Pinching her cheek, he murmured, “Have I not already earned a jar of your finest wine, old woman?”
She jerked away, sniffed. “I thought you my friend, not one who comes only to drink and to make merry at my expense.”
“We found three coffins in the room,” he teased. “Two were man-shaped, the third…” Suddenly a light flared in his heart and he shot to his feet. “By the beard of Amon, Nofery!
If the thought I just had has any substance, I’ll be indebted to you for life.”
He dashed out of the courtyard, leaving the three women gaping.
“Where’s Imsiba?” Bak called, racing into the guardhouse.
After the bright street outside, he could see almost nothing in the dimly lit entry hall.
Knucklebones clattered on the hard earthen floor and one of the Medjays on duty scrambled to his feet. “He’s in the back with Hori, talking to a prisoner. Shall I summon him, sir?”
Bak strode into his office. “Bring both of them at once.”
The guard vanished through a rear door, and his mate followed Bak. “Is something wrong, sir?”
Bak stood next to the coffin, looking at it. He had sat on it so often he had begun to think fondly of the man within, as if Amonemopet were a distant uncle, one often spoken of but never met. “Were you, by chance, one of the men who carried this coffin from Ramose’s ship to this building?”
“No, sir. I was assigned that day to Psuro’s inspection team. We found the elephant tusk on Captain Mahu’s ship.”
“You summoned us, my friend?” Imsiba hurried into the room, followed by Hori and the Medjay who had gone after them.
Bak looked at the two guards, thinking to use them for what he intended, but decided not to. This he must do himself. He moved to the head of the coffin and pointed to the opposite end. “Take Amonemopet’s feet, Imsiba. Let’s carry him out to the entry hall.”
Imsiba gave him a puzzled look, but did as he was told.
Bak knelt so his hands were close to the floor and gripped the carved shoulders. Imsiba found a slightly better hold at the ankles. At Bak’s nod, they tried to lift the coffin. As neither had been able to get his fingers beneath the wooden box, neither had a good enough grasp to raise it off the floor.
“It’s too heavy,” Imsiba said, shaking his head. He turned to a guard. “Go bring a lever and some rollers.”
“And a chisel and mallet,” Bak called to the departing man.
Imsiba eyed him thoughtfully. “Do you know something, my friend, that I don’t?”
“Don’t you think Amonemopet weighs far more than he should?”
Imsiba stared first at Bak and then at the coffin, his expressions ranging from puzzlement to thoughtfulness to dawning realization. Certainty took hold and he began to chuckle.
Hori gave him a startled look. The remaining guard stared at the coffin, trying to understand the joke.
The guard who had left soon returned with tools. Suitably equipped, he and his mate raised the coffin onto the rollers, grunting at the effort, and moved it to the entry hall. While the container stood in solitary splendor in the center of the large, open room, Bak suggested he and Imsiba try once more to lift it. Better able to grasp it, they did so, but with an effort. Its weight, they both agreed, was too great for a man whose body had been dessicated.
With Imsiba by his side, and a wide-eyed Hori and guards too stunned to speak looking on, Bak took up the chisel and mallet. Vague indentations in the white-painted surface told him where to find the wooden pegs that had been hammered in place to secure tenons projecting from the edge of the lid into slots cut into the case. He knocked out the pegs and in-serted the chisel beneath the lid. A sharp rap with the mallet cracked the paint sealing the lid to the case. Hori caught his breath, shocked. The guards murmured hasty prayers. Bak pried up the lid.
No odor of decay or of aromatic oils wafted out. No man-shaped package wrapped for eternity filled the space. Instead, the coffin was stuffed with loosely packed bags that smelled strongly of grain, making Bak sneeze. Imsiba, Hori, and the guards laughed, releasing their tension.
Offering a silent prayer to the lord Amon that he would find what he sought, Bak lifted a bag and dropped it on the floor, raising a puff of dust. He picked up another and a third. In the space between two deeper bags, he glimpsed a smooth white surface. His heart soared.
He glanced up at Imsiba and grinned. “How many times have I sat on this coffin, wondering how a man could transport in secret anything as large as an uncut elephant tusk?”
“The gods at times have a perverse sense of humor.”
“They do indeed.” Bak picked up another bag of grain and looked down at the void he had created. “I shall miss Amonemopet. Though he never existed, he lived in my heart.”
Imsiba laughed softly and set to work, helping to remove the bags of grain. With Hori and the guards looking on, amazed, they bared not one but two elephant tusks. The heavier, thicker ends lay together near the center of the coffin, with one tusk curving to the left, its point at the head of the container, the other curving to the right with its point at the feet.
Bak stared at his prize, delighted, and offered a second prayer, this of gratitude. How many tusks, he wondered, had traveled down the river and across the great green sea to lands far to the north of Kemet? How many were even now in transit? The thought cast a shadow over his joy and his smile faded. “Do you realize, Imsiba, that we must open every coffin passing through Buhen until we’re sure no more tusks will be found? And we must send word north so every inspector along the river, throughout the lands of both Wawat and Kemet, will do the same.”
Imsiba moaned. “I hope the praise we get for finding the tusks will outweigh the resentment we’ll arouse.”
Chapter Eighteen
“Only the most senior officers and the most powerful princes will be presented to the vizier.” The officer, barely old enough to shave, one of several eager-to-please young men in the vizier’s entourage, stood stiff and straight, full of himself.
“Then your turn will come. Commandant Thuty will present you.”
“I understand,” Bak said.
When Thuty had announced that the vizier wished to meet the men who had put an end to large-scale smuggling across the frontier, only Nebwa had taken the order in stride. Bak had cringed at the idea of being presented in so public and formal a way. As had Imsiba, and Mery most of all. Bak had gritted his teeth, expressed gratitude, and searched out his best kilt. The boy had come to the party with his parents, prepared to enjoy the occasion. Imsiba, always so depend-able, had vanished.
“Congratulations, sir.” The officer clapped Bak on the shoulder as if he were equal in age and rank. “I hope one day to match you in deed and courage.”
If not surpass, Bak read in his eyes. “I find this land of Wawat stretches one’s capabilities.”
“Uhhh…I’m sure it does.” The officer, who had probably never served a day of duty outside the royal house, hurried away to join several other men crossing the audience hall in the vizier’s wake.
Bak scanned the room, hoping to find Imsiba, yet certain the Medjay had not arrived. He’ll turn up, he told himself.
He has to.
The vizier, a tall, portly man with receding gray hair, strode slowly across the room, chatting with Commandant Thuty and the viceroy of Wawat, parting the sea of guests who stood in their path. Like Thuty, the viceroy was a man of medium height, but thinner, with a prominent nose and large ears.
Thuty and the viceroy-and most of the other men accustomed to the intense heat of Wawat-wore simple thigh-length kilts, broad multicolored bead collars, and bracelets, armlets, and anklets. The commandant had opted, much to his wife’s dismay, to leave his ceremonial wig in its basket, preferring comfort to style. The vizier and the men he had brought with him from Kemet, letting courtly vanity outweigh commonsense, wore ankle-length kilts, shifts with elbow-length sleeves, and sheer wraps around their shoulders. Sweat ran from beneath massive wigs
