City of the Dead

organise her escape; but he did not think that Horemheb or Ay would move against her so soon after the king’s death.
    Hugging shadows, he made his way back to the harbour quarter and his own house, embracing its isolation and his familiar loneliness like friends as he entered. He drew a woollen rug around his shoulders, for lack of food and sleep had made him cold, and settled his heart by reading. Cocooned by the night, he let his senses drift. At last his eyelids drooped, but a confusion of images jarred him awake again. It was a long time before they let him go.

    Huy awoke to find his lamp burnt out and the pale lilac shafts of dawn striking through the window. Stiff from having slept in a chair, he pulled himself to his feet, massaging his neck. His head felt heavy and his intellect was blurred, but after he had athed and shaved, perfumed himself and put on a clean linen kilt and new palm leaf sandals, he felt better restored than he had done in days.
    Senseneb greeted him with surprise, and, he thought, pleasure, though from her face she had slept as little as he had since their last meeting. She looked vulnerable. Perhaps she had been thinking about where her future lay now. It was time that she did. She could not simply have remained her father’s daughter, living by his side, forever. The reflection did not make it any easier for Huy to tell her what he had to tell her; nevertheless, it must be done. There was nothing to be gained from keeping the truth from those you wished to enlist as your allies, though that consideration did not give him the courage to speak of her father’s murderer straight away.
    He reckoned without her perceptiveness. She had called him through her heart once, and now she read his eyes without difficulty.
    ‘You have something important to tell me.’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘I didn’t think you had come simply to find out how I was.’ She had turned her face away.
    ‘I would not have needed a greater reason.’
    ‘Nevertheless...’
    ‘There is something, yes. And it will hurt.’
    ‘Little could hurt me more than what has already happened.’
    ‘I think I know who killed Horaha.’
    ‘That is not bad news. Tell me.’
    ‘Kenamun.’
    ‘How?’
    ‘He does Horemheb’s dirty work. If he was there at the Oblation to Hapy...’
    ‘But he would have been there anyway, as a court official. Isn’t the connection too obvious?’
    ‘We know Horaha’s death was meant as a warning.’ Senseneb looked thoughtful. ‘I am sure that my father was poisoned. There is nothing I can prove. If Kenamun - or someone used by him - could have poisoned the sacred river water he drank...’
    ‘I would like to finish Kenamun,’ said Huy. ‘For this, and for other crimes.’
    ‘Let me help you,’ she said. ‘You tell me that you think he killed my father, and I believe you. Horaha has no one but me to avenge him.’
    ‘It will be hard to bring Kenamun down.’
    They were sitting in the garden, in the same place as he had first met her with her father. Now she stood up, and paced the length of the pool impatiently. Returning to him, she said, ‘There is Ay.’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Have you seen him?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘What deal have you made with him?’
    She had sat down again now, still impatient, her whole body taut, her long legs spread like a man’s, leaning forward, forearms on thighs, her head low, at an angle, looking up at him, her eyes dark and angry.
    ‘I have asked for more time.’
    ‘Why?’
    Huy spread his hands. He was telling her more than he had wanted to, but found that he could not help it. It was possible too that he was tired of having no one in whom he could place trust. There was Nehesy, but he was part of the palace. Senseneb had suffered at the hands of the authorities and she was now outside them. The law, society, would no longer protect her, for she had seen it for what it was in its present guise; and she, too, needed someone to trust. Suffering is intolerable when it is endured in isolation, thought Huy; and action to end it needs help.
    ‘I asked for more time because I want to get Ay’s measure-He has a hold over me which I do not like. If for any reason Horemheb gets wind of what I know, or of what I am doing, before Ay is ready, Ay will toss me to him without a thought. By placating Horemheb he could buy himself more time.’
    ‘But don’t you have enough on Horemheb to give Ay now? Enough for him to use to bring the general down?’
    ‘I think so. But