White Lotus Read online

  White Lotus

  Part 1 of the White Lotus trilogy

  Libbie Hawker

  Contents

  Introduction

  Slave

  1. The Trader

  2. To Memphis

  3. Behind the Wall

  4. The Favor of Luck

  5. Lessons

  6. Blue Silk

  7. Iadmon’s Flower

  8. The Master Accepts

  9. In the Crocodile’s Pool

  10. The Hetaera’s Knife

  11. The Needle

  12. The Master’s Money

  13. The Spice-Merchant’s Party

  14. A New Name

  Hetaera

  1. Charaxus

  2. The Feather Mask

  3. Highest Bidder

  4. A Patron, At Last

  5. An Empty Vessel

  6. The Falcon and the River

  7. Rose Gold

  Also by Libbie Hawker

  About the Author

  Introduction

  In the fifth century BCE, Egypt is the greatest civilization known to mankind. But with a foolish king on its throne, the Nile Valley is ripe for conquering.

  Amid this climate of danger and strife, in the alleys and brothels of Memphis, an extraordinary young woman comes of age. To spare her siblings from starvation, Doricha is sold into prostitution. But she has gifts beyond mere beauty. Through wit and determination, she works her way into the realm of the hetaerae—courtesans of exceptional refinement.

  As a hetaera, Doricha has access to the schemes and negotiations that shape the world. But the rich and powerful also have access to her, and Doricha soon finds herself in the Pharaoh’s harem, caught up in his reckless schemes. When the Pharaoh sends her off to his fiercest enemy, thinly cloaked by a dangerous ruse, Doricha must become a double agent if she hopes to survive. Caught between the Pharaoh and the Persian king Cambyses, it is Doricha—once a slave, now a woman of great but secret power—who will determine Egypt’s fate.

  Blending ancient fable with true history, White Lotus brings Egypt’s downfall to life.

  I

  Slave

  1

  The Trader

  Doricha folded herself against the cold, crumbling mudbrick of the room’s inner wall. Pulling her knees up to her chest, she wrapped her arms around thin legs. Shin bones pressed hard against the tender flesh of her inner forearms—bones were near as sharp as knife blades, cutting with the force of her hunger. The threadbare cloth of her tunic was stiff with grime and soot, but a stab of fear went through her on the tunic’s behalf. Soon even that dirty scrap, like every other good thing she had once had, would be taken away from her—and beneath her only garment she felt very naked, very frail. Doricha rested her chin on her knobby knees and listened.

  The voices came from beyond the frayed yellow curtain, a stained and moth-eaten thing that separated one end of the single-room apartment from the other. On Doricha’s side lay the family’s lone sleeping mat—a single hard, flea-specked pallet for all five of them—and above the cold patch of shadow where Doricha crouched, the apartment’s only window. Shutterless, with its ripped drapery pulled back to let in the sour stink of back-district Tanis, the window also admitted the sounds of the crowded alley outside: the loud clatter of an ass’s hooves on the hard-packed lane; gruff shouts of men haggling over some cheap, shoddy wares; a child screaming shrilly as its mother scolded and whipped it. Doricha furrowed her brow, concentrating on the voices beyond the curtain—her mother’s voice, and that of the silky, erudite man, a perfect stranger who had appeared that morning in the back district, asking directions to the stacked, leaning row of hovels where Doricha and her family now lived. He was as incongruous amid the piss-soaked alleys as a peacock in a tumbledown hen house.

  “She hasn’t yet begun to bleed,” Melaina said. Doricha could hear pain in her mother’s words—a now-familiar thickness that had first appeared six months prior, when Doricha’s father had been killed by bandits. “And that’s why it must be now. If it’s now… if I do this thing now, the gods forgive me, then she’ll have time to be trained, won’t she? Trained up proper and cultured, like, so she’ll know what to expect. So she can have a chance. That’s what the women told me… the ones who said I ought to… I ought to…”

  “And that’s what you want, isn’t it?” the strange man said in his smooth, rich voice. “You want her to have a chance.”

  “Isn’t that what every mother wants?” Melaina choked on the words. “The gods forgive me.”

  “You needn’t take on so,” said the man. “You’re right to make the transaction now, while she is still a child. The training she will receive at this young age will—”

  “What they talking about, then?” Aella piped up. Doricha’s six-year-old sister looked as solemn as a priestess of Isis. She huddled on the sleeping mat, one arm wrapped around each of the twin boys, trying to keep their little brothers silent and still. Aella’s once-golden hair was dull and stringy, her small body thin as a twig, her eyes glazed by hunger. But she managed to keep Bolin and Belos quiet, and for that Doricha was grateful.

  “Hush,” Doricha whispered. “Can’t hear ’em if you’re talking, can I?”

  She caught the tail end of the man’s words. “—I do have a reputation, madam, and I uphold it with pride. I am well known throughout Egypt—and beyond, I dare say—for making and managing the finest pornae in the land.”

  Doricha’s breath caught in her throat. She hugged her legs tighter still, but she felt more exposed than ever. So it’s come to this, then. The man was a trader of pornae. Street-walkers—whores. Doricha knew she had no cause to feel either surprised or hurt. This was a sensible progression, after all—a natural bend in the hard, rocky road their lives had taken ever since her father’s death. It was no more than she ought to have expected.

  But knowing that did little to quell her fear. A wave of nausea swelled in her gut; she squeezed her eyes shut, blocking out the sight of the small, dirty room that was their home—for how much longer, without Father to earn the few hedj per week this rough shelter cost them? She tried to take solace in the darkness behind her eyelids, but she couldn’t shut out the stink of back-district Tanis, the piss and rotting refuse in the alleys, the close, cloying smell of unwashed bodies and hunger and despair. With her eyes closed, even over the din outside and the smooth voice of the silk-draped pimp, over her mother’s stifled sobs, Doricha imagined she could hear the breaths and heartbeats of little Aella and the twins. Such tiny things, all three of them. Small and brave and uncomplaining. Mother’s only goal after Father died was to see the family back in Thrace, and safe once more. To keep moving north, to find some way across the sea, until at last the family stood again on good, reliable Thracian soil. Thrace—their homeland, where once life had been good, where once, when Doricha was a little girl, they had wanted for nothing. Those sunny, contented days of her early childhood seemed a thousand years in the past.

  I’m all Mother has left to barter—my family’s only asset. She listened again to the soft murmur of her imagination—Aella and the little boys breathing in and out, in and out, their thready pulses beating in time with her own, for after all, they were one family, one blood.

  Most of us will get back to Thrace, and that must be enough for you, Mother. It will be enough for me.

  Beyond the curtain, Melaina spoke up, loud and indignant. The sudden shift in her mother’s emotions made Doricha’s eyes snap open. “You would think, sir, that the Pharaoh would do more to help people like us, so it wouldn’t come to this.”

  The sound of footsteps crossing the dirt floor—a light, confident tread. That was man, then, not Mother. “Do you mean,” he said, “the poor? Egyptian Pharaohs have never done
much to succor the poor. Not enough, at any rate.”

  He passed the yellow curtain. Through a rip in its cloth, Doricha caught one fleeting glimpse of him: curling black hair, skin of a deep olive tone, a sharp, hooked nose on a face that was still rather young. And his clothing! Though she could see him for only the briefest of moments, still Doricha could not help but see the richness of his well-draped tunic: its color bright as the sun, the careful red embroidery of angular keys crossing over one shoulder.

  “I don’t mean the poor, sir,” Melaina said. “I mean Greeks. Well—we’re Thracian, of course, but it’s near enough, isn’t it?”

  The man, out of sight now, gave a low, sympathetic chuckle. “It is.”

  “It’s said the Pharaoh loves Greeks more than he loves his own Egyptians.”

  “I cannot disagree with such a rumor. Our present king of Egypt admires all things Grecian. His over-fondness for the Greeks has given many good native-born Egyptians cause to speak against him.”

  “But he doesn’t admire us enough to help us. So many of us stranded here, after we came down to Egypt to do good, honest work, but found the work all dried up with the river.”

  “The river itself isn’t dried up, madam.” The man said it with a hint of amusement in his voice, tolerance for Melaina’s rural ignorance. It made Doricha’s hackles raise. “Just a few of the river’s arms here within the Delta region. This is not unheard of; many times throughout history, the river has silted over its various Delta arms and carved new paths through the soil.”

  “That’s as may be, but the change was enough to send my husband and me into poverty. Not enough work to be had in any of the places where we were told to look for it. And four children to feed, gods help us. What were we to think?”

  “And, I presume, by the time you reached Egypt there wasn’t enough coin left to travel south beyond the Delta, to seek out your fortune in places where the river is far more reliable.”

  “Yes, sir,” Melaina said. Her voice was soft with defeat. “That was the way of it.”

  “Madam, I have heard the same sad story many times. More times than I can count, alas. Greeks, once hopeful, stranded in Egypt and forced into slums with no way to get back home.”

  “It’s not right, that the Pharaoh won’t do a thing to help us.”

  “No,” the man said quietly. “It’s not right. On that we certainly agree. But you are fortunate after all, Madam. The gods have given you a daughter of the right age. She provides you with a solution to your troubles—a way out.”

  Doricha swallowed hard. Her mother maintained that strained, trembling silence.

  “Shall we have a look at the girl now?” the man suggested at length.

  Still Melaina did not speak.

  Doricha could all but see her mother, one pale hand clutching the neck of her ragged tunic, face turned away and head ducked in shame. She couldn’t allow her mother to continue in such distress. The time had come to take whatever she could—her future, the family’s safety—into her own small hands. Doricha drew a deep breath and pushed herself up from the hard earthen floor.

  “Where you going?” Aella asked. The boys squirmed in her arms, whining softly, struggling to break free and follow their big sister.

  “Stay put,” Doricha told the twins. To Aella she whispered, “Don’t worry. I won’t leave without saying good-bye. But I’ve got to go to Mother now and help her out, you see? Otherwise she’ll never do it herself.”

  Aella’s dirt-smeared brow furrowed in confusion. “Leave? What you talking about, then?”

  “Stay put,” Doricha said again. She pushed past the yellow curtain before Melaina could summon her. She would spare her mother that pain, at least—calling her own daughter out to be sold like a donkey in the market.

  Melaina made a thin, faint sound as Doricha came through the curtain, somewhere between a sigh and a cry of agony. But the girl did not look at her mother. She kept her eyes on the tall, lavishly dressed man as he turned toward her. He stood with chin cupped in hand, assessing Doricha in a stiff, business-like silence. She watched his face, his shrewd eyes, as he took stock of her. She seemed to see herself through the trader’s appraising stare. The narrow, straight frame of a child who was still many months—if not years—from adolescence; the delicate bones that pressed through skin and tunic, making awkward angles of her shoulders. The unimpressive height—even if six months of hunger had not stunted her growth, Doricha knew the gods had never intended her to grow tall. Skinny legs with prominent knees, the firm, resilient flesh of youth wasting away. Bare feet with dirt under the toenails. Doricha drew herself up and stood as proudly as she could—she hoped she looked proud—though she knew no back-district rat had any cause for arrogance or poise.

  The man stepped toward her. At close range, the smell of him overwhelmed Doricha—a rich spice of sandalwood, myrrh, and ginger, like the fine cleansing oil she had once tested at a market stall, rubbing it into her wrist and sniffing deeply until her head was dizzy, and then the oil merchant had lunged at her with a stick and a shower of curses and driven her away. The unfamiliar decadence of the whore-trader’s scent made Doricha feel warm and cautious at the same time. He was from an entirely different world than she, as far apart from Doricha’s reality as the Pharaoh was from his Egyptians, or as the gods were from mortal men. Even when her family had been safe in Thrace, so many years ago, they had never been wealthy enough to comb expensive oil through their hair.

  Gently, the trader lifted Doricha’s chin. He turned her face this way and that, considering the angles of her features in the room’s dim light.

  “Very pale complexion,” he said. “Though tender—she is freckled from the sun, I see. Those green eyes will be an asset—exotic. Not many women in Egypt have light-colored eyes. And her hair. It’s neither golden nor red, but somewhere in between. How would one describe hair like this, I wonder?”

  Melaina, turned away and shuddering as she held back her sobs, made no reply.

  The man answered his own question. “Rose gold. I’ve seen smiths in the south of Egypt who work with rose gold. Very fine, rich stuff.”

  Doricha fought to keep her expression neutral, plain—to keep the spite and tears from her eyes.

  “My name is Iadmon,” he told her, still holding her chin.

  Doricha didn’t know what to say, so she kept her silence. But she held Iadmon’s dark eyes steadily with her own. I am not afraid, she tried to tell him with her unflinching stare. She hoped Iadmon believed her. She barely believed herself.

  “I think she will do nicely,” Iadmon said to Melaina, releasing his grip on Doricha’s chin. “She is thin and dirty, but proper feeding and a good bath will take care of that.”

  Melaina stood with her back turned to them both, huddled in upon herself. Doricha watched her mother shake with the rhythm of her silent weeping. Then she turned to Iadmon and caught him once more by the eye.

  “Will I fetch a high enough price that they’ll make it back to Thrace?” she asked.

  Melaina gasped and turned toward Doricha, reaching out to clutch her eldest child. “No, I can’t! I’ve changed my mind, sir. I can’t let my girl go. Not for this!”

  Doricha moved away from her mother’s hand. She did not allow Iadmon’s gaze to slip from her own. “You must pay enough that they can all get back to Thrace—my mother, my sister, and the two little boys. Otherwise I won’t go with you. And if you cheat my family after you take me away, I’ll run off and you’ll never see me again, and you’ll have wasted all your money.”

  For a moment, Iadmon did not speak. He only watched her steadily, those dark eyes prying, assessing. Then a slow, amused smile curled one side of his mouth. Bracing hands on hips, Doricha sniffed sharply to make her point, and again the pimp’s rich smell filled her head.

  Iadmon leaned close to her, speaking quietly and with a smile—as if the conversation were a secret, intimate thing, and one held between friends. “Little girl, how much money do you th
ink you’re worth?”

  Though his smooth, cultured voice never roughened, there was no mistaking the mockery in his words. Doricha chose to ignore the subtle sting, and answered as if he had asked the question honestly. “I guess the only figure that matters is how much you think I’m worth.”

  Iadmon straightened. “Clever child,” he said, so softly that Doricha almost didn’t hear him. The faint trace of mockery left his eyes entirely—the thin, wry curve of his smile, too. A more contemplative stillness settled over him. His dark brows lowered for a moment and he seemed to deliberate with himself. Then he nodded once, and held out his hand. “Worth enough to get your family back to Thrace, and then some. You have my word on that. No need to run off and waste my money. I’ll see to it that they can leave Tanis this very day, if you like.”

  Doricha lowered her eyes, considering Iadmon’s hand. It was soft-skinned, untroubled by work, unlike the cracked palms and callused fingers of her father’s hands. But in its bigness and its confident, untrembling posture, she saw that he was strong despite his life of ease. Iadmon was a powerful man—maybe even a great man. Doricha hoped he would be as good as his word. She slapped her palm against his own, and he caught her fingers in his grip. Warm, hard, unflinchingly certain, his big hand shook her small and frail one.

  Doricha knew with sudden force, with a sting of tears in her eyes, that she couldn’t go back through the yellow curtain—couldn’t look at Aella and the twins again. She couldn’t say goodbye, because it would be forever. They would go home to Thrace, but she would remain in Egypt with this tall, rich-smelling man. The family would be parted now, but as long as Doricha avoided that terrible word—goodbye—then she might still pretend she would see her family again, someday, somehow.

  She swallowed the lump in her throat and turned to her mother. Melaina’s eyes were puffy and red, her mouth twisted with a terrible agony. Tears cut shining tracks through the grime on her cheeks.