Angels at the Gate (44 page)

“We will not allow this,” Mika says firmly. “Go back to your sister.”

Pheiné stumbles to Thamma's side.

A new voice, full of rage, shouts, “This Lot came among us as a stranger, and now he judges
us!”

The crowd roars. “We will punish Lot instead! Give him up to us!”

Raph is at my shoulder now, leaving the quieter back window to Danel. He moves me aside and, with a glance at Mika, opens the door, grasping Lot by the back of his robe and hauling him inside while Mika slams it closed and leans against it. Raph adds his weight, as do I, feeling the wood shake with pounding blows. It is only a matter of time before it splinters.

Pheiné whirls on Lot. “What are you doing, father? You would give us up to them for the sake of strangers?”

“They are my guests,” Lot says shakily, “and holy men.”

I am furious beyond thought. “It is more than that, husband.” I spit
the last word, tasting its foulness. “It is your precious reputation you wish to preserve, but not for the sake of hospitality.” All attention is upon me, even though Raph and Mika continue to press hard against the battered door.

“What do you mean?” Lot's voice is hoarse.

“I mean you would throw your daughters to this mob of men, hoping, if they live, to claim that as the reason they are with child!”

Thamma gasps and begins to cry again. Pheiné stares at me.

“I am crippled,” I say, “but I am not a fool. All those nights you spent in your daughters' room were not because you could not bear to lie beside your ugly wife.”

I had been a fool, but Lila had told me the girls' moon blood had ceased, and then I understood. My voice lowers, but still pitches above the noise of the rabble. “I know, as well, how Hurriya died.”

“No!” Thamma screams. “She fell!”

“Quiet,” Lila says to her. “Let all the truth be told.”

Lot is as pale as Shem's white camel. “My wife fell from the cliff.”

I would give him no mercy, not when he had tried to cover his sin by giving his daughters to the men who hammered at our door. Perhaps Lot had not thought it through, but I know even if those men did nothing more than rape Pheiné and Thamma, with so many, it would be a horrible death sentence. “Your wife, Hurriya, the mother of your children, chose her death and walked into the Dead Sea.”

“No,” Thamma cries again, and my heart goes out to her, but I cannot stop. “She knew what you did with her daughters, and she could not bear it.”

Pheiné bites her lip until blood wells at the corner.

It is a hard thing to know you are responsible for your mother's death. Though both these women are older, I turn to them. “If he came to you when you were children, you are not to blame. Your father should bear the burden.”

With a wild scream, Thamma lunges at me, her fingers clawing my face.

The weight of her attack knocks me off-balance, and I stumble backward. Lila pulls her off as Danel shouts, “They are coming in the window!”

So Lot stepped outside to talk to them, shutting the door behind him. “Please, my brothers,” he begged, “don't do such a wicked thing. Look, I have two virgin daughters. Let me bring them out to you, and you can do with them as you wish. But please, leave these men alone, for they are my guests and are under my protection.”

“Stand back!” they shouted. “This fellow came to town as an outsider, and now he's acting like our judge! We'll treat you far worse than those other men!” And they lunged toward Lot to break down the door.

But the two angels reached out, pulled Lot into the house, and bolted the door. Then they blinded all the men, young and old, who were at the door of the house, so they gave up trying to get inside.

—Book of Genesis 19:6-11

T
HE LATTICE ON THE WINDOW
shatters. Danel's knife meets the first man who tries to crawl through. His blade slips into the man's chest. No blood escapes until Danel wrenches it free. Hands reach up from below to pull the man's body out of the way, so another can come through. Blood runs down the inside wall.

For a fleeting moment, I wonder if I brought Danel into danger by insisting he come to our house, rather than protecting him from it, but selfishly, I am glad of his presence.

“Get the women into a room!” Raph yells to Lot, who is staring at the
blood on his wall. But Lot stands motionless. It is Lila who herds Pheiné and Thamma into our sleeping room, though not before she snatches one of the cooking knives. I slip my knife back into my sash and move to one side of the window, leaning against the wall for support, my staff in both hands. If a head shows, I believe the stout wood Ishmael chose from the sacred trees at Mamre will do its part.

Just as the door splinters, the world outside the window and around the door seams flashes white, followed by a thunderous noise. I blink, blinded for an instant. Confusion reigns both inside and outside the house.

“What has happened?”

“Which god?”

“Is the world ended?”

I am not certain who asks the questions, but no one answers.

When I can see again, the torches are gone from outside the window, though we can still hear voices at the front of the house.

Danel stands, staring at the bloody knife in his hand. He raises his gaze after a long while to me. “I have never killed before … not a man.”

“Danel!” Lila has left the daughters in their room to fling herself into his arms. “What has happened?”

There is no answer still, but the smell of brimstone is strong.

A few minutes later, a pair of hands appears at the windowsill. I raise my staff, but the fingers that grasp the edge are small; they can belong only to a child or a small woman.

I know the face that appears briefly to scan the inside, though I have not seen it since I left Yassib's tribe to go to Babylon in search of Raph. I remember the child I saw running through the back streets and suddenly know why he seemed so familiar.

“Shem?”

His eyes track to my voice. “Adir?”

It can be only Shem who calls me Adir in Sodom. I lean over the sill to look down at him. He has a thick covering over his head. Still, I can see he is thin, and his cheeks are hollow. I do not need to see his arm to imagine the slash of a slave mark. There is no other reason he would be here. My belly turns, remembering the happy boy in the desert, so proud of his white camel. “Shem—” is all I can manage.

A smile breaks across his solemn face. “Yes-yes, Adir.”

“Adira,” I correct without thought.

“I wanted to come before,” he says in a rush, “but I could not. My master watches too closely, but he is gone with the celebrations. I saw him at your door; now everyone is scattered.”

“Because of the bright light? Did you see it? What was it?”

“A son of Mot's Tongue erupted closer to the city. It is bigger than the first and weeping ash and bits of burning oil. The city is aflame!”

At that moment, I hear Mika cry out that our roof is burning. “Everyone to the little gate!”

“I am closer to the window,” I shout to him. “I will go that way!”

Shem helps me down, though I have managed myself many times. Wind from the sea tosses my hair, which has worked its way free of its braid and curls in sweaty ringlets around my face. “Did you say the men are gone from the door?”

“Yes-yes, they are gone.”

I relax my grip on my staff. “Why are you here, Shem? What has happened to you?”

“The horsemen returned after you left our tents, Adir. They killed all the men and sold the women and children.”

I am sick with the image of this in my mind. “Mana too? Your mother, Shem, where is she?”

He draws himself straighter. “She threw herself at the enemy, her knife in her hand.” He looks away and then back at me. “They killed her, but first she drew their blood.”

“I am so sorry.” I take a breath, trying to grasp all this. “How did you come to Sodom?”

He shrugs. “My master here was once a nomad and still has connections here. Once, when he had drunk too much, he told me that the raiders owed him for information he gave them about you. I was payment.”

This spikes my curiosity, but something stings my left arm, and I flick at it reflexively. A small red disc blossoms on my skin. A burn.

“Here,” Shem shoves a thick outer robe into my arms. It reeks of old sweat. “Put it on, quickly. I brought it to disguise you, but it may offer protection.”

I do. He also hands me a heavy wool head covering in the style a man of the desert would wear.

“Do you wish your dog back?” he asks.

My heart stutters. I grab his shoulders. “What did you say?”

“I know where Nami is. You should come. Quickly, we have very little time.”

I try to wrap my arms around him, but he winces and steps back.

“Take me to her, Shem!”

He starts to say more, but then decides not and leads me down the alley that runs behind the houses. To our right, the sea boils great belches. Shem says another tongue of Mot has thrust through the earth. Where is El? Is he watching or wielding? These questions dance in my thoughts like tiny stars around the central sun that is hope of finding Nami. My heart gallops. I want to stop our flight and make Shem tell me she is well, that she will bound out to meet us, her feet light on the ground in her excitement and joy. But I dare not stop.

I take a quick glance down the alleys that connect to the main streets as we pass them. Glowing embers and bits of burning oil have thickened into a rain of fire. Perhaps the wind off the Dead Sea is holding them in the city's heart. I am grateful our house sits on the far northeastern end near the sea. Even though Shem and I track the sea's edge, the foul air thickens with burning ash, and the smell of singed wool makes me grateful for the heavy robe and headdress, despite their rankness. What will happen if the wind fails?

We are fortunate a layer of dirt freshly covers the garbage in the alleyways, making our way smooth. Shem runs ahead and then waits for me, impatient and plainly anxious that I hurry. I do, though it awakens the pain in my hip and leg. The vision of Nami pushes me through the ache. I hope all in my household made it to safety … wherever that might lie.

A
T FIRST
, I do not recognize the building we come to because we approach from the side, but as soon as we reach the front, a stall full of rugs: I know it. We are far from our house, but still near the Dead Sea. The fire has burned holes only in a few of the merchant's wares, though I can see a nearby jar of pitch is burning. The air above it ripples blue and yellow.

I stop as soon as we reach the protection of the awning, though it is thatched and already smoldering in spite of the wind. We cannot stay here long. Shem leads me through the area that is normally a house's little gate, but here is a room stacked with carpets. “I have been to this place before,” I say. “Whose shop is this?”

“Katar, my master's.”

Then, as clearly as if it were yesterday, I remember when I bought a rug from this man. I can see him clearly—the tiny ring in his left nostril, the hand that roamed in a pattern from chest to oily beard to face and balding head. I never learned his name, but I have never forgotten him. The pieces of what Shem told me suddenly fit together. King Samsu-iluna hired Hurrians to search for Raph, believing he was the shaman of the two. When my father brought Mika and Raph to Sodom, Katar must have gotten word to the raiders that the giant strangers they searched for were with Lot. There are no secrets in this city. Everyone would have known we traveled with the strangers to Lot's tents on the plains south of Sodom. If all had gone according to plan, we would have been there when the raiders arrived, but they were too early, and so my father died protecting his guests' belongings. The raiders hunted for us. Shem was payment by the Hurrians to this rug merchant for his spying.

With a stab of guilt, I wonder if the slaughter of Shem's tribe was provoked by my rescue of the camels or if it would have happened in any case. I will never know the answer to that.
How our choices can return to burden us
.

“Katar wanted to buy Nami,” I say to Shem's back. “I think he might have killed me for her.”

“He wanted to breed her and sell her pups. She had a litter, but only one is left.”

“Is she all right?”

Shem casts a glance over his shoulder, but does not meet my eyes. “I have tried, but—”

At that moment, we pass through the doorway that separates the shop from living quarters directly into the courtyard. Not surprisingly, stained carpets cover most of the floor. Robes are scattered about. In the corner are a stacked pile of copper pieces and perhaps a few pieces of silver. A stout pole reaches up from the center of the courtyard. Bound so close to the pole she can barely turn her head is my Nami.

With a cry, I stumble to her. She does not respond, and it is no wonder. She cannot smell at all through the stench of this room. She is bone-thin and strips of raw skin stripe her back. Her head is turned away from me and rests on her paws. When I touch her, she jerks her head around and snaps and then cringes as if she has learned a blow will inevitably follow.

Tears flow down my face. “Nami. What has this demon of a man done to you?”

“I tried to help her,” Shem says over my shoulder. “I brought her water and salve for her wounds whenever Katar left the house, and I cleaned her the best I could. No creature should be treated like this, especially a desert dog.”

Katar. The name burns into my heart.

Nami should know my voice or recognize the shape of me, but her eyes are glazed and unseeing, and I am still swathed in the robe and head-covering of a man. “Shem, whose robe do I wear?”

“Katar's.” Shem moves his feet in a nervous shuffle, as if anticipating the outcome of his actions on his master's return.