sent his heart into his throat. Stifling a nervous laugh, he looked down into the open court. Below he saw a mound of crumbling mudbricks sprinkled with sand and trash. A swath of sand had been pushed away on the near side and the bricks beneath were gouged and crushed. As if a heavy object had fallen on the mound. Or a man had jumped from above.
Cursing beneath his breath, Bak pushed himself off the roof. The fall was not great, his landing easy, but his feet slid out from under him and he skidded down the bricks on his backside-as the man before him had done. Standing up, brushing himself off, he looked around. A single set of footprints crossed the sand to an open portal on his right.
Passing through, he found himself in a long corridor, its walls broken on both sides by open doorways. He hurried from one to the next, finding no one inside. Bursting through the final portal, he skidded to a stop. A ladder stood in the middle of the room, its uppermost rungs protruding through a small, square opening to the roof. Off to the side, hidden in shadow, he spotted a bow almost as long as he was tall and an unadorned leather quiver filled with arrows.
He snapped out an oath. Only a man confident that he would escape would leave behind his weapon. A man clever enough to abandon a weapon that would draw attention to himself.
Though he knew the effort was wasted, he climbed the ladder and looked outside. As expected, the expanse of white plaster stretched out before him, with no man in sight. While he had been wasting time going from room to room, his quarry had made his escape.
As much as he hated to admit it, he had been outsmarted.
Thoroughly disgusted, he picked up the bow and quiver and looked them over. They were standard army issue, no different than hundreds of other weapons stored in the armory and carried by the archers of Buhen. They could not have been more commonplace.
“He breathed his last in my arms.” The sentry, kneeling beside Mahu’s body, stared at his bloody hands. “Why am I moved? I’ve seen men die before, men I knew well cut down on the field of battle.”
Bak looked at the dead man, slain without warning and for no good reason. Mahu lay flat on his back, as the sentry had left him. One arm rested by his side. The other was folded over his breast, held there by the arrows that had stolen his life. His skin looked waxen, his tan too dark, his bared belly, seldom exposed to the sun, too light. Rivulets of scarlet had flowed from his wounds to congeal on the stones beneath him.
“Did he speak before he died?”
“He said…” The sentry stood up and placed his hands behind him, as he if could no longer bear the sight of them.
“He tried more than once and each time the blood came, snuffing out his words. Somehow, on the brink of death, he found the strength. He said, ‘I’ve done no wrong.’”
Bak muttered an oath. He was saddened by Mahu’s death, and angry. What kind of vile criminal would lie in wait to take a man’s life? A man destined to die anyway unless proven innocent of the crime for which he had been accused?
What snake would slay a man with a policeman walking beside him, taking him into custody for that very crime?
“I’ll do what I can,” he heard himself say, repeating the promise he had made while Mahu still lived.
Chapter Five
“Our task is to keep trade flowing, not stop it altogether.”
Commandant Thuty strode from his armchair to the door, paused, stared out at a courtyard he probably did not see.
At last he slapped the wall hard with the flat of his hand, pivoted. “All right, Lieutenant, I’ll issue an order at first light.
All ships and caravans will remain in Buhen and Kor until Mahu’s death has been resolved.” With a low growl of vexa-tion, he stalked back to his chair and dropped into it. “I trust you’ll lay hands on the one who slew him before all trading and shipping comes to a standstill.”
Bak took care to keep his voice neutral, his promise realistic. “I’ll do my best, sir.”
“Your best.” Thuty gave him a long, speculative scowl. “I’d not stop traffic crossing the frontier if I thought you’d fail.”
“Yes, sir.” Bak did not know which was worse: the commandant’s reprimands, whether deserved or not, or his refus-al to accept the possibility of failure.
As if satisfied he had made his point, Thuty leaned back in the chair and plucked his drinking bowl from the table beside him. The rich, heavy odor of roasting lamb wafted through the door, tantalizing Bak with the promise of an evening meal he would not share.
As soon as he had sent Mahu’s body to the house of death, he had hastened to the commandant’s residence. He had found Thuty in his private reception room, reading the day’s
dispatches from the other fortresses along the Belly of Stones.
The room, located on the second floor where the commandant’s family was quartered, was private in name only. Over and above the fact that Thuty conducted far more business here than in his office, his household-a wife, a concubine, a half dozen children, and as many servants-had a tendency to fill any available space.
Children’s bows, arrows, spears, and shields lay shoved against a wall with their father’s weapons. The drawer of a game board had been pulled open and the green and white playing pieces were strewn across a rush floormat. A woven reed box overflowing with scrolls sat on top of a basket full of wrinkled linen. A stool lay on its side between two wooden chests. A side door, open to allow the flow of air, offered a glimpse of the long stairway that climbed the wall of the citadel from the ground floor to the battlements. Bak glimpsed in the semidarkness a ball and a pull toy on a step.
He shuddered to think what would happen should the fortress be attacked, with archers racing upward to man the walls.
“You’re convinced Mahu knew nothing about the tusk.”
The comment jerked Bak’s thoughts abruptly to the here and now. “Not long before the attack, he pleaded with me to prove his innocence. I vowed I would.”
Thuty frowned at the younger officer. “Without his conniv-ance, I don’t see how an object so large and ungainly could’ve been taken on board unseen.”
Bak tamped down the urge to remind the commandant of the tusk that had made its way to faroff Byblos. How had it traveled so great a distance without attracting attention?
“Imsiba’s questioning the crew now.”
“I always liked Mahu.” Thuty’s voice turned wishful. “I don’t suppose Captain Roy could’ve had a hand in it?”
“If he did, another man acted for him.” A sour smell drew Bak’s eyes to the door, where a naked baby was crawling across the floor, its pudgy face, hands, and chest smeared with dirt. “Mahu sailed into Kor six days ago. The helmsman told me they took the sail down right away, as soon as they learned they’d be carrying livestock. The task was easier 74 / Lauren Haney with the deck bare and open, before they built the pens. They folded it and stowed it in the hold close on nightfall.
Throughout that day, Roy was moored here at Buhen, and he sailed north before Mahu came back.”
Thuty must have seen the baby crawling toward Bak, drooling, but he paid the child no heed.
Bak inched sideways, away from those filthy, probably sticky fingers. “Much of Roy’s cargo was contraband made legitimate by the false manifest. Once he’d sailed away from Buhen and Kor, leaving behind the many men who could attest to his rightful cargo, the false document would’ve deceived all but the most critical of inspectors. He’d have had no need to slip the tusk onto another man’s ship, where he’d lose control over it.”
The commandant let the silence grow, reluctant to voice the unspeakable. “Are we faced now with two groups of smugglers, both carrying contraband across the frontier on a large scale?”
“Thuty!” His wife Tiya, a short, stocky woman midway along in her fourth pregnancy, burst through the door, saw the baby. “Oh, there you are, little one!” Never taking her eyes off her husband, she scooped the child off the
