by Lauren Haney
Her dark eyes leveled on his and a hint of a smile flitted across her face. “Can I go to them if I so desire?”
Is she teasing me, he wondered, or testing me? “You must remain here.”
She turned away and crossed her sitting room to stand in the courtyard door, her back to him, her face and thoughts hidden from him. The sun touched her shapely legs, visible to the thighs below the short belted white tunic common to her homeland. Her ivory flesh, her slender waist, the thick reddish braid hanging down her back made her seem to Bak like an exotic bird. A bird torn from faraway Hatti, pushed ever farther south by the winds of fate, and dropped finally in this vile desert of Wawat.
He prayed with all his heart that she was free of guilt. He could not bear to think of so lovely a creature ending her life in this barren, unforgiving land.
“May I send Lupaki with a message?” she asked, pivoting to face him.
“A message?” Had his thoughts drifted so far away he had missed something? Had she threatened to tell Tetynefer about the slab of gold she had given him?
“How else can my friends know they may come?”
“My scribe Hori has too few tasks to fill his days,” he managed. “He’ll spread the news.”
A spot of pink colored each of her cheeks. “While they’re here, sharing my sorrow, will your Medjays be stationed in every corner to remind them I’m soon to stand before the viceroy, accused of taking the life of the man I mourn?”
Bak felt his own face color. He yearned to set her free, to leave her in peace. But he had to go on with his deceitful game and play it through to the end. “Ruru and Pashenuro will remain. As will I.”
She studied his face for so long he feared she was reading his thoughts. “I see.”
Swinging away, she passed through the door and crossed the courtyard to sit on the floor before her loom. He followed with hesitant feet, like Hori’s puppy, he thought, when it had not yet learned to trust, and feared a harsh word. The dusky servant girl was sweeping sand across the floor. The cloud of dust she raised billowed around Pashenuro, who sat with his back to the wall, forehead resting on his knees, sound asleep. Ruru sprawled in front of Nakht’s reception room, his bandaged head bowed over the blade of his spear, which he was honing to a fine point.
“We’ll not hover,” he said, kneeling beside the loom. “Only Ruru need remain in the courtyard. With his head swathed in linen, none will take his presence to heart.”
She glanced up from the shuttle flying back and forth through the threads stretched taut across the frame. “For that I thank you.”
Rebuffed by the stiffness in her voice, he rose to his feet.
With a rigid back, her eyes locked on her work, she said, “Yesterday you brought the body of a man from Dedu’s village, I heard, a goldsmith called Heby. I understand he was slain with a Medjay spear, but had another wound in his shoulder.”
“Yes.” He was relieved the news had reached her. If she had allied herself with the thief, at least now she knew to what lengths the vile criminal would go to protect himself. “He was the man you found searching this house. The wound was the mark of the weapon you threw.”
“The man you vowed you’d find with little difficulty.”
Bak’s laugh was cynical. “I thought not to find him the way I did, with his lips sealed forever.”
She let the shuttle slide to a stop and gave him an odd, rather chilly look. “You guessed right away he’d come for the gold my husband hid. Is that not true?”
“I did,” he admitted, wondering what she was getting at.
“And did you guess at that time he was a goldsmith? One of the few men in this city who could’ve molded the bar you’ve hidden away?”
He eyed her warily. “Not then, no.”
“When did you guess his craft?”
“I had no need to guess.” He heard a tinge of irritation in his voice, moderated it. “I learned his name and the way he earned his bread from one who saw him in the house of death.”
She tamped the threads tight and went back to her task, but her attention was far away, her face clouded by her thoughts. The shuttle raced across the loom, its whisper inaudible beneath the swish of the broom and the rasp of the stone grating across Ruru’s spear point.
“What of the spear in his breast?” she asked. “They say it came from your police arsenal.”
“Mistress!” He shook his head in disgust. “If all those who speak with so much wind were to open their mouths at one time, the desert sands would blow to the farthest ends of the earth.”
“I learned the weapon was yours from the steward Tetynefer’s wife. How can you deny it?”
Suddenly he understood. Appalled, he knelt and slammed his widespread hand down on the shuttle, jamming it midway across the loom. “You think I took Heby’s life!”
She stared straight ahead. “Did you?”
He grabbed her chin and pulled her face around so she had to look at him. “I’ve slain no man, mistress Azzia, nor will I ever without good reason. To my way of thinking, that thin bar of gold you gave me is not reason enough.”
“What of the bandages you wear?”
He barked out a disbelieving laugh, jerked his hand away, and stood up. “They cover burns, not the slashes of a weapon, and it happened during the storm, many hours after Heby was slain.”
Azzia’s eyes never wavered from his face, but for the first time since Nakht’s death, she seemed unsure of herself. Does she still doubt me, he wondered glumly, or is she thinking of the man I seek?
Bak would always remember that afternoon as one of the most disagreeable in his life. Partly because he hated himself for using Azzia, partly because he felt like a common eavesdropper, listening to private, sometimes intimate conversations he had no right to hear.
Azzia’s servants had bustled about, overjoyed with their mistress’s release from loneliness, temporary though it was. The women prepared fruit, sweet cakes, and bowls of fragrant flowers. Lupaki, with Pashenuro’s help, built a reed pavilion in the courtyard and furnished it with stools and small tables. Azzia received her friends in its shade, where a lazy breeze wafted down from the rooftop. Wearing the long, unadorned white shift popular in the capital, no jewelry, and her hair braided as always, she seemed to Bak more gracious and elegant than any woman he had ever known.
Tetynefer’s wife Iry, a woman as plump as her husband, arrived ahead of the rest. Kames’s spouse came shortly after with two other women, officers’ wives, Bak gathered. All four wore long shifts and were decked out with multicolored bead collars, armlets, and bracelets. Iry’s hair was pulled back in a linen bag. Kames’s wife sweated under a heavy wig. The others wore their natural hair straight, clipped horizontally across the shoulders. A trio of senior scribes and an elderly priest appeared, the latter’s shaven head as shiny as a mirror.
Although good-natured, Bak soon realized mistress Iry had a will of iron. She appeared genuinely fond of Azzia-motherly, in fact-and guided the conversation like a commander might guide his battalion through a narrow, treacherous valley. Not a word was uttered about Ma’am or Azzia’s precarious future. No one mentioned Ruru, sitting in a shady out-of-the way corner near the stairwell leading up from the audience hall. Pashenuro they could not see in Nakht’s reception room.
While they chatted, Bak prowled the rooms behind the courtyard, glimpsing the guests from shadowed doorways, catching snatches of conversation. No matter where he went, he seemed always to be in the way of the servants hurrying to the pavilion, carrying bowls piled high with food or vessels filled with drink. His presence was a constant reminder that their mistress was not free. Their cheerful smiles faded, the looks they gave him grew tight-lipped and resentful.
Azzia was quick to notice their flagging spirits. She excused herself from her guests, hurried inside, and found him watching Lupaki pour a deep red wine from a heavy storage jar into a smaller long-necked, blue-glazed vessel. Lupaki rolled his eyes toward Bak, grimaced. She nodded her un
derstanding, caught Bak’s arm, and aimed him toward the courtyard.
“I’ll not let you steal my happiness this day,” she said, her voice grim and resolute, “nor will I allow you to rob my servants of joy.”
He hung back, thinking she meant to usher him to the pavilion, to embarrass him before her guests. To place him there before he chose to show himself. Instead she drew him into Nakht’s bedchamber. Bed, chests, and stools had been set upright and tidied since Heby’s invasion. The room looked much as it had when Bak had searched it after the commandant’s death. Long, thin shafts of sunlight filtered in through slits in the woven reed mat covering the courtyard door. The voices outside were clearly audible.
“I’ve no intention of running away.” Azzia spoke slightly above a whisper so those in the courtyard could not hear, but with grim intensity. “I’m not so foolish as to make myself look guilty of a crime I didn’t commit.”
She had never before touched him, and all he could think about was her hand, so warm and firm, clutching his arm. “I can’t leave you unguarded. You know that.”
“Are you so certain I took my husband’s life?”
“I’ve tried to find proof of your innocence, that I swear.” It came out too loud, too defensive. “I’ve run out of time, as you well know.”
Her hand dropped to her side; she turned away and walked to Nakht’s bed. Beyond, through the doorway to her bedchamber, he saw a rush basket half full of clothing and linen standing beside an open, empty chest, mute reminders that she had been packing for her trip to Ma’am.
She picked up a folded camp stool leaning against the wall and faced him. Holding the stool before her like a shield, she said, “I no longer know what to think of you, Officer Bak. Sometimes I believe all you say. At other times I feel your words have no more substance than the mist that drifts over the river each morning.”
“Go back to your friends.” His tone was harsh, his dismay well hidden. She had every right to mistrust him, if not for the reason she thought.
Crossing the room, she pulled the stool open and set it in front of the mat. “If it pleases you to watch me through the day, sit here. I’ll have Lupaki bring you food and drink.”
She slipped out the door without another word. Bak slumped onto the stool, humiliated and depressed. The lady Hathor, goddess of happiness, had to be playing a game with him. She had dangled Azzia before him and teased him with her beauty, but made it impossible for him to reach out to her.
The minutes stretched to hours. Except for Iry, who remained through the afternoon, Azzia’s friends came and went: women and their offspring, scribes, officers, chief craftsmen. A few seemed merely curious, but most paid their respects and offered their support with a sincerity that made Bak’s suspicions seem petty and unfounded. Azzia rarely glanced his way, but when she did, he felt his stomach knot with guilt.
Not one of the four men he hoped to attract had come. He knew if he were the guilty one he would wait until late in the day in hopes of finding Azzia alone, but he could not understand why the innocent among them, men who professed to care for her, had not rushed to her side.
The voices droned on and on. Bak’s sleepless night began to catch up with him and he reached a point where he could barely hold his eyes open. He stood up, stretched, flexed his muscles. The activity helped, but not much. He wandered around, looking for something to keep him awake, finally stopping in front of a reddish hardwood chest. It had held, he remembered, several personal documents, all related to Nakht’s tomb and some land in the north of Kemet. Before, he had read a few words, enough to dismiss them as unimportant. But now…
Curious to know more, especially since Azzia had no doubt inherited Nakht’s estate, he removed the lid, took the scrolls, and carried them to his stool by the door.
As he sat down, he heard her say, “I don’t fear death, for only then can I walk beside my husband through eternity, but to think I might die accused of taking his life is an abomination.”
Mistress Iry, Bak thought, must have lost control of the conversation.
“The viceroy is a fair man, my dear, and wiser than most,” a deep-voiced man assured her. “He’ll judge you innocent, I know.”
“What can that young officer, that Bak, be thinking of?” The voice was Iry’s.
Bak dropped the scrolls in his lap and peeked through a slit in the mat. Iry’s face wore a disparaging scowl, as did most of the others’. Azzia looked straight ahead, taking care not to glance his way.
“He’s a soldier.” This from a thin, stooped man with the white cloud of blindness in one eye. “They’re taught to obey orders, not to use their wits.”
The man must be a scribe, Bak thought, one who knows nothing of the art of war.
Iry patted Azzia’s hand. “No one with good sense could think you guilty of taking another’s life. Certainly not Nakht, whom you loved so long and so well.”
“Kames told me he was sent here in disgrace,” said a distinguished-looking man of middle years who wore a calf-length kilt. “Something to do with a house of pleasure. A brawl, I believe.”
“A fight over a loose woman, I heard,” a full-figured, bewigged matron said, sniffing her disapproval.
“From what I heard, his archer wagered away his weapons of war in a game of chance and Officer Bak took exception.” The deep-voiced man sipped from his drinking bowl. “You know how those chariotry officers are: as protective of their archers as a goose is of her goslings.”
“You’d be protective, too, if your life depended upon the one man riding in the chariot with you.” The speaker was a large, muscular man of military bearing. “Without his archer, a charioteer wouldn’t last through a single assault.”
“That doesn’t excuse his involving the rest of the men in his company,” the deep-voiced man said.
“I’d guess they involved themselves. Those charioteers are a close-knit bunch of men.”
Azzia reached out to pluck a date from a greenish glazed bowl sitting on the low table in front of her. “My husband thought him an honorable man in spite of his rash behavior in Waset.” She raised her eyes from the bowl and looked straight at Bak’s hiding-place. “I pray he judged him right.”
Bak squirmed on his stool, spilling the scrolls to the floor.
“Honor is one thing,” the stooped man said. “Good common sense is quite different. And that he seems not to have.”
“My husband’s equally witless,” Iry said, disgusted. “He won’t listen to one word from me.”
A plump young woman of about fourteen years giggled. “Officer Bak is very handsome and well formed. To share a sleeping pallet with a man so favored…” She shivered with ecstasy.
The matron gave her a scathing look. “You’d do well to covet a man who thinks with his wits, not with his male parts.”
Bak cursed beneath his breath. Did Azzia also think him such a fool? Her face was turned away, so he could not see her expression. Beyond her he glimpsed Ruru, whose head was bowed, his shoulders shaking with laughter.
Bak snatched the scrolls from the floor and marched into Azzia’s bedchamber. Rejecting her sleeping pallet for a stool, he spread the first document across his lap. It proved to be a legal agreement between Nakht and a cousin who lived near Mennufer. In exchange for a parcel of farmland Nakht had been given as a reward for exemplary military service, the cousin had agreed to have Nakht’s tomb excavated and its walls painted. The next four scrolls, all from the cousin, discussed the progress of the construction. In each, he complained bitterly about the cost, airing his grievances to a point where Bak could almost hear him whine.
The final scroll was another legal document, written after the tomb was finished. To repay his cousin for the unexpectedly high costs, Nakht had given him the remainder of his estate: a second, adjoining piece of land. As a condition of the transfer, the cousin would take Azzia into his household if anything should happen to Nakht.
Bak rolled up the scrolls with a heavy heart. Such a nebulou
s position would not please any woman. Had she become involved with the man who was stealing the gold to save herself from such a fate?
Chapter Eleven
The shadows lengthened across the courtyard; the sun nudged the western battlements. A stiffening breeze cooled the air, drying the moisture on faces and backs and arms. The reeds atop the pavilion rustled as if inhabited by mice. The leaves on the potted trees danced. Azzia’s guests departed in ones and twos until none but Iry remained. She was on her feet, preparing to leave.
Bak could hardly wait for her departure and the chance to escape from this room in which Azzia had condemned him. The longer he remained alone and inactive, half-listening to the chatter in the pavilion, the more doubts he had that his plan would succeed. He knew he had no talent for subterfuge, and this plan, so fraught with opportunities for failure, seemed destined to prove it. Not one of his four suspects had come.
He paced the floor, fretting like a dog waiting for its master to throw a bone. What would he do if his plan failed? He paused at the door to Azzia’s bedchamber and scowled at the half-full chest of clothing. Maiherperi’s words came to him unbidden: If you’ve done all you can to reach the truth but have failed to grasp it, you must trust to the lady Maat to place wisdom in the heart of the man who metes out justice.
He turned his back to the room-and the thought. The day was not yet over.
“I dislike leaving you, my dear, but I must,” he heard Iry say. “You’ve no idea how irritable Tetynefer gets when his stomach is empty.”
“I thank you for staying through the day.” Azzia’s voice grew softer, wavered. “And for agreeing to care for my servants if I cannot return from Ma’am.”
“You’ll come back to us. The viceroy has but to look at you and he’ll read the truth in your face.”
“I’d rather he listened to my plea and found the truth in my words,” Azzia said, her tone wry.
