Sun Thief by Jamie Buxton

Author:Jamie Buxton [Buxton, Jamie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Egmont

The people trickle out of the audience chamber. A servant carries the sculpture. Two guards frogmarch Thutmose away, but leave me behind. I am too frightened to move and don’t know who to follow, so I wait.

A white dove feather floats down from on high, flares in a sunbeam, drops, drops, drops and settles on the queen’s throne. For the first time I notice the paintings on the walls of the throne room.

Wonderful scenes. Palm trees and birds, hippos and crocodiles, fish and fishermen. The colours are brighter than real life so each scene stands out: there’s a tree with red and turquoise feathered birds in it but there, half hidden by the branches, a grinning cat is stalking them. A fisherman casts his net from a boat while the fish swim in the other direction. A buffalo sinks his head towards the water to drink, unaware of the crocodile beneath the surface.

‘Stop gawking and follow me!’

It’s the big pale man who was with the queen. From his neck to his waist is a slope of wobbling fat. Waist down to feet is a long white apron. His face is bland and round. He wears an odd cap on his head and has very dark eyes.

‘Come!’ His mouth is an ugly slot and his skin so smooth it looks as if it has never seen a razor. He leads me out of a door at the back of the chamber. For all his size, he waddles quickly, bare feet slapping on smooth stone. He doesn’t look back as he talks.

‘My name is Potipher. I am the queen’s chamberlain. That is a general storeroom . . . Assistant grain master’s office . . . Grain master’s office . . . Hall of scribes . . . Office of ink mixer . . . Antechamber to eastern throne room . . . Small corridor . . . Slave’s corridor . . . What is my name?’

‘Potipher?’

‘And what am I?

‘A chamber . . . a chamberman?’

‘Hah! Not a chamberman nor a chambermaid. I am the chamberlain. I manage the queen’s household.’

All I see are rooms and doorways and corridors. Dark rooms and light rooms. Big rooms and small rooms. I trot after Potipher, trying to remember what he says, but knowing it’s going in one ear and out the other.

‘Where are we going? What am I doing?’

He ignores me.

The corridor is lit by oil lamps with small flames that emit trails of black smoke. The air is warm and damp. You could stir it, like soup. Then it gets lighter and we walk up some steps past a window and I realise that we are on the bridge over the Royal Road where I first saw the princess. I glance out of the Window of Appearances and see the road below me and the window ledge I climbed on to. It is only then that it finally sinks in: I am in the palace. Me. Mud boy.

But I have no time to think

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