Lynda Robinson - Drinker Of Blood

"Well done, Abu."

"I but followed your commands," Abu said. He almost saluted, but stopped himself and left by the back courtyard door.

Meren went back inside the tavern, his ka much lighter. At last the battlements of secrecy that protected Nefertiti's murderer were crumbling. Yamen was responsible for the plot to destroy his name. The question was why. Was it because Yamen himself had orchestrated the queen's death? If so, there was yet another above him who had issued the command, for Yamen hadn't been high enough at court to manage the deed by himself. And how had Yamen known that Meren suspected him?

Ever since he'd begun to inquire into Nefertiti's murder, he had run into one obstruction after another. He'd sought the queen's favorite cook, whom he suspected of administering the poison, to no avail. Her sister's wits were scattered, leaving him with no way to discover whether his suspicions were correct. The queen's steward had got himself killed before Meren could question him. And he'd barely embarked upon his quest to investigate Othrys's three candidates for murderer when he was snared in this evil trap and accused of attempted regicide.

Like Dilalu, Yamen had been at Horizon of the Aten when Nefertiti died. He'd had the men and the power to get rid of the cook and ruin Meren, but so did Dilalu. Only the barber linked Yamen to the plot to destroy him. If this half-bald soldier wasn't the barber, Meren was left drowning in ignorance again. And then there was Zulaya, whom he'd been on the verge of contacting when he was forced to flee. Zulaya was still a mystery to him.

Keeping to the shadows and obscure corners, Meren left the Divine Lotus and met Abu behind the carpenter's workshop. The space behind the house was littered with wood shavings, discarded lumber, and broken tools. Meren stepped over the remains of an adze handle and joined his aide, and they set off for the Street of Perfumers. It was a dangerous journey, for they had to cross the palace district and dodge police and military patrols. They skirted the area as much as they could, going completely around Horemheb's headquarters and ending up on the north side of the palace. There they entered a neighborhood of artisans-goldworkers, joiners, chariot makers, and perfumers.

The house of the perfumer was wedged between two larger structures, the agglomerated workshops of two extended families. The expansion of families into new quarters had left but a sliver of a passageway between each dwelling. As Meren approached the perfumer's, he heard the slapping footfalls of a patrol. Darting into the passageway with Abu behind him, he slipped around an exterior stairway and waited. He glimpsed a three-man patrol, spears used as walking sticks, as it tramped past.

When the patrol was gone, Abu snorted and said quietly, "They'll never catch anyone, lumbering about like drunken hippos."

"I doubt if they want to catch anyone," Meren replied. "Most city police I've met take care to avoid places where they're likely to find someone to arrest."

"True, lord."

Meren rested his back against the bulk of the staircase, hoping that his dark clothing would make him invisible. While he waited, he reviewed what had been discovered about Queen Nefertiti and her household.

Before Meren's own troubles intervened, his scribes had been examining government records and bringing back verbal reports. As with any great royal wife, Nefertiti's household had extended over countless estates and possessions throughout the empire. Her immediate servants were numerous as well. There had been waiting ladies-the daughters of princes and nobles-three personal maids, five dressers, several physicians, her steward, the chief scribe and his staff, her captain of troops and his men, her traders, and her overseer of the cabinet, who dealt with the queen's wardrobe. He'd reconstructed this list from his scribe's reports, not from his patchy memory.

Royal accounts had yielded payments to hairdressers, cosmetics attendants, a keeper of the queen's jewels and his assistant, a bearer of floral offerings, the queen's Aten priest, her musicians, singers, porters, and sandal-bearers. He'd found a sealer of the storehouse of gifts of the queen, three personal heralds, and a vast array of kitchen and garden staff, along with the woman who was overseer of the queen's bath. Rations had been dispensed to the queen's cup-bearer, her chariot driver, her grooms, and the keeper of the queen's pets. Nefertiti had left bequests to many of her servants, including the mistress of the queen's oils and unguents.

Unfortunately, the documents failed to list many of these servants by name. He could trace only the highest, many of whom had left royal service completely or had died.Two of the queen's physicians who had attended her during her last illness had died, and that worried Meren. The third, a woman, still attended Queen Ankhesenamun. Would a woman so highly regarded by the royal family have poisoned her mistress? Of that he had great doubt.

Another high servant had been Thanuro, the Aten priest appointed to serve the queen by Akhenaten. Once the queen had taken ill, the priest had conducted sacrifices to beg the gods to save Nefertiti, but he hadn't visited the sick woman. After the king and queen were both dead, the priest had retired. Meren remembered hearing that he'd died on a journey to a foreign estate he'd been given by Akhenaten. The steward, of course, had been in charge of the household and had access to the favored cook. But someone had directed his actions. Someone high enough to impose his will upon a royal servant; there were few such men.

An evil possibility had occurred to him while making the interminable list of queen's servants. He-Meren-had been a constant visitor to the palace in his capacity as Ay's aide. Being in the palace so frequently during the queen's final days made him vulnerable to the same suspicions he had against her servants. He'd been justified in his secrecy. Should pharaoh discover his inquiry into the queen's death, his cautious heart would conclude that Meren's recent mad actions resulted from a murderer's guilt and fear of exposure.

Shifting his weight from one foot to the other, Meren surveyed the dark streets at either end of the passageway. Few were abroad this late, and he was beginning to think Yamen wasn't coming. Resolving to give his quarry a little longer, Meren resumed his contemplation.

Records from the days at Horizon of the Aten were incomplete. Only those of immediate use had been taken when the court had moved back to Memphis. These were scattered among various government departments. Many had been left in the nearly abandoned city, which now was the residence only of the mortuary priests who attended the royal tombs. These pharaoh had not yet transferred, even though the graves they tended were empty. Tutankhamun was reluctant to remove them, for such an action would signal to the whole kingdom that the bodies of Akhenaten and his family had been taken away. The king was fearful of a repetition of the desecration that had been wrought upon his dead brother's body.

A stealthy and thus limited examination of accounts from the royal treasury had revealed some important news, however. In Nefertiti's final months, there had been payments of grain and small amounts of gold to Dilalu by the queen's steward. He had also found ration disbursement records that disclosed that Yamen had been assigned to the queen's household guard for a brief time. Of Zulaya there was no record at all, and Meren was beginning to think that the man had been somewhere else, possibly in one of the cities in which he owned property-Byblos, Aleppo, or Damascus.

Meren shoved away from the stairway and rotated his shoulders, which had grown stiff with prolonged inactivity. Motioning for Abu to remain where he was, he slithered down the passageway to the Street of Perfumers and looked at the sky. The moon was gone. Yamen wasn't coming.