Ark(2)

Not tonight.

Tonight, nothing could relax me. I could not eat, could not sit still, and could not stop my fingers fidgeting. My rooms were close to the throne room, which meant even with the doors pulled shut I could hear the cries and screams and pleas of Father’s latest prisoner. I sat in that throne room tonight, attempting to appear unaffected by the ugliness and gore, and the screams as the human prisoners begged for mercy or for death. Tonight, I could not do it any longer, and I begged my father to excuse me. Yet even back in my rooms, there is little escape, for I can still hear him.

“Highness,” Irkalla said, “Forgive me, but . . . you aren’t yourself this evening.”

“How can I be, Irkalla?” I waved a hand toward the throne room. “Father has another human prisoner. I hate this. He’s had the poor creature for days.”

She tugged the brush gently through the tangle, loosening the snarl until the brush swept through easily once more. “I know. It’s terrible. Small mercy it may be, but I heard one of the guards saying the prisoner won’t last the night.” She stroked through my hair a few more times. “Perhaps I could bring you a sleeping draught in some wine?”

I nodded. “Very well.”

I stood up, examining myself in my polished bronze mirror. My auburn hair fell in long, smooth, glossy tresses down around my shoulders, wavering around my elbows. My eyes glowed golden, like all Nephilim’s eyes did, and my skin was faintly luminous as well, a golden shimmer as if the radiance of the sun burned within me, somehow. Clad in only a thin shift, my body was clearly visible, my hips, my trim waist, my generous bust. I knew men considered me beautiful—among Nephilim men it was generally accepted that I was the most beautiful woman in Bad-Tibira, and those few humans who have looked upon me and left the palace alive, well . . . to them, I am a goddess.

I could see Irkalla behind me, still fully clothed in a servant’s plain dress. Despite the roughspun nature of her garments, Irkalla was very nearly as beautiful as I, or so whispered the other servants and guards. She was truly lovely, with golden hair the color of sunlight on wheat, fair skin with only a faint shimmer of Nephilim luminosity, and wide, expressive eyes whose golden glow was muted by her lineage—the more human ancestry a Nephilim possessed in his or her bloodline, the more muted the glow. Irkalla was striking, with sharp features, a strong bearing, and a generous figure. Suitable, I supposed, for a maidservant to a princess.

She smiled at me in our reflection and then swept gracefully from the room to prepare my sleeping draught. I settled myself in my bed, but I was still restless and discomfited. I doubted even with the herbs to hasten sleep I would find much rest.

Despite the sleeping draught, the screams kept me awake. The prisoner kept calling on Elohim to help him, to save him, but Elohim was silent, and his pitiful pleas to The One God only enraged my father all the more. I wished I could go to the poor prisoner and tell him he might find release in death, if only he would cease his cries to The One God.

My father hated Elohim. He hated any mention of His Name, and the prisoner only ensured the worsening of his torture by his ceaseless yowling of that hated name. If he had called on our gods, on Enki or Inanna, Father might have ended his pain with one swift blow to the head.

When finally the prisoner fell silent and went to meet his One God, I was relieved.

It was late and still sleep did not come. As I lay among my pillows and gazed out the window at the stars above, my mind began to drift and, unaccountably, I thought of my father.

As a powerful Nephilim king, Father hated humans. Compared to our race, he said, they were short and small and weak. He held their brief lives in contempt, and claimed that anyone who did not live at least 200 years was no better than an animal. We, the Nephilim, sons and daughters born when the gods mated with humans, were extraordinarily tall of stature and long-lived—men stood at least five cubits tall, and we women four and half, and we lived many, many hundreds of years, whereas the tallest human male stood shorter than even the most stooped old crone, barely clearing four cubits at most, and most of them died after a hundred years, if not less.

Father said humankind did not deserve the earth, and so he relieved them of it, one person at a time. He was not a kind man, my father the king. The name of King Emmen-Utu was known far and wide, spoken with respect and whispered in fear. Even the other Nephilim Kings treated him gingerly, stepping carefully in his presence.

As his daughter, it was no different for me. He was no kinder as a father than he was as a king.

My brothers were of little help. They were strangers, mostly, all of them much older than I. As men and royals, they were busy with war and politics and bedding women. I had five brothers: Kichu, Algar, Immuru, Zin-Suddu, and Dummuzi. Algar and Immuru were generals in Father’s army, leading raids against other cities and defending our borders. Dummuzi, as the youngest, was still in training, and thus lived in the soldier’s barracks.

Only Kichu, as the eldest and thus crown prince, was ever nearby, and it was he to whom I was closest. His rooms were near mine, and he was often about helping Father run the city and resolve arguments. Wandering around the palace during the day, I often saw him in a garden or in the hallways, and we might have walked together, chatting amiably.

I wish I could have said I loved my father, the king. The sad truth, however, was that I hated him. Every night I laid my head to the pillow and said a prayer to Enki and to Inanna, and I asked them to strike him down in his sleep.