Men of Bronze by Scott Oden

and who served.
    Ahmose heard the silky grate of oiled stone hinges and looked up. A section of the palace wall swung outward; a woman stepped through. Her long cotton gown flared out behind her as she crossed the throne room. Pharaoh smiled.
    “You heard, I take it?”
    “Heard? The palace is all a-twitter! Are you seriously considering sending troops to Memphis?” Her voice echoed the concern etched on her brow.
    “Not send. Lead. Ah, Ladice. What choice do I have? In all my years, I’ve learned one lesson quite well: If I show weakness, I’ll not be long for the throne.” Ahmose gazed at her, felt the soothing effect her presence had on him. He could have stared at her for an eternity.
    In her youth Ladice had been an incomparable beauty, one of those rare few the gods had gifted with a symmetry of form and a keenness of intellect. Poets from Cyrene to Byzantium composed verses in her honor. Sculptors begged to immortalize her in stone and bronze. Indeed, had Ladice been born a man, all of Greece would have had a new demigod to worship, a new warrior to emulate, a new philosopher to follow. As a man she would have conquered nations; as a woman, she conquered hearts. Yet, even though her thirtieth year had passed, Ladice’s allure faded but little. She retained the beauty of a Spartan queen tempered with the magnetism of wisdom and maturity.
    Ladice knelt by the throne and clasped Pharaoh’s hand. Dark, liquid eyes stared up at him. “My heart cares more for your safety, husband. I’ve heard this Phanes embodies the worst aspects of my people — ruthless, ambitious, and cruel. As a tool, you could ask for none better, but as an adversary …”
    “What would you counsel?”
    Ladice sighed; her shoulders slumped. “I think you must do this, if for no other reason than to show the nobles of Egypt that you fear no man.”
    He stroked her cheek. “I should free you from your bondage, child. Let you return to your home in Cyrene. I have kept you overlong as a slave of my harem.”
    The woman laughed. It was a light, silvery sound that brought a smile to the old Pharaoh’s face. “Child? You are as adept at flattery as you are at statecraft. Do I toil under your overseer’s lash, my husband? Am I a silky plaything pining away in your seraglio? I think not. I live in the shadows by your side, giving you my love and my strength, should it be your desire.”
    Ahmose kissed her gently. “If Phanes embodies the worst in your people, then you, favorite of my wives, symbolize what I fell in love with.” He broke their embrace. “Time grows short. Be off with you.”
    “Shall I come to you tonight?” she said, her fingers tracing the line of his jaw.
    Ahmose smiled. “Surely you do not wish to lay with a dried up old man?”
    “Now you presume to tell me my own mind,” Ladice said, taking the
nemes
from him and arranging it perfectly. She placed the
uraeus
, the golden circlet wrought in the image of the divine cobra, on his forehead. “Let me come to you, if only to lay together and whisper.”
    “After a dozen years,” Ahmose said, “you still surprise me.”
    “I will take that as a yes.” Ladice kissed him quickly and hurried from the room. Pharaoh took up the crook and flail and tried to gather his thoughts, his purpose hindered by teasing images of his favorite wife. He laughed like a man twenty years his junior. “Guards!”

     
    “I do not understand,” Tjemu said for the thousandth time. The man who shared his bench was a
hem-netjer
, a god’s servant; he threw his hands up in defeat. “You tell me tales that openly conflict with one another, and say that it does not matter? It does matter.”
    “No,” the
hem-netjer
closed his eyes, “all that matters is that we enact the rites and observe the festivals that mirror the perfection of divine order, and to acknowledge and hold sacred the gods as represented by their animal forms.”
    Tjemu looked lost. “So, when you worship the crocodile,