'That close to an enemy, you'll have no time to pull your knife, reverse it, and take a throwing stance. Here, watch.'
Meren grabbed his knife from its sheath by the handle. His arm sailed up, forearm in front of his face. He threw the knife in a slashing, diagonal movement. It smacked into the target, the handle shuddering a bit with the impact.
Turning to Kysen, he said, 'You see? Less throwing time, less exposure to your adversary. About these three men Othrys thinks might be interfering with our inquiries into the queen's murder.'
Father,' Kysen said in an aggrieved tone, 'sometimes you're confusing when you make these sudden shifts of conversation.'
'Forgive me.' Meren gave his son a pained smile. 'Too many years spent trying to baffle courtiers and enemy ambassadors. What I was trying to say was that there were many at court who might have wanted Nefertiti dead.'
'Not the newcomers Akhenaten brought in to serve the Aten.'
Meren nodded. Tutankhamun's older brother, Akhenaten, called the Heretic, had forced Egypt to abandon her old gods in favor of his choice-the Aten, the sun disk. The priests and temples of the old gods had been disestablished, and their endowed riches diverted to the Aten in the care of new men willing to participate in the heresy. Egypt suffered from the resulting disharmony and chaos to this day. The priests of the old gods, especially Amun, king of the gods, hated Akhenaten's very memory, and all who had supported the heretic.
'The priests of Amun? Would they have done such a thing?' Kysen asked.
Meren shook his head. 'In the last years before she died, Nefertiti had contacted them and begun to work for a reconciliation. They wouldn't have killed their hope of resurrection.' He watched Kysen throw his knife by its handle. 'Of course, there were rivalries in the royal household among the women. There always are, and one can never tell when such rivalries will poison the wits of an ambitious secondary wife or ignored princess.'
Kysen's head jerked around, and he stared at Meren. 'Not one of his daughters.'
'No, most likely a lesser princess. But I can think of no woman who would be in a position to gain from Akhenaten by Nefertiti's death. However, the queen did take a disliking to some courtiers who sought pharaoh's favor. I remember she held ill opinions of Prince Usermontu and Lord Pendua. But neither seems to have benefited from her death.'
'In a way that we can perceive,' Kysen said.
Meren's wide mouth quirked up at one corner. 'Correct.'
He threw his knife again, hitting the target in the center. Grabbing the hilt, he paused in the midst of pulling it free from the leather and studied the wooden handle. The knife was one of the sacred weapons that slaughtered the enemies of the sun god Ra in the underworld, thus allowing him to rise each day and bring light to the world.
'After I deal with Dilalu, we must go over what my scribes have gathered from the old records,' Meren said.
He glanced over his shoulder to see the fiery orb of Ra crest the trees that sheltered his town house. At the same time, Zar, his body servant, walked around the stables and came toward him. Meren nudged Kysen.
'Prince Djoser must be here with the dealer in weapons. Tell Zar to bring them here.'
Turning on his heel, Meren went to the stables. The low mud-brick building housed the teams of thoroughbreds that pulled the chariots driven by Meren and his men. In the first stall, a luxurious box finished in hard plaster and strewn with fresh straw, stood his favorite pair-Wind Chaser and Star Chaser. Brothers, they worked together as one, and Meren had raised them himself. Seldom did a day pass that he didn't take them out to the desert for exercise. If he couldn't, one of the other charioteers made certain they were kept in shape.
Star Chaser whinnied and stuck his head over the wooden gate in the stall. Wind Chaser pivoted and thrust his nose in Meren's face. Meren fed them handfuls of the grain they craved. The two were dish-faced, with great, low-set eyes and tapered muzzles; their flexible nostrils snuffled at him. They were dark, dark roans, their obsidian-black manes and tails grown long in the absence of warfare. Meren was proud of their refined and graceful features and fine-boned strength. They had charged with him into battle countless times, never wavering, never losing courage.
As he stroked their soft muzzles, Meren settled into a private realm of tranquillity, summoned by the feel of delicate skin and the soft rumbling sounds Wind and Star made when they talked to him. He answered in a low murmur as he stroked Wind's neck and laid his cheek against Star's jaw.
Kysen's reluctance to delve further into the death of the queen had kindled his own foreboding. Since discovering the murder, Meren had been suffering from evil dreams. Were they messages from the gods, or were they scraps of old memories?
Akhenaten had killed Meren's father for refusing to adopt the Aten as his sole god. He'd tortured Meren, suspecting him of the same treachery, and only the intervention of Ay had saved the devastated youth. Meren rubbed his wrist against Wind's neck.
It was beginning to itch, as it often did when he was agitated or when he was reminded of those nightmare times at the heretic's capital, Horizon of the Aten. He closed his eyes and tried to fend off the images of that dark cell, but he saw again Akhenaten's foot, soft and scented with oil, in its golden sandal from his position beneath the royal guards on the floor. He glimpsed the white-hot brand in the shape of the Aten. The metal formed a sun disk with sticklike rays extending from it and ending in stylized hands. It descended and pressed into his wrist, and Meren's body went rigid with agony.
His own voice jolted Meren back from the realm of apparitions. Turning his face, he buried it in Star's neck. Wind nudged him, jealous and impatient. The soft nose on his shoulder tickled, and Meren laughed unsteadily.
Someone blocked the light from the door. Immediately Meren shifted into the guise of courtier and King's Friend. Without looking, he said, 'May Amun bless you, Prince Djoser.'
Djoser was the son of Amunhotep the Magnificent and an Egyptian noblewoman. A scholarly man with a misguided ambition to be a soldier, he was slight, with thinning hair concealed by a court wig that lay about his shoulders in intricate braids. Djoser's arched brows and open-mouthed expression combined to give an impression that the prince was constantly startled. He wore a fine pleated robe and broad collar of alternating gold and carnelian beads and seemed embarrassed when he took in Meren's plain kilt, sweating body, and lack of ornaments or eye paint.
With an uncertain step he entered the stable, followed by a stocky man no higher than Meren's shoulder who walked with a cocklike strut. No doubt the visitor thought his gait stately, but the effect was that of a waddling pyramid block. Dilalu the merchant smelled of expensive unguents. Meren detected the scent of sweet flag, juniper berries, and myrrh. Beneath these lurked the odor of stale wine. In his arms Dilalu carried the fattest tabby Meren had ever seen. It watched Meren with flat-headed malice as Dilalu's stubby, beringed fingers stroked its fur.
Djoser stopped before Meren and bowed. 'Lord Meren, Friend of the King, count, and hereditary prince, I present the merchant of Canaan, Dilalu.'
Meren nodded, a slight inclination of the head that expressed his superior station in life. Dilalu bowed low with the fat cat in his arms and spoke with a manner and tone that called up visions of ox fat melting in the sun.
'Great lord, mighty of power, a humble man am I to be summoned into thy presence. May the blessings of the Lady of Byblos be upon thee.'
'Indeed,' Meren murmured as he stroked Star Chasers withers.
He let silence lengthen, a method by which he'd disturbed many an evildoer. This first meeting was but to whet Dilalu's appetite with the prospect of a connection near pharaoh. Only after the weapons seller was drooling at the possibility of much Egyptian gold would Meren begin inserting the point of his knife into the cracks in Dilalu's ramparts. Holding out his hand, he let Wind Chaser snuffle it. When Star began to toss his head, Meren spoken again, causing Dilalu to jump and his cat to hiss.
'I have heard of the quality of your thoroughbreds, merchant. I wish to purchase a fine pair for my eldest daughter in celebration of her first child. The birth should take place in three months' time.'
Dilalu's stubby fingers dug into his cat's fur. The animal growled, and the fingers lifted. Then, as if he suddenly woke from sleep, the merchant launched into a speech that had obviously been practiced beforehand.
