Chapter Six
The palace was different without Manu. It wasn't the grandeur or the way the guards bowed or the taste of meat dipped in honey that made it foreign—it was the silence. The heavy, hollow kind. The kind that swallowed laughter and replaced it with the echo of sandals scraping cold stone.
Nari had missed Kilani every day since the desert swallowed her silhouette, but now, with Manu gone, it was like losing her all over again. Manu had stayed a fortnight, long enough to help him settle in, not long enough to ease the ache.
"Let me go be with Kilani. I'll send word to you, Your Majesty," Manu had said. The man had bowed so low, his beard grazed the marble floor. And yet Nari hadn't answered. His throat had locked tight.
It wasn't like when they left Mabu. It wasn't even like leaving Khalaasar. That was a place. This felt like leaving a family behind. Again.
The only trace of Tahan now was the procession that had arrived with Manu. Trained men with eyes like desert hawks, scribes with their palms stained in ink, servants who moved like shadows and smelled of clove and sun. They had brought gifts in carts drawn by groaning oxen: goats, camels, horses, rams; bags of barley and wheat; jugs of wine wrapped in woven reed. It was enough to feed a city.
The nobles sneered behind their painted veils. "The King of Tahan thinks his grandson will starve," they whispered in corner halls and peacock gardens. "Let him believe every prophecy that rattles under his teeth. Let him send the last of his herds. Egypt does not beg."
But Nari had seen the way the Vizier's eyes darkened at the word famine. He had seen too much to dismiss whispers as smoke. There was always fire, somewhere.
---
The days bled into seasons. The scribes tested him on cartouches and treaties. The priests drilled him on rites. The Vizier watched all.
Harkem never raised his voice. He did not need to. He was the kind of man who could command silence by entering a room.
He had raised a brow, once, during a morning scroll-reading. "You read quicker than expected."
"Kilani made me," Nari said simply.
It was true. She had taught him every symbol, every mark. Had sat by the fire with his small fingers in hers, tracing the words carved in papyrus. He hadn't run the streets like the other boys in Mabu. She wouldn't let him. She made him learn poetry and geometry, how to measure a house by the span of his arms and how to recognize the scent of danger in a lie. She made him remember it all, so that one day, if he needed to run, he'd run clever.
Two years passed. He learned more than scrolls. The Vizier brought in men who didn't speak often and carried blades with foreign names. They taught him how to bend his knees before he swung a staff. How to control breath. How to cut a man and watch the blood teach a lesson.
By twelve, he was silent when angry. By thirteen, he knew when not to speak.
---
On the eve of his thirteenth birthday, the temple dancers performed for the gods. He did not watch them.
Instead, he sat in the red-lit chamber, while servants oiled his body and robed him in silks heavier than armor.
"The boy becomes a man," one whispered.
"He becomes a king," said another.
Outside, Thebes whispered. A wedding. A promise. A prophecy fulfilled.
He did not feel like a man. His hands still trembled when he held the goblet. His feet still itched when he was forced to sit still for too long. But they were dressing him like he was born of gods. They scented his hair with lotus and cassia. They brushed his eyebrows with dark ash. He looked into the polished bronze mirror and saw someone he didn't know.
Someone ready to wed Nakhtira.
---
She was seventeen, and she was his father's betrothed. The one the old king never claimed.
He had known her in glimpses. A shadow at court. A pale neck beneath linen veils. They said she was soft-spoken, but unwavering. That her silence held the weight of judgment.
Now, she stood beside him in gold-trimmed white, her head bowed. Her hands were still, unadorned. No rings, no bracelets. Nothing to chain her. Her face was calm, unreadable. Beautiful, but not like the dancers. Not like the women in painted jars. Hers was the kind of beauty that made you quiet, made you sit straighter.
She did not speak during the wedding. Neither did he.
The priests spoke instead, calling gods by name and asking for fruitfulness, dominion, and obedience. There was music, flutes and low drums. Wine was poured into the earth. The pact was sealed in sight of Ra and his sons.
They said the marriage was blessed.
---
That night, they were taken to the royal chamber. The one reserved for kings and queens. Not boys and brides.
She undressed in silence. Not out of shame. There was a stillness in it, a kind of practiced peace. Nari did not know what to do. The Vizier and the scribes had told him: he must perform his duties as a husband. That it was his right. That she would submit.
But when she lay on the bed, linen drawn to her hips, eyes resting on the ceiling, he felt something collapse inside him.
She didn't look afraid.
She looked like someone waiting. Not for him. But for something else. Perhaps the end of something.
He turned away.
He slept in the chamber, but not on the bed.
At dawn, he dressed alone. He left without speaking.
---
In the hall, the Vizier waited.
He looked at Nari with unreadable eyes. "Did she please you, Majesty?"
Nari said nothing.
The Vizier said no more. But that day, two new scribes were assigned to teach Nari statecraft, and a general from the Upper Nile was summoned to dine with him.
Outside the palace, the Nile was falling.
The priests said the gods were testing Egypt.
Inside, the boy-king sat beside a woman grown, married to silence, and dreamed of Kilani's voice calling him by his real name