Kha was very excited. He looked as smart as he ever had. He was dressed in his best, grey tunic and kilt and his mother had insisted that he take a bath.
He had been given the job of chief tally scribe for the work gang on the tomb of the nobleman, Mery. His father, Khahor, had been training him as a scribe since his fifth birthday, but this was a big job for a boy of thirteen. His excitement was mixed with sadness, however; he had been given the job because his father had suffered a broken leg and someone was needed to take over quickly.
As he made his way through the graveyard at Saqqara, Kha admired the low, carved mastabas that covered the tombs dug into the rock. He was proud to think that he would be helping to create such a tomb.
"You, boy! Stop!"
Kha turned at the angry cry and saw a group of Medjay on horseback. Their leader came forward and levelled his spear at Kha's head. "Who are you?" The man demanded. "What are you doing in Saqqara?"
Kha fidgeted and struggled to find the words to answer. "Urm..." he began.
"Let him alone, Sethe," one of the other guards said. "He's just a kid."
"He is trespassing," Sethe insisted.
"I...ah. That is, I'm the new scribe," Kha explained. He fumbled in his writing bag for the scroll of introduction given to him by Mery's factor and held it out. The guard took the papyrus scroll and read it quickly. He was reluctantly obliged to let Kha pass, but glared at him as he returned the scroll.
"Go straight to the foreman's tent," Sethe ordered. "No wandering around."
The foreman of the work gang, an experienced builder named Akhet, was a friend of Kha's father. His family lived in a house next to Kha's in Memphis.
"Welcome to Saqqara, Kha," he said. "I am glad to have you here. We miss your father; we need someone who can read your father's writing," he joked. "You can start tomorrow, but you had better get to know the place first."
Akhet called a girl called Neith to show Kha around. Neith was about the same age as Kha. She was a paint mixer. She showed Kha around the foundations of the mastaba tomb and then took him down into the short tunnel underneath.
"I expected the tunnel to be longer," Kha said.
"It should," Neith agreed, "but we haven't done as much work as we should have done."
"Why not?" Kha asked.
"Because your father is not the only one to have had an accident," she replied darkly.
Over the next few days, Kha learned that the tomb was not only taking too long, it was costing too much. There never seemed to be enough stone and a number of jewelled statues seemed to have gone missing.
"And not just the statues," Neith told him. "My master, Suty the Tomb Painter, beat me this morning."
"What?" Kha was shocked. "Why?"
"For losing his paints. It is not the first time he has done it, but I have never lost any of his paints," she assured Kha. "Someone else must have done it."
Kha looked at his papyrus scrolls. As the tally scribe for the project, he wrote down everything that was ordered and everything that arrived and everything that was used in building the tomb. He could see that all of the paint that had been ordered and paid for had been delivered, but that far less paint had been used.
"Someone has been stealing from the site," Kha realised.
"Then they must be stealing it from the dock down on the Nile," Neith told him.
"We could go down there tonight and catch them at it," Kha suggested.
And so, that night, they went down to the riverside and to the dock where the boats drew up. Blocks of stone and statues and pots of fresh paints lay on the dock where they had been unloaded, but not moved to the site of the tomb.
All was quiet and Kha began to fall asleep. Just before midnight, however, Neith shook his arm to wake him. A barque drifted down the Nile and tied up at the jetty. Two men got out of the boat and began loading paint pots and jewel boxes. A third man stood on deck. His face was hidden by a cloak, but they could see the other two easily enough.
"I know them. They work as labourers on the site!" Neith whispered.
"Ssh!" Kha hissed, but it was too late. The two men had heard them. Quickly, Kha and Neith ducked into the reeds to hide. Kha's food splashed in the water; he put out his hand and touched something wet and leathery.
With a sudden bellow, a hippopotamus lumbered out of the river towards them, its vast mouth gaping wide. Teeth like cold chisels loomed over Kha and Neith and a rush of hot, stinking breath washed over them.
With one voice, they screamed and ran. Kha was taller than Neith and scrambled easily onto the jetty. Neith cried out and he turned back to help her. He seized her hand and pulled her away from the hippo. The two labourers had backed away from the beast, but now they ran at the two children.
Kha fled. Neith was right behind him when she cried out. He looked back and saw her struggling in the grip of one of the labourers.
"Run!" she cried.
Kha ran. He did not stop until he reached the work camp and scrambled into his tent. He crouched there, gripping his pen-sharpener like a dagger, until he fell asleep.
The next day, Neith was still missing. Kha was worried. He wanted to rescue Neith, but he did not know how. She was his only close friend and with her gone, he did not know who to trust. He might have gone to Akhet, but Akhet had been forced to go home to Memphis with a twisted ankle.
He considered bringing the Medjay to the jetty, but he knew that the thieves would be careful now. It would be much harder to catch them, because they knew that someone was watching him. With a sudden lurch of his stomach, he realised that they would probably try to get rid of him before they did any more stealing. It would take something very valuable to lure them out before the interfering scribe was safely out of the way.
Kha tried to do his work, hoping that his enemies would not notice him if he gave no sign of his own fear. He was making a list of the supplies that had been delivered to the jetty that day, but which needed to be moved to the site, when he had an idea. There was a set of particularly fine golden statues that he had planned to have brought to the camp first, but instead he moved them to the bottom of the list. They would make fine bait.
That night, just before midnight, Kha crept away from the camp again. This time, he did not go to the docks, but went out into the graveyard. He walked around for some time, making a lot of noise and fuss, but the Medjay seemed to be asleep that night.
Kha was beginning to lose hope when at last the voice of Sethe called out for him to stop.
One of the other guards called out: "It's just the scribe, sir." and Kha's heart sank.
"In the necropolis?" Sethe demanded. "At night? I said stop!" he bellowed.
Kha ran. He ran for the docks with the Medjay at his heels, the hooves of their horses thundering in the night. He raced to the jetty and there were the thieves, lifting the golden statues from the dock to the deck of their barque.
He ran to the river and ducked underneath the jetty. The Medjay were running so hard after him that they could not stop and instead the horses leaped up onto the jetty.
"Halt!" Sethe called. "What are you doing with those statues?" Luckily, even Sethe was not stupid enough to need an answer to that question and he went on without waiting. "Seize them, Medjay! You are all under arrest."
Kha sprang up onto the planks.
"And arrest that scribe as well!" Sethe ordered. He jumped down from his horse and tried to grab hold of Kha, but Kha dodged past him and leaped onto the barque. He ducked into the cabin.
Neith sat on the cabin floor with her hands tied. She had a gag in her mouth. Quickly, Kha crouched down and released his friend, cutting through her ropes with his pen-sharpener.
Sethe jumped onto the boat behind him. "You are under arrest!" he said again.
Neith stood up and rubbed her sore wrists. "Don't be an idiot, Sethe," she said.
"Do you know him?" Kha asked.
"He's my cousin," Neith sighed.
On the dock, Sethe's Medjay had tied up the three men. The leader of the thieves still wore his hood.
"Now, who are these men?" Sethe asked.
"These two are labourers on the site," Neith explained. "And they have been robbing our master, Mery, blind."
"And the third?"
Kha walked up to the hooded man. "This is the leader of the thieves. The man who has organised the accidents to hold up the building and make sure that no- one was around for long enough to see what he was up to. The man who was eventually caught in one of his own traps." He pulled off the hood. "My father, Khahor."