House of Scorpion

by Mark Gajewski

  “Who’s in charge here?” I asked a boatman.

  “Raia.” He pointed.

  The overseer was directing half a dozen workmen who were sealing seams in the side of one of the boats, a wooden one from outside the valley.

  “I’m Iry, King Scorpion’s son,” I told Raia, stepping to his side.

  “I know, Majesty. Everyone in Ptah’s Settlement knows who you are.”

  Word had traveled fast.

  “Tell me, Raia – how many boats do your men work on in a typical week?”

  “A dozen, sometimes more, Majesty. Nearly every one needs a minor repair before setting out for home. Boats that travel the sea from the North often need major repairs – they take considerable pounding. Reed boats require the most upkeep, but repairing them is very easy.”

  “Could your men build me a boat?”

  Sety had his own fleet to carry his products to Ptah’s Settlement. Which made sense, since his ancestor had been a boat builder. Smaller estates, he’d told me, had only a single boat, usually made of reeds, or used his wooden boats to take their goods to Ptah’s Settlement. I’d realized over the past week that if I intended to supply Tjeni from the warehouses at Ptah’s Settlement I’d need a fleet of my own to fetch whatever I needed whenever I needed it and send it south on my schedule instead of taking a chance that the right boats would come to or depart Ptah’s Settlement at the right time with the right goods.

  “I’d need dozens more men for something like that,” Raia replied. “I’d need cedar from the North for the boat’s spine, considerable local timber for planks and decking and ribs and such, great quantities of resin to seal it all, women to make rope, dozens of copper adzes and awls and saws, metalsmiths to keep the tools sharp, carpenters to shape the wood. Not to mention a captain and steersman and oarsmen to crew the vessel.” He shook his head. “None of which matters. There’s no one around this harbor who knows how to construct an entire boat.”

  That was unfortunate. I was going to have to send to Tjeni for experienced shipwrights. It’d be months before they could make a start.

  “That’s not exactly true, Majesty.”

  I turned around. A workman was bowing.

  “My name is Niay, Majesty. I grew up on Sety’s estate north of here in the delta.”

  “I’m familiar with it. I lived there the past few months.”

  “I began helping my father build boats when I was five years old, Majesty. Sety sent me here a couple of years ago to make sure his boats are properly repaired. I oversee the boatmen Raia assigns and do the most critical repairs myself.” He lowered his voice. “Raia tends to hurry the work and do it poorly.”

  “You know about Sety’s ancestor Nykara, I assume.”

  “My ancestor worked alongside him after he founded his estate. My family’s been building boats ever since, for hundreds of years.”

  “Can you construct a boat from start to finish?”

  “I can, Majesty. Before I learned to wield an adze I snaked ropes through drilled holes in planks and tied them together – a task for small nimble fingers. Then I learned how to shape wood, and apply resin. Most importantly, Father taught me to design boats.”

  “Boats like these?” I glanced at the quays.

  “I could duplicate them, Majesty.” Niay eyed me speculatively. “Or I could build you a better one.”

  “Better how?”

  “Longer. Wider. Capable of carrying more cargo.” He was brimming with confidence. “Faster.”

  “Faster? How?”

  Niay dropped to his knees. He sketched a boat in the dirt, with upraised prow and stern, longer than those in the harbor, with more oars on a side. “Captains put bunches of palm fronds in their bows when they travel upriver to take advantage of the wind.” He sketched fronds, then quickly erased them with his finger. Then he drew a tall pole in the center of the vessel. “This is a mast, Majesty. It holds a sail.”

  “What’s a sail?”

  “A large square or rectangle of woven reeds or linen or a combination of both. I’ll have to experiment.” He drew another view of the boat, this time head-on. A large square billowed from the mast. “See, Majesty? The wind will fill the sail and push the boat powerfully against the current. The sail will provide more resistance than the fronds.”

  “I’ve never seen a boat like this.”

  “No one has. No one’s ever built one.”

  “Why do you think you can?”

  “I’ve made models, Majesty. They work. The trick was figuring out how to support the mast, and where on the boat to place it.” Niay looked up at me, expectantly.

  I realized I’d stumbled onto a genius – if Niay’s boat actually worked. More oars, a sail to take advantage of the wind – that could cut considerable time off the trip between here and Tjeni. More trips per year, more cargo per trip – what an aid to Father’s war effort.

  “How long, Niay?”

  “At least six months, Majesty. I’ll have to go to Jebail to pick out the cedar for the spine and mast myself – I can’t leave it to just anyone. I’ll have to train workmen to shape wood and assemble it into a boat. I’ll have to experiment with the sail. With trained men, the second boat will go faster, and the third.”

  I liked Niay’s confidence and enthusiasm and that he was realistic. “Beginning today, Niay, you’re building boats for me.”

  His face lit up. “Wonderful, Majesty! Thank you, Majesty!”

  I spent most of every day with Niay over the next week, identifying the various supplies and tools he’d need to build my boat, calculating quantities and where to get them, identifying workers, arranging a location for his boatyard, figuring out how much food and clothing and other materials I’d need to support his boatmen and their families. I couldn’t help wonder if I was feeling the same way Dedi had when Nykara designed and built the valley’s first wooden boat. I saw Niay off at dawn the last day of that week on one of Sety’s vessels, bound for Jebail.

  That evening, at sunset, I was traversing the portion of the lane between the warehouses and harbor where craftsmen worked and lived, heading to Didia’s house where I was staying. The street was alive with men and women returning to their huts for the evening, darkening rapidly in the growing twilight. I heard feet pattering rapidly in the dust behind me.

  “Majesty! Wait!”

  I recognized the voice. Tamit. I ignored her. I wanted to get home and have a hot meal, not get tied up in what could only be a pointless unpleasant conversation.

  She ran a few steps past me, halted, turned, put her hand on my arm, blocked my progress.

  What was wrong with her? No one touched a royal without permission. Especially not a lapwing. I jerked my arm away.

  A few people glanced at us curiously as they diverted around.

  “Majesty, there’s something in my hut I think you’ll like very much,” Tamit said, breathless, her chest heaving. “Very much indeed.”

  I was absolutely appalled. Her. By the gods! She thought I’d like her. Her eager eyes proclaimed it. Tamit wanted to sleep with me. Touching me so familiarly was proof. The nerve! Just because I’d let her talk to me a couple of times she thought I was interested in her. Isu claimed men were fighting over Tamit. But they were lapwings, not royal like me. Tamit wanted to snare me to raise her status. That was as clear as day. I couldn’t help recall how Matia had preyed on my affections with an ulterior motive, to gain control of Nubt and revenge on her brother. She’d tricked me into believing she loved me while she’d actually been laughing at me behind my back. Because of her I’d vowed I wouldn’t let myself be used by a woman to advance her interests ever again and I was certainly going to hold firm now. At least Matia was a king’s daughter. Tamit wasn’t even elite. She was aiming far too high above her station. I wondered how many girls had used that same line on my brother Mekatre. Tamit was likely one of the few he wouldn’t have taken up on her offer. Or maybe he would have. He’d consider her golden hair exotic and overlook her fi
lth and lack of status and use her and then discard her.

  “Why do you think I’d want to be intimate with the scrawny sister of a common ivory carver?” I asked with disdain.

  “You think I want to bed you?” Tamit was incredulous. She put her hands on her hips, scowled. “I don’t even know you. You may be impressed that you’re a king’s son but I’m not.”

  “Then what do you want?”

  “You said the other day you want to get this settlement under control. I was going to help you.”

  “I’m not interested in your help.”

  “Because I’m common and scrawny? You’re an awful person! Awful! So full of yourself!”

  “So stop bothering me.” I tried to push past her. She grabbed my arm again. What was it with her? Did I need bodyguards to protect me in Ptah’s Settlement? To protect me from Tamit?

  “Have it your way, Majesty. Let goods pile up at the harbor. Let them get lost in the warehouses. Let your overseers skim off far more than their due and make us workers suffer. I thought you wanted to control your precious goods.” She released my arm with a little shove. “My mistake.”

  I was angry now. Tamit had no right to speak to me that way. Again. “And you know how to control goods? A girl who lugs ivory between workshop and harbor? Who accosts her betters in the street?”

  “You think I have nothing of value to offer because I’m not elite? Because I’m scrawny? Because I’m common? Because I’m a girl?” She crossed her arms. “Those are assets, not drawbacks. I’m so much more than you’ll ever know. I can think for myself, Majesty, and I can see clearly. Unlike the elite men in charge around here, all too stupid and set in their ways and arrogant and greedy to properly do their jobs.”

  “I’m sure I can work out a method to better control things with the elites’ help.”

  “You don’t even know what to work out!”

  “But you do.”

  “I’ve lived here my whole life, Majesty. I have eyes and I use them. I heard your discussion with my lords Didia and Hemu and Hori the other day. Rely on their memory to know where everything is? Please! Whose memory is that reliable? Especially when so many goods pass through the harbor every day. Yours, Majesty? Mine isn’t. You know they were patronizing you, don’t you? When they want to find something specific in the warehouses they spend hours looking. Their men spend hours looking. Memory indeed!”

  I wasn’t going to get rid of Tamit. Might as well jolly her along, then be on my way. “I’ll listen to what you have to say. But make it quick.”

  “Good. Follow me. My hut’s close by.” Suddenly, she was cheerful. She thought she’d won a victory over me. It’d be a hollow victory. I’d listen to her for a few minutes and then leave. And make sure to never see her again. Even if I had to have her bodily removed from the settlement.

  Tamit lifted a reed mat that covered her door and we ducked inside her hut. It was dark and hot. She fumbled about on her knees a few steps to the right. Then a linen wick sprang to life, floating in a bowl of oil. She set the bowl on the floor in the center of the room. The flickering flame cast shadows that danced in the corners. I noted a sleeping pallet rolled up next to one wall, a few cooking pots, a couple of bowls and platters, two flint knives, large earthenware jars that likely held foodstuffs and beer. Skirts were neatly folded inside a reed basket, all coarse, all tattered. A leather pouch was propped against the basket. A dozen ivory combs were laid side by side on a reed mat, each with a different animal carved on top – ostrich, hippo, giraffe, antelope, several types of birds. I recognized the comb she’d worn in her hair the day I’d met her. A couple of jars and a reed brush and a chunk of malachite were arranged next to a fish-shaped grinding palette on the same mat. A copper awl and a few stone tools and hammerstones and a bowl full of dark liquid were on the floor nearby. I wondered how a girl like her had obtained possession of an item as costly as a copper awl. One she’d taken from the ivory workshop to be sharpened by the copper smelter and hadn’t returned? She invited me to sit on a reed mat beside the bowl.

  “Would you like something to drink?” Tamit asked.

  I could only imagine how awful whatever beer was in Tamit’s jar might be. I never drank anything but wine anyway. And I didn’t intend to stay long enough to finish a cup. “No. What did you want to show me? I don’t have all night.”

  She fetched the pouch and sat down next to me. “As I said, Majesty, the other day we talked about getting goods that pass through the harbor under control. I know how.”

  I doubted it. “Go on.”

  “My brother Nastasen works in the ivory workshop, as my father did and his father. I grew up there, as I told you.”

  “Yes. You run it.” I was getting impatient.

  Tamit opened her leather pouch and removed a flat sheet of ivory. It contained a dozen images of a falcon beside a plant, all roughly an inch square, all more or less alike. “I stole the sheet from the workshop. Thay will kill me if he finds out.”

  “And the awl too?”

  “Yes.”

  Tamit wasn’t exactly helping her cause. Men were beaten or executed for stealing copper. An awl alone was worth a worker’s annual pay. She wasn’t that bright if she’d just confessed to me that she was a thief. I was in charge of Ptah’s Settlement. I could punish her for what she’d done. I just might if she wasted my time. I studied the sheet. “Etchings of falcons. So what?”

  “I began by scoring the ivory, creating twelve squares. As you can see, in each square I inscribed the outline of a plant and falcon and inlaid the outline with dark paste to make it show up. I drilled a hole in each corner.” She carefully snapped the sheet apart along one of the scored lines, separating four falcons from the rest. She snapped each of those apart and handed one to me. “A label, Majesty,” she said triumphantly.

  “So?”

  “So?” She was irritated I wasn’t catching on. “Everyone knows a container with a falcon was made by potters on Sety’s estate in the delta,” she said impatiently. “I pointed that out to you the other day. But sometimes jars are reused, and then no one knows for sure where it’s from. But picture it, Majesty! All a porter has to do is tie one of these labels to a container when he unloads Sety’s boat and everyone who handles the container will know what estate it came from – the plant stands for estate in my system – and in which warehouse it should be stored. No more searching for hours to find a specific container only the gods know where.”

  Tamit’s label instantly brought into focus ideas I’d been mulling over for weeks. “No more need to rely on a single man’s memory,” I said. “The same information available to everyone. No more confusion about where a container should be stored, or found.” I recognized I was on the cusp of something important. Far less confusion. Far more certainty. Control. I caught Tamit’s excitement.

  “I have more labels, Majesty.” She pulled sheets from her pouch. The first contained hippos.

  “For Thay’s ivory workshop,” I guessed.

  She nodded. Then a sheet with plants next to scorpions.

  “For my father’s delta estate.”

  She showed me the rest of the sheets one by one. “These identify some of the major hamlets in the delta – a bird and shepherd’s crook, a bird beside a mountain, a bird atop an elephant, a jackal and a plant – that’s an estate, of course – a shirt, a shell, a fish.”

  “The shirt represents a hamlet that supplies linen, I suspect?”

  “Yes, Majesty.”

  “Could you design a label to represent every estate, Tamit? And every settlement in the delta and valley? And every location in the North?”

  “Easy enough. I barter at the riverside market with virtually every crewman who makes deliveries here. I’ve picked up a smattering of various languages, enough to communicate. If I can’t figure an image out on my own I can discuss it with them.”

  “Do it.”

  “Another thing, Majesty. Maybe you could convince Hemu to label the section of t
he warehouse where he stores Sety’s goods with a falcon too. And all the other labels. That way it’d be easy to organize everything.”

  “That’s an excellent idea,” I said admiringly. My opinion of Tamit was changing. I’d been an idiot not to listen to her before now. “But I suspect I’ll have to order Hemu, not convince him.”

  “He’s set in his ways,” Tamit agreed. She touched the sheets spread on the mat before us with her fingertips. “As useful as these labels will be, they’re still limited. They tell where the containers came from but not what’s in them.”

  “Ah! A need for additional signs,” I said.

  “A combination of a plant and falcon and cow…”

  “Would indicate meat from Sety’s estate,” I interrupted.

  “And what about quantities?” Tamit asked. “On a boat’s deck or in a warehouse you can only tell a full jar from a half-empty one by looking inside. Maybe lines or curls denoting quantities could be inscribed on the back of the label upon receipt,” she posited.

  “That implies employing men who know how to count and keep track of quantities so I’ll always know what goods and how much of each I have stored, and where,” I said thoughtfully.

  “I could try to figure out how to do everything we’ve talked about,” Tamit said earnestly.

  An hour ago I’d have laughed at her. Not anymore. I’d determined soon after my arrival here that control of trade goods was as important as control of trade routes, and control of trade routes was the key to unifying the valley. I had the feeling Tamit had just set an important steppingstone in place on that path. She was bright and persistent and forceful and capable and wasn’t afraid to take the initiative. I’d be a fool not to utilize her despite my past misgivings. “Work on this as well, Tamit – how to ensure the right delta estates get the right tools delivered from us at the right time. How to ensure the delta estates send us the proper quantities of foodstuffs we need to feed the people of Ptah’s Settlement. How to ensure we at Ptah’s Settlement collect and deliver the foodstuffs and supplies and luxuries Tjeni will need, and other settlements. How many men it’ll take to count and label goods, and how to train them. How to track the boats that arrive and depart from our harbor, and when they’re scheduled. And probably more.”