Lauren Haney - The Right Hand of Amon

"Not long before he died." Bak paced again across the courtyard, swung around, strode a third time to and fro. "We know why Puemre was slain: to silence his tongue. And if that sketch is a valid clue, we know-or think we know-why someone wishes to slay Amon-Psaro: to avenge the death or rape or some unknown violation of a female relative or lover."

"Twenty-seven years is a long time to hold a grudge," Imsiba pointed out, "especially over a wartime incident, no matter how indecent."

"Far-fetched, to be sure." Bak scowled, as dissatisfied with the theory as Imsiba was. "But no more so than Woser and his staff blinding me with ignorance. Revenge is personal, one man against another, not a communal effort."

Bak found Kasaya on the roof with four of the Medjays who had traveled upstream with the lord Amon. Sitting in a strip of shade from the fortress wall, they were sharing a stewed duck, a pot of lentils and onions, and a melon. As their usual diet was far less sumptuous, they were thriving while on their temporary assignment. Bak accepted a chunk of sweetish green melon and hunkered down to wait until the men finished the succulent fowl.

After the quartet filed down the stairs, Bak and the young Medjay crossed the roof to the front of the house, where they could look down on the broad north-south street that connected the two massive towered gates of the fortress. A slick-haired yellow dog lay sleeping in a shady doorway. A child two or three years of age played in a dusty lane too far away to overhear. Heat waves rose from the rooftops. The odors of burnt charcoal and cooking oil and manure were carved on a breeze too soft and gentle to dry the sweat trickling down their bodies.

"I need a weapon, Kasaya, something I can use to break Woser's wall of silence."

The bulky young Medjay frowned, puzzled. "You would go to a garrison commander, dagger in hand?"

"You misunderstand me," Bak smiled. "In this case, I speak of knowledge as a weapon. The more I know about Woser, the better armed I'll be when I go to him for the truth."

The light dawned on Kasaya's face. "Oh! Information!" Smothering his smile, Bak studied the young Medjay. Tall, broad at the shoulder and narrow of waist, a handsome yet innocent visage. "I can think of no one better able to help than you."

"You think me worthy after…" Kasaya stared unhappily at his large, naked feet. "… after I let the child die?" Bak laid his hand on the young man's shoulder. "We failed this morning, you and I both, and we can in no way make amends. But let's not let his death go unavenged. Let's find the man who slew him."

Kasaya raised his chin and stiffened his spine. "How can I help, sir?"

"I don't know how many servants toil in the commander's residence. From what I've seen of mistress Aset, I doubt she liftSS a hand to care for the household, so the number may be large. Servants move back and forth through the rooms, seeing and hearing much and saying little."

A donkey squealed in terror or pain outside the northern gate, drawing Bak's attention and Kasaya's. A man yelled, hooves clattered on hard-packed earth, and the creature burst through the portal, the baskets it carried bouncing to the rhythm of its trotting hooves. A portly man clad in a knee-length kilt raced after the animal, stick raised, chasing it all the way to the southern gate, where a guard stepped into its path and grabbed its halter.

The pair on the roof could not help but laugh. Bak was grateful for the young Medjay's resilience-and his own, for that matter.

"Go to the commander's residence." Bak stared across the rooftops toward Woser's house. "Be friendly. Especially with the women: those who are older and motherly and those close to you in age. Ask no questions. Say, if you think it would help, that I removed you from your duties because you failed in some small task. If you confide in them, gain their sympathy and trust, they may confide in you, telling you all they've seen and heard in Woser's household."

Kasaya thought over the assignment, and a smile wiped the gravity from his face. "I feared, when I saw you coming, that I was to be punished. Instead, it seems, I'm given a reward."

"They all hated him," Minnakht said.

Puemre's sergeant, a large, heavy man in his late twenties, with a crooked nose and an ugly scar on his thigh, stood beside Bak, hands on hips, legs spread wide, watching his men cutting bricks out of the partly collapsed wall of an old warehouse. Not a man among them looked happy with so menial a task.

"I don't like to think they envied him," he went on. "I respect them all. But what else can I think? Oh, I know Lieutenant Puemre sometimes trod on other people's toes, but he was raised a nobleman. Aren't they all like that?"

"My contact with the nobility has been limited," Bak said, keeping his voice neutral, uncritical.

Minnakht gave him a quick, amused glance. "I've heard you were exiled to Buhen because your fist made contact with a nobleman's chin. Or was it his nose?"

Bak was always amazed at the way useless information spread along the southern frontier. As a police officer, he thought it best to let this particular item die a natural death from lack of attention. "More than half the bricks are coming away broken, I see. Has that been the case since you started this task?"

The smile faded from the sergeant's face. "The mud hasn't been moistened for years and the straw that binds it has rotted away. Here, let me show you." He strode to a mound of bricks so broken they looked like the clods in a newly plowed field. Picking up a chunk, he crumbled the black earth between his fingers, turning it to dust. "You see?"

Bak's voice grew firm, an officer speaking to a lesser man. "Have you tried other walls in other parts of Iken?" The sergeant stiffened at the unexpected tone of command. "No, sir, but I doubt… "

"Do it. The buildings in this city couldn't have been raised all at one time or by a single brickmaker or mason. The binder will be different, the consistency, the way they dried. They'll have weathered in different ways, depending on their location."

Minnakht's eyes narrowed in thought, then a look of approval passed over his face. Without another word, he selected five men and sent them to various ruined sections of the city.

Bak watched the nearest man slowly, painstakingly extract a brick from a wall. "Tell the men here to cut bigger blocks from these poor walls. The island fortress has many large gaps as*ell as small ones."

"Yes, sir." The sergeant strode through the ruined building, issuing the new orders. By the time he came back, his men looked more cheerful and he more content with this new and untried officer to whom they must report.

Satisfied with the tentative acceptance, Bak let his voice return to normal. "Puemre served for a short time in my old regiment, the regiment of Amon. Why did he transfer so soon to Wawat?"

"The officers there, he told me, were youthful men firmly settled in their ranks, leaving few opportunities for a newcomer. He thought promotion would come faster on the frontier."

"So he came to Iken, where all the officers were older men; firmly settled in their ranks."

Minnakht stared straight ahead; his voice turned defensive. "If the truth were known, the officers in the regiment of Amon probably turned their backs against him, as they did here."

Yes, Bak thought, like most men of courage and integrity, they had no time for a man who thought himself more deserving than he was. "You got along well with him, I've been told."

"He wasn't the easiest man to please, but he was a good officer-the best I've ever known." The sergeant turned away so Bak could not see his face, and a huskiness filled his throat. "When any of us needed help, he was generous with both his time and his wealth. When we marched into battle, he was the first to face the enemy, and he was the bravest. Once he understood the ways of the frontier, he never planned a skirmish that failed."