Twilight in Babylon (37 page)

Her gaze raked him. “What do you do, to live on Crooked Way? Stay with your family?”

He drew himself up. “Certainly not! I am a stargazer, as I said.”

“You’re the one who advises the
lugal
and
ensi
?”

Ezzi smiled. Now he was getting the recognition he deserved. “I am indeed.”

“You were the one who discovered the new star, who predicted the moon would fight the sun?”

“You are a very knowledgeable woman,” he said, smiling at his most charming.

She simpered back, finished pulling the seal off the throat of the jar and pried off the wax top. He could smell it; sweet beer to warm his body and fill his belly. Who needed food when you had beer?

She handed it to him, and he took it, staring at her. “My good woman,” he said, “I need a drinking tube.” She might follow the news of the day, but she was hopeless about running a tavern. “And if you could wipe off one of those tables, I would appreciate it.”

“Hand me the jar, and I’ll slip it right in,” she said.

Ezzi handed it back, and she put it on the floor beside her. Then she wiggled and writhed, crouched and he heard the sound of liquid on liquid. “Ahh,” she said, then handed it back to him. The mouth was wet—

“You pissed in my beer! What kind of whore are you?”

She knocked the jar with her hand and sent the mixture across the bar and into Ezzi’s face, onto his cloak; bathed him in it. “My son died yesterday because some fool saw a sign in the stars! Get out, and never come back!”

Ezzi stared.

“He killed your brother,” she said to the two sailors. They looked at Ezzi and rose to their feet.

He turned and ran. The door banged behind him, then he heard it bang twice more. Terror pushed him on, across the bridge. He heard their feet against the wood, but they were losing the chase.

Ezzi threw himself in the shadows by a house, panting. Fire raced through his chest, and his face felt aflame. He couldn’t catch his breath. He peered around the corner. No one was coming.

The assistant stargazer limped home to his dark, empty mansion and climbed the stairs. The sheets had been removed from his bed for laundering, and had not been replaced. A beetle crawled across the palm-frond mattress, black and glistening in the moonlight.

He ripped off his Old Boy cloak and beat the beetle to death, then threw it all, urine-soaked wool and squashed bug, across the room before collapsing on the bed.

No one called up to ask if he was all right.

No one knocked to see if he needed food or drink.

No one was there.

Ezzi buried his head under his arms. It was better this way.

No one to interfere.

*      *     *

Cheftu’s stomach growled, and Chloe tightened her arms around him. They didn’t want to let go of each other. A knock at the door.

“Who?” Cheftu called.

“Sir, the courtyard is beginning to fill with clients who are paying their final respects.”

“Are you supposed to be there?” Chloe whispered in his ear.

He nodded. “I’ll be out after my bath,” he called.

“A half double hour, sir,” the priest said.

“Yes,” Cheftu said. “Thank you.”

“I poured some water for you, it’s probably cool by now,” she said.

Cheftu walked forward, her lightly veiled body clasped to his. He stepped into the tub and sank down, soaking them both. “Hold your breath,” he said, and pulled them below.

They came up, Chloe smoothing her hair back, Cheftu wiping the water from his eyes. She looked at him, up close. His face was the same as always, knife-blade nose, square jaw, intelligent forehead and heavy brow. His eyes were deep-set and thickly lashed. But in different coloring—on a different physique—he looked completely different. She was really glad she’d gambled on a feeling.

“You look like you’ve been gilded,” she whispered. “Your skin and beard match your eyes now. You’re all golden.” Droplets hung from the thousand braids of his hair and shimmered on the diadem he wore. She reached a finger out to trace his cheekbone, his lips.

“Oh, Chloe,” he murmured, and kissed her. No hesitation, no exploration, just flat-out claiming what was his.

“Make love to me,” she said as his mouth moved from hers, down her chin and neck.

He stopped.

“What?”

Cheftu sighed and looked at her. “My duty is to get out there, cleaned up, and complete this business. I—”

She placed a finger on his lips. “I understand. Do you need someone to wash your back?” Her grin was impish.

His gaze kindled. “Help me by getting
out
of my bath and finding me some food.”

She stood up, dripping wet, her wisp of a dress totally transparent.

“When I get back, we’ll discuss how you got in here,” he said.

“And where you got these clothes,” she said, plucking at her gown as she stepped onto the floor. “Women’s.”

Cheftu’s ears reddened.

She laughed. “You’re blushing!”

He pulled his cloak off and slapped it on the drying rack, keeping himself immersed. “I am not.”

“You’re fair-skinned,” she said. “You’re tan, but you’re really pale.”

“I’m a Berber,” he said. “This body is, anyway. Berbers were originally from the mountains, big fair-skinned people with blond or red hair. Before they settled in Africa.”

“I can’t believe it, you’re always dark. Now you are a white boy.”

He glanced into the tub. “You have no idea.”

She stood on tiptoe but Cheftu pulled her down for another kiss, openmouthed, deep, and penetrating. Chloe was gasping when he pulled back. “Food,” he said.

His cheeks were extremely pink, beneath the bronze of his skin. “I’m going,” she said.

Chloe was seated on a chair when Cheftu came out of the lavatory, freshly dressed and clothed. He had time for one kiss and three pieces of bread, before a priest summoned him from the hallway. “Don’t leave,” he whispered to her. “I’ll be back. Get some sleep.”

He closed the door behind him, and Chloe was alone in the apartment. No details revealed Cheftu lived there. It was ornate, every piece of furniture inlaid and gold-leafed, fussy, with all the blankets edged in fringe, the pillows beaded with lapis and carnelian, statues and bottles on every available surface, and colorful. If it wasn’t red, it was blue or yellow. The walls were cone-mosaicked in red and blue and yellow, a giant zigzag pattern in one room, and herringbone in the bedroom. Cheftu’s bed was draped in tissue-thin wool, and piled with pillows. Not to mention that his bed was three times the width of the ordinary ones she’d seen.

After all,
Chloe reminded herself,
he’s the high priest of fertility.

On the inlaid table beside the bed, she saw the only signs of the Cheftu she knew: a stack of tablets and a handful of cylinder seals made from lapis and agate, delicate things that were art in and of themselves. She glanced at the tablets; they would make no sense to her since they were written in the priestly code.

She sat down on the bed. She should take a bath—she could now, she was home free. But it didn’t feel real, it didn’t seem like the death pit and burial chamber had existed. Chloe stripped down and crawled into the bathtub. The water was lukewarm and probably dirty, but cleaner than she was, at any rate.

Her hair was still somewhat of a mystery. It wasn’t strictly Caucasian hair, and she didn’t know how to treat it. She wet it, combed it down, and made sure it was free of cobwebs and spiders. Then she scrubbed away gold paint for at least an hour. Finally, she took Cheftu’s razor to every part of her body she could reach. Nicked in a half dozen places, Chloe climbed out of the tub and tried not to bleed on anything white.

When she’d scabbed over enough, she walked nude into the bedroom and pulled back the covers. The sheets smelled of sunshine and had been hammered to velvety softness. With a groan, Chloe cradled a pillow and fell asleep.

*      *     *

Ningal threw his cup into the room, to land with a chink on top of the others—clay and copper and gold and silver: inlaid and molded and fired and glazed—there were thousands upon thousands, the final tribute of the clients in the commonwealth of Ur.
En
Kidu stood at the mouth of the mass grave and watched the clients pass, throw their cups, and climb the three steps from the landing.

Sunlight didn’t reveal what was inside, and incense burned to cover up the smell of dead and festering flesh. Heat scored the pavement around the temple, and the people were a sweaty stinking mass though the sun had been up only two double hours.

The populace waited to see if Asa would say the curse had been averted. Ningal had done all he could for those he cared for; thank the gods it seemed to have gone well. Kalam had lived, Chloe had been spared, and justice had been served.

All that remained now was to get on with the business of living. How he missed his wife, the warmth of a house where bread was baked with love, beer brewed with understanding. He didn’t think of her often; there was no point for she was so many years gone. Perhaps he should take a journey, go visit his children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren. A voyage to see them all should take the rest of his life.

He looked at the temple. Was everything from now on just waiting to die?

En
Kidu stood like a bronzed statue of the god. Chloe’s fate had been sealed and witnessed. She didn’t need Ningal, and her young man had the soul of an ancient one with its attendant wisdom. Ningal couldn’t fathom the story Nimrod had told: the two, Chloe and Kidu, brought from another time and place to inhabit these bodies. Yet Ningal felt it was true. Like stories from Before, it rang with authenticity.

What was Ningal’s life for, then?

“Ningal, Justice,” a voice said.

He turned and greeted the new
lugal.
Gilgamesh was a fine figure of a man, even though he was clean-cheeked. The look of another commonwealth, no doubt. “How are you, my boy?”

“We just laid our cups,” he said. “Mother is at the house.”

“How is she?”

Gilgamesh had eyes as black as pitch, hard to read. He had been a hard taxman, a relentless leader, and ambitious for territory and water. Ningal wondered if the years had tempered him at all. “Bereft, sir.”

“True, true.”

“She would probably enjoy seeing some old friends,” he said.

Ningal looked at him. “Are you inviting me to visit your mother?”

“She is a young woman,” he said. “Vital. Used to managing a household and looking after children.”

Ningal patted his shoulder. “Then invite another man, for I am old, sir.” He shook his head. “Old.”

“Of all the justices, my father thought you were the most honorable. You had the greatest understanding of humanity, he said.” Gilgamesh’s strong hand shook Ningal’s. “Think about the visit. You would be welcome at any time.”

“Thank you,” Ningal said and walked out of the compound, down toward his street.
Old,
he thought.
If I’d been asked, I would have died, too.
What was left, really? Each day to wake up and see what more of his body had failed, until the dawn when he wouldn’t be able to move enough to see, then the next when his sight would have failed him also? He turned on to Crooked Way. Sunlight poured down, drawing lines of shadow on the walls and doubling the length of palm trees on the street.

He wondered why he occupied his huge house. A family should live there, with children and grandchildren running around the courtyard and wondrous smells rising from the hearth. Not an old man sipping wine under the only tree in the yard. “I’ll sell it,” he decided. “Better yet, give it to someone. A young justice or scribe who is in the family way.”

Ningal stopped talking to himself. Not only was it a dotty, aged habit, but he heard another voice.

“Help,” it whispered. “Please, help me, somebody.”

Ningal turned his head to hear better. A whimper. He sniffed the air and smelled blood. This far from the butcher’s, he shouldn’t smell blood. Someone was hurt. He threw open the door of his courtyard and shouted for the slaves. “Look around,” he ordered them. “Someone is crying for help.”

Four sets of eyes and ears located the victim quickly. The blood seeping beneath the door was the key. An Old Boy was in his courtyard, bleeding profusely. The slaves all pushed and opened the door, sending his body rolling. There were no people inside, and the place smelled of stale smoke and old urine. Ningal stanched the Old Boy’s blood flow with the edge of his cloak, then the four slaves shouldered the man and took him down to Ningal’s house.

“Fetch the
asu
and
asipu,
” he told his new scribe. “See if there is any sign of who did this. Borrow the
lugal’s
guards if you must, but find out.”

Ningal washed the man’s face and chest. He’d been stabbed four times, but luckily no organs had been struck.

“Don’t let me die,” the Old Boy muttered. “She’ll be waiting for me, and I can’t face her. Don’t let me die.”

Ningal paused, then added willow bark to the water and continued his ministrations. The gods worked in mischievous ways. He beckoned a slave. “Go to the
lugal’s
house and ask for Shem’s widow. Tell her that the Justice Ningal needs a woman’s touch for a young cousin who has been wounded. Most especially, she needs to have a strong barley brew for the boy, because he won’t be able to eat solid food for many weeks.”

The slave dashed off, and Ningal proceeded to spread an herbal salve on the chest wound and clip it together with ants’ jaws. Ezzi was quiet now. He would recover from the chest wounds, for he was young and strong. Nothing, however, could be done about his gouged-out eyes.

The stargazer would gaze no more.

The covers blew off her, then she felt the heat of a large, naked male body. Cheftu’s smell enveloped her. Chloe buried her head against his chest, and he wrapped his arms around her. She was yet asleep, lost in the delight of sensations when something began to dawn on her. She stretched out her toes, and felt Cheftu’s ankles. She opened her eyes, and was right at the crook of his neck and shoulder. “Hey!” she said, pushing him up. “You’re tall!”