Year of the Hyenas (26 page)

Within the
temple
proper, tiny oil lamps stuffed into the walls were the only
illumination. Semerket became aware of hundreds of beggars that camped
in the halls, waiting out the night. They seemed to shrink into the
floor as he passed, occasionally moaning a curse when he blindly trod
on a foot. He brought his mantle to his nose, for the place smelled
worse than a privy.

The giant
pushed open
a screen onto yet another set of corridors. This hapless collection of
crumbling hallways upon hallways reminded Semerket of the stories he’d
heard of the people of Keftiu, whose god, imprisoned at the center of a
great labyrinth, was a creature half-bull, half-man to which the people
fed human flesh.

Almost upon
that
thought, the distant bellows of a demented and monstrous animal welled
up from the dark. The bellowing became louder as they trod the dark
hallways, and as he drew nearer Semerket determined that the lunatic
ravings were made not by a beast, but a man.

The giant led
him to a
small anteroom adjoining the room from which the screams emanated.
“Wait here,” the man said. Semerket sat down on a crude chair, and
found his buttocks poking uncomfortably through broken thatch. The
screaming stopped abruptly. Familiar sounds drifted to him now: a very
distinct tap-thump, tap-thump of some wheeled apparatus, followed by
the plaintive bleat of a ram. Semerket found it impossible to sit
quietly. He moved silently to the doorway and peered inside.

Three men with
shaved
heads, naked but for loincloths, held a bound man down on a table. A
fourth, their leader, waited nearby. The bound man was gagged, but
still managed to struggle and scream; it had been his cries Semerket
had heard. The fourth man now approached the prone figure and placed
his knee on the victim’s chest, while the others held his head steady.

Their leader
reached
his long, thin arm over to a table of bronze instruments. He took up a
small spoon, and turned it in his spindly fingers to catch the smoky
light from the brazier.

Deftly, the
thin man
plunged the instrument into the victim’s left eye socket, twisted it
delicately, and plucked the wet, translucent orb from the gaping hole.
He tossed the gleaming bit of flesh into a small basin. Blood sprayed
geyser-like from the man’s head, bathing his tormentors, but they
labored on unconcerned for either the warm spray or their victim’s
screaming. A swift flash of the spoon, and the other eye was torn from
his skull.

In that room
was the
Cripple Maker, Semerket realized, with his three assistants. Semerket
tasted vomit in his mouth, but was too fascinated to even retch, for in
the Kingdom of the Beggars, the Cripple Maker was as legendary as the
Beggar King himself. An apostate priest trained as a physician, his
special art was not in healing, but in creating appealing deformities
with hooks and knives. Any painful alteration to a body, any new
appalling deformity, would be tried that a more profitable beggar could
be manufactured.

The Cripple
Maker
reached over to a brazier to take a glowing ember between his thumb and
forefinger. Quickly, he plunged it into a gushing socket, and then
repeated the procedure for the other wound. There was a hissing gurgle,
the smell of burning flesh, and the man’s bleeding ceased—as did his
screams. A final convulsion and the man fainted.

The Cripple
Maker
spoke as he bandaged the man’s eyes. In a surprisingly high, sweet
voice, he prescribed, “Feed him a little opium paste tonight, and for
three days after. No food; only broth. If there’s no fever, he’ll
survive.” The Cripple Maker sponged the drying blood from his own body
with fastidious care.

Semerket could
not see
the person whom the apostate physician addressed. But a quiet voice now
spoke from the gloom. “Send him to the Beggar King of the North, then,
if he lives. The king must know that worse waits in Thebes for any more
spies he sends into my realm.”

“Yes, lord,”
the
Cripple Maker said, his voice syrupy with pleasure. He was a man who
enjoyed his work.

The other
voice called
out, louder, “Yousef!”

The giant
who’d led
Semerket through the halls put his head into the room. “Lord?”

“The other
business—we’ll attend to it now.”

Semerket was
so
mesmerized by what he’d seen that he was unaware when Yousef returned
to the anteroom to stand behind him, dragon’s teeth in his tight smile.

“Careful,” the
giant
said. “The poor fellow in there was guilty of seeing too much.” He
shook his head in mock sadness, “No more, though.” But he laughed
cordially, as if they were friends.

Semerket
followed
Yousef into the other room. The ironlike smell of freshly spilled blood
clung to the air, and the place seemed overly warm. A sudden movement
in the dark drew his attention. It was a ram, stolen from the sacred
herd of Amun at Karnak. Its combed, white coat floated to the floor in
soft, wavy skeins of wool, and its curved horns were enameled in rich
gold. The ram pulled a miniature chariot made of inlaid citron wood
from which a deep voice rose, “So it is Semerket who visits me?”

“It is I,
Majesty.”

“But you were
in
Babylon or Troy or some godforsaken place, weren’t you?”

“Forgive me,
Majesty,
but you always know exactly where I am… as you know everything in
Thebes.”

A deep laugh
rumbled
through the room, and Semerket peered down into the chariot to find
glinting back up at him the fierce eyes of the Beggar King. His neck
was hung with heavy chains of gold and silver, and he wore a battered
gold crown. Despite his kingly trappings, however, he was nothing more
than a legless torso overhung by two muscular arms. His lower limbs had
been long before taken by another Cripple Maker, before he had become
king; the ram and chariot now served as his legs and feet.

“Are you
investigating
another crime, then?”

“Yes, lord.”

“Does it
concern a
murdered priestess?”

Semerket
concealed his
surprise, asking in a quiet voice, “What can you tell me about it?”

The Beggar
King
slapped the reins across the ram’s flanks and he began to drive the
chariot about the room. “We had nothing to do with it, if that’s what
you mean. I have problems enough without slaughtering old women. Ah,
Semerket—it’s been many years since we’ve talked, and much has changed.
Times are hard in the south. Our empire has withered away over the
years; only the north is rich today.”

“Thebes seems
prosperous enough.”

“Not through
the eyes
of a beggar. When the great southern families are feeling the pinch,
alms are scarcer, bribes leaner.” He went on to complain bitterly of
his fellow Beggar King in the northern capital, an even richer and more
powerful monarch who had somehow wrested control of the abundant inflow
of foreign currency and goods that came from across the Great Sea.

“He knows
where we are
weakest,” the Beggar King said, “for he sends his spies and agents
here. One was apprehended in Thebes only yesterday, this man on the
table here.” The Beggar King’s stare was almost kindly as he regarded
the barely breathing heap before him. “But he has been punished so that
he can never spy on us again. And because we are merciful, he’ll be
sent back to the north as a warning—if he survives.”

The Beggar
King halted
his miniature chariot at Semerket’s feet. “But these are our problems.
Why have you come today, after so long? What do you need from us?”

Semerket told
him of
the beggars who had come to the village of the tombmakers and how they
had not known the secret sign he made. Hearing the Beggar King’s own
story made him think they were beggars from the north, somehow in
league with the tombmakers. Semerket said he feared it had something
to do with tomb robbery.

“Robbery in
the Great
Place?” Even the Beggar King was shocked— or envious—Semerket did not
know which.

Just then the
eyeless
man made small noises as if he were waking. The Beggar King moved his
chariot to look at him. “Come, Semerket.”

Semerket
approached
and bent to view the beggar. To his shock, he recognized him. “He’s one
of those who attacked me at the village temple!”

The Beggar
King’s eyes
glittered redly. “Ask him your questions then, Semerket; find out why
he pollutes my kingdom.”

Semerket
whispered
into the beggar’s ear, “I am the vizier’s man from the tombmakers’
village, the one you tried to kill. Do you remember me?”

The man moved
his head
in the direction of Semerket’s voice. Blood and tears oozed from
beneath his bandages. With great effort he nodded his head.

“I hold your
life in
my hand,” Semerket told him. “You can still live it out if you tell me
the truth. Do you belong to the Beggar King of the North?”

The man again
nodded.

“What is his
connection with the tombmakers in the Great Place? Why have you come
here?”

The man’s
cracked lips
moved as he tried to speak. Looking about the room, Semerket saw the
basin of water. The Cripple Maker’s instruments were still soaking
there. Though the water was pink with blood and matter, he withdrew a
sponge and squeezed a few drops over the beggar’s lips. As the man
attempted to speak, Semerket brought his ear to the beggar’s mouth.

The beggar
barely
breathed the words. “The ship… is overturned.”

Semerket and
the
Beggar King regarded one another in puzzlement. The man was delirious,
Semerket decided.

“What ship is
overturned? What do you mean?”

The man
shivered. His
breath came in shallow gasps, and he gasped for air like a hooked fish.
Again Semerket squeezed a few drops of water over the beggar’s lips.
But they fell from the man’s mouth to pool on the table. With a tiny
groan, a faint exhalation of air, the man shuddered and died.

“Damn!” roared
the
Beggar King.

Semerket
sighed and
stood erect in the gloom. “There are more of his companions here in
Thebes. I saw the noseless one tonight at the Elephant’s Tusk—”

Instantly the
Beggar
King drove his chariot to the door, shouting to Yousef to take a party
of men to the tavern and capture the beggar. After the giant had gone,
Semerket approached the Beggar King.

“Do you
consider me a
friend?” he asked.

The king’s
eyes were
suspicious. “I count allies, not friends.”

“As one ally
to
another, then—don’t be tempted to traffic in any treasure that should
come your way. Already the Medjays suspect its loss. When they find the
thieves and the missing jewels, all who have touched them will be
punished with their lives. This I can promise you—even kings could
fall.”

THE NOTE READ:

Vital to
see you.
I’m at the stable near the public well. Come alone. I am not drunk.
Please.

Semerket

It was the
next
morning when Semerket, summoning all his will, went through the second
door that had opened the night before. Standing in the small square
onto which the gates of the nearby estate emptied, he waited until a
serving girl emerged from the house, laundry basket on her hip. The
girl would have been pretty but for her cleft palette, and she winced
as he approached her, unused to strangers treating her with anything
but revulsion. She hid her mouth with a free hand, and her eyes were
frightened. Semerket made a gesture indicating that she should not fear
him, and held out the piece of folded papyrus.

“Will you take
this to
your mistress?” he asked. “And make sure no one else sees…?” He took a
copper piece from his sash and held it out for her.

Seeing the
shining
metal, the girl’s eyes became a great deal friendlier. She nodded her
head and took the note from him, disappearing into the house. Casually,
as if to prove he had no cares, Semerket strolled to the nearby stables
where the families who lived on the square boarded their livestock:
cows for milking and donkeys for transport and hauling, the occasional
horse. He nodded to the liverymen who labored there but said nothing,
and leaned against a hitching post.

Semerket
forced his
heart to calm itself. You will not fall to pieces, he told himself
firmly. Today you will remain calm, unmoved. You will not—

“Semerket…?”

Her low voice
made him
start, and he spun quickly in its direction. No matter the command to
his heart, it now leapt rebelliously into his throat.

“Naia.” His
voice was
barely more than a whisper.

She stood in
the
stable’s doorway, slim and more beautiful than he remembered, and her
familiar citrus scent was already in his nostrils. She seemed
absolutely unchanged, though she was dressed more richly than when she
had been his wife. Gold discs hung at her ears and her head scarf was
of rich wool that fell in long black sweeps to the ground.

It was then he
noticed
she carried something in her arms. He could not at first think what it
was, but then heard the small whimpering sounds issuing from it.

Semerket’s
eyes became
fixed and hard.

“I know your
note said
to come alone,” Naia spoke quickly, seeing his expression, “but I
couldn’t leave him behind. He’s only a week old, and I dare not trust
the servants…”

When he sent
her the
note Semerket had never imagined such a scene. Indeed, he had been so
careful not to imagine anything at all that his mind had been closed to
all possible scenarios. He stood there, barely breathing.

“Semerket?”
She took a
step forward. “Semerket, say something!”

He swallowed.
“I
didn’t know… I mean, no one told me…” Fiercely he tried to feel
anything in his limbs, which had gone quite numb, tried to force his
stupid tongue to work. Semerket took a long breath and spoke. “I
mean—congratulations, Naia.” To his astonishment his voice was calm and
even.