Beneath Ceaseless Skies #75 Read online

  There are jewels in them all, and I add them to the sack in my grand barge. I travel now with an entourage, with room for all my barge-boys, with a retinue of soldiers clad in the Pharaoh’s raiment, armed with his spears.

  None meet my eye. I am become a manifestation of the Sun King, spending seinu at every safram patch, bringing force to the quiet lives of these people, gathering their riches from a place they cannot know they reside; in the clavicle, closest to the heart.

  But there are not enough. By Abu Simbel I have provened a scarce hundred diamonds, all of varying sizes and shades, some culled from water buffalo, some from ibex, some from desert rams, some from camels. They glister in their leather like a bag of suns, but it is not near enough. As the year reaches its zenith and Ra blazes down upon the Nile, I must turn back and begin the journey back to Memphis, and hope Bes has prepared 900 animals raised on the pestilence weed.

  * * *

  He has. The banks of the Nile teem with safram and animals raised upon it. In my absence he has clad himself in gold, though still he abases at my feet.

  I begin the slaughter selectively, sending my men on barges up and down the river to seek out the oldest animals, those who have eaten the safram longest. I make my camp on Bes’s land, and day by day as the animals are brought in, I have them slaughtered, skinned, and I bury my hands in their meat to crack their bones and find the diamonds. At times I think the men might have seen my doings, might have guessed what it is I seek, but I hardly care. They know of the bulls. They would not dare defy my will.

  In most I find nothing. In some there are diamonds that are mere grains, seedlings only, which I gather but know I cannot count towards the thousand the Pharaoh demanded.

  By night I dream of fever and bulls, of Allory trapped within the bronze, crying for my help, but I cannot reach her. I dream I am a legless man endlessly climbing a stalk of safram, never reaching the tip, only killing things and cracking open their bones as I rise.

  My final six months elapse too quickly. The boys bring fewer animals to me, and each has nothing but the seeds of diamonds within them. For all the wealth of seinu, for all the safram spreading over the banks, I cannot buy another day. Just as with Allory, who died hot and stinking beneath my hands, what I have is not enough.

  I dream of her last moments again and again, all of it blurring with the bulls and the men in the arena. I wake each morning and feel her loss as keenly as ever, as though if only I could somehow gather the jewels, she would be spared. Again I am frantically racing through the streets of Memphis, begging any I can find for a seinu, a dreben, every little piece only adding a grain to the mountain I need for one stalk of safram, for enough to save my sister.

  It is impossible. It cannot be done.

  Then on the last day, the night before I must barge back to the city and face the Pharaoh and my fate, a wild answer comes to me in a dream. It is sickening, but I am sick. It is awful but I have become awful, flushed with fever, my skin ever-red with blood.

  With the dawn still twinkling over the horizon, I go to Bes’s room. It is larger than I remember, and he lays abed with two fair-skinned maidens, skirted round with ermine. My suffering has been good for him. He has grown fat off my anguish. I allow this to infuriate me, and I pull the women from the bed.

  The first shrieks, then she sees it is me, sees the dagger in my hand, and flees from the room.

  I climb atop the bed. Bes’s huge frame fills the cot before me, his black skin like that of a crocodile.

  “Lord?” comes his voice. He has seen my dagger. He has looked into my eyes. I allow that to anger me further.

  “Quiet Bes,” I tell him. “It will all be over soon.”

  He buries his face in the pillow. I pull up his shirt, see a black map of agony written across his back; scars and lacerations that criss-cross each other. I allow it to anger me further; he is disobedient. He has looked in my eyes. He has been plotting my downfall all along.

  At last, the sickest justification of them all, I must save my sister. The dreams have driven me mad with it. She is waiting at the Pharaoh’s palace for me, trapped in a bull, suffering until I bring the safram that will save her. Will I not save her? Will I not do everything I must?

  “Shh,” I whisper, feel the great man trembling beneath me like a crocodile. I never killed one of them, not once.

  I drop the blade into his back. He screams into the pillow. Blood wells up all around, but I am familiar with this. I cut deeper, slice through living muscle and fat, and peel back the layer of skin over his shoulder. His body rocks, but wisely he does not seek to throw me off. He too knows what the bulls mean.

  I lift my bone shears and disconnect his left clavicle at the articular process, snap it at the foramen. He is screaming but I do not hear it. The smooth shank of bone sucks out of the trembling meat of his back, and I hold it up to the gathering dawn light.

  There, buried in the center, is a diamond larger than any I found from a crocodile, blazing a deep and furious red at its heart. Bes has eaten the ibex and the crocodile for years. Of course he has harbored the largest diamond of them all.

  I cannot hear his screams, barely notice the blood soaking everything, as I stare into the entrancing red of the jewel. It is surely over one hundred carats. It will cut to a paragon, the most perfect diamond imaginable.

  As I walk from the room and leave him to die behind me, I only think of Allory, and how at last I can save her.

  * * *

  Riding my barge up the Nile to Memphis, the illusions fade away like water evaporating from a bucket of brine, leaving only the hard and clear crystals of salt remaining. There is no Allory trapped in a bull, waiting for me to come. That was just a wish, something childish from my past. I am the crystals of salt now, hard, unyielding, unfeeling.

  I close my eyes and remember how Bes always ate more than the others of his share, how he always smirked when I came into his presence, how he never fully bowed at my feet. Of course he was hiding his diamond from me. He was growing it for himself, to take my place at the Pharaoh’s side. All along he has been stealing from me. He came to kill me, came to my own rooms with a knife to crack me open and take out the diamond inside.

  Why else would I have done as I had done? Allory died years ago. I hold the rough diamond before me, still clotted with his blood. I lift it up to the dawn, and I watch as it burns hot as a second sun in the sky.

  * * *

  There is enough time to heat, facet, and plane the diamond to a paragon. It is the most stunning thing I have ever seen; an immense bead of burning blood, fire captured in glass, shedding its own light from within. Now I realize that Bes was glad to give it to me. Now he bent knee and offered it to me. He loved me, as a servant loves his master.

  I drop to my knees and wait for the Pharaoh.

  Ktolemy is watching me curiously. There is no one thousand diamonds in my hand, only one, wrapped in satin.

  The Sun King comes before me. He asks after his thousand, and instead of answering, I lift up the bag, decant the bloody paragon into my palm.

  His breath stops. Moments pass.

  “Where did you find this?” he asks at last.

  “In the body of a living Nubian,” I answer. “A man named Bes, who gave his life that you might know the beauty in his heart.”

  The Pharaoh lifts the jewel from my hand.

  “The diamond of a man,” he breathes.

  “The heart of a man,” I reply, daring to correct the Sun King himself. I no longer care if my tone lacks deference. I am not for the bulls, I know this now. The Pharaoh must surely realize it too.

  “As you say,” he whispers. His golden-sandaled feet carry him away. I am left with Ktolemy.

  “Not bad, polisher,” he admits.

  * * *

  I return to Bes’ land weighed down with orders from the gentry, my barge stocked with the Pharaoh’s men. My men.

  We sweep across the spawning fields, gathering the workers at their fields. T
hey are dull and sullen-eyed. They allow themselves to be herded into position, their eyes cast down, kneeling amongst the safram. They know the power of the Sun King. They know my power. They have all seen the corpse of their Bes by now, spread-eagled and bloody in his bed. I made no show to hide what I had taken from him. They know it could be infinitely worse.

  The Abindian boy meets my eye, from his knees. This does not appear unseemly to me. He once poled me to this place. He must know his role in this was essential.

  “No suffering,” he says. It is not a question, neither a command, just a statement. I nod. He has the right to name this. There is no need for pain.

  My men line up behind them. Bes’ workers kneel quietly. They are dignified; befitting men, women and children who are to give their lives for the greater glory of their God. This is their honor.

  I raise my hand, let it fall, and fifteen copper spears move as though my shadow.

  I walk amongst the dead with my shears, furrowing their flesh as though it is earth, mining within their shoulders for diamonds, all done with the Sun King’s grace.

  I pay my men in seedling diamonds from animals. They take them gladly, eagerly, their eyes glowing. They set to the bodies by my side, flaying the skin back that I might gain access to the bone.

  I look out over them all, the living stripping the dead, and allow the thought to cross my mind, to surpass the memory of the sister I once failed to save. It is not vain to rise with the sun. I will not only be rich, I will shine with the strength of the Pharaoh himself.

  * * *

  Within ten years my estates range almost the length of the fertile Nile, every inch of land bought with bone diamonds, every inch sown with wild safram grass. On my estates roam crocodile and ibex, leopards and river-horses, elephants, cows, eagles, goats, camels, and on, all of them fed upon safram or upon creatures that have fed upon safram, and within them all growing like pearls in oysters, are diamonds.

  From an elephant the jewel is immense, glowing with a dim grey blaze. From leopards and tigers the jewel burns green. From eagles and kites it is small, colored a wispy pink.

  From within men it is red like fire, without fail.

  The Pharaoh summons me to his palace, and I go. Carried on my palanquin through the streets, I see my diamonds gracing the necks and fingers of the populace, and I feel pride. It is an industry I have kept well. At my estates, men slay the beasts, hand them to others who transport them to butcheries in the city. The meats are prepared and sold; my estates now feed the city. The bones are crushed by medicians, others carved by jewelers, as I once was.

  The clavicles are delivered to a single room of old blind men, who powder them seeking what they believe to be chunks of coal. The rough diamonds are collected daily and brought to my cutting factory, where a hundred-strong team of bruters, grinders, faceters, and polishers prepare them for their settings.

  In the early years some of them stole from me. They were as unreliable and greedy as Bes, despite my generosity in rewards. I might have forgiven them, but they were brazen. They cast my diamonds into mounts that belied the secret of their origin; grey diamonds set into the carved tusk of elephants, pink diamonds inlaid about torcs of stiffened alligator hide.

  I cast a hundred bronze bulls and filled them with those men. I saved none of them. The diamonds cut years later from their desiccated flesh burned a cold red, as bright as their greed.

  Now I watch the people flowing by my palanquin borne on the back of ten slaves. They are all my farm. They all of them eat the safram, the weed that once was so rare, in every bite they take. It is everywhere, in everything, and the diamonds bloom in us all.

  I walk the long colonnade of bulls with Ktolemy two steps behind, his eyes downcast. Now I am the master. The bulls please me, to know that the order of things is respected.

  The Pharaoh greets me with an embrace. For a moment I am permitted to look into his eyes.

  “I have a treat for you, my friend,” he says in that soft voice. He takes me by the elbow and leads me to his quarters.

  Here there are women everywhere, and eunuchs and dwarves, painted gold, painted in blood, tables laid out for feasts, whole animals roasted and stuffed with other animals, the sweet sound of birds trilling in the cages overhead.

  He leads me through to a dark room, the walls hot with red velvet. There are two children, naked from the waist up, lying on their chests, barely breathing.

  “They are the first,” says the Pharaoh. “Twins. I thought you ought be the one.”

  I bow my head at the immensity of this honor. “Please, great lord of the sun, you honor me too much. I cannot.”

  He smiles. His face is so radiant. He is indeed the sun.

  “Very well, as you wish it,” he says. I hand him the bone shears, and he bends over beside the girl. I crane to watch. Her breathing is slow and even. He splits open her back with scarcely a movement from her, as though peeling a passion-fruit. Blood rolls from her like sap.

  He reaches inside, slurrying his coppered hand in the meat of her back, until he comes out with the left clavicle of the first child to have eaten nothing but safram since birth.

  The diamond has grown through the thin bone. It is like a blazing coal in that dim room. It lights the Pharaoh’s delighted face red. He hands me the bone shears, steps back.

  I kneel by the boy. For a moment I listen to his soft breathing. His eyes flicker, and he sees me. I look down on him with affection. I love him, as I loved Bes, as Bes loved me.

  “Please,” he murmurs, as I stroke his feverish cheek. “Please, don’t hurt my sister.”

  The words make me love him more. I close his eyes gently. I take the bone shears and snip through him as though a bundle of safram. He sighs, and the blood rolls out of him. The stone is a twin to his sister’s.

  The Pharaoh rolls my fingers around it, after I proffer it to him.

  “It is yours,” he tells me. “My gift. It is yours.”

  I stare enraptured into its burning depths, overcome by the heights to which I have risen.

  * * *

  His words crystallize in the night. I wake in my cavernous bedchamber, surrounded by my women, my attendant slaves, all softly sighing, spent with our celebrations. Something is missing, but I do not know what it is.

  I climb to the fine dome of my palace, lean against the marble balustrade and look out over the city of Memphis. The stone from the boy, his heart, is in my hand. It burns hot in my palm, like a reminder. His words echo back to me, but I cannot understand why they might matter.

  His devotion touches me. Then I remember that it was not meant for me, or the Pharaoh. It was for his sister. That puzzles me, for she was already dead.

  I hold the stone up beside the sphere of the moon. Of the two, his heart shines the brightest, as though a bloody sun risen at night over the palaces of Memphis.

  Then I begin to remember Allory.

  The diamond beats in my palm like her fading heart.

  * * *

  I am not a weak man any longer. I do not beg or cry. I am not afraid.

  I walk into the Pharaoh’s presence, meet his eyes, and bury the blade in his heart. It is hafted with the boy’s diamond. Ktolemy runs to me, but it is a simple matter to hurl blinding emery in his face. He falls back, screaming, his tulwar clattering at his feet.

  I chase him down easily, blade him with the same dagger I used to kill the Pharaoh.

  “Shh,” I tell him, watching their blood commingle. “It is a great honor.”

  “Polisher,” he hisses through gritted teeth, reminding me at last of who and what I am.

  My work with the vise and shears takes moments only. I am a practiced hand, now. I leave their bodies behind and walk back down the colonnade of bulls. At each I hammer the locking clasps away with a mallet. The stink rises up in the morning air, and the first few frail, filth-slicked arms lift out.

  “Go,” I tell them. “You are free.”

  I am not stopped. None know yet wha
t I have done.

  In the grand square I take to the orator’s stage, looking out over the market as it begins to bustle with morning hawkers and slaves from all the greatest houses of Memphis.

  “Here are your riches,” I call to them, and disgorge the first leather bag of diamonds into their midst. The stones sparkle in the air like rain after a drought, and I imagine each one an animal fleeing, running from the thing I have become.

  The people mass and clamor. The market fills, and I stand before them. They know me, the Pharaoh’s most trusted adviser, and here I am, slathered in blood.

  I watch them in silence, and soon they fall silent too, staring up at me as though I am the last legless slave to climb the arena’s safram pole. My silence spreads like water through them, over them, over the stalls they have trampled in their hunger for riches.

  I hold up the stone from the Pharaoh’s clavicle and feel the madness of ten years of shame and fear rising up off me like vapor, leaving only the last crystal remaining, the one over my heart.

  “The diamond of man,” I call to them, as the jewel burns red above me. “Cloven from the living bone of the Sun King himself.”

  They look up at me with faces grown fearful. They do not understand.

  “Do you truly not know the riches sown within you?” I call. “You know the source of the stones you wear. Can you be so blind to the greater treasures he sought to mine?”

  I see no recognition in their eyes. Perhaps they truly do not know, or will not admit it. . But no longer. They will find it in their Pharaoh. They will see it in me.

  I strip my bloody finery from my chest, toss it into the crowd. They gasp as I turn and show them the skin missing from my shoulder, flayed by a weeping slave that morning.

  I kneel, weak with loss of blood, but then Allory is beside me. She is holding her cool hand to my forehead.

  “I’m sorry,” I whisper to her. Tears pour down my cheeks, and she takes my chin, kisses me lightly on the eyes.