Beneath Ceaseless Skies #23 Read online

  And so it was three nights later when I came to bring it to Enanatuma. I was quite proud of it, the most complex magic I had ever worked, but the moment I saw her stricken face I knew I was too late.

  “He has been challenged,” she said dully. “He ignored my advice about how to conduct House business and has offended Amar-Sin, who was looking to be offended, like as not. Now my cousin has the excuse he was looking for and has called Shulgi out.”

  “Amar-Sin is good at gis-gis-la?”

  “One of the best,” she said. “Not that it matters; a 10-year-old boy could beat Shulgi, and he knows it. He will not speak to me about it at all, only keeps drinking bowl after bowl of date wine.”

  The challenge would be a fight to the death. Worse, the victor would control the fate of the defeated’s family. Amar-Sin would as good as own Enanatuma, and her children could be cast from their home or banished from Ummur entirely at his whim. If he were feeling particularly vindictive, he could have young Ekar executed to ensure he never sought revenge for his father.

  The words were out of my mouth before the thought even entered my mind: “Could you beat him?”

  Enanatuma looked surprised, then thoughtful. “Yes,” she said at last. “Yes, I could.”

  “The challenge is at dawn?”

  “Yes. At the square before the ziggurat.”

  “I need a piece of jewelry, something you can wear under gis-gis-la armor.”

  Enanatuma nodded and pulled a long necklace from around her neck. It was a simple thing, an imperfect piece of lapis lazuli tied to a cord of leather. It had been tucked unseen under her gown. The lapis lazuli was still warm from her flesh.

  “Shulgi’s first gift to me,” she said. I nodded, not trusting myself to speak. I knew the piece well; I had worn it myself for just one night before it was ever Enanatuma’s.

  “When I am finished with this, it will disguise you. You will look like Shulgi, but you won’t sound like him,” I said. “Can you do this?”

  “Yes. It will be tricky, but there is no ritual which says I must speak.”

  “It would be best to keep the fight brief.” She rolled her eyes at me, just for an instant like her younger self as scornful of me telling her how to fight the gis-gis-la as I would be of her telling me how to cast a spell. Then she was serious once more.

  “I will tell the servants I am going to the temple to pray for his victory in case they should notice my absence,” she said. “But what about Shulgi?”

  “I will see to Shulgi,” I promised.

  * * *

  There was scarcely enough time for me to cross the city to my room, imbue the stone with the spell, and then carry it back across the ever-brightening city to Enanatuma’s house. She was anxiously awaiting my return, casting nervous glances at Shulgi’s form on their low bed. She was already dressed in his armor, which needed only a little padding around the shoulders and waist to fit her.

  “He will wake soon. He had a lot of wine, but even so, he is always an early riser,” she said.

  “He will remain here with me until the fight is done; you can trust me on that.” I slipped the leather cord over her head, tucking the stone beneath the breastplate. Then I looked up into Shulgi’s dark eyes and my breath caught.

  “I just thought,” Enanatuma said, her voice snapping me out of my reverie. “I will always be Shulgi when I wear this now, won’t I?”

  “Yes,” I said. “The spell will not fade, and it cannot be broken.” I wondered for the first time what dangerous power I had just given her. But she was my most trusted sister; I kissed her cheek and let her go.

  I sat with my back against one of the pillars that divided Enanatuma’s bedroom from the garden beyond and waited for Shulgi to wake. The sun was not yet over the garden wall, but the air was already still and hot. I imagined Enanatuma fighting in that metal armor in the shadeless square before the ziggurat. No wonder challenges were always met at dawn.

  Shulgi had passed out draped facedown across the bed, still dressed in his formal garb from the House council meeting that had led to the challenge. This close to him, I could see the strands of silver just beginning to show in his still-thick hair. My hand itched to touch it, to see if the waves of it were as soft as I remembered.

  This would be the hardest part. I had not spoken to him since the morning so many years ago when I had left him alone in our makeshift bed with only the lapis lazuli necklace on the pillow beside him. I hadn’t trusted myself. Now I would have to speak to him, to keep him here until Enanatuma returned. Worse, I had to let him speak to me and not search his every word, every tone, for clues to his true thoughts. The past must stay in the past.

  At last he began to stir, groaning and rubbing at his face. Then he saw the sunbeam nearly touching his hand and remembered.

  He jumped up from the bed, sober and alert in the blink of an eye, and rushed towards the cedar chest that held his gis-gis-la armor, or had before Enanatuma had taken it.

  “Shulgi,” I called softly just as his hand touched the lid. He spun, eyes searching the garden before at last falling upon me.

  “Puabi?” He had a strange look to his face, as if he had just spoken a name he had heard once and had no idea whether it was connected to me or not. A look of recognition almost washed over his face but retreated just as rapidly.

  “It is I,” I said simply. “Puabi.” Was it the mere affirmation of his confusing suspicions that brought that look of recognition back, or was it the sound of my voice? Whatever the cause, his eyes lit up and I knew he knew me.

  “I searched everywhere for you!”

  “I know it.”

  “I went every day to the temple in hopes of seeing you.”

  “So I gave up being a dancer.”

  “Why?” There was no need to search the tones of that word for meaning; it was filled with pain and loss that could not be hidden.

  “You know why.”

  But I wondered if he did anymore. He believed himself a noble son; believed it mind, heart and soul. How would he remember our time together, I an orphaned ward of the temple sisters, he a refugee from a far-off city who had found work repairing the high city walls of Ummur, dangerous work with little pay. Neither of us much better than slaves. How could we marry with no money for a home, no money to feed children?

  And yet I had convinced myself that it was possible. I had accepted his proposal and his gift, the lapis lazuli necklace that had been his mother’s; it was all he had to give. I would have married him, I know I would have, if my sleep that night hadn’t been disturbed by the wail of a child.

  I had left Shulgi’s side, crawled to the edge of our hiding place on the roof of a shop near the temple. It was the perfect place to sleep on hot summer nights. From my vantage point I saw a woman laying a squalling infant on the temple steps, just as I had been left so many years before. She kissed the baby, wiped at her eyes, then hurried away.

  Another child waited for her in the shadows of an alley, a boy of six or seven years. She took his hand, and after one last long look back at the babe she was gone.

  What had happened? The child on the steps was a baby, but not newly born. Some change in this woman’s circumstance meant she could no longer feed both children, I surmised, but what? Had something happened to her husband?

  A sudden vision filled my mind: Shulgi falling from the city walls to be dashed on the rocky ground below.

  I didn’t know what had happened to that woman; I only knew I could never be her.

  I wasn’t certain how much Shulgi remembered beyond my name. He looked confused, his eyes washing over me and then looking around the room and then back at me. His past and his present didn’t seem to connect in his mind.

  He would never know what I had done for him, how I had made sure he and Enanatuma would meet. Noble daughter that she was, she had money enough for both of them. She could keep him safe. She was the one person I knew who would raise him up from his lowly place in the world, who would see
what he could be and not just what he was. And he had been perfect for her, he would never try to make Enanatuma a meek woman, touching only spindles and looms. He would love her as she was.

  So he would have, had I never cast that spell.

  Enanatuma never realized what I had done, either, to bring them together. How nervous she was, the day she asked me to weave the spell that would make him a noble son, the little difference between a man she could marry and one she could not. I hadn’t even needed a jewel to focus the spell on, only a scrap of paper, a genealogy of House Akitu that could hold a few extra “long-lost” branches. I gave Shulgi an ancestor so I could give him to Enanatuma.

  He was still staring at me, confused. Then he looked down at his hand resting on the cedar chest.

  “Shulgi!” I said, stepping forward, but too late. He had already thrown back the lid and was staring at the empty space where his armor should be.

  “What’s going on?” he asked. “Where is Enanatuma?”

  “She is saving your life and her House. Be still and let her do it.”

  “What do you know of my wife?” he demanded.

  “Think of your children. Think of Eku. This was the only way,” I said.

  “What was the only way? And what do you know of my children? Why are you even here, now?” Then I saw his eyes move up to my forehead, to the blue mark the priests had tattooed there. “You were banished. Why?”

  Before I could answer, Shulgi’s eyes moved past me to the garden and a look of shock froze his features. I turned to see his mirror image in dusty armor clutching a blood-soaked cloth to the side of his face.

  “What happened?” I cried.

  “I was victorious,” Enanatuma said, “but I paid a price.” And she pulled the cloth away from her Shulgi-face to reveal a gash starting near the corner of her mouth and extending up into her hairline, just missing an eye.

  “Oh no,” I said, looking from her to her husband and his unmarked cheek.

  “What have you done?” he asked, a whisper which held all the urgency of a scream. He dropped onto the edge of the bed, hands clutching violently at his hair.

  “What you could not,” she said. There was no hint of accusation in her words, only her own fierce brand of love. She gave me the bloody rag and pulled the necklace off over her head. She was Enanatuma once more, but the injury remained.

  “It’s not serious, sister,” I said, for the bleeding had already stopped. “It will heal.”

  “It will leave a scar,” Enanatuma said. “A scar on my face, not Shulgi’s.”

  We must cut him. And yet I couldn’t bring myself to say the words aloud. Even if we gave him the scar he lacked, how to explain Enanatuma’s? More magic, more illusions?

  Ten years had taught me nothing; I was still spreading oil fire even as I tried to douse it.

  Shulgi lifted his head from his hands. Enanatuma stood over him, her gis-gis-la dagger in her hand. Her thoughts had followed mine, but she too shirked away from the inevitable. She lowered her arm.

  “What you have done has damned every soul in this city,” he said to her. “You can cover it up from the eyes of men, perhaps, but not from the eyes of the gods. The wards of House Elam, how will they hold out the demons now that you have done this thing?”

  “The same as they have these last twenty years, since I first took up the swords,” Enanatuma said.

  “How did I allow it?” He was genuinely confused to the point of anguish. Did he remember nothing of his former life?

  “No one knows what the vapors are or why the walls keep them out,” I said. “The priests act confident, but I’ve read their most secret texts. They don’t really know.”

  But Shulgi only grew more enraged, leaping to his feet to pace the room. “Do not tell me this was no sin! You who are not one of us, not one of the noble Houses; you don’t know what it is to hold this sacred trust that protects us all. To keep the magic in our bones strong throughout life so that they will serve their purpose after death. But Enanatuma knows.” And he turned on her. “She knew the sin of it every time she took up the blades. She felt it in her bones. Every time.”

  Enanatuma met his gaze steadily, saying nothing, but I saw the glint of a tear in her eye and realized there was truth in what he said. I had broken every law of Ummur in my pursuit of knowledge, but I had never once felt I was doing wrong. I had never felt guilt.

  But Enanatuma had, and she had never said a word, not even to me, her closest sister.

  “You have to leave,” Shulgi said at last, and there were tears in both their eyes now. “Leave Ummur. There will be no covering this up, no more illusions, no more tricks.”

  “Shulgi,” I said, but I was unheard.

  “You should die, we should all die,” he said to her. “It’s the law.”

  “Shulgi, the children-” Enanatuma said.

  “Not just our children,” he interrupted. “Every child of House Elam will be condemned, and what then? The priests say the walls containing Elam’s bones must be razed. The walls of the Houses to either side must be extended to fill the gap. Do you know how long it would take to build those walls? How far we have to go to quarry the stones?” He broke off, a far-off look to his eyes, as if he were trying to recall the details of a dream he had had long ago. “I know,” he said and looked down at his hands, as though a part of him expected to find calluses there.

  He broke himself out of his reverie with a shake of his head. “And I’ve spoken only of the stones, not what lies between, what really keeps us all safe. How many would die each night before Ummur was made whole again? Not just our children.”

  Enanatuma’s face contracted as she fought the tears. The gash on her cheek began to bleed anew.

  “What else can I do, Enanatuma?” he asked. “What else? I cannot undo what you did. I can only hope your actions have not dishonored us to the point where the gods no longer smile on House Elam.” He grabbed her arms now, pulling her close. “You should die for this, I know. But I can’t condemn you. Even to save us all, I can’t. So you must leave and never return, and be as dead to all Ummur.”

  “I will go,” Enanatuma said. “If Puabi swears to watch over my children, to protect them for me until they are grown and wed.”

  “How can she, marked as she is? She could never be seen with them,” Shulgi said.

  “Puabi knows what I am asking,” Enanatuma said.

  I nodded, and in so doing sealed my fate. It would be years now before I could leave Ummur. Enanatuma hugged me a little too tightly before turning back to Shulgi. “May I say farewell to the children?”

  “No,” Shulgi said. “My love, your injury. They can’t see it, can never know what you’ve done. We cannot force them to keep such secrets.”

  “What will you tell them?”

  “I don’t know. What will I tell anyone?”

  “She fled,” I said, my words sounding dull in my own ears. “She was certain you would lose, that you would leave her at the mercy of Amar-Sin, who hates her.”

  Shulgi barked out a laugh that almost sounded self-mocking.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Amar-Sin does not hate Enanatuma. Quite the opposite. Exactly the opposite.”

  “What are you talking about?” Enanatuma asked, barely more than a whisper.

  “He told me once. It was at our wedding feast. He pulled me aside and told me that you and he had made a vow, that when he returned from his journey to the south the two of you would marry. It was a secret vow, not one sworn before a priest as such things are meant to be done. Don’t you remember? I told you about it and you laughed it off as some ridiculous story in his imagination.”

  “I don’t remember,” Enanatuma said, but her face had gone very white.

  “He’s never mentioned it again, but in every look he gives me, in every word he utters, he makes sure I never forget. No, he does not hate you.”

  Whatever more was going to be said remained unspoken as we heard voices from across th
e garden and the footfalls of a servant approaching.

  “You were seen leaving the fight with rude haste, ignoring many well-wishers. You will need to make apologies and explanations to keep your allies,” Enanatuma said. “And if I am gone, you will need those allies more than ever.”

  Shulgi looked at her, and I could see that he still wrestled with the obligation to surrender his family for the good of the city. I stepped up, pressing the blood-soaked cloth into his hand and raising it to his unshaven cheek.

  “Not good enough,” Shulgi said, pushing away the cloth and taking the dagger from Enanatuma’s hand. One fierce motion and his decision was irrevocably made. Enanatuma tore the cloth from my hand to press it to his cheek, but he pushed her away, knocking her to the floor behind the bed. Then he caught my arm and threw me down beside her.

  “Stay down,” he hissed, slamming the lid down on the empty armor chest just as the servant appeared.

  “What is it?” Shulgi asked.

  “Guests, my lord.”

  “Now? Damn, but this gash is bleeding again.”

  “Shall I fetch a surgeon, my lord?”

  “Why bother? The blood is what they’re all here to see,” Shulgi said. Enanatuma and I watched as the sandaled feet of the servant left the room, then Shulgi’s followed. He had not even said farewell to his wife.

  We got to our feet, Enanatuma looking more than a little dazed. “I think what Shulgi said might be true. I think I remember, like a dream I had long ago, making that vow. And we....” She broke off, eyes gazing off into the distance. “Do you remember him?”

  “Not at all,” I confessed.

  “Did I love Amar-Sin once, and forget? I abandoned him for Shulgi and forgot every moment we ever had together?”

  “Enanatuma....”

  “I felt something when he died. I had stabbed him with my parry blade; we were quite close at the end, practically in an embrace. Puabi, I thought at first that he had seen through your spell, because my name was the last word from his lips. Except the way he said it, it brought back such feelings. It felt so familiar. I did love him once, didn’t I? If I had I would’ve told you, my sister. Don’t you remember?”