The God’s Guardian (The Pharaoh’s Promise #3)

Chapter Twelve

He moved into the palace.

Pravar had gone with him to collect his things, clucking at the destruction left by the search. He had not come to Alexandira alone, but with a sizeable retinue provided by the Samrat as befitted an envoy of the empire. As much as Bhaskar chafed against his new station, the bevy of servants was very useful, especially since his own inclination was to sit in the middle of the mess and cry.

Anu had gone as well: silent, watchful, and not at all helpful.

Even at the palace, he did not leave them in peace, entering their new quarters and positioning himself at the door. Pravar seemed oblivious to the intrusion, as though having a half-naked, heavily muscled man standing in silent attendance was commonplace. The shishya continued to regale Bhaskar with gossip from Badrinath as though they had simply met on the street.

“Pravar,” Bhaskar finally said. “I don’t understand. Why did my parents…”

But Pravar cut him off with a sharp glance toward their unwanted companion. “Remember,” he said, “who your father is. Your parents took what precautions they deemed necessary.”

Bhaskar frowned at his words. Who his father was? Then it dawned on him. “Pravar, did my father see so—”

“The note you left? They were making the arrangements for you to come even then.” He shook his head. “You should have trusted they would indulge you, Bhaskar-ji. We could have travelled together. But you were always impatient in search of knowledge.”

His parents were going to allow his trip all along? They had only ever discouraged him from going. He mulled over the rest of what Pravar had said, or not said. He was forced to remember that the Samrajni hadn’t visited the shrine merely to light candles. She came to consult his father much as his cousins came to Bhaskar when they needed luck. What had his father foreseen that led his parents to use all their influence to place him under the protection of two courts?

He turned to Anpu, standing impassively at the door, clearly listening to every word. “Why just stand there? If you want to know something, why don’t you ask?”

“Do you style yourself a god, like the pharaohs?” The sneer in his voice made it clear what he thought of the idea.

“I never claimed to be a god.”

“God or not, if you know something about the missing artifact, you would be wise to tell me.”

Guilt swamped Bhaskar, but he remembered Callius and Hemhat. “So you can have me arrested again?”

Some emotion passed over Anu’s face, but then it hardened and he bit out, “That wasn’t me. You should be more careful who you trust.”

“You were following me from the first night,” Bhaskar accused. “Because you thought I was a thief.”

“We received word the stolen item was on your ship, bound for Alexandria. You were one of the few not continuing to Rome. I would have been a fool not to watch you. But that doesn’t mean—” He broke off.

“It does not mean you trust me any more now,” Bhaskar said bitterly.

“How can I, when you keep so many secrets of your own, Vidwan Bhaskar?”

After that, his life settled into some sense of routine, if not normality. He resumed his studies. Anpu escorted him to the library daily. At least after the first two days he did not remain standing stiffly behind Bhaskar’s bench all day. He sent the guard who had held him back from the chariot in the street. Kysen, he was called. Unlike Anpu’s rigid posture, Kysen lounged against one of the columns while Bhaskar worked and sometimes asked questions about the star charts and why the moon appeared to change shape. Over time, Bhaskar grew comfortable in his presence, greeting him each day and even offering to share some of the delicacies from the palace kitchen at lunch.

In the afternoon, Anpu would collect him and return with him to the inner palace. Their outings continued, but gone were visits to Meroe and Kharaka’s restaurant or quiet conversations under the Persea tree in the necropolis. There were no more nights spent on the roof, tracing the paths of the heroes amongst the stars.

Instead, Bhaskar now saw Alexandria as a guest of the King and Queen. He toured the renowned lighthouse of Pharos and the vineyards of Mareotis. There were lectures by the most most well-known intellectuals on topics ranging from mathematics to natural history to philosophy. Dinners held with visiting nobles were filled with music that ranged from the haunting tones of the aulos to the rhythmic, lively beats of hand drums. He attended many plays, though the sharp-witted phlyakes, known for their satirical humor, were noticeably absent from court performances. Anpu smiled at the appropriate lines, but there were no deep, delighted laughs at the antics of the performers.

When he remarked on the kindness of the Ptolemies, Pravat arched a brow and replied, “So Samrat may hear of the might and wealth of the Pharaohs.”

Anpu accompanied him everywhere and while he might call himself a bodyguard, he was hardly a servant. After the bitter words exchanged on their first day at the palace, they treated each other with careful, almost formal, civility. Vidwan Bhaskar, would you care for more wine and Commander Anpu, I wish to stay late at the library tonight became typical of their interchanges.

Bhaskar burned with shame at the fantasies he had concocted, Anu as a dockworker or bricklayer. His mother would have sent him to scrub the stone floors in the shrine for his conceit. He had been happy to attribute Anu with intelligence and some small education. How could he have failed to notice that this man’s intellect equaled or exceeded his in every way? Although not an astronomer, his position required him to be well versed in politics, history, warfare, and the secrets of the temple. Bhaskar might have had some favor bestowed upon him by the Samrat, but Anpu had earned his high status at the temple and the court of the Ptolemies.

And, despite knowing he was a great fool, Bhaskar could not ignore Anpu or banish him from his heart. They were together almost constantly, and while they did not talk except where necessary, a style of strange, indirect communication developed between them. Bhaskar thought Pravar might have taught them this inadvertently. The shishya rarely acknowledged Anpu’s presence at all, but he sometimes spoke to Bhaskar of things he clearly wanted the listener to hear.

Without quite knowing how it started, Bhaskar and Anpu followed suit. What they would not share with each other, they gave to strangers—first, subtly barbed comments, then stories of their upbringing, their thoughts on science or religion, their likes and dislikes.

Bhaskar hoarded away each piece of Anpu, but could not imagine crossing the great gulf between them. Slowly, however, the gulf seemed to narrow. One day, while they sat by the Nile at sunset, Anpu suddenly asked him directly.

“Why do you dislike being known as lucky? You are favored by the gods.”

Bhaskar was startled. He had never actually told anyone he disliked the title. He answered without thinking, “The blessings of the gods always come with a price. I learned quickly that someone must always pay for my luck.”

He hesitated, because the rest was something he rarely spoke of. “When I was young, I used to throw dice with my friends. We were children, so it was only a game, though we made bets as we had seen the men do. Our stakes were small items we cherished—simple things, toys or trinkets that passed among us. One winter day, one of the boys wore a brightly colored woolen shawl. I thought it beautiful and coveted the garment, so I convinced him to wager it.”

The image was burned into his memory, the shouting of the other boys, his anticipation as he shook the dice and threw.

“The gods favored me, and I won the shawl.”

He paused, lost in the memory, reliving the shame. “We were Brahmins. At the shrine, we were not wealthy by city standards, but the gods and the pilgrims, provided for us. We never lacked what we needed. That was my first lesson in poverty. The boy had no other warm clothing. The next time I saw him, he wore a thin cotton garment, and he shivered in the cold. Realizing my sin, I tried to return the shawl, but he refused it—he said the gods had favored me with it, and so it was mine.”

The boy had fallen ill, and Bhaskar had knelt at the shrine, praying until his knees were sore. He prayed long into the night until Pravar and his parents had carried him, weeping, back home. He had hated the shawl after that. Yet he wore it every day, hoping the boy could see that the item was treated with respect by the Brahmins of the shrine—that it was not taken lightly, nor discarded.

The boy had recovered but, “The worst part was that I was never punished.”

His mother had held him as he wept, sorrow and understanding in her voice as she stroked his head. “We are favored of the gods, my son. It is our duty to invoke their blessings wisely.”

Since then, the memory of the rolling dice had always signaled the notice of the gods. He rarely played games of chance, until recently when he needed to fund his trip. Even then, he had been careful of his play, careful of the other players. Until that last night on the river. And once again, the gods had extracted their price.

“Your life must have been very different,” he finally said. Not quite a question.

Anpu had turned to face him, something unreadable in his gaze. Then he looked back out over the river, the orange light of the setting sun reflecting off the water.

“Maybe,” he temporized. “Or maybe we were not so different. My family is also connected to the gods, if in a different way. We are protectors. I learned duty from an early age. Even as a child, my play was at warfare. My father and his father and his father before him for many generations have served as temple guards, palace guards, even bodyguards to the ancient pharaohs themselves. In that role, we learn early that men lie, they steal, they murder. I was trained early to demand proof rather than to rely on words. My life and the lives of others depended on it.”

He said no more, but continued to stare out at the river, fingering the ram’s head pendant around his neck absently before abruptly recalling himself and reminding Bhaskar that they must return to the palace to prepare for dinner.

Bhaskar never met the king, but one day, Queen Arsinoe herself escorted him to view the menagerie. Bhaskar marveled at the great warrior queen as much as the animals. Like Anu, she favored the Egyptian styles, and she was dressed in a pleated linen kalasiris dyed in deep blue, with a collar of gold and lapis lazuli draped over her shoulders, heavy earrings, and a uraeus crown atop her braided hair.

Anpu was well-known to her and she greeted him warmly. As they walked, the two discussed temple matters, the resurgence of several cults among the populace, and the ongoing search for stolen artifacts. When they came to the giraffe enclosure, Bhaskar gazed in awe at the height of the animal. It would tower over even an elephant!

“Big soulful eyes and long legs that carry them across the plains like the winds. Beautiful.” Anpu’s voice came in his ear, too low to be overheard by even Arsinoe a short distance away. Bhaskar pretended not to hear as well.

The queen had moved on to the lion enclosure. Everyone knew the great cats were favorites of hers, perhaps because of their kinship with Bastet. Bhaskar had imagined lions to be something like snow leopards and he was unprepared for their sheer size, their muscular forms radiating lethal power.

The attendants brought meat. The queen fed her pets with her own hands, and let the ferocious predators lick her face. But that was not what stayed with Bhaskar. It was the moment the lions rose from where they slumbered and stalked across their pen to greet their mistress. With startling clarity, he remembered the eyes he had seen in the dark while walking home from Euryleon’s. He had been wrong. If these great beasts stood in the spot among the pomegranate trees, their eyes would be at the same level as the ones he thought he had seen, higher above the ground than any cat he could have imagined.

By day, Bhaskar continued to bury himself in his studies, poring over the scrolls at the library until his eyes burned. His evenings were dedicated to the entertainments of the court. But at night, his thoughts drifted to other questions—questions he dared not ask. What had become of Hemhat? Whom could he trust?

To Bhaskar’s dismay, the citizens of Alexandria somehow learned of his least-favored titles. As Anpu escorted him through the streets, sometimes small crowds would gather, calling out, “ Bhaskar the Lucky” or “Bhaskar of the Gods!” They tried to touch him for luck, or worse, for healing, which had never been his gift.

One day, as they were returning from the library, a particularly enthusiastic crowd surrounded them. An old woman, her face etched with desperation, pushed her way through the throng. The others drew back as they noticed the open sores covering her body. A flicker of sympathy crossed Anpu’s face, but it quickly hardened as she pressed closer.

“Step away!” he commanded.

“Please, kyrios,” she pleaded in the thick Greek of the lower quarters.

Bhaskar's heart ached as he took in her condition, but he knew there was nothing he could do. “I’m sorry, mataji. Go in peace, and may the gods be merciful.”

A look of anger transformed the woman’s face, and she spat at him, cursing him and calling him names for refusing to help her.

Anpu’s attention was now fully on the woman. He placed a hand on his sword, his voice sharp as he warned, “Do not come any nearer.”

In that moment of distraction, Bhaskar felt a swift movement beside him. Hemhat emerged from the crowd like a shadow, his expression guarded. Without a word, he caught Bhaskar’s gaze, then pressed a small piece of papyrus into his hand. Before Bhaskar could react, Hemhat had melted back into the crowd.

Bhaskar quickly slipped the papyrus into his satchel, then schooled his features, hoping Anpu would attribute any increased nervousness to the crowd and the confrontation with the afflicted woman.

Back at the palace, he waited until Anpu had stepped out into the passageway to talk to one of the palace guards before he carefully unrolled the papyrus. He read it slowly, considering what he might do and whom he could trust.

After much thought, he rolled the scrap into Pravar’s prayer scroll, where he knew it would be found without attracting any attention.

He didn’t know why he was surprised that Pravar functioned as the true envoy of the Samrat. Pravar had managed the day-to-day affairs at the shrine for as long as he could remember, organizing everything from the household to visits from nobles as high as the Samrajni herself. Growing up isolated in the mountains, Bhas had never found it unusual to sit at dinner with a great lord or lady. It was not until he saw the workings of the court in Alexandria that Bhaskar began to understand the true trappings of power and politics and wonder what Pravar had been before he came to Badrinath.

While Bhaskar ached to confide in the man who protected him every day, it was Pravar to whom he entrusted Hemhat’s brief message.