One thing that Samlor had already decided about Napata was that the religious institutions here continued to do as well as they had in the time of Prince Nanefer. The silver spoon with which he ate his fruit was molded into delicate vine arabesques more estimable than even the metal itself.
"Samlor," Khamwas whispered urgenty. "Do you see her? There, going-"
He pointed. The priest who was acting as personal servant to the temple's guests craned his neck to follow the gesture but fell back two steps in embarrassment when he realized what he was doing.
Samlor leaned against the thick stone rail of the loggia and frowned in concentration at the bustle in the forecourt. A woman wearing a cape and headdress of shimmering red silk had just disappeared into one of the shops, accompanied by several maids. A pair of staff-bearing footmen remained outside, suggesting that they would use force if necessary to prevent their mistress from being jostled within.
"Somebody you know?" Samlor asked, cautious because he could sense Khamwas' agitation. He hadn't seen the woman's face, nor would it have meant anything to him if he had. But his companion had a lifetime of history in Napata, not a few weeks in the desert and two days in the capital. .
"I must learn who she is," Khamwas said, still whispering. He stared at the foreshortened doorway across the court as if intensity would give him clear vision of what went on inside. One of his hands clasped the rail while the other squeezed Samlor's knee hard enough to be disconcerting.
The whole situation was disconcerting.
"Well," said Samlor, shifting as he set down his bowl; his knee straightened, as if by accident, and flexed out of Khamwas' grip. "I'll go down and see what I can find out." He looked at his companion, waiting for a response to the question his tone had implied.
"Yes. .," Khamwas said, focused on the doorway. He turned sharply and added, "But you mustn't disturb her."
Samlor nodded and said with heavy irony, "Oh, you can trust me to handle the business with all the subtlety you would bring to it yourself."
A cloud softened Khamwas' intense features and he stared at the hand which had clasped Samlor so harshly. "I…," he said, looking up again as Samlor rose and shrugged his garments into place. "I'm sorry, my friend. She's very important to me in some way. I'm sure."
"No problem," Samlor grunted as he walked past the priest and lesser servants to the stairs within the temple.
No reason to imagine that it was a problem, and a dead certainty that Khamwas and the Book of Tatenen could handle any difficulty that arose.
But Samlor kept remembering a grinning crocodile.
The forecourt was busy, though from the height of the loggia it was obvious that there was more empty pavement than there were people. From the pavement itself, nothing but moving walls of people were visible.
Shrugging again-the brocade collar of his new tunic chafed him, though the fabric was soft enough-Samlor strode across the area. As he neared the far side of the court, his eye caught a flash of scarlet: not the woman but her tall headdress, leaving the shop and preparing to enter another one. He started after her, then thought again and stepped into the shop his quarry had just quitted.
The maid who waited while the shopowner wrapped a purchase was dressed even more strikingly than her mistress. Her skirt was of pleated linen, cut to beneath her navel in front but rising almost to shoulderblade level in back. Instead of an ordinary blouse or jacket, she wore the skin of a spotted cat pinned to bare her left shoulder.
The head hung over her right breast. The beast's eyes had been replaced by topazes, and the maid's own irises were of the same tawny lambency.
"The cat won't bite," the woman said drily to Samlor.
He blinked, realized that he had paused with his hand resting on the doorjamb-and then realized that his mouth was open.
"Yes, sir, may I help you?" asked the shopman with a tinge of concern underlying his professional brightness. He was folding the second of a pair of carnelian earrings, elephants astride the globe of the cosmos, into a square of velvet.
"Ah, I-" Samlor said. "Ah, my business is with the lady."
"Is it indeed?" said the woman, giving him a look of appraisal as cool as that of a cook pricing fowls in the market.
"The, ah, the lady who was here a moment ago, in red," he plowed on. "I believe you may know her?"
"Know my mistress?" said the woman. When she smiled, her mouth opened as wide as the cat's. "Yes, I should say 1 do."
The shopman was listening to his customers in obvious interest. Samlor gave him a look freighted with the frustration he could not let loose on the woman. The man jumped, then trotted to the back of the shop muttering that he needed better ribbon.
Samlor relaxed. The maid was playing a game, flirting at second-hand as it were, and there was no harm in that. He smiled and said, "Milady, a friend of mine-a high-placed friend of mine-noticed your mistress and was curious about who she is. Rather than make a public production of it, he asked me to check quietly."
That was pretty close to the truth, and it conveyed the threat without stating it. Coquetry was very well and good, but this amber-eyed woman had to know where the real power in the discussion lay.
"I'm sure my mistress Tabubu would thank your friend- her tone made the word 'master' and a slur because Samlor had not used it " – for his solicitude, if he chose to present himself in person," said the maid. "A lady of her position isn't in need of help from others, however highly placed, of course."
She shifted her stance. The false cat eyes winked from her breast.
Samlor raised an eyebrow and one corner of his mouth.
"She is here to make offerings for her father on the seventh anniversary of his death," the maid continued, bowing to the silent goad. "He was the prophet of the god Mnevis.
"I would have thought your highly-placed master would know Tabubu," she added with a tart voice and a flounce of the cat's head. "But-" she smiled again " – her house is in Ankhtawi, across the river, and we don't leave it very often."
"You've been very understanding," said Samlor-an understatement if ever he had made one. "I appreciate it. Perhaps we'll have the opportunity to speak again."
The woman stretched her shoulders back so that her chest arched and the cat slid against her. "And you?" she asked. "Do you have a name, or shall I call you 'Boy'?"
Samlor grinned back, aware of the game she was playing and too controlled to lose at it. "I'm Samlor hil Samt," he said. "But I answer to any name that seems appropriate."
He turned and strode out of the shop, hearing the owner bleat something inconsequential.
The woman called, "My name is Pre," but the words did not bring Samlor back into the shop. He had information to pass on to Khamwas, whose anxious face peered from the loggia opposite.
Besides, Samlor had a nagging fear that if he continued talking to Pre, he would succumb to his growing desire to throw her down on the floor and screw the hell out of her.
"Well, what have you learned?" Khamwas demanded, his discourtesy redeemed only by his obvious agitation. "She'd already left the shop when you went in, you know?"