“He was called away for an emergency, my lady, but I’d be happy to send him when he is back if you need him.”
I was making a promise I might not be able to keep, but the coins were already in her hand. If she opted not to pay me, there was nothing I could do, and I had to take care of my family.
She blew out an exasperated breath, then looked back at her little boy, who was squatting on the rug, playing with the sicklesword. “Fine,” she murmured. “Take this and be gone.”
She dropped six shekels into my hand, pulling away quickly, as if I were the one with an illness. I stuffed them into my healing satchel before she could change her mind.
“Thank you, noblewoman. I appreciate your generosity.” I nodded once to the boy and then to Hala, who’d come back with the garlic and the red-faced baby. Right before I closed the door, the woman snatched the garlic from Hala’s hand and yelled at her for not moving faster. I cringed, thinking of my own sister taking a scolding like that, as I headed quickly toward the marketplace. Thankfully, with the healing practice, I hadn’t yet needed to subject her to a wealthy woman’s whims. I shook my head at poor Hala’s fate.
Such was life for those born low and for those like us, cast into poverty after the biggest regrets of our lives.
At least now I had the means to buy grain and could be out of the marketplace before three perfectly healthy girls were called upon to lie in the cold embrace of a dead ruler.
* * *
The Libbu, the marketplace that wrapped around the base of the Palace, pulsed as people from all walks of life streamed in and out of the main gates, buying, selling, and trading. Gold and crimson flags snapped in the breeze atop the merchants’ stalls as sellers called out their wares: hand-woven linens, pots of spices, gleaming fish caught fresh from the Garadun and its tributaries that very morning. Young boys carried flapping ducks by their feet. Others tugged roped rams in from the farms. The aroma of sweet simmering spices—cinnamon, cardamom, cloves—filled my mouth with water as I walked through the gate.
It always felt distinctly alive in the Libbu, despite the fact that we were all supposed to be mourning Lugal Marus’s impending death. As the ruler of our city-state, he was due the respect of our grief, and most believed he was due three Sacred Maidens in the Netherworld.
The ritual was supposed to be an honor.
But I knew better.
For a healer’s apprentice like me, who knew the rigid terror that accompanies death for many people, it was not a day to be joyous. Three young women were going to die. They’d step onto the Boatman’s skiff and shove off toward the Netherworld.
I shuddered, though the sun warmed the skin of my exposed shoulders. Those poor girls. They were likely thinking only about living in the Palace, basking in the riches and glory it had to offer. But when the lugal passed, they’d enter the tomb with him as queens, never to emerge on this side of life again.
No thought of those they left behind.
What made the town crier’s impending announcement bearable was the knowledge that no one who lived near me in the huts along the wall would be selected, even though the choices were supposed to be based on beauty alone. For the past several generations, the daughters of the rich were always chosen, because their fathers could fill the Palace coffers with silver in exchange for the honor.
I took a deep breath and tried to focus on my mission: purchase food for my family, then get back home before the crowd thickened in the Libbu for the celebrations that would begin after the Maidens were selected.
A jeweler held necklaces of lapis lazuli and topaz under my nose as I drifted by his booth. I turned away, not being able to afford something so grand, and was nearly knocked off my feet by my closest friend in the city.
“There you are!” Iltani grabbed me in a fierce hug, and held me at arm’s length. “Let’s grab some barley and dates and head out to the fields to see that gorgeous farm boy of yours, Kammani. Get into some trouble. You can run off with him while I distract one of his field hands.” Iltani raised her eyebrows and linked her arm through mine as we dodged a man holding a bleating goat over his shoulders.
Heat colored my cheeks as I turned toward her. “He’s not my gorgeous farm boy.”
“Oh, please do not deny it. You’re nearly betrothed.” As we walked by a stall brimming with ripe fruit, Iltani plucked a green grape from a basket and popped it into her mouth, much to the merchant’s annoyance. “And besides, you should be grateful he’s still even considering it, since people like this one”—she nodded to the merchant woman, who was staring slack-jawed at us—“want nothing to do with you, despite your abum being the BEST HEALER IN ALU!”
“Iltani, be quiet!”
As I pulled her away, she eyeballed the merchant brazenly, as if daring the woman to say anything about her theft or her ill-timed comment. The woman didn’t. Despite being born into a low social status, Iltani could get away with murder, because she looked more innocent than she was. Bronze freckles, like clay flicked across clean linen, lay across her small, upturned nose. Twin dimples appeared in her cheeks when she grinned, as she was doing now.
“Honestly,” I told her, “you don’t understand the wealthy like I do. You could be whipped for stealing. Or worse!” We wound our way through the crowd, sidestepping requests to purchase goods I could no longer afford.
“Well, if I were as lovely as Nanaea, I wouldn’t have to steal, now, would I?”
“She’s here?” My heart leapt. I hadn’t woken my sister to say goodbye this morning before I’d left on my rounds. She’d been snuggled in our pallet, one arm flung across her face, the other curled against her chest. I’d pushed her damp, ebony hair off her cheek, considering it, but after the way she’d whimpered in her slumber the previous night, I’d let her sleep.
And then I saw her. She and two of her friends—new ones, since her old friends from the wealthy class wanted nothing to do with us after we’d been cast down—skipped along, trying on gauzy scarves and copper bracelets under the merchants’ watchful eyes. It reminded me of how we used to play together, running in and out of the freshly cleaned quilts drying on lines stretched from home to home, draped in our mother’s heavy jewels. I thought longingly of those days, free from worry. From heartache. I didn’t care about the wealth they’d stripped from us when we lost our status, although our previous lives had been easier, for certain. Now I only wanted a day I didn’t spend shackled by responsibility.
Nanaea, younger than I by only a year, didn’t seem to be bothered by any of it in the least, except at night, when the nightmares overtook her. By day, she was still as free as a child. A child trying to live as though she still had the status we once did, wrapping scarves around her shoulders we couldn’t afford to buy, trying bracelets on her arms she’d never wear in this lifetime again.