Free City of Dreams by Anton Gill

for word from Merymose. Then, the emptiness of his purse and the bareness of his kitchen had forced him to find work of any kind. Confronting Nubenehem with his problem, she had introduced him to another customer of the City of Dreams, an elderly papermaster with flaccid skin and a bald pate ringed with long, dank hair. This man, who told Huy that he only went to the place to drink, never having had a problem when it came to finding a girl, was looking urgently for somebody to work on his paperbeating team as one of his men had died suddenly from river fever. Huy knew something about papyrus, having spent most of his life writing on it, and had managed to convince the man that he knew how to make it, without giving away too much of his true background. He had been taken on.
    At first, as he worked, he had reminisced pleasantly to himself about the smells and the texture of paper and ink, and about the pleasure of opening a new roll of papyrus, laid out as far as there was need on soft leather spread over a wooden writing desk; then mixing the ink powder with water, and the nervous moment of dipping the brush to make the first signs — to load the brush just so, in order that the ink would be absorbed by the paper before it could run down it. He remembered the floggings which, when he was a student, had followed the botching of a papyrus. Now, after thirty days at this backbreaking and endless task, he realised why. But his fellow workers were happy and prosperous. Demand for their product was unceasing, and their labour was steady and safe.
    Its dullness stifled Huy’s heart, and he began to question the sense of feeding his belly at the expense of his mind, though such noble sentiments could hardly be his to indulge. He thought of Merymose, and wondered how he was progressing, with time running out as the embalmers pressed on with their task. He had not returned to see Taheb, partly out of pride, partly out of uncertainty. At their last meeting a line had been reached, and despite the urgings of his senses at the time, he was not sure that they wanted to cross it. At the same time he was puzzled by her silence, after such friendliness. Was she thinking as he was? Was each of them waiting for the other to make the next move?
    Ten more days were to pass before the longed for interruption to Huy’s humdrum existence occurred. For some time now he had not been aware of being followed, and he knew, too, that no one had searched his house in his absence. Every day when he left for work, he would leave objects such as a scroll or a limestone flake, or his kohl - pot , a certain measured distance from the edge of the table on which they lay, and from each other. However carefully the house might have been searched, those distances would have changed. They never did. Huy put it all down to his regular job. Perhaps the authorities thought that he had finally knuckled under. It occurred to him that a full belly was not all he had his tedious employment to thank for.
    One evening, however, as the never-failing north wind freshened, rustling the tops of the dom palms as he walked back to the harbour quarter, he had the impression that someone was dogging his steps. To make sure, he altered his usual route, ducking down alleys no wider than a donkey’s girth, slipping across little squares where five ways met. The streets of the harbour quarter were quite unlike the regular, broad thoroughfares of the rest of the city. This part of town had grown up organically, defying and outgrowing any order the town planners may once have tried to impose, and Huy knew it intimately. Yet he was unable to shake off his pursuer. Finally he gave up the attempt, and took the most direct way back to his house. He was almost there when he heard the sound of running feet behind him, and turned to see Merymose coming towards him.
    ‘Thank you for the guided tour,’ said the Medjay. He looked tired and drawn, but his mouth was still a determined