"Yes, lord."
"Tell me, Imsety. Does everyone have to supply the words you don't say, or is it that you fear me?"
"I have many thoughts, lord, but my tongue, it is clumsy."
It was like plowing a stony field, but Meren dragged the story of the last day from Imsety. It was much the same as Djaper's, except that Imsety's day was spent in the company of his mother. The man seemed more concerned with the imminent harvest than with the death of his father, and he kept asking when he could go home.
"When I have the murderer," Meren said for the third time.
"It's Beltis. She killed Father."
"And dragged him to the riverbank, tossed him in a skiff, and hauled him to the Place of Anubis?"
Imsety nodded eagerly. "Caught her stealing."
"You wish me to believe that if Hormin caught Beltis stealing his treasure that there wouldn't be a fight as noisy as Thebes on a feast day?"
"One of the scribes."
Meten's head was beginning to pain him. "What are you talking about?"
"Bakwerner."
"Do you know anything about your father's murder, Imsety?"
"Bakwerner hates Father."
"I will concern myself with Bakwemer, not you." By this time Meren found himself grinding his teeth. "I want to know if Hormin was as cruel to you as he was to Djaper. He must have been, or he wouldn't have refused you the farm you work so hard to preserve."
Imsety shrugged and stared at Meren.
"You'd better say something."
"I never listened to Father."
Meren waited fruitlessly. After a few minutes during which Imsety stared at him and he tried not to toy with his dagger, Meren spoke.
"Never listened to him? What do you mean, curse you?"
"Since I was a naked child, I never listened to Father's hot words."
"Don't stop talking," Meren said.
"Ugly words, Father, they aren't important. The land is important. And Djaper. Not Father."
"And your mother."
"Mother loves Djaper."
Never had he been more grateful for having three chattering daughters. Meren closed his eyes and prayed to several gods for patience. Talking to Imsety was taking twice as long as it had with anyone else. There had been times, before he adopted Kysen, when he'd asked the gods why the girls couldn't have been boys. Now he would make a sacrifice to the goddess of childbirth.
Meren opened his eyes and caught Imsety staring at him. The young man's face was as expressionless as a figure painted on a temple wall. But a transitory flicker in Imsety's eyes set off the baying of hunting dogs in Meren's heart. Crocodiles often basked in the sun, still and placid, with no evidence of life in their bodies except for that brief, telltale lift of an eyelid that revealed a mindless hunger for flesh.
"You said neither you nor Djaper saw your father leave the house during the night."
Imsety gazed at Meren and made no attempt to avoid meeting Meren's stare. "No, lord. I never saw him."
That direct manner, it was a match for Djaper's ingenuousness. And it posed a difficulty. For in Meren's experience, the best liars, those whose hearts were filled with deceit, made a practice of meeting the eyes' of those they deceived in just such a direct manner, while the innocent often foundered on their own lack of experience with evil. They quavered, faltered, and cast down their eyes. He would have to be Anubis, weigher of hearts at the soul's judgment, to decipher honesty based solely upon the face and habits of a man.
"Aren't you afraid that your father's murderer may harm you, Imsety?"
"No, Lord Meren. Why would he?"
"That is a question I've asked myself," Meren said. "And I'll find an answer. And if you should begin to fear, remember the ancient writings that tell us that justice lasts for an eternity and walks into the graveyard with its doer."
Kysen escaped the house without further damage to his ears. He made his way to a long, low building at the rear of the compound, which lay between the house and the barracks and stables. In it his father had established the headquarters for his duties as one of the Eyes and Ears of Pharaoh. There were workrooms for Nebamun, the physician-priest, and the scribes who kept records of the cases that came under Meren's hand, and two rooms for the count and his son.
Nebamun had finished his examination of the body by the time Kysen reached him. He was in the library consulting astrological charts and rubbing his shaved head in thought as he read. Kysen leaned on the doorsill.
"He died of the knife wound, didn't he?"
Nebamun looked up from the papyrus he'd spread across his crossed legs. "Assuredly. There was no sign of poison, and anyway, there was all that blood. But look at the writings for the day Hormin was born. They foretell a happy life."
"Do they say anything about his death?"
"No." Nebamun rolled up the papyrus and shook his head. "The men say there were no marks of the use of magic in the drying shed, and I found none on the body. He bit his fingernails, so I doubt if anyone could collect them for use in a spell. But there's always hair. We'll have to see what Lord Meren finds at his house."
"I can't think of any magic more potent than being stabbed with an embalming knife," Kysen said. "You'll send the body back to the embalmers for purification and treatment?"
"Yes, but you know his
ka
is likely to be wandering lost since he was dispatched by violence in so sacred a place. It will take powerful spells to restore his soul to his body."
Kysen didn't answer. He'd had to become accustomed to dealing with disturbed spirits just as he'd accepted that he would always meet evil. It was the price of being the son of the king's intelligencer. Yet sometimes dealing with malevolence made him feel contaminated. There'd been the time when that Babylonian merchant went mad and killed all those tavern women after raping them. He'd almost wished his father would relinquish his post by the time the merchant was caught.
After dictating his own observations to one of the scribes in the library, Kysen went to his father's office in search of the boxes containing Hormin's possessions and objects from the place of his death. He was lifting one of them from the floor to a worktable when he heard Meren's voice at the door.
"By the demons of the underworld, that is a family of cobras."
Kysen looked up and grinned. Even angry, Meren hardly looked old enough to be his father. At thirty-four he still kept the figure of a charioteer, and silver refused to appear in his cap of smooth black hair. Kysen's friends teased him that he would never get another wife because all the court maidens vied with each other for Meren's attention.
"Disturbed your plumb line, did Hormin's family?" Kysen asked.
Meren frowned at Kysen and stalked into the room. He dropped into his favorite ebony chair, slouched down in it, and cursed again. Kysen watched Meren drum his fingers on the arm of the chair, saw his features relax and then grow worried.
"You're staring at me," Kysen said.
"Mmmm."
Kysen pressed his lips together and pretended to straighten the lid of the box in front of him. He stilled when Meren spoke.
"You know about the village of the tomb makers."
"The water carrier told me."
"Did he recognize you?" Meren asked.
"He's new to the village," Kysen said. He let his gaze roam about the room, touching stacks of papyri, a water jar. "His father serves the painter Useramun. I remember Useramun. His hips wiggled when he walked, and he was always throwing tantrums if the plaster on tomb walls wasn't smooth enough for his paint."
"Any evil that touches the servants of the Great Place is important to Pharaoh. They're probably not involved, but I must make sure."
Rounding the worktable, Kysen took a stool near his father. "We can send for the chief scribe in the morning."
"You know that's not what I want to do."
"You want to go to the village?" Kysen flushed when his father lifted one of his straight brows. Meren could make him feel foolish more easily with a lift of those eloquent brows than by using a thousand words.
"I don't want to go," Kysen said.
"I can't do this, Ky. Word would be all over Thebes in minutes if I went there. Half the court would dog my steps out of curiosity or to make sure I didn't interfere with the work on their tombs. And how much do you think I'll get out of the scribes and artisans?"
"Little," said Kysen. "Oh, you don't have to tell me. I know. I'm the one who speaks their language. I'm the one who knows them—at least, I did know them. It's been ten years."
"Perhaps it will do you good to go back."
Kysen shot to his feet so quickly that his stool toppled. Ignoring it, he glared at his father, turned away, and placed both hands flat on the worktable.
"The fire pits of the netherworld, that's what that place was to me," Kysen said. "It's taken all this time for me to restore my
ka,
and you want me to go back there. You know what it was like. You saw me when Father tried to sell me in the streets of Thebes—the welts, the bruises so black I'd have been invisible on a moonlit night."
Rising, Meren went to Kysen. Kysen started when his father put a hand on his.
"You haven't seen your blood father since that day. Ky, I think facing him has become a great fear in your heart, and it grows larger the longer you ignore it. Hate makes festering sores in your
ka."
"Gods!" Kysen shook off Meren's hand. "Shouldn't I hate him? You said it wasn't my fault that he beat me, though he never touched my brothers. It took you three years to convince me of my innocence, but I tell you, if I go back there, he'll make me see the ugliness within my heart."
"There is no ugliness in your heart. It's in Pawero's heart. Face him, Ky. You're no longer an eight-year-old child and helpless. Ah, you didn't think I knew your greatest fear. Go back to the village. You need to face Pawero, if only to make him admit his guilt."
"And while I'm chastising my monster of a father, I'm to spy on the villagers."
"Like a dutiful son," Meren said.
"This dutiful son remembers setting fire to the bed of your oldest daughter."
"And does he also remember copying chapters from
The Book of the Dead
for three months afterward?"
Kysen had been leaning against the worktable. He snorted and bent to right the fallen stool. When he was finished, he found his father standing beside him, studying him with that compassionate yet determined expression that had become so familiar. Meren had decided what was best for him, and nothing Kysen could say would change his heart.
"When do I go?"
"Tomorrow morning," Meren said. "I'll send word to the lector priest not to let the water carrier go home for a while. It may take a few days to question everyone without revealing what you're about."
"What if they know who I am—to you?"
Meren said, "They don't."
"What do you mean?"
Resuming his seat in the ebony chair, Meren grimaced. "I hadn't meant to tell you, but I've kept watch over the doings of your father and brothers. And I told him not to reveal who bought you. No one knows who you are now."
Kysen walked away from Meren to stand with his back against a wall. Hugging himself, he studied the man to whom he owed so much.
"I could kill him."
"You won't," Meren said calmly.
Making fists with both hands, Kysen forced himself to go on. "Sometimes, when Remi tries my patience to the breaking point, sometimes I almost—sometimes I want to—something happens to me. A demon takes possession of my
ka,
and I almost raise my hand to him." Kysen waited for condemnation with his head bowed.
"But you don't. You've never hit Remi, and you won't. Not until he is old enough to understand such punishment, and then you'll be fair and kind, for that is your nature."
Kysen raised his head and met his father's smiling gaze. "I want to hurt Pawero as he hurt me."
"Perhaps when you go to the tomb-makers' village you'll see that the good god has cast judgment on your behalf already." Meren stood up and led Kysen to the door. "It's time you abandoned this undeserved guilt and—"
Shock wiped all expression from Meren's face. Eyes focused on something Kysen couldn't see, his mouth opened, and air hissed between his lips as he drew in a breath.
"Listen to me," Meren said. "Ordering you to abandon guilt when I…"
"Father?"
"Leave me, Ky."
"But—"
"Now."
Kysen slipped away, leaving Meren standing in the doorway transfixed by thoughts he wouldn't share.
In the wharf market of Thebes, lines of booths covered with cloths flashed bright colors in the afternoon sun like the scales of fish glistening in a reflection pool. One stall boasted fresh waterfowl trussed up and dangling from square frames. The naked bodies of two pintails parted to reveal the sweaty nose of a man. The owner of the nose remained behind the strings of birds with only it and his eyes showing, and he darted glances about the crowded street.
The charioteer had been following him since he'd left the office of records and tithes. Bakwerner's mouth was dry, and he licked his cracked lips. Wiping a drop of sweat from his nose, he realized that evil had stalked him since he'd left those records on Hormin's shelf. Nothing he'd done since had warded off the unlucky events of the past day and night.
He had to escape the notice of the charioteer. Count Meren knew more than he had revealed. Why else would he set a watcher upon an innocent scribe? There! That was the man who followed him. Bakwerner shrank back behind the duck bodies. The owner of the stall cast a wary glance at him, so he pretended to examine a basket of pigeons. When he looked again, the charioteer's back was turned. Bakwerner dropped the basket, sidled past a booth filled with nuts and melons, and broke into a run.
Dodging a cart filled with dried dung and skirting a flower seller, he gained the shadows of an alley and worked his way into the city. Every tall man, every figure wearing bronze made him jump or dart into a doorway. With each false scare, his fear increased. The more he feared, the more he sweated. Rivulets of perspiration tickled their way from beneath his wig, down his face, and over his shoulders. His kilt was damp.