The royal court was in a flurry that morning, loud voices up in arms as the viziers and officials debated the latest of the king's decisions. Moments ago, King Sneferu had announced that he was to embark on a tour of Lower Egypt, and that he was to be accompanied only by one of his sons—Prince Kha.
The announcement had brought delight to the faces of those allied to the queen's Sh'akhten clan, but equal disdain to the court's other major faction, the Nekhebets. This was the not the first time that the king was bringing princes along for his tours of the land, but it had always been Kanefer before.
"Your Majesty, with all due respect, Prince Kha is still young and inexperienced. He might not be able to provide the support you require while touring the lands," Ahmose said, not disguising the displeasure in his voice at the slightest. "Perhaps Prince Kanefer would be more suited, as per past precedence."
The king's tours were no trivial matter. It was a golden opportunity for a prince to gain exposure and win over the people. A rite of passage for anyone who wished to inherit the throne of Upper and Lower Egypt. That the king was choosing to bring Kha instead of Kanenfer this time was an indication that the king's favour had shifted, and the political implications were great.
"Ahmose, Prince Kanefer has already had plenty of chances to accompany His Majesty on these trips. Is it not time to give his younger brothers the opportunity?"
A smug smile tugged upon the oily lips of the bulbous man who had spoken, standing on the opposite side of the hall from the greying Ahmose. This was Omari, another of the king's senior viziers and brother to Queen Hetepheres.
"Duty to king and kingdom is not a honey cake that should be carelessly portioned out," Ahmose snapped. "We should choose the most appropriate person for the task and not treat it like a trivial game."
"Are you questioning His Majesty's decision then, my dear Ahmose?"
"Enough!" King Sneferu bellowed, slamming his palm down onto the gold-painted armrest of his throne.
The great hall fell silent. All eyes rested upon their irate monarch. Blue veins at his temples visibly throbbing, Sneferu's thin lips set themselves in a harsh line as his steely gaze swept his sea of courtiers.
"Omari is right," he declared. "Every prince of Egypt should understand his land and people. My sons will all serve in this court one day, and it is imperative that they are able to provide wise counsel to whoever sits on this throne." He ran his toned fingers along the surface of the armrest, pensive. "I have made my decision. Kha will come with me this time. Kanefer and Nefermaat will serve jointly as regent of the kingdom in my absence, aided by Ahmose and Omari. Are there any further objections to these arrangements?"
A quiet murmur went about the room, but no one dared raise anything further. Ahmose was still glaring angrily at the gleeful Omari, with Kanefer standing stoically by the side, his thick brows stitched tightly in deep thought.
"Good." Sneferu got up from his seat, waving his hand in dismissal. "This session is called to a close. We depart for Saqqara in twelve days."
#
"Me? Go on a tour of Lower Egypt with Father?" an incredulous voice burst out.
The court officials weren't the only ones who had been taken by surprise. Kha himself was reeling in disbelief when Nefermaat had stopped by his quarters bearing the news. Since he had no official appointment in the royal court yet, he had not been privy to the heated discussion that had taken place earlier in the day.
"Why the reaction? One might think you weren't willing to go," Nefermaat said. He was reclining comfortably on a wooden chaise, cheerily popping dates into his mouth one after the other.
Kha pulled a face, sinking down onto an empty chair. "Why would I want to? These trips aren't fun. They're workingtrips, and Father will be testing me about matters of the kingdom at all hours of day," he moaned. "Hasn't he always brought Kanefer? Why me!"
His older brother chuckled. "Look at you. Omari and Ahmose would have fits if they saw you like this. You should have seen how those two old fools locked horns this morning. Omari's smile practically split from ear to ear when he stepped out of court, and Ahmose looked like something that crept out from Anubis's cellar." He spat out a seed onto the ground, and it was promptly picked up by one of the servant girls. "Don't you understand how valuable this opportunity is? This is the first time Father is bringing someone other than Kanefer along. They say it is a sign that the throne of Upper and Lower Egypt may fall into different hands, my dear brother."
"You mean me? My hands?" Kha scoffed. "That's ridiculous. Father is clever enough to know that I am the least suitable person to run this kingdom. I'll ruin it! Why don't you go instead? If not Kanefer, then surely you should be next in line."
"Because who else would be better to keep our ambitious older brother in check if not yours truly?" Nefermaat pointed at himself. "I am a sturdy wall of goose fat that cannot be breeched," he joked, his round belly jiggling with laughter. "Father has named me as co-regent in his absence, together with Kanefer. I'll be kept busy enough until you return, so please, make haste."
"When do we leave?"
"Slightly under a fortnight. Plenty of time for you to come to terms with reality, and perhaps brush up on your studies so you don't get an earful from Father for not being to answer any of his questions."
Nefermaat handed his empty bowl over to a servant and walked over to his younger brother, placing one hand on Kha's shoulder. The look of rare seriousness replaced the jovial smile he had been wearing on his face.
"Kha, if I were you, I'd be extra careful from henceforth. The path to being king is often paved in blood, and even if you have no intention of taking the throne, that decision may not be yours to make. There are those who would not hesitate to remove what they believe to be a stone in their path, even though said stone is in actuality only a tiny pebble minding its own business."
"You're exaggerating, Nefermaat. I'm not even a pebble! I'm only a speck of sand who wants nothing more than to roam freely, to explore the world without these shackles," Kha replied, gesturing at the golden cuffs he wore around his arms. "When Kanefer or you, or maybe even Iynefer, takes over the throne, that's when I'll be off and away, seeking my riches wherever the wind takes me."
Nefermaat shook his head. "May the future be as straightforward and simple as you wish it to be, younger brother," he said quiet smile. "I'll be off now. There's a mountain of scrolls waiting in my office that needs attending to. Enjoy the next couple of days of freedom before Father puts you in chains and drags you away for your prison sentence."
#
After Nefermaat's departure, Kha made a sneaky escape from the palace and headed into the city centre. Perhaps the hustle and bustle of the markets would help take his mind off the impending "prison sentence", as his brother had aptly described.
The glorious weather was shining down from above, with the sun's rays bathing Memphis is a sheen of brilliant gold. Kha's mood was quite the opposite. He kicked at the sand and gravel beneath his sandals, ruing the day when he would need to leave the capital to set off on this lonely, tragic journey with his father the almighty king. There would be no Nefermaat to feed him correct answers, no Iynefer to jostle for attention and no Kanefer to outshine them all.
"I'm doomed," he muttered, head bowed as he wound in and out of the crowd. He was on the main market street and there were merchants touting their colourful wares left and right, but his world was painted in dull shades of grey.
When he and his brothers were younger, the king had paid more attention to their learning progress, dropping in every now and then to observe how they were performing in class. Kha had always brought up the rear. "Brilliant mind, but too lazy to make proper use of it," was his tutors' verdict. He hated history, politics and governance and could never give the king a decent answer to any question. That earned him several bouts of whipping throughout his growing years.
Kha shuddered at the memory. He had little doubt that he was not going to make it back to Memphis in one piece.
"Hey, watch where you're going!"
The distracted prince crashed headfirst into someone coming the other way, but unfortunately for the latter, she was the one who ended up toppling onto the ground.
A pair of angry eyes flashed at him.
"You?" Kha blinked, surprised to see the familiar face glaring at him from below.
It was the girl from the temple. What was her name again?
"Mereneith, isn't it?"
"Yes, but 'sorry, are you okay' would be what's expected of a decent human being in such situations," the girl retorted. "I suppose princes are the exception to the rule. As always." She picked herself back up, dusting off the back of her sheath dress. The clean white was now stained with splotches of brown.
"I'm sorry, I really am," Kha apologised. "Are you okay?"
Mereneith scowled. "I'll be better if you get out of my way." She shoved past him and continued down the street.
"Wait," Kha chased after her, jogging alongside, "where are you headed? Do temple priestesses get days off? Have you got errands to run?"
"Are all princes this nosy?"
"Only the better ones."
Around them, the residents of Memphis jostled for space with one another, their baskets of fruit, vegetables and assortment of paraphernalia doubling up as shields to help them carve paths amidst the crowd. Kha found himself squeezed up against Mereneith as they were forced along by the human current, so the latter couldn't get rid of him despite her best efforts.
"Do you have too much free time on your hands? Surely a prince of Egypt should have better things to do than lurk around the marketplace like a piece of floating debris."
"I quite enjoy being 'floating debris', as you so aptly put it," Kha replied. "In a couple of days I will be losing this freedom, so I fully intend to enjoy it while I still can."
"Then go float somewhere else."
"No, I think not. If it bothers you, feel free to pretend I don't exist. I promise I won't be offended."
He could feel the intense irritation bristling off Mereneith, but chose to cheerily ignore it anyway. If his suffering was to begin shortly, then there was no reason for him not to maximise his fun while he still could. The little priestess from the Temple of Ptah was an intriguing specimen. Eccentric, barbed and a whole lot of rude, but a breath of fresh air from the stuffy old court officials and retainers that he would be stuck with for the next few months.
Stifling a grin, he continued trotting along beside her, curious as to what her destination would be.
#
Much to Mereneith's ire, the prince made good his word to stick to her like a loathsome leech. No matter how fast she walked—even with a detour through the pest-infested alley behind a row of the city's busiest eating houses—she couldn't shake him off her tail. Eventually, she gave up. The sun was close to setting and she still had to make it back to the temple before nightfall.
She came to a stop in front of a small, non-descript mud brick house that looked identical from the ten dwellings before, and the next ten that came after. The only thing that set it apart was the inconspicuous wooden plaque hanging next to the front door, carved with the symbols that spelled "He who serves the Lord of Truth, Master of Justice". He who serves Ptah.
A deep sadness welled up inside her.
We serve the Lord of Truth and Master of Justice, yet who will deliver your truth and justice, Rekhmir?
Perhaps the gods were not listening and did not care. Or perhaps the gods did not exist at all.
Mereneith swept the blasphemous thoughts from her mind and pushed an old key into the lock. There was a soft click from the other side. She reached out to open the rickety door, but then stopped and whirled around instead.
"Are you really going to follow me inside?" she demanded.
The prince was peering over her shoulder, his lips mouthing the inscription that was on the wooden sign. "Is this your house? Can't be. It's too much for someone like you to be able to afford. One of the priests then?" he asked.
"Your Highness," Mereneith said, biting down hard on each syllable, "while every inch of soil on this land is owned by your father the king, intruding uninvited into someone else's home is still considered taboo, regardless your status."
To her surprise, the prince nodded.
"Right you are! So I'll just wait here while you settle whatever it is that needs settling," he answered with a bright smile. Whistling a tune, he looked around at the other houses in the vicinity as if all of this was something he was seeing for the first time.
He was intending to wait?
Mereneith could not comprehend what was running through the boy's mind. It was either he was genuinely bored out of his mind, or plain out of his mind. Gritting her teeth, she shoved open the door, not forgetting to slam it behind her once she had stepped in. Prince or not, there was no need for manners in front of someone who clearly knew not what manners meant.
While they were in service of the temples, priests had little use for private dwellings. However, most of them kept such abodes for the purpose of storing accumulated wealth and as preparation for retirement from the clergy. Rekhmir was no exception.
Mereneith had visited her mentor's humble property several times before, but this was the first time she was returning after his passing. Since Rekhmir had no other family, the responsibility of clearing his personal effects fell upon her shoulders. Already she had received several enquiries from other priests asking if Rekhmir had left instructions for selling the house, and they had been sorely disappointed when she answered otherwise. Even though Rekhmir had bequeathed all his worldly possessions to her, she didn't feel like it was within her right to dispose of any of them.
Rekhmir was the neat, orderly sort—everything that she wasn't. As far as she remembered, his things were always kept in the tidiest of arrangements, whether it be in his room back at the temple, or here in his private accommodation.
That was not the case today.
The first thought that ran through Mereneith's mind when she set eyes on the interior of the house was that she had entered the wrong one. Broken pottery and wares were strewn in pieces all over the floor, swept down from their shelves. Scrolls lay unfurled and trunks bare, their contents tossed carelessly into messy piles.
"What happened in here?"
The wind had blown the flimsy wooden door open, and Kha stood beyond the threshold, studying the interior curiously.
His question was exactly the same as hers, except hers was dipped in shock instead of inquisitiveness.
Someone had broken into Rekhmir's house and ransacked the place. Searching for something. But what? Even if she wanted to figure things out, Mereneith didn't know where to begin. The thief could have found what he was looking for and absconded with it, and she would be none the wiser.
She knelt down, running her fingers across a nearby sheet of torn parchment, Rekhmir's handwriting staring solemnly back at her from the papyrus.
Kha cleared his throat. "Ahem, I know I'm supposed to stay outside, but do you need a hand with cleaning things up?" he asked.
"Go. Away."
The next moment, a tall shadow was cast over her and she knew that the insolent princeling had ignored her words.
"Can't you understand me? I said go away!" she yelled, her neck snapping around to face him. Hot tears welled up at the base of her eyes, threatening to spill over.
Kha, who had been about to reach out one hand to tap her on the shoulder, froze in mid-action.
"Are you alright?"
"None of your business."
Mereneith turned away and started to gather bits and bobs from the ground, slowly putting them back where they looked like they belonged. It was likely nothing was going back to its right place, but this was the best she could do. On the other side of the room, she could hear the prince shuffling about, picking up broken pieces of clay, but she couldn't muster the strength the shout at him anymore.
She was tired. Exhausted. And she hadn't even begun to solve the mystery behind Rekhmir's abrupt demise yet.
"This place belonged to my mentor, Rekhmir. He was the head crystal keeper at the temple," she said quietly. "He died a while ago. Drowned in the temple well."
"Oh." A tinge of surprise laced Kha's reply. "I'm sorry to hear that. What an awful accident."
"It wasn't an accident." Mereneith's fingers gripped tightly around a shard of Ak'heka crystal that she had picked up. Rekhmir kept a good stash of crystals in his home and they would have been the most valuable items found here, yet they had been overturned and thrown out like cheap stones. Whoever broke in was no ordinary robber—they had been searching for something very specific.
"That's a big claim to be making." Kha frowned. "What proof do you have?"
"If I had proof then I would already have sought justice instead of letting the high priest declare it an accident."
"The high priest would not carelessly declare a death as such if it weren't the truth. Especially a death that has taken place on temple grounds. It would be a serious infringement on the laws of ma'at to do so."
"The laws of ma'at are nothing more than a human construct, intended to keep people in check so that order can be easily maintained by your kind," Mereneith retorted. "You think the gods really care about our laws? About justice? If they did then Rekhmir would still be alive because I swear on Ptah's name that he never did anything in this life to warrant such a horrible end."
She had stepped out of line.
For everything she just said, she could be given a hundred lashings and be expelled from Memphis for good. Moreover she had said it in the face of a prince of Egypt. Yet the anger that was boiling inside her was enough to sweep aside any sort of regret for her impulsiveness.
A stiff silence hung in the air between them.
"If you're going to report me then go ahead. I don't care," Mereneith muttered, lowering her gaze. Perhaps that was for the best. If she survived the whipping, she would have a legitimate reason to leave the capital and become a floating nomad, instead of remaining here and being constantly reminded of how helpless she was.
"I'm not."
"You're not?"
"Why would I do that?" Kha replied with a light scoff. "If everyone was reported to the viziers for such trivial matters then the royal court would be far too busy to run this kingdom." His expression took a more solemn turn. "If you truly believe that you mentor died by unnatural means, then maybe I can help. I can refer the case to Nefermaat—my second brother. He's one of the king's viziers. I can't promise the outcome will be what you're hoping for, but at least there'll be a proper investigation conducted."
"I— You— Why—" Mereneith blinked back her surprise.
The stunned look on her face earned a chuckle from the prince.
"No need to look as if you've swallowed a fly," he said. "This obviously means a lot to you, and from the looks of what's happened here I reckon there might be some truth in what you've said. I would love to help with the investigation myself, but I'm the most useless member of the family and I'll have to leave Memphis in less than two weeks, so my hands are—quite literally—tied."
"Where are you going?"
Kha's lips immediately took on a downward turn. "The king is going on a tour of Lower Egypt and I've been ordered to go along. We leave for Saqqara in twelve days."
"Saqqara!"
Mereneith's eyes lit up like lanterns.
First day of the second month of Akhet, by the hour of Nut. Location, north of the stepped pyramid at Saqqara.
"Why are you looking at me like that?" Kha asked, shifting his weight uncomfortably from left to right.
"No need to refer the case to the court," Mereneith burst out, rushing forward. Throwing all propriety out of the window, she grabbed on to Kha's arm. "I need a different favour from you. Take me with you to Saqqara."
If Rekhmir had been murdered and Tjethy was implicated, then there was no saying what the severity and scale of this entire plot was like. She trusted no one, especially not the conniving members of the royal court. In fact, she could well be committing a mistake by trusting Kha, but her instincts told her that this bumbling prince meant no harm. Only time would tell whether or not she would come to regret this decision.
She could make the journey to Saqqara on her own if she wanted to. Hitch a ride from a merchant with suitable payment in bread or beer that she inherited from Rekhmir. But the challenge lay in the destination, and not the path to get there.
Saqqara was the site of the royal necropolis, which explained why the king was making it the first stop of his tour. It was where the old kings were buried in their elaborate mastabas, hidden away from prying eyes behind a thick stone wall. Without help, there was no way any commoner could get close enough to even glimpse the stepped pyramid or even its surrounding complexes.
Now, an opportunity had presented itself.
"Why do you want to go to Saqqara?" Kha asked.
"There's something very important I need to find out. Something that might allow me to unravel the mystery behind Rekhmir's death. Please, if you want to help, then help me get there."
#