to search for its cause. Kysen found it first-a young woman who had emerged from the deckhouse. Startling the whole company, his youngest sister appeared suddenly between two posts that held the deckhouse awning. Silence befell one group of revelers after another.
Regal, with the grace of a white lily and the allure of frankincense, Isis calmly accepted the stunned appraisal. For a moment, no one moved. Then Lord Reshep detached himself from the rest, walking with the suppleness of a leopard to bow low before the girl. Kysen heard his sister employ the rough low power of her voice. She used what he thought of as her man-conquering tones.
'Who is this guest?' she asked of no one. 'Surely a highborn noble or a prince of royal blood.'
Kysen rolled his eyes and gave a snort of disgust. Then he smiled. With smooth yet relentless firmness, Meren stepped between his daughter and Lord Reshep. Although almost imperceptible, the shattering look of fury Meren threw at Isis turned Kysen's smile into a grin.
Chapter 5
For the vast numbers of Egyptians who labored in the fields, on the river, and in the workshops of Egypt, when the sun vanished, work stopped and rest began. It was the time when spirits of the dead roamed and underworld fiends ascended to attack the unwary. For Tcha, servant of a tavern owner, night was the time for the most profitable of his activities. He'd never encountered a spirit or a demon, no matter how late into the evening he worked. He wore an Eye of Horus amulet around his neck anyway, to ward off all evil. No sense in tempting such creatures by being foolhardy.
This night, Tcha was abroad not to work but to obtain the proceeds of his labor from his ally. Not wishing to be seen, he walked in the deepest darkness and avoided more illuminated or open areas. He was startled only once, when he suddenly came out of an alley near a private quay and into a glare cast by dozens of torches mounted on a jewellike pleasure ship. Tcha squeaked in alarm, skittered back down the alley, and turned into the nearest road.
Panting, he muttered to himself. 'By Ptah's staff,
Tcha indulged further in his litany of hardship, a favorite pastime, as he skulked his way across the city, climbing over walls, creeping through deserted gardens, dodging the few streets where light and drunken laughter announced the presence of a beer tavern or house of entertainment. No one else could have traveled so quickly unobserved, Tcha assured himself.
His secret lay in keeping to the refuse mounds where he could. The city was full of them. Each house had at least one outside its walls. Sets of dwellings of related owners tended to grow into contiguous labyrinths, and these usually had several garbage mounds. In a city as ancient as Memphis, the mounds almost outnumbered the houses. During the worst heat of the day they gave off such a powerful stench that even dogs could be seen avoiding them. Anyone frequenting the refuse mounds this late would do so for unsavory purposes and wasn't going to bother Tcha.
At last he came to the giant mound of trash and filth that loomed behind the house of a great man. This one was astronomer of the god Ptah, custodian of the estates of Ptah in the north, and magnate of the Royal Seal of the Treasury of Pharaoh in Memphis. And one thing Tcha knew about great men, they never visited their refuse mounds. It was an excellent place to conceal the spoils Tcha and his ally, Pawah, collected from their occasional house robberies.
The previous evening Pawah and he had done something brave. They had entered the house of a noble and taken away items of moderate value. At least, that had been the purpose they discussed. Pawah had taken things much more valuable.
'Stupid son of a vulture,' Tcha grumbled as he crouched behind a stack of empty oil jars to wait.
Tcha prided himself on never having been caught in a large theft. The city police knew him as a trifling prowler among citizens of limited means and a floor sweeper in the establishment of the fabled and exotic tavern mistress known as Ese. The officials of the city thought Ese a charitable woman for employing Tcha in any capacity. Pawah they considered barely clever enough to follow Tcha's lead. That was Pawah's advantage.
Last night he had shown his true nature. He had crept across the roof, stepping over the servants sleeping in the open air, and slithered downstairs. After pilfering a bronze bowl and a small faience serving plate, he had stolen into the master's bedchamber and filched a pair of gold ear studs. Then he'd sauntered into another chamber, and it had been occupied! By this time, as was his habit, Pawah had worked himself into a state of excitement at the risk he was taking. He had walked into the room, past the sleeping man, and snatched a scarab bracelet that lay on top of a jewel casket.
All the while, Tcha had waited perched on the wall surrounding the house keeping watch for guards, the city patrols, or other dangers. When Pawah hadn't come back quickly, Tcha knew what he was doing. And he'd been helpless. Lying flat on top of the wall beneath the branches of a willow tree, he could only curse Pawah and finger his Eye of Horus amulet while reciting a spell of protection.
The memory of his exposure to danger made Tcha angry all over again. 'Wretched bastard, greedy-hearted dolt.'
Perhaps it had been Tcha's spell that allowed Pawah to leave the house undetected. The magic hadn't lasted long after they left; somewhere between the noble's house and the refuse mound, they had acquired a follower. He and Pawah had parted, taking different routes home, and the follower had disappeared. Now Tcha felt safe enough to meet his fellow thief.
The house lay on the outskirts of the city west of the temple district. Here the great one had caused part of the city wall to be removed to make room for his villa and hadn't yet bothered to rebuild it. Tcha and his friend were to meet at the refuse mound so that they could divide their loot.
Their arrangement was that Pawah would sit sheltered from the refuse mound by a piece of the wall from the collapsed dwelling. By moonlight Tcha had a clear view of his surroundings, the oil jars being situated on a rise near the protective wall of the astronomer's house. He looked out on a vista of waste that formed scattered smaller hills around the great mound, rather like the sacred cities that once surrounded and served the pyramids.
But the little hills and mounds weren't as deserted as the pyramid cities. Beetles, ants, and spiders clambered in and out of the whole field of refuse, filling the narrow footpaths that wound through the area. Dogs and cats crept up to the freshest spills in search of delicacies. Sometimes they disturbed hawks or vultures perched on a fresh carcass. Then shrieks of fury sailed through the air and caused night terrors among those sleeping in nearby houses.
'Never know if one of them dogs is really an underworld fiend,' Tcha mumbled to himself while he scanned the refuse field. 'Where is that donkey's arse?'
He rose to see over the wall fragment. No Pawah. A scrutiny of the refuse field revealed a cat fastidiously picking its way through a dump of table scraps, an ant mound the size of a sarcophagus, and the same irregular and noxious landscape as before.
His uneasiness was growing. Had Pawah taken their stores of wealth and run away? Yes! That was why he'd taken those valuables; and he'd left Tcha behind to face any inquiries.
'Hathor's tits!' Tcha scrambled over the oil jars, startling the dining cat into flight.
His legs churning, his heart angry, Tcha darted from one heap to another in case Pawah was squatting behind one of them. When he reached the giant mound, he was breathing hard and gulping in putrid fumes. He crept around the base of the hill of rubbish. On the side away from the house wall, between it and the blank expanse of barren ground that became the western desert, lay their hiding place.
The mound had expanded over the uneven ground formed by more collapsed mud brick. Since before the days of the pyramid builders, people had lived in Memphis. When a house aged beyond repair, its sun-dried mud-brick walls were shoved down and became the new ground. Crumbling mud brick stuck up at odd angles on this side of the refuse mound. Scorpions nested there, and cobras burrowed into the aged earth. Few would risk treading here
