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breathe. Only the previous year my little sister Neferubity had died, of something in her throat that stopped her breath, and my mother had wept, it seemed to me, for months. “Not this one too,” she had cried, clutching me. “Please, please, do not take this one too!”
    “I told her I was quite safe with Hapi, but she was not impressed,” I said to Inet. “And my father the Pharaoh, may he live for ever, rewarded the men.”
    “He did. But he was angry with you, and you should never forget what he said to you then.”
    “He told me, ‘Always remember that your life belongs to Khemet. Do not be careless with it.’ But he did not understand that Hapi cradled me,” I said. “Hapi did not let me drown.”
    “That is so,” said Inet.
    Truthfully, I have felt a bond with Hapi all my life. I am never happier than when I am sailing upon her bosom. (Although she is both male and female, I believe her female side predominates, for does she not nurture the Black Land like a loving mother?) In times of sorrow, I have fled to her banks and my tears have mingled with the sacred water. As a child, I often escaped from supervision to run down to the river and sit staring at the grand sweep of it, or to cool my hot feet in the soothing shallows. It was not difficult to slip away from the harem palace, where I lived with the rest of the palace children, in the silent, sultry afternoons when all the adults were asleep and the tutor who was supposed to keep an eye on his charges while they rested had also succumbed to the heat.
    Here I was interrupted in my writing as my little dwarf Bek, one of my favourite slaves, came running out onto the portico, throwing himself into a series of rolling somersaults as he came. I could not help laughing and refrained from reproving him. He knows he should not rush unbidden into my presence, but he also knows he pleases me and he presumes on my lenience. In truth he is a grown man of some twenty-six summers, but he is no larger than a child of five, although he has broad shoulders and a large head atop his small body.
    “A riddle! A riddle!” he cried, coming to a stop with his feet folded neatly onto his thighs. His fine brown eyes sparkled with mirth.
    “What is it?” I asked.
    “What is small, but potent? Single, yet multiplies? Finite, yet filled with potential?” He looked at me expectantly.
    “A seed,” I guessed.
    He tilted his head. “A good guess, Majesty. It could be so. But I meant …”
    He always wanted his audience to beg.
    “Go on, tell me.”
    “Me! Me! Me!” he crowed, doing a backward somersault and sitting upright again.
    “You multiply?”
    “Me and Yunit,” he announced, beaming with delight. “She is with child.”
    “Why, Bek, that is wonderful,” I said, sincerely. Bek has been married to Yunit these seven years. She is also a dwarf, although slightly taller than he is. I had not thought they would have children.
    “Two moons gone already,” he told me proudly. “And sick to her stomach with it. She is only able to fancy pomegranates.”
    “Oh, so? And I suppose I must order my head gardener to supply my slave with pomegranates?”
    “Majesty is kind. Majesty is as kind as she is beautiful. I mean he,” and Bek shook his head. It confuses him that I am king although I am female.
    “Think of me like Hapi,” I said. “Hapi is both male and female. Strong and bountiful. Destructive and nurturing.”
    He nodded, his face clearing. The idea of the river god having a dual nature was familiar to him. “Majesty,” he said, dropping his voice, getting up and sidling closer to me. He glanced at the guards who are never far from me, even during the time of afternoon rest.
    “Speak softly,” I said. Bek, small and odd though he is, has eyes and ears that I trust and they are always at my service.
    “There is talk in the taverns,” he murmured into my ear. Bek likes to frequent a number of taverns, where he is a great favourite because of his jokes.