In terror, growing weak and dizzy, Bakht thrashed about on the ground, trying to get away. As he moved, he grabbed pebbles, sticks, anything he could use as a weapon, to hurl at his attackers. At last his back hit the enclosure wall. Bakht threw a rock at a furious mass of fur as it scampered at him. It screeched and retreated.
Summoning the last of his strength, Bakht cried out, knowing all the time that he would never be heard over the mindless screams of the baboons. His body was growing heavy. With one hand still pressed to the hole in his belly, his free hand scraped the packed earth, scooping up dirt. As blackness overcame him, he hurled the dirt in the snarling dog-face of the baboon that rushed at him.
Memphis, reign of Tutankhamun
Lord Meren, hereditary prince and Friend of the King, sailed over the shoulder of his opponent to land flat on his back in the dirt. He sucked in air while trying to focus his vision on the sky, which looked the color of old linen in the first feeble light of dawn. A fine spray of dust coated his sweat-drenched body, and he cursed his own arrogance. The new charioteer might have only nineteen years, but he had the muscles of a rhinoceros and the stamina of a water buffalo. Now he was in the midst of a wrestling match in front of his charioteers and his son—Kysen—and he might lose. Ignoring the cheers of support from Kysen, his aide Abu, and others, Meren blinked to clear his vision.
He rolled to his feet as Irzanen approached. Emboldened by his success, the young man made his first and last mistake of the match. With a yell that proclaimed his impending triumph, he charged at Meren, leading with his right shoulder. Although he was breathing painfully hard, Meren smiled, braced himself as though he were going to take the charge, and let Irzanen come at him. The charioteers bare feet slapped the ground, and at the last moment he lowered his head.
It was the move for which Meren had been waiting. He straightened from his crouch and whipped to the side as Irzanen pounded up to him. His foot lashed out, hooked the charioteer's ankle, and pulled. Irzanen crashed to the ground like a falling obelisk, and Meren jumped on his back. Grabbing Irzanens arms, he bent them up and pressed them against his back. The younger man cried out and thrashed about with his legs, but Meren simply slipped a knee between them and nudged. Irzanen went still at once.
Shaking his head while their audience cheered, Meren moved his knee. "If you want to survive, Lord Irzanen, you must learn when to give way as well as when to fight." He released his opponent's arms and hauled him to his feet. "A wise heart is as valuable as strength."
Irzanen's chest was heaving. Rivulets of perspiration flooded his face. "I was too quick, was I not?"
"Swift of body, but not of wits." Meren wiped his forehead with the back of his arm and noted Irzanens downcast expression. "And you almost bested me, but if you repeat that to the others, I will deny it."
Irzanen grinned as they were surrounded by charioteers. Abu offered advice and commiseration to the young charioteer while Kysen pounded him on the back and congratulated him for lasting so long against his father. Meren accepted a wet cloth from Reia, one of his most trusted charioteers. His face was buried in the cool material, but he looked up when he heard a groan.
He hadn't hurt the youth; he was certain of it. The charioteers had drifted away to form more wrestling groups, but Lord Irzanen was still at his side. He was looking across the practice yard, which was bounded by the barracks and stables in Meren's Memphis residential compound. Meren followed the direction of Irzanen's gaze and saw his middle daughter, Bener, following his eldest, Tefnut. Evidently Bener had been watching the contest, but now she was walking away, down the graded path that led through the formal gardens to the town house. Meren turned his gaze back to Irzanen, who was beginning to resemble a sick bull.
Perhaps it was his bulky muscles that fostered this impression. Certainly the young man was pleasing of appearance. Meren had long ago realized why the offspring of the nobility and royalty so often presented the features and bodies of gods. Noblemen, unlike commoners, could choose from a host of well-made young women. Generations of such pairings produced beautiful children. Irzanen had inherited the long-legged, almost Nubian stature of his father, Prince Minnakht, and the symmetrical features and wide mouth of his lady mother. His hair, cut short in the military manner, curled like the tresses of a Mycenaean Greek, but he was saved from the impression of femininity by his forthright manner and a certain endearing clumsiness that came from having grown nearly half a cubit in one short year.
A sigh brought Meren's attention back to the young charioteer. Meren decided it was best to know what was taking place. He hadn't noticed Bener taking special interest in this lad, but she was so clever of heart and so skilled in circumspection that Meren had to be constantly alert.
'Is something wrong, Irzanen?"
The young man blinked and dragged his gaze from Beners disappearing figure. "Naught, lord. I, that is, I didn't—"
"Find your tongue, Lord Irzanen."
"I didn't realize Lady Bener watched the practice matches, lord!"
Meren tried not to smile, but Irzanen's discomfort was too much for him. Seldom did young men blurt out such awkward statements to him. It was well known that Meren prized his daughters dearly and tolerated no interference with them from his charioteers. Most were sons of noblemen, and he chose them from the recruits of the elite chariot cavalry of the king. They served him in his capacity as the Eyes and Ears of Pharaoh. Places with him were valued and fought over not only because of Meren's reputation as a warrior and confidential inquiry agent of the king, but also because of his personal relationship with Tutankhamun. Yet despite their privileged position, Meren had always made sure the charioteers understood the dividing line between their service to him and pharaoh and the private life of his family.
He had been lucky for many years. Tefnut had married Prince Sunero when she was fourteen without engaging herself in any dalliance with the charioteers. The heart of Bener, who was sixteen, was serious. Quick of wit and far too complex of character for her own good, Bener had seldom expressed prolonged interest in young men. It was his youngest and most beautiful daughter, Isis, who worried him.
A black shroud settled over Meren's spirits at the thought of Isis. His heart had been wounded a few weeks ago, when she had, through her selfishness, nearly cost him his life. Since then he had been trying to summon the courage to confront Isis about her dangerous behavior, but he had yet to bring himself to speak to her. Isis avoided him, thus aiding his delay. She was ashamed, he could tell. But how long she would steep herself in remorse was a question he couldn't answer.
This time it was his own sigh that signaled a return to the present. Meren frowned at Irzanen. Presumptuous puppy.
"Don't stand there gawking like a heron after a fish," Meren snapped. "Knife practice."
Stalking away from the sorrowful Irzanen, Meren joined his son at a leather target set up near the stables. Kysen handed him a bronze knife, a plain weapon with an edge as sharp as his grandmother's tongue. Kysen threw his own, blade first, into the target from fifteen paces away. Meren cast an irritated glance at Irzanen across the practice yard, then signaled Kysen to move nearer the target. A large space separated them from the nearest buildings, and they were alone for the moment.
"The merchant is coming?" Meren asked softly.
Kysen paused in the act of pulling his knife from the target and glanced around the yard. "Prince Djoser is bringing him, as you instructed—he thinks we want to buy horses. But I still believe that searching for the murderer of a long-dead queen is madness."
"We've sailed this route before, Ky." Meren hefted the knife in his hand, testing its balance. "Whoever the evil one is, he already knows we've found out that Queen Nefertiti didn't die of a plague but was poisoned. If we don't find him, he'll find us and kill us. There will be no more argument."
Kysen inclined his head, and Meren thanked the gods he had at least one person with whom to share this burden. The difficulties in trying to find out who poisoned Nefertiti were countless. He could do nothing openly without the risk of warning anyone who might be guilty or those who would welcome a chance to stir up trouble for a rival for pharaoh's friendship.
He began by trying to find and question the one most likely to have administered the poison, the queen's favorite cook. The woman and her husband were killed before he could talk to them. Her sister might have been of help, but her wits wandered so much that he had yet to get much sense from her.
Kysen had set inquiries afoot through his nefarious friend Othrys, a Mycenaean Greek pirate. Othrys sent out his agents in search of information, only to have them disappear or return dying. From these experiences the pirate provided the names of three men powerful enough and audacious enough to have dared to kill a queen and risked incurring his own enmity.
Now, although Meren had sent his own scribes and servants on various missions of inquiry, he was being forced to deal with the three men first while waiting for more facts. One of these three—Dilalu, Yamen, or Zulaya—or someone who commanded one of them had become a hidden and dangerous enemy. This hidden one didn't want to be found; he killed rather than be discovered. This alone was proof of his guilt.
Meren believed, however, that there was a good chance that someone else, someone far more exalted, was the true hidden one, the man ultimately responsible for Nefertiti's death. None of the three had been closely associated with the queen's household. Ordering and accomplishing the death of a queen—such an act of sacrilege and temerity—would require someone daring, someone like Dilalu, Zulaya, or Yamen. But to conceive of the idea—the murder of the wife of the living god of Egypt—took far more power than any of those men seemed to have.
The situation was confusing because of the limitations upon his usual power to investigate. He would have to cultivate patience while his servants worked slowly and unobtrusively. The last thing he wanted them to do was attract attention and provoke curiosity among the officials and government workers in this intrigue-ridden city. Meanwhile, he shouldn't make his son suffer just because he was frustrated. Kysen was worried about him. He smiled at his son.
"I'm being as indirect as I can, Ky. Dilalu may be a merchant of weapons, but he thinks I'm interested in him for his reputation as a breeder of horses."
Tossing his knife in the air and catching it, Kysen gave a sharp laugh. "He could hardly think the Eyes and Ears of Pharaoh in need of extra daggers or spears."
"My heart's thoughts are as yours." Meren rubbed the scar on his wrist. It was bothering him again. "Have I ever told you about Queen Nefertiti?" He slipped his knife into a sheath at his belt.
"A little. You said Isis is almost as beautiful."
"Ah, but Nefertiti was raised and trained by pharaoh's mother, the great Tiye. Unlike your sister, she knew the importance of duty. I never saw two women more skilled in diplomacy, and Nefertiti, may she live forever with Osiris, needed all her skill to remain in her husband's favor while convincing him to do things that were best for Egypt."
Kysen held his knife by the blade and threw it into the target. The weapon stabbed deep in the straw-stuffed leather, and Meren shook his head.
"That close to an enemy, you'll have no time to pull your knife, reverse it, and take a throwing stance. Here, watch."
Meren grabbed his knife from its sheath by the handle. His arm sailed up, forearm in front of his face. He threw the knife in a slashing, diagonal movement. It smacked into the target, the handle shuddering a bit with the impact.
Turning to Kysen, he said, "You see? Less throwing time, less exposure to your adversary. About these three men Othrys thinks might be interfering with our inquiries into the queen's murder."
Father," Kysen said in an aggrieved tone, "sometimes you're confusing when you make these sudden shifts of conversation."
"Forgive me." Meren gave his son a pained smile. "Too many years spent trying to baffle courtiers and enemy ambassadors. What I was trying to say was that there were many at court who might have wanted Nefertiti dead."
"Not the newcomers Akhenaten brought in to serve the Aten."
Meren nodded. Tutankhamun's older brother, Akhenaten, called the Heretic, had forced Egypt to abandon her old gods in favor of his choice—the Aten, the sun disk. The priests and temples of the old gods had been disestablished, and their endowed riches diverted to the Aten in the care of new men willing to participate in the heresy. Egypt suffered from the resulting disharmony and chaos to this day. The priests of the old gods, especially Amun, king of the gods, hated Akhenaten's very memory, and all who had supported the heretic.
"The priests of Amun? Would they have done such a thing?" Kysen asked.
Meren shook his head. "In the last years before she died, Nefertiti had contacted them and begun to work for a reconciliation. They wouldn't have killed their hope of resurrection." He watched Kysen throw his knife by its handle. "Of course, there were rivalries in the royal household among the women. There always are, and one can never tell when such rivalries will poison the wits of an ambitious secondary wife or ignored princess."
Kysen's head jerked around, and he stared at Meren. "Not one of his daughters."
"No, most likely a lesser princess. But I can think of no woman who would be in a position to gain from Akhenaten by Nefertiti's death. However, the queen did take a disliking to some courtiers who sought pharaoh's favor. I remember she held ill opinions of Prince Usermontu and Lord Pendua. But neither seems to have benefited from her death."
"In a way that we can perceive," Kysen said.
Meren's wide mouth quirked up at one corner. "Correct."
He threw his knife again, hitting the target in the center. Grabbing the hilt, he paused in the midst of pulling it free from the leather and studied the wooden handle. The knife was one of the sacred weapons that slaughtered the enemies of the sun god Ra in the underworld, thus allowing him to rise each day and bring light to the world.