Lauren Haney: The Right Hand of Amon

Mocking himself for letting her trick him, Bak pushed her into the adjoining room. A priest. kneeling beside the basket, examining the linen, looked up, startled. Beyond, through another door, an embalmer bent over the body of a young woman lying prone on an embalming table. The wife of an officer, she had died in childbirth during the night. Using a long slim tool inserted through the nose, the embalmer was scraping the soft matter from within the head. A deep bowl with its contents hidden from view contained, Bak assumed, either the body of the unborn child or the organs that had been withdrawn through the gaping slit in the left side of the dead woman's abdomen.

"You'll not go back on your word, will you?" Nofery asked, worried. "You asked only that I tell you all I know."

He wrapped an arm around her shoulders. "I'll go to the commandant for you as I promised. But not until the lord Amon has come and gone."

"Many men will wish to celebrate the god's visit," she pointed out.

"Thuty has too great a burden to listen now. He'd close his heart to your plea, and you'd be out of luck altogether." Screwing her mouth into a pout, she shook off his arm, trudged ahead down a short passage, and shoved open the door to the courtyard. Hurrying past Imsiba, standing outside with the trader Seneb, the old woman strode to a mudbrick bench shaded by the sycamores and palms lining the high enclosure walls. She flopped down with a grunt that silenced a chirping sparrow and bent over a small fish pool to draw deep into her lungs the sweet scent of white lotus blossoms floating on the surface of the water. Bak smiled to himself. She was not so chagrined that she would return to her place of business before her curiosity was satisfied.

He shut the door behind him and, with the taste of death still on his tongue, eyed Seneb from head to toe. The pudgy trader's hands were tied behind his back; his kilt was rumpled and dirty. Though not a bruise or cut marked his body, his eyes were wary, frightened. It seemed unlikely that the slain man, one fose actions had been so noble they had even beguiled Nofery, would ever have crossed the path of this foul merchant. Yet the question had to be asked, for they had both come from upriver.

"Has this jackal told you of his journeys, Imsiba?" The big Medjay hefted the long, heavy staff he carried. "With a bit of persuasion, yes."

Bak had little faith in words extracted by means of the cudgel, but in Seneb's case he could think of no more fitting way. "How long ago did he travel upstream?"

"Five months, he claims, as does the pass we found among his clothing."

"Nofery saw our man four or five months ago." Bak spoke with care, preferring the trader remain in ignorance of how little they knew of the slain man. "He failed to introduce himself before traveling south."

The Medjay nodded that he understood. If the man in the house of death had come through Buhen only four months ago, Seneb would already have been far to the south in the land of Kush. If five months, the trader might have crossed his path.

"I'll take this cur inside, and when I'm through, I'll return him to his cell." Bak took the staff from Imsiba's hand. "In the meantime, speak with Nofery. After you hear her tale, send her home. Then go find Hori and see what luck he's had this morning."

Hori was the police scribe. Bak had roused the boy at daybreak and sent him out with instructions to describe the dead man to all the garrison officers and sergeants. A thankless task, but a necessary one.

Imsiba nodded. "I'll find him."

Bak gripped the, trader by the neck and aimed him toward the door.

"What is this place?" Seneb demanded. "Why bring me here?"

"Many years ago; when this wretched land of Wawat was ruled by a king not our own, it most likely was a dwelling of the living. Now… " Bak jerked the door open and shoved him over the threshold. "Now it houses the dead."

The cloying stench stopped Seneb as if he had run into a wall. "What're you going to do to me?"

Bak dug his fingers into his squirming prisoner's neck and propelled him through the building to the room where the unnamed body lay.

At the foot of the embalming table, Seneb dug in his heels. "Why have you brought me here? What…?" His eyes landed on the slain man's face. He blinked once, twice, leaned forward for a closer look. "Lieutenant Puemre!" A smile touched his lips, spread; laughter bubbled from his mouth.

Bak was so startled he relaxed his grip on the trader's neck. It took him a moment to realize he had been handed the name, and even then he was too distracted by the odd reaction to enjoy his unexpected success.

Seneb walked as if mesmerized alongside the table, staring at the damaged foot and hand, the blotches and tears on the body. He stopped at the head, purred, "You swine." And he spat on the dead man's face.

"Seneb!" Appalled, Bak lunged at the trader and_ dragged him to the foot of the empty embalming table. "Are you so low you'd violate a lifeless body?"

"I've harbored hatred in my heart for that man for five long months," Seneb sneered. "What would you have me do? Kneel by his side and offer words of forgiveness to his ka?"

Bak glared at his prisoner, giving himself time to think. Seneb's caravan had come down the river the same day the body had. The two men could have met and clashed somewhere along the Belly of Stones. Yet if Seneb were responsible for the man's death, would he have reacted with such surprise, such pleasure at seeing his enemy lifeless?

"What did this man, this Lieutenant Puemre, do to earn such loathing?"'he asked.

The trader's mouth twisted with malice. "He thought himself above all- mortal men, judging them for faults he failed to see within himself."

"I want specifics, Seneb, not a bald, flat statement any man could make. What did he do to you?"

"He…" The trader hesitated as if deciding what, if anything, he should divulge. "He treated me with contempt."

Bak's mouth tightened. He raised the staff, placed the end under Seneb's chin, and forced his head high. The trader tried to step back, but the table behind him caught him just below his fleshy buttocks. Bak increased the pressure. Seneb's spine arced backward. He clung with bound hands to the rim of the trough. His eyes grew large, frightened.

With a contemptuous smile, Bak pulled the staff back until the trader could almost stand erect. "Will you now spit on me? Or will you tell me what I wish to know?"

Seneb, his eyes glued to the pole, tried to swallow. "As I made my way upriver, bound for the land of Kush, he took my pass from me, keeping it day after day for no good reason. He cared nothing for the time I wasted or the goods I had to trade for a mere pittance in order to feed myself and my servants, my donkeys. He'd have bled me until I had nothing left if I'd not finally gained the ear of the garrison commander."

Bak's thoughts leaped back to the previous morning at Kor and the trader's excuse for driving his caravan so long and hard without a stop. The memory brought a dangerous glint to his eyes. "This, then, was the inspecting officer you wished to avoid at Iken when you came back downriver?"

Seneb tried to nod, but the staff held his chin, in place. "He was."

"You could've had no children with you at the time," Bak said, thinking of Nofery's story, "and your donkeys must've been fresh. What reason did he have for holding your pass?"

"He had none! I swear it!"

Bak raised the end of the staff a finger's breadth, drawing a fearful moan from the trader.

"My donkeys were laden with ordinary trade goods, I tell you. Pottery, tools, beads, linen. Nothing more, nothing less." Seneb's eyes darted in all directions but never once met those of his inquisitor. "If that Medjay of yours had thought to bring my pass, you could've seen for yourself."