Scepter of Flint

by N. L. Holmes

  Maya wondered what such a recall meant for a career diplomat like Keliya. Surely, it would be a simple formality, as Hani’s and Maya’s had been when Nefer-khepru-ra had come to the throne alone. But perhaps Keliya would refuse to serve a usurper.

  Lord Hani took his Mitannian friend by the arm and led him into the center of the room, as if the very walls themselves might be listening. “As you know, we cleared young Tulubri of any involvement with the tomb robbers, Keliya, but now it’s come out that there seems to have been some collusion on the part of Pirissi.”

  Keliya glanced sharply at Hani, although he replied in his easygoing voice, “Oh, I wouldn’t worry about it, Hani. He’s gone now anyway.”

  Hani caught his eye uncertainly. “You’ve dealt with it?”

  “His masters have taken him back.”

  Hani stared at him a moment longer then said with a shrug, “That’s your business, my friend. I just thought you might want to know.”

  Keliya smiled, his lugubrious face creasing. “You’re a good man, Hani. But much as I love you, you’re not a member of my mission.”

  Maya took that to mean there were internal things Keliya couldn’t tell an Egyptian.

  Hani nodded. “Understood. Were you ever able to get an audience to protest the seizure of your two aides?”

  Keliya smiled thinly. “No. I put in my request, but I’m still waiting. And now, of course, it makes no difference. I guess the message is pretty clear.”

  Maya sneered inwardly. Only too clear. The three men stood for a space in awkward silence.

  “How long will you be here, my friend?” Hani asked finally.

  “I don’t know.” Keliya scratched his beard. “But in any case, I’ll stay until Mane gets back.”

  “Come see us, my friend. Once you’ve gone, who knows when we’ll see one another again?” Hani clapped him on the shoulder, and then, as if his words had just sunk in, the two men embraced once more. Maya saw Hani swallowing hard as they made their way out. A pang pierced his own heart, not so much because of Keliya’s departure but because a sudden doubt had descended upon Maya. Was Keliya himself involved somehow? He seemed to be covering for Pirissi. We spoke so freely to him, told him of our suspicions. Was he the one to hustle Talpu-sharri to safety before he could be arrested?

  As they strode down the baked street toward Lord Ptah-mes’s villa, the chattering girls trailing behind them, Maya blurted, “What do we do now, my lord?” He felt he couldn’t expose to Hani how suspicious he had suddenly become of Hani’s friend.

  Hani smiled, but the expression held an edge. “I think our situation is very much like Keliya’s. Until we know who our new master is, we hardly dare take an action. Nonetheless...” As his words trailed off, a considering look took possession of his face. His mouth quirked, and one eyebrow cocked. Something had clearly just come into his mind.

  “What is it?” Maya cried eagerly.

  “I’m not sure yet.” Hani laughed, scrubbing the top of his head with his knuckles. “When it has wings, it will fly from the nest.”

  CHAPTER 12

  WHEN HANI AND MAYA and the girls reached Waset at last, Maya peeled off for home, and Hani entered his own gate with his daughter and her friend. As the young women headed off into the house, chattering, Hani saw Mery-ra crouched in the garden, staring into the plants.

  “What is it, Father? Did you lose something?”

  Mery-ra hauled himself to his feet with a grunt. “Ah, Hani, my boy. You’re back. Neferet, too, eh? No, no. There was a movement in the bushes, and when I looked closer, I saw it was Ta-miu’s kittens playing. As Neferet would say, they’re ado-o-orable.”

  Hani laughed. “Somehow, that word sounds better in the mouth of an adolescent girl than that of a crusty old scribe like yourself.” He slapped his father on the back, and the two men made their way into the house, where Hani dumped his baggage for the servants to take away. “And speaking of adolescent girls, the house is again officially full of them.”

  “So I see,” Mery-ra said.

  “Don’t Bener-ib’s family ever get to see her?” Hani pulled off his wig and tossed it onto a stool.

  Mery-ra said thoughtfully, “I get the feeling there’s a problem there, don’t you? We seem to scare her.”

  “I’m sure Neferet knows all and will gladly tell all.” Hani chuckled. “Where is Nub-nefer?”

  “Back down at the farm with Baket.” Mery-ra dropped with a thud into his chair and stretched out his legs.

  So Neferet has managed to time her visit so that she avoids her mother yet again. That was another strange business. Different as they were, Neferet and her mother had always been close. Hani sat next to his father. “Tushratta’s government is about to fall in Naharin. It may have already. Keliya expects to be recalled any day, but Mane is on his way back, and we should get the full story from him.”

  “Civil war is a terrible thing.” Mery-ra shot his son a sharp glance. “I hope your friends the Crocodiles are giving that plenty of thought.”

  Hani had no answer for that. The high priests were prudent men, even if his incendiary brother-in-law wasn’t. Nor had Lady Apeny been especially careful—she’d been a real firebrand.

  “Firebrand,” said Hani aloud, musing. Suddenly, it came to him why that word had resonated. “‘I have witnessed the acclaim in Fenkhu.’ What did they give you? ‘A firebrand and a faience column.’”

  Mery-ra looked at him in amazement. “You’ve memorized the Book of Going Forth?”

  Hani laughed. “No, only those verses. They keep popping up in my life lately. If Apeny was the firebrand, then Ptah-mes must be the faience column.”

  Mery-ra nodded, a sad but humorous spark in his eye. “Yes, that fits him—beautiful and brittle. And the high commissioner of foreign affairs over Fenkhu, among other places.”

  Hani found this deeply disturbing. He knew he was floundering in a case where two truths seemed to exist at once, but it spooked him to see so much of the reality around him acted out again in the Duat. Is life really just a rehearsal for the trial in the otherworld, as I’ve so often thought? It wouldn’t have surprised him to see in the Book a line like, Hani, you’d better watch your step; you think you’re righteous, but you’re full of prejudices. Musing aloud, he said, “Who is the scepter of flint?”

  “Scepters are the symbol of power. It must be the king.” Mery-ra added mischievously, “Life, prosperity, and health to him, of course.”

  “Maybe he’s more involved in these tomb robberies than I thought. Maybe Ay isn’t plotting behind his back but doing his bidding.”

  Mery-ra laughed and punched his son in the arm. “Because a scepter of flint is mentioned in the Book of Going Forth by Day? Maybe a seven-headed demon or one with a head of flames is the culprit. Come, come, Hani. Is this where your famous powers of deduction come from—magic texts?”

  Hani was aware of heat rising up his cheeks, and he said, more than a little embarrassed, “Ideas come from all sorts of places, Father. The only thing that keeps me from accepting this one is the lack of motive. Why would Nefer-khepru-ra want a regime change?”

  “And why would he rob his own father’s tomb? And why would he have you assigned to investigate the plot? I’m afraid it doesn’t hold together, no matter what the Book of Going Forth says.” Mery-ra smiled tolerantly at his son’s folly.

  “But they haven’t robbed Neb-ma’at-ra’s tomb. Maybe that was something our mysterious Mitannian made up to lure the workmen in with the promise of unimaginable riches.”

  Mery-ra shrugged with an eloquent lift of his shaggy eyebrows. After a moment, he clapped his son on the shoulder and headed off, leaving Hani wrapped deep in his thoughts. He was trying to force anything to make some sense when increasingly loud laughter and feminine voices told him Nub-nefer and her friend were approaching.

  He heard Bener-ib cry, “Oh! I left the oil of cedar upstairs. Go on and start. I’ll be right down.” A patter of rapid footsteps mounted the stairs
.

  A moment later, Neferet entered, and seeing Hani, she came bouncing over to him.

  “We’re going to make more of that special medicine since it’s worked so well.” She beamed proudly and seated herself in Hani’s lap.

  “That’s wonderful. You’re getting to be a real sunet.” A thought suddenly came to Hani. “My duckling, if you can put a drug together, can you also take one apart? Can you look at something and tell what it is?”

  “Maybe, Papa. Sometimes it has a smell or a color that gives it away. Why?”

  “I’d like to show you a little cup that we found in the room of a man who died mysteriously of apoplexy. I’d like to know if it’s some kind of poison that might have made him sick.” Hani strode to the kitchen and reached up to the high shelf for the leather bag with the small cup his father had found in Lord Pa-ren-nefer’s house. He brought it back to Neferet.

  She took it gingerly between her finger and thumb and looked into it, her mouth crooked into a dubious moue. “Well, I can certainly tell you if it’s poison. We’ll try it on something.”

  Hani cringed, imagining that some innocent creature was going to die to confirm his suspicions. For the first time, he hoped he was wrong. “Very well, my dear. Find the smallest thing you can, please.”

  “We’ll put honey in the cup and then wait for the ants to find it,” she said with the self-assurance of one who was long accustomed to poisoning things.

  “You say we—do you mean you and Bener-ib will work together? I’m not sure her parents would like her touching poison.” And what kind of father am I who lets his daughter do such a thing?

  But Neferet pooh-poohed the danger enthusiastically. “We always work together. She’s fa-a-abulous at diagnosis, Papa. And I like to treat the symptoms. So we’re perfect together. We’ve thought of opening a practice together someday.”

  “Ah,” said Hani noncommittally. “My love, your friend seems so sad around us, almost afraid, and yet I hear her laughing like a normal girl with you. Doesn’t she like us?”

  Neferet’s face dropped into lines of sorrowful pity. She said under her breath in an earnest voice, “Oh, Papa, her childhood was so terrible. Her mother died when she was young, and her father remarried this awful woman who was really mean to her. Ibet thinks her father sent her to Djefat-nebty to get rid of her as much as anything. She dreads having to go home. That’s why I invite her here. She’ll warm up to you all when she sees you’re not like her family.”

  Hani’s heart clenched for the poor girl. “She’s certainly welcome here. But Neferet, are you trying to avoid your mama?”

  Her eyes grew shifty. “I’m afraid Ibet might be scared by a mother, Papa.”

  Hani considered this and found it wanting as an explanation. “I would think she would want to have a mother figure in her life who was kind and loving, little duckling. Are you... are you sure there’s nothing else?” He almost hoped she would deny it.

  Neferet dropped her head and heaved a sigh before she said unconvincingly, “Of course there isn’t.”

  Hani didn’t know if he should probe her or not. The last thing he wanted to do was scare his daughter away. He gazed at her in compassion, willing her to trust him.

  She raised her eyes to him guiltily and put her arms around him. “Mama can be... she gets mad sometimes, and I don’t want to have to fight her.”

  Hani drew out his arms and enveloped her in turn. “Your mother has a fiery nature, my love, but more than anything in the world, she loves you. She wants only what will make you happy. Give her a chance.”

  Neferet pressed her lips together in reflection then said determinedly, “You’re right, Papa.”

  “So why don’t you pay a short visit to the farm, show Bener-ib what it’s like? You may find medicinal herbs growing in the fields.”

  Neferet buried her face in Hani’s chest and squeezed him with all her considerable strength. She drew back and beamed at him. After a moment, she said, “How do you like my shaved head?”

  “It’s very striking, my love. A lot of women do it, actually. It doesn’t even show under a wig.”

  “The princesses all do it, even without a wig. It’s becoming very fashionable.” She grinned mischievously, and Hani understood, with amusement, that that was not her real motive. Neferet was certainly not one to let fashions or expectations rule her.

  Bener-ib entered the salon, and Neferet slid off her father’s knees and ran to her. “Papa has given us an experiment, Ibet. You see this cup? We have to find out if it has poison in it.”

  The two girls went hand in hand toward the door, and as they disappeared into the garden, Hani heard Neferet say enthusiastically, “Why don’t we go to the farm this afternoon? You’ll love it there. And you can meet my mother.”

  Their departure left Hani sitting alone, his heart full of tenderness for them both and for all young people in search of themselves and in need of their parents’ approval.

  ⸎

  The next morning, Hani sat in his garden long after he’d finished his breakfast and watched a

  seshemty, a blue-green rock pigeon, strutting along the top of the wall and then descending on heavy whistling wings to the ground to forage. He tried to imitate its soft, throaty, fluttering call to lure its mate down as well, but apparently, he didn’t have the come-hither accent of a native speaker. The name of the bird, which meant turquoise colored, made him stop and reflect yet again on the unresolved case before him.

  Could the striking garment in the baggage he’d assumed was Tulubri’s have been Pirissi’s after all? He hadn’t noticed the size. “I wish I knew how common those tunics were in Naharin,” he said to himself. Did Talpu-sharri have one as well, or had witnesses actually seen Pirissi and conflated him with his confrere? He was a considerably bigger man than the chamberlain, and no one had mentioned that the mystery foreigner was heavyset. Perhaps he’d played a more secretive, behind-the-scenes role than Talpu-sharri, who seemed to have interacted directly with the robbers. Hani would have given a lot to know what that closed meeting at the Osir Sa-tau’s house had been about—he doubted it was music—but without knowing the other participants, he couldn’t trace anything any further.

  ⸎.

  The night before, Neferet had shared with him the results of her tests on the cup. After eating the honey mixed into its contents, the ants had died. Bener-ib had suggested testing it next on a mouse—who also died, in convulsions resembling those of an apoplectic fit. That was one question answered.

  A crunch of footsteps in the gravel made Hani look up. “Good morning, son,” said Mery-ra, as he emerged from around the bushes. “Enjoying a little idleness this morning?”

  “Afraid not, Father. I’ve been trying to put together in my head all the loose ends of what we know about the tomb robberies before Maya gets here. Or should I say murders? I had Neferet test the contents of that cup on ants. And a mouse. The results could pass for apoplexy.”

  “You’re not satisfied that Ay is behind it?” Mery-ra dropped into a chair with a plop.

  “He’s involved, I’m convinced. But in what? And why? Surely, this plan to put the ‘right person’ on the throne is more significant than the way in which he’s tried to fund it.” He emitted a bark of frustrated laughter. “I just keep having the same thoughts over and over again. We need more evidence.” Then Hani remembered that people had lost their lives to the tomb-robbing scheme, and he regretted that his priority was to investigate the robbery rather than the murders.

  That evening, Hani was standing in the gate, seeing Maya off after their workday. He’d just turned to go back inside when a small voice hissed, “My lord.”

  He turned to see a naked, knobby-kneed little boy of about eight pressed against the outside of the wall, staring up at him with big eyes. Expecting him to be a beggar, Hani turned to the lad and bent over him kindly. “Do you want food, son? I’ll have to go inside to get you a bowl of porridge.”

  “Are you Lord Hani?”
>
  Hani rose in surprise. Instinctively, he looked around, half expecting to see footpads closing in on him. But the boy continued to stare at him earnestly.

  “Yes, I am,” said Hani more quietly. “What is it you want?”

  “I have a message from my father, my lord.” The lad was polite and very grown-up. His accent was middle-class. He was no beggar.

  Intrigued, Hani asked, “And who is your father, my boy?”

  “Khnum-baf, the color man.” The boy scratched at the roots of his sidelock then clasped his hands, as if his mother had warned him not to do that. “From the Place of Truth.”

  Hani recognized the name as one he had heard, but he couldn’t remember the context. “Speak his message, then.”

  The boy cleared his throat and drew himself up with endearing solemnity. He said in a singsong voice that suggested he had memorized the words, “My father said that he was the man who fled the robbers. He said he has some information for you if you promise him im... im...”

  “Immunity?” Hani finished.

  “That’s it, my lord. If you promise, he said I could bring you to him.”

  It occurred to Hani that Mahu might well be watching his gate. “Come in here, son. We’ll leave through the service door.” Hani drew him into the gateway and carefully closed the leaves behind him. Together, they walked through the garden and into the barnyard, past the geese, who greeted them in outrage, and past the curious donkey. Hani stuck his head out the little door in the wall and looked around. Twilight was well upon them; it wouldn’t be easy to see them, and the alley seemed deserted.

  “But promise first,” the boy reminded him.

  Hani said gravely, “I swear on my mother’s ka that if your father gives me useful information, I will see to it he has immunity.”

  The lad nodded and set out ahead of Hani, walking, very straight and businesslike, on his little heron legs. Hani followed him down the alley and into a warren of small streets that were mostly lined with service buildings for larger houses, now abandoned. The crickets were throbbing as loudly as an orchestra of sistra. I could be walking into a trap, Hani thought uncomfortably. And no one knows where I’ve gone. They’ll never find me.