Ark(23)

“Blood of the gods,” Irkalla cursed, “you are so stubborn. You saved that human, Japheth, by marrying this demon. Now, save yourself. You can pretend to be a servant. Cut off your hair. Rub dirt on your face. Roll in manure and bathe in mud— no one would know you as a queen or princess, then. I can disguise you, I can hide you, teach you to act like a common girl, like a slave. Please, Aresia! Run away now, while he is gone. You won’t get another chance.”

“No, Irkalla. I will not. I would flee to the underworld itself, if it meant escaping that vile creature, but he would find us anywhere we went—I know it. He would kill anyone who helped us, and he would kill you and your family, your mother and father and your sisters and their husbands and their children. He is a monster, and he would stop at nothing.”

She fell silent then, knowing I would not be moved. I wanted desperately to flee, as she suggested, but I could not stomach the thought of anyone dying for me; I would stay in Larsa and accept my fate. Perhaps I could make him kill me one day and end my suffering that way.

A month after my husband left, I began to feel sick in the mornings and my courses stopped; for all his age, the king was still virile. Irkalla noticed as well, and called a healer, an ancient Nephilim woman, stooped and gray and wrinkled, one eye blind, teeth rotted, fingernails long and curling over, her body sagging. She shuffled into my chamber, leaning on a short staff, a bag of herbs in one hand.

“With child, you are.” She hadn’t even examined me before making the pronouncement. “King’s child. Come, girl, let me look at you.” She poked and prodded, hemmed and nodded and muttered to herself.

“I know I am pregnant, old woman.”

“Then what do you want with old Mirra? Hmmm? If you don’t summon me to tell you this, you want something else.” Her one rheumy brown eye fixed on me, and the healer shuffled close enough that I could smell the garlic and onions on her breath. “Perhaps you want some different herbs, eh? Not so grateful for this gift of the king, perhaps? Ah, girl, I’ve heard the stories. I know the ways of the king. I’ve been summoned to heal the boys he’s used, and the slave girls as well. More than one bastard child runs the streets of Larsa, unwanted. Yes, girl, I know why you called me.”

“Then give me the herbs that will take the child back to the gods.”

“Forgive me, mistress, but I cannot. The king would know I’ve been to you, and he knows the herbs I’d use. He’s a cunning king, that man. If I do what you ask, it would be my head. Old I may be, but I am not ready to meet Ereshkigal, not yet.”

I wept, then. “Please—please. I will have you taken to my father’s city. I can have you protected, there.”

Mirra shook her head. “No, girl. If the gods will it, the child will live, and the child will die by their will.”

I clutched her hand, falling to my knees before her. “I cannot have that monster’s child! I cannot. I would rather die. Give me poison then.”

Mirra pulled me up. “Just because the father is a demon, does not mean the child will be. I cannot give poison to the queen. You know that. The guards watch, and they report.”

I shoved Mirra away, roughly, and she stumbled back against the wall. “Fine then,” I hissed. “Leave me to my fate.”

“I’m sorry, child . . . I wish I could give you what you want. I was married to a man I didn’t love, once. I know your pain.”

“You don’t know my pain,” I snapped. “Maybe you were married to a man you didn’t love, but did he do what Sin-Iddim does? Did your husband rape you every night? Did he rape you so hard you bled, even though it’s not your moon-cycle? Did he sodomize little boys in front of you?”

Mirra glared at me, her eyes hard and ancient and unforgiving. She was not intimidated by me, not at all. Her eyes pierced me, sifted through my soul.

“Bah! What do you know of pain, girl?” Mirra’s voice crackled, as hard as her eyes. She’d seen a hundred lifetimes, her eyes said to me; she’d seen things I could never imagine. “You know nothing. I was not always a stooped and haggard old crone, you know. Once, my back was straight, my hair was dark and thick like yours, and my hips were round like yours and my breasts high like yours. Once, I was beautiful, like you. Once, I was proud, like you and thought I knew everything, like you. Once, I loved a man, like you do.”

A twisted grin curled the wrinkled corners of her mouth.

“Yes, girl, I know your secret,” she cackled. “I see what you hide from the king. I see what you hide even from yourself . . . yes, girl, I see it. You cannot hold secrets from old Mirra. Come, sit. Yes, sit here, next to me, and listen. Hear the wisdom of an old hag who has seen a dozen lifetimes.”

I had little better to do but wait, so I sat beside Mirra and listened to her story.

“When I was young and nubile and beautiful,” Mirra began, “I loved a man. He was tall, and strong. He was handsome and virile. He kissed me, and the world stopped. He held me, and the stars sang for our love. But the gods—and my father—had other plans for me. You see, my father was a wealthy man, a merchant. There was another man, another merchant just as wealthy as my father who dealt in the same goods, cloth and spices and slaves, and he ran his goods along the same trade routes as my father. You are a smart girl, I’m sure you can see where this led. Two proud, wealthy men plying the same goods along the same route . . . they came to blows more than once.