“I’ll accompany you ladies if you don’t mind a stinking donkey like me trailing after.” He grinned, his teeth flashing white against his black beard.
“We shall be glad to have you join us,” Nanaea murmured, then she stumbled, a bit too conveniently, and Dagan offered his arm. She slipped her hand through his proffered elbow, wrapping her fingers around his muscle.
I let myself turn to stone.
“Sister?” she asked, tossing her hair over her shoulder and smiling back at me. “I think I will watch the bear perform after the announcement, if I may. He’s so cute!”
“Do whatever you want, Nanaea. I’m not your mother.”
Iltani sucked in her breath.
“I shouldn’t have said that,” I muttered immediately. But the words had been spoken, the pain inflicted.
Nanaea’s eyes clouded over briefly at my words, but she turned away from me toward the crowds ahead of us. Dagan patted her hand, casting one long look over his shoulder at me.
Iltani linked her arm through mine and gave it a supportive squeeze. As Nanaea and Dagan walked away, his back rippling with strength, her shapely hips swinging, I thought that if anyone didn’t know them, they might think that she was the sister on the verge of being betrothed.
And despite being a healer’s apprentice, I didn’t have a remedy for the ill feeling in my gut that accompanied the thought.
THE CROWD SWELLED as we navigated around throngs of people, some arrayed in rags, some in jewels, to the center of the Libbu, where all official announcements—news of wars, festivals to come, and trade deals to keep the bands of mercenaries away—were made. Jingling their tambourines, a dance troupe in orange tunics shimmied for shekels in front of the pleasure house, where women draped in sheer fabrics peeked from the second-floor windows.
A gray donkey lumbered beside us, its back bowed with the burden of barrels marked with the crescent-moon insignia of Assata’s Tavern, the hub for gossip and news in Alu. Assata and Irra, the owners, were friends of those of us along the wall. They always welcomed my father happily when he visited if someone traded him a bubbly sikaru or two for stitching up a cut.
I often went with him, and the smells of the place—old wood, spilled wine, cinnamon from Assata’s cookies—brought me back to being six years old, seated on my father’s knee, with Nanaea occupying the other. I remembered the joy I’d felt with my cheek against his chest as my sister and I laughed at his stories. We’d had our first drink of sweet sikaru from his cup, and he’d promised to continue to treat us to more as long as we promised not to tell my mother. Nanaea and I still drank the brew with extra honey and a pinch of cloves as he’d taught us, although we could rarely afford the treat these days. I shoved down the memory and wondered where he was. Probably slumped over a little table in the tavern, drunk out of his head.
Guardsmen in silver breastplates and greaves, impenetrable leather covers that strapped around their calves and forearms, carried maces and sickleswords, daggers and whips, to keep the crowds streaming through the Libbu gates in line. A scuffle broke out near the pleasure house, and one man landed a punch to another man’s jaw before a guardsman backhanded them both to the ground. I winced, thinking of the broken teeth.
We followed a family with three girls arrayed in rainbow tunics and clattering beads, likely hoping for their names to be called, to stand near the cedar platform. White silks as big as sails stretched from beam to beam, providing shade to the town crier. My brother, Kasha, stood at the corner of the platform, chin up, eyes wary, poised to do the town crier’s bidding, it seemed. He looked so much older. So official. My chest swelled with the barest twinge of pride.
Behind the platform, the Palace loomed large and golden, shimmering in the afternoon sun. Smoke rose from the blue temple at the very top of the four-tiered structure, a sign that someone inside was praying.
In a flurry of dust, a caravan of guardsmen and horses paraded down the road that led from the Palace’s large central doorway. A luxurious sedan chair covered in flowy white drapery and golden tassels swayed as eight sweating men bore it slowly to the platform. A girl’s somber face peeked out from around the curtains and then immediately retreated. It was Nin Arwia, the lugal’s daughter and heir to the throne since her younger brother, the malku my father had failed to heal, had perished.
I’d met the nin once, just a few moons before we’d been cast out. We’d spent the afternoon together as my father healed a friend of hers. She’d been a quizzical, cunning girl, as curious about healing as I’d been about Palace life. But after her brother died and we were forced out of our home, watching our furniture and bedding and clothing and jewels taken in chests to the Palace for redistribution, I never talked with her again.
The nin’s sedan chair came to rest in front of the platform, the men beneath breathing heavily from the weight they bore. Guardsmen swarmed around it as the curtains were shoved aside and a man leapt gracefully down, his broad silver breastplate with a carving of Enlil, our winged god, reflecting the sun. He had to be Ensi Uruku, the man in charge during the lugal’s illness. His spiked mace swayed on his belt as he ascended the stairs to his sumptuous viewing box, perched high above the platform.
Then the nin disembarked from the sedan chair, looking as delicate as a reed growing on the banks of the river. Her knee-length black hair flowed after her like a banner. As she took in the crowd, she dipped her head, carefully steadying her headdress with one hand. Round pendants of lapis lazuli hung from her ears, and her slender neck was draped with copper necklaces encrusted with jewels, just one of which, I was certain, could have fed my family for an entire moon.
Once she was seated next to Ensi Uruku, the town crier, his big belly straining the fabric of his tunic, attempted to gain control of the crowd with outstretched hands.
Behind him, Kasha, a smug look on his face and scrubbed as clean as I’d ever seen him, shifted the tablet in his arms and came to attention.
I caught Nanaea’s eye, nodded toward Kasha, then straightened my shoulders, pulling my features into a look of haughtiness. She snickered and elbowed me softly in the ribs.
Nanaea never held a grudge for very long, and her laughter quelled the nerves in my stomach at the thought of what was about to transpire. I looked around for my abum, then shook my head. He wouldn’t have come, not with this many people around to point and whisper at the healer who’d failed the lugal.
When the crowd quieted, the town crier raised the trumpet to project his words to everyone in the Libbu.
“Women and men of Alu, I come to you today to honor a sacred tradition that has been passed down from generation to generation,” the crier bellowed, his bushy eyebrows knit across a wide, flat forehead.
Dread wiped the smile from my face as excited murmuring spread across the crowd like wildfire.