Slayer of Gods (10 page)

“I’m not here to entertain you, Mistress Anath. We’re running out of time. Soon now the evil one will realize I’ve returned
to the search for Nefertiti’s murderer, and the killing will begin again, if it hasn’t already. Remember Satet.”

Anath stalked over to him. “You don’t have to remind me of our peril, Meren. I’ve risked bringing myself to the attention
of this killer to help you.”

“Thank you!” Meren’s voice rose, so tense was he with frustration.

Planting her feet apart, Anath stuck her face close to his. “Thanks like that should come from an enemy, damn you.”

“All we’ve found is one fragment telling of Usermontu’s cheating and useless ration lists,” Meren said, leaning over Anath
and staring into her bright, uptilted eyes. “The whole search has been useless.”

“You don’t know that!”

“It’s bound to be,” Meren snapped. “The important records went back to Memphis.” He turned his back on Anath, kicked aside a
stack of papyrus scraps, and headed outside.

Before he got to the doorway Anath caught his arm and swung him around. Few dared to grab Lord Meren, Friend of the King, so
her touch caught him off guard, and he jerked around, knocking her off balance. Anath cried out as she fell backward, but Meren
caught her and pulled her upright She let out a sound of irritation and shoved him, hard. Meren hit a wall, and his head banged
against it. Pain exploded in his skull.

“Curse it, woman!” He lunged for her, grabbed her by the arms and shook her. “I’m not staying here any longer. Do you hear?”

Anath’s hair swirled around her face. She shook it away from her eyes and glared at him. Meren was already regretting his loss
of temper even while he found himself holding on to Anath. Her skin was smooth, as if she bathed in oil rather than water,
and he could feel her body’s tension, hear it in her rapid breathing. Her gaze lifted to his, and something dark stirred there.

Seldom had Meren allowed himself the luxury of giving free rein to lust. His life depended upon guarding his appetites lest
they be used against him. Anath had been forced to do the same; he could see it in her eyes. Beyond the superficial slaking
of lust lay the domain of love and desire, but that domain was ruled by trust. And trust was more precious than all the gold
in pharaoh’s mines, more rare than the black iron of the Hittites.

Anath whispered to him, “I have been too long among strangers, Meren.”

“I also, Eyes of Babylon.”

Her hand came up, and he held still while her fingertips traced the line of his jaw. “I have seen ancient pain come alive
in you. What they did to you lives on in your ka, as timeless as the netherworld. Such pain forces you to be a stranger to
all.”

Meren closed his eyes, afraid she would see how close to the truth she’d come. He felt her fingertips on his lips. Blinded
by pain and need, he took her mouth in his.

Surrounded by scrolls and scraps of papyrus, document cases and chests, Kysen sat on the floor of his father’s office beside
the chair Meren occupied while conducting business. By now his father should be in Horizon of the Aten. Arching his back, Kysen
yawned. He’d started out in the chair, but reading page after page of notes and culling through copies of government ration
records made him sleepy.

He was angry with Reia for making him come home last night, and even angrier with himself for having lost Dilalu’s trail. He’d
sent men after the weapons trader, but the man wasn’t at his home. They’d searched the docks and the foreign quarters in as
unobtrusive a manner as possible, with no success. Dilalu had vanished.

Kysen had decided to review once again the information they’d gathered. During his enforced rest Meren had made notes on who
might have had the opportunity and power to murder Nefertiti. Kysen dropped the papyrus containing Meren’s notations on Dilalu
and other suspects. Meren had continued to receive information from the agents he’d sent in search of old servants and courtiers
of the queen. Using his own resources, Ese and the Greek pirate Othrys, Kysen had located almost a dozen former servants.

Yamen, the army officer they’d suspected, was dead. Meren had been on the verge of contacting the merchant Zulaya when he’d
been wounded. The Greek pirate Othrys had suggested they investigate these two men, saying they had the power and daring to
bring about a queen’s murder.

Meren was of the opinion that even if one of these men was guilty, the ultimate responsibility for Nefertiti’s death—indeed,
for all that had happened during this investigation—lay with someone at the court. For months he’d pondered the question of
who might have wanted the queen dead. A rival? The magnificent Nefertiti had no rivals, not even the minor queens and concubines
of Akhenaten’s household. Akhenaten’s only love had been the great royal wife.

Although Meren could think of few women who might want to kill the queen, there might have been men who wished to do so. During
her last years, Nefertiti had thwarted the ambitions of a number of parvenus. These men, whether from the aristocracy or not,
had been of no consequence until they caught Akhenaten’s eye. Usually they’d gained favor by impressing pharaoh with their
fervor for the sun disk, their skill in ferreting out temple riches hidden by the old priesthood, or they ran royal departments
without causing any work for the king.

One of these was Lord Pendua. He’d been a nonentity at the court only to astound the king by providing expensive stone for
twenty altars in the Great Aten Temple. Since Akhenaten had ordained that there be countless offering tables in the open-air
courts of his Aten temple, he was mightily pleased. Dozens of courtiers followed Pendua’s example, but Pendua had been the
first and reaped the benefit of his creative strategy. He became overseer of the cattle of the Aten, and scribe of the king,
two lucrative posts. Another appointment made him administrator of the vineyards of the great royal wife.

Kysen sighed and rubbed his forehead. He twisted around, lay on his stomach, and grabbed a stack of letters from the queen’s
correspondence during her last year. These were among the few that hadn’t been left behind when the court abandoned Horizon
of the Aten. One of them mentioned Prince Usermontu, another parvenu who had attracted Meren’s suspicion.

As a youth Usermontu had been known to make fun of Akhenaten’s clumsiness, his horselike face and sagging stomach. Once Akhenaten
became heir and later king, Usermontu had found himself outside the intimate circle of royal friends. Then one morning early
in Akhenaten’s reign Usermontu had experienced a mystic revelation. During worship at the new sun temple the king had caused
to be constructed on the doorstep of the temple of Amun, Usermontu had been seized by a vision. He staggered to pharaoh and
fell at his feet, reciting Aten prayers and shivering at the same time. Regurgitating the litany written by Akhenaten, the
prince had claimed that the power of pharaoh had possessed him.

Meren told Kysen the story with the comment that it was lucky for Usermontu that he’d claimed possession by the king’s power
rather than the Aten’s. The king reserved to himself all communion with the sun disk, but few had grasped the significance
of this nuance at first. Meren had admired Usermontu’s creativity, but he deplored the way the prince had turned on the old
gods and helped Akhenaten disestablish the temples and impoverish the priests.

Prince Usermontu gained the title of Friend of the King as well as the stewardship of several royal estates. Shortly before
the queen’s death Usermontu had been given the responsibility of the queen’s horses and for appointing and managing Nefertiti’s bodyguards. Both he and Lord Pendua had survived Akhenaten, but they’d lost their posts in the transition under Tutankhamun.
They attended court and constantly sought positions and favor from pharaoh, but each had been too enthusiastic in his quest
for riches at the expense of the old gods. Tutankhamun granted them small benefits, but his ministers advised against elevating
either Prince Usermontu or Lord Pendua. One of those giving the advice was Meren. Kysen set aside Meren’s notes and reached
for an old report on the lesser servants of the queen.

“You’ve been in here for hours. What are you doing on the floor?”

Kysen sat up to find his sister Bener coming toward him. She was dressed for work in a plain shift, and a simple faience necklace
was her only ornament. She was tall for a girl, almost as tall as Kysen. Meren said she resembled her mother with her quick
movements and commanding manner. Bener had a habit of twirling her hair around her finger when she was agitated, but her most
annoying habit was interfering in the affairs of her father when she should be concerned with running the house. Kysen frowned
at her as she plopped down beside him and began inspecting Meren’s notes.

“You interrupted me,” he said.

“You weren’t doing anything.”

Kysen’s frown turned to a scowl. “I was thinking.”

“About the queen’s killer?”

“Shhh!”

“Don’t hiss at me,” Bener said. “We’re alone and there’s no chance we’ll be overheard.”

“Father was furious with you the last time you interfered.”

“Why are you rubbing your head?”

Kysen searched his sister’s face, noted the concern, and sighed again. “Reading all these records has made it ache.”

“You should talk instead. Rest your eyes.”

“I can’t discuss this with you.”

“Yes you can. I won’t tell anyone. I never reveal Father’s secrets.”

It was true. Bener knew some of Meren’s most dangerous secrets and remained silent. Kysen massaged his temples and relented.

“I’ve managed to lose the merchant Dilalu.”

“I know.”

Kysen gave her an irritated look and continued. “I’ve got men looking for him. Then there’s Zulaya. Father sent a man to find
him at his country estate, but he wasn’t there. Evidently he spends little time there. His mother was Egyptian, but his father
was Babylonian, and he moves about according to the demands of trade.”

“Zulaya is one of the men Othrys said might be involved in the queen’s death?”

“Yes,” Kysen said. “He’s a wealthy merchant who deals with the temples, Asiatic princes, the kings of Assyria, Babylon, and
of course the Hittite king. He trades Egyptian grain, linen, and natron for timber from Byblos, copper from Cyprus, oil and
wine from Syria, olive oil from the Greeks. The temple of Amun sometimes uses his services as a trader to exchange gold for
unguents, resin, aromatic woods, whatever they require.”

“Then he shouldn’t be hard to find.”

“Except that he has many agents who work for him and seldom needs to come to Memphis himself. He may be here now, but his
affairs take him to the delta, to Nubia, to many places. But we’ll find him, although I doubt he’ll be of much help. He only
began trading in Egypt about ten years ago when he purchased an estate here.”

“And before that?”

“I don’t know. It’s not important, Bener. He must have made his fortune among the Asiatics and decided to try his luck among
his mother’s people. Othrys seems to think Zulaya is dangerous, a dealer in secret power, and capable of causing us the kind
of trouble we’ve been having since we began to search for this evil one.”

Bener set aside the documents she’d been reviewing. “Othrys doesn’t spend his time at court. That’s where you should look
for the person who ordered her death.”

“Obviously,” Kysen snapped. He hated it when Bener pointed out to him things he already knew. “But until we told pharaoh what
we were doing, questioning great men wasn’t possible. Even Father can’t haul Prince Usermontu into this office and demand
an accounting of his time during Nefertiti’s illness without pharaoh’s permission.”

“And now?”

“And now Father will do that once he returns from Syene. I can’t do it.”

“Of course not.”

They lapsed into silence.

Bener picked up a rush pen that Kysen had set on the scribe’s palette he’d been using. “Usermontu and Lord Pendua. Hmm.”
She pointed the pen at Meren’s notes. “What about these other names.”

“Lady Takemet was known to have been jealous of Nefertiti’s power and beauty, but she’s dead.”

“Princess Sitamun?” Bener gave him a look of astonishment.

Kysen nodded. “I know. What are we going to do? She’s the daughter of Amunhotep the Magnificent and Queen Tiye, the sister
of the pharaoh. Father says she blamed Nefertiti for failing to stop Akhenaten’s excesses.”

“But she’s a royal princess!”

“You think princesses aren’t capable of having someone killed?”

“But why?” Bener protested. “She would gain nothing from Nefertiti’s death.”

“Nothing we can discern at the moment,” Kysen said. “But Father thinks it’s more likely to be someone else. Nefertiti’s chief
Aten priest, Thanuro, for example. Evidently he was a serpent, always spying on her, one of the fanatics who excelled at looting
the old temples. But he retired not long before Akhenaten died. And he’s dead too.”

Bener picked up Meren’s notes again. “It says here that Father tried to trace him. Ten years ago when he retired he received
a gift from pharaoh, an estate near Byblos, and he died on his way to take possession of it. That was the year after the queen
was murdered. Imagine dying away from Egypt in some Canaanite wasteland where there are no embalmer priests.”