by Lauren Haney
Bak stopped before the last house in the lane and a wooden door latched to discourage entry. "We must begin somewhere. Besides, I want Woser to know I'll sweep up every grain of sand, if I must, to look at the dark, clean earth beneath."
"I thought you wished him to believe you can be deceived."
"If he knows I'm serious about this investigation, he'll fret. If he thinks I'm stupid, he may be careless."
The young Medjay's expression lingered somewhere between confusion and skepticism.
Bak lifted the wooden latch and shoved open the door. The house was small, a single room five paces by ten, whitewashed for cleanliness, and a small kitchen at the rear lightly roofed with branches and palm fronds. Beyond a low platform covered with a sleeping pallet, a ladder led to an opening in the roof, closed now with a palm-leaf mat. A second pallet, much smaller than the other, lay on the floor in the opposite corner. A stool and three reed chests completed the furnishings. Several dried mud animals, a toy crocodile carved of wood, and a broken doll, lay clumped together on the smaller bed.
"He must've kept the boy with him!" Bak was surprised, though not sure why. "The mute child Nofery talked about."
Kasaya, little more than an overgrown child himself, had been intrigued by Nofery's tale. "Maybe Puemre kept him as his servant. A boy of six or seven years can do many small tasks to ease life's path."
"How did they manage to talk to each other?" Bak wondered. "More important, where's the boy now?"
The two men studied the room, looking for signs of recent occupation. The brazier was cold, the pottery dishes clean and neatly stacked against the wall. Both sleeping pallets were smooth and tidy. One chest contained men's clothing: tunics and kilts of fine linen, all clean and folded. Another was filled with sandals and armor and hand weapons: dagger, mace, and sling. A smaller chest held Puemre's razors, eye paint, and other toilet articles. An examination of the contents of several pottery jars large and small disclosed a bare minimum of foodstuffs.
"I fear the child's run away," Bak said. "With so little food remaining, I doubt he'll return." He was not unduly concerned. The boy was probably close by, living in the home of some soft-hearted, motherly woman with a brood of her own.
Kasaya hurried to the door to study the sandy lane. "He hasn't come this way since the last strong wind. How long ago was that, I wonder?"
"Go find a neighbor."
Within minutes Kasaya came back, bringing with him a dusky young woman of fifteen or so years holding a tiny baby to her breast. Her eyes were heavy with sleep, as if the Medjay had disturbed her afternoon nap.
"The wind blew hard three nights ago," Kasaya said. He nodded to the woman. "Speak up, mistress. Tell the lieutenant what you told me."
She lowered her eyes, too shy to speak in more than a murmur. "I've not seen the boy since the night before the sergeant came, looking for Lieutenant Puemre."
Bak's interest quickened. "The child was already gone before Puemre was found to be missing?"
Her eyes flickered to his face and away; she nodded. Bak's thoughts tumbled over each other, searching through the possibilities. Somehow the boy must have learned of his master's death. Was it possible that he saw Puemre die? Would it be stretching credibility to assume the murder had been witnessed by two people? One a drunk who might not remember and one a mute who could not repeat the tale? Both of whom had disappeared. "Tell me of that night," he urged.
"My man was on guard duty, so I lay alone on the roof. The air was hot and my baby restless. I couldn't sleep. I saw the boy climb up from this house and stand for an instant in the starlight. He carried a bundle on his back. A sheet, I thought, filled with I know not what, a burden so heavy it bent him double. He looked around like a puppy lost from its mother, searching for the terrors of the night. Finding no threat-he didn't know I watched him-he walked from roof to roof until he reached the far end of the block, where he disappeared from sight."
"And he's not been back since."
She hugged her baby close, gaining courage from its warmth. "No, sir."
Kasaya nodded in agreement. "I found sand on the mat above the ladder, so he didn't sneak in from the roof." Bak eyed the room, noting how neat it was, how abandoned it appeared. If the boy had seen Puemre slain, he would never come back. Nor would he be easy to find, as Bak had initially assumed. He let out a long, frustrated sigh. "Who's come to this house since Puemre's death?"
The girl nuzzled the dark fuzz on her baby's head. "The sergeant returned again and again, looking more worried each time. The woman came, the one heavy with child who cared for the house and cooked. Other men came, soldiers they were, but I know not how many for they all looked much alike to me."
Bak had expected no less, but his spirits sagged even further. With so many people coming and going, any clues Puemre might'6ve left had long ago vanished. The search he must make would be fruitless.
He asked a few more questions that led nowhere and dismissed the woman. "You may as well go, too, Kasaya. This house has been swept clean. I see no point in wasting your time as well as mine."
The lord Re hung low in the western sky, stretching the shadow of the escarpment across the lower city. The harbor was still and quiet, its waters a sheet of molten gold reflecting a cloudless sky. A soft breeze stirred the air, rousing the city's inhabitants to their evening endeavors, giving voice to animals and fowl and men.
Bak descended the ladder from the rooftop and glanced around the room. He had yet to search the sleeping pallets, then he could leave. As he knelt beside the child's bed, he wondered what Pashenuro had managed to glean from the garrison stores. A plump duck would be pleasant, he thought, and ajar of beer, treats to counterbalance his failure to find a single clue to Puemre's death. Or life, for that matter. Puemre had lived well enough, but austere, as if trying to prove to his fellow officers-or maybe himselfthat he could turn his back on his noble heritage.
Lifting the sheet, shaking it out, he thanked the lord Amon that he would soon be finished and on his way. He had barely peeked inside the house Woser had assigned to him and his men, but it seemed ideal: two rooms, located like Puemre's house at the end of a quiet lane. He eyed the pallet on which the mute boy had slept. The pad had been doubled, making it thicker and softer, more like a nest. He raised it, looking without hope for a hiding place in the hard-packed earthen floor.
A broken piece of grayish pottery fell from the folds of cloth, clattering to the ground, a shard with some kind of drawing in black ink on its smooth outer surface. Picking it up, he saw lines rough and uncertain, a sketch by an untrained hand. People with round heads and pointed, birdbeak noses, shapeless bodies, and stick-like arms and legs. Then his eyes widened and he pursed his lips in a silent whistle. The sketch showed a man with the tall crown of a king bending over a small figure lying on a bed. A second man stood behind the king, knife in hand, arm poised for a deadly thrust. The meaning was clear: the Kushite king
Amon-Psaro with his ailing son, and someone… Puemre maybe?… intending to slay the king.
He took a long, deep breath to calm his pounding heart. Was he leaping to a conclusion based on faulty evidence? Why would Puemre want to slay Amon-Psaro, a man who had not set foot on the soil of Kemet for many years and probably never would again? No, the idea was ludicrous.
He heard a sound, the faint crunch of sand underfoot. Swinging around, he glimpsed a deeply tanned leg and a short white kilt. Something struck him on the head, rocking him back, and he felt himself falling. The world around him turned to night.
Bak opened his eyes, tried to lift his head off the floor. The room tilted at a frightening angle, making his stomach churn. His skull felt about to burst. He closed his eyes, swallowed. After a while, he tried again to rise. This time, he managed to lift his shoulders onto Puemre's clothing chest, empty now, its lid askew. When the room stopped spinning, he looked at the mess around him and cursed with all his heart. Whoever had struck him senseless had torn the place apart. The chests w
ere empty, their contents strewn around the room, along with the sleeping pallets and sheets. The food storage jars had been tipped over, leaving grain and flour, lentils and dried dates, dumped on the floor. His eyes landed on a grayish mass of grit close to his knee and he muttered another, harsher curse. The shard with the drawing had been crushed to bits.
The chunk of pottery could have been accidentally trod on during the search-but he did not believe it for a moment. He quickly sorted through his thoughts, finding a new possibility. Maybe Puemre was not the man who wanted Amon-Psaro dead; maybe instead he had caught someone else plotting against the Kushite king.
Bak heard a noise, a faint crunch of sand underfoot exactly as before. He swung around and at the same time grabbed an empty storage jar, not much of a weapon but better than nothing. Glimpsing a man peering through the doorway, a long scar deforming his cheek and a wide-eyed look of shock and fear, Bak hauled himself to his feet and lurched toward the portal, the world unsteady around him. The man ducked away and began to run. Bak crossed the threshold on legs too shaky to carry him farther. Clinging to the doorjamb, he watched the man race around the corner at the far end of the lane and vanish from sight.
He scowled, more at his own infirmity than at his failure to catch the man. It should be easy enough to find one with so terrible a scar.
Bak walked along the lane, careful to make no quick movements that would goad the dull ache in his head into a full-fledged throbbing. He half listened to the voices on the rooftops, families relaxing in the cool of the evening while the women prepared the last meal of the day. A tiny brownish monkey chattered at him from a doorway. Dogs barked in the distance and a donkey brayed. A rat shot up the lane and through an open portal; an orange-striped cat raced after it. Iken might wear brighter colors than Buhen, he thought, but it was no different, a frontier city made up of men, women, and children, soldiers and civilians. Ordinary people going about their ordinary tasks.
As he neared the end of the block, the aroma of braised beef wafted from the open doorway of his new quarters. A broad smile spread across his face, and he hastened forward. The commissary, it appeared, had been generous indeed to Pashenuro.
He strode inside and followed the scent to a small, square courtyard at the back of the house. Stopping short on the threshold, he gaped at the attractive young woman kneeling at the burning brazier.
"Who're you?" he demanded.
She looked up, startled by his sudden entry, and gave him a sloe-eyed smile. "I'm Aset, daughter of Commander Woser."
For an instant, he wondered if the blow on his head had addled him so badly he had come to the wrong house. Impossible. "What're you doing here?" The question was too abrupt, he knew, and lacking in tact.
She rose to her feet, her elegant figure visible through a calf-length white sheath so diaphanous he could see every curve, every shadow and light. "You've had a long, hard day, Lieutenant. I thought to ease your evening hours with food and drink and…" She hesitated, shrugged. "With whatever pleasures strike your fancy."
He swallowed hard, trying to ignore the warmth in his loins. She was about sixteen, ripe for the plucking. But common sense told him to be wary of this woman. "Where are my Medjays, Kasaya and Pashenuro?"
She raised an eyebrow as if surprised he should care. "I sent them to my father's kitchen."
The warning signals grew stronger in his thoughts, helping to quench the fire in his groin. The barracks would have been a more logical place to send them, especially if she meant them to spend the night away from this house.
With a sultry smile, she reached out to take his hand and led him to the mudbrick bench built onto the back of the house. Near the bench, he saw a reed basket overflowing with two wine jars, stemmed drinking bowls, and several bundles wrapped in leaves, food prepared by her father's servants, he guessed. A neatly folded bundle of cloth lay on the end of the bench, a robe, he assumed, something to cover her nakedness while she walked the streets between the commander's residence and this humble abode. A pleasant breeze floated off the roof, blowing away the heat from the brazier.
She picked up a jar and a bowl. "Shall we drink and be merry while our food cooks?"
Bak took the jar from her, noted the vintage on the plug, and nodded his approval. Whatever her game, she was playing it with style. Or was it Woser's game? "I assume your father believes you to be with friends, mistress Aset?"
"Oh, he never questions my actions."
I'll bet, Bak thought. A lovely thing like you would be the bane of any father's life.
She sat beside him, so close he could smell her sweetscented hair and see the tiny brown mole tucked in the cleft between her lush, round breasts. "Will you open the wine?" she asked.
Squashing the moment's temptation, he broke the plug and filled her bowl. The wine was a clear, deep red, heavy with the scent of a delicate yet indefinable fruit.
Taking a sip, she smiled and turned the bowl so his lips would touch the same spot. "Drink, my brother, and enjoy. Let's make this a night never to forget."
My brother, she had said. The endearment was as disconcerting as the invitation. "I'm most flattered that you've come to me, mistress. You're as lovely as a gazelle, too perfect a creature to waste on one as undeserving as I."
"You're far too modest." She ran her fingers down the muscles of his arm, making his skin tingle. "My father has told me you're a man of great courage."
"Your father exaggerates." He rose to his feet, distancing himself from so tempting a morsel.
She looked up, surprised, and gave him a pouty smile. "You don't find me attractive?"
"You know I do." Kneeling beside the brazier, he picked up a stick charred on one end. "You're as lovely as any woman I know." He made a pretense of stirring the fire, his thoughts flitting in all directions, searching for a way out. The last thing he wanted was to be expelled from Iken by an irate father.
"Come to me," she urged, patting the seat beside her. He formed what he hoped was a regretful smile. "I'm sorry, mistress Aset, more sorry than you'll ever know. But I've pledged my heart to another."
The excuse was bittersweet, not altogether true, nor was it untrue. He had, many months before, given his heart to a woman too recently widowed to love him or anyone else.
She had gone to faraway Kemet, taking her husband's body for burial in his tomb. He had heard nothing from her since, nor was he sure he ever would. Still he yearned for her.
Aset's smile hardly wavered. She bent toward him, her shapely breasts bulging at the top of her dress. "She's not here. I am."
He eyed the plump offering. True, he had some time ago turned his back on abstinence. After all, yearning was one thing; remaining faithful to a faint hope was something else again. Not now, though, not with Commander Woser's daughter.
Quick footsteps sounded in the house. Leather sandals, Bak thought, not the reed-sandaled steps of Kasaya or Pashenuro. He offered brief but fervent thanks to the lord Amon for giving him the wisdom to leave the bench.
A gangly young man burst through the door, his hand on his dagger, his face an angry scarlet. He stopped short. His eyes darted from Aset to Bak and back again. Confusion supplanted anger.
"Nebseny!" The girl's face paled; she sprang to her feet. "What brought you here?" If her show of surprise was an act, it was a good one.
"Your father sent me. He told me he thought this man…" Nebseny glanced at Bak, far more than an arm's length from the girl, and took in her dress. "What're you doing in this house?" he demanded of her, "and in so revealing a gown!"
"What I do is none of your business," she snapped. Without a word, he grabbed her arm and shoved her out of the courtyard and into the house. Scooping up the folded robe, he humN after her.
Bak followed as far as the front door. As they disappeared from sight at the end of the lane, he let out a long, relieved breath. Thanks to the lord Amon, a great deal of luck, and a healthy suspicion, he had missed entrapment by a hair. He walked back to the courtyar
d and dropped onto the bench, not sure who had been doing what to whom.
Had Woser thought up the game? Or Aset? The young man Nebseny had seemed genuinely angry, but appearances could be deceiving.
He glanced at the meat, so brown and fragrant it was worthy of the lord Amon. The wine, too, was special. Yet he did not enjoy eating and drinking alone. He cocked an ear, heard children playing on the rooftops. One of the boys would surely be willing to carry a message to Pashenuro and Kasaya at the commander's residence.
Chapter Seven
"You understand what you must do," Bak said, looking first at Pashenuro and then Kasaya.
Pashenuro slipped the loop of his leather sheath onto his belt and retied the strip of linen. "I'm to follow Lieutenant Puemre's company onto the practice field-or to whatever task they have today-and I'm to speak with the sergeant, Minnakht, working my way into his confidence. With luck, and if the lord Amon smiles on me, he'll not only talk with an open and honest tongue, but he'll encourage his men to tell me what they can."
Bak fastened the clasp of his wide multicolored bead bracelet, tugged at the hem of his kilt to smooth it over his hips, and sat down on the sleeping platform, converted now to a bench cluttered with his neatly folded sleeping pallet, his sandals, Kasaya's shield, and a basket of bread so fresh it perfumed the room. The few other furnishings were the Medjays' sleeping pallets on the floor, two folding camp stools, and a basket of nonperishable provisions. A smaller basket containing writing implements and a few scrolls sat near the doorway to the second, empty room.
"Your purpose?" he asked Pashenuro.
"I'm to learn what I can about the dead man and…" The thick-bodied Medjay slid his dagger into the sheath, adjusted the weapon for greater comfort, and picked up his shield and spear, lying along the base of the wall. "Using all the guile I possess, I'm to learn what I can about the other officers without anyone guessing my purpose. Especially how they and Lieutenant Puemre worked and played together, whether friendly or as foes."