Lynda Robinson: Murder at the God's Gate

He brushed aside the obsequious attentions of one of the chief scribes of the House of Life, requested a lamp, and went alone to Qenamun's room. Shoving open the door, he held up the lamp to dispel the darkness. Someone had put the chamber in order.

Scraps of papyrus, broken pottery, and wax figures had been swept away. The documents that had been scattered about the room had been rolled and tied into bundles. Several such bundles rested on end on the floor.

To his left sat the shelves of texts against the wall. Before him lay the table on which Qenamun had died. Someone had placed his scribal equipment there. Meren glanced at pots of ink, a knife used to trim rush pens, the indispensable scribe's palette. Of wood overlaid with ivory, this palette was a luxurious version of an everyday instrument. A thin oblong box, it bore two hollows in which red and black ink were kept. Thousands of scribes carried humbler versions of such palettes in the city.

A sliding panel covered the slot used to store pens, but it was empty: Ahiram, in his haste to replace the scribal equipment with cobras, had dumped over fifty pens in the bottom of the casket that now resided in Meren's office.

No one had removed the incomplete wax figure of the Hittite king with its curse. The inscription called down every evil plot, deed, fate, and monster upon Suppiluliumas, whose name was enclosed in a cartouche. Meren set the figurine aside. He glanced at a stack of bowls behind it. They were clean, unused. Passing on, he continued to search the chamber.

He held little hope of finding anything. Qenamun was too clever to leave signs of his guilt where they could be found, and he'd already searched the place once. He was bending over a leather document case when a shadow fell between him and the lamp. He turned to face Ebana.

Closing the door, his cousin placed himself between it and Meren. "I didn't think you'd come here again after our last encounter."

Meren straightened and leaned against the table.

"Did you know, cousin, that you're one of the few people whose first words haven't been to ask if I caught Ahiram?"

"Would you tell me if I asked?"

It was like balancing on the tip of an obelisk. He couldn't bring into the open the destruction at Horizon of Aten, and yet he had to know if Ebana was involved.

"Shall I tell you?" Meren asked. "I'll relate what appears to have happened. Ahiram ran away out of fear that some crime of his had been discovered, and was killed by bandits before I could reach him."

Ebana didn't look away. He met Meren's stare with a lifted brow. "What crime?"

"I've given you the surface, upon which lilies float. Are you certain you want the unwholesome substance that sinks beneath?"

"You've become accomplished at subtly building suspense and hinting at evil to come," Ebana said, "but your artistry goes for naught if the victim understands your strategy."

Picking up a stone used to smooth the irregularities from sheets of papyrus, Meren sighed. "Very well. Ahiram had committed acts of great evil. He lost his wits and fled when he thought I was nearing the truth." He tossed the stone in the air and caught it, then smiled at Ebana. "How incongruous that I only discovered the truth through his carelessness and alarm."

Ebana had always been adept at playing parts in the great plays that told the stories of the gods. His acting skill had served him well in making his way at court and in the temple. Meren couldn't help admiring it now, when it was used against him. Brows drew together to indicate confusion.

"I still don't understand," Ebana said.

Meren kept tossing the stone slowly, as if he intended to remain in this dead man's room indefinitely. " Wings of Horus is the fastest ship on the Nile, Ebana. I caught up with him before those mercenaries you sent could finish him."

He watched understanding dawn over Ebana's face. He stopped tossing the stone; he hadn't expected to startle his cousin out of his composure. A wave of concern washed over those features that so resembled his, and then was gone. Dread crept into Meren's soul.

"If you had him, or anything else, to prove that I'd committed some transgression, we both know you'd have taken me prisoner the moment you docked."

Meren was shaking his head. "Even after all this time, I don't think I believed you'd go so far. Why? Pharaoh has decreed a restoration so complete that Amun is more powerful than ever."

"If I were to speculate upon the matter, I might reply with a question. Can evil be erased by one who shares the blood of a heretic?"

"So you believe that an innocent should suffer for the crimes of his brother."

Ebana came nearer, within a pace of Meren, and spoke in a low voice. "You would pry into my soul? You who served the sun disk that brought blasphemy and plagues to Egypt. That was your statement, not mine. But since we're speaking of innocents, I would remind you of my wife and son. How would you feel if someone took your son and dashed his head against the flagstones until it burst? Ah, did that frighten you?"

"Are you threatening Kysen?"

"I but asked a question."

"Damn you, Ebana, if you harm him, I'll hunt you from here to the netherworld. You'll wish the Devourer had taken your soul after I've done with you."

"You're no longer great enough to utter threats, my dear cousin. Everyone knows what happened at the palace, how you've angered pharaoh and lost his favor. What did you do to make him so furious, when he dotes upon your words and admires you as if you were the god and not he?"

Meren said nothing. He hadn't expected the rumors of his downfall to spread so quickly. If they had reached the temple, his power to serve the king was threatened, for no one would respect his authority. Ebana smiled at him and let out a long breath like the hiss of a cobra as it flared its hood. He opened the door and stepped to the threshold.

"You'd better take care, sweet cousin, or pharaoh will send men to murder you and your son and his son in your beds as his brother did to me." Ebana laughed. The sound reverberated down the hall as he closed the door behind him, leaving Meren alone in the chamber where Qenamun had been murdered. His hand hurt. He looked down to find it strangling the hilt of his dagger. He had to summon his thoughts and dampen his rage before he could direct his fingers to uncurl and loosen their grip.

The walk out of the temple seemed unending, and yet he reached the colossus without hindrance. He'd half expected Ebana to waylay him in some dark corner of the House of Life. He returned home certain that Ebana had had a role in the looting of Akhenaten's tomb, but with no way to prove it to pharaoh. Not that Tutankhamun needed proof to believe the priests of Amun had committed the evil.

What was he going to do? He couldn't tell anyone he suspected his own cousin of the crime. What proof did he have? An expression on a face, a silence. Ebana had said nothing to betray himself or anyone else. The only way to get more from him would be by force.

This last thought occurred to him as he entered his office. It was late afternoon, and he felt as if a century had passed since his confrontation with pharaoh. How had it happened, this fall from grace? No, he wouldn't harass himself with such musings. He found his juggling balls and began to toss three of them.

Casting his thoughts back, he remembered how frightened Unas had seemed when he last saw the man. Unas had been such an earnest little snail, concerned with accuracy, quality, detail. So why would he break a bowl and then try to burn it? Such an extraordinary act for a man who, in his heart, was so very ordinary.

He watched a leather ball as he tossed it in the air. It was of dark leather, almost as dark as those burned shards. He remembered that fragment of inscription on one of them. Which cursive hieroglyphs might they represent? Those curved lines above each fragment of a letter annoyed him for some reason, but he couldn't think why.