A Vile Justice (8 page)

Psuro, looking pleased with himself, nodded. "The trader Pahared sends his regards. He remembers well the afternoon he spent with you and Troop Captain Nebwa in Nofery's house of pleasure." A studied seriousness could not quite ,hide a smile. "A time of revelry and excessive drunkenness, he says."

Smiling at the memory, pleased with Psuro's success, Bak stepped over a turtle making its slow way toward the water. "I thank the lord Amon you had better luck in Swenet than in Abu."

"You must first thank my tenacity," Psuro laughed. "If I'd not searched with due diligence, I'd never have found him."

"He doesn't dwell in Swenet?"

"His wife has a house of pleasure near the market, and they live in a villa close by. I found him in neither place but at the harbor." Psuro pulled back the branch of a bush and held it while Bak edged by. "Pahared, I suspect, is on his way to becoming a man of wealth. He's the master of a trading ship, as he was when you met him in Buhen, and he shows no outward sign of success. But he buys hay downriver, ships it south to Swenet, and sells it to caravan masters to feed their donkeys. He admits he has no competition."

"I took him to be a resourceful man." Bak climbed onto the stone landingplace, thought what best to do, crossed to the skiff. "I must speak with him, Psuro. Maybe one who dwells in Swenet, a place where men come and go, transients who owe no special loyalty to Djehuty, can unlatch a door I've failed to open."

Pahared was just as Bak remembered him: a large, heavily muscled man with an incipient paunch and a hint of gray at the temples. His knee-length kilt rode low on his belly and wide beaded bracelets accentuated the thickness of his wrists and arms. He was good-natured under normal circumstances, Bak recalled, but formidable when pushed too hard. They had greeted each other like old friends, not men who had spent a single afternoon drinking and playing games of chance.

"There's not a man or woman in this province who hasn't heard of the murders." Pahared, seated on a low stool, watched his wife break the dried mud plugs stoppering two beer jars. She was almost as tall as he, but reed-thin, and she had the dark skin and woolly hair of the peoples living far to the south of Kush. "With so many dying so fast and all in the governor's household, most whisper that a demon of the night has come to lay waste to this province. They're scared, if the truth be told. Afraid the crops will fail, their animals sicken and die, their families starve."

Bak accepted a jar with a quick smile of thanks, toed a stool away from the wall, and sat beside the trader. "If Djehuty is the ultimate goal, as I think he is, the demon resides in a man, and he's out to avenge some unspeakable deed."

"I wouldn't know about that." Pahared eyed five sailors filing in through the door, their unsteady. gait and slurred speech pointing to earlier visits to other houses of pleasure. "I'm not sure anybody knows. That's what scares them so. They don't know where to turn, which demon or genie or god to placate."

Having no patience with superstition, Bak scowled at the room in which they sat: a large, open space with a high ceiling supported by one square mudbrick column. Long shafts of the waning light of evening filtered down from high windows. A large, gangly gray monkey searched through the straw covering the floor, hunting insects. Three-legged stools and a few low tables stood around the room, while the walls were lined with beer vats, wine jars, and baskets filled with drinking bowls. The room smelled of beer and vomit; the sailors reeked of sweat and fish and garlic.

This place of business reminded him of Nofery, though it resembled neither the old hovel where she had once toiled nor her new, much grander house of pleasure. It must be the smell, l e thought, the ever-present stench of the brew and overindulgence. "You've heard no tales that discredit Djehuty?" he asked.

"I've known of more popular governors, no doubt about it, but nothing that would bring the wrath of the gods upon his head."

Bak gave the trader a wry smile. "You disappoint me, my friend. When I saw this place of business, located on the main thoroughfare running through Swenet, close to the market and within easy walking distance of the encampment where the merchants unload their caravans, I thought to myself. how ideally situated to attract patrons from all walks of life-men who ofttimes drink to excess and speak with loose and frank tongues. When I saw your wife..." He nodded toward the woman, who stood with her shoulder against the doorjamb, keeping a close eye on customers and servants alike. ". . . she reinforced my confidence in you. I never thought superstition would reign."

Pahared chuckled. "I hear many tales, I'm bound to admit, some less fanciful than others. Among them, complaints about Djehuty. But none unique to him, I suspect."

"Tell me. I've nowhere else to turn."

Pahared laugaed again, not taking him seriously. "They say he's indolent, a man who lives a life of luxury and ease. One who, in his youth, loved to hunt and fish and fowl, but now prefers to loll away the hours in his villa, eating sweets and drinking wine. A man responsible for meting out the law, yet one who has scant knowledge of the laws of the land. A man who, thanks to the gods, is surrounded by men of talent and knowledge who tend to the needs of this province in his stead."

Bak suspected the assessment was fair. The brief time he had spent in the audience hall had divulged no brighter side to the man. "What of the men close to him? Have any of them committed an offense that might be laid at Djehuty's feet?"

Pahared drank from his beer jar, licked his lips, shrugged. "Not that I've heard-and I would've. Most have lived here since they were babes, and their lives are as open to view as the orb of Re traveling across the sky day after day."

Bak expelled a quick, frustrated sigh. "When I press Djehuty for help, he acts like a man with guilt in his heart but denies all wrongdoing. Three men on his staff have hinted he has a guilty secret, and none will enlighten me."

Pahared frowned. "Well, whatever he's done, it wasn't here." He watched two men of middle years, merchants from the look of them, wander in from the street and pass through the room to the courtyard beyond. His wife hastened out to serve them. "He was in the army, you know. In fact, as a young officer, he spent a couple years on the eastern frontier. I wonder how he conducted himself there?"

Bak knew garrison duty could sometimes bring out the worst in a man, but the assignment seemed too long ago, the eastern frontier too distant. Especially when trying to account for the death of five other people, two of whom-mistress Hatnofer and the child Nakht-he knew for a fact had never set foot out of Abu.

A new thought struck and his eyes narrowed. Djehuty had succeeded his father as provincial governor. During the older man's tenure, a seasoned officer had probably led the garrison, keeping the troops alert and trained, but the governor had in effect been in command-as Djehuty now commanded Antef. "After he served out his time on the frontier, did he remain in the army?"

"He did." Pahared glanced at his wife, who returned to her spot in the doorway. If he noticed the tension in Bak's voice, he gave no sign. "First he served as an aide to a royal

envoy, traveling north to the land of Amurru. Then, when the commander of the garrison of Abu was recalled to Kemet, his father appealed to our sovereign, Maatkare Hatshepsut, asking that Djehuty be given the post. That was ten or so years ago, when she was new to the throne and anxious to win the loyalty of powerful provincial governors. So she agreed."

Bak smiled, satisfied with a guess proven right: Djehuty had come back to Abu as a ranking officer, one in a position to step on many toes. "Was the garrison peopled mostly with local men? Soldiers born and reared in this province?"

"It was, but no longer. Menkheperre Thutmose, when he took command of the army, assigned men from throughout the land of Kemet."

Bak, nodding his understanding, watched without seeing a three-legged white dog trot into the room and lie down at Pahared's feet. Not only had Menkheperre Thutmose, the young man who shared the throne in name only, letting the queen have her way, cleared away incompetent officers and forced new men to prove their worth, but he had made radical changes throughout the regiments and garrisons, moving men of all ranks from one post to another so their loyalties lay with him rather than with provincial noblemen or governors.

"After Djehuty came back, did anything-anything at all-happen for which blame might be laid at his feet?" Bak heard the doggedness in his voice, the refusal to let go.

Pahared shook his head, regret filling his eyes. "I'd like to help, my young friend, but I can think of nothing."

His wife stepped forward and spoke a few words in her own tongue. Pahared snapped his fingers, nodded, listened further, and sniffled his thanks. She returned to the door, obviously content with herself and his response.

"My wife understands the tongue of Kemet but hesitates to use it, fearing ridicule." The merchant gave the woman a fond smile. `=She has a better memory than I do. She reminded me of the storm. The storm that took so many young lives." His eyes darted toward Bak. "But that was long ago.

It may have nothing to do with the here and now." "Tell me about it."

"A raging tempest out in the desert." Pahared looked surprised at Bak's ignorance. "Have you never heard of it? Five years ago, it was. Over a hundred men lost in the wind and sand, never to be seen again."

Bak forced his thoughts back. He had been assigned to the garrison at Mennufer at that time, newly appointed to head a company of charioteers, full of his own importance and barely listening to rumors of an army vanished in a desert storm.

"I heard tales of an entire company of spearmen lost and..." He stiffened, gave the merchant a sharp look. "And a commander who returned alive. That was Djehuty?"

"He came back, yes." Pahared stared at the large, calloused hands clasped in his lap, saddened by the tale, by the loss of so many. "He and a handful of other men."

Bak nodded slowly, dwelling on the news. "I take it Djehuty, as commanding officer, was responsible for so grave a loss."

"In the year I've lived in Swenet, I've heard no man lay blame at his feet." Pahared snorted, derisive. "How can you fault a mere mortal faced with the might and fury of the gods?

"You can't expect_ Djehuty to speak of that day!" Lieutenant Amonhotep ran his fingers around the upper inside edge of his broad beaded collar, as if it lay too tight around his neck. "Even now he feels the weight of responsibility, though no man alive could've guessed a storm would strike so late in the year."

The aide had been brought by Psuro to Pahared's house of pleasure, expecting a companionable evening with Bak. Instead, he had been ushered out to the courtyard, which was lighted by a torch mounted in a bracket by the door, and pressed for information. Now he sat on a stool,, drinking bowl in hand, offering nothing, admitting a bare minimum.

Bak leaned over to pet the three-legged dog, now curled up at his feet. Merry laughter and the clatter of knucklebones reminded him of the good time to be had beyond the door, doubling his regret that he must probe and poke. "I was told he was so filled with shame he stepped down from his post as garrison commander, turning his back on the army forever." Pahared had said no such thing, but exaggeration might free Amonhotep's power of speech.

"I suppose to some it looked that way." The aide's voice was as stiff as his spine. "In reality, he left the army to take his father's place as provincial governor-his right as sole heir."

"Did you serve with him while still he was an officer?" "Since my thirteenth birthday." Amonhotep did not look reassured by the change of subject.

"You, like so many others who toil in the governor's villa, must've been born and reared in Abu."

"I grew to manhood in Nubt, on Djehuty's estate." "And he took you into this garrison ten years ago. . ." Bak queried the aide with a glance, received a nod. ". . . when he came back to the province."

"He made me his herald, yes."

No wonder Amonhotep was loyal to a fault, Bak thought. He had Djehuty to thank for his rank and position. And possibly his life. Whether herald or aide, the young officer would have accompanied Djehuty on that fateful journey into the desert.

"What was he when he returned? A troop captain like Antef?" Bak's voice took on an edge of cynicism. "Or was he handed the lofty rank of commander?"

Amonhotep's eyes flashed indignation. "Djehuty may have his faults, Lieutenant, but he's always been an honorable man. This 7garrison is small, warranting no more than a troop captain at its head, and so he was when his father died and he took his seat as governor. While still he served in the army, I pointed out more than once that some men travel to the capital, seeking advantage. He refused to do so."

A refusal to seek preferment did not sound like the Djehuty who had summoned Bak from Buhen but refused to

help him, nor the Djehuty he sensed behind the compliments and complaints of the men on the governor's staff. "He had no black marks against him as an officer?"

"None."

Bak raised an eyebrow. "No blame was laid when he lost more than a hundred men in a sandstorm?"

"His record is clean, I tell you."

Again Bak veered away from the point, hoping to unsettle the aide. "Why would a garrison commander lead a company of men out onto the desert? Would that not be a task for an officer of lower rank? A lieutenant like you or me?"