CHAPTER ONE

The 15^th day of June (the month of Sivan), 763 B.C.

Nineveh

The sun burned against Nineveh, melting crops and making livers boil. From her post on the left of the knife stall, Nirari lowered her lashes and risked a sideways glance at the man. She had participated in enough demonstrations to recognize the perfect volunteer when she saw him and her father had chosen well this morning.

Sales were always best if the volunteer was ignorant. Large and ignorant was the ideal. Not wanting to enlighten their guest, Nirari kept her distance. But what she could see of him looked promising, though the jostling crowds and his tendency to face every conceivable direction but hers hid most of his features.

However shy he might be, the man before her was built big. Nothing could hide that. He looked capable of strangling an antelope and was definitely eating well despite the famine. The crush of muscles around his shoulders and arms were weighed down by a solid pack of fat at his middle.

Using its broken wheel for a step, her father climbed onto an overturned chariot and spread his arms wide to the crowd that shuffled around the knife booth. But the man remained engrossed in his study of the merchandise. He picked up a hunting dagger the length of his forearm and tested the balance of the blade as her father skillfully painted the necessary mirage for Nineveh's morning shoppers.

“My blades are hand crafted, strong enough for the god Assur, yet with a beauty to delight even our goddess Ishtar.” Her father nodded respectfully at a large stone figure of the goddess nestled among the completed swords. Most of her face was covered by the decorated hilts, but her robust bosom was clearly visible.

Nirari sidled closer to the man, though she did not dare a peek at his face now that she stood so near. She carefully positioned herself where he was sure to jostle her as he replaced the dagger. It was important that the volunteer feel her small height and slight build. Leaning over the dilapidated chariot toward his audience, her father continued.

“And I'm willing to prove so before your very eyes. Choose the most powerful man at this booth and let him wield an ordinary blade. I shall choose my only daughter, fragile flower that she is.” He clapped his great fist to his chest and lifted closed eyes toward the heavens in mock petition to some god.

After a hushed pause his eyes snapped open, and he drew the crowd closer with whispered intensity. “But when I place within her hands one of these glorious blades, I swear by Adad's lightning, she will be victorious over your chosen behemoth.”

The crowd immediately sized up the man beside her, for his paunch in no way detracted from his height and power. As they gathered around him, he turned to replace the dagger and bashed Nirari in the shoulder. She fell back with a small thump onto the packed dirt street, the very carving of frail femininity. But instead of the pale look of shame and mutterings of “My poor girl,” he grinned down at her, his teeth yellow against the black pit of his mouth.

“Hello, Nirari.”

Nirari gasped and swallowed some kind of bug. In the midst of a fit of choking she hid her face in her hands. This could not be happening, she thought. The gods would not be so cruel. It was Anzillu; her father had unwittingly chosen Anzillu.

Anzillu, her one and only marriage prospect, was a man fully capable of using phrases like, “Marry me,” and, “I'll chop your nose off for that!” in the same breath. He was enormous of size and ego, sprouting all over with black, bristly hairs from his uneven eyebrows to his thick, curling toe nails.

Anzillu pulled out his own dagger, a much used monstrosity depicting a poorly carved bull's head on the pommel. Her father tossed her his best blade, his eyes heavy with apology. Instead of an arrogant soldier sure of easy victory, Nirari faced a furious ex-suitor, slighted and suspicious of her every twitch.

Anzillu lunged for her neck, the grin still looming on his face. But at sixteen Nirari was small and quick, like those little lizards that streak out of a hand just as it closes around it. Her skin was a smooth sun-baked brown, save for a raised oval scarring her right cheek. Black hair poked out from her head in twenty stubby braids, like so many burnt twigs. A strip of leather pulled the braids away from dark eyes. But her most charming feature was a bright, reckless smile that made her mother cringe and rush to hide their most fragile pottery.

Fortunately, fifteen years as her father's only hope for a son hadn't left her without skills. Nirari darted behind the wide sweep of Anzillu's arm. But the white knuckled grip on his dagger made it obvious that a blood-free conclusion to the “demonstration” was not likely to satisfy. She touched her scar and then kicked the back of his knee, tipping his balance as she dipped back under his dagger arm.

Anzillu clipped her shoulder with the tip of his blade just as she came to the edge of his reach. Slowly he began to force her back into the knife stall where her agility would be tempered by the close quarters.

“By the gods! What's wrong with your hair?” Anzillu blocked her path with his great bulk so close now she could smell the leeks and barley beer on his breath. His smile returned, deforming his face into a grinning moon of furrows and moles.

Nirari glared at the offending soldier. “You go one-on-one with a giant river bush and we'll see what your braids look like.”

“I've seen war captives with tidier braids. You'd better widen your ears and grab me up before some other skinny, scarred, mostly bald girl catches my eye.”

Just as his meaty fingers brushed her braids, Nirari raked her blade along his forearm opening a wet red line. He instinctively pulled the wound toward his body and she slipped past, putting him within the close walls of the knife stall. She paused to suck in her first full breath and noticed Hadden, her baby brother, sitting a foot behind Anzillu, cooing and flapping his arms at floating specks of light.

Before Nirari could move, Anzillu stepped back, pinning the babe's arm beneath his leather boot. Hadden screamed but the brute didn't seem to hear, his every sense focused on her. Nirari flew forward, a blur of brown wool and mismatched braids. Sensing that something at his back had caused her sudden panic, Anzillu snapped his head around, faster then wisdom dictated. As she passed him, Nirari reached out and snagged the base of Anzillu's thick neck. Using the momentum of his turn she slammed his forehead straight into the great bosom if Ishtar, goddess of love and mistress of war. The sick smack of stone and flesh hit her ears just before she snatched up Hadden. Anzillu swayed, his eyes bouncing like jerboas in their sockets before he toppled backwards into a display of ornamental daggers.

She held Hadden up for inspection, frowning over his tear-bright face and the purple rising across his arm. Nirari quickly swiped Hadden's tears with a corner of her shawl and pulled some twigs from his dark curls. Wonderful, the little monster was injured. Her mother was going to flay her alive!

She looked over the top of Hadden's head and caught her father's eye. He was a large, sweaty man with a hastily braided beard and a hug of fierce proportions. Nirari nodded her head toward the street they would take home and curled her fingers below her mouth like the fangs of some bloodthirsty beast. Her father nodded as he quickly sold ten blades to the clamoring crowd. He hardly even haggled at prices and soon the throng began to thin. They had to smooth this over at home as quickly as possible. Her mother was a …difficult woman.

Nirari turned to contemplate Anzillu's still form as her father dug through a basket of polishing cloths and found a shallow pot of ointment for her shoulder.

Truly this was an opportunity with irresistible possibilities. She glanced back toward her father. Hadden had crawled to him and he was struggling to keep the babe out of a glowing brazier while he spread some ointment onto a bandage. She still had time. Nirari darted to the back of the booth, chose a blade with a thin gleaming edge, and knelt by Anzillu settling his head in her lap. But as she moved the blade toward his face a strange twinge within caused her to pause. If she continued, Anzillu would never be content with an apology and the ceasing of all hostilities. After a humiliation of this magnitude only her blood on his blade would suffice. She slowly lowered the dagger, after all, who needed mortal enemies?

Just as she turned away, Hadden squirmed from her father's grasp and she saw the thick dark bruise on his arm in the full morning light. Before she looked down to see what her hands were doing, Nirari had snatched a fistful of the soldier's oily beard and was hacking off great chunks of it. She stopped and surveyed the destruction for a moment. The damage was irreparable.Oh well, she thought, this is Anzillu after all. He deserved every drop of humiliation he was capable of soaking up.

After a closer shave using the dagger's fine edge, Anzillu's encounter with Nirari was complete. Not only had he been bested by a useless female, without his beard every single human he encountered that day would assume he was a eunuch. It might even extend to part of tomorrow depending on how fast he could grow facial hair.

She grinned down at Anzillu's helpless bulk. The gods had gone out of their way to lay a golden opportunity in her lap. Who was she to deny them their pleasure? Her father wrapped the bandage around her shoulder and turned her toward the road. He had paled slightly and Nirari suddenly remembered that they were returning home to face her mother's inevitable wrath. She sighed. Better now than later.

Nirari's heart wandered back to the fight as they walked. What had thrilled her so much about besting Anzillu? She wondered. It probably didn't say much for her character that she'd been toe-tingling happy when the big man went down. He'd not even imagined she had the skill to beat him, again. Nirari smiled—she loved that moment when someone is revealed as more than everyone thought. In that instant she was more: stronger, brighter, faster, more valuable. To look into a person's eyes and see amazement sweep through. This isn't just a foolish, style-impaired girl with unsightly hair: she's more.

“Much more,” Nirari told her imagined doubter as they walked silently through the market, past booths of sickly grain manned by thin merchants with stooping shoulders.

Nineveh rose from the desert built up on the carcass of the ancient city below it, old homes, palaces and bones. Despite the city's fierce history, famine had stripped her down to sinew and claw, hide and sunken eyes; she was an old lioness, hungry and padding through a wasteland of rattling grasses.

But Nineveh's river side mocked the desert. Built flush against the Tigris River, it was draped with moist foliage. Crisp alabaster colossi stood guard, giant statues of bulls and lions topped by the stern bearded heads of ancient kings, and great white stairs marched down into the water. Even after nearly seven years of famine, the Tigris brought a blush of green to the city. Perhaps famine could make a lion gaunt and mean, but as long as life remained it would always be a lion. Made to kill, feast and rule.

After leaving the market it was only a short walk to Nirari's street. Their house had thick walls of sun-dried brick white washed against the heat, and a single door painted red to ward off evil spirits.

Nirari's mother, stiff and veiled, snatched Hadden from Nirari's arms the moment they entered the courtyard. Her mother's hands went instantly to the deep bruise on Hadden's arm and her face paled with anger.

“I know your days saw favor before Hadden was born, but I never dreamed your fall in status would drive you to kill an innocent babe.”

“I saved him. Anzillu was at the stall and, well he did sort of step on Hadden, but I managed to give him a massive lump for his trouble…”

Her mother smiled slightly and raised one perfect brow. “Nonetheless, I don't want you watching him this afternoon. He's going back to the knife stall with your father. He will be much safer with only deadly weapons and white-hot forging fires to avoid.”

Nirari rolled her lower lip between her teeth and fiddled with her lopsided shawl. Her father stepped closer and his words rumbled through his beard like the soothing growl of a mother bear.

“Come Princess, I've just finished a dagger that is so perfectly balanced, I swear by Ishtar, a beggar boy could pick it up and send whole armies fleeing for their lives.” He wrapped his great arm around her, guiding Nirari past her mother's stony glare to the back of the house.

Nonetheless, her sharp words followed their flight. “By the gods, Mannuki, you have turned that girl into a Nahiru with your coddling ways. All the lazy creature can do is fight and ride like a soldier. She is sure to go unmarried and shame us both.”

Nirari quickened her pace, but her mother's voice carried across the courtyard easily. “And Nirari, that basket of blue wool is finished. Take it to the palace before we're all impaled. How you can place brawling above the safety of your own flesh and blood is beyond me.”

Nirari praised her father's new blade, gave Hadden a kiss, her mother a glare, and slipped back into the street. She walked slowly lest she muss the carefully folded fabric in her basket. Despite her lack of warmth, Nirari's mother was a fine weaver and in much demand at the palace.

Nirari walked down streets of hard packed earth and past shaded homes with walls up to a kanu thick to hold back the heat. She grumbled to herself for she made painfully slow progress through the sluggish crowds. If only she had a horse these trips would take half the time. Of course she had Whisper, but any rides on the gray mare were risky at best, though utter foolishness might be a more accurate description.

The mare belonged to the royal family. Nirari wasn't actually allowed in the royal stables, but luckily the stable master owned her best friend Joram. Not only could she, a girl, ride, she had limited access to the finest mounts in the empire.

Her father had shattered tradition and taught her to hunt and use a knife. But it was Joram who taught her to ride. And eventually, despite several years spent protesting, he'd even agreed to be her opponent when her father insisted on teaching her to fight like any Assyrian boy. Joram, though admittedly grouchy, was muscular, lithe, and an excellent fighter. He was also the best friend a girl could conjure up, even if she'd had the help of the gods.

Being someone with so many noble or, according to Nirari, tediously righteous characteristics, Joram endured Nirari's many foolish endeavors remarkably well. Though he did groan and beseech his god whenever one of her infamous ideas came dancing through her heart. However, no one could be entirely carved to perfection.

The smell of the market tickled her nose: fresh fish laid out for sale, the crush of unwashed bodies bumping toward the grain booths, road dust rising in small puffs around each sandaled foot, and old palm fronds baking in the heat. Bright spots of sunlight skittered across her face, and a few slaps with the loose end of her shawl kept most of the flies at bay.

Even after the whole Anzillu thing, life remained good, and so as long as her father kept her mother at bay it would surely remain so. Indeed the gods must be smiling down upon her.

Nirari slid through the maze of sticky bodies that packed the streets of Nineveh. The shuffling crowd created a fog of dust that drifted around her face and coated her damp tunic with grime. Nirari stopped to brush the gritty moisture from her forehead with the back of her hand. That was when she noticed a small dark smudge blackening the edge of the sun.

The beads of sweat felt foreign on her suddenly cold skin. Were starvation, suffering, and dying fields so insufficient that the gods felt the need to attack the very heavens? What in the empire had Nineveh done to receive such wrath? Now don't panic, she thought, maybe it's just a huge bird.

Nirari felt a slight wobble creeping from her ankles up her legs to her knees. She knelt by the temple of Ishtar and stared up at the sky, steadying herself with a hand on the hot road. But the smudge soon spread as the moon drew the sun into her dark embrace. It was the frightful shamash akallu, or bending of the sun --one of the most dire celestial signs known to man. A message from the gods, a message of doom against Assyria and her king.

The murmur of nervous voices grew to a low rumble and then a panicked roar, as more and more people stopped to stare upward.

A priest, robed in linen and smelling sharp of juniper, appeared beside one of the alabaster cherubim or colossi that guarded the temple's entrance. The colossi were huge stone lions with wings and the heads of men and stood at almost three times Nirari's height. But despite these massive stone protectors, the priest trembled.

“Observe the sign in the heavens!” the priest screamed. “The moon has swallowed the sun, turning light into darkness. Nineveh is under the fiery gaze of heaven and has been found wanting. A god will come against the king and calamity will fall like rain upon our land. Humble yourselves before the gods if you place value upon your living selves.”

A cold touch traced up Nirari's neck and across her scalp, like the icy finger of a long dead spirit. But even as terror spread through her body, her heart was choosing the fastest route to the knife stall. She had to get to Hadden.

Nirari scanned the crowd. Women began to wail and throw dust in the air while the men cursed and drew their blades against the sky. Nirari jumped off the steps and ran hard toward the market. Nineveh's dazed citizens were just seconds from a mass panic that would make the famine seem like a blessing to those caught in their path. “Hadden is not going to be one of them,” she whispered to herself.

A noise, like the crash of the surf, rushed toward her. Nirari ducked down a side street and into the market, but she was too slow.

The panicked crowd roared up behind her like a wave, flattening the brittle market stalls. Their senseless flight crushed anything foolish enough to remain in the open. The broken bodies of the small and slow were left in their wake, like flotsam strewn upon the shore. Nirari slammed through a stack of baskets and into the next street, but still a wall of living souls boiled down on top of her.

She sucked in a breath and turned, but hundreds of hands clawed her under. Legs pounded down from above. Dust and tears filled her throat. Nirari grabbed an ornamented belt as the owner trampled over her. In a mad scramble she climbed up his back, leaped off his shoulders and hit the roofs running.

When she reached the square mud brick building that leaned over her father's knife stall, Nirari stopped. The mass of people in the street tumbled and flowed over what had been the market. The knife booth where her father worked was scattered like the rest of the wreckage, beneath a thousand tramping feet. If Hadden had been there when the crowd swept through…Nirari closed her eyes and strangled the thought.

He was fine. He had to be.

A bitter memory pressed to the surface of her heart. She saw her mother again, on the day of her failure. Echoes from that cursed event slid through her, piercing her liver. Hate had hung in the air, and her mother's slim shoulders shook with rage as she screamed, “You wicked, jealous little beast! I should have drowned you at birth, your soul is crooked as any clubbed leg.”

It had been her mother's first day back at the weavers. Plans for Nirari's betrothal had been canceled (thank the gods) so that she could care for her tiny brother. Despite her talent with a blade, Nirari had failed to inherit any of her mother's domestic prowess and was appropriately terrified. Nonetheless she took Hadden to the weaver's to nurse at her mother's breast, sang him to sleep, and changed his soiled wrappings with some success.

All was going as it should until he vomited in her face, soaking her clothes and hair. Oh she hadn't cursed him like her mother thought, but she'd shouted, plopped him down in his basket, and stormed outside.

Nirari let him scream while she paced the street outside their house, aiming a kick at a foolish chicken that ventured too close. She hadn't let him cry long, only a minute, but it didn't matter. When she came back in, he'd been sick in his bed. When she held him close, singing and pacing the floor, he vomited once more. And by the time her mother returned, the house stank of disease, of death, and nothing she could say would exonerate her.

True, she spent those sleepless nights wiping the filth from his face and bathing his shaking body. But her mother didn't care, didn't believe her, didn't trust her. When Hadden's fever finally cooled and he began to eat, her mother had laughed saying even the gods didn't think much of Nirari, for they had failed to uphold her curse.

Nirari took a deep breath and closed her eyes. She wouldn't look at the street again. Hadden wasn't there, couldn't be there among the splinters and crushed fruit. She jumped to the next roof. Her house was only one street over. If her father had been alert they could have made it. She would find Hadden, and he would be fat and happy and annoyingly alive in every way. He absolutely had to be.

Hours later Nirari trudged down the powdery street still in search of her brother. The sun's hot hand pushed on her robe, gluing it against her back. It shone down cheerful and calm from the heavens, a pleasant yellow in an over-blue sky, as though no signs of doom had ever marred its brightness. Yet everything else was scarred.

Even so, the people of Nineveh slowly began to come out into the open. They stared up at the sun, squared drooping shoulders, and began clearing the wreckage from around their homes and shops. Perhaps their faces were a bit pale, but the terror was gone. This was Assyria by the gods. They were the rulers of the world, hunters and warriors and kings.

Nirari was staring at a dark patch where the road had soaked up blood when her forehead smacked into a well-muscled chest.

“Looking for something?”

Nirari glanced up to see a tall, bronzed boy about eighteen years old. His jaw length hair lay unbraided and smooth—except for the thick slave braid hanging down his back—and his beard was close-cropped, instead of plaited like an Assyrian's. A small smile touched her face. It was Joram.

In his arms a grime-covered infant blinked sagging eyes and gave a sleepy squeak.

At seeing Hadden the tears almost came; they pricked at the backs of her eyes, a shower of weakness hidden deep in the dark of her liver. Instead, Nirari stood on her tiptoes and snatched him from Joram's arms. With a ragged sigh Hadden folded his warm body against her chest, his lashes brushing her pulse.

A small part of Nirari dwelt upon the fact that if she had been lost in some massive panic her mother would have only made a cursory search, though her father would have been more thorough. Yet she also fought a strange urge to press her cheek against her brother's hair and submit to a storm of shameless weeping. She was accustomed to feeding him, bathing him, giving him a playful kiss on the nose. But the idea of such an emotional display was disturbing.

Nirari finally decided that a calm soothing reaction would be best for all parties involved and she patted his back with the slow steady rhythm that always sent him deep into sleep. “Never again Lion Cub,” she whispered. “I won't let you get lost, or hurt, or sick, or so incredibly dirty ever again. I will not fail at the only task I am valued for.” Well that was still alarmingly tender, she thought. At least he was asleep for it.

“Thank you,” Nirari glanced at the heavens acknowledging the gods. “But I'll take it from here,” she told any prying deities.

As they walked back, Nirari gave Hadden a little kiss every other step, before he woke up to witness her brief lapse. A kiss for Hadden's left cheek, a kiss for his right eyelid, a kiss for his chin, a kiss for his chubby neck…

“Don't you think he's gotten enough kisses? There are other, cleaner people who haven't had any kisses at all.”

Nirari stopped and surveyed the empty street, then turned a lofty eye to Joram. “I don't see anyone cleaner than Hadden, although that corpse we saw two streets over looked quite a bit cleaner than you.”

“I may look dirty, but its just dust.”

“I don't care about your dust.” She gave Hadden's ear a kiss.

“Don't you care where I found him?”

“Yes,” Nirari spun toward Joram. “How did you find him? Was he crying? Was he hurt?”

“No.” Joram took a step back from her onslaught and laughed. “Somehow he ended up at the royal stables. I don't suppose you've ever risked your mother's ferocity and snuck your brother into the stables?”

Nirari dug a design into the street with her toe, ignoring his bright teeth and laughing eyes.

“Anyway, he was curled up sleeping like a little cub, his fist in his mouth. He'd been chewing on something in his sleep.”

“He does that all the time, likes to mouth stuff while he's crying. He may look silly but at least it helps stifle the noise.” Nirari smiled and kissed his little fist.

“It was really cute. But I uncurled his fingers to see what he had, and he didn't want to give it up. He woke up and screamed at me. He even turned a little purple.”

“How mean can you get, taking—” She kissed his pouty bottom lip.

“Taking manure from a babe?”

“What?” Nirari stopped mid kiss.

“Yeah, I found him sleeping in the manure pile behind the stallion barn. When I finally got his fingers open I found a big chunk in his hand. He'd been sucking on it while he slept.”

Nirari glared at Joram and gave Hadden a cautious sniff. She wrinkled her nose and started spitting on the ground and wiping her mouth on her dusty robe. “You could have told me.”

“I just did.”

They continued in silence for a time, Nirari trying not to see the mangled remains of the market and Joram quietly letting his eyes roam the street. Finally Nirari broke the quiet.

“What horrors have your inexplicable god rained down upon your life this week?”

Joram glanced down at her and laughed. “Must there be horrors this week? Perhaps my days have been a soothing balm to body and liver alike and I've done nothing but nibble dates and sip beer from a golden straw?”

“Sure, Joram.” Nirari twirled Hadden's curls around her finger tidying him up for her mother. “But I recommend just going ahead and revealing your god's newest plague before I go desert-crazed from the wait and come after you with a water jug.”

“Pretty brash Nirari, last time you didn't walk away unscathed. Who knows which decaying structure will fall on you this time?”

Nirari had been five when she'd gotten her scar. And in spite of his loudly sworn vows of indifference to her plight, Joram had spent a furious hour digging her out from under a fallen heap of glazed brick. Nirari closed her eyes and touched her face where the scar dug a white circle in her cheek. The price he'd paid, staying to go after her. She took a deep breath, blowing out the guilt, and then looked up, giving him her brightest smile.

“Who knew my greatest enemy was destined to be some king's half crumbled stone nose?” Joram smiled back but she noticed that the memory had shadowed his eyes.

He pulled on his slave braid and looked off toward the river. “But once again my divine punishment has a disturbing connection to you.” Nirari rolled her eyes and rested her cheek against the top of Hadden's head.

“Last week you were on such a rampage about how the colts needed to run free, feel the wind in their ears. I'm a fool, but it seemed like wide-eared advice.”

“You let them run, that's wonderful.”

“Yeah, they ran free as the wind straight into the king's garden. They were trompling flowers, biting the gardeners, and eating grapes like mad beasts. Those vines are imported too. Then I saw the garden decorations and nearly vomited on the prince's favorite colt.”

“What decorations?

“You see, just off from where the king and queen eat, there is a cluster of palms and then a lone pine. Well, hanging in the pine was some guy's head!

“By their table?”

“Yeah, Assyrians have got to be the nastiest people alive.”

“We are not. Hebrews are worse. And lots of kings keep old heads in the garden.”

“Yeah, maybe lots of Assyrian kings.”

“I'm afraid that it is obvious to everyone but yourself that the gods are punishing you.”

“Honestly Nirari, no amount of singed animal fur or chanting is going to make God safe and malleable. If horrors are raining down it's not because I failed to put food out for my dead relatives or to pay homage to the stars.”

“What kind of a wimpy god is that?” Nirari smiled up into his brown eyes and watched a scowl form. She couldn't help but smile at Joram. He was so lovably grumpy sometimes. “I want a just god, a sensible god, I want to know exactly what to expect from him.”

“Sometimes He simply…scorns justice, because He loves.”

Nirari opened her mouth to explain the absolute necessity of justice as a divine personality trait, but Joram had stopped in front of her house.

Forgetting the argument, Nirari marched toward her parents holding Hadden high, a smile of conquest shining on her face.

Her father ran toward them, his beard had escaped its plates and fell on his chest in wild curls. Then Nirari's mother came swooping down like a grandmother crow kissing, sobbing, and scolding all together and at once.

Nirari was babbling explanations, her father was laughing and tickling the back of Hadden's knees, and her mother's scowl had begun to return when a strange crackling quiet drifted toward them and each one turned slowly in unison to stare down the narrow road.

The silence drifted with the wind for a moment before they heard the hard smack of hooves and the rolling of chariot wheels. Dust shifted far down the street and then the royal procession burst through a swirling cloud of grit. Tassels swayed against the horses' breasts while gold and ivory gleamed on their bridals. Then the heavy infantry came bearing lances. Like great silver fish stepping from the Tigris, their scale armor flashed against the setting sun.

Fear-numb faces poked out of every house to stare at the spectacle. The people had just finished sorting through the dead. Their limbs were still weak from running the streets and their eyes gritty with weeping.

Joram leaned close and whispered in her ear, “I've got to go. All these horses are going to come back to the stables caked in road grime and snorting for hay in their mangers.” He squeezed her shoulder and jogged back the way they had come.

Soon a quiet crowd was piled up along Nirari's street. The people bowed their heads and held trembling hands behind their backs. Why had the king come here? Assur-dan III had only recently returned with the army, their street would have little to concern him.

Two tall beardless men walked toward them. One on the left of the road and one on the right, they examined each face before moving on. By their smooth, hairless skin Nirari knew that they were eunuchs, most likely the king's chief eunuchs, who often accompanied him on royal occasions and stood on either side of him in the throne room.

Then a spearman flanked by two warriors with bows and maces appeared. Stiff and tall, they marched directly in front of the royal chariot.

The king's driver held two glistening stallions at a slow walk. Assur-dan III stood stern and tall in the royal chariot. On his royal robes, lions and men fought and died in elaborately embroidered scenes. Maybe this is a favorable sign, Nirari thought. If his heart is turned to hunting then it shouldn't be dwelling on the foolishness of blade smith's daughters, disappearing royal mares, or furious palace guards with excess nasal hair and recent head injuries.

One of the eunuchs stopped and scowled at a stone cutter who had meaty shoulders and a grim mouth. The other eunuch murmured something negative and they continued down the street. Then they both scrutinized a sweat stained carpenter, even going as far as dragging him before the royal chariot. But the king dismissed their choice with a frown.

Finally the procession pulled abreast of Nirari. The eunuchs shoved her mother aside and gestured toward her father in a confusion of whispers. “Look at the girl and the babe …the ancient one spoke of a firstborn girl …king's demand, and I'll not be impaled …his only heir …” The king waved a hand and everything stilled. Like a lion approaching his kill, their monarch stepped down from his chariot, brushed past Nirari in a swirl of rich purple wool and stood before her father.

Nirari lowered her head to show respect. The Assyrian monarch had absolute power over the empire and all his subjects. He could demand that someone be mutilated, or impaled. And whether the command was reasonable or not, spoken in the heat of anger or the deep of sleep, it would be obeyed.

A slave with an ivory handled fly whisk followed the king, lest a foolish insect approach Assyria's shepherd. Their ruler's eyes met her father's, and for a long moment they were men of stone, pupils carved to stare in silence at one another.

Assur-dan III turned to the eunuch on his right, “Seize him, Ildisi never errs.” The king made a small gesture toward the soldiers.

He turned away then. The scent of cedar drifted from his robe and the gold on his head and hands gleamed under the last few rays of evening sun. As he stepped into his chariot the king paused, for Nirari's mother had stepped up beside her father with Hadden snuggled in her arms. Sorrow touched the king's eyes for a moment and Nirari saw him swallow. Then coldness seized his features and he turned away. With a slight nod to his driver the royal chariot thundered down the street and was swallowed in a great swirl of dust.

Fear, like a skim of ice, touched Nirari's liver and she shivered.

Two guards in short tunics, quilted breeches, and tall hard boots took Nirari's father by the arms and forced him into a second chariot. By the gods, Nirari thought, this confirms it. Someone must have seen me riding Whisper. She started down the road toward the chariot, her hand going to the small blade strapped beneath her shawl. But from the corner of her eye she saw someone approaching Hadden and her mother. Spinning quietly Nirari slipped back. The royal brutes would avoid her brother if they wanted to keep their self respect. Men just hated being bloodied by an insignificant female.

But the guards came to a stop and one of the eunuchs stepped forward and addressed Nirari's mother. “You may wait at the palace.” Nirari stood silently expecting a more developed explanation, but silence rested on the air, like a mist coming up from dark water.

“Where are you taking my husband?” Nirari's mother asked. But the eunuch only gave her a small nod indicating the waiting chariot. When her mother turned to secure Hadden in his sling, Nirari bent and whispered quickly. “Take Hadden into the house, I'll be behind you.”

“Are you desert-crazed,” her mother whispered, “or actually trying to get your father killed?” She shot Nirari a black look, gave the sling a final tug and stepped into the chariot. Nirari's hands formed small fists at her sides, but she clamped her mouth shut, stomped to the chariot, and stepped up beside her mother.

The chariot began to clatter over the market's scattered remains and Nirari yanked Hadden out of the sling on her mother's back. Ignoring the glare of utter loathing intended for her, Nirari held her brother tightly against her breast. She would not fail to protect him, even in this. And by the gods, when their tale was complete her mother would see it and thank her.

Nirari sighed and leaned against the rattling chariot. What foolishness were the gods playing at now? She glanced at the passing city and traced her scar with a finger. A breath of cool came with the setting sun and blew gently across their faces as the chariot blazed toward the palace.