Lauren Haney: Face Turned Backward

He grimaced at the task the gods had dropped into his lap.

“Why couldn’t Rennefer accept the girl like the sensible woman all who knew her thought she was?”

Thuty was a short, broad man, with powerful muscles accented by the strong evening light. The officer’s hair and brows were thick and heavy, the set of his mouth firm. Like Bak, who had taken a quick but cleansing dip in the river and a detour to his quarters to change clothes, he wore a thigh-length white kilt, a broad multicolored bead collar with matching bracelets, and woven reed sandals. He wielded his baton of office like an extension of his arm, pointing, patting his leg, prodding an odd-looking lump in a corner.

Bak could offer no consolation. “I suspect her wits were so addled by sudden anger that she stabbed him without thought.”

“Time and time again?” Troop Captain Nebwa snorted.

“He was lucky the neighbor came along when he did. And she was lucky Netermose didn’t stumble on her, dagger in hand, slashing away like the garrison butcher.”

The coarse-featured officer, Thuty’s second-in-command, was half a hand taller than Bak, and heavier. His unruly hair needed cutting, the hem of his kilt was hiked up on one side.

A blue faience amulet of the eye of Horus hung from a bronze chain around his thick neck. As usual, he had neglected to carry his baton of office, preferring to keep both hands free to use as he liked.

Bak was familiar enough with his friend’s colorful manner of speech to ignore it. “The stabbing was spontaneous, I feel sure, but the root of mandrake was another tale altogether.

She meant to slay him. Either to punish him, to silence him, or to hold the farm for herself. Or for all those reasons and more. But she measured out a smaller quantity than needed, one too meager to slay a man.”

“Penhet is beholden to the gods.” Nebwa grinned. “She has no aptitude for murder.”

“He’s flat on his belly and helpless-and will be for a week or more. She’d have succeeded sooner or later.” Bak had had enough of Rennefer. Thanks to the lord Amon, he had not fallen into her web of deceit, but he had come uncomfortably close. Whether or not this poor adventure would gain him respect among the local people remained an open question.

He leaned against the parapet and stared down at the city, a series of rectangles, gray-white in the fading light, outlined by streets and lanes buried in shadow. Thuty had ushered him and Nebwa to the top of the fortress wall, the most private place in Buhen, for a reason. Would he never get to it?

In the corner below lay the commandant’s residence, from which a long open stairway rose up the wall to the massive corner tower beside which they stood. Granaries and warehouses were easily recognized by their vast size. The walled temple, mansion of the lord Horus of Buhen, towered above the more commonplace buildings on a high manmade mound. Beside it stood the old guardhouse Bak and his Medjays used as a prison and operations center. Barracks blocks and a sector of interconnected villas housing officers and scribes and their families occupied the far side of the nearly square citadel.

Pinpoints of light scattered across the rooftops reflected the brightening stars in a sky turning dark. Each dot represented a baked clay brazier and a family sharing their evening meal. Smoke mingled with the odors of cooking oil, onions, braised fish and fowl, and the ever-present smell of manure wafting into the citadel from the animal paddocks in the outer city. A pack of dogs raced down a street, snarling at a creature too small to see, a rat most likely. Donkeys brayed, a courting tomcat yowled. Bak thought of his first days in Buhen, when he had disliked the fortress and resented the task he had been given. Now Buhen was home, a place of comfort and friendship, and he was proud to stand at the head of the Medjay police.

Dismissing Rennefer with a shake of his head, Thuty broke the long silence. “I guess you know a courier arrived from the viceroy before the storm broke?” He paused, waiting for their nods, then went on, “The vizier, so the message said, believes trade items from far upriver are reaching the hands of northern kings-rulers of Mitanni, Amurru, Keftiu, even far-off Hatti-without first passing through the treasury in Waset.”

Bak raised an eyebrow. Surely this was not why he and Nebwa had been summoned. “We’ve heard that rumor before, and it’s never proven true. At least not in a quantity large enough to cause worry.”

“We’re speaking of more this time than a few small items that crossed the frontier on the back of a donkey, hidden among bundles of skins and baskets of ostrich eggs. We’re speaking of ivory. Whole, uncut tusks. Only the lord Amon knows what else has slipped past us.”

“A tusk can stand as tall or taller than I do, and it can weigh almost as much.” Bak tried not to sound as skeptical as he felt. “That’s not an easy thing to smuggle.”

Nebwa snorted. “Impossible, if you ask me.”

“I don’t want to believe it any more than you do,” Thuty said, scowling at the pair before him, “but it’s a fact. Our 24 / Lauren Haney envoy to the king of Tyre saw a tusk in the palace there. It held pride of place, a new and treasured possession. He took offense, thinking our sovereign, Maatkare Hatshepsut, had delegated another man to present the gift without his knowledge. That very day he sent a courier to Waset, to the vizier.

The tusk was not a gift from the royal house. Nor had it passed through the treasury, as it should have.” Thuty looked first at Bak and then Nebwa, his mouth set, his eyes flinty.

“We’ve been ordered to search all vessels sailing this sector of the river and all caravans coming across the desert. The garrisons farther south along the Belly of Stones will have a like responsibility.”

“We’ll not find an uncut tusk on a caravan,” Nebwa said.

“We might discover a few good-sized chunks. We sometimes do. But nothing that size.”

“What of the lands east of Tyre?” Bak asked, as slow to be convinced as Nebwa was. “They say elephants are found beyond the two mighty rivers that flow south instead of north. Could the tusk have come from there?”

Thuty raised his baton to acknowledge an approaching sentry, a lanky young man wearing a short kilt, carrying a white cowhide shield and a long spear. “The chancellor of Tyre, the king’s right hand, assured our envoy it came from far to the south of Kemet. And it was no gift from one royal house to another. It was bought from a merchant in exchange for gold.”

Before Bak or Nebwa could utter a word, he cut them short. “Further discussion is futile. The vizier has issued a command, and we must obey.” He waited for the sentry to pass by, walk into the tower, and climb the ladder to the roof. “We’ve been ordered to keep the smuggled tusk our secret, saying nothing to anyone. The vizier wants no rumors spreading across the frontier that the land of Kemet no longer wields the power it did when our sovereign’s father, Akheperkare Tuthmose, sat on the throne.”

“Every captain we delay will squawk like a snared goose,” grumbled Nebwa, who had little interest in politics.

“Every trader, caravan master, fisherman. Every man bringing a load of vegetables across the river.”

“Send them to me. I’ll silence them soon enough.”

Bak saw the task was unavoidable, but felt he must point out a truth. “As soon as word spreads that we’re looking for contraband-and the news will fly faster than dust in a gale-not so much as a sandstone chip will cross the frontier without proper clearance and a careful accounting, with the toll already laid out for collection. We’d have more success with random inspections.”