The House of the Abyss

Once their figures had dwindled into the distance, Kian passed through the pylon gate of the Temple of Hathor. Beyond the great court and the colonnade, the temple's undercroft twisted like a labyrinth; anyone who was not a jailer or one of the temple's overseers was bound to lose the way and wander. Kian, though, had heard its plan repeated until he was sick of it, while treating a patient who had once served as a jailer. Kept too long in that lightless dark, the man had fallen prey to visions and phantom voices, and day after day he had poured out secrets he would never have spoken in his right mind. Past the laboratories attached to the House of Life and the house of books crammed with ancient scrolls, turn where the halls great and small began, and there you would find the House of Darkness and the House of the Abyss, where criminals were held. Who would have thought those words, heard until they grated and still remembered, would one day be of use to him?

Yet when he slipped into the House of Darkness with his footsteps hushed, the first cell held not the Pesejet he had hoped for, but Iuni.

"So my innocence is proven!"

Unlike Kian, disappointed to find it was not Pesejet, Iuni broke into a guileless grin at the sudden sight of him and rejoiced aloud.

"No. A writ has come, ordering you conveyed to Karnak in Thebes. Once you're there, you'll most likely face the extreme penalty."

"The extreme penalty?"

"If you're lucky, you'll drink the poisoned cup. If you're not, you'll be dropped onto a sharpened stake. Pierce a vital organ or a major vessel and you die quickly—but if the point catches you clumsily in the wrong place..."

"This damned Egypt!"

Shock seized Iuni, and he began kicking the wall until the blows thudded.

"This rotten Egypt! Is this all I get for giving up a chieftain's seat?"

"I have the key to this place."

Iuni, who had been taking his fury out on the wall, dropped to his knees before Kian—bronze key in hand—and gazed up at him as if he were looking upon a divine image.

"Will you use this key and risk a charge of flight added to the rest, if it means escaping the extreme penalty? Or will you stay here and trust your fate to the fairness of the trial?"

"...Open it. Now."

Afraid, perhaps, that Kian might change his mind and shut him in again, Iuni—wooden manacles still on his wrists—shot out through the door the instant the bronze key turned in the lock.

"Couldn't you get these manacles off me too?"

"I don't have the key to the wooden cuffs. And I haven't the strength."

"Even so, just a little..."

"I said I haven't the strength!"

Leaving the whining Iuni behind him, Kian cast about the House of Darkness in search of Pesejet.

"They've added blasphemy and insult to the royal house to Pesejet's charges. She's in the House of the Abyss, as I understand it."

The House of the Abyss. The shock of it seemed to stop the blood in his heart more completely than the news of the transfer to Karnak. Not one soul who had entered that place had escaped the extreme penalty at Karnak. The sin of freeing those confined beneath the temple would weigh his heart down, and at the judgment of Osiris after death it would tip the balance of the scales. Heavier by far than the Feather of Ma'at, that heart would become fodder for the ravenous beast waiting beside the scales, and he would never so much as set foot in the eternal world. Even so, he could not send Pesejet to Karnak.

"Brother! They've proved I'm innocent, haven't they?"

Pesejet, catching sight of Kian, asked it in a voice bright with hope.

"You told them you'd been riding about on a leopard, and you still expected that? First we get out. Then we find a way to prove your innocence. Hurry—out."

He had no intention whatever of leaving her in this perilous House of the Abyss, and so, without asking her leave, he fitted the key into the lock of the abyss cell.

"I'd rather just stay. They say the truth comes out one way or another."

"Then you die. You'll take the extreme penalty, or you'll sicken and die at forced labor. They might even throw your body out in the desert. If the corpse is destroyed, you never reach the eternal world. You know that as well as I do."

When he named the worst of it without flinching, Pesejet, at last grasping how matters stood, answered in a trembling voice.

"Even so, there's no way to run. They'll catch us before we even clear the village."

"The water-bearers will be here any moment, with great jars of water loaded on a cart."

"Water-bearers! That pack of filth—even if I hacked them to pieces and fed every scrap to the hyenas, it wouldn't be enough!"

At the mention of the water-bearers—the men with whom his former wife Sebua had been unfaithful—Iuni breathed hard and seethed, but Kian pretended not to notice and went on.

"Once they pour the water into the village's communal jars, the great jars will be empty. Hide in the empty ones and get clear of the village."

"But then they'll add flight to the charges..."

"Only if you're caught. What difference does one more charge of flight make when you're already as good as dead? Go to Karnak like this, and you die."

Perhaps it was the press of time. Harsh words he did not mean kept spilling from Kian's mouth.

"If I'm dead either way, I'll kill those cursed water-bearers and die on the spot myself!"

"Catch the one who truly harmed Master Usir, and wait until Pesejet's name is cleared. Then do as you like. I won't stop you. Kill them, by all means, and die right there yourself. Understood?"

"...The paved road will be crowded with people coming and going, so it'd be better to slip out when the jolting is worst."

Iuni, who a moment before had been ranting that he would slaughter the water-bearers on the spot, grew meek instead when Kian declined to restrain him. Insomnia and melancholy seemed to be ruining the man's character. Hoping that once Iuni and Pesejet were clear of the false charges and their lives had steadied, he might have the chance to examine that strain in earnest, Kian led the way out of the Temple of Hathor.

Whether because the debate to choose a new overseer of works was in full swing, not a single soul appeared as they made their way toward the village entrance.

"There—the water-bearers!"

Kian looked where Iuni was pointing and shouting, and saw two water-bearers drawing a cart heaped with great jars of water toward the village gate. Hidden with the others behind a date palm, he watched them pour their load into the village's communal jars. When the men set down the emptied vessels, hefted the ones still full, and moved away from the cart, Kian signaled the two in wooden manacles with a glance. This was the moment—the one chance to hide inside the jars.

He had shut the lid of the first jar, the one concealing Pesejet, and was about to close the second, where Iuni had hidden, when he sensed someone beside him. Had they been found? He started and turned—and there, standing near him for who knew how long, was the weaver Iset, wife of the murdered overseer Usir.

"Lady Iset, we were..."

"You needn't explain. I've been watching your movements."

To be caught like this before they had even left the village. While Kian stood stricken by the shock of failure, unable to offer so much as a single excuse, Iuni—still crouched in the jar whose lid had not yet been shut—thrust his head out and spoke.

"I truly did not harm Master Usir. I swear it on the beard of Osiris."

"I know. Until the true culprit is caught, hide yourselves with Lady Sebua's help. She has established herself in Thebes."

He had scarcely a moment to be astonished by words he had never expected from Iset before the water-bearers' voices reached them. Afraid of being discovered, Kian slammed the lid on the jar that held Iuni, then dragged Iset behind the date palm.

"Strange. Not a single guardsman in sight today. With that black officer gone, I can actually breathe."

"Even so, watch yourself. Because of that wife of his who got caught sporting with a water-bearer, he grinds his teeth and swears he'll kill us on sight."

"I'm scared out of my wits. Why'd anyone go and touch a Nubian warrior's wife!"

"They say he had more than thirty local wives back in Nubia. When his lady found out too late, she flew into a fury and said she wanted him to see her with a man too—handed over a lump of silver and asked them to put on a show."

"Staking your life on one lump of silver. Tch. Idiot."

All the while he crouched behind the palm listening to the water-bearers, Kian fretted that the enraged Iuni might burst from the jar—but the thing he feared did not happen. A little later, their delivery finished, the water-bearers drove the cart, drawn by two donkeys, out of the village.

He wanted to chase after it at once, but for Nenefer's safety he had to return the bronze key she had given him. When he came back to the village assembly hall, Paser, newly chosen as overseer of works, and the painter Uas, who had succeeded him as foreman of the left side, were giving their addresses.

"You're here?"

Nenefer came up and spoke to Kian quietly.

"I came to say goodbye. I'm going after them too. Take care of yourself, Nenefer."

"When you say it like that, it sounds as if we'll never see each other again. Don't talk as though this is the last time."

"Do what you can to catch the true culprit. I'll see you again."

Having bid farewell to the sorrowful Nenefer, Kian looked toward his father Djau, the coppersmith from Cyprus, and his mother Alida, the village wet nurse, praying they would keep their health until the day they met again, and then stepped out of the hall.

"Kian!"

He could not deceive his mother after all. Alida had followed him out. Though he had said nothing, she seemed to see straight through her son's heart, and she spoke as one who already knew everything.

"The scarab ring must never leave your finger, no matter what happens. There was an oracle of the cobra goddess Meretseger: so long as you have it, you will not lose yourself. You know that well enough, don't you?"

Wondering what the oracle meant by not losing himself, Kian closed his hand around the finger that wore the scarab ring, then opened it again.

"It will protect you. Do not take the ring off."

"Yes, Mother."

"Come back safe, my son. And look after Pesejet for me."

Alida, whose embrace had always been warm, held her son Kian tightly, then went back into the assembly hall.