kind, but I have so many chores to see to.”
“Well,” Tenry said, “it is true that a priest’s work is never done. Or a priestess’s work, I suppose. Very well; we will talk some other time, when we both have more leisure. You won’t forget to take some leisure now and then, will you? It is good for the heart and the ka. Here, take some bread and cheese with you. No, I insist. A little wisp of smoke like you needs all the bread she can get.”
Satiah took the food with a nod of thanks and turned back to her duties. The door shut softly behind her, accompanied by another of Tenry’s fond chuckles. She sped back toward the storerooms, and when she rounded a bend in the temple’s corridor she pressed herself into the shadow of a recessed doorway and ate the crumbling bread and hard cheese in a few bites. The bread stuck painfully in her throat; she gulped at it, eyes watering, until at last it settled into her hollow stomach.
She was thinner than ever now, for though she received ample vouchers for bread and beer, the usual payment for an apprentice priestess, as well as a share of Abedju’s offerings of fruit and cheese, meat and honey cakes, most of what she earned as a priestess was paid out again. She cashed only enough of her vouchers at the city’s storehouses to keep herself alive and strong enough to do her work – not enough to get plump and indolent like the other priestesses of Min. No – she needed her earnings. Satiah had expenses that must not be neglected. She had a duty to the gods. She checked the yellow belt cinching her rough-spun linen tunic. The week’s vouchers were still safely tucked away in the folds of its fabric.
T he bread and cheese dulled the familiar, pervasive gnawing of her belly. She stretched her arms above her head, humming a happy tune. There were indeed duties yet to attend. She had not simply thrown Tenry off the subject of her family and history out of habit, though the gods knew she had become adept at polite deflections and quick to dodge the kind inquiries of priests at temples all along the course of the Iteru. No, there were offerings of gold and precious stones to weigh and sort, and somebody had to oversee the washing. The tunics of the servants of Min would never stay gleaming white on their own.
Satiah smiled at the prospect of a full day still laying ahead. Work was good. Work made her happy, filled her with a deep satisfaction at the setting of the sun, a sensation she had come to appreciate as she had lain on the creaking wicker couch in Harit’s hut night after night, those many months ago. She had loved weeding the dark rows of the fields, plunging her hands into the damp coolness of moist earth, though her back cramped from the stooping. She had loved hauling water for the goats, milking them, pressing her face against their bristly sides and giggling at the sounds their wide bellies made while her hands coaxed frothing milk from warm udders. She had grieved when she’d realized it was time to move on from Harit’s farm, but Waset was too near, and Satiah could never rest easily at night, knowing that the palace was only a bowshot away. Satiah had work to do even then, duties to fulfill. Her old life was a threat to her new and precious obligations, and so the very city itself was a threat.
When she knew the time had come to leave, she had slipped a sharp knife from Harit’s small, humble kitchen, tucked it into her belt, and made her way north toward Senenmut’s estate. From there, her new life had begun, and Satiah had never before known such joy. With her family’s sins atoned for and the taint in her blood washed clean, the gods had given her what she had longed for. At last.
In the alcove behind the Room of Offerings, Satiah worked with her fellow priestesses to organize the tangle of gold chains, the hoops of copper bracelets, the unset cabochons of glimmering stones. They packed each type of treasure into flat cedar chests between layers of