
Rushlight flickered in clay pots around the temple. The warm smell of the burning tallow thawed the cold that had crept into my bones.
Shadows shifted as the priests of the temple moved to the far corners of the room to grant Arsinoe and me privacy.
I cannot say I was ever truly comfortable under the gaze of the priesthood.
Even my mother, who was one of the few people who truly loved me as a child, seemed to see the entirety of my shortcomings through the eyes of her god.
I rubbed at the Isis mark on the back of my neck. The skin there was smooth as though unblemished, and I often asked Charmion to hold up a polished mirror so I could see Isis’s sigil. Every time, I let out a sigh of relief to see the mark still there.
I took the last few steps towards my father’s body. He lay upon a stone slab, cloaked in a linen robe. His hands were clasped across a stomach that had, in bygone days, been plump and full of laughter. Cheeks that had once budded with smiles were now emaciated and wan.
“You will smile once more in the great beyond.” My throat was hoarse and the words came out as a rasp.
In four days, my father’s body would be taken by the priests for purification before being interred in this temple seventy days from now. His body would be hollowed out, the fragile cage of his chest pulled apart to replace the vital organs with myrrh and cassia.
I placed my hand on the soft skin below his throat. Soon the flesh there would be marred with stitching, the skin drawn taut to keep the aromatics within.
He was a shadow of the great man he had been two years earlier. But day by day, season by season, Osiris had beckoned for him to cross into the afterlife.
“The only other body I have ever seen was Berenice’s.”
I started at Arsinoe’s voice, having forgotten she was there. “You were so young, I did not think you could remember.”
She turned her cold brown eyes to mine. “It is hard to forget the bloodied neck of one’s sister.”
I grimaced. I was twelve when my father had killed my older sibling. You see, I was never meant to lead Egypt. Berenice was the one destined to follow my father’s legacy.
“She would have been made Pharaoh today,” I said.
If Berenice was still alive, I would not have to take the throne. I felt a wave of guilt as I realised my wish for my sister’s resurrection was rooted in my misgivings towards ruling Egypt.
Arsinoe snorted. “She was never going to be Pharaoh, not with the divine power gifted to her.”
When Berenice had been born, she had been marked with the swirl of a snake on the back of her calf. There had been much celebrating, as Hapy of the Nile was a generous god, and when a Ptolemy was marked by him the harvest was always plentiful.
But the soothsayer who had read the signs of Berenice’s mark had been wrong. It was not the blessing of Hapy but the snake of Apep, the Lord of Chaos.
Instead of a bountiful yield, the crops dwindled year on year and Father claimed Berenice’s power was wilting the plants. My older sister always denied her gift was to blame, but when a swarm of locusts ravaged the fields on her fifteenth birthday, she could no longer hide the truth of it.
Her feud with Father had incited a civil war, but the throne would not be taken from him easily. For as joyful as my father was, he was equally ruthless. He had Berenice’s throat cut in her sleep.
A day and a night I spent weeping amongst her bloodied sheets.
As I looked down on my father’s expressionless face, I recalled what he had said that day after he had lifted me from Berenice’s cold bed: “We are Egypt, and Egypt is us. Sometimes we must sacrifice what we hold dear. But Egypt must live. Always.”
Sacrifice was a new concept to me back then. I did not know what it was like to lose something I held so dear. Berenice had to die so Father could reign in peace.
And now the cycle continued. “Father, I will ensure that Egypt lives. Always.”
Arsinoe was still watching me, and I reached for her hand once more.
“Come, sister,” I said. “It is time for me to take my throne.”
—
I wish I could say that I intended to make the scene I did, but the truth is I had entirely forgotten that I was naked. I strode into the court with a singular purpose, to begin my rule as Pharaoh.
But as I reached the bottom of the dais, my feet felt laden with honey. Every step was harder than the last. I paused when it became too much.
The throne is three steps away. Three short steps.
They may have been short steps, but in my mind, each one might as well have been the height of a pyramid. Impossible to scale. I pressed my knees together to stop them from buckling.
Father was right, I am too weak for this. I cannot even rise to the throne.
Tears pooled in my eyes and I blinked them away in frustration. The thought of my father’s disappointment was more potent than my grief.
I may not want this, but I do it for him. For Egypt.
With a battle cry in my throat, I raised my foot. And when it struck the tiles, I felt my father’s approval from the realm beyond. The final steps came more easily.