The soft crunch of sandals on grit drew his eyes to the passage through the tower. The large white form within grew more distinct and soon an obese old woman lumbered out. Sweat dripped from her jowls, formed stained crescents beneath the armholes of her long white sheath, and glued the fabric to her back and into the cleft between her heavy, sagging breasts.
She glared at Bak. "Can you never go about your duties in the early morning or in the evening, as civilized men do?"
"Would you've preferred, Nofery, that I pull you from your sleeping pallet?" His voice was stern, but his eyes twinkled with fondness.
She sniffed. "Little you care what suits me."
The sentry grinned from ear to ear. "Think you can show the scribblers how to hold their morning meal, my little ewe?"
With a coy smile, she patted the front of his kilt where it covered the joining of his legs. "You jest now at my expense, but you'll seek my favors quick enough when next you come to my place of business."
The sentry pushed himself against her as if it was she he visited instead of one of the young seductresses who earned their bread in her house of pleasure.
Laughing, Bak clapped the sentry on the shoulder, caught Nofery's arm, and drew her onto a path squeezed between the jumbled block of buildings and the sunken walkway at the base of the citadel wall. "You can seduce anyone you like when your time is your own, old woman, but now you have a task to perform for me alone."
He could see she liked the inference that she might still be able to lure a man into her bed, especially a strapping young ram like the sentry, but she jerked her arm from his and hid her pleasure in a scowl.
"I rue the day I agreed to be your spy," she said. "If I'd not been so free with my promises, I'd not be obliged to answer to your every beck and call."
She was walking so fast Bak had trouble keeping up with her. For one so put upon, she was wasting no time.
Bak watched Nofery with smarting eyes and a queasiness that always came upon him in the house of death. Hot, sticky air enveloped him like a cloak. The stench of decay, the sweet perfumes used for embalming, and the musty odor of ceremonial incense assaulted his nostrils. Smoke from a poorly made wick rose from an oil lamp, sending tendrils of vapor drifting through the air like wraiths from, the netherworld. He had come to this place many times, and the oppressive atmosphere never failed to make him feel that he stood on the threshold of an eternity he was in no way prepared to inhabit.
Nofery stood beside a thigh-high stone embalming table, studying the naked body lying in the shallow trough carved into its upper surface. If she had ever seen the dead man before, the knowledge was hidden behind the perfumesoaked square of linen she held over her nose and mouth.
"Do you recognize him?" Bak doubted she did; she had been silent too long.
"The face, I think, is familiar, yes." Her eyes, narrow and sly, slid toward him. "If you were to jog my memory, perhaps with a small favor… "
He buried his surprise-and mistrust-in a frown. "This isn't the market, old woman. You can't haggle with me over this man's name as you would with a merchant over the price of an onion."
"I've no wealth to speak of, and I'm no longer in the prime of life," she said in a plaintive voice. "Yet I must make my way alone in this hard, cruel land. Have you no pity?"
Unmoved, he leaned against the empty table behind him and crossed his arms over his chest. "Before a melon can be eaten, the vine must be given water in sufficient quantities to allow the fruit to mature."
The wrinkles deepened at the comers of Nofery's eyes, hinting at a smile. "I saw this man alive and well. Four or five months ago it was. He must've come and gone all in one day, for I laid eyes on him only the one time."
She must really have seen him! Bak could barely believe his good luck. "Go on," he said, keeping his face bland, his voice level.
"My dwelling is small, but my business grows each day," she said sadly. "Those who come for beer must sit on the laps of those who play games of chance. Those who come for a quiet chat must shout to be heard through the din. Those who…"
Bak tamped down his impatience with a game he usually enjoyed and strode toward the door. The adjoining room contained nothing but a basket of clean white linen frayed at the edges and a few baked clay jars and pots. "Come along, old woman. If you've nothing to tell me, I'll find someone else who has."
She eyed him, measuring the strength of his will. He returned her look, saying nothing, waiting.
Her mouth drooped, she let out a long, aggrieved sigh, and turned back to the table. "I went to the market that day earlier than usual. I heard loud, angry curses so 1, and others like me, ran to see. A sailor-I'd never seen him before nor have I seen him since-was beating his servant with a staff. The child, a boy of mixed blood no more than six or seven years of age, lay on the ground, his back, arms, and face bruised and bleeding. Before those of us inclined to do so could stop the beating, this officer…" She nodded at the dead man. "… burst through the crowd, tore the staff from the sailor's hand, and flung it away. Then he struck the sailor with his baton of office time and time again until he fell senseless to the earth."
Bak eyed her long and hard. "I heard of no such incident."
"Nor were you meant to, for when the officer knelt to help the child, he and those of us who watched soon realized the gods had blessed the boy with neither speech nor hearing. We stood back and allowed this officer, who himself looked like a god, to lift up the child with uncommon tenderness and carry him to a warship moored at the quay."
Bak nodded his understanding. A crude form of justice had been carried out, and, in the eyes of those who witnessed it, the matter was closed. He walked to the table and studied the grayish face of the man lying there. Would one who had behaved in so noble a fashion shun the scribal offices, thinking himself too great a man to register? Would he wear a belt clasp for which he was in no way entitled? "Are you certain this is the same man?"
"He is. Ask any of the others who were in the market that morning, and they'll agree."
Bak's final doubt ebbed away, and he gave her a pleased smile. "You've done well, old woman, very well. Now did you ever learn his name and where he was going from here?"
Nofery's smile was no less sly than before. "I'm in great need of a more spacious house. I went to the chief steward, and my plea fell on deaf ears. Only the commandant carries greater weight, but he'll not listen to me alone."
"You tell me all you know about this man, old woman, and I'll convince Thuty of your merits, though that, I fear, will be no easy task."
With a triumphant smirk, she backed away from the table and sidled toward the door. "He boarded a warship carrying replacement troops for the fortresses along the Belly of Stones. I assume they, and he with them, disembarked at Kor and marched on south. How far I don't know."
Realizing she was trying to escape, Bak leaped across the room and caught her by the elbow. "You never learned his name, did you?"
"I wanted to!" She tugged her arm, trying to dislodge the fingers clamped around it. "I thought him a fine man and yearned to know him. But few people had seen him and those who had knew nothing of him."
Mocking himself for letting her trick him, Bak pushed her into the adjoining room. A priest. kneeling beside the basket, examining the linen, looked up, startled. Beyond, through another door, an embalmer bent over the body of a young woman lying prone on an embalming table. The wife of an officer, she had died in childbirth during the night. Using a long slim tool inserted through the nose, the embalmer was scraping the soft matter from within the head. A deep bowl with its contents hidden from view contained, Bak assumed, either the body of the unborn child or the organs that had been withdrawn through the gaping slit in the left side of the dead woman's abdomen.