Her tone was matter-of-fact, but Bak heard beneath the surface a fierce determination to do as she promised. He had never met a woman like her, so soft and gentle and at the same time so strong and unyielding. An intriguing mix, especially in the heat of passion. Fearing she might guess his thoughts, he stepped over Ruru’s legs and entered Nakht’s room, righted an overturned stool, and sat down to brush the dirt off the bottom of his feet.
“There’ll be no next time,” he said. “The wound in his shoulder will be noted by all who see him. Word will spread from mouth to mouth as fire spreads in a field of dry stubble. He’ll be in my hands before nightfall tomorrow.”
“If he hasn’t already flown from Buhen.”
“No ship or skiff will sail until I have him. If he leaves by footpath, the villagers who dwell nearby will see him, and my sergeant, Imsiba, will hear within the hour.”
Azzia raised an eyebrow, unconvinced. Bak felt like shaking her, yet as he glanced around the disheveled room, he had to admire her. She must have fought like a lioness to have done so much damage in so short a time.
Lupaki hurried across the courtyard with a dozen linen strips fluttering from his hand. Azzia took them and said something to him in their own tongue. He nodded, knelt beside her, and lifted Ruru’s head from the floor. She laid the medicated pad on the wound and bound it in place, winding the strips around the Medjay’s head until it looked like the head of a man wrapped for eternity. He prayed her bandage would be enough, that others would not be needed to bind his body in the house of death.
“Go to the storeroom and get your master’s folding camp bed,” she said to Lupaki. “We’ll lift him onto it and carry him to my sitting room. He can’t lie out here through the chill of the night.”
The servant’s eyes darted toward Bak, an unspoken question formed on his face.
Her smile was fond, reassuring. “Go, Lupaki! He’ll not carry me off to the viceroy tonight.”
“You’ve heard?” Bak asked, more disconcerted than surprised.
Her smile vanished. She turned away to pick up the bowl of bloody water and poured it into the dirt out of which an acacia grew. “Tetynefer’s wife, Iry, sent a message.” She passed the bowl to the old woman. “Her note said you urged her husband to wait, to give you more time.”
“I reported what I saw in this room,” he said unhappily. “He heard nothing more I said.”
“He tells Iry all he knows, but she made no mention of the gold. Why?” Her eyes held his, probing his thoughts.
He stiffened his spine lest he wriggle like a schoolboy. “He knows nothing about it.”
The old woman hissed like a cobra, spat out a dozen words in the tongue of Hatti.
Azzia’s stare grew cool, distant. “I trusted you, as did my husband.” She gave a hard, bitter laugh. “What innocents we were!”
The words stung, and he muttered a curse. He should have known she would learn too soon that he had kept the gold. Now he had to convince her to say nothing about it without admitting he hoped to use it as bait in a trap, a trap that might snare her along with the one who had stolen it.
He stood up, walked to the door. “I can report it tonight to Tetynefer and give him another, stronger reason to believe you took your husband’s life. Or I can keep it hidden and say nothing. In the second case, you must trust me to report it when the time is right. The decision is yours.”
Her disbelief evident, she drew close a clean bowl of water. With the old woman speaking to her in an urgent voice, Azzia bent over to splash her face and arms. As she dried herself with a fresh cloth, she answered with a few quick words that brought a scowl to the servant’s face. A final word and a wave of her hand sent the woman scurrying across the courtyard, her back stiff with disapproval.
Azzia threw the water in a pot containing a stunted sycamore, checked Ruru’s bandaged head, and stood up to face Bak. “I care nothing for the gold. Keep it, trade it for a more comfortable life if you like. But I ask this of you: find the man who took my husband’s life. If you don’t, if I must go to Ma’am, I’ll tell the viceroy you have it.”
Bak’s mouth tightened. He had done all he could to help her and she not only thought him a thief, but thanked him with an ultimatum. He clutched her elbow and marched her into Nakht’s reception room.
“Look at this!” He swung his arm in an arc. “The man you fought in here most likely took your husband’s life.”
“I know!” She jerked free of his grasp. “Why do you think I tried to slay him?”
“If you’d succeeded,” he said grimly, “you’d be charged with his murder-and you’d have destroyed your sole chance to prove you had nothing to do with your husband’s death.”
Azzia dropped to her knees among the objects scattered on the floor, looked with moist eyes at first one and then another. When at last she spoke, her voice was barely loud enough to hear. “These things are all I have left of my husband. When I saw him here, pawing through them like a dog digs in a garbage heap, throwing them aside as if they were trash, my heart filled with rage and I took leave of my senses.”
Bak wanted to hold her, to console her. He took a step toward her, backed off. She may have thrown the spear in anger, as she claimed. She could as easily have thrown it to get rid of a confederate she no longer trusted. He wished with all his heart he had Imsiba’s gift for reading the thoughts of others.
He realized suddenly what she had said. “You saw him searching this room? How? The room was as black as a tomb.”
“He had a lamp.” She glanced up, saw how intense he was, and hastened to add, “He quenched it before I could see his face.”
With a sinking heart, Bak studied the room, noting the way the objects were scattered about. The iron dagger lay in front of the inlaid cedar chest, too far away to have fallen out during the struggle. Its sheath was well off to one side. The two lamps, one broken beyond repair, were halfway across the room in the opposite direction. The lid lay near the door where the chest had originally stood. Cursing vehemently, he ran outside, grabbed the torch, and raced across the courtyard to Nakht’s bedchamber. Linen, clothing, and toilet articles lay in untidy heaps around gaping storage chests. This room, like the other, had been ransacked-for the gold, he was sure, and the papyrus scrolls.
Scrolls. Nakht’s office on the floor below. Swinging around, he glimpsed Azzia standing outside the door, her hand over her mouth, her eyes wide, horrified. He darted past her without a word, ran to the stairwell, and plunged downward, spreading a shower of sparks in his wake. From halfway across the pillared hall, he could see the door of the office he was aiming for. It was closed and latched but no longer sealed-as he had left it.
Though he doubted the man he had pursued would have returned to the building, he slowed, approached on silent feet, and raised the latch, careful to make no sound. He shoved the door open and held the torch high. The office was empty, the door at the rear still latched and sealed. The room looked no different than when he and Hori had left, but he had to be sure.
He mounted the torch in a wall bracket, pulled a scroll at random from a chest to his right, and looked at the date. He pulled the next one, checked the date, pulled another and checked it. As he shoved them back, he automatically aligned the ends. He repeated the process more than a dozen times and concluded they were all in the proper order. He moved on to the next chest, reached for another scroll. Its end protruded well beyond those around it. A closer look told him none was aligned. Neither were those in the top third of a chest standing before the rear wall. The scrolls had all been shoved as far back as they would go, and since none was exactly the same size as the others, some stuck out while others lay deeper in the chest. He and Hori had looked at every document in the room. He had watched with a growing impatience while the young scribe carefully aligned the ends of each and every one of them.
He took the torch, left the office, and walked slowly across the audience hall. It was apparent the intruder had spent a considerable amount of time going through Nakht’s records. Bak thanked the gods that he and Hori had been before him. They had found nothing, but at least he had the satisfaction of knowing the man who followed them had been equally unsuccessful. He entered the stairwell, plodded upward. One thing was certain: the intruder was a man who could read. Bak stopped on the upper landing, nodding his satisfaction. That narrowed the field to a few officers and the scribes. All he had to do was discover which of them had a nasty wound in his shoulder.
Bak entered the courtyard with a lighter step. In the glow of a fresh torch mounted beside the reception- room door, Azzia bent over Ruru, a drinking bowl in her hand. The Medjay was sitting up unaided. Smiling with relief, Bak jammed his torch into the nearest empty bracket, trotted to them, knelt, and clasped Ruru’s bony shoulders.
