Lauren Haney: Place of Darkness

“Anyway, I can’t let you walk free and clear, with no further obligation. I’ll still need your services as my spy.”

Rather than pacify her, as he had hoped, the gentle teasing further upset her. Sobs burst forth, her shoulders shook with misery. “Spy! How could I be your spy in a city as large as Mennufer? Where I’d lose my way at every turn of a lane?

Where I’d know no one? Where I’d hear no secrets to pass on?”

“You’ll learn, as I will, and Nebwa, and Imsiba-if he chooses to come with us.”

“Imsiba has so chosen.” A small, delicate woman with shoulder length dark hair, stepped through the door, brightening the courtyard with a radiant smile.

The big Medjay, following close behind, slipped an arm around his wife’s shoulders. “Sitamon is not as fond of Buhen as we are. After dancing around the truth, unwilling to hurt my feelings, she admitted as much.” He gave her a fond smile. “As for her business, she hopes to trade her ship in Abu for a bigger, newer vessel to ply the waters of Kemet.”

Bak let out a secret sigh of relief, but had second thoughts. “I for one would miss you greatly if we had to part,” he admitted, “but are you sure this is what you want?”

Nebwa looked as doubtful as Bak felt. “You’d give up the chance to reach a higher rank and become a leader of men?”

“Commandant Thuty will see that we get our due-

sooner or later.” Imsiba grinned suddenly at the two officers.

“Your friendship, the needs of the woman I love, and the men who look to us for leadership are more important to me by far than standing at the head of a group of strangers.”

Bak caught his friend by the shoulders and he swallowed hard to clear the emotion from his throat. “If you’re sure this is what you want, I’ll bend a knee before the lord Amon for months to come. I feared I’d bid you good-bye and never see you again.”

As he stepped back, making way for Nebwa, sobs shook Nofery’s heavy body.

Sitamon, quick to understand, knelt before the old woman and clasped her hands. “You must come with us, Nofery.

You must trade away your place of business and move to Mennufer, as I intend to do.”

“I’ve the boy, the lion, the women who toil for me. I’ve furniture, dishes, jars of wine I’d hate to leave behind.

This chair. So many objects, so many people to move.

How can I?”

“Lest you haven’t noticed, Nofery, my ship has a large deck. Plenty of room for all of us and all we hold dear.”

Nofery leaned forward and encircled the younger woman with her arms. Her tears continued to flow, trickling around a tremulous but broad smile that told them how much she had come to love them, how touched she was that they cared for her.

“You’ve heard nothing from Amonked?” Hori asked.

Laughing, Bak ran his fingers under his belt, wet through with sweat although the day was young. While dwelling in Buhen, he had imagined Kemet to be cooler, and he supposed it was. But he had found his homeland during this, the hottest time of the year, to be no less uncomfortable than the southern frontier. “I didn’t send off my message until late yesterday, after we moored at the harbor in Waset.”

The young scribe hoisted himself onto the mudbrick wall that surrounded the paddock where Bak’s chariot horses were kept. The animals, two fine black steeds named Defender and Victory, were grazing at the edge of an irrigation ditch. Bits of greenery peeked up through dry and brittle grass and weeds badly in need of the floodwaters soon to swell over the thirsty land. Brown geese waded in a muddy puddle beside the mudbrick watering trough, while several ducks nibbled grain strewn before the door of a shed at the far end of the paddock. Outside the wall, several goats and two donkeys nibbled a mound of hay on the floor of a lean-to. Beyond, a small herd of cattle, sheep, and goats grazed on the dry stubble of a neighbor’s field. The young girl who watched the animals was playing with her dog, making it bark.

“What did your mother and father think when you ran off so early this morning?” Bak asked.

Hori shrugged. “I told them I was to meet Kasaya here, which was the truth.”

“You’re both free to go your own way until we travel north to Mennufer. How many times have I told you so?”

Bak gave the youth a stern look. “You’ve been gone for many months. Your parents surely want to spend time with you.”

Unable or unwilling to meet Bak’s eyes, the youth stared at his right foot, which he was bouncing against the wall.

“I’ve reached my sixteenth year, yet they treat me as a child.

You don’t.”

Recalling his first time home from the army and the way he had been treated by his father’s housekeeper, the only mother he had ever known, Bak could not help but sympa-thize. How would she behave now, he wondered, if she were here? After so long an absence, would she revert to the past and baby him as she had before, or would she recognize his maturity? He must wait to find out. She had traveled to Ipu to tend to her daughter during childbirth.

“What’s Kasaya’s reason for escape?” he asked. “Or have you lured him from his home so you’ll have a partner in tru-ancy?”

“He’s worse off than I am-if that’s possible. His mother started in on him the instant he set foot in their house.” A sudden laugh burst from Hori’s lips. “She’s found a suitable young woman, and she insists he take her as his wife.”

Bak could not help but laugh with him. Kasaya was a good-natured individual of fine appearance, but was not overly endowed with intelligence. Women of all ages adored him, and he responded to their needs until they-or their parents-mistook his friendship for more serious intent. He had barely evaded permanent entanglement more than once while they had dwelt in Buhen.

A new thought silenced Bak’s laughter. He would be the man Kasaya turned to if he needed a voice of authority to escape the fate his mother had planned for him. Shuddering at the very idea, he crossed a patch of drying grass to the horses he had, against all sound reason, refused to part with when exiled to Buhen.

He did not know if the animals recognized him or not. After all, he had been away more than two years. But, when first he had gone to them the previous evening, both had accepted him without hesitation. When he had come out to groom them at daybreak, they had seemed to glory in the touch of his hand as he caressed their muzzles, brushed their sleek coats, combed their long manes and tails. He had not hitched them to the chariot-he had first to make sure time had not damaged its various parts-but he doubted they would accept the lightweight two-wheeled vehicle as quickly as they had him. His father, Ptahhotep, a physician, had no use for a chariot, preferring to walk, so the animals had rarely left the paddock in which they spent their days or the shed where they were kept at night.

“Do you think Amonked will ask you to seek out the man who stole the jewelry from the old tomb?” Hori asked.

Bak eyed the youth across the horses’ backs. He had thought Hori had outgrown the urge to play an active role in tracking down men who offended the lady Maat. Apparently not, thus this early morning visit. “He’s the Storekeeper of Amon, Hori, not a police officer.”

“He could go to the man who’s responsible and suggest you investigate.”

“If moved to do so, I suppose he could.”

“Would you accept?”

Bak grinned-at himself as much as the boy. “What do you think?”

“Why don’t you ask him?” Hori’s wide-eyed eagerness left no doubt as to how he felt. “You’d need my help, wouldn’t you? Mine and Kasaya’s?”