Palace of Darkness

by Tracy L. Higley

  “A few pinches in the jar”—he let the amber-yellow powder drift into the jar’s mouth—“then a generous coating on the rim and the stopper.” He finished his preparation of the jar, then held it out to her to smell again.

  She took a sniff and nodded. “Smells the same. As strong as the pure myrrh.”

  Aretas grinned. “Though worth a fraction of the price.”

  Cassia tried to match his smile, but her stomach knotted and she felt her expression darken. Aretas did not miss the change, but he mistook her resolve for fear.

  “You will play your part well.” He left no room for argument. “It grows late. You two get dressed.” He reached for another small jar to repeat his villainous process.

  Cassia crossed the room to a wooden box he had placed on the table. Inside lay the dress, the sumptuous silk robe she was only allowed to wear on these occasions. She lifted the pale-yellow silk from its soft folds and let it fall before her.

  “Alex,” she called to the back room. “Get dressed in your linen tunic.”

  She stripped her dirty tunic and let the yellow silk wrap her in softness. In the bottom of the box lay two delicate sandals, and she slipped these on as well, then turned for Aretas’s approval.

  He looked up, nodded once, and then returned to his work. “Better powder that eye.”

  She found some of the white lead powder and brushed it across the bruised flesh.

  Alexander emerged as Aretas packed his jars between layers of linen in a large pouch and lifted the strap over his head and shoulder. “You look pretty, Mama.”

  Cassia straightened his belt. “And you look like a young prince.”

  Aretas held out a short dagger. “Here, hide this under your robe.”

  Cassia lifted her hands, palms out. “No weapons. You know how I feel.”

  He swore and tossed the weapon on the table. “We will walk together until we reach the edge of the traders’ market.” And then the small pouch he had brought back last night, with more added besides, was in her hands at last. She hid a smile. Today was the day.

  She forced them to walk slowly out of town, to keep the dust down and the yellow silk clean. Aretas grew impatient as Alexander kept darting off to investigate stray goats, wild foxes, shy badgers. Cassia kept him moving, but the boy could not pass an animal without stopping to talk to it. Friends hailed him as they passed, and Cassia smiled to hear other boys call his name. Somehow he had won hearts here in spite of everyone knowing what kind of man his father was.

  “Do we really need Alexander?” Cassia asked Aretas. “I can do this without him. Let him stay with his friends.”

  Aretas stalked on ahead. “The boy makes you respectable.” He left her behind to ponder the deeper truth of his words.

  She slowed even more, knowing she had sufficient time to linger. Aretas had work to do.

  “Come, Alexander.” She held out a hand to the boy and he bounded to her, placing his small hand in hers.

  “Did you see that fox, Mama? It had big eyes.”

  “Perhaps it was a magical fox, eh?” She tugged at his hand.

  Caravan traders arrived in Damascus several times each week from faraway places like Egypt and India, Persia and China. They came with loaded camels, snorting and jingling with treasures, and gathered at the edge of town, where they camped and waited for other traders to arrive and make deals. When they left in a few days, it would be with new purchases. And hopefully, with one small woman and an even smaller boy.

  Ahead, a series of small tents, nothing more than blankets propped on sticks pushed into the dirt, dotted the horizon. These men had been at the edge of Damascus for a few days, but the new caravan approaching in clouds of dust brought new treasures and fresh opportunities. Aretas had timed his arrival perfectly so he could mingle with the resident traders and those arriving, with neither group realizing he did not belong. He had even let his face go unshaven for several days to better fit in with the travelers.

  It was her task to stay close enough to arrive at the right time herself, without being seen too soon.

  She kept her attention trained on Aretas’s tall figure and muscular arms, watching him move through the crowd as though at home. And then he had begun to engage some of them. No business yet. Just conversation. She heard his booming laugh and saw him slap a trader on the back.

  The new caravan, with its red-tasseled camels and loaded packs, blended with the first group, and Cassia lost sight of Aretas.

  “Do you see your father?” she asked Alex. His hand had grown sweaty in hers.

  The boy shielded his eyes with the other hand. “There he is!” He pointed.

  Aretas had pulled away from the crowd a bit and had taken two traders with him.

  It begins.

  Alex wriggled his hand from hers. “You are hurting me, Mama.”

  She clutched him to her side. “I am sorry, shekel.” She tipped his face up to look at her. “Do you remember what you must do?”

  He nodded, his tongue playing with his loose teeth. “Stay quiet. Always quiet.”

  She smiled. “Good boy.”

  She looked back to Aretas. Was it time? Her mouth went dry. She must finish the game he played, then she would be free to move among the traders and complete the true task that drew her today.

  Now.

  “Come, Alex.” She led him forward, forcing a casual smile to her lips. Within a few minutes they had reached the traders. She tried to make it look as though they wandered but kept her steps headed for Aretas. A trickle of sweat ran down the center of her back, and she regretted the yellow silk would absorb it. She read the language of the lead traveler’s body. Interested. Not yet sold.

  She watched from the corner of her eye as Aretas wielded his winning smile and spoke with the traders as though he were the prince of the land, all grace and charm.

  The first trader, clearly the spokesman, had a weaselly look about him, beady-eyed with a pointy nose. She hoped Alexander would not point out this fact. The second stood behind him, like a wall of intimidation, wide-chested and a vacant look in his eyes.

  They began to move away. A flick of Aretas’s eyes signaled her.

  She strode up to him, smiling.

  “Ah, here you are.” She spoke loudly enough to be heard by the retreating traders. “I have been searching for you.”

  As they always did, the traders stopped and turned at the sound of a woman’s voice, an uncommon occurrence in caravan camps.

  Aretas held out both arms and grinned. “My best customer, and most beautiful.” His voice dripped with flattery. To the two men he nodded and winked. “Here’s a lady who knows quality and where to find it.”

  “Indeed.” Cassia smoothed the yellow silk over herself and smiled at the traders. “Those cheats in the town market would try to sell me their wives’ wash water if I let them, eh?” She waited for a returning smile. “I know where to come.”

  The larger of the two men sidled back toward them. “Smelled rather weak to me,” he grunted. But she could sense his interest. The other one leaned into the conversation, clearly trying to gain Cassia’s attention. “We can do better in Petra.”

  Beside her, she felt Aretas’s body straighten at the mention of Petra. The feeling lasted only a moment, then he held out one of his alabaster jars to Cassia. She removed the red clay stopper and waved the jar under her nose. “Oh, you must not be familiar with the subtler scent of Anatolian myrrh. It does not overpower yet is finer than any Egypt can produce.” She smiled and nodded to Aretas. “I will take it.”

  He named an outrageous price, and she argued him down a bit but then glanced at the traders and shrugged prettily. “One must pay for quality.” She pulled a few coins from her pouch, flashing the sum conspicuously.

  Aretas took her money, then bowed over her hand and kissed it. The gallant gesture brought her a jolt of the attraction that had first brought them together, and she couldn’t help but smile. She did not miss the elbow jab and wink the big trad
er gave his friend. “Too bad she’s got her boy with her, eh?” he said to Aretas.

  “I must move on.” Cassia gathered her dress around her. “I have more to purchase. But I will see you again, I am sure.”

  Aretas bowed again and she drifted away, with Alexander following. He had played his silent part well.

  Behind her, she heard the trader say, “You won’t take me for the lady’s price, so let’s make it fair.”

  She realized she’d been holding her breath and forced her heart to slow. They had succeeded.

  Now to find an honest-looking trader who would take a few coins in exchange for a promise of safe passage to anywhere for Alex and her.

  She could not go far. The jingle of coins changing hands meant Aretas would be leaving soon, before the traders could inspect their purchases too closely. She would need to be close behind or he would suspect.

  Another of the newly arrived traders tried to interest her in a sack of fabrics tied to his camel. She released Alexander’s hand to run her fingers through it. When she looked up to use her special sight to read his heart and his character, Alex had disappeared.

  She turned a frantic circle, not wanting to cry out and draw attention. Ah, but there he was, heading back to Aretas.

  No, Alex.

  She moved toward the small group. The traders were packing away their myrrh and Aretas was pocketing his “earnings.”

  Alex skipped to Aretas’s side. As far as she was from them, Cassia still heard his voice ring out, and the words drained the courage from her.

  “Papa! I forgot to show you my loose teeth!”

  The big man, who had been slinging his pouch over his camel’s back, stopped in midair and eyed Alex.

  Cassia’s hand fluttered at her chest, betraying her nerves. Should she retrieve her son or let Aretas handle the situation?

  “Papa?” the burly man repeated. “The boy is yours?”

  Aretas opened his mouth, exhaled, then closed it again and glanced at Cassia.

  She tried to mask her horror, but it was too late. Understanding flickered in the eyes of the trader as he looked from her to Aretas. Her temples throbbed at the murder she read in his eyes.

  She watched, rooted to the ground, as Aretas secured his money pouch to his belt, grabbed Alexander’s hand, and spoke only one word to the boy.

  “Run!”

  FOUR

  I NEVER SHOULD HAVE LET HIM BRING ALEX.

  Cassia sprinted behind Aretas and her son as they took to the open field between the caravan camp and the town. Long grasses slashed at her thighs and grabbed at the yellow silk as though they knew it was too fine for her.

  Behind them, the two foreign traders rained curses down on them. No doubt they were securing their goods and camels so they could give chase. The fugitives did not have long.

  Aretas still held Alexander’s hand as they ran. Cassia strained forward, trying to take the boy’s hand from Aretas, but she could not reach them. Alex stumbled once, then again, and Aretas yanked his arm upward to set him on his feet. He cried out in pain and fear.

  “He can’t run as fast as you!” Cassia yelled at Aretas’s back.

  “He’d better!”

  Cassia’s breath came in short gasps now, but she risked a look over her shoulder. Across the field, the two traders had started their pursuit.

  “They are coming!”

  She hated open spaces. She felt vulnerable, exposed as they ran. As if their pursuers could stop them simply by pointing a finger across the expanse.

  But the town loomed, and they were soon within its limits. Aretas turned into a narrow street lined on either side with small, mud-brick houses. They ran through the street speckled with greenish horse dung. Aretas pulled Alex against a wall and let the boy catch his breath. Cassia lowered herself until her face was even with her son’s.

  “Are you well, shekel?”

  He panted but nodded. Tears had channeled down his cheeks and already dried to white streaks.

  Aretas paced. “Is he well? He’s the reason we’re in trouble. And he’s going to get us caught!”

  Cassia spun on him, her jaw tight. “Then go on alone! We’ll be fine without you!”

  Aretas’s eyes went dark and his hand fisted. He swallowed hard, then shook his head. “We must keep going.”

  They outpaced the traders somehow, losing them in the close-packed streets of Damascus. They returned to the house, and Cassia placed Alexander on a chair to wipe the grime from his body.

  Aretas growled. “The boy deserves a whipping, not gentleness.”

  Cassia’s lips tightened and her breath shallowed.

  Aretas was not finished. “One of these days he’s—”

  “Stop!”

  Alexander jumped at the sharpness of her voice.

  “Not another word, Aretas.” She turned on him, protecting her son with body and words. “You pulled us into your trickery when we wanted no part of it. I warned you it would be dangerous for us, but you did not care. So do not speak another word of blame to me!”

  She sensed his tension. Like a snake coiled to strike. But she had venom in her as well.

  Later, when Alexander had been given his thousand kisses and tucked into his bedding and the day’s take sat fat and heavy in a pouch beside the boy’s lyre, Cassia lay tense and angry beside Aretas.

  “Those traders”—she hesitated, then pushed forward—“when they spoke of being in Petra—”

  Aretas cut her off. “It was my home.”

  “You never speak of it.”

  “For good reason.”

  In the darkness she could not see his face, but she could read him easily. Regret, perhaps bitterness, soured his voice. In all their years together, she had only learned bits and pieces of his early life. “Have you no one there anymore?”

  He did not answer at once, and when he did speak, his voice was thick. “They are there. But they do not want me back.”

  “But perhaps Alexander . . .”

  Aretas rolled to his side, away from her. She had seen all she would see through that small window. He was asleep long before her, his breathing steady and untroubled, even after the frightening day.

  But sleep again did not favor Cassia. Today’s plan had been shattered. A new plan was needed.

  Sleep did come, eventually. But sometime in the early watches of the morning, a pounding came at the door. Cassia bolted upright, her heartbeat matching the clamor.

  Aretas was on his feet. Alexander appeared in the doorway behind her. He clutched a tiny carved lion, his bedtime companion. Cassia went to him and turned as the door burst inward.

  She gathered her son behind her and faced the two intruders. She recognized them in an instant.

  “We want no trouble here.” Aretas wore a light tunic only and had no weapon. In that moment he seemed quite weak.

  The trader Aretas had swindled took in the room with a glance.

  “We want what’s ours,” the man said through clenched teeth. “And then you will be the one who pays.” His gaze drifted to Alexander and her, and the throbbing in her head warned her of danger.

  This was it, then. The day she had known would come since she had first tied her fate to Aretas’s, somehow believing she could love him into respectability, create out of him a man worth having, who would love her in return in the way she yearned for. She had stayed with him, had borne him a son. Somehow she had believed her own commitment would foster his. And yet some part of her had always known that Aretas’s past or his present would someday find him.

  Now all that remained was to see if he would destroy her and Alex as well. She pushed the boy behind her and held his arm with her own slick hand, willing him to stay as unseen as possible.

  But it was not possible. Perhaps it was the scent of gold at the boy’s feet.

  It happened in an instant, and yet slowly. The weasel-man flashed a knife and lunged for Aretas. The beefy man lumbered toward Alex and her, where they stood with the coins beside
their sandals. His hands were outstretched, and his fingers were fat and clubbed, like greasy sausages in the market.

  There was no time to react before he knocked them both aside with one sweep of his massive arm. They fell together, and Cassia heard Alex’s lyre fall to the floor with a crack. The boy had landed on the instrument. She felt an illogical jolt of sadness at the loss, as though something much greater was not at stake.

  Cassia reached for Alexander. The boy held his hand to his mouth, as he often did when trying not to cry.

  Behind them Aretas screamed, and Cassia turned to see the little man pull his knife from Aretas’s stomach.

  Her own insides turned to water then, with the ponderous dread that comes when one’s entire world is about to change.

  Alex lay upon the money pouch. Cassia turned back as the fat man kicked her little boy in the stomach to push him aside. The air whooshed from his lungs. His light eyes widened in terror and fixed upon her as his only hope. “Mama!”

  Aretas was in trouble, but the protective fierceness that rose up in her was only for Alex. She pulled him away from the scattered coins. His attacker bent to scrabble in the dirt.

  The bitter taste of fear and anger rose in her chest. She glanced around her, saw the heavy pot of caraway, and wrapped her hands around the cool weight of the terra-cotta. She scrambled to her feet, hefted the pot over her head, and smashed it down with a furious yell onto the fat man’s bent head. The clay cracked and the soil spilled over him like a dirty anointing, and he went down with a groan and lay still.

  On shaking legs, Cassia turned to the other, smaller man. He faced her, bloody knife in hand.

  Alex whimpered at her feet, and one glance at him revealed a bloody mouth. The two wiggly front teeth had been knocked out.

  Somehow the injury to her boy, though slight, raised a fury in her like she had never known, not even when Aretas would shove him aside in impatience and neglect.

  She took two rapid steps to the table, still laid from yesterday’s holiday celebration, and grabbed up the knife she’d left there while cutting dates. She spun to her attacker, who clearly debated whether to lunge for her first or the boy.