Sun Thief. Jamie Buxton

to get it. It was me. I’d been wrapped in a cloth, put in a little reed boat and sent off down the river. Anyway, he brought me home to my mother and she . . . Well, I don’t know. Maybe they liked me until Imi came along. Maybe she always thought I was a waste of space.’

      ‘And now he’s an innkeeper. Interesting. Second question: why are you so eager to please him and the woman? All they do is abuse you.’

      ‘You made them look stupid last night so they’ll take it out on me today,’ I say. ‘I just try to give them fewer excuses.’

      ‘No one likes a cringer,’ he says.

      That hurts like a slap in the face. I don’t say anything, but I feel a hatred for him so deep and strong that I can hardly breathe.

      He nods. ‘All right,’ he says in that quiet voice. ‘There’s a bit of life in you, boy. Third question: what’s changed?’

      ‘What does the master mean?’ I say, adjusting my tone. Submissive, sullen, sarcastic. I know how to annoy guests.

      ‘The master means what he says,’ he answers right back.

      ‘Because the master stood up for me last night, I now have money,’ I say. ‘That’s changed.’ I take the tips from my purse and offer them to him. ‘Does the master want a cut?’

      ‘No.’

      ‘Then I don’t know what the master means.’

      ‘The master will tell you, boy. When I arrived at the inn, you were curious about me. But from the moment you walked in last night, you’ve been keeping something from me. So what’s changed?’

      I try to hide my shock and start to bluster. ‘I don’t understand the master. I’m only a poor serving boy. The master knows how grateful I was. Am! I’m still grateful. That is what the master sees.’

      My dumb act only amuses him. ‘Anyone who can make this –’ he holds up the little mud sphinx ‘– has got more than nothing going on between his ears. It’s not grateful I’m seeing. It’s something else. You went away to pick up your sister. You came back filthy and knowing. Now, how do two little brats get dirty like that? From playing? I don’t think so. From running? Maybe. From hiding?’

      The shock must show again because he says: ‘I can see through you like water, boy. Where were you hiding?’

      ‘The City of the Dead,’ I say, resistance crumbling.

      His eyes narrow. ‘Why would a cringer take his sister into the City of the Dead?’

      I shake my head. ‘She ran into it on the way back.’

      ‘Why did she do that?’

      ‘She said it was a short cut. And she thought it was funny that I was scared and she wasn’t.’

      He closes his eyes slowly. It’s like his mind is chewing what I say to get the full flavour of it. Then the eyes open. ‘But last night the little girl said she had been scared. Not of the dead or she would have stayed away. Why is that?’

      I feel I’ve just walked into a trap that I knew was there all along. My mouth opens and closes.

      ‘You tell me if you know so much,’ I just about dare to say.

      He shakes his head, then stands, those awful, thick arms heavy by his side.

      ‘We’ll get to the bottom of it, boy. I’m going for a little stroll, but we’ll talk again when I come back.’ And he walks out of the courtyard.

      I’m so scared that I want to be sick.

      I try to settle down at the wheel to make more plates and beakers, but it’s like he’s put a spell on me. My hand can’t shape the mud, can’t make it rise and hollow into a beaker or thin into a plate.

      This has never happened to me before, but my hands find something else to do. They pick up a lump of mud and start to shape it. A big, round head, piggy little eyes, nose like a broken rudder and an oddly full mouth. The Quiet Gentleman is the colour of mud anyway and no one seeing my model of him could mistake it for anyone else. Or mistake what I think of him.

      I leave it on his bench, then retreat into my corner to think.

      No one likes a cringer, the Quiet Gentleman says. Well, I’ll show him what a cringer can do. From the way the tomb robbers were talking, it’s clear he’s brought something valuable with him, so when I go off to sweep his room, I check for soft earth where he might have dug a hole in the floor.

      Nothing.

      I run my hands over the walls, looking for missing bricks. All present and correct. A sudden burst of certainty sends me up a ladder to check the roof, but there’s nothing up there either. Now I have to hurry, because how long can he be out strolling for?

      Come on, come on . . .

      My father comes out of the kitchen and scratches himself in the morning sunshine. He looks at me warily. I will him to notice that the courtyard has been cleaned from the night before and I’ve been out to get milk and bread.

      He notices all right. He clears his throat, spits and says: ‘Have you cleaned the shrine? It must be filthy. Take a broom down there and make sure you do a good job.’

      It’s like a sudden handclap of understanding. That’s the place I should be searching.

      Once, a long time ago, there must have been a temple or palace where our inn is now. If you dig in the courtyard you can find huge blocks of smooth stone just a little way down. All gone now but for a sort of hut with the goddess in it and that’s our shrine.

      I’ve never liked visiting the shrine. Now the gods are hiding, the statue down there is not much more than a stone corpse.

      The light comes through the holes in the roof so she’s always half lit, a worn lump of rock with an animal head and a woman’s body. I think she was meant to be Sekmet, goddess of war and plague, but my father thought there were more commercial possibilities if she was one of the fertility goddesses, so he borrowed a chisel and hacked away until she looked a bit more like a hippo and said she was Tawaret, the goddess of making babies.

      It worked, I guess, because Imi arrived, but I still think the goddess looks more like Sekmet, and a pretty angry Sekmet at that.

      I stand in front of her. She doesn’t look at me, just keeps on staring at the entrance with her badly painted eyes, like she’s wondering where the crowds have gone. I put a coin between her stone feet and say: ‘I’m going to look behind you. I hope it’s not rude. Please don’t give me the plague if you’re Sekmet, or a baby if you’re Tawaret. I don’t know why the king killed you off, but it doesn’t matter really, does it? You’re still here and you’re not going anywhere. Thanks.’

      With a last glance up to see if she’s angry, I squeeze into the space behind her. It’s darker round here. No sand. A flagstone rocks slightly under my feet. I manage to lever it up and peer into the dark hole. I should have brought a taper from the kitchen fire . . .

      The darkness moves. I know I’m not imagining it. There’s just enough light to see something dark in there, as dark as water, gleaming like water, pouring itself like water, but with more purpose. And rustling with a dry sort of hiss.

      Snake!

      I jump back and the flagstone falls, but instead of a dull whump there’s a wet crunch, then . . . nothing. I wait, motionless. Still nothing.

      Swallowing my fear, I reach down and touch the dead snake’s head, half severed by the edge of the falling flagstone, which I lift again and push back.

      The first thing I find is a leather roll, wrapped tightly. The second is a small bag that is