Garden of Madness (12 page)

Secrets and truth. Power and death.

Tia and her mother both unfavorably mentioned.

And could the one whose death they anticipated be anyone other than her father?

Her muscles remained knotted and she forced herself to breathe, to release the fear. What was this plan? And how were they involved?

Her earlier musing returned with ferocity.

Would she live her life only to satisfy a lust for thrills? Or would she chance a venture of significance?

She will lock me up until Zagros arrives
. If Tia were to pursue the truth, it must be in secret.

She would be risking her freedom, not only for the moment, but permanently, if it meant a forced marriage.

Strangely, the face that flashed in her mind’s eye was an old man with bright eyes who lived a stone’s throw from the palace and yet had never let himself become truly part of it.

“Question everything,”
Daniel had said. As he had done and would continue to do.

Tia regarded the stars once more, searching for counsel and finding only more mystery.

But in her heart, something had already changed. She was no pet cat with a tangle of threads. No unruly princess interested only in amusement.

The game had turned deadly. And she was prepared to win.

Dark. Light.

Black, white, gray.

All I know.

Nose to wind, sniffing, sniffing. Meat! Throw it here. Here!

Pawing to meat, stones scratching skin. Devour. Not enough. Hungry, always hungry. Snuffling in dirt, more food, more food. Pawing at the roots, smell of earth. No food.

Black above, specked with white. So cold.

Grayness at the edge of black. Grows. Lightens. Water on my skin, falling on me. Colder.

She comes. I watch. Eyes soft, water there too.

She goes.
Do not go
.

Head lifted, lips open, teeth bared. Baying at the luminous white, disappearing.

Change. Change coming.

Urge to eat, urge to kill . . . receding.

Something more. There is something more.

Lingering fog.

Lifting fog.

CHAPTER 14

I prowl the night palace again, looking for the jackal. I search rooftop gardens where I watch the soft glow of the moon, and underground corridors lit by an occasional smoking torch burning low in the late watches of the night. I do not find him. My silent tread takes me to the throne room courtyard, to the low-hanging fronds that brush against my back as I pad along the path. So thirsty. The fountain bubbles and trickles and I approach, lean my head over its stone lip, and stare into the water at my reflection in the moonlight
.

I have found the jackal
.

Tia sucked in a ragged gasp of air and woke. Watery morning sunlight slanted across the floor of her bedchamber, striking a path across her eyes. She blinked against the intrusion, then reached a hand to the dust-sparkled beam, willing the sun to banish the terror.

I am not in my bed
. The shock of finding herself the jackal in her dream surged again, like nausea, and Tia scrambled to sit upright, her eyes darting around the room. Her own bedchamber, but she was on the floor. Had she fallen and not awakened? Or did the dream have something of reality?

Before she was fully dressed, a male slave usually attendant on Amytis appeared at her door. Omarsa held the door ajar while Gula hastily wrapped Tia in a tunic.

The young man had the beautifully dark skin of Upper Egypt. The gold armbands her mother lavished on her slaves shone against his lean arms. “Your tutors await, my lady.” His tone was deferential yet firm.

Tia’s jaw tightened. Always she went voluntarily to her tutors. This escort was meant to ensure her attention to duty. Amytis would allow her no freedom. Bitter memories surfaced—memories of other days, perhaps weeks if childhood recollection could be trusted, spent behind locked doors. Tia would not risk open flaunting of her instruction. She would pursue the truth, but it would be done with stealth.

Amytis kept her occupied with lessons and meals from dawn until the heat of the day finally waned and the sun dropped into its nightly grave. Her tutors scolded her for inattention, and she was too preoccupied to notice her food, but when darkness overtook the palace, her time was her own and she had a plan.

As she had pondered through the day the unseen chain that linked Kaldu’s death to the rooftop words of Shadir, she could find no obvious connection. But if one existed, Shadir’s protégé, the young Amel-Marduk, might know of it and might be willing to share his knowledge with a princess.

She dressed for warmth, in an open woolen tunic in scarlet that accentuated her dark hair and fairer skin. Omarsa and Gula decked her in sapphires and jade and rouged her lips with scarlet pigments, and in their silent ministrations they required no explanation.

Babylon had more festivals, auspicious days, and holy days than one could count, and tonight’s was minor, dedicated to the moon god Sin. Ordinarily Tia would ignore the rituals, but they provided a reason to visit Etemenanki, where she was certain to find Amel. More important, her mother never denied her in religious endeavors.

Soldiers were summoned to escort Tia through the city, and she strode through the convoluted palace halls, winding toward the grand entrance.

At the head of the massive staircase, she stood and looked over the darkening city, over the flat rooftops with their family altars and shelves of drying herbs. Colorful tunics, strung high across the streets to dry in the cooling breeze, waved and snapped like flying standards of soldiers. Torches bobbed and weaved under the wash lines as citizens made their way to temples and shrines.

Her lessons of the day returned to her, recitations she had made all her life, as if there were some danger of her forgetting.
The great and mighty Babylon, home to fifty-three temples of the great gods, fifty-five shrines of Marduk, and a thousand more for the celestial and earthly deities
.
The goddess Ishtar is worshipped at one hundred eighty altars, and another two hundred serve other gods
.

In Babylon, one could not stumble in the street without falling into a temple or shrine. Just as well, for as she had been taught since infancy, the demons sought always to destroy their great city, and the gods must be forever entreated to keep them safe from the demons’ malevolence.

And across the city, the greatest temple of them all: Etemenanki, the House of the Platform of Heaven and Earth, rose to match and surpass the great height of the palace. Tia’s chest swelled with pride at the sight of the seven tiers; the stairs that twisted round it, like a snake around a pole; and the topmost torches, already blazing against the orange-purple sky.

The wind caught at her scarlet cloak and twisted it around her ankles.

Must keep moving
. It would take some time to cross the city and ascend the tower.

Indeed, by the time she and her soldiers climbed to the Platform, their breath came heavy and labored. Pride kept her own breath steady, but the trek had been arduous. The effort was required to please the gods, the priests insisted.

Tia paused at the top stair and gazed across the plateau-like top of the tower, then below her, where the streets slanted away at odd angles, with toy houses and insect-sized people. The night wind blew cold and strong here, and a wave of dizziness swept her. She pulled her attention from the streets and focused on the temple at the center.

The Platform of Heaven and Earth was aptly named, for it was here that man first began to build with bricks in an attempt to reach the gods. Their first feeble efforts, millennia ago, had been thwarted by a sudden, bizarre confusion of language, scattering the builders across the grasses of the earth. But eventually some had returned and built again. And around this tower swelled the city and then the empire that became Tia’s Babylon.

The crowd of worshippers was meager tonight, and Tia searched impatiently through priests and diviners to find the one she sought. Torches flared every kanû’s length along the platform’s edge and sunk into sockets in the half wall of stone, slashing yellow bands of light across dark faces.

In the center of the Platform, beside the temple built to Marduk, the massive altar commanded the attention of priest and mage. With their backs to Tia, they were an undulating sea of red robes embroidered with gold, swaying against the prayers of the
kalû
, the chanter-priests intoning incantations to the rhythmic beating of box drums and stringed
tanbûrs
. She could see nothing of the altar’s surface, but masses of gray-white smoke twisted above their heads.
Impossible to identify Amel among his colleagues
. She would have to wait.

Tia slipped toward the altar, drawn by lilting chants of the kalû and the smoky sweetness in the air. Keeping back from priests at their duties, she closed her eyes and let herself be swept into the music of the night, held captive by the wind, rocked by the gentle hand of the gods.

And then he was there, beside her, gripping her elbow. Her eyes fluttered open and found his, glittering and hard like the cold stars against the black dome. Red, full lips and skin gone pale in the moonlight.

“Princess.” That slight smile, amused, confident. Powerful. Tia was once again drawn into the spell that surrounded Amel-Marduk. “You have come to honor the gods?”

“What?” The sky seemed to tilt above her. She reached out to steady herself and found only Amel’s arm. “Yes, yes. The gods.”

He led her forward, through the clustered priests with their turbans wound high atop their heads, to the white stones of the altar, where the newly sacrificed bull still burned. An intertwine of smoke and incense filled her nose. Orange embers glowed under the flesh, and blood slanted between the white stones to a channel cut round the altar. In the darkness the blood glistened, nearly black. The charred bull’s flesh crackled and hissed, and Amel reached across the embers to tear a piece of it, then turned and brought the flesh to her lips.

Tia opened her mouth and let him place it between her teeth. The heat burned her tongue and the ashy taste watered her eyes, but she chewed and swallowed, obedient to the gods, and somehow, strangely, to Amel. She angled her face to the wind and the night, and the taste of the charred flesh pricked her senses. Again Tia swayed on her feet and felt Amel’s arm around her waist, his cheek nearly touching her own.

Across the altar, beyond the smoldering bull, she saw Shadir, his head bowed to another, whispering and watching. Watching her.

She turned away, ready to speak at last. To Amel, still close enough to hear her whisper, she said, “I must speak with you, alone.”

Again the smile, the lifting of the perfect brows. He led her to the stone wall at the Platform’s edge. The wind buffeted a nearby torch, its flame bent sideways as though reaching for Tia. The sky inclined again and she gripped the ledge to ease her light-headedness.

“You are worried, Princess.”

He had that ability to see into her. “I fear there are happenings in the palace that do not bode well for my family.”

Amel peered over the ledge to the streets, wickedly far below. She kept her focus on his pale face.

“How can I help?”

The words she’d hoped to hear, but she must not be naive. “Shadir, he is your master?”

Amel’s gaze came back to her, roamed her face. “He is.”

“Is he—is he someone to whom I could take concerns about the kingdom? Does he fully support my father’s reign?”

Amel lowered his chin, quieted his voice. “There are some who would say your father does not reign at all.”

“Who? Who says this?” Her voice sounded petulant, even to her.

“You must be careful, Princess.” His hushed words brought her closer, wrapped in their private exchange. “Those with ambition would use this time to further their goals.”

“This time?”

The torch flame behind Amel snapped and Tia jumped. He laid a cool hand over hers on the ledge.

“The nobleman’s strange death. There are rumors.”

Tia pulled away a bit. Rumors were not surprising, but still the words struck against her heart.

Amel’s long fingers closed over her own, comforting. “So fiercely loyal to your family, to Babylon. This is one of the things I love about you, Princess.”

Tia ignored his flattery, for now. “And Shadir? Is he ambitious?”

Confusion crossed Amel’s features. “Shadir is a mage, without royal blood. What ambition could he have?”

Tia searched his eyes. Did he speak from loyalty or truthfulness? A gust of wind blew against them, leaning them toward the ledge. She looked back toward the altar, grounding herself in something solid.

“Your nephews, Tia.”

“What about them?”

Amel glanced over his shoulder, a slight movement but fearful. “Your sisters’ boys are of royal blood. Be wary.”

She had been foolish. Pedaiah’s warning about her father’s lack of sons, and now Amel’s words about her nephews, Labashi and Puzur, spun together, a splash of truth against a murky sky. A usurper must rid the kingdom of Nebuchadnezzar’s grandsons before he could seize the throne without fear of attack by those loyal to her family. Tia breathed deeply of the night air to steady her thoughts and took in lungs full of incense and smoke.

Amel released her hand and reached into his cloak to a leather pouch hung from his belt. “I created something for you.” He drew out a long cord, knotted at intervals around smooth white stones. He held one end, let it dangle and spin under the moonlight.

“It is beautiful.”

He turned her toward the expanse beyond the tower and circled her neck with the cord. She lifted her hair and felt his fingers fasten the knot against her neck. Her skin tingled under his touch.

“An amulet,” he whispered against her ear. “Every stone laid under the stars for a special blessing of protection.”

She released her hair and turned back to him. He did not step back, and there was an intensity in his eyes Tia had not previously seen.