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“This was only a fitting. The crowns aren’t finished.”
    “You’re going to let him make you pharaoh?” Ay’s voice cracked. He took a deep breath and began again. “This is madness.”
    Throwing up her hands, Nefertiti walked away from them as she spoke. “He says the idea came to him in a vision from the Aten.
     I am to become king jointly with him. That way he can entrust the daily business of government to me and concentrate on his
     reformation. You know how he hates diplomacy and administration. It’s almost impossible to get him to make decisions about
     who is to fill various posts or about distribution of grain supplies, much less deal with foreign kings.”
    Ay stalked over to Nefertiti and grabbed her arm. “You can make those decisions without becoming pharaoh. Women don’t become
     kings. Kings are men, the sons of the great Amun, king of the gods.”
    “If I’m pharaoh I can make decisions without bothering Akhenaten, which means he won’t have to tolerate as many interruptions
     in his campaign to establish the Aten as the only true god.”
    Nefertiti gently disengaged Ay’s hand from her arm, and Meren saw the glitter of unshed tears in her eyes. “Don’t you see?
     He didn’t ask if I wanted to be pharaoh. I have no choice.”
    Across the gulf of years the words echoed in Meren’s mind as he sat beside Anath.
I have no choice.
Had Nefertiti ever had a choice in what befell her?
    He glanced at Anath, who had taken back her dagger to polish it with a length of her red robe. “A little more than a year
     later, she was dead.”
    “A great pity,” Anath said, the dagger resting in her motionless hands. “And a tale of great evil. Akhenaten perverted the
     rightness of things, Meren, but that’s hardly a secret, even if no one speaks of it openly.”
    “I told you about it because you were too young to know how things were back then. I felt—most of us felt that chaos ruled.
     Akhenaten was driving Egypt away from harmony and balance, abandoning all that was right and true. In those final years, Nefertiti
     was trying to bring him to see reason. It was slow, and she had to go carefully, but she thought she could bring about reconciliation
     with the old gods. She was working with the priests of Amun.”
    Anath scooted around to face him and whispered. “Do you mean she was actually speaking to them? If the king found out…”
    “He didn’t,” Meren said. “But all her work came to nothing because she died.”
    Nodding, Anath said, “The plague.”
    “No.”
    Her eyes became slits as she regarded him silently.
    “She was poisoned by her steward, Wah. He supplied the poison, and her favorite cook used it over a period of time until she
     collapsed.”
    Anath said a spell against evil under her breath. “By all the demons of the underworld, Meren, what are you saying?” The color
     ebbed from her face while her breathing sped up. She darted more glances around the garden, then lowered her voice to a whisper.
     “How do you know this?”
    Meren told her about accidentally discovering the truth from Wah before he was killed. “Since then I’ve been trying to find
     out who ordered Wah to kill Nefertiti, but every time I come upon someone who might be able to help, they’re murdered.”
    “This is impossible,” Anath muttered.
    “I assure you, it’s not. I wish it were.”
    Anath stared into his eyes for a long time, as if she could read the truth in their agate darkness. Finally she nodded once,
     and Meren knew she had accepted what he’d said. She would never question him again.
    “I’m going to Syene tomorrow to find the bodyguard Sebek, but I’ve put it about that I’m sailing for my country house to complete
     my recovery.”
    “Send someone else,” Anath said with a frown. “You’re not strong enough for such a long journey.”
    “Yes I am, and besides, the matter is urgent. You were right when you said pharaoh is troubled, Anath. He loved Queen Nefertiti