"Nebmose?" Amethu released the pleats in his kilt and glanced up. "You are reaching far afield, aren't you?" Bak ignored the jibe. "I walked through the house and grounds this morning and was struck by their value. It occurred to me that Nebmose might've had some distant relative, one whose relationship is unknown to all who dwell in Abu, a man seething with resentment at having his birthright confiscated."
"No, no, no." Amethu shook his head vehemently. "Nebmose had no living relatives, close or distant. That I know for a fact."
"How can you be so sure? I've lain with women I've told no one about. Might not he or his father or his father's father have done the same, creating a child at the time?"
"You don't understand." The steward wiggled around on the bench to face Bak, the better to make sure he got his message across. "Nebmose was his father's only child, and his father was his father's only child, and so it had been for at least six generations. That was their curse. Somewhere in the distant past, the gods had willed that each man in that family would have only one child-one boy. No girls were ever born, no second sons."
Bak frowned, skeptical.
The steward read the look on his face and turned indignant. "I knew Nebmose's father well, Lieutenant. We studied together in the scribal school at the governor's villa. And my father knew his, studying with him a generation earlier."
"I can't believe none of Nebmose's ancestors had concubines."
"None who conceived, but…" Amethu hesitated, scowled. "I've heard tales… Well, who knows how true they are? They're told in the servants' quarters and enter the homes of respectable men and women through the back door. They say that pretty servant girls in Nebmose's villa have, in past generations, given birth to babies born deformed, sad little creatures fortunate to die within an instant of seeing the light of day."
Bak found the tale difficult to believe, the curse superstitious nonsense. But the steward, he felt sure, was not a man to pass on information containing no grain of truth. If only my father were in Abu, Bak thought; as a physician, he would know if such a thing were possible.
A new thought struck. "You grew to manhood with Nebmose's father?"
Amethu nodded. "A good man, he was, one I valued as a friend. All who knew him loved and respected him. No malformed babies were born to his servants, I can tell you. His one and only son, Nebmose, was as fine a man as his sire."
Bak stood up and walked to the edge of-the shade, giving himself time to absorb the news. Throughout his stay in Abu, he had assumed Nebmose to be Djehuty's age. Never had he thought him a young man. Walking back to the bench, he asked, "How'old was Nebmose when he died?"
"He'd just celebrated his twentieth year." "How long ago?"
Amethu drew his head back, surprised. "Has no one told you? He was an officer in the garrison. A lieutenant. One of the many fine young men — who died in that frightful sandstorm five years ago. The storm in which you've shown so much interest."
"By the beard of Amon!" Bak was staggered. He had been looking at that house for eight long days, walking its grounds, taking it for granted. Could he, after so much time, have stumbled upon the right path at last? "Was anyoneanyone at all who toils in the governor's household-related in even the most remote fashion to Nebmose?"
"Simut." Amethu spoke as if he could hardly credit Bak's lack of knowledge. "He was Nebmose's uncle."
Bak eyed the steward warily. Simut's name was the last he had expected to hear, the relationship hard to believe. "Did you not just tell me Nebmose had no relatives?"
Amethu waved off the objection as if of no significance. "Simut was no blood relative and had no right to the property. His wife's sister was wed to Nebmose's father, and she died long before her husband. He didn't tell you? I'm astonished. He thought of the boy as one of his own."
Bak recalled the chief scribe mentioning a nephew lost in the storm, a youth as close to him as a son. Which might explain the offerings left in Nebmose's family shrine. But would it account for the unusual care given the interior of the house and the garden in which the shrine stood? Bak's thoughts leaped back to the possibility that had occurred to him earlier-a notion he had rejected without due consideration. If that idea had any merit at, all, and now he was inclined to think it might, the donor was another individual altogether.
For one thing, Simut could not be the slayer. He had been at the farthest end of the province at the time of Lieutenant Dedi's death, accompanying the tax inspector.
Simut lived in Abu, in a housing block a short walk from the governor's villa. His home was similar to dozens of others Bak had seen in the crowded cities of Kemet, revealing nothing of his lofty position in the province. It was a modest single-story dwelling of five rooms laid out in a square, with an open kitchen at the back that contained a hearth, an oven, and a small conical granary.
The chief scribe spoke with Bak in the reception room, which was larger than the other chambers and whose high roof was supported on a single wooden column painted red. Windows close to the ceiling allowed light to enter and air to circulate. The household gods Bes and Taurt stood in niches along one wall, while a small ancestor bust occupied a third niche.
Simut's short kilt and lack of jewelry testified to his intent to spend the day in the comfort of his own home. "Now that that wretched inventory is complete, I thought to escape for a few hours the cares of my daily task," he explained.
His wife, short and round like her husband and as cheerful as a sparrow, hurried in with open jars of beer and a basket of sweetcakes that smelled of yeast, with bits of dates and raisins peeking through a crusty brown surface. She placed the food and drink on a low woven reed chest between the stools on which the men sat, brought out drinking bowls, and hustled away.
Simut, plucking a cake from the basket, examined his guest's bandages and bruises with an open and curious mien. "From what I hear,' Lieutenant, you put on quite a show last night. The tale's already reached near-mythical proportions."
"The men of Swenet and Abu are easily amused." Bak made no attempt to hide his irritation. "I caught my man in spite of them, but I couldn't keep him alive."
"My wife just returned from the market." The scribe handed a drinking bowl to his guest and ajar of beer. "She heard Nenu was the one who took all those. lives in the governor's household and he was attempting last night, not for the first time, to slay you. Frankly, I find it difficult to credit him with so many vile deeds. He seemed a lackadaisical sort, one without enough purpose to plan so elaborate a scheme."
"He was a tool, nothing more, one used by the governor to…"
Simut gave him a startled look. "You're accusing Djehuty of murder? Surely he's not responsible for all those deaths!" "Only for Nenu's attempts to slay me."
"Oh, come now, Lieutenant. Why would he want dead the one man who…" Simut noticed the look of conviction on Bak's face and his voice tailed off. He shook his head, utterly mystified
Pouring beer into his drinking bowl, Bak admitted, "To be quite honest, I don't know. I suspect he wanted to prevent me from learning the secret he's refused all along to divulge."
"A secret born in that fatal sandstorm five years ago." "So I believe."
"I wish I could help you, but I know almost nothing of that tempest." Simut took a bite of cake, swallowed it, added, "What little I do know I've told you."
"Have you?" Bak's voice carried an edge of cynicism. Simut frowned. "What are you implying, Lieutenant?" Bak set bowl and jar on the table, stood up, and strode to the door. Abruptly he swung around. "You told me of a nephew who died in the storm, a young man you loved as a son. Yet you neglected to mention that he was Nebmose, the man who owned the villa Djehuty claimed for the royal house and took as his own."