So she begins to teach the minister. He will not succeed. She comforts herself with this. Even if a shred of magic were buried somewhere in him, he would not be able to access it; to access it, you had to be receptive; to be receptive, you had to be capable of admitting all you did not know. But she can’t let him fail outright, either. If he fails, he will blame her. He will take Darius to Persepolis the whole year round. She has to make the minister fail without realizing it; she must make him an eternal apprentice, so that he inches forward, or perceives himself inching forward, but never quite enough. This will be its own kind of sorcery. She will have to trick him into thinking he is learning until he dies.
It will be a kind of circling, she thinks, endless movement without actually going anywhere. Like the camp used to do before the attacks started, when all they were hiding from was the sun.
She teaches the minister. He does not touch her during their lessons, a pleasant fact she understands has nothing to do with humility; he is simply unexcited by the prospect of molesting her without the king present.
Darius is returned to her. Though he is walking now, often away from her, she does not let him out of her sight.
Her stomach begins, once or twice each day, to harden as if into rock. Her time to find the bones room is running out.
She searches. But the minister is probably right. Why would they leave now if they haven’t already?
She searches. But what if they are already gone? Maybe they walked off a year ago, into the desert. How would Esther know? The only information she gets comes from within the palace. Everyone could be lying. Even Baraz. Maybe especially Baraz.
Baraz is nowhere to be found.
People stop looking her in the eye.
Only the midwives touch her. And Darius. Though he runs now, fast, laughing.
A midwife tells her that Darius was well cared for, by a woman who claims she knew Esther in the night station, a woman with one eyebrow. And Esther thinks of the last time she saw Lara, and wonders if it’s too late, if Lara might yet be a friend, if she might help. Esther starts thinking she sees her, around corners and behind doors, but she can never move fast enough to reach her.
The minister tells her she is losing her mind.
She is the minister’s teacher.
But the minister may be right.
She is dreaming when he wakes her, his voice a comfort she brings into the dream with her, a dream of childhood, a floor of papyrus reeds, yellow grass, Darius’s hair, Darius a friend, Esther only as tall as the grown-ups’ knees, Baraz’s voice: “Shhhh, wake up,” a tilting sky, a bowl of rice. It takes his hand on her shoulder to lift her out. At once, her blood begins to pound. Is the baby coming? Has Darius been taken? She rises onto her knees. Darius is there, his skin pink in the light thrown by Baraz’s torch. Her inside is calm.
A whisper. “Come.”
“Where have you been?” She hasn’t seen him in weeks.
“I’ll show you.”
“You didn’t tell me about the spices,” she says.
“Shh.”
“Why should I go with you?”
“I didn’t know. I am only told what it is useful for me to know.”
“You said you spoke—”
“Never with them. I never said I spoke with them directly.”
“The bird—”
“I know.” Baraz swallows visibly, his Adam’s apple sliding in a way that reminds her that he is both a man and more than a man. “Please. I need you to come with me, without more words.”
“I can’t leave Darius.”
“He’ll cry.”
“I won’t leave him.”
Baraz suffocates the torch before opening the door to the passage. They walk in darkness, Esther carrying Darius until Baraz, sensing her struggle, takes the boy into his arms. Esther is barefoot as Baraz ordered her; their soles purr across the stones. They walk through portal and passage, far enough that Esther, losing track of the turns, takes up a fringe of Baraz’s robe between her fingers.
When they stop, Esther touches the wall nearest to her. It’s smooth and solid—not a door. She feels Baraz at her feet, his hands working at something in the ground. She kneels and feels her son’s feet tickle her neck; he is cocooned, she realizes, in the space between Baraz’s legs and chest. Then a current of air rises and Baraz has her by the hand, leading her downward. Rungs in a wall. She has to lean back so that her stomach will clear them. Baraz is still above her, she can hear his almost soundless movements, his hands settling something back into place. She waits at the bottom, sand damp beneath her feet, her leg muscles quivering. The exertion has stirred up tears, and a fantasy: they are in the bones room. Baraz knew without her telling him what she wanted. Never mind that the bones room had not required a descent.
The torch flares. They are in not the bones room but a low-ceilinged cellar, empty of furniture. Three other eunuchs stand waiting near an opening in the wall. A tunnel, Esther sees.
Baraz says quietly, “It’s not for you.”
Her chest starts to ache. “This is what you were doing,” she says, realizing. “When Darius was born.”
Baraz nods. “This is where we’ve been anytime we weren’t somewhere else.”
Esther is gripped by a sudden, wild fear. They have made some kind of deal for Darius. She can’t understand what; it makes no sense; when Baraz woke her, he didn’t want Darius to come at all. But that could have been an act, too. They are
