Peasants by the side of the road, old men and striplings and women, called questions to the travelers as they tramped along. The peasants cheered to learn the Gibli army had beaten the Imhursagut in their first clash. The Imhursaggi captive was astonished. “Why has your god not told all the folk of Gibil of this victory?” he asked.
“Engibil doesn’t do things like that,’’ Sharur said. Whether Engibil could do things like that any more, he did not know. The god had not exerted himself so for generations. If he took back power in Gibil from the lugal, though, he would have to do such things. His laziness, which Sharur had seen, helped keep the people of Gibil free.
“How very strange,” the Imhursaggi said. Habbazu caught Sharur’s eye, but did not say anything.
“We like it this way,” Sharur said, answering what his captive had said and what Habbazu had not.
“How very strange,” the captive repeated. Habbazu started to laugh. Sharur gave him a dirty look. This time, though, he was the one who did not say anything.
When they got into Gibil, Ushurikti, who had not gone to war, bowed himself almost double before Sharur. “Ah, master merchant’s son,” the slave dealer said with a smirk, “are you going to bring me all of Imhursag to sell, one prisoner at a time?” He took a damp clay tablet out of a pot with a tight lid that kept its content from drying out and incised it with a stylus. Sharur, reading upside down, saw the dealer write his name as the owner of the slave. Then Ushurikti asked, “And what is the name of this Imhursaggi?’’
“I never bothered to ask him.’’ Sharur turned to the captive. “What is your name, fellow?’’
“I am called Duabzu, my master,’’ the Imhursaggi replied.
“Du-ab-zu.” Ushurikti wrote the syllables one by one. “Well, Duabzu, have you anyone in Imhursag who might ransom you? If your own people will pay a better price for you than I could get from a Gibli, you may go free.”
“It could be so.” Duabzu visibly brightened. “Perhaps, before long, I will again hear the voice of my god in my mind. Life would be sweet, were that to come to pass.”
“He is not a poor man,” Sharur said. “He swung a sword of bronze against me, till I struck it from his hand. No poor man would have swung a sword of bronze against me.”
“This is so. No poor man could have afforded to own a sword of bronze to swing against you,” Ushurikti said. “But whether this Duabzu has kin who would even want to pay ransom for him, that is a different question. When a man is captured, sometimes his kin prefer to reckon him as one dead, that they may make free with his inheritance.” The slave dealer had surely seen more of the unsavory side of life than had most men.
Duabzu looked horrified. “My kin would never be so wicked as that. If they can afford your price, they will pay your price. Enimhursag would turn his back on them forever if they were so wicked as to refuse.” He looked Sharur in the face. “In Imhursag, the god keeps men from being so wicked as that. I see the same is not true in Gibil.”
“In Imhursag, the god keeps men from being men,” Sharur answered. “Men are not all good, but neither are they all bad. Nor,” he added pointedly, “are gods all good, no matter what they impose on men.” Duabzu sniffed.
Ushurikti said, “You need not argue with this man, master merchant’s son. You need not argue with this slave, master merchant’s son.”
“I know that,” Sharur said. “I leave him in your hands. He invaded our land. He will pay the price. Someone, Gibli or Imhursaggi, will pay the price for him. You and I shall profit from that price.”
“It is good,” Ushurikti said. If Duabzu thought it was anything but good, he kept the thought to himself. Ushurikti led him away, back toward the little cubicle with the bar on the outside of the door where he would stay until sold or ransomed. Sharur wondered how close his cubicle would be to Nasibugashi’s, and how many other Imhursagut would take up temporary residence with Ushurikti and other Gibli slave dealers.
To Habbazu, Sharur said, “Come, let us go back to my own house. You will be my guest there. You will eat of my bread. You will drink of my beer. You will use my home as if it were your own.”
“You are generous, master merchant’s son,” Habbazu said, bowing. He answered ritual with ritual: “If ever you come to Zuabu, come to my own house. You will be my guest there. You will eat of my bread. You will drink of my beer. You will use my home as if it were your own.”
“If ever I come to Zuabu, I will do these things,” Sharur said. He wondered how welcome he would be in Zuabu, if ever Enzuabu learned Habbazu had given him the Alashkurri cup instead of taking it back to the god. But ritual was ritual. Sharur continued with what was not quite ritual, but was polite: “If you feel the urge, lie down with our Imhursaggi slave woman. If not eager, she is always obedient.”
“Perhaps presents would make her more eager, or at least make her seem more eager,” Habbazu said. “When a man lies down with, a woman for his own amusement or for pay, having her seem eager is as much as he can expect.”
“It could be so,” Sharur said.
At the house of Ereshguna, the slaves brought Habbazu bread and beer. They also brought him onions and salt fish and lettuce and beans, and did so without being asked. Sharur smiled at that, remembering how the Imhursaggi peasants had done for him exactly what Enimhursag ordered them to do for him, and no more than Enimhursag ordered them to do for him.
Habbazu eyed the Imhursaggi slave woman with frank speculation. She recognized that for what it was, and somehow, without smearing dust on herself or using any other trick, contrived to look even more mousy and nondescript than she usually did. Habbazu turned away, as if he had smelled salt fish that had not been salted enough and was going bad. When he turned away, the Imhursaggi slave walked straighten Sharur hid a smile.
Betsilim and Nanadirat stayed upstairs. For them to come down and greet a male guest who was not an intimate family friend, as Sharur and his father and brother were in the house of Dimgalabzu, would have been a startling breach of custom. Habbazu did not remark on their absence. He probably would have remarked had they made an appearance. .
When the slaves had left Habbazu and him to their food and drink, Sharur asked, “Will you go to the temple of Engibil tonight, to see if you can make off with the cup while Engibil’s eyes are turned to the north, to the fight with Enimhursag?’’
“Master merchant’s son, that was my plan,” the Zuabi thief replied. “I think it best to do this as soon as may be.”
“You thieves like the darkness,” Sharur said. “It was in the darkness that you came to my caravan outside Zuabu.”
“It is so,” Habbazu agreed. “Darkness masks a thief. Darkness masks what a thief does.” He sighed, a sound of chagrin. “Darkness, that night, did not mask well enough what a thief did.”
Sharur’s grandfather’s ghost spoke in his ear: “Be wary of this man, lad. Be careful of him. He is a thief, and not to be trusted. He is a Zuabi, and doubly not to be trusted. Be wary, be careful, lest darkness hide what he does to you, not what he does for you.”
“I understand all that,” Sharur muttered impatiently, in the tones a living man used to address a ghost. Habbazu, realizing what he was doing, looked up to the ceiling and waited for him to be done. Sharur sighed, a sound of exasperation. His grandfather, querulous alive, was even more querulous as a ghost. Then Sharur brightened. He might yet make use of the suspicious ghost. “Ghost of my grandfather, will you go with the Zuabi thief into the temple of Engibil?” he asked, murmuring still, but not so softly as to keep Habbazu from hearing him. “Will you warn me if he tries to sneak off for his own purposes with what we seek?”
“No!” The ghost’s voice in his mind was indignant. “I shall do no such thing. I wanted nothing to do with this man from the beginning. I want nothing to do with him now. I want you to have nothing to do with him now.”
Sharur wanted to pitch the ghost through the nearest mud-brick wall. He knew that would not have hurt the immaterial spirit,
but it would have made him feel better. Instead, he smiled broadly and said, “I thank you, ghost of my grandfather. That will help us. That will help us greatly.”
“I told you, I am not helping you,” his grandfather’s ghost shouted at him. “You young people pay no attention to your elders.” The ghost fell silent, and presumably departed in anger.
Habbazu, however, could not know that. Not having known Sharur’s grandfather as a living man, Habbazu could not hear him as a ghost. The thief could hear only Sharur. He said, “I would not have cheated you even without the ghost watching over me.”
“It could be so,” Sharur answered, nodding. “I think it is so. But, because I am not sure it is so, I shall do what I can to protect myself. Were I trading wares for you here, would you not like to make as certain as you could that I was not cheating you?”
“Well, so I would,” Habbazu said. “Very well; your grandfather’s ghost will have no cause to complain of me.”
“My grandfather’s ghost always has cause to complain,” Sharur answered, and Habbazu laughed, as if that were something other than simple truth.
“Most often,” Sharur said in a low voice as he and Habbazu stepped out onto the Street of Smiths, “I go out at night with slaves bearing torches to light my way.”
“Most often, when you go out at night, you want people to know you are going out at night,” the thief replied. “This is a different business. You want to be silent as a bat, stealthy as a wild cat, and quick as a cockroach that scuttles into its hole befgre a sandal crushes it.”
“And what you need fear now is not the sandal of a kitchen slave, but the sandal of Engibil,” Sharur said.
“I fear the sandal of Engibil not so much, for you did turn the god’s eyes to the north,” Habbazu said. “The way you turned the god’s eyes to the north ... no Zuabi would use such a way, but it worked. I fear the flapping sandals of Engibil’s priests. An old man who gets up to make water at the wrong time could undo me.”
“I thought you have ways to escape such mishaps,” Sharur said.
“I do,” Habbazu said. “And you, no doubt, have ways to keep from being cheated in your trading. But sometimes your ways fail. Sometimes my ways fail, as well. Did my ways not sometimes fail, your guards would not have caught me when I came to your caravan outside Zuabu.”
Sharur nodded. “I understand. Each trade has its own secrets. I hope, master thief, you will not need to use any of yours.”
“So do I,” Habbazu said. “I like easy work as well as the next man, as you must enjoy trading with fools for the sake of the profit it brings you. I wish I were robbing En- imhursag’s temple; with his eyes turned away from his city, his priests, those who have not gone to war, will surely be sluggish as drones. But you Giblut, you are alert all the time.”
“You speak in reproof,” Sharur said. “It is not a matter for reproof. It is a matter for pride. We do not need the god dinning in our ears to make us do what we should do. We are men, not children.”
“You are nuisances,” Habbazu said. “It is a matter of risk. I am not fond of risk when that risk is mine.”
“Ah,” Sharur said, and said no more. Up the Street of Smiths toward Engibil’s temple they strode. Near the end of the street, a large man stepped out of the deeper shadow of the house. He looked in the direction of Sharur and Habbazu for a moment, then drew back into the shadows. As Sharur walked on, he listened for the sound of rapid footsteps behind him.
“I am lucky you are with me,” Habbazu said. “Were I alone, that footpad might have set on me, for I am not large, and I look like easy meat.” Suddenly, even in darkness, the edge of a dagger glittered in his hand. “A serpent is not large, either, and looks like easy meat. But a serpent has fangs, and so have I.”
“I have seen your fangs,” Sharur said. “So have the Imhursagut.” He pointed ahead, and felt foolish a moment later: Engibil’s temple could not have been anything but what it was. “We draw near.”
“Yes.” Habbazu had not been making much noise. Now, abruptly, he made none at all. He might have been a ghost, walking along beside Sharur. Truly, a master thief had talents of his own.
Sharur looked up and up, toward the god’s chamber at the top of the temple. No light streamed out from its doors. Engibil was not in residence at the moment. Before Sharur could point that out to Habbazu, the thief waved him into a patch of deep shadow, nodded a farewell, and slid soundlessly toward the temple.
Torches burned outside the main entranceway. Guards paced outside the main entranceway. Sharur wondered how Habbazu could hope to get in unseen. But Habbazu, apparently, did not wonder.
No cries rose from the temple guards. Whatever Habbazu was doing, it seemed to work. Sharur stood in the deep shadow and waited. He had no idea how long the thief would need to enter the temple, to find the cup, and to escape. He was not altogether sure whether Habbazu could da that, or whether he would face the wrath of Engibil’s priesthood and perhaps of the god himself. Again, though, Habbazu would not have attempted the theft without confidence he would succeed.
As Sharur waited, he stared up at the heavens. Slowly, slowly, the stars moved over that blue-black dome. The star everyone in the land between the rivers knew as Engibil’s star was not in the sky. Sharur took that as a good omen: the god could not peer down from his heavenly observation platform and see Habbazu sneaking toward and into his temple.
Had the men who guarded that temple been caravan guards, they would from time to time have come out to check the shadowy places not far from the entrance to make sure no one skulked in them. They did not. They paced back and forth, back and forth. Perhaps they did not believe anyone would dare to try to sneak past them. Had Sharur been one of them, perhaps he would not have believed anyone would dare to try to sneak past, either.
He yawned. He was not used to being out by night, out in the darkness. The darkness was the time for men to sleep. The night was the time for men to lie quiet. It would not have taken much for Sharur to lie quiet against the wall. It would not have taken much for him to sleep.
He yawned again. The stars had wheeled some way through the sky. He glanced toward the east. No, no sign of morning twilight yet. He did not think he had been waiting long enough for the sky to begin to go gray, but he was starting to have trouble being sure.
Then, without warning, his grandfather’s ghost shouted in his ear: “Be ready, boy! The thief comes!”
“Has he got the cup?” Sharur whispered, excitement flooding through him and washing away drowsiness as the spring floods of the Yarmuk and the Diyala washed away the banks of canals.
“What? The cup?” his grandfather’s ghost repeated. “No, he hasn’t got the cursed cup. He is pursued, boy—pursued. He’ll be lucky to make it this far, is what he’ll be.”
“I did not think you wanted anything to do with him,” Sharur said. “I did not think you wanted to go with him into the temple.”
“I did not want anything to do with him,” the ghost answered. “I did not want to go with him into the temple. But you are flesh of my flesh: flesh of the flesh I once had. You were bound and determined to go through with this mad scheme. Since you were bound and determined to go through with his mad scheme, I had to help you as I could, even if I had said I would not.”
“For this I thank you, ghost of my grandfather,” Sharur said.
“Do not thank me yet,” the ghost said. “You are not safe yet. I have no flesh. I had no trouble leaving Engibil’s temple. The thief is a living man. He will not find it so easy.”
“What will they do to him if they catch him?” Sharur asked.
“Maybe they will simply kill him,” his grandfather’s ghost replied. “Maybe they will torture him and then kill him. Maybe they will torture him and then save him for Engibil’s justice, for whatever time in which Engibil decides to mete out his justice. Whatever they choose to do, the house of Ereshguna will fare better if they have not got this choice to make.”
“Ghost of
my grandfather, you speak truly,” Sharur said with a shudder. What Engibil could wring out of Habbazu might well touch off a war between Gibil and Zuabu, and would surely bring ruin to the house of Ereshguna. The second possibility concerned Sharur far more than the first. He was a Gibli: his own came before his city, his city before his god.
He heard a thump, and then the sound of running feet— not headed in his direction. Cries came from the top of the temple wall: “There he goes! After him, you fools!” Some of the guards at the entranceway ran off in pursuit of those fleeing footsteps. One man fell down, his armor clattering about him. Another tripped over him in the darkness, producing fresh clatters and horrible curses. The rest of the temple guards pounded on.
“A good evening to you, master merchant’s son.” The whisper came from right at Sharur’s elbow. He whirled, and there beside him stood Habbazu.
“How did you come here?” Sharur demanded, barely remembering in his surprise to whisper also. “I heard you run off in that direction.” He pointed.
Habbazu’s laugh was all but silent. “You heard footsteps. Likewise, the priests and the guards heard footsteps. The footsteps you heard were not mine. Likewise, the footsteps the priests and the guards heard were not mine. Have you seen a mountebank, a ventriloquist, who can throw his voice so it seems to come from somewhere far from his mouth? The footsteps you heard—likewise, the footsteps the priests and the guards heard—seemed to come from somewhere far from my feet.”
“How do you do that?” Sharur asked.
“Master merchant’s son, this is not the time to linger and ponder such things,” Habbazu replied. “Neither is this the place to linger and ponder such things.”
“He is right. The thief is right,” Sharur’s grandfather’s ghost said.
Sharur knew Habbazu was right without having his grandfather’s ghost tell him. As quietly as he could, he withdrew from the place of shadow and stole back toward the Street of Smiths. Beside him, Habbazu was quieter still. Sharur was a quiet man; the Zuabi thief, again, might have been a ghost.
Turtledove, Harry - Novel 12 Page 31