Meren pressed his back to the golden doors. His gaze met a sea of columns taller than the tallest trees, their electrum surfaces aglow with the light of thousands of tapers and candles in tall stands. He searched the shadows between the columns, but could see no one. At the end of the long hall, on a high dais, sat the golden throne of the king, but the living god wasn't on it. He was sitting on the last step of the dais, talking to an ancient man in a short wig and flowing robe. The old man was on his knees, whispering in the king's ear.
Tutankhamun shook his head, glanced at Meren, and waved the servant away. The man vanished through a door behind the dais. Meren walked swiftly to the king and knelt, touching his forehead to the floor. He could see a golden sandal.
"Rise," the king said.
Meren straightened. The king wore his formal robes. A cloth of the finest linen covered his head, fastened by the Uraeus diadem. His neck, arms, and legs were laden with gold and lapis and turquoise, but he'd laid aside on the throne the double scepters, the crook, and the flail. The high windows on one side of the audience chamber cast light on the king, and he gave off a glint like his father the sun.
Tutankhamun sighed and rubbed his temples. He almost smeared the heavy paint on his eyes. Abruptly he stood and walked away from the throne. Meren followed him until they were standing well away from the throne and some distance from any of the columns.
Catching Meren's arm, Tutankhamun pulled him close and spoke quietly. "Do you think they can hear me?"
"Who, majesty?"
"Anyone who's listening."
"No, majesty."
The king sighed again. He winced and rubbed his temple again. "She has betrayed me."
Meren felt his heart still. He stopped breathing.
"The queen?" he asked.
Tutankhamun nodded, studying Meren's face.
Meren became silent again. Ankhesenamun, daughter of the pharaoh Akhenaten, whose royal blood gave Tutankhamun one of his strongest claims to the throne. The girl had worshiped her fanatical, mad father. She'd never forgiven Tutankhamun for returning the kingdom to the old gods. Meren had never questioned Tutankhamun about her, for her relationship with her father had been close. Like her older sisters, she had been married to Akhenaten.
When he died, it had been Tutankhamun's duty to marry Ankhesenamun. Five years older than Tutankhamun, she had taken her elevation to Great Royal Wife as her due, yet hated her husband for what she saw as his betrayal. She had fought the restoration of the old gods, fought the return to Thebes from the upstart capital her father had built. All this she had done with a fanaticism and spite that rivaled her father's.
And now she had betrayed the king. She surrounded herself with zealots who had served her father in the old solar religion of the Aten. Had she betrayed the king with one of them? Or had she plotted an equally evil crime-the king's death?
Whatever the case, Tutankhamun had made a mistake in interrupting his audience. He was adept at intrigue, yet heartbreakingly precipitous when unnerved. His youth was the reason, and his youth endangered him.
"Sire," Meren said in as low a voice as possible, "how has she betrayed you?"
The king met his gaze, and he beheld the suppressed fury of outraged majesty. "She wrote to the Hittite king. The bitch wrote to my greatest enemy and offered to marry one of his sons if he would come and kill me."
"Merciful Isis."
Meren found his throat muscles thickening with ten sion. The Hittites rivaled Pharaoh in power. They nibbled away at the edges of the empire and fostered rebellion among the vassal states of Palestine and Syria. One day Egypt and the Hittites would go to war. If Ankhesenamun had succeeded, the war could have been brought upon them now, when Pharaoh was still a youth and ill-prepared to face the vicious multitudes of the Hittites.
"What am I to do?" The king drew his ceremonial gold dagger.
"You cannot kill her."
"She has committed the worst sin against me."
"She is the Great Royal Wife, daughter of a pharaoh. The kingdom has suffered strife and instability for too long, majesty. The execution of a queen will do great harm and shake the people's faith in you, no matter how innocent you are, or how strong."
Tutankhamun sheathed his dagger. His gold wristband and bracelets clattered with the violence of his movements. He lifted a tortured face to Meren.
"She hates me," he said. "She hates for me to touch her-and she has endangered my people. I could forgive her for hating me, but not for the other."
"Nor should you, for either. What have you done?"
"Naught." The king waved his hand in a gesture of weariness. "I wanted to find her and kill her, but I did as you taught me and waited while I recited a prayer, then I sent for you."
"And Ay?"
"She's his granddaughter. He loves Ankhesenamun. I haven't the courage to tell him."
He noticed what was not said: that the king had dis covered the queen's treason, not the vizier, not his eyes and ears. It was startling how well Tutankhamun had learned Meren's lessons in intrigue. Then he remen› bered the old servant. He was called Tiglith, a Syrian slave who had attended the royal children for longer than Meren had been alive. Tiglith served in the queen's palace.
"Majesty, you must continue your audiences."
"I know." The reply came out softly, belying the rage in the king's eyes.
"All of the queen's servants will have to be replaced, but we must avoid creating a stir in your golden hive of a court."
"I will give her a new palace."
Meren smiled grimly. "The one near the temple of Isis in Memphis?"
"Aye," the king said. "The high priest there detests her. The whole city hates her. And you, my friend, will supply the slaves and attendants. Set your people to the task at once."
Meren fell in step with the king and they paced back and forth in front of the throne.
"The arrangements will take time, majesty, and she must be watched. May I have leave to-see to her maj esty's comfort until she goes to Memphis?"
The king nodded, then halted abruptly and turned to Meren. "You should know I gave Tiglith certain orders. In the next few days Ankhesenamun will find herself growing more and more listless and unable to get enough sleep."
"Thy majesty possesses the wisdom of Tom." Meren hesitated, but the king's furrowed brow and lack of color spurred him on. "Perhaps word could be spread that Ankhesenamun believes herself with child and sent word to thy majesty at once. You were so overjoyed you were forced to dismiss everyone for fear of betraying your dignity. And now you will surround her majesty with the best physicians, the most careful of attendants, so that she and her child are cared for as befits the wife of the living god."
"I am such an attentive spouse."
"And I must be seen to go about my customary du ties."
Distracted, the king's voice assumed its normal tone. "You've brought news?"
"Another death, Golden One. The son, Djaper, was poisoned yesterday or last night."
He summarized the events for the king and obtained permission to visit the royal workshops. Leaving Tutankhamun to deal with Ay, he quit the audience hall openly and made a show of obtaining a royal bodyguard who would gain him admittance to the workshops near the palace. As the Nubian marched ahead of him, he was joined by his own men. They walked beneath a succession of pylons and turned south, heading for a walled complex near the Nile. Once clear of the royal palace and its crowds of officials and courtiers, he spoke quietly to Abu, who fell back with two chariot and sauntered off in the direction of Meren's house to begin arrangements for the queen.
Unable to do more at the moment, Meren resigned himself to continuing with his original plans. He mustn't show concern. Any disruption in his pursuit of the murderer of the Place of Anubis would attract the attention of those with evil intentions. Such attention risked not only his life, but that of the king. The High Priest of Amun maintained vigilance, ever watchful for a weakness in the young Pharaoh. The Hittite ambassador would know of any disturbance at once, and seek out its cause.
Thus he and his remaining charioteers went to the royal workshops, passing easily by the posted sentries at the gate. Long rows of workshops lay before him, their awnings protecting the bent heads of jewelers, sculptors, goldsmiths, weavers. He glanced briefly at a shop where several men and women carved lapis lazuli, carnelian, and agate for use in royal jewelry. At the intersection of the packed earth path with another, a procession of laborers bore supplies to a reed shelter where scribes checked and recorded them and sent them on for distribution to artisans.
The bodyguard stopped at a workshop that rivaled Meren's house in size. Meren would have known what it was from the smell of heated fats and spices issuing from it. Before him lay a wide, open courtyard formed by a low wall. Inside sat a line of domed ovens. Opposite them lay open fires and braziers tended by several women. Two youths were stoking the ovens while a third thrust a heavy pot of resin into one of them. Meren followed the guard inside the workshop. He entered a room that resembled a small audience hall in size.
Glancing at shelves bearing countless pots, vials, and stoppered jars, he saw the guard address a man who resembled one of the ovoid jars on his shelves. The man hurriedly put aside a box of spice on a counter that ran the length of the room. He waddled over to Meren and dropped to his knees, wheezing. Presenting himself as Bakef, the king's master perfumer, the man touched his forehead to the floor. When he'd made his obeisance, the guard had to help him stand.
"It is my honor to serve and obey, mighty prince." Puff, puff, wheeze.
To Meren's questions about the unguent qeres, Bakef had no immediate reply. He fluttered his pudgy, pale hands.
"Qeres, qeres."
Meren held out his hand, and a charioteer placed a scrap of cloth from Hormin's kilt in it. He tossed the scrap to Bakef. The perfumer snatched it and held it to his nose. Beads of sweat had formed on the tip of it. He sniffed again.
"Ah!"
Bakef fluttered the scrap, made a ponderous, belly- shifting turn, and waddled to a shelf. Retrieving a leather case, he pulled from it a sheaf of papyri bound by wooden stays. He leafed through page after page, starting in the middle. After a few moments, he poked a fat digit at a line of cursive hieroglyphs. Meren watched a gleam enter the man's eyes. The hillocks of his cheeks flushed as he reached high over his head and pulled a dusty roll of papyrus from a pile on the top shelf. He read the wooden tag attached to the roll and nodded. Sneezing, he brushed the roll, then wiped his hands on his kilt before spreading the paper and anchoring it.
Meren waited patiently, his attention only half on the perfumer, while hb plotted a strategy to cope with the Great Royal Wife. Bakef got his full attention when he suddenly clapped his hands together in excitement and rubbed them. He seemed to have forgotten his noble guest in his agitation, for he turned his back and trotted through a guarded door at the back of the workshop.
Meren followed him into a dim hall lined with five doors on each side. Ahead, Bakef had snatched up a taper and was muttering to himself.
"Ninth storeroom, tenth row, seventh shelf. Ninth storeroom, tenth row, seventh shelf. By the gods, the ninth storeroom. Who would have thought?"
Meren was right behind the perfumer by the time the man opened the fourth door on the right. Bakef touched the taper to a torch in a wall sconce beside the door. Yellow light illuminated a room crowded with shelves and made the faience and obsidian vials gleam. Jar after jar sat in neat lines-tall, cylindrical ones of deep Nile blue; squat ones of glassy black; bright yellow ones. Bakef picked up a stool in one hand and, with the taper in the other, wedged his bulk between the last two shelves at the back of the storeroom. Here the jars were covered with a fine layer of dust.
"My lord, I don't think I've ever had occasion to search the tenth shelf. I doubt if anyone has since my father's time."
Bakef set his stool on the floor and stood on it. Meren heard a crack and a snap. Bakef wavered and would have fallen onto the tenth shelf if Meren hadn't caught his arm. Pulling Bakef off the stool, he mounted it himself.
"What am I looking for, perfumer?"
Wiping his sweaty upper lip, Bakef ducked his head. "A jar of the finest alabaster. It should be shaped like a short, wide cylinder, and its top is decorated with a sculpture of a resting lion."
Meren searched the shelf. He found several vials and a big pot of dried herbs in an eggshell-thin pottery jar. He shoved this aside and glimpsed the pink tongue of a lion. Retrieving the jar, he walked back to the torch beside the door. He tried to lift the lid of the jar. It was stuck, and he had to twist it to get it open. The lid jerked free to reveal an interior empty of unguent.
All that remained was a faint smell of myrrh and a small piece of papyrus. Thrusting the jar into Bakef's hands, he read the notice that the last of the unguent had been used in the funeral equipage of the king's grandfather. One remaining jar should be found in the royal treasury.
Meren dropped the notice back in the jar. "He couldn't have gotten it from the royal treasury."
"My lord?"
Glancing at Bakef, Meren frowned. "Where else may this unguent be found?"
"Why, the only other notation I have for it is three jars housed in the treasury of the god Amun, may his name be praised for eternity."
"Ha!"
Bakef started and almost dropped the lion jar. "Is something wrong, lord?"
"He visited the treasury of the god on the day he died."
"The god died?" Bakef eyed Meren and shuffled away as if ready to bolt.
"No, you fool. Hormin died. But first the bastard vis ited the treasury of the god Amun." Whirling away from the perfumer, Meren strode from the storeroom without another word to the bewildered and wary Bakef.
The perfumer pattered after him, wheezing all the way, and caught up as Meren emerged into the deepen ing shadows of late afternoon.
"My lord, I beg a word!"
Meren paused. "Well, man, speak quickly."
"If-if you find more qeres, and happen to come upon the recipe-that is-the queen-"
Meren hadn't been paying much heed to the per fumer. His gaze darted to the man's face, and he curled his lips into a sweet, benevolent smile.
"Yes, master perfumer, what is thy wish?"
"The queen sent word several months ago that she would like some qeres. I had forgotten, and the recipe is lost, you see."
"Did the Great Royal Wife say anything more of this unguent?"
"No, lord, only that a small amount came in some tribute from Byblos and was used up."
"I will see, perfumer."
Bakef stuttered his thanks as Meren walked away. The gratitude went unheard as Meren considered the meaning of this new connection between the murder of a common scribe and the Great Royal Wife. Was it a connection, or simply a happenstance? If the qeres on Hormin's kilt had come from the treasury of the god Amun, the unguent could still be that from the tribute of Byblos, for tribute was distributed among the temples of the gods as well as the royal household and favorites. Both the queen and Hormin might have gotten the qeres from the Byblos tribute. And Byblos was a known haven for the Syrian bandits who served the Hittite emperor.
Meren shook his head as he stood in the street before the perfumer's workshop. No, it could not be. As suspicious as he was, he couldn't imagine the low bureaucrat Hormin catching the interest of a Hittite spy, or the Great Royal Wife. But perhaps he'd been suborned by the priesthood of Amun. Though for what purpose, even Meren was at a loss to understand.
And now he must make inquiries of the royal amulet maker and at the treasury of the god Amun. The business would distract him from the problem of Ankhese-namun. He would have to meet with the king and Ay, but he must do so in secret, after dark. There was just time after seeing the amulet maker to cross the river to the great temple complex of Amun before the evening meal. Then, when the city slept, he would go to the palace again.