The Right Hand of Amon by Lauren Haney Read Free Book Online

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its contents hidden from view contained, Bak assumed, either the body of the unborn child or the organs that had been withdrawn through the gaping slit in the left side of the dead woman's abdomen.
    "You'll not go back on your word, will you?" Nofery asked, worried. "You asked only that I tell you all I know."
    He wrapped an arm around her shoulders. "I'll go to the commandant for you as I promised. But not until the lord Amon has come and gone."
    "Many men will wish to celebrate the god's visit," she pointed out.
    "Thuty has too great a burden to listen now. He'd close his heart to your plea, and you'd be out of luck altogether." Screwing her mouth into a pout, she shook off his arm, trudged ahead down a short passage, and shoved open the door to the courtyard. Hurrying past Imsiba, standing outside with the trader Seneb, the old woman strode to a mudbrick bench shaded by the sycamores and palms lining the high enclosure walls. She flopped down with a grunt that silenced a chirping sparrow and bent over a small fish pool to draw deep into her lungs the sweet scent of white lotus blossoms floating on the surface of the water. Bak smiled to himself. She was not so chagrined that she would return to her place of business before her curiosity was satisfied.
    He shut the door behind him and, with the taste of death still on his tongue, eyed Seneb from head to toe. The pudgy trader's hands were tied behind his back; his kilt was rumpled and dirty. Though not a bruise or cut marked his body, his eyes were wary, frightened. It seemed unlikely that the slain man, one fose actions had been so noble they had even beguiled Nofery, would ever have crossed the path of this foul merchant. Yet the question had to be asked, for they had both come from upriver.
    "Has this jackal told you of his journeys, Imsiba?" The big Medjay hefted the long, heavy staff he carried. "With a bit of persuasion, yes."
    Bak had little faith in words extracted by means of the cudgel, but in Seneb's case he could think of no more fitting way. "How long ago did he travel upstream?"
    "Five months, he claims, as does the pass we found among his clothing."
    "Nofery saw our man four or five months ago." Bak spoke with care, preferring the trader remain in ignorance of how little they knew of the slain man. "He failed to introduce himself before traveling south."
    The Medjay nodded that he understood. If the man in the house of death had come through Buhen only four months ago, Seneb would already have been far to the south in the land of Kush. If five months, the trader might have crossed his path.
    "I'll take this cur inside, and when I'm through, I'll return him to his cell." Bak took the staff from Imsiba's hand. "In the meantime, speak with Nofery. After you hear her tale, send her home. Then go find Hori and see what luck he's had this morning."
    Hori was the police scribe. Bak had roused the boy at daybreak and sent him out with instructions to describe the dead man to all the garrison officers and sergeants. A thankless task, but a necessary one.
    Imsiba nodded. "I'll find him."
    Bak gripped the,trader by the neck and aimed him toward the door.
    "What is this place?" Seneb demanded. "Why bring me here?"
    "Many years ago; when this wretched land of Wawat was ruled by a king not our own, it most likely was a dwelling of the living. Now ... " Bak jerked the door open and shoved him over the threshold. "Now it houses the dead."
    The cloying stench stopped Seneb as if he had run into a wall. "What're you going to do to me?"
    Bak dug his fingers into his squirming prisoner's neck and propelled him through the building to the room where the unnamed body lay.
    At the foot of the embalming table, Seneb