We are still in the reign of Hatshepsut, but now we are far to the south of Egypt in the fortress town of Buhen, in Nubia, which was then called Wawat. Lauren Haney is the pen name of Betty Winkelman, a former worker in the aerospace industry, who now indulges her interest in ancient Egypt with a highly praised series featuring Lieutenant Bak, head of the Medjay police. The books in the series so far are The Right Hand of Amon (1997), A Face Turned Backward (1999), A Vile Justice (1999), A Curse of Silence (2000) and A Place of Darkness (2001).
“Lieutenant Bak!”
Bak, officer in charge of the Medjay police, glanced up from the scroll he was reading, the week’s compilation of entries taken from the daybook kept by the commandant of the fortress of Buhen.
A boy of 11 or 12 years burst through the opening at the top of the stairs and onto the rooftop of the guardhouse, where the police were quartered and prisoners were kept. The youth was sturdy of body and deeply tanned by the sun; his skin was dusted with fine sand and his kilt stained with sweat and dirt. He bent half over, holding his side. Gasping for breath, he said, “You must . . . come . . . right away . . . sir.”
“Go away, Mery.” Hori, the police scribe, a pudgy youth a mere few years older than the boy, waved him away. “Can’t you see we’re busy?”
Bak took one look at Mery’s face, scowled a reprimand. “Silence, Hori.”
Clutching his side, breathing hard, Mery hastened to the pavilion beneath which Bak and Hori sat. “A man’s been . . . slain, sir.”
The shelter, a sturdy affair with a shaggy palm-frond roof, was open on all four sides, allowing the cool early morning breeze to waft through. A quiet, comfortable place to read and write reports before the hot breath of the lord Re reached into the city inside the tall mudbrick walls of the fortress. Painted stark white, towered for strength, the stronghold’s crenellated battlements looked down upon an orderly grid of building blocks, barracks, storehouses, and the walled mansion of the lord Horus of Buhen, the local version of the falcon god. The fortress was the largest and most important in Wawat, a land south of Kemet held close in the heart of Maatkare Hatshepsut because of the gold found in its desert wastes.
Muttering an oath, Bak let the ends of the scroll roll together, tossed it into a basket of similar documents, and scrambled to his feet. “Who is he, Mery?” With a permanent population of slightly more than four hundred people, the question was reasonable. Everyone knew everyone else.
“A foreigner, from the looks of him. A man from far to the north.”
“A stranger, then. A trader.”
The boy shrugged.
“You found him where?” Bak asked, though he could guess easily enough from the brownish yellow dust coating Mery’s skin and clothing.
“We were playing in the old tombs, sir. He’s in one of them.”
Bak summoned his Medjay sergeant Imsiba, a tall, powerfully built man, lithe of gait and sharp of eye. Soon the two of them and Mery were hurrying out of the twin-towered gate, leaving the citadel behind, and striding along the broad, sun-struck thoroughfare that joined the gate behind them to the even larger, desert-facing gate that pierced the massive peripheral wall. Passing the jumble of interconnected houses that formed the outer city, they veered off the street to cross an open stretch of sand to a low shelf of rock that marked the site of an ancient ruined cemetery.
Mounds of rubble and broken mudbrick walls, the tops of low structures built many generations earlier, protruded from sand blown against the face of the shelf. Gaping holes and stairways partially covered with wind-driven grit led to black cavities in the earth. The outer wall of the city loomed over the sandy waste, allowing the sentries on the battlements to look down in idle curiosity.
A half dozen boys close to Mery in age, all as sturdily built as he and as dirty, sat in a cluster on overturned pots and heaps of tumbled bricks. They were the sons of an ever-increasing number of soldiers and scribes who thought the southern frontier safe enough to bring their families. Spotting the newcomers, the boys leaped to their feet and ran to meet them, all chattering at once, the shock of finding a dead man far outweighed by the excitement of discovery.
With Mery leading the way and the rest of the children straggling behind, they walked along the rocky shelf, past broken walls and collapsed roofs, toppled memorial tablets and crushed burial jars, towards a rock-cut stairway enclosed by what looked like a low mudbrick wall of irregular height but which was actually the remains of a vaulted roof. A rectangular black hole at the bottom beckoned.
Imsiba lighted the torch they had brought and they plunged down the dozen rough steps to the low, narrow doorway. Bak ducked down and held the torch inside, examining the walls and ceiling for cracks, the floors for chunks of rock fallen from above, signs that the ceiling was close to collapse. He had suggested more than once that the boys play elsewhere. They had countered by pointing at the sentries atop the walls, who could summon help in an instant.
The tomb was slightly longer than a man was tall, not quite as wide, and barely high enough to stand erect. Chisel marks pocked its rough-cut walls, but it was otherwise unadorned. If a body had been placed inside when newly dug, it had long ago vanished. Now a fresh burial had been made, a casual interment at best.
The fleshy body lay half on its side, arms askew, legs outstretched. The usual smell of hot, dry earth was smothered by the odours of sweat and stale beer, of defecation and the metallic smell of blood. Black hair, held off the man’s face by a white band around his head, would have hung nearly to his shoulders when he stood erect. His dark beard had been cut to a point. He wore a long-sleeved, ankle-length white tunic, with a broad wrap of red-fringed white fabric bound around his ample stomach and hips. His seal ring, the torque around his neck, and the bracelets on both arms were of heavy gold. Their presence hinted at a reason for death other than robbery.
A dagger projected just below his breastbone. Blood had spurted out, staining the tunic but not the dust-covered rock floor beneath him. A clear indication that he had been slain elsewhere and carried into the tomb. Sucking in his breath, doing what he had to do, Bak gripped the hilt and pulled the weapon free. The bronze blade was ordinary. Strips of leather, shiny from wear, had been wound around the handle.
Bak examined the floor of the small space. He found many scuffed footprints, but none distinct enough to recognize later should he come upon them. Glimpsing something whitish in a corner, he scooped it up. A knucklebone. Had the boys tired of playing hide and seek or chasing make-believe tribesmen through the tombs and begun to play games of chance?
Imsiba bent closer and stared at the face. “I’ve seen this man before, my friend. Yesterday evening it was, shortly before nightfall. Entering Nofery’s house of pleasure with three other men.”
“I remember him,” Nofery growled. “How could I forget so vile a man?”
“Who was he?” Bak asked.
The obese old woman, her expression stormy, handed jars of beer to him and the sergeant. “He was called Ben-Azan. A trader. A man from Retenu, so his name proclaimed, but he’d long ago washed away the remnants of his birth and childhood, thinking himself a man of the world.”
Bak settled on one of the dozen or so low stools in the dark, dingy room. Beer vats and baskets piled high with smaller jars lined one wall. A low table held a multitude of drinking bowls, many cracked and chipped. The room reeked of stale beer and sweat, reminding him of the tomb, and a mix of other odours hinting of sex and vomit. Dust motes danced in the slab of light entering through the open doorway. Nofery was his spy, one who enjoyed sly games to gain an advantage. Not this time, he could see.
Imsiba drew a stool close and sat down beside him. “He was passing through Buhen?”
“I thank the lord Amun he had no plans to stay.”
Bak broke the dried mud plug from his jar and, taking care not to stir up the gritty sediment, eyed her curiously while he sipped the bitter brew. She usually turned a blind eye to her customers’ faults. What had Ben-Azan done to antagonize her? “Was he travelling to north or south, did you hear?”
“Who could not have heard?” she said with a sneer. “He was returning to his homeland, well pleased with himself.”
“He’d had a successful trading expedition, I assume.”
“From the way he gloated, he left no doubt of his masterful dealings with those poor, ignorant tribesmen in the land of Kush.”
Poor and ignorant? Bak doubted the words were hers; she must be quoting Ben-Azan. The river running through Kush and Wawat served as a major trade route along which exotic products highly valued by the royal house of Kemet were transported from far to the south. From what he had heard, many Kushite merchants were men of wealth who could out-barter the wiliest of traders from Kemet and lands beyond. “Where are his wares, do you know?”
Nofery broke the plug from a beer jar, dropped onto a stool that vanished beneath her sagging flesh, and poured a thin stream of brew into her mouth. Bak exchanged a look of long-suffering silence with Imsiba. He knew from experience that the harder he pushed, the more she resisted.
“He came in with a ship’s captain, Tjay by name, and two other men,” she said. “Traders like him, they were. They’d come north by donkey train, passing down the trail west of the Belly of Stones. Would they not have unloaded the beasts at Kor and reloaded on a vessel bound for Abu?” Abu was the southernmost city in the land of Kemet.
Bak understood her meaning. The Belly of Stones was a long stretch of rapids not navigable much of the year. Merchandise travelling north was transported past the boiling river on the backs of donkeys and unloaded at the small fortress of Kor where the river grew tame. A sensible trader would quickly load his goods onto a northbound ship – such as that of Captain Tjay.
“Who were the other two men?”
She grimaced at a slick-haired yellow dog peering in from the street, but most likely her distaste was directed at the man she held in her memory. “Foreigners, like he was. Friends, he called them.”
“You sound doubtful. Did they quarrel?”
Grudgingly, she shook her head. “They behaved like men on the best of terms.”
Bak was beginning to lose patience. “Tell me, old woman, what exactly did he do to make you dislike him so?”
“He snapped his fingers and beckoned, as if I was beneath contempt, and treated the women who lay with him as vessels in which to take his pleasure. As for those he called friends, he behaved like a man holding court. I expected them at any moment to get down on their knees and kiss his feet.” She screwed up her face in distaste. “Worst of all was the gloating. Smiling expansively, patting his stomach like a man of wealth, bragging of his brilliance as a trader, hinting at some special coup that demonstrated his superiority.”
“He sounds like a man asking to be slain,” Imsiba said.
They hurried to the harbour, praying Captain Tjay had not yet set sail. If he had left with Ban-Azan’s merchandise but without the man himself, he was at best a thief, at worst a slayer.
Their worry proved unfounded. The ship they sought was moored at the near end of one of three long stone quays that reached out into the river. Like many vessels plying the waters between the Belly of Stones and Abu, Captain Tjay’s ship looked to be a veteran of the frontier. The wooden hull was gray with age and scarred, but appeared solid and sturdy. Bak noted several neat patches on the faded reddish sail, laid out across the deck so a sailor could repair a fresh tear.
“Dead?” Tjay, standing on the quay near the end of the gangplank, shook his head. “I don’t believe it. I was with him just last night. We shared a brew – more than one, if the truth be told – and made merry with congenial companions and a few of that old hag Nofery’s women.” He was a man of medium height, with broad shoulders and thick, muscular legs. His skin was dark from years of exposure to sun and wind, his eyes almost yellow.
“He was stabbed in the chest sometime during the night,” Bak said.
“It can’t be true.”
Tjay’s ship, its fittings and stays creaking, rose and fell on the shallow swells. Brownish silt-laden water lapped the quay, carrying close a duck and her cheeping offspring. Farther out, the river flowed smooth and quiet, with each small ripple like bits of silver, reflections of the bright-white sky.
“How late did you leave him to go your own way?” Bak asked, hoping to avert another denial.
Tjay gave him a sharp look. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”
“He’s even now in the house of death, awaiting the commandant’s decision as to what must be done with his mortal remains.”
“Ah, yes. What does one do with a foreigner whose home was far away and whose burial customs are different than those of Kemet?”
Bak chose not to respond to the obvious. With the days so hot, the dead man would surely be buried without delay. “You’re not grieving, I see.”
“I enjoyed his company, yes, but grieve?” Tjay expelled a humourless little laugh. “I’d never set eyes on the man until two days ago, and not until after midday. When he and his friends came off the desert trail at Kor.”
“They asked you to transport their goods to Abu? Or was Ben-Azan the sole man who wished to hire your ship?”
“The three of them, but Ben-Azan did the talking.” Tjay scratched his chest, matted with thick, dark hair. “He was a thrifty sort. Though darkness was threatening, he wanted their possessions transferred directly from the donkeys to my ship, saving the price of unloading the poor beasts and leaving the objects where they lay, then hiring men to stow them on board the following morning.”
“Such haste must’ve been irksome.”
A hint of irritation touched Tjay’s face, quickly supplanted by a smile. “He was thrifty, lieutenant, but not stingy.”
Bak noted the stifled emotion, the too quick reassurance. “If he’d not showed up after several days – and he wouldn’t have – what would you have done with his wares?”
Tjay did not have to think twice about his answer. “I’d have off-loaded his part of the cargo and taken on board that of someone else. With enough goods on deck to make the journey profitable, I’d have sailed north to Abu.”
“You’d not have reported him missing?”
The captain frowned, clearly resenting the question. “I would have, yes. The documents I obtained at Kor list him and his belongings as being on board. We couldn’t pass through customs at Abu without an accounting, could we?”
Bak chose to ignore the sarcasm. “Tell me of the two traders who travelled with him.”
“Thutnofer and Aper-el.”
“I was told they both are foreigners, yet the one . . .” Bak’s voice tailed off, inviting an explanation.
“Like many another man who’s come from a distant land to make Kemet his home, Thutnofer has taken a name common to his adopted land.”
“Where have the two of them gone?”
“They went out in search of Ben-Azan.”
* * *
“Captain Tjay seemed not to care when you laid claim to Ben-Azan’s merchandise in the name of our sovereign,” Imsiba said.
“The man is dead, his goods forfeit. Tjay’s been sailing long enough to know that.” Bak eyed the mounds of goods lashed to the deck behind the deckhouse, where the objects were sheltered from spraying waters – unlike the merchandise belonging to Thutnofer and Aper-el, which was stowed on the bow. There was barely room for the oarsmen on either side and for a man at the rudder. “Let’s begin at the stern and work our way forwards.”
“Can we not look through these objects in a more leisurely fashion after they’ve been carried into a storehouse?”
Bak called a greeting to two nearly naked fishermen hurrying down the quay, each carrying a long string of silvery fish. Late for the market, they had no time to stop and chat. “We must see all this vessel carries, not merely the wares of Ben-Azan.”
“The customs inspector at Kor approved the shipment and authorized their departure. What do you hope to find that he didn’t?”
“Why was Ben-Azan slain, Imsiba?”
The Medjay sergeant looked at him with narrowing eyes. “What are you thinking, my friend?”
“Would a man of Buhen think to get rid of a body in one of those old tombs?”
Understanding struck and a hint of a smile touched Imsiba’s lips. “All who dwell in this city know of Mery and his friends, of how they play in the cemetery day after day. If you wish to conceal a murder, that’s not the place to leave the victim.”
“Captain Tjay has been here before, but not often. He might know of the tombs, but not of the boys.”
“You believe he slew Ben-Azan?”
Bak knelt before a woven reed chest, broke the seal naming Ben-Azan the owner, and opened the lid, revealing dozens of cloth-wrapped packets. Each gave off the smell of some exotic herb or spice brought from far to the south. “I know only that a man unfamiliar with Buhen left the body in that tomb. A search of this cargo may reveal his name.”
“They say he was found in an empty tomb within the walls of this fortress. How can that be?” Thutnofer had been the first of the two traders to return to the ship, carrying word of Ben-Azan’s death. As always happened on the frontier, any news of note – in this case, the death of a foreigner – had spread faster than sand in a desert storm.
Bak stood up and arched his back, stretching weary muscles. A detailed search of a ship’s cargo could be time-consuming and exhausting. “There’s an ancient cemetery near the outer city. You didn’t know of it?”
“How could I? I’ve been here once before and then for no more than an hour. When we travelled south seven months ago, that was. Ben-Azan urged us to hurry on our way, pointing out – and rightfully so – that each day we spent in travel was that much profit lost.”
Thutnofer was of medium height and wiry. His black hair had been cropped short and his face was shaven. He wore a knee-length kilt, a string of amulets signifying the gods of Kemet, and a broad beaded collar, bracelets, and armlets. If it was not for his swarthy complexion and long beak of a nose, he could have been taken for a man of Kemet.
“You travelled with him and Aper-el from where?”
“I met them at the harbour in Mennufer. Ben-Azan was my wife’s brother, Aper-el his nephew. We thought to travel to Kerma together. For safety’s sake and, with luck and the favour of the gods, to increase our profits.” Kerma was the largest city in the land of Kush.
Bak watched a small ferry shove off from the next quay. A small boy tended a bleating sheep and her twin lambs in the bow, while several chatting women surrounded by baskets and bundles stood in the shade of a rickety shelter, travelling home from the market. “You don’t seem surprised that I’ve confiscated his wares in the name of our sovereign.”
“Someone must’ve mentioned that such was the law at one time or another. We traders talk among ourselves, you know, especially when we’re far from home, surrounded by people whose tongue we don’t speak.”
“You’ve travelled often to the land of Kush?”
The trader shook his head. “This was my first journey south. Always before, I’ve earned my daily bread as a craftsman, a metalsmith.”
Bak formed an admiring smile. “Your work must be much in demand to allow you to purchase sufficient wares to make such a long trek worthwhile.”
“The objects I make are much admired, yes,” Thutnofer said, his chest swelling with pride. “I toil in a workshop of the lord Ptah, and each and every piece is accepted with high praise before it’s taken into the god’s storehouse.”
Noting Imsiba’s raised eyebrow, a reflection of his own puzzlement, Bak asked, “If the lord Ptah supports you and your household, where did you get the wealth to invest in trade goods?”
A sudden reticence entered Thutnofer’s voice. “Ben-Azan brought to my wife a modest inheritance from their parents. He said I could increase its value ten times over if I accompanied him to the land of Kush.”
“And did you return a wealthier man?” Bak asked, pretending not to notice the change in attitude.
“I did well enough,” the trader said in a voice bereft of the enthusiasm one would have expected.
“What kind of man was Ben-Azan?”
“A fine man, the truest of friends.” Thutnofer’s voice shook and he turned away to wipe his eyes with the back of his hand. “One who would give his very life for those he cared for.”
Bak glanced at Imsiba, who raised an eyebrow. “You last saw him where?”
Thutnofer cleared the roughness from his throat. “We left him at the door of the place of business in which we celebrated our return to a land less savage than Kush.”
“How do you account for his presence in the tomb?”
“Someone lured him there, lieutenant. Probably one of the women he took up with at that house of pleasure, the establishment of that hideous old woman Nofery.”
Bak exchanged a look with Imsiba. Both knew Nofery well. She could be greedy, yes, but would never condone murder.
“If Thutnofer hoped his journey into the land of Kush would make him a man of wealth, he was doomed to disappointment.” Imsiba dropped onto a mound of soft and supple cowhides and scowled in the general direction of the bags and bundles beyond the deckhouse. “I’ve no idea what he took south as trade goods, but what he accepted in return is very ordinary. Lengths of ebony and other rare woods, not of the best quality. Many cowhides, none nearly as lovingly cured as these on which I sit. Horns and teeth from animals from far to the south. The best of the lot: ostrich eggs and feathers.”
“Ben-Azan certainly wouldn’t have gone home a poor man.” Bak tapped the edge of a basket filled with lumps of resin, used for incense, and pointed to a chest of spices and a rough linen bag filled with chunks of precious stone.
Imsiba flung a sour look towards the ship’s bow. “I’d be willing to bet my newest pair of sandals that I’ll find Aper-el’s merchandise to be no better than that of Thutnofer.”
Bak ran his fingers along the smooth, cool side of an ivory tusk, not large but of exceptional beauty and value. “How could the two of them come north with nothing when Ben-Azan returned a wealthy man? Was he so skilled a trader?”
They sat in silence, mulling over the problem.
Imsiba spoke at last. “I can see Thutnofer and Aper-el slaying him somewhere south of the Belly of Stones, while still in the land of Kush, and taking his trade goods as theirs with no one the wiser. But would they slay him here, knowing full well you’d confiscate these fine objects for the royal house and they’d go home with close to nothing?”
“I’ve asked myself that question time and time again, Imsiba.” Bak eyed a dog loping along the quay, a half-grown rat in its mouth. “We’ve missed something, but what?”
“I admired him more than any other man.”
Aper-el could not seem to stop sniffling, whether saddened by his uncle’s death or from some malady carried on the air, Bak could not begin to guess. No more than 18 years of age, he was of medium height and plump. His beard was black and thick, his curly hair held off his face by a vivid green band. He wore a tunic similar to that of the dead man, but brightly dyed with entwined circles of green, yellow, red, and black. “My father, Ben-Azan’s brother, died when I was but a babe, and he took it upon himself to care for my mother and I as if we were his own.”
Bak rocked forwards to examine a basket filled with chunks of amethyst. “Is this the first time you’ve travelled with him?”
“Yes, sir.” Aper-el sniffed. “He thought I should make more of my life. I was a merchant, you see, tending the small shop my father left and living with my mother in the rooms above.”
“Is she caring for your business while you’re away?”
Aper-el shook his head. “Ben-Azan urged me to sell it, to invest everything in the trade goods I took with me to Kush.”
Imsiba, sitting nearby, listening, made an unintelligible sound Bak took to be condemnation. He had finished looking through Aper-el’s acquisitions and had reported that the young man had fared even worse than Thutnofer in his dealings with the Kushites. Which meant that all he had had in his homeland had been thrown to the four winds. Bak thought of the young man’s mother, no doubt dwelling in Ben-Azan’s household as scarcely more than a servant, awaiting her son and freedom. Pity filled his heart.
Noticing that the basket containing the amethysts had been placed inside another similar container, Bak picked them up and placed them on his lap. “Your uncle appears to have been a very successful man, his skill as a trader unparalleled.”
“Yes, sir.” Aper-el wiped his nose with a square of red fabric, then clasped his hands tightly together on his lap. “Would that he’d lived longer so he could pass on to me the knowledge he possessed.”
The words were so trite Bak dared not look at Imsiba. “I’ve been told he was equally able with the ladies.”
“He was tireless – and most inventive, so they say.”
“Was he also adept at games of chance?”
“Whatever he turned his hand to, he succeeded, sir.”
Another banal statement, this delivered with an outward display of pride undermined by a touch of resentment. Bak lifted the inner basket carefully, expecting chunks of rock to drop through a damaged bottom. Nothing happened; the container was in good condition. Why bring along the outer basket, which was clearly not needed? He noted the design, common to a nomadic tribe east of the river, and the seed of an idea entered his heart. Praying the basket would verify the thought, he turned it one way and another, probed it with his fingers. A bright speck fell out from between the woven fibres.
Fervently thanking the gods for smiling upon him, he palmed the tiny granule. “While you were in Kush, Aper-el, did you spend all your time in Kerma?”
“No, sir, we often travelled to towns and villages far from the city, where we traded with headmen and tribal chieftains.”
“Such journeys must at times have been long and difficult.”
Aper-el nodded, wiped his nose. “A thankless task it was, but Ben-Azan would ignore no opportunity.”
Imsiba, walking beside Bak up the quay, asked, “What now, my friend?”
“Make them our prisoners, Imsiba.”
“All of them?” the Medjay asked, surprised.
“Tjay, Thutnofer, Aper-el. None must be allowed outside the walls of Buhen.”
“Captain Tjay could slay a man, I’ve no doubt, but resentment for having to quickly transfer goods from donkeys to ship seems too small a reason for taking a man’s life. Thutnofer and Aper-el have good reason, but I’m convinced they’re both too weak to raise a hand in anger.”
Bak nodded at the sentry standing in a thin slice of shade cast by the twin-towered gate at the end of the quay. Holding out his hand, palm open, he revealed the small golden kernel. “We must get some men into the hold of Tjay’s ship. I’ll wager a jar of the finest wine from northern Kemet that a thorough search will turn up more than ballast down there.”
* * *
“You can’t do this!” Captain Tjay, his hands, like those of his companions, manacled behind his back, glared venomously at Bak. “I’ll complain to your commandant, to the viceroy, to the vizier himself.”
“Why make me a prisoner?” Aper-el sniffed. “I’ve done no wrong.”
“If you truly seek Ben-Azan’s slayer, you’ll look closer to home,” Thutnofer said. “To that old woman Nofery and the women who toil in her house of pleasure.”
Bak rested a shoulder against the doorjamb and eyed the trio his Medjays had brought to the guardhouse. The entry hall seemed full to bursting, with Imsiba and Hori, the prisoners, the four policemen who had brought them in, and the two Medjays currently on duty all crowded together at the near end. The latter pair, their curiosity aroused, had gone so far as to interrupt the never-ending game of knucklebones that went on night and day as the shifts changed.
“I see no need to look any farther than the three of you.”
“Why would any of us slay a man we so greatly admired?” Thutnofer scoffed.
“Admired? Or envied. The one oft times supplants the other.”
“I’ll have your baton of office torn from you,” Tjay snarled. “You’ll be lucky to remain in the army a common spearman.”
Bak signalled the men on duty to return to their game and dismissed two of the Medjays who had brought in the prisoners. Entering the room he used as an office, he ordered the captives to sit on the floor against the wall and the remaining Medjays to stand guard outside. Hori lit three oil lamps to supplement the light coming through the door and sat cross-legged on a floormat facing the bound men, his writing implements close to hand. Imsiba sat on a mudbrick bench built across the back of the room, while Bak dropped onto a low three-legged stool.
“The three of you together slew Ben-Azan.” Bak waved off a ribbon of smoke drifting up from a lamp. “One man plunged the dagger into his breast. Tjay, I’d guess – the leather wrapping around the hilt is the mark of a sailor. No less than three men could carry a man so heavy from the place where he was slain to the ancient cemetery.” He saw defiance on their faces, added, “We found his blood under a patch of loose sand near the outer city.”
“No!” Aper-el cried. “It wasn’t my idea.”
“Silence, you witless fool!” Tjay snarled.
Bak exchanged a satisfied look with Imsiba. The prisoners would shortly be at each other’s throats. “How long ago did he entice you into playing games of chance? After you crossed the border at Semna, I’d guess, and were shown on the records as having returned from Kush. While you travelled north along the Belly of Stones, where he believed he’d be safe.”
The three men threw accusatory looks at each other.
“Did he cheat? Or were you so eager to give away all your wares that you made unwise bets?” Bak heard no clatter of knucklebones in the entry hall, no betting. The men were eavesdropping. “And as the days passed I suppose you wagered again and again to recover your losses, only to lose more.”
“How did you know?” Aper-el whimpered.
Tjay swung towards him, hissed, “Not another word, you fool!”
Bak eyed the captain. The traders, he suspected, had eliminated one man to take up with another who would in the end have been no more honest or fair than Ben-Azan had been. “What happened last night? Did he constantly boast of his success as a trader, all the while needling you about how stupid you’d been? Ultimately pushing you too far?”
Aper-el opened his mouth to respond, but a harsh grunt from Tjay cut off whatever he intended to say.
“I’ve never known a trader to come back from the land of Kush impoverished. Nor have I known one to return with enough for three – as did Ben-Azan.” Bak bent over and flung a knucklebone, which rattled across the floor and came to rest near Thutnofer’s feet. “One of you lost this near his body.”
“All right! He stole from us.” Thutnofer spat out the words in fury. “But what good would it do us to slay him? We knew all he possessed would go into the coffers of the royal house. With him alive we might sooner or later get the better of him; dead we’re left with nothing.”
Bak doubted they would ever have got the better of Ben-Azan. “So you would have us believe.” He glanced at Imsiba, who lifted a lumpy, dusty, and obviously heavy leather bag from a basket sitting on the bench beside him. A bag the Medjays had found hidden among the ballast stones.
The three men seated on the floor turned a mottled, sickly grey.
Imsiba untied the knot at the top of the bag and slowly poured out the contents. Rough nuggets, glittering in the light cast by the lamps, clattered into the basket in which Bak had found the golden fragment. Nuggets fused by nomadic tribesmen from granules found in dry watercourses or washed out of quartz dug from the earth. The ragged unformed pieces produced when molten gold is slowly poured into water.
Enough gold to have made the three prisoners wealthy for life.