City of Dreams Read Free Page A

caused only by his having been unable to accept her letter. He wished now, in a spirit of self-torture, that he had not destroyed the papyrus on which her firm hand had spelt out their situation with such merciless exactness. The trouble with the end of an affair, whether it has lasted one year or twenty, Huy reflected for the hundredth time, retracing the barren ground of his life like a dog which has lost the scent, is that the partner who leaves has already left in the heart.
    Humiliated and miserable, he had subjected Aset to a series of wretched deaths in his imagination, before regretting each; just as he had envisaged a sudden change in his fortunes, making her accessible to him — but in his thoughts coming at a time when he no longer wanted her, however bitter her penitence might be at having thrust him aside. At his core, though, was a seed which would grow and grow, finally blossoming as the rank flower of acceptance, the harbinger of cure.
    By the time Aset had married Neferweben, the former nomarch at Hu and now a gold dealer in the Northern Capital, six months after her brother’s death and three since her letter of dismissal to Huy, the scribe was beginning to be able to thank his guardian Ka for small blessings: that she was no longer living in the same city, and that Neferweben may have been rich, but was also fat and fifty, and missing an ear from a skirmish against desert raiders in his youth. Aset, just turned nineteen, had explained to Huy that she needed to consolidate her fortune and business. For his part Huy, who might have entertained hopes of joining Aset in the shipping business and helping her to expand, in competition with Taheb, her former sister-in-law, now told himself that marriage to such a venal woman would have been doomed from the start in any case. All these new, righteous, male thoughts helped for short periods. In time, however, they had become a poor substitute for an empty bed and no work.
    The empty bed could be remedied with ease; living as he did near the port, the whorehouses were close by, and they were maintained to a fairly high standard of cleanliness by the city authorities. But a body paid to be there is no substitute for a heart that wants to be.
    Work was another matter. Certain people with influence knew the major part Huy had played in solving the mystery which had ended so tragically; but none of them were friends now. He was tolerated by the authorities, though still kept under occasional surveillance by General Horemheb’s police, the Medjays. His ambition — to be allowed to work as a scribe once more — was as far off as ever. Discreetly, he advertised for the work fate had given him. Former colleagues would mention his name as a problem solver at the foot of information papyri, and he made sure that in court and palace circles those whose matrimonial and business interests and difficulties might put them in need of him should not forget his services and his whereabouts. After that, it was a question of sitting, waiting, and growing thinner, together with his dwindling supplies.
    Amid shouts of warning and panic from the sailors on the foredeck, the huge barge, sunk to the waterline by the weight of the massive red obelisk in its cradle, wrenched free of the helmsmen’s control and, pushed by a vigorous undercurrent of the River, hurled itself against a jetty wall of the Southern Capital. Several men were thrown on to the deck by the impact, and in the brief pandemonium which followed, it seemed as if the boat had split, and might sink, there and then, at the end of its journey. But the groaning timbers held, though a plank in the half-decking astern snapped with a noise like a lightning crack, and one of the derricks on shore swayed dangerously, threatening to fall.
    Surere, released from his bonds by Khaemhet, along with the other prisoner-quarrymen brought to augment the crew, cast a quick glance fore and aft. The barge wallowed to such a degree that it was