City of Dreams by Anton Gill Page A

climbed lightly out of bed, dipping her face into the bowl of washing water on the table near the door and dabbing it dry with a hand towel. She was careful not to disturb the make-up she had applied secretly before retiring, and checked it quickly in a polished bronze mirror that lay next to the bowl, the deep yellow glow from the oil lamp she had left burning providing her with just enough light to see that none had smudged. Having satisfied herself, she slipped into a tight calf-length dress which had a strap over the left shoulder but which fell away to the right of her body, leaving one young breast exposed. Then she snuffed out the light, and waited for a moment, getting her owl-vision. High in the sky, Khons’s chariot reflected only a sliver of light from its sides.
    Stepping into the passage she trod on something soft, silky and alive, but was in time to withdraw her naked foot before it wailed. Instead, a sleepy purring trill told her that the dozing house cat — it was the long-haired one, named after Bubastis, and almost a pet — had mistaken her clumsiness for a caress; she had barely disturbed its sleep. The corridor was in the embrace of a deep silence which spread right across the dark garden court below and beyond the open verandah which ran along all four inward-looking walls of the house on the first floor, on to which the bedrooms opened. The only sound was her father’s heavy breathing, occasionally broken by a snore. She stole past his door with even greater care, unsure whether he was sleeping alone tonight. It had been long since he had asked her mother to share his bed, and for some time now his favourite had been a young Khabiri concubine, a month younger than she was herself. And that, if anything, was what had fired her to embark on this adventure.
    Aware of the loose board near the top of the stairs, she clung to the wall and then slipped down to the garden in shadow, barely a shadow herself, and making as little noise, though inside her head it seemed as if her heart would waken the dead with its pumping. The one hurdle still to be jumped was the gatekeeper; but she had chosen her night carefully. Old Mahu was on duty, and he never left his shelter by the main gate, once he was sure that everyone was asleep. It was likely that he, too, slept.
    She made her way to the small side gate that opened on to the alley and which in the daytime was kept permanently open so that tradesmen could make their way to the kitchens through the vegetable garden. There was a steady flow of people during the day and in theory the last to use the gate after the second hour of night should be the one responsible for bolting it. In practice this rarely happened, and anyway since childhood, even before she was old enough to wear her hair in the Lock of Youth twisted over her right shoulder, she had known the location of the hidden bolt, and how to slide it.
    She was not wearing her hair tied into the Lock now. It was loose and tumbled in a dark brown cascade over her narrow shoulders. It changed her face; she seemed a stranger, a complete adult. She tried to imagine how she would look when she was old enough to wear a wig, like her mother and the great ladies of the court who surrounded Queen Ankhsenpaamun, though the queen was not much older than she was herself.
    For once the little gate was locked, but she quickly pulled back the stone bolt and slipped outside, drawing the gate closed but not relocking it: she would need to be as little delayed as possible if she were to get back unnoticed, and the first servants rose early, at the ninth hour of night. She knew by the temperature that it was now about the sixth hour. Borne on a tiny breeze, there was even a faint hint of morning in the air already, so she would have to hurry.
    She knew the meeting place; the pool in the little park on the south side of the palace compound. She knew it because she frequently went there. The pool in their own garden had been filled