Lauren Haney - Face Turned Backward

Picking up his beer jar, Bak walked to the edge of the roof and looked across the street at the building where Mahu’s slayer had vanished without a trace. He saw nothing but a solid wall, two stories of white-plastered mudbrick that revealed no secrets. Like Mahu’s crew. “Confine them on board the ship. A day or two of boredom should revive lost memories.”

Imsiba laughed. “You’ve no sense of fair play, my friend.”

Bak’s smile was fleeting. “Have you ever had a man die while he strode beside you? A man you’d made your prisoner? I could feel the touch of Mahu’s arm on mine, Imsiba, the warmth of his flesh. And then he fell.” Taking a final look across the street, he turned his back on the blank wall and the intense frustration he had felt when he found the slayer gone. “Ramose will return to Pahuro’s village tomorrow?”

“He hopes to sail at first light.” Imsiba eyed Bak a moment as if to assure himself of his friend’s well-being. “He wanted to leave as soon as his deck was cleared, thinking to sail until darkness fell.” The Medjay set his bowl in front of the dog, who licked it clean in an instant, and plucked a half dozen dates from a makeshift package of leaves. “But Commandant Thuty has ordered that the wrecked ship be saved, so the last I saw of Ramose, he was treading on the heels of the chief scribe, urging him to soon find carpenters to travel north with him.”

“He’s wise not to delay, lest he return to find the wounded vessel dismantled, carried off board by board. I doubt Pahuro would be so bold, with the eyes of authority aimed his way, but his isn’t the only village in the area.”

“If they set sail at dawn, with luck and the help of the gods they’ll reach the village before midday.” Imsiba popped a date into his mouth. “The carpenters will remain, as will the soldiers who’ll see to their safety, but Ramose 78 / Lauren Haney will come back to Buhen the following day, his deck piled high with contraband.”

“And here his ship must remain until I lay hands on Mahu’s slayer,” Bak said, his voice turning sour.

“You’ll find him, my friend. You always do.”

Bak had to smile. “When you speak those words, I know you mean them. When they come from Thuty, I take them as a threat.”

Laughing, Imsiba collected the residue of their meal. The last of the color faded from the sky, quenching the bright reflection on the wall and leaving the rooftop in darkness.

The two men, with the dog tagging behind, walked to a square of light and descended the stairway to the entry hall below. A torch mounted on the wall beside the street door cast light on the stairs and illuminated the large, unfurnished hall, where the two Medjays on night duty sat on the floor playing knucklebones, a game that seemed never to end, continuing from one watch to another, day in and day out.

Bak had initially feared the wagering would lead to trouble, but the quantities bet remained small, the enthusiasm and good humor vast.

Imsiba went off to assign men to the next day’s inspections at the harbor. Bak watched the game for a short time, then selected a dried twig from a basket filled with kindling, held it to the torch, and carried the flame into the adjoining room, which he used as an office. With the fire creeping toward his fingers, he lit the wicks in two baked clay lamps, small dishes filled with oil, supported on thigh-high tripods made of reeds.

He hastened back to the entry hall and, as the flame licked his fingers, dropped the twig into a bowl of sand on the floor below the torch.

Returning to his office, he dropped onto the woven mat Hori preferred to a stool and eyed the litter around him: scribal pallets, pens and inks, and writing materials had been shoved aside, providing space for lengths of papyrus fresh from the river, knife, mallet, burnisher, and glue. With a multitude of old documents always available for reuse in the scribal office building, he could not imagine why Hori was attempting to make his own scrolls.

A basket piled high with sealed documents and a dozen or so grayish pottery jars from which additional scrolls protruded shared the upper surface of a mudbrick bench built the length of the back wall. Bak’s long spear and cowhide shield were stacked with Imsiba’s weapons against the wall to the left. The white coffin they had removed from Captain Roy’s ship had been set against the right-hand wall. It was so newly made Bak could smell the tangy scent of fresh-cut wood. Two three-legged stools, one upside-down on top of the other, stood near the door. Soon, he thought, there would be no space left for him.

Imsiba arrived with two fresh jars of beer. Glancing at the littered floor and bench, he chuckled. “When first we met, I thought you a man of refined taste.”

Bak merely grinned. “You spent some time with Roy’s crew, I noticed, during the voyage from Pahuro’s village.”

Sobering, Imsiba handed over a jar, set the uppermost stool on the floor, and toed the second stool away from a thin ribbon of smoke coiling toward the door. Knucklebones clattered on the floor outside, one man laughed and another moaned.

“They’re poor specimens, I can tell you. Irascible and coarse.” Imsiba broke the plug in his jar, dropped the pieces onto a pile of papyrus waste, and sat down. “Two faults they seem not to have: indolence and disloyalty. They’ve toiled long and hard together and have formed a rock-solid unit, with Captain Roy at the core. His death will in time tear them asunder, but not yet.”

“He must’ve been generous to earn such loyalty.”

“They show little sign of wealth now.”

Bak waved off the objection. “Too many unlucky games of chance, a craving for women, a large family somewhere making frequent demands. I’ve seldom met a sailor who could hold onto so much as a handful of grain.” He scooted back against the bench and set his beer jar aside, unopened and unwanted. “What’d they have to say about their cargo?”

80 / Lauren Haney

“They claim this is the first time they’ve carried contraband.”

Bak raised a skeptical eyebrow.

“I know,” Imsiba said, “once a smuggler, always a smuggler. In this case, though, the reason they gave for Captain Roy’s willingness to take the risk has some merit.”

“I yearn to hear it.”

“I can only repeat what I was told.” Imsiba eyed the coffin with distaste. “Captain Roy had decided to leave Wawat forever, returning to his wife and family in Kemet. The crew was going with him, each and every man. This was to be their final voyage north from the Belly of Stones. The precious items they took on board would’ve given Roy the wealth to buy another, bigger ship at Abu, and his men a new berth, one much to their liking.”

“A good excuse for law-breaking,” Bak admitted. “What kind of place did Pashenuro find to sequester them?”

Imsiba smiled. “One I’d not enjoy. A house in the outer city. One not far from the animal paddocks, where few men live.”

“He couldn’t have made a better choice,” Bak laughed.

“Forced to enjoy only each other’s company, with the smell of manure perfuming the air and Buhen’s houses of pleasure just out of reach, they may decide that confessing the truth is more appealing than keeping their silence.”

“So Pashenuro believed.”

Bak stood up, stretched. “It’s been a long day, Imsiba, one I hope never to repeat.” He scowled at the clutter around his feet. “Hori will have to find another room to call his own.

I’ll speak with him tonight.”

A sharp hiss drew his attention to the entry hall. The two guards, one with his hand poised as if interrupted on the brink of casting the knucklebones, exchanged a meaningful glance and looked furtively at Bak. When they realized his eyes were on them, they hastily looked away, as men do when they have a guilty secret.