Leaving the storage area, Meren walked between the two columns and mounted the stairs to the upper floor. The door was ajar. Inside he found a deserted living chamber with mats, worn cushions, and a cold brazier. A few pieces of furniture were scattered around, all of old, inferior wood, probably sycamore. The chamber was dark except for a diffuse glow from a ceramic lamp on the floor near an entryway that probably led to the kitchen. Movement in the shadows caught Meren's eye. He backed up a step, then stopped as he recognized yet another goose. It was perched on a stone quern in the corner, devouring grain.
Meren thought about hailing the cook and her husband, but decided not to. He hadn't expected to find the woman in such a neglected place. He had assumed that the cook, Hunero, had been given provision from the royal estates when she left, or that she had taken a position with a noble household. Favored royal servants were symbols of rank and prerogative. Hunero should never have lacked for a place. And surely Akhenaten, heretic though he had been, would have provided for his beloved queen's loyal and trusted cook.
Yet this farm had been neglected for a long time. No one had replastered the walls, repaired the gate, or kept adequate provisions. How had its owners survived? Sustenance must have come from elsewhere. He was always suspicious of those who seemed not to toil and yet prospered-if living in this half-ruined old place could be called prospering. What was going on?
Already wary, Meren grew more uneasy as he looked around the living chamber. In a niche built into the wall sat a double statue of the heretic and his queen, Nefertiti. A foolish display, even for a former royal servant. The heretic was anathema. It would only take some officious tax collector or priest's report to invite persecution. Even dead Akhenaten still threatened those he touched, as he had threatened Meren.
He walked over to the niche, which was bathed in the dim lamplight, and stared at it. Seldom since his death had Meren looked upon the visage of Akhenaten. This cheap limestone version had been painted so that the king wore bright trappings. More talented than the sculptor, the artist had painted the eyes so accurately that they held a reflection of the black fire of Akhenaten's gaze. Meren quickly looked away from it to examine Nefertiti's fragile figure. His fascination with the contrast between the two must have been the reason he was caught off guard by the crash behind him.
Whirling around, Meren drew the dagger in his belt and cocked his arm over his shoulder, ready to throw. As he sank into a crouch that would offer a smaller target for an attacker, he spotted a tiny woman in the threshold between the kitchen and the living chamber. She had dropped a bowl of water.
"Thief, thief, thief, thief, thief!" the lady screeched.
Meren winced at the shrill trumpeting sound of her voice. He was sure Egyptian women developed blaring voices that could be heard across a battlefield from keeping order among their children. The shrill voice rose higher; the goose honked and hissed. Meren thrust his dagger into his belt and covered his ears.
"Peace, old woman! Do I look like a thief?"
The woman's mouth snapped shut. Her jaws pressed together and spread out as they do when back teeth have been lost.
"What are you doing here, boy?"
Startled at being addressed in so familiar a manner, Meren blinked, then said, "I'm searching for a woman called Hunero, who was favorite cook to the Great Royal Wife, Nefertiti, the justified, and I seek her husband, Bay, also."
"Hunero is down in the yard milking the donkey, young one." The old woman vanished back into the kitchen without another word. Meren was about to follow when she reappeared, carrying another bowl of water, which she set near the goose.
"There, Beauty. Drink deep, my sweet, my little gosling. She's a little treasure. She's a little daub of honey, she's a-"
"Did you say Hunero was in the yard milking a donkey?"
"A goat, fool. Milk a donkey, what a mad thought."
"Aged one, there is no one in the yard."
"My name is Satet, boy. You should know that if you're a friend of my sister's."
Satet seated herself on a stool and stroked the goose named Beauty with a trembling hand. Meren guessed that she had six or seven decades, a great age seldom achieved by those of humble rank. Like many who attain a revered age, Satet had shrunk as her years increased until she was the size of a twelve-year-old boy.
Unfortunately, her skin hadn't shrunk as her bones did, and now she looked like a huge bag into which had been tossed a collection of children's bones. Her neck was pleated with more wrinkles than a courtier's robe. Wobbly blue veins protruded from her skin like earthworms. Her hair had been shorn in a haphazard manner so that it hung in thin, irregular lengths.
However, her age and frailty didn't concern Meren. He was disturbed by the slight but constant nodding of her head, her strange conversation, and the fact that she had stuck at least a dozen wooden combs in her hair at different angles.
"Satet," Meren said, "where did you say Hunero and Bay have gone?"
"Oh, them? They're not here."
"I know, but where have they gone?"
"They left, all of a sudden, like nomads in a drought.
One day Hunero came to me and said they were leaving, going to the city to seek fortune. A lot of folly, that is."
"Did Hunero say which city?"
Satet was stroking Beauty again. The goose shifted her weight from one foot to the other, marching in place as she rubbed her back.
"Aged one, about Hunero."
"Oh, she'll be back soon. She just went to fetch honey from the hives out back."
Suppressing a sigh of exasperation, Meren drew near the seated woman. "Do you live here alone?"
"Of course, young one. Do you see anyone else here? That lazy Bay convinced Hunero they'd be safer in the city, among lots of people."
"Safer, why safer?" Meren squatted so that his head was level with Satet's and caught her gaze. "Please, aged one, tell me why they felt safer in the city."
A voice came at him from behind. "No one knows why they left."
Meren's hand went to his dagger again. Looking over his shoulder he watched a youth come toward him. Unarmed, he carried a sagging basket in both hands, which he set beside Satet.
"I have brought your food and supplies, good grandmother."
Meren's hand dropped from his dagger hilt. This boy was no danger. He bore no weapon except for a small flint knife stuck in the waistband of his kilt. He was tall, but thin as youths are before they attain the musculature of manhood. Satet patted his head and trailed her wrinkled fingers through smooth, soft hair that gleamed as though it had been recently washed.
"Your name?" Meren asked.
"I am Tentamun, master. Bay paid me goods worth many copper deben to look after the good grandmother until he came back."
"So you aren't related to Satet. Where did they go, and when?"
"They left, oh, almost a week ago. Five or six days, I think. But Bay refused to say where they were going, and now no one in the village has heard from either Hunero or her husband Bay."
Satet gave Tentamun a playful slap on the arm. "I told you, boy, Hunero is in the yard milking the donkey."
"Yes, revered grandmother," Tentamun replied with patience.
"Did anyone see which way they sailed?" Meren asked.
"No, master, but I happened to be up early the morning they were to leave, and I saw a temple trading ship pass by going south. I haven't seen Hunero or Bay since that vessel sailed by."
"South," Meren repeated.
He pondered his situation. He couldn't chase all the way to Nubia in hopes of finding the city in which his quarry chose to hide. He wasn't going to pry the truth from Satet, if she even knew what the truth was, without a great deal of patience and time. He couldn't stay here. Satet would have to go with him back to Memphis.
"You're certain no one knows where the couple went?" he asked Tentamun.
"Yes, good master. Their leaving has been the talk of the village. Even the headman doesn't know, and we'r
e all worried about Satet." Tentamun swept his arm around in a half circle. "After all, they took almost everything with them, even their cookware. We don't think Hunero and Bay are going to return."
Meren remained silent for a moment, assessing Tentamun's direct look and the way his hands lay comfortably on his thighs as he knelt, resting on the backs of his heels.
"I think you're right. Those two aren't coming back. And I am left with a problem. My master, a great noble, has need of an experienced cook to train several in his household. I was sent to find Hunero. My master detests failure, but perhaps he will forgive me if I bring Satet."
"Oh, but-"
"You can cook, can't you?" he asked the old woman.
"Better than that conceited Hunero," Satet said with a sniff. "I was placed in the household of the high priest of Ptah in Memphis. Hunero says she'll get a place even more grand than that. I told her she's imagining above herself. She thinks she's going to be a royal cook, of all things."
His head was beginning to ache from trying to follow Satet in her voyages through the past and present and back again. Meren spent a while longer satisfying Tentamun that the old one would be safe in his care. Then the youth left, his departure unnoticed by Satet. She was too busy shrieking for her pet cat.
"Treasure, here Treasure, where is mother's little girl?"
Meren covered his ears and glanced around the living chamber. He would sleep on a pile of mats tonight and leave for Memphis with Satet in the morning. He only hoped she would remember him then.
He slept lightly, waking every few hours. Most of the time he woke because Satet was roaming around the house. She napped throughout the day, rather than sleeping through the night. Once he came awake with a jolt to find the old woman's snores from the single bedchamber echoing off the bare plastered walls. Painfully alert, Meren listened to the deep groaning bark that came with each intake of breath. He had a vague memory of something moving beside him.
Looking around, he could see little in the blackness. He assumed Beauty was still nestled in her basket stuffed with linen scraps. The feeling of air disturbed by the movement of a body remained with him. Was it the remnant of a dream, the cat Treasure, or worse, a demon?
"What demon would bother with this neglected and peculiar household?" he mumbled.
Meren rose and went to the door. Pulling it open, he stood searching the yard, the garden, the barren fields. He heard an owl and looked up. A black silhouette crossed the sky, descended, and settled on the gatepost. Meren couldn't make out the flattened face, but he could see the black feather tufts.
Without warning the great bird's head swiveled around, then twisted back in Meren's direction. With a hoot that sounded across the horizon and reverberated from the desert cliffs, the creature sprang into the air. Wings flapping, it climbed the sky, its cries fading before Meren lost sight of it.
He remained at the door to listen for what had startled the owl. In the yard all was stillness. It was so quiet he could hear the north breeze whistle through the vent in the roof. Finally he perceived movement. Treasure, a fat black-and-gray bundle of meanness and gluttony, jumped onto the gatepost and sniffed the spot where the owl had perched. Meren watched the feline stalk along the wall and leap to the ground outside the yard. A black spot, she moved with deliberate care into the fields. Nothing else moved. The cat. He'd sensed the cat leaving the house. After assessing the likelihood that the source of his awakening might be something more sinister, Meren went back to his makeshift bed. Once inside the house, all he could hear were Satet's resounding snores and her intervening snuffles. The cat had startled the owl. He closed his eyes only to open them wide at the eruptions coming from Satet's bedchamber. If it hadn't been the cat that had frightened the owl, it had been those snores.
Now Kysen knew where Ese had gotten the inspiration for her imitation Greek house. He glanced at the guard on either side of him, then raised his gaze up past the brilliant frescoes to the people on the second floor who leaned over a balustrade and stared down at him silently. His escorts had halted him beside the circular central hearth, and the balustrade went around the entire square walk. Above it rose the clerestory window, now dark and sprinkled with stars. Ese had thrust him into the care of these two spear-carrying want-wits and ordered them to take him to Othrys. That she hadn't come with them said something about the relationship between her and the Greek.
A silver-haired Mycenaean in a long robe appeared and shuffled across the hall. Those in his path gave way. Many of them were accomplished bandits and pirates who stepped aside for no man, so Kysen knew immediately that this Greek was an intimate of Othrys. The farther into the hall the man came, the quieter its occupants became. Silver Hair's steps faltered and ceased as he drew near Kysen. He squinted, then drew a sharp breath and scuttled back the way he'd come.
Conversation failed to resume, and Kysen tried to look unconcerned that everyone seemed to be staring at him. A boom signaled the closing of a door somewhere within the house. It was a deceptive place, appearing to be one moderately large building when it really occupied the entire space of the two adjacent dwellings as well. Why hadn't such a large residence attracted the attention of the mayor and the royal officials concerned with foreigners?
Another boom sounded, closer, and then Silver Hair reappeared, entering from a door painted to look like part of a fresco of leaping dolphins in sea waves. Taking short, careful steps, Silver Hair came to them, made a signal with his hand, and was off again. One of the guards shoved Kysen, and he followed. When they left the hall, Silver Hair picked up the pace and led Kysen through a maze of rooms and corridors.
All at once they came into an antechamber crowded with more guards, then a room filled with shelves bearing clay tablets, papyrus, and flat pieces of stone and shards of pottery. Almost every tablet, papyrus roll, stone, and shard had writing on it-the wedge-shaped script of the Asiatics, the odd scratchlike characters of the Mycenaeans, and copper tablets covered with a script he'd never seen. A good proportion of this varied collection of documents bore signs of violence, either burning, damage from weapons, or both.
The center of the room was clear of shelves and held several low tables. Scribes sat on the floor or on stools surrounded by tablets, shards, and papyrus. Kysen could see only two men without a stylus or rush pen. One was the odorous Tcha. The man in leggings, sandals, and a blue tunic cinched with a gold belt was Othrys.
Silver Hair approached with silent delicacy, hovering behind his master. Othrys paid no attention to his servant or to Kysen. He was a well-built man of middle years, his arms, legs, and chest thick with hillocks of muscle. Puckered scars interfered with the smooth expanse of skin a shade or two lighter than cedar. In spite of the scars, his skin had the tautness of a youth, not a battle-weary barbarian pirate.
Kysen watched Othrys carefully, trying to discern his intentions. He gained nothing from staring at eyes the color of the sky at midday. He wasn't used to sky eyes. They seemed cold and pale compared to the warm shades of brown and black so much more common in Egypt. However, they did go with hair the color of old honey and streaked with gold from the sun. He was still assessing Othrys when Tcha's whine rose above the whispers of the scribes.
"I tell you he's dead! The jackals dragged him away, and I swear upon my own ka, I can't find our-" Tcha glanced at Kysen. "I can't find our belongings."
"By the Earth Mother, he's run off with the spoils," Othrys said.
Tcha had been squatting on the floor, but he had never been able to stay in one place for long. The thief jumped to his feet and darted in one direction, then another as he rattled on. "Not run off, killed. There was a hole hacked in his chest. A hole, I tell you!"
"Who is dead?" Kysen asked. He brushed by Silver Hair and confronted Tcha. "Who is dead?"
Tcha slid a narrow look at Kysen, then at Othrys.
"My cat."
Folding his arms, Kysen said, "You don't have a cat. No cat would keep company with one as filthy and ill
-mannered as you."
"Be at ease," Othrys said in a light purring tone that encouraged neither ease nor further conversation.
"Most worshiped prince," Silver Hair murmured. "I have brought the one called Nen to you, from Mistress Ese."
The servant retreated. Kysen turned his attention back to his host to find that Othrys had been surveying him calmly, rather like a mongoose contemplating a cobra. Othrys had the most unwavering stare he'd seen, other than pharaoh's. But the golden one's stare was that of a living god contemplating an invisible horizon between mortality and divinity. Othrys's stare was a javelin piercing a man's ka. Kysen always felt that the barbarian's sky-hued gaze masked the fact that he was debating whether he would kill his guest now, or later.
"Thunderbolts and quakes, Nen, be seated while I deal with this fluttered fool."
"It's to be later, then," Kysen said to himself.
"What?"
"Nothing," Kysen replied.
Tcha's relentless movements brought him back to Othrys. "I tell you, great master, there be a fiend abroad in Memphis."
"There are always demons who torment the living," Othrys said.
Flapping his arms in agitation, Tcha burst into a tirade. "He had no heart! And there was a feather. Heart and feather, feather and heart. Do you know what that means, great master?"
Othrys rolled his eyes and shook his head.
"Judgment," Kysen said. He was growing vaguely uneasy, no doubt because Tcha wouldn't keep still and chattered absurdities.
Othrys threw up his hands. "What judgment?"
Tcha licked his lips, but couldn't make his voice work. Kysen answered for him.
"He seems to think the missing heart and the feather- was it a white one? Ah. He seems to think the missing heart and the white feather are signs of a different kind of creature. Which causes me to fear for the health of old Tcha's wits."
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