Ocean's Breath Plateau scarabs

senmut had few reasons to come to muat-riya, only one, truly. but fellahin had all sorts of business which demanded they travel. yet could not the same be said of priests? he would think upon this, not yet knowing that the royals of his home would ask for something which commanded such from him.

"i find myself more spoiled from day to day, machiavelli," senmut rejoined with a wry grin, and then his face smoothed into the serene look of one who remembers.

"my father and mother were very poor. born poor. lived poor. i myself was born into a very large family already, in a nome so far from the eye of pharaoh that i do not think he knew we fellahin existed. i suppose i had some early eye for numbers. my mother and father took me to the temple of our locality and paid a small wealth for the priests to take me as their own, to make a we'eb of me, to teach me the skill of a scribe."

"they loved me, so they gave me up to a better life. i have not seen them since i left our province as a boy. the vizier of the time caught sight of me, and the rest is as you may know. i served seti as a laborer in that province. i served ramesses as a scribe. i served makono as a priest, and it was our pharaoh now who made me hereditary prince. for me, the gods have always intervened. it is why i am happy to know my life and my ka belong already to their whim."

a pause, searching; "how is a royal deposed to servitude?"