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Gebgeb’s steps were soft on the sand as he approached Nakht-Amun, slowly and hesitantly. The priest glanced up, acknowledging the red-haired man, and turned back to gazing over the muddy-green expanse of the Nile. Gebgeb chose to interpret this as an invitation and slid onto the stone slab next to him.
They sat in companionable silence for a while, watching a small flock of sacred ibises pick their way through mud and shallow water. Finally, Gebgeb spoke, his voice halfway between nonchalant and tentative.
“It was a clever thing you did there, with the caraway seed and three cowry shells.”
That was the wrong thing to lead with. Nakht-Amun’s face crumpled, revealing his inner turmoil.
“I lied,” he almost wailed in distress, “to the Great Pharaoh to thwart her justice!”
“Would it really have been justice if they executed me for using heka to unleash Isfet on people of Kemet?”
“Well, you do bring plenty of chaos to the city,” Nakht-Amun huffed. “But chaos of mundane variety, not the philosophical counterpart of Ma’at.”
That was true; Gebgeb thrived on harmless pranks like sticking scarab seals to the ground with resin and watching passerby try to pick them up. However, he never used his Apophis-granted command of heka for anything more sinister. Executing the silly man for this would’ve been an overreaction, and Nakht-Amun just couldn’t let it happen.
“Still, I fooled the pharaoh by passing a simple sleight of hand off as the will of Amun-Ra,” he clarified his concerns.
“Maybe doing this was the will of Amun-Ra,” Gebgeb shrugged. “Maybe it’s all part of the great plan. It’s ineffable.” Nakht-Amun didn’t look convinced, so Gebgeb tried again. “I'm not gonna tell anybody. Are you?”
The priest shook his head no. “But if Nefertiti finds out, she won't just be angry, she'll destroy us both!”
“Nobody ever has to know. I’ll leave the city, everybody will forget about me in a season or two, and nothing has to change, does it?”
“Even so, I fear that Meketaten suspects something…”
That was, in truth, the least of Nakht-Amun’s worries. Akhetaten, the city where the priest had been content, if not happy, for so long, would now be unbearable without his almost-daily encounters with Gebgeb, the man’s pranks and secret acts of kindness, his crooked smirks and bright laughter…
“I mean, we can always go off together,” the other man suggested meanwhile, making Nakht-Amun’s heart skip a beat.
“Go off together?” he repeated, marveling at the novelty of the idea.
“I hear Faiyum is nice this time of year. Lots of spare orchards up there, nobody would even notice us. You and me, what do you say?”
Nakht-Amun tried to picture that. Lush oasis landscape, so different from the endless sand dunes and limestone here. Days of idle pursuits, him reading, Gebgeb tending to an orchard, and long leisurely evenings together…
“I think I would like that,” he said slowly, a smile blooming on his face. “I would like that very much.”