“You left Imen to guard the tomb alone?” Bak, who had hastened to Djeser Djeseru at daybreak, glared at Kasaya. He prayed the Medjay was making a poor joke, but his too-stiff spine, his guilt-ridden look, spoke of a man who had disobeyed orders. “Explain yourself!”
“I wasn’t gone for long.” Kasaya stared straight ahead, unable to meet Bak’s eyes. “Half an hour at most.” With one hand he clung to his spear and shield, in the other he held a packet wrapped in leaves, food Bak had brought for the young man’s morning meal.
“What, in the name of the lord Amon, possessed you?”
“The malign spirit.”
Bak bestowed upon him the countenance of a man sorely tried. “Spirits possess men who know no better, Kasaya.
Men of no learning who know nothing of the world beyond their field of vision. Not men who’ve traveled to the far horizon, as you have.”
The Medjay gave Bak a hurt look. “You misunderstand, sir. I saw the spirit and I gave chase.”
Bak recalled their conversation of the previous day, the comments he had made about the guards and his feelings about men who failed to do their duty. Kasaya, though superstitious to the core, had taken his words to heart, it seemed.
Irritation fleeing, he dropped onto a stone drum awaiting placement as part of a sixteen-sided column on the upper level in front of the temple. “Seat yourself, Kasaya, and while you eat, tell me what happened.”
Not entirely reassured by the milder tone, the young Medjay sat down on a similar drum. Laying spear and shield beside him, he unwrapped the packet and began to eat the braised fish and green onions he found inside. Imen, at the mouth of the tomb thirty or so paces away, was also eating.
The lord Khepre, peeking above the eastern horizon, sent shafts of yellow into an unblemished sky. A thin sil-ver mist hovered over the floodplain to the east, filtering into the faint blue morning haze lingering over the river.
The workmen, early to rise and quick to begin their day, were spread over the building site, as vociferous as men who had been parted for days rather than the few short hours of night.
“Two, maybe three hours after nightfall, Imen thought he saw a light among the columns of the upper colonnade.”
Kasaya tore away a bite-sized chunk of fish and popped it into his mouth. “At first I saw nothing, but then I, too, spotted a light. It looked to be entering the temple. Since every man who toils here fears the malign spirit. . Well, I knew none of them would go into the temple in the dead of night.”
He stopped chewing, his voice grew hushed. “My blood went cold, and the worm of fear crept up my spine.”
“Yet you gave chase,” Bak said, knowing well the strength of will it must have taken.
“Not because I wanted to, I tell you.” Kasaya broke off another chunk and paused, holding it in midair halfway to his mouth. “Giving myself no time to think, I raced across this terrace, passing innumerable statues and sections of columns behind which hid I knew not what. Up the ramp I went, and into the temple. The building was dark, the moon a sliver so thin and weak the unfinished colonnade cast no shadow.” He glanced at the piece of fish in his hand, returned it to its bed of leaves. “I saw no one, heard nothing. I felt obliged to search the sanctuary and the chapels to either side. I crossed the courtyard to the sanctuary, but beyond its portal lay nothing but black. As was the case in the rooms to the south. I feared greatly and longed for a torch.”
Bak could almost see the young Medjay, standing in the dark, wide-eyed and quaking with fear, trying to convince himself to step into one of those fearsome chambers.
“I heard a faint noise behind me. I spun around and spotted the light. It was near the entrance to the chapel of the lord Re. A tiny flicker that vanished in an instant.” Kasaya took a deep, ragged breath. “Thinking it had gone inside, I followed. All the while I walked around the altar, I thanked the lord Re that the chamber had no roof, that I could see my hand before my face. I found nothing; the light had vanished like the spirit it was.”
Or, more likely, a quick and agile man, Bak thought. One with a vile sense of humor. “Did you smell anything?
Smoke, for example, from an oil lamp?”
“No, sir.” Kasaya lifted the bite of fish to his mouth and ate. “I smelled nothing, heard nothing, saw nothing more.”
“The sanctuary and the southern chambers were empty?”
Kasaya flung him a guilty look. “I peeked inside, sir, but in the end I didn’t search them. They were too dark, and I could see nothing. Anyone or anything hiding there could’ve slipped past me and I’d have known no better.” Giving Bak no time for comment good or bad, he hurried on, “Instead, thinking you’d say I’d chased a man and not a spirit, I seated myself in the entrance near the top of the ramp, intending to remain until daylight, hoping to catch a man if a man it was.” He paused, frowned, offered up another point in his favor, “From there I could see Imen and go to his aid if need be.”
“He’d remained at his post?”
“Yes, sir. He told me later that he’d never have chased the malign spirit, as I did. I think he was afraid. He didn’t admit he was and spoke instead of disobeying orders, but how long has the malign spirit been seen in this valley with no guards giving chase?”
“How long did you stay at the temple?”
“I’d barely had time to settle myself when I glimpsed a light in the old temple of Nebhepetre Montuhotep. The spirit had flitted from Djeser Djeseru to there in the time it takes to blink an eye. I started down the ramp, but it vanished again.
I ran to the southern retaining wall and waited awhile, but it didn’t reappear. Certain no man could ever catch it, I finally decided to return to the tomb and Imen.”
Bak suspected the so-called malign spirit had lured Kasaya into the chapel of the lord Re, and had slipped out of the temple when he was safely out of the way. He also suspected, because of the light’s speedy appearance in the older temple, that more than one man had been roaming the valley floor, each carrying a small oil lamp.
He glanced across the field of partially worked stones toward the burly guard. “As far as you know, did Imen remain at his post all the while you were searching the temple?”
“I can’t swear to every moment,” Kasaya admitted, “but each time I looked, there he was.”
Bak eyed the young Medjay. By rights he should chastise him for abandoning his post at the tomb, but how could he reproach a man who had shown such courage in spite of his strong superstition, his fear of the unknown?
“Go back to the tomb and stay there,” he said. “Let me know when Menna arrives with the priest from the mansion of the lord Amon.”
Could Imen have entered the tomb during Kasaya’s absence? Probably not. Visible from the temple and assuming the Medjay might return at any moment, the guard would have had neither the time nor the freedom to do so. Nonetheless, Bak wanted to know for a fact that the body was intact, to be sure the ancient jewelry was on that bony wrist when the tomb was sealed for eternity.
As Kasaya strode away, Bak walked to the southern retaining wall and looked beyond the workmen’s huts to the old temple of Nebhepetre Montuhotep. Had the Medjay been deliberately drawn into the new temple? If so, for what purpose? To allow the malign spirit freedom of movement in the ruined structure? No one could have predicted the young policeman would have the courage to leave Imen’s side and give chase, but if the objective was worthy enough, perhaps the risk could not be ignored. Or had the second light, that in the old temple, been meant to draw Kasaya from Djeser Djeseru? Had he interrupted someone intent on setting up another accident?
“There’s Kames, sir, the chief stonemason.” Hori, arriving at Bak’s side unnoticed, pointed toward a crew of workmen toiling at the northern end of the lower colonnade. “You said you wished to speak with him. The white-haired man looking on.”
Bak tore his thoughts from Kasaya’s adventure and tamped down a sudden, nearly overwhelming desire to explore the ruined temple. He must speak first with the living, saving until later his quest for lights and shadows.
“I found plenty to fault in Montu, but he knew what he had to do and he did it.” Kames scratched his head, making his short white hair stand on end. His body was tall and angular, very thin, a living skeleton covered in leather-like skin. “You can’t criticize a man for doing his duty, now can you?”
“You’re more forgiving than anyone else I’ve talked to,”
Bak said. “In fact, I’ve been told he shirked his duty.”
“He was critical, to be sure, and never quite satisfied with where we placed the stones. But he had every right to be.
The responsibility for the finished temple rested heavily on his shoulders.”
Kames’s eyes darted toward a man checking the four sides of a block of stone, making sure they were square to each other and the top surface. Evidently not quite satisfied with what he saw, he moved closer to watch. The stone was one of many that would be stacked to create the square columns of the lower colonnade. The sides of the stone, like that of its mates, were rough, not yet dressed to a smooth surface. The final smoothing would be done after they were installed, before reliefs were carved and painted. Other stonemasons were scattered nearby, forming blocks similar in shape and size. The tapping of mallets on chisels made Bak think of giant birds, pecking away at some equally colossal food source. Two rows of square columns would ultimately stand before the retaining wall that held back the fill beneath the upper colonnade. As Bak had noticed before, the roof over this portico would form an open terrace along the front of the temple.
For the first time, he was struck by the fact that no construction ramps marred the facade to either side of the central ramp. “You surely use a ramp to raise these blocks into position, and also the architraves and roof slabs that will sit on top. Why is none here?”
Several of the men glanced at each other and exchanged surreptitious grins. The chief stonemason’s expression turned stormy. Bak saw at once that he had poured natron into an open wound.
“The last time our sovereign visited this temple, we had to take down the ramp we had here and another at the southern colonnade.” Kames’s nostrils flared with anger. “Senenmut said she wished to see the facade unencumbered by ramps, and so it was. I thought it wise not to replace them for a while, to rough out many of the column parts so we can position them all at one time. Thus saving us extra effort should she soon come again.”
A prudent decision, Bak suspected. Much effort was required to build or tear down a ramp. Not as much as building a permanent mudbrick or stone structure, but the number of hours expended could be better used elsewhere. “Did Pashed not shoulder more than his burden of responsibility, while Montu sought the ear of Senenmut, taking much of the credit for building this temple?”
Kames shook his head in mild disgust. “Oh, I know.
Pashed complained all the time, saying this, that, and the other. Always critical of Montu, with never a word of praise.
But you have to understand: Montu was an artist while Pashed is a mere artisan. You can’t expect an artist to take an interest in the dreary day-to-day tasks of a project as big and important as this one.”
An unexpected puff of air lifted the dust from the steep slope to the north and flung it on the men below. Bak snapped his eyes and mouth shut as grit peppered his face and shoulders. Kames’s attitude was so different from that of the others to whom he had spoken that he could not help but wonder about the discrepancy. “Were you and Montu related in any way?”
A toothy grin let him know the stonemason understood exactly what he was getting at. “We weren’t even friendly.”
The smile, the flippant tone, promised a game of words Bak refused to be drawn into. A stream of curses drew his eyes to the northern retaining wall, where a crew of workmen were dragging a sledge laden with stone blocks up a construction ramp. Given time, Kames would explain himself, he felt sure. “You know Amonked has bade me look into the many accidents that have occurred since construction began on this temple.”
The stonemason’s smile was swept away by an inexplica-ble bitterness. “I wish you luck, Lieutenant.”
Bak eyed him closely. That he had struck a sensitive spot was apparent. “You and your men work with the stone, sometimes placing heavy blocks high above a man’s head.
Have you lost anyone to an accident?”
Kames glanced at the men scattered in front of what would one day be the colonnade, beckoned Bak to follow, and walked far enough away that none could hear. “A man died. Ahotep. A foreman.” He spat out the words, his voice hard, rough with emotion. “Seven months ago, it was. We’d just begun to raise the columns at the northern end of the portico, the end nearest the southern retaining wall.”
“How did it happen?”
“A part of the cliff broke away, sending stones plummet-ing down the slope and onto the temple.” Kames stared bale-86
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fully at the cliff and went on with obvious effort. “Ahotep had gone up the ramp along which we were raising the blocks. We’d reached no higher than the second course, so the ramp was low. He was checking the placement of stones, making sure they were seated properly. An enormous boulder came hurtling down from the face of the cliff, bringing others with it and tearing away lesser rocks and earth. The retaining wall collapsed and he was struck down. Buried.
We dug him out, but could do nothing for him. His back was broken. He lived an hour that seemed a day, unable to move, helpless.” The stonemason cleared his throat, but could not clear away the grief on his face. “His death was a gift of the gods.”
Laying a gentle hand on Kames’s shoulder, Bak said, “He was close to you, I see.”
“He was my firstborn son.”
Bak muttered an oath. No wonder the old man ached.
“Were any other men injured?”
Another puff of air, this stronger than the first, blew dirt across the terrace. Bak swung away and raised his hands to his face, protecting eyes and mouth. As the breeze abated, he saw Kames wiping tears from his cheeks, tears of anguish, he felt sure, not moisture caused by the grit.
“Four were hurt,” the stonemason said. “Two will never toil again as once they did, their limbs too damaged to regain strength. The others are now raising the walls of a set of chambers our sovereign is having built in the mansion of the lord Amon in Waset.”
A bitter blow, Bak thought. Most of the work crews were men who had toiled together for years. To lose so many would not only upset the smooth functioning of the crew, but would rend the survivors’ hearts for months to come. “Do you, like most of the men toiling here at Djeser Djeseru, believe a malign spirit responsible for the accident?”
“I’d like to think not. I’d like to believe that one day I’ll lay hands on the one who loosed the rocks and break his back as my son’s back was broken. A vain hope, I’m forced to admit. How could a man make a cliff face fall?”
Eyeing the cliff looming above the northern retaining wall, Bak made a silent vow to climb up and see if he could find an answer to that question. Unfortunately, four months was a long time. Too long, he suspected, to find telltale signs of a man-if a man had indeed been responsible. The cliff face and the tower-like formations that had formed at the front of it were high and steep, cracked and pitted, scarred where rock had broken away and fallen. The slide might well have been a natural occurrence. “Does the accident have anything to do with your dislike of Pashed, your sympathy with Montu?”
Kames flung Bak a quick, smoldering look. “Pashed allowed us no time to mourn, no time to make peace within ourselves. He sent the crew back to this northern end of the portico. The men feared another rockfall above all things, but what choice did they have? They returned and here they remain. Montu faced Pashed, saying no men should be put to such a test. His words struck deaf ears.”
Bak had always heard that if a man came close to drowning, he should immediately go back into the water. If such was the case, and he had no way of knowing the truth of the matter, Pashed had done the right thing. “Was Montu sincere, or did he wish to make himself look good in your eyes and Pashed look bad?”
“Why would he wish me to think well of him? I’m a lowly stonemason, a man of no wealth or influence.”
Uneasy about the open tomb, Bak stood at the rim and looked into the darkness below. Would Menna never bring the priest? Did the guard lieutenant have another report he felt more important than seeing that the shaft was filled before nightfall?
He eyed the long palm trunk that had been removed from the opening and laid alongside after he and Menna had returned to the surface the previous day. The urge to go down again, to have another look around, was difficult to resist, but in the end he decided to wait. However, if Menna failed to bring the priest by mid-afternoon. .
“Here they come, sir.” Kasaya pointed eastward toward the causeway. “Lieutenant Menna and the priest.”
Relieved, Bak watched the guard officer weave a path among the worked and unworked chunks of stone scattered across the terrace. A slight older man and a boy of ten or so years trailed in his wake. The man’s hair was close-cropped and he wore a knee-length kilt. He had to be the priest. The youth carried a basket containing, Bak assumed, a censor, water jar, incense, and everything else required to purify the tomb. The wind gusted, raising the dust around their naked limbs and the stone images among which they walked.
As the trio drew near, Bak smiled. “I thank the lord Amon that you’ve arrived, Lieutenant. I was making ready to go into the tomb to check its integrity.”
“Why?” Menna gave him a sharp look. “I’ve every confidence that Imen remained on guard through the night.”
“As did Kasaya,” Imen said. “Lieutenant Bak thought I shouldn’t stand watch alone.”
Menna’s mouth tightened. “Do you not trust my judgment, Lieutenant?”
Bak did not appreciate being placed on the defensive, but he smiled pleasantly anyway. “I do, but a man alone looked to be fair game should a gang of men come to rob the tomb.
How would you have felt if we’d found Imen at the bottom of this shaft, his neck broken in the fall, and the tomb desecrated?”
“As I believe I told you earlier,” Menna said in a stiff, un-yielding voice, “I know well the men who dwell in this area, those who thrive at the expense of the dead. They’d never take a life merely to rifle one small burial place such as this.
There are, without doubt, other tombs easier to enter, tombs isolated enough that they could be robbed at will, with small risk of being caught.”
If you know them so well, Bak thought, why haven’t you laid hands on those who took the baubles I found in Buhen or the jewelry found on ships in the harbor at Mennufer? He was being unfair, he knew, too quick to judge. Menna had admitted he was not a seasoned investigator, and his resent-ment of a man usurping his authority was understandable.
The priest stepped forward, filling the uncomfortable silence. “I’m Kaemwaset and you must be Lieutenant Bak.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Amonked told me of your many successes as a hunter of men. He has every confidence that you’ll not only bring a halt to the accidents here, but will lay hands on Montu’s slayer.”
“I pray I won’t disappoint him.”
“He’s an excellent judge of character, young man. I’m sure you’ll live up to his expectations and reach beyond them.”
Bak was jolted by such supreme confidence. He had thought, when he left Commandant Thuty in Buhen, that he was free for a time of the burden such conviction added.
Another gust forced mouths and eyes closed and added a sense of urgency to the priest’s demeanor when finally the dust fell away. “Shall we enter the tomb, Lieutenant Menna?
After midday, I must teach this boy. .” He laid a hand on the youth’s shoulder. “. . and seven more as witless as he to understand the sacred writings of the lord Ptah.”
“Move the palm trunk across the shaft,” Menna said, including Kasaya as well as Imen in the order. “Bring the rope and light a torch.” His eyes darted toward Bak. “We won’t be in the tomb for long. You need not wait.”
Though annoyed by so curt a dismissal, Bak kept his expression untroubled, his tone amiable. “I’ve a slayer to lay hands on, Lieutenant. I wish to speak with Kaemwaset after he performs the necessary ablutions.”
The guard officer swung around without another word, watched Imen and Kasaya position the palm trunk and light the torch, and prepared to descend. When all was ready, he turned to the apprentice who had come with Kaemwaset.
“Go to Pashed and tell him your master has come. He must send men to fill this shaft. The task must be completed before end of day.”
“Yes, sir,” and the boy hurried away.
Menna glanced at Bak-an apology of sorts, perhaps.
Getting an affable nod in return, he turned away, soon to be swallowed by the tomb shaft. The priest promptly followed.
Imen sat on his haunches at the rim, awaiting the order to bring them up. Bak knelt for a time beside the guard, watching the faint glow of Menna’s torch at the lower end of the shaft. He heard the murmur of voices below and smelled a hint of incense, but his thoughts were on tasks completed and others left to do. He rose to his feet and joined Kasaya, who sat with his back to the human-headed lion statue, out of reach of the wind.
“Go summon Perenefer or Seked,” Bak said, “whoever can leave his men untended for an hour or so. I wish to learn what he thinks about the accidents and also look at the cliff that rises above the northern retaining wall. A portion broke away a few months ago, slaying one man and maiming others. I wish to know what made it fall.”
The smell of incense was quickly swept away by the sharp, warm breeze. The leaves Kasaya had thrown aside after his morning meal played tag with the dust sporadically racing across the terrace. Not far away, a crew of workmen manhandled a column segment onto a sledge, the amount of effort required measured by how loud their overseer bellowed. Snatches of a workmen’s song were carried by the wind, the source impossible to locate.
Kaemwaset’s apprentice returned with the men Pashed had sent to see the tomb properly closed: Perenefer, his crew of workmen, and two brickmasons. Three boys wearing yokes across their shoulders carried suspended on flat, square wooden trays the dry mudbricks that would be used to build the wall to seal off the tomb before the shaft was filled. The men huddled against various statues and column parts, keeping out of the wind as best they could while they waited for Kaemwaset to finish the necessary prayers. The long line of youths who had been carrying debris from north to south across the terrace swung eastward to bring the fill to the open shaft.
A call from below sent Imen scrambling to his feet. He brought up the basket containing the priestly implements, and Kaemwaset followed. After shaking out a tangle in the rope, the guard beckoned the first of the two masons who would wall in the tomb and helped him descend into the shaft. The second mason attached the first tray to the rope and began to send the mudbricks down to his partner.
“How did you find the tomb?” Bak asked, drawing the priest away from the many prying eyes and ears.
“Just as it should be. You and Lieutenant Menna are to be applauded for keeping it safe through so many hours.”
Bak responded with a wry smile. “Maybe the local tomb robbers fear a malign spirit.”
“Malign spirit, Lieutenant?” The priest snorted. “Our sovereign was conceived by the lord Amon himself. Would any vile specter dare approach the memorial temple of one so beloved of the greatest of the gods?”
“The men who toil here are convinced a malign spirit is responsible for the many accidents, and my Medjay saw it last night, walking through her temple and that of Nebhepetre Montuhotep.”
“Bah! Such spirits are meant to frighten the poor and uneducated-as they’ve done here at Djeser Djeseru-but not the man of learning you so obviously are.”
Bak relented, smiled. “I seek a man of flesh and blood, Kaemwaset. Probably more than one.”
“I thank the lord Amon!” the priest said, openly relieved.
“I’ve been summoned to purify the temple each time a man has died or suffered injury. In each case, I’ve been told of an accident that might’ve been brought about by a careless man or by worn or faulty equipment or, in a few cases, by the whims of the gods. I’ve found no evidence to the contrary, but I believe none of those reasons. Nor is a malign spirit an acceptable explanation.”
Bak eyed the old man thoughtfully. “What are you trying to tell me, sir?”
Kaemwaset glanced at the workmen and drew Bak a few steps farther away, as if a single overheard word would be of major import.
“Our sovereign is a woman,” he said, speaking softly and intently, “a beautiful and talented woman who rules the land of Kemet with a firm yet beneficent hand. She has many enemies, foremost among them those who believe only a man can rule our land. Those individuals, I believe, are responsible for the many accidents, the rumors of a malign spirit.”
“What do they hope to gain? She isn’t one who gives up easily. She’d never send the workmen home and let the temple languish, incomplete as it is today.”
“Of course not. It will be built-no matter what the obstacles.”
“I’ve heard of no similar problems at other locations where she’s set men to toil: the mansion of the lord Amon, the shrine of the lady Pakhet, the quarries at Abu or Khenu or Wawat. .”
“Djeser Djeseru will have special significance. By causing trouble here, they think to discredit her, to make her look weak in the eyes of the people, to make her look less than what she is: daughter of the lord Amon himself.”
Kaemwaset paused-for effect, Bak suspected. “You see, young man, upon the walls of this temple will be depicted the tale of her divine conception.”
Later, after Menna and the masons returned to the surface, while Kaemwaset was mumbling additional prayers and performing further libations, Bak thought over the theory the old priest had offered. It sounded good, believable, but he suspected it owed more to necessity than reality. A tale created by Maatkare Hatshepsut’s followers within the mansion of the lord Amon. A tale designed to take advantage of a series of events for which they had no explanation.
Pashed arrived to make sure the tomb shaft was properly closed. Their duty completed, Kaemwaset and his apprentice returned to Waset. Lieutenant Menna strode away, saying he must inspect the guards who stood watch night and day at other burial places near the valley. He left Imen on duty with instructions to remain until the shaft was filled.
Bak waited at the top with Pashed, watching baskets of debris being lowered to Perenefer and the workmen whose duty it was to fill the horizontal shaft.
Kasaya finally returned with Seked, Perenefer’s brother.
Leaving the Medjay behind with the architect to see the sepulcher fully closed, Bak and the foreman set off across the terrace.
“Kames told me of the cliff that fell above the northern retaining wall and of the havoc it wreaked,” Bak explained. “I wish to see for myself the landscape above the wall.”
Seked gave him a probing look. “You think the fall not a natural one, sir?”
“I don’t know-and we may never learn the cause. The accident happened some months ago and the site may’ve changed.”
“It’s not rained since,” Seked said thoughtfully, “but rocks fall all the time. You can see for yourself how they’ve formed the slope at the base of the cliff. The bigger the fall, as that one was, the more rocks come down over a longer period of time.”
“You’ve no hope we’ll find signs of man or beast? Or malign spirit?”
The foreman smiled. “Your Medjay told me that’s what you seek.”
“You look skeptical.”
Bak stopped ten or so paces from the partially completed retaining wall to study the incline up which they meant to climb. Their presence silenced the men toiling on the wall, who peered around, curious as to their purpose. Other men, cutting away the slope at the end of the wall, forming a fairly smooth surface against which the builders would lay courses of stone, eyed them with no less interest. As Seked had said, the slope was covered with rocks, some broken into chunks and others pulverized by their fall, and looked treacherous to climb but by no means impossible. The gusting wind sent dust racing across the slope in spurts, pelting the men below.
“Let me put it this way, sir. If I see a light in the dead of night and it comes my way, I step aside lest a man bump into me, and at the same time I mutter an incantation to protect myself from I know not what.”
Bak burst into laughter. He had heard few men speak with so gifted a tongue, and certainly none at Djeser Djeseru. The men building the wall and those cutting away the slope smiled tentatively at each other, trying to share a jest they had not heard.
Sobering, Bak strode to the end of the cut and began to climb the untouched slope. A puff of wind drove dirt around him, forcing him to turn his back momentarily. “How long had you known Montu?”
“I’d toiled at his feet since I was a callow youth.” Seked, keeping up step for step, expelled a cynical laugh. “I may as well open my heart to you, sir, for I’m a poor liar and will in the end give myself away. I couldn’t stand the sight of him in the beginning, and I shed no tears the day his body was found.”
“Strong words, Seked.”
“He was a man of no principals, fonder of himself than of the lord Amon or of any other god. When younger and less self-satisfied than in his later years, he would without qualm work a man to death if he thought to gain a smile from one loftier than he.”
“Did your brother feel as you do?”
“If the truth be told, not a man at Djeser Djeseru felt otherwise. If he’d not been slain openly, as he was, he’d soon have met with a fatal accident.”
“Which would’ve been blamed upon the malign spirit.”
Seked’s smile was grim. “Cannot a spirit enter a man’s heart, sir? Cannot the malignancy fester and grow?”
Bak climbed on in silence, taking care where he placed his feet. The earth and stones that had most recently fallen were loose and unstable, sliding easily down a slope made hard by time and weather. Spurts of dust forced them to close their eyes, hiding the surface from view when every step counted, leaving no choice but to pause until the wind died down.
If Montu had been destined to die in a contrived accident, he wondered, why had the slayer taken his life openly? Why risk an investigation into his death when an accident would go unexamined? Then again, he had been meant to vanish, with no one knowing where he had gone. True, a search would have been made, but how thorough a search and for how long was anyone’s guess.
“Do you have a specific reason for disliking Montu so, or has the feeling grown through the years?”
The foreman’s mouth tightened to a thin, stubborn line.
“Speak up, Seked. You’ve told me the worst already, why hold back now?”
Seked stopped to face Bak. The slope was steep and he stood as if sideways on a stairway, one foot higher than the other. “I’ll tell you the truth, for I’m an honest man, but you must lay blame on neither my brother nor I. We wanted him dead, but we didn’t slay him.”
“Come,” Bak said, climbing ahead. “The cliff will keep us safe from the wind.”
A gust of dirt-laden air spurred Seked on. “Several years ago, while toiling at the mansion of the lord Amon, Montu bumped into a scaffold, causing it to fall. I was struck as it collapsed and knocked senseless, my forehead sliced open.”
He touched the scar with the tips of his fingers. “When Perenefer tried to aid me, to take me to a physician, Montu accused him of turning his back on his duty. Perenefer carried me off anyway. Montu sent a guard after him, and he, too, helped carry me to the physician. The two of them together saved my life.”
He let out a low, bitter laugh. “Montu pressed the issue, charging them both with desertion. They were sent together far away to the turquoise mines as punishment. The guard died. My brother survived.”
Bak climbed the last few paces to the cliff face. As if smiled upon by the gods, the air was still and hot, protected from the wind by the tall vertical columns of rock. “How did Perenefer manage to come back as a foreman? Was his so-called crime forgiven and forgotten?”
“The officer in charge of the mines recognized his competence and ability. He saw to his early release and found the task for him here.”
“Did not Montu recognize the two of you? Identical twins are not easy to forget, and the scar on your forehead would be a unique reminder.”
Seked’s voice grew harsh, angry. “Montu acted as if the accident was of no consequence, as if the guard’s death and Perenefer’s imprisonment were insignificant, a passing occurrence.”
A man asking to be slain, Bak thought.
He walked a couple steps down the slope and turned around to look up the cliff face. A high wall of golden stone, made irregular by tower-like protuberances and the crevices between them, by niches and slabs of rock that looked ready to come tumbling down. Weathered by wind and sun, heat and cold, by the infrequent torrential rainstorms that drowned anything in their path.
A scattering of sand peppered his head and shoulders. He looked upward, thinking a falcon might have a nest above them. Several rasping sounds followed, and stones large and small began to fall. Thoughts of a bird fled and his muscles bunched, ready for flight. A sharp crack rent the air, followed by the quick rumble of tumbling stones. Recognizing the sound, knowing it for what it was, he yelled a warning to the men below. Grabbing Seked’s arm, he shoved him across the hill. Stones rained down upon them.