Sphinx's Princess by Esther Friesner

accident brought on your early birth. My Seshat was terrified that you wouldn’t survive. How she smiled when you were first laid in her arms and she gave you your name! But then she closed her eyes, and—” His voice caught. “We never should have traveled. I should have stood up to my sister and told her to find someone else to take Seshat’s place, but in those days, both your mother and I were afraid of her.”
    “And now?” I asked.
    “I won’t lie to you again: I still am,” Father replied. “I’m not proud of it.”
    “You shouldn’t be ashamed, either,” Henenu said. “Pharaoh adores her and the passing years have broughther more and more power. Only a fool wouldn’t be afraid of Queen Tiye.” He turned to me. “When your mother died, Tiye lost a valuable strand in her web of secrets. At last, one of her own daughters mastered the scribal arts, but the queen finds Princess Sitamun to be a poor substitute for your mother. The princess has a life and a mind of her own and isn’t willing to drop everything else the instant Queen Tiye demands her help. The queen can’t bully her as effectively as she could bully—”
    “—me.” I finished the thought for him. “If she knew I could read and write, she’d use me the way she used my mother.”
    “You see, Henenu?” My father glared at the dwarf. “Even the child recognizes the danger she’s in, thanks to your lessons!”
    “What danger?” Henenu countered. “Until today, she and I were the only two people under the sky who knew about them. You’re wary of your sister—good!—but you’ve let it get out of hand. She’s controlling your life as successfully as though you’d never left the court.
And
the lives of your daughters! What next, Ay? Will you seal the girls inside your house with bricks to guarantee that Queen Tiye can never touch them?”
    Father pushed himself out of the chair so violently that it crashed backward to the floor. “If I do, it’s my house and they are my daughters!” he shouted. “And you won’t see any of them again!”
    “Father, no!” I cried, grabbing his arm. “He’s your friend and he’s done nothing wrong. Don’t send him away because of me.”
    “This isn’t your choice, Nefertiti,” Father said. I’d never heard him use such a cold voice to me.
    Maybe I couldn’t choose whether or not Father banished his boyhood friend forever, but I could make a different choice. I knelt on the stone before Father and stretched out my arms as if I were praying. “I swear by Ma’at and Isis, by the goddess Seshat and by my mother’s spirit, if Henenu stays welcome in our home, I will never have another lesson from him. Never!” I bowed forward until my palms and my forehead touched the ground.
    I lay there like that for some time, nothing but stillness in my ears. I couldn’t even hear Father and Henenu breathing. At last, the faint brush of a footfall broke the silence and I heard my father’s weary voice say, “Get up, little kitten. You’ll ruin your dress and Mery will blame me.”
    Slowly I raised my forehead from the floor. “So … you’ll forgive him?” I looked from Father to Henenu. The scribe’s expression was gloomy but resigned.
    Father’s familiar smile brightened his face. “Why should I forgive him when, as you say, he’s done nothing wrong.” He turned to Henenu. “It’s you who should forgive me, my friend.” I watched, lighthearted, as the two men embraced and began trading jokes as though nothing had ever come between them.
    Henenu dined with our family that evening. He and Father drank a lot of beer and acted like rowdy boys. Mery wore the flowers Bit-Bit had picked in the garden earlier that day and looked as beautiful and serene as Isis, even when Henenu and Father got into a loud contest to see which of them could do a better imitation of a baboon’sscream. Finally she tried to put an end to their nonsense by smoothly suggesting that Bit-Bit and I entertain