Free The Right Hand of Amon by Lauren Haney

father's influence. "When was Puemre first discovered missing?"
    "His sergeant, Minnakht, reported him gone the morning of the afternoon we found him."
    Bak was accustomed to the oblique way Imsiba sometimes spoke, but as always he had to struggle to make sense of the words. "Two days before you told Woser we'd found the body. Two whole days, and he didn't send a message to Thuty. How did he explain that?"
    "He offered no reason, nor was it my place to ask." Imsiba gave Bak the same dour look as before. "Can you not close your eyes to such a small lapse? You'd be much happier leading me and our men in Amon-Psaro's guard of honor than spending day after day in Iken."
    Refusing to admit, even to himself, how tempted he was to heed Imsiba's plea, Bak drew the Medjay off the paved street at the rear of the guardhouse. The sandy plot was cluttered with building materials: drying bricks, wood of varying lengths, a few stone slabs.
    He dropped the rock, brushed his hands together to remove the dust, and sat down on a stack of wood. "If Woser neglected to report the absence of a nobleman, what else will he fail to do?"
    "The men of the garrison think him a worthy and honorable man. He'll do what he must."
    "Will he?"
    Imsiba's brow furrowed with disappointment. "If not for you, my friend, I and all our men would still be looked upon with suspicion, as we were when first we came to Buhen. Now that a time has come when we're to be given a place of honor, you must stand at our head, for without you there, our triumph will be hollow."
    Bak felt as if he was being torn in two. "Don't you know how much I want to go with you, Imsiba? But I want also to do my duty. And if it takes me to Iken, I must go."
    Imsiba shifted from one foot to another, uncomfortable with the decision.
    Bak rose from the woodpile and forced a smile. "I can promise you one thing, my brother: I'll do all in my power to resolve this death as fast as I can. With luck, the lord Amon will smile on me, and I'll be free by the time he reaches Iken." He clapped his friend on the shoulder. "Now, go find a place for a swim."
    Imsiba gave him a halfhearted smile and hurried down the street to the fortress gate. Bak picked up the chunk of stone, swung around, and hurled it as hard as he could at the mudbrick retaining wall that supported the mound on which the mansion of Horus stood. A puff of dust erupted from the slight hollow it made. Given enough time and a sufficient number of rocks, he could lay bare the temple foundations. He prayed he could gather enough pebbles of information to reveal Puemre's slayer in time to go upriver, as he had promised Imsiba.
    Bak stood with his fellow officers on the stone terrace facing the river. His eyes, like those of every man, woman, and child of Buhen, were locked on the sacred barge of the lord Amon, moored at the quay projecting into the water from the pylon gate leading into the mansion of Horus of Buhen. The long, slender hull, the canopied dais rising amidship, and the sacred barque within, all sheathed in gold, glittered in the harsh midafternoon sunlight. The slim and elegant image of a man, the lord Amon, formed of solid gold, as tall as Bak's arm from elbow to fist, stood in a golden shrine atop the barque. As the white-robed priests on board performed their ministrations, the vessel rocked gently on the water; the bright painted ram's heads carved on prow and stern rose and fell in tandem.
    Bak closed his eyes and waited for the glowing reflection to fade from inside his lids. Having lived as a youth in the capital, he had seen the enshrined god many times. The sight never ceased to move him, but he no longer felt the single-minded awe of men and women who had never before set eyes on the greatest of all the gods.
    With his vision returned to normal, he scanned the river, the crowded quays and waterfront, searching for his men and for possible sources of disruption. Sailors on the warship that had towed the barge upriver were