II. In the Valley of the Dead
"I will build a city in the Valley of the Dead."
Cassandra was stretched out beside Mathayus, her left arm and leg draped over his body. One finger traced idle patterns over the skin of his chest. "Why?" A single candle still flickered low beside them, but the narrow window showed the first yellow stain of sunrise.
"It's my home... it was my home." Mathayus turned his gaze toward Cassandra, and a gentle smile ghosted across his face. "I can't forget who I am. Balthazar was right. I can't forget where I came from." He caught her wandering finger, bringing her hand up to his mouth to kiss it.
"And who will build this city for you in the Valley of the Dead?" Raising herself up, Cassandra slid her body atop Mathayus'. "And who will live in this city in the Valley of the Dead?"
Her hair brushed over his lips. He buried his hands in it, stroking through the dark, sleek strands. "My people will build it. And more than just my people..." His words were lost for a long moment in her mouth, in her taste and scent. Then he pulled away.
"Everyone who comes, I'll give them land, and homes, and they'll work for me while the Nile is flooded, and farm the richness the sacred river leaves behind."
Cassandra kissed him again, nipping his lower lip playfully. His hands found her throat, then her breasts, then gripped her waist. Her lips explored his jaw line, then worked their way down to his chest. "But there isn't enough land in your kingdom for all the people who would come to such a promise."
A moment later, Mathayus had rolled over, trapping Cassandra beneath him. His own long hair, freed from its ties for sleep he hadn't gotten, spilled onto her face. Sputtering and giggling, she tried to brush it away, but Mathayus pinned her wrists down. Teeth grazed over her earlobe, then down her neck.
The king shrugged his hair back over his shoulders and grinned. "Then I will need more land."
* * *
He'd never had the chance to say goodbye to his brother, not with his days being occupied almost solely with survival.
Now Mathayus shadowed a small pit he'd dug in the sandy ground of the Valley of the Dead. In his hands he held a dagger--his own dagger, the one Memnon had killed Jesup with. Perhaps, Mathayus thought, he meant to give Jesup a shameful death. But for an Akkadian, there was no greater honor than to die by one's brother's blade. No wonder there were so few of us.
His fingers flipped the blade over and over compulsively. Jesup's body had been burned. This dagger was all the king had left of his brother. Dried blood still lined the center seam of the short blade, coating the join at the hilt as well. Finally, he knelt down, setting the dagger gently into the makeshift grave, and swept the sand back over it.
"The Egyptians say that if the body is destroyed, the soul decays as well," he said aloud, one hand still resting on the sand. "But you were an Akkadian, my brother. We have both seen the spirits of our ancestors walking this land. And so I will give you, and all the spirits here, a home. A city. A city of the dead, in the Valley of the Dead." He rose to his feet. "You will never be forgotten."
Over the grave, Mathayus erected a rocky cairn. To the east, he raised a standing stone with his own hands. Then he turned to the west, where a horde of people lined the horizon, waiting.
His sorceress approached him. "They have come for you."
"They have come to build for me."
Cassandra's lips tilted upwards. "No, they have come because of your promise. Because you are a king they can love."
Mathayus turned to her with his brother's grave in his eyes. "And you, my sorceress? Am I a king you can love?"
"It is the man that I love, my lord. Not the king."
* * *
The courtyard wall made a perfect perch for the small ex-thief. Below, a handful of red guards stood in a knot in one corner, out of reach of the flickering torchlight.
Arpid caught "Captain" and "treason," and, carried up on a sudden gust, "The Scorpion King must die."