“What are the two of you talking about?” Nanadirat repeated. Neither Sharur nor Ereshguna answered her.
Dimgalabzu was grinding a sharp edge onto a spearhead when Sharur and his family walked into the smithy. Seeing them all there together, the smith set the spearhead down on his workbench. “Well, well, what have we here?” he said in surprise. He took a longer look at his guests. A slow smile spread across his face. “What we have here is good news, unless I miss my guess.”
Ereshguna bowed. “What we have here is good news indeed, my friend,” he said. “Engibil has smiled upon my son. Engibil has smiled upon the union of our families.”
“Is it so?” Dimgalabzu’s smile got wider, but then contracted. “When last we spoke of this matter, there was a difficulty concerning the bride-price. Unless this difficulty has been eased, the union can not go forward.”
“This difficulty has been eased, father of my intended,” Sharur said. “The union can go forward. Today Engibil summoned me to his temple. Today the god released me from my oath. Today he gave me leave to accept from my family a loan for the bride-price to be paid for Ningal your daughter.”
“Is it so?” Now the smith sounded astonished. “How fortunate for you, son of Ereshguna. The god rarely changes his mind. The god rarely needs to change his mind. Why did he change his mind this time?”
“He said he had held my oath too tight. He said he had been too strait. Thus he chose to ease and loosen his hold on the oath.” Sharur answered with nothing but the truth, straight from the god’s lips. He did not look at his father.
The thought they seemed to share would have to wait.
“How fortunate for you, son of Ereshguna,” Dimgalabzu repeated. The broad smile returned to his broad face. “How fortunate for all of us.” He clapped his hands together and shouted for his slaves to bring beer and salt fish and onions for his guests. Then he went to the stairway. “Gulal!” he called. “Ningal! Come down! We have guests you should see.”
Ningal and her mother came downstairs. They both carried spindles; they had been making wool or flax into thread. They exclaimed in surprise when they saw Sharur and his family in the smithy. They exclaimed in delight when Dimgalabzu explained why Sharur and his family had come.
“Is it true, Sharur?” Ningal asked softly.
“It is true,” Sharur answered. Most of the time, his intended bride kept her eyes on the ground, as a modestly reared young woman was supposed to do in the presence of a man not of her immediate family. Every so often, though, she would look up at Sharur from under lowered eyelids. As he kept his eyes on her to the exclusion of all else, he caught the glances. They enchanted him.
Gulal, who stood beside her daughter, also caught those glances. She poked Ningal in the ribs with her elbow and muttered something pungent under her breath. Thereafter, Ningal glanced at Sharur less often and more circumspectly. But, to Sharur’s delight, she did not stop glancing at him.
In came the beer and salt fish and onions. “Let us drink,” Dimgalabzu boomed. “Let us eat. Let us rejoice that our two families are to be made one. Let us rejoice that the god has favored our two families’ being made one.”
They drank. They ate. They rejoiced. Gulal and Betsilim put their heads together and talked in low voices for some time. Every so often, they would look over at Sharur and Ningal and then go back to their intent conversation. He eyed them with considerable apprehension. Because they were only women, he felt foolish about that... until he noticed Ereshguna and Dimgalabzu eyeing them with considerable apprehension. If his father and the father of his intended worried about their wives, his own concern had reason behind it.
Dimgalabzu asked, “How did the god of the city come to release you from the oath he formerly held close?”
“If you mean to ask why the god chose to do it, father of my intended, you would have to enquire of him,” Sharur replied. Whatever ideas he and his father had on that score, he was not yet ready to share them with Dimgalabzu. “If you mean to ask how he did it, he summoned me to his temple, as I told you, and told me of his change of heart there.”
“How very curious,” Dimgalabzu murmured. “Do not mistake me, son of Ereshguna; I am delighted that Engibil changed his mind. I am joyous that the god thought twice. But I am also surprised.”
“I was surprised, too, when Engibil summoned me to his house on earth,” Sharur said. He had also been horrified, but the smith did not need to know that. He wondered whether he ought to tell Dimgalabzu about Habbazu. For the time being, he decided, the father of his intended did not need to know about the Zuabi thief, either.
Ningal and Nanadirat put their heads together, as their mothers had done. Watching them whisper and giggle and point at him made Sharur want to sink into the floor. He glared. They giggled harder than ever. Having nothing better to do, he dipped up another cup of beer.
Gulal spoke up in a loud voice: “It is decided.”
“Aye, it is,” Betsilim agreed. Between the two of them, they sounded as certain—and as irresistible—as any god Sharur had ever met.
Gulal went on, “The wedding shall take place on the day of the full moon of the last month of falclass="underline" not only a day of good omen, but also one on which the son of Ereshguna is unlikely to find himself away from the city with a caravan.” Sharur did not think he was likely to find himself away from the city with a caravan any time soon. No other cities of Kudurru, no other lands around Kudurru, seemed willing to trade with Gibil. Still, his guess was that his mother had won the concession from Gulal, hoping trade would improve in what remained of the better weather. He supposed he should have thanked her. Instead, he grumbled to himself at having to wait so long for the wedding.
Whatever else Dimgalabzu was, he was not a foolish man, and, if he was not a young man, he once had been. He said, “Let Sharur and Ningal embrace now, before us all, in token that this arrangement is agreeable to them.”
Gulal gave her husband a look suggesting she would have a good deal to say when she could speak to him in private. When Ningal stepped toward Sharur with a smile, Gulal gave her daughter the same look. Under Gulal’s glare, the embrace was perforce brief and decorous. But an embrace it unquestionably was.
Tupsharru clapped his hands together. Nanadirat whooped. That embarrassed Sharur enough to make him let go of Ningal even sooner than he would have otherwise. Dimgalabzu looked pleased with himself. Gulal’s expression said she was less furious than she had been before Sharur took Ningal in his arms.
Sharur bowed to the mother of his intended. His politeness made Gulal smile for a moment, till she caught herself doing it. Ningal saw that and smiled, too, at Sharur. He kept his own face carefully blank. A merchant often found it useful not to let the other side in a bargain see at a glance everything in his mind.
Ningal said, “The end of fall is not so far away. Every day that goes by brings it one day closer.”
“You are right,” Sharur said loyally. Altogether too many days would go by to suit him, but he would not disagree with his intended before she became his wife—nor, he hoped, too many times after she became his wife, either.
Ereshguna stared down into his cup of beer, as if it held the answers to all the questions in the world. A torch behind him flickered, making his shadow jump. Outside in the darkness, a cricket chirped. Farther away, a dog howled. Those were the only noises Sharur heard. His mother and sister and brother had gone up onto the roof to sleep. The slaves slept, too, in their stuffy little cubicles.
Sharur looked down at his own cup of beer. He saw no answers there. He drank. If he drank enough, that was an answer of sorts, but not the one he needed now. He sighed.