“You are not yet Sharur’s wife,” Dimgalabzu said. “You have not yet gone to live in the house of Ereshguna.” He muttered something his mustache muffled, then shook his head like a man bedeviled by gnats. “Let it go, let it go. We could argue for long and long, you and I, and we would end up where we began,” Glancing over to Sharur, he asked, “Do you see how this goes, intended of my daughter?”
“Yes, I see,” Sharur answered. “Once we are wed, though, everything will be smooth as fine clay, smooth as rock oil between the fingers.”
Dimgalabzu, Ereshguna, and Habbazu laughed uproariously. Sharur and Ningal looked miffed. “Let it go,” Dimgalabzu said again, still laughing. He turned to his daughter. “Very well, you obeyed this fellow, with his words smooth as fine clay, his words smooth as rock oil between the fingers.”
“Do not mock him, Father!” Ningal said. “Do not mock his words!”
“What is a young man for, if not to be mocked?” Dimgalabzu held up a hand before Ningal could say anything. “Never mind, never mind. Since you obeyed him, since you secreted away this ... thing, whatever it may be, find it now and give it back to him, that he may take it away from here, that we may do our best to pretend it never was here.”
“I shall obey you, my father,” Ningal said. Her tone of voice remained in perfect accord with her words, but her expression warned that she was less serious than she sounded.
She picked up a stool and carried it over to the wall, into whose clay several shelves had been set. The highest of those, well above the height of a man, was too tall to be convenient, not least because one had to stand on a stool to see what was at the back of the shelf. One of the things at the back of the shelf proved to be the Alashkurri cup, which Ningal now brought down.
“Let me see this thing,” Dimgalabzu said. Ningal’s eyes swung to Sharur to make sure it was all right before she handed the cup to her father. The smith examined it, then gave it back to her. “I had expected something all of gold and silver, encrusted with precious stones. Why so much fuss, why so much mystery, over a foreign cup of cheap clay?”
“I will answer if you insist,” Sharur said, “but I hope you do not insist, for naming certain things draws notice to them.”
Dimgalabzu grunted. Sharur’s answer was not an answer, and yet, in a way, it was. The smith thought for a while before finally saying, “Very well, then. What you tell me does not surprise me, not considering what I saw and heard at the encampment close by the border with Imhursag. You shall tell me in full one day, but not today.”
“I thank you, father of my intended,” Sharur said, bowing.
“Father, what did you see and hear at the encampment close by the border with Imhursag?” Ningal asked. “You have said nothing of this.”
“Nor shall I say anything of this, not now,” Dimgalabzu answered. “I shall tell you in full one day, but not today.” He turned to Sharur. “Were you wise, son of Ereshguna, to embroil my family in this without my leave?” He had made his own guesses about the cup and its provenance, guesses liable to be good.
Sharur bowed again, apologetically. “Perhaps I was not wise, father of my intended, but I could not have embroiled your family with your leave, for, as Ningal your daughter has said, you were at the encampment close by the border with Imhursag. No harm has come of it, for which I am very glad.” He spoke nothing but the truth there.
Dimgalabzu let out another grunt. Sharur’s words were not quite an apology, but were soft enough to make it hard for the smith to take offense. “Let it go,” Dimgalabzu said yet again. “Take that cup out of here, and let it be as if that cup had never been here.”
“So may it be,” Sharur said.
“So may it be,” Ereshguna echoed.
“So may it be,” Habbazu said, adding, “May the god of Gibil always reckon this cup has never been here. May the god of Gibil never learn where this cup has been.” That prayer brought a fresh chorus of “So may it be!” from everyone else in the room.
Sharur, Ereshguna, and Habbazu bowed first to Dimgalabzu and then to Ningal. They left the house of Dimgalabzu. Sharur wanted to run back to the house of Ereshguna, to minimize the time during which the Alashkurri cup was out on the Street of Smiths. But running might have drawn the notice of other men on the Street of Smiths, and might also have drawn the notice of Engibil. Sharur walked, and walked sedately, keeping up a front no less than he did in a dicker.
When he and his father and the master thief reached the house of Ereshguna, though, he did sigh once, loud and long, with relief. So did Ereshguna. So did Habbazu. Ereshguna asked, “Where will you now put this cup, son? What place have we that can match the house of a smith for holding such things safe?”
“We still have a pot or two of Laravanglali tin, have we not?” Sharur asked. He did not wait for his father to reply; he knew where the metal was stored. He carried the cup over to one of the big clay pots, opened it, set the cup inside on the dark gray nodules of tin, and replaced the lid.
“It is good.” Ereshguna nodded. “It is very good. The presence of metal makes a god as shortsighted as a mortal man. Tin is especially good since it has such power of its own, the power to strengthen copper into strong, hard bronze even though tin is neither strong nor hard itself.”
Habbazu also nodded approval. “This hiding place will indeed conceal the cup from a searching god,” he said. “The question of what to do with the cup now that it is back in our hands still remains.”
Another question that still remained, as far as Sharur was concerned, was how to make sure the cup did not come into Habbazu’s hands alone. The master thief might yet repair his position with Enzuabu if he brought the cup to his own city god—and if he could sneak it past Engibil, assuming Engibil was still watching the western border of Gibli territory and had not lazily gone back to fornicating with courtesans in his house on earth.
Ereshguna said, “If we break the cup, it stays forever broken. We must think hard before undertaking a step that may not be revoked.”
“This is so,” Habbazu said. “The very idea of breaking the cup, the very idea of choosing my will over the will of the gods, turns my liver green with fear.”
“You would break something that belongs to the gods?” In Sharur’s ears—and no doubt in Ereshguna’s ears as well—the voice of Sharur’s grandfather’s ghost was a frightened screech. “Are you mad? What will your punishment be when the gods learn of what you have done?”
“They are only foreign gods, ghost of my grandfather,” Sharur said in the mumble mortals used to talk with a ghost when other mortals who could not hear that ghost were present. “And, if we break this thing, the foreign gods will not have the power to punish us.”
“Foreign gods!” Now Sharur’s grandfather’s ghost let out a disdainful sniff. “You have no business dealing with foreign gods in the first place. Leave them alone and pray they leave you alone, is all I can say.”
Ereshguna sighed. “Ghost of my father,” he said in a mumble like Sharur’s, “when you lived among men, you traveled to the mountains of Alashkurru. You dealt with the Alashkurrut. You dealt with the gods of the Alashkurrut. We follow in the footsteps you laid down.”
Habbazu could follow only one side of the conversation, but smiled in a way suggesting he had no trouble figuring out the other side. Sharur’s grandfather’s ghost said, “Aye, I traveled to the mountains of Alashkurru. Aye, I dealt with the Alashkurrut. Aye, I dealt with the gods of the Alashkurrut. And I hated the mountains of Alashkurru. They were too high and rugged. I hated the Alashkurrut. They were too haughty and foreign. I hated the gods of the Alashkurrut. They were even more haughty and even more foreign. I would sooner have had nothing to do with any of them.” Sharur schooled his features to stay straight. Laughing at a ghost who complained about how things had been while he yet lived was rude. But Sharur recalled how many times his grandfather, while a living man, had told him stories of the Alashkurrut, stories that showed far more lively interest than hatred. Pointing that out now would be useless, so he stayed quiet.