Wadjet-Renput plucked a rock from the pile, held it out so they could see the glittering flecks in the quartz, and began to talk. He moved on to the nearest lean-to and the next and the next, explaining, elaborating, adding anecdotes of success and disappointment as the miners had followed the vein deeper into the mountain. They watched nearly naked men huddled beneath the lean-tos, crushing the rocks to the size of peas in large mortars. Others ground the ground stone in hand mills to the consistency of coarse sand. A third group washed the powder in a sloping stone basin, using precious water to separate out the heavier gold.
Prisoner-miners they were, men who had killed or stolen or cheated or committed some other serious offense against their fellow man, offending the gods by their behavior. A few went mad in the heat, Bak knew; others died of exposure or in accidents, or their hearts stopped beating when they could take no more. None who returned to Kemet ever forgot the mine; none repeated his offense. And no wonder, Bak thought, for he could think of no greater punishment than drawing the precious flesh of the lord Re from stone.
He watched and listened intently, seeing many points in the process where gold could be stolen, but never more than a few grains at a time. At that rate, it would take months to collect a large enough amount to make a bar the size of the one hidden in his bedchamber in Buhen. Yet if he had interpreted Nakht’s scroll correctly, enough gold had disappeared in one year to make a dozen or more similar bars. One glance at Imsiba told him his friend was equally puzzled.
As they watched a prisoner pick golden granules from the bottom of a basin, Bak asked Wadjet-Renput, “How much gold is lost to theft?”
“You jest!” The overseer swept his baton in an arc, drawing all eyes to the dry and rock-strewn land around them. “What man with good sense would try such a thing?”
“Greed sometimes makes men foolish-and desperate.”
“Bah!” Nebwa spat on the earth by his feet. “These men have been reduced to animals. What use can a witless beast make of so precious a metal?”
“They watch each other, Bak.” Paser spoke as if to a child with an overactive imagination. “None is willing to share the blame for another man’s folly, and such would be the case if gold were found missing.”
They walked to the final lean-to, built on the hillside three or four paces above the others. Wadjet-Renput beamed at the man inside. He was scrawny, about thirty years of age, with short curly hair and hands so delicate Maatkare Hatshepsut herself would have envied him. He wore a long kilt and sat behind a scale and a set of weights. A pile of pottery cones lay beside one hip, writing implements by the other. He was a scribe, not a prisoner.
“This is Roy,” the overseer said, “the foremost teller of obscene jokes in the land of Kemet.”
A shrill whistle pierced the air, cutting short the introduction.
“The day has ended,” Wadjet-Renput explained and added with a contented smile, “Shall we see what our labor has brought forth for our divine sovereign?”
Bak was surprised at how much time had passed. The sun had slipped beyond the horizon. The wadi lay in shadow, and the peaks to either side were bathed in an orange-gold afterglow. He had been so intent on learning all he could that he had forgotten his thirst and the heat enveloping the land.
The bearers made a final trip across the shelf to empty their baskets. A gang of naked men snaked out of the mine, so covered with dust they looked as if the lord Khnum had molded them on his potter’s wheel from the earth itself. The men who crushed the stone and those who ground it up abandoned their lean-tos. A dozen guards shepherded the lot off the shelf and up the wadi toward their camp.
Those who remained, the men who washed the gold from the rock, carried small pottery bowls to the lean-to and handed them to the scribe. Inside each bowl were the glittering grains so painstakingly collected through the long, sweltering day. Bak’s pulse quickened. This lean-to, with so much of the precious metal in the hands of one man, seemed a likely place for theft. Except two guards stood close by, watching the exchange.
As the prisoners hurried away, Roy poured all the gold into a single round-bottomed spouted bowl about the size of his cupped hand. He then weighed it. While he toiled, he chattered to those watching, relating one tale after another, all funny, all vividly obscene. Bak laughed with the rest, but kept a surreptitious eye on those delicate fingers, intrigued by their deft manipulation of the bowls and the weights. The guards, he noticed, were too distracted by the talk of women and pleasure to pay attention to Roy’s supple hands.
Bak caught Imsiba’s eye. The Medjay was laughing along with the rest, but his brief nod said that he, too, thought the scribe a likely source of the stolen gold.
How could one be sure?
Reaching into the lean-to, Bak grasped the spouted bowl. Shocked, the scribe stopped his patter in midsentence. The guards stiffened, looked to a gaping Wadjet-Renput for guidance. Paser sucked in his breath. Nebwa took a quick step back, his eyes darted from Bak to Imsiba, his hand clutched his dagger. Whether he meant to protect the gold from men he thought thieves or whether Roy was his confederate and he feared discovery, Bak could not tell.
Bak took a generous pinch of the ore between his fingers, careful to hold it over the bowl so none would be lost. “Could a man not take this much gold every day and carry away a handful at the end of a year with no one the wiser?”
“By all the gods in the ennead!” Nebwa exclaimed. “Are we back to that?” His hand remained on his dagger.
“You take your task as a policeman too seriously,” Paser said in a tight voice.
Roy’s face blanched to a waxy white.
Bak dared not look at Imsiba for fear his elation would show. He had seen few men look guiltier or more afraid. As casually as he could, he let the brilliant flecks trickle into the bowl and handed it back. Muttering a disgusted curse, Nebwa let his hand swing away from the dagger. Wadjet-Renput, Paser, and the guards relaxed.
Roy went on with his task, his tongue less glib, his hands no longer so quick and sure. He pried the plug off a partially filled cone, poured in gold nearly to the top, and plugged it with wet clay, which he impressed with the royal seal. Placing it on the scale, he noted its weight and scribbled it on the baked clay surface. The remainder of the ore he poured into an empty cone and repeated each step though the vessel was less than a quarter full. He turned both sealed containers over to Wadjet-Renput.
As at the goldsmiths’ workshop and at every other step of the process, there seemed no way to steal the gold in any significant quantity. Yet Bak was certain the scribe was taking a part of each day’s proceeds. His impulse was to accuse then and there, but common sense prevailed and he elected to wait. Wadjet-Renput would not take kindly to having his scribe charged with a serious offense simply because he looked and acted like a guilty man.
Bak had to find proof. He had to examine the tools of Roy’s trade. There, he felt sure, lay the secret of the thefts. To do so he needed the bright light of day, not the deepening shadows of evening already filling the lean-to. He muttered a frustrated curse at the need to wait and vowed to return at first light. In the meantime, his Medjays would have to watch Roy, to protect him from the same fate Nakht, Heby, and Ruru had suffered. If the scribe were to die, the trail to the man who had slain the three might forever be lost.
“Bak!” A hand clasped his shoulder and shook him awake. Nebwa was bending over him, his face dark, grim. “One of my sentries saw a man leave this campsite last night. He slipped away in the dark, but we caught him this morning, hiding in a crevice above the miners’ camp.”
Bak sat up and blinked the sleep from his eyes. The wadi below was dark, the hillside gray and featureless. The pink glow of dawn had just begun to wash over the eastern peaks. His Medjays lay scattered around him, a few sleeping or pretending to sleep, most raising their heads to peer at the intruder.
“You’ve not harmed him!” Bak’s voice was sharp-edged, concerned.
“Not yet.” Nebwa spat on the ground by his feet. “I thought to hear your explanation first-if you have one.”
Bak rose from his thin sleeping mat and urged Nebwa along the slope away from the camp. “Like you, I think Tetynefer wrong in believing the tribesmen have formed an army. However, should he prove to be right, they might believe this mine vulnerable, the place to start a war. I’ll not let my men fight blind if fight they must. I sent them out to study the ground on which they’d have to stand.”
Nebwa nodded a grudging approval. “You think like a soldier.” His eyes narrowed and he muttered a curse.
