Amel remained in the shadows. He slipped to her side and touched her arm in sympathy. The wind rose, rustling garden shrubbery and whistling over the stone wall. For the second time that night she heard a jackal howl, and the sound raised the hair on her arms.
“Who did this?” Kaldu’s daughter moaned. “Who killed my father?”
The asû had little to do but proffer his opinion. “He has been mauled. I have only seen this in the desert or among the animals kept for the hunt.” His voice dropped in pitch, as though he feared his own words. “Some kind of predator has done this killing.”
Tia did not react. Nor did anyone else on the rooftop, to their credit. But the words hung in the air like a pronouncement of guilt, and every one of them must have had the same thought.
True fear clutched Tia’s heart, and her own blood seemed to drain to the stones. All these years, all these years they had kept the secrets . . . A coldness slithered through her and she fought to keep from shaking.
Shadir’s eyes were on her. Amytis looked over the northern city wall, across desert sand to places unknown.
“We should give the family their privacy.” Amytis turned to the asû. “You will take care of the body?” He nodded.
With that, they were ushered from the rooftop by the force of Amytis’s personality.
In the palace hall Shadir pulled Amel toward the east wing. The younger mage turned once, a lingering look and cool smile for Tia. Amytis saw it, raised her eyebrows, then left Tia standing alone.
Just as well that she had been abandoned. She had a single thought and must pursue it.
When she had left the Gardens earlier, her thoughts had been wrapped around her plan to avoid the Median prince and safely marry Shealtiel’s youngest brother, Nedabiah. One question now scorched her thoughts.
Had she left the door to the upper tier of the Gardens unlocked?
For the second time that night, Tia trekked through courtyards, down steps, across underground chambers, and up the shaft to the small door that was her private entrance.
She found it ajar.
Heart pounding, Tia slammed it shut, yanked the key from under her tunic, and secured the door. Then she turned, leaned her back against the splintered wood, and tried to breathe.
One way or another, whether unlocked door or cedar plank, Tia feared Kaldu’s blood was on her trembling hands.
There was more at stake here than her freedom. She would not forsake her plan to marry Nedabiah and keep herself safe.
But she must find out what happened to Kaldu.
Dreams clung to the long night.
A jackal with my father’s eyes roams the Gardens, the palace balconies, the courtyards. I follow, my feet bare, slipping from columned arch to leafy palm, watching the jackal prowl. The beast slows, lifts its gray snout, sniffs the air. Turns its eyes to me. My heart beats like a bull’s-hide drum, hollow and deep, and those eyes, those eyes take me in and study me as though they would dissect soul from body. A numbing cold spreads like a wave from my eyes to my feet and out to my fingers, and I grasp the rough palm trunk and burrow cold fingers into its jagged bark
.
Tia woke, breathing hard and fingers tangled in bedcoverings.
Gula was at her bedside a moment later, holding a palm-sized oil lamp that etched her face with shadows. She reached for the cup of warmed wine she’d given Tia before she retired.
Tia shoved Gula’s arm from her vision and clawed at the coverings. “I am well, Gula. Only a dream.” But the dry rasp of her tone betrayed the pretense.
Gula ran a narrow-eyed gaze over her, then returned to her pallet in the adjoining room.
Tia sought sleep again, though it had been an oppressor.
In the morning her first thought was of Kaldu’s mutilated body and that unlocked door. Questions tightened the muscles of her neck and shoulders, and the night’s pent-up tension left her with the urge to strike. Or scream.
I must run
.
“Gula, make ready my training chamber.”
She appeared in the doorway at Tia’s call. “But your husband’s burial—”
“Not until tonight. It is the Jews’ Shabbat.”
“Still, your mother—”
“Gula! The chamber!”
She bowed out of the room, and when Omarsa had her dressed, Tia left, keeping to the back corridors.
As always, guards crawled the halls. One of these, a wide-chested soldier, joined her as she rounded the final corner. He accompanied Tia to the double-wide door of the chamber, standing too close.
Will no one let me breathe?
The guard assumed his post outside the door, and she entered alone.
Finally
. This need she had to run, to strive, to
sweat
—her training chamber was all she had to ease the pressure of a life too idle, too indulgent.
The four windowless walls were hung with braziers, lit by Gula. It was an inner room formerly used for storage, enclosed by other rooms. Shadows played on the undecorated baked brick walls.
“The ugliest room in the palace,”
Amytis had sneered. Perhaps to her. To Tia, it was her sanctuary, her temple. She did not utter such thoughts aloud, for fear the gods would be jealous, but in this room she controlled her own life.
And that control had become her religion.
Tia had chosen every item herself, from the straw-stuffed mats to hemp ropes and rigged pulleys. But the piece she loved most, the one that most angered Amytis, was the hide-covered wooden bull in the center of the room.
Tia crossed to the beast and stroked its back. “Greetings, old friend.”
Its marble-chip eyes stared into the dark corners. It had stubbed horns, long enough for handholds, but not as sharp as a real bull’s.
Tia had never taken part in bull-leaping outside this room, but it was a favorite dream. The annual festival gave the city’s best athletes the chance to flaunt their talent. She could race chariots with the best of them, but she was not yet ready for the bulls.
She bent to the animal’s carved ear. “Someday.” And what would Mother say on that day?
In spite of her complaint to Amytis, Tia often ran here, and she began this morning by chasing shadows around the circuit of the cavernous room until her skin glowed in the firelight and her lungs burned.
After a swig of water from the jug at the head of the chamber, Tia stretched her muscles, then faced the bull with undivided focus. Her limbs twitched, a prickling pain that craved action. She looked into the bull’s marble eyes, readied her stance, then shot forward at full speed.
One, two, three, LEAP!
Her hands clasped the horns. A grunt escaped her chest. Back leg kicked upward, up, higher, and she was inverted on the bull’s head, balanced.
Hold, hold
. A thrust with her lower body and she completed the flip, soared over the bull’s body, and landed with a shout of triumph.
A bit unsteady. Needed to work on that. But her lips curved with pleasure and her pulse beat a satisfied rhythm through her veins.
“You are an acrobat.”
She spun to the shadows that held the smooth voice. “Who is there?”
She knew the answer before he stepped into the torchlight. Had his voice already become so familiar?
Panting, Tia used her forearm to wipe dampness from her brow, conscious of her strange attire and strands of hair affixed to her cheeks with sweat. “How did you get past the guard?”
Amel-Marduk’s smile boasted flawless teeth, perfection unnoticed in the solemn moments beside Kaldu. His full lips held amusement at her expense and his arms were crossed over his strong chest. He was no stranger to training either, it was clear. He shrugged a shoulder, as if accustomed to the world giving way at his touch. “You are not the only one who enjoys taking risks.”
Tia swiped hair from her face. “Is there news of Kaldu’s killer?”
Amel strolled to her, hooked a finger around an errant strand of hair, and shook his head, slowly. His hand brushed her cheek and felt like summer lightning.
Her mouth had gone dry. From exertion, no doubt. She pulled away, fetched the water jug, and drank directly from its lip. Too late she realized her usual method was less than feminine. She set the jug down too hard and turned, eyes on his feet.
But Amel-Marduk laughed, still amused by her, it seemed. He tipped his chin upward. “You are like a soldier in combat, Tia. But who is your enemy?”
Who, indeed?
She met his gaze. “Why did you come?” Her voice scratched, a little hitch of nervousness.
He was by her side again, those eyes drawing her in. Did he have some secret knowledge imparted by magi? Secrets that left her swaying on her feet as though wrapped in a spell, with only his eyes to keep her upright?
“I came to see you.”
“Why?”
He spoke the answer against her ear. “Because you are the goddess Tiamat. And from you the whole world is formed.”
He spoke of creation, of all land and sea that came from the chaos of Tiamat.
She turned her head away, thoughts jumbled, and answered with a whisper. “But it was
Marduk
who slew her.”
His laugh was a low rumble in his throat, dangerous and predatory. He traced her jawline with a cool finger. “Fear me, Princess?”
He smelled of smoke and incense.
Yes, and he is trained in ways more mysterious than I understand
.
Tia grabbed at a pulley fixed to the ceiling. All of this was not right, not what it should be. “You will forgive me, Amel, if I continue alone. I have a full day ahead.”
His eyes never left hers. As though they still spoke, even in silence. At last she broke the heady connection and turned her eyes to the mats.
The door whispered closed a moment later.
Her breath escaped her chest and she leaned against the pulley. It gave way and she stumbled and cursed. She had sought to release her anxiety, but Amel’s visit had sharpened it with the hint of the desirable, the forbidden, until the very air made her skin itch. Shaking, she bound her hands with strips of cloth, then attacked the hide-covered bull, beating her fists against its cushioned surface. She pounded with a fury she had not known, all the guilt and frustration and loss of the past day building, building and coursing through her arms like a river surge.
Her husband—dead. Another foreign prince summoned to take what remained of her.
While she maneuvered to marry herself to a child, a mage not permitted to even speak to her invaded her chamber, her thoughts, and crawled under her very skin.
To all this, add Kaldu’s strange death. And the fear that the one person to whom she still clung, perhaps without reason, might be slipping away. Too much for even her.
The surge of emotion swelled, then spent itself against the unforgiving hides.
She fell against the bull and wept.
Tia had never entered slave chambers. The floor of the single room, much smaller than her own, was littered with no less than a dozen pallets. The bare walls bore no tapestries, no furniture stole floor space, not a single item of indulgence graced the room.
Amytis was wrong. Her training chamber was not the ugliest room in the palace.
A few well-placed questions of other slaves led her to the chambers of Ying, the slave who tended the rooftop garden. She had not expected to find so many slaves—six of the pallets held sleeping women. Were their slaves permitted to sleep so late? One of them lifted her head, focused on Tia, then scrambled to her feet. She was younger than Tia, with the darker skin of Upper Egypt. Did she remember her home? Still cling to former freedom?
Tia mustered a cool look, trying to convey an obligatory disapproval of the slave’s laziness. “I am looking for Ying.”
The girl raked fingers through tangled hair and blinked rapidly. “Ying works in the day.”
Her voice was high and light, like a wisp of cloud, and the way she leaned into the word
day
unraveled Tia’s mistake. These women were not neglecting their duties. They worked all night and slept in daylight. She had never considered that slaves worked whilst she slept. She fought to keep a flush of shame at bay. “Where would I find her?”
“She keeps gardens. Mostly the outermost courtyard, closest to the palace’s east gate.”
Tia nodded her thanks, a quick bob of her head more dismissive than grateful. Slave relations were complicated. They could not be treated as equals. Even if the injustice nagged her conscience.
Amytis loved the east courtyard. Would Tia find her there? She would not approve of her daughter’s questions.
She found Ying kneeling alongside another slave woman, clipping back the stems of anemones. Her gaze followed Tia’s entrance and she spoke to her companion, too softly for Tia to make out the words. At Tia’s bidding, she rose and wiped dirt from her hands.
She was from the East, the land of silk and ivory. Small-framed and strong, with the lovely almond eyes and delicate fingers of her people. Babylon’s conquests extended far. Tia sensed resentment at her intrusion, though Ying’s expression quickly shifted to a mask of deference.
The resentment puzzled Tia, and when she spoke, her words sounded clipped, harsh. “You tend the rooftop garden off the northwest wing?”
“Yes, my lady. Is something amiss?”
So the news had not yet traveled through the palace. Had Shadir’s influence kept it quiet? “You worked there yesterday?”
Her eyes shifted to the right, then back to Tia, unreadable. “Yes, into the evening.”
Tia stepped across a paving stone and lowered her voice. “Did you see anyone there?”
Ying tilted her head, studying Tia like a diviner trying to read a sheep’s liver. “Yes . . .” She drew the word out until it sounded more like a question.
“Tell me”—she resisted the desire to shake the truth from her—“who was in the garden last night?”
Ying’s eyes fixed on hers, suddenly cold and accusing. “You were, my lady.”
Those eyes. Did Ying know what had happened to Kaldu? A flutter of apprehension tickled Tia’s stomach. “Before me. Or perhaps after. Someone else.”