Dagger

"Do you think you can threaten meT Khamwas snarled at Patjenfi. His hand clasped his sash where it bulged over the crystal book. "I'm a god, do you realize? You will do as I command, or-"

He paused. Instead of leaving the threat unspoken, he added in a voice as quiet and cruel as leprosy, "I will blast you as if you never existed, Patjenfi." His gaze swept his brothers. "I will blast you all."

"I didn't-" said Patjenfi.

Pentweret silenced him in a chopping gesture. "You have the right to dispose of your property, my brother," he said in a voice tremulous with emotions and his attempt to control them. "But for^your sake as much as for your children, think about what you're doing."

"The document is complete, lady," said the scribe. He held it up to Tabubu along with the ink-charged brush.

Samlor could not recall ever having seen a smile as cruel as that with which Tabubu gave the deed and pen to Khamwas.

Khamwas tried to smile back, but the expression was not successful and the man's hands were quivering so badly that he could scarcely hold the paper he was to sign.

Tabubu leaned over so that her pendant and full breasts wobbled in front of Khamwas. Her fingers rested on his hands, not so much to guide them as to still their trembling.

Khamwas touched the brush to the document and drew his name with the sure strokes of an accomplished scholar. His face had no expression and his eyes did not appear to be focused.

Beneath Samlor's fingers, Pre's breast was as densely fluid as molten lava.

Patjenfi was muttering unintelligibly to himself; Osorkon's broad jaw was set in grim silence; and the curse Pentweret spoke was fully audible.

The scribe rose, holding his desk open with the ink palette upon it. Crushed stone clung in blue shadows on the back of his thighs. His face was professionally bland and perhaps genuinely bored.

Tabubu dropped the executed deed onto the desk and waved the scribe negligently toward Khamwas' brothers. "The witnesses must sign," she said.

Nodding, the scribe held the desk out for Osorkon to use the brush waiting in the hollow of vermilion ink.

"I thought we behaved badly to you six years ago," said Osorkon. He stared at his lounging brother, then scribbled his signature with disdainful haste. The brush, carefully frayed from the reed which formed its stem, flattened under Osorkon's pressure.

"We were models of familial affection," he added, "compared to the way you're treating your children." He turned his back.

Tabubu was standing at an angle to Khamwas, watching Patjenfi take the brush and fastidiously try to straighten its splayed bristles on the flat of the palette. Her fingertips were massaging the front of her dress, working slowly downward from her navel.

"You'll regret this, my brother," said Pentweret as he took the brush in final turn. "But it won't be undone. It can't." He sighed and turned away.

Pre was touching Samlor, rubbing him with feather-light fingers the way Tabubu massaged herself. His vision was blurring. Khamwas's brothers were trudging down the stairs with lowered heads, but reflections from the surface of the wine kept staining their image in Samlor's eyes.

The scribe had squatted again to roll his inked seal behind each signature on the deed.

Tabubu was kneeling beside Khamwas' couch. She allowed him to kiss her as if the prince were a rambunctious puppy whose affections were too cute to be degrading.

"My lady," said the scribe, holding out the completed document.

Tabubu rose as she took it and slapped Khamwas' hand with the rolled paper as he reached for her.

"You can't deny me now!" Khamwas bleated. His tone made it obvious that he knew she could-and that he expected her to do so.

"Deny you?" said Tabubu, snapping the scroll open angrily. "It's you who're denying me!"

Samlor had not heard an order to the servants, but they were returning up the stairs with-

"Your children haven't signed this yet!" Tabubu was saying. Her voice was as cold and hard as the walls of the crater where Nanefer fought the worm. "Do you think I don't know what will happen? When you're gone, they'll take everything away from me."

"Daddy, what-" said Serpot. She took a quick step toward Khamwas, past a servant whose reaching hand halted when the child and the child's words stopped at Tabubu's glare.

Serpot hopped back beside Pemu. The boy was as stiff as a soldier being cursed by his superior. Tears rolled down Serpot's cheeks although she tried to hold them back with closed eyelids.

"You see?" Tabubu hissed. "They'll ignore any agreement you make!"

Samlor kept seeing Star rather than Serpot facing Tabubu in blind misery. He wanted to get up and hurl a smirking servant through the window to the crocodile pond beneath. . That would show this bitch what the real power was in,this world where women were only toys for men.

He didn't move though, couldn't move, because Pre had given the cup to another of the servants. Now, as she caressed Samlor with one hand, she rubbed her own groin with the other.

"Tell them they must sign the deed," Tabubu ordered as she dropped it on the little desk the scribe carried. He bore it to the children as he had to Khamwas' brothers. His face showed no more emotion than the paper did.

"Father?" said Pemu. His hands were gripping his thighs as if to keep themselves from being dragged upward toward the waiting brush.

"Don't speak, Pemu," Khamwas said. He lay on the couch with his eyes closed and his fists clenched.

"Tell them they have no inheritance!" Tabubu said. Her voice was chilled steel, but her belly thrust and withdrew rhythmically a few inches from Khamwas' face. "Tell them you have beggared them for life and that they must sign their agreement to what you've done!"

"Da-" Serpot pleaded.

"I can't bear your voice!" Khamwas screamed in sudden anger. "Sign it! Sign it! Don't make me hear your voice!"

"I will do as you order, Father," said Pemu stiffly. His cheeks were flushed with embarrassment, at the scene and at his father's behavior.

Serpot turned to hide her open blubbering, but a liveried servant stood behind her and she whirled around again. "I can't," she wailed. "I can't write, I can't I can't I can't!"

As Ahwere couldn't write the symbols that would have protected her, thought Samlor.

Pemu wrote his name with the careful certainty of a child who is well taught but as yet lacks the practice which makes the motions instinctive.

Prince Nanefer had been a scribe and a scholar without equal in his time, and he was dead as surely as Ahwere. Samlor wanted to say that to Khamwas, but only a sigh of pleasure escaped when he opened his mouth.

"Your brother will sign your name, child," said the bland scribe. "Just make a mark on the paper."

Serpot could not prevent her eyes from dripping as she took the brush from Pemu, but she dabbed the tip against the paper with queenly disdain which belied her sobs of a moment before.

They were good kids, royal in the best sense of the word, but Samlor hil Samt couldn't move a muscle to help them. He was kneading Pre's breasts. The crocodile hide was coarse against the backs of his hands, while the skin beneath was as smooth as finest silk save for the erect nipples.

"My lady," said the scribe coolly as he returned the document to Tabubu after sealing the new signatures also.

Tabubu sat on the couch, her hips to the curve of Khamwas' lap just as the maid sat with Samlor across the table. Her right hand played with Khamwas' hair while the left gently waved the scroll in his face. Khamwas was trying to pull the woman prone onto the couch with him, but only the dimples in the silk beneath his fingers suggested that she resisted him.

Samlor had expected Pemu and Serpot to be led away. They still stood by the window looking doubtful, frightened-and as resolute as children could be in the face of unspoken threats.