CHAPTER ONEThe Envoys of Agga
On that day Al-Bariko woke before the sun. The city lay in blue-grey coolness; canals breathed damp air, fishermen cursed softly, and cart axles complained in the market. A merchant might sleep through a royal birth or his own wedding, but never through the morning price of barley.
Al-Bariko was proud, loud, and a little deaf to the cracking of its own defences. It had gates, earthworks, watchtowers, temples, granaries, workshops, the king’s house, and streets where one could judge the state by the smell of goats, oil, and other people’s debts. It had no great wall.
Water ran through the city like blood through a body. The granaries were its stomach, the gates its mouth, the temples its voice, the scribes its memory, and the king its will.
Yet the city had no skin: no ring of stone between its life and the steppe.
At the northern gate they first noticed dust.
Dust frightened no one in Al-Bariko. It entered houses uninvited, settled on bread, hair, tablets, and shrine gods, and carried itself like the earth’s first citizen.
But this was not merchant dust.
Merchant dust drifts. Military dust travels low and evenly, as if it already knows where it will lie by evening.
The guard on the tower, a man whose face suggested he personally prevented the sky from falling, narrowed his eyes, spat over the edge, and said:
“They are coming.”
The second guard below, who had envied the first all his life merely because the man stood three human heights above him, asked:
“Who?”
“If I knew, I would already be a scribe.”
“Scribes do not know either.”
“They write it down.”
The dust drew nearer: spears, donkeys, dark cloaks, men. They were not an army, but neither were they merchants. Two at the front carried staffs hung with the sun-bleached leather ribbons of the Land of Keshar.
The Land of Keshar was not a city. That was its strength.
Keshar lay scattered across the steppe: settlements, clan yards, wells, pastures, grain pits, war camps, oath grounds, and tracks known only to people born with dust between their teeth.
Agga gathered Keshar when it wished to be gathered. He spoke for clans that quarrelled in peace and remembered their common wells in war.
The envoys halted before the gate.
Their leader was lean and rigid, his beard divided into four braids, a dark bone token at his throat. His calm troubled the guards more than anger would have.
“We are envoys of Agga, leader of the Land of Keshar,” he said.
The upper guard straightened. “And we are the gates of Al-Bariko.”
The envoy looked up. “Do gates speak?”
“When people arrive too early, they do.”
The lower guard added: “Sometimes they also close.”
The envoy did not smile. “Tell your king that Agga speaks to him.”
“Our king has not risen yet,” said the upper guard, and immediately regretted it. One does not give such intelligence to enemies, even if the whole city knows the old king rises before the priests, and the priests before their consciences.
The envoy inclined his head. “Then tell his son. They say he rises before his father.”
Rumour of Meski travelled faster than boats. He was not king, yet citizens already spoke of what might happen “under Meski”, waiting for him to become the ruler they had imagined.
Meski was indeed awake.
He stood in the inner court watching three young warriors fail to bend an old bow. Nabu-Etsir called the wood’s resistance divine will. Shunam blamed poor drying. Ilu-Namar would have recorded both opinions had anyone permitted tablets where men sweated.
Meski took the bow. He planted one foot, breathed once, and drew the string without looking to see who watched.
“You see,” said Nabu-Etsir, “the gods open the road to the chosen.”
“Or to the man with wider shoulders,” said Shunam.
Meski released the string. It struck the air with a short, vicious note.
“The gods favour strong shoulders.”
Shunam bowed. “Then the temple should accept training instead of barley as sacrifice.”
Nabu-Etsir regarded him with patient disapproval, already practising the expression of a priest faced with preventable irreverence.
A guard entered the court. The same man from the tower. Here he was no longer the Gate of Al-Bariko, but merely a person hoping his news was important enough for the royal house and not important enough for execution.
“Envoys at the northern gate, my lord.”
Meski turned. “Whose?”
“Agga’s. From the Land of Keshar.”
Even Shunam fell silent. Nabu-Etsir lowered his eyes. Ilu-Namar scored his tablet with a fingernail. Agga’s name was frightening not like a shout, but like a crack in a wall.
“What do they want?” Meski asked.
“They say Agga speaks with the king.”
“Agga is far away.”
“His envoys are near.”
The guard surprised himself with the answer.
“Bring them.”
“To the king?”
“To me first.”
The guard hesitated. “The old king ordered all envoys taken to him.”
“And I order these brought first to me.”
“But if the old king asks...”
“Tell him the gates began speaking and frightened you.”
Shunam coughed to hide a laugh. Nabu-Etsir composed a face from which, with sufficient effort, one might have moulded a prayer for prudence.
Meski went to the northern gate.
The city was fully awake. Among the potters, the envoys had become an advance guard; among the cloth merchants, Agga demanded half the city. At the well he demanded young women, because rumour without young women walks with a limp.
