‘I must leave today,’ Piay pressed. ‘Just seal the gates after I’ve gone.’

  ‘Have you seen them?’ Zahur exclaimed. ‘You would never make it out of the city alive.’

  ‘You will not disobey me,’ Harrar said, wagging his finger. ‘If you try to leave the palace, I will have you placed in the cells beneath the garrison. I do not care who your master is.’

  Piay was simmering with rage as he strode out of the sitting room. He could ill afford to waste any more time, but Harrar’s tone had made it plain that this was not the moment to challenge him.

  When he found Hannu, they brooded over their options, but could see no easy way out.

  ‘Look, the palace can’t stay sealed forever,’ Hannu said. ‘We just have to hope that things calm down in the next day or two. Then we should be able to slip away.’

  The desert wind dropped and the temperature began to rise as the sun climbed higher. Though the city remained quiet, Piay sensed an oppressive tension in the sweltering streets. When night fell, the heat barely seemed to diminish. He wandered through the gardens, listening, but this time he couldn’t hear women soothing their babes or men in full-throated chorus, either yearning for days long gone or hoping for better times ahead. Those within the palace walls might as well have been all alone in the world.

  The palace, too, seemed quiet, as if everyone within was holding their breath. Piay retired to his bed early, but it was too hot to sleep and his frustrations gnawed at his mind. From his window, Piay could see the candlelight flickering in Ankhu’s house as he pored over parchments for any knowledge that would help them when they were allowed to begin the next stage of their quest. The only noise was Hannu snoring in the chamber next door.

  Finally, Piay rolled out of bed and wandered back into the gardens. He half-thought he might visit the garrison and see if any of the Blue Crocodile Guards felt like gambling on a game of knucklebones over beer from the kitchens, but as he strolled along the walls once again, he passed a guard who grinned at him and nodded as if they both shared some secret. After a few steps, Piay turned to question him, but the guard had already continued on his round.

  That nod of complicity preyed on Piay’s mind as he walked. When he reached the gate, the two soldiers set to keep watch were leaning on their spears, engaged in bored conversation.

  One of them looked up as Piay neared.

  ‘She’s come back, then.’

  Piay shook his head, baffled. ‘Who has come back?’

  ‘Your woman.’

  ‘My . . . woman?’

  ‘Turned up at the gate—’

  ‘When?’ Piay snapped.

  ‘Not long ago. Said she’d been captured by some Hyksos dogs, but that she’d managed to escape. They hunted her, but she hid in the fields till they’d gone, then made her way back here.’

  Piay felt his heart leap. If anyone could escape from Akkan, it was Myssa. His mind raced as he imagined what might have transpired, from Myssa pretending to take the Cobra’s potions and then slitting a throat and fleeing into the night, to turning those potions upon her own captors. Anything was possible if her mind was clear.

  And yet he barely dared hope.

  ‘Where is she?’ Piay asked.

  The soldier shrugged. ‘Well, when we let her in, she said she was coming to see you.’

  Piay raced along the avenue from the gate. Apart from the guards on their rounds, the gardens were deserted at that time of night. The palace, too, was still. The slaves had returned to their quarters; the kitchens were deserted.

  He paused in the entrance hall and cocked his head. Nothing. No sound of echoing feet anywhere.

  Piay bounded up the steps and raced towards his chamber. When he burst in, he was ready to throw his arms around Myssa and lift her off her feet, but his room was empty.

  Piay felt his heart begin to thump. Where else could she be? Had the soldiers been playing some cruel joke on him?

  He crept out of his chamber. He could still hear Hannu snoring, but he looked in on him, nonetheless. After that he moved on through the palace. His initial jubilation ebbed away – he could find no sign of Myssa anywhere.

  As he paused by a window to reflect, he glimpsed a flash of pale yellow-grey in the gardens, sweeping along the white enclosure walls. It could have been the dress Myssa had been wearing at Akkan’s camp, but he resisted calling her name for fear of waking the rest of the palace.

  What a game of cat and mouse they were playing! Myssa had failed to find him in his chamber and now she was searching the gardens for him.

  Piay raced back down the steps and into the garden. Ducking past the avenue of sycamores and around the pool, he dashed towards the wall, where he hoped he could intercept Myssa.

  Through the trees and shrubs, he glimpsed flashes of pale grey in the moonlight. Then, when he looked along the wall, Piay finally caught sight of Myssa. She had come to a halt, her head bowed, looking down at the ground.

  ‘Myssa,’ he called, though his voice was so low it was barely more than a whisper.

  He hurried towards her and tried again. This time she heard him. She raised her head and pushed her shoulders back, and though she still had her back to him, his heart jumped in recognition.

  Slowly she turned and her lips curled into a smile of greeting. Piay felt overwhelmed at the sight of her.

  ‘Thank the gods,’ he gasped, then ran forward to sweep her into his arms.

  But as Piay came closer to Myssa, the moonlight picked out more detail – something dark and glistening on her arms and hands. He slowed, trying to make sense of what he was seeing, and that was when he saw what she was clutching in the fingers of her right hand –a short-bladed knife.

  Piay stumbled to a halt.

  Two bodies were sprawled on the ground, one near her feet, still twitching as the lifeblood pumped out of him, the other a little further away. She must have circled around and taken the two soldiers guarding the gate by surprise.

  ‘What have you done?’ Piay croaked.

  Piay had seen Myssa kill before. She had slit the throat of a pirate captain on the Great Green Sea, shortly after they had first met. But that was to save his life, and Hannu’s. These were murders.

  ‘What have you done?’ he asked again.

  ‘I remember you now, I think,’ Myssa said, frowning, ignoring his questions.

  ‘Remember? We were as one.’

  Myssa shrugged. ‘Ah, well, I have forgotten much recently,’ she said dismissively. ‘But I remember the woman I once was, long ago. I know what I deserve in this world and what is necessary for victory.’

  Piay glanced past Myssa and saw the bar from the gate now lay across the ground. Before he could move, the gate creaked open and shadowy figures drifted in. When they stepped into the moonlight, Piay saw the Cobra, towering over the others, his wild hair limned in silver by the pale rays. Behind him strode half a dozen Hyksos warriors, their crescent swords drawn,

  ‘We have come for you,’ Myssa said. ‘Or rather, for what you have.’

  Piay’s mind raced. The pouch the Cobra had given him still hung at his side, for he kept the Eye of Horus and the Disc of Ra with him at all times. He’d thought that he had been ensuring the safety of the two priceless objects, but now he had delivered them straight to a woman who considered herself his enemy.

  ‘How you escaped the traps in that shaft, I will never know,’ Myssa continued, ‘but when my spies told me you had returned to Memphis, I knew you had discovered what we both wanted.’

  ‘Your spies?’

  Piay glanced around the gathered Hyksos and realised that their leader was nowhere to be seen.

  Myssa nodded as if she could read his thoughts.

  ‘I am in command now, Piay of Thebes. No man will make me a slave again. No man will tell me I must be his bride. I bow my head to no one.’

  ‘Where is Akkan?’

  Her smile grew darker. ‘With his god. I killed him with his own sword. His men follow me now. If I give the word, they will end your life.’

  As if to prove her point, two Hyksos warriors appeared behind Piay, their curved swords ready in their hands.

  Myssa turned her head to Tallus and flicked her hand, beckoning him to join her. When the priest stood beside her, Myssa pointed at Piay.

  ‘Do you recognise that pouch?’ she asked, smiling at Tallus.

  ‘Yes . . . I believe I do,’ he replied, with an equal air of amusement, the two of them mocking Piay’s folly.

  ‘As I recall, you gave it to this man in case the Great Architect might have left something at the bottom of his pit – something that might be of great value.’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘Let’s see if you were right.’

  Myssa moved forward, and all at once she was so close to him that Piay could smell her scent . . . so, so close. Piay sensed the approach of the Hyksos warriors behind him, felt their calloused hands take his wrists, but he was helpless to resist with Myssa standing there in front of him. He could feel the warmth of her body through her dress, see her bare skin. As her fingers worked at the knot that held the pouch to his belt, his body betrayed him and he responded as he had always done when it was late at night and the woman he loved was at his side.

  Myssa saw it, felt it, and as the knot came undone and she pulled the pouch into her hands, she gave a mocking smile and said, ‘Men . . . all the same, all equally pathetic.’

  She walked back to Tallus, opened the pouch and they both looked into it. Then she looked at the priest and said, ‘Congratulations. You were absolutely right.’

  B

  ast sat on the windowsill in the moonless dark that comes before the dawn. The cat’s eyes burned with green fire and its tail flicked. Whether it had accompanied its mistress to the palace, Piay did not know, but the feline’s stare gripped him as if the beast was trying to tell him something of great value.

  ‘So, what I want to know is, why didn’t Myssa kill you?’ Hannu asked. ‘Because it certainly wasn’t because she still loves you, deep down inside.’

  ‘No, it wasn’t . . .’ Piay paused. ‘Just before she left, she told me that I posed no threat to her now. And then she said that she’d rather have me on my knees in front of Taita, begging for his forgiveness for my failure, than have Taita coming after her to avenge my death.’

  ‘By the gods, she really doesn’t think much of you.’

  ‘No, and she wanted to make sure I knew it.’ Piay sighed. ‘I’ve been humiliated a few times in my life, but, by Khonsu, this really hurts.’

  ‘So now what?’

  ‘Now . . .’ Piay said slowly, as if his thoughts were only just becoming clear enough for him to read them. ‘Now, I’m going to prove her wrong, and make her pay for what she did to me. I don’t know how, not yet, but I swear that whatever Imhotep left for us, I’m going to beat her to it.’

  ‘Well, that’s a relief,’ Hannu said. ‘I thought I’d lost you for a minute. Good to have you back. Now, what are you going to do to stop their lordships from kicking us out of the palace once they find out what happened tonight?’

  ‘They’re not going to find out. I had a long talk with the commanders of the palace guard and the Blue Crocodiles last night, while we were clearing up the mess. We agreed that there was no point in waking Harrar or Zahur. Harrar would have made a big show of being angry, Zahur would have cried like an overgrown baby, and then they’d both have lashed out at us.

  ‘And then I said, “Do we have to tell them . . . at all?” I mean, those two don’t see the men who guard them as human beings – they don’t know their names, don’t know their faces. So, we sent the bodies of the dead soldiers off to be prepared for a decent burial and the commanders adjusted their guard rotas so that there’ll always be plenty of lads on show. Harrar and Zahur won’t even notice anyone’s missing . . . not for a few days, anyway. The way I see it, Myssa’s going to want to use her new possessions as fast as she can. This will all be decided pretty quickly, one way or the other.’

  ‘Makes sense.’ Hannu nodded. ‘But if Myssa’s getting on with solving that riddle, how are you going to stop her?’

  ‘By getting help from Harrar and Zahur.’

  ‘What?’ Hannu exclaimed, loud enough to startle Bast, who jumped off the window ledge onto a balcony below and disappeared into the garden. ‘You’ll never get help from those two. Never!’

  Piay smiled. ‘Just watch me.’

  T

  he Hyksos warriors huddled in the half-light of a single spluttering torch that sent shifting shadows across their faces. The air was thick with the scent of cumin – the walls and floor of the old spice warehouse had been richly stained by the merchandise it once contained. Its shelves were bare now, though – months had passed since fresh stock had been delivered.

  Myssa leaned against a clay-brick wall, away from the others, her fingers dancing across the Disc of Ra, moving the rings back and forth as she unpicked its mysteries. Next to her was the empty bowl that had contained the serving of the blue lotus that Tallus had brewed for her.

  It was the second she had consumed that day. Myssa was finding that a single draught was no longer enough to sustain her from one morning to the next. She felt as if she were floating, as she always did after consuming the lotus, but somehow the feeling was not quite as blissful as it had been when she had first fallen under its spell.

  Myssa had begun to wonder what would happen if she ever decided to set it aside. Could she banish the aches and shivers? Would she still retain the power and clarity of thought that the potion had given her?

  For a moment, her mind drifted away from the disc to the adventurer they had encountered at the palace, Piay of Thebes. His face floated in her memory like a half-forgotten dream. Feelings stirred deep within her, but they were half-formed, misremembered, and she couldn’t tell if they were real or imagined.

  Myssa pushed thoughts of Piay aside. Only one thing truly mattered – discovering Imhotep’s secret. The Cobra, his acolytes and the warriors all thought she was aiding them. What would they say if they knew she was on this road for herself? The power and the gold the Great Architect had hidden would make sure that neither she nor her people, in her faraway homeland, would ever suffer at the hands of others again.

  She nodded as she moved the rings of the disc. The Hyksos needed her sharp mind more than she needed anything they could offer.

  The Cobra’s staff tapped on the dusty floor as he drew towards her out of the dark.

  ‘Dawn is not far off,’ he said. ‘We must be away before night fades if we wish to avoid unfriendly eyes.’

  ‘I will have the answer soon,’ Myssa said.

  Tallus nodded. Myssa returned to the disc, but she could feel his gaze continue to lie heavy upon her, scrutinising every movement.

  ‘Too many died tonight,’ she murmured, distracted by one of the windows, which showed two stars.

  ‘You are not a warrior. It is understandable that you do not have the stomach for this business.’

  ‘It is not a matter of stomach. I just wonder if it is wise to provoke our enemies.’

  ‘Let them be provoked. What can they do to us now that we have all the tools that Imhotep left behind? And if our enemies die, so much the better. They stand between us – between you – and what you most desire.’

  Myssa felt the Cobra’s words seep deep into her mind. Tallus had a way of speaking that always seemed to ease her thoughts: low, calming, sibilant.

  She made one last movement of the disc and took note of the unmistakable triangular shape that was revealed in the open window.

  ‘I am finished now,’ she said. ‘Tell the men to be ready to move out. I know exactly where we must go.’

  T

  he first thing Piay heard, when he finally gained admittance to the garden room where his superiors liked to take their morning meal, was the high-pitched wail of Zahur.

  ‘We are not safe anywhere!’ he cried.

  ‘We must conscript more men,’ Harrar replied sternly. ‘If the numbers defending the palace are great enough, no enemy would dare attack us.’

  For a moment, Piay felt his stomach clench and the bile rise in the back of his throat. Had someone reported the previous night’s attack after all? He gritted his teeth and prepared for the moment when the blame for everything that had occurred would be piled on him. But the two men ignored his presence, and it soon became clear that the current state of the city was quite enough to alarm them, without the news that a band of Hyksos warriors led by a homicidal Kushite had been wreaking havoc inside the palace gardens.

  ‘You know what feelings seethe beyond these walls,’ the governor whined. ‘By conscripting men from the common mob, we would risk bringing enemies into our midst. Why, we would never sleep peacefully again.’

  Harrar stared into the middle distance. He knew Zahur was right and he could see no other solution.

  Piay folded his hands behind his back and let the two men stew for a while.

  ‘What can we do?’ Zahur stuttered.

  Harrar chewed his lip.

  Finally, Piay said in his calmest tone, ‘I have a suggestion.’

  Zahur and Harrar cast a look of suspicion Piay’s way.

  ‘More than a suggestion. I have knowledge to impart which may change the course of events.’

  Piay bowed his head and wrung his hands together, an act he hoped would convey that he was wrestling with revealing a long-held secret.

  ‘Speak,’ Harrar said. ‘But do not waste our time.’

  ‘This will not be a waste of your time, my lord.’ Piay raised his head and showed a confident face, as if he had reached a decision. ‘I give you my strongest personal assurance of that.’

  ‘Speak!’ Harrar demanded.

  ‘I have not been completely honest with you,’ Piay said, feigning a look of contrition. ‘Quite rightly, you questioned why Taita had sent me to assess the great monuments. Crumbling stones, as you say. What use are they to this age we find ourselves in? Now I feel obliged to reveal that this was not the full extent of the task my master set for me.’