The sentry, tall and muscular with unruly red hair, rested a sweat-slick shoulder against the wall of the twin-towered gate behind him. He grinned at Bak. "You must've fouled the bellies of every scribe in Buhen, Lieutenant. How's this place going to go on without them?"
"Better, no doubt, than usual." Bak had to smile, though thus far the morning had been disappointing-and frustrating. Of all the scribes who had visited the house of death, not one had recognized the slain man. He had not registered in Buhen.
The sentry laughed. "Never saw so many sallow faces in my life."
His good humor attracted the curious eyes of twenty young, raw recruits marching in ragged pairs out of the passage through the base of the tower. A few slowed, others maintained their pace, stepping on the heels of those before them. Their sergeant barked an order, they re-formed. Marching at double time, they burst out of the broad strip of shade cast by the high citadel wall and hastened up the street in the blinding midmorning sunlight. Bak watched with sympathy recalling his own experience as a recruit, until they disappeared through the massive desert-facing gate which pierced the outer fortification.
Homes and workshops of civilians who supported the garrison nudged the thoroughfare to the left and right. Unlike the citadel, where the streets and lanes were straight and orderly, the outer city was a jumble of cramped structures thrown together in a haphazard manner along narrow, crooked lanes. Open patches of sand, walled animal paddocks, and encampments for transient soldiers filled the remainder of the vast rectangle.
"I fear you wait in vain, sir," the sentry said. "Nothing less than a summons from the lord Amon himself could bring Nofery out on so hot a day. She hides from the sun as if she fears she'll melt."
"Her curiosity knows no bounds. She'll come."
The sentry laughed. "She might at that. But do you really expect her to recognize him? Those scribes didn't." Bak's voice turned wry. "It wouldn't be the first time a man neglected to register, yet visited a house of pleasure." He offered a silent prayer to the lord Amon that such would be the case. If not, he would have to cast his net in ever-widening circles, racing against the time when the priest in the house of death deemed it necessary to place the body in a sandy grave or embalm it. With the heat so great, the decision must soon be made.
A shrill, terrified bray drew Bak's eyes toward a cloud of dust rising from the southwest corner of the fortress, where the donkey paddocks lay. The drovers, he guessed, were branding a new herd driven into Buhen the previous day. Closer to hand, thin columns of smoke spiraled up from the metalsmiths' workshops. The sharp smell of molten metal and white-hot fuel mingled with the faint, everpresent odor of manure and the aromas of fish and onions and cooking oil.
The soft crunch of sandals on grit drew his eyes to the passage through the tower. The large white form within grew more distinct and soon an obese old woman lumbered out. Sweat dripped from her jowls, formed stained crescents beneath the armholes of her long white sheath, and glued the fabric to her back and into the cleft between her heavy, sagging breasts.
She glared at Bak. "Can you never go about your duties in the early morning or in the evening, as civilized men do?"
"Would you've preferred, Nofery, that I pull you from your sleeping pallet?" His voice was stern, but his eyes twinkled with fondness.
She sniffed. "Little you care what suits me."
The sentry grinned from ear to ear. "Think you can show the scribblers how to hold their morning meal, my little ewe?"
With a coy smile, she patted the front of his kilt where it covered the joining of his legs. "You jest now at my expense, but you'll seek my favors quick enough when next you come to my place of business."
The sentry pushed himself against her as if it was she he visited instead of one of the young seductresses who earned their bread in her house of pleasure.
Laughing, Bak clapped the sentry on the shoulder, caught Nofery's arm, and drew her onto a path squeezed between the jumbled block of buildings and the sunken walkway at the base of the citadel wall. "You can seduce anyone you like when your time is your own, old woman, but now you have a task to perform for me alone."
He could see she liked the inference that she might still be able to lure a man into her bed, especially a strapping young ram like the sentry, but she jerked her arm from his and hid her pleasure in a scowl.
"I rue the day I agreed to be your spy," she said. "If I'd not been so free with my promises, I'd not be obliged to answer to your every beck and call."
She was walking so fast Bak had trouble keeping up with her. For one so put upon, she was wasting no time.
Bak watched Nofery with smarting eyes and a queasiness that always came upon him in the house of death. Hot, sticky air enveloped him like a cloak. The stench of decay, the sweet perfumes used for embalming, and the musty odor of ceremonial incense assaulted his nostrils. Smoke from a poorly made wick rose from an oil lamp, sending tendrils of vapor drifting through the air like wraiths from, the netherworld. He had come to this place many times, and the oppressive atmosphere never failed to make him feel that he stood on the threshold of an eternity he was in no way prepared to inhabit.
Nofery stood beside a thigh-high stone embalming table, studying the naked body lying in the shallow trough carved into its upper surface. If she had ever seen the dead man before, the knowledge was hidden behind the perfumesoaked square of linen she held over her nose and mouth.
"Do you recognize him?" Bak doubted she did; she had been silent too long.
"The face, I think, is familiar, yes." Her eyes, narrow and sly, slid toward him. "If you were to jog my memory, perhaps with a small favor… "
He buried his surprise-and mistrust-in a frown. "This isn't the market, old woman. You can't haggle with me over this man's name as you would with a merchant over the price of an onion."
"I've no wealth to speak of, and I'm no longer in the prime of life," she said in a plaintive voice. "Yet I must make my way alone in this hard, cruel land. Have you no pity?"
Unmoved, he leaned against the empty table behind him and crossed his arms over his chest. "Before a melon can be eaten, the vine must be given water in sufficient quantities to allow the fruit to mature."
The wrinkles deepened at the comers of Nofery's eyes, hinting at a smile. "I saw this man alive and well. Four or five months ago it was. He must've come and gone all in one day, for I laid eyes on him only the one time."
She must really have seen him! Bak could barely believe his good luck. "Go on," he said, keeping his face bland, his voice level.
"My dwelling is small, but my business grows each day," she said sadly. "Those who come for beer must sit on the laps of those who play games of chance. Those who come for a quiet chat must shout to be heard through the din. Those who…"
Bak tamped down his impatience with a game he usually enjoyed and strode toward the door. The adjoining room contained nothing but a basket of clean white linen frayed at the edges and a few baked clay jars and pots. "Come along, old woman. If you've nothing to tell me, I'll find someone else who has."
She eyed him, measuring the strength of his will. He returned her look, saying nothing, waiting.
Her mouth drooped, she let out a long, aggrieved sigh, and turned back to the table. "I went to the market that day earlier than usual. I heard loud, angry curses so 1, and others like me, ran to see. A sailor-I'd never seen him before nor have I seen him since-was beating his servant with a staff. The child, a boy of mixed blood no more than six or seven years of age, lay on the ground, his back, arms, and face bruised and bleeding. Before those of us inclined to do so could stop the beating, this officer…" She nodded at the dead man. "… burst through the crowd, tore the staff from the sailor's hand, and flung it away. Then he struck the sailor with his baton of office time and time again until he fell senseless to the earth."
Bak eyed her long and hard. "I heard of no such incident."
"Nor were you meant to, for when the officer knelt to help the child, he and those of us who watched soon realized the gods had blessed the boy with neither speech nor hearing. We stood back and allowed this officer, who himself looked like a god, to lift up the child with uncommon tenderness and carry him to a warship moored at the quay."
Bak nodded his understanding. A crude form of justice had been carried out, and, in the eyes of those who witnessed it, the matter was closed. He walked to the table and studied the grayish face of the man lying there. Would one who had behaved in so noble a fashion shun the scribal offices, thinking himself too great a man to register? Would he wear a belt clasp for which he was in no way entitled? "Are you certain this is the same man?"
"He is. Ask any of the others who were in the market that morning, and they'll agree."
Bak's final doubt ebbed away, and he gave her a pleased smile. "You've done well, old woman, very well. Now did you ever learn his name and where he was going from here?"
Nofery's smile was no less sly than before. "I'm in great need of a more spacious house. I went to the chief steward, and my plea fell on deaf ears. Only the commandant carries greater weight, but he'll not listen to me alone."
"You tell me all you know about this man, old woman, and I'll convince Thuty of your merits, though that, I fear, will be no easy task."
With a triumphant smirk, she backed away from the table and sidled toward the door. "He boarded a warship carrying replacement troops for the fortresses along the Belly of Stones. I assume they, and he with them, disembarked at Kor and marched on south. How far I don't know."
Realizing she was trying to escape, Bak leaped across the room and caught her by the elbow. "You never learned his name, did you?"
"I wanted to!" She tugged her arm, trying to dislodge the fingers clamped around it. "I thought him a fine man and yearned to know him. But few people had seen him and those who had knew nothing of him."
Mocking himself for letting her trick him, Bak pushed her into the adjoining room. A priest. kneeling beside the basket, examining the linen, looked up, startled. Beyond, through another door, an embalmer bent over the body of a young woman lying prone on an embalming table. The wife of an officer, she had died in childbirth during the night. Using a long slim tool inserted through the nose, the embalmer was scraping the soft matter from within the head. A deep bowl with its contents hidden from view contained, Bak assumed, either the body of the unborn child or the organs that had been withdrawn through the gaping slit in the left side of the dead woman's abdomen.
"You'll not go back on your word, will you?" Nofery asked, worried. "You asked only that I tell you all I know."
He wrapped an arm around her shoulders. "I'll go to the commandant for you as I promised. But not until the lord Amon has come and gone."
"Many men will wish to celebrate the god's visit," she pointed out.
"Thuty has too great a burden to listen now. He'd close his heart to your plea, and you'd be out of luck altogether." Screwing her mouth into a pout, she shook off his arm, trudged ahead down a short passage, and shoved open the door to the courtyard. Hurrying past Imsiba, standing outside with the trader Seneb, the old woman strode to a mudbrick bench shaded by the sycamores and palms lining the high enclosure walls. She flopped down with a grunt that silenced a chirping sparrow and bent over a small fish pool to draw deep into her lungs the sweet scent of white lotus blossoms floating on the surface of the water. Bak smiled to himself. She was not so chagrined that she would return to her place of business before her curiosity was satisfied.
He shut the door behind him and, with the taste of death still on his tongue, eyed Seneb from head to toe. The pudgy trader's hands were tied behind his back; his kilt was rumpled and dirty. Though not a bruise or cut marked his body, his eyes were wary, frightened. It seemed unlikely that the slain man, one fose actions had been so noble they had even beguiled Nofery, would ever have crossed the path of this foul merchant. Yet the question had to be asked, for they had both come from upriver.
"Has this jackal told you of his journeys, Imsiba?" The big Medjay hefted the long, heavy staff he carried. "With a bit of persuasion, yes."
Bak had little faith in words extracted by means of the cudgel, but in Seneb's case he could think of no more fitting way. "How long ago did he travel upstream?"
"Five months, he claims, as does the pass we found among his clothing."
"Nofery saw our man four or five months ago." Bak spoke with care, preferring the trader remain in ignorance of how little they knew of the slain man. "He failed to introduce himself before traveling south."
The Medjay nodded that he understood. If the man in the house of death had come through Buhen only four months ago, Seneb would already have been far to the south in the land of Kush. If five months, the trader might have crossed his path.
"I'll take this cur inside, and when I'm through, I'll return him to his cell." Bak took the staff from Imsiba's hand. "In the meantime, speak with Nofery. After you hear her tale, send her home. Then go find Hori and see what luck he's had this morning."
Hori was the police scribe. Bak had roused the boy at daybreak and sent him out with instructions to describe the dead man to all the garrison officers and sergeants. A thankless task, but a necessary one.
Imsiba nodded. "I'll find him."
Bak gripped the, trader by the neck and aimed him toward the door.
"What is this place?" Seneb demanded. "Why bring me here?"
"Many years ago; when this wretched land of Wawat was ruled by a king not our own, it most likely was a dwelling of the living. Now… " Bak jerked the door open and shoved him over the threshold. "Now it houses the dead."
The cloying stench stopped Seneb as if he had run into a wall. "What're you going to do to me?"
Bak dug his fingers into his squirming prisoner's neck and propelled him through the building to the room where the unnamed body lay.
At the foot of the embalming table, Seneb dug in his heels. "Why have you brought me here? What…?" His eyes landed on the slain man's face. He blinked once, twice, leaned forward for a closer look. "Lieutenant Puemre!" A smile touched his lips, spread; laughter bubbled from his mouth.
Bak was so startled he relaxed his grip on the trader's neck. It took him a moment to realize he had been handed the name, and even then he was too distracted by the odd reaction to enjoy his unexpected success.
Seneb walked as if mesmerized alongside the table, staring at the damaged foot and hand, the blotches and tears on the body. He stopped at the head, purred, "You swine." And he spat on the dead man's face.
"Seneb!" Appalled, Bak lunged at the trader and_ dragged him to the foot of the empty embalming table. "Are you so low you'd violate a lifeless body?"
"I've harbored hatred in my heart for that man for five long months," Seneb sneered. "What would you have me do? Kneel by his side and offer words of forgiveness to his ka?"
Bak glared at his prisoner, giving himself time to think. Seneb's caravan had come down the river the same day the body had. The two men could have met and clashed somewhere along the Belly of Stones. Yet if Seneb were responsible for the man's death, would he have reacted with such surprise, such pleasure at seeing his enemy lifeless?
"What did this man, this Lieutenant Puemre, do to earn such loathing?"'he asked.
The trader's mouth twisted with malice. "He thought himself above all- mortal men, judging them for faults he failed to see within himself."
"I want specifics, Seneb, not a bald, flat statement any man could make. What did he do to you?"
"He…" The trader hesitated as if deciding what, if anything, he should divulge. "He treated me with contempt."
Bak's mouth tightened. He raised the staff, placed the end under Seneb's chin, and forced his head high. The trader tried to step back, but the table behind him caught him just below his fleshy buttocks. Bak increased the pressure. Seneb's spine arced backward. He clung with bound hands to the rim of the trough. His eyes grew large, frightened.
With a contemptuous smile, Bak pulled the staff back until the trader could almost stand erect. "Will you now spit on me? Or will you tell me what I wish to know?"
Seneb, his eyes glued to the pole, tried to swallow. "As I made my way upriver, bound for the land of Kush, he took my pass from me, keeping it day after day for no good reason. He cared nothing for the time I wasted or the goods I had to trade for a mere pittance in order to feed myself and my servants, my donkeys. He'd have bled me until I had nothing left if I'd not finally gained the ear of the garrison commander."
Bak's thoughts leaped back to the previous morning at Kor and the trader's excuse for driving his caravan so long and hard without a stop. The memory brought a dangerous glint to his eyes. "This, then, was the inspecting officer you wished to avoid at Iken when you came back downriver?"
Seneb tried to nod, but the staff held his chin, in place. "He was."
"You could've had no children with you at the time," Bak said, thinking of Nofery's story, "and your donkeys must've been fresh. What reason did he have for holding your pass?"
"He had none! I swear it!"
Bak raised the end of the staff a finger's breadth, drawing a fearful moan from the trader.
"My donkeys were laden with ordinary trade goods, I tell you. Pottery, tools, beads, linen. Nothing more, nothing less." Seneb's eyes darted in all directions but never once met those of his inquisitor. "If that Medjay of yours had thought to bring my pass, you could've seen for yourself."
Bak was well acquainted with the many and varied ways traders, soldiers, and even the royal envoys tried to slip objects through the frontier without paying the required tolls. False passes were not uncommon. He exerted pressure on the staff, forcing the trader so far back his eyes bulged.
"Ahight!" Sweat rolled from Seneb's forehead into his ears and hair. "Four donkeys were found in the desert, tethered out of sight of the trail. Two carried fine weapons, the others wines from the best vineyards of northern Kemet. He accused me of hiding them-no doubt one of my servants whispered the thought in his ear, meaning to repay me for an imagined wrong-and he insisted I be punished with the cudgel as well as fined. But I knew nothing about them!" His eyes darted toward Bak and away. "I swear to the lord Amon, they weren't mine! Would I leave my beasts of burden with no food or water?"
Bak was sure that was exactly what Seneb had done, and Puemre had taken upon himself the task of righting a wrong, just as he had when he beat the sailor who struck the mute child. A man of high principles. Or was he? What of the belt clasp?
Bak eyed the trader with disdain. "How did you convince the garrison commander to believe you over Lieutenant Puemre?"
"I saw no love between them," Seneb said in a sullen voice.
"And you'd. aheady sacrificed… What? Half your investment?… by denying knowledge of the hidden animals and what they carried?"
Seneb clamped his mouth shut, refusing to admit or deny. Bak jerked- the pole from beneath the trader's chin, grabbed his arm, and swung him around to face the dead officer. "Did you take this man's life, Seneb?"
"You accuse me of…" The trader stared with horrified eyes. "No!"
"Did you come upon him standing alone, somewhere along the river between Iken and Kor? Did you creep up behind him and knock him unconscious, giving him no chance to protect himself?"
"I didn't!" Seneb cried. "Ask my servants. Ask those wretched children I brought from the land of Kush. They'll all tell you. I never left the caravan. Not once."
"We'll ask them," Bak said grimly.
But will we get the truth from them? he wondered. They all hated the trader and no longer had reason to fear him. They would as readily lie now to see him punished as they would have lied to protect him while still he held the whip.
"Lieutenant Puemre, inspecting officer at Iken." Nofery savored each word as if the knowledge was more tasty than fine wine. "I can't imagine why none of the scribes remember him. He was so well-formed and manly."
Bak scooted his three-legged stool closer to the doorway to catch the afternoon breeze and took a sip from his chipped drinking bowl. The beer she had given him was not the best she had to offer, but it was exactly what he needed: thick enough to coat the tongue and pungent enough to chase away the scent of death.
"They never saw him." He took another sip, rolling the harsh liquid around his mouth. "I went again to the scribal offices after I left the house of death. They have no record of a Lieutenant Puemmre bound for Iken or anywhere else upriver."
Nofery plopped down on a stool, which disappeared be1 heath the sagging flesh of her thighs. "Records have been known to disappear through careless filing."
He snorted. "You tell that to the chief scribe."
Tipping his stool back, he rested his head against the doorjamb and eyed the small, cramped room. Since he had come to Buhen he had grown accustomed to its faults and even felt at home within its walls, but he could well understand why she wanted better quarters. Stacks of amphorae and beer jars lined dirty, scarred walls. A table piled high with pottery drinking bowls, most in worse condition than the one he held, stood near the back wall, partly concealing a curtained door leading to a rear room. A dozen or so low three-legged stools were scattered about, one holding a precariously balanced pile of baked clay lamps. After the house of death, the mingled odors of sweat, stale beer, and burnt oil were almost pleasant.
"What a snake that trader is!" Nofery sneered. "To slay so noble an officer was an abomination."
Bak frowned into his nearly empty bowl. "I wish I could be as certain as you are."
Her eyes narrowed. "You doubt his guilt?"
"If you took a man's life, old woman, would you offer as witnesses to your innocence eleven people who despise you?"
Nofery shifted her huge rear, no longer comfortable with her certainty. "I'd like to believe the gods have given me greater wit than that."
Bak lifted a pottery beer jar from the floor between them and refilled their drinking bowls. All in all, he was content with his day, but he felt it a beginning rather than an end. He had found the answers he sought, yet he had more questions now than when he started. Those he felt sure could be answered in Iken. He yearned to go himself instead of sending a courier ahead, as Commandant Thuty wished. But, like the dregs swimming around in his bowl, he was trapped by circumstances.
Nofery brokedegthe silence. "They say the lord Amon travels south to Semna to meet the Kushite king Amon-Psaro, and you're to go with him. You and Nebwa." She stared at the bowl in her hand. "Is this true?"
The abrupt change of subject, a studied indifference in her voice drew Bak upright. "You never cease to amaze me, old woman. I learned of our mission only last night."
"The tale is true then."
"Nebwa will go, yes." Sure she wanted something, he was wary of what it might be. "I may not."
He went on to explain the commandant's decision to make him responsible for all major offenses within Thuty's area of command. While he spoke, a pretty, tousle-headed young woman peeked around the curtain behind Nofery. Her eyes were heavy with sleep, her smile slow and lazy. Bak greeted her with an absentminded nod. He enjoyed the pleasures of the flesh as much as any man, but this was neither the time nor the place.
"So because Thuty chooses to wait," he said ruefully, "I'm sitting on top of a wall, wanting to leap in both directions yet unable to jump either way."
Nofery, grunting at the effort, bent over to pick up the beer jar. She splashed the liquid into his bowl and hers, chuckled. "If I know you, my fine young friend, you're already searching for a way to do both."
With a sardonic smile, he raised his hand to lick off the beer she had slopped over the rim of his bowl. The young woman at the curtain bared one small, shapely breast, fondled it, beckoned. He barely saw her. The old woman's words were like a herdsman's goad, urging him to move, not stand in place.
Nofery was as unaware of his thoughts as she was of the girl, behind her. "If you do go upriver with the lord Amon, you'll be in Semna for some time, they say, serving the king himself."
Her tone again was too casual, jerking his thoughts from his own desires to hers. The journey upriver could have nothing to do with her wish to expand, he thought. Unless… "What do you want me to do, old woman? Walk through the villages around Semna, looking for a few dusky beauties for this place of business?"
Nofery's face lit up, she chortled. "Now that's an idea! Not one I'd thought of, but…" Her laughter dwindled, and she shook her head. "No, I'll speak with Nebwa later. He'll serve my purpose better."
Unable to hold Bak's attention, the girl shrugged her shoulders, stepped back, and let the curtain fall.
He was puzzled. What else could Nofery want? "If you've something to say, spit it out. Imsiba will soon come, and I'll have no more time for your endless demands."
She stared at her hands, lost in some secret memory that softened her heavy features and gave warmth to her mouth and eyes. "I once knew Amon-Psaro, many years ago." "You, old woman?" Bak asked, incredulous.
"Barely more than a child, he was, yet more of a man than most I've bedded. He was strong and fierce and at the same time kind and gentle. A man above all others even then."
"How can you make such a claim? You've never traveled beyond Kor. You told me so yourself."
Her massive breast rose and fell in an exaggerated sigh. "More than twenty years ago, it was, in our capital city of Waset. He was a prince then, a hostage taken north to Kemet by the soldiers of Akheperenre Tuthmose after their victory over his father in the land of Kush."
Could she be telling the truth? Bak wondered. The war she referred to was the last the army of Kemet had fought in this wretched land. Male children of defeated kings, boys who might one day sit on the thrones of their fathers, were commonly taken to Waset to live in the royal house. Raised with the children of the highest men in the land, adopting their ways, making firm friendships, they more often than not returned to their homelands as staunch allies of the conquering nation.
Hearing voices in the lane outside, Bak tipped his stool back and peered through the door. Imsiba stood a dozen or so paces away, talking with a trio of spearmen. Bak swallowed his beer in a single gulp and stood up, ready to leave. "As for me…" Nofery sneaked a glance in his direc tion, smirked. "I was young and beautiful then, desirable to many men. Amon-Psaro among them."
The smirk convinced him: she was trying to dupe him for the second time in one day. Giving her his most charming smile, he bent over and pinched her cheek. "You were never young and beautiful, Nofery."
She stared at him with an expression so forbidding he thought for a moment she would slap him. Then she started to laugh, great hearty guffaws that set in motion every roll of fat beneath her long white shift.
Bak, feeling a bit guilty for making fun of her, pulled her to her feet. "Come, old woman. Imsiba is outside. I trust he's spent much of the afternoon questioning those poor wretches Seneb brought from the south. If so, he's earned a reward. A jar of beer should suit him, the best you have."
"You want me to go to Iken." Imsiba's voice was flat, his expression disapproving.
Bak shoved aside a basket of crusty, fist-sized loaves of bread and sat down on the second step of the open stairway leading to the roof. Fine dust drifted aimlessly in a sliver of sunlight falling from above. "The commandant said., send a courier,' and you're the man I've selected."
"What of Seneb? I've not yet finished questioning those who traveled with his caravan."
Bak had thought out exactly what he wanted, and he was not about to retreat before the Medjay's assault. "Am I not able to question them as well as you?"
Imsiba scowled at the world in general. Bak settled back on the stairs and glanced around his quarters with the unconscious satisfaction of one who had experienced life in a barracks. The room in which they sat was small and plain, with a hard-packed earthen floor and white plastered walls. One stool stood just inside the entrance, the other in a corner amid a clutter of rush baskets overflowing with scrolls, a writing pallet, paint and water pots, all the tools of Hori's trade. One rear door led to Bak's bedchamber, the second to the scribe's room. A large white dog with a broad muzzle and sagging ears sprawled between the two, his legs and bushy tail twitching in response to a dream.
Surrendering to the inevitable, Imsiba dropped onto the stool by the entrance, his back to the narrow, sun-baked lane. "What am I to do once I'm there? Or, more to the point, what are your special instructions over and above delivering the message of Lieutenant Puemre's slaying?"
Bak gave his friend a look of mock innocence. "You question my motives, Imsiba?"
"I know you too well, my friend, to look only on the surface of any task you give me that's out of the ordinary." Bak plucked a loaf from the basket and, breaking into laughter, threw it at the Medjay, who caught it with easeand a reluctant smile.
"One day I'll disappoint you, but not today." Sobering, Bak leaned forward, elbows on knees. "If the man who took Puemre's life has been caught, the matter is closed, and all I ask you to do is satisfy my curiosity. Who slew him in so foul a manner and why? For what reason did he fail to register here in Buhen? What story lies behind the belt clasp?"
Imsiba shook his head. "If the slayer has been caught, a message would've come to Commandant Thuty long before now, especially if Lieutenant Puemre was of noble birth."
"You'd think so, wouldn't you? Yet Thuty hasn't even been notified he's missing." Bak raised a cynical eyebrow. "Don't you think an officer's absence would've been noticed by this time?"
"Perhaps you make a mystery where none exists." The Medjay spoke with no conviction whatsoever.
"Go to Iken at first light tomorrow. Speak with the garrison commander and learn all you can. If he can offer no solution to Puemre's death, I must go at once. The slayer's trail is already two days old. By the time you return, three will have passed, and a fourth day will go by before I can get there."
"Are you not leaping too fast, my friend? Commandant Thuty has yet to decide what he wishes you to do." "The slain man was an officer, Imsiba, and from all appearances a man of quality." '
The Medjay muttered a curse in his own tongue. "This Lieutenant Puemre could not have been slain at a worse time. You should journey upstream with the rest of us, not spend your days in Iken, searching for carrion."
"I'm not sure when the lord Amon will arrive in Buhen or how long it'll take him to reach Iken. I'd wager six or seven days, maybe more." Bak's mouth tightened to a thin, stubborn line. "I hope to lay my hands on Puemre's slayer long before that."
Imsiba looked doubtful. "I yearn to believe you can, my friend."
"Thanks to Commandant Thuty, I feel like a man who's been offered two plump pigeons but given no opportunity to eat either of them." Bak's voice turned grim. "I may fail in the attempt, but I intend to try for both."