by Brad Geagley
Toh spat into a bowl at his feet. “Because the crime falls by a technicality into both your jurisdictions.”
From his position at the rear of the anteroom, Nenry strained to hear.
Toh picked up a set of wax tablets. “We’ve learned from this report of Captain Mentmose of the Medjays that the dead woman has been identified as coming from your own village of the tomb-makers, Pawero—the Place of Truth.” He handed the tablets over to a slave, who bore them to Paser. “But her body was found on Paser’s side of the city. You can see the dilemma.”
Paser made a tactical error then, scanning the report quickly. “Surely, Lord Toh, this is a regrettable but trifling matter. It says here that this Hetephras tended only small shrines in the desert hills.”
“Are my priestesses any less valuable than yours?” Pawero fumed. He was going to continue in the same vein, but a roar of outrage from Vizier Toh stopped him.
“You think this a minor incident, Paser? I tell you, the people will rise in their anger and demand justice when they hear of it, for the murder of a priestess calls forth the awful rage of the gods. You’re young. You’ve never seen the populace in its fury, or the city after a riot. I remember during the famine that cursed this region fifty years ago, the Thebans rose like a single animal and blamed us, their rulers, for the calamity. We had to flee to the hills for our lives. I’d not be too eager to dismiss this ‘minor crime’ so blithely if I were you. At such times it’s difficult for mayors to cling to their offices.” He paused, allowing his aged eyes to flash. “How do you think I was promoted?”
The old man spat into the bowl once more. “So what are you going to do about it, I ask you again, so that we can all sleep peacefully in our beds?”
Paser immediately spoke up, hoping to make good his error. “Since the body was found in the eastern part of the city, the crime—if it is one—is mine to solve.”
Seeing the vizier begin to favor Paser caused Pawero to speak up. “The case belongs to me. The priestess was a member of my flock, after all.”
“And so well tended she ends up slaughtered on your watch,” Paser murmured loud enough to be heard by the entire room.
“We don’t know that, yet,” the vizier remonstrated. “The crime could very easily have occurred at the Osiris Festival, on your watch.”
“But no tomb-maker is allowed on my side of the city,” Paser reminded him.
“Do you quote the law to me, Lord Mayor?” Toh narrowed his eyes.
With his advantage ebbing, Paser grew reckless. “But clearly the gods have spoken in their clearest voice, Great Lord.”
“How do you mean?” Toh was curious.
“I mean that if the gods had any faith in Lord Pawero’s abilities, the body of this Hetephras would surely have been found on his side of the city. Obviously, the August Ones want me to handle the case.”
“That’s preposterous,” Pawero gasped, “and heretical as well!”
“You accuse me of heresy?” It was the most serious charge in Egypt. “I can see where you’re going with this—don’t think I don’t. You have some darker purpose and hope to obscure it with these charges against me.”
“Darker purpose…!”
“That’s why you want this case—to hide the truth.”
The attendants and temple slaves gasped out loud at this accusation.
“Enough!” yelled the vizier. “This is unseemly, to make such charges as these. I know you have no love for one another, but if these accusations are true, what does that make me, who appointed you both?” Vizier Toh sucked his rubbery lips into his mouth. “We must have a solution to this problem and at once. Who is to discover the truth in this case? And how am I to know that what you will tell me is not some made-up tale to pacify me?”
At the back of the room, a wild thought seized Nenry, and he coughed slightly to be heard.
“Yes, what?” Vizier Toh’s filmy eyes raked the room. “What do you wish to say? Who are you?”
“I am Nenry, Great Lord, chief scribe to Lord Paser. If the mayors will forgive me, I think I may have a solution to this dilemma.”
“Well?” said the vizier.
“Someone with allegiance to neither mayor must be appointed to investigate this crime,” stated Nenry, “to assure that Lady Ma’at’s feather of truth is honored.”
“Yes, yes. But in all Thebes is there such a person? Surely a man must belong to one mayor or the other.”
“My brother, Semerket, is that person, Great Lord.”
The name was caught up in whispers, like the rustle of quail wings, and repeated throughout the room.
“And what makes this Semerket so right to investigate this crime?”
“He was once the clerk of Investigations and Secrets in this very place, Great Lord. He knows the laws of Egypt and is very clever—and is devoted to the truth.”
The Vizier was intrigued. “But surely because you are in Lord Paser’s employ, wouldn’t your brother favor him out of love for you?”
“Great Lord, my brother has no love for anyone. And since Lord Paser’s good friend is Lord Nakht, who married Semerket’s ex-wife, I don’t think he would be inclined to show favor to Lord Paser at all.”
“Nakht—the keeper of Pharaoh’s harem?”
“Yes, Great Lord.”
“Better and better,” Toh cackled gleefully. “But should he not then favor Pawero, to take revenge on Nakht?”
“Oh no, Great Lord. He’d never do that.”
“And why not?”
Nenry gulped. “Because… because he has told me he considers Lord Pawero to be a…” His voice trailed away.
“Well?” Toh was becoming impatient.
“Well—he calls him a pea-brained old pettifogger, Great Lord.”
Laughter erupted in the room. Seated on his stool, Pawero stiffened and color rose in his dark face.
“Silence!” Toh yelled roughly. “I will clear the room if there is another outburst.” He turned again to Nenry. “He sounds a very sour man, this brother of yours.”
“Oh, yes, Great Lord,” Nenry nodded vehemently. “He has respect for one thing only—Lady Ma’at’s feather of truth.”
Pawero rose indignant from his seat. “I protest. To retain such a man—a follower of Set, as I have heard his own brother describe him—it flies in the face of the gods. No good can come of this.”
But Toh ignored him and addressed Nenry. “Bring this man to me.” With a gesture he indicated that the audience was concluded.
The high vizier rose from his throne. Stumbling a little from the effect of his beer and palm wine, he went outdoors to relieve himself against the wall. Pawero, glaring at Nenry and Paser, exhaled loudly in disgust and took himself back to his river barge. Nenry and Paser stayed behind in the anteroom. Paser still said nothing.
“I hope you did not think me too forward, lord, proposing my brother as I did…” began Nenry.
“I should have you beaten,” the mayor stated matter-of-factly. “Don’t ever do anything like that again, Nenry, without discussing it with me first.”
“Yes, lord. It was wrong of me, lord. Never again, lord.”
The Mayor of the East chuckled and clamped his huge arm around his trembling scribe. “Don’t be too hasty, Nenry. You were wrong in not discussing it with me. But not wrong with the plan itself.”
“Lord—?”
Paser chuckled. “Did you see how angry the Old Horror was? Heehee-hee! It was worth it just for that.” But almost at once, a look of foreboding swept over him. “I still say it, though—there’s a reason Pawero wants to control this investigation. I don’t trust him. I never have. Your drunken brother is perhaps just what we need. And I intend to give him all the help I can.”
The mayor turned swiftly and strode out of the anteroom. Only after he was gone did Nenry realize, however dimly, that Mayor Paser had referred to Semerket as his “drunken brother.” How could the mayor know? Unless…
But before he could ruminat
e further, he was hailing a sedan chair to make his way into the center of the city to begin the search for Semerket. The gods alone knew what sordid places he would have to seek him in.
HE WAS IN THEIR sleeping room, just as he remembered it. Semerket laughed aloud to find himself at home, and he gazed around in delight. The walls were sensible mud brick, whitewashed, and a small window of thick transparent mica was set into a wall. He had purchased the mineral at great price from a passing caravan years ago so that Naia could gaze upon her courtyard planted in fig trees and papyrus. Sunshine poured into the room from the window, and Naia was bending down solicitously to tend him on his pallet. Semerket sighed luxuriously. He’d known, always, that Naia would return to him. They loved each other too much for it not to happen.
Then in the distant fields he saw the birds.
“Naia!” he cried happily, pointing from the roll of bedding. “Naia, look! The ibis chicks are in the furrows!” He knew how dear she found the little birds, probing the ruts with their long, black beaks. Semerket turned his gaze from the sun-besotted window. The corners of his mouth drew down. Someone else—not Naia—was bending down to peer at him.
When she saw his eyes open, she called his name. He heard her as though from very far away… and it was not Naia’s voice that he heard.
Semerket blinked, trying to force himself back into the sun-drenched room with the mica window. He had only to close his eyes, and he and his wife were again in the little mud-brick house, and hares were nipping at the wheat.
No, not hares. What were they?
“Ibis chicks,” he whispered aloud, and smiled.
The woman knelt on the floor where he lay and reached forward to feel his forehead. “Ibis chicks? Semerket, you’re scaring me. Please don’t say such things!”
He could barely register more than mild shock to see this strange woman again reaching down to stroke his cropped black hair. He shook off her hand. “You’re not Naia,” he said under his breath.
“Please get up, Semerket. Unless there’s another copper in your sash for more drink, they’ll make you go home. You should go home anyway.”
What was she talking about? He was home.
The curtain to the room was drawn back with a sudden rush of dank air. A Syrian eunuch brought another man to his pallet. The stranger was thin and bald, his face a festival of tics and twitches, and he held a kerchief to his nose, repelled by the smell of stale wine and vomit. “Yes,” the nervous man said, “yes. This is my brother.” Semerket heard the clink of copper exchanging hands.
“Nenry?” He wanted to ask why his brother was here, in his home, but a rising tide of panic drove all curiosity from him. He sat up. Where was Naia? And the window of mica? What had happened to his little house with the sensible mud-brick walls?
From somewhere far away he heard thin screaming. Semerket shook his head, forcing his mind to shut out the terrible sounds. But the shrieks penetrating his head were now so loud he tried to keep them out by clamping his hands over his ears.
The bald man continued to stare at him in horror. “How long has he been like this?” he asked the woman.
“Since early this morning. He couldn’t stop screaming, no matter what I did for him.”
Tears slid down her face. She brushed them away with irritation. “He’s so tortured, your brother,” she said. “I’ve never seen anyone sadder. I’d do anything for him if he’d ask. But he doesn’t see me at all. I’m just a tavern wench he sobs to about his wife sometimes.”
Semerket’s eyes fluttered open. The bald man was speaking to a physician, who was sitting next to him on the cot. The pretty woman was holding Semerket’s head in her lap.
“Will you undertake his cure?” his brother asked the physician.
The physician nodded. “Get me some date wine,” the man said to the tavern maid.
“More wine?” said Nenry. “Surely more will kill him!”
“He hasn’t had much else for some time. To deprive him of it suddenly would shock his body.” The physician quickly wrote a prayer on a strip of papyrus in red and black inks. The woman placed the bowl of wine before him. From his instrument box, the physician withdrew a stoppered bottle. When he opened it an acrid smell invaded the room.
“What is that?” Nenry asked suspiciously.
“Fermented pine resin,” he said as he poured. “And this,” he said, opening another bottle, “is opium from Hattush.”
“Will it cost much?”
“You want him to live?”
Nenry nodded.
Five tinctures of the serum were dropped into the palm wine, then a quail’s egg was broken into it and stirred. The physician dipped the prayer strip in the bowl and the ink of the spell’s glyphs dissolved into the liquid. The physician jammed an ivory plug between Semerket’s teeth, then spooned the wine down his throat.
The shrieks stopped almost immediately, and Semerket saw that the beautiful room with the mica window was serene once again. With the ivory in his mouth, Semerket could not speak. He would have filled the darkening room with questions, had he been able. He would have asked the physician if he knew why his beautiful Naia was not there and when she would return…
Suddenly, he knew the answers to his questions.
For the first time in many days he lay quietly, and his restless mind did not conjure visions of beautiful rooms and pleasant pastures, everywhere inhabited by the shade of his beautiful wife. And perhaps this was why, occasionally, tears oozed from beneath his bruised and flickering lids.
HE AWAKENED TO the slosh of water and the sound of a scrubbing. When he opened his eyes, sensible mud-brick walls rose before him, and he saw a pane of mica set into the wall.
For a moment he believed himself back in his dream, but the window glared red with late afternoon sun, bloodily picking out unpleasant bits of detail in the small room. He lifted his head and stared, wincing from the heavy, clanging weight of his skull. He lay on dirty, crumpled linen. Broken crockery littered the floor around him. Mouse droppings were everywhere, and above him the palm rafters of the roof glistened with spider webs.
A man with scaled and peeling feet was cleaning up the mess, list-lessly scrubbing the floor with a pig-bristle brush. Semerket swallowed, tested his voice, and was able to croak to the man, “Who are you?”
The man whirled around. He dropped the brush into the basin of water with a plop, calling out, “Master! Master! He’s awake!”
Nenry appeared at the doorway. “So he is,” he said with sardonic disapproval. “Don’t be afraid of him. He’s only my younger brother, of no account.”
Semerket regarded his elder sibling with wonder. “Nenry, what are you doing here?” Then memories of the last few days flooded his mind. The inside of his skull itched like fire, and his throat felt like sand. He turned a plaintive gaze on his brother. “Some wine? Beer?”
“Water is what you’ll get.” His brother poured some into a bowl and handed it to him.
The bowl went flying across the room. “Wine,” he rasped out again.
With a covert look at the servant, Nenry brought out a couple of copper rings from his sash. “Go to the tavern at the corner, and bring us a jug of wine. If I find the seal broken, you’ll be beaten with a stick.”
The man scuttled from the room like a dung beetle. Semerket noted that he limped, that his injuries were fresh. Instantly an image of Nenry’s terrifying wife took shape in Semerket’s mind. “Your servant?” he asked.
“My valet,” Nenry answered. “I had to bring in someone. This place of yours smelled worse than a nest of river ducks. You can’t expect someone of my position to wash down a house by myself.”
Semerket laid his head back down on the pillowed cradle. The mere mention of wine had done much to calm him. “What position?”
“Why, I’m the chief scribe to the Lord Mayor of the East! I sent you an announcement when the office was given to me. You didn’t receive it?” Nenry’s face revealed sad disappointment that hi
s brother apparently knew nothing of his good fortune, for he believed in his heart that all men envied him. Nenry counted on it, in fact.
Semerket spoke with difficulty. “I thought you served at Sekhmet’s temple.”
“I’m happy to say that my diligence and skills were noted there.” A fatuous smile settled on Nenry’s lips. “Thanks to the gods, my wife and I are now among the first citizens of Thebes.”
“Ah, yes. Now I remember. And you had only to sell a son to do it.” Semerket inserted the phrase like a surgeon incises a wound, finished before the bleeding has begun.
Nenry winced. He rose to stand indignant and outraged above his brother. “How can you say that? My son is now a prince because of my selflessness. I gave him to my wife’s uncle because of what could be done for him. I did it for the boy, do you hear?”
Semerket became calmly reassuring. “You mistake me, Nenry. You’ve done well. ‘Chief scribe to the mayor’—that’s worth two sons, at least.”
Nenry looked at his brother, hands falling to his side. “Why do I keep helping you? You’re never grateful. You always sneer at me. Why? What have I ever done to you?”
Semerket now directed so level a gaze at his brother that Nenry was forced to drop his eyes. “You sold your son to become a scribe. A scribe, Nenry! If you knew how much Naia and I yearned for a child… Yet you gave yours away as casually as a woman loans a kerchief.”
Tics and twitches laid claim to Nenry’s mouth. “I should have let you die today. Everyone would have been better off if I had.”
“Yes.” Semerket’s voice was tired, dull. “Especially me.”
THE SERVANT RETURNED with the wine, and Nenry broke its seal. He poured a bowl and handed it to Semerket, who drank it down in a single draft. Silently he held out the bowl for more. This time he drank it more slowly, and sighed. Strength visibly returned to him. He turned his black eyes on his brother and the serving man. “Join me,” he said.
“You’re very free with the wine I paid for.” Nenry was still peevish, but he nevertheless poured the wine. The three men sipped in silence for a while.