Meren shook his head, leaned back, and loosened his grip on the arms of his chair as he smiled. "Ah, cousin, we've just heard of this accident at the temple. My spy?" He gave Maya a glance that held both amusement and resignation. "Why is it that everyone at court believes that I have spies in their households and in every temple in the kingdom?"
"Because you do," Maya said calmly.
Meren would have liked to cuff the treasurer on the ear, but Ebana interrupted.
"I saw your man speaking to him only a few weeks ago. It's not like you to expose your minions so carelessly, but I had him watched after that." His eyes glittered and fixed on Meren's face. "And now he's fallen to his death from the top of the king's statue. No doubt the good god avenged himself upon his traitorous servant."
Sighing, Meren said, "Unas wasn't my spy."
"You know his name."
"Gods, Ebana," Maya said. "We just learned it together a few moments ago."
Meren had been watching his cousin through his lashes. If something weren't done, Ebana would create a scandal that could eventually involve the king. He sighed again and gave Maya an apologetic look.
"Would you mind, old friend, if I spoke to my cousin alone? Family quarrels and rivalries, you understand."
Maya registered no surprise, nor did he object at being edged out of a matter that involved his underlings. With a smooth acquiescence, he left them alone. Meren knew he would be inundated with queries later, which was why Maya could keep his curiosity under rein now. When he was gone, Meren rose so that Ebana could no longer look down on him.
He turned away and, beckoning a slave, whispered that Kysen be summoned. Then he dismissed the servants with their fans and walked away from the chairs. He stopped when he reached one of the sycamores that surrounded the reflection pool in orderly rows.
He glanced back at his cousin. Wide of shoulder, with a flat belly and long legs, Ebana had a body that closely adhered to the canon of proportions painters used to depict gods and kings. People said the cousins looked alike. Meren had never paid much attention to their resemblance. He did remember how Ebana used to laugh at him for being embarrassed when girls would linger in doorways and drape themselves on rooftops as they drove their chariots through the city.
That had been when they were like brothers. Leaning his shoulder against the tree, he waited for Ebana to join him.
"I haven't come for a loving family talk," Ebana said. He confronted Meren with arms folded across his chest. "I've come to report to his majesty."
"You know well that I was only pursuing a murderer when I talked to that priest. I talk to priests of Amun all the time, Ebana. Do you suspect each of them? And if you do, perhaps I should suspect you of killing this one.'
Ebana flushed. "I'm no murderer, and don't try to distract me."
A breeze caught and tossed the leaves of the sycamore. Meren breathed in cool air, closed his eyes, and raised his face to sunlight dappled by leafy branches. "Follow your own reasoning. Of all the priests of Amun, you're the one I talk to the most. Therefore, you're the one most likely to be my spy. Does Parenefer suspect you?"
When Ebana didn't answer, Meren opened his eyes. Had he not shared a childhood with the man, he couldn't have read anything in his expression. Ebana's eyes weren't simply the dark brown of Egypt. They were true black, like the Nile at night. Only Meren could catch a glint as if the full moon had dropped into them, and the skin around them seemed pale from tension.
"I didn't know," Meren said softly.
"You know nothing. I have orders to report to the king. I could tell him what I know of your spy."
"Don't," Meren said as he began to rub the scar on his inner wrist. "You'll only annoy him and create further strain between the temple and the court."
"Amun has no fear of-"
"Ebana, sometimes you're wearisome beyond endurance. I've had a letter from my sister. She's at home with Bener and Isis and says they're both learning the running of an estate quite well. I have to admit that I didn't think Isis would do well. You have daughters. You should understand how the youngest always manages to slip away from responsibilities."
"The way you slipped away from yours to me?"
Ebana touched his temple where his scar began. It crossed his left cheek and slanted down his neck, where it disappeared under a gold-and-carnelian broad collar.
Meren shoved away from the tree trunk and planted his feet apart. "Damn you. I tried to warn you, but I found out too late."
"I'll never believe that you didn't know Akhenaten had condemned me. You knew how unpredictable were his humors."
"Why won't you understand? He almost killed me as well. I'd only been released a few days when I found out he'd sent men after you. I could barely stand, yet when I heard he'd taken it into his head that you sympathized with Amun, I tried to come to you. I could trust no one with a message, so I tried to warn you myself."
Ebana wasn't looking at him. His gaze had gone distant. His mouth contorted as he sank into the memory.
"You found them, didn't you? My wife. My son. The guards dragged me away from their bodies. I never saw them again."
Slowly, Meren reached out. He touched his cousin's arm, but Ebana shook him off.
"You know I took care of them. Did I not conceal them and have them taken to Thebes? The old king never found their bodies, did he? I tried, Ebana."
"Did you?"
Meren met his cousin's gaze. For a moment he glimpsed the old Ebana, his friend and companion, the one who had studied with him, hunted with him, sailed with him. Then the pit of distrust and old hurts opened between them again. Meren subdued the pain of loss he always felt during one of these confrontations. Ebana chose to live in a netherworld of timeless grief and hatred. He couldn't make his cousin whole again.
"Leave it," Meren said softly. "Leave it before it destroys you." Ebana said nothing, and Meren veered away from the matter, glancing over his cousin's shoulder in the direction of the palace. "Difficult as it is to believe, I've other tasks of greater importance than this accident. However, as a favor to Maya, I'm sending Kysen to inquire into the happenings at the god's gate."
Ebana looked over his shoulder to watch Kysen's approach. "Ah, your peasant son. Have you no seed left in your loins, that you have to adopt the spawn of a commoner?"
Meren stepped close to Ebana. "Shut your teeth, cousin, or I'll reach down your throat, pull your spine out, and make you eat it."
Moving back, he smiled sweetly at Ebana before welcoming Kysen. He heard Ebana curse him, but by the time Kysen greeted him, his usual mask of unconcern had settled over his features. With Ebana lurking beside him, he couldn't warn Kysen of the significance of this death. He could only hope that Ky had learned enough to recognize danger without help.
Kysen approached the statue of the king before the gate of Amun, his head throbbing from a night spent drinking beer and losing wagers at games of senet to Tanefer, Ahiram, and several other friends. He should have looked at a calendar this morning, for surely today was a day of misfortune for him. He knew his eyes were red-rimmed. His head felt like it had been filled to bursting with swamp water. And now he had to spend the day with his father's serpent of a cousin.
The noise of the temple aggravated his pain, for the house of Amun was more a city within a city, its great walls enclosing not only the home of the god but lesser shrines, the House of Life, workshops, a treasury, libraries, the high priest's residence, and service buildings. In addition there was a sacred lake, and every building contained its own staff of busy priests, servants, slaves, and sometimes priestesses.
Blinking against the sun's glare, he shaded his eyes and tried not to kick up dust as he walked. Something was wrong. Ordinarily the death of a lowly pure one wouldn't concern the great Servant of the God, Ebana.
Neither would it have attracted his father's attention. Yet both men had been reserved as they gave him the task of investigating the accident.
Meren rarely spoke of Ebana. His silence hadn't kept Kysen from recognizing the violence of whatever secret lay between the two men. Nor had it disguised the place Ebana still held in Meren's affection. Few had such a claim on his father. Kysen had learned long ago that Meren guarded his ka against deep attachments outside the family. He suspected the reasons lay in too many losses-father, mother, a beloved wife and infant son, comrades in warfare.
The sun was rising high above the walls of the temple now, glinting off the gold-and-silver inlay of the god's gate. The light sent jabs of pain spiking behind Kysen's eyes. He squinted and stepped into the shadow cast by the statue of pharaoh. Workmen crawled over the great stone figure, climbing the scaffolding, carrying baskets of tools and waste flakes.
Kysen stopped beside the base and studied the ground. "You let them move the body? Where is it, and where was it found? Gods, they've tramped all around here."
Ebana rounded on him.
"Don't address me as if I were a fruit seller, boy. Surely Meren has beaten some civilized behavior into you by now."
A white-hot poker drilled its way through Kysen's skull, and he felt his cheeks burn. Ebana always managed to make him feel like fish dung, but he'd learned a little from watching his father.
He inclined his head at Ebana and said, "I was abrupt. However, I doubt anyone could rid me of my plain blood, adopted cousin." He paused to lift his head and stare dagger-straight at Ebana. "It sometimes makes me-unpredictable-to those whose raising was softer."
"By Amun's crown, your blood may be plain, but you've acquired the clever tongue and slippery wit of your second father."
Ebana turned to point at a dusty spot near the base of a ladder that scaled the statue. "He fell from the top of the scaffolding. There."
Kysen knelt and brushed dust and flakes of stone away to reveal dried blood, a few dark hairs embedded in it. Standing, he looked across the flagstones, then up the ladder, then back at the blood. All at once, he looked around, scooped up a heavy mallet from a basket of tools, and began scaling the ladder.
"What are you doing?"
He ignored the impatience in Ebana's voice. Reaching the top of the ladder, he mounted the platform. All work on the statue stopped. Two artisans on the scaffold stared at him as he turned to look down at Ebana. More stoneworkers, apprentices, and laborers stared up at him from the ground.
"You'd better stand back, O Servant of the God."
He didn't wait. Stretching out, he dropped the mallet. The tool plummeted to land almost directly below the ladder.
Kysen stared at it, then muttered. "A man's weight. He trips, falls, tries to grab the ladder and misses. Perhaps he hit the rungs going down. Still…"
Turning, he found the artisans still staring at him. The most senior of the two was eyeing him keenly.
"You found the priest?" Kysen asked.
"Aye, lord. I'm Seneb. We found him on his back. His head was split."
"Did you see any marks on him?" Kysen asked. "Any bruises, cuts?"
"Lord, if you mean had he been attacked, no. There were no marks of violence."
"And when did you arrive?"
"Just at dawn, lord."
As they spoke, Kysen sensed the suppressed excitement of the stonemason and his assistant. They hadn't known Unas long, for he'd only recently been assigned to the task of supervising the statue. There were so many priests of Amun, and the royal craftsmen had been at the quarry with the statue until it came to Thebes. As the questioning continued, Seneb became less reserved.
"We saw no one around the body, so I went to get a priest. I'll make a wager that the porter was asleep. We talked to the night sentries before they went home. They came to look at the body, you see. They said they must have been walking the circuit on the far side of the temple, or they would have seen Unas arrive."
Kysen nodded. He went back to the top of the ladder and stood gazing over the edge of the scaffolding. The stonemason joined him.
"Seneb," Kysen said. "No doubt you've seen a lot of rock fall in your time."
"Aye, lord."
"If a stone weighing about as much as a man were to fall from this scaffold, where would it land?"
"Almost directly below, lord. There."
Seneb pointed a cracked and dusty thumb at a spot near the foot of the ladder. Kysen glanced from the spot to the patch of blood.
"Not where the priest landed?"
'Too far away, lord, but a man is not a rock."
"But if he tried to grab the ladder?"
"Such a movement might keep him at the foot of the ladder, or thrust him away, to the place where the blood is."
"Ah."
Kysen tried to estimate the distance between the blood and the ladder-several arm-lengths at least.
"Um, lord"
"Yes."
"I've seen men fall from scaffolding. Their wits sometimes riot and they kick out, hit the ladder, and thrust themselves out even farther than this one did."
"My thanks, Seneb."
He lapsed into silence as a priest emerged from the crowds swelling in and out of the temple. This one, like Ebana, wore a wig over his shaven head and therefore must not be on sacred duty at the moment. He was dressed in cloud-white linen and gold. "That's the one who came when we found the body." Seneb was standing at his shoulder. They exchanged glances, and Kysen knew the man was waiting for encouragement.
"What did he say?"
"He didn't want me to report to the treasury. Said it was the concern of the temple, but this is the statue of the living god. I'm a royal craftsman. Pharaoh-may he have life, health, and strength-pharaoh has been generous to his stoneworkers. We couldn't allow such an evil to go by without reporting to our chief."
Now he understood. "Fear not. Your chief is pleased, as is his superior, and those at the palace who interest themselves in this matter. All will go well with you and your men, Seneb. You can work in peace without fear of the temple."
"Thank you, lord. May Ptah, god of artisans, protect you."
"And you," Kysen said as he climbed down the ladder, leaving a much-relieved stonemason atop the platform.
He joined Ebana and the new priest and was introduced. He'd already formed an impression of Qenamun from observing him from above. The man walked as if his joints were hot oil, smoothly, with a glide that surely would make no sound. Close up he seemed as slender as a walking staff. He had long, thin bones, almond-shaped eyes, and thin nostrils that quivered, thus completing his resemblance to a gazelle. Beside Ebana's dense muscularity, he appeared almost fragile.
"So the body was sent to his house," Qenamun was saying. "No doubt by now it has gone to the embalmers across the river. And of course we've given the sad news to his wife."
"Of course," said Kysen. "How quick and attentive of you."
Qenamun gave Kysen a chilly smile and bowed slightly. "All diligence is needful in the service of the good god. Have you any other questions?"
"What of the porter? Where is he?"
"The man was asleep at his post. He's been punished and has been set to hauling refuse. Laziness and negligence are an abomination to the god."
"I would like to question him myself."
"What foolishness," Ebana said. "The man knows nothing, and he's not here."
"I'll go to him."
"You will not!"
Kysen only lifted a brow, a gesture he'd acquired from his father.
Ebana scowled at him. "You're not dragging us down to the refuse pits. Qenamun will send him to your house around midday to await you."
Murmuring his assent, Qenamun executed a sinuous bow and left them. The sun had moved, causing the shadow of the statue to shift. Kysen moved with it and wiped sweat from his brow with the back of his hand.
"An imposing personage, Qenamun," he said.
Ebana said nothing.
"Are you going to tell me about him, adopted cousin, or shall I bribe servants and humble pure ones?"
Shrugging, Ebana said, "Qenamun is a lector priest."
"You don't like him." When this comment was met with further silence, Kysen sighed. "Ah, well. I was hoping to go home to a midday meal, but it seems I must enter the temple and ask questions until nightfall simply because you won't be agreeable."
"You're an insolent pup."
"Who can bribe or coerce what I need to know out of any servant in that temple."
Ebana studied him, allowing his hostility to show in his gaze, but he finally spoke.
"Qenamun is one of our most talented lector priests. He's learned in magic, a man of power whose spells have aided many in need of help. For a price."
"You don't like him, do you, Ebana."
"The man is a scorpion," Ebana snapped. "I detest him because he creates discord, lovingly, as a spider spins a web. One of my underlings befriended him a few years ago when we were repairing the damage done to the temple by the heretic. They worked together. Then one day I was talking to Qenamun and he mentioned that my underling was repeating heated words about me to others. I was furious and exiled the man to a temple estate in Nubia. Later I found out from a friend that Qenamun had repeated the same story about one of his underlings."
"But why?"
"To eliminate rivals, those who could stand in his way. The usual reasons."
Kysen felt the throbbing in his head increase, and heat rose up at him from the flagstones. "Gods, I hate aristocrats."
He swore silently at himself as Ebana turned to smile at him.
"Go home, Ky," he said. "There is nothing here but dried blood and the death of a careless fool. You're not going to blunder into the temple and dare to question those of high station and noble blood. Remember, the high priest of Amun comes from the same lineage as pharaoh; his Servants of the God are princes and nobles as well. You don't belong in there. Go home."
"Unas didn't work among princes and nobles. Oh, don't get a heated belly, I'm going."
Kysen turned on his heel and stalked away from his father's cousin. Shouldering his way through the crowds streaming in and out of the temple, he looked back only once. Ebana was still standing where Kysen had left him, but he was looking down, his features set and still as he examined the dark patch of blood at the foot of the image of the living god.