The Heretic Queen by Michelle Moran Page B

curiously. "She obviously has an interest in you." When I didn't respond, she asked temptingly, "Do you want to see the robing room?"
    In most chambers, the robing room is very small, with only enough space for three or four chests and perhaps a table with clay heads for keeping wigs shapely. In my old chamber, the space could barely fit a bronze mirror. But Woserit's robing room was nearly as large as her bedchamber itself, with a limestone shower as well, where water poured down from silver bowls. Merit had arranged my makeup chest near a window that looked out over the gardens. I opened the drawers to see my belongings in their new home. There were my brushes and kohl pots, razors and combs. Even my mother's mirror, in the shape of an ankh with a smooth faience handle, had been carefully laid out.
    "If the High Priestess hadn't given me her chamber," I asked, "where would I have gone?"
    "To another chamber in the royal courtyard," Merit said. "You will always remain in the royal courtyard, my lady. You are a princess. "
    A princess of another court, I thought bitterly, as a soft body rubbed against my calf.
    "You see?" Merit added with forced cheerfulness. "Tefer approves of his new home."
    "And you'll still be next door to me in the nurse's quarters?" I looked across the room, and near the foot of the bed I saw the wooden door, that for royalty meant that aid was only a softly spoken word away.
    "Of course, my lady."
    That evening, I climbed into my bed with Tefer while Merit swept a critical eye over the chamber. Everything was in place. My alabaster jars in the shape of sleeping cats were arranged on the windowsills, and the carnelian belt I would wear the following day had been laid out neatly with my dress. All of my boxes and chests had arrived, but my shrine was missing. And tonight Iset would be sleeping beneath the mosaic of Mut that my mother had commissioned.

    I AWOKE in Woserit's chamber before even the earliest light had filtered through the reed mats.
    "Tefer?" I whispered. "Tefer?"
    But Tefer had disappeared, probably to hunt mice or beg food from the kitchens. I sat up in the same bed I had slept in as a child, then kindled an oil lamp lying by the brazier. A breath upon the embers, and then light flickered over unfamiliar walls. Above the door was the image of the mother-goddess Hathor in the form of a blue and yellow cow, a rising sun resting between her horns. Beneath the windows, fish leaped across blue and white tiles, their scales inlaid with mother-of-pearl. And near the balcony Hathor had been depicted as a woman wearing her sacred menat, a beaded necklace with an amulet that could protect the wearer from charms. I thought of the painting of my mother in my old chamber and imagined her confusion at seeing Iset beneath her instead of me. I knew that a painting was nothing more than ochre and ink, not like an image in a mortuary temple to which the ka returns every Feast of Wag. Still, my mother's image had watched over me for more than thirteen years, and now, across the courtyard, Iset was in that room preparing for her marriage. I glanced at the corner where my mother's naos should have been and anger blurred my vision. Woserit had warned me. She had said that Iset would try to drive me from Thebes.
    My feet felt their way uncertainly through the gloom, as my lamp brought color to the robing chamber ahead. I sat at my makeup chest, taking out a pellet of incense and rubbing it under my arms. I tied back my hair and leaned close to the polished bronze. Woserit believed I could challenge Iset, but what about me could ever compare with Iset's beauty? I studied my reflection, turning my face this way and that. There was the smile. My lips curved like an archer's bow, so that I always appeared to be grinning. And there were my eyes. The green of shallow waters touched by the sun.
    "My lady?" I heard Merit open my chamber door, and then when she saw that my bed was empty, the heavy pad of her feet into