Twilight in Babylon (12 page)

He opened an eye and gazed at her for a moment. “Split evenly, or fighting for power?”

“Neither.”

“What’s the other person like? Which one of you is the cook?” Nimrod sat up. “Are there any more of those round things to eat?”

“One more,” she said, handing it to him. “I think I’m the cook. But she’s like me, almost exactly.”

“Then why do you say two people?” He looked confused.

“Because it’s another mind, other memories and knowledge.”

“Fighting for control over you?”

“No, not usually. Usually commenting on what I do, but what I do is exactly what she would do. If she were me.”

Nimrod lay back down and closed his eyes. Chloe watched the sheep. “Don’t go too far,” she called to one who was starting to wander. “I’m talking to you.”

I’m talking to ewe. Eweee that’s baaaad.

Dadi, the sheep, looked up, gave a sheep’s pouting huff, and moved back into the flock.

“You’re telling me, well… let me understand. Here’s you,” Nimrod said, holding up one hand. “Just you.”

“Truth.”

“Then this other person, the other mind.” He held up his other hand.

“Truth.”

“But it’s not trying to invade you.”

“No, she’s there already.”

“Not trying to hurt you.”

“No.”

“Doesn’t do anything.”

“Chatters a lot, in ways I don’t understand.”

“Words you don’t know?” he said, sitting up on one elbow.

“I understand what she’s saying, I just don’t comprehend exactly how she’s saying it.”

He stretched, his hair-tufted fingers playing in the grass. “You have a personal demon, I guess.”

Chloe sighed. “I wish. It doesn’t do things for me.”

“Doesn’t carry out curses, huh?”

“Do you think the scribe in your father’s office would still be able to walk upright if I could cast curses?” she asked.

Nimrod laughed. “That scribe must have a very powerful exorcist in his employ. No one likes that man.”

“That’s not the worst part, though.”

“It doesn’t sound so bad. A friend inside your head. At least it’s a friend, not an enemy. Not trying to throw you off a roof, or make you dance naked before your flocks, or something.”

She laughed at Nimrod, then shouted at the sheep.

“What’s the worst part?” he asked.

“This other person, personality, is in love.”

Nimrod sat up and looked at her with great interest. “With whom?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know him? Have you seen him?”

“Only in her dreams. At first I thought he was a god, he had very unusual eyes. Now—I don’t know. I don’t know how she got in my head or what she’s doing there.”

“Have you asked her?”

The glance she gave him was withering. “Only madmen and priests talk to themselves. I can barely tell you about this—and you’re my closest friend.”

He patted her hand. “I am glad you can. What are you going to do?”

“Maybe an exorcism wouldn’t be a bad idea.”

“I know a good diviner,” he said. “And then there’s the exorcist my mother used on my father.”

“The
lugal
was possessed?”

“I don’t think so, but it forced him to be more discreet. That was all she cared about.” He tore at the ground a little longer. “Is this other person, is she the compulsion to go to the Tablet House?”

“That is where we are too closely woven to tell apart. The Harrapan have a statue, Pasupati, with several heads and many arms. This is like one body with two heads. Our hearts and desires are the same, but our minds are separate.”

“Not in conflict, though?”

“No. Not yet anyway.” Dadi was starting to wander again. Chloe got up and herded him back, with a reminding swat on his fat-tailed rump not to do it again. “She might be the reason I don’t remember anything before, about my village.”

“I thought that was because you hit your head.”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. I know nothing.”

“What is her name?”

“Chloe.”

Nimrod frowned. “What’s yours then?”

She lifted her hands and shoulders, baffled. “I have no idea.”

*      *     *

“We don’t need a new
ensi
!” Rudi the stargazer said.

“Asa said we do; he said it is what the star says,” Gem argued.

“Asa hasn’t been able to see the stars for six summers,” Rudi scoffed. “How can he interpret an omen for a star he can’t see?”

Gem adjusted his basket hat and leaned back. “The
ensi
must leave. Asa said that is the message the gods send.”

Rudi sat down opposite and looked at the replica sheep’s liver—an exorcist’s tool. Her charts of the stars were scattered across the table, beside it. “A new star has appeared, there is no doubt of that.”

“So Asa says.”

“But it has only been a few weeks! How can he know what it means? We haven’t had time to study it at all!” Rudi gestured to the materials in front of him. “Generations it took to gauge when and where these known twenty-five stars appeared. Generations before we could recognize the shifting flocks in the sky. Where is Asa’s sense of judgment, of intellectual intercourse.”

Gem sighed and stared at Rudi. “The lands are at stake. The gods are displeased. The
ensi
must step down in order to protect them. That is what Asa said. He was almost in tears when he told us. A man doesn’t cry for no reason.”

“Asa cries in hope it will clear his vision.”

“You better be careful, Rudi. You are the least favorite at the council, and if anyone overhears what you say, slander, about Asa—”

“They could take me to court, and we would test Asa’s vision and everyone would know. He’s a stargazer who barely recognizes when it’s night!”

“Bitterness is not an attractive cloak, Rudi. Especially not on you.”

Rudi looked at the table. “The
ensi
isn’t going to surrender her position willingly. Puabi is too cunning for that.”

“If she realizes she is doing it for the sake of the lands, she will.”

“It won’t hold up before the council’s scrutiny.”

“The
lugal
already believes it.”

“A month of probation, and I miss a lot, don’t I?”

“You did it to yourself, Rudi. You completely missed the bloodmoon—”

“It was not my—”

“—then you refuse to take responsibility. You’re lucky I’m willing to risk—”

“I am, Gem. I apologize for my wretched behavior.”

“Since Puabi is your sister, though, I thought you should know.”

Rudi looked at the table again. “Thank you.” She sighed. “Did Asa have a time line for when the
ensi
had to leave?”

“If he did, he didn’t mention it. It wasn’t a full cabinet meeting, Rudi, just a few stargazers and the
lugal.
”

“Who really discovered the star, Gem? We both know it wasn’t Asa.”

Gem looked at Rudi. “A young man, barely an Old Boy.”

“Whose Tablet House?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know, but his name is Ezzi.”

“Ezzi. A stargazer.” Rudi looked out the window over Gem’s shoulder. “I will place a curse on Ezzi. The brat.”

*      *     *

Outside the window, flattened against the wall, the selfsame Ezzi dared not breathe. Overhearing this conversation hadn’t been his intent; he’d gotten lost coming back from seeing Asa stargazer. How was he to know that Rudi, the most outspoken and least favored of the stargazers, would be right there?

It was an omen from the gods, that must be it!

A good omen, or bad, a diviner would have to tell him. The stairway behind him, the pathway out of the mass of temples and storehouses and palaces, was somewhere below that. He had to cross the section of light that streamed from the window. The window where Rudi the stargazer had almost seen him.

Inside, they weren’t speaking. Ezzi looked over his shoulder; he could walk the circumference of this level of the ziggurat and get to the stairs that way. A much better plan. Keeping to the shadows, he walked away from the staircase to arrive at it.

He prayed at the shrines of all the gods and demons along the way.

Good day,
lugal,
” Chloe said, poking her head into his office. The scribe was gone—maybe he was hanging himself. One could hope.

The
lugal
groaned and sat back. “How have you come to cast a bane on me today?”

“Time to break your fast,” she said, striding into his office and setting a basket on his desk. “I brought you food.”

“Ah, a curse in every bite?”

“Just try one, see what you think.” She unwrapped flax cloth from some round items and handed one to him. “Don’t be so suspicious. I haven’t murdered anyone yet.”

He sniffed it, a wary eye on her. Chloe sighed and bit one herself. “See?” she said through the food. “It won’t kill you.”

The
lugal
bit, chewed, and a beatific expression crossed his face. “This must be an offering for the gods! What is this?”

“It’s my specialty. If,” she said, leaning over to the rapidly chewing man, “if only I could write, I could make you a recipe.”

He rolled his eyes, but kept eating.

“If your wife could read, she could take my recipe and make these for you every day.”

He grabbed another one, moaning like a man in love.

“Or if I wanted to, and I could write, I would make them, and write the recipe for them. Then I could open a shop, with other people who could read and write. They could make them and sell them to tradesmen and visitors from other cities.”

The
lugal
chewed a little more slowly now.

“Those people, in other cities, if they could read and write, could make the food and sell it. Because it was my recipe that I wrote, and they read, they would pay me a percentage of what they made. Because I would be a citizen of the great, noble, literate city of Ur, that would be taxed.”

Chloe sat down and wrapped up the last remaining piece. “If… I could write.”

The
lugal
swallowed his bite, wiped his mouth, and his eyes followed Chloe’s movements as she put the last piece away. “I can’t let you attend a Tablet House,” he said. “It would be too upsetting to the commonwealth. How are your lessons going?”

She smiled and picked up his reed stylus and a fresh slab of clay. Biting her lip in concentration she wrote out a message, laid it in front of him, smiled, picked up her basket, and walked out.

“You can’t call me an idiot!” he shouted at her back after reading the message. “I’m the
lugal.
”

“Whore dog,” the scribe whispered as he passed her.

“Festering rodent,” she whispered back.

Chloe stepped into the sunshine of the street and handed Nimrod the last piece. “Phase one is under way.”

He grinned. “Nirg will love you forever for giving her food.”

She laughed as she walked home.

*      *     *

“It’s all the time,” one of the women complained. “Kidu is insatiable.”

“Poor Puabi, no wonder no one has seen her for days.”

“I’ve heard on opium, he’s more intense.”

“Ah, but you can’t take drugged seed,” another woman said. “It would make a drugged infant.”

“Then someone needs to take the opium away, or none of us will fulfill our duties.”

The priestesses continued to discuss the newest
en,
Kidu, and the
ensi.
Shama squinted at the necklace he was rebeading and listened to them. He never ceased to wonder at women’s capacity to make excuses for worthless male humans. The priests and acolytes had only to smile, and they were fawned upon. Their beauty was legendary, and none more than the
en.
The soon-to-be-
en,
Shama corrected himself. If Puabi continued to be pleased, today she would set the boat of his appointment to sail, and none could reclaim it. Today she would recommend Kidu to the council, formally.

En
Kidu. It had a ring, Shama had to admit.

“He looks like the sun god should,” one of the women said, leaning back. “Bronze and gold.”

“And he’s so hot, his very skin is like touching the sun,” someone else said.

“Did he do—” they bent their heads together. Shama couldn’t hear; he was disappointed. His wasn’t prurient interest, he just wanted to be certain Puabi was receiving the best the mountain man had to give.

The women shrieked with laughter, then sighed and groaned and began to discuss who would visit him next.

Shama tied off the end of the necklace and stood. He could have eliminated Kidu’s chances by telling Puabi of their confrontation, Kidu’s attempt to kill him. However, Shama knew Puabi had worked so hard to get the
en,
to bring him to the temple. For the first time in her life, she had invested herself in someone, given something, embraced her humanity. Shama was pleased with that. If Kidu were the reason why Puabi had a lightness in her step or brightness in her smile, then Shama would help Kidu become
en.

After the ratification, he would inform Kidu there was an outstanding debt.

Not because Shama cared about payback, but because after centuries of working in the temple, he knew that was how power was brokered here. It was tradition.

*      *     *

The next day, Chloe was back. The
lugal
had a group of people in his office. She smiled as she walked in, set a tablet on his desk, smiled at the men again, and left.

Nimrod sat in the shade of a palm with the goat, whittling.

“What is that?” she asked, sitting down beside him. She batted Mimi’s inquisitive teeth away.

“A seal,” he said.

“Whose?”

“An entrepreneur I know.” He pursed his lips as he carved. “Nirg loved those edible things. What do you call them?”

She smiled at him. “It’s my secret. I have to know how to write before I can name them.”

“Then I hope my father gives in soon,” he said. “They were delicious. Nirg hit me when I didn’t have more.” They watched the clients of Ur come and go from the administrative offices. The sun was getting high, and as it was getting closer to summer, it was getting hotter. “I have business down at the waterfront,” he said. “Did you want to visit a diviner?”