Lynda Robinson: Murder at the God's Gate

Sighing, Meren said, "Unas wasn't my spy."

"You know his name."

"Gods, Ebana," Maya said. "We just learned it together a few moments ago."

Meren had been watching his cousin through his lashes. If something weren't done, Ebana would create a scandal that could eventually involve the king. He sighed again and gave Maya an apologetic look.

"Would you mind, old friend, if I spoke to my cousin alone? Family quarrels and rivalries, you understand."

Maya registered no surprise, nor did he object at being edged out of a matter that involved his underlings. With a smooth acquiescence, he left them alone. Meren knew he would be inundated with queries later, which was why Maya could keep his curiosity under rein now. When he was gone, Meren rose so that Ebana could no longer look down on him.

He turned away and, beckoning a slave, whispered that Kysen be summoned. Then he dismissed the servants with their fans and walked away from the chairs. He stopped when he reached one of the sycamores that surrounded the reflection pool in orderly rows.

He glanced back at his cousin. Wide of shoulder, with a flat belly and long legs, Ebana had a body that closely adhered to the canon of proportions painters used to depict gods and kings. People said the cousins looked alike. Meren had never paid much attention to their resemblance. He did remember how Ebana used to laugh at him for being embarrassed when girls would linger in doorways and drape themselves on rooftops as they drove their chariots through the city.

That had been when they were like brothers. Leaning his shoulder against the tree, he waited for Ebana to join him.

"I haven't come for a loving family talk," Ebana said. He confronted Meren with arms folded across his chest. "I've come to report to his majesty."

"You know well that I was only pursuing a murderer when I talked to that priest. I talk to priests of Amun all the time, Ebana. Do you suspect each of them? And if you do, perhaps I should suspect you of killing this one.'

Ebana flushed. "I'm no murderer, and don't try to distract me."

A breeze caught and tossed the leaves of the sycamore. Meren breathed in cool air, closed his eyes, and raised his face to sunlight dappled by leafy branches. "Follow your own reasoning. Of all the priests of Amun, you're the one I talk to the most. Therefore, you're the one most likely to be my spy. Does Parenefer suspect you?"

When Ebana didn't answer, Meren opened his eyes. Had he not shared a childhood with the man, he couldn't have read anything in his expression. Ebana's eyes weren't simply the dark brown of Egypt. They were true black, like the Nile at night. Only Meren could catch a glint as if the full moon had dropped into them, and the skin around them seemed pale from tension.

"I didn't know," Meren said softly.

"You know nothing. I have orders to report to the king. I could tell him what I know of your spy."

"Don't," Meren said as he began to rub the scar on his inner wrist. "You'll only annoy him and create further strain between the temple and the court."

"Amun has no fear of-"

"Ebana, sometimes you're wearisome beyond endurance. I've had a letter from my sister. She's at home with Bener and Isis and says they're both learning the running of an estate quite well. I have to admit that I didn't think Isis would do well. You have daughters. You should understand how the youngest always manages to slip away from responsibilities."

"The way you slipped away from yours to me?"

Ebana touched his temple where his scar began. It crossed his left cheek and slanted down his neck, where it disappeared under a gold-and-carnelian broad collar.

Meren shoved away from the tree trunk and planted his feet apart. "Damn you. I tried to warn you, but I found out too late."

"I'll never believe that you didn't know Akhenaten had condemned me. You knew how unpredictable were his humors."

"Why won't you understand? He almost killed me as well. I'd only been released a few days when I found out he'd sent men after you. I could barely stand, yet when I heard he'd taken it into his head that you sympathized with Amun, I tried to come to you. I could trust no one with a message, so I tried to warn you myself."

Ebana wasn't looking at him. His gaze had gone distant. His mouth contorted as he sank into the memory.

"You found them, didn't you? My wife. My son. The guards dragged me away from their bodies. I never saw them again."

Slowly, Meren reached out. He touched his cousin's arm, but Ebana shook him off.

"You know I took care of them. Did I not conceal them and have them taken to Thebes? The old king never found their bodies, did he? I tried, Ebana."

"Did you?"

Meren met his cousin's gaze. For a moment he glimpsed the old Ebana, his friend and companion, the one who had studied with him, hunted with him, sailed with him. Then the pit of distrust and old hurts opened between them again. Meren subdued the pain of loss he always felt during one of these confrontations. Ebana chose to live in a netherworld of timeless grief and hatred. He couldn't make his cousin whole again.

"Leave it," Meren said softly. "Leave it before it destroys you." Ebana said nothing, and Meren veered away from the matter, glancing over his cousin's shoulder in the direction of the palace. "Difficult as it is to believe, I've other tasks of greater importance than this accident. However, as a favor to Maya, I'm sending Kysen to inquire into the happenings at the god's gate."

Ebana looked over his shoulder to watch Kysen's approach. "Ah, your peasant son. Have you no seed left in your loins, that you have to adopt the spawn of a commoner?"

Meren stepped close to Ebana. "Shut your teeth, cousin, or I'll reach down your throat, pull your spine out, and make you eat it."

Moving back, he smiled sweetly at Ebana before welcoming Kysen. He heard Ebana curse him, but by the time Kysen greeted him, his usual mask of unconcern had settled over his features. With Ebana lurking beside him, he couldn't warn Kysen of the significance of this death. He could only hope that Ky had learned enough to recognize danger without help.

Kysen approached the statue of the king before the gate of Amun, his head throbbing from a night spent drinking beer and losing wagers at games of senet to Tanefer, Ahiram, and several other friends. He should have looked at a calendar this morning, for surely today was a day of misfortune for him. He knew his eyes were red-rimmed. His head felt like it had been filled to bursting with swamp water. And now he had to spend the day with his father's serpent of a cousin.

The noise of the temple aggravated his pain, for the house of Amun was more a city within a city, its great walls enclosing not only the home of the god but lesser shrines, the House of Life, workshops, a treasury, libraries, the high priest's residence, and service buildings. In addition there was a sacred lake, and every building contained its own staff of busy priests, servants, slaves, and sometimes priestesses.

Blinking against the sun's glare, he shaded his eyes and tried not to kick up dust as he walked. Something was wrong. Ordinarily the death of a lowly pure one wouldn't concern the great Servant of the God, Ebana.

Neither would it have attracted his father's attention. Yet both men had been reserved as they gave him the task of investigating the accident.

Meren rarely spoke of Ebana. His silence hadn't kept Kysen from recognizing the violence of whatever secret lay between the two men. Nor had it disguised the place Ebana still held in Meren's affection. Few had such a claim on his father. Kysen had learned long ago that Meren guarded his ka against deep attachments outside the family. He suspected the reasons lay in too many losses-father, mother, a beloved wife and infant son, comrades in warfare.