like nothing else could.”
“No man who serves me will ever act the coward,” Bak said grimly.
“That knowledge eased my other tasks. As did the fact that you’ve never questioned their innocence in the slaying of Commandant Nakht or the goldsmith.”
“Tell me…” Bak broke off abruptly, feeling a mudbrick in the corner jiggle beneath his fingers.
Imsiba dropped a stained kilt into the chest and hurried to his side. “You’ve found something?”
“We’ll soon know.” Bak knew better than to expect success in so short a time, but his voice was tinged with hope.
He hurried into the kitchen, scanned the clutter on the floor until he spotted a chisel, and hastened back with it to pry up the brick. Both men peered into the hole he’d made, saw nothing behind but another brick. Bak probed with the tool, but the surrounding bricks were firmly anchored to those around them.
Muttering an oath, he continued his examination of the platform. “What luck have you had in placing our men elsewhere when Nakht and Heby were slain?”
Imsiba swept a second kilt from the floor and flung it at the chest. “I know where every man was at the time the commandant’s life was taken. One man, Ruru, was alone and unseen. In the barracks he was, sleeping. As for last night with so many hours to account for, all in the dead of night when most men slept…” Heexpelled a mirthless laugh. “That task is more hopeless than looking for gold in this house where none remains.”
“You must not give up, Imsiba!” Bak’s voice was sharper than the chisel in his hand. “To ask Nofery to lie for five men was a task I dreaded. To ask for more is a thing I won’t do. She’d make me her slave-and you and all our company. That’s too high a price to pay.”
Imsiba knelt beside the sleeping mat, his expression bleak. “I’d not like to kiss her dirty feet for the rest of my life, but I see no other way.”
Bak regretted his outburst, backed off enough to ask, “How many men do you speak of?”
“Ten. All those assigned to patrol through the night.”
Bak had to laugh. “If you were the viceroy, Imsiba, what would you do if you learned ten Medjays, policemen of Buhen whose duty it was to walk the streets from sunset to sunrise, had spent all the night taking their pleasure with Nofery’s women?”
Imsiba’s shoulders sagged. “The storm must’ve carried my wits far into the desert.”
Leaving the sleeping area, Bak gave the glum-faced Medjay an understanding pat on the shoulder. He stopped before a wall niche containing a crude baked clay image of the squat, ugly household deity Bes. From the dusty cobwebs draped around the figure, he guessed no offering had been made for many weeks. Unpromising though it seemed, he swept the webs away to examine the niche.
“I should’ve reported the gold the moment I laid eyes on it,” he said unhappily. “Heby and his confederate would’ve retreated to the shadows, fearing discovery, and they’d have done nothing more. Because I made it my secret, I left them free to act. I alone set off this chain of events which led to Heby’s murder and the vile rumors holding our men responsible.”
Imsiba finished with the mat, threw it on the platform, and surprised Bak with a smile. It was stiff and too hearty, but a smile nonetheless. “We’ll find that other man, my friend, and the gold he’s stolen as well. We’ll be looked upon as men of valor, and we’ll grow fat and lazy with nothing to do day after day but watch the lord Re sail across the sky.”
“Boredom seems a small price to pay for the answers I long to find.”
Bak examined an empty niche and each of the four walls. Imsiba cleared the floor, throwing Heby’s meager possessions on the sleeping platform, and swept the sand out the door. They both got down on hands and knees to inspect the dry, hard-packed earth.
“You spoke of those men on patrol last night,” Bak said, brushing away pieces of grit embedded in his knee. “What of the others?”
“Except for Ruru and Pashenuro, who stayed with mistress Azzia in the commandant’s residence and are still there, all were in the barracks from dusk to dawn.”
“Unseen by any but themselves and you.”
“You err, my friend. One other man was there, a man of Kemet.”
Bak’s head popped up, a query on his face.
Imsiba busied himself with a crack so thin and snakelike that a blind man would know it had no depth. “The scribe Ptahsoker, he is. The steward Tetynefer’s right hand. He came while we ate our evening meal and stayed through the night, playing the game of knuckle-bones with Amonemopet and the men on watch.”
Bak wanted to believe, but suspicion lurked in his heart. “You said nothing about him this morning.”
Imsiba gave an elaborate shrug.
It’s not the truth, Bak thought, or is it? Would a man so close to Tetynefer risk such a lie? Prudence dictated he let the matter drop. “What of the three who claimed to wander the city when Nakht was slain?”
Imsiba rocked back on his heels, frowned. “As you thought, they had better things to do than await the results of our raid on Nofery’s house. They were at the quay, gambling with some sailors. They feared to admit as much, for they lost much of their portion of our monthly rations.”
Bak’s expression hardened. “And now the other men will have to share with them, leaving less for themselves through no fault of their own.”
“They’ll not soon make the same mistake, I promise you. I ordered the stick, thinking a firm reminder will long remain in their thoughts.”
Bak nodded his approval. The punishment was just.
A short time later, he hauled his weary, aching body off the floor and walked into the kitchen. He prayed they would find something, anything. Imsiba brought the torch, which flickered and sputtered, the fuel nearly burned away. With the uneven light urging them to hurry, they continued the search. Bak concentrated on the stairway; Imsiba took the floor.
“Where was Amonemopet when Nakht’s life was taken?” Bak asked. “Across the river, as he said?”
“With a village woman, yes. He shared a skiff with three other men of Buhen, scribes they were. They went over for the date wine, which is sweet and very strong.” Imsiba chuckled. “It crept upon them in the night and stole their senses. If he hadn’t come back with them, the current would’ve carried their vessel downriver and they’d be well on their way to Ma’am.”
Pausing on the seventh step, Bak eyed the big sergeant. “Would one of the scribes you speak of be Ptahsoker, the man who spent last night in our barracks?”
“I failed to ask,” Imsiba said, his expression bland.
Bak thought of pledging a goose to the lord Amon in thanks for the debt Ptahsoker had incurred to Amonemopet, but he decided to wait. Wait for a greater gift from the god, one far more substantial than a lie.
He reached the top of the stairway, finding nothing, and raised the trapdoor over his head. As it tilted up, sand showered down through the poorly woven mat. The rooftop was stark and empty beneath the starlit sky. If Heby had left anything there, the wind had swept it away. Two glinting yellow eyes-those of a cat, he thought- stared from a roof across the lane. A donkey brayed somewhere in the distance.
He ducked back inside and let the trapdoor fall in place. Kneeling on a step, his shoulders hunched beneath the mat, he studied the room. His eyes came to rest on the oven. When he had looked inside before, he had retrieved nothing from the ashes. Maybe he should take a closer look.
He descended the steps, cursing the man who had reduced his lower back to a nagging ache. Retrieving the torch from the bracket, he scrambled over Imsiba’s long legs, knelt in front of the oven, and peered in through the lower hole. It looked no more promising than before. He fished through the ashes and withdrew every solid object he found. Finished with his own task, Imsiba hunkered beside him. Bak balanced the torch in the oven door and set about examining his finds: a few good-sized lumps of charred fuel and several pieces of baked clay. The largest was a hard ring-like object, the top quarter of a pottery cone. Another was a dried clay plug.
Not enough of the cone remained to say with certainty whether or not it had been weighed, but not so much as an inkblot marred the small amount of surface that was left. The plug, which had never been stamped with a seal, fit so well Bak was sure the clay had dried inside the cone. The objects appeared to verify his theory that gold was being brought to Buhen outside the normal channels; they did nothing to help identify the man who was bypassing those channels.
