villa. Kasaya had left the vessel, he saw, and was sitting on a projecting boulder a short distance downstream, chatting with several women kneeling on the mudbank, washing clothes. He had to smile. The young Medjay, tall, hard-muscled, and goodnatured, had a way with women few other men could claim. The older among them sought to mother him, the younger to gain a caress — if not more. Information flowed from their lips like water from an overturned bowl.
Psuro, more mature and practical, stood at the base of the stairway, haggling with an old woman holding a plucked duck and a basket overflowing with fruits and vegetables. The Medjay was planning a feast. The very thought made Bak's mouth water.
He turned back to Khawet, who had stopped pacing to sit on a mudbrick bench in the dappled shade of a willow. 'When did you last see Hatnofer, mistress?'
'This morning. Soon after daybreak. In the room where we store linens. She was counting sheets.' She bit her lip. 'With so many so recently dead in this household, our supply has dropped far below the numbers we normally keep on hand. And now…' She swallowed hard, turned away so he could not see her face. Her voice trembled. 'Now we must send more to the house of death. For her!'
Bak resisted the urge to go to her, to offer sympathy, fearing too gentle a demeanor might set the tears flowing in earnest. 'What did you speak of?'
'You.' She raised her hand to her eyes, most likely to wipe away tears, and turned around. 'We spoke of your arrival. Today, we thought, if the gods had smiled on Amonhotep and he'd journeyed to Buhen and back as swiftly as he'd hoped.'
'Was it she who decided to quarter me in the guest villa? Or did you think to place me there?'
'That was my father's decision.'
Bak was surprised, and he let it show. 'The rooms are more befitting a vizier than a police officer fresh from the frontier. I'd have thought Djehuty would have preferred I stay in the barracks.'
She gave him a tremulous smile. 'He wanted you close in case of need, but not so close you'd remind him every moment of the deaths he yearned to forget.'
'I see,' he said, his voice dry. 'You spoke with Hatnofer of my arrival and then…?'
Khawet stared at her feet, which were protected by leather sandals little more than a sole and a couple of narrow straps. 'She set aside several sheets, saying she'd take them to Nebmose's villa and prepare the rooms for your use. She was ready to leave, her arms laden with bedding, when Amethu sent a message, saying he was toiling over the household accounts and he needed her assistance right away.' She plucked a flower from a nearby bush and twisted the stem between her fingers, making the fragile reddish petals shiver and dance. 'She seemed so distracted, so overburdened with tasks that I took the linens from her, saying I'd prepare the rooms.'
'But you didn't.'
'No.' She spoke to the flower, not to him, and her voice was tight, almost brittle with strain. 'My father summoned me. He was displeased with his fan bearer and wanted him whipped. It wasn't easy to convince him the boy was too small by far to hold so long and heavy a handle high in the air. By the time I had done so, I had forgotten my promise to Hatnofer. Later… Much later, I remembered. I summoned Nefer and we…' Her voice broke and she turned away. 'I feel i1. Will you leave me now?'
Bak yearned to probe further, but he could not in all conscience do so. He was too new on the trail of the slayer to limit his questions only to those that were necessary, for he had no idea which were essential. And she was too upset to tolerate questions that had no obvious purpose.
' `How will I explain to Djehuty?' ' Bak said, imitating as best he could Amethu's harried expression and voice. `He wanted you close-within the walls of this compound, not in some empty house in the city.' '
Psuro gave the duck a quarter turn on the makeshift spit he had erected over the mudbrick hearth. Grease dripped into the fire, filling the air with smoke. The cloud billowed upward, passing through the light roof of branches and straw, leaving in its wake a tantalizing aroma. 'How'd you convince him you wanted none of it, sir?'
Fanning away a tattered ribbon of smoke, Bak grinned. 'I told him you Medjays are a superstitious lot and you'd get no rest in a place so recently defiled by murder.'
Psuro gave him a doubtful look. 'He believed that?'
'I don't know,' Bak admitted. 'He was so startled by my wish to keep you by my side, he could do nothing but sputter.'
'I thank the lord Amon you held out, sir.' Kasaya, carrying a folded sleeping pallet over his shoulder, peered through the door of the tiny house the steward had found for them on a narrow lane a few streets away from the governor's compound. Over the rear wall, they could hear the laughter of neighborhood children. 'It's one thing to walk into a house, eyes wide open, in search of a murderer, and another to sleep there.'
'I doubt we'd be in any danger,' Bak said. 'Not yet, at any rate. If I've read the signs right, the slayer has set his sights higher than us.'
'Governor Djehuty.' Psuro picked up a stick and stirred a steaming bowl of lentils and onions cooking at the edge of the coals. 'From what you've said of him, sir, he seems a weak man, one too preoccupied with the small world around himself to step hard on another man's toes.'
'He'd have to step very hard to anger a man so much he'd slay time after time to make his point,' Kasaya said. 'He would indeed.' Eyes smarting, Bak stood up and joined the younger Medjay at the door. 'But maybe Djehuty's not what he seems. We know too little of him. Nor do we know enough about those who've died thus far. We must look for a tie that binds them. Something more than the mere fact that they all earned their bread in the governor's villa.'
'Where shall we begin, sir?' Kasaya asked.
Psuro scowled at his younger companion. 'You can start by laying out our sleeping pallets and unpacking the rest of our gear. Unless we hear tonight of another death, l, for one, mean to eat my fill and sleep like a babe held close to its mother's breast.'
Bak drew Kasaya into the front part of the house, a single room with an open stairway to the roof, where a spindly wooden frame was all that remained of a lean-to. Two stools, a small table, and a reed chest, all provided by Amethu, stood near a door that opened onto the lane. Scattered around were the baskets and bundles they had brought from Buhen and jars of grain and other foodstuffs the Medjays had drawn from the garrison stores at Abu. Spears, shields, bows and arrows, and smaller hand weapons had been stacked against the wall. One side of the room held a mudbrick sleeping platform on which lay bedding the steward had provided. A wall niche, empty of the image of the household god it once had held, broke the starkness of the opposite wall.
Bak lifted one of four large, heavy water jars, carried it out to the kitchen, and leaned. it against the wall beside a round oven, long unused from the look of it. Going back inside, he said, 'Tomorrow, Kasaya, you must go to the governor's villa, familiarize yourself with the grounds and buildings, and make yourself useful to the servants. The sooner they accept you as one of them, the sooner they'll feel free to speak with an open and frank tongue.'
'Yes, sir.' Kasaya pulled the sleeping pallet off his shoulder, shook it out, and laid it on the floor. 'Would it suit your purpose, sir, if I took special pains to befriend the guards? We may need men we can trust.'
'Good idea.' Bak clapped him on the shoulder and crossed the room for another jar, which he carried outside to stand with its mate.
'What am I to do, sir?' Psuro asked, looking up from, fis cooking.
'I know of no better measure of the man than the way his people think of him. Walk first around Abu, getting to know the city and befriending its residents, both military and civilian. When you feel you've gleaned all you can-by the end of the day tomorrow, I hope-take the skiff Amethu loaned us and sail across the channel to Swenet. There, too, you must learn the streets and lanes and get to know the people.'
Psuro gave him a dubious look. 'This city is small, I know, and Swenet smaller yet, but to befriend everyone would take months. Can you not narrow the task to the possible?'
'Do what you can, Psuro, that's all I ask. If Hatnofer was meant to die today, as I think she was, we've only a week before the slayer strikes again.'
'Yes, sir.'
Bak resisted the urge to smile at the Medjay's gloomy countenance. 'As you go about your task, you must seek out a man named Pahared. He once was a merchant in Wawat, one who traveled from village to village, trading the small objects needed by men and women who have close to nothing. I met him once in Nofery's house
