Year of the Hyenas (6 page)

The high
vizier rose
from his throne. Stumbling a little from the effect of his beer and
palm wine, he went outdoors to relieve himself against the wall.
Pawero, glaring at Nenry and Paser, exhaled loudly in disgust and took
himself back to his river barge. Nenry and Paser stayed behind in the
anteroom. Paser still said nothing.

“I hope you
did not
think me too forward, lord, proposing my brother as I did…” began Nenry.

“I should have
you
beaten,” the mayor stated matter-of-factly. “Don’t ever do anything
like that again, Nenry, without discussing it with me first.”

“Yes, lord. It
was
wrong of me, lord. Never again, lord.”

The Mayor of
the East
chuckled and clamped his huge arm around his trembling scribe. “Don’t
be too hasty, Nenry. You were wrong in not discussing it with me. But
not wrong with the plan itself.”

“Lord—?”

Paser
chuckled. “Did
you see how angry the Old Horror was? Heehee-hee! It was worth it just
for that.” But almost at once, a look of foreboding swept over him. “I
still say it, though—there’s a reason Pawero wants to control this
investigation. I don’t trust him. I never have. Your drunken brother is
perhaps just what we need. And I intend to give him all the help I can.”

The mayor
turned
swiftly and strode out of the anteroom. Only after he was gone did
Nenry realize, however dimly, that Mayor Paser had referred to Semerket
as his “drunken brother.” How could the mayor know? Unless…

But before he
could
ruminate further, he was hailing a sedan chair to make his way into the
center of the city to begin the search for Semerket. The gods alone
knew what sordid places he would have to seek him in.

HE WAS IN THEIRsleeping room, just as
he remembered it. Semerket laughed aloud to find himself at home, and
he gazed around in delight. The walls were sensible mud brick,
whitewashed, and a small window of thick transparent mica was set into
a wall. He had purchased the mineral at great price from a passing
caravan years ago so that Naia could gaze upon her courtyard planted in
fig trees and papyrus. Sunshine poured into the room from the window,
and Naia was bending down solicitously to tend him on his pallet.
Semerket sighed luxuriously. He’d known, always, that Naia would return
to him. They loved each other too much for it not to happen.

Then in the
distant
fields he saw the birds.

“Naia!” he
cried
happily, pointing from the roll of bedding. “Naia, look! The ibis
chicks are in the furrows!” He knew how dear she found the little
birds, probing the ruts with their long, black beaks. Semerket turned
his gaze from the sun-besotted window. The corners of his mouth drew
down. Someone else—not Naia—was bending down to peer at him.

When she saw
his eyes
open, she called his name. He heard her as though from very far away…
and it was not Naia’s voice that he heard.

Semerket
blinked,
trying to force himself back into the sun-drenched room with the mica
window. He had only to close his eyes, and he and his wife were again
in the little mud-brick house, and hares were nipping at the wheat.

No, not hares.
What
were they?

“Ibis chicks,”
he
whispered aloud, and smiled.

The woman
knelt on the
floor where he lay and reached forward to feel his forehead. “Ibis
chicks? Semerket, you’re scaring me. Please don’t say such things!”

He could
barely
register more than mild shock to see this strange woman again reaching
down to stroke his cropped black hair. He shook off her hand. “You’re
not Naia,” he said under his breath.

“Please get
up,
Semerket. Unless there’s another copper in your sash for more drink,
they’ll make you go home. You should go home anyway.”

What was she
talking
about? He
was
home.

The curtain to
the
room was drawn back with a sudden rush of dank air. A Syrian eunuch
brought another man to his pallet. The stranger was thin and bald, his
face a festival of tics and twitches, and he held a kerchief to his
nose, repelled by the smell of stale wine and vomit. “Yes,” the nervous
man said, “yes. This is my brother.” Semerket heard the clink of copper
exchanging hands.

“Nenry?” He
wanted to
ask why his brother was here, in his home, but a rising tide of panic
drove all curiosity from him. He sat up. Where was Naia? And the window
of mica? What had happened to his little house with the sensible
mud-brick walls?

From somewhere
far
away he heard thin screaming. Semerket shook his head, forcing his mind
to shut out the terrible sounds. But the shrieks penetrating his head
were now so loud he tried to keep them out by clamping his hands over
his ears.

The bald man
continued
to stare at him in horror. “How long has he been like this?” he asked
the woman.

“Since early
this
morning. He couldn’t stop screaming, no matter what I did for him.”

Tears slid
down her
face. She brushed them away with irritation. “He’s so tortured, your
brother,” she said. “I’ve never seen anyone sadder. I’d do anything for
him if he’d ask. But he doesn’t see me at all. I’m just a tavern wench
he sobs to about his wife sometimes.”

Semerket’s
eyes
fluttered open. The bald man was speaking to a physician, who was
sitting next to him on the cot. The pretty woman was holding Semerket’s
head in her lap.

“Will you
undertake
his cure?” his brother asked the physician.

The physician
nodded.
“Get me some date wine,” the man said to the tavern maid.

“More wine?”
said
Nenry. “Surely more will kill him!”

“He hasn’t had
much
else for some time. To deprive him of it suddenly would shock his
body.” The physician quickly wrote a prayer on a strip of papyrus in
red and black inks. The woman placed the bowl of wine before him. From
his instrument box, the physician withdrew a stoppered bottle. When he
opened it an acrid smell invaded the room.

“What is
that?” Nenry
asked suspiciously.

“Fermented
pine
resin,” he said as he poured. “And this,” he said, opening another
bottle, “is opium from Hattush.”

“Will it cost
much?”

“You want him
to live?”

Nenry nodded.

Five tinctures
of the
serum were dropped into the palm wine, then a quail’s egg was broken
into it and stirred. The physician dipped the prayer strip in the bowl
and the ink of the spell’s glyphs dissolved into the liquid. The
physician jammed an ivory plug between Semerket’s teeth, then spooned
the wine down his throat.

The shrieks
stopped
almost immediately, and Semerket saw that the beautiful room with the
mica window was serene once again. With the ivory in his mouth,
Semerket could not speak. He would have filled the darkening room with
questions, had he been able. He would have asked the physician if he
knew why his beautiful Naia was not there and when she would return…

Suddenly, he
knew the
answers to his questions.

For the first
time in
many days he lay quietly, and his restless mind did not conjure visions
of beautiful rooms and pleasant pastures, everywhere inhabited by the
shade of his beautiful wife. And perhaps this was why, occasionally,
tears oozed from beneath his bruised and flickering lids.

HE AWAKENED TOthe slosh of water and
the sound of a scrubbing. When he opened his eyes, sensible mud-brick
walls rose before him, and he saw a pane of mica set into the wall.

For a moment
he
believed himself back in his dream, but the window glared red with late
afternoon sun, bloodily picking out unpleasant bits of detail in the
small room. He lifted his head and stared, wincing from the heavy,
clanging weight of his skull. He lay on dirty, crumpled linen. Broken
crockery littered the floor around him. Mouse droppings were
everywhere, and above him the palm rafters of the roof glistened with
spider webs.

A man with
scaled and
peeling feet was cleaning up the mess, list-lessly scrubbing the floor
with a pig-bristle brush. Semerket swallowed, tested his voice, and was
able to croak to the man, “Who are you?”

The man
whirled
around. He dropped the brush into the basin of water with a plop,
calling out, “Master! Master! He’s awake!”

Nenry appeared
at the
doorway. “So he is,” he said with sardonic disapproval. “Don’t be
afraid of him. He’s only my younger brother, of no account.”

Semerket
regarded his
elder sibling with wonder. “Nenry, what are you doing here?” Then
memories of the last few days flooded his mind. The inside of his skull
itched like fire, and his throat felt like sand. He turned a plaintive
gaze on his brother. “Some wine? Beer?”

“Water is what
you’ll
get.” His brother poured some into a bowl and handed it to him.

The bowl went
flying
across the room. “Wine,” he rasped out again.

With a covert
look at
the servant, Nenry brought out a couple of copper rings from his sash.
“Go to the tavern at the corner, and bring us a jug of wine. If I find
the seal broken, you’ll be beaten with a stick.”

The man
scuttled from
the room like a dung beetle. Semerket noted that he limped, that his
injuries were fresh. Instantly an image of Nenry’s terrifying wife took
shape in Semerket’s mind. “Your servant?” he asked.

“My valet,”
Nenry
answered. “I had to bring in someone. This place of yours smelled worse
than a nest of river ducks. You can’t expect someone of my position to
wash down a house by myself.”

Semerket laid
his head
back down on the pillowed cradle. The mere mention of wine had done
much to calm him. “What position?”

“Why, I’m the
chief
scribe to the Lord Mayor of the East! I sent you an announcement when
the office was given to me. You didn’t receive it?” Nenry’s face
revealed sad disappointment that his brother apparently knew nothing of
his good fortune, for he believed in his heart that all men envied him.
Nenry counted on it, in fact.

Semerket spoke
with
difficulty. “I thought you served at Sekhmet’s temple.”

“I’m happy to
say that
my diligence and skills were noted there.” A fatuous smile settled on
Nenry’s lips. “Thanks to the gods, my wife and I are now among the
first citizens of Thebes.”

“Ah, yes. Now
I
remember. And you had only to sell a son to do it.” Semerket inserted
the phrase like a surgeon incises a wound, finished before the bleeding
has begun.

Nenry winced.
He rose
to stand indignant and outraged above his brother. “How can you say
that? My son is now a prince because of my selflessness. I gave him to
my wife’s uncle because of what could be done for him. I did it for the
boy, do you hear?”

Semerket
became calmly
reassuring. “You mistake me, Nenry. You’ve done well. ‘Chief scribe to
the mayor’—that’s worth two sons, at least.”

Nenry looked
at his
brother, hands falling to his side. “Why do I keep helping you? You’re
never grateful. You always sneer at me. Why? What have I ever done to
you?”

Semerket now
directed
so level a gaze at his brother that Nenry was forced to drop his eyes.
“You sold your son to become a scribe. A
scribe,
Nenry! If you
knew
how much Naia and I yearned for a child… Yet you gave yours away as
casually as a woman loans a kerchief.”

Tics and
twitches laid
claim to Nenry’s mouth. “I should have let you die today. Everyone
would have been better off if I had.”

“Yes.”
Semerket’s
voice was tired, dull. “Especially me.”

THE SERVANT RETURNEDwith the wine, and
Nenry broke its seal. He poured a bowl and handed it to Semerket, who
drank it down in a single draft. Silently he held out the bowl for
more. This time he drank it more slowly, and sighed. Strength visibly
returned to him. He turned his black eyes on his brother and the
serving man. “Join me,” he said.

“You’re very
free with
the wine I paid for.” Nenry was still peevish, but he nevertheless
poured the wine. The three men sipped in silence for a while.

Semerket
raised his
head from the bowl and looked about the small house. “I never expected
to come back here,” he said, almost in wonder.

“Why not?”

“Wasn’t that
obvious?
I meant to die.”

Nenry remained
unmoved. “You mean you’d tired of pounding on Naia’s gate at all hours,
heaping shame on yourself and the family?” He expected his brother to
fly into one of his dark rages, and waited apprehensively for the
explosion.

But Semerket
said
simply, “No. I’ve done with that, now.”

Nenry grunted
sarcastically. “To what miracle does Egypt owe this change?”

Semerket
inhaled
slowly, and the words came out in a long sigh. “She’s pregnant with
Nakht’s child. Did you know?”

Nenry turned a
shocked
face on his brother. His hostility was forgotten, and he became
instantly contrite. “Oh, Ketty!” He drew nearer to his brother, his
face inches from Semerket’s. “How did you find out? Who told you?”

“She told me
herself.”

“When?”

“I don’t
remember.
During the Osiris Festival, I think. She took my hand—I felt it
stirring…”

“When is it
due?”

“I don’t know.
Three
months? Four?”

“Ketty, I’m so
sorry.
Truly I am.”

Semerket
turned his
face to the wall. “Don’t pity me. Not you.”

“Receive it
from one,
then, who knows what it’s like to lose a son.”

It was as near
a
confession as Semerket had ever gotten from his brother. Semerket’s
eyes began to smart with tears, and he blinked them away, harshly
wiping his face with the back of his hand. “Why did you come today of
all days?” he groaned. “Why couldn’t you just let me die?”