The Blood Star (49 page)

Thus I did not hear the splash when Selana
dived into the harbor, intent on following wherever I went.

My first object was the see the king and, for
once, without the presence of Nabusharusur. This, I fancied, would
not be difficult—Abdimilkutte had almost ceased to exist for my
brother, who thought only of his revenge. By this time, I hoped,
Nabusharusur would not even be in the palace.

The guards at the great cedar doors
recognized me, and I was admitted without hindrance.

It was always dangerous to share a secret
with a king, for every king is surrounded by spies. I had lived
most of my life in royal courts and knew their ways. Doubtless
Nabusharusur kept himself informed, and it would not have surprised
me to learn that more than a few of Abdimilkutte’s most loyal
retainers had given consideration to how they could survive him and
were sending messages to Esarhaddon.

Thus, when I requested admission to his
presence, I did not ask to wait upon the king alone—why draw
attention to my business? I would find some means when the moment
came.

He almost refused to see me, and when I
beheld his distracted condition I could understand why. This was
not a man whose mind could tolerate any more bad news. And,
besides, he was with his concubines.

“Well, My Lord, and am I to have no refuge
from my cares?”

He was lying on a couch, his tunic pushed up
around his waist and his loincloth undone—the Phoenicians are the
most immodest race the great gods ever fashioned—and an exquisitely
made young girl with skin the color of tarnished brass was crouched
over him, doing all that she could towards solacing the flesh. I
waited with averted eyes until she had quite finished.

“Mighty King,” I said, when he had readjusted
his garments and sent his women away, “I wondered if you might be
kind enough to show me the wonders of your garden—I am informed it
is the last patch of green in Sidon with any hope of
surviving.”

His eyes darted to my face, narrowing
suddenly, as if he wished to be quite sure of what he had seen
there. Yes, he understood well enough.

“My Lord, with the greatest pleasure. .
.”

The roof of Abdimilkutte’s palace was a kind
of paradise, lush with flowers and pleasantly cool. The wind had
died away almost to nothing, so it was more for privacy’s sake that
we chose the shelter of a vine-covered arbor that allowed a view of
the sea. The king had brought with him a pitcher of wine and a pair
of golden cups, and with his own hands he filled them.

“Notice, My Lord, how thin the Tyrians have
spread themselves,” I said, raising an arm to points toward the
horizon—at this distance the sails of their ships were almost
invisible, so probably Abdimilkutte, who did not possess a hunter’s
eyes, had to accept my assessment on trust. “They dare not come in
too close, for they do not know the channels and fear to run
aground. And it is a wide expanse of sea they have chosen to
close.”

“Yes, but they have done it effectively
enough,” the answered, sounding faintly annoyed. “In fifteen days,
no ship has dared to sail from this harbor.”

“Quite true—a ship alone is too easily picked
off. But think of a hundred ships, sailing in a mass with the land
breezes stiff behind them. Some would be lost, certainly, but the
rest would break out like a bull through a wooden fence.”

His eyes trained on the horizon as he tried
to see the thing in his mind. He leaned forward, resting the palms
of his hands on his knees, and I could hear his breath catch. Yes,
he understood now.

“It would be a chance at life—for you and
some few thousand of your subjects. To stay here is to die, for the
king of Ashur will drive pity from his heart once his men are
inside the city walls. You know that, My Lord.”

“The Lord Nabusharusur says the army of your
brother is already maggoty with unrest, that they will go away if
we only wait. . .”

“They will not go away. The Lord Nabusharusur
knows this, for the king is his brother as well as mine. Leave the
Lord Nabusharusur to me. If you listen to him, you are a dead
man.”

He swallowed, hard, but it would seem that
whatever was in his throat refused to go down. Perhaps it was his
own heart.

“An hour before dusk would be the best time,”
I continued, “when the wind is the strongest. I have a fast ship
waiting already. I leave it to you and your people to settle who
goes with us and who stays behind.”

“My soldiers—I will take my soldiers with
me.” He licked his lips as if they were cracked with thirst. The
wine cup, which he held cradled in his hand, was forgotten. “Eight
thousand men and perhaps only a hundred ships. . . A great pity, I
shall have to leave some behind, and yet. . .”

“You will have no need of soldiers, Lord. You
will have need of men to sail your ships—think of your people. War
is a soldier’s business, and his only virtue is to know how to die.
Have a little mercy on those who have trusted you.”

“My people—well. . .” He smiled blandly,
gazing into empty space. “They hate me now, so. . .”

I might as well have been speaking to the
wind. The king of Sidon had no thought for anyone but himself. I
needed Abdimilkutte, for without his help no escape was possible,
but I did not like him.

“One hour before sunset, then.”

I rose and left him there, wondering why I
had thought to hang my life by so weak a thread. Because, of
course, there had been no other choice.

Yet what was I to do about Nabusharusur?

We had been children together in the king’s
house of women, and no one but Esarhaddon himself had been more my
friend. And then, when we had come of an age to begin life in the
world of men, the castrator’s knife had done its bitter work.
Esarhaddon and I, having been spared, studied to become soldiers,
while Nabusharusur disappeared into the tablet house to learn the
arts of a scribe and to nurse his bitterness. I did not hear of him
again for many years.

And it had all led to this. He had had a hand
in our father’s murder, and his had been the voice raised loudest
to urge rebellion against Esarhaddon—and not for his own sake, nor
for Arad Ninlil’s, who had struck the blow that killed the Lord
Sennacherib, nor for any abstract love of duty or his native land.
Why then? The reasons were hidden from me, and perhaps even from
him. Perhaps, by now, reasons no longer mattered.

I was to meet him by the Great Gate, where he
would be waiting at the third hour past midday. I was not his
brother now, or even his friend—only his instrument. I would do
well to remember that.

Perhaps, even now, if I could persuade him. .
.

He stood by the gate tower, dressed in a
simple soldier’s tunic, talking to the officer of the watch. When
he glanced up and saw me his eyes tightened, as if he looked into a
bright light. More than this, he betrayed not the slightest
emotion.

“I see you are here,” he said, turning from
the officer with a gesture of dismissal. “I was not entirely sure
if at last you would come, but perhaps I should not have doubted.
Everything is prepared. I even have a fine horse for you, that you
might ride into our brother’s camp not like a fugitive or a thief
but like a prince of Ashur.”

He put his hand on my arm, meaning to draw me
aside for some private word, but when he saw that I was not
prepared to be moved he released me at once.

“That is all there is for you,” I said,
feeling less anger than a kind of grief. “You and I and
Esarhaddon—it is like we three were somehow alone in the world,
isn’t it. The people of this city, they do not even exist for
you.”

“What are you talking about, Tiglath?”

His face crumpled in a strange and unnatural
way, creating the impression he could not decide between rage and
mere perplexity.

“I will not kill Esarhaddon this day,
brother. Nor will you. But I have arranged an escape. Forget
Esarhaddon. Abandon your revenge. Come with me, and live.”

“Forget Esarhaddon? Forget? Have you gone
mad?”

“It is not me, I think, who has gone
mad.”

He took a step backwards, as if repelled. He
seemed, for the moment, to have lost the power of speech. I could
almost see his mind reeling, clutching for anything to seize
upon.

“I see how it is,” he said finally. “I see!
Once again, as when first I invited you to join the rebellion
against Esarhaddon, when we might have won so easily, you have no
bowels for the thing. I can only wonder what could have made you
such a coward.”

With a sudden movement he drew the dagger
from his belt and cut the air with it, more as a demonstration than
a threat.

“‘I am Tiglath Ashur!’“ he shouted. “‘My
father is Sennacherib, Lord of the Earth, King of Kings! Come near
me at your peril!’ Did you think I had forgotten? By the gods, what
a lion you sounded then! So they spared you. They spared you, and
they cut open my scrotum like a green fig. And now you cannot find
even the little courage it takes to push aside a lump of mud like
Esarhaddon and take the world for your own! You are less of a man
even than I am, brother.”

“Come with me, Nabusharusur. Save yourself.
To stay here is to invite death.”

“You think I fear death? Let me show you how
I fear death!”

He took a wild swing at me with his dagger,
so close that it cut my tunic even as I dodged out of its way—yes,
this time he had meant to kill me.

“You should have obliged me at Khanirabbat,”
he shouted, beside himself now with rage. “You should have spilled
my guts on the hard earth when I asked you to, for life is an
endless misery to one such as I. But you shall pay for that
mistake, brother—or you shall make it good.”

He lunged again, but this time he did not
take me by surprise and I parried his arm with a slap of my hand.
He stumbled back and I drew my own dagger, hoping he would think
better of this folly. Nabusharusur had no skill with weapons, nor
even a man’s strength, and I had been a soldier all my life. I
could have killed him so easily, yet I shuddered to think of
it.

“Let it have an end, brother. Stop this
before it is too late.”

“What troubles you, Tiglath?” His voice
trembled and there were tears streaming down his face, so hot was
his wrath. “Have you no knees even for this fight?”

Another thrust—he struck out, like a woman,
his arm carrying his body with it and thus betraying his whole
attack—and I caught his blade on my own, leaning into him to take
him off balance. He staggered back, and. . .

It had all happened so quickly that no one
had time to intervene. The soldiers of the watch were only now
rising to their feet, but it was already too late. The blow that
felled Nabusharusur came not from me nor from one of the guards’
spears, but from above.

He snapped up straight for an instant, as if
there had been a noose around his neck, and then fell forward
directly onto his face. A jar of water that had been standing on
the catwalk around the top of the wall had fallen over and struck
him on the back of the head before smashing on the ground.

But it had not fallen. It had been pushed. I
glanced up and saw Selana crouched above on the wall, staring down
in what seemed a paralysis of horror.

“Come down,” I shouted, not even knowing why
I sounded so angry. “Come down at once.”

Nabusharusur stirred, bringing his arms
together around his head. I thought perhaps he had only been
knocked unconscious, but when I turned him over and looked into his
wide, fixed eyes I saw at once that he was dead.

“I never meant. . . I never. . .”

Selana, who now was standing beside me,
covered her face with her hands and broke into uncontrolled
sobbing. It was not her fault. She had followed me, all this way,
and had thought that Nabusharusur, whom she had never seen before,
might really have killed me.

I took her in my arms, picking her up like a
child.

“I think the gods have at last shown him some
mercy,” I said quietly, stroking her hair. “But you shouldn’t have
come. You should have stayed on the ship, as I bade you.”

“I couldn’t. . .” She pressed her face
against my chest, still weeping. “I thought you might never come
back.”

“I would have come back—haven’t I
always?”

It was strange how in that moment everything
seemed to change between us. She was only fourteen, but a child
would never have done what she did. Her childhood had ended with
Nabusharusur’s life. We would never be the same together again, she
and I.

A soldier stumbled toward us. He had been
drinking and he looked down at the corpse on the ground with an
expression of profound astonishment. The wineskin dangled loosely
from his fingers.

I took it from him—he did not even have time
to protest—pulled the cork, and poured out the contents over
Nabusharusur’s broken head. For all the evil he had done, he was my
brother and would not go down into the dark realm of Death without
a grave offering.

Then, with Selana still clutched in my arms,
I started back toward the harbor.

Of all Sidon, the harbor was perhaps the most
deserted. For fifteen days now ships had been left at anchor, their
hulls knocking against the stone quay with a hallow, haunting
sound, as empty and disregarded as forgotten promises. As we
crossed the causeway to the port island we could see their naked
masts rocking back and forth, ever so slightly, in the first
stirrings of the land breeze.

“The man I. . .” Selana said at last, her
hand holding mine tightly as we walked along, “who was he?”

“A bad man—you did right to kill him.”

She nodded, accepting this on my authority
but perhaps not quite believing it. Without even a few words of
Akkadian, she had understood nothing of my conversation with
Nabusharusur and therefore had no idea that the man she had killed
was my brother. It seemed to me best that she should remain in
ignorance.