City of the Dead (16 page)

I pounded my staff on the floor twice and shot looks at all of them. Khufu drew himself up as though ready for a fight. “This is outrageous!” I said. “I never paid Ebo. I did not know of Merit’s concerns. And I would have no reason to kill the only man who ever truly thought of me as a friend!”

I regretted the words as soon as they were spoken. Khufu’s eyes clouded and he looked away.

“Ahmose,” I pleaded, “say something. Tell them that I am not a killer. Whatever else you may think of me, you must know that!”

Ahmose’s eyes seemed to roam my face, as though to pry out the truth. His expression drifted from hope to sadness and finally to resignation. He turned his body from me and faced the king.

“I have known that Hemi killed Amunet since that day in the marsh. I saw him with her.”

Khufu’s eyes went wide and Tamit gasped.

“And you said nothing?” she shouted.

Ahmose looked to the floor. “He is my brother.”

I staggered backward a few steps. My grip loosened and my staff clattered to the floor. The grief of these many years of distance between myself and my brother swept over me, and I saw the truth. It was not jealousy that had torn my brother from me; it was integrity. Ahmose believed me a murderer.

I reached for him, but it was as though I stretched out my hand from the grave and he could not even see me. “Ahmose,” I whispered, and my eyes filled with tears. He did not look at me.

But Khufu was looking at me. On the column behind him, his own painted likeness looked out with placid satisfaction, like a distorted mirror that reveals the opposite of a man’s emotions. “I thought—” he said. “All of these years, I believed—“

“It is not true, cousin!” I said. “I did not kill her!” I turned to Ahmose. “I found her body, it is true. I found her dead in the marsh, after—after Merit ran from me and I went in search of her. I saw the body. But it was not hers. It was Amunet. Dead. Already. I—I believed that it must have been Khufu. I was afraid.” The tears flowed in earnest now, and they made me angry. “I was an ambitious fool, and I believed that an accusation against Khufu would destroy my future too. So I left her there.” I covered my face with my hands. “I left her there to be torn apart by crocodiles, until her body was so broken there was no hope of her crossing to the west.”

Tamit flew at me. Khufu pulled her from me, but not before she had clawed a scratch across my face.

“Don’t you see that none of this makes sense?” I protested. “I had no reason to kill Amunet. I would not kill Merit. Or Mentu or Ebo. The rest of it is fabricated. Someone is trying to shift blame to me.” I looked to their faces. Ahmose, a mixture of confusion and hopelessness. Tamit, all angry grief for her dead sister. And Khufu, holding her back as though unsure if he should bother.

“You will see!” I said. “I will find the truth. Somehow I will find the truth!”

But my declaration was met with silence.

I snatched up my staff from the floor and stalked from the audience hall, leaving behind me the fiery sting of false accusation.

The moon still stared down at me with its single unblinking eye. I took to the path outside the palace with vengeance, and with each step my staff pounded a hole into the sandy dirt.

Justice and truth. Justice and truth.
The words beat in rhythm with my steps. Ma’at had not yet been put right, but I would not let it go.

They suspect me of killing Amunet? Me? All of these years, that is
what my own brother has thought of me?

We were no closer to learning the truth. Still none of us told all that we knew. And somewhere in those secrets was the truth about these new killings.

I passed a servant on the way, the only other person about at this hour. He scurried toward me, head down, then lifted his head as we passed one another. A look crossed his face, of surprise and perhaps fear.

The royal estate was guarded by soldiers at all times and had never given me reason to fear, but tonight it seemed as though the rules had all been broken. I quickened my steps, anxious to be
behind my own walls. There was a killer about, after all. Khufu’s words came to mind.
Who will be next?

My stomach grew tight as I replayed the confrontation with my brother, my cousin, and Tamit. When my house finally emerged from the shadows ahead, my fingers had grown weary from their grip on my staff. I passed through my doorway with uncharacteristic relief at arriving home. The house was dark, and I went directly to my private chamber, uninterested in food or leisure.

I was quick about my preparations and soon stretched on my bed, my head on the alabaster headrest given to me by my father years ago. He had carved it himself.

Something about that memory triggered emotion in me once again at all that I had lost over the years. Over the past few weeks. I closed my eyes, trying to turn my mind to the problem that still faced me and to devise a plan.

When the morning comes, I will go to each of them in turn and
force the truth from them.
Only when I understood exactly what had happened that day would I find answers for the present.

My body slowly relaxed. An involuntary jerk of my muscles started my heart pounding, but I closed my eyes again and focused on my breathing. Sleep was the great healer, and I now sought it in earnest.

My mind drifted and I followed it down the paths of memory, willing to see where memory would lead. I thought of Merit, but then her face dissolved into Neferet’s. And then it was Neferet who was drowned.

The scrape of a sandaled foot snatched me from my dream. I sat upright, ears tuned to the sound, palms sweating.

Another noise, outside my chamber.

I swung my legs over the side of the bed and stood, ready for an attack.

The door jumped open.

In the darkness, the figure at my door seemed as black as the jackal Anubis himself.

“What is it?” I said.

A moment of silence met my demand. Then a low voice. “It would seem, Grand Vizier, that the favor of your king has come to an end.”

I stepped toward the man, squinting to make him out. The whites of his eyes were all that appeared in the darkness. “Axum?”

The Nubian’s face was passionless. “Pharaoh, Lord of Crowns, Beloved of Amun, has commanded that you be brought to the prisoners’ chamber. You must come with me.”

I grabbed a robe from my bed and covered myself. “This is insane, Axum. You know me. You know I have done nothing worthy of imprisonment.”

“I serve at my king’s command, Grand Vizier, and cannot act of my own accord.”

I turned away and cursed. “Why didn’t he throw me in there hours ago,” I said, “when I stood before their accusations?”

“It is my understanding that new information has come to the attention of the king,” Axum said. “Information that points to you as the Scourge of Anubis.”

I sensed Axum’s displeasure at his orders.

“What new information?”

“We must go, Grand Vizier.” Axum reached for my arm, but I jerked it away.

“I’m not going anywhere, except to Khufu to hear what this is about.”

“Those are not the orders of the king. You must come with me.”

I stepped up to Axum, my nose to his. “Understand this, Axum. You work for me. And I am going nowhere.”

Axum’s eyes did not leave mine, and the set of his jaw was unchanged. Still nose to nose, he let out a shrill whistle, surprising me. I pulled back, and in that moment, three other Nubians appeared like a wall of basalt behind Axum. He did not take his eyes from me as he ordered his men.

“Take the Grand Vizier to the prisoners’ chamber.”

They surrounded me, grabbed at my arms without respect.

I pulled away. “Let go of me!” I demanded. “I will have each of you flogged!”

Two of the beasts gripped my upper arms while the third swooped low from behind me and knocked out my legs. A sliver of a moment later they carried me like a sack of barley out of my own home.

But not without a fight. I kicked and twisted, cursed and threatened. I was no match for four trained guards. When my strength was spent, they set me upon my feet, each arm still bound in their grip, and forced me along the path toward the palace, where they intended to imprison me beneath the palace walls. My legs shook and a sweat broke over my chest. The grip on my arms numbed my fingers.

“Take me to Khufu,” I said to Axum just ahead of me. “We will discuss this like friends, like cousins. He is angry right now, but I can calm him. I can always calm him.”

Axum’s countenance remained stony, and his gaze never turned to me.

Outside the shaft that led to the underground chamber, I dug my heels into the sand. They dragged me on. Axum lifted the pin that unlocked the gate, and the other three forced me through. One of them grabbed a torch from the outer wall, and it spilled only enough light ahead for me to see a step or two.

The shaft plunged downward, only wide enough for one man. I tried to block our passage with my body, but one of the guards prodded me in the back with his sheathed sword and we moved forward.

I have spent many hours in the shafts of Khufu’s tomb without any sense of fear, but sliding downward toward this chamber felt like death to me. It smelled of death. Every part of my body tensed now. The shaft opened to a passage of tiny cells. They dragged me to the first.

Axum shoved past me to unpin the lock.

And then I was on the other side, and they were sealing the door behind me. Axum’s face flickered with something like regret, but he would not be moved.

From the darkness inside the chamber, the scuttling of barely human feet came toward me, and a hand grabbed at me. “Grand Vizier,” a voice rasped, “have mercy! I will repay all that I stole!”

I looked down in the last of the receding torchlight and recognized the now-emaciated face of a laborer I had consigned to prison some weeks ago for stealing rations. His collarbones angled painfully from chest to shoulder, and hair grew in dirty patches from his head and face. He looked wildly up at me, his rotting teeth protruding from thin lips.

“Please, Grand Vizier,” he begged, “release me from this place!”

Axum and the guards were well away now, the torchlight gone and the two of us left in darkness. The man still gripped my hand.

And then slowly, his clutching hand released and his feet shuffled backward. There came a sound from him, and it took me a moment to comprehend that it was laughter. The strange sort of quiet huffing that comes from being left too long alone.

“You have not come to visit,” he laughed. “You are a prisoner. Like me.”

I wrapped my arms around my chest, wondering what else lay in the darkness around us. Were there other prisoners? The terrible laughter faded, and I heard the
tick-tick
of insect feet scurry across the floor.

“You are afraid, Grand Vizier?” he said. “Afraid of what terrors the chamber holds?” His voice had grown close, and I smelled him powerfully now. The smell of a man forced to live in his own filth for many weeks. The laughter began again, and I realized that he held me responsible for his torture. And as surely as the gates, he also held me prisoner.

“What is your name, peasant?” I snapped.

“Wati,” he hissed. “You have not given me another thought in all these days, have you?”

“You brought this upon yourself, Wati. Egypt is great because the divine order is well kept. You are the victim of no one but your own poor choices. Justice has been handed down to you, and you have no cause for complaint.”

“Justice, eh?” he said, his voice mocking in the darkness. “And what of mercy, Grand Vizier? What of mercy?”

I said nothing.

“Well then, as there is no mercy for the peasants, there shall be no mercy for the royals either.” His voice built to a crescendo, and I sensed him coming for me.

I sidestepped, but he caught my shoulder and knocked me into the wall behind. A shower of dirt drifted down, gritty in my eyes and mouth. I shoved my hands out, but he had me pinned against the wall, his hands at my throat.

“I am grand vizier,” I choked out. “Surely you will suffer more than prison for harming me!”

His voice was low, his foul breath at my ear. “Do you think I care? Do you? Death would be welcome now. I shall cross into the west and live forever in the ripe fields, instead of crawling in the darkness to find the food they toss to me like a diseased dog.”

I brought my hands to his grip and tore him from my throat. His wrists felt like reeds in my hands, as though I could snap them without effort. I pushed him backward and he cried out, a mixture of anger and pain.

But I would not show mercy yet. If we were to live here together for any time, Wati must know who held the power. I pushed him to the floor and placed a foot on his throat. He whimpered, then begged again for his life.

All the anger I felt at the injustice of my entrapment seemed to run in sparks through my arms and legs. “You will not touch me again, do you understand?”

I felt his head bob under my foot.

“We will leave each other alone. I will not kill you for threatening me, and you will not speak to me, come near to me, or touch me.”

“Yes, Grand Vizier. Yes.”

I released him and gave him a half-hearted kick in the ribs to punctuate my thoughts. He rolled and crawled away to the other side of the chamber.

My eyes had by now adjusted to the darkness sufficiently to see the edges of our prison. The chamber was roughly the size of my bedroom, with no furniture of any kind. I went to the wall closest to me, slid down it and sat upon the dirt. My fellow prisoner was true to his promise and neither approached nor spoke to me again that night.

And so I was left truly alone, as I wished. Alone with my thoughts.

What new information had been given to Khufu that accused me? Already he believed I had reason to kill Merit and Ebo, and Ahmose had accused me of killing Amunet. My mind worked at the problem, trying to come up with a solution that would bring about what I sought more than anything: justice, truth, divine order. Ma’at.

But as the night wore on, and my thoughts swirled around the fetid air of the prisoners’ chamber, something gave way inside me. Doubts, at first as small as the dung beetles that tapped in the darkness around me, grew into shadowy beasts that threatened to devour me.

Justice and truth. I had served the goddess Ma’at all my life. And yet, what divine order did I truly see? All was chaos around me. The pyramid project was failing without my oversight. People I loved were dying. I stood accused of horrible crimes. Where was justice? Where was truth?

A rebellious thought began to take root, one I had long denied. I let it grow in the night. I nourished it with my attention and willed it to grow and take over my mind.

There are no gods. There is no ma’at.

Finally, finally I let myself dwell upon the truth that I had been running from for so many years. If there were truly justice in the world—and in death—no man or woman would reach those blessed fields of which Wati spoke. Not one of us could claim purity to curry favor in the afterlife.

And so death could only mean condemnation.

I scratched at the dirt floor with my feet and tried to stay warm with only my own arms to cover me.

Yes, I had known the truth of justice all my life and had run from the admitting of it for just as long. If death were condemnation, then life—this life—is all there is. My mad, driven push to leave a legacy in stone, to achieve and accomplish, all of it was to avoid this ultimate truth.

If the gods awaited me with justice on the other side of life, then justice would surely destroy me. If nothing awaited me on the other side, then I was equally cursed.

Given the events of the past weeks, and the disorder that continued to thrive in spite of my best efforts, I began to believe that the gods were a lie, that ma’at existed only in my imagination, and that nothing awaited me but an endless black void.

In all the years that have passed since the day I found Amunet’s body in the marsh, I have never allowed myself to wonder what might have changed had I made a different choice.

But I wonder now. I let myself return to that day, to the moment when I lifted her head from the water, chest beating with the sick certainty that my beloved Merit was dead …

* * *

Relief floods me, followed hotly by guilt, as I realize that it is Amunet who lies dead in my arms.

Amunet, who was alone with Khufu. Khufu, who will be Pharaoh. And I his grand vizier.

My knees sink further into the mud. The unnatural water falling from the sky beats against my bare skin. I wipe away the reeds from her face. My mind seems to lock, unable to choose.

But I do choose.

I lower her body to the water’s edge once more, climb to my feet, walk a few paces away and wash my hands in the river water.

And then I turn my back on Amunet.

And somewhere in the reeds, unknown to me, my brother watches.

Some time later I discover Merit, standing on the grassy bank, her eyes wet, with tears or sky water, I cannot say. “We should return to the donkeys,” I say, and she nods. I reach for her, but she ignores my hand.