women, servants he had seen in the kitchen at daybreak, stood chatting near the top of the steps leading down to the water. One balanced a large, heavy jar on her head, the second held an empty container by the neck. Glimpsing Ineni, the former hurried toward the kitchen and the latter hastened down the steps to fetch water.
Bak made no comment until he and Ineni were midway along the row of granaries, when the servants were too far away to hear. 'Was the sergeant who died, Senmut, small and no longer young?'
'He was as tall as you,' Ineni admitted with a crooked smile, 'and he prided himself on his strength.'
'Yet there was no sign of a struggle.' 'None.'
Bak stopped in the shade near the rear door of the house, and gave his companion a curious look. 'You seem unmoved by Hatnofer's death. Wasn't she a mother to you, as she was to Khawet?'
Ineni's laugh was harsh, derisive. 'My mother was a servant, Lieutenant. She was young and beautiful, I've been told, and he took her as his own the day she walked into this villa. Hatnofer hated her from that time forward, and she had no more use for me. When my mother died giving birth to a stillborn daughter, I was sent to our estate at Nubt. There I was raised by a houseful of servants, all of whom I think of as parents.'
The tale was not unusual, but moved Bak nonetheless. 'Do you go often to Nubt?'
'I'd be there now if my father hadn't summoned me.' Ineni snorted. 'Sometimes I think he fears his own shadow.'
Bak eyed him curiously. 'Aren't you yet convinced he has reason to fear? Five people have died thus far.'
Ineni walked to the door and lifted the latch. 'If I'd been so inclined, I'd have slain Hatnofer many years ago. Sergeant Senmut was a braggart, a man who believed himself above all others in any endeavor he chose to pursue. The guard Montu… Well, he seemed a nice enough fellow, but he drank to excess and he loved to talk. He could say more about less than any man I ever met.'
'What of Lieutenant Dedi? And the boy Nakht?'
'Dedi was young and full of himself, not one to take too seriously, I'd have thought. But who knows? Maybe someone resented his
… His enthusiasm.' Ineni lifted the latch and shoved the door open. 'Nakht is a puzzle. The child was small and slight, gentle. An innocent. Why he had to die, I can't begin to guess.'
Nor could Bak. If Hatnofer had been slain because she was small and vulnerable, the child's death could be explained in the same way. However, neither Senmut nor Montu had been small men, and both had been stabbed without a struggle. Five deaths, with not a man or woman or child offering resistance to the assailant. Bak could think of no way to accomplish such a feat unless the man who slew them had blinded them with magic. Or, more likely, with familiarity.
'I must admit my relief when I learned another had been slain and I could rest easy.' Amethu hiked up his long white kilt, bunching the fabric over his bulging stomach, and dropped onto a portable stool. 'Does that sound heartless, Lieutenant?'
'You're not the first to voice the thought,' Bak said, 'and I doubt you'll be the last.'
The steward gave him a fleeting smile, his thoughts on the task before him: the weekly distribution of grain to those who toiled in the governor's kitchen.
Bak knelt beside him in a strip of shade cast by Nebmose's villa-how quickly he had come to accept the local name for the dwelling-watching servants empty one of the granaries. One man knelt before an opening twice the size of a man's head located at the base of the tall conical tower. Another man, who had climbed down an interior ladder, swept the remaining wheat into a basket and poured a golden stream through the hole, gradually filling the larger basket his companion held. Dust billowed from the cascading grain, making the man outside cough. Amethu noted the amount on a bit of broken pottery. Later, Bak knew, he would total the various quantities and record them on a scroll.
'I'll miss Hatnofer,' the steward said. 'She was one of the few people in this household to know the value of keeping accurate accounts. The rest of them…' He gave a longsuffering sigh. 'They just don't seem to care. They take an item from a storage room, don't bother to note its removal or to tell anyone, and then complain when they go in search of another like item and find none.'
'Was she as diligent in managing the household and its many servants?'
'To a fault, some would say.' Amethu frowned. 'I don't mean to be critical, but you'll find out soon enough. She was not well liked. Too stem and unforgiving. Too demanding. But she kept the household running as smooth as a welloiled chariot wheel. She'll be greatly missed.'
'What of mistress Khawet? Can she not oversee the servants?'
'Enough!' Amethu scrambled to his feet and hurried to the man kneeling at the base of the granary. He reached into the basket, withdrew a handful of wheat, and let it trickle from one hand to the other. His mouth pursed in disapproval. 'We can't distribute this. It's full of sand. We'd have a rebellion on our hands.'
He flung the grain to the ground and took a fresh handful. Sifting it through his fingers, he shook his head. 'Unacceptable. Set this basket aside and move on to the next granary. After you've gathered enough wheat for today's needs, come back here, sweep this one out, and pour all this dirty grain into the storage chamber where we're saving the seed for planting.'
'Yes, sir,' said the man outside, his voice echoed from within.
Amethu returned to his stool and bowed his head in what Bak took to be a prayer. When at last the steward raised his eyes, he again shook his head, this time in vexation. 'They never learn. Never. A foreman should sit out here, not me, but the last time I entrusted this task to another man, we had sand in our bread for a week.'
Bak held his tongue. Gritty bread- was endemic to the army. 'We were speaking of mistress Khawet, of her ability to take over Hatnofer's duties.'
'Khawet is a nice woman. I've known her from a babe. The question is: can she oversee a large and busy household in addition to satisfying her father's many demands? Not to mention the demands of a husband.'
'She has no children.'
'A pity.' Amethu paused to watch the servant climb out of the granary and drop onto a shoulder-high platform that joined the empty structure to the one beside it. Hurrying down a stairway that descended to the ground, he knelt beside his partner, who had broken the seal that attested to the integrity of the full granary. 'I've long been of the opinion that Hatnofer's problem was her failure to conceive. She was a woman of good humor and sweetness in her youth. A few years ago, as life began to pass her by, her disposition soured. Now I see Khawet traveling, the same path, and I fear for her.'
From what Bak had seen of Djehuty, he was more than enough child for any woman. Or perhaps he was being unfair. 'You've been with Djehuty for many years, I see.'
'My father was his father's steward. I grew to manhood in this provincr, learned to read and write in the governor's villa. When my father left this worldly realm, Djehuty's father appointed me to his place, as was right and proper.'
'Can you think of a reason anyone would want him dead? Would kill and kill again to plant fear in his heart?' Amethu looked distinctly uncomfortable. 'He's stepped on toes What man hasn't?'
'Has he come down so hard he'd merit death?'
'He's basically a good man, Lieutenant.' Amethu cleared his throat, as if the next words were caught there. 'Oh, he can be thoughtless at times. Selfish and petty. Altogether a most aggravating individual. But as he intends no ill, all who know him forgive him.'
Especially those who walk the corridors of the governor's villa, Bak thought. Men who wield a moderate amount of power and live in far greater comfort and style than their neighbors. Those who owe their lofty positions to Djehuty and dare not speak out lest he replace them with others more agreeable.
'If you truly believe a murderer walks these corridors, why are you not living within these walls?' Simut's voice pulsed with frustration as he tried to balance vehemence and the need to speak softly so his students would not hear his words. 'Why do you not send for Medjays-not from Buhen, for the journey would take too long, but from the capital? Men with dogs who'll patrol the rooms night and day?'
'If I were to summon additional men, Djehuty might well be slain long before they arrive.' Bak spoke softly, as reluctant to draw the boys from their studies as the chief scribe was. 'Have you never watched a cornered animal, forced to strike rather than bide its time?'
A chunky boy of ten or so years looked up from a pottery fragment on which he had been writing and sneaked a peek in their direction. He and a dozen or so other youths ranging in age from ten to fourteen sat cross-legged on the floor of the open courtyard, scribal pallets beside them, pieces of broken pottery or slabs of limestone in their
