put out.”
“The well is close, I see.” Bak looked over the waist-high wall that protected the broad, round mouth of the well. In side, a spiraling stairway led down to a platform that encir cled the top of a narrower shaft up which water was drawn.
“Still, it takes a lot of water to put out a fire-and it must be delivered fast.”
“You see the problem,” Tetynefer said, eyeing the officer with respect. “Water alone would never have done the task.”
A tall, sturdy young guard whose accent marked him as a man of the north grinned. “Tetynefer sent me off in search of something to smother it. The lord Amon smiled on me, and right away I found a heavy woolen cloak.”
“I led the rest off to the well.” Tetynefer looked upon the young man with considerable pride. “By the time I got back with a jar of water, he’d shoved well out of the way all the scrolls that weren’t burning and had quenched the fire lick ing the ends of others.” He motioned toward the young man’s sandals, which were black and charred. An angry red burn ran up the side of his right ankle. “Look at his feet. No common sense at all but the courage of a lion.”
Trying without success to look modest, the young guard said, “As soon as they brought the water, it was all over.”
“We didn’t get a good look at the dead man until the fire was out.” The third guard, a shorter and stouter man, stood his shield against the wall and knelt beside it. “We saw the wound in his neck and sent the boy for the Overseer of Over seers. Instead he brought you and the Storekeeper of Amon.”
Bak turned away from the well and sat on a mudbrick bench shaded by a half-dozen date palms. Fronds rustled above his head, stirred by the light breeze, and the sweet song of a hoopoe filled the air.
“Since most men would give their best kilts to see the pro cession, I assume you were ordered to stay,” he said.
“Yes, sir.” Tetynefer hunkered down in the scruffy grass in front of him. “I’ve seen enough processions to satisfy me through eternity, and these two,” he nodded toward his com panions, “grew to manhood in Waset. Our sergeant thought to give men new to the capital the opportunity to watch.”
The sturdy guard looked up from the dirt in which he was drawing stick men. “He’s vowed to assign us to the court yard in front of Ipet-isut when the lord Amon returns from his southern mansion. We’ll get to see him close up, closer than we ever would standing alongside the processional way. And the other gods and our sovereigns, too.”
A fair exchange of duties, Bak agreed. “Amonked and I saw no sentry when we came through the gate, and unless
I’m mistaken, no one’s on duty there now. Aren’t the gates guarded?”
“Yes, sir. At least in a manner of speaking.” The tall guard leaned back against the wall of the well, raised his spear, and shoved it hard into the ground, making it stand erect. “Our task is to keep an eye on the gate and at the same time patrol the streets and lanes within this sector of the sacred precinct, making sure no one roams around who has no right to be here.”
His shorter companion nodded. “With so many people come to Waset from afar, you never know who might allow his curiosity to lead him inside to explore.”
“Or to take something of value,” Tetynefer added.
Bak was not especially surprised at so casual an attitude toward guarding the sacred precinct. Few people would risk offending the greatest of the gods. “Did any of you happen to see Woserhet arrive?”
“I did,” Tetynefer said. “He came from the north, as if from the god’s mansion. I wouldn’t have noticed him- there were too many others hustling and bustling around, per forming tasks related to the festival-but he was so deep within his thoughts that he stumbled over a blind dog that lays in the lane every morning, warming his tired old bones.
He felt so bad he gave me a food token, telling me to get meat for the cur. After that he went into the storage maga zine where Meryamon found him.”
“Did you go then to get the meat?” Bak asked.
“I didn’t have time.” Tetynefer’s eyes narrowed, fearing
Bak might be questioning his honesty rather than his where abouts. “Never fear, sir. I’ll not take food from a dog’s mouth.”
Bak reassured him with a smile. “The three of you never left this sector after Woserhet came?”
“No, sir,” they said as one.
“After he entered the storehouse, how much time passed before Meryamon smelled smoke?”
“A half hour.” Tetynefer’s eyes darted toward the younger guards. “I told you right away about the token. Would a half hour be a fair guess?”
The stout one nodded; the other looked doubtful. “Closer to an hour, I’d say.”
“Did you notice any strangers wandering around after he came?”
The three guards laughed.
“One man in three, maybe one in four, was a stranger,” the taller guard explained. “During this busy time, the regular priests need all the help they can get.”
Bak listened to the chatter of birds in the otherwise silent sacred precinct and imagined how full of life it must have been so short a time ago. The mansion of the god and the many buildings crowded around it, literally a city within the city of Waset, had been alive with people and activity. Then almost everyone had gone, leaving the streets and lanes de serted, the buildings empty, the scrolls and sacred vessels abandoned. The slayer could have struck at any time, but the most opportune time would have been those last few confus ing moments when everyone was preparing to leave, too busy to notice and too eager to get away.
“He’s not dead! He can’t be!”
“I’m sorry, mistress Ashayet, but you must believe me.
His ka has flown to the netherworld.” Of all Bak’s many and varied duties as a police officer, the one he disliked the most was informing the family of a loved one’s death.
The small, fragile woman knelt, wrapped her arms around the three young children clinging to her skirt, and hugged them close. “We’re waiting for him. He’ll come at any in stant to take us to Ipet-resyt to see the end of the procession.”
“Mistress Ashayet…”
She released the children, stepped back, and sent them to ward the rear of the house with a fond slap on the oldest one’s bare behind. She smiled brightly at Bak. “What can I be thinking, leaving you standing in the doorway like this?
Come in, sir. You may as well await my husband in comfort.”
Wishing he could flee, Bak followed her through the front room, which was cluttered with hay for the family donkey, large water and storage jars, spindles and an upright loom, and four ducks nesting in large flattish bowls. She led him into the next room, the primary family living space, whose high ceiling was supported by a single tall red pillar and pierced by windows that allowed inside a generous amount of light. A couple of stools, a woven reed chest, and a tiny table shared the space with the low mudbrick platform on which the family sat and the adults slept.
“Take my husband’s stool, sir. Would you like a beer while you wait?”
“Mistress Ashayet.” He caught her by the upper arms, making her face him. “I regret I must be so harsh, but you leave me no choice. Someone took your husband’s life. He was slain early this morning. In a storehouse in the sacred precinct of the lord Amon.”
“No!” Her eyes met his, a plea formed on her face. “No,” she said again with less assurance, a faltering conviction.
“Your husband is dead, mistress.” He held her tight, forc ing her to give him her full attention. “You must believe me.
You alone shoulder the responsibility for your household, your children. You must be strong for them.”
A look of horror, of unimaginable pain fell over her face like a cloud. She jerked away, stumbled through the next room and into the kitchen, a small area lightly roofed with branches and straw, where she dropped to the hard-packed earthen floor and began to sob. The children gathered around her, lost and forlorn. Bak shifted a stool
