help as soon as I can.”
Mery, he saw, was not among them. Quick footsteps drew his eyes to the far end of the baffle, where the youth, running along the pathway as fleet as the wind, vanished in the next dark passage. Snapping out an oath, Bak raced after him.
He doubted the archer remained inside, awaiting his chance to take another shot, but the risk remained. The boy could be taken captive, killed even.
He raced into the next passage. Though half-blinded by the dark, he spotted Mery’s silhouette in the rectangle of light at the far end. He saw no sign of a man armed with a bow.
He sped on through, grabbed the boy by the upper arm, and gave him a hurried, whispered reprimand. They went on then, Mery close on his heels, working their way up the second, larger baffle, darting from one projecting tower to another. They slipped into the shadow of the third and final passageway and crept through the darkness to the last door.
In the sunlight beyond, the usually well-traveled thorough-fare from the gate to the citadel lay empty and deserted. A flock of pigeons perched on the broken walls and ruined vaults of the ancient cemetery, preening themselves in the sun. Thin coils of smoke rose from the outer city. Behind the blank walls facing the cemetery, children laughed, a man cursed, women chattered. A sweet childish voice sang an old love song accompanied by a lute played with surprising ability. They saw no man carrying a bow and arrows.
“He’s gone,” Mery groaned.
Bak muttered another oath. The outer city was not large, but he could think of no easier place for a man to disappear than in its rabbit warren of lanes. “We must report to the sentry at the citadel gate and have him summon help for Imsiba and the injured man. Then, my young friend, we’ll go from house to house, asking questions of one and all.”
With the day so close to completion, the streets teemed with life. Men set aside the tools of their trade to walk home, filling the lanes with laughter and camaraderie. Women and children moved from inside to outside, from dark, still rooms to bright and breezy rooftops. That, Bak told Mery, would ease their quest if not make it more successful.
Moving quickly but systematically from one roof to another, probing stairways, airshafts, and courtyards, querying everyone they saw, they explored one block of buildings after another. By the time they had searched half the outer city, Bak was sure their quarry had long ago eluded them. He persisted nonetheless, thinking someone might have seen a man in a hurry armed with bow and quiver.
Spotting yet another open trapdoor, he plunged down the stairway, the boy close behind, to a shabbily furnished room.
The hippopotamus-headed, pregnant goddess Taurt looked out from a dusty prayer niche.
A scraggly headed woman of indeterminate years burst through a rear door. She gave him a long, hard stare, her mouth tight, angry. “Get out of my house you…You…”
Words failed her.
“I’m Lieutenant Bak, head of the Medjay police. I’m looking for a man…”
“You then!” she snarled. “Lieutenant…Whatever your name. You’re the one I want to talk to!”
Mery opened his mouth to object. Bak, controlling his own tongue with an effort, silenced the boy with a cautionary look. He was worried about Imsiba and discouraged by a quest he was certain was futile, but he knew also that help sometimes came when least expected.
As he took a step toward the woman, she ducked backward through the door. Not sure why, whether she feared him or wanted to show him something, he followed her into her kitchen, which reeked of burned onions and fish.
She grabbed an object he couldn’t see from beside the oven. Swinging around to stand before him, flat chest thrust forward, eyes blazing, she held out a long bow. “Here!” she snarled, shaking it in his face. “Take this thing before I wrap it around somebody’s neck.” In her other hand, she held a quiver containing a dozen or so arrows.
Bak caught the bow, fearing she would blind him in her rage, and took it from her. She gave up the quiver reluctantly, as if afraid she would have no further grounds to complain.
The objects were standard army issue, he saw, no different than those he had found after Mahu’s death and Intef’s.
“Where did you get these?”
Her mouth tightened to a thin, angry line. She pointed to a roof of smoke-darkened palm fronds loosely spread across a framework of spindly poles. “There! Somebody dropped them into my kitchen while I prepared our evening meal.”
Her voice grew shrill. “It fell on the brazier, breaking my bowl and spilling our stew. We’ve nothing left to eat but bread and beer!”
Chapter Ten
“It burns like fire,” Imsiba admitted, “but I can use it if I must.”
Bak, standing in the doorway of his office, noted the drawn look on the Medjay’s face and eyed the bulky bandage wrapped around his upper arm, tied with a large untidy knot.
An oily green salve with the sharp smell of fleabane oozed from beneath the edges of the linen. Experience had given the garrison physician an unsurpassed skill with wounds, but his bandaging technique left much to be desired. “Stay quiet today, as the physician ordered. With Hori moved and the bench now usable, I can think of no better place than here.”
“Ten!” yelled one of the men on duty, and the knucklebones clattered across the entry hall floor. The man leaned over to look, banged his fist on the hard-packed earth, and snarled a curse. His companion chortled.
Imsiba grinned. “Quiet, you say?”
“While you stay here, out of harm’s way, I’ll cross the river to see Nehi.” Bak flashed a smile matching that of the sergeant. “Yesterday, if you recall, you tore me from my purpose, taking an arrow in the arm.”
“Sir!” Hori called, bursting through the door.
Bak tensed, expecting he knew not what. For close on a week, each time the youth had hailed him like that he had brought word of death or destruction.
“I’ve been out on the quay.” Hori shoved a fishing pole against the wall and dropped a musty-smelling basket on the floor. Water trickled from the loosely woven container, half full of small silvery fish. “A man just came from across the river, one of the farmer Penhet’s servants. He brought a message for you, sir, from mistress Nehi. She wishes to see you at her farm, to talk with you.”
Imsiba threw Bak a congratulatory smile. “Your suggestion to Penhet, it seems, has borne fruit.”
“Are you sure this man’s who he says he is, Hori?” After the previous day’s ambush, Bak thought it prudent to be cautious.
Imsiba stood up, concern erasing the smile. “I’ll go with you to the quay, my friend. I spent time with Penhet’s servants the day Rennefer tried to slay him. I know them all.”
“When Penhet summoned me, I knew not what to think.”
Nehi gave Bak a shy smile. “I knew who he was. I’d walked the path through his fields many times-each time I went to the village.” She smiled again, this at herself. “I’d envied him his lush crops and healthy animals, his abundance. Never did I dream he’d invite me to live there.”
Bak tried not to stare. With much of the worry lifted from her shoulders, Nehi looked a different woman. She would never be thought beautiful, but in her own thin way she was attractive, seductive even. “Do you like him?”
“He’s a kind man. Gentle and warm. And so cheerful!
How he can laugh with his life turned upside down, I don’t know.”
After housing Rennefer in the guardhouse for close on a week, Bak could well imagine the freedom Penhet must feel.
A more dour woman he had never met. “Does he often summon your children?”
