Two Eyes Cenote strife

muat-riya's crocodile lay in silent repose. 

broad chest rose and fell with even breaths. he had been sedated for weeks now, cleansed, washed, combed. but some goodly portion of his muscled body had wasted away. his left ear was gone, ripped almost cleanly off.

but he lay on his right side for the worst of the wounds: skinned from skull-base to beyond his shoulders, the flesh was a large pink sea of slow-mending scar-tissue, a macabre cowl if he awoke.

over him, pharaoh whispered. 

listening gods shook their heads in gentle murmuring among one another. she did not know, she still did not know.

but of course she did not know! how could she? stories buried, names stricken from stelae and memory. not even the man who lay silent had ever been given these things to understand.

blood, royal. golden. bluest. it ran in khusobek as it had run in ramesses, for seti was a man with many tastes. one divine wife in tuya. seven more political marriages. innumerable concubines, servant girls, slaves.

to young amunet had been born khusobek, and because she had come from a family of memphis nobility, her name was well-known — which gave her crocodilisk boy claim to seti's throne. it was not so great a grasp as to be far within his reach, but more than enough to threaten Great Royal Wife tuya.

amunet was killed and her body buried far in the desert, beyond recovery. khusobek was delivered into the hands of palace guards. a waif, his bearer had said, left behind at the doors of the palace. lastly, the pharaoh seti had been informed that mother and child succumbed to an unfortunate fever. if he had ever suspected his queen, he said nothing.

when hatshepsuun struck down the coup of her brother ramesses to take seti's throne, she had retained khusobek with no knowing of his origins.

now this forgotten prince, this lesser brother; he lay with blood shared betwixt he and toula, the only current threat to rashepses' own lineage. how sweet the irony; how bitter its unknowing.

in his slumber, the captain groaned aloud.