I placed my hands on my hips so that he knew that I was waiting.
“All right, all right.” He descended into the underground chamber and reappeared with my mother’s treasure, which would be mine someday. “So your sister must be getting married,” he said.
I held out my hand. “The collar.”
“She would make a fine queen.”
“So everybody says.”
He smiled like he knew my thoughts on the matter, the prying old donkey, then he held out the collar and I snatched it. I ran back to my room and held up the heavy jewel like a prize. Nefertiti looked to my mother.
“Are you sure?” She looked at the gold, and her eyes reflected its light.
My mother nodded. She fastened it around my sister’s neck, then we both stood back. The gold began at my sister’s throat in a lotus pattern, dipping between her breasts in droplets of various lengths. I was glad she was two years older than me. If I had been the one to marry first, no man would have chosen me over her. “Now we are ready,” my mother said. She led the way to the Audience Chamber, where the queen was waiting. We could hear her speaking with my father, her voice low and grating and full of command.
“Come when you are called,” my mother said quickly. “There are gifts on the table from our treasury. Bring them when you enter. The larger one is for Nefertiti to carry.”
Then she disappeared inside, and we stood in the tiled hall to wait for our summons.
Nefertiti paced. “Why wouldn’t she choose me to marry her son? I’m her brother’s child, and our father has the highest position in the land.”
“Of course she’ll choose you.”
“But for Chief Wife? I won’t be anything less, Mutny. I won’t be some lesser wife thrown into a palace that Pharaoh comes to visit only every two seasons. I’d rather marry a vizier’s son.”
“She’ll want you.”
“Of course, it’s really up to Amunhotep.” She stopped pacing, and I realized that she was talking to herself. “In the end, he’ll be the one who chooses. He’s the one who has to get a son on me, not her.”
I winced at her crassness.
“But I’ll never get to see him without charming his mother.”
“You’ll do well.”
She looked at me, as if noticing that I was there for the first time. “Really?”
“Yes.” I sat down in my father’s ebony chair and called one of the household cats to me. “But how do you know that you will love him?” I asked.
Nefertiti looked at me sharply. “Because he’s about to become the Pharaoh of Egypt,” she said. “And I am tired of Akhmim.”
I thought of Ranofer with his handsome smile and wondered if she was tired of him, too. Then my mother’s servant came through the doors of the Audience Chamber and the cat slipped away.
“Are we to come?” Nefertiti asked anxiously.
“Yes, my lady.”
Nefertiti looked at me. Her cheeks were flushed. “Walk behind me, Mutny. She has to see me first and fall in love.”
We entered into the Audience Chamber with the gifts from our treasury, and the room seemed bigger than I remembered. The painted marshes on the wall and blue river tiles on the ground looked brighter. The servants had done well, even washing out the stain on the hanging above my mother’s head. The queen looked the same as she had at the tombs. An austere face surrounded by a large Nubian wig. If Nefertiti ever became queen, she would wear such a wig. We approached the dais, where the queen sat in a large, feather-stuffed cushion on the chair with the widest arms in our house. A black cat rested on her lap. Her hand was on its back, and its collar was lapis and gold.
The queen’s herald stepped forward and flung out his arm in a sweeping gesture. “Your Majesty, your niece, the Lady Nefertiti.”
My sister held out her gift and a servant took the gilt bowl. My aunt touched an empty seat to her left, indicating that Nefertiti should sit next to her. As my sister ascended the dais, my aunt’s eyes never moved from her face. Nefertiti was beautiful in a way that made even queens stare.
“Your Majesty, your niece, the Lady Mutnodjmet.”
I stepped forward and my aunt blinked in surprise. She looked at the turquoise box I held out for her and smiled, a concession that in Nefertiti’s presence she’d forgotten about me. “You’ve grown tall,” she commented.