the lady Maat would forgive his lies.
“I can give you no specific weights of the gold they’ve taken. The records are in my office, not in my heart, but I can tell you this: none but the wildest desert tribesmen are bold enough to attack our caravans. They seldom get more than five or six donkeys, and, more often than not, the animals they take are carrying food or water rather than gold.”
“What do they do with the ore?” Bak asked. “Make trinkets for themselves or use it for trade?”
“It goes through many hands, I’ve been told.” Kames allowed himself a faint smile. “In the end it’s brought back to us.”
“Is its source never questioned?”
“The lord Re chose to scatter bits of his golden flesh in many of the wadis in this barren land. Most tribesmen look for it; those with the gift of patience find it. They and the raiders alike trade it for necessities. Those who receive it trade it off to other men. So it goes until ultimately it falls into the hands of the chief-tains, who accept it with a smile and ask no questions. Well aware that Maatkare Hatshepsut hungers for gold, they bring it to us, either as a trade item or as tribute for the royal house in Waset.”
Bak shifted uncomfortably from one foot to another. Could a local chieftain have given Nakht the ingot Azzia found? “Do you personally receive and weigh every ingot that passes through Buhen?”
“Did the commandant tell you nothing?” When Bak failed to answer, Kames expelled a long, resigned sign and spoke as if to a schoolboy. “The gold is brought to me, yes, and weighed and recorded. As for ingots…” His snort was sharp, cynical. “The chieftains of Kush more often than not melt the gold and form it into rings. The tribesmen of Wawat don’t understand the principles of smelting nor do they bother with molds. Some bring nuggets they find in the wadis or the granules they wash from the rock. Those with larger quantities heat it, melt it, and throw it into water, where it forms rough kernels. It’s easier to transport that way, with less chance of losing the smaller grains.”
Bak turned away lest the sharp-eyed scribe read the satisfaction on his face. Nakht had, without doubt, gotten the ingot from someone inside Buhen. “Other than to raiders, is gold ever lost after it falls into our hands?”
“I see no way. As I told Nakht, men of proven honesty weigh it again and again, from the time it’s taken from the rock until it’s delivered to the royal treasury in Waset.”
Bak stared across the glistening river, his eyes on the opposite bank, his thoughts on another maxim of Maiherperi: Even an honest man will alter the balance of the scales if his hunger for wealth is great enough. “Weights can be made to lie.”
Kames flung him a resentful look. “I’m responsible for those weights, young man, and I can assure you that they do not lie.”
“I don’t question your honor, Kames.” Bak gave him a placating smile. “Merely the steps we take to ensure the gold’s safety.”
Not entirely mollified, Kames said, “I keep a set of master weights of proven accuracy. With them, I test all other sets at least twice a year.”
“Do you go to the mines yourself?”
“I do no such thing! My responsibilities are here, not out on the burning sands.” Kames unbent enough to explain, “Every few weeks or months, in no regular pattern, I send out sets of weights I know are true, and those at the mines are returned to me.”
“You leave nothing to chance,” Bak said, his tone admiring. The system seemed to have no fault. Nonetheless, one had to exist. How else could the gold have been stolen?
Kames’s face relaxed in a modest smile. “I try to think as a thief, and then I take precautions so even I would fail.”
Bak laughed, appreciative of the technique. With a fading smile, he said, “The miners are all vile criminals, men who’ve been convicted of offending the lady Maat. Are there no thieves among them?”
Kames’s answer was lost to the angry bellow of a cow followed by laughter. Bak glanced at the cattle ship, where a lanky tribesman decked out in his traveling finery, a fringed red wrap and necklaces, bracelets, and anklets of copper, stood on the narrow wooden gangplank, trying to pull after him a cow whose hooves were planted firmly on the quay. She bawled, swept her head back and forth. A slender youth in yellow and red smacked the beast’s flank with a whip. She refused to budge. Another man, older and heavier, bent low behind the cow and hissed so much like a snake that a chill ran up Bak’s spine. Bellowing her alarm, the beast charged headlong up the gangplank. A lightning-quick leap to the deck saved her owner from being pitched into the river. He caught the rope, pulled her up short, and shook his fist at her in mock anger. The Kushites on the quay laughed so hard tears ran from their eyes. Their high spirits were infectious, and Bak and Kames joined in.
As the second cow walked sedately up the gangplank, Kames’s smile waned. “A clever miner might take for himself a small amount of ore before it’s weighed, but few try.” He pointed toward the distant sandhills, where the shimmering sun-struck dunes seemed to dissolve into the molten sky. “The land you see there is baked and lifeless, the wadis where gold is found are far worse. The lord Re burns the heart from the miners, sometimes taking their wits as well, sometimes their lives. Gold loses its value when life itself is at stake.”
Kames’s sympathy for men forced to endure such hardships was apparent. If this man, who had insisted on sending a ship out when it needed recaulking, could feel such compassion, the miners’ lives must be very hard indeed. He thought of the ingot hidden beneath his sleeping pallet and the sweat chilled on his back. Every day he kept it made any explanation he could offer more difficult to believe. If he was judged a thief, he too would be sent to the mines-or worse. He and his men had to catch the one who had ransacked Azzia’s home. They had to! But what if they never found him?
His resolve to keep the ingot weakened and he fished for an opening. “If I were to tell you someone has been stealing gold for over a year, what would you say?”
“Impossible!” Kames laughed at what he took to be a joke. “For as long as I’ve been in Buhen, three years and two seasons, the weights of the ore leaving the mines have matched exactly the weights received at the smelters. The same is true of the ingots shipped from here to Waset.”
Bak opened his mouth, quickly clamped it shut. To speak to Kames would be foolish. He must be patient. He must wait until they caught the fugitive. Or until they were certain they would never catch him. Then he would report the ingot to Tetynefer, not to this man who was responsible for the accuracy of the weights.
“Officer Bak!”
He looked down the quay, saw the husky figure of Pashenuro, one of his Medjays, burst from among the half-dozen cattle waiting to be loaded.
“You must come at once, sir!” Pashenuro’s body glistened with sweat, his breath came out in short, quick gasps. “Imsiba has a message from Dedu, the headman of the village beyond the north gate. A man has been pulled from the river. He’s dead. Stabbed, so Dedu says.”
Bak and Imsiba paused at the top of a sloping path which cut through a low, sandy ridge lying between the river and a mudbrick village whose area was smaller than that of the dozen or more brush-enclosed donkey paddocks built off to one side. Two Medjays, one carrying a rolled-up litter on his shoulder, drew up beside them. At the far end of the slope where the water lapped the shore, thirty or more men, women, and children stared at the patch of ground they encircled, speaking in hushed voices. He could see nothing of the body in their midst.
The message had been vague, but he knew the headman would not have summoned him if a villager had been slain. The victim had to be a man of Kemet. Could Azzia’s thrust with the spear have been more deadly than it appeared? He thought not. The wound had been ugly but not lethal. No brawls had been reported, no arguments between two men, and no troops had gone missing from the garrison. Maybe the body had washed downstream from one of the fortresses along the Belly of Stones.
Praying it was so, praying the fugitive they sought was in Buhen, alive and able to confess his offenses, Bak strode down the path, a track of hard-packed sand mottled with manure. Imsiba and the others followed in a ragged line. A woman spotted them and spouted a warning in the tongue of Wawat. The murmurs of the villagers tapered off. The circle parted to let a wizened old man come through.
“I am Dedu, the headman,” he said. “It was I who summoned you, sir.”
Before the group closed behind the old man, Bak glimpsed the waxen body. It looked intact, undamaged, not yet bloated. It had not been long in the water. He longed for a closer look, but forced himself to be patient.
