Ark(22)

Sin-Iddim was an old man, nearly twice my father’s age. His black hair and beard were shot with silver, his skin tanned nearly black, wrinkled and weathered and taut against his bones like stretched leather. He would have been a powerful and attractive man in his youth, for even in his old age he was strong and energetic and restless. His eyes were the color of burnished copper lit by the sun, always in motion, roving, roving, and penetrating in their intensity, hungry for gore and violence and rapine.

He had arrived within a week of my father’s messenger, striding into the palace as if he owned it. He’d dropped a sack of gold and jewels at my father’s feet, grabbed me by the arm, his eyes glinting with eagerness and malice, silently promising me nights of endless hell. My father had called for a scribe to carve the terms of the treaty into a tablet, and they both had signed it with their name-rune. Then my father watched me leave with an impassive expression on his face.

Yet . . . was that a glint of regret I saw in his eyes as I left his palace? It didn’t seem possible, and I doubted I had seen it.

The trip had been long and dusty, and Sin-Iddim’s hands had groped me for much of it, which I endured in silence. He hadn’t spoken a word. I was thankful for Irkalla’s presence beside me, the one comfort from home I had been allowed to bring with me. She held my hand, squeezing it at times to express her sympathy.

I tried not to think of Japheth. Tried not to wonder where he was, or if he thought of me.



As it did every night, dusk fell upon the court of the King of Larsa. I loathed the coming of night. On the nineteenth day of my marriage to Sin-Iddim, after the last of the courtiers had gone and the slaves were chained to the pillars and the warriors returned to barracks, my husband the King demanded my presence. There was no preamble, no pretense of affection or even kindness. He merely pushed me into his bedchamber, threw me against the tall, hand-carved bed-frame and told me to strip.

Inanna, help me. My hands trembled, and my legs shook; I hesitantly began tugging at the ties of my gown. Not quickly enough, it seemed, for Sin-Iddim cursed, drew his knife, and cut away the straps, gouging my shoulder in the process. The dress fell to the floor, and I was left standing naked before him. I tried to cover myself with my hands, but he knocked my hands away.

“No need for modesty, girl,” he grunted. “You belong to me now.”

Against my will, tears welled in my eyes.

I was helpless against him. He shoved me to the bed, hands squeezing my breasts with bruising fingers, forcing apart my knees . . .

I bled, and whimpered—and received a vicious blow to the mouth to silence me. Irkalla wept in the corner, her face turned away, shoulders shaking.

Thus began my marriage to Sin-Iddim, King of Larsa, and so it continued, every night in the weeks that followed.



One afternoon a messenger, a curly-haired Nephilim boy breathless from running, arrived from my father. “My lord King . . . news from Ur.”

“What is it, boy? Spit it out.”

The messenger quaffed from a skin of water brought by a servant, and then continued between gasps. “Uruk has attacked Ur, my lord . . . they arrived at dawn yesterday with twenty thousand foot soldiers and . . . and ten thousand chariots. King Emmen-Utu requests that you bring your forces and meet him at the walls of Uruk. He—he says that together you can take the city while the army is gone.”

The king’s eyes lit up with greed: Uruk was the second largest city after Ur, and filled with wealth. “If Uruk falls to us,” Sin-Iddim said, “and if Ur falls to Argandea of Uruk, then we will be unstoppable. Argandea will be weak from battle, and we will have both cities.”

“Yes, my lord.” the messenger said. “That is his plan.”

“Shut up, boy. I wasn’t talking to you.” The king turned to a middle-aged warrior standing next to him, a general by the looks of him. “Lugash—call up the troops. Prepare for war.” The general nodded and left the chamber.

The king ran his fingers through his beard, lost in thought, and I prayed to Inanna to keep my husband gone for many months, and I begged Ninurta to strike down my husband, that I might be a widow. By dusk the next day the army was tromping out of the city, the king at their head. I was so glad to see him go that I offered a sacrifice to Inanna; I made a bargain with her as smoke from the burnt offering coiled up to heaven: if she took my husband, I would bring a burnt offering to her temple every week for a month.

Irkalla stood with me on the roof of the palace, watching the stream of soldiers depart, spears glinting in the sun, dust from the road rising like a cloud. “Are you well, mistress?” Her voice was heavy with worry.

“Well enough, I suppose. Better now that he’s gone.”

“I hope he dies in battle,” Irkalla said. “I hope he takes a spear to the gut and dies slowly and in pain.”

“Hush, Irkalla! His servants are everywhere. If they report your words to him, even I can’t save you.”

“I would rather die than remain here in his service another moment.” She leaned in close and lowered her voice to a fierce whisper. “Let us leave, my lady. Let us flee! With all the chaos around us, now is the time. If we leave in the night, we can be far away before anyone notices we are gone. I have a brother in Eridu, he will take us in.”

I shook my head. “No, Irkalla. The king would find us, and then he would raze Eridu to the ground. He would torture your brother to death, and rape his corpse. No. You go, but I cannot. I cannot be the cause of anyone else’s pain.”