summoned them.”
“Yes, sir.”
Thuty eyed him critically. “He’s but a child, unknown outside the walls of this city. Why did they hasten from their homes to help him?”
Bak shifted his weight on the stool, not sure how best to answer. The last thing he wanted was to remind Thuty of a subject that never failed to anger him. “Well, sir…”
“I’ll talk to the boy. He’s earned my praise and more. But first I would hear the tale from you.”
“You know how fast news spreads along the river.”
Thuty gave him a sour look. “Spare me the facts of life, Lieutenant.”
Bak felt the heat rush into his face. “The people living along that stretch of the river had no love for Wensu. He oft times demanded food and drink when they had barely enough to survive, and when the urge struck, he and his men took a wife or daughter as their own. As for the headless man…The people feared him, plain and simple.” Staring straight ahead, he went on doggedly, “On the other hand, they’d heard how lenient I was with Pahuro and the people of his village, and they’d heard of my kindness to the hunter Intef’s widow. I’d also made a promise to an old farmer in the area, Ahmose he’s called, but that I’ve yet to keep.”
Thuty wove his fingers together across his hard, flat stomach and eyed Bak from beneath lowered brows. “I’ll not withdraw what I’ve said before, Lieutenant. I’m responsible for this garrison; therefore, I’m the man who must sit in judgment on all who err along this sector of the river.”
Bak braced himself, expecting the worst.
“That’s not to say my officers can’t now and again use their own discretion.” Thuty paused, added in a dry voice,
“As you’ve done in the past, and will no doubt continue to do in days to come.”
Bowing his head, hiding a relieved smile, Bak murmured,
“I’ll not abuse the privilege, that I promise.”
“Humph!”
Bak was still trying to decide how best to interpret so en-igmatic a sound when the servant returned. She handed each man an unplugged jar of beer and a drinking bowl and hastily departed, as if expecting at any time a summons from on high.
Thuty filled his bowl, took a deep drink, and nodded his appreciation. “The vizier means to sit in my place in the audience hall tomorrow morning, listening to those who wish to make a supplication or air a complaint or ask for a judgment between one man and another.” Setting the jar on the small table by his elbow, he added in a voice as smooth as the finest linen, “I wish mistress Rennefer to go before him. Are you prepared to stand at her side and accuse her of attempted murder?”
Bak gaped. “Yes, sir, but…”
“As you know, Lieutenant, I’ve few duties as disagreeable as judging a woman like her. One who failed in her purpose, but clearly intended to upset the balance of right and order by taking her husband’s life.”
Bak, who could practically see the commandant brushing his hands together, wiping away an unpleasant smear, smothered a smile. “Thirteen days have passed since I brought her to Buhen. Will the vizier not question your wisdom in waiting so long to judge her?”
“He knows you’ve been busy, tracking that wretched Userhet.” Thuty peered at Bak over his drinking bowl. “You are nearly finished with him, aren’t you?”
“My Medjays are even now searching his house, and an army of scribes is comparing the contents of each warehouse to the written inventory. I early on documented mistress Rennefer’s tale, so the effort will in no way hamper our appearance before the vizier.”
“You’re a thorough man, Lieutenant.”
“Userhet left his skiff with the officers’ skiffs, hiding it among its kind. I feel sure we’ll find contraband in one of the warehouses, laid out for all the world to see.” And if the gods smile on us, he thought, we’ll find in some secret place an uncut elephant tusk.
“You’ve found nothing?” Nebwa asked, glancing at the row of mudbrick niches built along the wall. The reddish pottery jars lying inside were empty, the scrolls they normally contained carried off by the scribes who were checking the inventory.
“Not yet,” Bak admitted.
The two men stood in the small, square entry hall of a warehouse containing a wide variety of dissimilar objects, some used by the garrison troops in greater or lesser quantities-body oils and oils for cooking, rolls of linen, dried beans and chickpeas, hides, lengths of wood, beer jars both full and empty-while the rest were the more exotic objects paid as tolls by traders crossing the frontier. A multitude of odors intermingled in the still, hot air, hinting at perfumes and fragrant woods, onions and spices, dried fish, and the human body, with none standing above the others.
Nebwa walked to the rear door and stared down the long, narrow corridor, broken at intervals by open portals and lighted by flickering torches that ran the length of the building. “The swine surely shipped his share north each time Captain Roy sailed to Abu.”
“Not if he was taking more than his due.” Bak’s eye was drawn to a mouse, running along the base of the mudbrick wall, its nose twitching. “Besides, I’ve not given up hope that we’ll find an elephant tusk.”
Nebwa snorted. “From what I saw of Roy’s cargo, Userhet’s fingers stuck to much that came his way. But tusks?”
He hiked up his kilt, grunted. “Wensu, yes. I can see a wild and unruly man like him hiding tusks on the ships of unsuspecting captains like Mahu, but Userhet was a man of thought, one too smart to take so great a risk.”
“He approached Mahu, a man with an untarnished reputation, the night they played knucklebones at Nofery’s house of pleasure. How smart was that?”
Nebwa grunted, unswayed. “I know of many a foul deed I’d like to lay at Userhet’s feet. To wash the scrolls clean would ease my life no end, but we can’t lay blame on a whim.”
Bak could not keep the impatience from his voice. “We know for a fact that one of the men who played asked Mahu to smuggle contraband. If not Userhet, who do you believe it was? Ramose, Hapuseneb, Kay, or Nebamon?”
“All right,” Nebwa admitted somewhat grudgingly, “Userhet approached Mahu.”
“He was smuggling contraband by the shipload, Nebwa.
I’ve heard of no man in the past who’s ever been so bold, nor can I believe a second man exists today of equal daring.
He was also, I’m convinced, the one smuggling the elephant tusks.”
Running his fingers through his unruly hair, Nebwa scowled at his friend. “It’s a pity you slew him before he could talk.”
With Thuty’s order to continue the search for tusks fresh in his thoughts, Bak could think of no greater understatement.
“Sir!” Hori burst through the door. The youth thrust a short segment of papyrus at Bak, and waved a second document in the air. “I’ve found a match, sir, as you hoped I would.”
Bak knelt and flattened the scroll across a knee. The document was short, listing the items stored in a single room in the warehouse, but it brought a smile of satisfaction to his face. The symbols were perfectly formed and the writing neat, with no slovenly habits to identify the scribe. Hori knelt beside him and unrolled the second scroll, the manifest taken from Captain Roy’s ship, the document that had legitimized the contraband on board. The writing was identical.
Bak stood in the doorway, watching Hori and a thin, elderly scribe compare the objects in the room with those listed on the inventory the youth had found. Imsiba prowled, lifting first one item and then another, while Nebwa stood, hands on hips, looking on. Located in an out-of-the-way corner of the warehouse, the long, narrow space contained less than half the number of objects they had found on Roy’s ship, but their combined value must have been four times as great.
A neat stack of leopard skins stood beside a basket of odd-shaped horns taken from creatures unknown in the land of Kemet. Ostrich feathers protruded from the neck of a wide-mouthed jar. Short lengths of ebony lay beside a basket filled to the brim with chunks of precious stone. Innumerable jars contained, according to labels jotted on their shoulders, myrrh and frankincense, aromatic woods, spices. A narrow-mouthed red pot held the
