City of Dreams by Anton Gill Read Free Book Online Page A

any marks on her back?’
    ‘None that I noticed.’
    Huy looked at the girl’s hands again: they were without a blemish. Her heels were grazed. The rest of her skin, over all the visible part of her body, was clear and unbroken. He would need a doctor to tell him if she had been violated, but there was no indication of it, not even a bruise on an arm where a strong hand might have held her. He reached gently behind her head and felt her hair and the back of her neck, detecting no damage. He registered the stiffness in her body as he lowered her head again.
    ‘Well?’ asked Merymose.
    ‘I can tell nothing,’ Huy said. ‘There has been no violence, and there is no way of telling the manner of her death.’
    Merymose sighed. ‘That is what the doctors say.’
    ‘Have you spoken to Ipuky?’
    ‘They have shut themselves in their house. I will speak to their chief steward before night.’
    ‘What will happen to Iritnefert?’
    ‘Since she can tell us no more, I will give the order for the embalmers to take her.’ He paused irresolutely. ‘The way this has been done, you might think a god was to blame. Has she been struck down by heaven, do you think?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘If she were not the daughter of such an important family…’
    ‘Yes, how much easier it would be. I am sorry I could not help. Perhaps Taheb overestimated my talent.’
    ‘I will speak to you again of this.’
    ‘You know where I am. How much time will they give you?’
    ‘Seventy days. The time that it takes to embalm her and send her to the Fields of Aarru.’
    Huy wondered, as he walked away, what Merymose would do if in that short time no killer had been found. Someone would be made to die for the crime; but for all his reservations, Merymose did not strike him as the kind of man who would fall on just anyone in order to present a solution. At least, not until the three months had passed and the knife was poised over his own neck.
    His route took him past the City of Dreams. Remembering the wig which now he did not need, he pushed open the door and entered the antechamber which served as a reception area and office. There was no other way out of the building than through here, though the girls may have had a secret exit of their own, and this antechamber was guarded more fiercely by Nubenehem than ever a desert demon guarded its cave.
    The large Nubian was discussing something — evidently money — with a client who bent over the desk towards her, his back to Huy. A middle-aged man, well-dressed, but furtive.
    ‘It’s too much!’ he hissed at the madam.
    ‘For what you want to do, it’s a bargain. Take it or leave it.’
    He half turned, indecisive, and Huy caught sight of a grey profile, vaguely familiar, but the man turned back to Nubenehem before he could place it.
    ‘All right. But they’d better be good.’
    ‘You’ll have a ringside seat.’
    The man giggled — a horrible noise — before setting off for the curtain at the back of the room.
    ‘Just a minute.’
    ‘What now?’
    ‘Pay first.’
    Cursing under his breath, and still keeping his face averted from Huy, the man threw a handful of small silver bars in front of the fat woman, who scooped them up almost before they had settled on the surface of the table.
    ‘They’ll show you where to go inside.’
    The man vanished. Only now did Huy approach.
    ‘Who was that?’
    ‘You know better than to ask questions like that. He’s too important a client for me to tell you.’
    ‘That’s a lot of money he paid.’ 
    ‘What he likes is specialised. We don’t usually do it.’ The Nubian looked up from the couch where she half lay by a low table on which a number of limestone flakes were scattered. They were covered with calculations.
    ‘The accounts,’ she explained, deliberately changing the subject. ‘The farmers coming in from outside the city always want to pay in so much emmer, so many hides, so much barley. I tell them to pay in metal, it is easier for me to