'I have many thoughts, lord, but my tongue, it is clumsy.'
It was like plowing a stony field, but Meren dragged the story of the last day from Imsety. It was much the same as Djaper's, except that Imsety's day was spent in the company of his mother. The man seemed more concerned with the imminent harvest than with the death of his father, and he kept asking when he could go home.
'When I have the murderer,' Meren said for the third time.
'It's Beltis. She killed Father.'
'And dragged him to the riverbank, tossed him in a skiff, and hauled him to the Place of Anubis?'
Imsety nodded eagerly. 'Caught her stealing.'
'You wish me to believe that if Hormin caught Beltis stealing his treasure that there wouldn't be a fight as noisy as Thebes on a feast day?'
'One of the scribes.'
Meten's head was beginning to pain him. 'What are you talking about?'
'Bakwerner.'
'Do you know anything about your father's murder, Imsety?'
'Bakwerner hates Father.'
'I will concern myself with Bakwemer, not you.' By this time Meren found himself grinding his teeth. 'I want to know if Hormin was as cruel to you as he was to Djaper. He must have been, or he wouldn't have refused you the farm you work so hard to preserve.'
Imsety shrugged and stared at Meren.
'You'd better say something.'
'I never listened to Father.'
Meren waited fruitlessly. After a few minutes during which Imsety stared at him and he tried not to toy with his dagger, Meren spoke.
'Never listened to him? What do you mean, curse you?'
'Since I was a naked child, I never listened to Fa ther's hot words.'
'Don't stop talking,' Meren said.
'Ugly words, Father, they aren't important. The land is important. And Djaper. Not Father.'
'And your mother.'
'Mother loves Djaper.'
Never had he been more grateful for having three chattering daughters. Meren closed his eyes and prayed to several gods for patience. Talking to Imsety was taking twice as long as it had with anyone else. There had been times, before he adopted Kysen, when he'd asked the gods why the girls couldn't have been boys. Now he would make a sacrifice to the goddess of childbirth.
Meren opened his eyes and caught Imsety staring at him. The young man's face was as expressionless as a
Murder in the Place of Anubis 65 figure painted on a temple wall. But a transitory flicker in Imsety's eyes set off the baying of hunting dogs in Meren's heart. Crocodiles often basked in the sun, still and placid, with no evidence of life in their bodies except for that brief, telltale lift of an eyelid that revealed a mindless hunger for flesh.
'You said neither you nor Djaper saw your father leave the house during the night.'
Imsety gazed at Meren and made no attempt to avoid meeting Meren's stare. 'No, lord. I never saw him.'
That direct manner, it was a match for Djaper's ingenuousness. And it posed a difficulty. For in Meren's experience, the best liars, those whose hearts were filled with deceit, made a practice of meeting the eyes' of those they deceived in just such a direct manner, while the innocent often foundered on their own lack of experience with evil. They quavered, faltered, and cast down their eyes. He would have to be Anubis, weigher of hearts at the soul's judgment, to decipher honesty based solely upon the face and habits of a man.
'Aren't you afraid that your father's murderer may harm you, Imsety?'
'No, Lord Meren. Why would he?'
'That is a question I've asked myself,' Meren said. 'And I'll find an answer. And if you should begin to fear, remember the ancient writings that tell us that justice lasts for an eternity and walks into the graveyard with its doer.'
6
Kysen escaped the house without further damage to his ears. He made his way to a long, low building at the rear of the compound, which lay between the house and the barracks and stables. In it his father had established the headquarters for his duties as one of the Eyes and Ears of Pharaoh. There were workrooms for Nebamun, the physician-priest, and the scribes who kept records of the cases that came under Meren's hand, and two rooms for the count and his son.
Nebamun had finished his examination of the body by the time Kysen reached him. He was in the library consulting astrological charts and rubbing his shaved head in thought as he read. Kysen leaned on the door- sill.
'He died of the knife wound, didn't he?' Nebamun looked up from the papyrus he'd spread across his crossed legs. 'Assuredly. There was no sign of poison, and anyway, there was all that blood. But look at the writings for the day Hormin was born. They foretell a happy life.' 'Do they say anything about his death?' 'No.' Nebamun rolled up the papyrus and shook his head. 'The men say there were no marks of the use of magic in the drying shed, and I found none on the body. He bit his fingernails, so I doubt if anyone could collect them for use in a spell. But there's always hair. We'll have to see what Lord Meren finds at his house.'
'I can't think of any magic more potent than being stabbed with an embalming knife,' Kysen said. 'You'll send the body back to the embalmers for purification and treatment?'
'Yes, but you know his ka is likely to be wandering lost since he was dispatched by violence in so sacred a place. It will take powerful spells to restore his soul to his body.'
Kysen didn't answer. He'd had to become accus tomed to dealing with disturbed spirits just as he'd accepted that he would always meet evil. It was the price of being the son of the king's intelligencer. Yet sometimes dealing with malevolence made him feel contaminated. There'd been the time when that Babylonian merchant went mad and killed all those tavern women after raping them. He'd almost wished his father would relinquish his post by the time the merchant was caught.
After dictating his own observations to one of the scribes in the library, Kysen went to his father's office in search of the boxes containing Hormin's possessions and objects from the place of his death. He was lifting one of them from the floor to a worktable when he heard Meren's voice at the door.
'By the demons of the underworld, that is a family of cobras.'
Kysen looked up and grinned. Even angry, Meren hardly looked old enough to be his father. At thirty-four he still kept the figure of a charioteer, and silver refused to appear in his cap of smooth black hair. Kysen's friends teased him that he would never get another wife because all the court maidens vied with each other for Meren's attention.
'Disturbed your plumb line, did Hormin's family?' Kysen asked.
Meren frowned at Kysen and stalked into the room. He dropped into his favorite ebony chair, slouched down in it, and cursed again. Kysen watched Meren drum his fingers on the arm of the chair, saw his features relax and then grow worried.
'You're staring at me,' Kysen said.
'Mmmm.'
Kysen pressed his lips together and pretended to straighten the lid of the box in front of him. He stilled when Meren spoke.
'You know about the village of the tomb makers.'
'The water carrier told me.'
'Did he recognize you?' Meren asked.
