The red-haired man, Bak concluded, had eluded him. Not one to give up easily, he turned back toward the sacred precinct.
“No, sir.” The thin elderly scribe, whose dull white hair hung lank around his ears, dipped the end of his writing brush into a small bowl of water and swished it around, cleaning the black ink from it. “At least I don’t think I know him. Your description lacks…” His voice tailed off, the si lence saying more emphatically than words that his inter rogator could have been describing almost anyone with red hair.
Bak was painfully aware of the deficiency of his spoken portrayal. The red-haired man had been too far away to de scribe properly. Bak would know him when he saw him, but to create a recognizable verbal image was close to impossi ble.
“Do you know all the redheads who toil within the sacred precinct?”
The scribe touched the tip of his wet brush to an ink cake and dabbed up a slick of red ink, letting Bak know he was a busy man and must get on with his task. “Not all, but I can tell you where to find one or two.”
Bak walked into a large room whose ceiling was sup ported by tall columns. Light flooded the space from high windows, shining down on twenty or more men seated cross-legged on reed mats, writing beneath the sharp eye of their overseer. Near the front sat a youth with flame red hair.
Curly but not fuzzy. A closer look revealed a body pale from spending most of the time indoors. The man Bak was look ing for had the ruddy skin of one accustomed to the sun.
“Try Djeserseneb,” the youth said after Bak had explained his mission. “His hair is red, about the color of a pomegran ate. You’ll find him at the goldsmith’s workshop.”
Had the man he chased had hair the color of the succulent fruit? Bak wondered. He would not have called it so, but dif ferent men saw things in different ways.
“Roy might be the man you’ve described.”
The metalsmith, a muscular man whose hair was truly the color of a pomegranate and as straight as the thin gold wire his neighbor was forming, paused to adjust the tongs clamped around a small spouted bowl. Satisfied he would not drop the container, he poured a thin rivulet of molten gold into a mold on the floor in front of him. Bak could not tell what the finished image would be.
“He’s a guard, one who watches over the sacred geese.”
The craftsman glanced upward to see the sun’s position in the sky. “About this time of day, they open the tunnel and let the birds out for a swim. You’ll find him awaiting them at the sacred lake.”
A guard. A promising occupation. The red-haired man he had followed through the lanes had looked well-developed of body and had certainly been fast on his feet.
The guard’s hair was bleached by the sun, strawlike and dry. Unlike the man Bak had chased, it had no spark of life and could be mistaken for brown from ten paces away.
“Sounds like Dedu,” Roy said. “He’s a sandalmaker.
You’ll find him in a workshop behind the house of life.”
“And so my search went.” Bak sat on a stool beneath the newly erected pavilion on the roof of the building where his men were housed. Hori had needed a shaded place to unroll and read the scrolls, so the Medjays had built the light struc ture before leaving to partake of the day’s festivities. “I’m confident I met every red-haired man who toils within the sacred precinct. The man Meryamon denied knowing was not among them.”
“If he’s not there, where can he be found?” Kasaya asked.
The ensuing silence was filled with birdsong, children’s laughter and adult voices, the barking of dogs and the bray of a donkey.
Hori glanced ruefully at the scrolls spread across the rooftop, unrolled and held in place with stones. “Our day’s been more productive, but I can’t say we’ve learned any thing.”
Bak left the pavilion to look at the documents, making his way down one narrow aisle after another. The lord Re hov ered above the peak beyond western Waset, offering plenty of light to see by. Many of the scrolls were in the condition he would have expected after Hori’s initial sort: wholly in tact or damaged at the edges with the ends burned away. The remainder, those he would never have guessed could be un rolled, were in various stages of destruction. Large segments remained of a few. Of the rest, patches of decreasing size had been salvaged, some little more than a few charred scraps.
He whistled. “I’m amazed you recovered so much.”
“We’ve Kasaya to thank, sir.” Hori grinned at the young
Medjay. “He has the patience of a jackal sniffing out a grave.
He’d sit there for an hour, bent over a charred scroll, un rolling it a bit at a time. You’d think the whole document a total loss, but sooner or later he’d find something inside I could read.”
Bak smiled his appreciation at the hulking young Medjay, whose hands looked too large to manage any kind of deli cate effort. “You’ve done very well, both of you. I couldn’t have asked for more.”
Hori and Kasaya exchanged a pleased smile. “We decided that if the slayer took Woserhet’s life to hide the fact that he’s been stealing from the lord Amon, he’d probably have thrown any documents that might point a finger at him into the fire. If that was the case, the worst burned would be the most useful.”
“I guess you know what you must do next,” Bak said, his eyes sliding over the display.
“See if we can learn what the culprit was stealing.”
“Should we concentrate on items Meryamon would’ve handled?” Kasaya asked.
Bak thought over the idea and shook his head. “No. Let the throwsticks fall where they will. If he’s been stealing, signs of his activity should appear naturally, without making an effort to find them.”
“But, sir,” Hori said, clearly puzzled, “you told us the red haired man ran when he saw you. Wouldn’t that indicate guilt?”
“Guilt, yes, but for what reason we don’t know. Also, I chased him, not Meryamon. One man’s guilt is not necessar ily that of another, and Meryamon’s lie about knowing him doesn’t make either man a thief.”
“Can we help in any way, sir?” Sergeant Pashenuro reached into the pot of lamb stew and withdrew a chunk containing several ribs. “None of us can read, and it sounds to me as if that’s what you need, but we’d like to be of some use.”
“Never fear, Sergeant. When I require help, I’ll summon you.” Bak tore a piece of bread from a round, pointed loaf so recently taken from the heated pot in which it had been baked that it stung his fingers. “Until I do, let the men play.
The festival won’t last forever, and when it ends we’ll set off for Mennufer. The lord Amon only knows when next they’ll have time to relax.”
Sergeant Psuro, a thickset Medjay whose face had been scarred by a childhood disease, swallowed a bite of green onion. “You don’t seem too worried about laying hands on
Woserhet’s slayer.”
“The more I learn, the more straightforward his death ap pears. He was probably slain because of a problem he un earthed in the lord Amon’s storehouses. The trick is to learn exactly what that problem is-theft, no doubt-and to search out the man responsible.”
Pashenuro looked across the courtyard, illuminated by a single torch mounted on the wall. The two men assigned to remain on watch were playing knucklebones with a marked lack of enthusiasm, both having returned after a long, hard day of revelry. Deep shadows fell around them, and around
Bak and the sergeants, accenting the sporadic reddish glow beneath the cooking pot, dying embers stirred to life by the light breeze. Hori’s dog lay with his back against a row of tall porous water jars, snoring and twitching.
A small boy came through the portal from the street.
“Lieutenant Bak?”