Amun fiddled with the door, annoyed that it was still refusing to close without making that infuriating squeaking noise. The cabinet was ancient - older than anyone cared to remember - but it had been a gift from Ra to the Lord Warden, so however practical it might have been to just replace the hinge for a new one Amun couldn't bring himself to do it. And while there were undoubtedly craftsmen more skilled at carpentry than he, Amun was loath to allow anyone else within his master's quarters.
The Lord Warden was an extremely private god. Open and honest to be sure, but the man valued his solace and privacy greatly. The royal apartments were the Lord Warden's refuge, his bastion where he allowed himself to be weak. The intimacy of these rooms was sacrosanct and Amun would die before he allowed something to break that sanctity.
This was the place where a god allowed himself to weep, hiding his tears from the world.
Amun applied oil to the hinge, tentatively moving the door back and forth. It quieted slightly, but still had more of a grind to it than Amun would have cared to have. A lifetime of experience told him, unfortunately, that the dull creaking was the best he could hope to achieve until his pride finally broke and he brought in a craftsman to work on it. He would likely tolerate the hinge for another day before that.
He sat down in the modest wooden chair next to the hearth, a sturdy but pain piece of furniture that was the only piece he allowed himself to sit upon without being specifically directed to do so by the Lord Warden. His master often insisted upon Amun making use of the seats intended for his betters, but Amun didn't dare make use of his God's belongings in the Lord Warden's absence.
He yelped in surprise as he felt something poking him in the back, pulling back a tapestry to reveal a child's wooden sword. Amun rolled his eyes as he pulled the carved blade from where it had been hidden, turning the "weapon" over in his hands to get a look at the carvings along the side. Amun sighed. "Of course."
The Lord Warden's endless habit of adopting orphans was one of his more exhausting oddities, but few proved quite so exhausting as the street urchin he'd purchased on Delmak. The child had no manners and even less sense, acting as though he were an equal of the gods themselves. Why the Lord Warden tolerated the child's insubordination was anyone's guess, but he'd forbade corporal punishment of the children in his care so Amun's resources to curb the boy's insolence were limited.
It seemed like the only one who the irritating little hellion would even listen to was the Lord Warden. Even then it seemed like the child was half convinced that he was cleverer than the God. He was constantly questioning his very god, asking "why?" as though the Lord Warden owed him answers to every third thing the man said. Bafflingly the Lord Warden often answered him as though it weren't patently absurd for a nine year old boy to make demands of a god.
The boy was a horrible influence on the Lord Warden's other adopted children. He'd practically infected the lot of them with the belief that the Lord Warden was their father now, rather than their patron.
At least the child had loyalty. Amun snorted, testing the weapon in his hand. Likely the boy had hidden his sword in the Lord Warden's room in the hope that he might be able to pull the blade out at a moment's notice if he needed to protect his "father" like the heroes from one of the Warden's stories. Amun smiled - the child did listen to the Lord Warden's parables remarkably well. The child had even picked a name from one of them.
Amun rubbed the carved name thoughtfully with his thumb, before putting the toy back where the boy had hidden it. The child's loyalty shouldn't be discouraged. "Far be it from me to tell you that you're not a warrior, Grayson."
He patted the tapestry fondly, grunting in irritation as he realized that he was thinking well of the boy. It was unbecoming, unacceptable even! The child actually referred to Amun and Ul'tak as his uncles and Muminah as his Aunt as though they were all family - all equals. Amun shivered thinking back to the goblet his master had handed him.
"I'm not equal - I can't be. Men can't be equal to the gods." He fought back bitterness, his own childhood under Heka had not been quite so blessed as than enjoyed by the Orphans in the Lord Warden's care. He exhaled slowly, doing his best to push back the memories of the times before. Heka was dead. The Warden now reigned - good conquered evil and all was well.
He did not pretend to understand what confluence of magics had purged his master of the darkness that had plagued him, but he sent a thousand prayers to the universe for casting the evil from his heart. Life was good now. The people were happy. Amun was happy.
He couldn't remember a time when he had been happy, not since he'd been sold to Heka as an infant. There were times when he'd been proud and times when he hadn't been scared. But he'd never been truly happy. He'd never felt free.
The Lord Warden insisted that Amun was free now, that Amun could choose whatever he wanted. But what choice did he have? What other life would one like him live? He'd been bred and broken to serve as a Lo'tar. Without that what manner of cretin was Amun?
It was too much. Anything but serving the Lord Warden would be too different.
Then again, things were different. Nekheb was different. Even embroiled in endless war and reeling from the horrors of battle, the city was more full of life and laughter than he'd ever thought could be possible. Amun had gone to the market last week on a whim, only to find the place embroiled in a grete fete thrown in celebration of the Lord Warden. The people of Nekheb were celebrating the Lord Warden without it being solicited by the clergy.
They loved their God.
So did Amun.
He wiped moisture from his eye as he pulled back the cloth from the top of the hamper containing his mid-day meal, and chewed a piece of well seasoned meat. Licking his fingers after, Amun made contented smacking noises with his lips as he made sure to savor every bite. The spices warmed his mouth and throat with a comforting burn that pleasantly as he ate a dollop of white sauce on flatbread out of a ceramic bowl.
He blushed as he pulled up the last bit of bread to find a flower at the bottom of the hamper. It was a small token of affection from the cook who'd made his meal, but he was still conceptually getting used to the idea of being an eligible bachelor. The flower's blue petals were a polite indication of a wish for greater than mere friendship. Most men his age wouldn't bat an eye at an innocent gesture of interest, but Amun hadn't the foggiest what to do when a woman flirted with him.
Courting has always been the affair of other people, a seemingly exhausting dance for men without his holy mandate. As a eunuch Amuns interactions with women hadn't even been particularly complicated. The household staff were mostly servants pooled from those women who'd lacked the proper temperament to remain in the clergy, those who'd wanted families or who'd had crises of faith requiring they leave the clergy but not service to the divine. There were some intermingled slaves bought at market, but the inner sanctum of the Lord Warden was a place for believers.
He'd spent decades with these women as their peer, listening to their problems and encouraging their success. Now that his manhood was restored far too many of them were immediately eager to court him. There were times - brief times - where he almost wished that the Lord Warden hadn't consented to allow his restored manhood. Life was simpler when one didn't have to try and navigate the confusing landscape of human pair bonding rituals.
He was regularly finding himself reduced to a jibbering mess of the man he knew himself to be, overcome with the simple proximity of women he'd worked with since childhood. Innocent gestures of affection were becoming wholesale liabilities to social interaction. A woman had simply touched his arm that morning and she might as well have struck him with a Zat-blast given the jolt of shock it had sent through his body.
It was embarrassing, these were their problems most men worked out in there adolescence not their adulthood. He'd spent so much of his life without gender that now that one had been thrust upon him that he found himself lacking the proper mentors to whom he might turn in order to figure out what one was supposed to do with one's self. He was quickly becoming a voyeur of young Jaffa soldiers in the midst of their training in the hopes that he might gain some measure of clarity by proximity. It wasn't working particularly well.
His glassy eyed stare was only half focused on the room around him as he grew lost in his thoughts, roving across the room for other items in need of tending or mending. He idly considered an ugly little statue of a man on the Lord Warden's desk, noting it's bulbous face and stitched clothing before it occurred to him that the ugly statue was staring back.
He just about jumped out of his own skin when the statue blinked, fighting the urge to move with every fibre of his being as the little man waddled across the table towards him. It scurried along, taking care not to trip over its long beard as it walked, climbing over dinner ware and books with surprising grace given their relative size.
It was clearly a creature from the land of Sun and Snow - though not one that Amun had yet seen. He was knowledgeable enough to realize that the creature's stature would bear little relevance to the potential danger such a thing could pose. Creatures of the other world often seemed harmless, right up to the point they killed their prey.
He wanted to cower from the little man as it hopped down from the table and sauntered up to him, flinching as the tiny thing walked up to his feet. The man couldn't have been taller than the span of Amun's hand. He had to crane his neck to get a proper look as he examined the Lo'tar's sandals. The little man pulled at his beard pensively as he strolled around Amun's feet, examining the shoes from every angle before grunting approvingly. "You take good care of your shoes."
"Thank you." Amun replied, looking for the trap in the demon's words and finding none. The demons of Sun and Snow could only speak truth. It was known.
"I had hoped you would have worse shoes so that I could demonstrate my skills." The little man spoke with a mixture of surprise and disappointment. "I do not often find those requiring only some of my work. I will have to make you an entirely new set of shoes for you to understand my worth."
"You… repair shoes?" Amun looked at the tiny demon, trying to reconcile the stories told by firelight of demon soldiers of fire and frost with the miniscule creature pulling a measuring tape from it's pocket to measure the side of his foot.
"My people fix many things. We sew. We clean. We cook. It is our way." The little man pulled out pipe from his apron as he started annotating the measurements he was taking of Amun's foot. "Do you prefer a high arch to the sole or are you more of a mid arch person? Your current sandals have no arch at all, but that looks uncomfortable."
"Am I what?" The Lo'Tar hadn't the foggies idea what the little demon was talking about.
"Ah! Good, then you have never had a proper fitting? Then I will be able to show my worth." The little man snapped his fingers and the sheet of paper disappeared. "A proper set of shoes will be the price then."
"I have agreed to no price." Amun stated emphatically. "We have no bargain."
"I am no swindler." The little man waved away Amun's concerns. "My people have no patience for the games of Sidhe. I will give you a glorious set of shoes in exchange for you listening to a proposal. I promise that I will take no action, nor tolerate any action to be taken, that would harm you or those you care about in the brokering of this deal. I give you shoes, you will give me time? It is agreed?"
"But… I have shoes already." Amun replied to the little man.
"Not as fine as these though." The little man pointed to Amun's right, drawing Amun's attention to a cluster of little men and women Amun would have sworn hadn't been there only moments ago. There were dozens of tiny men crawling over a pair of fine leather boots, ascending the shoes like a carpenter working on a multi-story building. Next to them, women sat cooking some sort of stew in a tiny pot - tending to children smaller than Amun''s thumb.
"They are fine boots." Amun replied, not sure what do with the village worth of demons suddenly surrounding him.
"Not just fine. Enchanted." Replied the little man. "They will always be shined. They will always be comfortable. Most importantly, they will help you find the fastest route to where you wish to be. They are very good shoes."
"How long of a proposal?" Amun asked, looking at his reflection in the mirrored surface of the polished black leather.
"Not long. If you tell me to leave, I will stop talking and leave. The shoes will be yours." Replied the tiny man.
"Ok." Amun replied, feeling a rush of adrenaline. This was the sort of decision a man made. Taking charge, dealing with danger. This was the sort of thing the Lord Warden rewarded.
The tiny man puffed his pipe twice. "My people want to work for you."
"The Kingdoms of Sun and Snow have treaties with the Lord Warden already." Amun blinked he tentatively picked up the boots, removing his own sandals and pulling up the Furling made clothing. They fit more perfectly than anything he'd ever hoped to own.
"I do not want to work for the Lord Warden." The tiny man snorted derisively. "I want to work for you."
The Lo'tar paused in the process of lacing his boots, making eye contact with the little man in shock. "Me?"
"You." Replied the little man. "My people need a home. You are the head of this household. If you let us live here we will clean and care for all the shoes in this palace. Your household will be orderly as none have been since the Folly. We will serve you and protect the secrets of your home as though it were our own."
"What do you get out of it?" Amun asked nervously.
"Have you seen the state of the shoes in this palace?" The man replied in a scandalized whisper as though it were self evident. "There are thousands of them, and they're all damaged. We could fix them! Broken shoes, dirty corners, many things there are that we can fix."
"But what do you want?" Amun repeated the question.
"There are broken shoes." Replied the little man, as though confused by Amun's inquiry.
"Demon, are you telling me that you've come to enter into a pact with me to haunt my household because you can't stand the idea of poorly tended shoes?" Amun laughed.
"Shoes, rooms, cupboards, there is just so much clutter." Replied the tiny man. "We would take food to support ourselves, but we do not eat much." He gestured to the thimble full of stew.
"So for the price of letting you eat less than the rats mange in a day, your people would clean and tend to the palace." Amun asked.
"But you must never tell anyone that we are here, or we will unmake the work that we have done." Replied the tiny man.
"... Why?" The Lo'tar inquired.
"It is how things are done." The tiny man asserted, puffing at his pipe and holding out a miniscule hand. "Do we have an accord?"
Amun considered the tiny creature, seeking the trap in the beasts words. He found none. Nervously he reached out his pinky and shook the tiny man's hand. The man grinned and disappeared in a puff of smoke along with the entire village worth of little people.
"I am Tikk. Speak my name and I will come." Spoke the evaporating whisps.
Amun stood up, the boots his only proof that he'd not just imagined the entire affair, and walked back to the squeaking cabinet. He opened it slowly and smiled broadly.
There was no more squeaking to be heard. Well, Amun supposed if he was to be the most trusted manservant of a God of Magic, he might as well had a bit of magic in his own corner. He leaned back in his chair and was gratified to feel the weight of the child's toy hidden in the tapestry behind him.
Things really were better now.