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shoulder to erase the sting of my accusation. “Tell the ship’s captain to begin unloading the granite at the harbor. I will be there immediately.” And I’ll have a few things to say to the supervisors who decided to declare a holiday.
    Chuma half-smiled in understanding.
    I turned back to the old men and gripped the edge of their table, with a nod to the red-and-white Senet board. “I have no time for games, as you can see. What do you know of Mentu?”
    Most of them studied their hands or twirled game pieces in gnarled fingers. My friend on the end of the bench did not fail me.
    “You ask questions that will bring harm, not good,” he said. “You must leave it alone.” His cloudy eyes turned upward to mine and they cleared, focusing on me with the intensity of the desert sun. “For the good of Egypt.”
    I could have pushed him further, though I suspected I would get nothing more. But there was no time. I glanced over the village wall to the half-finished pyramid in the west. Plans must be revisited, granite shipments directed, lazy men put back to work.
    The Horizon of Khufu must be my one and only focus. Without my complete attention, the project would falter.
    Perhaps, as the old man said, I must leave questions of justice to the gods.
    Surely Mentu would understand.

FOUR
    On the east side of the village lived a man of whom people spoke highly. Senosiris was the construction supervisor under Mentu, but he was about to be promoted. I needed to restore order without delay. I headed to the street where he lived, a rolled papyrus in my hand.
    My workforce comprised about two-thirds conscripted labor and one-third specialists—artists, sculptors, and the like. The majority of men were farmers who came to the village for three months of the year while their land lay under water. At the end of akhet , the season of Inundation, they would return home to plough and sow. Depending on their rank, some had brought wives and children to the village. Others lived in barracks with dozens of other men.
    The houses all looked the same here on the east side of the village—utilitarian mud-brick structures with flat roofs, in straight lines like rows of barley. I intended to ask the location of Senosiris’s house of a young man on the street ahead, but when he glanced my way, he darted into an alley and was gone. He was old enough to be a laborer, and I assumed he too was avoiding his work today.
    I stopped a running child. “Do you know Senosiris, the construction supervisor?”
    A smile like the sun broke over the boy’s face. “Ah, Sen-Sen!” He pointed down a narrow street. “The last house. There.”
    I squeezed his shoulder in thanks and headed down the street. The red-painted lintel confirmed the home was the one I sought. Two large clay pots flanked the doorway, filled with water. A bright white linen hung at the window and billowed outward with the breeze.
    A pungent smell greeted me at the door and led me inward. “Greetings,” I called. No doorkeeper or resident appeared. To the right, a passage led to the kitchen, and I followed the scent. A soft singing came from the room ahead, an unfamiliar melody, high and sweet. I approached in silence, not wanting the music to stop.
    There stood a woman at a brazier, her back to me. She wore no wig that I could tell. Her dark hair hung straight down the back of her bright red dress. Yellow beads were stitched to the bottom hem. She swayed with her tune, and her hair swung in counterpoint.
    I exhaled, and she started and turned.
    “Oh!” She held a stir-stick, brown gravy dripping from it. She laughed and caught a drip with her hand, placed the stick in a pot on the brazier, then licked her palm and laughed again. “My apologies. I did not hear you.” She held out long fingers to the passage behind me. “Please, will you come to the courtyard?”
    “Yes.” I preceded her down the hall. Behind me, the swish of her red dress embroidered with those fascinating