Beneath Ceaseless Skies #75 Read online

  He shrugs, points at the one powdered at my feet and the two remaining on the cart. “What does it matter? There are your three.”

  “It matters!” I cry and punch him weakly in the shoulder. “Have you forgot I come with the Sun King at my back?” I wave the paper of writ from Ktolemy in his face, and what color yet remained in his stubbly cheeks drains away. “Surely you keep records, man, of your purchases,” I bluster. “Of each skeleton, and where it was captured.”

  “I do, lord, I do, in my head, all in my head.”

  “Then remember, on pain of the arena, from where did you buy that skeleton?”

  He blanches at mention of the arena, as he should, but nods understanding. He takes a breath, holds it, squints his eyes shut, and slowly his cheeks turn red as bloodstone with the effort, as though he is pushing a heavy boulder up a hill. I realize he is thinking, concentrating.

  I wait, until at last he gasps as though coming up for air.

  “I recall, my lord, that that one was not hunted but reared, in a farm south of Saqqara, by a man named Bes. He brings his spawn to market at each season’s turn, when his brood reaches full growth.”

  In his answer I see my redemption flitting like a djinn.

  “And have you more of his beasts? Anywhere? In any condition?” I ask.

  “No lord, none—” he pauses, clearly sensing my abjection, then continues— “but he surely keeps studding pairs. If you sought his spawn, lord, I am sure he would sell.”

  “Yes,” I say, “I will barge to this Bes at once. Have one of your boys direct me.”

  “Of course, lord,” he bows, “and please, remember me as your servant, willing and able but sometimes slow only in the mind.”

  “Yes, yes,” I dismiss him. “The boy, and the barge.”

  He hurries off to fetch a guide.

  It is only much later, days gone by, that I realize I threatened him with death over what was but a trifling matter to him. I treated him much the same way the Sun King treated me. Allory would have hated to see it.

  * * *

  Riding the Nile is a slow and laborious thing at any time, but worst in the months before spring and the rains. The mother river’s flow is reduced to a turgid trickle, fecal and rotting with all the effluvium of Memphis.

  I endure it with a palm leaf held wilting over my head to keep off the worst of the sun’s baking heat. The boy poling us along is Abindian, probably the son of a slave, freed only to live out a short life burning to a crisp under the eye of Ra.

  At Bes’s spawn farm I debark. The land is flat and broad, broken by fences curtaining fields of low-cropped green and purple scrub, what seems to be safram, the pestilence weed, amidst which a few scraggy ibex graze. Water nets enclose sections of swampy Nile water, where crocodiles rove languidly. A few are full-sized; the remaining handful newly spawned. My heart turns over in my chest to see them.

  Bes is an ogre of a man, thick-fingered and as broad in the shoulder as any I have seen, but he turns as flop-kneed as the boneman when I flash him my writ of the Pharaoh.

  “Yes, yes,” he effuses, as I tell him why I have come, tell him what I need. “Yes for the Pharaoh, of course yes. “

  I need not mention the arena to this man— I can see he bears the mark of the whip upon his skull and chest. Once a slave, I muse, as he leads me to the trapping cage. Small wonder he has taken up residence so far from the Sun King’s seat in Memphis.

  He baits one of the older beasts with rotting venison, draws it in, and impales it through the heart with a long metal spear. It twitches, thrashes in the mud, then falls still. Between them he and his man raise the thing over the wooden divide and lay it at my feet.

  “Would you board it whole to your barge, lord?” Bes asks me, his eyes downcast.

  I eye the thing; it is immense. It would sink the barge if we tried to ferry it; better to lay it on a float and tug it behind us. But I do not need the meat of it, nor do I need the bulk of its bones.

  “No, flay its back now and leave me to my work.”

  He bows, doesn’t question. He and his man expertly slice through the creature’s thick green-brown hide with a sickle blade, peel it away as though sloughing off a vest; leaving the pink of glistening muscle and yellow of fat exposed.

  I spy the clavicle, though it seems different embedded in flesh. I have only ever worked with bone excised, dry and separate as though a found thing like wood or rock. That is how Allory and I always imagined our work, as a crafting of something to bring it to life, not thieve it of life. Like this, embedded in the still warm body of this great beast, it seems like theft.

  I steel myself, kneel, and dig into the crocodile’s shoulder with my bone shears, slicing through the gristle of the articular process easily. I trim away the clavicle from the foramen and wrest the thick broad blade of bone free. It is hot, wet with blood, but already I can see what I have come to find.

  A glowing diamond crystal, so large it has grown out through the sheer blade, emergent on both sides. It must be fifty carats in all, near perfectly spherical. I will lose perhaps only ten carats to faceting.

  I hold the chunk of bone to my chest as though it is a remembrance from my dead sister, not even thinking of the blood that will sully my artisan’s robe, ignoring the tears of relief that pour down my cheeks and splash into the crocodile’s corpse. It is unseemly, perverse, but I do not care. I am not mad, and I will not die in the arena.

  * * *

  I trim it with the vise, wrap it in velvet, pocket it securely in the belt about my waist. Then I fall upon the corpse with the shears, savaging it, tearing open the rib cage from behind, chopping bone into splinters. When I am finished, there is no sign that I afforded any special attention to the left clavicle, no sign at all of what I have done.

  I walk the fence back to Bes’s home. He is sitting with the Abindian boy of my barge, playing senet with counters of bone. Upon seeing me they both bow their heads.

  I toss the leather bag containing Ktolemy’s five hundred seinu on the table. It clunks heavily, disturbing their board.

  “All your stock,” I tell him, “bar a studding pair, with the meat of all to remain yours, along with the majority of bone and skin. Perhaps from amongst so many, I will find once the thing that I seek.”

  Bes stares at the seinu, gleaming gold in the afternoon sun, then back up at me. It is a fortune, and a grand price considering he will keep almost all of what I have paid for. Still, I cannot help but feel Allory’s eyes on me, judging me for a thief. Each jewel is worth at least double five hundred. I am swindling him.

  “Your lordship,” he bows, jerks to his feet.

  “And one more thing. Your spawn, are they fed in any peculiar way, or are they of a particular breed?”

  His heavy brows wrinkle in thought. “Any breed, lord? Only the browns and greens of the Nile, perhaps intermixed, but to no grand design. And of food, they eat from the herd of ibex.”

  “And what do the ibex eat?”

  He points into the field. “The grass, lord. It is a wild breed of safram, perhaps.”

  “They eat the pestilence weed?” I ask, surprised.

  He shrugs. “It grew here when I first started the spawn, lord. The ibex took to it readily, so I let them.”

  “Is it common to feed ibex safram?”

  He moderates his tone, careful to keep his eyes averted from mine. “I cannot say, lord. I have not seen it elsewhere.”

  I wonder at this, safram that cured the pestilence, that could have cured my sister, now the feed for ibex. Now it comes so cheaply, when once I needed it so dearly, when once a single stalk cost a thousand seinu, and I could not buy it for all the bone jewelry I’d ever carved.

  I push such morbid thoughts from my mind, focus on the task ahead.

  “Then an ibex too, skinned in back. Perhaps I will find what I seek there.”

  “In an ibex, lord?”

  I only stare at him, and wait. In seconds he realizes he has just questioned an em
issary of the Pharaoh. He shrinks, bows, as though he thinks I will lash him. Though I have no intention of doing so, the thought does cross my mind.

  I butcher the ibex first. There is a diamond crystal within its clavicle, smaller, burning a weaker shade at its heart, but yet a diamond. I look out on the herd, over the sweeping field of wild safram, and realize that not only will I live, I will also be rich.

  * * *

  For two days I grind, brute, facet, and polish the diamonds I have found. I barely sleep, so excited am I at the prospect of the riches that await me at the Pharaoh’s hand. I will never have to watch the games from amidst the commoners again. I shall have my own box, and a seat beside me kept vacant in memory of Allory.

  The first diamond is the largest. I cut it macle-wise, set it in the haft of the finest silver ring I possess. It is flawless, and in the light its luster outranks any I have known before. I glaive the three ibex diamonds within a golden hair-brooch. The one remaining crocodile diamond, around 30 carats, I cut as a perfect octahedron and leave it loose, to be admired and handled.

  Then I go to the Pharaoh.

  The grounds of his palace are vast and green, bordering on the Nile. I am admitted and walk them astounded by the aquifers delivering the silver splash of water here; the same aquifers that flooded the arena and drowned the pestilence-cripples.

  The entrance building is a dome of sandstone cut smooth as fine clay, unornamented but stunning in its curving polished surface. The floor is plated with Grecian marble, the veins thick and blue, running in unbroken seams like a completed game of senet.

  I am carried to the Pharaoh’s chamber upon a wicker chair by four blind men, down a long colonnaded avenue lined with large bronze statues of mighty bulls to either side. There must be a hundred of them, each shining with reflected sunlight. There is a strange scent in the air, somewhat fecal as that of the Nile, but masked by the heavy fragrance of myrrh.

  We halt in a grand gold-leaf chamber, where I am set down. Ktolemy is already there, standing beside a golden throne inset with lapis lazuli, carmine, argenta, a thousand precious and shining stones. He is looking at me as though I am some kind of annoying bug to be squashed.

  “You’d better have diamonds,” he says frankly.

  I nod. “I do, several, freshly provened and cut.”

  “Of a similar quality to the first?”

  “Better.”

  The blind men back out of the room, and I am left sitting. Am I to stand?

  Ktolemy answers with his mocking tone.

  “Will you repose upon your fat bottom before the Pharaoh also, polisher?”

  I leap to my feet. I brush down my gown, and cast my eyes to the floor. What would Allory think of me now?

  “Do you know what happened to the last man who remained seated before the Pharaoh?” he continues.

  I shake my head vigorously, as though to shake off any indication that I am at all similar to such a man.

  He points back to the bull-lined colonnade down which I have just passed. “Smelt a little off, did it?”

  I look at him blankly.

  “The longest has been in there for about fifteen years, I think. They put food in through the snout, clean up the shit out of the back.”

  I almost gag in my throat as I understand what is inside the bulls.

  Ktolemy chuckles.

  “Fifteen years, can you imagine that, polisher? Fifteen years swimming in your own filth. Most of them drown themselves in it after a few weeks. In fact we just had one go under this morning.”

  “I—” I begin, then fall silent, stare at the floor, will myself not to cry.

  Ktolemy’s chuckles die out.

  “Lost for words?” he asks. “Good. Let’s just hope your diamonds will suffice. Now, on your knees.”

  I drop to my knees, sweating again, the terror fresh in my heart. Soon I hear the drum beating and the steady footfall of the Pharaoh, and wonder that every step leads him past the men he has locked up in the metal bellies of cows, to rot and fester to death on whatever whim he deems.

  I stare at the ground immediately between my knees as his feet approach me. I cannot help but notice how pale they are against the dark marble floor.

  “You have brought me diamonds?”

  His voice is soft as before, but carries all the weight of a god.

  “Yes, great lord of the sun,” I stammer, and proffer the satin bag. He makes no move to take it, so I open it, decant the crystals into my open palm, careful not to look at any point but my own hands.

  A long moment stretches out as he examines them.

  “Your cuts are excellent as always, jeweler,” says the Pharaoh. “But the brooch is of a different type. From where did these stones come?”

  “Ibex, great lord of the sun,” I answer.

  “Ibex,” muses the Sun King. He picks up the brooch, turns it over in his hands. “And are such diamonds to be found in all the ibex that roam my lands?”

  “I don’t believe so, great lord. I found them only within those that eat a certain breed of wild safram.”

  “Safram, the pestilence weed?”

  “Yes, great lord.”

  “Interesting,” he says. “It brought more than the cure, then. And the crocodiles?”

  “The crocodiles eat the ibex, great lord. Whatever ingredient causes the crystals to form surely passes from the ibex to them.”

  A pregnant moment stretches out.

  “And where is this safram to be found?”

  Again, as before at the arena, I realize there is no hope of keeping this information secret. The eye of Ra sees all. I imagine myself pausing a moment too long, speaking a moment too soon, and finding myself cast into one of the bulls. In its bronze cauldron I would bake by day, stew in filth by night, and all along know that my life was nothing, was a blade of grass to be cut, a diamond to be harvested.

  So I tell him everything, as carefully and respectfully as I can. He questions me further, and I tell him every detail I think will save me, every inflated estimate of what I can gather, what I can cut, what I can produce. The fear of the bulls does not lift from my mind throughout, so intense that I can scarce remember the numbers I spoke, the promises that I made.

  At the last, the Pharaoh lays a heavy leather bag in my hand, still outstretched.

  “Ten thousand seinu,” he says. I want to gawk at it, but fear of the bulls keeps me in check, staring down at the ground. It is a larger sum than I have ever seen before. “Conditional upon you furnishing me with one thousand like diamonds, by the turn of the year.”

  I feel the bull closing in around me. At Bes’s farm there are perhaps ten more beasts, most of those haggard old ibex or stripling crocodiles years from their full growth. What he asks is impossible.

  But I cannot say that. I have been given ten thousand seinu, enough to buy a palace of my own, enough to outfit a fleet of trading vessels. For me there will surely be no bull. For me it will be something far, far worse.

  I nod, say “yes great lord of the sun.” Soon after, the drum beats, and his golden feet recede.

  Ktolemy chuckles again.

  “You really are an idiot, polisher,” he says. “He would have settled for a hundred.” Then he too leaves me alone, on my knees, shaking at what I have wrought.

  In the quiet that follows I imagine Allory standing before me, stroking my forehead, just as she did even as she was dying with the pestilence. Though I ran all quarters of the city for days, I could not gather the seinu to buy one stalk of safram. Now I have ten thousand seinu in my hands and could save her a hundred times over, but what are they worth now she is gone? A thousand crystals of bone, and a sure death sentence on my head.

  I allow myself to wallow a moment longer, lost in fear of the bulls. Then I get to my feet. A moment is enough.

  * * *

  I do not tarry. I barge the Nile at once to Bes’s land, where he rushes down the wooden jetty to meet me, as though he has expected this moment. He drops to his k
nees, lays his forehead on the wood as though I am the Sun King himself. I want to smack him to his feet, drive the fear out of him, but realize it will only drive it further in.

  “The weed,” I tell him, as his big black head touches the jetty beneath me. “I want the safram weed seeded and sown up and down the banks of the Nile for a thousand kha in each direction. You will buy or lease the land from the current owners, and upon it will be grazed ibex, cattle, oxen, and bulls, river horses, with crocodiles in the river shallows.”

  He looks up at me without thinking, then immediately back down again. “Yes, lord,” he whispers, though I hear in his voice the uncertainty.

  I drop a bag of five thousand seinu before his face.

  “Here is your seal from the Pharaoh,” I say, and hold out a sheet of finely pressed and inked papyrus. “Take it, man.”

  He reaches up a hand, not daring to look me in the face, even as I had when handing the diamonds to the Pharaoh. I have no time for it, so I close his fingers around the note.

  “Pay for what you must, take what you can, but stock those lands with animals, and graze them solely upon the safram. Am I clear?”

  He nods frantically.

  “Only upon the safram, and at least one thousand beasts.”

  Then I am walking back to my barge. I cannot stay here, just as I could not stay by Allory’s side as she burned and turned to pus with the pestilence. I had to sell in the streets of city, and now I must buy along the length of the delta.

  I send boys hired from Bes out ahead of me, to pole the Nile, to cross the desert tracks in search of safram oases, and from there bring back the intact shoulder bones of any creatures they find. I have told them all of the Pharaoh’s bulls, instilled in them the fear they need to keep their fingers from prying.

  They do not know what is inside them. I dare not share that secret.

  In that manner I ride the Nile for the remainder of the year, past Saqqara and overland to the lakes of Fayum, south to Akhetaten, to Abydos, past Kom Ombo, even into the lands of the Nubian, through his thatched straw river cities of Philae and Abu Simbel. I hire dark-skinned men and have them seek out the wild patches of safram, I have them skin the animals, then I send them away as I eagerly crack the clavicles.