Lion Head Mesa she cries 'cause she's nothing like you, is she like you?

makono could lie.
she could have his name stricken from the collective mouth of akashingo.
but he knew he must have this last trust. he had not chosen makono. he had chosen siptah. it was the gods who had changed these things and it was the gods he had resisted.
a bolt of fear rushed through him, the understandable agony of a man who had long believed he would not see death until he lay old in his bed.
siptah had unraveled him.
but it was satsu; her unsolved death and dead face rose in his dreams on waves of guilt, her grinning skull damning him to a half-life.
ramesses glanced once more toward nazli. it would be an easy thing, a fine thing, to walk, to strangle her where she lay even as heir and priest moved to stop him. 
but she was still vibrant with a life he had sought to siphon for himself.
and perhaps she would carry the name of ramesses forward into the future now barred to his soul.
pharaoh grabbed up the wooden goblet and drained it, tasting the sweetness of pine, the tartness of berry; it soared electric to belly and limbs and tasted only of the pleasure he had ever known.
"be wiser than i," ramesses said, somehow restored as the elegance returned to his spine and legs and countenance.
and thus, he lifted his head and strode beyond them, out of his throne room, to the roof of the mesa where darkness waited for the touch of Ra.