“Life was simpler then,” Irmitti said. “Life was better then, I think. I mean no offense to you and your family, but are we better for having so much bronze in the city? The smiths make it into knives and swords, and we kill each other with them. A wood sickle edged with polished stone was good enough for my great-grandfather. Why would anyone need a bronze tool now, when you metal merchants have to travel to the ends of the world to find the stuff the smiths use to make it?”
“You may be right,” Sharur said with a small bow. Never insulting a customer was a merchant’s first rule. But he did not believe what he was saying, not for a moment. Where new things seemed to frighten Irmiiti, they excited him. He could hardly hold still, he so much wanted to point out all the interesting, useful, beautiful things that were easy to accomplish with metal but slow and difficult if not impossible with stone.
After grumbling a little longer, Irmitti left. Ereshguna looked up from his counting and said, “You did well there, son. The worst sort of fool is a man who does not know he is a fool.”
“Irmitti could be worse,” Sharur said. “Some forget they owe us anything, not how much they owe us. Then the lugal’s men have to remind them.”
“Oh, yes, I know that, and you are right,” Ereshguna said. “But when he talks about sickles edged with stone, from where does he think the stone came? It did not come from the land of Kudurru. Here between the rivers we have water and mud and the things that grow from them, not much else. Merchants brought the stone here, as we bring in ores today. But he does not want to think of that, and so he does not.”
“If he wishes for things to be as they were in the time of his great-grandmother...” Tupsharru let that hang, for what he meant was unquestionably something like, He would wish• Engibil ruled the city in his own right once more. Saying such things aloud was dangerous. The god might be listening. If he was, he might choose to punish the speaker in any number of unpleasant ways. Or he might even decide to overthrow the line of lugals and resume his direct rule. That was the last thing Sharur and his family wanted; they had gained too much from the changes over the past couple of generations.
Engibil might also be listening to Tupsharru’s thoughts. If the god chose to do so, he could go through a man’s mind as Sharur had gone through the basket of tablets looking for what he wanted. Engibil had no particular reason to be listening to Tupsharru’s thoughts, but that did not mean he wasn’t.
Sharur took from his belt the amulet with which he’d routed the fever demon. He covered Engibil’s eyes with his own two thumbs for a moment, symbolically masking from the god what was passing in this house. His father and brother imitated the gesture. Each of them looked nervous. They did not know for certain whether the charm bound the god, or merely distracted him, or in fact did nothing to restrain him. They did not want to find out.
Ereshguna said, “Sometimes I feel like an ant in a line of ants crawling up a wall inside a house. We think we are doing something fine and grand. But one day the kitchen slave will notice us crawling there and smash us with her hand or sweep us away with a broom.”
“We are ants who know copper and tin,” Sharur said. As his brother had before, he spoke with great care. One of the things for which metal was better than stone was making weapons. But he had not spoken of fighting the gods, nor even come close. “We are ants who write down the way to the dates in the larder. Even if the kitchen slave smashes us, our brothers will know where they are.”
“We are still ants,” Ereshguna said. “We would do well to remember it.”
For the late meal, Sharur, a hungry ant, ate locusts. The cook, a slave woman captured from the nearby city of Imhursag, had roasted them with coriander and garlic and now served them up on wooden skewers along with thin sheets of barley bread, onions, melons, and dates preserved in sesame oil.
Sharur’s mother, Betsilim, was not in a good mood as the kitchen slave brought in another tray loaded with sliced onions and melons and set it on a stool. “We should have had beans, too,” she grumbled. “I told her three different times to put them in the pot, but she forgot.”
“I’ll whip her, if you like,” Ereshguna said. “Will that make her remember?”
“If I thought it would, I would tell you to do it,” Betsilim answered. “But I do not think she is lazy. I think she is stupid.”
“Remember, Mother, she is without the voice of her god in her ear, too,” Sharur said. “Enimhursag rules his city himself. He has no lugal, he has no ensi. He watches over all his people all the time.”
“He can’t do that in Gibil!” said Nanadirat, Sharur’s younger sister.
“No, he can’t, and he never will,” Sharur said. Now, instead of trying to conceal his thoughts from Engibil, he wanted the god to know he was glad Engibil still protected Gibil even if he no longer directly ruled it. Gibil and Imhursag were neighbors and rivals in Kudurru. Engibil and Enimhursag were also rivals. Each god wanted more land and more worshipers. Over the years, Engibil had succeeded at Enimhursag’s expense. Sharur knew how jealous the other town’s god had to be, and how angry.
Ereshguna said, “Imhursag would be more dangerous to us if the town god let his people be freer. They would soon think of ways to fill our canals with sand.”
“Yes, but Enimhursag fears they would think of ways to fill his canal with sand, too,” Tupsharru said.
Giving his brother a reproachful look, Sharur took out his amulet again and covered Engibil’s eyes. Ereshguna did the same. A moment later, so did Tupsharru himself. He put on a shamefaced expression. If Enimhursag’s people might trouble him on being given more freedom, what of Engibil’s people, who had gained more? Would they now trouble their god as a result? Those were not the sort of thoughts any man who valued such freedom as he possessed wanted the city god having.
“Let us drink some wine,” Betsilim said hastily, and clapped her hands. “Slave, bring us the wine and cups and a strainer.”
The kitchen slave—she had no name, not in Gibil; it was left behind in Imhursag—carried in the jar and the cups and the bronze strainer. “Ha!” Tupsharru said, pointing to it. “I’d like to see Irmitti make a strainer out of stone.”
“What did they used to be before they were made of metal?” Ereshguna asked the air. No family ghosts answered. They were all off doing something else. That gave supper an unusual feeling of privacy.
Timidly, the slave said, “In Imhursag, the strainers are made of clay and baked like pots and dishes.”
“Ah. Well, there you are,” Ereshguna said. The slave poured the thick fermented juice of dates through the strainer into the cups. Twice she had to rinse the strainer in a bowl of water to clear the sticky dregs from it.
Like anyone well enough off not to have to make do with water, Sharur drank beer with almost every meal. Date wine was for more special occasions. After pouring out a small libation to Putishu god of dates and to Ikribabu’s cousin Aglibabu, who made the dates into wine, Sharur sipped. The wine was very sweet and strong and made his heart merry.
He and his family drank the jar dry. The kitchen slave cleared away the bowls and pots in which supper had been served. As she carried them out of the dining room, she hummed a little hymn to Enimhursag. Sharur did not think she even knew she was doing it; no doubt she had been doing it all her life. It would not help her, not in this city where the people worshiped Engibil. Hum, speak, scream: her god would not hear her prayer.
“When will you be leading the trade caravan to the mountains?” Nanadirat asked Sharur.
“A few more days,” he answered. “I was seeing about donkeys today, before I came home and saw Irmitti. Why? Do you want me to bring you back something special?”