Free Pharaoh by Jackie French

him.’
    Nitho translated. The Trader grinned and spoke to her briefly.
    ‘He agrees,’ said Nitho.
    ‘What? Just like that?’ Narmer had been prepared to argue, even plead, to bargain for this just like he had bargained with the Trader before.
    ‘My master says,’ Nitho continued, ‘that if you’re not worth your bread we can just leave you in the desert for the jackals. No loss to us either way.’ But she looked startled too, as though the Trader’s words had surprised her.
    Narmer stared at the Trader. Was he serious? The man’s eyes crinkled, as though he were laughing at a joke no one else had heard.
    Was this some kind of test?
    ‘Good,’ Narmer said evenly. ‘Then it’s a fair trade. No loss on either side.’
    ‘Except your life, perhaps,’ said Nitho drily.
    Narmer shrugged. At the moment his life didn’t seem much to risk.
    Seknut cried. Her face screwed up like a pomegranate left too long in the sun. She covered her face with her hands to try to hide her sobs.
    ‘Into the Endless Desert! No one survives the desert!’
    ‘The People of the Sand do.’
    Narmer felt like crying too. But he hadn’t cried before—when the crocodile attacked; when the King made Hawk his heir. He wouldn’t let himself cry now, either. If only he could take Seknut with him! But an old woman would never survive the desert. And a Trader’s apprentice did not have servants.
    Seknut shook her head without replying, the tears streaming down her cheeks. The People of the Sand were barbarians. The River was the only world she knew.
    But there is another world beyond the River, thought Narmer. A world of giant boats and lands of strange treasures. A new excitement was growing within him.
    He told his father privately, kneeling on his cushion before the throne.
    He expected the King to object, to plead with him not to go. But he didn’t. Instead his father sat silently on his throne, while the noises of the palace lapped over them: the songs of the women in the kitchen courtyard, the sounds of their chopping, the cry of a plover near the River.
    Finally the King said, ‘Good.’
    The word hurt, even more than the teeth of the crocodile. But Narmer understood. Even crippled, he was athreat to Hawk. The new rule would be easier with Narmer gone. The King had spoken, not his father.
    ‘I wish…’ Suddenly it was his father talking, not the King. ‘I wish it could be different. If I could give my life for yours, my legs to the crocodile in exchange for yours…’ His father’s fingers gripped the chair arms so tightly the knuckles were white.
    Was he going to say ‘I would give anything for you to be my heir, not Hawk’?
    Suddenly Narmer knew he couldn’t bear to hear the words. Nor should a king say them.
    Instead Narmer used his crutch to lift himself from his cushion and threw his arms round his father. It was unheard of; even as the heir he had never touched the King unbidden.
    He felt his father tremble as he returned the hug.
    Yes, it was better that he left.
    The King gave the Trader more gold—all the gold his servants could mine in the moon before they left. It seemed strange to Narmer that the gold went to the Trader, not to him. But he was no longer Prince of Thinis, and the Trader was his master now. It was something that would take a while to get used to.
    The King gave them provisions too: dried meat and fruit, parched grain, travel bread baked in the oven till it was hard. He would have given them more, but the porters could only carry so much.
    Seknut fussed over Narmer to distract herself from her grief, weaving him a new kilt and ordering him new sandals,as though the best clothes she could find would protect him from the demons of the outside world.
    The night before they left, the King held a feast as splendid as the one for Hawk and Berenib’s wedding.
    It was hard to feel the people’s eyes on him, gazing at his scars, his crippled leg. It was hard to hear their farewells.
    ‘You will always