“Gods protect me!” he shouted, falling away with shock. The man’s face was as freshly preserved as Jebel’s, and his eyes were open. He looked like he’d just awakened and was planning to eat Jebel alive for disturbing him.
Jebel ran for the ladder, missed it, crashed into another coffin, and rebounded. He lay on the floor, panting, heart beating faster than a bird’s. His eyes shot to the open coffin, and he thought he saw a hand reaching up out of the darkness. He began to scream… then stopped when he realized that he was imagining the hand.
Jebel lay on the floor, gasping. Eventually he got to his feet and stumbled back to the open coffin. The corpse was still there, its face as fresh as before, its eyes open. But this time Jebel saw that there was no life in its eyes nor breath on its lips. The cold of the mausoleum must have kept the body fresh, or else the Um Saga used embalming fluid. Either way, this person could do him no harm, and although Jebel still felt queasy, he was no longer terrified.
Jebel ran his gaze over the corpse’s face, neck, and left arm. The man had been buried with a diamond- studded earring and two gold rings, one on his index finger, one on the middle finger. Jebel reached for the earring. Paused. Raised a hand and laid the back of his palm on the dead man’s cold forehead.
“I beg your forgiveness,” Jebel whispered. “I’m a slave to evil men and must do as they command or else join you in the land of the dead.”
Then he took off the earring and pried the rings from the corpse’s hand. That wasn’t so easy — they were jammed on tight and had half-fused with the flesh. Jebel had to use a piece of glass to cut the rings free, and when he slid them off, they had bits of the corpse’s flesh attached. Jebel didn’t clean off the flesh. He would leave that messy task to Bush and Blair.
Jebel went to the other side of the coffin and slid the lid back in the opposite direction so he could get to the dead man’s right side. There was one ring on this hand, and again Jebel had to cut it free. He put it with the others on a piece of cloth, then shut the lid and rested a moment.
Laying his head on the coffin, Jebel breathed raggedly in and out, eyes shut, trembling uncontrollably as he thought about what he’d done. How could he ever eat again, knowing his fingers had touched the cold, grey flesh of the dead? Tears dripped down his cheeks for the first time since his father had threatened to disown him all those years ago if he ever wept again, but Jebel didn’t care. This was a place and a time for tears.
Although Jebel didn’t want to continue, he knew he couldn’t pause here forever, mourning the loss of his humanity. He had a job to do, and grisly as it was, the sooner he completed it, the sooner he could get out. So, pushing himself away, he wiped tears from his cheeks and, with all the sluggishness of a bewitched corpse, moved on to the second coffin.
There was a moment, somewhere in the middle of that dead and chilling night, when Jebel thought of using a shard of glass to slice his throat open. But suicide was not the way of the Um Aineh. It was only acceptable as a last resort, to avoid great disgrace. But Jebel didn’t think the gods would look kindly on him if he took his own life. He wasn’t beyond hope. There would be chances in the future to fight for his freedom. Killing himself now would be an act of cowardice.
So he worked on, from one coffin to the next, until all five had been plundered. Replacing the last lid, he staggered to the rope ladder, hauled himself up, pulled the ladder after him, then rolled to the edge of the roof and dropped off. He thrust the bulging cloth at Bush and Blair, then strode away to draw clean breaths of fresh air.
Bush and Blair were impressed by Jebel’s haul. “You did a fine job,” Bush said.
“Most commendable,” cooed Blair. “Except next time work a little faster — you were in there much longer than necessary.”
Jebel almost retorted, but the traders were in a good mood and there was no sense angering them. Instead he sighed and said, “Do you want me to do another mausoleum?”
Bush looked at the moon, then shook his head. “It pays not to be greedy. Let’s settle for what we have and slip away safely.”
“I agree,” said Blair, pocketing the rings and jewels. “The secret to success is to stop when you’re ahead.” He clapped Jebel on the back. “You did well tonight, young Rum. We’ll reward you with a hot meal when we stop for dinner tomorrow.”
“And we’ll give you another glove,” Bush said. “And a cloak.”
Jebel wanted to refuse the gifts, to tell the pair to give them to the dead instead. But that would have been pointless. So he forced a smile, bowed, and managed a faint but almost genuine-sounding “thank you.”
“See?” Bush beamed. “Life with us isn’t so bad, is it?” Then he led the way out of the graveyard and locked the gate behind them. They marched at a fast pace and kept going through the remainder of the night, putting as much distance as they could between themselves and the town by morning.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Weeks of graverobbing followed, trawling the lands of southern Abu Saga, hitting the more prosperous towns and raiding their mausoleums. They weren’t all as straightforward as the first. Many of the graveyards were guarded — although raids were rare, they did happen occasionally, so the wealthier Um Saga preferred to put patrols in place where possible.
If Bush and Blair had been working by themselves, they would have avoided the guarded graveyards, valuing their necks over profits. But they were not overly concerned about Jebel, so they happily sent him in by himself, sneaking him past those on watch, leaving him to plunder on his own.
Jebel hated those raids the most, having to slip past the guards and work silently, terrified in case he was discovered. The first time he was sent in solo, he tried to fake an unsuccessful robbery. He hid in the shadows of a mausoleum for a few hours, then climbed out, claiming that the tombs had already been robbed. But Bush and Blair saw through the lie. While Bush held his mouth shut, Blair cut a small slice off the tips of both his index fingers. They vowed to chop off whole fingers the next time he lied to them, then sent him back in.
Occasionally a graveyard was too well guarded, and they had to skip it, but that was rare. Bush and Blair sent Jebel in except when the odds were overwhelmingly stacked against him. Despite their protestations that he was an important member of the team, Jebel knew he was expendable. He didn’t think they planned to keep him beyond winter. If he wasn’t caught robbing a tomb and killed before they headed south for the spring, he was sure they’d sell him to slavers or slaughter him in his sleep.
The bogus Masters let Jebel wear gloves and a cloak now, and gave him a blanket when he slept. And they fed him more but not too much — he was more useful to them thin than fat, and even though he told them he had always been thin, no matter how much he ate, they didn’t want to take any chances. Jebel wasn’t starving any longer, but he was never far from hunger’s door.
Jebel knew that the clothes and food were given in order to bend him to Bush and Blair’s will. They thought they’d broken his spirit and were using the gifts to make him feel indebted to them. The tyrants were cunning but arrogant. It never crossed their minds that Jebel might be acting, pretending to be more disheartened than he was, letting them think he was beaten when in fact he was constantly plotting to escape.
His captors no longer bound his hands except at night. When they were walking, Jebel deliberately fell behind, complaining of weariness. Bush and Blair had lapsed into the habit of letting him trail after them, and every day he dropped a little farther back, creating the space that he would need when the time was right to run.
But would that time ever come? He was always reeled in when they drew near a town or passed by a river where there might be boats. Where could he run to here in the wilderness? Where could he hide? Bush and Blair would follow his footprints in the snow, track him like hounds, and punish him cruelly.
He thought a lot about Tel Hesani. Was the slave working down a mine, never to see sunlight again? At first Jebel blamed the Um Kheshabah and held to the belief that his guardian should have seen this coming. But as the days turned to weeks, he remembered that Tel Hesani had done his best. He had been suspicious of the traders in Shihat and warned Jebel not to trust them, but Jebel had ignored him. There was no point blaming the slave. Jebel decided that if he was dead when the Wadi witch tried to contact his spirit in the summer, he would demand freedom for Tel Hesani’s wife and children.
