Year of the Hyenas (4 page)

“He’s slow,
lazy, and
gluttonous. What’s more, he’s a sneak. Last night he left his station
and went off to the festival. When the fool finally returned he was so
drunk he peed into my lotus pond. All my little fish were belly-up this
morning. I had to throw scalding water on his feet just to wake him for
his caning.”

“So
that’s
why he’s limping…”
Nenry moved past her and into his sleeping chamber. He dressed quickly,
feeling less vulnerable when a sheath of linen was between himself and
his wife.

Relentlessly
she
followed him into the room, still clutching the razor. “So what are you
going to do about him?”

“Enroll him at
the
servant’s school, I suppose. What else can I do?”

“Not the
servant. Your
brother.”

“I thought you
were
speaking of—”

“I wasn’t. Pay
attention. Ever since his divorce he’s behaved like a madman. Not that
he was much of a prize to begin with—not that
anyone
in your
family is.”
Nenry sighed, knowing that she was off on another favorite tangent.

He had married
Merytra
because she was the grandniece of Lord Iroy, the high priest of
Sekhmet. Glazed with ambition, Nenry had allowed himself to be adopted
into Iroy’s family and married to his unlovely ward. Though his home
life was sour, advancements had come rapidly; only recently Nenry had
been promoted to chief scribe to the Eastern Mayor of Thebes.

But the price
was
terrible. Their first and only child, a son, had been snatched by Lord
Iroy to be raised in his own house and named his principal heir.
Merytra, torn between loyalty to a powerful uncle and hatred because he
had stolen her child, was left embittered and frustrated. Nenry became
her natural target.

Nenry
hurriedly
fastened a sash around his waist and thrust his feet into his sandals.
When his wife turned her back, he quietly tiptoed from their sleeping
chamber.

Escaping to
the
mayor’s home was the only way to avoid Merytra’s tongue on such days.
Lately he had been leaving earlier and earlier. In the courtyard he
looked unseeing upon the ground, wanting to weep from the unhappiness
of his life.

“Ah me,” he
sighed.

And now this
trouble
with his brother had compounded his woes. Semerket had always been a
trial, his pitiless black eyes forever belittling Nenry’s desires for
advancement and position. Where the older Nenry followed every
stricture and rule in Egyptian society, the younger Semerket had been
wild in his ways, intemperate in his habits. Early in his youth people
had taken to calling him a follower of Set. He was never easy with
words, and the few things Semerket found to say were mostly
unpleasant—but always truthful. Truth was, in fact, Semerket’s chief
mode of warfare against others.

Then, almost
miraculously, Semerket had met and married Lady Naia. He was besotted
by her, and under her influence Semerket had become almost pleasant in
his society. The few words he spoke lost most of their rough sting.
Naia had even prevailed on him to accept a post in the courts’
administration, for like Nenry he knew how to write.

Semerket had
become
the clerk of Investigations and Secrets, a position in which he was
used to ferret out the truth in confusing criminal cases. He was even
praised by the judges for whom he toiled, though grudgingly, for he was
not above hurling a few truthful observations in their direction when
he thought the need warranted.

For a while it
seemed
that such pleasant times might endure. But Semerket’s marriage was
cursed; Naia failed to conceive. Physicians with their poultices and
bitter brews; priests with their chants and prayers, incense and
candles; even Nubian witches with their amulets and eerie rites of
magic had failed to kindle Semerket’s seed in his wife’s womb.

More than
anything
Naia desired a child of her own body. In despair of ever becoming a
mother, she had convinced Semerket that divorce was the only solution.
Soon after, she married Lord Nakht, a nobleman who was responsible for
the upkeep and provisioning of Pharaoh’s royal harem in Thebes.

Semerket’s
reaction to
his wife’s desertion had been characteristically simple. He had fallen
apart. Never at peace with words, he found his tongue at last through
drink. For weeks he had howled his grief and rage into the night,
pounding on his ex-wife’s gate, pleading in vain with her to return to
him. Many nights embarrassed Medjays awakened Nenry, whispering that
his brother had been arrested again. Nenry paid the bribes to keep the
policemen quiet, but Merytra was correct—such behavior could not go
unnoticed much longer. In Egypt, when a family member committed a
crime, all the family suffered the resulting loss of status—and status
was the one craving shared by Nenry and his fearsome wife. Something
indeed had to be done.

“Nenry!” He
jumped
when he heard Merytra’s voice in his ear. He’d been so wrapped in his
own misery he had failed to hear her jangling approach.

“I was
inspecting the
lotus pond, my love. Yes, I can see how all your little fish have died.
Why don’t I give you a few copper rings and you can buy some new ones…
or anything you choose…?” He searched desperately about in his sash.

“I want
something done
about your brother.”

“But what can
I do?”

“Use your
influence,
however small it might be. Get him a position somewhere.”

“How can I?
People
know him. They’d think I was trying to foist him off on them.”

“I don’t care
what
they think. I won’t have what little we’ve managed to seize for
ourselves ruined by your brother’s sordid behavior….Are you listening
to me?”

“It seems I do
nothing
but listen to you.” In his misery he had spoken the words aloud,
without thinking. He had gone too far. Nenry saw her arm drawing back,
her right hand forming a fist, the expression of rage on her face. He
closed his eyes, waiting for the blow.

A burst of
rapid
knocking at the gate made them both jump. He and his wife stared at one
another.

“Who could it
be?” he
whispered.

“The police,
who
else?” she hissed back. “Here about your brother again!”

Nenry slowly
pulled
open the gate. A Medjay was indeed standing there, black skin gleaming
in the morning sun, dressed in the uniform of the Temple of Justice.
His insignia proclaimed him to be a bodyguard of the high vizier. Nenry
felt his knees swimming beneath him. The high vizier! How could his
brother’s scandal have reached that high?

“Are you
Nenry, scribe
to Paser, the Eastern Mayor of Thebes?” The guard was terse, his manner
cold and official.

“He is.”
Merytra
pushed herself forward. “What do you want?”

The man,
surprised by
the woman’s forcefulness, blinked. “An… an urgent summons for the
Eastern Mayor. I was instructed to give it to his chief scribe.”

Trembling,
Nenry broke
the seal on the wax tablets, eyes becoming wide as he read. “Oh, my,”
he said helplessly.

“What is it?”
Merytra
clutched his shoulder, looking from the tablet to peer anxiously into
his eyes.

“A priestess
has been
found dead—possibly murdered. There’s to be an investigation. I have to
fetch the mayor to the Temple of Ma’at. The high vizier himself
commands it.”

“A priestess,
dead!
How horrible!” She paused, and in the interval he saw her face once
again harden. “Just remember what I told you. You’ll either deal with
your brother or you’ll deal with me.” She strode back into the house,
the merry jangle of her bracelets filling every corner.

Nenry glanced
at the
Medjay, and was comforted to see a shred of pity in the man’s eye.

WITH HIS WIFE’S WORDSstill ringing in his
head, Nenry hurried to the poor section of town where Paser, the
Eastern Mayor of Thebes, lived. Glancing around at the refuse and rot
of the area, the teeming crowds of beggars, he could not fathom why his
master chose to reside in such an awful place. Nenry had spent his
whole life trying to flee such poverty.

To create the
imposing
abode of a mayor in so poor an area, Paser had simply purchased all the
little houses there and knocked holes through the walls to link them
together. Nenry hurried through the compound’s many kitchens and
storage rooms, past its harem, to finally pace anxiously outside the
mayor’s distant sleeping chamber.

Nenry glanced
past the
flapping curtain at its doorway and saw that Paser was already awake
and dressed, adjusting his wig. Nenry’s ears pricked when he heard
other voices in the room. To his horror, he recognized one of the
voices as belonging to Nakht, Naia’s husband. Nenry’s knees buckled,
and he leaned against the mud brick wall to steady himself. He would be
ruined, just as his wife had predicted.

The other
person
beside Nakht was someone unknown to him—a large, powerful man with a
brutal profile, dusted in the grime of limestone chips and desert sand.
Nenry momentarily pitied the man that he should appear before the mayor
in such humble attire. Incredibly, as if to confirm Nenry’s thoughts,
it seemed as if the man were indeed weeping.

Before he
could hear
what the men said, two slave girls wearing only leather thongs emerged
from the mayor’s chamber. Seeing Nenry’s face, which had furrowed
itself into a mask of tortured remonstration, they smirked.

“Is he almost
finished?” Nenry asked them. “Will he be out soon? What’s he talking to
Nakht about? And who’s the other man?”

“I thought I
heard him
say he was going back to bed,” the African girl said with a sideways
look at the other girl.

“After last
night, who
could blame him?” the tall one chimed, with a pretty yawn. The two
glanced lewdly at each other and burst into laughter.

“How now,”
Paser said
as he pushed his rotund bulk from behind the curtain. “What’s all this
noise out here?” He casually glanced at his scribe. Beyond the
curtains, Nenry noticed Nakht and the stranger departing through a rear
door in Paser’s chambers.

“It’s Nenry,
lord,”
the tall girl answered Paser. “That’s why we laugh! When he scrunches
his face like that, he’s so funny!”

“And I’m not?”
The
mayor’s booming voice filled the tiny room. “I was amusing enough last
night, you fickle things!” He feinted at the girls and they fled,
trailing behind them their piercing and highly satisfying shrieks.
Paser smiled to see them run away, a reminiscent gleam of lust in his
eye. Reluctantly, he turned to his scribe.

“What’s all
this with
the vizier, then, Nenry?”

“You know of
the
meeting, lord?” His surprised manner quickly became honeyed. “But then
of course you’re so perceptive, so quick. What is there in Thebes you
don’t know?”

“Nakht told me
of it.”

“Has… has Lord
Nakht
spoken of anything else, lord?”

Paser didn’t
answer
him. With long strides he left the room and went to his front stoop.
“Come on then, Nenry,” he called. “Don’t dawdle. Mustn’t keep the old
dear waiting.” The mayor did not waddle as most fat men did, but strode
like a wrestler. The mayor and his scribe resembled nothing so much as
an enormous hippopotamus with its flapping tickbird.

“Apparently a
priestess has been murdered.” Nenry was breathless, trying to keep up.

“Yes, poor
nag. Nakht
says it’s all over town. Nasty business. But we don’t know it’s murder
yet, Nenry. Mustn’t jump to conclusions. More than likely it was an
accident of some sort.”

The mayor
stepped into
his waiting sedan chair. “Up!” he shouted. With many a moan and curse,
his bearers lifted the chair to their shoulders and then exited through
the front gate.

“The Temple of
Ma’at,”
Nenry directed the lead bearer. Sweat already trickled down the man’s
face, and he merely nodded. There were more strenuous careers in Egypt
than being a bearer for the porcine Eastern Mayor—pyramid builder,
perhaps; obelisk hauler.

Two mayors
were
appointed to rule over Thebes-of-the-Hundred-Gates: one for the part of
the city on the east bank of the Nile, the other for the section west
of the river. Paser ruled the living, while his cohort, Pawero, ruled
the dead in their tombs in the west. And though they shared the capital
of the world between them, the mayors were so unlike in temperament and
philosophy that there could not be found two more dissimilar men in all
the rest of it.

Paser was fat,
prosperous, quick to laugh, in character exactly like the people over
whom he ruled. His true parents had been lowly fishmongers, but the
young Paser was so pleasant and engaging that a childless scribe had
adopted him into his family years before and sent him to the House of
Life to become a scribe himself. There Paser had learned the 770 sacred
writing symbols in the shortest time ever recorded in the temple’s
history—for the one thing that exceeded his girth, it was discovered,
was his cleverness.

After
graduation into
the priesthood, Paser entered the city administration offices and had
risen swiftly. At twenty-seven years of age, he now found himself
appointed mayor of Eastern Thebes, reporting directly to the high
vizier of Egypt. It was a satisfying position to have achieved at so
young an age. Paser relished his office enormously and never so much as
now, when the gates of his compound opened and the cries of the crowd
greeted him.

Paser leaned
from his
chair to clasp their outstretched hands in his. “Nefer!” he called to
an ancient crone. “Still the most beautiful woman in Egypt!” The woman
blew him a kiss from withered lips. “Hori, you rascal!” He turned his
attention to a legless beggar. “Watch your purses, citizens; he’s
quicker than a gazelle!” The beggar laughed in glee, taking no offense
at his words.