City of the Dead Read Online Free PDF

awaits.”
    I paused to steady my voice, then squared off against the king. “I cannot allow his killer to remain unjudged.”
    Khufu put his hands to his hips and lifted his head. “Justice will do nothing for Mentu. And I cannot spare you from the building project to chase after a mystery.”
    Merit’s eyes darkened and a crease formed between them, but she said nothing.
    “He was my friend,” I said.
    “And also mine. But as one of your chief overseers, his crossing to the west will endanger the timetable of the project even further.”
    “Do you care for nothing but the pyramid?”
    In the dim light I saw Khufu’s eyebrows lift in amusement at the accusation I’d heard directed toward myself. He nodded toward Mentu’s body. “We never know when the gods might require our presence. And what of Egypt, if I should be called before my tomb is ready?”
    Behind us, the slaughterers had begun hacking up the ox’s carcass. Death seemed to hover in this place, ready to alight on any of us.
    Khufu was right. The House of Eternity I built for him was, in some way, a guarantee of eternity for all of us. As the king went, so went all of Egypt.
    Still, Khufu’s refusal to pursue justice in this matter troubled me. Mentu’s death had brought a disruption to ma’at, that principle of justice and divine order that held all of Egypt together. This also was important.
    I raised my chin like a faithful soldier. “I will not fail you,” I said.
    He gave me a quick smile, as though he knew I would not refuse him, and turned away.
    My gaze slipped back to Mentu. Last night had been goodbye, though neither of us knew. And I will not fail you either, my friend.
    * * *
    If there were a way to keep crews working through the night on this great project we had undertaken, I would have done so. But the desert at night is as black as the soil after the flood waters have gone, and men fear darkness as much as they love their sleep. As it was, I spent a restless night, tossing in my bed, with images of Mentu’s lifeless eyes, oxen blood, and the half-finished pyramid chasing through my meager dreams.
    Midway through the night, I finally rose and applied myself to a design I had been drawing in my leisure—a corral of sorts for the masons’ tools when they laid them aside on the pyramid. Of late, chisels and drills had been slipping over the edge, injuring laborers on the ramps below. Men of Egypt, even common workers, were not expendable to my mind.
    I finished the drawing and rolled the papyrus. The sun god had not yet been reborn in the east, but I undertook my morning rituals and then headed for the workmen’s village. It was time to find answers. And to find justice for Mentu, regardless of Khufu’s instructions.
    The village spread only a few thousand cubits south of my own home on the royal estate and could be reached on foot. We were all connected, the people who had undertaken the Horizon of Khufu. I walked the path with my staff at my side, poking angry holes in the soft sand.
    Few people understood the scope of my project. It was left to me to chart the twenty-year course of the work. We were five years in, and only slightly behind schedule. A harbor had been excavated at the edge of the desert, to bring the Nile water and ships from Tura, from Aswan and Nubia, carrying all manner of wood, stone, and gold for the project. The village had been built to house the labor force—forty-five streets intersecting in a lovely grid of sixtysymmetrical blocks, like two enormous Senet boards laid side by side. The valley temple at the edge of the harbor was already in place, and the mortuary temple at the base of the pyramid would be finished after the great structure was complete, as would the causeway that would connect the valley and mortuary temples. There were still the queens’ pyramids to be built, the boat pits, the many flat-topped mastaba tombs for officials and nobles. A true city of the dead.
    I passed the wheat and