Kasaya raised his chin and stiffened his spine. "How can I help, sir?"
"I don't know how many servants toil in the commander's residence. From what I've seen of mistress Aset, I doubt she liftSS a hand to care for the household, so the number may be large. Servants move back and forth through the rooms, seeing and hearing much and saying little."
A donkey squealed in terror or pain outside the northern gate, drawing Bak's attention and Kasaya's. A man yelled, hooves clattered on hard-packed earth, and the creature burst through the portal, the baskets it carried bouncing to the rhythm of its trotting hooves. A portly man clad in a knee-length kilt raced after the animal, stick raised, chasing it all the way to the southern gate, where a guard stepped into its path and grabbed its halter.
The pair on the roof could not help but laugh. Bak was grateful for the young Medjay's resilience-and his own, for that matter.
"Go to the commander's residence." Bak stared across the rooftops toward Woser's house. "Be friendly. Especially with the women: those who are older and motherly and those close to you in age. Ask no questions. Say, if you think it would help, that I removed you from your duties because you failed in some small task. If you confide in them, gain their sympathy and trust, they may confide in you, telling you all they've seen and heard in Woser's household."
Kasaya thought over the assignment, and a smile wiped the gravity from his face. "I feared, when I saw you coming, that I was to be punished. Instead, it seems, I'm given a reward."
"They all hated him," Minnakht said.
Puemre's sergeant, a large, heavy man in his late twenties, with a crooked nose and an ugly scar on his thigh, stood beside Bak, hands on hips, legs spread wide, watching his men cutting bricks out of the partly collapsed wall of an old warehouse. Not a man among them looked happy with so menial a task.
"I don't like to think they envied him," he went on. "I respect them all. But what else can I think? Oh, I know Lieutenant Puemre sometimes trod on other people's toes, but he was raised a nobleman. Aren't they all like that?"
"My contact with the nobility has been limited," Bak said, keeping his voice neutral, uncritical.
Minnakht gave him a quick, amused glance. "I've heard you were exiled to Buhen because your fist made contact with a nobleman's chin. Or was it his nose?"
Bak was always amazed at the way useless information spread along the southern frontier. As a police officer, he thought it best to let this particular item die a natural death from lack of attention. "More than half the bricks are coming away broken, I see. Has that been the case since you started this task?"
The smile faded from the sergeant's face. "The mud hasn't been moistened for years and the straw that binds it has rotted away. Here, let me show you." He strode to a mound of bricks so broken they looked like the clods in a newly plowed field. Picking up a chunk, he crumbled the black earth between his fingers, turning it to dust. "You see?"
Bak's voice grew firm, an officer speaking to a lesser man. "Have you tried other walls in other parts of Iken?" The sergeant stiffened at the unexpected tone of command. "No, sir, but I doubt… "
"Do it. The buildings in this city couldn't have been raised all at one time or by a single brickmaker or mason. The binder will be different, the consistency, the way they dried. They'll have weathered in different ways, depending on their location."
Minnakht's eyes narrowed in thought, then a look of approval passed over his face. Without another word, he selected five men and sent them to various ruined sections of the city.
Bak watched the nearest man slowly, painstakingly extract a brick from a wall. "Tell the men here to cut bigger blocks from these poor walls. The island fortress has many large gaps as*ell as small ones."
"Yes, sir." The sergeant strode through the ruined building, issuing the new orders. By the time he came back, his men looked more cheerful and he more content with this new and untried officer to whom they must report.
Satisfied with the tentative acceptance, Bak let his voice return to normal. "Puemre served for a short time in my old regiment, the regiment of Amon. Why did he transfer so soon to Wawat?"
"The officers there, he told me, were youthful men firmly settled in their ranks, leaving few opportunities for a newcomer. He thought promotion would come faster on the frontier."
"So he came to Iken, where all the officers were older men; firmly settled in their ranks."
Minnakht stared straight ahead; his voice turned defensive. "If the truth were known, the officers in the regiment of Amon probably turned their backs against him, as they did here."
Yes, Bak thought, like most men of courage and integrity, they had no time for a man who thought himself more deserving than he was. "You got along well with him, I've been told."
"He wasn't the easiest man to please, but he was a good officer-the best I've ever known." The sergeant turned away so Bak could not see his face, and a huskiness filled his throat. "When any of us needed help, he was generous with both his time and his wealth. When we marched into battle, he was the first to face the enemy, and he was the bravest. Once he understood the ways of the frontier, he never planned a skirmish that failed."
Bak was surprised at Minnakht's depth of feeling, like a man grieving for a friend rather than an officer. "What of mistress Mutnefer? Did he speak to you of her?"
"Many times. He thought her a kind and gentle woman, one to love through eternity. He meant to take her with him when he went back to Kemet." Minnakht's eyes spilled over. With an annoyed grimace, he brushed away the tears. "He planned to make her his wife."
Bak gave him a sharp look. "His wife? She told me he meant to keep her as his concubine."
"He talked many times to me of facing his father over the matter, but he never told her. He wished to surprise her."
Bak had seldom heard so sad a tale. No wonder Minnakht was upset. "It's best she never knows. Her life's already filled with toil and poverty. To add the knowledge of what might have been would double the hardship."
"She'll not hear it from me, of that you can be sure." Minnakht glanced at Bak as if searching for approval. "I mean to take her for my wife, if she'll have me."
"Mutnefer?" Bak asked, startled by the admission. "My wife died in childbirth two years ago. I've felt no great need for a home and family since her death, but now the time has come. I want Mutnefer, and I wish to take the child as my own."
"You're certain Minnakht was in the barracks when Puemre was slain?" Bak asked.
"Yes, sir." Pashenuro's eyes darted along the line of men carrying old, dry bricks up the path from the supply boat to the island fortress. "He stayed the night, as always."
They stood at the gate, watching the men work with an ant-like patience and tenacity. The sun was dropping toward the western horizon, the shadows lengthening, the northern breeze carrying away the intense heat of the day. The sharp chirp of a sparrow sounded above the roar of the rapids. The mound of bricks on deck shrank rapidly as crewmen shifted their cargo onto trays suspended from yokes across the shoulders of the infantrymen. They, in turn, plodded up the steep path, balancing the unfamiliar load with care, and deposited the bricks at the base of the walls, where they were raised to the scaffolding or ramparts for use by m1n repairing broken sections of wall.
"Would his men lie for him?" Bak asked.
"Others were there, too," Pashenuro said. "Outsiders who'd have nothing to gain by saying they saw him when they didn't: eleven guards traveling north with a royal envoy and three spearmen journeying upriver for assignment at Semna."
"I see the sense in Minnakht's taking Mutnefer as his wife," Bak admitted, "but when he confessed he coveted her, I was sorely tempted by the obvious conclusion. If I thought Puemre's death an ordinary murder, I'd have locked him away then and there."