“It is good,” Ushurikti said. If Duabzu thought it was anything but good, he kept the thought to himself. Ushurikti led him away, back toward the little cubicle with the bar on the outside of the door where he would stay until sold or ransomed. Sharur wondered how close his cubicle would be to Nasibugashi’s, and how many other Imhursagut would take up temporary residence with Ushurikti and other Gibli slave dealers.
To Habbazu, Sharur said, “Come, let us go back to my own house. You will be my guest there. You will eat of my bread. You will drink of my beer. You will use my home as if it were your own.”
“You are generous, master merchant’s son,” Habbazu said, bowing. He answered ritual with rituaclass="underline" “If ever you come to Zuabu, come to my own house. You will be my guest there. You will eat of my bread. You will drink of my beer. You will use my home as if it were your own.”
“If ever I come to Zuabu, I will do these things,” Sharur said. He wondered how welcome he would be in Zuabu, if ever Enzuabu learned Habbazu had given him the Alashkurri cup instead of taking it back to the god. But ritual was ritual. Sharur continued with what was not quite ritual, but was polite: “If you feel the urge, lie down with our Imhursaggi slave woman. If not eager, she is always obedient.”
“Perhaps presents would make her more eager, or at least make her seem more eager,” Habbazu said. “When a man lies down with, a woman for his own amusement or for pay, having her seem eager is as much as he can expect.”
“It could be so,” Sharur said.
At the house of Ereshguna, the slaves brought Habbazu bread and beer. They also brought him onions and salt fish and lettuce and beans, and did so without being asked. Sharur smiled at that, remembering how the Imhursaggi peasants had done for him exactly what Enimhursag ordered them to do for him, and no more than Enimhursag ordered them to do for him.
Habbazu eyed the Imhursaggi slave woman with frank speculation. She recognized that for what it was, and somehow, without smearing dust on herself or using any other trick, contrived to look even more mousy and nondescript than she usually did. Habbazu turned away, as if he had smelled salt fish that had not been salted enough and was going bad. When he turned away, the Imhursaggi slave walked straighten Sharur hid a smile.
Betsilim and Nanadirat stayed upstairs. For them to come down and greet a male guest who was not an intimate family friend, as Sharur and his father and brother were in the house of Dimgalabzu, would have been a startling breach of custom. Habbazu did not remark on their absence. He probably would have remarked had they made an appearance. .
When the slaves had left Habbazu and him to their food and drink, Sharur asked, “Will you go to the temple of Engibil tonight, to see if you can make off with the cup while Engibil’s eyes are turned to the north, to the fight with Enimhursag?”
“Master merchant’s son, that was my plan,” the Zuabi thief replied. “I think it best to do this as soon as may be.”
“You thieves like the darkness,” Sharur said. “It was in the darkness that you came to my caravan outside Zuabu.”
“It is so,” Habbazu agreed. “Darkness masks a thief. Darkness masks what a thief does.” He sighed, a sound of chagrin. “Darkness, that night, did not mask well enough what a thief did.”
Sharur’s grandfather’s ghost spoke in his ear: “Be wary of this man, lad. Be careful of him. He is a thief, and not to be trusted. He is a Zuabi, and doubly not to be trusted. Be wary, be careful, lest darkness hide what he does to you, not what he does for you.”
“I understand all that,” Sharur muttered impatiently, in the tones a living man used to address a ghost. Habbazu, realizing what he was doing, looked up to the ceiling and waited for him to be done. Sharur sighed, a sound of exasperation. His grandfather, querulous alive, was even more querulous as a ghost. Then Sharur brightened. He might yet make use of the suspicious ghost. “Ghost of my grandfather, will you go with the Zuabi thief into the temple of Engibil?” he asked, murmuring still, but not so softly as to keep Habbazu from hearing him. “Will you warn me if he tries to sneak off for his own purposes with what we seek?”
“No!” The ghost’s voice in his mind was indignant. “I shall do no such thing. I wanted nothing to do with this man from the beginning. I want nothing to do with him now. I want you to have nothing to do with him now.”
Sharur wanted to pitch the ghost through the nearest mud-brick wall. He knew that would not have hurt the immaterial spirit, but it would have made him feel better. Instead, he smiled broadly and said, “I thank you, ghost of my grandfather. That will help us. That will help us greatly.”
“I told you, I am not helping you,” his grandfather’s ghost shouted at him. “You young people pay no attention to your elders.” The ghost fell silent, and presumably departed in anger.
Habbazu, however, could not know that. Not having known Sharur’s grandfather as a living man, Habbazu could not hear him as a ghost. The thief could hear only Sharur. He said, “I would not have cheated you even without the ghost watching over me.”
“It could be so,” Sharur answered, nodding. “I think it is so. But, because I am not sure it is so, I shall do what I can to protect myself. Were I trading wares for you here, would you not like to make as certain as you could that I was not cheating you?”
“Well, so I would,” Habbazu said. “Very well; your grandfather’s ghost will have no cause to complain of me.”
“My grandfather’s ghost always has cause to complain,” Sharur answered, and Habbazu laughed, as if that were something other than simple truth.
“Most often,” Sharur said in a low voice as he and Habbazu stepped out onto the Street of Smiths, “I go out at night with slaves bearing torches to light my way.”
“Most often, when you go out at night, you want people to know you are going out at night,” the thief replied. “This is a different business. You want to be silent as a bat, stealthy as a wild cat, and quick as a cockroach that scuttles into its hole befgre a sandal crushes it.”
“And what you need fear now is not the sandal of a kitchen slave, but the sandal of Engibil,” Sharur said.
“I fear the sandal of Engibil not so much, for you did turn the god’s eyes to the north,” Habbazu said. “The way you turned the god’s eyes to the north ... no Zuabi would use such a way, but it worked. I fear the flapping sandals of Engibil’s priests. An old man who gets up to make water at the wrong time could undo me.”
“I thought you have ways to escape such mishaps,” Sharur said.
“I do,” Habbazu said. “And you, no doubt, have ways to keep from being cheated in your trading. But sometimes your ways fail. Sometimes my ways fail, as well. Did my ways not sometimes fail, your guards would not have caught me when I came to your caravan outside Zuabu.”
Sharur nodded. “I understand. Each trade has its own secrets. I hope, master thief, you will not need to use any of yours.”
“So do I,” Habbazu said. “I like easy work as well as the next man, as you must enjoy trading with fools for the sake of the profit it brings you. I wish I were robbing Enimhursag’s temple; with his eyes turned away from his city, his priests, those who have not gone to war, will surely be sluggish as drones. But you Giblut, you are alert all the time.”
“You speak in reproof,” Sharur said. “It is not a matter for reproof. It is a matter for pride. We do not need the god dinning in our ears to make us do what we should do. We are men, not children.”
“You are nuisances,” Habbazu said. “It is a matter of risk. I am not fond of risk when that risk is mine.”
“Ah,” Sharur said, and said no more. Up the Street of Smiths toward Engibil’s temple they strode. Near the end of the street, a large man stepped out of the deeper shadow of the house. He looked in the direction of Sharur and Habbazu for a moment, then drew back into the shadows. As Sharur walked on, he listened for the sound of rapid footsteps behind him.