Three ways of reaching Nakht with small chance of being seen by members of the household. All possible but risky. Foolhardy, even.
No, the foreign woman Azzia must have slain her husband. Yet doubt nagged Bak like a hungry mosquito. He dreaded talking to her, dreaded having to accuse her of taking her husband’s life. But if she should prove her innocence, he dreaded more the idea of having to search further. How could he, a man whose sole experience was with horses, chariots, and battle tactics, find the one guilty man in a city of nearly five hundred?
Bak crossed the courtyard with heavy feet. He had dispatched Nakht’s body to the house of death and examined the slain man’s personal rooms, where he found nothing of interest. He had questioned the onlookers, who all denied having seen anyone take the stairway to the second floor, and had sent them away. And he had ordered Imsiba to go with Mery to question the men patrolling the battlements as to who and what they had seen through their night’s vigil.
The moon had sunk behind the fortress wall, the torches had burned low, and the stars above sparkled in an inky void. The dark forms of potted flowers and trees, which gave the courtyard the appearance of a miniature garden, scented the air with perfume. As he approached the only lighted doorway, he nodded to the Medjay he had posted there to guard the woman Azzia.
She sat on a low three-legged stool, her back straight, her hands clasped in her lap, her head held high. No bloodstains remained on her hands or her pale, oval face, and she wore a clean unadorned linen sheath. She must have heard the patter of his sandals, for her eyes were on the door when he entered.
“Have you come to accuse me of murder?” Her voice, which held no trace of an accent, was quiet and composed, with barely a hint of tension.
He stopped short on the threshold, caught by surprise. “Did you take your husband’s life?”
The servant Lupaki, standing by her side, laid a protective hand on her shoulder. Seated on the floor next to a large pottery basin, a dusky, nearly naked girl of no more than ten years raised her hand to her mouth to smother a sob. Beside the child, a twig-thin, wrinkled old woman glared at Bak over an untidy pile of bloodstained linen she clutched in her arms.
“No.” Azzia looked at him, her gaze steady. “Lieutenant Mery has said you believe I did.”
Bak silently cursed the watch officer for saying more than he should. The female servants must have thought his scowl meant for them, for they scurried into the next room, Azzia’s bedchamber.
“I’ve found nothing to convince me otherwise,” Bak said.
“And I was there.” It came out as a whisper, and for an instant she seemed close to breaking, but she stiffened her spine and tried to smile.
That smile, so fragile and filled with pain, pierced Bak through and through. He looked away, pretending to examine the room. It was half the size of Nakht’s reception room and furnished much the same. Rush mats covered the floor. The lower walls were painted with unsophisticated but delicate scenes of the animals of the desert.
“I did not take his life, that I swear. He was my…” She paused and her thoughts turned inward. Then she shuddered as if to free herself of memories and looked directly at Bak. “Mery said that though you believe I’m guilty, you looked beyond my husband’s room for signs of another person.”
“That’s right.” Bak’s tone was brisk, covering his annoyance that he had allowed her to move him. He grabbed a stool from its place near the door, set it in front of her, and sat down. “Tell me what happened this evening.”
Lupaki slipped forward, dropped to his knees before Bak, raised his hands in supplication. “Don’t ask this of her, sir. You must give her time to compose herself.”
“Be silent, Lupaki,” Azzia said firmly. “It must be now.”
“Mistress…”
“Would you have me punished for the death of my husband? Would you allow the one who slew him to go free?”
Bak was taken aback by the blunt questions and by the depth of anger her voice betrayed. The anger of innocence, he wondered, or of guilt?
Lupaki uttered a strangled denial and hauled himself to his feet, his face flushed with shame.
Briefly, Azzia’s gaze dropped to her hands, clasped so tightly together her fingers were nearly bloodless. “We took our evening meal in the courtyard where we could enjoy the breeze. While we ate, we talked about our day, as we always do.” She gave an odd little laugh, or was it a cry? “As we always did.”
“What exactly did you talk about?” Bak asked, hurrying her on before she had a chance to think too deeply.
“I told him about the market, the gossip I’d heard from the other women. Nothing important. He told me he’d met with several officers, Mery, Nebwa, Paser, and others, no doubt to discuss the attacks on the caravans bringing ore from the mines, the need to send out troops to hunt down the raiding tribesmen. He said he told them of suggestions you’d made based on tactics you learned with the regiment of Amon.”
Bak made no comment, but he was surprised the commandant would share so much of his official day with his wife.
“He was pleased Commander Maiherperi had sent you and the Medjays.” A fleeting smile touched her lips. “He felt sure your presence here would put an end to much of the wild carousing and petty crime. And then…” She paused, her voice trembled. “Then he looked troubled and said…he said, ‘But they can do nothing to help me now. I must personally deal with…’”
Bak leaned toward her, his pulses quickening. “Go on.”
“He never finished the thought. I urged him to explain, but he said he’d do so later, after the problem was resolved.” She closed her eyes tight, took a deep, ragged breath.
Bak did not know what to think. Her grief appeared genuine, but she could as easily be playing on his sympathy to learn if Nakht had confided in him.
She hurried on. “He left me soon after and went to his bedchamber. I helped the servants take the remains of our meal to the kitchen and spoke with them while they cleaned the bowls. When I returned, my husband was waiting for me in this room. He said he had something he must do and suggested I retire. He said…” Her voice grew tight. “He said he would come to me later.”
With the wild panicked look of a snared fawn, she sprang to her feet and rushed out the door. Bak hurried after her, but stopped short when he saw her standing, head bowed, her back to him, in the center of the courtyard. The Medjay guard, already on his feet, threw him an uncertain look. Bak signaled him to remain where he was and walked toward her. In the dim light, the clinging white sheath accented every graceful curve of her lovely body. Bak, who had known many women in his twenty-three years, was drawn to her like a wasp to water.
Very well aware of his weakness for an attractive woman, he stopped a few paces away and forced himself to think of her not as a lovely young widow but as the one most likely to have slain her husband.
She raised her head and turned to look at him. “Nakht went to his reception room. His distress had worried me, and I couldn’t rest. I waited and waited-too long, I thought-so I dressed and went to him.” She paused, swallowed. “He lay bleeding on the floor. I tried to stop the flow. He said it was too late and asked me to raise his head and shoulders. I asked who had done this to him, but he spoke of personal matters. Again I asked who…” She closed her eyes, shook her head. “He never answered.”
She turned away and walked slowly toward the lighted door of her sitting room, where Lupaki waited. Bak watched the two of them go inside, his mind a jumble of contradictory thoughts. Is she bravely holding her sorrow at arm’s length, as she appears to be? he wondered. Or is her every word and action a lie?
“Is she telling the truth?”
The question, so closely matching his own, startled him. He swung around and spotted Imsiba emerging from the shadows of the landing atop the stairway that connected the private quarters to the audience hall. The sergeant, a dozen years older than Bak and half a head taller, walked as lithe and graceful as a leopard. His shoulders were broad, his hips narrow, his muscles solid and powerful.
“I wish I knew,” Bak admitted. “Did you hear it all?”
“Merely the last few words.”
Bak cursed his bad luck. Imsiba’s uncanny ability to read another’s thoughts might have pulled his wits from the sodden marsh they seemed to have fallen into. “What did you learn from the sentries?”
“No one saw anyone on the battlements who should not have been there, and no one noticed anyone on the
