King and Goddess Read Online Free PDF Page B

pawed over like a trull in the market.”
    Nehsi swallowed a sigh. She had a look he knew all too well.
She would do what she would do, and no one had any hope of stopping her.
    “You,” she said, “will hunt down a suitable woman for the
king. Let her be young, but not so young as to lack experience in the arts of
the bedchamber. Let her be beautiful—that goes without saying. And above all
let her be sweet and biddable, and see to it that she is loyal to me.”
    It was never the habit of queens to set simple tasks for
their servants. Nehsi bowed to the ground. He did not pause to see how she
responded to that pointed abasement.
    ~~~
    On his way out of the garden he roused one of the other
guards, a good enough man for an Egyptian, and set him on watch over the
queen’s solitude. He was not entirely sure how to go about his task, but he
knew at least where to begin.
    The twins were busy with the queen’s wardrobe, washing her
gowns of state and spreading them in the sun on the roof of her palace.
    Most people could not tell them apart. They affected the
same waist-long plaited hair and the same blue beads on a string about the
hips, and they were identically pretty, with round ripe faces and laughing
black eyes. But Nehsi knew that Mutnefer was a very little the taller, and
Nutnefer was a very little the more ample of breast. He could aggravate them
terribly by knowing which was which when they tried, wickedly, to deceive him.
    They greeted him with matched and brilliant smiles. He paid
obligatory tribute: a kiss for each, and a quick slap at the hand that strayed
under his kilt. “Not now,” he said. “I’m on the queen’s errand.”
    “Can’t it wait?” Mutnefer abandoned her washbasket with
visible relief. Her sister was already pressed to Nehsi’s side, stroking him
above the kilt since he barred the way below.
    “You know the queen can never wait,” he said from between
them.
    “What does she want?” asked Nutnefer as her fingers walked
themselves down to his kilt’s fastening. He caught them; she giggled. “Aside
from that, of course.”
    “The queen doesn’t know what it is, to want it,” Mutnefer
said. “Poor thing, she’s scared to death. Some idiot told her it hurts the
first time; now she doesn’t want it at all.”
    “I don’t think she’s a coward,” said Nutnefer. “Wary, more
like. She never rushes into anything.”
    “Some things one should rush into,” Mutnefer said.
    Nehsi, listening and fending off determined hands, enjoyed a
moment’s pleasurable contemplation of a twofold gift to the king. He discarded
it with regret. These two were pretty and charming and delightful in bed, and
their likeness to one another was a rarity, but the king liked a less
substantial armful of woman. A willowy girl would allure him best; and one of
exceptional beauty. Which the twins were not. Pretty, that was all, and lively.
No more.
    “Listen to me,” he said over their chatter. “You can help me
if you will. I need a woman—”
    “And here we are!” they cried, attacking him with delight.
    He got a grip on each and set her firmly aside. “Stop that
and listen. The queen has taken it into her head to do a thing, and she’s
harnessed me with the doing of it.”
    It was slow going, with a great deal of foolery, but in the
end he got it all out. The twins were less incredulous than he had been.
    “That’s like her,” Nutnefer said. “Careful. Silly, and no
mistake. But it can’t be either of us, no.”
    “Not that we’d mind at all, teaching the king manners,” said
Mutnefer, “but we’ve tried already. He’ll not take lessoning from us.”
    They were both almost sober for a moment, with the hint of a
frown.
    “It’s not that he’s exactly clumsy,” Nutnefer said. “He
never commits rape, nothing as bad as that. But she has the right of it. He’s
awkward. And he sweats.”
    “Nothing like you,” said Mutnefer, but she had stopped
trying to drive him wild with wanting