I’ve no idea.”
“The irregularities he’d mentioned?”
“Perhaps, but I don’t think so.” Seeing the puzzlement on Bak’s face, the scribe hastened to explain. “When he ini tially suggested I look for discrepancies, he didn’t seem un duly disturbed, so why would he become upset later? Also, why would he not mention the irregularities we’d previously discussed?”
Good questions, both. “Didn’t you ask what the trouble was?”
Sadness clouded Tati’s expression. “Normally, he ex plained what he was thinking, but this time… Well, as he offered no explanation, I assumed the matter personal and let it drop.”
Bak sipped his beer, thinking over what he had learned.
Practically nothing. Many men confided in their servants, but Woserhet had been a man of limited means, one unac customed to retainers and no doubt unwilling to share his thoughts with them. “You must let me know if you find any discrepancy of significance, or anything else unusual. One of your workmen can deliver the message to my Medjays’ quarters.”
While the scribe wrote the location on a shard, Bak said,
“The workman who brought this beer obviously liked
Woserhet, but indicated he could be sour at times. So much so that he made enemies?”
“Sour. Not a word I’d use.” Tati set the shard aside and laid down his pen. “He was honest to a fault, sir, and blunt in all he said. He angered many people, especially the various storehouse overseers when he pointed out problems that, with proper supervision, could’ve been avoided. But I can’t honestly see a man slaying him, offending the lady Maat in the most dire manner possible, for so small a thing.”
Bak had known men to slay for less, but usually in the heat of anger and after too much beer. He doubted such had been the case with Woserhet’s death.
“Many of the scrolls are like this one, sir.”
Hori, seated in the lane outside the small room in which Woserhet had died, carefully unrolled the partially burned document. In spite of the care he took, the charred outer end flaked off onto his lap. Deeper inside the roll, only the lower and upper edges had burned and were dropping away. Most of the words and numbers remained, but the more exposed surfaces were difficult to decipher because of soot and water stains. Farther in, the stains were fewer, the document easier to read.
Bak, kneeling beside the youth, eyed the three piles of scrolls. The largest by far was the one from which Hori had plucked the open document. Another was made up of scrolls slightly damaged or not burned at all. The third was a mass of badly burned documents that looked impossible to salvage.
“Can we take these to our quarters, sir?” Kasaya asked.
“We’d be a lot more comfortable on the roof, have more room to spread out, and nobody would bother us.”
Bak looked into the fire-damaged room. Most of the bro ken pottery had been shoved off to the side, out of the way.
A black splotch on the now-dry floor identified the spot where the oil had burned, and a larger brownish patch had to be dried blood. The smell of burning remained, but not as strong as before.
“All right, but you must reseal this room before you go, and warn the guards to let no one inside. You may need to look at other records, and we don’t want them to walk away while your back is turned.”
“If Woserhet was fretful, I have no idea why.” User, the
Overseer of Overseers of the storehouses of Amon, gave
Bak an irritated look. “All I know is that Hapuseneb sum moned me one day and told me to expect him and those ser vants of his. He said I was to cooperate with them in every way and give them free access to all the storehouses. I re peated his instructions to the men who report to me, and that was that.”
Bak stepped into the shade cast by the long portico in front of the squarish treasury building. User was seated on a low chair about ten paces from the gaping doorway. His writing implements lay on a small, square table beside him.
He looked the perfect example of the successful bureaucrat: his spine was stiff, his demeanor august, with an expansive stomach that brought the waistband of his long kilt almost up to his plump breasts.
“You were never curious about what he was doing?”
“I knew what he was doing.” User sniffed disdainfully.
“He was an auditor, wasn’t he?”
Bak smothered a smile. He had asked for that. “How close was he to the end of his task?”
“As far as I know, he’d almost finished.” User looked out into the courtyard, where four royal guards idled in the shade of a sycamore tree. Their officer had gone inside the building with two treasury guards and a priest. “Most of the overseers had come to whisper in my ear, ofttimes to complain that he exceeded his authority. I quickly set them straight, repeating
Hapuseneb’s order that we give him every assistance.”
“You never looked into what he was doing?”
“Why should I? He had his task and I have mine.”
“Were you not worried that he might find irregularities in the records?”
“Irregularities, Lieutenant? Someone counted wrong or transposed a number? Someone omitted a line when trans ferring amounts from a shard to the final scroll?” User snorted. “Everyone makes a mistake at one time or another.”
The Overseer of Overseers, equal in rank to Amonked but with not a shred of the common sense, was too self-satisfied for his own good. Bak was beginning to understand why
Amonked took such a strong interest in the large warehouses of the lord Amon outside the walls of the sacred precinct, those that housed the real wealth of the god: grain, hides, copper ingots. His title of Storekeeper of Amon had un doubtedly been intended as a sinecure, yet he toiled daily at the task, as would any conscientious man. If he, like User, had been responsible for the day-to-day operations of the storehouses, Bak had no doubt he would have known ex actly what the auditor did.
“Could Woserhet have uncovered a theft?”
“Who would steal from the greatest of the gods?” User scoffed. “Such an offense is unthinkable. No man would be so bold.”
“Given sufficient temptation…”
“Yes, yes, I know.” User waved off Bak’s objection. “But not here. Not in the sacred precinct of Ipet- isut.”
The man was insufferable. Offering a silent prayer to the lord Amon to give him patience, Bak glanced at the royal guards, who had begun to play with three fuzzy kittens whose mother watched from a safe distance. “Did Woserhet audit the treasury?”
“He began here. I assured him that I take personal respon sibility for the god’s most valuable possessions and can list from memory all the items stored here.” User scowled.
“Nonetheless, he insisted.”
Bak had never been inside this particular treasury, but its size alone told him no man could remember each and every object it contained. “How long ago was that?”
“A month, no more. The very day Hapuseneb told me to open all doors to him and his men.”
Too long ago, Bak suspected, to have anything to do with
Woserhet’s most recent worry. Unless fresh evidence had been found leading back to the treasury. “This building must contain more items of significant value than all the other storehouses added together. Would it not be logical for a thief to look here for the most worthy prize?”
“How many times must I repeat myself, Lieutenant?”
User pursed his lips in irritation. “I take considerable pride in the fact that the treasury falls within my realm of respon sibility, and I daily walk through its rooms. I frankly admit to being obsessed with beautiful objects, and where else can one find so many in so confined a location?”
“I understand the storage magazines in the block where
Woserhet died also contain objects of value.”
User laughed, disdainful. “Nothing worthy of offending the lord Amon, believe me.”
“Aromatic oils, ritual instruments made of precious met als, fine linen, and…” Bak broke off abruptly. The
