Game of Queens (3 page)

“Someday we'll need friends and favors,” he told his three friends, a truth they hotly denied.

“We do our tasks well. We serve Nebuchadnezzar in the proper fashion. Nothing more can be asked of us,” Mishael said. Daniel could not agree, but he did not argue.

At least I avoided the sin of pride.
But he had enjoyed the luxury and power that came with being a court favorite. And had remained convinced of his purity of heart, mind, and body.

Until I met Arioch.

It had been one of King Nebuchadnezzar's increasingly-rare calm days, and the king had decided to visit the Temple of Ishtar and ordered everyone in the court to accompany him. Daniel had been swept up in the crowd jostling for position, trying to gain a spot close to the king. After a few useless attempts to drop out of the impromptu procession, Daniel had concentrated on not stumbling. He suspected that if he fell, the courtiers would simply trample him in their rush to convince King Nebuchadnezzar of their loyalty and piety.

Despite the fact that a tunnel led directly from the palace to Ishtar's temple, King Nebuchadnezzar led his followers out the main palace gate, through the Northern Fortress, and swung around to re-enter Babylon by the Processional Avenue. The king strode between the brilliantly blue-tiled walls, ignoring the strikingly lifelike images of bulls, sirrush, and lions set into the blue tile. After this long detour, the king and his followers at last entered the Temple of Ishtar.

As the courtiers filed into the temple, Daniel struggled to free himself from the current forcing him to follow Ishtar's worshippers. Up steps inlaid with white marble doves, between tall crimson pillars—in a moment he'd be swept into the temple itself—

A strong hand clamped onto his arm, hauled him sideways. In the shelter of one of the pillars, Daniel gasped out his thanks.

“Well, you didn't look as if you were passionately devoted to Our Lady of Stars.”

Daniel found himself staring into eyes steady and golden as a lion's. “Thank you,” he said again. “I can't enter Ishtar's temple. Any Babylonian god's temple.”

“Why not?” his rescuer asked.

After a moment, Daniel settled for, “Because my god wouldn't like it.” Daniel studied the man who had saved him from angering the Lord. Taller and older than Daniel; the strong planes of his face hardened by wind and sun. Daniel needed no special wisdom to know this man was no courtier, for he wore the dark blue tunic and gold trousers of the king's guard.

“Who's your god, and why is he quarreling with Ishtar?”

“He isn't quarreling with Ishtar—well, I suppose in a sense He is, but—” Daniel looked at his rescuer; saw laughter in his eyes. “It doesn't matter,” Daniel said. “Thank you. I'm Daniel, but in the palace they call me Belteshazzar.”

“Arioch. Captain in the king's guard.” Arioch studied Daniel for a moment. “You're the fortune-teller, aren't you?”

“Not really.” Daniel had no idea how interpreting a few simple dreams for some of the palace servants had transmuted into an ability to predict the future. “I can explain what dreams mean. Sometimes, that is. If the Lord grants me that wisdom.”

Arioch glanced at the temple doorway and sighed. “Well, your Lord must just have granted me wisdom, because I predict we'll be waiting here for hours. Fortunately, I happen to have brought along these.” Arioch pulled a set of gambling pieces out of his belt pouch. “Care for a game?”

“Yes,” Daniel said, and held out his hand for the
pur.

By the time King Nebuchadnezzar finally left the Temple of Ishtar, Daniel and Arioch had each won and lost great, if illusory, fortunes. In the process, Daniel saw his own future, saw his life entwined with Arioch's.

Impossible.
But to the end of his days, Daniel remembered his first sight of Arioch's eyes. A lion's eyes …

Proud as a lion, too. And as lazy, sometimes.
Arioch never saw the point of doing well what didn't need doing at all—“Or at least not by me, Daniel. Not by me.”

And then there had been Samamat. Samamat with her brilliant mind and her wide blue eyes, her sun-gold hair and loving heart. Impossible to think of Arioch and not of Samamat as well.

She was a Chaldean, brought from the ancient city of Ur when Babylon's king collected boys and girls as if they were gems. Samamat's skill was astrology. As Daniel knew dreams, she knew the stars. She could read the heavens as easily as she could a scroll, and see futures written there.

One of King Nebuchadnezzar's ill-fated hunting trips bound the three of them together. Arioch was there because he was captain of the king's guard. Samamat was there because the king needed someone to read the stars. Daniel—Daniel wasn't sure why he'd been there, but he'd been ordered to come along, and so there he was, trying to stay on the back of a horse.

The king's hunting parties tended to resemble a rather eclectic army on the march. A mix of warriors, courtiers, courtesans, concubines, and even a few of the king's huntsmen, the assemblage moved at the languid pace of the palanquins carrying the women and eunuchs. Except, of course, when Nebuchadnezzar lost what little patience he had and whipped his horse into a gallop, an action that caused the king's guard to bolt after him and the rest of the horde to mill around aimlessly.

Eventually the entire crowd came to the campsite, and after several hours of chaos, during which the Chief Eunuch announced no less than three times that he would fling himself under the feet of the king's elephants if the women's pavilion was not raised
this instant
and the Chief Huntsman complained that any animal that wasn't deaf had long since fled, Daniel was able to find the tent assigned to him and collapse onto the bed. The next morning he rose early—the noise from the animals and the guards made that easy—and walked through the tents until he reached the edge of the camp. He stared at the vast forest that lay waiting, indifferent to the fate awaiting it and its inhabitants.

“I wish I hadn't come,” he muttered, and whipped around when a soft voice said,

“I wish I hadn't come either.”

Daniel found himself staring into very blue eyes. She was nearly as tall as he, and wore a long vest over a tunic and trousers. Glittering silver stars were so thickly embroidered over the vest they almost hid its midnight-blue color. Her hair was cut unnaturally short; it was the color of sunlight and honey.

“You're a woman.” Daniel realized it was an idiotic comment the moment the words left his mouth.

“Yes, I am.” Clearly she was used to such idiotic comments. “I'm Samamat. I'm an astrologer.”

That explained the starred vest and her oddly shorn hair; Daniel supposed she'd left the astrologer's elaborate headdress back in her tent. “I'm Daniel. I—well, I'm in attendance on the court. And the king. When he remembers who I am.”

She glanced around. “Be careful. Words carry.”

“No one else is awake yet.”

“The guards are, and the grooms. It only takes one word, Daniel.”

Daniel understood. King Nebuchadnezzar was half-mad at least half the time, and the other half he was over-conciliatory and morose. The court trembled, never knowing which king would summon them: the mad or the sane. A noise behind him—Daniel turned and watched a groom lead a pair of horses past.

“Beautiful sunrise,” Samamat said.

“Yes, very.”

They stood watching the sun climb higher into the sky. Vivid blue seemed to arch to forever. “I wonder what the sun is, really,” Daniel said. “It looks like a ball of fire, doesn't it?”

“I have a theory about that.” Samamat put her hand up to her forehead, shading her eyes against the sun's burning brightness. “I think the sun is just like the stars. I think somewhere someone is watching the sun as a star in his night sky.” She turned to Daniel. “I suppose you think that sounds completely mad.”

It did sound completely mad, but Daniel managed to not say so. “Well, you're the one who knows the stars. Do you read the sun, too, then?”

“I haven't been able to do that yet. Maybe I'm too close to it.” She shrugged; silver stars glinted. “Are you going hunting, Daniel?”

“I'm doing whatever King Nebuchadnezzar commands,” Daniel said.

*   *   *

The hunting party could have been a disaster—it was one of what Daniel thought of as the king's furious days, and even on the briefest of acquaintances he already knew that Samamat might be a brilliant astrologer, but she made a poor courtier—but Arioch had joined Daniel and Samamat once the hunting party raised enough dust to obscure clear vision. And then, somehow, the three of them had become separated from the king's party.

“I don't know how that happened,” Arioch said blandly, when Daniel looked around and pointed out they were out of sight of the main band of hunters. “Well, come on. I'm sure we'll find them soon.”

“Yes,” Samamat agreed. “How can you hide two hundred men and two dozen chariots?”

The answer seemed to be “easily enough.” Arioch led Daniel and Samamat on a long, rambling walk through underbrush and scrub. Eventually Daniel stopped worrying about the king, and concentrated on following Arioch. He'd thought he'd need to assist Samamat, but the woman seemed as lithe and energetic as a cheetah.

“Slow down,” Daniel finally begged her, as she disappeared around another clump of wild lilac. Apparently she listened, for Daniel nearly bumped into her; she'd stopped and now stood idol-still, staring at a mass of broken stone.

Ruins. No surprise; the plains of Babylon were littered with the bones of shattered empires.

“I saw something like that in Egypt once.” Arioch regarded the curve of broken stone as if he disapproved of it. And when Daniel and Samamat moved closer, and put their hands out to the relic, Arioch snapped, “Don't touch it!”

Daniel stopped, his hand almost to the stone. “Why not?”

“Oh, I don't know. Because it's bad luck to meddle with other people's gods? Just leave it.”

“I think this is the constellation of the Hunter,” Samamat began, reaching toward one of the raised symbols on the arch, and Arioch grabbed her hand.

“What is it about
do not touch that thing
that you do not understand?” Arioch demanded. He and Samamat stared into each other's eyes for what seemed to Daniel an unseemly length of time. At last Arioch let go of Samamat, and she stepped back.

“We're going back to the king's camp. Now,” Arioch said. He strode off, leaving Samamat and Daniel to follow or not, as they choose.

“I guess we'd better do as he says,” Samamat said. “After all, he's captain of the king's guard.”

And that makes him always right, I suppose.
But Daniel didn't say the words. He merely nodded, and walked beside Samamat after Arioch. When at last they returned to the king's camp, no one seemed to notice they had ever been gone—for which Daniel gave grateful thanks to the Lord. King Nebuchadnezzar's notice could be a dangerous thing.

*   *   *

That evening the three of them ate together and talked; since Arioch was almost as unwilling as Daniel to talk about himself, it didn't take long to learn each other's stories. Daniel had explained he was one of the Judean captives and worked in the palace.

“And—?” Samamat said, raising her eyebrows.

“And what?” Daniel stared at the bowl in his hands. Was the meat in the stew lawful to eat? It was lamb, after all.…

Samamat sighed and leaned forward. “And what do you do in the palace? How long have you lived there?”

“Well, there's not really much to tell. Really. I'm just one of the king's servants at court.”

Samamat sighed dramatically and shook her head.

“What?” Daniel looked at Samamat, her hair gleaming in the firelight. “What else is there to tell?”

“You know, Daniel. Only everything,” Arioch said.

“I'm really a very dull person,” Daniel told them, and Samamat laughed ruefully and shook her head. She slanted a glance at Arioch.

“What about you, Arioch?” Daniel asked, trying to turn the conversation away from himself.

Arioch shrugged. “I'm a soldier. What else is there to tell?”

“Only everything.” Daniel looked at Arioch's firmly shut mouth and realized he wasn't going to hear “everything”—at least not tonight. Apparently Samamat understood that too, because when Daniel turned to her, she smiled.

“Do you really want to hear
everything,
Daniel? Because I must warn you it's amazingly dull.” Samamat's gaze flashed to Arioch, who merely stared up at the night sky.

Why do I suspect that “everything” includes a great deal of Arioch?
Daniel decided not to voice that suspicion; statements of fact based firmly on common sense and observation had led to his undeserved reputation for unearthly wisdom. “I want to hear whatever you want to tell, Sama.”

Samamat laughed. “Now that's not truth. You certainly don't want to hear about the conjugations of the stars and how the gods use them to influence men.”

“Even that. It's still better than listening to Ari
not
telling us about his life.”

“Not what you'd say if I did tell you about it,” Arioch said. “March and wait and fight. Oh, and sometimes we wait and march and then fight. That's about it.”

“Of course,” said Daniel. “So … Sama?”

She regarded Arioch with exasperated fondness. “Just remember, Commander-of-a-Thousand Arioch, this is your own fault.”

“Oh, absolutely. Go ahead, tell us all about the conjugations of the stars.” Arioch leaned back against the tent pole and closed his eyes.

“Very well, but remember I'm an astrologer, not a storyteller.” Samamat drew in a deep breath and began, “I was born in Ur, and my family supplied astrologers to priests and kings as far back as—as—”