Dagger

"You've really tried to provide for me, dearest, flower of my life," said Tabubu as she leaned slightly closer to Khamwas. Instead of icy hectoring, her tone was a lover's in the moment following a splendid climax.

"But you can't, you see, darling-" her voice was as soft as the breast which dangled just low enough to brush Khamwas' ear " – so long as the brats are alive. You saw how your brothers hate me. If you were gone, they'd snatch everything away from me and give it to-"

"But they're my children," Khamwas whimpered. His eyes were open, but Tabubu's pendant hung too closely before them for him to be able to focus on it.

"I can give you children," Tabubu murmured, "and I can give you much more."

She leaned still further forward. Samlor thought she was whispering into Khamwas' ear, but instead she was nibbling it. Her tongue was very pink against her teeth for an instant. Then she smiled and purred, "Much more, little flower. Bat first you must kill them."

"Daddy," Serpot cried.

"Silencel" Khamwas shouted back. His face was livid with strain. "I told you to be silent, didn't I?"

"You see how they obey you," said Tabubu, her lips inches from Khamwas' ear. The words drilled through Samlor's brain, but he did not try to move.

"Do the abomination that you demand, then," Khamwas said past the hand that he had thrown over his eyes.

"N-" Samlor stammered, "N-n-"

"No, heart of hearts," said Tabubu. Her hand touched Khamwas' and softly guided it to her quivering breast. The agony of his uncovered expression smoothed to chalky emptiness. "Your man must do it. Otherwise the act will be laid to me. Order him."

"No," said Samlor. He got to his feet, though he could not feel anything below the pulse throbbing in his groin 'Wo."

"You heard her," said Khamwas without emotion. Men in scarlet robes held Pemu and Serpot, but the children refused to demean themselves with vain struggle.

"You can't order me!" Samlor shouted. He had drawn his long dagger. If there had been a servant behind him when he flashed around a fierce glance, the watered steel blade would have disemboweled the man. There was no one.

"Samlor, I beg you," Khamwas whispered. "For our friendship-please. You must understand. .»

Someone did stand behind Samlor now. His motion as he turned seemed as slow as wax melting in the sun. Pre's hands teased open Samlor's sash. She was nude. Her pubic hair had been he

Pre pressed her body against Samlor and kissed him with her whole naked length. "Now. .," she murmured, turning him with her fingertips on his shoulders and the memory of her warmth consuming all choice but obedience to Tabubu's will.

Samlor walked slowly toward the children. He tried to grasp Pemu by the hair, but the boy's head had been shaved to mere fuzz in the fashion of the country. Instead, Samlor closed his hand across the skull with his fingertips on one temple and the pad of his thumb on the other. He turned the boy so that Pemu's tightly-clenched eyes were on him.

The eyelids flew open as Samlor cut the boy's throat from ear to ear. The blade severed all four branches of the carotid artery, bathing both victim and killer in hyphenated spurts of blood. It dripped onto the floor, cratering the lapis lazuli dust and turning it into purple gum.

Pemu's head flopped to the side when the muscles holding it erect were cut, but his eyes were still bright as the servant holding him turned and dropped the dying child out the window. The body splashed in the pool beneath. One, then the other crocodile slammed their jaws on it with a sound like vaults closing. In the room's dead stillness, Samlor could hear the boy's ribs cracking beneath the pressure of ragged yellow teeth.

He looked back at Khamwas. He could feel nothing except Pemu's blood, and that burned like boiling vitrol. "Go on," Khamwas croaked.

Tabubu's dress lay crumpled beside the couch. She wore nothing but the dangling crocodile pendant toward which she drew Khamwas' face.

Samlor turned. His bloody left hand was a claw poised to wrap itself in Serpot's hair and jerk the child's throat up for his blade.

Her face was already lifted to him. Her eyes were glistening with tears, but they were open and her slender throat bobbled as she swallowed a sob.

"Don't you want me?" Pre breathed in Samlor's ear. She was standing behind him, so close that when she lifted herself on her toes the pressure of her body slid Samlor's tunic up on his hips.

He swung the coffin-hilled knife in a short arc that grated on Serpot's neckbone as it tore through everything else, skin and flesh and the tough cartilage of her windpipe. Her tongue stuck out in final terror as the force of the blow flung her sideways, against the smiling servant holding her.

A voice in Samlor's mind screamed "Father!" and his eyes flickered with images of Star, not Serpot, being lifted and hurled through the window to the reptiles waiting below.

His dagger clanged to the floor. There was blood everywhere, ropy trails slung from the blade as it cut clear and great pools splashed on the sparkling dust by the child's jugular emptying her life.

Pre's arms were around Samlor. She kissed him, the touch of her lips beneath his ear drawing his face around to meet them.

"Now," she whispered as she drew Samlor down onto the blood and lapis of the floor with her, "take what you have earned, my hero."

He didn't realize he was tearing the strong linen of his tunic until the fabric ripped. He knelt between Pre's thighs and felt her heels encircle him.

As he thrust forward, her gri

Samlor was face down on the ground outside the arbor in Khamwas' garden. Khamwas was within, sprawled across

the curved wicker bench in a pose that must have been as painful as the way Samlor's knee pressed a knotted root in the turf.

Samlor had cut the neck off a gourd-two gourds, he saw, when Khamwas sat up. His cock was stuck through the hole, and that hurt also.

"What in the name of heaven are you doing?" demanded Osorkon in amazement. Behind stood the palace children, their game forgotten, and the equally frightened servants who had been watching them. "Are you drunk?"

CHAPTER 29

"COVER YOURSELF, FOR pity's sake," said Osorkon scornfully as he stepped past Samlor to the entrance of the arbor.

Samlor turned toward the wall and tried to blank out the memory of childish faces gaping in amazement at him. The rind was tough enough that the edges scraped as he pulled the gourd off him. That pain helped him-not forget, but at least put aside the shock and embarrassment that made his skin burn all over his body.

"Brother," Osorkon said in cold fury as Khamwas disengaged himself from a similar gourd. "If you've returned to degrade yourself and the kingdom, so be it- your family has no power to stop you, you've made that clear. But tell us now so that we can exile ourselves and avoid watching further disgusting exhibitions."

Samlor squeezed the front of his tunic together. He'd torn it all the way to the waist, despite the brocaded hem. It was an impressive feat of strength-for a singularly unworthy purpose.

"Where-"he said, more to get his voice working again than because he understood where the sentence would go next. "H-how long have we been here?"

Osorkon turned. In his face Samlor saw the concern which Osorkon's personality converted to anger before he could openly display it. "Well, some hours," he said. "You were watching the children play, and then you began to behave, well, oddly."

He blinked, trying to drive away the image of just how oddly his brother and Samlor had behaved. "They became concerned, and your major domo-" that plump servant, sweating with emotion and the sunlight into which only a crisis had drawn him, attempted a smile of acknowledgement " – thought I should be summoned rather than a doctor at first."