Mushezib’s blunt, battered features grew dark with anger. “He is here? In this city? He has come to rob our god for Enzuabu? Master merchant’s son, I will hunt him down. I will put word of him in the ears of our comrades who also saw him outside Zuabu. When we lay hands on him, the scavengers shall feed.”
“No,” Sharur said, and Mushezib’s shaggy eyebrows rose in surprise. “No,” Sharur repeated. “Bring him to the house of Ereshguna, that we may question him as he should be questioned.”
“Gold awaits you if you bring him to my house,” Ereshguna added.
“Question him as he should be questioned, eh?” Grim anticipation filled Mushezib’s chuckle. “Question him with hot things and sharp things and hard things and heavy things, do you mean?”
“It could be so,” Sharur answered, not altogether untruthfully. He still did not know how far Habbazu could be trusted.
Mushezib bowed to him. “Master merchant’s son—” He also bowed to Ereshguna. “Master merchant, my comrades and I shall drop on this thief like a collapsing wall. We shall fall upon him like the roof beams of a house that crumbles.”
“It is good,” Sharur said, and Ereshguna nodded. Mushezib bowed to each of them once more and strutted off, a procession of one. By his manner, he expected to return momentarily to the house of Ereshguna with one large fist clamped around Habbazu’s skinny neck. Sharur hoped he or another caravan guard or a donkey handler would soon return to the house of Ereshguna with Habbazu in his grasp.
“Do not raise your hopes too high,” Ereshguna warned him. “Do not expect too much. These men saw Habbazu for a small part of one night some while ago. They may not recognize him even if he should walk past them on the street. And he is a clever thief, a master thief. He may not show himself at all, and he will surely be adept at escaping danger.”
“Every word you say is true, Father,” Sharur replied. “And yet—I will hope.”
“How not?” Ereshguna clapped him on the back. “You are a man. I, too, will hope—but not too much.”
Sharur was adding numbers on his fingers that afternoon when a man of about his father’s age came through the doorway. “One moment, my master, if you please,” Sharur said, as to any stranger. “Let me finish my calculation.” He looked down to his hands once more.
“Take the time you need,” the stranger answered, and Sharur forgot the calculation he had been making. The man’s voice declared what a hasty glance had not—he was no stranger. There stood Kimash the lugal, not in a lugal’s finery but in the rather dirty kilt and worn sandals a potter or a leatherworker might have worn.
“Your pardon, mighty lugal,” Sharur gasped, and began to prostrate himself before the man who had ruled Gibil for most of his life.
“No. Wait,” Kimash said. “Speak neither my name nor my title while I am here. Call me ... Izmaili.” He plucked the name from the air like a conjuror plucking a date from a woman’s ear.
“I obey.” Sharur wondered if he was not to call Kimash lugal because Kimash was lugal no more. Had Engibil stripped the man of his title and his power? Would a dirty tunic and worn sandals be Kimash’s fate forevermore?
Reading his thoughts as if they were syllables incised on clay, Kimash said, “You need not fear, son of Ereshguna. I still am what I.was.” He smiled at his circumlocution, then went on, “Barely, perhaps, but I am. No, a man who looks like me sits on my high seat in the palace. A man who looks like me wears my raiment. He drinks my fine date wine. He eats my delicate food. If he so chooses, he couples with my women—all but a few whose names I have not told him, and of whom I am particularly fond. If the god looks in the palace, he will see the lugal in the palace, doing the things the lugal does. I? I am Izmaili, a person of no particular account.”
Sharur bowed, acknowledging Kimash’s daring. “But,” he could not help asking, “what if the god should summon the lugal to his temple while Izmaili, a person of no particular account, walks through the streets of Gibil?”
“Then we have a difficulty,” Kimash said. “But I do not think that will happen, not today. The god and the lugal have already had a long talk today. Call your father, if you would.” He smiled. “Izmaili, a person of no particular account, was told the two of you would have speech with him.”
“It shall be as you say, my master,” Sharur replied, as he might have to any customer who came into the shop. He raised his voice: “Father! The ... a man is here to see you.” When Ereshguna came out, he recognized at once who the “man” was. As Sharur had done, he .began to prostrate himself. As Kimash had done with Sharur, he bade Ereshguna stop and gave the name by which he would be known and the reason he was wearing both it and his shabby clothes.
Ereshguna nodded slow approval. “This is a bold plan, Izmaili.” He hesitated not at all over Kimash’s alias. “This is a clever plan, person of no particular account.”
“For which praise I thank you—although why you should value the thanks of a person of no particular account is beyond me.” Kimash’s eyes twinkled as he went on, “Also beyond me is why the two of you would want to have speech with a person of no particular account.”
“Be that as it may, we do,” Ereshguna said. Together, he and Sharur explained how Habbazu had come to Gibil to steal the Alashkurri cup from Engibil’s temple, and how the Zuabi thief had fled when Engibil summoned Sharur to his temple.
Kimash listened intently. When Sharur and Ereshguna had finished, he said, “For one who sits on the high seat in the palace, admitting he was wrong would come hard. For Izmaili, who is a man of no particular account, it is much easier. Son of Ereshguna, in the matter of this cup and its likely importance, you had the right of it.”
Sharur bowed, saying, “You are gracious, Izmaili. We have men from my caravan, men who will know this Zuabi by his face, searching for him here in Gibil. Still, we do not know whether they will find him before he can enter the temple and seek to steal this cup.”
“You did well to put men on his trail,” Kimash said. “You did well to have men search for him. But, if he should enter the temple and steal the cup, is it not likely now that he would take it away to Enzuabu rather than setting it in your hands? He will be fearing that you have come under Engibil’s power, even as you feared I had come under the god’s sway.”
“That is likely, yes,” Sharur said, and Ereshguna nodded. “Then we shall have to warn Engibil’s priests,” Kimash said. “Better that our god should have this thing than that a rival god in Kudurru should have it.”
Reluctantly, Ereshguna nodded again. Sharur said, “What still perplexes me, Izmaili, is why the god should have denied any knowledge of the cup when we asked him about it.”
“This also perplexes me,” the lugal admitted. “I have no answer I can give you. The god lied for reasons of his own. What those reasons are, I cannot guess. I am, after all, only a man. I am, after all, only a person of no particular account.” He seemed to enjoy having escaped for a little while the stifling ceremony with which the lugals of Gibil had come to imitate the homage given the city god. After a moment, though, he turned serious once more: “If your searchers catch this thief, have him brought before me.”
A person of no particular importance would never have given an order in that crisp tone, a tone used by a man certain of obedience. “We shall do as you say, Izmaili... just as if you were the lugal,” Sharur replied.
Kimash’s eyes widened. Then he caught the joke, and threw back his head and laughed. “It is good,” he said at last. “It is very good. Obey me as you would obey the lugal and all will be well. Now I will go back to the palace. I will see how much fine wine I have left. I will see how much dainty food I have left. I will see how many babies born next spring I will know to be a cuckoo’s eggs, and not sprung from my seed at all.” With a shrug of resignation, he left the house of Ereshguna and strode down the Street of Smiths.