Lauren Haney: Face Turned Backward

Bak could not keep the impatience from his voice. “We know for a fact that one of the men who played asked Mahu to smuggle contraband. If not Userhet, who do you believe it was? Ramose, Hapuseneb, Kay, or Nebamon?”

“All right,” Nebwa admitted somewhat grudgingly, “Userhet approached Mahu.”

“He was smuggling contraband by the shipload, Nebwa.

I’ve heard of no man in the past who’s ever been so bold, nor can I believe a second man exists today of equal daring.

He was also, I’m convinced, the one smuggling the elephant tusks.”

Running his fingers through his unruly hair, Nebwa scowled at his friend. “It’s a pity you slew him before he could talk.”

With Thuty’s order to continue the search for tusks fresh in his thoughts, Bak could think of no greater understatement.

“Sir!” Hori burst through the door. The youth thrust a short segment of papyrus at Bak, and waved a second document in the air. “I’ve found a match, sir, as you hoped I would.”

Bak knelt and flattened the scroll across a knee. The document was short, listing the items stored in a single room in the warehouse, but it brought a smile of satisfaction to his face. The symbols were perfectly formed and the writing neat, with no slovenly habits to identify the scribe. Hori knelt beside him and unrolled the second scroll, the manifest taken from Captain Roy’s ship, the document that had legitimized the contraband on board. The writing was identical.

Bak stood in the doorway, watching Hori and a thin, elderly scribe compare the objects in the room with those listed on the inventory the youth had found. Imsiba prowled, lifting first one item and then another, while Nebwa stood, hands on hips, looking on. Located in an out-of-the-way corner of the warehouse, the long, narrow space contained less than half the number of objects they had found on Roy’s ship, but their combined value must have been four times as great.

A neat stack of leopard skins stood beside a basket of odd-shaped horns taken from creatures unknown in the land of Kemet. Ostrich feathers protruded from the neck of a wide-mouthed jar. Short lengths of ebony lay beside a basket filled to the brim with chunks of precious stone. Innumerable jars contained, according to labels jotted on their shoulders, myrrh and frankincense, aromatic woods, spices. A narrow-mouthed red pot held the fangs of large carnivorous beasts.

A gray-green vessel held small linen bags of seeds, each labeled with the name of a tree or plant growing far to the south of Wawat. A basket contained dried roots and leaves and stems, laid in layers separated by squares of rough linen.

Two man-shaped coffins and a rectangular outer coffin were stacked before the rear wall with three small wooden tables and a broken chair. The coffins had been painted and adorned, but the spaces reserved for names had been left blank. Their tops leaned against the wall behind them. They were empty, off-the-shelf items to be shipped upriver and sold. They and the furniture looked out of place in a room otherwise filled with exotic trade goods. Bak suspected Userhet had stored them here to convince any curious scribe that the contents of the room were aboveboard.

He was more than satisfied with both the quantity and the quality of what they had found. Yet at the same time he was disappointed. The room contained no elephant tusk, nor so much as a sliver of ivory. Could he be wrong after all? Could someone other than Userhet have been sending tusks north?

Who? Of equal import, how was the deed done?

“Another jar of myrrh. The sixth, by my count.” Imsiba, shaking his head in wonder, set the ovate black jar among several similar containers. “Userhet meant to leave Buhen a rich man, of that you can be sure.”

“I wonder what Psuro’s found in his house?” Hori asked.

“Not much, I’ll wager,” Nebwa said. “He had too many neighbors with too many prying children to hide anything of value there.”

Bak waved off a thick, acrid ribbon of smoke drifting from a torch mounted near the door. “Somewhere to the north, probably in Abu, there’ll be a man who received the contraband Userhet sent to Kemet-and a place where they stored all they smuggled.”

“Thuty sent a courier at first light.” Nebwa watched the older scribe count leopard skins. “If the gods smile on him-and on us-he’ll reach Abu before Userhet’s accomplice realizes something has gone amiss. I’d hate to see the swine slip away free and safe.”

“How will they know who to look for?” Hori asked.

“I see no problem there,” Nebwa said, chuckling. “He’ll be the one hanging around the quay, asking for Captain Roy.”

“Userhet must’ve brought a few objects at a time from the tomb we found,” Bak said, thinking aloud, seeking a way a tusk could be smuggled. “He probably listed them then and there as part of the inventory. With so many ships coming and going, each leaving a portion of its cargo as toll, not a scribe on his staff would’ve noticed.”

“Once listed as stored in Buhen,” Imsiba added, “everything here could be sent north on any ship. A false manifest would account for them should an inspector show interest between here and Abu-or wherever they were set ashore.”

Bak nodded. “Userhet had but to find a captain who would unload them at the proper time and place.”

“I thought him arrogant and no brighter than most,” Imsiba admitted. “Never would I have given him credit for so simple yet clever a scheme.”

“A scheme is only as good as those who carry it out. His began to crumble the day Roy decided to return to Kemet.”

Nebwa caressed the soft gray hide of a monkey. “Why he approached Mahu, I’ll never understand.”

“Maybe Mahu had a darker side,” Bak said.

Nebwa’s head snapped around. “I don’t believe it!”

Bak preferred not to think it either, but no other explanation could account for Userhet’s proposition to Mahu. The overseer had been too canny by far to approach a man he knew to be of unimpeachable integrity. But best not to press the point. Best for Sitamon’s sake-and Imsiba’s-to leave her brother’s reputation unblemished.

“Here it is.” With her fleshy arm threaded through the shoulder straps, Nofery spread the lower portion of a white sheath, a wide swath of the finest linen, across the foot of her bed. “I had it made especially for the commandant’s party.”

Bak, standing close so he could see, formed an admiring smile. It was difficult to appreciate so large a dress, but the last thing he wanted was to hurt the obese old woman’s feelings. He had come to her place of business to keep his promise, to tell her of his hunt for the smugglers, narrowing the

274 / Lauren Haney field to Userhet, and the final chase ending in the overseer’s death. As the rich black earth of the river valley absorbs the yearly flood, she had soaked up his every word and in return had insisted on showing him her party finery. The tale, a minor distraction at best, had failed to ease his frustration at not finding a tusk.

The dusky servant Amonaya laid a broad collar of multicolored beads over the straps and Nofery’s extended arm.

He stepped back, head tilted, to admire the effect. Nodding his satisfaction, he shook open a large rectangle of white linen, draped it around her arm, crossed one fringed end over the other, and brought the visible end down the front of the sheath. Smiling, the boy laid out bracelets, armlets, and anklets that matched the collar, completing the ensemble.

Bak patted Nofery’s hefty behind. “You’ll steal the vizier’s heart, old woman.”

“You make light of me now,” she said, flinging her head high, “but you’ll be most impressed this evening.”

Bak thought it best to make no comment. He had learned a long time ago not to underestimate her. “Will you take the boy with you? And the lion?”