Bak dashed up the stairwell, taking the invisible steps two, sometimes three at a time. He hit the upper landing, veered sharply to avoid a dozen or more porous pottery water jars stacked in a cool corner, and burst into the courtyard. The potted trees and shrubs looked like silent dark sentinels, the loom a low bier, the grindstone an offering table to the shades of night. Ruru was nowhere in sight.
Through a doorway at the back of the courtyard, he glimpsed a flickering light, heard the chitter of frightened women. To his left, from Nakht’s reception room, he heard scuffling, the crash of overturned furniture, a man’s curse. And Azzia half-screaming, half-yelling words he could not understand. As he ran toward the unlighted room, Lupaki raced through the rear door, followed closely by Azzia’s old female servant.
“Bring a torch!” Bak yelled.
He circled a pair of acacias, whose twiggy branches raked his arm, and spotted two shadowy figures wrestling in the dark. He yelled to draw their attention. His foot hit something solid; he stumbled and fell to a knee. A quick glance told him he had fallen over Ruru, who lay sprawled in front of the door, unmoving. Bak looked up, saw the figures inside draw apart. As he scrambled to his feet, one ducked down, grabbed a spear from the floor, and threw it. The weapon struck its target but fell away. The one it hit, Azzia he felt sure, stumbled backward, bumping the wall near the darker rectangle, the open door to the mudbrick stairway leading to the roof.
A mindless fury drove Bak into the room. How could a man attempt to slay a helpless woman? He lunged at the attacker, caught an arm, and pulled him close so he could grab the other arm. Long tendrils of hair tickled his naked torso; his groping hand found a firm, round breast.
“He’s getting away!” Azzia screamed, trying to jerk free of Bak’s grasp.
Cursing his mistake, he pushed her roughly aside and bounded after the fleeing man, who had faded into the black stairwell, the spear in his hand. Bak leaped through the doorway, landed on the stairs. Light flooded the room behind him, Lupaki with a torch. Bak’s eyes darted upward. He noted broad bare feet and thick muscular calves below a knee-length kilt. Yelling at the servant to bring the flame close, he stretched high and grabbed an ankle. The man swung around and kicked, trying to break free. Lupaki held the torch through the doorway. Bak saw in the cavorting shadows a heavy bare torso with muscles turning to fat and massive shoulders, the left dripping blood from a dark, ugly gash. The man’s head was out of sight, above the opening to the roof.
The man shook his leg with the strength of a bullock. Bak’s fingers slipped, held. With a furious snarl, the man swung the spear, slashing at Bak, who jerked away and lost his grip. The man leaped up the stairs and through the opening. He looked back, saw Bak pressing close, midway up the stairway. Hissing like an angered goose, he slashed with the spear. Bak dropped to his knees, and the deadly point whizzed past his head.
Before his attacker could jerk the weapon away, Bak grabbed the shaft not far above the point and pushed it hard against the frame of the rooftop opening. The man held on tight, but Bak had the advantage. Placing all his weight behind the effort, he drove the spear point forward. The shaft broke in two with a loud snap. He lost his balance, came close to tumbling down the stairway. His assailant ran.
Clutching the stub of shaft above the spear point, Bak scrambled to the top of the stairs. The fleeing man was running hard, his feet pounding across the roof toward the board that bridged the lane between the commandant’s residence and the storehouse. Bak sprinted after him, praying he could catch him before he could descend the stairway in the scribal office building and get to the street. If the man was a resident of Buhen, and Bak assumed he was, he would know its streets and lanes far better than any newcomer.
The man darted across the board, pivoted, and kicked out. The bridge vanished between the buildings and crashed on the hard-packed earth below. Laughing derisively, he sped across the barrel-vaulted roof of the storehouse. Its upper surface was a series of plaster-coated half-cylinders running the width of the building, each roofing an individual storage magazine. The adjoining cylinders formed broad straight parallel ridges with narrow hollows in between. The man raced across as agile as a cat.
His laughter spurred Bak on. He ran toward the edge of the roof where the bridge had been, uttered a brief, fervent prayer to the lord Amon, stepped onto the low parapet, and leaped through the air. The gap fell away behind him, and the impact brought him to his knees on the first ridge. As he scrambled to his feet, his sandals slid beneath him, unable to grip the sloping surface. Years of grit borne on the wind had smoothed the plaster, making it as slick as a muddy riverbank. He glared at the man ahead, nearly halfway across the storehouse roof, running easily. Bak remembered the man’s bare feet, kicked off his own sandals, and left them where they fell.
His pace initially was uneven, his footing uncertain on the curved surfaces. The man pulled farther away, making no attempt to reach the stairway that descended to the scribal offices. Puzzled, Bak raced after him. As far as he knew, there was no other way off the block of buildings.
Once Bak found a pattern, four long strides, jump, four more strides, another jump, he began to close the gap. He was less than a dozen paces away when the fleeing man reached the end of the building. Bak was elated. He had him! He slowed to a trot, shifted the broken spear from left hand to right.
The man glanced over his shoulder and saw his pursuer closing in. He flung himself over the edge, legs dangling, then vanished from sight. Bak spotted the upper end of a sturdy rope tied to a heavy wooden peg embedded deep in the mudbrick ridge. His quarry had slid down to the lane below.
Spitting out a vile oath, Bak threw himself over the wall and slid down after him. As his feet touched the ground, he glimpsed the man racing around a corner, heading back the way he had come. Bak sped after him, passing the long, bare wall of the storehouse and the more impressive facade of the commandant’s residence. A left turn and a burst of speed carried him along the base of the citadel wall to the unguarded twin-towered gate leading to the outer city. By the time Bak passed through, his quarry had disappeared. He searched the area as well as he could, but finally had to give up, as frustrated and confused by the man himself as by the rabbit warren of lanes. He had never gotten a good look at the man’s face, but he knew for a fact he was not Nebwa or Paser or Mery or Harmose.
Bak knelt beside Ruru, his face tight with worry. The Medjay lay where he had fallen, still and silent, woolly hair matted with blood. Only the steady rise and fall of his chest gave hope he would live. Bak bowed his head and offered a silent prayer to the lord Re, the greatest of all physicians. He could do no more.
He rose to his feet and looked at Azzia. She was sitting at Ruru’s head, a damp cloth in her hand, a bowl of water in her lap. The old female servant sat cross-legged beside her, mixing bits of leaves and other ingredients in a small, flat bowl.
“Who did this?” he demanded. “Did you know him?”
“I didn’t see his face. How could I? You saw for yourself how dark it was.” Her voice shook, and so did her hands, he noticed.
Bak had heard of men weak-kneed with fright after bravely facing the enemy on the field of battle, but to see Azzia afraid after such a valiant effort to protect her home was unsettling. Unsettling but understandable. Several angry red blotches on her bare arms and shoulders would soon turn dark, as would the slight swelling around the broken flesh at the corner of her eye. Over her shoulder, he could see Nakht’s reception room in the light of a torch Lupaki had mounted outside the door. A thin ribbon of smoke drifted from the flame to the open stairwell door. Most of the furniture had been overturned; a leg had been broken off one table. The chests were open and their contents strewn across the floor, the iron dagger among them.
“Calm yourself,” he said. “He’ll not come back tonight.”
She dipped the cloth into the bowl, squeezed out the excess water, and gently washed the blood from the back of Ruru’s head. “If he does?” she asked. “Will you be here to catch him? Or will you chase him away and return empty-handed?”
Bak flushed. He knew how close he had come to catching his prey. The last thing he needed was this woman’s scornful reminder that he had failed.
“Here!” he said, holding out the broken spear. “You can catch him yourself.”
It was her turn to blush. “I missed, yes, because I threw in haste.” She took the bowl from the old woman, wrinkled her nose at the gooey green mess she withdrew on her fingers, and spread it over a linen pad. “Next time, I’ll take more care.”
Her tone was matter-of-fact, but Bak heard beneath the surface a fierce determination to do as she promised. He had never met a woman like her, so soft and gentle and at the same time so strong and unyielding. An intriguing mix, especially in the heat of passion. Fearing she might guess his thoughts, he stepped over Ruru’s legs and entered Nakht’s room, righted an overturned stool, and sat down to brush the dirt off the bottom of his feet.
“There’ll be no next time,” he said. “The wound in his shoulder will be noted by all who see him. Word will spread from mouth to mouth as fire spreads in a field of dry stubble. He’ll be in my hands before nightfall tomorrow.”
“If he hasn’t already flown from Buhen.”
“No ship or skiff will sail until I have him. If he leaves by footpath, the villagers who dwell nearby will see him, and my sergeant, Imsiba, will hear within the hour.”
Azzia raised an eyebrow, unconvinced. Bak felt like shaking her, yet as he glanced around the disheveled room, he had to admire her. She must have fought like a lioness to have done so much damage in so short a time.
Lupaki hurried across the courtyard with a dozen linen strips fluttering from his hand. Azzia took them and said something to him in their own tongue. He nodded, knelt beside her, and lifted Ruru’s head from the floor. She laid the medicated pad on the wound and bound it in place, winding the strips around the Medjay’s head until it looked like the head of a man wrapped for eternity. He prayed her bandage would be enough, that others would not be needed to bind his body in the house of death.
“Go to the storeroom and get your master’s folding camp bed,” she said to Lupaki. “We’ll lift him onto it and carry him to my sitting room. He can’t lie out here through the chill of the night.”
The servant’s eyes darted toward Bak, an unspoken question formed on his face.
Her smile was fond, reassuring. “Go, Lupaki! He’ll not carry me off to the viceroy tonight.”
“You’ve heard?” Bak asked, more disconcerted than surprised.
Her smile vanished. She turned away to pick up the bowl of bloody water and poured it into the dirt out of which an acacia grew. “Tetynefer’s wife, Iry, sent a message.” She passed the bowl to the old woman. “Her note said you urged her husband to wait, to give you more time.”
“I reported what I saw in this room,” he said unhappily. “He heard nothing more I said.”
“He tells Iry all he knows, but she made no mention of the gold. Why?” Her eyes held his, probing his thoughts.
He stiffened his spine lest he wriggle like a schoolboy. “He knows nothing about it.”
The old woman hissed like a cobra, spat out a dozen words in the tongue of Hatti.
Azzia’s stare grew cool, distant. “I trusted you, as did my husband.” She gave a hard, bitter laugh. “What innocents we were!”
The words stung, and he muttered a curse. He should have known she would learn too soon that he had kept the gold. Now he had to convince her to say nothing about it without admitting he hoped to use it as bait in a trap, a trap that might snare her along with the one who had stolen it.
He stood up, walked to the door. “I can report it tonight to Tetynefer and give him another, stronger reason to believe you took your husband’s life. Or I can keep it hidden and say nothing. In the second case, you must trust me to report it when the time is right. The decision is yours.”
Her disbelief evident, she drew close a clean bowl of water. With the old woman speaking to her in an urgent voice, Azzia bent over to splash her face and arms. As she dried herself with a fresh cloth, she answered with a few quick words that brought a scowl to the servant’s face. A final word and a wave of her hand sent the woman scurrying across the courtyard, her back stiff with disapproval.
Azzia threw the water in a pot containing a stunted sycamore, checked Ruru’s bandaged head, and stood up to face Bak. “I care nothing for the gold. Keep it, trade it for a more comfortable life if you like. But I ask this of you: find the man who took my husband’s life. If you don’t, if I must go to Ma’am, I’ll tell the viceroy you have it.”
Bak’s mouth tightened. He had done all he could to help her and she not only thought him a thief, but thanked him with an ultimatum. He clutched her elbow and marched her into Nakht’s reception room.
“Look at this!” He swung his arm in an arc. “The man you fought in here most likely took your husband’s life.”
“I know!” She jerked free of his grasp. “Why do you think I tried to slay him?”
“If you’d succeeded,” he said grimly, “you’d be charged with his murder-and you’d have destroyed your sole chance to prove you had nothing to do with your husband’s death.”
Azzia dropped to her knees among the objects scattered on the floor, looked with moist eyes at first one and then another. When at last she spoke, her voice was barely loud enough to hear. “These things are all I have left of my husband. When I saw him here, pawing through them like a dog digs in a garbage heap, throwing them aside as if they were trash, my heart filled with rage and I took leave of my senses.”
Bak wanted to hold her, to console her. He took a step toward her, backed off. She may have thrown the spear in anger, as she claimed. She could as easily have thrown it to get rid of a confederate she no longer trusted. He wished with all his heart he had Imsiba’s gift for reading the thoughts of others.
He realized suddenly what she had said. “You saw him searching this room? How? The room was as black as a tomb.”
“He had a lamp.” She glanced up, saw how intense he was, and hastened to add, “He quenched it before I could see his face.”
With a sinking heart, Bak studied the room, noting the way the objects were scattered about. The iron dagger lay in front of the inlaid cedar chest, too far away to have fallen out during the struggle. Its sheath was well off to one side. The two lamps, one broken beyond repair, were halfway across the room in the opposite direction. The lid lay near the door where the chest had originally stood. Cursing vehemently, he ran outside, grabbed the torch, and raced across the courtyard to Nakht’s bedchamber. Linen, clothing, and toilet articles lay in untidy heaps around gaping storage chests. This room, like the other, had been ransacked-for the gold, he was sure, and the papyrus scrolls.
Scrolls. Nakht’s office on the floor below. Swinging around, he glimpsed Azzia standing outside the door, her hand over her mouth, her eyes wide, horrified. He darted past her without a word, ran to the stairwell, and plunged downward, spreading a shower of sparks in his wake. From halfway across the pillared hall, he could see the door of the office he was aiming for. It was closed and latched but no longer sealed-as he had left it.
Though he doubted the man he had pursued would have returned to the building, he slowed, approached on silent feet, and raised the latch, careful to make no sound. He shoved the door open and held the torch high. The office was empty, the door at the rear still latched and sealed. The room looked no different than when he and Hori had left, but he had to be sure.
He mounted the torch in a wall bracket, pulled a scroll at random from a chest to his right, and looked at the date. He pulled the next one, checked the date, pulled another and checked it. As he shoved them back, he automatically aligned the ends. He repeated the process more than a dozen times and concluded they were all in the proper order. He moved on to the next chest, reached for another scroll. Its end protruded well beyond those around it. A closer look told him none was aligned. Neither were those in the top third of a chest standing before the rear wall. The scrolls had all been shoved as far back as they would go, and since none was exactly the same size as the others, some stuck out while others lay deeper in the chest. He and Hori had looked at every document in the room. He had watched with a growing impatience while the young scribe carefully aligned the ends of each and every one of them.
He took the torch, left the office, and walked slowly across the audience hall. It was apparent the intruder had spent a considerable amount of time going through Nakht’s records. Bak thanked the gods that he and Hori had been before him. They had found nothing, but at least he had the satisfaction of knowing the man who followed them had been equally unsuccessful. He entered the stairwell, plodded upward. One thing was certain: the intruder was a man who could read. Bak stopped on the upper landing, nodding his satisfaction. That narrowed the field to a few officers and the scribes. All he had to do was discover which of them had a nasty wound in his shoulder.
Bak entered the courtyard with a lighter step. In the glow of a fresh torch mounted beside the reception-room door, Azzia bent over Ruru, a drinking bowl in her hand. The Medjay was sitting up unaided. Smiling with relief, Bak jammed his torch into the nearest empty bracket, trotted to them, knelt, and clasped Ruru’s bony shoulders.
With mock severity, he said, “Did Imsiba never tell you to lead with your spear, not your head, when you face the enemy?”
Ruru gave him a sheepish grin. “Tonight, I should have paid no heed.” He gingerly touched the bandaged wound. “The man who did this came up from behind.”
“You didn’t see him?”
“One moment I was standing at the reception room door, the next I woke with a bandaged and aching head.”
Bak rose to his feet, frowned. “How did he get into the courtyard without your knowledge?”
Ruru stared at his feet, mumbled, “I took my evening meal in the kitchen at the back of the house.”
“That was my doing,” Azzia cut in quickly. “Rather than bring his food out here, I suggested he eat with my servants and me.” Her voice grew cool. “Did you not tell him to watch me rather than my home?”
Much to Bak’s chagrin, that was exactly the impression he had left with Ruru.
“He was meant to watch from afar,” he snapped, “not share your bed.” He saw with satisfaction a flush spreading across her face and was gratified he had finally stolen the gift of speech from her.
“What brought you here, to this spot where you fell?” he asked the Medjay.
“I saw a movement, the branches of the tree, I thought. The air was still, so I walked this way to find the reason.” Ruru gave Bak a shamefaced glance. “I expected to find a cat and took no care.”
Bak nodded. With no forewarning of a possible break-in, he might have thought the same. Tame cats and feral prowled the city at night, hunting rats and mice, which, if not controlled, would gnaw their way into the storehouses and consume more food than the garrison troops.
“No matter,” he said, clasping Ruru’s shoulder. “His wound will lead us to him.”
The Medjay lay back on the floor, satisfied.
Bak entered Nakht’s reception room and slumped onto a stool, weary from the chase and too little sleep, but content. He had been so sure Mery, Paser, Nebwa, or Harmose had stolen the gold and taken Nakht’s life, and now it seemed another man had done both. He thanked the lord Amon he had had the good sense to keep his suspicions to himself.
He hunched over, elbows on knees, chin resting on clasped hands, and stared at the overturned furniture and the objects strewn about, vaguely aware of Lupaki’s arrival with the camp bed and Ruru’s transfer to Azzia’s sitting room. Why, he wondered, had the intruder searched less than half the documents in Nakht’s office? Why was he so neat there and so disorderly here in Nakht’s personal rooms? Had he grown impatient with the search below and come upstairs to ask Azzia for the gold and scrolls? Had the two of them quarreled? A man hot with anger might throw things halfway across the room.
He heard footsteps and looked up to see Azzia coming across the courtyard. She stopped on the threshold, her back rigid, her expression cool.
“May I straighten this room?” she asked.
“Yes.”
She hesitated as if reluctant to begin, took a deep, ragged breath, and stepped inside. She was genuinely upset, he was sure, and had not expected her home to be violated. Maybe he was trying too hard to tie her to the break-in, the stealing of the gold.
“How did you come upon the intruder?” he asked.
She knelt beside a senet board, set it upright, and began to search for the widely scattered playing pieces. “I brought a sweet cake for Ruru. I didn’t see him, but I noticed light along the edge of the closed door. I thought you’d come back and he was in here with you.” Her laugh was sharp, cynical. “I knew you’d not told Tetynefer about the gold and thought you were looking for more.”
Her assumption nettled, but Bak said nothing.
“No man, not you or anyone else, had a right to be here, and I meant to send you away.” She moved a small table and found another playing piece, this one broken. She closed her hand tight around it. “I stumbled over Ruru and fell against the door. It flew open. I glimpsed a lighted lamp on a chest, my husband’s writing implements on the floor around it, and that man.” She must have heard the tremor in her voice, for she paused, spoke more calmly. “He was heavier than you, lighter skinned than a Medjay. I realized my mistake and screamed for help.”
“Didn’t he look around to see who you were?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I needed a weapon, and it wasn’t easy to tug Ruru’s spear from beneath his shoulder. That’s when the man quenched the lamp. He ran at me, knocked the spear from my hand, and grabbed me. I tried to break free, but he was very strong. What he meant to do with me…” She shuddered. “We heard you coming up the stairway. He flung me away. I picked up the spear and threw it.”
“And I mistook you to be the aggressor.”
Her eyes lifted to Bak’s and she managed a crooked smile. “I don’t know what he’d have done if you hadn’t come when you did.”
Her gratitude was disquieting. “Your screams drew Lupaki as well as me.”
“I know, but…” She studied him briefly, shrugged, and turned away to busy herself with sorting through the objects on the floor.
Bak had the disconcerting feeling she wanted to trust him, as he wished he could open his heart to her. No, he thought, impossible! She’s no more sure of me than I am of her. To ease his frustration, he left the stool and strode around the room, standing upright each piece of furniture he came to. The broken table he carried out to the courtyard. On his return, he lifted the inlaid cedar chest and stood it where it belonged beside the door. He located the iron dagger and its sheath on the floor and stooped to retrieve them.
As he stood erect, she bent to pick up Nakht’s writing pallet. Her firm round breast nudged the low vee-neck of her sheath, threatened to fall free.
“Will you stay the night?” she asked.
Bak almost dropped the dagger. His eyes leaped to her face, but he saw no tenderness, no seductive smile, just anxiety.
“Or summon another Medjay?” She dropped the pallet in her lap, reached for a pen. “If that man comes back…” She shivered. “Ruru is ill. He could do nothing to stop him.”
Bak chided himself for a fool. She was a recent widow, mourning her husband. How could he think she would invite him into her bed? Even if she had cared nothing for Nakht, had taken his life, in fact, she would do no such thing. An offer of her body would make a lie of the sorrow, the hurt she had displayed since her husband’s death. The scent of her perfume must be clouding my wits, he thought.
He shoved the dagger into its sheath and dropped them in the chest. “Summon Lupaki. I’ll send him to my sergeant with a message to assign another guard. I’ll stay until he comes.”