City of the Dead

toneless.
    ‘You do not have a choice,’ retorted Ay, harshly. ‘I will give you five days to reconsider. If you refuse me you risk much.’ Feeling that with this threat he had gone too far, he brought their conversation to an abrupt end, with only as much ceremony as was necessary to prevent the observers’ tongues wagging, and left her. Pointedly, he did not bother to reach the door before turning his back.
    Ankhsenpaamun managed to hold back her tears long enough to dismiss the women, then she let go and threw herself on to a chair, giving way to the anger, grief, frustration and loneliness which she could bear no longer.

    ‘Nehesy isn’t here any more,’ said the stable boy with the carbuncle to Huy. They stood in the dusty yard. Over it all there hung an air of neglect, disuse. Huy looked across to the animal shed, and wondered how the beasts there were faring.
    ‘Where has he gone?’
    The man scratched his neck. Huy noticed that two among the cluster of boils had started to fester. The man needed medical treatment quickly, or he would risk gangrene. ‘They took him away.’
    ‘Who did?’
    ‘I thought you were a palace official. The Medjays did.’
    ‘Arrested him?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘When?’
    Scratching again, and squinting into the sun, the man said, ‘Four days ago.’
    ‘Did you find out what for?’
    ‘Do they need a reason nowadays?’
    Huy glanced towards the huntsman’s house.
    ‘No good looking there,’ said the stable boy. ‘The family’s gone too.’
    ‘What?’
    ‘Yes. There’s a new chief huntsman.’
    ‘Who?’
    The man grinned. ‘Me. Don’t look so alarmed. No one’s got time for hunting just now so I’m a sort of caretaker. This thing on my neck’s going to put me into the Boat of the Night before I’m much older, anyway.’
    ‘You could have it treated.’
    ‘I haven’t time to leave the animals. Somebody’s got to keep them clean and fed and exercised.’
    ‘But what’ll happen afterwards?’
    The man shrugged. ‘Everyone’s got to die sooner or later. I expect they’ll appoint somebody, once they’ve settled whose going to rule us. There’ll always be hunting, whoever’s in charge.’
    ‘What’s happened to Nehesy’s wife? Where’s she gone?’
    ‘Her parents have a farm just north of the city.’
    ‘I don’t even know her name.’
    ‘Aahetep, if it’s any use to you. But she’s got no more idea why they took Nehesy than I have.’
    Huy hurried back through the city. The sun at midday was so harsh by this time in the season that all activity ceased until the breeze picked up again towards evening. Business was compressed into the hours of the early matet boat and the late seqtet boat. It was now late in the morning so the streets were clearing, and although the rickshaw puller he had hired grumbled unceasingly under his breath at the mercilessness of expecting him to drive in this heat, they covered the distance between the palace and the northern streets of the town in fewer than thirty minutes.
    The city ended abruptly. The sheer walls of the houses, elevated on their low hill of centuries of detritus and the rubble of earlier buildings, which protected them from the worst of the annual river floods, gave way immediately to fields which were parched and cracked now, but which would very soon be flooded with the rich black silt which was the life-giving gift of Hapy. The River had risen already, the red sand which gave it its colour at this time of year swirling on its surface as it passed northward on its long journey to the Great Green.
    As Huy walked along its shore he startled a flock of egrets which rose white in the sun on silent wings, only mildly irritated by the disturbance, to settle again a handful of paces further on. From this new position they paid no more attention to him.
    On the distant west bank it was just possible to make out the dun forms of herons, but only when one of them abandoned its still-as-stone posture to dart at a fish, or rose in unhurried flight to curl above the implacable rocks of the valley beyond. Near the shores, duck and geese swam, scooping the surface of the River for food, and farther downstream, where smooth rocks shelved to the water’s edge, crocodiles basked in the sun, warming themselves for the evening’s hunt. Near them, coots scuttled through the current in nervous teams.
    A handful of villages, thatched mud buildings the colour of the land, clutched the ground in tight clusters on