“Lieutenant Bak?” Kasaya, his face screwed up in a grimace of pain, heaved his shoulders off the packed earthen floor and sat up. “What are you doing here, sir?”
“Why didn’t you answer when I called out?”
“I didn’t recognize your voice. I didn’t expect you.”
Bak helped the Medjay to his feet and seated him on a stool in the center of the sparsely furnished room. “I might’ve killed you.”
Kasaya gave him a wan smile. “If you’d given me the chance, I’d have brained you with my mace.”
Bak had told his Medjays time and time again that they must not slay suspects before they had a chance to talk.
Kasaya, he saw, had not altogether taken his words to heart.
The young man rubbed his stomach gingerly. “I must warn the other men in our company not to anger you, sir.”
“I expected to fell an enemy, not a friend.” Bak’s smile waned. “Now tell me what brought you to this farm.”
“I met a man at a house of pleasure a short walk south of here. When I showed him the sketch you made, he remembered seeing the fisherman Pairi with such a jar. I came here to ask who’d given it to him. By great good fortune, I stopped first to talk with the boy watching the flocks. He knew of the jars; his mother makes them. Pairi and the 228
Lauren Haney
brother Humay give her fresh fish in exchange for a few newly formed and dried jars. They add the design and return them to her so she can place them in her kiln.”
“What’s she to these men? Sister? Mother?”
“Neither. She dwells on the adjoining farm. The boy’s father died two years ago and he has several younger brothers and sisters. They earn their bread the best way they can. He tends the flocks of Pairi and Humay and in return his family’s flocks graze with theirs.”
Bak looked around the dwelling, which was none too clean and smelled strongly of unwashed bodies and fish. A quick search revealed nothing of value and no clothing. Either the two brothers had taken all they had of value and fled or they lived in squalor with the most meager of possessions.
“Not much to show for the lord Amon alone knows how many years of tomb robbing.”
Kasaya, looking doubtful, eyed the room. “If they’re the robbers, sir, where’s the wealth they’ve been getting in exchange for the ancient jewelry?”
“Perhaps the man we call the malign spirit is keeping it.”
“For them or for himself?”
“Yes, sir, I’ve seen them go out at night.” The boy, wide-eyed with curiosity and excited at such an interesting distraction from his lonely vigil over the animals, rubbed the soft ears of the baby lamb he held in his arms. “The two of them most of the time, but sometimes another man goes with them.”
“What does he look like?” Bak asked.
“He’s taller than they are and not as broad, but otherwise I don’t know. I’m always out here with the animals, too far away to see in the dark.”
“Do they go out often?”
“Not that I’ve seen, sir, but I might’ve been asleep when they left. My dog barks at strangers, not men he knows. Or at jackals or some other predator. Or when a sheep or goat gets itself in trouble.”
“Is there a pattern to their nighttime journeys? For example. .” Bak hesitated, not wishing to put thoughts into the boy’s heart. “Do they leave early or late? Do they go often or seldom? A day at a time or several days in a row?”
The boy set the lamb beside its mother and scratched his bony chest, thinking. “They usually go not long after darkness falls, during nights when the moon isn’t very bright.
Sometimes they go several nights in a row with a long gap until the next time, and sometimes they just go. No pattern that I can see.”
“Do you know where they are now?”
“No, sir. They left early this morning, as they always do, and I haven’t seen them since.”
After a few more questions that led nowhere, Bak thanked the boy with a plaster-covered wooden token, which his mother could take to the local garrison quartermaster and exchange for grain or some other item she needed. He and Kasaya headed toward the river and Ptahhotep’s skiff.
“Someone-our malign spirit, I suspect-finds the tomb,”
Bak said to Kasaya, “and these two, possibly the three of them, dig it out.”
“And Imen, while still he lived, watched to see that no one stumbled upon them in the night.”
Bak nodded. “Once they’ve dug their way in, they take a night or two to clean the sepulcher of all its valuables. That done, they close the mouth of the shaft to deceive the guards who patrol the cemeteries.”
“I’d not be surprised to learn that Pairi and Humay have gone for good.” Kasaya’s brow furrowed. “Or have they been slain as Imen was?”
“If I trod in their sandals, I’d have fled the instant I learned of Imen’s death.”
Chapter Sixteen
“Well done, Lieutenant. You’ve accomplished in a week what that guard lieutenant-What’s his name? Menna?-
has been unable to do in more months than I can guess.”
“Yes, sir. Now all we have to do is snare them.”
“You can leave that to me.” Maiherperi snapped his fingers and beckoned. A young officer who had been talking with several scribes at the back of the room hastened to the dais. The commander sent him off to summon the head of the garrison at Waset. “Or, rather, to my colleague Commander Ahmose. Within the hour he can have soldiers across the river watching the farm and send out couriers to have the boat stopped should Pairi and Humay travel beyond the borders of this province. At first light tomorrow he’ll have men on the river searching for their boat nearer to home.”
Bak nodded, well satisfied. He had hurried directly to Waset after leaving the farm of Pairi and Humay, thinking to relate his tale to a man with far more authority than he. Unable to reach Amonked, he had come to the commander. The decision had been a good one. Maiherperi was a man who wasted no time in setting in motion what had to be done.
“As I said before, sir, they may no longer be among the living.”
“I’ll tell Ahmose. Never fear; they’ll be found whether alive or dead.” The commander waved away a ribbon of smoke wafting across the dais from a torch mounted on the wall. “Does Amonked know of your success?”
“No, sir. I thought to bring him with me to see you, but he was away from his home, summoned by our sovereign to the royal house. Something to do with Senenmut’s inspection tomorrow of Djeser Djeseru.”
“Ah, yes. The matter of providing additional guards. I suppose I should’ve gone to the royal house, too, but I’ve no patience with discussing over and over again a problem that’s been resolved. The guards will be provided and they’ll be on the alert for trouble. If Senenmut insists on going. And knowing him, he will.”
Maiherperi had to be very secure in his position, Bak thought, to take a summons from their sovereign so lightly.
The commander waved his hand again, breaking up the smoke. A guard grabbed a torch mounted beside the door, hastened across the room, and substituted the one for the other.
“Have you told that guard officer-Menna-that you’ve resolved his problem for him?”
“No, sir.” Bak hesitated, added, “I’d rather he didn’t know yet.”
Maiherperi gave him a sharp look. “Why not?”
Bak was not sure what he should say. He did not want to lay blame where no blame was due. “He was very resentful when first I came to Waset. His attitude has since improved and he’s readily accepted my recent suggestions, but he won’t like the fact that I’ve achieved what he has toiled so long and hard to accomplish. And
