"What in the name of the lord Amon… " Psuro's voice tailed off; puzzlement clouded his features.
"Must be a joke," Kasaya said, staring down.
Bak was as perplexed as they were, as dumbfounded. "Who came to this house tonight? Did you see anyone approach?"
"It is a joke, isn't it, sir?" Kasaya asked, seeking reassurance.
Psuro shook his head. "We've been on the roof since nightfall, eating, playing senet, talking. We paid no heed to the lane."
Bak knelt beside the perch, forcing himself to think. A lack of blood on the floor told him the creature had been slain elsewhere, probably pulled from the water and bludgeoned before it suffocated. If the fish had been intended as a gift of food, the donor surely would have brought it gutted and cleaned, and would have placed it out of reach of scavenging cats and dogs. Since that was not the case, why had it been left? Could it have something to do with his mission in Abu? With the murders in the governor's villa?
A thought surfaced; a chill ran up his spine. This could well be a reminder of the first victim. The child Nakht, who could swim like a fish. His head had been crushed. Was the slayer teasing him? Challenging him? Or could the fish be a warning?
"We'll say nothing of this to anyone," he said. "Not Djehuty, Amonhotep, or anyone else in the governor's household. With luck, curiosity will eat at the one who left it, and he'll give himself away."
Chapter Six
"Nakht was all I had left." The woman grabbed the feet of the duck whose neck she had wrung and dropped onto a low stool to dunk the bird into a large gray bowl of boiling water. The stench of wet feathers filled the air. "Now I'm alone, with no husband to share my old age and no sons or daughters to ease my journey to the netherworld."
She was of medium height and bony, a woman who looked long past her middle years but was probably ten years younger. A life of toil and deprivation, disappointment and anguish, had bent her back, wrinkled her face and arms, and given her a thin-lipped, bitter demeanor.
"Was he your only child?" Bak asked.
"I lost a girl a few days after childbirth, two before they reached full term, and two older boys to a fever that swept through this city before Nakht was born." She pulled the duck out of the water and, letting it drip into the bowl, plucked a handful of grayish feathers. They fell to the ground in a sodden clump, intensifying the stench. "He came late in life, a gift of the gods, and I could have no more."
Bak stood outside the rough lean-to beneath which she sat, letting the early morning sun warm his back. The roof, palm fronds spread across long reeds, was attached to the end of a shed that sheltered seven donkeys with their wobbly newborns and three others big-bellied and ready to give birth. The straw beneath the animals was clean, the smell of manure faint. He hoped the merchant who had taken in the woman in exchange for labor cared as well for his servants as he did for his animals.
"Did he speak of his life in the governor's household?" "Often." The bitterness vanished from her smile and pride filled her eyes. "Mistress Hatnofer worked him hard and had a tongue as sharp as a scythe, but the rest more than made amends. He slept on a soft pallet and ate food left over from the master's table-all he could hold and more, he told me. He thought the house, its many rooms and rich furnishings, more beautiful than the Field of Reeds, and he looked at mistress Khawet as a goddess."
"And the governor?"
She flicked her hand, sending damp feathers flying, and gave him a scornful look. "What would a boy of the kitchens know of a man so lofty?"
He nodded, pretending he agreed the question was ridiculous. He had in fact gotten what he sought, verification of Djehuty's offhand remark that he had not known the boy.
Bak had lain awake half the night, searching in vain for a more satisfactory explanation for the fish left in his quarters. Finding none, he had turned his attention to the child, seeking a reason for what seemed a senseless death. Nakht had been eleven years of age when slain, six at the time of the deadly sandstorm-assuming the storm lay behind the murders. At that time, he had been too young to have traveled into the desert with the soldiers, too young to have provided the smallest of services to the garrison. But other possibilities existed, other connections, that needed exploring. Thus Bak had come to the child's mother.
"How did your husband earn his daily bread?" he asked. She turned the duck to pluck the soft white feathers from its breast. "He served our sovereign, Maatkare Hatshepsut, as a scout for the garrison of Abu."
Her voice conveyed pride, but something else. Defensiveness, he thought. Several scouts had accompanied that illfated trek into the desert. Her husband must have been among those who failed to return. "How long ago did he die?"
"Four years."
"He didn't vanish in the… T' Realizing his error, he bit. off the words. Nakht's father had not marched off to his death, as had the others-or had he come back a survivor?
She looked up from the fowl, her expression dark, her voice fierce. "You don't understand, do you? How a man can come back near death, broken in body and spirit. A shell of the man he was before." She flung away a handful of feathers. Most lay where they fell in a soppy mess, but a few, dry and delicate, were whisked away by the breeze. "You think because he returned alive, because he was a scout, you can point a finger at him, making him responsible for all those many deaths. Well, let me tell you, Lieutenant! Their loss was no fault of his!"
He gave her a surprised look, perplexed by the outburst. He had made no accusation, nor had he thought to. Why was she so quick to take offense, to deny?
"First my husband and now my son." She lowered the duck into the water and swirled it around, washing off the loose feathers. Bitterness again settled on her face, and the frustration of the powerless. "This city of Abu, this province, is cursed. The day those men marched into the desert, the gods ceased to smile on all who dwell here."
She clamped her mouth shut and refused to speak further, whether from superstitious fear or some more down-to-earth reason Bak could not begin to guess. He returned to the governor's villa, his thoughts awhirl. Close-mouthed though she had been, she had laid the foundation for a new idea, one that fitted in well with all he had learned thus far.
"Sure I knew Montu." The guard Kames, a wiry man of thirty or so year*, propped his spear against the high mudbrick wall that separated the garden from the well and hunkered down beside the weapon. "He talked too much, told the same tales over and over again until he put you to sleep, but I liked him."
"He was a witless old fool." The second guard, called Nenu, hefty of build, barely seventeen years of age, stood his spear with the other weapon and leaned a shoulder against the wall. He made a contemptuous face. "He acted no older than the children he allowed inside these walls. Against the specific orders of mistress Hatnofer, mind you. Talk about asking for trouble!" He shook his head, laughed cynically.
"I heard she wanted him — replaced," Bak said, hoisting himself onto the low wall that curved around the well. "So goes the rumor," Kames said, "but he managed to hang on in spite of her. Or to spite her, more likely." Nenu snorted derision. "It was the governor who kept him on."
"Djehuty?" Bak asked, hiding his interest, feigning skepticism.
"I've befriended a servant in the kitchen, a girl. We…" Nenu smirked. "Well, let's say I know her well. Very well. She once overheard mistress Hatnofer quarreling with the governor. The housekeeper wanted to get rid of the old man; he refused."