Free The Legend of Sheba: Rise of a Queen by Tosca Lee Page A

others from view.
    “My queen,” he said quietly, laying a ringed hand on the table’s polished ebony, “you are exhausted.”
    “Nonsense,” I said. “I do not have the benefit of that fine qat you and Yatha favor so greatly.”
    Polite laughter from the others. But Wahabil straightened and shook his head.
    “We worry for your majesty. You wear yourself away. The servants say you hardly sleep, refuse all but the smallest amount of food . . .”
    “My servants are women, councilor. No doubt your own mothers and wives say the same of you. They are not interested in land disputes or the condition of the dam or the southern canals or trading vast sums of myrrh for Egyptian horses.”
    “And yet it is apparent to us as well. My queen, if there is some unease that keeps you from food or rest, let me send for the physician, I beg you.”
    The table was silent as I felt the weight of their eyes upon me. Niman, my cousin. Abyada. Khalkharib and Yatha. Nabat, captain of my guard. Abamar. Their forbearance and impatience in varied mosaic.
    “I assure you I am well,” I said. “Perhaps we should take that recess after all.”
    “You are the unifier of Saba. Your person is precious to the kingdom, especially as you are without an heir. You must look to your well-being. If not for your own sake—”
    I slammed my hands on the table and stood.
    “What do you want of me? What have I not given to you, to Saba,that is mine to give? In what way have I failed you that you chastise me? My duty! My obedience! Myriad lives! What more do you ask?”
    “My queen,” Wahabil said, “perhaps if you were to marry, it would ease your burden. And the security of an heir—”
    “I will not speak of marriage!” I said, dashing a pile of parchment along with my gold cup to the floor.
    I was shaking with a fury I did not understand, welled up from a source I had long thought dry.
    “You, who summoned me because you did not want a Nashshan pawn on the throne.” I stared at each man in turn. “Do not think to make a man among your nobles king through me. I am queen, and by Almaqah, I will rule!”
    With a last look around the table, I shoved back my chair. “This meeting is finished.”
    T hat night, Asm came to visit me in my private chamber—the same one that had once belonged to my king father.
    “Wahabil sent you,” I said wearily. Outside, drizzle fell in a constant drone. I could just make out the dull roar of the corbel lions through the sputter of a rainy season nearing its end.
    “No man may send the chief priest of Almaqah anywhere,” he said. “But he did ask.”
    I looked away.
    “Have you come to chastise me, too?”
    It had been my custom in Punt to visit during the dark moon, to observe the nightly sacrifice for Almaqah’s return to the sky. But I had not walked that narrow temple causeway since the ritual feast months ago.
    “For what would I chastise you? Almaqah’s Daughter must do as she will.”
    I gave a soft laugh.
    “You do not believe that?”
    I did not know how to say that being queen was a death sentence of loneliness. That I felt every finger’s breadth of the ever-widening gap between those closest to me and the isolation of my own counsel and the thoughts I could not, dare not, share.
    Nor would I say that I had never felt more a slave or less remembered to the gods.
    And so I said nothing.
    “Perhaps she must remember who she is.”
    I considered Asm where he lounged on the low sofa adjacent mine. He had never adopted the silver hem and hood of the other priests, his simple robe lending gravity to his position more than any flamboyance would have. He had seemed ageless to me always, nearly immortal except for the injury to his leg that day on the field, and the limp he would now walk with forever. The low flicker of the lamp on the gold table between us—my mother’s table, reclaimed from Hagarlat’s apartment—illuminated the rich earthen hue of his skin. It was the color of Punt and