The Legend of Sheba: Rise of a Queen (9 page)

“I am barely upon this throne,” I said one day. “Would you see me gone from it so soon that you plan for my death?”

“Never, my queen.” The portly Abamar of Awsan bowed his head. “May you reign a hundred years.”

“And yet,” Salban said quietly, startling me. He had remained mercifully silent on the matter to date. “You considered alliance with another clan once before. Will you not consider it now?”

My fingers went cold.

I had spoken my earlier intent to marry Maqar to no one but him.

“I presume . . . that you mean my brief betrothal when I was a child,” I said, very carefully. I would not speak Sadiq’s name.

He inclined his head—too late. The question so long put to rest that night before Maqar’s death had reared up within my heart once more.

“Almaqah has set me upon this seat, as I have set you upon yours,” I said, looking meaningfully from one man to the next. “Almaqah will make the future known. For now, we have far more pressing matters.”

That summer, as gum flowed in the trees of the foothills and the frankincense farmers went out to make their cuts in the papery bark, I accepted young women from the noble families of Saba and Awsan to tend my chambers, men to oversee the stables, and priests and priestesses from entire pantheons of gods to serve my household.

I did all these things, barely reckoning the hour of the day, and the month only by the capricious moon through my window as I lay down each night.

That autumn, as tears of white resin were gathered from the frankincense trees and the rains returned again, grief ceased its nightly visit. Duty remained in its stead. I slept rarely, and when I did it was only to dream of a body-strewn field, the ibex in the clearing. At times I thought I heard the keening of souls as I woke to the wind howling through the stone mouths of the lions beneath the palace cornices. In a sweat, I went to my table to pore over the accounts of disputes settled in my name and the temple tithes gathered for public works.

“My queen,” Shara said, pushing up from the silk pillows of the bed where she slept beside me. “Will you not rest? The records will not have changed by tomorrow.”

“Soon,” I said, as I did every night.

I could not tell her that I dare not. That the office I wore like a leaden mantle had been purchased too dearly and I must wield wisely this power I resented so well. Worse, Salban’s comment had brought to barbed life the question of Maqar’s intention I had thought long buried. A thousand times I nearly sent for his father, to demand answers to questions dignity forbade me ask. It was a riddle with no answer at any rate: no confirmation of Maqar’s duplicity could ever dissuade me of his love, no denial ever put my heart to rest.

And neither would return him to me.

I knew only one thing for certain: I was queen now. And I knew nothing to do but labor all hours or go mad.

“M
y queen,” Wahabil said one early evening as I met with my privy council. I glanced up with a start, only then realizing that I had nodded off where I sat.

“Forgive me,” I said. “Pray continue.”

“We have held you hours in session. Perhaps a short recess,” he said, nodding to the scribe sitting in the corner. To my right and left, the others made to rise.

“No,” I said sharply. And then, “Councilor Abyada is newly married. Let us finish our business and speed him to his young wife, where his mind is, no doubt, already.” Chuckles from around the table.

“Ah,” Abyada said, with a cant of his aging head, “it is true. And yet, I am not a young man and she is vigorous for want of a child. I beg you, delay me, that I may rally my strength.”

I smiled but said, “We will continue.”

Farther down, Niman and Khalkarib exchanged glances. Yatha studied his folded hands.

“Well?” I said.

Wahabil slowly rose from his seat at the far end of the table, walked its length, and came to lean in before me, obscuring the others from view.

“My queen,” he said quietly, laying a ringed hand on the table’s polished ebony, “you are exhausted.”

“Nonsense,” I said. “I do not have the benefit of that fine qat you and Yatha favor so greatly.”

Polite laughter from the others. But Wahabil straightened and shook his head.

“We worry for your majesty. You wear yourself away. The servants say you hardly sleep, refuse all but the smallest amount of food . . .”

“My servants are women, councilor. No doubt your own mothers and wives say the same of you. They are not interested in land disputes or the condition of the dam or the southern canals or trading vast sums of myrrh for Egyptian horses.”

“And yet it is apparent to us as well. My queen, if there is some unease that keeps you from food or rest, let me send for the physician, I beg you.”

The table was silent as I felt the weight of their eyes upon me. Niman, my cousin. Abyada. Khalkharib and Yatha. Nabat, captain of my guard. Abamar. Their forbearance and impatience in varied mosaic.

“I assure you I am well,” I said. “Perhaps we should take that recess after all.”

“You are the unifier of Saba. Your person is precious to the kingdom, especially as you are without an heir. You must look to your well-being. If not for your own sake—”

I slammed my hands on the table and stood.

“What do you want of me? What have I not given to you, to Saba,
that is mine to give? In what way have I failed you that you chastise me? My duty! My obedience! Myriad lives! What more do you ask?”

“My queen,” Wahabil said, “perhaps if you were to marry, it would ease your burden. And the security of an heir—”

“I will not speak of marriage!” I said, dashing a pile of parchment along with my gold cup to the floor.

I was shaking with a fury I did not understand, welled up from a source I had long thought dry.

“You, who summoned me because you did not want a Nashshan pawn on the throne.” I stared at each man in turn. “Do
not
think to make a man among your nobles king through me. I am queen, and by Almaqah, I will rule!”

With a last look around the table, I shoved back my chair. “This meeting is finished.”

T
hat night, Asm came to visit me in my private chamber—the same one that had once belonged to my king father.

“Wahabil sent you,” I said wearily. Outside, drizzle fell in a constant drone. I could just make out the dull roar of the corbel lions through the sputter of a rainy season nearing its end.

“No man may send the chief priest of Almaqah anywhere,” he said. “But he did ask.”

I looked away.

“Have you come to chastise me, too?”

It had been my custom in Punt to visit during the dark moon, to observe the nightly sacrifice for Almaqah’s return to the sky. But I had not walked that narrow temple causeway since the ritual feast months ago.

“For what would I chastise you? Almaqah’s Daughter must do as she will.”

I gave a soft laugh.

“You do not believe that?”

I did not know how to say that being queen was a death sentence of loneliness. That I felt every finger’s breadth of the ever-widening gap between those closest to me and the isolation of my own counsel and the thoughts I could not, dare not, share.

Nor would I say that I had never felt more a slave or less remembered to the gods.

And so I said nothing.

“Perhaps she must remember who she is.”

I considered Asm where he lounged on the low sofa adjacent mine. He had never adopted the silver hem and hood of the other priests, his simple robe lending gravity to his position more than any flamboyance would have. He had seemed ageless to me always, nearly immortal except for the injury to his leg that day on the field, and the limp he would now walk with forever. The low flicker of the lamp on the gold table between us—my mother’s table, reclaimed from Hagarlat’s apartment—illuminated the rich earthen hue of his skin. It was the color of Punt and my kinsmen there, their skin a bare shade darker than my own.

“She is the queen,” I said at last, reaching for my wine.

“And beloved by her people.”

“They love me for what I might do for them,” I said. “Because they want land and trade tariffs and disputes decided in their favor.” I glanced up and he gave a slight shrug of acquiescence. “So, I think sometimes, must the gods say of us as we intone prayers of supplication. The barren woman for children, the sick for health, the farmer for rain, and the merchant for fair weather and safety.”

“The queen, for the favor already evident upon her.”

I was silent a moment before I said: “I did not know favor came at such cost.”

The priest said quietly, “There is always a price. Do you yourself not reserve your best favor for those who prove their devotion through the costliest ways? Those who send men to march for your throne even though they may die . . . who go at your bidding to build your garrisons and offer routes through their land with the best terms at their oases?”

“If what you say is true, then our worship is nothing but the brokering of deals. No man who comes into my hall does so without hope of some gain. And neither do we offer devotion except for hope of what we want. No wonder the gods scorn our attempts to control them with our piety. No wonder they strike us when we least expect it, if only to prove that we cannot,” I said bitterly.

“Do you truly think the gods so petty?”

“It is the only thing that makes sense to me,” I said. “That they act out because we have never given them what they truly want.”

“And what is that?”

I shrugged. “We do not ask about the hearts of gods, whether they care to be known. We spill blood in their names, which we make fearsome. But we do not seek to know them. We do not offer love. Not truly. I understand something of that now,” I said, gazing dispassionately at the alabaster burner on the table, the thin tendrils of incense disappearing before my eyes, going nowhere.

“And I think they must be the loneliest of beings,” I said softly. “Or perhaps, being gods, they have no desire to be known, and mine is an entirely human affliction.” Outside, the rain had stopped.

When he said nothing, I glanced at the priest and found him staring at me with strange amazement.

“How is it that you ponder such thoughts, that you enter the mind of the gods?” he said.

I blinked. “I think them always! These thoughts are with me day and night! But surely you have thought these things yourself and can speak to this. Speak then. Tell me how the gods rid themselves of the desire to be known and accept our transactions instead—how I may go one hour without crying out to them:
Why?
Why did Almaqah take Maqar from me? Why, when I might bear it that no one truly knows me as long as he does!”

Though my affection for Maqar had been no secret to him, I was mortified hearing the echo of those words from my lips. “And yet I know what you will say—that then I would love Almaqah only because he gave me what I wanted. And that is true. And that is no love. I am as guilty as anyone in bemoaning the lack of what I will not myself give!”

Asm said nothing as my heart thudded between us in the silence.

“Isn’t it true?” I demanded.

He gave a faint shake of his head. “The gods are unknowable. As intercessors, we are tasked only with predicting and placating the whim of Almaqah—”

“Yes, with statues and feasts and blood on the altar. Yes, yes, I know,” I said, setting down my wine, untouched all this time. “But why? What need do they have for all our striving? Is it arrogance that demands our dread adoration? Or is it fear that if we do not sing and praise and build countless temples in their names, they will cease to exist? Whatever the reason, I wonder now if they take from us that which we love so we
must
seek them, if only to scavenge for meaning in this existence.
Why? Why?
I ask it day and night!”

He was looking at me then as though at an oracle, a strange mixture of bafflement and reverence tattooed across his face. And though we sat only two arms’ breadths apart, I felt the distance between us as a league.

“For the first time,” he said, very softly, “I envy you the office you carry like a weight, that you may understand the minds of gods better than any of us.”

And that was the worst of all. Where was I to turn if not to him?

“Don’t you understand? I know nothing! I ask and hear only silence. For all I know, Almaqah has abandoned me. I, who build temples in his name. What have I done to cause such offense that he would take Maqar?”

Or what had Maqar? Had he deceived me and Almaqah killed him for his duplicity? But I had seen the last look on his face. He had thrown himself into the melee. Why? For atonement? For love?

And the worst of it was this: there was no oracle or sacrificial liver, no star or rising constellation from which I could extract the truth. And the priest before me could no more decipher the mind of Almaqah than I.

“It is the story I told myself after I abandoned worship of Shams,” I said, wiping hot tears from my cheek. “That any living thing could wither beneath the same heat with which the sun gave life. But the moon arrived in the cool of night to preside over lovers and dreams, to give life to seeds as they slumber in the soil. Now I know that seeds molder in the dark, and the moon falls on peasant and queen alike. Just as the sun. In which case no man is favored at all, and the gods do as they will and we are the ones who assign meaning to their actions. Either that . . . or they exist not at all.”

He was silent.

“Will you not say I am speaking sacrilege? I say this to my own priest! You, who have not even a platitude for me. Do you not condemn me?”

“I will not patronize you with platitudes,” he said at last, very
quietly. “You are the Daughter of Almaqah. You wear his favor. If he will not speak to you, to whom will he speak?”

He left me soon after that, clearly disturbed, and I could not help but feel that I had somehow infected him with my turmoil. And I did not know if that was a good thing that he might seek answers for both our sakes . . . or if such answers were unknowable and he went away troubled when I might have let him go in peace.