Queen of Ashes (8 page)

He turns and runs across the fields, Laila trailing him. Some of the crop has been uprooted by the earth's heaving, though most of it is still intact. But all the retaining pools are empty, their stone walls askew, with large holes pocking the bottoms. And all the pipes are broken, sticking through fissures in the earth like brown bones in a paupers' graveyard. The entire irrigation system is ruined.

At the last retaining pool, Brehan turns in helpless rage, his face red, his fists clenched. “I will put this right,” he promises in a tight voice.

He runs from the field. Laila looks left and right at the precious seedlings doomed to wither and die under the unforgiving sun, leaving her people to starve.

PART III

Chapter Eight

LAILA EXAMINES THE fine faience necklaces on the tray before her. Which one would be best? She asks herself, trying to ignore the caustic chemical smells that are enough to turn her stomach. In the factory behind the shop, workers create a paste of ground quartz, lime and natron salt to glaze clay objects in kilns belching black smoke. It doesn't smell pretty, but the faience—in colors from pale green to bright blue—is as smooth and gleaming as the most precious gemstones.

She finally settles on one, a wide collar of five rows of long, bright turquoise-colored stones interspersed with pale green falcons of Horus and gold beads. Egyptian faience is prized by King Seb, ruler of Kush, the dark-skinned warrior nation far to the south where barley and wheat still grow. She will send this necklace along with her embassy taking all her jewels and gold cups—anything the king might want—in return for grain.

Immediately after the irrigation system's destruction, Laila found Brehan and told him that Riel had dared her to sleep in his bed and nothing had happened between them. Brehan said grimly, “Typical of him to find a way to trap you even though you didn't do anything wrong.” But then relief flooded his face and he smiled at her.

Next she ejected Riel from the palace guest quarters for putting the butterfly in her hair. He merely shrugged when she commanded him to go. But instead of leaving Sharuna, he rented a palatial house in town, and Laila, afraid of his powers, let him be. She hasn't heard a word from him since then. Then she and Brehan got to work on repairing the irrigation system. It took only twenty-one days to repair what took three months to build, and tomorrow, water will be flowing freely down the canals. Still, it is too late. The sun has scorched the tender wheat and barley seedlings to a crunchy yellow, all except for a patch nearest the river that the slaves have watered by hand—grain for the princess and her top advisers.

When Brehan asked them to water the rest of the grain, too—making the long trips from the Nile shore out to the fields, the hundreds of pairs of feet trampled some of the plants. Worse, no matter how many trips they made, no amount of water carried by hand could compare with the gurgling flow running down irrigation canals or stave off the blistering sun in the cloudless Egyptian sky.

For three weeks now, every evening Brehan has attempted to bring a soaking rain to the fields. Once he created the lightest sprinkling that merely laid the dust for a few minutes, and the effort caused him to fall to the ground completely worn out.

Mehmut, the factory owner, rubs his hands unctuously and asks, “Has Her Highness made a choice?”

“This one,” she says. “Package it for a royal recipient.” His wizened brown face crinkles into a smile as he whisks it away.

Behind her, Sada and Sarina play with necklaces and scarab bracelets. Wazba examines faience-inlaid sword pommels. Laila takes a turquoise-glazed figurine off the shelf in the shape of a mummy, its entire body except for the face incised with hieroglyphs. It is an
ushabti
—a statuette inscribed with sacred verses of the
Egyptian
Book of the Dead
to make it perform as a living servant in the afterlife in its owner's tomb. She wonders if they ever work, or if the
ushabtis
, too, gather dust and decay just like the mummies they are supposed to serve.

Rapid footsteps rouse her. She turns to find Brehan standing there, breathing heavily, face flushed.

“What is it?” she asks, wondering if some new disaster has ruined the freshly repaired irrigation system.

“Nothing good ever comes from hiding your passion,” he says.

“What?” she asks, wondering if he has been in the sun too long.

“Come with me, Princess,” he says, taking her arm. “I have something important I need to show you.”

Laila nods to Wazba and the twins and allows Brehan to lead her through the streets bustling with shoppers and hawkers crying their wares.

“What was it you said back there?” she asks again.

“Amosis said it, actually,” he says, dodging a donkey cart. “I just saw him in the Temple of Thoth. I went to ask your god of wisdom for some advice on surviving this famine and met a remarkable stranger at the altar, asking for the wisdom to marry the woman he desires most.”

Laila almost trips over a chicken, but Brehan's grip keeps her upright.

“He's come for my hand, then, after all,” she says, wondering if she should be glad. Wondering if she
is
glad.

“Yes, he's staying at the Three Pyramids Inn until he figures out how to approach you. When I told him I was your minister of agriculture, he asked me what gift he could give you to make you marry him.”

Laila's heart beats rapidly. What will she say to Amosis? Could she even marry in a time of drought, famine and plague? But can she put him off again? Does she still love Brehan, who murdered the woman he loved?

“What did you tell him?” she asks.

“Grain,” he says, pulling her around the corner onto Fish Street. “That he could give you grain.”

“But Thebes, too, has drought,” she protests. “There is no inundation there, just like here.”

“Yes, but wise Amosis has huge granaries bursting with it from previous years. I said if he dowered you with grain, you would look on him favorably.”

She hurries numbly forward. She would have to marry Amosis if he saved Sharuna, wouldn't she? She would marry a fat toothless old man if it prevented her people from starving. Amosis's handsome face and magnificent physique rise before her eyes. She remembers the heat and passion of him. A husband any woman would be proud of.

If she wasn't in love with Brehan.

“Do you want me to marry him?” she asks.

“No, I certainly don't. But I don't want your people to starve, either. And I destroyed the grain when I lost my temper. I owe it to you to solve this problem.”

A toddler bolts out of a sandal shop, straight into their path, as his mother scoops him up with an apology.

“Where are you taking me?” Laila asks. “Without my bodyguard clearing the way, I'm realizing just how dangerous it is to walk the streets of Sharuna.”

“Here,” he says, stopping in front of the painted gates of the Temple of Horus. Brehan drops a few lumps of bronze at the donation table at the gate, and a bald priest smiles and nods. Then he leads her across the courtyard, down a corridor and into a garden whose reflecting pool brims with blue lotuses.

“Before you make up your mind about Amosis,” he says, “I want to explain what happened with Cassandra. After that, marry Amosis if you wish. You will hear no argument from me.”

She nods. Yes, she must hear it, though it might hurt her worse than not knowing. “Why here?” she asks, looking around.

“You will see.” He kneels beside the pool and gestures for her to join him. He stares into the water and swallows hard as if searching for the right words. “She was
the
Cassandra. Princess of Troy. Oracle of the gods.”

Laila's mouth opens. “But that was...that was more than three hundred years ago.”

Now it is his turn to nod. She's suddenly struck by the weight of the centuries he has lived through and suffered. Compassion flows through her like honeyed wine. To live so long with the loss of the one you love must be unbearable, especially if you caused it. Sometimes death can be a sweet relief.

He pushes lotus plants out of the way and holds his outstretched hands over the rippling water. “Look,” he says, “you will see it better as I tell it.”

She squints at the water and sees only her own reflection. But her face shifts into something else, though at first she cannot tell what. Peering more closely, she sees enormous crenellated walls and a hundred towers of golden stone flying brightly colored pennants, rising like a mountain from the surrounding plains rich with crops. Troy.

We went there on a lark to see if Helen really was the most beautiful woman in the world,
says a voice coming from the city. Brehan's voice.
The war had been going on for years and many wanted to see it. Sometimes the Greeks just stayed on the beach, exhausted and frustrated, while visitors came and went to the city.

Laila finds herself transported into the images in the water—there and yet not there—watching everything as though floating invisibly through it. She's in a large hall, smoke from the fire pit rising toward the smoke hole in the roof. Seated at a banquet table among richly dressed royals is a proud, haughty blonde of incomparable beauty, but Laila finds her cold and unappealing. That must be the famous Helen of Troy, so beautiful she caused a war between the Greeks and the Trojans. Then Laila sees a girl very similar to herself, standing in the shadows, tall and slender as a delicately carved column, her long black hair and fiery dark eyes contrasting sharply with her pale skin. Laila floats forward until she hovers right in front of her. This must be Cassandra. She sees vulnerability, sadness and longing in Cassandra's eyes, but something else, too—insights direct from the gods—insights only a true and magnificent oracle could know. Of course. Laila knows the stories of Troy—and in particular, the story of Cassandra, who foresaw terror that would come to her city. Foresaw it because she was an oracle. But no one listened.

Scenes from Troy flash before Laila rapidly in the reflecting pool—courtiers strolling in a garden, people sitting under canopies on the ramparts watching the clash of Trojans and Greeks on the fields below, a crowd listening to a bard singing in a throne room. While everyone else is enjoying themselves, Cassandra usually hides in the shadows, avoiding others as they avoid her. But when the god speaks through his oracle of Troy's doom, she no longer hides but demands attention, crying of flames and death and slavery. Some laugh at her, others become angry. Great Troy could never fall, they say. No city in the Known World has walls so strong and proud. For over a thousand years, they had never been breached and never would be.

Cassandra was a priestess of our god Apollo
, Brehan's voice says,
who saw her in his temple at Troy and desired her, but she rejected him. Furious, he laid a curse on her: though all her predictions were true, no mortal would believe them, ever. Everyone would just think she was crazy. In fact, the only ones who recognized her for a true oracle were my brother and me. Apollo's curses had no effect on other gods, even fallen ones.

Laila blinks and finds herself in a garden where Cassandra is embroidering. Riel marches up, smiling, and offers her a garnet necklace. Laila cannot hear what he says, but Cassandra throws the necklace down and hurries back to the palace.

Riel was always bothering her, giving her unwanted presents and promises, flattering her, sometimes even threatening her. He wanted her to ask the gods how he could regain his powers, but she refused, saying her prophecies were only for Troy. He begged me to ask her, for Cassandra and I had become very close. Indeed, I had fallen in love with her, and she with me. But I would not use her to satisfy Riel's thirst to return to the gods.

Now Laila sees Brehan and the oracle in bed but fully dressed, Cassandra's face a mask of desire and agony.
The voices, Cassandra begged me... Stop the voices. She didn't want to be forced to see so many deaths before they happened. The city burning...

Brehan holds her tightly, but that is all.

Oracles lose their powers along with their virginity. The gods can only speak through a pure, unsullied vessel. And I didn't want to be responsible for taking away her powers, though she begged me to, saying they were a curse, a burden she could not bear. I couldn't bring myself to do it. From the world beyond time, those gods that remained had chosen her to sing their songs. I would not be the instrument of breaking that sacred connection between gods and men. And so our days together were bright, filled with hope and love, but the nights were filled with groaning frustration.

The scene shifts again, and Laila is on a beach watching hundreds of black ships hoisting their sails and heading away. She turns and sees an enormous wooden horse, at least three stories tall, and a man, bruised and bloody, on his knees before a delegation of well-dressed courtiers.

And then came the day mankind will always remember when the Trojans found that after a ten-year siege, the Greek ships had left. The only thing on the beach was a giant wooden horse. A sole Greek remained behind, beaten and abandoned. He told the Trojans the horse was a gift to the goddess Athena, asking for a safe journey home. They had built it too tall to be brought in the city gate, he said, not wanting the Trojans to have the good fortune it would bring.

Laila sees men removing the top of the main city gate as others pull the horse inside. Cassandra stands there, shrieking that Greek solders are inside the horse, that when the Trojans are drunk in celebration that night the Greeks will open the gates and let in the armies. But the people ignore her. They clap and dance and cry,
The war is over!

Now bonfires burn brightly in the night as Trojans sing and play music in the streets. Many stagger; many more lay sprawled on the ground. Laila sees Brehan rushing through the streets looking for someone, looking for...her.

We had made plans to leave the city before the catastrophe. We would meet at the Scaean gate an hour before it was closed at sunset, and well before the Greeks climbed out of the belly of the horse in the middle of the night to let in the rest of the army. But neither Riel nor Cassandra was there. I looked everywhere in the palace and in the city where I thought they might be. Desperate, I returned to the palace to look again.

Laila sees Brehan enter the unguarded palace and push through knots of laughing people who pull on his arms and ask him to join their celebration. Then, in the garden, by the light of brightly burning torches, he sees a white butterfly that seems to lead him forward.