Cruel Deceit lb-6
Page 10
With no foreman to complain that he would get in the work men’s way, he could ascend unimpeded to the top. From there he would have a panoramic view of the southern por tion of the city.
The slope was not steep and soon he reached the upper end. As he had expected, the scene laid out before him was lovely. After passing the first barque sanctuary, the pro cessional way swung west around the small walled mansion of the lady Mut, then cut a wide swath south to Ipet-resyt.
Along much of the way, buildings pressed against the strips of trampled grass lining both sides of the broad thorough fare. The sea of white rooftops was dotted at times with the dark brown of unpainted dwellings and islands of dusty green trees standing alone or clustered in groves. A sizable crowd had gathered beyond the mansion of the lady Mut to watch a procession of some kind.
He waved to the boys, who had stopped to rest, and moved to the western edge of the ramp, where he looked down into the housing area outside the small gate he and
Amonked had used to reach the storehouse where Woserhet was slain. Few people walked the lanes; the day was too hot.
Donkeys stood close to the dwellings in narrow slices of shade, and dogs lay well back in open doorways. A move ment caught his eye. A man, a redhead, coming out of the sa cred precinct. Turning toward the unfinished gate and the ramp on which Bak stood, the man walked along the lane at the base of the enclosure wall.
Bak could not see his face clearly, but the fuzzy hair was the color he remembered. He raced down the ramp, entered the lane running alongside, and ran back toward the enclo sure wall. The redhead rounded the corner. He saw Bak, piv oted, and retreated the way he had come. Bak turned the corner and spotted him ahead, veering into a lane that led in among the housing blocks.
Bak raced to the point where the man had vanished, saw him turn into an intersecting lane. He sped after him. The man ducked into a narrower passage and another and an other, zigging and zagging between building blocks that all looked much alike. Each time Bak lost sight of him, the sound of running footsteps and at times the barking of an ag itated dog drew him on.
The red-haired man was fast and knew this part of the city well. He maintained his distance, twisting and turning with out a pause. How far they ran, Bak had no idea, but he had begun to gasp for air and sweat was pouring from him when his quarry dashed out from among the building blocks and onto the grassy verge lining the processional way. A short burst of speed took him into the crowd Bak had seen from atop the ramp.
He was so focused on the redhead that he was slow to re alize the procession was made up of men leading exotic ani mals imported from afar. Though not nearly as long as the procession of two days earlier, the number of spectators was large, with a multitude of wide-eyed and noisy children among equally enthralled adults. The redhead used the crowd to his advantage, letting his bright hair blend in among the many colorful banners carried by the youthful spectators. Bak lost him within moments.
Stopping to catch his breath, he paused at a booth to buy a jar of beer. He drank the thick, acrid liquid while he walked the length of the procession, searching for his quarry. His eyes strayed often to the creatures parading along the thor oughfare. He assumed they were the more manageable of the animals Maatkare Hatshepsut kept in a zoo within the walls surrounding the royal house. Except for a few special occasions, they were never seen by any but a privileged few.
Why she had chosen to show them now, he had no idea.
An elderly black-maned lion held pride of place. Behind him, carried by porters wearing the bright garb of southern
Kush, came a caged lioness and a leopard, both of which Bak might well have seen in Buhen, being transported from far to the south on their way to Kemet. A leashed and muz zled hyena led a parade of baboons and monkeys, antelopes and gazelles, each creature with its own keeper. Men carried a few caged birds that had somehow survived the long jour ney from distant lands. Last in line, occupying another place of honor, lumbered a bear from lands to the north, led by a man of Mitanni.
The red-haired man, Bak concluded, had eluded him. Not one to give up easily, he turned back toward the sacred precinct.
“No, sir.” The thin elderly scribe, whose dull white hair hung lank around his ears, dipped the end of his writing brush into a small bowl of water and swished it around, cleaning the black ink from it. “At least I don’t think I know him. Your description lacks…” His voice tailed off, the si lence saying more emphatically than words that his inter rogator could have been describing almost anyone with red hair.
Bak was painfully aware of the deficiency of his spoken portrayal. The red-haired man had been too far away to de scribe properly. Bak would know him when he saw him, but to create a recognizable verbal image was close to impossi ble.
“Do you know all the redheads who toil within the sacred precinct?”
The scribe touched the tip of his wet brush to an ink cake and dabbed up a slick of red ink, letting Bak know he was a busy man and must get on with his task. “Not all, but I can tell you where to find one or two.”
Bak walked into a large room whose ceiling was sup ported by tall columns. Light flooded the space from high windows, shining down on twenty or more men seated cross-legged on reed mats, writing beneath the sharp eye of their overseer. Near the front sat a youth with flame red hair.
Curly but not fuzzy. A closer look revealed a body pale from spending most of the time indoors. The man Bak was look ing for had the ruddy skin of one accustomed to the sun.
“Try Djeserseneb,” the youth said after Bak had explained his mission. “His hair is red, about the color of a pomegran ate. You’ll find him at the goldsmith’s workshop.”
Had the man he chased had hair the color of the succulent fruit? Bak wondered. He would not have called it so, but dif ferent men saw things in different ways.
“Roy might be the man you’ve described.”
The metalsmith, a muscular man whose hair was truly the color of a pomegranate and as straight as the thin gold wire his neighbor was forming, paused to adjust the tongs clamped around a small spouted bowl. Satisfied he would not drop the container, he poured a thin rivulet of molten gold into a mold on the floor in front of him. Bak could not tell what the finished image would be.
“He’s a guard, one who watches over the sacred geese.”
The craftsman glanced upward to see the sun’s position in the sky. “About this time of day, they open the tunnel and let the birds out for a swim. You’ll find him awaiting them at the sacred lake.”
A guard. A promising occupation. The red-haired man he had followed through the lanes had looked well-developed of body and had certainly been fast on his feet.
The guard’s hair was bleached by the sun, strawlike and dry. Unlike the man Bak had chased, it had no spark of life and could be mistaken for brown from ten paces away.
“Sounds like Dedu,” Roy said. “He’s a sandalmaker.
You’ll find him in a workshop behind the house of life.”
“And so my search went.” Bak sat on a stool beneath the newly erected pavilion on the roof of the building where his men were housed. Hori had needed a shaded place to unroll and read the scrolls, so the Medjays had built the light struc ture before leaving to partake of the day’s festivities. “I’m confident I met every red-haired man who toils within the sacred precinct. The man Meryamon denied knowing was not among them.”
“If he’s not there, where can he be found?” Kasaya asked.
The ensuing silence was filled with birdsong, children’s laughter and adult voices, the barking of dogs and the bray of a donkey.
Hori glanced ruefully at the scrolls spread across the rooftop, unrolled and held in place with stones. “Our day’s been more productive, but I can’t say we’ve learned any thing.”
Bak left the pavilion to look at the documents, making his way down one narrow aisle after another. The lord Re hov ered above the peak beyond western Waset, offering plenty of light to see by. Many of the
scrolls were in the condition he would have expected after Hori’s initial sort: wholly in tact or damaged at the edges with the ends burned away. The remainder, those he would never have guessed could be un rolled, were in various stages of destruction. Large segments remained of a few. Of the rest, patches of decreasing size had been salvaged, some little more than a few charred scraps.
He whistled. “I’m amazed you recovered so much.”
“We’ve Kasaya to thank, sir.” Hori grinned at the young
Medjay. “He has the patience of a jackal sniffing out a grave.
He’d sit there for an hour, bent over a charred scroll, un rolling it a bit at a time. You’d think the whole document a total loss, but sooner or later he’d find something inside I could read.”
Bak smiled his appreciation at the hulking young Medjay, whose hands looked too large to manage any kind of deli cate effort. “You’ve done very well, both of you. I couldn’t have asked for more.”
Hori and Kasaya exchanged a pleased smile. “We decided that if the slayer took Woserhet’s life to hide the fact that he’s been stealing from the lord Amon, he’d probably have thrown any documents that might point a finger at him into the fire. If that was the case, the worst burned would be the most useful.”
“I guess you know what you must do next,” Bak said, his eyes sliding over the display.
“See if we can learn what the culprit was stealing.”
“Should we concentrate on items Meryamon would’ve handled?” Kasaya asked.
Bak thought over the idea and shook his head. “No. Let the throwsticks fall where they will. If he’s been stealing, signs of his activity should appear naturally, without making an effort to find them.”
“But, sir,” Hori said, clearly puzzled, “you told us the red haired man ran when he saw you. Wouldn’t that indicate guilt?”
“Guilt, yes, but for what reason we don’t know. Also, I chased him, not Meryamon. One man’s guilt is not necessar ily that of another, and Meryamon’s lie about knowing him doesn’t make either man a thief.”
“Can we help in any way, sir?” Sergeant Pashenuro reached into the pot of lamb stew and withdrew a chunk containing several ribs. “None of us can read, and it sounds to me as if that’s what you need, but we’d like to be of some use.”
“Never fear, Sergeant. When I require help, I’ll summon you.” Bak tore a piece of bread from a round, pointed loaf so recently taken from the heated pot in which it had been baked that it stung his fingers. “Until I do, let the men play.
The festival won’t last forever, and when it ends we’ll set off for Mennufer. The lord Amon only knows when next they’ll have time to relax.”
Sergeant Psuro, a thickset Medjay whose face had been scarred by a childhood disease, swallowed a bite of green onion. “You don’t seem too worried about laying hands on
Woserhet’s slayer.”
“The more I learn, the more straightforward his death ap pears. He was probably slain because of a problem he un earthed in the lord Amon’s storehouses. The trick is to learn exactly what that problem is-theft, no doubt-and to search out the man responsible.”
Pashenuro looked across the courtyard, illuminated by a single torch mounted on the wall. The two men assigned to remain on watch were playing knucklebones with a marked lack of enthusiasm, both having returned after a long, hard day of revelry. Deep shadows fell around them, and around
Bak and the sergeants, accenting the sporadic reddish glow beneath the cooking pot, dying embers stirred to life by the light breeze. Hori’s dog lay with his back against a row of tall porous water jars, snoring and twitching.
A small boy came through the portal from the street.
“Lieutenant Bak?”
“I’m Bak.”
“I’ve come with a message, sir.” The child spoke rapidly, running his sentences together in his eagerness to pass on what he had to say. “A man named Amonked wishes to see you, sir. He asks you to meet him at a grain warehouse near the harbor. Right away, he said. I’m to take you there.”
The three men looked at one another, their curiosity aroused.
“Shall we go with you, sir?” Psuro asked.
“What did this man look like?” Bak asked the boy.
The child shrugged. “Like a scribe, sir.”
“You could be describing any one of a thousand men,”
Pashenuro said, disgusted.
“Wouldn’t Amonked send a note, sir?” Psuro asked.
“He may not have had the time or the means.” Bak scooped up his baton and rose to his feet. “I suspect we’re making too much of a simple summons. Lest I err, I’ll send the boy back after we reach the warehouse. If I don’t return by moonrise, he can lead you to me.”
The building they approached looked like all the other warehouses strung along the river, especially in the dark, and the slightly ajar door before which they stopped opened into one of countless similar storage magazines in the area.
A strong smell of grain greeted them, making Bak sneeze.
He shoved the door wider and peered inside, expecting a light, finding nothing but darkness and an empty silence.
Amonked was not there. Disappointed, Bak turned to speak to the boy. The child was halfway down the lane, run ning as fast as his legs could carry him. Something was wrong!
Bak sensed movement behind him, started to turn. A hard object struck him on the head, his legs buckled, and his world turned black.
Chapter Seven
A pounding head brought Bak to his senses. He lay still and quiet, reluctant to move. Time passed, how much he did not know. He opened his eyes. At least he thought he did. But he could see nothing. What had happened? Where was he? He tried to rise, but pain shot through his head, intense and ago nizing, centered somewhere over his right ear.
He had no choice but to lay motionless, allowing the pain to lessen to a fierce, persistent throbbing. He felt himself ly ing on… On what? He tried to think, to remember. He had been summoned by Amonked. A boy had led him to a ware house near the river. He recalled standing outside, watching the child run away, and then… Yes, he had heard a move ment behind him. After that… Nothing.
He could see no stars overhead, nor could he hear the creaking and groaning of ships moored along the river’s edge or feel the light breeze. His assailant must have moved him.
The air was hot, heavy, and dead silent. It carried the musty smell of grain and another odor he could not quite identify. A food smell. He was inside a building. A warehouse. Probably the one to which Amonked had summoned him.
No. Not Amonked. Someone else. Someone who wished to slay him? Or get him out of the way for a while?
He slid a foot back, raising his knee, and crooked an arm, thinking to prop himself up. The realization struck: his as sailant had left him untied. Offering a heartfelt prayer of thanks to the lord Amon, he explored with his fingers the rough bed beneath him. He felt fabric, the heavy weave of storage bags, and a layer of dust. Touching a finger to his tongue, he tasted ashes, used to protect grain from insects and worms.
The sacks were full, plump with grain. A few kernels had escaped to lay among the ashes. As he had guessed, he was in a warehouse, most likely the same one he had approached without a qualm, thinking to meet Amonked. A block of buildings near the river, the lanes around it untraveled at night. In the unlikely event that his cries for help would carry through the thick mudbrick walls, no one would be outside to hear.
Why, in a warehouse, could he smell food? He frowned, trying to think. Not food, but what? Something scorched, burning. A thought, the sudden certain knowledge, sent a chill down his spine. The grain was on fire.
He sat up abruptly. The world spun around him and his head felt ready to burst. He thought he might be sick. He swallowed hard, reached up and gently probed the painful spot. A lump beneath his hair came alive to his touch and he felt a small patch of something wet. Blood.
Not enough to fret about, he told himself.
One thing he knew for a fact: he had to get out of the warehouse. He had heard tales of grain fires, of the very dust in the air bursting into flame. Even if untrue, the air would fill with a suffocating smoke as deadly as a conflagration.
This warehouse, like most others, would have a single door and no windows. It might be vented in some manner, but the interior was blacker than night, making any small opening impossible to find. Therefore he must either exca vate a hole in the mudbrick wall or find a way out the door.
He needed a tool of some sort. Automatically he reached for the leather sheath hanging from his waist, felt the dagger in side. He laughed aloud; his assailant had been careless. The laugh was cut short by a cough, which jarred his splitting head.
He thought of Nebamon, the way the overseer had dug into the mudbrick of the storehouse in the sacred precinct.
The arched roof had to have been at least four palm-widths thick. The walls supporting the heavy arch might be thicker.
He would need a hole almost a cubit in diameter to crawl through. He felt certain the smell of burning was growing stronger. Could he dig himself out in time?
Better try the door. How hard was the wood? he won dered. How thick? Two fingers? Three? No matter. He could delay no longer.
He had not the vaguest idea where the door was, so first he had to find it. The bags beneath his feet were at a slightly lower level than those he sat on, which might mean some had been removed at one time or another. No man assigned to carry the heavy bags would collect them from deeper in side than necessary; he would take those nearest the door.