shards. He remembered that fragment of inscription on one of them. Which cursive hieroglyphs might they represent? Those curved lines above each fragment of a letter annoyed him for some reason, but he couldn't think why.
Darting forward, he managed to catch a ball he'd thrown badly as his thoughts moved on to the three dead men. Try as he might, he couldn't produce a tangible connection between them. That trip to the temple had been useless, and it had exposed him to danger. He'd almost expected Ebana to try to overturn the king's statue on him. What a fate, to be crushed by the image of the pharaoh he'd worked so hard to serve, to lie beneath the carvings of his names…
Meren continued to toss and catch leather spheres. Carvings. Two cartouches, curved lines encircling hieroglyphs. All at once, two unrelated pieces of knowledge slipped into place-the curved lines on the inscription on the shards, and those carved in relief on the statue's base. Two curved lines side by side; the encircling ovals of two cartouches. And beneath them, the tip of a reed leaf and a portion of a disk. Two cartouches drawn on the colossus-and on the rim of a bowl.
A bowl inscribed with the king's name. Pharaoh's name, on a common pottery bowl found in the house of a dead priest. Why place such an inscription on a bowl?
Oil jars bore the year of the reign, as did wine jars. No, this was a small bowl like those in any common kitchen. Then Meren caught his juggling balls and stood holding them in the middle of his office. He'd seen bowls recently, but not in a kitchen-in a room, Qenamun's room.
There had been a stack of them next to the wax figure of the Hittite king, the one with the curse on it. The curse! There was a special instance in which bowls were inscribed-when they were to be used as cursing bowls. Of course Unas had no reason to burn a bowl, unless it was a cursing bowl, and then only if the curse were heinous. If it bore the name Nebkheprure Tutankhamun.
Magic. And who of all those involved in this mystery was connected intimately with magic? Lector priests specialized in sacred writings and magic, and Qenamun would have possessed the knowledge necessary to imbue the vessels with magical curses. He must have been making bowls bearing curses against the king. A lector priest would break them to bring about evil and precipitate the magic.
Meren shivered as he held the leather spheres. Those bowls must have been part of Qenamun's collection of magical implements, to be used for some fell purpose. Qenamun needed those curses to protect himself while he was doing evil, betraying pharaoh.
Had the priests of Amun been protecting themselves against pharaoh discovering their crimes? If Qenamun knew that Unas had found the bowls, he would have killed the priest rather than risk betrayal. But what if the curse against pharaoh was meant for use in a greater, more far-reaching evil?
Placing the juggling balls on the table in his office, Meren sank into his chair, growing more and more uneasy at the direction his thoughts were taking. Qenamun simply might have been protecting the priesthood against pharaoh with these cursing bowls. But such an explanation didn't account for why Ahiram, who wasn't a priest but a warrior and courtier, had become involved in the first place. Nor did it necessarily explain why someone had sent foreign mercenaries to kill Ahiram. Unless the looting of the royal tomb served another purpose besides vengeance.
If Ahiram had suddenly become more wealthy, he, Meren, would have noticed, would have made inquires. He must have wanted the valuables from the royal tomb for some other purpose. Another visit to Ahiram's house might help him think. Distracted by his deliberations, certain that he'd caught the scent of an unseen and dangerous animal, Meren left without telling anyone where he was going.
Chapter 18
The same porter stood watch over Ahiram's house when Meren arrived. Since the prince was dead and the place had been examined, there had seemed to be no further need to guard it. Like most houses of the nobility, it was set behind a high wall, with gardens, a reflection pool, and service buildings. Meren was interested only in the places Ahiram might have left signs of his evil acts.
Leaving the porter at the front gate, he went to Ahiram's chamber again. Once more he rummaged through the covers of the polished and gold-trimmed cedar bed. He kicked aside scattered clothing that had been taken from chests.
He came across a small casket by the bed that contained writing supplies, a palette with rush pens, pots filled with red ocher and black soot, and one for water. An ebony-and-gilt-wood case for spare rush pens rested on top of unused papyri, yet there were no letters, no accounts, no personal writings of any kind. Ahiram must have destroyed any correspondence he didn't want found.
What had he expected? Kysen was thorough, and he would have found anything significant remaining in this room. Still, Meren eyed the frieze of lotus flowers along the walls near the floor, looking for concealed niches.
Bending over, he moved along the wall, running his fingers over the lotus design, until he came to the recess containing the statue of the goddess Ishtar. His sandal hit a belt. He straightened and kicked it aside. His gaze caught another belt, the one with gold and turquoise beads that Kysen had left beside the pen holder at the base of the statue.
Then he looked at the goddess, with her pleated and tiered skirt and rounded eyes. Ahiram had felt the need to propitiate a foreign goddess, and yet when he most needed her favor, he'd strewn his possessions all over her altar. Meren shook his head at such conduct. There weren't any offerings that he could see. No food or wine or incense, and he didn't think Ishtar would be satisfied with a pen holder. A pen holder.
Slowly, his hand reached out to the tubular case. It was of wood shaped like a bundle of slender papyrus stalks and overlaid with gold foil. He picked it up and shook it. Empty. But hadn't he just seen another equally as rich in the casket by the bed?
Meren rolled the columnar case between his palms and stared at the wall. Few warriors such as Ahiram had need of enough rush pens to fill two elegant holders. He rested his shoulder against the wall near the statue and examined the pen holder. A sudden image came to him, of many rush pens spilled in the bottom of Qenamun's casket. Ahiram had Qenamun's pen holder.
The man had been a fool to purloin the case from Qenamun, as he had Akhenaten's sandals, but Meren could see that he'd grown more and more distraught after Unas was murdered, until he lost all sense on the day of the hippo hunt. Even on the water waiting for their prey, he'd been anxious, querying Tanefer about how long they should wait for the animal, fussing about the delay, and then nearly getting himself killed.
Meren's hands stilled on the golden case as he remembered the struggle with the hippo. Tanefer's huntsman had told them the hippo was ashore, not in the river. Therefore the creature had taken them by surprise, rising up out of the water like a mountain with eyes and toppling Ahiram.
He and Tanefer had tried to help Ahiram, but the hippo had knocked him into the water as well. He remembered plummeting into the blackness, the breath knocked out of him, nearly losing consciousness. Tanefer had come after him.
When they broke to the surface, the hippo was attacking Ahiram again. He had thrown himself at the creature to grab the harpoon sticking from its shoulder, and then Tanefer had lunged at him. Lunged at him and at the same time kicked out, shoving Ahiram beneath those long, yellow tusks.
Shoving him. Meren closed his eyes. No.
'Put it down, brother of my heart.'
Tanefer was standing in the doorway, a dagger strapped to his upper arm, a straight sword in his hand. The blade was wet and red. Soldiers followed him into the room, bearing spears, and took up positions surrounding Meren at a distance.
'Put it down,' Tanefer said.
Laying the pen holder back in the niche, Meren walked toward his friend. 'You weren't trying to save me from the hippo. You were trying to kill Ahiram.' He thrust his sudden grief into the dark pit of his soul as he approached Tanefer.
'Stop. I'm not a fool, to let you get too close.'
Meren glanced at the bloodied sword.
