City of the Dead (24 page)

I wished for the knife I had given to Ahmose. Though I still had the guard’s, I wanted nothing more than to fill my arms with weapons, to strap them to my legs and chest. I would wield another in my teeth if I could.

I could abide the crowds no longer. I kept my head low and shoved my way through the playing fields, through the gardens, past the pools and sycamores, and out of the royal estate.

My furious march took me in the direction of the quarry.

The plateau sloped toward the quarry, and it seemed I was alone in the desert. Was the entire population of the pyramid city inside the walls of the royal estate?

My steps took me down, until I stood on the lip of the quarry. I stared into its jagged depths. Despite the hopelessness of my situation, I did not consider what it would be like to hurl myself over the edge. I thought instead of throwing Rashidi to the rocks below.

A narrow path led down, and I took it. The ledge brought the Tura quarry to mind and with it, Neferet. I tossed the memory aside.

At the bottom of the deep pit, I leaned my back against the rock wall. From above, no one would see me. From across the quarry, I would be too small to recognize. Unless someone descended, I was safe here for now. And I did not expect anyone at work in the quarry on a festival day.

Cursed, cursed Rashidi.
By the scattered limbs of Osiris, I hated him and his sickening, smug smile. He had bested me. I had thought to expose him, to prove my innocence and condemn him for the murders. Instead, he had the ear of the king and I was at the bottom of a hole.

And what now? I looked at the dried blood where the guard’s sword had cut across my chest. Should I fall on my knife as Khufu had commanded? And allow Rashidi to exact his revenge?

Even with Khufu’s explanation of all that I had seen the night before, including the three death masks, I still believed the priest to be the Scourge of Anubis. Somehow he had fooled them all. But he had not fooled me. If nothing else, that look he threw me in the palace hall before he left with Khufu told me what I needed to know.

Smug little weasel.

My throat constricted and I coughed with the dryness that comes of running in the desert. I found a barrel of water near a small pitched overseer’s shelter and scooped up a handful. The water was brackish and carried the quarry grit. I swallowed anyway and shuddered. Then I splashed some on my chest. The cut stung like fire.

Two mallets lay nearby, left behind by careless workers, and I hefted them in my hands. The mallets were meant to pound small clefts into the rocks, so that wooden pegs could be inserted and then swelled with water to crack the rocks along a prescribed
line. I had no desire for such precision today. Only to crack rocks. I lifted one of the mallets above my head and ran at the wall. I skidded to a stop before it and let the mallet fly over my head. It slammed the rock with a
ching
that rang through the quarry. I backed up and used the other mallet against the wall. Then the first again. And the second. The mallets swung in a haze about my head, as though wielded by a mad sculptor. The rocks refused to be dislodged. They bared their disfigured faces at me, mocking me to strike them again. The mallets scraped at my hands, and still I pounded at the wall. Stone chips flew into my wig, and I knocked the stupid thing from my head.

When my strength was spent, I backed away and hurled curses at the rocks instead until I could think of no more evil to invoke upon them.

Finally, I fell silent and still, and the last of my fury echoed across the quarry and died there.

I must stop Rashidi.

Which meant I would have to kill him.

I dropped the mallets and fell to my knees in the sand, then lay on my back and stared at the cloudless sky. It was right that I could not see my pyramid from this hole. It was lost to me now. I knew that there would be nothing for me after this. My dream of building a legacy for my family, a pyramid to stand for a thousand generations, would be like the desert sand that drifts away to the west. If I did not carry out my own sentence, as Khufu had ordered, I had no doubt it would be done for me. No one could kill an “innocent” priest of Ra and live. And yet it had to be done. This was justice, I knew. Rashidi had killed Merit. And Mentu. Even Ebo deserved to have his death avenged. And Rashidi still planned to murder Tamit, Ahmose, and Khufu, I had no doubt.

Why he did not seem to have a plan to kill me, I could not understand. But perhaps it was enough to see me blamed and executed for his crimes.

I had done all I could to find justice. There was only one way left—manufacture justice by my own hand.

The sand ground into my bare back. I shoved over to the rock wall and leaned against it.

I must find the priest alone. Could I kill a man in his bed?

Yes. This man.

I searched the sky again. It was well past midday, but it would be many hours before darkness had fully fallen and the royal estate emptied of revelers.

So be it. I would rest first. I would prepare my mind, my body, and my weapons. And one more thing I would do before I restored ma’at.

I would find Neferet.

And I would say good-bye.

* * *

A few hours of fitful sleep did nothing to abate the hardening passion in my stomach. When the moon was high and the night cold, I climbed from the quarry and continued south along the plateau to the workmen’s village.

I had little thought of being apprehended. My mission had become so fixed in my mind that it seemed impossible anything should keep me from it. I moved confidently through the darkness, my thoughts on Neferet. Would she cling to me, beg me not to do it? She was a strong woman, but I knew that she desired my safety.

The stars above seemed cold tonight, as though they would pour their silvery electrum into my blood and make me strong for the tasks ahead. I studied the constellations as I walked and wondered if the gods really lived among the stars, if the Pharaohs that had gone before had truly ascended to live among the gods and now looked down upon us. Did they care about those of us left behind on this corrupt, sandy plain? Or was everything I had believed about the gods the fabrication of men? Did the People of the One pray to the One True God, as they believed, one who cared enough about our wretched race to reconcile us to himself?

The lights of the village wavered before me, like a mirror image of the sky. I widened my path and circled the wall to the back. Pushing pointless thoughts of the gods aside, I climbed Neferet’s tree, walked along the village wall, dropped to the temple wall and then to the ground. This path did not seem so much an adventure this time. Each step took me closer to an encounter I both longed for and dreaded.

The village still swirled with a celebratory mood, even with the lateness of the hour. I moved through the streets, avoiding eye contact but not caring much who saw me. I did not believe I would be apprehended here in the village in time to prevent me from fulfilling my task.

Outside the door of Sen’s home, I took a deep breath, then pushed through. In spite of his new position, Sen had yet to engage a doorkeeper.

I was loathe to call out, not knowing who was inside. Instead, I treaded softly through the passageway to the courtyard. A single small lamp flickered amid the foliage, vainly trying to dispel the darkness. A lone figure sat on the central bench. I knew from the shape that it was Sen.

“Neferet?” he said, his voice low but hopeful.

I took hesitant steps toward him. “It is I, Sen. Hemiunu.”

He stood. “She is not with you?”

My chest tightened. “What has happened?”

Sen rubbed the top of his head with his hand. “I do not know. Nothing, perhaps. But it is not like her to be out this late, to not tell me where she is. Sometimes she goes to help with a birthing or with a workman’s injury. But always she gets word to me.” He half smiled. “She knows I worry.”

“I am sure she is well.”

Sen slumped to the bench again. “I heard about this morning. At the palace. They say you tried to attack the king then escaped. I—I thought perhaps you and she—that you had fled together.”

“I would not take her from you in that way, Sen.”

He nodded. “You are a good man, Hemi. Somehow, with everything, I know this.”

I flexed my hands at my sides and looked away. “How is it that you know this after such a short acquaintance, and yet my cousin and my own brother suspect me of murder? Those who know me best?”

“Are you certain they know you so well?”

The flowers on Neferet’s wall drew me with their tranquility. “They have known me all my life.”

Sen inclined his head and studied me. “And yet I suspect that they have not seen your heart. That not many have.”

“Some of us are better than others at expressing ourselves.”

“Yes.” Sen looked at Neferet’s painting with me. “And often they have a way of seeing into a heart that is closed to others.”

“Where do you think she is, Sen?”

Sen’s voice tightened. “I am worried, Hemi.”

I dropped to the bench beside him. “I came to say good-bye.”

“What will you do?”

“Kill Rashidi. After that, I do not know. I will wait to see what the gods will do with me.”

“There is but one God, Hemi. And he loves justice also. But be careful that you do his will and not your own.”

“How can a man know the will of a god, Sen?”

He reached to the ground, lifted a jug, and handed it to me. “He must listen very carefully.”

I took the cold jug in my hands and let the wine soothe the dryness in my throat. With the wine, the anger also flowed back into me, and my resolve hardened. I pushed the jug back at Sen and stood. “I cannot stay.”

Sen held out an arm. I grasped it.

“Tell her—tell her—”

“She knows, Hemi. She knows.” He stood and embraced me. I should have felt a different emotion at our parting, but all I could see was my anger. Anger that I could not stay here, could not wait for Neferet, could not even say good-bye.

“Senosiris?” a male voice called from the front of the house. Sen glanced at me, then inclined his head to the shadowy side of the courtyard. I retreated, and he crossed into the front passageway. I could hear the voices but not discern the words. I leaned my head against Neferet’s painting and focused on the tiny white lilies that grew along the base of the wall. I remembered the chipped quarry wall where I had spent the day with her. I thought that perhaps these flowers were the only pure thing in this evil world.

Sen was back a moment later, a papyrus in his hands, and a strange look upon his face. The look of a man expecting bad news but afraid to hear it. He held the papyrus out to me.

“What is it?” I asked and took it from him.

He did not answer.

I looked at the papyrus, covered with demotic script. The language of the priests. Sen would not be able to read it.

But I could. And it was a message meant for me.

I read it aloud. “Hemiunu,” it began. “You spoke once of the goddess Ma’at and the need to serve her above all others. It is time for us both to live according to that injunction. Too many years have passed with the divine order disrupted. All must be put right. But how does one atone for the evil of the past? It must be repaid.

“And so I take what is precious to you, as you once took from me. And in the same place, under the same midday sun, I will offer up this sacrifice to Ma’at, and justice will be restored.”

My breath came shallow now, and I forced myself to read on. “I tell you this, Hemiunu, so that you may witness the restoration of the divine order you love. The secrets must end. Ma’at will not be silenced any longer.”

It was unsigned. There was no need.

“I do not understand,” Sen said. “Why was this brought here? Who sent it?”

I took in Sen’s creased brow, his piercing eyes. “I must go, Sen.”

“It’s Neferet, isn’t it? Someone has taken her? Is that the thing that is precious to you?”

I smiled, though it was with the sadness of a truth realized perhaps too late. “Yes, Sen. She is the thing that is precious to me.”

He swallowed, and I knew he worked to remain calm. Then he gripped my shoulder. “I trust you, son. I trust you. Bring her home.”

I covered his hand with my own. “Pray to your One God, Sen. If there is true justice in this world, I fear only a god can find it for us now.”

I left him there in the leafy courtyard and let my feet carry me from the house, from the village, across the plateau. The heat in my veins carried me forward, and it seemed but a moment until I was perched on the edge of the harbor.

The dark water spanned my vision, out to the canal and on to the river. She was out there somewhere, I knew, traveling downriver toward the marshy wilderness at the mouth of the Great Sea. And beside her was a crazed little man who lived only for revenge.

* * *

Boats clogged the quay of the pyramid’s dark harbor, their noses knocking against the stone wall. I did not see one that would suffice. Each of them required the labor of oarsmen and a pilot to pole-steer them through the canal and down the river. I had no such labor at hand and did not intend to rouse sailors from their beds with an insane request to help a fugitive chase a priest of On into the marsh.

I stalked the quay, scowling at each of the cargo and tow boats, as well as the large boats of nobles who had traveled to the royal estate for the Festival of Hapi. The water smacked against hulls and stone, a lonely sound. At last, at the shadowy end of the dock, I came upon a small skiff, narrow enough for one man to operate both of the small oars fitted into rowlocks. It was made of a light wood, perhaps a foreign pine, and rose up high in the back, with
only a third of its length touching the water. This craft would skim the water with speed, I knew. A steering pole lay in the bottom.

I jumped aboard with little thought as to whom the boat belonged to. My thoughts were on Neferet, somewhere out there in the night with Rashidi. With little effort I untied the boat and poled it out of its position at the dock. Once I was clear of the other moored boats, I set to the oars and hurled myself toward the mouth of the harbor. The journey would not be a leisurely one. The rough oars chafed at my hands.