Year of the Hyenas Read Online Free PDF

dead in their tombs in the west. And though they shared the capital
of the world between them, the mayors were so unlike in temperament and
philosophy that there could not be found two more dissimilar men in all
the rest of it.
    Paser was fat,
prosperous, quick to laugh, in character exactly like the people over
whom he ruled. His true parents had been lowly fishmongers, but the
young Paser was so pleasant and engaging that a childless scribe had
adopted him into his family years before and sent him to the House of
Life to become a scribe himself. There Paser had learned the 770 sacred
writing symbols in the shortest time ever recorded in the temple’s
history—for the one thing that exceeded his girth, it was discovered,
was his cleverness.
    After
graduation into
the priesthood, Paser entered the city administration offices and had
risen swiftly. At twenty-seven years of age, he now found himself
appointed mayor of Eastern Thebes, reporting directly to the high
vizier of Egypt. It was a satisfying position to have achieved at so
young an age. Paser relished his office enormously and never so much as
now, when the gates of his compound opened and the cries of the crowd
greeted him.
    Paser leaned
from his
chair to clasp their outstretched hands in his. “Nefer!” he called to
an ancient crone. “Still the most beautiful woman in Egypt!” The woman
blew him a kiss from withered lips. “Hori, you rascal!” He turned his
attention to a legless beggar. “Watch your purses, citizens; he’s
quicker than a gazelle!” The beggar laughed in glee, taking no offense
at his words.
    Then, sniffing
the
air, Paser swore that the fish frying on a nearby griddle was the best
to be had in all of Thebes—and who should know better than he, the
child of fishmongers? This was the cue for Nenry to toss small rings of
copper into the crowd. The mayor challenged them all to taste for
themselves and see if he was a liar. The grateful fish vendor sent over
a slab of greasy river perch, spiced with cumin, and the mayor gobbled
it down, delivering hymns of praise and delight between gulps. By the
time his chair was borne to the main avenue along the riverfront, the
crowd was chanting hymns to him as though he were Pharaoh himself.
    Nenry trotted
alongside the sedan chair, all the while trying to answer the sharp
questions that Paser put to him.
    “Is the Old
Horror
coming as well, Nenry?”
    The “Old
Horror” was
the epithet by which Paser designated his colleague Pawero, the Western
Mayor.
    “Yes, lord,
the
summons included the Old—the mayor of the West.”
    “What was its
tone?”
    “Pardon, lord?”
    “Come on, come
on,
Nenry—what did it read like? Angry, threatening, cold, what?”
    “No, my lord!
It was
full of the usual compliments.”
    “Nothing
indicating
displeasure?”
    “Nothing,
lord.”
    The mayor
brooded. “I
still don’t like it. Why ask the Old Horror to attend? A crime, after
all, that occurred in my side of the city. What does it have to
do with him ?”
    Paser fell to
uncharacteristic moodiness and he and his scribe traveled the last few
furlongs to the Temple of Ma’at in silence. As luck would have it,
Pawero’s river barge pulled up to the stone wharf just as Paser and
Nenry came to the broad stretch of ramp that led into the temple.
Pawero sat motionless as a god’s statue beneath the barge’s wooden
canopy as the boat bumped against the bales of straw cushioning the
wharf. Once the tethers were secure he rose, majestic in his starched
white robes.
    Where Paser
ruled the
living part of Thebes, Pawero’s jurisdiction extended over the tombs
and mortuary temples across the Nile in the west. This included the
Place of Truth where Pharaoh’s tombmakers lived, the Great Place where
the Pharaohs rested, the Place of Beauty where their queens were
buried, and the fortress temple of Djamet, the southern residence of
Pharaoh.
    Pawero was at
forty-three a man given to pious readings and long-winded prayers.