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  He took the hem of the vest he was wearing, sooty and stained from the tomb, and tore it, ripping an untidy piece of cloth from the front and tying it around his face over his mouth and nose like a robber. He looked in the hole again to see how deep the drop was. Hard to tell with no light. He took off his sandals and placed them at angles to one another around the hole to form a corner, then stood opposite with his feet angled the same way, hedging the opening to stem the water. He bent down, turned his ear to the hole and lifted one sandal to let the water slide in again, listening for the splash beneath.

  The water sloshed into the waiting current below.

  “Not too deep,” Neythan muttered.

  He put his sandals on again, sliding his now grimy soles into the thongs as he listened for sounds of pursuit. He then, with a deep breath, took hold of the wet rims at the hole’s edges and lowered himself through as the sewage splashed over his head and shoulders.

  He dropped down into the dark. He could hear the skitter and squeak of rats as he landed, and the continuing gurgle of the water running to an exit. He used the limited moonlight from the opening above him to check the current’s direction, and then began walking. The sewageway was a tall and slim passage. He steadied himself against the walls as he walked, moving slowly and allowing his hands to slide over the sweaty rock on either side. He felt the wet furry scurry of something over his foot in the blackness and flinched, then carried on, deeper into the dark.

  So perfect was his blindness that it was a shock to feel the sudden cold bite of a blade against his ribs, pressing warningly, and then a whispered voice.

  “I could split you in two from here as easy as gutting fish,” it hissed. “Leave you catching your innards before you’ve chance to ask if it was worth chasing me… one chance, go back now and you die another day, old and in your own bed perhaps, instead of in a sewer with no one to come and fetch you out, and only the rats to offer you burial.”

  Neythan spoke carefully, slowly. “I chase no one… I do not know you.”

  A silence.

  “Neythan?”

  And then another.

  “Caleb… is that you?”

  “Ah, of all the… why creep up on me like that? I thought you some overzealous palace guard.”

  “How did you get out?”

  “I could have killed you.”

  “And how did you find your way here?”

  “Ah, so now you worry for my welfare?”

  “You told me to chase the ranger.”

  “Did you get him?”

  “No.”

  “But didn’t come back for me.”

  “How could I? More guards in that palace than there are rats here. And a Shedaím.”

  “In the palace?”

  “Yes.”

  “So, one did stay.”

  “Yes. No… I think he knew me. I think he was waiting for me.”

  Caleb paused briefly. “We’ll speak of it later. We must get out of here, out of the city. I’m just surprised you had the sense to know the waterways would be the only way.”

  They walked together along the passage, Caleb ahead, Neythan a little behind. The tunnel walls bent and wound mildly for what must have been several miles before they finally felt the gentle cool of evening air from an outlet somewhere up ahead, likely where the sewage emptied out from the city. It was true night by the time they reached it, too cloudy for stars. The tunnel opened above a small pit, part quag and part lake, gouged into the mount beneath and beyond the city walls. Neythan dropped down into the puddled mud first.

  “Orgh!”

  The sludge came to his knees.

  He looked up to Caleb standing at the tunnel’s lip. “Might be best to remove your sandals first.”

  Caleb did so, then dropped down after him. The muck rode up to the middle of his thighs. They waded across to the pit’s end and kept going, on down the mount, making their own path away from the road.

  “You should mark this, Neythan. Mark all I have done. This is far beyond the duty of our bargain. I smell like a mule’s slopbucket.”

  “Qadesh is not far,” Neythan said.

  “Qadesh? I’d say it is. I’d say it’s farther than most would like to go by night and on foot, covered in this load of–”

  “We will wash in the river. Then we will go there.”

  “And then what? The ranger will be on horseback already, on his way north most likely, not to be found. And as for Arianna?” Caleb huffed a derisive laugh.

  “I don’t know. I need to sit and think… This whole thing… The ranger, the Brother in the palace…” Neythan looked down at the muck covering him. He flicked a gob of it from his hand to the ground and shook his head. “I need to think.”

  Twenty-Five

  T R U S T

  By the time Sidon made it back to the palace there were people everywhere, crowding along the gangways of the atrium, pressed up against the foyer’s torchlit walls, murmuring agitatedly in corners or milling around the mosaic-floored lobby. Sidon had seen the blood as he was ushered through the main doors, smudged blotches of burgundy scattered across the patterned paving of the antechamber like dashes of paint from a child’s hand. A clutch of cookmaids hunched on their knees, scrubbing vigorously as Abda, Sidon’s bodyguard, led him through the flustered throng.

  The main hall was mostly filled with soldiers. Some standing idly, watching, others bickering, relaying competing accounts of the evening’s events to the captain of the cityguard to try to dodge blame. Handmaids whispered on the fringes behind them, pretending to console one another in the moonlight from the atrium whilst angling for gossip of what would come next. Everyone quietened as Sidon entered and looked around.

  The middle foyer and main hall were a mess. Broken pieces of ceramic and clay littered the floor from a pair of upended vessels. Divots of dislodged grass lay strewn beyond the court from the sliver of green beside the pool. There was a lampstand lying against the near wall that no one had bothered to return upright. And yet, as untidy as the place looked, and as anxious as he was at the thought of intruders, as Sidon looked over it all he couldn’t help feeling strangely exhilarated too. Something about the disorder, and all these people being here at so uncommon an hour, the excitable whispers of the handmaids in the walkway, the hurried stride of courtiers and guardsmen as they looked for signs of entry and escape, the silver hue of the moon as it glazed the brickwork by the atrium, glinting in the reflecting pool’s silkily calm surface and casting eerie blue shadows over everything and everyone. It was like the air itself was heightened somehow, alive, itching with expectancy, like during the new moon festivals.

  “We’re still not sure how they got in.” Sidon’s mother appeared at his shoulder against the wall, surveying the hall with him. An hour before, they’d been at the School of Hanokh together, listening to the chief scribe explain the pupils’ normal practices and routines and admiring the ribbed sandstone columns of the amphitheatre when Yaron, one of the courtiers, had arrived, interrupting to tell them of what had happened.

  “Elias says he spoke with Casimir,” Chalise added, still beside him. “The Shedaím who stayed behind. He saw and engaged one of the intruders. He is certain it was the betrayers.”

  “The betrayers? Why would they come here?”

  “Not for you, my son. Elias is certain of that much. The Shedaím, they study the movements of those they hunt. Had they sought to come on a day you would be found here in the palace, they would have.”

  “Then what did they come for?”

  “That, we do not know. Not yet… But come. You must rest. And not worry of these things. Fifty men will foot the palace guard tonight, and Abda and Casimir shall remain also.”

  Sidon slept in fits nonetheless, and only lightly. It took no more than a muffled thud for him to start from sleep, eyes wide and heart racing. He glanced to the shuttered windows. Narrow slats of night sky peeped in darkly; a star or two glimmered faintly between the gaps. Perhaps he’d ima
gined the sound. Or dreamed it. He rolled over, adjusted his pillow, and was closing his eyes when he heard what may have been scuffed footsteps somewhere outside. He stared at the door, waited for the silence to swell and comfort him. Instead he heard another soft scrape, or was it a sneeze, distant but definitely within the palace.

  The sharíf’s bedchambers were a dome-roofed house, reasonably sized, lodged with several other smaller buildings on the palace’s flat roof and all hemmed within a balustrade that edged the lengths and corners of the balcony. The palace’s crown, as Elias liked to call it. From here, if the rest of the palace was quiet enough, Sidon could sometimes hear through the open cutaway of the atrium to the ground floor beneath. He waited a further few moments in the bed, listening for more noise and wondering if his mother had been lying to him earlier about the betrayers having not come in search of him. Gahíd had sent Abda and Casimir to lead his bodyguard after all.

  When only silence answered, he climbed from his bed and ambled around in the dark for a robe and then, finding one, shouldered himself into it. He found the dagger his uncle Játhon had given him the day of his anointing and went to the door and unhooked the latch. He lifted the beam from its crook and pulled it slowly open.

  Outside, the porch was empty. The night was breezeless. The bushes marking the strip of plants that ran along the rooftop’s walkways sat poised and still. Sidon could feel his heart pulsing as he looked across the balcony. Usually there would be someone manning the narrow railed path that went around the upper level, whilst the remaining guardsmen kept watch in the courtyard and gardens surrounding the palace. Abda and Casimir had taken to watching over the ground floor, taking turns each night and roaming or sitting somewhere within the main hall and middle foyer. With Casimir’s wounds still healing, Abda had volunteered to take the whole watch herself, which in turn had made Sidon wonder whether, beyond midnight, she’d be too tired to guard him. Shedaím are not as ordinary men, his mother had assured him. But Sidon was now beginning to wonder.

  He couldn’t see the guard on the upper level. He opened the door of his bedchamber fully, trying to get a better angle and view the rest of the rooftop. No one. He stepped out onto the walkway with the dagger. The moon had turned gloomy, shrouded by cloud. He could see the glow of torchflame from the broad rectangular opening of the atrium in the centre of the balcony, the light leaking up into the night like the mouth of a tamely simmering volcano. He was wondering whether to return to his bed and stash the dagger beneath his pillow when he heard what sounded like whispers. He blinked, frozen to where he stood, listening for more.

  Silence.

  He crept with held breath toward the edge of the atrium to peer over the handrail to the floor beneath. From here he could see the reflecting pool and the edges of the middle foyer, all bathed in dim lampflame. But still no one. He straightened and glanced over the courtyard to see if the palace guard were still standing watch on the outer grounds. At least a dozen men stood or wandered the yard on the west side, staring out to the sandstone terraces of the city as it slumbered. He considered calling to one of them but could think of nothing to say that wouldn’t end in him appearing cowardly, or childish, and being embarrassed as a result. He decided to go downstairs. If there was need to, he could summon the guards with a shout. If there was no need, he would return to his chambers feeling safer, and with his dignity still intact.

  The palace seemed so different in the dark. Each drawn shadow turned the usually familiar spaces strangely foreign, as though the angles and lengths of everything had shortened, narrowed by the night. Objects and furniture seemed to shift shape with every step he took.

  Sidon heard another scuffed sound as he came down the final step of the stairway to enter the rear lobby. He turned the dagger in his grip, resisting the foolish urge to call out, and followed the sound. He went quietly across the lobby until he reached the corner and turned into the adjoining corridor. He began to hear the whispers again, this time clearer, closer. Two men, sitting in the deep shadowed alcove at the end of the passageway.

  “We should consider it, Elias. The truth is we should have considered it from the beginning.”

  “You are impatient.”

  “And what if I am? Do you think doing nothing is a better course? They entered the palace.”

  “Explaining things to Gahíd won’t change anything, Játhon.”

  “And doing nothing will?”

  “I didn’t say that. What I say is we ought to tread carefully. Things are finely balanced. A wrong step now could spoil everything.”

  “Uncle?”

  The chamberlain’s old head snapped toward Sidon like a flicked ox goad. Játhon, Sidon’s uncle, bolted to his feet beside the chamberlain.

  “Sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you… I heard voices.”

  “Sidon…” For a moment Játhon’s lips remained poised, as though he’d forgotten what he was going to say. “You struggle to sleep too?” he said, finally.

  “Yes… a little.”

  “Well,” Játhon licked his lips and coughed a short laugh. “As you can see, you are in good company.”

  Elias, the chamberlain, bowed. “We were just discussing the betrayers, my king… and whether Gahíd…” The chamberlain’s rheumy eyes glazed for a moment, sliding to the corridor’s borders. “Whether he ought to send another Shedaím to abide here with you, keep you safe.”

  Sidon looked at the chamberlain sitting there in the shadows. He seemed unlike himself, somehow. Restless. The lateness of the hour, perhaps.

  The chamberlain gestured loosely at the alcove around them. “I expect this must be a new and strange thing to you – men whispering in the night like this. I assure you it is not an uncommon thing. You are sharíf now. The hopes of us all hinge on your wellbeing. Do not think it strange that some of us steal away to see how it may be more readily sought.”

  Sidon glanced at his uncle, who was smiling reassuringly, and then back to Elias. “I see,” he said.

  The chamberlain dipped his head once more in acknowledgment.

  “I suppose I should say thank you,” Sidon said.

  And now both men smiled. “No, my king,” Elias said. “It is as it ought to be. We are your servants, after all. In truth, we would ask you to join us, but I know you are to be very busy the next few days, preparing for the wedding. You will need your rest. Were we to deny you that, the sharífa would not be as accommodating of our intentions as you may be willing to be.”

  Sidon smiled a little himself, mostly in relief. The palace had not been invaded a second time after all. The betrayers had not, as he’d thought, returned in search of him. Silly of him to have thought so. “You are right as always, Elias,” he said.

  To which the chamberlain, again, smiled gratefully and bowed. “Good night, my king.”

  “Good night, Elias.” Sidon nodded at Játhon. “Uncle.”

  “Sleep well, Sharíf.”

  Sidon turned and made his way back through the lobby to the stairway and up the steps, pondering the exchange. When he came to the top he found the missing guard lying in one of the beds of the roof garden on the balcony, head tipped back, mouth cavernous, great gulps of breath sliding sloppily in and out. Sidon nudged him with his foot on the way to his bedchamber, snapping the man awake, spluttering “Sharíf” as he rolled clumsily to his feet. Sidon ignored him and passed on to return to his room. He would have the guard disciplined and removed tomorrow for the lapse. It was the night following an intrusion after all. Strange how easily those who ought to be awake slept, whilst those who ought to be sleeping remained awake. Sidon returned to his bed and lay down. Then got up again, to take his dagger from the table and place it under his pillow instead.

  Twenty-Six

  Q A D E S H

  Neythan could still remember the day Uncle Sol left, the solemn way he’d stared deep into Neythan’s eyes, hands pinned to his young shoulders as if nailed there whilst behind him the darkening sky gleamed along the horizon l
ike molten bronze as he spoke those cold black words. Leaving. Exile. Forever. Neythan had tried to ignore them. There were larks frolicking overhead despite the hour, behind Sol. Neythan had turned his gaze to watch them until it seemed as though they were entering and leaving Sol’s head, like living images of his thoughts. So Neythan had stayed like that, trying to pretend that what Sol was saying wasn’t real, until he could no longer remain deaf to it, the words pushing in at the seams of his fragile make-believe and pressing their relentless way into his ears, his heart, like the stab of a blade, each solemn syllable piercing in and dripping its slow bitter truth like shedding blood.

  “Are you the monkey man?”

  Neythan awoke with a start to find a boy staring down on him. The child was small, no more than six or seven years old, with deep olive skin as dark as Neythan’s, and large dark eyes.

  “Well? Are you?”

  Neythan just stared at him, still groggy from sleep, then looked past him to the surroundings. The house seemed smaller in the daylight, the pale cracked walls, their skinny fissures zigzagging upwards from the cornerstone, all dimpled and crummy and staining yellow toward the awnings like the aged vellum of the scroll under Neythan’s hand. He glanced down at it and picked it up. He brushed the dust from the leather covering and shook it to spill the rest from the rolled page.

  The plot was narrow and mostly empty save for a few items here and there – a rusty pan with clods of dried clay fixed to it, leaning against the wall. Beside it a grotty edged wooden bucket, and beside that several half-finished vessels of clay, each well formed at their bases but spilling from shape into ruddy blunt mounds.