roof of this house.”
“None but officers and guards are allowed on the wall at night.” Bak gave the Medjay a sharp look. “I know Lieutenant Mery was there. Are you saying others were, too?”
“Three men,” Imsiba said. “Nebwa, the senior lieutenant in this garrison who commands the infantry, had to speak with the watch sergeant. As he was busy, Nebwa waited for some time. The second man was Paser, the lieutenant responsible for escorting the gold caravans. He climbed the stairs near the quay, walked briefly along the parapet, and returned to the ground.”
“What of the third man?” Bak asked.
Imsiba looked vaguely uncomfortable. “Harmose, an archer who shares the blood of my people and yours and speaks both tongues. He translated for the commandant, who valued his judgment, so I’ve been told, and treated him like an officer.”
“What was he doing up there?”
“He often walks the wall, looking at the ships moored at the quay, the river, and the desert sands where his mother was born. He did so tonight.”
“The commandant’s life was taken when the moon was at its highest point. Did the sentries notice any of the three-or Mery-near the stairway to this house at that time?”
Imsiba snorted. “They think of the moon as nothing more than a measure of the hours they must remain on watch. They know it passed overhead and they know those men were on the wall sometime during its passing. That’s as specific as they can be.”
Bak stared with a gloomy face at the door to Azzia’s sitting room. That Nakht had spoken during the afternoon to the three officers, and possibly to his translator as well, and they had all been atop the wall near the time of his death, meant almost nothing. He had no good reason to free her from suspicion. Common sense told him she was guilty, but doubt remained in his heart. Was it because her words and behavior had played on his sympathies? Or because her youth and beauty had warped his judgment?
What he needed, he decided, was an impartial observer, and he could think of none better than a man who could sense another’s thoughts.
“Come with me,” he said.
Imsiba raised an eyebrow, but followed in Bak’s shadow across the courtyard.
When they entered the lighted room, Azzia was standing in its center, talking rapidly in a tongue Bak did not understand, the tongue of her homeland, he assumed. Lupaki stood before his mistress, trying to speak but unable to stop her flow. Her voice and face were positive and determined, his negative and glum.
She glanced around, saw Imsiba, and stiffened. Her eyes swung toward Bak. “Are you now convinced only I could’ve taken my husband’s life?”
“I don’t know what to think,” Bak admitted.
Her laugh held no humor. “My husband said you were a man who spoke his thoughts.”
Bak could find no appropriate response.
“Are you as honest in deeds as words?” she asked.
“I try to be,” he said stiffly.
She studied him for some time. “You were sent here in disgrace, I know, and my husband was prepared to dislike you. After he met you, talked with you, he thought you a man he could depend upon and, more important, trust.” She glanced at Lupaki. “Since I have no better alternative, I must trust you, too.”
Lupaki shook his head vehemently and rattled off a few unintelligible words, but Azzia ignored him. “First, lest you hear it from another’s lips, I must tell you…” She hesitated, then took a deep breath as if to draw strength from the air. “When my husband spoke of the problem he must face, I urged him to share his burden. He refused, insisting it was his alone. I…I accused him of taking on all the problems of the world with no thought of those around him. And we quarreled.”
A wan smile failed to steal the haunted look from her eyes. “Later, when I found him struck down, he seemed to have forgotten our harsh words, but I doubt I’ll ever forget, nor forgive myself.”
She turned to a small ivory inlaid chest, which had not been there earlier, and hurried on before Bak could comment or even sort out his thoughts. “I found something in my bedchamber, something my husband must’ve left there before…before his life was taken.”
She raised the lid. Nesting among combs, perfume jars, cosmetic containers, and a bronze mirror were a roll of papyrus and a rectangular slab of metal. The scroll was bound with cord but its seal was broken. The rough slab was six fingers’ breadth by three, and half a finger’s breadth thick. Bak was sure it was gold, the flesh of the lord Re.
He stared, unable to speak. Unworked gold was the exclusive property of the royal house, of Maatkare Hatshepsut herself. In Buhen, where the precious ore was received from the mines and melted down to ingots before its shipment to the capital, where temptation was ever-present, no man, not even the commandant, had the right to possess it.
Chapter Three
“You can’t keep this to yourself!” Imsiba glared at his friend. “Do you want to spend the rest of your life working in the mines? Or lose your nose and ears?”
Bak forced a semblance of a smile. “I could flee to a faraway land, as Nakht fled to Hatti when he was falsely accused of treason.”
The sergeant laughed derisively. “He lived in Mennufer then, near the routes to the north, where the land is fertile and the villagers and herdsmen live and act as civilized men. You’re in Buhen, with desert on all sides, a land peopled by men who live in hovels. Would you cross the barren sands by yourself? Would you choose a hovel for your home?”
Following his shadow away from the torch mounted beside the door, Bak paced the length of the small, plain whitewashed room. Imsiba dropped onto one of two low stools setting between a small table and an oblong rush basket brimming with scrolls. Shields, spears, and other weapons of war were stacked against the wall by an open stairway leading to the roof. The tools of their scribe Hori’s trade-writing implements, paint and water pots, a neat stack of papyri-lay on the floor at the far end of the room. One door, closed for privacy, led outside to a narrow lane. Two others opened to Bak’s bedchamber and Hori’s. In addition to a sleeping pallet, Bak’s room contained two plain woven reed chests, one for clothing, the other for bed linen, and a small box for toiletries. Hori’s chamber was equally spare. Although modest, the house was clean and comfortable.
“No,” he admitted, “a hovel would not please me at all.”
“Then take the gold with you when you report to the steward Tetynefer. He holds the power in Buhen now; let him decide what to do.”
“I can’t throw her to the crocodiles, Imsiba!”
“You’ve been exiled to Buhen by no less an individual than our sovereign. Do you wish to add to your offenses in her eyes?”
A stubborn look settled on Bak’s face. “She exiled me, yes, but she surely knew I did what any responsible officer would do: I stood at the head of my men when they needed me. The lieutenant who took me before the vizier, the one whose Medjay police broke up the fight, swore we were in the right and the other men had been cheating.”
“The man you struck was the son of a provincial governor, his firstborn and favorite. You broke his nose and knocked out some teeth. He’ll never again be thought handsome.”
“Nonetheless…”
“You and the others in your chariotry company swept through that house of pleasure like wild bulls chased by jackals through an outdoor market. The end result was the same: total devastation. That establishment was frequented by some of the highest men in the land. The man who owns the building is a ranking priest, responsible for all food offerings in the mansion of the lord Amon. The man who pulls the strings of the old scoundrel who ran the place is one of the wealthiest merchants in Kemet.”
“I know, but…”
