AU Fic: Cracked 7
Title: Cracked 7/?
Author: Dria
Rating: PG
Previous Chapters: One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six.
Summary: Tuti enters the temple in order to appeal to Ptah for some protection as they continue their journey, but has the god listened to him?
Author’s Notes: Another shift in POV (back to Tuti this time) and another dose of Egyptology to go with it. For the record, the description of the cult statue is entirely educated guess-work seeing as no cult statues have ever survived in the archaeological record. Seeing as they would have been made from the most precious materials available, that's not exactly surprising ^_^;
It had come as no surprise to Tuti that before he’d taken more than a few paces into the first hypostyle hall he was being challenged by a priest who wanted to know where he thought he was going. Tuti had bowed politely as he’d answered that he had travelled from Pi-Ramesses to see his father, Ptah, and had held out his hand to the priest so that the man could see the ring he’d just slipped on.
Fortunately, the priest had been one of the more intelligent ones, who had recognised the ring and the tone of voice, as well as what had actually been said and begged Tuti to wait while the High Priest was summoned. The man in question, short, hairless and with a leopard skin tied over the top of his white robe, was now leading Tuti through the temple and Tuti was thankful for his good eyesight because the High Priest apparently didn’t believe in lanterns.
They had already left the first hypostyle hall behind them and were now passing through into the second, a great room even thicker with columns than the previous hall had been. The ceiling in both halls was high, the solid stone roof supported by decorated pillars so thick that it would take four men with their arms fully outstretched to encircle them. Near the roof there were small spaces to allow air and a little light inside, but those shafts of daylight penetrated only so far into the darkness, leaving the paved floor below in an evening-like gloom.
From the second hall, Tuti and his lightless guide passed into a third. This one was still as wide as the others had been, but shorter, the door lintel was lower and Tuti could feel the floor beginning to rise at a steeper angle beneath his feet. The darkness grew that bit closer, the only source of light now being what had made it into the halls behind them and Tuti’s shadow stretched out ahead of him until it mixed and merged with all the other shadows that lurked here.
As the darkness had grown, so had the cold and the quiet, both had crept up on him so gradually Tuti had barely noticed them at first. But now, as he crossed over the threshold out of the third hall and into the next room, he couldn’t ignore either. The chill within these lifeless halls was making his skin prickle with goosebumps, the cloak over his shoulders wasn’t enough protection and it was with difficulty that he stopped himself from shivering in his sandals. And as for the silence... it wasn’t the peaceful quiet of a still night by the river, or even the cautious pause of a held-in breath so as to not disturb a sleeper. This was an intimidating silence wrapped in darkness, cold and stone; a wrong silence lurking within a city this size, with this many people around it, beneath a sun so hot; a powerful silence that dwarfed Tuti and his companion, smothered their footsteps and ate the thud of Tuti’s heart against his ribs so that he was little more than a fleeting ghost passing through the house of eternity.
Ahead of Tuti, the High Priest had been reduced to nothing more than a vague shape in the darkness, a darkness that was now so nearly complete that Tuti wondered if there was any point him having his eyes open at all. His other senses, as well as his own knowledge of temple architecture, told him what his eyes could not - that this room was smaller than the others, the ceiling was lower and that up ahead there was a door. A closed door.
The mixed scents of incense finally became strong enough and clear enough for Tuti to identify as he cautiously approached that which he could barely see. The broken balls of incense would be smouldering in two braziers, one on either side of the door; he knew that just as surely as he knew that the slight scraping noise that sounded so loud in the darkness was the High Priest pulling back the bolt that held this door safely shut.
‘Are you ready, my son?’ asked the High Priest, his voice echoing off the plastered walls with their reliefs and images that hadn’t been put there for mortal eyes.
Taking a deep breath that filled his lungs with incense-tainted air, Tuti drew himself up so that he stood straight and tall. ‘I’m ready, father.’
‘I will be waiting here for you; take all the time you need,’ and with those words, the High Priest pulled back the sanctuary door.
Tuti had been steeling himself for the shock that ran through his entire being every time he did this, but no amount of mental preparation could make you ready for facing a god. The first thing he noticed was, as always, the warm breath that swept out of the sanctuary as the door was swung back. It washed over Tuti, the foreign spices and strong incense the breath carried with it burning their way into his nose and mouth, getting into his throat and his lungs, filling him up and cleansing him inside and out.
The second thing to notice was, of course, the light. After the chilling darkness of the temple halls, the sanctuary glowed, the four lamps that sat one in each corner brought both illumination and warmth to that sealed room and, once his eyes had adjusted to the change, Tuti walked slowly forward with a certainty his steps hadn’t possessed before.
The sanctuary room was the smallest room in the whole temple, but it was also the most brilliant. The gold-covered walls reflected back the light of the lamps so that it seemed to Tuti that he was actually stepping inside the flame. The floor was smooth, swept perfectly clean as though no one had ever walked across it since creation, and rising, always rising up to where the god himself sat inside his shrine.
Tuti bowed low, breathing slowly and deeply, taking in more of the fragranced air and wishing he’d thought to ask the High Priest to let him rinse away the sweat and dust on his body before he did this. But it was too late for regrets now, having come this far he couldn’t just back out and go away, Ptah would never forgive him for such rudeness.
Straightening up, Tuti approached the shrine with all the reverence he could summon together, but still his hands trembled as he reached out to touch the wooden doors. The shrine was the only thing in the sanctuary not made from or covered in gold, its wood was dark with age and some part of it creaked as Tuti flicked back the clasp that held the doors shut. Licking his lips and feeling far more like an illicit thief than a rightful prince, Tuti opened the shrine.
And there he was, the lord of Memphis, the god Ptah sitting on his throne. Ptah’s seat was almost as dark as the wood of the shrine, but the bandages that covered his mummiform body were shining gold. From those bandages his hands emerged, crossed at the wrists and held snug against his chest. One hand grasped the was-sceptre and an ankh, the other was wrapped around a djed - power, life and stability, three things Tuti felt like he needed more than ever at the moment. The solid bandages covered Ptah’s body but they didn’t hide his head and claim him as a true mummy. Ptah’s face was free of any kind of disguise, his golden skin giving off its own light while something that looked a lot like life flickered within the lapis lazuli eyes. His features were serene though, his mouth set in neither a frown nor a smile above the thin beard that extended from his chin, and was matched in colour by the blue skullcap he wore instead of a more elaborate headdress.
The god met Tuti’s nervous gaze with all the calm composure Tuti had known he would find there and it was with a great deal of effort that Tuti broke eye contact to bow his head to Ptah again.
Tuti’s first impulse upon straightening up was, as usual, to speak, to put his request straight to the god without any kind of preamble because everyone knew that the gods could read the hearts’ of men. But, as usual, he didn’t. The High Priest may have pushed the door half-closed to give the illusion of privacy, but the man was still out there and for all that he was a priest, he was also a nobleman and a politician. And this wasn’t Seth sitting in the shrine in front of him, with his square ears and quirked mouth, but the unfamiliar lord Ptah - Tuti had to play by the rules.
The rituals were at least straightforward and the same in one temple as they were in every other. Incense, wine and food all had to be offered to the god, and the right words uttered in the right order, promising gifts, honour and power.
Tuti went through the motions with what he had available, relieved that it was the words that counted more than the actual items when he had only been able to carry a representative of each with him. One cake of bread from his own breakfast table, one flask of wine left over from the night before and one ball of incense moulded by Kimeru that morning, were placed before Ptah, transformed by the words of the spell into mountains of each.
Only once the offering had been made and the gifts removed to be placed on the low table behind the door where the remains of Ptah’s breakfast sat, did Tuti return to stand before the shrine and make his request.
Keeping his voice low, and lifting his chin so that he could meet Ptah’s calm gaze as best he could, Tuti licked his lips and said, ‘Hear me, father. Your son requests your wisdom and your protection. Hear me, father. Keep my household safe as we sail down to Thebes, and my friends’ whole. Hear me, father. Guide my decisions and hold my resolve firm, whatever happens along the way to test me. Hear me, father. I ask these things not for my sake, but for the sake of those that follow me. Father, hear your son.’
Dropping once more into a bow, Tuti held it for as long as it took him to get his breath back and to calm the frantic pattering of his heart. Even when he had himself back under control though, his hands still shook when he went to shut the shrine doors and it took him three attempts to get the clasp to click closed properly.
***
The trio waiting by the second pylon were just beginning their fourth half-hearted attempt at forming a conversation they could sustain, when Tuti emerged from the temple and jerked his head in an obvious order to follow him. Takashi reacted fastest, shouldering his way through the crowds after Tuti until he was level with the other man, leaving Daiki to hurry after them with Eiji at his heels.
Daiki didn’t need to be closer than he was to see that Tuti wasn’t saying much, if anything, in response to the questions Takashi was asking. But quite what reactions Takashi was getting from their prince he couldn’t tell when it was taking most of his attention to not lose them amongst the swarms of people outside the temple.
‘Hey, Daiki,’ Eiji’s voice rose above the chattering noise of the crowd. ‘Can’t we catch them up?’
‘I’m trying!’ Daiki snapped back over his shoulder. ‘What do you want me to do, start shoving even more?’
‘Let me lead,’ was the surprising answer he got and before Daiki could respond, Eiji was slipping past him, grabbing Daiki’s hand as he went and tugging him round and through the hoardes of people at a far greater pace than Daiki had been managing alone. Eiji apparently had the knack Daiki had never developed of knowing how to move through a crowd at speed. He could spot those gaps that appeared and disappeared again as the flow of people shifted this way and that around them, moving into the free spaces almost before they’d formed and hurrying on again without a pause, and only occasionally resorting to the pressure of a well-placed elbow. It was like threading a needle, Daiki supposed as they circled a large group of loud women, except the eye of the needle kept changing shape.
With Eiji leading them, it didn’t take long to rejoin Tuti and Takashi (who didn’t appear to even have noticed that they’d lost the pair of scribes), so that the four of them left the huge, crowded square outside the temple together. And though Daiki knew it was only natural for Eiji to drop his hand the moment they were no longer battling through the press of people, he still couldn’t help noticing how cold his hand suddenly felt when Eiji did so.
But there was no time to think about cold hands when Tuti wasn’t letting them linger in the street. Something was driving the prince forward through the busy market street at a brisk pace that Daiki knew they’d all struggle to match if it went on for long enough. It never failed to amaze Daiki how much energy Tuti possessed in that long, sometimes gangling frame of his. It wasn’t just the long strides and quick walk with which he led them down the street, away from the looming temple behind them, but the way Daiki had seen Tuti drive himself from one royal duty to another without a pause to catch his breath; from intense counsels with advisors and loud receptions of ambassadors, to long divine services and exercises with the chariot core. There were days when just looking at Tuti’s schedule made Daiki feel exhausted, and yet Tuti never complained. Oh he whined about, sure, he muttered comments under his breath or rolled his eyes in an exaggerated fashion, but he never told Daiki “I can’t do this”. Daiki sometimes wondered if his prince knew how to admit defeat.
At least, thought Daiki, it was easier for them to stay together here. The road they were on was busy, but it wasn’t crowded like the square had been, the huddles of people standing still were clustered around the stalls and workshops that lined the road, leaving the centre open for the flowing traffic. Their group skirted round peasant women with bundles of food and farmers with pairs of donkeys, stepping aside when a cart rumbled along packed with sacks or barrels or crates of live chickens and picking their way over a street that could do with a good clean considering how many animals used it. On they went, Tuti’s stride unbroken as they turned right onto a narrower road, past a man loudly declaring how wonderful his bread was to the masses, then left to take them down a broad street that cut between larger buildings.
As out of breath as Daiki was, the sight of the public buildings around them prompted him to poke Eiji in the arm and ask him, ‘So whereabouts is your old scribal school?’
Eiji, who had been staring at the back of Tuti’s head instead of at their surroundings, started a little at the direct question. ‘What? Oh it’s in another quarter, nearer one of the temples.’
Dodging round a merchant who’d stopped in the middle of the road to count the rings he’d just bought, Daiki continued, ‘Ptah’s temple, or Sekhmet’s, or one of the others?’
‘One of the others, I forget exactly who the resident god was.’
‘Huh.’ Normally Daiki tried to keep his nosy questions to himself, but after the shambles he’d made of conversation so far that morning, he felt like he had to make it up to Eiji somehow, or prove something to the other man. Pulling a grin onto his face, which felt strained even to him when he was having to maintain a walking speed that felt more like a jog, Daiki persisted, ‘Still, must feel strange to just show up in your old home like this and then vanish again all in the space of one morning, right?’
‘Not really, I never considered Memphis my home,’ Eiji shrugged dismissively.
‘But even if you weren’t born here, your training would have kept you in the city for years an-and... where were you born then?’
Eiji gave a second shrug that was almost as unhelpful as the first, his attention still fixed on Tuti ahead of them so that he didn’t spare Daiki so much as a glance. ‘Some village nearby, I don’t really remember it, what does it matter?’
Puzzled, Daiki asked, ‘Well... isn’t that where your family are from? Aren’t they still there now?’
‘My family are dead, Daiki.’
The blunt, emotionless statement almost made Daiki fall over his own feet in surprise. Struggling to put a coherent response together, the best he managed was a stuttered, ‘Oh. I-I’m sorry.’
Still not looking round, Eiji briskly continued, ‘We didn’t all get to grow up with a prince as our best friend you know. You should - wait, what’s that?’ Eiji’s abrupt question was loud, but not loud enough to rise above the sudden surge of noise ahead of them.
Now that Daiki was no longer being distracted by his companion he could notice what he’d been ignoring till now - people shouting, their voices angry and harsh, and the way there was suddenly a lot more people around them than there had been. But most of the noise wasn’t coming from the crowd, nor was anyone running away from the source of the commotion, in fact no one was moving at all, except to try and see the cause of the fuss better.
Tuti, being the tallest among the party, was the first to identify the problem that was causing the crowd to block the road and he pulled them all free of it, explaining as he did so, ‘Some kind of accident by the looks of it. Nothing serious, a couple of carts have collided and the drivers are arguing over what belongs to whom, but they aren’t clearing the road and no one can get past.’
Behind them a few new voices rose up out of the crowd to join in the argument. Tuti grinned, ‘Sounds like Memphis’ citizens don’t like being kept waiting anymore than we do.’
‘So what are we going to do?’ Eiji asked, crossing his arms in front of his chest. ‘We can’t hang around waiting for those peasants to bicker over every last chicken feather and cubit of linen. We agreed to meet the Captain at midday and if we don’t get moving quickly -’
‘I’m aware of that,’ Tuti snapped back, the grin gone again to be replaced by a frown. ‘Of course we have to keep moving, we’re just going to have to take a diversion. Come on.’
Briskly turning on his heel, Tuti strode off the main road, his cloak billowing angrily behind him as he disappeared into an alley between two shops.
Takashi rolled his eyes, muttered, ‘Well done, Eiji,’ and hurried after him, leaving the two scribes to follow in his wake.
TBC
Author: Dria
Rating: PG
Previous Chapters: One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six.
Summary: Tuti enters the temple in order to appeal to Ptah for some protection as they continue their journey, but has the god listened to him?
Author’s Notes: Another shift in POV (back to Tuti this time) and another dose of Egyptology to go with it. For the record, the description of the cult statue is entirely educated guess-work seeing as no cult statues have ever survived in the archaeological record. Seeing as they would have been made from the most precious materials available, that's not exactly surprising ^_^;
It had come as no surprise to Tuti that before he’d taken more than a few paces into the first hypostyle hall he was being challenged by a priest who wanted to know where he thought he was going. Tuti had bowed politely as he’d answered that he had travelled from Pi-Ramesses to see his father, Ptah, and had held out his hand to the priest so that the man could see the ring he’d just slipped on.
Fortunately, the priest had been one of the more intelligent ones, who had recognised the ring and the tone of voice, as well as what had actually been said and begged Tuti to wait while the High Priest was summoned. The man in question, short, hairless and with a leopard skin tied over the top of his white robe, was now leading Tuti through the temple and Tuti was thankful for his good eyesight because the High Priest apparently didn’t believe in lanterns.
They had already left the first hypostyle hall behind them and were now passing through into the second, a great room even thicker with columns than the previous hall had been. The ceiling in both halls was high, the solid stone roof supported by decorated pillars so thick that it would take four men with their arms fully outstretched to encircle them. Near the roof there were small spaces to allow air and a little light inside, but those shafts of daylight penetrated only so far into the darkness, leaving the paved floor below in an evening-like gloom.
From the second hall, Tuti and his lightless guide passed into a third. This one was still as wide as the others had been, but shorter, the door lintel was lower and Tuti could feel the floor beginning to rise at a steeper angle beneath his feet. The darkness grew that bit closer, the only source of light now being what had made it into the halls behind them and Tuti’s shadow stretched out ahead of him until it mixed and merged with all the other shadows that lurked here.
As the darkness had grown, so had the cold and the quiet, both had crept up on him so gradually Tuti had barely noticed them at first. But now, as he crossed over the threshold out of the third hall and into the next room, he couldn’t ignore either. The chill within these lifeless halls was making his skin prickle with goosebumps, the cloak over his shoulders wasn’t enough protection and it was with difficulty that he stopped himself from shivering in his sandals. And as for the silence... it wasn’t the peaceful quiet of a still night by the river, or even the cautious pause of a held-in breath so as to not disturb a sleeper. This was an intimidating silence wrapped in darkness, cold and stone; a wrong silence lurking within a city this size, with this many people around it, beneath a sun so hot; a powerful silence that dwarfed Tuti and his companion, smothered their footsteps and ate the thud of Tuti’s heart against his ribs so that he was little more than a fleeting ghost passing through the house of eternity.
Ahead of Tuti, the High Priest had been reduced to nothing more than a vague shape in the darkness, a darkness that was now so nearly complete that Tuti wondered if there was any point him having his eyes open at all. His other senses, as well as his own knowledge of temple architecture, told him what his eyes could not - that this room was smaller than the others, the ceiling was lower and that up ahead there was a door. A closed door.
The mixed scents of incense finally became strong enough and clear enough for Tuti to identify as he cautiously approached that which he could barely see. The broken balls of incense would be smouldering in two braziers, one on either side of the door; he knew that just as surely as he knew that the slight scraping noise that sounded so loud in the darkness was the High Priest pulling back the bolt that held this door safely shut.
‘Are you ready, my son?’ asked the High Priest, his voice echoing off the plastered walls with their reliefs and images that hadn’t been put there for mortal eyes.
Taking a deep breath that filled his lungs with incense-tainted air, Tuti drew himself up so that he stood straight and tall. ‘I’m ready, father.’
‘I will be waiting here for you; take all the time you need,’ and with those words, the High Priest pulled back the sanctuary door.
Tuti had been steeling himself for the shock that ran through his entire being every time he did this, but no amount of mental preparation could make you ready for facing a god. The first thing he noticed was, as always, the warm breath that swept out of the sanctuary as the door was swung back. It washed over Tuti, the foreign spices and strong incense the breath carried with it burning their way into his nose and mouth, getting into his throat and his lungs, filling him up and cleansing him inside and out.
The second thing to notice was, of course, the light. After the chilling darkness of the temple halls, the sanctuary glowed, the four lamps that sat one in each corner brought both illumination and warmth to that sealed room and, once his eyes had adjusted to the change, Tuti walked slowly forward with a certainty his steps hadn’t possessed before.
The sanctuary room was the smallest room in the whole temple, but it was also the most brilliant. The gold-covered walls reflected back the light of the lamps so that it seemed to Tuti that he was actually stepping inside the flame. The floor was smooth, swept perfectly clean as though no one had ever walked across it since creation, and rising, always rising up to where the god himself sat inside his shrine.
Tuti bowed low, breathing slowly and deeply, taking in more of the fragranced air and wishing he’d thought to ask the High Priest to let him rinse away the sweat and dust on his body before he did this. But it was too late for regrets now, having come this far he couldn’t just back out and go away, Ptah would never forgive him for such rudeness.
Straightening up, Tuti approached the shrine with all the reverence he could summon together, but still his hands trembled as he reached out to touch the wooden doors. The shrine was the only thing in the sanctuary not made from or covered in gold, its wood was dark with age and some part of it creaked as Tuti flicked back the clasp that held the doors shut. Licking his lips and feeling far more like an illicit thief than a rightful prince, Tuti opened the shrine.
And there he was, the lord of Memphis, the god Ptah sitting on his throne. Ptah’s seat was almost as dark as the wood of the shrine, but the bandages that covered his mummiform body were shining gold. From those bandages his hands emerged, crossed at the wrists and held snug against his chest. One hand grasped the was-sceptre and an ankh, the other was wrapped around a djed - power, life and stability, three things Tuti felt like he needed more than ever at the moment. The solid bandages covered Ptah’s body but they didn’t hide his head and claim him as a true mummy. Ptah’s face was free of any kind of disguise, his golden skin giving off its own light while something that looked a lot like life flickered within the lapis lazuli eyes. His features were serene though, his mouth set in neither a frown nor a smile above the thin beard that extended from his chin, and was matched in colour by the blue skullcap he wore instead of a more elaborate headdress.
The god met Tuti’s nervous gaze with all the calm composure Tuti had known he would find there and it was with a great deal of effort that Tuti broke eye contact to bow his head to Ptah again.
Tuti’s first impulse upon straightening up was, as usual, to speak, to put his request straight to the god without any kind of preamble because everyone knew that the gods could read the hearts’ of men. But, as usual, he didn’t. The High Priest may have pushed the door half-closed to give the illusion of privacy, but the man was still out there and for all that he was a priest, he was also a nobleman and a politician. And this wasn’t Seth sitting in the shrine in front of him, with his square ears and quirked mouth, but the unfamiliar lord Ptah - Tuti had to play by the rules.
The rituals were at least straightforward and the same in one temple as they were in every other. Incense, wine and food all had to be offered to the god, and the right words uttered in the right order, promising gifts, honour and power.
Tuti went through the motions with what he had available, relieved that it was the words that counted more than the actual items when he had only been able to carry a representative of each with him. One cake of bread from his own breakfast table, one flask of wine left over from the night before and one ball of incense moulded by Kimeru that morning, were placed before Ptah, transformed by the words of the spell into mountains of each.
Only once the offering had been made and the gifts removed to be placed on the low table behind the door where the remains of Ptah’s breakfast sat, did Tuti return to stand before the shrine and make his request.
Keeping his voice low, and lifting his chin so that he could meet Ptah’s calm gaze as best he could, Tuti licked his lips and said, ‘Hear me, father. Your son requests your wisdom and your protection. Hear me, father. Keep my household safe as we sail down to Thebes, and my friends’ whole. Hear me, father. Guide my decisions and hold my resolve firm, whatever happens along the way to test me. Hear me, father. I ask these things not for my sake, but for the sake of those that follow me. Father, hear your son.’
Dropping once more into a bow, Tuti held it for as long as it took him to get his breath back and to calm the frantic pattering of his heart. Even when he had himself back under control though, his hands still shook when he went to shut the shrine doors and it took him three attempts to get the clasp to click closed properly.
***
The trio waiting by the second pylon were just beginning their fourth half-hearted attempt at forming a conversation they could sustain, when Tuti emerged from the temple and jerked his head in an obvious order to follow him. Takashi reacted fastest, shouldering his way through the crowds after Tuti until he was level with the other man, leaving Daiki to hurry after them with Eiji at his heels.
Daiki didn’t need to be closer than he was to see that Tuti wasn’t saying much, if anything, in response to the questions Takashi was asking. But quite what reactions Takashi was getting from their prince he couldn’t tell when it was taking most of his attention to not lose them amongst the swarms of people outside the temple.
‘Hey, Daiki,’ Eiji’s voice rose above the chattering noise of the crowd. ‘Can’t we catch them up?’
‘I’m trying!’ Daiki snapped back over his shoulder. ‘What do you want me to do, start shoving even more?’
‘Let me lead,’ was the surprising answer he got and before Daiki could respond, Eiji was slipping past him, grabbing Daiki’s hand as he went and tugging him round and through the hoardes of people at a far greater pace than Daiki had been managing alone. Eiji apparently had the knack Daiki had never developed of knowing how to move through a crowd at speed. He could spot those gaps that appeared and disappeared again as the flow of people shifted this way and that around them, moving into the free spaces almost before they’d formed and hurrying on again without a pause, and only occasionally resorting to the pressure of a well-placed elbow. It was like threading a needle, Daiki supposed as they circled a large group of loud women, except the eye of the needle kept changing shape.
With Eiji leading them, it didn’t take long to rejoin Tuti and Takashi (who didn’t appear to even have noticed that they’d lost the pair of scribes), so that the four of them left the huge, crowded square outside the temple together. And though Daiki knew it was only natural for Eiji to drop his hand the moment they were no longer battling through the press of people, he still couldn’t help noticing how cold his hand suddenly felt when Eiji did so.
But there was no time to think about cold hands when Tuti wasn’t letting them linger in the street. Something was driving the prince forward through the busy market street at a brisk pace that Daiki knew they’d all struggle to match if it went on for long enough. It never failed to amaze Daiki how much energy Tuti possessed in that long, sometimes gangling frame of his. It wasn’t just the long strides and quick walk with which he led them down the street, away from the looming temple behind them, but the way Daiki had seen Tuti drive himself from one royal duty to another without a pause to catch his breath; from intense counsels with advisors and loud receptions of ambassadors, to long divine services and exercises with the chariot core. There were days when just looking at Tuti’s schedule made Daiki feel exhausted, and yet Tuti never complained. Oh he whined about, sure, he muttered comments under his breath or rolled his eyes in an exaggerated fashion, but he never told Daiki “I can’t do this”. Daiki sometimes wondered if his prince knew how to admit defeat.
At least, thought Daiki, it was easier for them to stay together here. The road they were on was busy, but it wasn’t crowded like the square had been, the huddles of people standing still were clustered around the stalls and workshops that lined the road, leaving the centre open for the flowing traffic. Their group skirted round peasant women with bundles of food and farmers with pairs of donkeys, stepping aside when a cart rumbled along packed with sacks or barrels or crates of live chickens and picking their way over a street that could do with a good clean considering how many animals used it. On they went, Tuti’s stride unbroken as they turned right onto a narrower road, past a man loudly declaring how wonderful his bread was to the masses, then left to take them down a broad street that cut between larger buildings.
As out of breath as Daiki was, the sight of the public buildings around them prompted him to poke Eiji in the arm and ask him, ‘So whereabouts is your old scribal school?’
Eiji, who had been staring at the back of Tuti’s head instead of at their surroundings, started a little at the direct question. ‘What? Oh it’s in another quarter, nearer one of the temples.’
Dodging round a merchant who’d stopped in the middle of the road to count the rings he’d just bought, Daiki continued, ‘Ptah’s temple, or Sekhmet’s, or one of the others?’
‘One of the others, I forget exactly who the resident god was.’
‘Huh.’ Normally Daiki tried to keep his nosy questions to himself, but after the shambles he’d made of conversation so far that morning, he felt like he had to make it up to Eiji somehow, or prove something to the other man. Pulling a grin onto his face, which felt strained even to him when he was having to maintain a walking speed that felt more like a jog, Daiki persisted, ‘Still, must feel strange to just show up in your old home like this and then vanish again all in the space of one morning, right?’
‘Not really, I never considered Memphis my home,’ Eiji shrugged dismissively.
‘But even if you weren’t born here, your training would have kept you in the city for years an-and... where were you born then?’
Eiji gave a second shrug that was almost as unhelpful as the first, his attention still fixed on Tuti ahead of them so that he didn’t spare Daiki so much as a glance. ‘Some village nearby, I don’t really remember it, what does it matter?’
Puzzled, Daiki asked, ‘Well... isn’t that where your family are from? Aren’t they still there now?’
‘My family are dead, Daiki.’
The blunt, emotionless statement almost made Daiki fall over his own feet in surprise. Struggling to put a coherent response together, the best he managed was a stuttered, ‘Oh. I-I’m sorry.’
Still not looking round, Eiji briskly continued, ‘We didn’t all get to grow up with a prince as our best friend you know. You should - wait, what’s that?’ Eiji’s abrupt question was loud, but not loud enough to rise above the sudden surge of noise ahead of them.
Now that Daiki was no longer being distracted by his companion he could notice what he’d been ignoring till now - people shouting, their voices angry and harsh, and the way there was suddenly a lot more people around them than there had been. But most of the noise wasn’t coming from the crowd, nor was anyone running away from the source of the commotion, in fact no one was moving at all, except to try and see the cause of the fuss better.
Tuti, being the tallest among the party, was the first to identify the problem that was causing the crowd to block the road and he pulled them all free of it, explaining as he did so, ‘Some kind of accident by the looks of it. Nothing serious, a couple of carts have collided and the drivers are arguing over what belongs to whom, but they aren’t clearing the road and no one can get past.’
Behind them a few new voices rose up out of the crowd to join in the argument. Tuti grinned, ‘Sounds like Memphis’ citizens don’t like being kept waiting anymore than we do.’
‘So what are we going to do?’ Eiji asked, crossing his arms in front of his chest. ‘We can’t hang around waiting for those peasants to bicker over every last chicken feather and cubit of linen. We agreed to meet the Captain at midday and if we don’t get moving quickly -’
‘I’m aware of that,’ Tuti snapped back, the grin gone again to be replaced by a frown. ‘Of course we have to keep moving, we’re just going to have to take a diversion. Come on.’
Briskly turning on his heel, Tuti strode off the main road, his cloak billowing angrily behind him as he disappeared into an alley between two shops.
Takashi rolled his eyes, muttered, ‘Well done, Eiji,’ and hurried after him, leaving the two scribes to follow in his wake.
TBC