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Tzipporah curses herself for her own stupidity as she jangles the fine chains that bind her.
Getting caught in the first place was one thing, but allowing that brat of a prince to humiliate her in front of his whole barbaric court was just her temper getting in the way of her brains. It was nobody’s fault for the piece of luck that caused her ankle to turn as she fell in the water, giving her the most painful sprain of her life and ruining any chance she had of escape.
But she would not let his stricken expression, his obvious regret as he followed her that night to his rooms, get the better of her ill feelings towards him. She’d blame him if she wanted to and blame him she does.
She wonders how he can stand having someone who hates him live in such close proximity. It’s obvious that her presence makes him uncomfortable, but he keeps up with the charade.
Perhaps the other prince, his brother, is offering some kind of pressure in the matter, as he had thrust her on him in the first place. Perhaps he feels some sense of duty to her, since his actions injured her so. She can tell he believes he has some higher morality, though she wonders how he can stomach slaves in any form if he truly does.
He offers her food with a shy smile. They are small, beautiful, delicacies that she would never have dreamed of eating in her lifetime. The pain medicine that they forced on her made her groggy and her stomach too unruly for food in the preceding days, but as the pain recedes she finds herself much more hungry.
She eats everything he puts in front of her and she’s not careful about her manners. She doesn’t care if he’s watching her.
He does watch her though, whenever he is there. He doesn’t try to speak to her anymore because if she says anything at all in return it is a growled curse. She sees him thinking about something hard when he looks at her, but she flashes her eyes at him in a death glare and he never speaks.
She knows where the usable weapons in the room are. He has not thought to remove them. She won’t murder him in cold blood, she won’t be able to get away fast enough and they would kill her for it, but she will maim him if he touches her. She will kill him if he tries to do anything more.
She thinks he knows that, or some baser part of him does, because he never goes near her. He gives her as wide a berth as possible, occasionally sleeping on his own floor if she has claimed his bed. She only does that once in a while, however, if the stone is making her ankle ache. She does not want to push him too hard, too often.
He shows her small kindnesses. He brings her things, a new dress to replace the only one she had with her when she was taken, a flower from the Queen’s gardens, the desserts he once caught her sneaking off his plate after she’s already eaten hers. She has to fight not to like him for these things. She has to remind herself that he holds the keys to her chains.
All these things stay the same, fall into a kind of pattern, until one evening when he stumbles into his rooms long past his usual time. She’d heard laughing and music and merry-making off in the distance, and knew the court was holding some kind of gathering. She knew he would not come back until much later, but she was not expecting him to be so thoroughly drunk.
He smiles when he sees her, lying half-asleep on his bed, until he realizes he cannot fall into it because she is there. He stands uselessly for a moment and rocks on his heels. She sits up in the bed and they just stare at each othert.
The chains at her wrists are light, made of a metal she’s not sure she’s ever encountered, and they pool in her lap and then stretch to the hook on the wall to which she is secured. His eyes follow the trail of it and he looks angry, though she can’t say why.
“You would run away if that was not there,” he says. “Even though you cannot walk. You would risk death to be away from here.” There is something dark in his tone. She considers him, then nods.
He sways on his feet and she is about to move from the bed so he can take it over when he speaks again. “My brother wants me to oversee the expansion of the slaves’ quarters now.”
She was being taken from the room when they made him Chief Architect. She did not think he seemed very thrilled.
“I am to go view them tomorrow.”
When he does not speak again, but only covers his eyes with his hands as though the light is beginning to pain him, she gingerly retreats from the bed, putting less weight on her ankle than it can handle. She doesn’t want him to know how much it has healed.
He stumbles forward and flops onto the bed sending his wig askew. She’d known he wears one, but the sight of his haphazardly trimmed locks underneath surprises her. He doesn’t look like the pure-blooded Egyptians she’s known, not with that hair.
He’s fallen asleep already and she creeps up to view him more closely. She reaches a hand out to pull the wig from under his head, dropping it to the floor as if it had fallen there naturally. If you took away the jewelry and the fine clothes, he looks just as if someone had let a street urchin sleep for a night in the bed of a prince.
He begins to snore and she finds herself smiling at him.
He returns late again the following day. But this time he is in a panic. His eyes are wide, his hands shaking, he looks at her as if he’s forgotten she would be there. He is breathing as if he’d just run from the outer reaches of the city.
She speaks before she thinks about it. “What’s wrong?” They are the first words she’s said to him in weeks.
He looks at her, startled. “I am Prince here,” he says after a moment as though he doesn’t believe it anymore, as if he’s trying to convince himself. “This is my home.” He looks around at the place as if to confirm this fact. He touches his trophies, his hands trailing across them like they mean nothing and everything to him. He lets the mutts crowd and follow him, though more often than not he ignores them in favor of watching her. He looks at her again, fear in his eyes, and says, “She was lying.”
“Who was?” She throws her silence and her pride out the window she’s been thinking about climbing from for weeks now. His distress has unravelled her.
“The slave woman,” he answers, his eyes going distant, his voice soft. “She said that I was born of her mother, sent adrift in basket, a brother to slaves. She said I would deliver them.” He back up, stumbling, into the marble column behind him and presses his hands to his face, his fingers reaching up and pulling the wig from his head. He sinks to the ground and rubs at his short, stifled hair absently. “This is my home,” he insists.
She watches him and dares not breathe. She does not take the time to examine this feeling that’s welling up inside her, that does not wish to see him in pain. It would be so much easier if she still hated him.
“Come here,” she commands suddenly, when she realizes he is falling asleep where he sits. “You’ll not sleep there tonight. Not now. Come here,” she repeats when he just looks at her.
He rises, though she cannot think why he would obey her, and goes to the bed. He lays down next to where she sits and they do not touch. “She sang to me. I can’t get the song out of my head.”
He stares at the gossamer fabric that lines the canopy as she moves to lean against a pillar at the foot of his bed. “Shall I sing to you?” she asks. “Something else?”
“Why would you do that?” he whispers.
She does not answer. She begins to sing a song her mother taught her, one she sang to her smallest sister when their mother could not. She watches him fight sleep for several minutes, watches fear shadow his features, then clear, but return again as he begins to dream.
She toys with the chains at her wrists and fights sleep herself until he begins to flinch and moan. She wants to wake him, but she fears touching him. She needs to do something.
“Moses,” she calls, leaning close to him. She has never said his name before.
He startles awake and flinches away from her. She retreats immediately, but looks into his eyes. They are full of despair.
“Please,” she says, “what is it?”
He is searching her face for something. His voice is hushed. “Come with me.”
He pulls her chain from the wall using a complicated catch she has not seen before. She watches him unlatch it and knows she will remember how when the time comes. He hold onto the chain, but she gathers up the slack in her hands. She does not need him to pull her.
He keeps a breakneck paces as they follow the long corridors of his father’s palace to the halls where the records are kept. Her own people have no such practice, but she has heard of the pictographs and glyphs that are used to show the history of this place.
They do not need to go very far to find the wall he seeks.
He stops before it, staring in disbelief. His breath is heavy, his eyes wide. He walks forward slowly and raises a hand to press against the image of a child, thrown to his death by the Pharaoh’s men. His other hand is clenched around her chain.
It’s she who hears his father approach. She who has the presence of mind to run for the shadows, to wrench the chain from his hands. He throws her a stupefied glance before he realizes who has come upon them.
She cannot hear what it is that they say, but she sees the prince’s back straighten in something like shock. He backs away from his father, whose expression is caught some where between sadness and incomprehension.
When he retreats, Moses falls back into her shadows and she scrambles away to avoid his stumbling into her. He whirls around to face her and grasps at her arms before she can trip over him. She cannot see his face in the dark, but his hands are warm and strong. It is he who pulls away first.
He seizes her chain from the ground and pulls her in the direction of his rooms. She follows at a much greater distance and watches the slow, despairing rhythm of his gait. She wants to touch him again.
He does not catch the chain against the wall upon their return. He releases it instead, letting it fall to the floor with an abrupt clank. She stares at him.
“I’ll not keep you here,” he says, his eyes blazing with raw defiance. “I don’t care what they think about it.”
She opens her mouth to speak, but closes it again immediately. She realizes his doubt, has disappeared. His father, no, the Pharaoh, has cemented whatever unrevealed truths the slave woman had spoken to him.
She puts her hands on her hips. “My ankle isn’t healed yet,” she lies.
His eyes dart to where she is standing, her feet planted perfectly straight, with no visible discomfort. He purses his lips and she can’t tell if he is amused or disapproving.
Suddenly his expression changes and it’s as if he cannot hold back the tide of grief and uncertainty that has plagued him that night. He sinks onto his bed, cradling his head in his hands once more. “They all lied to me,” he murmurs. “Everything I am. It’s nothing but lies.”
“That’s not true,” she says and goes to him. She reaches out, hesitates, and finally raises her palm to his cheek. He lifts his eyes. “You were kind to me. You did not deceive or brutalize me. You could have. Before I knew your secrets, I knew you were a good man.”
He stares at her, mystified. “Why are you still here?” He raises his hand to grasp at her fingers.
“You are a good man, Moses.” She repeats. A better man than she could have hoped for.
He turns away from her and does not speak again.
She sings to him and he sleeps, after a long while. As she sings, she watches him and plans.
He doesn’t belong here. When she goes, Tzipporah resolves to take him with her.
For a long time, she does not ask what brings him rushing back to his rooms in an even greater panic. And she does not listen to the heated words he exchanges with his brother on the road from the city.
She brings him into the desert and there they are both scrubbed clean. It’s all that matters to her. When all is said and done, they both come into her father’s house older, wiser, and more understanding than either had ever been before.
But she swears, even years later, she never intended to marry him.