He pulled on the kilt, rose, and left the dark cubicle without another word. When he went up onto the roof, he found his parents were already sleeping. He lay down beside Tupsharru. “The Imhursaggi slave woman?” his brother asked.
“Twice,”’ Sharur said.
“Twice?” Tupsharru coughed. “My dear brother, you have been without a woman a long time. Once, of course; once is always sweet. But twice? Did having her fall asleep while you were at work make you want to go in again so you could see if she would stay awake all the way through the second time?”
“Surprises everywhere, my dear brother,” Sharur answered through a yawn. “Yes, surprises everywhere.”
When morning came, Sharur wanted to go to the house and smith of Dimgalabzu to discuss revising the arrangements for paying bride-price for Ningal. Ereshguna would not hear of it. “Everything in its own place, Sharur,” he said. “First we call on Kimash the lugal. He needs to know of the misfortune that befell you in the mountains of Alashkurru so he can decide what to do next.”
“Dimgalabzu also needs to know, because—” Sharur began.
Ereshguna folded his arms across his chest. “I am your father. I say we will go to Kimash. You shall obey me.”
“You are my father.” Sharur bowed his head. “We will go to Kimash. I will obey you.”
And so, instead of walking down the Street of Smiths to Dimgalabzu’s, Sharur and Ereshguna walked up the Street of Smiths to the lugal’s palace. As they passed, smiths and other metal merchants popped out of the buildings in which they worked to ask how Sharur’s journey had gone. None of them seemed unduly concerned; the bonuses Ereshguna had paid to the caravan crew must so far have persuaded the guards and donkey handlers not to say too much.
Nor did Sharur and Ereshguna say too much now to their colleagues. “We go. to speak of the caravan with Kimash the mighty lugal,” Ereshguna said several times. “Kimash deserves to hear first the news of what Sharur traded. The mighty lugal deserves to hear first the news of what Sharur brought back.”
That satisfied the smiths and the other metal merchants. It did not satisfy Sharur. What did I trade? Nothing, he thought bitterly. What did I bring back? What I set out with. And what would the smiths and the other metal merchants say if they heard that? What would the smiths and the other metal merchants do if they heard that? Sharur was glad he did not have to find out, not yet.
A procession of slaves and donkeys carrying costly baked bricks on their backs made Sharur and Ereshguna stand and ' wait outside Kimash’s palace. “See, he is building it larger again,” Ereshguna said. “Soon, I think, it will be larger than Engibil’s temple.”
“I think you are right, Father,” Sharur answered. Neither man said what he thought of that. Just for a moment, Sharur covered the eyes of the amulet he wore on his belt. He did not want Engibil looking at him then. He did not want Engibil looking into his heart then. He did not want Engibil seeing how he hoped the lugal’s palace would outdo the god’s temple.
When the last braying donkey and the last sweating slave had passed, Sharur and Ereshguna advanced to the doorway of the palace. Guards with spears and shields stood stolidly, enduring the building heat. Ereshguna bowed before them. He said, “When the mighty lugal Kimash should deign to Cast his eye upon us, we would go into his presence. When the mighty lugal Kimash should deign to hear us, we would have speech with him.”
“You are Ereshguna and Sharur,” one of the guards said. “I will tell Inadapa the steward you are come. Inadapa will tell Kimash the mighty lugal you are come.”
He hurried away. When he returned, Inadapa accompanied him: a bald, round-faced, round-bellied man with a beard going gray. “Kimash the mighty lugal bids you welcome,” the steward said. “Welcome you are, he says, and welcome, and thrice welcome. You will come with me.”
“We shall come with you,” Ereshguna and Sharur said together. Without another word, Inadapa turned on his heel and went back into the palace. They followed.
Sharur wondered how Inadapa found his way through the rabbits’ warren of corridors that made up the palace. The building had not grown up according to any unifying plan, but haphazardly, by fits and starts, as three generations of lugals decided again and again that they needed more room—and more rooms—to house all that was theirs, or to store away the old so that they might enjoy the new.
Here was a room full of stools and tables. Should Kimash decide to give a great feast, they might come forth once more. Meanwhile, they simply sat in twilight. In the next room, pretty young women brewed beer, chanting hymns to Ikribabu as they worked. The chamber after that was piled high with bales of wool; the powerful oily smell of sheep filled that stretch of the hall.
Jars and pots held wine, beer, grain, dates ... who could say what all? The stores in the palace might feed Gibil for a year, or so it seemed to Sharur.
Presently, Inadapa led his father and him past a chamber where more pretty young women were spinning wool into thread. As Sharur had in the brewing chamber, he noticed them because they were young and pretty. If Kimash summoned one of them, she would come, and, Sharur was sure, she would not lie beneath the lugal as if half a corpse. Kimash had opportunities for pleasure beyond those of an ordinary man.
Ereshguna noticed something else. To Inadapa, he said, “Steward to Kimash the mighty lugal, would these women not get more work done if the wool they spun were in the chamber next to theirs rather than halfway across the palace?”
Inadapa stopped in his tracks. “Master merchant,” he said slowly, “in days gone by, wool was stored in the room next to this one. For some reason or other, it was moved. No one ever thought either to move it back or to move the women closer to the chamber where it is now held. Perhaps someone should give thought to such things.” Shaking his head, he strode down the hallway once more.
“How many other such cases are there in the palace, if only someone would look?” Ereshguna murmured under his breath to Sharur as they followed the steward.
“I wonder if any one man knows everything the palace holds,” Sharur whispered back.
Ereshguna shook his head. “Inadapa’s grandfather— maybe even his father—might have, but the palace was smaller in those days.”
Sharur started to answer, but just then the hallway opened out into Kimash’s audience chamber. The lugal sat on a chair with a back; its legs and arms were sheathed in gold leaf, and it rested on a platform of earth that raised Kimash above those who came before him. Inadapa went to his knees and then to his belly before Kimash. Sharur and Ereshguna imitated the steward’s action.
“Mighty lugal, I bring before you the master merchant Ereshguna and his son Sharur,” the steward said, his face in the dust of the rammed-earth floor.
“In my day,” Sharur’s grandfather’s ghost said with a scornful sniff, “in my day, I tell you, we only groveled in front of Engibil, not in front of some upstart man who thought he was as fancy as a god.”
“Not now, Grandfather,” Sharur whispered under his breath.
“Father, Kimash may be able to hear you,” Ereshguna added, also muttering into the dust. “He knew you well in life, recall.”
The ghost gave another loud sniff, but said no more. Kimash gave no sign of having heard. He probably heard a lot of ghosts; as lugal, and before that as lugal’s heir, he had come to know a great many Giblut. All he said was, “Rise, master merchant Ereshguna. Rise, Sharur son of Ereshguna.”
“We greet you, mighty lugal,” Sharur and Ereshguna said together as they got to their feet.