Twilight in Babylon (8 page)

The stargazer’s smile showed his broken side tooth. The Tablet Father loved that smile, loved that tooth. “She’s out,” the stargazer said. “Some felting at the factory, they needed all hands.”

The Tablet Father wiped his greasy hands on the edge of his cloak—he’d be out of it in a minute, anyway. “What about the sky?”

“Like you said, it will be there in a few hours. Stars will wait.”

He took his hand.

*      *     *

“And how was your day, today?” his mother asked Nimrod.

“Fine,” Nimrod said.

“Even though there was nothing to kill?” his littlest brother, Roo, smarted off.

“I met a girl,” Nimrod said.

“A girl?” his father repeated. “Where did you meet a girl? I didn’t realize we had many huntresses in the city.”

“I wasn’t hunting. There’s nothing to hunt here. I miss the mountains.” His mother’s glance was pleading—not this topic, not during dinner, not again—but Nimrod ignored it. “I’m sorry I ever got married, or came to the city,” he said.

Nirg, Nimrod’s wife, said nothing, just served him more food. He would apologize to her later. Lea, his second wife, glared at him. She would throw things at him later.

“You met another female?” Nimrod’s father said. “Not hunting?”

“Should you be looking at other females?” Nimrod’s mother asked. “I mean, you have two lovely brides now, maybe… another onager, or dog?”

“We don’t want him to transgress with onagers,” his father said. “It wouldn’t reflect well on the family or my position.” His father was the
lugal.

Nimrod stabbed his food with a dagger.

“Where’d you meet the female?” his little brother, the brat, asked.

“Father’s offices.”

“When were you there?” his father asked. “I must have already gone to the temple.”

“Why was a female in your father’s office?” his mother asked.

Nimrod knew they had an
understanding.
Priestesses, well, it was part of the duty of his father Shem, to spend time and congress with them. But other women, city women, his mother wouldn’t have it. It shamed her at council gatherings and meetings of the karums.

“She was returning a skirt, from Justice Ningal,” Nimrod said.

“The female who vomited on me?” his father asked, pushing away his plate.

“We’re eating,” Lea reminded Nimrod.

“Yum!” the brat said.

Nirg dug into her mush. Not much could come between Nirg and food. A hardy mountain female who didn’t waste energy on conversation or fancy clothes. Very different from the woman Nimrod had met today. “Your scribe showed his usual charm.”

“His task is not to be nice to people but to keep people from taking my daylight. It’s valuable!”

“It’s voted on by the public,” Nimrod said. “Anyway, this female was running out of the building, and we crashed into each other.”

“Is she ugly, since she’s a female?” the brat said.

Nimrod shrugged. “She’s Khamite. Dark, like all the city women.” His gaze touched on the fair heads of Nirg and Lea. They were like flax and wheat. “Spoke like she was from somewhere north.”

“She’s a refugee, a sheepherder. Ningal, out of the goodness of his aged heart, apparently has taken her in, Roo,” his father explained.

Nimrod saw the look his mother gave his father. Everyone knew Ningal spent time with priestesses only. There were going to be a lot of unhappy widows, not to mention how his children were going to feel, if the leading justice of Ur took up with a young Khamite girl. A refugee, which was worse.

It was so much simpler in the mountains, Nimrod thought. People meant what they said. If they didn’t like you, they killed you. If you didn’t like them, you killed them. Animals were honest. Mountain people were honest. Nimrod got tired sometimes, just trying to figure out which smiles were real and which were not.

It was time to meet Kidu, the incoming
en
and Nimrod’s friend, for a friendly wrestling match and cool beers. He was straightforward, and a good companion. An honest mountain man.

The girl was like that, today. Honest. No, she couldn’t be from the city.

“She was trying to see you,” he told his father.

“Why, so she could throw up on something else?”

The brat snickered. Nimrod elbowed him. The little urchin squealed and fell off his chair. The remonstrations were immediate and expected, and Nimrod helped the brat up and served him some more food. Lea’s gaze was laughing now; she hated Roo. Nirg ate on undisturbed.

“Thank the gods I left a few minutes early today,” his father said. “I’ll do it tomorrow, too, just in case.”

The brat snorted a pea up his nose, then made a loud hacking noise and spat it out his mouth onto his dish. Their father turned away. Nimrod looked at his food. He missed the mountain people… their honesty, simplicity, the sense it made when you lived in the mountains. You fought to stay alive, you treasured the moments of dawn and twilight, you valued a woman who could feed a fire, and you protected the man who fought at your back.

Everyone had the same goals, to live a good life, to not irritate the gods, to feed the children, the animals, themselves.

But none of them knew how to read or write; for this reason, Nimrod had returned to the city. He was a hunter, and he loved the mountains, but he needed the energy of the city.

He just wished he could start Ur over. Build it up from a slate of blank clay.

Get it right.

*      *     *

“See! It’s just there!” Ezzi said, pointing at the sky. The men, the venerable priests of the Temple of Sin, stared up at the blackness. “It’s new. I think tonight is its fourth night.”

They stared long and hard. The exorcist among them held up his clay copy of a sheep’s liver and pointed to various spots. They muttered and stared and consulted each other. He could have a cloak like that, Ezzi thought. Then everyone would know he was a stargazer. Dark, like the night, sprinkled with the signs of stars and moon, falling to the ground with the rustle of gold fringe.

“Next week is the New Year,” one of them said to Ezzi. “Watch this star every night until then. We’ll cast omens and see what secrets the gods hold for us.”

“Yes, sirs,” he said, bowing his head.

“Keep a good watch on it, boy. We’ll talk to the
lugal’s
stargazer when he gets here.”

“Yes, sirs.”

“Let us know if there are any changes in its position, or the time it appears. Anything at all.”

Ezzi could barely control his excitement.

“Are you a stargazer professionally?” one of the cloaked men asked.

“Ye-yes, sir.”

“Employed by anyone?”

He cleared his throat. “Not yet, I just completed the Tablet House. I’m entertaining some offers from various businessmen around town.”

“I see.” The man looked back at the sky, and no one else said anything.

Ezzi realized he must have been dismissed. He’d hoped they would offer to pay him or something; he really wanted that tub, but they didn’t pay him. Not this time, he reminded himself. Next time they would, for sure. He’d discovered a new star! The
lugal
himself would be thrilled!

He crossed the roof and walked down the stairs. Priests with spears watched the entranceways to each of the floors; they were usually the biggest men and certainly the most handsome. Priests were above all men in Ur, the most physically blessed by the gods.

Would the same could be said for priestesses. Ezzi had seen some servants of the goddess who looked like they guarded the seven gates of Kur instead of danced in the court of the gods. He continued his path around the temple. The night gardeners were out, clearing the small irrigation ditches that lined the walkways and fed the innumerable palm trees that swayed and swooshed in the evening air. Light from the oil lamps illuminated the blue or red or green or yellow on the walls of the staged temple. Ezzi walked down the stairs.

Maybe the
lugal
himself would offer Ezzi employment? Perhaps he would be so impressed and so pleased he would come to Ezzi’s house himself. No, Ezzi scoffed. The
lugal
would never visit, but he might send a scribe, or a gentleman. That wouldn’t be unheard of. Ezzi’s steps quickened.
My mother won’t be home tonight; the week before New Year’s is one of the busiest at the tavern. This would be a good time for the scribe to come.

He’d get home and whip those slaves into order to clean the house, get rid of the donkey odor.

When Ezzi heard footsteps behind him, he held his breath. It had happened so quickly! The runner’s pace and breath seemed to get faster the closer he got. Ezzi hurried his steps; he wanted to be at home by the time the message arrived. The runner gained on him and Ezzi accelerated. His Old Boy cloak was too formal actually to run in; and it wouldn’t be seemly for the
lugal’s
newest stargazer to race.

The runner passed him, and Ezzi saw the lapis and pearl shell standard around his neck. It
was
from the
lugal
! Running to his street. The man would just have to wait until Ezzi got home. Aware of his importance, Ezzi slowed his pace and lengthened his steps, like a justice. He lived on the street with Justice Ningal; he’d seen the grave and noteworthy way he walked.

Ezzi turned onto Crooked Way, and the runner ran past him. Going the other direction. “Wait!” Ezzi cried. “I’m not home yet!”

The runner paid him no heed. His hands were empty now.

Ezzi peered down the street and saw one of the doors closing.

Oh. Not for him.

*      *     *

“For me?”

“It does say, ‘The Female human Chloe.’ ”

“Good thing there aren’t any male human Chloes,” she said, stepping up to Kalam. “May I have it?”

“Certainly.”

The clay envelope was wrapped around a clay tablet, similar to the one with the record of her sheep. Scribbles and scratches, scribal marks, were all over it. She couldn’t read a thing. Not even the part with her name in it. She handed it back to him. “Do you mind?”

He looked at it, then looked at her. Somehow the story of her puking in the potted palm had gotten back to him. Ningal was out tonight, but Kalam was in and had been as irritable as an expectant water buffalo ever since twilight.

Nice analogy,
the voice inside her head said. Snidely.

He sighed. “Certainly.” With a quick whack, he broke the outer clay envelope and pulled out the letter. He read it quickly. “By the gods,” he muttered and tossed it at her.

Chloe dived for it, sliding in the dirt, but she caught it. “You throw like a girl,” she said. His expression was confused, on top of angry. She was confused at herself. Did girls throw more than boys? Differently? She shook her head to clear it, and looked at the clay letter.

Marsh bird marks walked across the clay. It was damp. “What does it say?”

“Meet me at the
lugal’s
office at the double hour before noon. You’ll get to meet him.”

“Nimrod!” she exclaimed.

“How do you know the
lugal’s
son?”

So the story of the puked-on potted palm hadn’t made it to him. “Old friends,” she said glibly. “Thank you, Kalam.”

“I’m leaving now,” he said, slapping his basket hat on and storming through the courtyard. He slammed the door after him.

Chloe looked at the letter; the scratches were familiar somehow. She’d never used them, but she’d seen something similar. In a big room, with lots of light. They were lying on tables, lots of them, with little placards explaining where they’d been found and when.

She walked up to her room, her palm-frond bed. Familiar things.

Sometimes her own mind didn’t feel very familiar.

Guli woke to the sound of banging on his door. His palm-frond mattress, which had fallen in less time than he’d expected, left him trapped between the four braces of the bed frame, scrambling like a bug to get on his feet.

His guests didn’t wait for him to open the door.

“Perhaps this is why you can’t pay us back,” his creditor said as he stepped into the room. Two men stood on either side of the tradesman. Unlike him, they were sailors with brawny arms and wide chests. Viza crossed his arms and looked at Guli. “You rest past dawn, as though you were the
en
!”

Guli managed to get up and greet the owner of his shop—by default—if business didn’t pick up. “I’m not late,” he said to Viza. “Payment isn’t due until the first of the year. You swore by Enlil!”

Viza snapped his fingers, and a scribe ran in, with an armful of tablets. “Give Guli a copy of the new agreement,” he said.

“I don’t read.”

“Of course not,” Viza said. “Read him a copy of the new rules.”

The scribe squinted at the clay.

Guli felt a rush of cold down his back, as if he were wearing his kilt backward during the winter. This was not a good omen.

The scribe cleared his throat and read, in an obnoxious high voice: “I, Guli, who borrowed sixty minae of barley to lease a residence in the fashionable weaving district for my salon, Guli’s Karum of Style, will repay the generous and majestic citizen Lord Viza at the prescribed 15 percent. If by the first quarter of the first year I have not made a payment, I will relinquish my residence and submit to being a gardener for Lord Viza.”

“I didn’t sign that,” Guli said. “And I didn’t lease a residence in the weaving district. If I had, if would be full of weavers getting their hair done!”

“This is the new agreement, Guli.”

“You can’t change the conditions after we made a covenant,” he said. Guli was a former offender of the commonwealth; he knew his laws.

“I am Lord Viza, you sniveling sifter of shit!”

The two men turned on Guli’s house.

“What are you doing? Have you lost your mind?”

“Shut up, or I’ll have them work you over,” Viza snarled.

One of the sailors upended Guli’s palm-frond trunk and spilled his receipts onto the floor. “Wait! You can’t touch those!”

With big, bare feet, the sailors stomped on his receipts, smashing them to bits. To pieces. To dust.

Guli watched as the lease of his house, the loan of the furniture, and the purchase of several asses’ tails was converted to powder. Lord Viza stepped closer. A small man with a nasty scar on his head, he didn’t even wear the cloak of an Old Boy. “Sign the new agreement, Guli.”