He stepped onto the flat, empty rooftop and took a deep breath of the clean chill air. Wondering if he should look further, he gazed at the open flight of stairs that continued up the wall to the battlements. What exactly had Nakht said? “If you’d offended the gods to the extent some men have…” Men. He had made no mention of a woman. The thought spurred Bak on, but the stairs above were as free of stains as those below.
After identifying himself to the sentry at the top, he climbed onto the nearest tower, which rose from the northwest corner of the inner city, the administrative sector of Buhen. From there, he could see in the waning moonlight much of the outer city, a huge rectangular area enclosed by walls as high and strong as those around the citadel. The streets were crooked, the blocks irregular in shape, the buildings thrown together in random form. Within these cramped structures were the workshops and homes of craftsmen and traders. On the outskirts lay the animal enclosures, encampments for transient soldiers, and a necropolis of the ancients. No light was visible, no human stirred. Only the creatures of the night disrupted the silence: a chorus of dogs, a howling cat, the soft tweet of birds nesting in the wall somewhere below where Bak stood.
He puzzled over Nakht’s words. Had he used the word “men” as a general term, encompassing both sexes, or had he been more specific? With no ready answer, Bak watched the sentries patrolling the battlements. Besides the man who paced the sector where he stood, he could see the more distant figures of several others. They stopped at times to look over the wall and they lingered to chat when their paths happened to meet. He felt certain a cautious man could slip from one tower to the next and onto or off the stairway without their noticing.
He looked over the breastwork at the inner city, a series of grayish rectangles outlined by straight black streets and lanes infrequently traveled in the dead of night. His eyes settled on the shadowy roof of the commandant’s residence, the largest house in Buhen. It nestled in a corner with two of its walls butting against the fortress wall, its facade opening to the street. Its fourth side hugged a narrow lane-bridged by a wide board, he noticed-which separated the residence from the scribal office building and the main storehouse, easily recognized by the long parallel ridges atop its barrel-vaulted ceiling. Beyond lay the treasury and the walled mansion of the lord Horus of Buhen. The scribal offices interested Bak the most. They were empty at night, as were most of the structures in the sector, and the building had a stairway to the roof. It would take but a few moments to fly from there to the stairs descending to Nakht’s reception room.
He studied the dozen or more dark smudges visible in the torchlit courtyard, men who had been watching the Medjays when the woman screamed, and considered another, equally likely possibility. With so many people milling around the ground floor, a man intent on murder could easily have slipped into the dark, enclosed stairwell and later, after slaying the commandant, rejoined the crowd without being missed.
Three ways of reaching Nakht with small chance of being seen by members of the household. All possible but risky. Foolhardy, even.
No, the foreign woman Azzia must have slain her husband. Yet doubt nagged Bak like a hungry mosquito. He dreaded talking to her, dreaded having to accuse her of taking her husband’s life. But if she should prove her innocence, he dreaded more the idea of having to search further. How could he, a man whose sole experience was with horses, chariots, and battle tactics, find the one guilty man in a city of nearly five hundred?
Bak crossed the courtyard with heavy feet. He had dispatched Nakht’s body to the house of death and examined the slain man’s personal rooms, where he found nothing of interest. He had questioned the onlookers, who all denied having seen anyone take the stairway to the second floor, and had sent them away. And he had ordered Imsiba to go with Mery to question the men patrolling the battlements as to who and what they had seen through their night’s vigil.
The moon had sunk behind the fortress wall, the torches had burned low, and the stars above sparkled in an inky void. The dark forms of potted flowers and trees, which gave the courtyard the appearance of a miniature garden, scented the air with perfume. As he approached the only lighted doorway, he nodded to the Medjay he had posted there to guard the woman Azzia.
She sat on a low three-legged stool, her back straight, her hands clasped in her lap, her head held high. No bloodstains remained on her hands or her pale, oval face, and she wore a clean unadorned linen sheath. She must have heard the patter of his sandals, for her eyes were on the door when he entered.
“Have you come to accuse me of murder?” Her voice, which held no trace of an accent, was quiet and composed, with barely a hint of tension.
He stopped short on the threshold, caught by surprise. “Did you take your husband’s life?”
The servant Lupaki, standing by her side, laid a protective hand on her shoulder. Seated on the floor next to a large pottery basin, a dusky, nearly naked girl of no more than ten years raised her hand to her mouth to smother a sob. Beside the child, a twig-thin, wrinkled old woman glared at Bak over an untidy pile of bloodstained linen she clutched in her arms.
“No.” Azzia looked at him, her gaze steady. “Lieutenant Mery has said you believe I did.”
Bak silently cursed the watch officer for saying more than he should. The female servants must have thought his scowl meant for them, for they scurried into the next room, Azzia’s bedchamber.
“I’ve found nothing to convince me otherwise,” Bak said.
“And I was there.” It came out as a whisper, and for an instant she seemed close to breaking, but she stiffened her spine and tried to smile.
That smile, so fragile and filled with pain, pierced Bak through and through. He looked away, pretending to examine the room. It was half the size of Nakht’s reception room and furnished much the same. Rush mats covered the floor. The lower walls were painted with unsophisticated but delicate scenes of the animals of the desert.
“I did not take his life, that I swear. He was my…” She paused and her thoughts turned inward. Then she shuddered as if to free herself of memories and looked directly at Bak. “Mery said that though you believe I’m guilty, you looked beyond my husband’s room for signs of another person.”
“That’s right.” Bak’s tone was brisk, covering his annoyance that he had allowed her to move him. He grabbed a stool from its place near the door, set it in front of her, and sat down. “Tell me what happened this evening.”
Lupaki slipped forward, dropped to his knees before Bak, raised his hands in supplication. “Don’t ask this of her, sir. You must give her time to compose herself.”
“Be silent, Lupaki,” Azzia said firmly. “It must be now.”
“Mistress…”
“Would you have me punished for the death of my husband? Would you allow the one who slew him to go free?”
Bak was taken aback by the blunt questions and by the depth of anger her voice betrayed. The anger of innocence, he wondered, or of guilt?
Lupaki uttered a strangled denial and hauled himself to his feet, his face flushed with shame.
Briefly, Azzia’s gaze dropped to her hands, clasped so tightly together her fingers were nearly bloodless. “We took our evening meal in the courtyard where we could enjoy the breeze. While we ate, we talked about our day, as we always do.” She gave an odd little laugh, or was it a cry? “As we always did.”