Pyramids

foreign parts, in most cases quite briefly.
    He wished Vyrt was around to advice. His majesty had also heard that only one student in fifteen actually became an assassin. He wasn’t entirely certain what happened to the other fourteen, but he was pretty sure that if you were a poor student in a school for assassins they did a bit more than throw the chalk at you, and that the school dinners had an extra dimension of uncertainty.
    But everyone agreed that the assassins’ school offered the best all-around education in the world. A qualified assassin should be at home in any company, and able to play at least one musical instrument. Anyone inhumed by a graduate of the Guild school could go to his rest satisfied that he had been annulled by someone of taste and discretion.
    And, after all, what was there for him at home? A kingdom two miles wide and one hundred and fifty miles long, which was almost entirely under water during the flood season, and threatened on either side by stronger neighbors who tolerated its existence only because they’d be constantly at war if it wasn’t there.
    Oh, Djelibeybi * had been great once, when upstarts like Tsort and Ephebe were just a bunch of nomads with their towels on their heads. All that remained of those great days was the ruinously-expensive palace, a few dusty ruins in the desert and—the pharaoh sighed—the pyramids. Always the pyramids.
    His ancestors had been keen on pyramids. The pharaoh wasn’t. Pyramids had bankrupted the country, drained it drier than ever the river did. The only curse they could afford to put on a tomb these days was “Bugger Off.”
    The only pyramids he felt comfortable about were the very small ones at the bottom of the garden, built every time one of the cats died.
    He’d promised the boy’s mother.
    He missed Artela. There’d been a terrible row about taking a wife from outside the Kingdom, and some of her foreign ways had puzzled and fascinated even him. Maybe it was from her he’d got the strange dislike of pyramids; in Djelibeybi that was like disliking breathing. But he’d promised that Pteppic could go to school outside the kingdom. She’d been insistent about that. “People never learn anything in this place,” she’d said. “They only remember things.”
    If only she’d remembered about not swimming in the river…
    He watched two of the servants load Teppic’s trunk onto the back of the coach, and for the first time either of them could remember laid a paternal hand on his son’s shoulder.
    In fact he was at a loss for something to say. We’ve never really had time to get to know one another, he thought. There’s so much I could have given him. A few bloody good hidings wouldn’t have come amiss.
    “Um,” he said. “Well, my boy.”
    “Yes, father?”
    “This is, er, the first time you’ve been away from home by yourself—”
    “No, father. I spent last summer with Lord Fhem-ptahem, you remember.”
    “Oh, did you?” The pharaoh recalled the palace had seemed quieter at the time. He’d put it down to the new tapestries.
    “Anyway,” he said, “you’re a young man, nearly thirteen—”
    “Twelve, father,” said Teppic patiently.
    “Are you sure?”
    “It was my birthday last month, father. You bought me a warming pan.”
    “Did I? How singular. Did I say why?”
    “No, father.” Teppic looked up at his father’s mild, puzzled features. “It was a very good warming pan,” he added reassuringly. “I like it a lot.”
    “Oh. Good. Er.” His majesty patted his son’s shoulder again, in a vague way, like a man drumming his fingers on his desk while trying to think. An idea appeared to occur to him.
    The servants had finished strapping the trunk onto the roof of the coach and the driver was patiently holding open the door.
    “When a young man sets out in the world,” said his majesty uncertainly, “there are, well, it’s very important that he remembers…The point is, that it is a very big world after all, with all sorts…And of course, especially so in the city, where there are many additional…” He paused, waving one hand vaguely in the air.
    Teppic took it gently.
    “It’s quite all right, father,” he said. “Dios the high priest explained to me about taking regular baths, and not going blind.”
    His father blinked at him.
    “You’re not going blind?” he said.
    “Apparently not, father.”
    “Oh. Well. Jolly good,” said the king. “Jolly, jolly good. That is good