Waterborn

seems like a long time ago, when I was very young…'

'You are still young, Princess,' Tsem reminded her. 'Master Ghan is right. You have other things you could be doing.'

'Oh, yes,' Hezhi responded sarcastically. 'Important things. Like going to parties. Like meeting men.'

'Qey thinks…'

'I know what Qey thinks, and so what? Anyway, I'm not old enough for men yet. I haven't started my bleeding.'

Tsem suddenly grew a shade darker and turned his attention intently upon the fountain. Realizing she had embarrassed him, Hezhi stood and walked to the waist-high wall that encircled the rooftop garden. The city of Nhol stretched out before and around her, a bone metropolis shimmering in the westering light. Her mother's garden occupied the southern wing of the palace, and though the towers and ziggurats of the central halls soared high above her to the north, nothing obstructed her view to the west, south, or east; this rooftop was the highest on the wing.

Now Hezhi gazed off east. Behind the palace, gardens and vineyards rolled out green for a thousand paces before they were bounded by the wall. Beyond that, vast fields of millet and wheat checkered the floodplain in black fallow and viridian cultivation. Not far beyond them, Hezhi knew, the desert began, the vast waste her people called Hweghe, 'The Killer.'

Tracing her finger along the stuccoed wall, Hezhi walked south, gazed out at where the walls of the palace faded seamlessly into the city, a jumbled, chaotic tangle of streets, shops, and dwellings. Near the palace, these were of comfortable size, but they seemed to diminish with distance. Though Hezhi had never been into the city, it seemed difficult to believe that her eyes told the truth about the most distant—and most numerous— houses visible to her. It seemed that they were no larger than Qey's kitchen—perhaps smaller.

East and south lay the River. Before him loomed the Great Water Temple, a seven-tiered ziggurat that blazed white, gold, and bronze, from whose sides four streams of water constantly cascaded, drawn up from the River by his own will. The two waterfalls Hezhi could see glistened like silver and diamonds. The River himself, beyond, was nearly too wide to see across. He lay heavy and cobalt, massive, unmerciful, unstoppable. A thousand colored toys bobbed upon his back: her father's great trading barges, fishing boats, houseboats, the tiny craft that could hold only one or two people. Foreign ships, beautifully clean and graceful of line, swept along beneath billowing sails, coming and going from the Swamp Kingdoms and the seacoast beyond like so many swans. All on the River, trusting—no, praying—that he would not capriciously choose to swallow them. People loved the River, worshipped the River, but they did not really trust him. The River had taken people in from the Killer, saved them, made them his own. The people of Nhol had no other god but the River—and his manifestations, the nobility. Like her father, who was part god.

Like herself. Like D'en, wherever he was.

An amazingly loud belch erupted suddenly behind her, and Hezhi smiled. Tsem was no god. He was mortal, pure-bred, despite his parents' different races. Mortal and happy to be so.

'Pardon me,' Tsem said sheepishly.

Hezhi bit back a rude retort, but she did move upwind.

'It's not just the flood that buried the lower city, you know.'

'No?' Tsem asked.

'I always imagined, la, and the flood covering the city, and then the Third Dynasty building this one upon that. But really, most of the lower city was filled in on purpose. To raise up the new one.'

'So the next flood wouldn't be as bad.'

'Right. The River isn't supposed to flood us, his children, but…' Hezhi shifted uncomfortably. 'I've heard the River sleeps a lot. That sometimes we just have to fend for ourselves.'

'Why not wake him up?' Tsem asked.

'I think that might be worse,' Hezhi replied. But she made a mental note to look for books on that, too. Priests wrote most books, so there should be more than a few about the River. In fact, that might be another angle to consider. The new palace had aqueducts and canals crisscrossing it, so that the sacred water would always surround them, enclose its children. The old city must have had such ducts, too.

'There must have been at least a few pipes,' Hezhi mused to herself.

'You've changed the subject, haven't you?' Tsem said, his brow wrinkled.

'Hmm? Oh, yes. The one useful book I found was on the reconstruction. There were no maps, and that was a disappointment. But it talked about what they did. They filled in the courtyards with sand and rubble. Houses back then were mostly courtyard, and the walls were even thicker than the ones in the palace are now, so with the courtyards filled in, they could build on top of the old buildings, even if the rooms were still empty. That's why the floor cracks in the old sections, sometimes, and there are spaces underneath. That's why we haven't gotten anywhere; even when we find a suite of rooms that aren't full of sand or water, we eventually hit one of those filled-in courtyards. But you remember that one pipe? The one we found about a year ago?'

Tsem grunted. 'The one I couldn't fit into?'

'Yes. I bet that was one of the sacred water tubes, built to carry water to the interior canals and fountains.'

'And? It was blocked off, too.'

'It had collapsed. Recently, I bet. If we could just find those… If I knew where the old temple sanctuaries were…'

'Princess!' Tsem's eyes were wide. 'Temples? We can't go into temples!'

'Why not? After all, one day there will probably be a temple dedicated to me, like there is one for my father.'

'But not to Tsem, Princess. Tsem is not safe from sacrilege, and he guesses that you aren't, either, whatever you may think.'

'Hmmf. Well, I'll find that out, as well.'

'Princess, you spent all day in there and found only one book.'

'You have to admit, it's better than bumping around in the dark the way we have been. In one day, I understand more about the problem than I did this whole past two years.'

'Well, I'm all in favor of keeping you from bumping around in the dark.'

'And yourself,' Hezhi added.

'That, too,' Tsem admitted.

IV

A Drink with the King

Perkar's palms stung with the shock of his blow; the axe twisted off the grain of the wood and whistled down, out of his control. Angata swore and danced aside, the heavy blade barely missing his calf.

'Pay attention to what you're doing, you fool,' Angata snapped, glaring at Perkar from his new vantage two strides away.

'Sorry,' Perkar grunted, barely meaning it.

'Sorry wouldn't help if you'd gashed my leg down to bone,' Perkar's cousin retorted. He shook back his brown hair, his green-eyed gaze still hard.

Perkar shrugged. 'Sorry is the best I can do.'

'It's not helping us get the fence built, either,' Angata complained, waving his hand vaguely at the split-rail snake winding back into the woods, then at the half league of pasture that remained to be crossed.

'I know,' Perkar sullenly acknowledged. His gaze followed the line of Angata's finger off into the woods.

Angata stared at him a moment and then shrugged. He sank down to the soft, new grass of the pasture, folding his legs up beneath him. 'I say we rest, then.' He sighed. 'You've been like this all morning, and I have no desire to hop back to your father's damakuta on one leg.'

'Father wanted this fence done by the new moon.'