his secrecy. Should pharaoh discover his inquiry into the queen's death, his cautious heart would conclude that Meren's recent mad actions resulted from a murderer's guilt and fear of exposure.
Shifting his weight from one foot to the other, Meren surveyed the dark streets at either end of the passageway. Few were abroad this late, and he was beginning to think Yamen wasn't coming. Resolving to give his quarry a little longer, Meren resumed his contemplation.
Records from the days at Horizon of the Aten were incomplete. Only those of immediate use had been taken when the court had moved back to Memphis. These were scattered among various government departments. Many had been left in the nearly abandoned city, which now was the residence only of the mortuary priests who attended the royal tombs. These pharaoh had not yet transferred, even though the graves they tended were empty. Tutankhamun was reluctant to remove them, for such an action would signal to the whole kingdom that the bodies of Akhenaten and his family had been taken away. The king was fearful of a repetition of the desecration that had been wrought upon his dead brother's body.
A stealthy and thus limited examination of accounts from the royal treasury had revealed some important news, however. In Nefertiti's final months, there had been payments of grain and small amounts of gold to Dilalu by the queen's steward. He had also found ration disbursement records that disclosed that Yamen had been assigned to the queen's household guard for a brief time. Of Zulaya there was no record at all, and Meren was beginning to think that the man had been somewhere else, possibly in one of the cities in which he owned property-Byblos, Aleppo, or Damascus.
Meren shoved away from the stairway and rotated his shoulders, which had grown stiff with prolonged inactivity. Motioning for Abu to remain where he was, he slithered down the passageway to the Street of Perfumers and looked at the sky. The moon was gone. Yamen wasn't coming.
Returning to the staircase, he whispered to Abu, 'He's not coming. We'll try again tomorrow night.'
He slipped out of the passage with Abu at his heels. Traveling as a wanted man meant skulking down foul alleys and over the rooftops of buildings when he could be sure a family wasn't sleeping outdoors. He couldn't hop and clamber over roofs in this crowded district, however. With reluctance, Meren picked his way through side streets and alleys, trying not to step in dog and goat dung or pools of muddy piss. He made it through several noxious passages before his sandal landed in muck that oozed between his toes. It was as black as night in the netherworld, but Meren recognized that unpleasant, slimy texture. Abu stopped beside him and made a noise of commiseration.
Cursing, Meren lifted his foot and sniffed. He sniffed again. No acid odor. He smelled dirt mixed with a coppery scent he knew from the battlefield and practice yard. Forgetting his foot, he squatted and reached out. His fingers touched skin slick with blood, and then he heard a whimper.
Chapter 18
Meren slid his hand along an arm, up a shoulder, to a neck damp with blood. Abu reached past him, searching, and found a dagger beneath the victim.
A faint voice made harsh with effort sounded loud in the blackness. 'Finish it, and may the gods damn you.'
'Yamen?' Meren's searching hands encountered others clamped over Yamen's belly.
'Who is-' Yamen broke off to laugh, and the laughter turned to wet coughing. 'My lord Meren, by the light of Ra. You're not dead yet?'
'Rest yourself,' Meren said. 'I'll send for help.'
'No!'
With a bloody hand Yamen grabbed Meren's and dragged it to rest on a gaping hole in his gut. There was no need for argument. The wound was deep, and of the kind for which there was no remedy. Meren freed himself and placed Yamen's hands over the wound.
'I haven't long,' Yamen said, his words growing more and more indistinct. 'What a fool I was to trust-'
Meren squeezed Yamen's arm to keep him alert. 'Trust whom?'
The soldier began to laugh again. 'I was so pleased to come to your notice. Then he came and warned me. Should have known then. Too confident.'
Hearing a cough, Meren lifted Yamen against his leg, and the gasping eased.
'Who did this? Who killed the queen? Yamen, there's no time. Tell me before it's too late, and I'll avenge you.'
There was a weak chuckle. 'Queen? Should have known he wasn't helping me out of friendship. Stupid…'
Meren felt Yamen's body go slack. Desperate, he slapped the man's face. 'Yamen!'
He heard a cough and felt blood splatter on his wrist. Blood from the mouth. There was no time.
'Yamen!'
Abu had been keeping watch. 'Lower your voice, lord.'
Meren bent close to Yamen and hissed, 'Speak, you sodding whoreson.'
Yamen gave a choking cough and garbled his words. 'Avenge me? No, sacrifice me. He learned that when he… He'll sacrifice you as he does all who know him.'
Uncontrolled laughter bubbled from wet lips. Meren started when Yamen grasped his wrist with a bloody hand and pulled him close to hear a harsh whisper.
'He is in my heart. There is no other who knows him.' This time the weak laughter was mocking, malevolent.
A wet hand fastened on Meren's neck and pulled him to within a finger's width of Yamen's lips. If he hadn't been so close, he couldn't have heard the man's last words.
'All perish who threaten him.'
'Damn you, Yamen, tell me his name!'
Meren felt the gory hands slip from him and heard the final hiss of escaping breath. Behind him Abu muttered prayers and spells against evil. Meren crouched beside the body, head bowed, frustration and rage rising in his heart. Because of this man he was an accused traitor and his family in danger. Kysen, Bener, Tefnut, Isis, all could lose their lives. He wanted to chase Yamen into the netherworld, wrap his hands around the man's neck, and wring it until he got the answer he wanted. Months of apprehension, of looking over his shoulder, of fearing for the king, for Kysen, and all the others rushed upon him, and Meren's long-held temper snapped.
'Come away, lord. He has become
Meren grabbed Yamen's body and shook it. 'Tell me his name, you mother-cursed ass!'
He kept shaking Yamen until he was jerked away from the body and shoved against a wall. His head hit the mud brick. The pain jolted Meren from his rage, and he lapsed into silence, breathing rapidly.
After a while Meren said, 'You can release me, Abu.'
Stepping back from Meren, Abu turned his head. 'Listen.'
'A patrol?' Meren shoved away from the wall. 'We can't be caught here.'
Without a thought for the body or ka of Yamen, Meren darted down the passageway and swerved around a corner into a crooked path between houses and the city wall. Walking rapidly, he headed toward the Caverns. They hadn't gone far when they heard cries of alarm from a city patrol.
'They found him,' Meren said. 'Hurry.'
He sped up, stepped into a street of beer houses and taverns, and almost collided with someone. Meren shrank against a wall, trying to become one with the shadows cast by a torch set in a sconce beside a door. He glimpsed a cloaked man and caught a dizzying whiff of wine fumes.
'Miserable peasant,' the cloaked man muttered as he wove his way down the street.
Abu, who was holding Yamen's dagger at ready, relaxed and came over to Meren. 'Allow me to go first, lord. This night's deeds have upset you.'
'I'm not upset, I'm furious.'
