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before.
But a whole trading ship? And this of all that sailed the river of Egypt— “You
were in Memphis,” he said. “What were you doing in Memphis?”
    “Is that any affair of yours?”
    This was too subtle for his stumbling Cretan. He shifted
back to Egyptian—swiftly and rather pleasantly gratified to see in her the same
moment of confusion as she had caused him, when she shifted languages without
forewarning. “As long as I serve the king who rules in Thebes, any stranger who
has tarried in Memphis is a matter for suspicion. What were you doing in this
city? Were you, perhaps, forging alliances with the foreign kings?”
    “You sit on my ship,” she said, low and level. “You accuse
me of treachery. If I were what you fancy I am, I would have had you seized and
taken long since.”
    “Not if you hoped to learn my king’s secrets,” Kemni said.
    Her lip curled. It was a beautifully molded lip, painted
with great artistry—and why he should even care for that, in this that was as
keen as any battle he had fought with spear or sword, he could not imagine. “I
doubt that you are privy to anything but the few words of a king’s message. A
dancing ape could do as well, or a singing bird.”
    “And do apes dance the bulls, then, in the courts of the
Double Axe?”
    She had moved before he knew what she had done. Her fingers
were strong about his throat, strong and strangely cool, like bands of bronze.
Her face filled all his world. Her voice was a whisper, like the hissing of
wind in reeds. “Do not ever,” she said. “Do not ever, even in anger, even to
vex the likes of me, speak so of that dance. Do you understand me?”
    He understood. But she had stung his pride, and he had no
fear of dreams; even dreams that came from the gods. “Was it you I saw, then,
taunting the young men, till one died trying to match your leap?”
    She went still. No, that had not been her face; he had known
it even as he said it. But close. Very close. As if that one had been her blood
kin. The lines were much the same, though hers were not as exquisitely drawn,
nor near as beautiful.
    Her hand drew back, slowly, as if she hated to do it, but
some force compelled her. “So,” she said in a new tone, a cold tone, but empty
of anger. “So. That is who you are. I should have known.”
    “Known what?”
    Of course she did not answer. She returned to her couch, but
did not recline there in comfort. She sat as a woman might sit in Egypt,
carefully upright. “Be aware,” she said, “that the gods may speak through you,
but they add nothing to your wisdom. You will be judged as you are—not simply
as the gods’ instrument.”
    “I should hope so,” Kemni said a little sharply.
    She took no notice. “Presume nothing,” she said. “And know
this. We have as little need to love your king in the south as the king in the
north. And the king in the north stands athwart the gate to the sea. We do
whatever we must do, to keep that gate open.”
    “Including betrayal of the king in the south?”
    “If it should suit us,” she said. “At the moment it does not.”
    “Then why were you in Memphis?”
    He pressed too hard; he knew it. But he could not seem to
stop. She was driving him half mad: her odd, too-strong beauty, her impudent
breasts, her mind that was as keen as a blade and more relentless than any
man’s.
    She did not leap again, nor did she threaten him. She said
in a voice that might have been thought mild, “We are a trading people. We
trade wherever trade is to be had.”
    “In secret? Shrouded from the world?”
    “Not all trade is conducted under the sun. Not even most of
it.”
    Kemni felt his eyes widen. “Smuggling—what?”
    “You, for one,” she said with a flash of wit that he had not
expected.
    “I was not in Memphis.”
    “Do you ever give up?” she asked him.
    “No,” he said.
    “Then we’ll continue to mistrust one another,” she said. “Go
now. Sleep as you can. We sail with the first