little gift? I left one for Aket-ten, too, just now. Hermia, Goddess of the Hearth. I never much cared for that image; a little too placid and bovine for my taste. You can claim she’s At-thera, your cow goddess; the wet-nurse to the god Haras, if I recall. I’m sure our friend will find that to be a suitably appropriate and pious image for a proper young lady to worship.” He sniggered.
Aket-ten scowled, but didn’t immediately reply, since Nofret was already talking. “We’re officially on religious retreat in the Temple of At-thera, as a matter of fact,” Nofret told them. “And it wasn’t even our idea! Our original plan was to be such a plague that the Great Ladies would send us to father’s country estate, but this was even better.”
Marit chuckled. “After we began asking all those questions, the Great Ladies suddenly recalled that when a new royal clan marries into the succession, the brides must spend a moon in religious retreat and instruction in a temple of their choice before the wedding. Of course, we have never heard of anything of the sort, but we agreed to it with some pouting, and chose the Goddess At-thera because they haven’t got one single priestess of noble blood there. And it’s brilliant, it couldn’t fit any better with our plans; we were supposed to leave all our attendants behind, be escorted by Royal Guards to whom one lady looks like every other lady, and live as the priestesses do.”
“So they won’t know that the Nofret and Marit that left the palace in their rain capes and with their escort are not us,” said Nofret. “All that they will see is a pair of twins.”
“Right, I’ve got that part,” said Kiron. “But where did you find substitutes?”
She sighed heavily. “Do you have any idea how often someone thinks that a clever gift for twins is a pair of twin body slaves? We just looked through our handmaidens until we found the ones we thought stood the best chance of carrying off the deception. We explained the situation to them, and divided our jewels with them—which, after two sets of betrothal gifts in addition to what we already owned, is more than we could carry anyway. They’ll be under guard, of course, which will give us at least a few days and possibly a week or two before they escape and run away.”
Well, that explained the plain linen shifts and horse-hair wigs. Marit wrung out the hem of her shift, and added, “Of course, they won’t be in any danger of being caught, because the Great Ones and the Magi will be looking for Nofret and Marit, not a pair of escaped slaves.”
“And ‘Marit and Nofret’ ordered the two ‘slaves’ here as a gift for Aket-ten, so they won’t even be missing from our entourage at the palace.” Nofret smiled in triumph, and Kiron didn’t blame her; the plan was very, very clever.
Except, perhaps for one small detail. “What if they betray you?” he asked.
Marit made a sour face. “That’s the first thing we made sure of. They’re Tian, and they’re slaves. We explained to them—in great detail—just how they would be questioned if they betrayed us. Because no one would ever believe that they didn’t know every detail of our plans, now, would they? And Tian slaves—well, I reminded them that it would never even occur to anyone to reward them for betraying us. I pointed out that they would be the first to be suspected, reminded them of what the Magi did to Toreth, to the Winged Ones, and to everyone who was in the way when they opened the Eye. I told them what I knew about how the inquisitors question slaves, which is rather more than I actually want to know, to tell you the truth, and pointed out that there are a lot more options open to someone torturing a female.”
Heklatis looked at her with awestruck fascination. “You horrible young woman!” he said, admiration in his voice.
“Not horrible,” Nofret corrected. “Brutally honest, and realistic. I didn’t enjoy telling them, and I wasn’t trying to intimidate them. We gave them the truth, and then a chance to escape with wealth. We picked the cleverest, because they have the best chance of escaping quickly, and we picked the temple they have the best chance of escaping from. On the whole, I think we should be commended. They certainly didn’t seem displeased with the bargain.”
“They didn’t have a choice, though,”