Free The Bull of Min by Lavender Ironside

for who she truly was. None would have had any significant chance to see her in her former life, when she had been Neferure the God’s Wife, his original consort. They knew only what he told them, and believed the rumors they concocted over their nightly beer.
    The gods keep it so.
    The climb to the top of the bluff was hot and dusty. Thutmose ducked gratefully into the shade of the gateway and called for something to drink. Djedkare fetched a skin of wine; Thutmose drank deeply, not only to soothe his dry throat, but to still the anxious tremor in his hands. When he was ready, he told the men to open the gate.
    One great cedar door, twice the height of a man, swung wide to admit him. Beyond the rebuilt wall, a small garden unfolded in the sun. It was newly planted, revived from the abandonment that had left the courtyard sere and unfriendly before Lady Satiah had moved in. But here, at least, she had done good and honest work. The flower beds were weeded, tilled, filled in with black soil from the orchard below – it must have been carted up by the guardsmen, one of the tasks Satiah had no doubt requested of them. A few pale green starts grew in the beds; some of them had been carefully staked and tied. Thutmose saw where cracked paving stones on the garden path had been repaired with plaster, and saw, too, the bright white of new plaster sealing the old dark tracks of leaks in the wall of a raised pond. It sparkled with water – that, too, must have been carted up the path by the guards, for this high atop the bluffs no well could reach deep enough to tap a reserve of ground water. Satiah had gone to great lengths to beautify her little prison. It was a humble and lonely place, but thanks to her touch, it was at least prettier than the tiny cell at the Temple of Min where Thutmose had found her.
    He was about to send Djedkare ahead to announce him when Satiah herself appeared, framed in the deep rosy stone of a doorless archway. She was as tiny and light-boned as a bird, stark and dramatic in plain white linen against the violet of interior shadow. Thutmose halted on the garden path. She stared at him a moment, then went back inside without word or gesture.
    “Wait for me here,” he told Djedkare.
    Thutmose blinked his eyes rapidly, striving to adjust his vision to the cool dimness of the house. The chill was refreshing. Small niches in the walls held statues of various gods, but nothing else adorned the walls – no tapestries, no murals. The perfume of sacred incense hung heavy in the air, undercut with the smoky char of burnt meat. A sudden gust from the orchard moaned in the windcatcher high above his head. Satiah perched silent and self-possessed on a rustic wicker couch, waiting for him to speak with her hands folded in her lap.
    “You have made the garden quite lovely,” he said awkwardly.
    “It will be lovelier with time. Everything I planted is still new.”
    “May I sit?”
    “This is your home, not mine.”
    Thutmose found a wooden stool against one wall. He positioned it across from her wicker couch, reluctant to come any nearer.
    “I admit it is a prettier prison than the last one you kept me in,” she said.
    “I had no choice but to keep you there.”
    “So you think.”
    “How did you get out, anyhow?”
    Satiah answered at once, in a voice so lacking in coyness or irony that he knew she believed it to be true, and knew he would get no clearer response. “The gods removed me.”
    “Yes, well. I wanted to be certain you are relatively comfortable here – you and the boy. Is there anything he needs?”
    “His name is Amenemhat.”
    Thutmose said nothing. He held her black gaze steadily. When she looked away, it was with a light toss of her head, the beads in her braids chiming together like tiny sesheshet in a dark temple.
    “Amenemhat,” she said again, “and now that you have an heir, it is time you restored me to my position.”
    “Your position?”
    “Great Royal