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paddocks lay. The drovers, he guessed, were branding a new herd driven into Buhen the previous day. Closer to hand, thin columns of smoke spiraled up from the metalsmiths' workshops. The sharp smell of molten metal and white-hot fuel mingled with the faint, everpresent odor of manure and the aromas of fish and onions and cooking oil.
    The soft crunch of sandals on grit drew his eyes to the passage through the tower. The large white form within grew more distinct and soon an obese old woman lumbered out. Sweat dripped from her jowls, formed stained crescents beneath the armholes of her long white sheath, and glued the fabric to her back and into the cleft between her heavy, sagging breasts.
    She glared at Bak. "Can you never go about your duties in the early morning or in the evening, as civilized men do?"
    "Would you've preferred, Nofery, that I pull you from your sleeping pallet?" His voice was stern, but his eyes twinkled with fondness.
    She sniffed. "Little you care what suits me."
    The sentry grinned from ear to ear. "Think you can show the scribblers how to hold their morning meal, my little ewe?"
    With a coy smile, she patted the front of his kilt where it covered the joining of his legs. "You jest now at my expense, but you'll seek my favors quick enough when next you come to my place of business."
    The sentry pushed himself against her as if it was she he visited instead of one of the young seductresses who earned their bread in her house of pleasure.
    Laughing, Bak clapped the sentry on the shoulder, caught Nofery's arm, and drew her onto a path squeezed between the jumbled block of buildings and the sunken walkway at the base of the citadel wall. "You can seduce anyone you like when your time is your own, old woman, but now you have a task to perform for me alone."
    He could see she liked the inference that she might still be able to lure a man into her bed, especially a strapping young ram like the sentry, but she jerked her arm from his and hid her pleasure in a scowl.
    "I rue the day I agreed to be your spy," she said. "If I'd not been so free with my promises, I'd not be obliged to answer to your every beck and call."
    She was walking so fast Bak had trouble keeping up with her. For one so put upon, she was wasting no time.
    Bak watched Nofery with smarting eyes and a queasiness that always came upon him in the house of death. Hot, sticky air enveloped him like a cloak. The stench of decay, the sweet perfumes used for embalming, and the musty odor of ceremonial incense assaulted his nostrils. Smoke from a poorly made wick rose from an oil lamp, sending tendrils of vapor drifting through the air like wraiths from , the netherworld. He had come to this place many times, and the oppressive atmosphere never failed to make him feel that he stood on the threshold of an eternity he was in no way prepared to inhabit.
    Nofery stood beside a thigh-high stone embalming table, studying the naked body lying in the shallow trough carved into its upper surface. If she had ever seen the dead man before, the knowledge was hidden behind the perfumesoaked square of linen she held over her nose and mouth.
    "Do you recognize him?" Bak doubted she did; she had been silent too long.
    "The face, I think, is familiar, yes." Her eyes, narrow and sly, slid toward him. "If you were to jog my memory, perhaps with a small favor. . . "
    He buried his surprise-and mistrust-in a frown. "This isn't the market, old woman. You can't haggle with me over this man's name as you would with a merchant over the price of an onion."
    "I've no wealth to speak of, and I'm no longer in the prime of life," she said in a plaintive voice. "Yet I must make my way alone in this hard, cruel land. Have you no pity?"
    Unmoved, he leaned against the empty table behind him and crossed his arms over his chest. "Before a melon can be eaten, the vine must be given water in sufficient quantities to allow the fruit to mature."
    The wrinkles deepened at the comers of