Year of the Hyenas (5 page)

Then, sniffing
the
air, Paser swore that the fish frying on a nearby griddle was the best
to be had in all of Thebes—and who should know better than he, the
child of fishmongers? This was the cue for Nenry to toss small rings of
copper into the crowd. The mayor challenged them all to taste for
themselves and see if he was a liar. The grateful fish vendor sent over
a slab of greasy river perch, spiced with cumin, and the mayor gobbled
it down, delivering hymns of praise and delight between gulps. By the
time his chair was borne to the main avenue along the riverfront, the
crowd was chanting hymns to him as though he were Pharaoh himself.

Nenry trotted
alongside the sedan chair, all the while trying to answer the sharp
questions that Paser put to him.

“Is the Old
Horror
coming as well, Nenry?”

The “Old
Horror” was
the epithet by which Paser designated his colleague Pawero, the Western
Mayor.

“Yes, lord,
the
summons included the Old—the mayor of the West.”

“What was its
tone?”

“Pardon, lord?”

“Come on, come
on,
Nenry—what did it read like? Angry, threatening, cold, what?”

“No, my lord!
It was
full of the usual compliments.”

“Nothing
indicating
displeasure?”

“Nothing,
lord.”

The mayor
brooded. “I
still don’t like it. Why ask the Old Horror to attend? A crime, after
all, that occurred in
my
side of the city. What does it have to
do with
him
?”

Paser fell to
uncharacteristic moodiness and he and his scribe traveled the last few
furlongs to the Temple of Ma’at in silence. As luck would have it,
Pawero’s river barge pulled up to the stone wharf just as Paser and
Nenry came to the broad stretch of ramp that led into the temple.
Pawero sat motionless as a god’s statue beneath the barge’s wooden
canopy as the boat bumped against the bales of straw cushioning the
wharf. Once the tethers were secure he rose, majestic in his starched
white robes.

Where Paser
ruled the
living part of Thebes, Pawero’s jurisdiction extended over the tombs
and mortuary temples across the Nile in the west. This included the
Place of Truth where Pharaoh’s tombmakers lived, the Great Place where
the Pharaohs rested, the Place of Beauty where their queens were
buried, and the fortress temple of Djamet, the southern residence of
Pharaoh.

Pawero was at
forty-three a man given to pious readings and long-winded prayers. No
wife or slave girl warmed his bed; Pawero was drawn to the lean, hard
life of the most rigorous priesthood. He was a zealot, in fact, who
secretly disapproved of the increasingly casual way Pharaoh performed
his religious duties in his later years. Pawero longed for the day when
a more god-fearing pharaoh might rule; perhaps— Amun willing—a pharaoh
from his own family, whose lineage was far more ancient than Ramses’.

Such a miracle
was a
possibility, too, for Pawero’s sister Tiya was the second of Ramses’
great wives and had borne him four sons. One son in particular, his
nephew Prince Pentwere, was commander of an elite cavalry unit and a
great hero to the Thebans. He would make a splendid pharaoh. But to
even imagine the death of a pharaoh was an act of treason, and Pawero
sternly banished such thoughts from his mind.

As Pawero
descended
from his barge, head held high as the slaves and temple guardians
bowed, he crossed in silence to the jetty. The effect would have been
grand, indeed, had he not placed his sandaled foot in fresh horse dung
left by a passing chariot. Stopping abruptly, gazing down, Pawero
murmured a most unprayerful word.

Paser’s laugh
bellied
out across the quay. “That should teach you to raise your sights too
high, Pawero. You’ll only land yourself in shit.”

The Western
Mayor’s
eyes went as flat and deadly as a cobra’s. “I must heed my revered
colleague,” Pawero said as his valet rushed forward to clean his
sandal. “For he comes from shit himself.”

In the uneasy
silence
Paser laughed loudly again, as if appreciating a fine jest. Only Nenry
recognized the cold, subtle anger that lurked in it. “I’ve never made
any secret about my lack of pedigree, Lord Mayor,” Paser said.
“Everyone knows your glorious birthright, while I merely had my wits to
get me by. But here we are, all the same, equals.”

“Equals?”
Pawero
mused. “Yes. As we all are before the gods, even Pharaoh himself.”

“Well, you
must tell
Pharaoh that, for I don’t have the nerve.” Paser bade his bearers to
set his chair on the ground. After a few false starts he was able to
wrench himself at last from the narrow seat and hurtle himself over to
where Pawero stood. Their contrast was never more evident than at that
moment. Lean and fat. Haughty and simple. Tall as a reed. Compact as a
wrestler. Yet they were united in something greater than their
differences: their pure and utter loathing for one another.

Paser held his
arm for
Pawero to lean on. Together, they ascended the long ramp that led into
Ma’at’s Temple of Justice, each clutching his identical staff of
office. To all who saw them from afar, it seemed the mayors were the
most cordial of friends. But Nenry privately was reminded of the
stilted and wary courtship dances performed by certain desert spiders,
where death, not mating, was often the result of such delicate footwork.

The high
vizier
received the two mayors in the usual temple anteroom reserved for such
meetings. Outside, a long line of petitioners and litigants waited.
With shouts and pleas they tried hard to catch the vizier’s attention,
for Toh was not often in Thebes these days, being instead at
Pi-Remesse, the northern capital where Pharaoh resided. If the
petitioners could not catch the high vizier’s ear, or failed to bribe
him sufficiently, it might be weeks or months before Toh was again in
the south.

The vizier was
a
wrinkled old man of some seventy years, older than even his friend, the
Pharaoh. He tottered slowly to his chair, waving his hand in the
direction of the litigants, and exchanged compliments with the mayors.
Wanly, he directed a slave to take them a bowl of fried dates and other
dainty tidbits. Beer mixed with palm wine—a most heady brew—was next
brought, and the old man treated himself to a hefty draft to fortify
his liver. He then directed all the litigants to wait outside and wiped
his toothless mouth with his hand, ready for the business at hand.

When the room
was
empty but for the mayors and their retinues, Toh spoke. Gone was the
feeble, tremulous voice, the doddering manner. “By Horus’s little brass
balls,” he shouted, “I want to know what’s going on.” He slammed the
goblet down on the arm of his throne and peered at the two mayors. “A
priestess murdered. There’s not been such infamy in Thebes since the
Hyksos left. I want answers and I want them speedily.”

“I beg to
remind you,
Great Lord,” Paser began with a broad smile, “that we’ve no way of
knowing whether or not it even
was
a murder. And I beg to
inquire why
this incident should justify the presence of the
two
mayors of
Thebes?”

Toh spat into
a bowl
at his feet. “Because the crime falls by a technicality into both your
jurisdictions.”

From his
position at
the rear of the anteroom, Nenry strained to hear.

Toh picked up
a set of
wax tablets. “We’ve learned from this report of Captain Mentmose of the
Medjays that the dead woman has been identified as coming from your own
village of the tombmakers, Pawero—the Place of Truth.” He handed the
tablets over to a slave, who bore them to Paser. “But her body was
found on Paser’s side of the city. You can see the dilemma.”

Paser made a
tactical
error then, scanning the report quickly. “Surely, Lord Toh, this is a
regrettable but trifling matter. It says here that this Hetephras
tended only small shrines in the desert hills.”

“Are my
priestesses
any less valuable than yours?” Pawero fumed. He was going to continue
in the same vein, but a roar of outrage from Vizier Toh stopped him.

“You think
this a
minor incident, Paser? I tell you, the people will rise in their anger
and demand justice when they hear of it, for the murder of a priestess
calls forth the awful rage of the gods. You’re young. You’ve never seen
the populace in its fury, or the city after a riot. I remember during
the famine that cursed this region fifty years ago, the Thebans rose
like a single animal and blamed us, their rulers, for the calamity. We
had to flee to the hills for our lives. I’d not be too eager to dismiss
this ‘minor crime’ so blithely if I were you. At such times it’s
difficult for mayors to cling to their offices.” He paused, allowing
his aged eyes to flash. “How do you think
I
was promoted?”

The old man
spat into
the bowl once more. “So what are you going to do about it, I ask you
again, so that we can all sleep peacefully in our beds?”

Paser
immediately
spoke up, hoping to make good his error. “Since the body was found in
the eastern part of the city, the crime—if it is one—is mine to solve.”

Seeing the
vizier
begin to favor Paser caused Pawero to speak up. “The case belongs to
me. The priestess was a member of my flock, after all.”

“And so well
tended
she ends up slaughtered on your watch,” Paser murmured loud enough to
be heard by the entire room.

“We don’t know
that,
yet,” the vizier remonstrated. “The crime could very easily have
occurred at the Osiris Festival, on
your
watch.”

“But no
tombmaker is
allowed on my side of the city,” Paser reminded him.

“Do you quote
the law
to
me
, Lord Mayor?” Toh
narrowed his eyes.

With his
advantage
ebbing, Paser grew reckless. “But clearly the gods have spoken in their
clearest voice, Great Lord.”

“How do you
mean?” Toh
was curious.

“I mean that
if the
gods had any faith in Lord Pawero’s abilities, the body of this
Hetephras would surely have been found on his side of the city.
Obviously, the August Ones want
me
to handle the case.”

“That’s
preposterous,”
Pawero gasped, “and heretical as well!”

“You accuse me
of
heresy?” It was the most serious charge in Egypt. “I can see where
you’re going with this—don’t think I don’t. You have some darker
purpose and hope to obscure it with these charges against me.”

“Darker
purpose…!”

“That’s why
you want
this case—to hide the truth.”

The attendants
and
temple slaves gasped out loud at this accusation.

“Enough!”
yelled the
vizier. “This is unseemly, to make such charges as these. I know you
have no love for one another, but if these accusations are true, what
does that make me, who appointed you both?” Vizier Toh sucked his
rubbery lips into his mouth. “We must have a solution to this problem
and at once. Who is to discover the truth in this case? And how am I to
know that what you will tell me is not some made-up tale to pacify me?”

At the back of
the
room, a wild thought seized Nenry, and he coughed slightly to be heard.

“Yes, what?”
Vizier
Toh’s filmy eyes raked the room. “What do you wish to say? Who are you?”

“I am Nenry,
Great
Lord, chief scribe to Lord Paser. If the mayors will forgive me, I
think I may have a solution to this dilemma.”

“Well?” said
the
vizier.

“Someone with
allegiance to neither mayor must be appointed to investigate this
crime,” stated Nenry, “to assure that Lady Ma’at’s feather of truth is
honored.”

“Yes, yes. But
in all
Thebes is there such a person? Surely a man must belong to one mayor or
the other.”

“My brother,
Semerket,
is that person, Great Lord.”

The name was
caught up
in whispers, like the rustle of quail wings, and repeated throughout
the room.

“And what
makes this
Semerket so right to investigate this crime?”

“He was once
the clerk
of Investigations and Secrets in this very place, Great Lord. He knows
the laws of Egypt and is very clever—and is devoted to the truth.”

The Vizier was
intrigued. “But surely because
you
are in Lord Paser’s employ,
wouldn’t
your brother favor him out of love for you?”

“Great Lord,
my
brother has no love for anyone. And since Lord Paser’s good friend is
Lord Nakht, who married Semerket’s ex-wife, I don’t think he would be
inclined to show favor to Lord Paser at all.”

“Nakht—the
keeper of
Pharaoh’s harem?”

“Yes, Great
Lord.”

“Better and
better,”
Toh cackled gleefully. “But should he not then favor Pawero, to take
revenge on Nakht?”

“Oh no, Great
Lord.
He’d never do that.”

“And why not?”

Nenry gulped.
“Because… because he has told me he considers Lord Pawero to be a…” His
voice trailed away.

“Well?” Toh
was
becoming impatient.

“Well—he calls
him a
pea-brained old pettifogger, Great Lord.”

Laughter
erupted in
the room. Seated on his stool, Pawero stiffened and color rose in his
dark face.

“Silence!” Toh
yelled
roughly. “I will clear the room if there is another outburst.” He
turned again to Nenry. “He sounds a very sour man, this brother of
yours.”

“Oh, yes,
Great Lord,”
Nenry nodded vehemently. “He has respect for one thing only—Lady
Ma’at’s feather of truth.”

Pawero rose
indignant
from his seat. “I protest. To retain such a man—a follower of Set, as I
have heard his own brother describe him—it flies in the face of the
gods. No good can come of this.”

But Toh
ignored him
and addressed Nenry. “Bring this man to me.” With a gesture he
indicated that the audience was concluded.