A Vile Justice Page 6

  Psuro gave him a dubious look. "This city is small, I know, and Swenet smaller yet, but to befriend everyone would take months. Can you not narrow the task to the possible?"

  "Do what you can, Psuro, that's all I ask. If Hatnofer was meant to die today, as I think she was, we've only a week before the slayer strikes again."

  "Yes, sir."

  Bak resisted the urge to smile at the Medjay's gloomy countenance. "As you go about your task, you must seek out a man named Pahared. He once was a merchant in Wawat, one who traveled from village to village, trading the small objects needed by men and women who have close to nothing. I met him once in Nofery's house of pleasure. He'd just wed a woman of Kush and was giving up the life of a wanderer to return to Kemet. I last heard they'd settled here, but whether in Abu or Swenet, I don't know."

  "He's a man we can trust?" Psuro asked, a flicker of hope shining through the gloom.

  "We talked and drank long into the night. He seemed a man of good sense and honor."

  Looking none too pleased with so vague an answer, the Medjay nodded. "If he's here, I'll find him."

  Bak walked inside for the third jar of water.

  Kasaya, immobilized by thought, knelt beside a second sleeping pallet he had just spread out on the floor, a folded sheet in his hand. "I know we're not far from the governor's villa, sir, but do you think it wise to spend the night here?

  What if someone else is slain? From what you say of Djehuty, he'll be the first to lay blame-if he's not the one to die."

  Bak gave the young Medjay a quick smile. "As soon as we eat our evening meal, I plan to return to Djehuty's house. I see no need to open the door to disaster."

  Chapter Four

  Bak, stifling a yawn, stood in front of Nebmose's house, letting the chill morning breeze awaken him. He had gotten some sleep, thanks to Psuro and Kasaya, but not enough. The night had passed without incident; the occupants of the governor's villa had slept in peace. He doubted the police presence had made a difference. Hatnofer had died because she had been close in importance to Djehuty.

  He eyed the small, neat garden that surrounded the family shrine inside the main entrance to the property. Venerable trees, thick bushes, and lush flowering plants filled the space with color. Birds chattered from on high, while tiny, fuzzy ducklings swam with their mother on a small, shallow pool and frogs sat on lily pads, soaking up the sun. Bees waded in pollen, humming an ancient tune while they harvested the sweet juices hidden inside the flowers. Bak could well imagine how impressed a distinguished visitor might be, striding through the gate after a long, wearisome voyage. The garden was like the Field of Reeds, where the justified dead spent eternity.

  He followed the path to the shrine, a small, white-plastered structure with a cornice painted red and green. A narrow flight of four steps carried him to an entrance flanked by red columns. He had expected the building to be empty. Instead he found an ancestor bust on a limestone plinth. A fresh offering of flowers lay at the base of the red-painted, summarily formed figure with the head of a man. The last of the family might be gone, but someone remained to care. Leaving the shrine, he crossed the garden to the gate, which was almost as high as the wall around the compound and securely barred on the inside. He opened it and looked out onto one of the many lanes that ran through Abu. Two neighbors' gates, both on the opposite side of the lane, had been cut through walls equally tall and solid. The few windows he saw there were narrow and very high, admitting light and air, but allowing no view of the world outside. The far end of the lane vanished in a jumble of small, sometimes squalid dwellings. As was usually the case in Kemet, the poor touched elbows with the wealthy, but seldom met face-to-face.

  Returning to Nebmose's- compound, he barred the gate behind him and hurried around the house. Beyond the empty stables and the granaries, he found a dusty yard in which a cluster of palms were being smothered by tamarisks. The mouth of a well gaped open in front of a squarish building containing four long, narrow storage magazines with a portico in front. Three of the chambers were empty; the fourth contained a chariot with a broken axle. He strode to a narrow gate shaded by the warring trees, lifted the pole that barred entry, and pulled it open. The lane outside was narrow, meant solely for foot traffic. Toward the south, it disappeared in a huddle of small houses. In the opposite direction,.it passed the governor's villa and dwindled to nothing among a patchwork of fields that covered the northern end of the island.

  Disappointed in spite of low expectations, he swung the gate shut, dropped the bar in place, and walked back to the house. Hatnofer's slayer could have come and gone unseen through the front entrance or the back, or from Djehuty's villa. Other than the audience hall and the visitors' quarters, the rooms were all used for storage. The house had been empty of life, the woman alone-or so she had thought. Anyone could have slain her.

  "It seems a terrible waste, doesn't it?"

  Bak, standing in the doorway of the stable, eyeing a long row of empty stalls, started and swung around. The governor's son Ineni stood behind him, looking past him into the `shadowy building.

  "In days gone by, when I served as a charioteer with the regiment of Amon, I dreamed of a stable like this each time I had leave to go home." Bak gave the young nobleman a wry smile. "My horses, a worthy team but creatures of no discernment whatsoever, were content with the lean-to where my father housed his donkey."

  A brief smile lit Ineni's face. He stepped around Bak and led the way down the dimly fit corridor. Each stall, built of mudbrick with an arched ceiling, would have held two horses. Now the wooden gates were gone, as were the leather trappings that had hung from the walls and the chariots that had stood in the yard outside. The building had been swept clean and nothing remained but a few bits of straw, traces of grain, and dark stains on the hard-packed earthen floor, which still gave off a faint odor of manure. A waste it was, agreed Bak, an abomination to allow so useful a building to lie idle.

  "I came here often as a child," Ineni said. "The horses were some of the finest in Kemet, the stallion from the faroff land of Hatti. They were beautiful, spirited, the stuff of dreams. I longed to become a charioteer." He stooped, picked up a straw, and stuck it in the corner of his mouth. "But the gods stepped in, and now I'm a farmer." He laughed-at himself, Bak felt sure. "Don't misunderstand. The life of a farmer suits me. I manage my father's fields with a skill not many men can claim."

  Bak was surprised. Not because Ineni's family had an estate, perhaps more than one, at a distance from Abu. Most noblemen lived off the labor of those who toiled on land far from the cities where they spent most of their days. Not one in a thousand would call himself a farmer.

  "What happened to the horses?" he asked.

  "When my father took this villa as his own, he had me move them to our estate in Nubt, a half day's sail north of here. They're there yet, as are their descendants."

  Bak paused in front of an empty stall and asked with reluctance, fearing the answer, "What happened to the horse that took Lieutenant Dedi's life?"

  "I ... " Ineni hesitated, then evaded the question. "My father ordered me to have it slain."

  Bak eyed the young farmer closely. "Did you obey?" Getting no answer, glimpsing defiance in Ineni's downcast eyes, he said, "Horses were my life for more than eight years, Ineni. I cherished my team, and if anyone had suggested I slay them, I'd've cut off my hand first, the hand I use to thrust my spear."

  Ineni's eyes darted to Bak's face, searching for a lie. Evidently satisfied, he glanced toward the open doorway and lowered his voice lest anyone hear. "As soon as I took the poor, terrified beast out of the stall, away from the scent of death, he quieted. My father had insisted he was mad, but I could see he'd simply been consumed by fear. I had him taken that night to our estate in Nubt, and there he will remain, alive and well. My father need never know."

  Bak nodded approval. "He'll not hear the tale from me." They reached the end of the corridor and turned back, sharing the silence and a vision of
the stable as once it had been. Somewhere in the dark, a cat growled. A half-grown rat shot out of a stall and down the passageway a pace ahead of a huge orange tomcat. As the rodent raced into the sunlight outside the door, the cat leaped with a ferocious snarl. Clamping its teeth into its kicking and squeaking prey, it trotted off.

  "Why, do you believe, was Hatnofer slain?" Bak asked. Ineni gave a short bark-like laugh, rending their brief camaraderie. "You surprise me, Lieutenant. You told us yesterday, did yoW not, that the next to die would be one who walked close to my father. Have you since decided you erred?"

  Bak chose to ignore the sarcasm. "She died because of her importance in this household, of that I've no doubt, but you are equally important. As are Amonhotep, Antef, Simut, and Amethu. Why was she chosen over the rest of you?"

  "I see no mystery there. She was small and no longer young. And she walked alone into an empty building, easy prey."

  Bak opened the gate to the govemor's compound and glanced into the yard containing the well. Two young women, servants he had seen in the kitchen at daybreak, stood chatting near the top of the steps leading down to the water. One balanced a large, heavy jar on her head, the second held an empty container by the neck. Glimpsing Ineni, the former hurried toward the kitchen and the latter hastened down the steps to fetch water.

  Bak made no comment until he and Ineni were midway along the row of granaries, when the servants were too far away to hear. "Was the sergeant who died, Senmut, small and no longer young?"

  "He was as tall as you," Ineni admitted with a crooked smile, "and he prided himself on his strength."

  "Yet there was no sign of a struggle." "None."

  Bak stopped in the shade near the rear door of the house, and gave his companion a curious look. "You seem unmoved by Hatnofer's death. Wasn't she a mother to you, as she was to Khawet?"

  Ineni's laugh was harsh, derisive. "My mother was a servant, Lieutenant. She was young and beautiful, I've been told, and he took her as his own the day she walked into this villa. Hatnofer hated her from that time forward, and she had no more use for me. When my mother died giving birth to a stillborn daughter, I was sent to our estate at Nubt. There I was raised by a houseful of servants, all of whom I think of as parents."

  The tale was not unusual, but moved Bak nonetheless. "Do you go often to Nubt?"

  "I'd be there now if my father hadn't summoned me." Ineni snorted. "Sometimes I think he fears his own shadow."

  Bak eyed him curiously. "Aren't you yet convinced he has reason to fear? Five people have died thus far."

  Ineni walked to the door and lifted the latch. "If I'd been so inclined, I'd have slain Hatnofer many years ago. Sergeant Senmut was a braggart, a man who believed himself above all others in any endeavor he chose to pursue. The guard Montu ... Well, he seemed a nice enough fellow, but he drank to excess and he loved to talk. He could say more about less than any man I ever met."

  "What of Lieutenant Dedi? And the boy Nakht?"

  "Dedi was young and full of himself, not one to take too seriously, I'd have thought. But who knows? Maybe someone resented his ... His enthusiasm." Ineni lifted the latch and shoved the door open. "Nakht is a puzzle. The child was small and slight, gentle. An innocent. Why he had to die, I can't begin to guess."

  Nor could Bak. If Hatnofer had been slain because she was small and vulnerable, the child's death could be explained in the same way. However, neither Senmut nor Montu had been small men, and both had been stabbed without a struggle. Five deaths, with not a man or woman or child offering resistance to the assailant. Bak could think of no way to accomplish such a feat unless the man who slew them had blinded them with magic. Or, more likely, with familiarity.

  "I must admit my relief when I learned another had been slain and I could rest easy." Amethu hiked up his long white kilt, bunching the fabric over his bulging stomach, and dropped onto a portable stool. "Does that sound heartless, Lieutenant?"

  "You're not the first to voice the thought," Bak said, "and I doubt you'll be the last."

  The steward gave him a fleeting smile, his thoughts on the task before him: the weekly distribution of grain to those who toiled in the governor's kitchen.

  Bak knelt beside him in a strip of shade cast by Nebmose's villa-how quickly he had come to accept the local name for the dwelling-watching servants empty one of the granaries. One man knelt before an opening twice the size of a man's head located at the base of the tall conical tower. Another man, who had climbed down an interior ladder, swept the remaining wheat into a basket and poured a golden stream through the hole, gradually filling the larger basket his companion held. Dust billowed from the cascading grain, making the man outside cough. Amethu noted the amount on a bit of broken pottery. Later, Bak knew, he would total the various quantities and record them on a scroll.

  "I'll miss Hatnofer," the steward said. "She was one of the few people in this household to know the value of keeping accurate accounts. The rest of them . . ." He gave a longsuffering sigh. "They just don't seem to care. They take an item from a storage room, don't bother to note its removal or to tell anyone, and then complain when they go in search of another like item and find none."

  "Was she as diligent in managing the household and its many servants?"

  "To a fault, some would say." Amethu frowned. "I don't mean to be critical, but you'll find out soon enough. She was not well liked. Too stem and unforgiving. Too demanding. But she kept the household running as smooth as a welloiled chariot wheel. She'll be greatly missed."

  "What of mistress Khawet? Can she not oversee the servants?"

  "Enough!" Amethu scrambled to his feet and hurried to the man kneeling at the base of the granary. He reached into the basket, withdrew a handful of wheat, and let it trickle from one hand to the other. His mouth pursed in disapproval. "We can't distribute this. It's full of sand. We'd have a rebellion on our hands."

  He flung the grain to the ground and took a fresh handful. Sifting it through his fingers, he shook his head. "Unacceptable. Set this basket aside and move on to the next granary. After you've gathered enough wheat for today's needs, come back here, sweep this one out, and pour all this dirty grain into the storage chamber where we're saving the seed for planting."

  "Yes, sir," said the man outside, his voice echoed from within.

  Amethu returned to his stool and bowed his head in what Bak took to be a prayer. When at last the steward raised his eyes, he again shook his head, this time in vexation. "They never learn. Never. A foreman should sit out here, not me, but the last time I entrusted this task to another man, we had sand in our bread for a week."

  Bak held his tongue. Gritty bread- was endemic to the army. "We were speaking of mistress Khawet, of her ability to take over Hatnofer's duties."

  "Khawet is a nice woman. I've known her from a babe. The question is: can she oversee a large and busy household in addition to satisfying her father's many demands? Not to mention the demands of a husband."

  "She has no children."

  "A pity." Amethu paused to watch the servant climb out of the granary and drop onto a shoulder-high platform that joined the empty structure to the one beside it. Hurrying down a stairway that descended to the ground, he knelt beside his partner, who had broken the seal that attested to the integrity of the full granary. "I've long been of the opinion that Hatnofer's problem was her failure to conceive. She was a woman of good humor and sweetness in her youth. A few years ago, as life began to pass her by, her disposition soured. Now I see Khawet traveling, the same path, and I fear for her."

  From what Bak had seen of Djehuty, he was more than enough child for any woman. Or perhaps he was being unfair. "You've been with Djehuty for many years, I see."

  "My father was his father's steward. I grew to manhood in this provincr, learned to read and write in the governor's villa. When my father left this worldly realm, Djehuty's father appointed me to his place, as was right and proper."

  "Can you think of a reason anyone would want
him dead? Would kill and kill again to plant fear in his heart?" Amethu looked distinctly uncomfortable. "He's stepped on toes What man hasn't?"

  "Has he come down so hard he'd merit death?"

  "He's basically a good man, Lieutenant." Amethu cleared his throat, as if the next words were caught there. "Oh, he can be thoughtless at times. Selfish and petty. Altogether a most aggravating individual. But as he intends no ill, all who know him forgive him."

  Especially those who walk the corridors of the governor's villa, Bak thought. Men who wield a moderate amount of power and live in far greater comfort and style than their neighbors. Those who owe their lofty positions to Djehuty and dare not speak out lest he replace them with others more agreeable.

  "If you truly believe a murderer walks these corridors, why are you not living within these walls?" Simut's voice pulsed with frustration as he tried to balance vehemence and the need to speak softly so his students would not hear his words. "Why do you not send for Medjays-not from Buhen, for the journey would take too long, but from the capital? Men with dogs who'll patrol the rooms night and day?"

  "If I were to summon additional men, Djehuty might well be slain long before they arrive." Bak spoke softly, as reluctant to draw the boys from their studies as the chief scribe was. "Have you never watched a cornered animal, forced to strike rather than bide its time?"

  A chunky boy of ten or so years looked up from a pottery fragment on which he had been writing and sneaked a peek in their direction. He and a dozen or so other youths ranging in age from ten to fourteen sat cross-legged on the floor of the open courtyard, scribal pallets beside them, pieces of broken pottery or slabs of limestone in their laps. A boy of about twelve sat before them, dictating from a'scroll the maxims of a long-dead sage. A younger group of boys sat beneath a shallow portico, copying words from a list of household objects. A slick-haired black dog lay in a shady corner, nursing four spotted puppies.