Year of the Hyenas

by Brad Geagley

  Semerket had never before seen the pharaoh at such close range, and stood on the trunk of the old sycamore to better view him over the heads of the crowd. It was easy to see he was the father of Pentwere, for he shared the prince’s well-proportioned physique. Ramses had become gaunt with the years, Semerket noticed, and his head drooped under the heavy red and white crowns. Yet as he walked to the gangplank, his gait was anything but feeble.

  Ramses was entirely what he seemed—a successful old warrior. Whatever majesty was in him came from the reflected glory of his office and not from the blood that flowed through his veins. Ramses III had not been brought up a royal prince; he was the son of the general Setnakhte who had acquired the throne almost by accident, rescuing it (Semerket now knew) from the grasp of Queen Twos-re. In the few times Semerket had heard Ramses speak from his Window of Appearances, he was wont to address his subjects as he did his soldiers. “Listen up!” were the words with which he usually began his rasping speeches—and people did. There were some, mainly southerners, who complained that his reign lacked dignity.

  Pharaoh was even whiter-skinned than Semerket remembered. His lips were thin, his eyes pale, his nose a beak. Though others in his entourage were painted like statues, his face was barren of cosmetics. As a young man he had been red-haired, like most of the northern Ramessid kings, and the contrast between him and his chestnut-skinned Theban subjects was pronounced.

  Semerket saw that the crown prince was beside him; this was indeed the same man he had met in the House of Life. Apparently the prince had slipped northward to board his father’s warship downstream, so that he might arrive with him on this day of days. Clad in nondescript robes, he clutched a wax tablet and stylus in his hand. Now that Semerket saw father and son together, he noted the unmistakable stamp of Ramses III on the prince’s features—the thin nose and lips, the pale skin.

  Suddenly the whole purpose of Pharaoh’s visit became clear to Semerket: just as the librarian Maadje had intimated, Ramses did indeed intend to cede his authority to his son within the holy capital, just as other far-seeing pharaohs had done at the end of their reigns, to ensure a smooth transition of power.

  The crowds became silent as Pharaoh stepped aboard his royal carrying chair. Then Vizier Toh, more gnarled and bent than Pharaoh, brought him the scourge and crook and Pharaoh took them in his hands. In a radiating wave of prostration starting from the docks, The-bans knelt in an ever-expanding circle so that even those too far away to see him sunk in homage.

  At a signal from the rams’ horns, the first to rise were Pharaoh’s sons. The twelve princes scrambled to hoist their father’s chair upon their shoulders. The crown prince was not required to lift the chair, but preceded Pharaoh into the Great Temple. It was an honor not given to the other sons, and Semerket saw the humiliation that lurked behind Pentwere’s eyes. Pentwere was used to being the darling of the Thebans—but now all eyes were focused on the rarely seen crown prince.

  At that moment, Semerket was struck by the thought that none of Pharaoh’s wives waited to greet him. He could remember other such occasions, when he had been much younger, when Queen Tiya had been very much on display. Now she was conspicuous by her absence. Semerket remembered Qar’s words to him at Djamet, that Pharaoh “had a horror of women meddling in the affairs of men.” He also remembered Maadje’s words, that Tiya had locked herself away to protest Ramses’s passing over her own brood of eaglets.

  Pharaoh was borne by his sons through the Avenue of the Rams into Amun’s Great Temple, accompanied by the chanting of priests, to spend the night within the god’s sanctuary and commune with his celestial father. On the following day he would sail across the river to the fortress temple of Djamet, where he resided when he was in Thebes.

  The nobles of the court followed Pharaoh into the temple, and after them, the city officials. From a distance, Semerket saw the mayors of Thebes, fat Paser and thin Pawero, hoisted onto the shoulders of their bearers. Pawero was rigid and dignified, never deigning to look at the crowds, but Paser smirked and shouted to the Thebans, who clapped their hands for joy to see him. They shouted his name and blessed him, and Paser kissed his fingers to his lips, waving to them as he disappeared behind the gates of the temple.

  Though the day was not an official holiday, the Thebans nevertheless made for the pleasure houses and inns that lined the waterfront. The poor sat at the river’s edge, laughing and singing together and generally behaving as if Pharaoh’s arrival were a sanctioned celebration.

  Semerket paced at the tavern’s door, impatient for his brother’s arrival. He gnawed at a thumbnail and went back inside, where he discovered that the tomb-makers had been joined by two other men. Their backs were to him, and he could not readily make them out in the gloom. He could only see that one was dressed in the fine linen of a noble, while the other wore filthy rags.

  By now the tavern was full of strident Thebans whose noise made it impossible to hear anything the men said. A sudden tap on his shoulder made him spin around. It was his brother, mouth pursed in disapproval.

  “I might have known you’d be in here.” Nenry spoke loudly to be heard over the din. “I thought you said you’d wait out by the tree. Why are you all wrapped up like that, Ketty?”

  Semerket made a gesture to quiet him and led Nenry into a corner of the tavern. “Keep your voice down,” he whispered into his ear. “I’m following someone.”

  “Who?” Nenry whispered back, eyes wide.

  Semerket pushed him to the edge of the pillar for a better view of the village’s scribe and foreman. “Those in the far corner. The big one is named Paneb and the other Neferhotep.”

  Nenry peered into the gloom. “No,” he said flatly. “Those are not their names.”

  Semerket blinked at Nenry’s blithe denial.

  “If you’re going to follow someone,” Nenry continued, “I really think you should know who they are. The big one is named Hapi and the little round-shouldered one calls himself Panouk.”

  Semerket’s mouth fell open in amazement. He closed it and swallowed. “What?”

  “I’ve seen them often at Mayor Paser’s house. They’re engineers.” He turned to Semerket, smug, but a serving maid’s passing oil lamp briefly illuminated Semerket’s face in the tavern’s gloom and Nenry’s expression changed to alarm. “Ketty! Are you ill? What’s happened? You’re so thin!”

  Semerket shook his head dismissively. “What do you know about them?”

  “Let me think. I first saw the big fellow, Hapi, on the same day we found out your priestess was dead. He was in the mayor’s private rooms, early in the morning, and he was covered in limestone dust from head to toe. I remember how embarrassed I was for him. Don’t you think that when one stands before the mayor, one should dress for the occasion?” Whenever Nenry discussed proper attire, Semerket began to feel as if he were slowly settling into the ooze at the bottom of the Nile.

  “But what do they discuss with Paser, Nenry?”

  Nenry opened his mouth to answer, but stopped. A puzzled look came over his face. “I don’t really know. It seems the mayor always has some errand for me to run the moment they…” Nenry’s words trailed off. He looked sharply at his brother, and his voice became suspicious. “What don’t I know, Ketty?”

  Semerket rubbed his forehead. “I’m suddenly in the dark, as well. But I do know their names aren’t Hapi and Panouk. And they’re not engineers—they’re tomb-makers.” He indicated the other two men, the noble and the man in rags. “What about their guests—do you know them?”

  Too many people had crowded into the tavern by this time, obscuring Nenry’s view. “Give me your cloak,” Nenry said. Draping it over his face as Semerket had done, he affected the unbalanced gait of a drunkard, lurching to the ditch at the tavern’s corner as if to urinate. As he went past, he peered at the table where the four sat.

  “The one to the left is nobody,” Nenry said when he was again at his brother’s side, “some awful beggar or criminal. His
nose and ears are gone—there now, why do you look at me like that, Ketty?”

  Quickly looking into the gloom, Semerket saw that it was indeed Noseless who sat with Paneb and Neferhotep—there could be no doubt. He quickly looked around the tavern for the beggar’s two companions. If they were there and recognized him, he and his brother would be in danger. But though the tavern was crowded and smoky, he became fairly certain the other two beggars were not with Noseless.

  “And the other one? The noble?”

  “I know him, yes,” Nenry said, looking at his hands. His face was beginning to contort again. “And so do you.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Yes, you do, Ketty. It’s Naia’s husband, Nakht.”

  SOMEHOW HE HAD GOTTEN OUTSIDE. Pushing his way through the still-crowded avenues, he ignored Nenry’s attempts to restrain him. He soon found himself at the end of the jetty where the deep-water harbor was dredged. Semerket sat on the pilings, staring out on the streaming Nile, breathing hard.

  Nenry caught up to him. “Ketty…”

  Semerket shot his brother a hate-filled look.

  “Don’t blame me,” Nenry said, sitting beside him. “You were the one following them, not I.”

  Semerket’s anger melted away. “You don’t understand,” he said with a sigh. “I’d thought I was finally getting over her. There was a whole day, once, when she didn’t even enter my mind. But seeing Nakht…” He became silent.

  The scents of pepper and cinnamon emanated from a nearby warehouse, while a recently laden ship in the berth next to them exuded the musty scents of corn and emmer wheat. The resulting effluence, mixing with the stale smell of bilge water, conspired to make Nenry a trifle nauseous. He glanced at his brother’s furrowed expression. Always believing that it was his duty to cheer up people, Nenry cast about for something to beguile his brother from his gloom.

  “Well,” he asked, “do you want to hear about what I discovered in the bazaars? Isn’t that why you wanted to see me?”

  Semerket sighed. “I suppose.”

  “I did just as you said to do. Picture me, in the robe of a Babylonian merchant. I even covered my eye with a jeweled patch, if you can believe it, and spoke in that singsong way they have. ‘Jewels,’ I said. ‘Royal jewels for my wives back in Babylon.’” He stared at his brother, who still continued morose. Nenry made his voice even more animated. “I winked at them, you know, so they’d understand what I meant. But they pulled out some rubbish even I could tell were fakes. ‘No, no, no!’ I said. ‘Why do you slander my wives with this whore’s trash?’ I was so insistent they told me to come back the following day. Well, what could I do but return? Even though my wife was absolutely against it…”

  This at last piqued Semerket’s interest. “Why?” he asked, a trifle harshly. “What business is it of hers where you go?”

  “Well, frankly, she thinks anything connected with you brings disaster. Not that I blame her—it usually does.”

  Semerket grunted, not being able to argue the point, and turned his gaze once more to the river.

  His brother again took up his tale. “So the next day I returned to their stalls. But what do you think? The merchants said I should go away, that they didn’t have what I wanted. Quite a different reception from the day before, let me tell you. What made them change their tune like that, do you think?”

  Semerket continued to stare at the river. “Someone had tipped them off that we knew about the tomb robberies,” he said dully.

  Nenry’s lips began to move spasmodically and his face contorted into a quivering mass of tics and spasms. “Tomb robberies?!” The words were almost a shriek.

  Semerket reached forward and put his hand over his brother’s mouth. “Calm down. Do you want everyone to hear?”

  Nenry pulled away. “You’re going to have to tell me everything, Ketty! If I had known these things about the jewels, I’d never have gotten involved. You know that. Tomb robberies!”

  So Semerket related to Nenry all he had learned from the time he had begun his investigation—about finding the abandoned campsite within the Great Place and the ancient ear loop buried in the sands; of his suspicions concerning the tomb-makers and their odd, unfeeling reaction to the death of Hetephras; of being afraid to eat the village food for fear that it was drugged—or worse. He told him of the woman Hunro, and how she had hinted and teased of murky doings in the village. Semerket described the enmity of Paneb and Neferhotep, who nevertheless still worked in tandem, and how they often slipped from the village into Eastern Thebes, though it was forbidden for them to do so. He told of that day when he’d confronted the beggars outside the village temple, and now Noseless had shown up at the Elephant Tusk that very night… for what purpose he did not know. He told his brother, too—whose mouth by now was hanging slightly ajar—how the Medjays had discovered Hetephras’s bloody wig on the sands of the Great Place, and how he suspected that the tomb-makers had enlisted the support of Prince Pentwere to confound and possibly stop the investigation. He related how he had found the criminal queen’s liver in Paneb’s house and learned about the mysterious merchant named Amen-meses who had supposedly sold it to him. Then he told of how the ghost of Hetephras haunted the village of the tomb-makers.

  “I’m walking down a street of doors, Nenry,” Semerket concluded, his head in his hands. “I search every house, open all the doors, and when I think I know everything there is to know, I go to that last door and pull it open—only to find an entirely new street, with new doors. The more I know, the less I know. And now, tonight, two new ones have opened—the door to Mayor Paser’s house, and the one to Naia’s.” He sighed dejectedly. “The gods are dicing with me, Nenry. There is conspiracy here.”

  Nenry felt a sudden great surge of fear for his own position. “How can Mayor Paser have anything to do with this? For what purpose?”

  Semerket stood up and headed for the main boulevard. “I don’t know,” he said tiredly. Always with his brother it was the same question—how did the situation affect his own career and standing in Thebes?

  “Where are you going, Ketty?” Nenry said when they reached the main boulevard.

  “Where you must not follow. Go home, Nenry.”

  Semerket was about to enter another door that night, one that had in fact opened weeks before on the day he had run into Noseless and his friends behind the village temple. He had to go through that door now, no matter how fearsome it was.

  ALONE, SEMERKET FOLLOWED the streets that led into the foreign quarter of Thebes. Here lived the traders, mercenaries, and émigrés from distant lands who called Egypt their home. Many were exiles, banished to Egypt because of crimes they had committed elsewhere. Others were simple tourists who found Egypt too pleasant to leave.

  Above the streets where Semerket walked were a profusion of galleries and balustrades, so close they seemed to touch. Where once they had been brightly painted, the balconies were now tattered and bleached with age. When a building fell, the rubble lay in streets fouled with heaps of rotting refuse.

  The sordidness of the district was compounded by its other inhabitants, the vagrants, cripples, and mendicants who made up the Kingdom of the Beggars. Miscreants of every ilk loitered in the doorways, eyes staring after him as he passed. As he had done with Noseless and his accomplices back in the tomb-makers’ village, he flashed them the secret sign of their kingdom with his fingers. This time the signal had the desired effect: seeing the sign, the beggars withdrew again into the dark alcoves and did not threaten him.

  Soon he stood before the rotting gates of an abandoned temple. A foul place that good Thebans avoided, the building had been erected by the Hyksos hundreds of years earlier. Not many knew that it was the abode of a king.

  Semerket waited at its pylons. He wanted to do nothing more than flee, but could not. Stiffening his resolve, he pounded with his fists on the rotting gates, crying, “Open up! I have business with the king!”

  The black door slowly opened. A man imme
nse as a god stood in the gloom. Semerket made the secret sign, and the giant returned the gesture. The man glowered beneath brows painted in the Egyptian manner, though he was bearded like a foreigner. Two curved knives crossed at his chest. He beckoned for Semerket to follow him.

  In the temple courtyard, a strange silence reigned. The temple’s sacred lake had silted up over the years, but was still connected by some long-forgotten underground viaduct to the Nile. Now it was an overgrown oasis of palms and reeds. Semerket followed the giant through the tiny forest, hearing the slither of asps and scorpions beneath the rot.

  Within the temple proper, tiny oil lamps stuffed into the walls were the only illumination. Semerket became aware of hundreds of beggars that camped in the halls, waiting out the night. They seemed to shrink into the floor as he passed, occasionally moaning a curse when he blindly trod on a foot. He brought his mantle to his nose, for the place smelled worse than a privy.

  The giant pushed open a screen onto yet another set of corridors. This hapless collection of crumbling hallways upon hallways reminded Semerket of the stories he’d heard of the people of Keftiu, whose god, imprisoned at the center of a great labyrinth, was a creature half-bull, half-man to which the people fed human flesh.

  Almost upon that thought, the distant bellows of a demented and monstrous animal welled up from the dark. The bellowing became louder as they trod the dark hallways, and as he drew nearer Semerket determined that the lunatic ravings were made not by a beast, but a man.

  The giant led him to a small anteroom adjoining the room from which the screams emanated. “Wait here,” the man said. Semerket sat down on a crude chair, and found his buttocks poking uncomfortably through broken thatch. The screaming stopped abruptly. Familiar sounds drifted to him now: a very distinct tap-thump, tap-thump of some wheeled apparatus, followed by the plaintive bleat of a ram. Semerket found it impossible to sit quietly. He moved silently to the doorway and peered inside.