Chapter One
900 BCE
Heat and salt swirled off a pale blue sea.
Glass-like shards of sand bit into my flesh, or whatever it was that I wore as skin when we walked the surface. I pushed my toes to the sheer tip of the rocky edge. Endless desert stretched to my right while a statuesque woman stood still to my left, as though she’d been molded from the cliff itself. Her gauzy shift tufted around her, bringing with it the scents of cinnamon and wine, strong enough to drown the sulfur that lapped at the shores below.
I endured the discomfort of pomp and circumstance as my title demanded. I’d remain in the crawling mirk of the mortal crust until I’d fulfilled my duty. But if we could just get on with it…
I sucked in an encouraging breath, a gentle prod for her to start the meeting.
“Prince.” She broke the uncomfortable silence at last. She didn’t look over her shoulder as I moved into the place beside her.
“Queen,” I replied.
Of course, she was not my queen, nor was I a member of her royal court. The formalities were merely that. Her pantheon was one of many queens, all of whom wore the title proudly. When occasion demanded that Hell speak with the Sumerians, Gula was my favorite go-between. As the goddess of justice and medicine, among other things, she was reasonable and to the point. As Hell’s royal emissary, I was sent between kingdoms only when the need arose. Meetings like this were blissfully shorter than they might be if I’d been sent to engage with a war deity.
Her gaze remained fixed at the base of the cliff amidst a crowd of humans. The sounder of strangers–a generous term for mammalian collections of pigs, regardless of the mortal beast in question–was close enough that we could make out each of their faces. As a reprieve, no matter how temporary, the stampede was not so near that we were subjected to the sweat, dirt, and death that clung to their breath.
“The humans…thesehumans…are they why we’re here?” I asked.
Gula hadn’t been in the first place I looked, or the sixth, or the tenth. I could have asked an underling, and word would have rippled through the realms in an instant, but I preferred discretion. It was a luxury not often afforded to us.
A full, dark lip pouted, the space between her brows puckering as she said, “Sometimes they make me feel…” Her words were directed as much to me as they were to no one. Her voice had a thin, delicate quality that I’d never appreciated. It gave an air of insincerity to everything she said. “I think I am sad,” she decided at last.
“Empathy?” I prompted. I knew the word. I understood the concept. Still, it was surprising. She wasn’t the sort.
She looked at me for the first time since my arrival. Gula’s large, dark eyes had the clarity of tea. They flashed as she narrowed them at me. The space between her brows squeezed tighter as her lip fell, “No, nothing so primitive. Empathy clouds judgment. It is my duty to remain impartial.”
“Pity,” I said. “One of the humans belongs to you, then?”
“There, in the back,” she lifted her chin to gesture beyond the crowd, where a woman trailed behind the frothing gaggle of filthy bipeds. “She’s called Aea. Her cries held such fervor I needed to see for myself.”
We weren’t watching a crowd, I realized. It was a mob. Their cries were belligerent and unintelligible. A central male figure had thrown a young woman onto the water’s edge, and others crowded around to watch. The accused and the accuser. The accused—a woman no older than nineteen—was raw and bloodied, presumably having been dragged from the nearby city to this place of judgment. Her hair was matted with dirt. Vertical lines carved through her dust-caked cheeks as she sobbed.
Maybe I understood what Gula meant. Perhaps…perhaps this was sad.
“Have you had one?” she asked, though it felt more like a disinterested murmur than a true question.
“A human?” Nowtherewas a thought. I knew better than to laugh at a goddess of her caliber.
“It’s rather something to be loved by a mortal. They have so little time on their rock, and when they choose to spend their blinks of time worshipping you…everything is fleeting. All of it. Remember that, Prince.”
The Sumerians had reigned Mesopotamia for two thousand years. With the help of their gods, their people invented the wheel, cuneiform, geometry, sandals, irrigation, chariots, harpoons, and even sea-to-sea trade routes that led to the cloud of cinnamon wafting off the goddess now.
The Akkadian usurpers were marked by their economy. Most notably known for agriculture, taxation, and conquest. They overthrew with fists, ruled with coin, and promptly fell in under two hundred years.
Her people remained; though, her patience thinned.
“Why have you requested my presence?”
She gestured with a single finger. “Watch.”
I inspected the cluster of incensed humans to see a wailing woman—Aea, the goddess’s practitioner—following from a distance. She had to be roughly the same age as the accused woman, though the others paid her no mind.
The wind moved the queen’s night-dark hair and covered the space between us with the sweetness of fermented honey wine once more. It was a welcome relief to the blood, sand, sweat, and sorrow that lined my nose.
Gula said, “Aea knows the accused is innocent. She’s the one they want. Her companion has taken the fall for her, though she has done nothing wrong.”
