Day of the False King (27 page)

“Of course, these persons rarely know they
possess the talent,” he explained, as he beckoned the farmer into the
chamber, placing him near Rami’s head.

Kem-weset was ready to begin. Quickly, he
made the incision, a half circle around the indentation above Rami’s
ear. The boy groaned, but did not wake. Carefully, Kem-weset peeled the
flesh up to expose the bone. Blood oozed from the cut, spilling across
Nidaba’s lap. She made no sound, and her expression remained stoic.

“Where is that stauncher?” Kem-weset asked
crossly.

The man had backed unseen into the corner of
the room. Marduk dragged him into position, and the blood stopped its
flow.

“Stay there!” Marduk growled.

Kem-weset took up a chisel and mallet, and
began hammering at Rami’s skull. Finally, the physician inserted a bore
into the wound. A few taps of the mallet, a twist, and he pulled away a
neat plug of bone, exposing the pinkish-gray brain inside. It pulsed in
the lamplight, and even Semerket noticed the black blood and fragment
of bone that pressed against it.

“Now,” said Kem-weset, “all I must do is
remove this chip — like so — and tweeze away the bits of old blood.
Yes…there!” Deftly, Kem-weset inserted the flattened disc of polished
silver he had fashioned from the piece that Semerket had given him,
then sealed it with mastic.

“They say the brain’s a worthless organ,”
said Kem-weset as he threaded a needle with lamb’s sinew. “But see what
this minuscule piece of bone was able to do to the poor lad?” He held
the fragment in the lamplight, where it glistened bloodily for all to
see. With gasps and curses, the Isin warriors sharply averted their
eyes. But Kem-weset continued his discourse, fascinated. “What it tells
me is that the brain must be good for something,” he said. “Don’t you
agree?”

When no one answered him, Kem-weset shrugged
and began stitching up the flap of skin. Then he made a paste of honey
and herbs, lathering it onto a bandage, and pressed it against the
wound. Finally, he wrapped a cloth tightly around Rami’s head.

It was not until Kem-weset rose to his feet,
saying, “I’ll have that wine now,” that everyone realized the surgery
was over. A collective sigh of relief sounded through the room.

Semerket found that he was drenched in
sweat, that his forehead blazed with pain. The headache that had
threatened to overtake him all day had at last arrived. He did not
mention it to Kem-weset, however, lest the physician in his enthusiasm
suggest a second surgery.

“When will you know if the boy will live?”
Semerket asked him.

“The next ten measures of the water clock
are critical,” replied the physician. “If he develops a fever, he will
die.”

Ten hours. He could not wait ten hours. He
would go mad in this tomblike place. He needed to walk, to wander, to
breathe fresh air. And then he knew what he needed more than anything
else in the world at that particular moment; a demon had taken
possession of him, thirsting with a demon’s ferociousness — he needed
wine.

“I must leave,” Semerket said abruptly.
“I’ll come back later. I have business in the city.”

Kem-weset reassured him that he would stay
with the boy until they knew his fate, one way or another.

Without a word to even Marduk or Nidaba,
Semerket had already turned on heel and started to sprint down the
tunnels. Marduk called out, saying that if he waited he would send a
man with Semerket to lead him out. But Semerket would not wait. Even
when Nidaba called after him, offering to take him back through the
cisterns herself — even then he ran.

Possessing no torch, he had no idea where he
went. He simply kept running forward, tripping over the roots and
broken tiles, sometimes falling. A faint light appeared in the
distance, seeping down from a cistern grate, and he ran to it. He found
a curving stairway and climbed, coming upon the grate at its far end.
It took him a moment to figure out its latch, but he was finally able
to lunge into the Babylonian twilight after a few moments, gasping.

Semerket leaned against a wall. The street
was unfamiliar to him. As always, he attempted to orient himself to
Etemenanki, but the angle of the buildings in the area prevented a
clear view of the tower. At the end of the street, however, he saw the
pediment of the Ishtar Temple. He knew he was near the Egyptian
Quarter. From deep within the cistern he heard Nidaba faintly calling
to him. But he was unable to face her — anyone — and began to run.

“WINE,” he said. “Red.”

“Going to drink it this time?” the
wineseller asked, his disdain for Semerket as marked as ever.

“What’s it to you whether I drink or not?”
The black jets in Semerket’s eyes flashed dangerously.

The wineseller swallowed his impertinent
retort; there was something about Semerket that night that reminded him
of a coiled serpent. Best not to tease it into striking.

Semerket sat at the rear of the tavern, away
from the lantern light. Though the Elamites patrolled the city,
enforcing the curfew where they could, they ignored the Egyptian
Quarter. Semerket had known instinctively that this tavern, where he
had first met Kem-weset, would continue to serve wine regardless of
riot, upheaval, or war.

“Planning on staying long?” the wineseller
asked.

“What’s it to you?”

“No reason, no reason — just making
conversation.”

“Bring me the wine.”

The wineseller shrugged and went back to
where his wine jars were stacked. Semerket watched him as he poured out
a bowl. The seller caught the eye of his servant, a sheep-faced youth
who collected the empty bowls strewn about the disordered place. The
wineseller whispered into the boy’s ear, then nodded in the direction
of Semerket.

“He’s telling him to charge me double,”
Semerket thought morosely. He dropped his eyes, past caring, for his
body throbbed with fatigue and grief. The bowl was set before him. It
was not the servant who put it there, but the wineseller himself.
Semerket looked around in dim surprise, and noticed that the serving
boy was gone. Pulling out a gold piece from his belt, he flipped it
into the air. “Keep the wine coming,” he said shortly.

The wineseller caught the ring in his fist.
He saluted Semerket smartly, and returned to his jars.

Semerket brought the bowl to his lips and
the red flowed into his throat. For a whole year he had not tasted
wine, save for the cup that Kem-weset had forced into him, mixed with
medicines. On the Theban docks, when Naia had sailed away from Egypt
forever, he had solemnly promised her that he would never again drink
it. She had placed her son in his arms, saying that if Semerket ever
tasted wine again, then her child could not thrive and she would grieve
for them both.

For an entire year, he had kept his promise.

But Naia was dead. Gone from him forever.
Surely that invalidated his pledge.

A paroxysm of grief shook him, starting from
his stomach where the wine lay cold and sour, refusing to do its work.
He called for another bowl. It was delivered. Then another. It was
doing nothing for him, this wine. What kind of piss did they serve
here? Rage suddenly blazed through him, and he hurled the bowl across
the room.

“I still feel!” he shouted. “Bring me
another bowl!”

“Why don’t I just bring you a jar of my very
finest?” the wineseller suggested from across the room.

The establishment’s very finest tasted
suspiciously like the wine he had been drinking all along. By the end
of the jar, however, he didn’t care, for it had finally succeeded in
calming his roiling mind. Now he could take out the terrible
revelations that Rami’s confession had stirred; he had the courage to
examine them at last.

He stared into the distance, allowing the
spectre of Prince Mayatum to appear before him. Semerket finally
acknowledged to himself the thought he had been trying to keep at bay,
that the prince had come to Babylon not for any diplomatic discussions,
nor for pleasure.

The prince had come simply to arrange the
murder of Naia and Rami.

It seemed almost a ridiculous thing to
admit. Semerket could not comprehend why the prince had gone to such
lengths to strike at him. Semerket was a nobody, beneath his notice.
Mayatum and his brothers were princes of the blood, tracing their
lineage to the great god Amun himself, while Semerket was only a
generation from the peasantry.

Self-effacing, willfully naive, Semerket had
always considered himself scarcely worth the attention of even ordinary
people. That was why, when Naia had approached him, seeking him out
above all the other youths who trailed in her wake, he had lost his
heart to her.

Then he remembered something else and his
tears dried.

Menef had struck her!

Icy wrath surged through his body, and the
thought came upon him succinctly — I will kill him. Tonight. Before the
dawn arrives, I will drive the life out of him.

His rage was not directed at the
ambassador’s bodyguard, the Asp, the one who had impaled Naia on his
lance. No, the Asp was an animal, scarcely human, who gloried in pain
and suffering. Semerket had known it the moment he had seen him, with
his ghoul’s smile and yellow teeth. Why expect an animal to be
something other than what its nature compelled it to be? No, it was
Menef who said, “Fetch!” and it was Menef who said, “Kill!” and the
animal went just as willingly to either task.

He was convinced now that Menef had been a
member of Queen Tiya’s foul conspiracy. Prince Mayatum’s secret visit
to Babylon proved it. The remnants of the terrible cabal were alive,
Semerket realized, and their sinister hand had reached all the way into
Mesopotamia to take their revenge upon him. He had been the one who
foiled their ambitions, who had also been the author of their
subsequent humiliations, testifying at the trials against them. How
stupid he had been to consider their conspiracy dead and forgotten!
Though the queen had mysteriously disappeared, rumored to be the victim
of her husband’s secret revenge, as long as her remaining sons were
still alive, how could it ever be over? By killing Naia they had sought
the most vicious and painful way possible to kill him as well.

Well, he was not dead yet.

He would go that very night to Kutir, to
make his accusations against them. They had caused the massacre at the
plantation, to make Rami’s and Naia’s murder look like the work of Isin
terrorists. But he shook his head, uncomfortable with the logic. Was it
not strange that so many had to die because of some distant Egyptian
quarrel — that a massacre of more than thirty Mesopotamians was
perpetrated just to kill two ordinary Egyptians?

He looked at the empty wine jar in front of
him. Perhaps another would help him reason out why so many had to die
at the same time. Semerket raised his head to call again to the
wineseller, but discovered that a group of men had quietly stolen
around him.

Rough hands suddenly pulled him to his feet.
“Whoa there, my lord!” a harsh voice came to him, loud enough for all
to hear. “It seems you’ve drunk a wee bit too much tonight — as usual.
Don’t want you to go making a spectacle of yourself again, eh? You
might fall into the wrong hands!”

The Asp leered at him. Semerket whirled
around to see the other man who gripped his shoulder; the young man’s
face was very familiar and he strained to remember who it was. Then he
knew — it was the guard from the embassy, the one to whom he had given
the new spear.

“What’re you doing here?” Semerket mumbled
to him. “I thought we were friends…”

The young man glanced fearfully at the Asp,
and his grip on Semerket’s arm became tighter. “Come along quietly now,
sir,” he urged.

But that was precisely what Semerket would
not do. He struggled, cursing, shrieking for help, but none in the shop
made a move to aid him. He was just another obstreperous drunk to them,
fortunate to have people who cared enough to rescue him before he
passed out. As they dragged him from the wineshop into the dark street,
Semerket saw the Asp toss a couple of gold pieces to the wineseller and
his serving boy. He suddenly knew where the boy had disappeared to that
evening: he had been sent to fetch the Asp.

In the empty streets, Semerket’s screams
caromed off the brick walls of the shuttered buildings. He saw heads
peeping at him from over the balustrades, and he shrieked up to them
for help. But they quickly withdrew into the shadows; in times of war,
no one willingly went into the dark to aid a stranger.

In his hysteria, Semerket noticed that he
and his captors were skirting the Processional Way, heading in the
direction of the royal quarter. Surely there must be Elamite soldiers
on the avenues, he thought, and craned his neck to see. But the dark
was by now so pervasive that he could not even see the faces of his
captors.

“I know it was you who attacked the
plantation,” he hissed in the direction of the Asp.

“We suspected as much,” came the indifferent
answer.

“Kutir knows,” Semerket lied. “I told him.”

“No, he doesn’t.”

“Even now his men are searching for you.”

“No, they aren’t.”

“How do you know? Where do you think I’ve
been all day? I’ve been at the palace! I told Kutir everything — how it
was you who dressed up as Isins and killed his brother-in-law. I showed
him the Egyptian arrow I found!”

“Did you, now? I’m curious to learn, then,
what Ambassador Menef had to say. He’s been at the court all day, too,
you see. Did you have an opportunity to chat?”

Semerket cursed inwardly at his slip, but
continued to hurl his accusations into the dark “I told him that it was
you who attacked the Egyptian temple, that you thought my wife was
there —”

“No. We knew your wife wasn’t there.”