Ark(36)

By whom do I swear, now?

It felt blasphemous to swear by the name of The One God, wrong in a way it never did to curse by Inanna or Ereshkigal. Elohim is real, I think, and to use his name for so vulgar a thing as cursing seems wrong. But yet . . . the way I feel at this moment warrants a curse of some kind.

I contented myself with a groan and a curse I’ve heard from soldiers: “Shit.”

A hand touched my cheek, knuckles brushing my forehead. “You’re awake.” Japheth’s voice washed over me, familiar and welcome.

I had worried, upon waking, that this had all been a dream that I would wake from back in Sin-Iddim’s palace or on the road.

“Yes, I am awake,” I croaked. “Unfortunately.”

“How do you feel?” Japheth asked.

“Not good,” I answered. “Beaten, raped, and broken.”

Silence fell for several moments.

“You’re safe now,” Japheth said. “No one will ever hurt you again, I promise.”

I wished I could believe him, but I didn’t.

I tried to force myself to a sitting position, and the effort left me sweating, cursing in pain—I gave up before I passed out, and settled into a slightly more elevated position, enough that I could rest my head against the wall of the wagon bed, my ribs screaming agony, every breath an agony.

“Where are we going?” I gasped, when the pain had receded enough to allow me speech.

We were alone on the road, and I was alone in the wagon, facing Japheth’s back as he sat on the bench, driving the onagers. It was a small thing, a two-wheeled cart pulled by a pair of onagers, their round, powerful, tawny bodies drawing the cart effortlessly, knobby knees seeming too small for their fat bodies, long dark tails swishing at flies.

The land around us was flat in every direction, plowed and furrowed in wide squares of verdant green, broken by river channels and undeveloped swaths of swampland, all divided by this road on which we traveled, a high-banked, hard-packed line of dirt through the countryside.

Japheth did not answer for such a long time I began to wonder if he had heard me.

“Japheth?” I stared at his broad, hunched back. “Answer me—where are we going? Where are Irkalla and Uresh?”

“We’re going to my father’s house,” Japheth said, eventually, his voice heavy. “Irkalla and Uresh are still in Bad-Tibira; they are staying in my room for now. Uresh said he has family in Kutallu, so they will go there, eventually. Once Irkalla is well enough to travel.”

A thousand questions were banging through my mind. “Why did she not come with us? She is my maidservant . . . I have not gone anywhere without her since I was a little girl. What is happening, Japheth?” The questions took every bit of strength I had.

“She is not sick in her body, not in a way any healer could fix,” Japheth replied. “She is sick in her mind, in her soul. Whatever it was she endured has damaged her. Uresh cares for her—he will see her well, if she has the courage to let herself be well again.” Japheth turned in the wagon seat and looked at me. “I told you, we’re going to my father’s house. You will be safe there. He lives far from anyone.”

“Why?” My mind was not working properly. I could not understand why we would go to Noah’s home.

“Think, Princess: you ran away from Sin-iddim, and he will not let that go. He will send soldiers to Bad-Tibira to search for you, and if your father knows where you are, he will hand you straight back to that monster. In any of the cities in Sumer you are known, so we risk discovery anywhere we might go.

“I do not know any other trade besides war, and I haven’t enough money to support us without finding work. I cannot leave you alone long enough to escort some fat nobleman from one place to another. Besides which, you are injured. It will be months before you’re well enough to even walk on your own, much less learn to survive alone in a city while I’m gone.” He shook his head and sighed. “No, Princess, the only place we have a chance to see you well again is my father’s farm.”

A bolt of anger seared through me. “Stop calling me that.”

“Stop calling you what?” Japheth twisted on the bench and shot me a quizzical look.

“Princess—I am not a princess anymore, and I am most certainly not a queen. I am just . . . Aresia.”

“Aresia, then,” Japheth said, reaching behind himself and squeezing my ankle.

I found a measure of comfort in his touch, but something was bothering him—I could feel it radiating off of him in palpable waves.

“What is wrong, Japheth?” I asked.

“Nothing.”

I did not believe him, not for a second. “Do not lie to me—I am not blind.”

Japheth clicked his tongue and snapped the reins to get the onagers moving more quickly as we hit an upward incline, and once again he was silent so long I thought he wasn’t going to answer me.

He chuckled mirthlessly, and then sobered again. “It’s my father . . . I’ve never gotten along with him very well. I left home when I was young. I was still a boy, really, but I was sick of his rigid morality, his unbending devotion to Elohim . . . everyone else had to believe the way he did, everyone had to live the way he commanded, and his word was law, no matter what. I could not live with him, so I left.”

More silence, and then he continued.