Twilight in Babylon (34 page)

The chamber reverberated with sound.

Someone was moving the chest away from the hole.

*      *     *

“More is required,” Asa said.

The
lugal
and Cheftu looked at each other. “What more is there?” the
lugal
asked. “We’ve given almost every mina of gold in the commonwealth, emptied the temple’s stores and almost depleted the granary. Countless clients weep tonight because the women they love are gone—we don’t have anything else!”

The stargazer lifted his hands. What could you do, if the gods weren’t satisfied, you had to give them more. His gaze shifted to Cheftu.

“The first floor is ready for the offerings,” Cheftu said. “This meeting delays me.”

“They require more offerings.”

“Or what?” the
lugal
asked. “We’ve had floods, barley rust, crops fail, starfall, and an eclipse. What more can they send?”

“You mock the gods?” Asa questioned. “We haven’t sacrificed enough, that is all I can read in the stars.”

“More lives?” the
lugal
asked.

“Clients,” Asa said. “Representatives of the First Families.”

The
lugal
sank into a chair.

“Another pit?” Cheftu asked. He must keep them from digging close to Chloe’s escape route. Another pit could ruin everything.

“It needs to be carried out immediately,” Asa said. “Stars continue to fall from the heavens. A new star burns in the house of the moon of the barley stalk. It burns red.”

The
lugal
looked at Cheftu. “Is there any alternative?”

“To the choice of humans, or where they’ll… go?”

“Ask stargazer Rudi if my word is in doubt,” Asa said. “It was she who brought this to my attention.”

“I’ll go convene the council,” the
lugal
said, standing up. “Prepare a chamber.”

Cheftu nodded, his mind racing.

Asa spoke softly. “It is a harsh thing the gods ask, but we are here at their pleasure.”

“We are their slaves,” the
lugal
said.

Cheftu muttered something, but he made sure they didn’t hear it. Cloak flapping, he raced back to the pit. His stomach growled with hunger, and his head felt light, but there was no time to eat, regardless of what his contentious body wanted. His scribe scurried to catch up with him. “Wake the diggers,” Cheftu said. “Bring me a team of bricklayers, pull brick stock from the storehouses, get the remaining vessels from the treasury and send a phalanx of priests to meet the
lugal
at the city gate. Go!”

Acolytes with incense and food came stumbling out of the barracks, with eyes still glued shut from sleep. One let a ladder down into the shaft and Cheftu clambered down it. While he sang, they poured drink offerings, placed the incense, and made a primeval feast for the dead.

Cups and baked bread, and chunks of meat, stewed with onions. He was ravenous. They inverted a clay bowl over the offering, then climbed out. “Fill it some more,” he said to them and walked through the dawn to the council meeting.

*      *     *

Guli paced his cell. Eight steps left, eight right. The smell of dung wafted through the window, but at least it was cool now, at dawn. Whoever thought to cut holes in perfectly good walls? he wondered. Did they not realize how miserable it made the room? Footsteps had pounded the streets, men and women moving back and forth in the night. Apparently the gods had accepted the gifts—they were no better than Viza—for the earth still stood.

He looked out at the gray. The afterlife was like this. Gray and dusty, with nothing but the smell of shit. He sat down on the floor with his legs bent and arms akimbo.

“Guli, is that you?” a voice said from the window.

“Justice?”

“Listen to me. Have you accepted your sentence?”

Guli looked at his hands.

“Was it worth it, to lose your freedom and life for the joy of killing Viza?”

“The scorpion deserved to die.”

“It was not your decision to make.”

Guli didn’t say anything. Whether or not the justice was correct, the system had condemned him. “Did you disturb your rest to prod my conscience?” he said.

“No. I have an offer to make you. I’m coming in.”

Guli heard the wooden gate open, then the clay seal on his door crack. Ningal must have caught the pieces because they didn’t fall. The bar lifted, and Ningal stepped inside. Guli looked up at him.

“Your clothes are stained yet,” Ningal said.

“They didn’t give me a change of clothes before locking me away,” Guli said. “I am meditating on my future of being dead. What do you want? What is your offer?”

“Die a hero.”

“I’m no fool like Ulu.” He wanted to weep at the thought of her quenched of life to cold, uncaring gods. Yet he was blessed for having touched her that last time. For a moment, he had been her gentleman husband, and she had been his honored wife. It was enough to die with.

“You’ll perish anyway,” Ningal said.

“What’s the benefit to me?”

Ningal looked away. “Tonight, in fact most of tomorrow, you can have any woman you want, feast to your contentment, and go to death with a smile.”

“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.”