Garden of Madness (15 page)

And yet his feet took him to Daniel’s of their own accord, and he found the wise man at the edge of his rooftop, enjoying what little breeze cooled the night air.

Daniel did not turn at Pedaiah’s march across his roof, but his words traveled to Pedaiah. “You are much distressed tonight, son. I feared you might kick a stray cat in your haste down there.”

Pedaiah joined him at the half wall, leaned against the stones. “Where is this new heart, this new spirit, that the prophet Ezekiel assures us will come, Daniel?”

“Do you speak of the people, or of yourself?”

“The people, of course. They perform their fasts and observe the Sabbath as we instruct them, but their hearts are still tempted by idolatry. Is it not enough that our land has been taken from us? So many killed and those not dead, starving in the land? When will they learn?”

“They will learn.”

Pedaiah turned his back to the city and to the wall. “But how can they, when they will not even remain separate from the idolaters!”

Daniel’s gaze traveled the streets as if he could see into each house, read the souls of each Jew. “The temptation to conform is great. They have no wish to suffer, and to conform to the manners and customs of those who hold us captive brings safety and even wealth.”

“While sacrificing our distinctiveness as a people called out from the world.”

“That is the danger, yes.”

Pedaiah waved a fist in the air. “This is why I say that we must keep ourselves apart, always apart from them. We should not hear them, should not teach them.”

“Should not marry them?”

Pedaiah closed his eyes and leaned his head back. “Why must you always come back to her?”

“Because she is never far from your thoughts.”

“Even my mother wishes me to marry her, to give my brother an heir.”

“How difficult it must be then, for you to remain apart, as you say.”

Pedaiah eyed Daniel, searching for a note of mockery in his voice. But his mentor was truly concerned for him, he could see that. “I must remain so, Daniel. I cannot love a pagan.”

Daniel’s eyes softened, but it did not seem to be admiration for Pedaiah’s declaration of loyalty to Yahweh. He saw more of sadness in the older man’s gaze.

“You are a great leader for your people, and they have much respect for you, Pedaiah. As they should. But you have much to learn.”

“Tell me, then. Tell me what I must know.”

Daniel lifted his eyes to the stars, searched them as a wise man, as a mage. “When the Anointed One comes, the Prince of princes, He will come to the Jews. But not
only
for the Jews.” He lowered his head and turned. “If you cannot love a pagan, Pedaiah, then you do not have the heart of God.”

The words struck deep, slashed at the toughened places of his heart. But he could not understand how to both love them and despise their ways. How to make them part of his life and yet separate from it. “You also think I should marry her, then?”

Daniel smiled. “I thought we were talking about our people.”

Pedaiah looked across the streets, to the walls of the palace lifting in the distance, the lofty trees of the Hanging Gardens silhouetted against the night sky. “We are.”

“Tell me more of the princess, Pedaiah. My memories are all of her childhood. An energetic little one, I remember.”

Pedaiah laughed. “You have no idea.” But then sobered. “I worry for her. The young mage Amel-Marduk, who is attached to that evil Shadir, stalks her like prey. I fear she is taken in by his surface charms. He does not see her truly, though. She is only a useful and pretty tool in his hands.”

“And you see her truly?”

“I see her better than she sees herself, I sometimes believe. Her mother has convinced her that she is unattractive and worth nothing more than what can be gained through alliances. She defies her mother in ways that are often selfish and silly, but only from ignorance. She has never lived outside the palace.” He sighed, thinking of Tia’s passionate declarations in her training chamber. “She has a fierce love for her father.”

“And yet in all of this, you could never love a pagan?”

He turned away from the palace view, his heart hardening again, along with his words. “It is true, Tiamat could have been a woman of not only strength but also great influence.” He left Daniel at the wall and headed for the steps.

“If only she had been born a Jew.”

CHAPTER 17

Tia wrapped a cinnamon-colored scarf around her hair, its gold coins cool across her forehead, then veiled the lower half of her face. When she pulled her cloak from its hook, her ladies stood expectantly.

“I go alone.” They sat.

She traveled through back corridors and unused wings, making her way toward the kitchens. She had no temple errand as an excuse and would take no chance of her mother hearing of her excursion.

Slaves still worked the kitchen complex. Tia passed through the cook room where she had inquired about Ying and found a dozen slaves still hunched over cook fires and chopping boards. Still working when the evening meal had ended. Preparation for tomorrow? Such long hours they worked. Curious glances shot her direction, then turned away in deference.

The wide door at the back of the kitchen complex allowed for deliveries. From her favorite rooftop garden Tia had watched many cartloads of vegetables and fruits travel through it over the years. Tonight it afforded the best means of unseen escape. A narrow alley ramped downward and opened onto the Processional Way, an exit only a slave or palace staff would use.

Tia stepped out of the alley and felt again the thrill of being in the city streets rather than high above, running the wall or racing her chariot.

Would Pedaiah be at the shrine as he had promised? Tia strode that direction and avoided the faces of those she passed. The streets were still crowded, the sun having only just set. Had she come too early? Would she have to wait?

She slid along the Processional Way, hugging the blue-glazed wall. Now and then a merchant’s donkey got too close or a knot of men, drinking long before night fell, jostled her into the blue mosaics with their yellow winged lions waiting to devour her.

The ziggurat loomed ahead, a mighty mountain in the center of the city, with its snake-wrapped stairs and torch-lit temple. There were fewer torches tonight, and if Amel was there, he would be standing against its darkened rim, watching the purple dome for its first stab of starlight. Thoughts of Amel swirled into those of Pedaiah, and Tia quickened her steps.

The length of the Processional Way, from palace to Etemenanki, was familiar—though she rarely traveled it on foot. But the rest of the city lay shrouded in mystery, an unknown world, observed from the far-off palace roof and city wall. Ahead, the Street of Marduk, a main thoroughfare, intersected the wide Processional Way.

And at the head of the street, in the deepening dark, a shrine to Shamash. The small, hexagonal stone building lay in shadow, but two torches stood at its narrow door, reaching to the tiled roof. A figure lingered across the street. Her heart raced ahead of her, and for a moment she felt danger. The last time Pedaiah found her crossing the city alone, he had called her naive. Her fingers strayed to the flimsy protection of her veil. She hurried forward, then slowed, for fear the man across from the shrine would be a stranger.

But then he turned and she saw that proud jawline. Tia rushed to him, and he must have seen her fear, for he met her midstride and caught her arms.

“What is it, Tia? Did someone follow?” His gaze shot past her, along the street.

She recovered her dignity and pulled away. “No. No, all is well. I—I only grew foolish for a moment.”

He studied her face, his head tilted and eyes searching. “I would never call you foolish.”

She smiled under her veil. Spoiled, perhaps. Inferior. But not foolish. “I am so rarely down in the city and never alone.” She watched the busy street, the people rushing forth with lives and plans she did not understand. “All I see of it is from the palace or the Platform.”

Pedaiah glanced at her home, sitting high above the city like a matched peak with the Platform. “Do not forget the city walls.”

She turned on him, hands on her hips. “That is the second time you’ve said such a thing. Explain.”

He shrugged. “I like to get a better view at times myself. The guard in the Marduk Gate tower is a friend. From the sentry tower you see more than the city. You see anyone who approaches along the top of the wall. No matter how fast she is running.”

He did not look at her, but Tia saw the smirk. “And I am a joke among the guards, then? They laugh at me while huddling around their little braziers through the cold nights?”

Pedaiah faced her fully, his expression grave. “Every one of them would give his life to protect you, Princess. They watch you, yes. And they love you.”

The intensity of his voice stole her breath. Not only his declaration of the soldiers’ loyalty. That tiny window, that small crack once again, into a man that was perhaps not what he appeared. “Then I am honored, though I knew nothing of it.”

He growled and looked away. “You know nothing of anything.”

“Do not be rude! I have had Chaldean tutors since before I could speak!”

“Ha! Tutors! They keep your head in the sky and your thoughts occupied with aimless philosophy. What do they teach you of this?” He swept a hand toward the city. “Of the real world of your people, the streets where they live and work and love?”

“I—I have learned of our history, of the battles—”

He grabbed her arms and shook. “Not history, Tiamat. Now. Today. Do you know what it is like to be an ordinary citizen of Babylon? Or to be a Jew, captive here your whole life?”

She said nothing and he released her arms but took her hand. “Come, Tia. I will show you the true Babylon.”

And then they were running. Leaving the crowded Processional Way and running as though he would weave her through the entire city before the moon reached its zenith. Winding through dark alleys with tiny doorways that glowed like eyes, past small, unfamiliar shrines and through well-tended gardens no bigger than her bedchamber.

He still clutched her hand. They ran, and it was intoxicating— the night wind snatching at hair and cloak, the fringed coins of her veil jingling against her forehead, the pounding of their feet. And the freedom. The wondrous freedom. No one but Pedaiah knew her footsteps. She was lost to the world, to Amytis and her Median prince, to Shadir and his scheming magi.

There was only this night and Babylon. Her head sang with the thrill of the unknown.

Black garbage littered the alleys they ran, the smell of sewage assaulted her, and flint-eyed rats twitched furry noses at them as they passed. But there were also scents of cook fires and baking bread and the night perfume of rooftops that spilled jasmine down crumbling walls.

A donkey cart swung around a corner and rattled toward them, and Pedaiah snatched her against the wall, holding her against his chest until the snorting beast and its owner passed. Her veil fell from her face, and she laughed up at him and was shocked to see him grinning too. A wide, full smile she had never seen in all her life and did not think possible.

They both panted with the exertion, and when the cart disappeared at the end of the rutted alley, they parted hastily and continued at a walk.

“We are almost there.” Pedaiah pointed. The dash through the city had not been random. The Euphrates gleamed ahead, between low-lying buildings of the wharf district. The grand bridge that spanned the river and connected the old and new halves of the city lay to their left. Tia caught the fishy scent of the river.

“Where are we going?”

“There is more to see.”

At the river’s edge it seemed Pedaiah had friends not only in guard towers but also at the harbor. He left her at a pier for a hurried conversation with a younger man, who glanced toward her and nodded.

Pedaiah returned, snatched a wooden oar from a pile, and extended a hand toward a small skiff bobbing at the water’s edge. “He needs it delivered to the New City.”

Her jaw dropped. “We are going across? On the water?”

Pedaiah lifted his chin, a challenge in his eyes. “Afraid?”

In answer, she hopped into the little boat and planted herself on a low bench.

The skiff cut across the current, directed by Pedaiah’s muscled paddling, and she stopped watching him to gaze along the ripples—diamonds against black water. She leaned over to trail her fingers through the cold Euphrates for the first time in her life. One could not feel the water from palace balconies.

The run through the city had fired Tia’s blood, but it was not the effort that made her heart pound in her chest now. It was something else, something she could not describe. The sense that this was
real
, the streets, the people, the river, and that her life in the palace was only a show.

When they reached the western bank, Pedaiah pulled her from the skiff. He held her until her feet were steady on the bank, then secured the boat’s leads with practiced hands while she secured her veil. They turned toward the New City. She had never been on this side of the river.

Pedaiah led. “We will walk now.”

“Too tired to run?”

He shot an annoyed glance at her but saw she was teasing and, surprisingly, softened. “I want you to see more on this side. To see
my
people.”

And she did see. The New City, despite its name, was burdened with far more poverty than Tia witnessed on the eastern side. They wandered through the Jewish district, where captives her father brought to Babylon spent their nights. Their days were spent at furnaces, goldsmith shops, the streets of weavers and tanners. All the best artisans of Judaea were brought to their city to help them make Babylon a dazzling jewel in the desert.

And yet, it was not dazzling here. Why did the Jews not beautify their own district when they were so skilled?

Perhaps they have neither time nor money
. The thought shocked her a bit, and her intake of breath brought Pedaiah’s eyes to her, but she was not ready to speak her thoughts.