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Amon are all in hiding, and the new priests of the Aten lord it over us. They too take our money and seize our crops and even take our children away to place them in the service of the Aten, who is His Majesty’s god and not ours, and whom nobody in the village wants. Is this done at His Majesty’s command? We do not believe it. But somebody commands it, for it is done. And whom can we look to for salvation from these crimes? It should be the duty of His Majesty to protect us, but he does not. What are we to do?
    Now we talk, all up and down the river, from village to village in the ancient way that carries the news of Kemet swiftly from the Fourth Cataract to the Delta. Now we are all aware of what is happening, because it is causing trouble for us, and for our wives and children. We did not pay attention when His Majesty was Co-Regent with his father, because we knew his father and the Great Wife still had some power in Kemet to see that we were well governed, which is Pharaoh’s charge. We knew they were trying to look out for us.
    We could ignore his god the Aten, which we did, because Amon and the other gods we have always worshiped were permitted to continue much as they had always done. Now all has changed.
    Now it is known to us that His Majesty is not interested in keeping the faraway lands that brought wealth to Kemet and helped us all. He is not interested in caring for his people when they go hungry and need assistance. He is not interested in maintaining ma’at and the eternal order of Kemet which has always given us a contented life along the Nile, in good years and lean. He is not interested in protecting us, as the Good God should.
    He is interested in three things only:
    His god the Aten.
    His brother the King Smenkhkara.
    And himself.
    We would never do anything to harm His Majesty, for he is the Living Horus, Son of the Sun, King of the Two Lands, Good God and Pharaoh, and we are his people, as has ever been the way in Kemet. But we no longer believe in him, nor do we love him any more, since he does not love us. And we think—nay, I will go further since I am saying my thoughts secretly and in private, and say we hope —that this will weaken him enough so that someone can do something to save us from him.
    Save us, his own people, from Pharaoh!
    How sad that it should come to that! How sad for Pharaoh, and for us, who wanted only to love him had he but kept his trust with us and made it possible for us to do so.
    Now from the Fourth Cataract to the Delta we know this is not to be. And this is sad and frightening for Kemet, because we do not know what will happen to us, and in the village we all go fearful and uneasy because of it, and even in the midst of frolicking with my wife I find I cannot stop thinking of it, which makes me pause so that she cries out angrily and blames me for being a weakling and no man, when it is really His Majesty she should blame.
    ***

Kia
    Poor Naphuria—whom I still call that, as we do in my native Mesopotamia, because in ten years as his second wife we have never been close enough so that I could comfortably call him Akhenaten.
    Poor Naphuria, who thrashes about in the grip of his futile love and his unloved god and wonders why the Two Lands slip away from him!
    Or does he wonder? Sometimes I think he cares not at all, so recklessly does he conduct himself, with so harsh and contemptuous a disregard for the traditional ways of Kemet. They were not my ways when I came here, and it has taken me awhile to understand them, but I have learned that they are good for Kemet. They have kept this ancient land in relative peace and stability for almost two thousand years, saving only the invasion of the Hyksos and a few weak kings here and there, and two millennia is not such a mean record for a country. I know, in fact, of no other like it. But such a heritage apparently means nothing at all to him.
    Nefertiti and I have been living in the North Palace ever since our return from