“What exactly did you talk about?” Bak asked, hurrying her on before she had a chance to think too deeply.
“I told him about the market, the gossip I’d heard from the other women. Nothing important. He told me he’d met with several officers, Mery, Nebwa, Paser, and others, no doubt to discuss the attacks on the caravans bringing ore from the mines, the need to send out troops to hunt down the raiding tribesmen. He said he told them of suggestions you’d made based on tactics you learned with the regiment of Amon.”
Bak made no comment, but he was surprised the commandant would share so much of his official day with his wife.
“He was pleased Commander Maiherperi had sent you and the Medjays.” A fleeting smile touched her lips. “He felt sure your presence here would put an end to much of the wild carousing and petty crime. And then…” She paused, her voice trembled. “Then he looked troubled and said…he said, ‘But they can do nothing to help me now. I must personally deal with…’”
Bak leaned toward her, his pulses quickening. “Go on.”
“He never finished the thought. I urged him to explain, but he said he’d do so later, after the problem was resolved.” She closed her eyes tight, took a deep, ragged breath.
Bak did not know what to think. Her grief appeared genuine, but she could as easily be playing on his sympathy to learn if Nakht had confided in him.
She hurried on. “He left me soon after and went to his bedchamber. I helped the servants take the remains of our meal to the kitchen and spoke with them while they cleaned the bowls. When I returned, my husband was waiting for me in this room. He said he had something he must do and suggested I retire. He said…” Her voice grew tight. “He said he would come to me later.”
With the wild panicked look of a snared fawn, she sprang to her feet and rushed out the door. Bak hurried after her, but stopped short when he saw her standing, head bowed, her back to him, in the center of the courtyard. The Medjay guard, already on his feet, threw him an uncertain look. Bak signaled him to remain where he was and walked toward her. In the dim light, the clinging white sheath accented every graceful curve of her lovely body. Bak, who had known many women in his twenty-three years, was drawn to her like a wasp to water.
Very well aware of his weakness for an attractive woman, he stopped a few paces away and forced himself to think of her not as a lovely young widow but as the one most likely to have slain her husband.
She raised her head and turned to look at him. “Nakht went to his reception room. His distress had worried me, and I couldn’t rest. I waited and waited-too long, I thought-so I dressed and went to him.” She paused, swallowed. “He lay bleeding on the floor. I tried to stop the flow. He said it was too late and asked me to raise his head and shoulders. I asked who had done this to him, but he spoke of personal matters. Again I asked who…” She closed her eyes, shook her head. “He never answered.”
She turned away and walked slowly toward the lighted door of her sitting room, where Lupaki waited. Bak watched the two of them go inside, his mind a jumble of contradictory thoughts. Is she bravely holding her sorrow at arm’s length, as she appears to be? he wondered. Or is her every word and action a lie?
“Is she telling the truth?”
The question, so closely matching his own, startled him. He swung around and spotted Imsiba emerging from the shadows of the landing atop the stairway that connected the private quarters to the audience hall. The sergeant, a dozen years older than Bak and half a head taller, walked as lithe and graceful as a leopard. His shoulders were broad, his hips narrow, his muscles solid and powerful.
“I wish I knew,” Bak admitted. “Did you hear it all?”
“Merely the last few words.”
Bak cursed his bad luck. Imsiba’s uncanny ability to read another’s thoughts might have pulled his wits from the sodden marsh they seemed to have fallen into. “What did you learn from the sentries?”
“No one saw anyone on the battlements who should not have been there, and no one noticed anyone on the roof of this house.”
“None but officers and guards are allowed on the wall at night.” Bak gave the Medjay a sharp look. “I know Lieutenant Mery was there. Are you saying others were, too?”
“Three men,” Imsiba said. “Nebwa, the senior lieutenant in this garrison who commands the infantry, had to speak with the watch sergeant. As he was busy, Nebwa waited for some time. The second man was Paser, the lieutenant responsible for escorting the gold caravans. He climbed the stairs near the quay, walked briefly along the parapet, and returned to the ground.”
“What of the third man?” Bak asked.
Imsiba looked vaguely uncomfortable. “Harmose, an archer who shares the blood of my people and yours and speaks both tongues. He translated for the commandant, who valued his judgment, so I’ve been told, and treated him like an officer.”
“What was he doing up there?”
“He often walks the wall, looking at the ships moored at the quay, the river, and the desert sands where his mother was born. He did so tonight.”
“The commandant’s life was taken when the moon was at its highest point. Did the sentries notice any of the three-or Mery-near the stairway to this house at that time?”
Imsiba snorted. “They think of the moon as nothing more than a measure of the hours they must remain on watch. They know it passed overhead and they know those men were on the wall sometime during its passing. That’s as specific as they can be.”
Bak stared with a gloomy face at the door to Azzia’s sitting room. That Nakht had spoken during the afternoon to the three officers, and possibly to his translator as well, and they had all been atop the wall near the time of his death, meant almost nothing. He had no good reason to free her from suspicion. Common sense told him she was guilty, but doubt remained in his heart. Was it because her words and behavior had played on his sympathies? Or because her youth and beauty had warped his judgment?
What he needed, he decided, was an impartial observer, and he could think of none better than a man who could sense another’s thoughts.
“Come with me,” he said.
Imsiba raised an eyebrow, but followed in Bak’s shadow across the courtyard.
When they entered the lighted room, Azzia was standing in its center, talking rapidly in a tongue Bak did not understand, the tongue of her homeland, he assumed. Lupaki stood before his mistress, trying to speak but unable to stop her flow. Her voice and face were positive and determined, his negative and glum.
She glanced around, saw Imsiba, and stiffened. Her eyes swung toward Bak. “Are you now convinced only I could’ve taken my husband’s life?”
“I don’t know what to think,” Bak admitted.
Her laugh held no humor. “My husband said you were a man who spoke his thoughts.”
Bak could find no appropriate response.
“Are you as honest in deeds as words?” she asked.
“I try to be,” he said stiffly.
She studied him for some time. “You were sent here in disgrace, I know, and my husband was prepared to dislike you. After he met you, talked with you, he thought you a man he could depend upon and, more important, trust.” She glanced at Lupaki. “Since I have no better alternative, I must trust you, too.”
Lupaki shook his head vehemently and rattled off a few unintelligible words, but Azzia ignored him. “First, lest you hear it from another’s lips, I must tell you…” She hesitated, then took a deep breath as if to draw strength from the air. “When my husband spoke of the problem he must face, I urged him to share his burden. He refused, insisting it was his alone. I…I accused him of taking on all the problems of the world with no thought of those around him. And we quarreled.”
A wan smile failed to steal the haunted look from her eyes. “Later, when I found him struck down, he seemed to have forgotten our harsh words, but I doubt I’ll ever forget, nor forgive myself.”