City of the Dead

thought to him, concentrating hard. If it reached him, he would come.
    Two days. Who had betrayed her father? Perhaps Merinakhte. But her refusal to sleep with him was too small a reason for such vengeance. There was no doubt in her mind that Horaha had been poisoned.
    When had the coughing started? Early the previous day. Horaha had put it down to a chill caught at the bank of the River during the Oblation to Hapy. The dry season was nearing its end and Horaha had been chosen as one of the officials to offer this year’s sacrifice for the flood. He had drunk the holy river water, but so had all the others chosen.
    Horaha had taken no food or drink outside his own house since then that she had not taken too. Indeed, since the noon meal yesterday he had eaten nothing, taking only the herb tea he had prescribed himself. It seemed insane, she thought, that he had to die in the middle of the best community of doctors in the entire Black Land.
    She knelt by her father, holding his hand, knowing that nearby two of the Eight Elements, his Khou and his Ka, would be standing in the gloom. His Ba would be preparing itself for the long lonely journey through the Twelve Halls. Struggling with her thoughts, she remained with Horaha until dawn, sending message after message to Huy. Perhaps it would work, though with the generations the Blacklanders were losing this gift of communication.
    Then, shortly before dawn, she saw in her heart’s eye a stocky figure leave a house in a shabby street in the harbour quarter, and she knew that he had heard her.

    Huy’s first thought was that the killing had been committed with such crude disregard for secrecy that it was meant to be taken as a warning.
    ‘You will have to heed it,’ he told Senseneb.
    ‘How?’
    ‘Keep your head down. Do nothing.’
    ‘How can I do nothing?’ she asked angrily. ‘Anyway, they will be watching the house. They will have seen you come.’
    ‘That is not unnatural. You did not summon me by any means they could track. As far as they are concerned, I was bound to come back here. If they are watching me - or you - at all.’
    ‘They must want to know what has happened.’
    ‘They will hear about it soon enough in any case.’
    Senseneb was silent. Then she said, ‘What is this all about?’
    ‘A struggle for power,’ replied Huy. ‘Do not look so stern-Why do you not give in to your grief?’
    ‘I am not ready yet,’ she answered. ‘I am not yet brave enough to face it.’
    The embalmer came with his assistants and his long cart.
    Soon the shell that had contained the Eight Elements of Horaha was taken away to be prepared for the spirit that would inhabit ¡t eternally. They watched it go from the gate and turned back into the garden. Suddenly, her shoulders started to shake.
    He held her as her body was racked with sobs. Nervous servants peered from windows and doorways, but Hapu brought water to wash her and wine to drink, and together he and Huy nursed her through the first wave of misery. Later, sitting up on the couch by the pool, the pet ro geese solicitously attending her, she looked at the former scribe with tired eyes and smiled.
    ‘I will not apologise for my tears, but I am ashamed of some of the reasons for shedding them. I am alone now, and soon I will have nowhere to live.’
    ‘What will happen to this place?’
    ‘It belongs to the House of Healing. It is the residence of the chief doctor, and as soon as a new one is appointed, he will move in.’
    ‘Where will you go?’
    ‘My father owns a place far to the south, in Napata. It is a long way from the Southern Capital.’
    ‘How long will they let you stay here?’
    She sighed. ‘At least until my father is in his tomb. The funeral rites must be controlled from here and they would not risk the anger of his Ka.'
    ‘His killers risk that already.’
    ‘I have never known the dead avenge themselves yet. Have you?’
    ‘No.’
    She sighed, stretched her long limbs, and looked at Huy With the ghost of a smile again. ‘I am glad you caught my thought.’
    It was vivid. I was sleeping when it came and it woke me.’ I did not think it would work.’
    There are few left who can use the air between us.’
    I could not do it again.’
    ‘I hope you will not have to.’
    Huy poured wine and they drank together. The sun was heading towards its zenith, warming the tamarisk’s grey awl-shaped leaves; but in its shade it was still cool, and the garden had trapped a breeze which