They reached the door, still ajar, and she slipped into the shadow beyond and pulled on the rope. It bit into her fingers. “Come, Father. Through the door. We must leave.”
But he rocked backward on his haunches again, his arms tight around his legs. Was it the darkness beyond the door? Or simply the unknown? Tia could do nothing about either.
She pulled again. “Please, Father. Trust me. All will be well.”
She could not bear to drag him through the door like a stubborn animal. She bent to him and unwrapped one hand from his self-embrace. The nails were long and clawed, the hair on the back of his hand wild and bristly. She held it in her own chilled grip and placed her other hand over it.
“It is your Tia, Father.” Her whispered reminder seemed to catch his attention. He looked at their entwined hands, then at her face. “Yes, that’s right. Tia has come for you. And you must follow her.” She pulled gently on his hand, and he did not resist. Stepped backward and drew him again.
Yes, yes, that’s it. Follow me
.
Tia still held his hand with both of hers and the rope dragged behind.
A moment later they were through the door.
Tia snatched up the rope that bound her father and clutched the key that swung from her neck. One last time locking the door, with a nervous glance over her shoulder to see what he would do, now that they were in the stairwell, with only a wisp of torchlight reaching them from below. His head swung back and forth, taking in the new surroundings. He had not left the Gardens in nearly seven years. Did he feel relief or fear? Did he feel at all?
With the door secure, she ventured past him to the first step. She had seen him climb the tiers of the Gardens, but navigating downward in his unnatural position would be difficult. Could she get him to stand upright and walk down as a man?
She took another step down, her face now level with his. His gaze roamed her face, as if searching for the familiar.
“We are on the stairs, Father. We need to go down.” Tia pantomimed stepping down, as if he were a small child. How else did one communicate to someone such as he? “Can you stand?” She straightened her back, lifted her shoulders. Would he mimic?
But he only watched her, his nose twitching. She would have to use the lead tied to his body and hope he could balance his malformed body on the narrow steps.
“Come, Father.” Tia turned and descended another couple of steps, pulling gently on the rope. Behind her he was silent, unmoving. The rope dug into her palm. She pulled harder. Nothing.
Back up the steps, faces equal again. Her eyes had adjusted enough to the dim torchlight to see his expression. Fear? Rage? His rough lips pulled back from his teeth, yellowed from his years of madness, even blackened in some places. Guilt stabbed her. They should have cared for him better. She should have found a way. There was a yellowing in the whites of his eyes too. Malnutrition, probably. But his wolfishness frightened her.
“Come,” Tia whispered, not even certain she wanted him to obey.
The rope was not effective—she could not simply haul him down the steps, even if she did possess the strength. She wrapped a hand around his upper arm and tugged him toward her own body.
But it was too much. Whether it was her touch or her insistence that he move, he suddenly pulled back. A low rumble, too much like a growl, sounded from his chest.
“Father, you must come with me!” Tia did not release his arm. “You are in danger here. We must—”
He yanked his arm from her grasp and scrabbled backward on the platform. “Sheeggaaahhh!”
It was the first sound Tia had heard from his lips in seven years, and it frightened her more than his eyes or his fury. She set her teeth to keep from crying out.
He paced on hands and feet, back and forth like a caged animal about to be released for the hunt. Hungry, desperate for a kill. Unpredictable. Dangerous.
The first bitter taste of true fear had her grasping at the wall for a handhold.
“Kkkrrrruuaaahhh!” His bellowing noise bounced around the stairwell and echoed downward, a stone falling into the underworld.
Tia’s breath was coming fast now, and she tripped up the steps and held out both hands. “Father, we must be quiet—”
He whirled on her outstretched arms and smacked them away with a clawed fist. His hand struck her mouth and she gasped at the pain, and then at the taste of her own blood.
“No!” Too loud. She had cried out in shock, but it was too loud. “Father, no. I am trying to help!”
He backed away until his feet ran against the wall, then wedged himself into the corner and wrapped his arms around himself once more.
She crawled across the platform. Her bottom lip throbbed. She probed it with her tongue and could feel it swelling. But she did not take her clear eyes from his cloudy gaze. Somewhere, somewhere underneath the animal instincts of self-preservation, was her father.
He rocked against the wall, more penitent child than threatened beast. She crept closer, closer, until they were side by side and she drew her own legs up, mimicking him as she had wished he would her.
They sat in silence for some minutes, though she knew the darkness was flying past. She had lost time in the Gardens. Their escape had eaten up the night. And now he refused to take even the first step. How was she to get him all the way down to the lowest level of the palace, then up to the street and out the back entrance to the waiting wagon?
This close to him, Tia smelled the odor of his body, his decaying breath. The deep, familiar sadness swamped her. She leaned her forehead against her knees, willing the tears to stop for they did no good.
“We were going to see Daniel, Father. Your Belteshazzar, whom you care for. And he cares for you. He would have hidden us for a time, I know. And then I planned to take you far from here, somewhere safe from the scheming of magi and royal wives.”
His chest heaved against his thighs, but he did not lash out.
She pressed the back of her head against the wall and watched him. Though his body was quiet, his gaze still roamed the platform, the dark steps beyond. It was fear that kept him from following her, but it was a fear she could not break through.
“I have tried to be brave, Father. Tried to do what you would have done.” She let the tears flow now and felt them drip to her bare shoulder. “You never retreated from a risk, from danger. I never saw you frightened.” His breathing seemed to slow at her voice, but she spoke more as a release than to calm him.
“I have tried to do whatever was needed to save the king, to save the kingdom. But I am frightened, Father. Things have happened— strange events—I do not know if perhaps I am going mad myself. Was this how it was for you at first? Did you feel the darkness coming and not tell any of us?”
It was out, then, if only spoken to her father’s insensible ears. “They say that madness runs in families, Father. Am I more like you than anyone has even known?” The last words were only a whisper, as if she could hide the truth from even the darkness. But at this last confession, he glanced at her and she saw again that flicker of some understanding. It was gone in a moment, but in the next he surprised her. With only a slight movement, he shifted his upper body toward her, until their shoulders touched, and then his head was against hers, and he leaned on Tia with the closest thing to affection she’d felt in seven years.
Love for him pushed against her chest, threatened to shake her apart, but she would not move, would not break this blessed, tenuous connection. Instead, she closed her eyes against the tears, closed her senses against the animal smells, closed her mind against the fear. And opened her heart.
He knows me
. He was her father still. Somewhere he was her father. Somehow she would free him.
But not tonight and not this way.
They remained there against the wall until her legs grew numb and she knew the daylight must approach. Loathe to leave him, she stroked his matted beard and whispered her love to him, then stood and unlocked the door.
At its opening, the beginnings of the dawn swept into the stairwell. Her father’s head jerked upward, he looked to her, and then to the open door. Tia nodded.
He approached slowly, crouched beside her, held still while she untied the rope from his waist.
And then he was gone, bounding back into the Gardens like a boy released from his lessons. She closed the door, locked it tight, leaned her forehead against it, and wept.
But there was no time for self-pity. Or pity of any sort.
She reversed her trek of hours earlier, retrieved her pack from the wagon in the alley, and swatted the donkey’s rump to get it moving. Where the animal would wander, she did not care. The first rays of the sun streaked across the streets of Babylon as she slipped quickly back toward her room.
But she would not return without being noticed. In the hall outside her door, her two slave women huddled and spoke in hushed tones. Gula spotted her first, and her lifted head and parted lips quieted Omarsa’s chatter and turned her to Tia. Omarsa nudged Gula’s arm with her fingertips. “Go,” she whispered. And Gula fled past her, head down.
“My lady.” Omarsa opened her chamber door and took the pack from her arms. “We were concerned. You mentioned an illness, and when we came to check on you in the night, you were not here.”
Tia breezed into the chamber and tossed her hair over her shoulder. “I thank you for your concern, Omarsa, but it was unwarranted. I am fine.”
“Your mother—”
Tia spun on her. “What about my mother?”
“When we couldn’t find you—”
“You didn’t tell her, Omarsa? Tell me you did not go running off to Amytis to report my absence.”
“We were worried, my lady.”
“And Gula?” Tia eyed the closed chamber door. “Where did you send her just now?”
“To assure your mother that no harm had come to you. That you had returned.”
Tia cursed under her breath and snatched the pack from Omarsa. “Help me with this.” Her fingers fumbled at the knot, suddenly cold and uncooperative. “And say nothing of it!”
The pack spilled open on the floor and she shoved the clothing at Omarsa. “Put these away.” She placed them on a pile of tunics in a nearby basket. “Under! Under the others.”
She kicked the pairs of sandals against the wall, grabbed the carved wooden box of jewels, and deposited it onto the side table.
Did she still smell of him? Tia sniffed at her shoulder but caught only the faint whiff of the myrrh she had applied, it seemed a lifetime ago.
She could hear her mother’s voice in the hall as she seized the red bedcovering off the floor and tossed it to the bed. The jewel box—it sat at a strange angle on the table. She nudged it back into place, shot a warning look at Omarsa, whose wide eyes were enough to betray her, and straightened her shoulders against the coming attack.
The door flung open and her mother paused only a moment, framed by the entrance. Gula cowered behind her. Amytis took two strides into the room, clutched Tia’s arms, and rotated her left and right, inspecting her like a purchase that might have been damaged. “You are well, then?”
“Fine, Mother. I am sorry you were—”
She saw Tia’s clothes. “You have been running? All night? Again you are running about the city like a peasant?”
“Not all night. I woke feeling better and needed some air.”
“Bah! There is air in the courtyards. Air on the rooftop gardens.”
“I prefer my air untainted by greed and betrayal.”
Amytis slapped her.
The open hand stung Tia’s cheek and she clenched a fist rather than raise her hand to the sting.
Amytis stared her down and Tia met her gaze, aware of Omarsa and Gula backing toward the door.
“How dare you.” The words escaped through Amytis’s clenched teeth. “Everything I do is to keep this family safe. Everything. You have no idea the lengths I’ve gone to and the plots that rise up against me.”
“Against you? Or against my father?”
Amytis was like a rearing cobra, hood spread and ready to strike. “What do you know about any of it, little Tiamat?”
“I know that neither the throne nor my father is safe.”
Amytis spun away. “If there is a threat, it is inconsequential. Pretenders rise up to make claims, fabricate a right to rule. But we never allow them to succeed.”
A flicker of doubt crossed Tia’s thoughts. Was Amel the pretender? Was his claim fabricated and was he not actually her brother? She fought to recall each word of the overheard conversation in the advisory chamber. “You have proof that this claim is false?”
Amytis waved her question away. “There are better ways for royalty to handle themselves than stooping to acknowledge such foolishness.” Her eyes burned into Tia’s. “Quietly eliminate the threat. Bolster your own political strength. These are the strategies of royalty.”
She was like a rock. Like a jutting stone in the river, unmovable while everything around her rushed into foam.
“Yes, you have always been strategic.”
Amytis’s lips tightened. “I will not abide anyone who works against me, against the safety of my family.”
Did that include Tia?
“They are my family too, Mother. I will not stand by—”
“No. You will not. You will do your part. The day of your marriage approaches.” Amytis scanned her clothes with a disdainful eye. “Focus on your duty, Tia. Duty, above all else.”
“But, Mother, if there is a way to prove—”
“Tiamat!” The word was like a curse on her mother’s lips. But then she sighed and dropped her shoulders. “Omarsa, Gula, leave us.” Gula fumbled at the door’s latch and the two slipped into the corridor. Tia watched them go. “You must learn to hold your tongue, Daughter.”
“If we can prove that this claim to the throne is false, if he is not truly—” Amytis’s frozen look stopped Tia’s gush of words.
“Of whom do you speak, Tia?”
She debated only a moment. It was time to work together, not against each other. “Amel-Marduk. If he is not truly the king’s son—”
“How do you know this?” Amytis’s eyebrows drew together until a deep crease formed between, a furrow that gave her the look of a lioness on the hunt. “Who told you this?” She took a step toward Tia and Tia retreated. “It was that Jew, wasn’t it? Your husband’s brother? He sees too much, speaks too much.”