Lion Head Mesa crook & flail

khusobek kept his hourly vigil beside the catacombs.

the man had said nothing.

part of the mazoi hoped he would die in the darkness. he had not known the other, but his loyalty was to the blood of hatshepsuun, and that ran in the girl-queen.

more than one he had considered ending the man himself.

but he remained as he was, a sentinel in the half-light. the servants brought him meat and wine. khusobek devoured these but asked for nothing more of their presence, which faded as he resumed his post.

hope u don't mind me popping in <3

Khusobek was a mysterious man.
She knew not where he came from, although she knew he was, perhaps, newer blood to the red palace just as much as Zaahira herself. But he carries himself effortlessly the same way pack-born Akashingoans do, and so they were not all the same. Zaahira was a wildwoman; feral in a past life. She was no royal.
But nonetheless, she had her duties here.
A chuff rolls from her nostrils as she glides through the hallway and towards the inky dark of the catacombs. Khaba lay there, and though Akashingo's victory was one she celebrated, feelings of old made her gut twist as she approaches his jail. It wasn't pity or sympathy, per se, but nervousness. A fear of him seeing her.
She approaches Khusobek hidden in a shadow, taking her place adjacent to him. When she sits, she is tall, poised; chin high, shoulders pushed back. She doesn't greet him traditionally. Instead, she mumbles, He makes me sick, as her gaze is cast downward to the floor.

<3 never

captains of the palace guards did not often brush shoulders with the more brutish, nor with war itself. hatshepsuun possessed her own armies for that.

what khusobek knew was the inside of a harem with his man's eyes, the gilt and pomp of flesh paraded. alliances traded on the upright backs of noble girls who disappeared into painted rooms. in the fermentation of wine, in the tasting of meals before they reached the door of pharaoh. in poisoned servants buried in silent tombs, of concubines' children sickened with khamsin fevers, then stricken forever from royal memory once they had passed.

fine things. cold things.

in this place there was finery in less excess, so its nature caught his eye. zaahira had it as well. he watched through peripherals the stiff set of her body. had she once belonged to khaba? "Osiris will test him now. and i do not think he can survive having his heart devoured."

there was no smile. her cinnamon glint burned with the underglow of a pulsing ember. khusobek felt he knew the look of hate in its quieter forms.

May Osiris help us, she remarks, eyelids fluttering to a close as she takes a deep, shaken inhale. It felt all the more real, now; Khaba was not far behind them. Surely he could hear the names of Akashingo's gods come from her tongue. He should resent her; the way she had so quickly abandoned him.
But he did not deserve her sympathy now, and perhaps he never did. Whether or not he hated her was not of importance.
The man beside her is hardened, bitter, a pill that dissolves on one's tongue too quickly. Curt, but not necessarily rude. He knows these gods well.
She wanted to ask what brought him to the palace, but that did not feel quite right. For all she knew, he was a King or perhaps a seasoned soldier, and she was merely misinformed. So when she turns to him, the firelight shimmering within a tangerine gaze, she instead says; He killed my lover, with a terse frown. so now I am here.
He did not ask, but she felt perhaps she should tell him anyway. It's not as if it mattered who knew and who did not anymore.

a a dead love. khusobek mused that few things moved the heart more than death or affection.

he could not sense whether she desired sympathy. he had none to give, and given their mutual rank, decided it was best to leave zaahira to her steel.

best to taste love than to be dismantled by it. he thought of hatshepsuun, her eyes darkened with pleasure as she laughed at something he no longer remembered.

"Iset spent a lifetime rebuilding her lover's body. she loved Osiris in every form." the faint glow of sunlight from down the redstone corridor highlighted him as it did zaahira, and for a moment they were flame and shadow against the rock wall.

"He is not a god of love, but He is a god who has dearly loved."

Khusobek did not inquire further about her loss. She did not want him to. Really, she was grateful; for once, she had not been looked at with the saucer-eyes of pity, of discomfort.
But what he did offer was talk of Osiris, and that made her soften.
He was murdered, too, yes? she thinks of Akhtar, of what he told her of Akashingo's scripture. By His brother. Set. her lower eyelid visibly twitches as she speaks, low and husky. She thinks of Khaba, of how he should perhaps learn from Set's wrongdoings — these were his gods, once.
I speak to Him, sometimes, Osiris, and then, a heavy sigh, slouching as she leans her back against the terracotta. I ask Him to tell her things. I think she would have liked Akashingo.
She lets the air fall silent. Man and woman, soldiers in arms, a shared goal. Her head tilts upward to the gilded ceiling before her eyes fall upon the Mazoi once more. Tell me, Khusobek, there's a flicker of intrigue, a raise of eyebrows. A burning, boiling question sits on the tip of her tongue. are you from here?

a crocodilisk in a silent pool.

now the ripples flickered against his scales.

zaahira spoke of Osiris. yes. he could see that she was learning, turning into the bosom of The Death God as one did when their pain was too great.

khusobek wondered if anguish was the word for his own sensation, or if in its consumption of him it had become something else.

"i am a gift to the queen of akashingo from her royal aunt, pharaoh hatshepsuun." a play upon the flare of his nostrils. 

set. tooth flashing in the depths of water. zaahira struggled and yet she kept herself closed. khusobek might have looked away had she gone into the catacombs herself.

He was a gift, he says, and at that, a soft grin tugs at the edge of the aspwoman's mouth. She dips her head, chin resting against her chest before it raises again. I did not know Akashingo's reach was so broad, she comments, a gruffness to the shell of her voice as it bounces off the catacomb walls. it has many connections. And it is weird, being foreign in such a place.
Her nerves have given her a prickly feeling in her toes. It feels odd to openly disclose her non-royal blood; the fact that it is quite the opposite. Sinir was a woman of the great bay on the edge of Kyneswood, wild and stained with seasalt. She spoke little and had even less to lose.
And Zaahira, well—
May I ask you something else? and if he were to accept, she then inquires with a crease to the edges of her eyes, are you lonely, Khusobek?

what could zaahira want with his sense of loneliness?

now a half-dozen images of hatshepsuun inundated the mind of khusobek, in those chambers where he had not been a guard and she no pharaoh, only two individuals who found something to answer in the other. "most of us are foreign. but we are akashingo also."

a tensing chased itself across his muscular shoulders. "pharaoh is invested in assuring an heir is born. it bodes better things for her when it is time to journey for the Land of Reeds."

loneliness. khusobek fought the question silently until the quiet stretched too long and called for a reply. "no. i have my work. unless you are asking if my bed is empty and i wish for it to be filled." 

now, a smile, or something that wished to be, slitting the dour line of his mouth into something toothy as he glanced at last toward zaahira. "are you?"

He thinks it as an offering of her body. She had already given herself so eagerly to Akhtar, and though she and Selena had no exclusivity even while she was alive — the thought of another pair of paws touching her was sickening.
For now, at least. So she gives him a Maybe someday, with a flicker of knowing.
I am not so lonely anymore, she shakes her head. it is hard to be lonely here. So many faces. But the Lake was very. a grimace snakes across her features, and she feels as though she cannot swallow.
She was no stranger to loneliness. But that was not her life anymore, was it? Now, her life was keeping watch over the angry fist of a man she once called her savior.
I heard word the Divine One is searching for suitor, at that, a chuff, and a lift of a forepaw to her chin. I worry for her. What men would do to her.

did she believe he had asked for her then? while the crocodile was not opposed, they had their rank. he would rather have summoned one of the fellahin for it, not a fighter of equal standing.

in many ways, the mixing inside and outside of class was muddled. his mouth drew to an answering line.

what had she suffered there? who was this lover?

zaahira spoke of men. khusobek thought of hatshepsuun. women too could be terrible. "she searches for a suitor but it will be that prince of hers. that is the role of a hereditary assigment."

Senmut? Eyebrows raise in disbelief, eyes of fire suddenly lidded and squinted as if Khusobek was playing a joke on her. Senmut was... well, he was far from unattractive, but the mere idea of him lying with a woman seemed unimaginable. And he seemed a little old for her, she thought; an imbalance of power in more ways than one.
I never thought him a romantic. And not towards The Divine One, a breathy chortle, as if she had blown smoke from her nostrils. but maybe I am mistaken.
She thinks of the potential men who were sure to come from miles away in search of Toula's hand. She thinks of the men who had already come; the ones here already, and wonders how many of them have underlying motives. And in Zaahira, a sickness billows and boils and curds in her stomach. Her Queen, being controlled by a testosterone-fuelled iron fist, not unlike the way she had been by Khaba—
Senmut did not seem the type to wish harm upon her; no, not at all. But would he love her the way she deserved?
How strange.

"royalty does not marry for romance," khusobek grunted, pushing his shoulders more firmly against the stone at his back. "they marry to preserve a lineage. he is not only a prince, he is a priest. as pharaoh he would be three godheads. surely he knows this."

khusobek did not know that senmut's origins were lower even than his own, that the man had been a boy with muddied blood, the same as any born into the fellahin class. he saw only nobility, and the coolness of the prince surely masked ambition.

"it is the ones who do not bluster or announce themselves who are the most dangerous."

Zaahira finds herself intrigued. She senses distaste toward the Erpa-ha, though she cannot place the reason for it. Jealousy for his position, his royalty, his potential marriage to the Queen?
Evidently, Zaahira drinks from it. The cogs of her mind turn, and she points an inquisitive gaze at him. It makes sense, she comments. political marriages. Perhaps it would be better to have a shared goal over being in love.
Again, she thinks of Akhtar. She had given her body to him beneath the shadows. But that was not love. She wonders of the potential for herself to be placed in marriage by the palace. As one of few female Mazoi, however, she could not think of herself as particularly valuable.
The ones who do not bluster are dangerous, he says, and to that, hickory ears turn about. What makes you say that?

"if you want to hold power, give the appearance that you do not want it. that you are reluctant to have it." it was a polished move of manipulation and it was partly how khusobek had become captain of the queen's guard beneath hatshepsuun — beneath her indeed.

the vestige of that tensed his jawline for swift moment and then it passed on. "love is far less structured than any arrangement. it can break them also." but now he was delving, and he did not want to do it any longer. "i am going to piss," the mazoi said as he rose to his paws. "will you keep watch for me?"

Have you ever thought that perhaps some are merely humble? Perhaps a rhetorical question, one with an upward shift of an eyebrow. In Greatwater, the pursuit of power was constant. If you did not fight for it tooth and nail, you were punished. A violent, blazing lack of camaraderie, perhaps not a structure of society that was built to last. Backstabbing, manipulation, bickering; teeth to skin, claws to chest. Blood drawn.
And it had ended in death at the hands of a cruel, weathered man.
I will keep watch, she replies with a curt nod, turning herself so that she did not have to face him. Men could be crude; relieve themselves anywhere. She did not want to find out whether or not this even implied his going outside.

<3

he did not linger, the hallway outside the catacombs echoing with his step. khusobek meant to go out of doors, to take the air while he watered the earth.

so close to the void of akashingo, he had held some good breaths. now he allowed himself to break control, to experience the anxiety of holding himself so poised so close to what felt like an underworld.

eventually the man would return. for now it was only he and the heavens.