Angels at the Gate (20 page)

I took a breath. “It was the cloth I bought in Sodom.”

His eyes widen as the meaning of that settles in his mind. “It was among goods stolen by those who took Raph?”

I nod.

He is perfectly still, except for the pulse that quickens in his neck.

“Yes,” I say, my voice hard as stone. “The raiders who took Raph and killed my father.”

Before another word is spoken between us, Mana appears at the tent's entrance. “A traveler has come, asking for you by name and description. He seeks a tall fire-haired man and a boy. He has touched our tent pole and asked for hospitality, but Yassib has suspicions he might be one of the men who mean ill toward you.” She looks me full in the eyes. “You saved my grandson and our herd. We will not allow harm to fall upon you.”

My thoughts are racing. No one is chasing us; that was just the story I told to keep Yassib from cutting my throat in outrage at my trickery. It
was a made-up tale, but—I glance at Mika—could there be some truth to it? What do I truly know about the business of Mika and Raph?

“Someone has come looking for me or us,” I say, translating. “Could it be someone wishing you harm?”

He is thoughtful. “If they have learned Raph was not useful, they might come for me.”

I turn back to Mana, “Thank you for your warning. Can you describe the man?”

“He is thick-bodied, with black hair and a full beard. A lot of hair and thick brows, also black. A gravelly voice.”

“Chiram!” I stagger to my feet, and Mika moves quickly beside me, a hand under my arm, in case I am dizzy.

“Chiram?” he says, confused.

“The cook from my caravan.”

“Do you trust this man?” Mana asks.

I hesitate. Since I was a child, I have found Chiram distasteful. He was with the caravan before my birth and has never said a kind word to me. Yet, my father often trusted the caravan to him, and he had been wounded fighting the raiders. I bite my lower lip, and my mind spins, still not recovered fully from my fall. Chiram's wound was not a serious one. How hard had he fought to protect my father? Was the raid of Lot's tent a random happening or had they come looking for El's messengers and perhaps the mysterious box they carried? How had they known Mika and Raph traveled with us? It suddenly seems odd Chiram had gone off to gamble with desert men after the two strangers joined us on our journey to the tents of Abram.

Troubled, I say, “I am not certain if we can trust this man. Please ask Yassib not to kill him, but not to grant him hospitality either, until we can learn if he is with the men who wish us harm.”

If Yassib gave Chiram hospitality, he would be obliged to protect him, although Yassib had almost violated that most sacred code and killed me. Perhaps, if the moment had been allowed to play out without my inventiveness, he would have stayed his knife, bound by desert code, but I am glad not to have relied on it.

Mana nods and disappears in a whirl of black dress.

Mika, seeing I am steady, drops his hand from my arm. “What she say?”

I tell him.

He rubs his chin. “It seems you making habit, Adir.”

“What habit?”

“Of saving lives. Now Shem and I both owe ours.”

I do not want his life. I want my father back. I want—my thoughts stop on their way to proclaiming my love for Raph. Do I truly love him? Now, after so much has happened, I am not certain. I am not even certain what love is. It is not a necessary ingredient for marriage, though desert tribes are famous for their poems of love for women … and camels.

I can imagine Shem telling a love poem about his white camel. Mika cocks his head at me when I break into a laugh. “I confuse words?” he asks.

As out of place as my laughter is, it is difficult to stop. I wipe a tear from my eye. “No, you spoke well. Let us go see Chiram.”

Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.

—Sun Tzu

O
UTSIDE THE TENTS, THE MEN
of Yassib's clan sit in a circle around the communal fire, though it was extinguished for our move and is only ashes now. The sun has started its descent, extending shadows toward the eastern hills. A few paces away, the man I pulled from the black horse kneels, his hands tied behind him to a stake driven in the ground. I thought I had killed him, but apparently the blow to the head was not fatal. His dark eyes track us as we enter the circle.

Though I am a woman, Yassib beckons me forward to sit beside him. It is a place of honor. It has not been long ago that his knife thirsted for my blood.
So does the world turn head-below-feet
.

Upon seeing me, Chiram climbs to his feet. “Adir! You are here!”

He starts toward me but, to my surprise, Kerit, Yassib's son, leaps to stand between us. Chiram stops, his thick brows knotting. He glares at Kerit and then me. “Adir,” he demands, “tell him who I am.”

Who
are
you? I want to shout. Did you truly fight to defend my father or did you lead those raiders to his tent? I see the healing wound that runs from his check to his neck—a slash from battle or a carefully opened line made to look so?

Instead of shouting at him, I respond calmly in the tongue of Yassib's tribe, “Why are you here?”

His mouth twists as he realizes events are not proceeding as he imagined they would. “I have been searching for you since you disappeared.”

“Why?”

The men sit silently watching.

“Speak in the language of the desert men,” I say. Chiram knows it as well as I. How else would he have gambled for Nami …
or arranged for a raid on Lot's tents?

Realizing he is being judged, Chiram turns both palms out in the sign for peace. “I looked for you because that was what your father would have wanted me to do. He made me swear I would watch over you and see you to Abram and Sarai.”

I have only recently decided that is where I was going. Now, because it comes from Chiram's mouth, I balk. “I will decide where I am going and when. I am a wo—” I halt the word before it escapes. “I am of age to do so.”

With the back of his hand, Chiram wipes his mouth. It is a rough hand with splintered nails, fingers stained from the grease of a thousand cook fires and calloused from wielding his beloved knives. “Danel and I set out for you as soon as we realized you were gone. We tracked you until I lost the trail.”

“Where?” I am curious.

“At the edge of a wadi. We feared you had drowned, and we returned to Lot's tents.”

I close my eyes. Help had been so close.

“Then how did you find me?” I ask.

“Word came to the city through a traveler that an unusually tall man with hair the color of the setting sun and a young boy were guests of this tribe. I came in the hopes it was you.”

He looks around at the solemn, hard faces. “It seems, for a youth, you are highly thought of here. Are you planning to stay with these people?”

Yassib twists a short camel stick in his hands. “Adir may stay with us as long as he wishes.”

I am stunned. Such an option has not occurred to me. Yassib and this tribe know I am a woman. This fact, which had been such an offense to them, is now accepted. In gratitude for saving the clan's camels, he offers
the protection of his people for as long as I wish. I have a place, a home should I wish it so. Like my beloved caravan, this home is not bound to one location, but moves with the wind.

Chiram presses his fat lips together. “You will not honor your father's wishes?”

I ignore him and turn to Yassib. “You honor me with a generous gift that is more than I deserve.”

He gives me a curt nod. Not a word has been spoken of the camels or my actions, but enough has been said. He waves at Chiram to return to his seat. “You may stay here three days.” This is the mandatory hospitality requirement period of desert code.

Chiram glares at me, but keeps his anger to himself. He is familiar with this culture, and I am sure he is waiting to confront me later.

“We have a clan matter to determine,” Yassib announces to all, extending his arm to the bound man outside the circle. Two men cut him free from the pole and bring him to stand in the center of the circle where they bind his wrists behind him and then move to rejoin the circle of seated men, leaving him standing, alone.

Yassib's eyes are hard. The prisoner's are equally so. Whatever either feels is hidden beneath that harshness demanded by this land.

“You have sought to take our camels,” Yassib says. “Is there reason to ransom you?”

He straightens. “I have value.”

It is the beginning of a possibly long negotiation for this man's life. Yassib would seek recompense for the lives that have been lost. But first, his gaze travels over the faces of the men around us. He does not consider the women who have lost sons and husbands. His question is for the men only, though perhaps in the privacy of their tents they have heard their wives' tears.

“Do any claim blood price?” Yassib calls out formally.

It is the right of those who have lost value to claim the man's death. In doing so, they would gain personal vengeance, but in giving up that right, they allow the tribe to recoup some value by ransom. The addition of even a single camel can mean much if the balance of people to resources is at stake or a water hole has dried or a trade soured. The clan respects the right of a man to extract the death of an enemy, but there is a cost to the clan to do so.

No one speaks.

Then, into the silence, I speak.

By the granting of the right of status, I am part of this tribe. As a woman not married to a clansman, I could not claim this, but by some strange twisting, I have been accepted as a man, an honored man, no less. It is as if by ignoring my gender, the dilemma is put aside. This is a puzzle to ponder later.

I stand. “This raider stole my goods and camels and my … friend's brother.” I indicate Mika who sits in the second row of men, loathe to call him my “husband” and break my fragile acceptance as a man of status or betray my story that we are hiding our “true” relationship. “The same men raided the tents of my cousin”—I take a breath—“and killed my father.”

Yassib considers. The stealing of the camels and the death of his clansmen occurred before his own eyes. But I was claiming some past injury of which he has no knowledge. “How do you know the truth of this?”

“This man,” I say pointing at the raider, “whom I pulled from his horse, sat upon a piece of cloth I purchased in the city of Sodom, a cloth that was taken from me on the road to the tents of Lot by the same raiders who killed my father.”

There are murmurs among the men of the circle, and several discussions break out. Yassib is the head of this clan and tribe, but he is not a king or ruler. His wisdom is sought, but every man has the right to his opinion and to voice it. My welcome into the tribe, likewise, would not have been Yassib's decision alone.

One man's voice rises above the talk. “You have proof this man stole the cloth and your camels and took a man for ransom. That gives you the right to recompense, but why do you speak for this man Lot? Were you there when his goods were taken and your father slain?”

The others quiet for my answer.

I understand the reasonableness of his question. I have a right to a portion of a ransom to help buy back Raph, but blood right—the life of this man—is only reasonable if he were linked to my father's death, and I have no proof of that.

A familiar, gravelly voice speaks from the opposite side of the circle, and I realize Chiram is on his feet. Despite his bulk, I did not notice the movement, with the bound raider standing between us. “I have such proof.”

All gazes turn to Chiram. He points at the man's back. “I fought with this man in the tents of Lot.” Chiram lifts his hand to the red welt tracing a line down his cheek and neck. “This man slew Zakiti, Adir's father.”

Blood gallops through my veins, blurring my vision. Images of my father play before me.
Lost. Lost to me forever
. That which was most precious in my life, stolen by this man. And worse, he took from my father that which was most precious to him. Zakiti would never feel the thrill of a new land opening before us, the satisfaction of a hard-won bargain, the wind upon his face … or his daughter's kiss.

My hand moves of its own accord to the hilt of my knife, my father's knife. My gaze locks on the prisoner's, as if some invisible force draws us together. Still, I wait for the clan's judgment. I have no right to avenge my father's death without that. No right in their eyes … but in the darkness of night I can claim my right.

Yassib calls for silence. “We have Adir's evidence this man rode with raiders who stole camels and goods, and Adir's opinion that one of them killed his father.” He pointed at Chiram. “We have a guest's word that this is the man who did that deed.” He turned to the prisoner. “What is your name?

“Sidilk of the Hurrians.”

“What do you say, Sidilk of the Hurrians?”

Though bound, he shoves out his chin. “I slew your clansmen in battle, but we had no intent of it. We would have taken only four camels and turned the rest back. Because of this boy—you lost men.”

Only a twitch of cheek beneath Yassib's left eye gives notice of any reaction. “And this boy's father?”

A shrug. “He fought over a few items. He was not desert people.”

A flush crawls through my body. There is more talk around me, but I hear nothing. It is as the buzz of distant bees. My eyes lock on the raider's, and his cannot escape mine. He knows I am his death, here before this council or in the arms of night, should they leave him tied or should he sleep. If they give him his life and ask for his honor in exchange for being untied, he will search me out in my sleep … if he is wise.

Yassib's raised hand tells me they are finished with the discussion. “Because Adir is of this tribe, so is his family. It is not a matter of a tribesman killing a city dweller, but a family matter.” He points at me. “Blood right is yours.”