City of Dreams (18 page)

‘You have a lot to learn,’ said Surere’s voice in the darkness. Huy could feel his breath, and smell the mint he chewed to sweeten it.

‘And you have learnt much,’ replied Huy.

‘In prison, if you do not learn stealth, you die.’

‘Why are you still here? What has happened to your mission?’

The pressure of the knife at his throat relaxed. ‘The king will not let me go.’

‘Is it he who is keeping you safe?’

‘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.

‘Tell me.’

The young man, no longer so neutral, his wig awry, gasped and coughed for air.

‘…doing my job…’ he managed to get out.

‘What job?’ Huy tightened his grip.

‘No.’

‘Then tell me.’

Limply, the young man did so. The girl had arrived from somewhere in the north early in the season. She seemed, in his words, to have some experience of what they required, and they put her through her paces. Huy found that, during much of what he had to listen to over the next few minutes, his only defence against the temptation to break the young man over his knee was to invoke the Horus within him.

‘And when she left?’

‘It was unusual. There’s very little goes on here that is true. Some of them really enjoy it, but mostly it’s acted. So it wasn’t as if she was being maltreated.’ He looked at Huy half-apologetically, cringing, as if he feared another blow. ‘But then we heard that she’d been killed.’

‘Beaten, raped and stabbed.’

‘That didn’t happen here.’

‘Who were her clients?’

The young man’s face froze. ‘Who are you?’

‘Vengeance,’ said Huy, meaning it, but speaking the word before he realised how theatrical it must sound. He had reckoned without the effect of his anger and his appearance on the man, who trembled. For a moment there was silence, punctuated, from somewhere deeper inside the building, by one long, isolated scream of pain.

‘Did Horemheb send you?’ asked the young man, finally. ‘Yes.’

‘I don’t understand. The people who come here are powerful. Their delights hurt no one. Why shouldn’t they indulge them?’

‘Horemheb understands that he cannot touch you — yet. But he would not want you to think that he had forgotten you. Who were her clients?’

An unpleasant expression slunk on to the young man’s face. ‘I do not believe you are from Horemheb. My masters and he understand one another now.’ He gave a curt signal with his head. Huy realised too late that the man’s eyes had switched direction to focus on someone behind him. He did not see his assailants. He was taken from behind by two men who pinioned his arms and pitched forward into the room, the young man darting out of the way to allow his saviours to smash Huy against the wall in his turn. He felt his teeth scrape against the plaster, then someone caught hold of his hair and pulled his head back. He had a close view of one of the pictures painted on the wall that he had not noticed before. Now, in a moment of crisis, he took it in with startling clarity. Two elderly men were crouched over a naked girl who was strapped face down to some form of wooden rack. Using sharp needles and ink, they were in the act of tattooing something on the girl’s back. One worked while the other watched, clutching his grotesquely enlarged erection. 

The work was almost complete and the result was clearly visible: curled around the apex of the left scapula was a small, crudely-executed scorpion.

‘Not the wall,’ he heard the young man’s voice say. ‘There’s been enough damage done as it is.’ They pulled him round and beat his head against a stool until his brain boiled. Then blood swam before his eyes and there was blackness.

TEN

On the eve of her wedding, they found Nephthys dead. It was unusual for her to have been alone then, but she had asked for time to herself. Although the ceremony itself was a simple one — a private exchange of shared intentions in which the most important formal element was the document which laid down precisely who got what in the case of divorce — it was nevertheless going to be used by both sets of parents as an excuse to throw a party, during which they would vie with each other in largesse, showing off their wealth as well as arranging useful introductions for their unmarried children.

Huy, recovering from the wounds he had received, and cursing the broken left forearm which the doctor at the Place of Healing had put in a splint and then bound too tightly, heard about the killing from Nebamun, who awakened him early in the morning — about the eleventh hour of night — with a furious hammering at his door. Although his eyes were red, the young man seemed calm — until Huy handed him a cup of beer. His hands trembled so violently that he was unable to bring it to his lips. It took him several minutes before he could talk.

The plump girl, who had been so full of life, was killed in the same way as the earlier victims. She had been found lying on her back, hands folded, naked. There were no marks or signs of a struggle, and the body was without a blemish.

‘I have lost two sisters now. I know you are working for Ipuky, but you
must
let me work with you. I have a right. I seek vengeance.’

‘And Ankhu?’

‘He is organising his own hunt.’

‘Why do you not join him?’

‘Because I think you know what you are doing.’ The reason, as Nebamun gave it, fell too pat. ‘Won’t you tell me how much you have found out?’ continued the youth. ‘I am older than the king; and grief has made me a man.’

Huy thought about Reni. What was the old scribe’s reaction? Where would his philosophical attitude be now? Would he continue to be prepared to leave the matter of investigation to the Medjays? And what would his heart tell him about the gods, who had singled him out for this fate? Whom would he blame, and to whom would he turn for protection and comfort? His youngest daughter was almost ready for burial, her body emptied, dried out, repacked, decked out for the long night, bandaged in the finest linen with the scarab placed over her heart, and laid in her case of painted cedarwood. Soon her mouth would be opened by the lector-priest and her purification ministered by the
Sent
-priest. Horus would restore her five senses for the Fields of Aarru. She would descend to the Hall of the Two Truths, and go before the Forty-Two Judges. Then Nephthys would follow her, and instead of standing, as a new wife, before Renenutet and Tawaret, would go as a shadow to meet Anubis and Osiris.

Would Reni seek consolation in the arms of his last daughter, or would he lose himself in wine? Perhaps there was another route he would choose — after meeting the scribe again, Huy had little doubt who the rich client at the City of Dreams had been, and knew why his profile, fleetingly glimpsed, had seemed familiar. He thought of the bruise on Kafy’s shoulder. Did the rest of his family know of his predilections? Nephthys had not. How might Ankhu react if he knew?

The new death showed that the killer and his motivations had not changed. The death of Isis may have been an aberration, or it may have had nothing to do with the others. That Merymose had died because he had discovered something important enough to threaten the killer was clear, and Huy knew that his own reluctance to take the policeman into his confidence had been one indirect reason for his death.

One detail needed confirmation, and Huy knew that he would not be able to perform the task himself. Even Ipuky could not arrange for him to see this body, and he no longer had the cachet of officialdom with which to browbeat the embalmer. Could he expect Nebamun to do it for him? And yet the best form of relief for this boy whom grief had made a man would be in action.

He made his decision quickly.

‘I accept your help,’ he said.

Hope came into Nebamun’s eyes, and with it eagerness and desperation. Fear too. What secrets were there in Reni’s family? Would involving Nebamun put him in any danger? But it was too late to retract.

‘I need to know how Nephthys died. There is no trace on the body of a wound? Just as Neferukhebit? It will be difficult. You will have to look carefully at her body.’ He decided not to tell the young man where to search.

Nebamun looked at him. ‘I have already done that. I knew that there had to be a wound: she had not been drowned or strangled or poisoned. There is a little mark, only just larger than a needle might have made, under her left breast.’

‘I see.’

‘Is that how the others were killed?’

‘Yes.’

‘What happens now?’

‘Go home. Comfort your parents. Find out all you can about what Ankhu intends to do. Our quarry needs very careful stalking.’

Nebamun left. Huy watched him cross the little square in front of his house and disappear around the corner on the way back to the palace compound. He thought of the forsaken wedding preparations, of the thoughts running through the head of the betrothed man, whose name he did not even know, of the decorations which were now mockeries. We establish order and think we are in control; then Nu throws over the table and breaks what we have taken a lifetime to construct. Perhaps one day he will even manage to destroy the pyramids we have built in defiance of his chaos. But however solidly we build, our lives remain huts of straw and mud, at the mercy of the River and the Sun, thought Huy.

* * * 

Dressed in the quiet livery of Ipuky’s staff again, make-up covering the worst of the bruises on his face, his arm tied in a linen sling, Huy spent the next two days sending himself on imaginary errands in the palace compound, which took him past Reni’s house often enough to be able to assess the state of repair and height of its walls, the number of gates it had, and which streets they led into. The walls were in good condition, and smoothly plastered so that it would be hard to climb them, and if anyone had tried to, scuff marks would surely have shown where. There were two gates apart from the main entrance: a small one which led directly into the garden from an alley along the east side of the house, and a double gate for waggons and chariots opening on to a broad square which faced the north wall.

In the course of those two days no member of the family left the house. Ankhu, with well-muscled arms oiled to show them off to their best effect but with a stomach that was already turning soft, had accompanied the narrow cart pulled by a white ox which took Nephthys’s body, wrapped in a white linen sheet, to the embalmer, but that was all. Huy had followed him. After he had left the embalmer, Ankhu went to the East Barracks and spent the afternoon drinking with cronies there, returning as the
seqtet
boat of the sun sailed towards the Horizon of Manu, stopping only to buy mint and coriander from a stall, and several cupfuls from a waterseller.

There was no sign of either Reni or his wife, or of the eldest daughter. Nebamun made no attempt to contact Huy. There was a steady stream of visitors to the house, of whom Ipuky was one.

‘It is curious,’ Huy’s employer told him later. ‘Reni has aged. He has shrunk, as if he were already preparing to return to Geb. I spoke to him, but he barely noticed me. The brothers are bent on vengeance, especially the older one, but he does not know what to do. He asked me if his men could work with mine, but they are a wild lot, cadets, and I do not think they will do more than relieve their feelings by scratching at the surface of this thing. They will drink, swear oaths, and plan great deeds. 

If they find Surere they will tear him limb from limb.’ Ipuky paused. ‘Nebamun is quieter. Do you know him at all?’

‘No. I met him once.’

‘He is intelligent, but I cannot fathom him. The mother and the daughter have grown in stature. They have become the strength of the family. The girl especially, though there is a bitter satisfaction on the mother’s face — as if a prophecy she expected were finally being fulfilled. But I fear for them. You must find Paheri and stop him.’

‘Are you sure you know nothing more? I can only track the beast by watching the place where he last killed.’

Ipuky looked hard at Huy. ‘I know you do not trust me completely, and why should you, when all I can offer you is a conviction that my son is here? But my spirit senses his presence.’ He slapped his hands on his thighs in frustration. ‘If I were you, I would have little faith in hunches either.’ The panic which had seized other parents in the palace compound had revived with new strength. Horemheb issued a proclamation that Kenamun’s investigations would soon bear fruit, that no more than ordinary security precautions need be observed. The season was progressing, and every day that passed was hotter. Soon it would be
akhet
, the time of Inundation, though the river was not expected to rise as much as was hoped. If it dropped even a fraction below the minimum limit, a year of famine would follow. The people were restless. Things were not going well. Where were the gods, to aid them in their distress? Or was this the beginning of a Judgement? ‘What is Kenamun doing?’ Huy asked.

‘Horemheb is making him sweat. He wants to deploy his full force here. There will soon be two men on every street here, and consequently none in the harbour quarter, where crime will double. There is talk of using soldiers too. But there are others who say that Surere has called forth demons, and that men will be no use against them. Kenamun himself looks calm, but there is always sweat on his lip.’

‘If Surere is still in the city, they will find him.’

‘Yes.’ But Ipuky looked thoughtful.

* * * 

On the third day, Nebamun and Ankhu left the house at dawn together. Huy noticed immediately that they were unarmed. The sunlight filtered into the ochre canyons of the streets through a clinging mist. A pair of egrets, unsettled by the noise of the garden gate entrance clicking shut, left their perches high on the wall of Reni’s house and wheeled round towards the river. Huy, who had taken up residence in a small upper-room at Ipuky’s house, where the younger children came to stare at him curiously, had risen at the ninth hour every night — well before the sun came up — and stationed himself in a doorway on the square to the north of Reni’s house, from where he could look down the alley and cover the large rear gateway. The main gate was always attended by a gatekeeper, and it would be impossible to open the big northern gates unaided, so Huy guessed that anyone wanting to enter or leave the house unnoticed would use the garden entrance; but the alley was too straight and narrow to admit any hiding place. Kenamun’s additional Medjays were due to be on the streets from that night, and the authorities had made no secret of the fact, in order to calm the people. Huy had argued that if there was going to be any covert movement from the house it would be now.

Early as it was, the square was not empty. Already servants had been down to the harbour and were returning with fish — their own food, for the lords who lived here would never stoop to eat cursed meat. The servants would breakfast on
ful
, olives and white cheese before preparing more sumptuous meals for their masters — dates, pomegranates, honey cakes, and, in the palace itself, rare
depeh
fruit, still imported from the lost northern empire. Walking through the mist, the sun casting thin shadows behind them, moving in silence, they were like the population of a dream.

The brothers walked south along the alley, purposefully and without conversing, turning west at its far end, the dispersing mist swirling behind them. Huy could see that Ankhu carried a packet wrapped in vine leaves. The scribe followed at a good distance. He was hampered by his damaged arm and he knew that if Nebamun saw him, he would recognise his stocky figure instantly. 

As they walked through the streets and squares of the palace compound, now heading north again, the number of people about increased, and it became easier to maintain the pursuit. At the same time, Huy had to follow more closely, to avoid losing them in the crowd. He was also considering what he might do if they split up, though his heart had turned over the possibility that Nebamun had contrived to accompany his brother. A column of soldiers marching towards the palace cut Huy off for a long minute as they blocked a square, but by now Huy was sure that Reni’s sons were on the way towards the city itself, and, continuing in that direction, he soon picked them up again.

Using a large ox-cart loaded with clay storage jars as cover, Huy managed to keep out of sight crossing the open space which separated the palace from the town, but neither brother seemed aware of being followed. They took the main road which bisected the Southern Capital on its south-to-north axis, and turned right, into a street which led gently up a low hill. This was a residential district, and still quiet, but Huy knew that the streets here were arranged in a grid, which made it easy to keep one corner between him and his quarry. The disadvantage was that each street was alike. The only aspect the houses presented to the road was a blank wall, punctuated by doors at irregular intervals, which led to courtyards, though you could see an occasional small upper window.

Huy had been following Nebamun and Ankhu successfully for five minutes, memorising the number of left and right turns they had made since leaving the hill road, when he suddenly knew where he was. He slowed his pace as he approached the next corner, and turned it with caution.