and desperate thirst, she dived into the oasis pool and let the cool water caress her. She drank her fill, then disappeared into the depths.
When she finally emerged for a breath she heard men’s voices, nearing the pool. They were speaking in a deep, guttural tongue that she recognised immediately. Libu.
Her heart hammered as she cowered into a shady stand of flute reeds growing in the water on the far bank. She found the longest of the reeds and snapped it in half, then sank down against the bank, breathing slowly through the natural straw.
In moments a group of men arrived at the pool’s edge. Their blurred figures were difficult to see through the water, but Kiya noticed their purple headdresses and the long copper blades that hung from their belts. The men spoke excitedly—joyfully, even. As their donkeys bent to drink, Kiya could see the animals’ saddlebags bulging with grain.
Khemetian grain.
Kiya felt her heart pinch with hatred. They were Libu raiders, for certain. Their joy was the Khemetians’ doom. All the workers—the thousands of peaceful farmers whom Kiya had joined in service to the King—would now return to their homes empty-handed because of these evil men. Many of the Khemetian farmers would not return home at all.
Kiya struggled to keep her breaths even and swore she would have her revenge. The Sun God would soon be on his nightly voyage to the Underworld and the murderous villains would be to bed. The Moon God would rise, and Kiya would execute her escape plan anew.
Curses on the trader, for she no longer needed him. She had a band of Libu to plunder from instead. Besides, if her captor were any kind of trader he would have quickly understood the threat they represented to his grain. He and his strange, oversized donkey were probably halfway across the Big Sandy by now.
But she was mistaken.
He slid down noiselessly into the water next to Kiya. He might have been a stranger, for he wore nothing upon his head, nor any distinguishing clothing. His chest was bare, and strands of his long yellow-brown hair floated languidly around his face like threads of smoke. Kiya knew him only by the two cerulean eyes staring out at her. Their colour was incomprehensibly blue, their gaze so deep and steady they might have belonged to a statue of an ancient god.
His arm slipped behind her back and she felt his hand grip her waist. Gently, he floated her body in front of his and pulled her against him. She could feel the hard, rippling contours of his stomach against her back as he nestled them against the bank.
Kiya did not know what to do. If she fought him she would reveal them both. What had he told her? That he no longer claimed to be Libu. If that was so, then perhaps he was in as much danger as she.
She held her breath as he took the hollow reed from her fingers and pressed it to his own lips, drawing in a deep breath then returning it to her mouth. They passed the breathing reed back and forth in this manner as the Libu men began to retreat from the bank one by one. His arm surrounded her waist and kept her body pressed tightly against his, making her feel oddly safe.
Soon she began to feel something else as well. A growing firmness where her backside pressed against his hips. Neither his loose-fitting pants nor her voluminous wrap could conceal it in their folds. That.
At the advanced age of twenty-three, Kiya would have never guessed herself capable of stirring a man’s desire. Indeed, she had worked quite hard throughout her life to achieve the opposite effect. Did this man who wished to sell her in fact desire her? Or was this simply what happened when that part of a man came into contact with a woman’s body? Surely it was the latter, for Kiya was not the kind of woman men desired. Fie—she was not the kind of woman men could usually even detect was a woman.
Kiya gazed up through the water. The Libu raiders were dispersing. She counted only two lingering on the far bank. A large insect glided across the surface of the water above them and a water snake swam languidly past. Meanwhile, the trader’s growing desire had found its resting place in the cleft of her backside.
It was the first time in her life that she had been this close to a man. She might have moved to the side, but the sensation was not altogether unpleasant. As a test, she allowed herself to imagine what it would be like to feel him there. That was what happened when a man took a woman, was it not?
She pictured the act, for she had heard the tomb workers discuss it in detail, and had seen it depicted in the reliefs carved upon the gates of Hathor’s temple. In this case he would not be above her, as the reliefs often depicted. He might lift her by the waist, for example, and then settle her upon him, pushing himself into her. But how could that be? How could she possibly contain him? For a moment an unfamiliar pain akin to hunger shot through her, then it was gone.
No, there it was again.
To further the test, she pushed gently against his firmness, giving resistance, and thought she could feel him grow firmer still. Was this the power of a woman? Was this the fantastic faculty that the storytellers sang of in the taverns? And was this the beginning of the act that the young men sketched in the alleyways of Memphis, chuckling conspiratorially?
If it was, then she might be interested. Perhaps.
But not with a murderer. And never as a slave.
The trader’s hands pulled her against him more tightly. She knew she needed to escape his grasp, for her body was starting to move against her will. But escape was impossible, for there was still one Libu raider left at the pool. He was standing motionless at the water’s edge.
He appeared to be looking right at them.
Kiya froze. The man could not see them. They were underwater, in shadow, and concealed by a patch of reeds. Her heart pounded so hard that she imagined it creating a ripple. Tahar, too, seemed to have noticed, for he squeezed her gently. Hold still, his hands told her.
The Libu man walked to their side of the pool and stood above the stand of reeds. He pulled his long sword from its sheath and began poking it into the water. The sword probed to the left of Kiya, then to the right. Kiya held her breath.
The sword’s penetration into her arm was not deep, but Tahar watched as it shattered her senses. Pierced as the woman was, even the mightiest of warriors would not have been able to stifle a cry, and as they floated to the surface he knew he could not prevent her coming scream—the scream of a woman.
‘Ah!’ she cried in pain.
‘Hazah!’ Tahar yelled, covering her voice with his own.
He grabbed the Libu man’s ankle and pulled him into the pool. Amidst the splash of water Tahar pulled her close. ‘Swallow your agony,’ he whispered frantically. ‘And keep your mouth shut. He must not know that you are a woman.’
The Libu man surfaced. ‘Villain!’ he shouted at Tahar.
Tahar eased the woman behind him. ‘You have discovered me, brother,’ he said, splashing water at his tribesman playfully. ‘You were the only one who even came close!’ He could feel the warmth of the woman’s blood draining into the water all around him. ‘Dakka, you scoundrel,’ Tahar
