Bak grinned. “Simple confusion. I’ve too many loose ends, making me mistrust both theories. And neither meshes well with the other.”
Imsiba lifted the coils, one or two at a time, and looked closely at the rope. About midway through, he revealed a long segment that was so frayed and worn it looked ready to pull apart under the least bit of strain. Scowling, he laid the coil so the worn part was visible and continued the task.
“How can I help?”
Though sorely tempted, Bak shook his head. “No, Imsiba.
Sitamon needs you more than I do.” He saw doubt on the
Medjay’s face, smiled. “Look at the large number of ships moored here in Waset and likely to remain throughout the festival. Seldom does such an opportunity arise. She needs you by her side.”
Bak thought to go to the sacred precinct, but decided in stead to speak with Netermose, a man who would know well those who dwelt in Pentu’s household and the one he felt would more readily divulge that knowledge.
The aide was not an easy man to find, but thanks to a ser vant who had toiled for Pentu’s family for a lifetime and knew her betters as well as she knew herself, Bak found him at the river’s edge. He was carrying a basket from which he threw kitchen leavings, a handful at a time, into the river.
Twenty or more ducks bobbed on the swells, competing for fish heads, wilted lettuce, and melon rinds.
Finding Netermose away from the house was a gift of the gods. Here he might speak more freely than when under the roof of the man to whom he owed his livelihood.
“It’s hard to believe the festival is almost over,” the aide said, eyeing a dozen or so men adding fresh white limestone chips to the short length of processional way along which the lord Amon would travel from Ipet-resyt to the river for his homeward bound voyage to Ipet-isut.
“Other than the first day and one night, I’ve had no oppor tunity to take part in the revelry,” Bak admitted.
“Have you found the man who slew Maruwa?” Looking embarrassed, Netermose laughed. “Of course you haven’t.
You’d not have searched me out if you had.”
Bak reached out, palm up, signaling that they should walk south along the river. The ducks swam along beside them, squawking for another handout. “When I asked you yester day which member of Pentu’s household might’ve hoped to cause trouble in the land of Hatti, you said the tale was un true. You spoke with utter conviction, yet you surely know that an envoy is not lightly recalled. And you must’ve been told that Pentu’s successor, when he arrived in Hattusa, ver ified the charge.”
“Your presence has brought back much that I’d hoped to forget.”
They strolled past a mooring post sunk deep into the moist, grassy bank and swerved around an acacia hanging out over the river, bowing toward the lord Hapi and his beneficent floodwaters.
“Three men have died, Netermose. The incident in Hat tusa may or may not be linked to their deaths. If it is, any in formation you offer may help snare the slayer.” Bak saw a denial forming on the aide’s face and raised his hand for si lence. “If those who dwell in Pentu’s household prove inno 182
Lauren Haney cent, the sooner I learn the truth and put aside my suspi cions, the sooner I’ll turn down a more fruitful path.”
A long silence, an unhappy sigh. “I was appalled at the very thought that someone in our household had been in volved with Hittite politics.” Netermose, his face gray and strained, shook his head as if denying a thing he knew to be true. “According to Hittite law, if a man is caught plotting against the king, he and everyone in his family are slaugh tered. That might also have held true if a member of an en voy’s household were found guilty of plotting against the throne. I consider myself and all who served Pentu in Hat tusa to be lucky that we were withdrawn before the traitor was identified.”
“Who do you think would take such a risk? You must’ve given the matter some thought.”
Netermose looked truly puzzled. “I never reached a con clusion. Each and every one of us is a man or woman of
Kemet, loyal to our sovereign and the land she governs. Why any one of us would do such a thing is beyond me.”
To stir up trouble in the land of Hatti-or any other land, for that matter-did not necessarily mean a man was not loyal to his homeland. The true test of loyalty depended on whom he was backing and how that individual meant to deal with Kemet. “You grew to manhood on Pentu’s estate, I be lieve you once said.” Or inferred.
The aide did not blink an eye at the more personal ques tion. “Yes, sir.”
“Have you always toiled for the governor and his family?
Or did you leave Tjeny for a time?”
“Why would I leave? Pentu and his father before him have always been good to me. Through his father’s generos ity, I learned to read and write. I studied with Pentu as a child, played with him. I’m pleased to count him among my friends. Of equal import, he raised me up to my present po sition. If not for him, I’d be toiling in the fields with my brothers.”
Bak noted the pride on the aide’s face, the devotion of a servant for a longtime master. “Did Pentu not go to Waset as a child to study in the royal house, as other noble youths do?”
“Yes, sir, but he didn’t remain for long. His father died when he was twelve years of age and he had to return to
Tjeny to assume his duties as landowner and to learn from his uncle the duties of a governor.”
“He never served in the army?”
“No, sir.”
Bak wondered if any man who had spent his life so close to his provincial birthplace would become involved in the politics of another land. Netermose’s very innocence might allow him to stumble into a predicament that was beyond his understanding, but to venture into a situation he understood would be unlikely. Pentu must have been almost as shel tered, so the same would most likely be true for him. Why, in the name of the lord Amon, had Maatkare Hatshepsut named him her envoy to a distant and alien land like Hatti?
“Tell me of Sitepehu. He was a soldier in Retenu, he said, but I know little else about him.”
Netermose turned away to throw a handful of kitchen leavings into the river. The ducks fluttered across the water to grab what they could. Quacks blended in a single ear splitting racket. “I don’t like speaking of a man behind his back, Lieutenant.”
“Better to speak of him now than to find him one morning with his throat cut. As Maruwa’s was. Or to find him cutting someone else’s throat, possibly yours.”
The aide flushed, then spoke with a reluctance that gradu ally diminished. “He served in the infantry from the age of fourteen and rose to the lofty position of lieutenant, learning to read and write along the way. He likes to say he climbed through the ranks with the tenacity of a hyena stalking its prey. He was wounded, came close to dying. You saw the scar on his shoulder. He went to his sister, who dwelt in Tjeny, to recover.
“Pentu met him, liked him, and took him into his house hold as a scribe.” The aide’s smile was rueful. “I sometimes resent his success in Tjeny, in our household, but I’m the first to admit he never shirks his duty. He rapidly attained the position of chief scribe, and thus he went with us to Hattusa.
When we returned, Pentu appointed him chief priest of the lord Inheret.”
“While a soldier, did he ever travel beyond Retenu to the land of Hatti?”
“If so, he never said.”
They walked on, each man immersed in his own thoughts.
Bak had no doubt that Sitepehu could steal up behind a man and slay him with a single slash of a blade. He had been trained in the art of death, and his heavily muscled shoulders and arms would ease the act. But Bak liked the priest, en joyed his wry sense of humor, preferred not to think of him as a heartless killer.
Ahead, the grassy verge narrowed, squeezed between the riverbank and the massive enclosure wall around Ipet-resyt.