“Harmose would slay no man off the field of battle, my friend,” Imsiba said with conviction, “nor would he steal.”
“Have I pleaded my case to deaf ears? He looks no less suspicious than the other three.”
“I’ve talked with him several times. He’d do no wrong.”
“Mery, too, appears to be a man of honor, but I’ll not proclaim him innocent until I know for a fact he’s the man he seems.”
Imsiba spat the tiny bones of a pigeon wing into his hand and threw them into a bowl containing other discarded bones. “What of Mistress Azzia? You’ve never proclaimed her innocence, that I grant you, but neither have you looked for proof of her guilt.”
The accusation stung. It was true and Bak knew it. He had not approached her friends, women in whom she might have confided, nor had he searched for hints of a liaison which might have reached the ears of officers and men other than Paser. Now his time was running out; he had but a single day left before he must take her to Ma’am. Worse yet, with him away from Buhen the growing hatred of his men might well reach a climax, and he would not be here to help them.
Hori could go from house to house and from barracks to barracks, using his youthful candor to pry the truth from women and men alike. So extensive a task would take longer than one day, far longer. Another, faster way must be found.
He thought long and hard, wrapped in darkness, enveloped by Imsiba’s reproachful silence. When the answer came, the food in his stomach hardened to stone. If Azzia knew nothing, as she claimed, she would never forgive him. If she was injured, he would never forgive himself. However, if he learned the name of the man he searched for, if his Medjays could be freed of blame for the wretched goldsmith’s death, would it not be worth the sacrifice?
“I think I know a way to find the guilty man.” Bak glanced across the rooftops, saw the rising moon fully visible above the battlements. “Before I explain, we must go to the commandant’s residence-and we must waste no time.”
Imsiba looked up, startled. “You expect…what?”
“If Azzia is innocent, nothing. But if the man we wish to snare gave the gold to her…” Bak swabbed the last of his soup from the inside of the bowl with a chunk of bread, set the bowl aside, and stood up. “He took Heby’s life to silence him and he tried to slay me when he feared I’d find whatever was hidden in the goldsmith’s house. Will he not try to slay her if he thinks she might speak his name?”
Imsiba cursed his dull wits. “She’ll not remain silent if the viceroy judges her guilty of murder.” He jerked the bowl off the brazier and turned another bowl over the smoldering fuel to quench it.
Bak swallowed the bread, swept up the leaf-lined basket containing the remaining pigeons, and folded the leaves over the top. “If he tries to reach her tonight, you and I, with Pashenuro and Ruru, must be prepared to catch him.”
“If he stays far away?”
“We’ll make sure he approaches her tomorrow.”
Imsiba stared, surprised. “You’d use her as the bait in a trap?”
“Do I have a choice?” The words echoed through Bak’s heart, mocked him.
Chapter Ten
“To find me in Heby’s kitchen, looking at molds, must’ve been quite a shock,” Bak said, stifling a yawn. “If he thought before that I knew nothing of the stolen gold, he knows now for a fact that I do.”
“I hope he spent as sleepless a night as we did,” Imsiba grumbled.
A worried frown darkened Hori’s usually carefree visage. “I think you must walk the streets of this city with great care, sir.”
“He’s surely guessed I didn’t see his face. If I had, we’d have made him our prisoner many hours ago.”
They stood on the roof of the scribal office building, waiting for the lord Khepre, the rising sun, to show his face above the battlements. The city lay in the deep shadow cast by the towered wall. The sky above was a cloudless azure streaked with gold. Good-natured banter rose and ebbed around them. Twenty or more soldiers were spread across the storehouse roof, removing the sand left by the storm between the long cylindrical ridges. A second group was clearing away deep drifts which had collected on the roof of the commandant’s residence along the fortress walls. The scribal office building and the stairway rising to the battlements had been swept clean at first light.
“What if he believes you’re closer on his heels than you are?” Hori asked, his worry unabated. “Will he not try again to slay you?”
Bak gave the boy a reassuring smile. “He had every chance when I lost my way in the storm, yet he chose to return to Heby’s house. He cares more for covering his tracks, I think, than for taking a life before he feels he must.”
“He carried no weapon then, my friend,” Imsiba pointed out. “I doubt he’ll try to slay you at close quarters, but if I were wearing your sandals, I’d look to the distance and be wary of men who carry bows and arrows.”
“I pray this trap you plan will snare him,” Hori said.
Imsiba flung him a censorious scowl. “For it to work, you must wipe the cloud from your face. All those you speak with today must think you gossip with a light and innocent heart.”
Hori’s eyes widened. “I’m to have a part in this hunt?”
“You’ll lay the scent that will guide him to us.”
“I no longer have to walk through this city, asking endless questions about our own men?” As Hori spoke, his boyish face lit up as if touched by the sun. He stiffened his spine and sucked in his plump stomach. “I can lay aside my writing pallet to take up the arms of a policeman?”
Bak wished with all his heart his own worries could be so easily set aside. “You’ll use guile, not a spear. With luck your well-placed words will be far more deadly.”
Disappointment flickered across Hori’s face, replaced by curiosity and a cautious interest. “What must I do?”
Bak related his interview with Kasaya and the conclusions he had drawn. Spotting Imsiba’s grimace when he included Harmose with the other three, he thanked the lord Amon that Hori had made no special friendships among the quartet.
“I think it fair to assume that the man we seek has guessed I know of the stolen gold, but he can’t be certain how I learned of it. You must make him believe I was set on its trail before we left the capital. Speak of the royal treasury and its overseer, Sennefer. Say nothing of gold and always talk in circles, letting him guess your meaning by what you fail to say. As if an afterthought, tell him Mistress Azzia may see her friends today, and let him know I mean to thoroughly search the commandant’s residence after her guests are gone. He must be made to think I’ve just begun to connect Nakht’s death with the gold.”
Hori’s eyes twinkled; he uttered a mischievous laugh. “I’ll chatter like a monkey, leaving those who are innocent with a pounding head and the guilty man sick with fear.”
“Don’t make him so afraid he’ll run away,” Bak cautioned. “He must be drawn to the residence, thinking to remove all signs of his theft.”
“The gold and scrolls, you mean,” Hori said.
Imsiba opened his mouth to speak, glanced at Bak, changed his mind. The risk to Azzia hung in the air between them.
Bak tried to shake off his fear for her. An unreasonable fear, he told himself. For if she knew nothing about the thefts, the man who had taken the gold had no reason to hurt her. On the other hand, if she knew of his crime and shared his guilt, her fate was already in the hands of the gods. Somehow that was no consolation.
“I may receive anyone who wishes to see me?” Azzia asked, surprised and a bit puzzled.
“As the translator Harmose said, to hold you apart from those who can comfort you is cruel and unfeeling, especially today when…” Bak paused, cursed his clumsy mouth. The last thing he wanted was to remind her of the
