Death of East Read online

  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 emissary 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 survive this ordeal, I will be the richest man in Memphis.

  * * *

  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, near 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 through astounded by the aquifers delivering the silver splash of water; 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 waiting for me, standing beside a golden throne inset with lapis lazuli, carmine, argenta, a thousand precious and shining stones, looking at me as though I am some kind of annoying bug to be squashed.

  "You'd better have diamonds," he says.

  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.

  "Do you know what happened to the last man who remained seated before the Pharaoh?" Ktolemy asks.

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

  He points behind me, back to the colonnade lined with bronze bulls. "Smelt a little off, did they?"

  I look at him blankly.

  "The longest has been in there for about fifteen years, I think. We put food in through the snout, clean up the shit out 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. Baking in it, breathing in it, endlessly. Most of them drown themselves 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? 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 bulls, 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," he says. "But the brooch is of a different type. From where did these stones come?"

  "Ibex, great lord of the sun."

  "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."

  "The pestilence weed?"

  "Yes, great lord."

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

  "The crocodile
s 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. 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 speak of, the wild promises that I make.

  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. "Should you furnish 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. At once I know, 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.

  "Yes great lord of the sun," I say. Soon after, the drum beats, and his golden feet recede.

  Ktolemy chuckles again. "You really are an idiot, polisher. 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 even 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 with her 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 knees, 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, even 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. I have no time for it, and 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. At least one thousand beasts. Do you understand?"

  He nods frantically.

  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 the bones. 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.

  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 and crack their bones. 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. My will is the Pharaoh's will, and they would not dare defy it.

  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 and 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. 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 slave-girls, skirted round with ermine. My suffering has been good for him. He has grown fat o
ff 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 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 crisscross 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 has learned his servitude too well.

  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 I found from any 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 jewel 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.