by N. L. Holmes
“Any leads about the murder of our Babylonian?”
Amen-nefer knit his brows. “Not in so many words. But I suspect the hapiru more and more. They’ve clearly been emboldened by the lack of resistance shown by our mayors. No doubt, they would love to see our position weakened still further on the eastern border by a conflict with Sangar—perhaps even an invasion.”
Hani nodded. “This has been very helpful, Lord Amen-nefer. Thank you for sharing your observations.” He paused and then said in a casual tone, “It seems our servant Zalaya has died.”
“So it seems. I was gone at the time, but the other slaves have told me that. Well, they’re cheap. We won’t lack for domestic help. Did someone bring up your bags?” Amen-nefer’s eye rested on the baggage stacked on the floor and then seemed to flicker toward the clothes press. Maya prayed Bin-addi wouldn’t sneeze or otherwise give his presence away.
“He did. Thank you for your attention to our comfort.”
The commissioner got to his feet and tipped his head graciously. “You’re the representative of Our Sun God, Lord Hani.” With an amiable word of goodbye, he exited the room and pulled the door shut behind him.
Maya and Hani stood staring at one another for a long space while Amen-nefer’s footsteps clopped off into the distance, then Maya burst out, “The lying dog. I’ll bet anything that he was the chief of the conspirators. And that pig Hotep. These are the men guarding our borders?”
Hani raised an eyebrow and looked pensive. Finally, he opened the lid of the clothes press, and Bin-addi emerged, shaken and red-faced. Hani helped him out and urged him to seat himself where the commissioner had just been. The slave sat there stiffly, but he was no longer meek—a light of resolve flashed in his eyes.
“Did you hear that?” asked Hani.
“I did, my lord, but I can’t judge such matters. What I need to tell you is that the commissioner was lying when he said he was out of town. He’s the one who killed Zalaya and raped his wife.”
A stunned silence fell over the room, although Maya had to admit that he wasn’t altogether surprised. It seemed to fit the commissioner’s record of violence.
Lord Hani finally asked, “Did you see this happen?”
Bin-addi shook his head, but he said in a firmer voice, “Zalaya’s children saw it. They told me.”
Maya let out a whistle. Children would have had no reason to lie. The horrible deed must have been imprinted on their young memories forever.
Hani’s jovial face had grown pale and set. “Did the wife survive?”
“Yes, my lord, but she’s not in good shape.”
“And why do you think this happened, Bin-addi?”
Bin-addi’s voice dropped, and he cast his eyes around nervously. “The Lord Commissioner wanted to shut Zalaya up, my lord. He knew something, but I don’t know what.”
“Isn’t Amen-nefer worried that the wife saw him do it? She’ll be in more danger now,” Maya said.
“But, my lord, Zalaya was only a slave. No one cares if his master killed him.”
Maya cringed. Thank the gods no such barbarous custom exists in the Two Lands.
Hani said quietly, “Do you happen to know anything about the murder of the Babylonian?”
“No, my lord. It wasn’t me assigned to be his valet.”
“Who was, do you know?”
Bin-addi shook his head, looking apologetic. He said, as if embarrassed, “Will you help me get away, my lord? And my wife and children?”
“I told you I would, son, and I keep my word,” said Hani earnestly. “I’ll take you all to Azzati and free you. But I beg you, keep your ears open until then. Some one of the servants knows more than he’s revealing. Perhaps you could find out the man who served Lord Shulum-marduk.”
The slave dropped to his knees and threw himself on Hani’s feet. “May the gods of both our lands bless you, my lord.”
⸎
Before he and Maya and their staff departed for Azzati, Hani wanted to speak to Amen-nefer about the perception of the vassals that he was perhaps closer than he ought to be to the hapiru. But there was another topic even more urgent than that.
“Well, my lord, we’ll be off to the south tomorrow,” he said to Amen-nefer when the latter received him in his office. “I would like to buy a slave from you to serve me on the way, if you don’t mind.”
“Don’t think of it, Hani. Anyone you want is yours—no need to pay me. Let’s just call it the cost of your bribery that wasn’t needed,” the commissioner said, his curvaceous lips drawn upward in a smile.
Hani acknowledged the gift courteously. He wasn’t sure how to launch into the conversation that was trying to force its way out of him. Breathing was singularly hard. “On a completely different matter, my lord, something of personal interest came up in my discussion with one of the friends of the deceased. It turns out that Shulum-marduk was in Kemet seventeen years ago and witnessed a terrible boat accident in which a young girl fell overboard and was injured.”
Amen-nefer listened politely. When Hani stopped for a painful swallow, the commissioner said, “And?”
“That girl was almost certainly my daughter. The Babylonian said she was last seen talking to a man of your description. I wondered if you had any recollections of what happened that day? Her mother and I have long wanted to know how it befell her. We—”
“I think it must have been someone else, Lord Hani. I certainly never witnessed such an event,” Amen-nefer interrupted with every evidence of compassion. “I’m very sorry. I know how much it would mean to her family to have those recollections, but I can’t supply them.” He smiled wryly. “I’m not the only one-eyed man in the Two Lands, you know.”
“Of course not,” Hani said, so disappointed he felt tears burning in his nose. To have come so close... He got a grip on himself and decided to feel out Amen-nefer with something a bit safer. “That’s more or less all, my lord commissioner. I did feel I should transmit to you, friend to friend, something I’ve heard repeatedly from the locals, however.”
“What’s that, Hani?” Amen-nefer asked with a smile that was a little chillier than it had been a moment before.
“King Abdi-hepa, for one, seems to think you aren’t as hostile to the hapiru as you might be, my lord.”
The commissioner’s face grew dark with anger, and although he maintained his white smile, it had become sharklike with contempt. “That hound-eyed little pansy? If anyone sneezes, he fancies himself threatened.”
“It’s not the first time I’ve heard questions about you from vassals. Let’s just say that it’s to your advantage to appear as loyal as you no doubt are in your heart.” Hani smiled amiably, suspecting that Amen-nefer was probably quite close to striking him.
The man’s face grew redder and redder, a vein bulging in his temple. When he spoke, his voice had turned into a snarl. “I told you why I was dealing with them in Qidshu. You don’t believe me? It’s my word against that perverted scum Abdi-hepa. I’m not a liar.” He approached Hani, his head low between his shoulders, his fists clenching and unclenching. “Is this how you repay my hospitality, Lord Hani? By concocting accusations?”
The commissioner’s reaction was so disproportionate to the provocation that Hani felt he’d fallen into a scene from the Book of Going Forth by Day. Amen-nefer had about him something of the incendiary wrath of a demon with a head of flame. “I’m accusing you of nothing, my friend. Just reporting what others have said. Since I know that you want to be a loyal magistrate of the two lands, I tell you this in private. Your actions, of course, speak louder to Our Sun God—life, prosperity, and health to him—than the reports of others.” Hani managed to sound calm and friendly, but he felt the cold sweat on his forehead. He bowed and withdrew toward the door. “I leave you, Lord Amen-nefer. Thank you for everything. May the lord of the horizon bless you.”
He closed the door carefully behind him, his heart pounding, and had gone no more than a few paces when he heard something violent
ly strike the inside of the panel and shatter. Then another. And another.
“I hope he has copies of those tablets,” he said to himself, amused, but the hair rose on the back of his neck nonetheless. This display was a revelation of an aspect of the commissioner’s character that his previous behavior had only hinted at.
As Hani walked across the courtyard and into the wing he and his staff inhabited, he formulated revised plans. He didn’t want to spend another night under Amen-nefer’s roof; he didn’t trust the man’s volatile temper. I’m the king’s representative, here for no other reason than to set things right. Why should I have to mince my words? He wanted to get away before Amen-nefer threw him at the door.
As soon as he regained the corridor where his party was lodged, he began knocking on doors and telling everyone, “Get ready to leave. We’re going this afternoon.”
Maya stuck his head out of his room. “What’s that, Lord Hani? Leaving so abruptly?”
“I don’t want to delay our departure. I’ll explain later. Go round up our new slave, Bin-addi, and I’ll alert Pa-aten-em-heb,” Hani said under his breath.
He had to go looking in the barracks for the officer and his men. Pa-aten-em-heb reacted with surprise to Hani’s sudden orders, but he asked no questions and said simply, “I’ll see to it the men are ready.”
By the middle of the afternoon, the party was out the gate and on its way south. Bin-addi and his wife and three small children trudged along with the troops, casting fearful looks behind them until they’d entered the mountains and Kumidi was well out of sight.
⸎
When they made camp that night, Hani felt at last that he could speak to Maya and Pa-aten-em-heb about the reason for their precipitous departure. They sat on the ground, elbow to elbow, around the campfire the soldiers had built. The night was chill, even this late in the season, and the age-old trees about them cast a darker blackness that swallowed up the sky, lit with its friendly stars. Crickets pulsed rhythmically, and now and again, a cry in the woods reminded Hani of why they kept a fire burning all night. He heard the shriek of a barn owl on the hunt.
Hani began quietly so that none of the soldiers or his own staff could catch his words. “The commissioner and I had an interview this morning, and everything was cordial. Then I brought up some of the disenchantment of the vassals with his so-called protection, how he seems to be a little soft on the hapiru. I said all this nicely, of course, not confrontationally. In fact, I said it in private so he could explain himself, or better still, quietly make an effort to improve. But the man fell into a rage. I got out as fast as I could, only to hear him throwing things at the door in my wake.” Hani managed a smile, but he spoke seriously. “I honestly expected him to attack me, and I wanted us to get away from him before he lashed out at one of the secretaries or something. Slaughtered our pack donkeys.”
Maya looked shocked, his jaw hanging open. “But you were only doing your duty, my lord.”
Pa-aten-em-heb seemed less surprised. “That seems in character, frankly,” he said with a bitter sneer. “Anyone who would attack a woman wouldn’t scruple to attack the king’s emissary.”
All at once, something shifted in Hani’s mind. He murmured, the words finding themselves as he spoke them, “Could it have been he who murdered the Babylonian?” Then he answered his question with a shake of the head. “He had no motivation, though. It will only bring shame down on his administration, as it already has to an extent.”
“He had no motivation to attack you, either, my lord,” Maya said. “He just lost his temper.”
“Although I had confronted him at least. That was more provocation than some foreigner passing through would have given.”
“But why else would Amen-nefer have killed Zalaya unless he was afraid of what the slave would say?” Pa-aten-em-heb fixed Hani with a piercing stare of his black eyes.
Hani said pensively, “I told him that I planned to interview Zalaya—because I had to ask for the debens, you remember. And after that, the slave turned up dead.” He wanted this not to be the way it looked. Apprehending a magistrate of the Two Lands for murder was more than he wanted to take on. But if the man is guilty, someone must restore ma’at...
The other two men stared at Hani, and he could almost see the thoughts battering the walls inside their heads, trying to take shape—as his own were. “I need to ask Lord Ptah-mes how to proceed with this. We have to find some proof. I can’t get Amen-nefer convicted with no direct evidence.”
“Convict him of rape and battery on my sister, then,” said Pa-aten-em-heb, barely suppressing a snarl. “We know he’s guilty of that.”
“But didn’t the Master of the Hall of Justice find him innocent?” Maya’s face was stretched with incomprehension.
“True.” Hani fell silent. Maybe Ptah-mes can at least get him removed from office on the grounds that he has alienated the vassals under his charge. He earnestly hoped so. The black marks were piling up against the commissioner, even if he hadn’t murdered Shulum-marduk. Hani stood up and stretched. “It’s getting chilly, gentlemen, and we have another long day of travel ahead of us tomorrow. I think I’ll head to bed.”
He bent to light a brand and made his way toward his tent. The night closed in around him as he moved farther from the fire, the brave little flame of his burning branch a feeble protector against the black. A jackal yelped from afar. Hani entered his tent, bone weary. Yet as the hours of night passed, he found he couldn’t fall asleep. If it were proved that Amen-nefer, an official of Kemet, had murdered a foreign dignitary, Sangar would view it as an act of war. It would be an act of war. Who could ever be sure the deed wasn’t on orders from the Great King himself? How far do I pursue this? Hani asked himself. Is ma’at best served by punishing the villain or by letting him go and preventing open hostilities between our kingdoms?
And of course, he had no real proof that the commissioner was the perpetrator of the murder. To be sure, he was a violent, volatile man, but that didn’t make him guilty of that particular crime. “I need a witness,” Hani murmured. “I need a motive.”
CHAPTER 10
The little caravan was due to reach Siduna on the coast the next evening. From there, they would take a ship to Azzati, a journey of three or four days, depending on the winds. So far, the weather had held. It was pleasantly cool crossing the hill country and even cold at night. But as they descended the coastal side of the range, the heat began to close in on them once again. The humidity was rising; Hani could see it hanging like a pale scrim that blurred the horizon, where the deep blue-green of the sea met the washed blue of the sky. They were following a road that looped and looped back on itself, and the forest had fallen away behind them, the rolling foothills stretching on all sides. The view of the coastal plain, spread out below, was heart-stoppingly beautiful—the well-watered green fields and silvery olive orchards, the reed-thin black cypresses, the scattered pale cubes of farms. In the middle distance, clustered along the water’s edge, the salt scatter of Siduna rubbed into the carpet of green and gold and gray.
With a lump in his throat, Hani murmured to himself, “This must be how the gods see us.”
They stopped for lunch right there in the middle of the road. Their scout had gone ahead a ways to check the condition of the road because it would be hard enough for their carts to descend the slope safely even if the cherty surface of the passage were clear. And sure enough, as Hani spread out their basket of small breads and olives and cucumbers in green grape juice, the scout came jogging back into the camp. Hani got to his feet and followed him to where Pa-aten-em-heb sat eating with his men.
“My lord,” the panting scout said to his commander, “there are several dead trees across the road not far from here, all in a row.”
“That doesn’t sound natural,” the officer said grimly. “It must be a deliberate roadblock.” He rose to his feet and shouted, “Men, form up, and be prepared for an attack. You, you, and you”—he pointed at several so
ldiers—“go get those trees cleared in case we need to make a run for it.”
The soldiers abandoned their food and dived for their weapons. Hani asked quietly at Pa-aten-em-heb’s elbow, “Hapiru, I wonder?”
“Almost certainly, Lord Hani. Who else would fall upon a traveling party under such heavy escort?”
But Hani thought uneasily, Even if we have trained soldiers, a dozen men doesn’t seem very heavy to me. He made his way back to where Maya still sat, looking up in confusion.
The secretary sprang to his feet and dusted himself off. “Are we being attacked, my lord?” His eyes were round but not with fear. A look of fierce anticipation sparkled in them.
Hani envied him his innocence. He himself knew better what the cost of a battle would be. “It looks like it. You and I had better find some weapons, but don’t be too quick to get out into the fray to use them, my friend.” He thought he’d do well to find something to arm Bin-addi and the rest of his staff with as well, just in case. They couldn’t throw reed pens and ink blocks at a gang of desperadoes.
Apart from the brief clang and clatter of arming, a curious deadly silence lay over the camp so that the twittering of birds in the bushes became almost loud. No one spoke. All eyes were fixed on the boulders and scrubby trees and gorse that surrounded the road. It was late afternoon, and the declining sun hit them full on from the west. Below, some iterus away, where the ground leveled out, the sea glittered, too bright to look at. Hani, weighing a heavy war club in his hand, looked at the soldiers around him. They were defended only by their quilted aprons and thick scarves, their chests completely bare, yet they seemed unafraid as they prepared methodically for a conflict that would no doubt become deadly for some of them.
Lord Montu, protect us, he prayed.
He saw archers mounting a few of the rocks around them and crouching there, ready to spring up and loose their arrows into the melee. Yet how vulnerable they were to an attack from higher up the hillside. The road wasn’t wide enough to form the defenders into a circle—they were all strung out, the carts turned sideways and the animals unhitched, while Bin-addi’s wife and children had crawled under the vehicles, hoping to stay unnoticed. Hani’s heart was pounding in expectation, but he didn’t yet feel fear.