‘No.’
‘Who is?’
Surere laughed softly. ‘Light a lamp. But keep the wick low.’
Huy struck a flint and the lamp spread a tight circle of yellow light, so deep that it drew objects into it. Surere’s face was sucked forwards. It was thinner, and the eyes were sunken; but they were alert, and burned brightly.
‘Why have you come here again? You risk much.’
‘I need to talk. There is no one but you in this city.’
‘There is your protector.’
Surere laughed drily.
‘How else can I think you have survived here untraced so long?’ Huy persisted.
‘The search for me has died down. They think I have gone.’
‘Well, it is none of my business now.’
Surere’s eyes darted over his face. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I was never your hunter, Surere.’
‘You think I killed the girls?’
‘Did you?’
‘I wouldn’t tell you. But perhaps I desire to make my peace with the man who did.’ Surere laughed again. ‘Under our laws, you can die for killing a hawk, a cat, or any other of the Sacred Animals. But why not kill a child if it is for the child’s good? Tell me, Huy. I am confused by what the king tells me in dreams, and I need your help. The Aten was clear; but now I no longer know. I am confused between vengeance and salvation.’
Huy raised himself on one elbow. ‘What are you saying?’ He wanted to turn the lamp up, to see the man’s eyes better. Jailed shadows flickered on the walls. Above all, he wanted to get up, but Surere still held the knife close to his throat, and every muscle in the man’s body was taut. He truly had the supernatural alertness of the hunted.
‘The age is evil. After the light, there is darkness. What is the use of continuing our race if it is to go on in darkness?’
‘Is there any other way to bring us back to the light? I thought that was the purpose of your mission.’
Surere’s eyes wavered, unsure. ‘Perhaps the way is lost.’
‘Who has told you that?’
‘No one.’
‘Has the king spoken to you of this?’
‘Stop it!’ A dry sob broke from the man’s lips before he brought himself back under control. ‘Forgive me. I have tried all my life to live in Truth. Now I no longer know where I am.’
‘Who is the king? Who is it that you really see?’ Huy asked softly, after a pause.
‘I have told you! Our king! Akhenaten!’
‘You have seen him again?’
‘Oh, yes.’
‘Where do you see him?’
Huy saw that he had pressed too hard, too fast. The cunning was back in Surere’s face. ‘Why? Do you want to take him from me? You are working for them now.’
‘I work for no one.’
‘Do you think I don’t recognise Ipuky’s livery? What’s your game?’
‘I have to eat.’
‘So you compromise,’ rejoined Surere scornfully. ‘At least you have chosen a good man.’
‘But he abandoned the Aten to save himself, like the others.’
‘And what have you done?’ said Surere. ‘I have been thinking. I have been too quick to condemn, where in time I might redeem. You did not know Ipuky before?’
‘No.’
‘He was much in love with his wife. She ran rings round him, but he loved her all the same. And when she left, he clung to her shadow in their daughter.’
‘And maltreated her?’ Huy was still not sure how he would have answered his own question.
‘I cannot believe that.’ Surere’s eyes had changed again, cloudy in remembering.
‘You talk of redeeming,’ said Huy, gently. The point of the dagger drooped towards the floor. Huy looked at Surere. He was taller than Huy, and labour had made him sinewy; but he was older, and his guard had dropped. Now was the time to take him. But if Huy overpowered him, what then? He would have forfeited the fragile trust Surere had put in him, and if he turned him over to Kenamun, he would lose all trace of the delicate thread that seemed, somehow, to link Surere with the girls’ deaths. Kenamun would use pliers and the needle to destroy what was left of balance in Surere’s confused mind, and then extort a confession.
‘Then you cannot have killed,’ Huy continued.
‘But it would not matter if I have. Death is a redemption, too, if it saves the innocent from corruption.’
Huy felt the world close in on him. He seemed to be sitting at his own centre, in the innermost room of his heart, as he heard the words. The two men, forced by their fate into this intimacy that was not intimacy at all, sat in silence, the words used up. In the end Surere stood up.
‘Do not follow me, Huy,’ he said with his old authority.
‘Tell me who is protecting you.’
Surere smiled. ‘Someone who owes property to the king.’
Huy looked troubled. ‘You are going, and I do not know if I have helped you. I do not even know if I should.’
‘You should turn me in; but then where would you be? Do not attempt to follow me.’
Surere put down the knife, turned his back, and made for the steps. Huy listened to him descending them, then the soft creak and click of the door. After that, night wrapped him in silence.
Getting Huy into the Glory of Set had forced Ipuky to take his steward into his confidence. The simplest method was to send Huy as a client. He would wear private clothes and say that he was a merchant from the Northern Capital. Expensive jewellery and make-up completed the display of wealth, though it made Huy self-conscious and uneasy.
The place was constructed on the same plan as the City of Dreams, though its decoration and furniture were richer. No one had questioned him or seemed suspicious. He was led from the neutral entrance hall by a quiet, equally neutral young man, who might have been a civil servant, into a room in which the walls carried friezes that depicted the perversions which the brothel traded in. As his eye travelled over them, the trepidation which Huy had felt turned to contempt, and then to pity, for here were nothing but sorry fragments of imagination.
‘Please choose,’ said the young man, indicating the walls.
‘Choose?’
‘What you would like to do. Or would you like to watch? Some do, at first, to get them in the mood. One of our best customers only watches.’ The young man managed to combine collusion with the antiseptic disinterest of a nurse. He stood too close to Huy for comfort, invading his space. Huy could smell the sweet perfume of the oil he used on his hair and face.
He looked at the walls again. People were depicted in neat rows, engaged in activities which belied the formal expressions on their faces. The first scene showed a pair of children whipping a tied girl, perhaps their nurse. In another, an elderly woman forced a pronged implement into the anus of a muscular man wearing the mask of Horns. Further on, a young couple, tied back to back, were threatened by three creatures carrying torches. A little girl was shown twisting fish-hooks into the penis of a man suspended from his wrists by bronze wire, and in a fifth scene a man and a woman on all fours were yolked together, drawing a miniature cart, whipped by a dwarf charioteer.
‘I’m looking for a particular girl,’ said Huy.
‘Aren’t we all?’ replied the young man with a crispness bordering on impatience. Huy felt anger rise into his mouth, but he made himself remain calm as he described the dead girl from the land of the Twin Rivers.
‘Never seen one like that,’ said the man promptly. ‘What did she do? Hurt or get hurt? Or maybe you like a bit of both. Now – ‘
He did not finish the sentence. Huy had grabbed him by the throat, lifted him from his seat, and slammed the back of his head against the wall with a force that cracked the plaster. A small portion of the scene showing the couple with the cart flaked away and broke on the floor. Blood dribbled from the man’s mouth.
‘Just tell me when she left,’ said Huy. The man spat in his face. Huy held on to the thin throat until the face above it turned blue and tears appeared. When the neck started to stretch, and the eyes gaped, he relaxed the pressure.