Aani

The baboon took the accusation out of Hori’s hand before the seal had dried.

One moment Hori was blowing on the clay. The next, a grey arm swept across his writing board, and the roll vanished into a mouth full of yellow teeth.

“No,” he said. “Not that one.”

Aani climbed the post of the awning. He did it with offensive ease, three quick pulls of his long arms, the papyrus gripped sideways in his jaws. Above the account desk he settled on a beam, silver mantle spilling around his shoulders, and began to pick at the string.

Across the yard, Dedu stopped struggling with the man holding his wrists.

The porter had been shouting since sunrise. Now he watched the clay seal turn between the baboon’s fingers.

“Perhaps he wants it read to him,” Dedu said.

Hori looked toward the overseer’s door.

“Keep your voice down.”

“You wrote it loudly enough.”

The words reached him through the scrape of grain baskets and the slap of water against the landing steps. He could still see the accusation even with it rolled shut: twenty sacks issued to the porter, eighteen delivered to the village store. Beneath those figures he had written Dedu’s name, giving the last sign more care than it needed. His hand always grew careful when he wanted to stop thinking.

At the riverside gate, the boatman called that he would wait no longer. Dedu was to leave with him, bound, and the accusation was to go to the district office.

Hori held up a piece of bread.

Aani bared his teeth and pulled the string tighter.

The Small Weight

“He has already eaten,” said Seneb.

The overseer stood in the doorway, fastening the cord of his purse. He took in the empty writing board, the baboon above it, the porter waiting at the gate.

“Get it back.”

“I’m trying.”

“Try from closer.”

Hori dragged a stool to the post. Aani watched it come. The baboon’s muzzle was dark and long, the pale fur around it ragged where he had slept against the plaster. Hori knew that face better than he knew Seneb’s. Every afternoon, when the yard emptied, the creature came down to investigate his ink cups, pry at the lids and turn the reeds in his hands.

Seneb liked to point him out to visitors. Thoth’s own animal above the accounts. What better guarantee could a man require?

Standing on the stool, Hori could smell the grain dust in Aani’s fur. He offered the bread again. The baboon reached for it, and Hori seized the end of the roll.

The jaws opened.

Hori let go before they closed on his fingers. His foot slipped off the stool. He struck the desk with his hip, and the balance weights jumped in their tray.

One rolled to the edge.

He caught it.

It was the little duck-shaped weight used for the workers’ grain portions. He had carried it a hundred times. Today his thumb went into a shallow hollow beneath its belly, where a dark plug had shifted away from the stone.

He rubbed the spot. Something soft came off on his nail.

Wax.

“Put that down,” Seneb said.

Hori obeyed, but turned the duck on its side in the tray. A grain of pale sand clung to the wax under his nail.

Outside the gate Dedu was speaking to the boatman.

“Ask him how many I took. Ask the boy. He stood beside the cart.”

Yesterday Hori had stood beside Dedu’s cart as it was loaded for the village store. Eighteen sacks, their seams still wet from the supply boat, one with a split at the neck. He had counted them twice. Seneb had changed the number afterward, tapping the board with the blunt end of a reed.

You missed two. Correct it.

Hori had corrected it.

Above him came a small crack. Aani had broken the seal.

Seneb swore. “Fetch a rope.”

The yard keeper left Dedu with the boatman and came toward the awning, drawing a loop through a length of cord.

Hori pictured it tightening on one of those narrow wrists. Aani would fight. The roll would tear. Seneb would dictate another, and Hori would write twenty again.

“Wait. I can bring him down.”

“You have until that boat leaves.”

Hori took his wooden palette off its peg.

His father had cut the two ink hollows unevenly. Hori’s thumb fitted the deeper one, polished smooth by years of carrying it. Aani leaned forward when he saw it. He liked the sliding cover over the reed groove; once he had worked at it for most of an afternoon while Hori pretended not to notice.

Hori slid it open now.

The baboon’s fingers stopped worrying the string.

What Was Written

Hori laid the palette on the desk and moved away.

Aani came down headfirst, hanging from the post with one arm before dropping heavily onto the board. The accusation remained in his left hand. With his right he explored the groove, plucked out a reed and bit through its soft end.

“Take the paper,” Seneb whispered.

Hori waited until Aani needed both hands to pull the cover free.

Then he took it.

The baboon sprang backward with the palette clasped to his chest. Black ink ran down his wrist. Hori flattened the roll before Seneb could reach it.

“Eighteen,” he said.

Seneb’s hand stopped over the desk.

“What?”

“He took eighteen. That was what I wrote first.”

The yard keeper lowered the rope a little.

“A mistake,” Seneb said. “Already corrected.”

“I counted them.”

Seneb glanced toward the gate. Then he stepped close enough that Hori could see a grain husk caught in the weave of his collar.

“Your mother collected your wages yesterday.”

Hori pressed his sore hip against the desk. For a month he had slept without moving his mat away from the drips.

“I know.”

“She said the roof was repaired.”

Behind Seneb, Aani tested the palette against his teeth. A splinter lifted beside the groove.

“You’ve spoiled a sheet,” the overseer said softly. “Spoil it properly. Wet it. I’ll give you another. By evening you’ll have forgotten this.”

Hori looked at the duck in the tray.

If the wax covered a hollow, the weight was light. Every worker received less grain than the account said. There would be grain left over, grain that belonged to no one on the page.

Perhaps there was another explanation. Perhaps the underside had always looked like that.

He reached for the duck.

Seneb caught his wrist.

The grip answered the question.

“Leave it.”

Hori tried to pull free. The overseer’s thumb pressed between the bones of his arm.

At the gate, Dedu began shouting again. “What are you doing to him?”

The boatman had turned to look. So had the women waiting with empty ration baskets. Hori knew their faces. He had written beside every one of their names.

“I changed the count,” he said to them.

It came out thinly. He made himself say it again.

“I wrote twenty. There were eighteen.”

Seneb released him with a shove.

“Listen to your thief,” he told the boatman. “At last.”

Hori’s mouth went dry. He had imagined the truth leaving him cleanly, like a thorn drawn from skin. Now the porter was staring at him, and the boatman had stepped away from the gate.

“Fetch the receiving weight,” Hori said. “The one kept in the box.”

“You give no orders here.”

“Then ask him why.”

This time Hori spoke to the women.

One of them set her basket down.

Under the Baboon’s Hand

Seneb reached across the desk for the duck.

Hori snatched it first. The overseer caught his sleeve, dragging the writing board sideways. An ink cup fell. Aani screamed and launched himself from the desk onto the balance stand.

The crossbeam swung. One pan struck Hori’s forearm.

The duck flew out of his hand, hit the paving and skittered toward the narrow drain that ran down to the river.

Hori dropped to his knees. His fingers scraped stone. The weight struck the lip of the drain and tipped.

A bare foot stopped it.

Dedu stood above him with the binding still around his wrists. He pressed the duck against the paving with his heel.

“This?” he said.

Hori nodded.

The porter looked from him to Seneb. Then he bent awkwardly, lifted the weight between his bound hands and held it against his belly.

“You can tell me afterward.”

The yard keeper came back carrying the box. The woman who had set down her basket walked beside him. Hori had not seen either of them leave.

Seneb made a movement toward the box, but the woman stepped between them.

“My portion is weighed with that duck,” she said.

The keeper looked at the overseer. “They all are.”

He held up the key he carried for opening the yard. Seneb had used the same simple lock on the weight box. The keeper fitted the key, hesitated, then turned it.

For a moment no one moved. Above the balance, Aani crouched on the wooden upright, lips drawn back, the broken palette dangling from one hand.

Seneb began to laugh.

“Look at you. Holding an inquiry because a monkey stole a paper.”

The woman kept her place.

Hori took the marked weight from the box. Its matching mark was cut into the duck’s back. When he had first come to the yard, checking those marks had been his morning task. Lately Seneb had kept the box locked.

He set the two weights in opposite pans.

The duck rose.

“Again,” said the woman.

Hori exchanged them.

The duck rose on the other side.

Aani shifted above them, and both pans trembled. They waited until he was still. The difference remained.

“A damaged weight,” Seneb said. “Replace it.”

Hori took out the little knife he used to trim his reeds. He turned the duck over and worked the point beneath the plug.

The wax resisted. His wrist hurt where Seneb had gripped it. He steadied the blade against his knee and pushed.

The plug came away.

Sand spilled into his lap, followed by a few pale stone chips. Behind them was a drilled cavity.

The woman picked up a chip. She rubbed it between finger and thumb.

“How long?” she asked.

Hori could not answer.

Seneb was looking toward the riverside gate. The boatman stood in it now, filling the opening with his shoulders.

“Untie him,” the woman told the keeper, pointing to Dedu. “He’s staying here until someone hears this.”

The keeper put his rope aside.

Hori spread the accusation on the desk. Beneath the charge against Dedu he wrote the number he had originally counted. He recorded the test of the weights. Then, before his courage could fail him, he wrote that he had changed the account at Seneb’s instruction, knowing the first count was correct.

The nib split on the last word.

He reached for another reed and found his palette gone.

Dedu took one from the floor and laid it beside his hand.

“Put your name,” he said.

Hori did.

By noon the boat had left with two accounts, the broken weight and the boatman to explain them. Seneb waited in his office with the keeper at the door. Hori remained at the desk. No one had told him he could leave.

The women brought their ration slips one by one. Dedu sat across from him, sorting them with fingers that were beginning to swell.

Hori reached for the next slip.

Aani dropped behind him. His weight bowed the back of the stool. Hori stiffened, but the baboon only braced a blackened hand on his shoulder and leaned over to inspect the moving reed.

Dedu slid a slip across the board.

“My mother’s.”

Hori knew the signs he had copied there all season. He looked at them, then at the porter.

“Tell me her name.”

Dedu told him. Hori dipped the reed and wrote it again, with the warm, heavy hand still resting on his shoulder.