by Diana Wilder
Mersu touched the wrecked carving with grieving fingertips. “We worked so hard,” he said. “It had been so perfect. Prince Nakht had the tomb constructed as a gift for his son. Djehutymose himself carved this.” He looked over at Nebamun, who was tracing the edge of the destroyed face with his thumb. “This was unnecessary!” he said.
Nebamun lifted his eyebrows. He was pale and heavy-eyed, though his manner was composed. “Who can understand the mind of a vandal?” he asked. “More to the point, who's foolish enough to want to? No doubt he thought he had a good reason for this.”
“There's never a reason for something like this,” Mersu said.
“You can't be sure,” Nebamun said.
“It was criminal!” Mersu persisted.
“Whatever you say, Mersu,” Nebamun said with the beginning of a shrug. He paled and suppressed the motion.
They were speaking as though no one else were in the tomb. Khonsu looked away and caught sight of a speck of white at his feet. He bent and lifted it. It was a scrap of carving, a chunk of limestone edged with crushed crystals on one side. The other side was smooth. Khonsu turned it in his hand and saw that it was most of the statue's right eye. He frowned at it, caught by a sense of familiarity...
“This is a cap for the hub of a chariot wheel,” Seti said, lifting something gold and glittering from the floor. He had been looking around the tomb with the detached interest of one who is critically viewing a work of art. “Look at that one from the chariot His Grace brought back two days ago, and I think you'll find this is the mate. The chariot came from here.”
“Just as I thought,” said Nebamun. “They have broken into the sarcophagus chamber as well.” He nodded toward the far wall, where the sealing plaster had been smashed, allowing an entry hole some two feet in diameter. “I wonder what's left there,” he said.
Khonsu slipped the bit of stone into the pouch at his belt. “I'll find out, Your Grace,” he said. He went to the hole, dropped to his knees, and started to crawl through.
“Never mind that, Commander,” Nebamun said. “Break open the doorway.” When Mersu started to speak, he said, “I mean it. The sarcophagus chamber has obviously been rifled, and something was burned. What harm will it do for us to destroy the door?”
And so two of the brawniest of their escort took up clubs and battered down the door, to the officers' acute discomfort. When the way into the burial chamber at last lay open Khonsu stepped within. “I can't see anything here,” he said. “It's all smoke.”
“Smoke!” Mersu gasped. He seized a torch from one of the escort and hurried into the room. “I was afraid of this! This is where the hardest part of our work was done!” he said. “This where he was to lie through eternity! That quartzite sarcophagus! Aagh!”
He had caught sight of the splintered sarcophagus and the nesting coffins that had been sheltered within it, sheeted and blanketed in rock, cradling the frail, embalmed cocoon that had once been Neb-Aten against its journey into a splendid sky. Now the coffin lids were smashed and scattered where they had been flung, and there before them, cradled on a large shard of the lid, lay a still-smoking tangle of charred sheets with a blackened dome thrusting through them where the head had been. All that was left of Neb-Aten.
** ** **
Nebamun stirred the charred winding cloths with the end of his staff. “The thieves must have cut through the wrappings to take the jewelry hidden on the body,” he said. “What was left after that was worthless, so they burned it. What a squalid ending for that hectic young man!”
Seti had come into the chamber and was looking down at the swath of ashes with a twist of disgust to his mouth. “You say you knew him, Your Grace,” he said. “Did he die by his own hand?”
Nebamun's mouth stretched into an odd smile as he met Mersu's gaze. “No,” he said. “He simply turned his face away from the living and allowed death to come and take him. It was a strangely silent, still ending for one who had been so imperious and so active.”
Seti had turned to inspect the shattered sarcophagus. “This is quartzite!” he exclaimed. “It's in pieces! Never say that this was done with a club!”
Mersu looked grimly down at the fragments. “It was done with fire,” he said. “Look where the stone's blackened. Someone kindled a blaze on and over it, left it to burn for a long time, then doused it. The shock of the cold water on the hot stone made it fracture. It's an old trick.”
Seti leaned forward with an exclamation. “Look, Your Grace,” he said. “There's blood here.”
“Blood?” Nebamun repeated.
Khonsu stood beside Seti and frowned at the marks on the jagged edge of the lid, then nodded. “So there is. Just a spot. Here, and here.” He lifted his head. “Check the antechamber. I want to know if there is any more blood.”
Lord Nebamun closed his eyes and leaned back against the wall.
When one of the soldiers came back with the report that nothing further had been found, he lifted his head and looked over at Khonsu.
Seti dusted his hands on his kilt. “Nothing more?” he repeated. “Maybe our thief cut himself on the lid. Precious little to find.”
Lord Nebamun nodded. “Well, Commander, “he said. “You have seen Neb-Aten, or what's left of him. Are you satisfied now?”
Khonsu gazed around the burial chamber. His eyes fastened on the titles of the young man. “Captain of Archers', “Commander of One Thousand of Chariotry', “Kinsman and Well-Beloved of the Lord of the Two Lands'...
He plucked loose the knot holding his bracer in place, removed the smoothly chased bronze, and quietly laid it within the swath of charred wrappings.
Nebamun seemed surprised, though his voice was calm as ever. “What are you doing, Commander?” he asked.
“I'm giving a fellow soldier a gift that he'll need in the life to come,” Khonsu replied. “For I don't think it truly matters what condition his body's in. If he was justified, then he lives and walks in the Field of Reeds at this moment. However clamorous and arrogant he may have been, he didn't deserve this treatment. He was an archer: he'll need a bracer in the Land of the West, and I gladly give him mine.”
The Second Prophet looked quickly down at the coffins; Khonsu had the brief, strange impression that his lashes were suddenly wet, but Nebamun merely said, “He would have appreciated such a gift, Commander, and blessed you for your generosity.”
“I suspect he'd have done the same for me,” Khonsu said. “Come, Your Grace. We all are tired; we had best return to the city to rest.”
** ** **
But when they returned to Akhet-Aten they learned that one of their patrols had discovered a body by the roadside.
XXIX
The body seemed like a tangle of skin and cloth from a distance, with only the steeply angled jut of an arrow shaft to give any clue to its identity. The northern track stretched beyond and behind them, level and packed and shaded by the overhang of the rock above it. The sheer drop of the cliffs to the southwest, just past the corpse, veiled the silver ribbon of the Nile. The wind trailed plumes of dust and sand from the edges of the rocks, ruffling the surface of the river far below them, sifting along the disordered hair.
The sun was beginning its slow descent into the west, lengthening the shadow of the arrow rearing upward through the ribcage. The cliffs and valleys bounding the roadway shimmered in the heat that had already gone far toward baking the corpse into a mass of dried flesh. Khonsu's guards looked sidelong at the body and then watched impassively as their commander sat back on his heels and lifted his eyebrows at the Master Physician.
Sennefer frowned down at the corpse before him and then knelt beside it. “There's no doubt that he's dead,” he remarked.
“Yes,” Khonsu agreed. “Or who he is.”
“Paser,” Sennefer said. “He was thoroughly killed. Here: feel this for yourself, Commander.”
Khonsu set his hand where Sennefer indicated. The hard, curved surfaces of the skull shifted and grated together be
neath his fingertips like carelessly pieced shards of a broken pot. “I see what you mean, Physician.”
He had received the news of the death, had notified Sennefer and then, with Lord Nebamun's blessing, gathered an escort and gone with the Master Physician to the place where the body had been found.
Khonsu looked down once more at the wreckage of what had once been a living, breathing man. “A blow to the head, then.”
“That's all it could be,” Sennefer agreed. He added with dry humor, “You're a wise man, Commander, to ignore the arrow.”
One of the guards bent to look closer.
Khonsu caught the motion, glanced at the man, and then, turning back to the corpse, snorted. “Look at it,” he said. “The angle's impossible. This one here: entering just below the ribcage in back, with its slant, it must come out somewhere near the breastbone! Unless it was shot by a pygmy lying on his back as this chap stepped over him, it was done to mislead us.”
“Someone thinks we're a pack of half-wits,” said Sennefer. “Come on, I'll draw out the arrow, and then your men can turn him. I want to see how he came to break his skull.”
He suited actions to words. The arrow came easily away, but the head remained in the wound. “A hunting arrow?” Sennefer said, staring at the grooved shaft.
“Let me see that,” Khonsu said. He frowned at the fletching. “Very odd,” he said. “This arrow's the mate to the two Lord Nebamun loosed two nights ago!”
“That is strange,” Sennefer agreed. “But it can wait. Turn him.”
Khonsu nodded to two of his men, who took hold of the corpse and heaved. The body was stiff, and when the man lay face-up they could see dried blood caking his hair and the side of his neck, as they had suspected. The face was distorted by the force of the blow and the traces of rage. The ground beneath him was soft, level, and unmarked with blood.
Khonsu sat back on his heels with a frown. “It's Paser,” he said. He cast a quick look around. “But where's—” he began. He did not finish the sentence, but the thought remained. Where was Ruia?
Sennefer scowled at the distorted face. “Yes: Paser,” he said. “Looks like he died hard.”
The face glared up at them. Khonsu stared back. Where was Ruia?
“Odd,” Sennefer mused. “Paser was killed with a mace, judging by the depression in the skull. Do you or your men see any blood or brains spattered around here?”
Khonsu motioned to his men. “Cover this area and those rocks,” he said. He crouched on his heels and watched as they cast about.
“Nothing over here, Commander!” shouted one man by an outcropping of red stone.
“None near these rocks, Chief!” another cried.
“Has anyone found any traces of the blow?” Khonsu asked. He looked from face to face, then turned back to Sennefer. “None at all,” he said. “I'd think with a wound like that, there'd be plenty to see.”
Sennefer looked up at the sky. “It's a still day, and sunset is some time away. The light should last awhile. Would you look personally, Commander, and tell me what you find?”
“We'll see what these surroundings can tell us,” Khonsu said. He got to his feet, brushed off his knees, and looked around.
“There's a streak over here, Chief!” one of the guardsmen called. “It looks as though something was hauled across here!”
Khonsu hurried over. “Show me, Yuy.”
“It's here, Chief. Pretty visible, if you ask me.”
“You're right,” said Khonsu. He bent to look at the marks and then shook his head. “From the look of it, Master Physician,” he said, “Paser was dragged through here.”
Sennefer craned his neck, frowned at the mark, and then bent to look at the corpse's feet. “Hmm,” he said. “I can see some abrasions on the heels. He was dead when it was done: they didn't bleed at all.”
Khonsu nodded. “From the direction of the scrape marks, it looks as though he was brought here from the desert.”
Sennefer was peering at some spots on Paser's chest. “From the desert, you say?” he demanded.
“Yes, Master Physician. You can see—there—the tracks come from the east.”
“The killer can't have thought to hide the body by bringing it closer to the main northern road from the city,” Sennefer objected. “That was well within the boundaries of our patrols last night. It's as though he wanted it to be found. That makes no sense!”
“No sense at all,” Khonsu agreed. “Unless...” He considered and then completed the sentence. “Unless it was meant to warn us.” He rose and followed the track over the nearby rise. “It's no use,” he called. “The trail ends here. Paser must have somehow been carried to this side of the hill and then set on the ground and dragged. This ground's hard and yields few tracks. There may be hoof prints, but it'll take sharper eyes than mine to tell with any certainty.”
“Bend your sharp eyes to this,” Sennefer said, pointing, when he came back. “Blood on his hand, and by the look of the rest of him, probably not his. And while he has a sheath at his belt, his dagger is gone.”
“I'd noticed that,” Khonsu said.
Sennefer turned his attention back to the face. “Interesting,” he remarked, running a fingertip around the orbit of the eye and lifting his eyebrows at the fractures. “Look at his expression, and then notice the location of the wound. His features are distorted, and I don't think it's solely due to the force of the blow. He was in a rage. If this was a murder, it wasn't one of stealth. He was killed in a fight, or at least face to face with his attacker.”
Sennefer bent to look more closely, and then straightened with a nod. “And here,” he said, pointing to the man's forearms. “Broken. He threw up his left arm to protect himself against the blow to the head. The bones of the left forearm are broken, but I don't see much bruising, so it probably happened right before he was killed. The right arm is different. Look: the elbow's sprained, almost dislocated, as though the arm were forcibly stopped in a sweeping stroke going from right to left.”
“Probably a parried stroke,” Khonsu said. “Parried by a heavy weapon.”
“Well and good, then,” Sennefer said. “And if you look you'll find bruising on the flesh and swelling at the joint. And there's bloodstaining around his right hand. He struck something that bled.”
“There's something odd about his right hand aside from the blood,” Khonsu said. “Can you see it?”
Sennefer frowned at the hand. “It's distorted,” he conceded. “But it's hard to say with that blood on it. I'll look into it, but the blood doesn't appear to have come from him.” He pushed to his feet and nodded to the half-circle of guards standing before him. “I'll want to examine the corpse more thoroughly. Would you ask your men to take him back to the city for me and have him brought to the House of Life?”
“As you wish, Master Sennefer,” Khonsu said. He caught Yuy's eye and said, “Supervise it, Yuy, and report to me at my quarters when you're through.”
He and Sennefer watched as the men lifted the body, which was still stiff, set it in one of the chariots, and roped it securely to the rails before leaving.
When they were out of sight he looked over at the Master Surgeon. “It was a fight,” he said.
“That's what I think,” Sennefer agreed. “But that brings a big problem: who was he fighting? Paser has blood all over him, and it's obviously someone else's. Who fought and killed Paser?”
Khonsu knew the answer: Ruia. But Sennefer had not known that Paser was being followed. He turned away from his unease and spoke calmly. “Try an even more basic question, Master Sennefer,” he said. “Why would Paser have been fighting anyone here?”
“I can think of more than one explanation,” Sennefer said. “There's a question of thievery. Paser had more than his share of greed, that I could see, and he may have stepped on someone's toes.”
“That's fair enough,” Khonsu said. “What's your other theory?”
“Paser and Ptahemhat parted on bad terms,” Sennefer s
aid.
“Yes,” Khonsu said. “But Ptahemhat was sent to his quarters.”
“Did he stay there?” Sennefer asked. “You heard his parting shot to Paser. He's a hotheaded young man and no more likely to obey someone he views as a father than anyone else of his age and temperament.”
“Ptahemhat only echoed what everyone else thought,” Khonsu pointed out. “He certainly spoke for me! Paser as much as called Lord Nebamun a pederast. He was lucky that His Grace took the comment for what it was worth, or there might not have been enough of Paser left in that room to examine.” He frowned and then said, “What was the other explanation?”
“That he was killed and brought here as a sort of ghostly warning to us,” Sennefer said.
“It's a foolish notion,” Khonsu said. “But I agree that someone might have thought to do that. Well. We'll see what you discover when you take a closer look. From what I know of him, His Grace will want to send Paser's body back to Memphis for embalming.”
** ** **
Lord Nebamun raised his head and frowned at Khonsu. “You say you found Paser?”
“Yes, Your Grace,” said Khonsu. Nebamun had been sitting on the loggia of his private apartments, gazing out over the ruins of the garden. He had been calm when he heard the news, but his grief had been evident and undoubtedly sincere.
“He's been dead for some time, according to Sennefer,” Khonsu said.
“Where is he now?” asked Nebamun. He appeared even more fatigued than he had been that morning. Though his habitual courtesy was unchanged, it seemed a little forced to Khonsu.
“Sennefer has him at the House of Life, Your Grace,” Khonsu replied. “He wants to examine the body more thoroughly than he could out in the open. He'll report his conclusions this evening.”
“Very good,” said Nebamun.
Khonsu hesitated. “The death was violent, Your Grace.”
