Duabzu got down upon his belly and touched his forehead to Sharur’s foot. “In the great and mighty and terrible name of Enimhursag, I swear I shall obey you as a son obeys his father.” Nasibugashi swore the same oath, though he did not humble himself before Sharur in the same way.
“It is good,” Sharur said. “Here, then, is the message: somewhere in the land of Imhursag is some small, hidden thing into which Enimhursag has poured a great part of his power for safekeeping. I do not know what it is. I do not know where it is. I do know that, should it be broken, a great part of Enimhursag’s power will be broken with it. Deliver and spread widely through Imhursag this message I have given you, as you have sworn to do.”
Duabzu looked appalled. “But this is a message that might prove dangerous to the great god. This is a message that might bring harm to the mighty god.” By way of reply, Sharur smiled at him. That only made him look more appalled. He had sworn an oath by the god he loved, the god who ruled him absolutely, but to fulfill it he would, as he said, have to endanger the god.
Nasibugashi said, “I see now what I have seen again and again since being deceived into entering Gibil in the first place: this city has a larger store of clever men, men who are ready for anything and to turn anything to their advantage, than does Imhursag. Imhursag would be a better place if we had more men of this sort.”
“Imhursag would be a place more like Gibil if we had more men of this sort.” Duabzu’s shudder plainly gave his opinion of that.
To Nasibugashi, Sharur said, “I do not know whether you will take this for good or ill, but you strike me as being more nearly a man of this sort than most Imhursagut I have seen.”
“I do not know whether to take this for good or ill, either,” Nasibugashi replied.
“Enimhursag will surely know whether to take this for good or ill.” By Duabzu’s tone, he had no doubt how the god of Imhursag would take it. Sharur suspected Duabzu was right, too. If Enimhursag saw what Duabzu and Nasibugashi carried in their minds, his wisest course might be to strike them both dead the instant they crossed into land he ruled.
But, while that might keep Enimhursag safe for the time being, it would also make Imhursag fall further behind Gibil not only in the art of war but also in the art, if art it was, of producing men such as those to whom Nasibugashi had alluded. If Imhursag fell further behind Gibil, sooner or later the Giblut would be in a position to overrun their rivals and find for themselves the thing into which Enimhursag had poured a great part of his power for safekeeping. And when they did ...
Sharur would not have wanted to be the god of Imhursag, nor to be faced with the choices the god of Imhursag was facing. When he remembered the choices with which the god of Imhursag and the other gods had faced him, though, he was far from altogether sorry to confront them with worries for a change.
“You have sworn your oath. I expect you to obey it when you return to the land of the Imhursagut,” he said to Nasibugashi and Duabzu. “Return to the land of the Imhursagut you shall. I set you free. I release you. No one shall make any claim on you. No one shall molest you. Go now, and return not to Gibil unless you should come as peaceful traders.”
The two Imhursagut left the establishment of Ushurikti the slave dealer, Nasibugashi walking straight and tall, Duabzu almost slinking after him. Duabzu was afraid. Duabzu, Sharur thought, had good reason to be afraid.
Ushurikti said, “Master merchant’s son, now I see why you have done as you have done. You have given Enimhursag poison hidden inside a date candied in honey; in freeing two men for him, you may have freed his city from him. I bow before your cleverness.” He suited action to word. “This, of course, does not mean I abandon my claim for compensation over what I might have expected to earn from the sale of these two men.”
“Of course,” Sharur said. “I expected nothing different.”
“You had better not have expected anything different.” Despite an unprepossessing, pudgy build, Ushurikti drew himself up to his full height. “Am I not also a Gibli, even as are you? Am I not also a merchant, even as are you?”
“You are a Gibli, even as I am. You are a merchant, even as I am.” Sharur clapped the slave dealer on the shoulder. “And together, you and I have this day struck no small blow for all Giblut.”
“May it be so,” Ushurikti said, “as long as I get my profit, too.”
A commotion in the street outside the house of Ereshguna made Sharur glance up from the tablet on which he was inscribing measures of barley received in exchange for some of the tin that had been stored in the pot where he’d hidden the Alashkurri cup. “Come on, you lug!” a man with a deep voice shouted. “Don’t think you can give me and my pal the slip, because we cursed well won’t let you! Now move, before something worse happens to you.”
A moment later, Mushezib, the guard captain on Sharur’s caravan to the Alashkurm Mountains, strode into the house of Ereshguna. With him came Harharu, the donkeymaster on that caravan. And jammed between them, like salt fish and lentils and sesame seeds between two rounds of flatbread, perforce came Habbazu the master thief.
Mushezib had hold of his right arm. Harharu had hold of his left arm. If he tried to escape, they would tear him in two, as a man at a feast might tear a leg of roasted duck in two.
“Here’s that lousy Zuabi wretch, master merchant’s son,” Mushezib boomed. “Harharu and I were drinking a quiet cup of beer together when the fellow came swaggering by, bold as you please. Harharu gets the credit for spotting him, because I didn’t. But I’m the one who jumped on the son of a thousand fathers, so I guess we ought to split the reward you promised.”
“I had almost given up looking for the thief, master merchant’s son,” Harharu said, “and then he strolled past my nose when I thought he must surely have gone back to Zuabu. I am glad I was able to help put him in your hands.”
Habbazu said not a word. He looked at Sharur with large, reproachful eyes. Sharur, for once in his life, had trouble finding words himself. He had offered the reward for Habbazu’s capture. He had offered the reward, and then he had forgotten about it. The men to whom he had offered it, though, they had remembered.
He saw only one way to disarm their suspicions, and that was to play along with them. “Well done,” he said. “Well done for being so faithful, well done for being so vigilant. I said I would reward you. Reward you I shall. I promised gold. Gold I shall give you, gold in equal measure.”
He found two rings, thin bands of gold. Setting them on the scales, he discovered one was heavier than the other. He weighed the heavier one, then took it off the scales, set the lighter one on the pan in its place, and added tiny scraps of gold until they and the ring balanced the weights in the other pan. The heavier ring he gave to Harharu. The lighter ring and the gold scraps he gave to Mushezib.
“You are generous, master merchant’s son,” Harharu said, bowing.
“Truly you are generous,” Mushezib agreed. “But can we leave this wretch of a Zuabi with you now that we have gained our reward? He is liable to rape away all your stock in trade.”
“What good would it do him, when he has seen he cannot escape the vigilance of the Giblut?” Sharur said. “You may leave him here with me. I will tend to him as is most fitting.”
“Ha!” Mushezib said. “In that case, he’ll be sorry he was ever born.”
“The master merchant’s son has not explained his purposes to us,” Harharu pointed out.