Bak grinned. "So you're the one who waved a greeting from the watery depths, making me think the lord Hapi had sprouted arms."
Inyotef laughed. "You were sailing as if born to these waters, a joy to watch."
"Coming from you, that's a real compliment." Bak knelt and offered his hand. "Are you ready to come out? I've beer at my quarters and, with luck, there'll be food as well."
"And questions, I assume?" Inyotef swam close to the quay and raised his hand for the proffered help. "Woser tells me I'm high on your list of suspects."
Bak grabbed the hand and heaved. Inyotef was heavier than he looked, his muscles dense and compact. As he scrambled to his feet, Bak wondered if he could have swum to the island and cut the skiff free of its mooring. The distance was not impossibly far, with the long island breaking the journey into two laps, and a strong swimmer who knew the river well could use the currents to his advantage. No! Guilt flooded Bak's heart. The idea was absurd! Inyotef had a weak leg. "I suspect everyone." He smiled, turning it into a joke. "But some people more than others." Inyotef studied him in the fading light, and finally gave an odd little laugh. "I've done nothing I'm ashamed of. Ask anything you like."
"I feel better now." With a contented smile, Bak set his empty bowl on the rooftop and picked up a fresh jar of beer. Breaking the dried-mud plug, throwing the pieces aside, he filled his drinking bowl and tasted the brew with caution. Since the beer sold at Iken was as likely to be made by men who came from far to the south as by those from the north, the quality varied drastically from one jar to the next.
"A feast fit for Maatkare Hatshepsut herself." Inyotef gnawed a healthy bite from the end of a thick leg bone. "I've not often tasted a chunk of beef this tender."
"We have the lord Amon to thank, no doubt. The steer was probably an offering divided among the priests and my Medjays after the god's evening meal."
Kasaya had been nowhere in evidence when they reached the house, but they had found three stools stacked one on top of another, supporting a basket laden with food and drink. The precaution had been wise. They had surprised a mouse, darting in and around the stubby legs of the lower stool, searching for a way to reach the basket.
They had carried the food up to the roof and watched the night fall, while they ate. The stars were glittering specks in a sky as dense and black as obsidian. The air was cooled by the northerly breeze, chilling the sweat on Bak's breast and ruffling the hairs on his arms. A jackal howling, in the distance raised a chorus of barking, yowling dogs. Now and then, he could hear the skittering of tiny claws, rats waiting in the shadows for a scrap of food. The sweet scent of some fragrant wood, perhaps cinnamon, souvenir of a past offering to the god, wafted from the basket, competing with the fading smells of the city: animal dung, burnt cooking oil, food, and sweat.
"I understand you once battled in Kush, winning the gold of valor," Bak said, easing his way into his questions. "That was long ago," Inyotef smiled. "In the carefree days of my youth when the living was all-important and life itself taken for granted as eternal."
Bak remembered Huy saying something similar, or had the speaker been Senu? "Most men shout their successes far and wide," he said, forming a smile as genial as the pilot's, "yet I was surprised to learn of the award. You didn't say a word through those many long hours of talk while we sailed north to Mennufer."
"Nor did I speak of a second golden fly I earned during a voyage to the land of the Keftiu." Inyotef's smile cooled, and his voice took on a sharp edge. "I'm no braggart, my young friend."
Feeling his face grow warm, Bak busied himself with selecting a thick slab of meat and wrapping it in bread. "You faced Amon-Psaro's father on the field of battle?"
"I've always served the royal house from the deck of a ship." The chill left the pilot's voice and a wry smile touched his lips. "You've not pried into my-past as much as I thought. If you had, you'd know me as well as I know myself. My successes, my failures. My wealth, my habits, how often I defecate and where."
Bak recalled from the past how adept the pilot was at putting a man in his place, how quickly he could grab the offensive and control the conversation. His mouth tightened; he would not be manipulated. "I must earn my bread, Inyotef, an amp;so must you. When I report back to Buhen, Commandant Thuty will listen avidly to each word I say, each reason I give if I never learn the truth."
The implied threat hung in the air between them, unseen but potent.
Inyotef broke the silence with a quick, hard laugh. "Your exile in Wawat has made you hard and intractable, Bak, like this and and empty land. But I suspect you're a better man for it, a better officer."
Bak smiled at what he chose to take as a compliment. "You sailed on a warship plying the waters above Semna twenty-seven years ago?"
"A cargo ship. I was an ordinary seaman then. The vessel was heavy with weapons and food bound for our army in the land of Kush." Inyotef stopped, gnawed on his bone, forcing Bak to probe where probing should not have been necessary.
Bak did not bother to hide his impatience with the ploy. "How did you win the gold of valor?"
Inyotef's expression was lost in the dark, but his tone was suspiciously like that of a man enjoying a small victory. "Our vessel went aground on a sandbar. A troop of Kushite soldiers, seeing us trapped and unable to free ourselves and greedy for our cargo, came racing out of the sandy wastes, firing flaming arrows. Our sail burned like a torch and we lost our mast. We had few men to spare to hold off the enemy; it was all we could do to smother the many small fires blazing from prow to stern. I and three others who could swim slipped into the river and dug away the sand, working beneath the water until our vessel broke free."
"Admirable," Bak said, picturing the scene, imagining the desperation of men trapped on a burning ship. "You earned the golden fly and more."
"A path was cleared for me, and I soon became an officer." Inyotef's voice again turned wry. "You didn't draw me to your quarters to speak of my youthful adventures. What do you really wish to know."
"I see an irony here, a situation that interests me greatly." Bak took a bite of bread and meat, chewed, and swallowed, washing it down with beer, making the pilot's ploy his own. "Not only you, but Huy and Senu and Woser fought bravely against the Kushite army. Now the four of you are together, officers assigned to this fortress of Iken.
And Amon-Psaro, a great tribal king in, present-day Kush, will soon arrive with the future king. The son and grandson of the man you faced in battle."
"Irony?" Inyotef snorted. "It's the reality of empire, Bak, where a shared interest in trade wipes out years of mistrust and mutual enmity.".
Bak had no intention of allowing himself to enter a debate on that well-worn subject. "Huy told me he was one of the men who escorted the hostage child Amon-Psaro to Kemet after our victory in Kush."
"He was, and so was I."
"You sailed downriver with them?" Bak gaped. Inyotef laughed softly. "Funny, I'd forgotten that journey. But I'm not surprised Huy remembered; it was a far from happy experience for him."
Bak's eyes darted toward the pilot. "He told me he enjoyed the journey, befriending Amon-Psaro, playing games with him, fishing and hunting."
"Like most mortal men, he prefers to remember the good rather than the bad." Inyotef examined the bone, searching for a fragment of meat he might have missed. "He's a poor sailor, terrified of rapids and rough waters."
"So he told me."
"Then you can imagine his reaction when our ship rode the floodwaters downriver through the Belly of Stones. I've never seen a man so frightened."
"I, too, would be afraid," Bak admitted. "It's hard to believe the water could rise so high it would cover those crags and boulders enough to cushion the hull of a great warship."