Lauren Haney - Place of Darkness

The charioteer flung what looked like a garrison grain token at the man and drove on. “He said yesterday, when he informed me of your discovery, that you’d grown very excited when he told you, three days earlier, of the jar I found in Buhen with jewelry inside. Especially when he described the sketch around the neck, a necklace with a pendant bee.”

“That surprises you? It shouldn’t. After months of fruitless searching here and there and everywhere, we had something specific to look for. Who would’ve thought of looking inside a honey jar? None of my inspectors. Nor I, for that matter.”

“Lieutenant Menna didn’t come to you seven or eight days ago, when I told him of the sketch?”

“He did not.” Mai’s eyes narrowed. “You told him when?”

“A few hours after I arrived in Waset. He vowed he’d tell you right away.”

“Well, he didn’t.” Mai, obviously irritated, stared out the window at the many vessels moored there. The beat of a drum and the chant of the oarsmen announced the arrival of a cargo ship whose deck was divided into stalls filled with reddish long-horned cattle. Bak doubted the harbormaster saw the ship or its contents. “Menna seems a good-hearted soul, Lieutenant, rather touchy about what he perceives as the status of his assignment, but he’s not a man one can depend on.”

“Is he incompetent, sir? Or something else?”

Mai’s eyes darted from the window to Bak, his expression censorious, directed not to his visitor but to the man about whom he spoke. “I’ve heard he seldom visits the cemeteries, that he spends more time writing reports than supervising the men who guard the dwelling places of the dead.” His mouth tightened to a thin, critical line. “I’ve never seen him with a speck of dust on his kilt or sandals, and he always looks as if he’s fresh from his bath. When I visit my venerable ancestors during the Beautiful Festival of the Valley, staying on the paths as much as possible, I return to my home dripping with sweat and with myself and my clothing stained brown by dust.”

“I’ve felt he was lax in his duty, but tried to believe he had sergeants he could trust. As I trust mine.”

“Do you leave your sergeants alone day after day, letting them do what they will with no word from you, no report from them?”

Bak smiled. “No, sir.”

The smile Mai returned was stingy, weakened by censure.

“Don’t get me wrong, Lieutenant. I like him. However, I can’t condone a man’s failure to oversee the men responsible to him.”

Bak liked this gruff, outspoken man. They saw their duty much the same. “How well do you know him?”

“Not personally. Our paths seldom cross. Only when my inspectors recover an object stolen from the dead. Also, if I have the time, I drop in to see him when I visit my chief inspector, who’s housed in the same building.”

“Where’s Menna from, do you know?” Bak spoke casually, as if giving no special weight to the question.

He either failed in his purpose or Mai’s thoughts were keeping pace with his, for the harbormaster gave him a long, thoughtful look. “His forebears were men of the river, as were mine, so that question I can answer. He was born in Iunyt, the son of a fisherman who died when he was three or four years of age. His mother was daughter to a ferryman who dwelt across the river. Upon the death of her husband, she returned to her family home in western Waset, bringing the child with her.”

Bak’s heart skipped a beat. The Lates fish was held sacred in Iunyt. “So he knows western Waset well, and the people who dwell there.”

“Better than most, I’d say.”

Bak drew in a breath, then released it with a whoosh.

Though he had no proof, the tiny suspicion in his heart was rapidly turning into a conviction. “Would that I’d come to see you when first I came to Waset. Information flows from you as water from a spring, and each word more worthy than gold.”

“You must’ve asked the right questions,” Mai said, openly curious.

“As harbormaster, you must know or at least have met Pairi and Humay, two brothers who sail a fishing boat out of western Waset.”

Mai must have detected the change from suspicion to certainty, for he turned away from the window, focusing his attention on his visitor. “Broad, strong men, one most notable for a squarish head and flat face.”

“Are they in any way related to Menna?”

“Not that I’ve heard.” Mai tapped his fingers on his thigh, trying to remember. “Their father was a farmer, I’ve been told, and their uncle a fisherman. They were apprenticed to him as youths, and when he died, they inherited his boat.”

“Have you ever seen Menna with them?” Bak asked, not quite ready to reveal his thoughts.

“Not that I recall.”

Bak was willing to bet that if the three men had been together at the harbor, Mai would remember. “Have you ever seen the brothers with any of Menna’s guards? His sergeants?”

“I fear you’ve lost me, Lieutenant. I know the Medjays assigned to guard the harbor, and I’d recognize a palace guard by his dress and weapons and shield. Other than those two units, I can’t tell one from another.”

“One of Menna’s men, a sergeant, was found dead yesterday at Djeser Djeseru. He’d been slain, struck down from behind, and a small landslide set off to make his death look accidental. I thought before we found him that he’d robbed the tomb in which I saw the jewelry your inspector found in the honey jar. I erred. Another man, the one we call the malign spirit, took the jewelry and slew the guard who helped him take it.” Bak went on to describe Imen.

“Several men answer to that description, so I can’t be sure, but I think I’ve seen him here at the harbor. Not with Menna, but talking to Pairi and Humay.”

Satisfaction erupted within Bak’s heart. The various trails he had been following had converged into one.

Mai eyed him curiously. “What are you thinking, Lieutenant?”

“I think Menna might well be the man we’ve been calling the malign spirit, his goal to steal ancient jewelry from a tomb or tombs in the valley where Djeser Djeseru is being built.”

“Menna?” The harbormaster chuckled. “He’s negligent, lazy, never follows through on a task. Does that sound like your malign spirit?”

“He could be a man of two faces. On the surface, a quiet, perfectly groomed, and rather incompetent guard officer.

Beneath the skin, a cold-blooded and vicious slayer of innocent men, one whose sole purpose is to safely rob the dead.”

Mai laughed so hard tears flowed from his eyes. “Your imagination does you credit, young man, but I fear you must look elsewhere for your malign spirit. Menna simply doesn’t have the will or competence to pursue a task as dangerous and difficult as robbing tombs.”

With Mai’s laughter ringing in his ears, Bak hurried along the busy streets to Menna’s office. The harbormaster’s certainty that the guard officer was incapable of carrying out a long-term, complicated, and difficult task had seriously placed in question his suspicion. For one thing, Mai’s impressions of Menna were much in line with his own over the past few days.

If not Menna, then who could the malign spirit be? More than one man, he had already concluded. The fishermen, certainly. They would be as likely to wear amulets of the Lates fish as a man from Iunyt. They had had Imen’s help and that of at least one other man. One who could walk unimpeded and unnoticed across the sands of Djeser Djeseru, one who knew the building site well.

No man would have had more freedom or knew the site better than Montu, and Bak had found the shard with the sketch of the bee in the architect’s office. True, Montu had expressed anger when the workman Ahotep had died while toiling at the southern retaining wall, but what better way to draw attention to an accident that was not in fact an accident than to point it out?