“I’m going to death anyway. A good lay and a decent meal doesn’t seem like much.”
“Six double hours’ difference. Poison instead of hanging. Entry with gold and power instead of as a criminal and dung layer.”
Guli stretched out his legs. “I die at dusk, instead of dawn?”
“Yes.”
“Do I die for you? Take your noble name?”
Ningal’s gaze met his. “Not for me, but no less noble a name.”
“Who?”
“Kalam.”
Guli snorted. “He’s a scorpion, no better than Viza. You should despise him. Didn’t he betray your little sheepherder to Asa’s Old Boys? She’s gone now, isn’t she?”
The older man’s eyes shimmered with tears; Guli wanted to insult him, but he didn’t have the heart. Ningal straightened his shoulders. “Kalam was a son in my heart long before he became…” The justice couldn’t speak. “Humanity sometimes means living by one’s own standards, even if they cease to make sense to others.”
He looked at Guli, and somehow Guli knew the justice understood him. And sympathized.
“I accept your offer.”
Ningal reached out his hand. “Then come, you have double hours of pleasure ahead of you. What do you want to do?”
“How do you know I won’t run?” Guli asked, standing. He was larger than Ningal, in better condition. He could snap the justice’s wiry neck and be through the door and into the marshes by noon. But there were no hairdressers in the marshes, no call for them.
“You’re a man of honor,” Ningal said.
Guli stepped through the door. “I’d really like to bathe.”
* * *
“En Kidu,” Nimrod said, bowing. “How does the dawn find you?”
“The gods require more,” Cheftu said.
“I know, my family is among the chosen.”
Cheftu looked into the face of his friend. “Who?”
“The lugal.”
“Who will be lugal in his place?”
“Gilgamesh, my older brother, returns from his trading soon. He will be voted in by the council. It’s doubtful he will have much competition.”
“How is your mother?”
Nimrod looked at the ground. “We are but slaves of the gods, all of us, truth?”
“We are slaves,” Cheftu murmured.
“I understand there will be a new pit?”
Ears were everywhere, curious eyes and suspicious minds. “We are building a chamber, even now.”
“En,” a priest said, running up. “The next floor is ready.”
“Walk with me,” Cheftu said to Nimrod.
The scribe was out of earshot, and Cheftu spoke quickly, softly. “We have to push back the schedule by a day, at least.”
Nimrod nodded once.
“I trust… it has gone according to plan.”
“Will she survive?” Nimrod asked, his breath barely carrying the words to Cheftu. The tenemos walls looked bloody in the sunrise, the palm trees like black claws reaching up from the earth.
“She’s tough,” Cheftu said, as they walked down the wide steps to the closed pit. The pit where Chloe huddled in utter blackness and dissipating air, alone. “She can do anything.”
* * *
Blood filled her mouth and Chloe mentally cursed herself for biting her tongue. She swallowed the salty liquid and listened as the chest was dragged away from the hole. The cuts her teeth had made were tender; but she hadn’t made a sound. At least.
Shuffling above.
Who?
Had she sensed movement, life, breath, sound, heat, anything from any body as she had passed through them? The leather sandal, had it been warm? What could she do? How long had it been? Was Nimrod, even now, tunneling toward her?
A grunt. Male? Female?
I’m really glad I don’t believe in ghosts. Especially furniture-moving ghosts.
Chloe’s hand tightened around her knife’s handle.
The person crashed to the floor.
I have to go to the bathroom, Chloe thought.
No sound. Had he, or she, been knocked out? I can only hope.
Another thud.
Another!
Holy shit! We’re all supposed to be dead! Two not-dead people, besides me? Had anyone actually taken the poison?
She heard the scratch of tinder and slipped flat into the depression as light flamed.
“Did you bring it?”
A man.
“Yes.”
Another man.
They moved quickly, made a huge racket. Robbers! They were stripping the tomb. Quickly. Underneath the clash of precious metals against each other, Chloe heard the prayers of one man. The other was panting hard. Out of breath, or terrified?
Don’t come this way, Chloe thought.
Had they heard her?
“Did you move it back?” one asked.
“I forgot.”
“Get up there, imbecile. They might come back.”
“They’ve loaded a thousand minae of dirt into the shaft. It would take days.”
“If we know about this route, then someone else does.”
Grumbling, someone banged against wood. She heard the chest moved back into place.
“Which way do we go?”
“By the door, there’s a passage.”
The same passage she was waiting for. Oh God, help me!
An answer to prayer and a natural result. The light flickered out.
The shallow breather began to hyperventilate. The men raced toward her, bones flying in their wake.
Chloe used their noise to slip away from them but against the wall. She felt bones sliding beneath her, beads and antique ribbons under her hands. She halted at the edge of something wooden.
One of the men whimpered as they banged against the wall in panic, looking for the false section. She barely breathed through her nose.
“Calm yourself,” one shouted. “We’ll find it.”
“They’re going to get us,” the other said, sobbing. “They are going to find out and torture us—”
Something large, metal and heavy hit the wall and both men shouted.
Y’all are making enough noise to wake the dead, Chloe thought. And I’m losing my mind making jokes in a room with… two men who probably wouldn’t hesitate to add my body to the quota in this chamber.
“There!” one said. “Air, do you feel it?”
“Praise Sin,” the other said.
Scratch of tinder, and light flickered.
They didn’t look back, but rattled through the tunnel, banging their treasures and snuffling like overgrown warthogs. Chloe recited every song she remembered from church camp, from college, from those few years free in the modern world. Hours passed before she peeked.
There was no light, but she did feel some air.
She slid back and screeched at the sound. She’d brushed a lyre—the soft cry was like a human’s.
The strength left her body, and she huddled, arms tight around her drawn-up legs, her head on her knees. One more millimeter and she would have bumped it. Those thieves would have heard her—
Relief was an icy shower of sweat.
Chloe crawled to the space she’d heard them make. Her touch ascertained they had pierced a whitewashed wall, the covering to the tunnel that led to the well was maybe an eighth-inch thick. A breeze definitely blew through.
Should she wait for Nimrod? Or take the initiative?
One side was death and decay, the other uncertainty and peril.
Chloe chewed her lip.
* * *
Cheftu paced as they worked. Two more layers before they’d build the room for the rest of the sacrifices. Funeral objects—coffins, furniture, utensils, games, pets—lined the courtyard walls. Sweat had soaked the chest of his garment, and Cheftu wished he could strip down to a kilt and stand in the cool mud.
Chloe had been buried for a whole day now. The death pit was huge—she should have plenty of air.
There was food by the sledge, if she needed it. He glared at the sky, waiting for the next double hour and the next offering.
“En—” It was Nimrod. His skin, tanned to leather and covered by a mat of hair, was ashen.
Cheftu looked around. No scribe, no followers. The priests were still filling in rubble. He walked to the man.
“We have a problem.”
“Serious?”
“Follow me.”
Cheftu looked around, but they weren’t watching him. He followed Nimrod out the back entrance of the temple compound into one of the storehouses, recently emptied into the pit. Two men were tied to the rafters by their wrists.
Gagged.
Bloody.
A bag of loot—funeral loot—lay at their feet.
Nimrod spoke to Cheftu with his back to them. “My guards found these thieves leaving the well.”
Cheftu felt his body turn to ice. “The same—?”
Nimrod nodded once.
“What have they said?”
“Not much. One weeps most of the time, the other throws up poison yet.”
Cheftu looked at them, dark faces with overgrown eyebrows, close-cut beards and woolly heads. They could be anyone. “Did they play at being guards?”
“I don’t think so. They aren’t very tall.”
“Are these Puabi’s funeral items?”
Nimrod glanced over his shoulder, then back. “If it were so, I wouldn’t worry. These objects are from the tomb below.”
“They know everything, then,” Cheftu said.
Nimrod nodded slowly.
Cheftu looked at the ground. “Do we know who they are?”
“I can’t get much out of them.”
Cheftu noted the black eye of one, the bloody nose of the other. One’s gaze was wide, petrified, in shock. The other’s was knowing, derisive. “Let me look at their hands.”
Nimrod spun around and gestured for his guards to release the prisoners. The terrified one began to whimper, the other one’s expression grew more solemn.
Cheftu turned each hand over, checking the cuticles, the calluses, the palms, and the heels. “Restrain them again,” he said. Nimrod gestured, and his men retied and suspended the thieves. Cheftu walked to the doorway and stared out. The sky was a heartless blue, the shadows of the palms black on the ground. His thousands of gold-beaded braids were soaked with sweat. Absently, his fingers ran over the impressions of the seals around his waist.
“What do you want me to do?”
Cheftu turned and peered into Nimrod’s face, his eyes. He looked at the men who stood on tiptoe and watched him with terror. Cheftu wasn’t worthy to make these choices, but by any standard, these men would be killed. France, Egypt, Aztlan, Jerusalem—no society looked kindly on grave robbers.
He spoke softly. “When you retrieve Chloe, return the loot.”
“What about the men?”
Cheftu inhaled deeply, then spoke. “Take them to the marshes,” he said. “But first—cut out their tongues.”
Nimrod turned on his heel and motioned his men. It sickened Cheftu to watch; he was a healer, not a despot, but he had no choice. If Nimrod had to enact Cheftu’s decision, then Cheftu would witness it.
The two men’s cries rang in Cheftu’s ears; neither was brave, then they were quickly bundled off by Nimrod’s efficient mountain guards. Nimrod joined Cheftu as they returned to the pit. “Why look at their hands?” he asked.
Cheftu felt the blaze of sun on his back and shoulders, it beat down and centered in the golden diadem around his head. The priests were waiting for him, lounging on the ground.
“If they could write, they would have calluses. If they could write, they would have had to die.” Cutting their tongues took away their only method of communication.
“You are merciful,” Nimrod said. “If I were lugal, I would make you a justice.”
“I’m not worthy,” Cheftu said and joined the priests for the next series of offerings.
* * *
At twilight they started to gather, the families of Ur, the landed gentry, the leading merchants, the master craftsmen. Silent, so as not to invite the gods’ greater wrath, they bid farewell to the representative who would give himself in sacrifice for each family.
Unlike those who had gone into the pit, these people were buried as individuals, named, with their belongings and coffins. And if the one who was named was not the one who entered the quickly constructed chamber, his neighbor wasn’t going to betray him.
A sacrifice was a sacrifice. The gods just wanted people dead, bearing the identification of those specific families. The quays were crowded with merchant ships turned passenger vessels, heading for long journeys on the evening’s tide. The road beside the Euphrates was jammed with onagers and their owners, faces carefully hidden from the sun and from recognition, on their way to extended family, or distant fields, or noted Tablet Houses in other commonwealths.
The people of Ur were accepting of fate, but they also knew the gods had an eye for a bargain and weren’t above bartering, “merchandise” exchanges, or half-price sales. Destiny was designed for negotiation.
Guli’s stomach was tight as the kettledrum. He’d eaten too much, spent the day in the bath with perfumes and oils, a blonde, and a brunette, then dealt with distributing his hairdressing tools. He looked at his hands, saddened that he would never feel the weight of glossy locks across his palms again.
The intricate twists he could make with his index finger, while holding the other twists in place, would not be a skill he’d use in Kur. His cuticles were still stained from the last job on Ulu—making her golden to be Puabi. The smell of blood was washed away, though. His clothes were new—he even wore the bordered and fringed cloak of an Old Boy and carried a death mask hammered into an exact reproduction of a gentleman’s hairstyle, every braid picked out in detail.
Kalam was on a boat tonight, headed for Dilmun. He would trade for spices and jewels, then return in a few months. The danger would have passed by then, no one but the priests would know about the substitution, and, if necessary, they were easy to bribe.
Gilgamesh, son of Shem, had returned to Ur, and been voted in as lugal during a special meeting of joint houses. He now stood at the head of his family. The basket hat looked strange on his shaved skull, and he wore no beard, but he stood with dignity, the seals and cylinders of his new position hanging from his beaded belt. The former lugal, Shem, in contrast, looked all of his years.
Shem’s was the First Family. They had landed here after the Deluge, and the brothers had fought and been sent to separate corners of the world to ensure peace. Ziusudra, it was whispered, had had enough of their bickering on the boat. Rumor was that Ziusudra’s first project of planting vineyards was because he wanted to be drunk and forget his annoying offspring.
Kham had been cursed to the west desert and beyond, Japhet had set sail across the great northern sea and now Shem, the lugal of Ur, the protector of the brown-haired humans, the ruler of the black-haired humans, stepped into line as a sacrifice.
Guli didn’t know numbers well, but Shem had lived almost as long as the kings of Before. The healing properties of the water were gone now, though. Boy grew to man quickly, had his children, and was bent with age in less time than a boy used to grow to a man. A lasting curse of the Deluge.
Guli wondered if they were averting something as great as the Deluge by this sacrifice, as he glanced at the sky. It was orange and rose and striped with gold. The temple courtyard filled with flickering lamps.
He had just seen his final sunset.
En Kidu looked as golden as the ensi had, though his hair and beard were naturally fair, Guli guessed. Even his eyes were golden.
The en’s expression was strained, and the lines around his eyes and mouth were pronounced in the twilight. The drums began and he looked down, his lips moving in prayer. Someone’s wife screamed, then her cries were muffled. The priests wheeled forward a sledge holding the great copper pot.
Ningal’s hand trembled as he patted Guli’s arm. “For you,” he said, and handed Guli a parcel.
Guli unwrapped it and rubbed his fingers over the carving. “My seal.”
“It bears your name,” Ningal said. “Guli, blessed of Inana. You go to die for Mes-Kalam-Dug, but the gods will not forget you, good Guli.” He handed him a cup.
The old man’s eyes were shiny; Guli didn’t know what to say. They embraced stiffly, Guli was afraid he’d break Ningal’s ribs. Then he let go and stepped into the line, holding his cup and seal. It was mostly men, representatives of their lineages, many of them aged, volunteering in order to spare their young. The handsome young priests blessed them as they walked by.
Guli counted fifty volunteers who had already disappeared down the narrow shaft, into the chamber, another sixty to go. At the landing before the tunnel led down, the priests held the pot. “Dip in, dear client,” they said in unison.
Holding the edges of the cup, Guli dipped, getting it full, for he was a large man. A last glance at the temple, the stages illumined with lamps, the blue chamber to heaven shining in the night.
Would that even one god watched and cared. Even one. Guli stepped down in time to the beat of the drum.
* * *
It was dark out, and Chloe hadn’t exactly made a decision. Should the thieves come back—she couldn’t imagine why they would—but she’d been surprised by their presences altogether, so her suppositions couldn’t be trusted—if she was in the well, they would find her.
Dead Chloe.
Having just dodged poison, the itching and cramping and vomiting effects of surviving it, and crawling over bones and bodies to get there, she wasn’t going to die by being stupid in the end.
Provided that was the stupid choice.
Neither was she going to stay in the room with the skeletons beside her and the rotting corpses above. She didn’t have a masochistic bone in her body.
The tunnel leading to the dry well didn’t run straight. At the end, it curved. Probably a ladder or rope there. She could see that far, so she had some warning if people came down the well, into the tunnel.
Consequently, she’d wedged herself in the mouth between the tunnel and the pit. The burial pit was an arm’s length away, easy to fall into and hide, but she got the benefit of fresh breezes, and the psychological boon of not being with the dead.
Twilight in Babylon Page 27