Flood Read online

  She hesitated, but he lifted it over her head and helped her slip her arms through. It fell past her curves and she paused, feeling strange in such luxury after days of brutality. He clucked his tongue and brought her to the tall mirror against the wall.

  She touched her hand to her mouth to stifle a gasp because the image in the reflection couldn’t be her. The dress shimmered strangely, enhancing her good features and somehow replacing what she lacked, even bringing color to her pale, bruised complexion.

  The eunuch smiled. “It is perfect. Is it not?”

  “Perfect,” she breathed. “But for what?” She turned and carefully slid her palms down her hips. “What are you preparing me for?”

  The eunuch dipped close, smile flashing. “You have been given the opportunity to dine with the God-King.”

  Her eyes hardened. “But—”

  He gripped her hand hard enough to make her wince, saying in a low voice, “A rare opportunity few would rebuff.”

  She paused, thinking of the doorway to the bathroom. She nodded and, when the eunuch turned, threw a glance toward the doorway, but she saw no cracks or holes through which anyone could be watching.

  What, in the name of the gods, was happening?

  The eunuch hung a delicate silver necklace around her neck, and slipped thin rings on her fingers, until both hands glittered and clinked.

  He stepped behind and braided her hair, forming one tress into a spiraling circlet, while the rest he formed into a pattern that fell past her shoulders and both defied the mind and drew the eyes.

  Adah watched in the mirror, enraptured by how the dark powder he applied to her upper eyelids seemed to make her eyes flash. He lifted one foot at a time to slip on leather sandals with carved ivory clasps.

  “Now you are ready,” he said, and bowed, offering her his hand.

  “Have you always served in the labyrinth?”

  The eunuch went about cleaning up the excess materials, apparently not worried anyone might overhear. “I became a eunuch at a very young age. The labyrinth has only existed for a short time. Like most eunuchs, I’ve attended to myriad duties, the majority related to tending the God-King’s concubines.”

  “So that’s how you know how to . . .”

  “To make you beautiful? Simple tricks that only enhance the features you already have.” He offered his hand, and she laid her fingers in his and let him lead her through another door, down several corridors, to a large table set with silk tablecloth and glimmering silverware.

  The eunuch sat her at the far end and scooted her chair in until her chest touched the table. She grabbed her thumb in her lap, wiped the sweat from her palm, and tried to still her bouncing leg.

  The eunuch bent and whispered, a smile in his voice, “The God-King will join you shortly.”

  Chapter 12

  A week after Lamech and his father dreamed the same dream, Lamech exited his hut to a rose-colored sky and his father staring at the pile of rocks marking where supplies were dropped every season. He approached and waited for Father to speak. Instead, Father bent, knees popping, callused fingers scraping the stones. His brow furrowed, gray eyes squinting. His black hair was more unkempt than usual, and when he finally spoke, it was in a raspy whisper. “They’re not coming.”

  Lamech’s jaw hung as he breathed the cold mountain air and looked down the empty pathway. He had been so distracted by Adah and her expanding belly that he hadn’t given their supplies any thought.

  “In all these years, they’ve never been late,” Father said.

  “Something must have happened.”

  “Of course something happened.” Father stood. “But what? And why?”

  Lamech dug at the packed earth with his toes, ignoring Father’s weighty gaze. “Maybe they forgot.”

  Father buried his face in his arm and coughed long and hard. “They don’t forget.”

  “Are you sick?”

  “It’s nothing.” Father itched his nose and rested his hands on his hips. “We’ve used up our supplies. We need grain, firewood, herbs, salt, rope, and new tools to replace the broken ones. I can’t carry all that up the mountain.”

  Lamech picked a skeletal twig out from amongst the rocks and cracked it in half. “Adah would never make the journey.”

  “No.” Father grabbed a black stone from the pile. “Still. Our needs remain.” He coughed again, and used the porous stone to dab the mucus from the corner of his mouth.

  “I can’t leave her,” Lamech said, and continued breaking the twigs into smaller halves.

  “You’re her husband.”

  “You don’t understand,” Lamech said. “I promised her I wouldn’t leave.”

  “If no one brings us supplies, you might have no choice,” Father said.

  Lamech tossed the fragments to the wind.

  Father gauged him. “Did I ever tell you the last thing I said to your mother before she died?”

  “I’m in no mood for a lecture,” he said.

  “When have I ever cared for your moods?”

  Lamech glared down the pathway, refusing to look into those gray eyes.

  “Will you let me go to the grave unheard?” Father continued.

  “I’m not stopping you,” Lamech said.

  Father coughed and slapped at his chest, taking a moment to recover. “I told her I wouldn’t let her die.”

  “What does that have to do with anything?” He saw the twinkle in Father’s eye and looked away.

  “Sometimes we speak out of ignorance,” Father said. “That’s forgivable. What matters is that we act out of conviction.” Father laid a hand on Lamech’s shoulder. “When the time comes, you’ll know what to do. And you’ll do it. Promise or not.”

  Lamech shrugged his hand away and let his father’s words spill cold and bitter. “Do as you say and not as you do?”

  When Father spoke again, his voice sounded small and distant. “I am no more than a shadow in the mountains. I’ve never wanted you to be like me.” He hobbled away, leaving Lamech standing in the mountain wind, fighting tears.

  Chapter 13

  The God-King entered ceremoniously with female servants caressing him and pouring wine into a goblet from a weathered wineskin. The liquid splattered the God-King’s white undergarment, and he lifted the goblet to his lips, letting it slosh over the rim and drench his chest. He slammed the cup on the table, and the female servants cowered and giggled.

  “Leave,” he said. Their feathered headpieces bobbed out of sight. He smiled, his teeth red, his silver eyes and black horns more unnerving than before. “Thank you for joining me.”

  Adah picked at the bloody dirt beneath her fingernails.

  “I’d like to formally welcome you to my kingdom.” The God-King motioned with his hand to indicate the room and beyond. “Have you enjoyed yourself?”

  Adah bent her fingernail back.

  A smirk tipped the corner of the God-King’s mouth, and words poured like droplets in a dark cave. “Does my company not satisfy you? Does my food not please you? How about the adornments I’ve given you? Or your beautification by my eunuch?”

  Adah’s hands shook in her lap. Her forehead burned, and her mind darkened with the memory of the smoke in Father’s eyes. She stared at the God-King as if doing so were an act of violence.

  He pushed back his chair and paced, the flesh of his feet sweeping the floor. “Do you feel superior? Too beautiful to grace the hall of the God-King?”

  “No.”

  He smiled. “Then what?”

  “You murdered my parents.”

  The smirk widened. “Come now,” he said. “You’re a grown woman. Do you really still need your mother and father to enjoy dinner with a man?”

  She jumped up, knocking the chair over. Her body shook, and she gripped a knife. The light of the flames of the torches along the walls flickered across its dull edge.

  “Ah . . .” His teeth glinted.

  She held her breath as he slid toward her like a
tiger. She willed the arm holding the knife to stab, but could not move, for his silver, predatory gaze held her immobilized. He swiped the knife from her hand and replaced it with his own fingers. His eyes hovered above her and seemed to grow into twin moons blacking out her surroundings.

  “Have you never thought,” he said, “about how strange it is that we have bodies? That we are flesh, blood, and bone?” He leaned forward until his lips nearly touched hers, bending her wrist until she cried out. “We are so easily crushed. Thrown away. Burned. And yet . . . something remains, does it not? After the body dies, what of the soul? The vapor, the essence of a person? Where does it go?”

  Adah’s fingers curled around his, digging into his hand as she imagined seizing the knife again. But she could barely breathe, for his words had lodged themselves in her throat.

  “I’m going to let you in on a secret,” he said. “Something I’ve not told anyone else in many a century.”

  He released her wrist and leaned in until his breath kissed her ear. “I am not like you. You were born in your body, but me? I was born a vapor on the wind, aimless, thirsty for the blood that pumps in your veins. And as was planned in the halls of Timelessness, I formed this body with the wisdom of the Watchers, and the help of a woman like you, pulling it on as a skintight robe. If you picked up that knife and stabbed me, you may be able to destroy this body. But you would never destroy me. I would only come back to haunt you in your dreams. And eventually, after I found another body, I would have my way with you.”

  He released her, and she jerked away. But all she could think of was the way his breath had warmed her skin. Though he smelled perfumed, she felt dirtied by his touch.

  He turned and said, “Follow me.”

  She obeyed, feeling drawn like an empty boat tied to a galley. He led her down a hallway through a door to what appeared to be his private bedchamber. The eunuch stood guard outside, and after she and the God-King entered, he shut and barred the door.

  Adah watched as he crossed to a table and took a sip from a bowl of what looked like blood. “To do what we desire, we need bodies. But we can neither mate with you, nor do what we must without first becoming like you. And the terrible truth is that we then become bound. Now I must drink, and drink, and drink, or die.” He smiled again. “But so long as I have a steady supply of blood, this body will continue as it has these past two thousand years. And by inhabiting this body, I have been given a gift. The ability to change children while they are still in the womb, to craft them into receptacles fit to receive my brethren, the spirits of the Watchers.”

  Adah took in the room. Hanging curtains, wooden arches over the bed from which hung white sheets that blew in the breeze from the narrow windows at either end of the room. Several tables held silver flasks and wooden bowls, but she saw no utensils. No weapons. No means of escape save jumping to her death.

  “Now that I have been gifting the Watchers with bodies fit to receive them, they reward me by plotting my assassination. They want control.” He steadied himself against the table, his fingernails scraping the wood. He turned, silver eyes glowing. “Oh, they know it wouldn’t last long. But they are hungry. All their thought is bent on it.”

  Adah cleared her throat and said, “Why should I care about the squabbles of demons?”

  “I’m not the one who killed your family,” he said.

  “You might as well be.”

  Another smile. “Maybe.” He slipped his hand into his pocket. “I know what burns within you.”

  Adah’s feet flexed as the silken dress rippled cold against her legs.

  “The one who plots against me is the same who burned your village and murdered your parents. He sought to start the war prematurely to make me look the fool, because he thinks he’s unlocked the secret that might replace my gifting. Do you not want revenge?”

  “Why involve me? Why not just kill him, if you’re so powerful?”

  “I could have him swinging by his neck from the city gates,” he said. “But what of the others? Many follow him and rely on him and the abominable machines he’s invented to run the city. He’s begun to convince the others that they might not need me. I must make an illustration of him.” He walked toward her, silver eyes flashing. “They are not like me. Though I could come back a thousand times, they get one life, like you.” He chuckled at her expression. “Yes, you hate me, but you will do this for me: you will murder my servant, the one who calls himself Lord Tubal.”

  Adah remembered the demon’s double face, heard his breathy laughter, felt his gluttonous eyes, and thought of her parents, of the price she’d paid that could never be returned. Indeed, she wanted nothing more than to murder Tubal, but how could she justify helping the God-King? “You ask a great thing of me.”

  “Revenge is no little reward,” he said, and for the first time she thought she saw a flair of anger in those cold, silver eyes.

  She straightened. “If I do this for you, I would want the freedom to leave this place, to go where I will, to live the rest of my years in peace.”

  “I grant it. What else?”

  She blinked. What else could she want? She could ask for food, but it would likely be poisoned. She could ask for a servant to follow her, but how could she trust anyone who served such a demon? “Promise on your life.”

  A smirk. “Of course.” He pulled a small wooden box from his tunic, opened the lid, and retrieved a tiny, sharp object. “Take this and hide it in the palm of your hand. Careful. Do not let it prick your skin. It is hollow. Filled with deadly poison. After you return to your cell, Tubal will visit. When he does, you will press this needle through his flesh, take his keys, and escape your cell. But you will not free the other women.” He gripped her chin and she met his eyes. “If you free the other women, I will know. You may think you could disobey me, but I promise that there is no place on earth that you could go where I could not find you. Do you understand?”

  Adah pulled away, nostrils flared. “I understand.”

  “I will order the western aqueducts emptied for one day, and one day only. The entrance to the aqueduct is near your cell. If the aqueduct is full, you will be drowned in the current. But when you find the aqueduct dry, you will know the God-King has done as he said. That he has granted you life as only God can.”

  Chapter 14

  Lamech awakened the next day, rolled out of bed, and left Adah to check the stone marker. It stood as before, dark and deserted, and Father was nowhere to be seen. Since Lamech was a child, Father had woken before sunrise, but the sun was already climbing the axis.

  He ducked into Father’s hut and found him lying under the covers, head tangled in sweat-soaked hair. He knelt and shook his shoulder. “Father? Are you awake?” He felt Father’s forehead with the back of his hand, and parted his eyelids to bloodshot white. He tapped his cheek. “Wake up.”

  Father grimaced, moaned, and rolled his head.

  Lamech stood, unsure what to do. Father was feverish and they had no supplies. They had used up the last of the herbs that could be used to resist a fever, and Lamech could no longer hope for help. Worst of all, Adah was due to give birth at any moment. And he had promised he would never leave her for fear of the dreams that pursued them like shadows from her darkened past.

  Lamech pressed his palms to his eyes and sucked at the air through bared teeth. He had to get supplies. But it would likely take him half a day to walk down the mountain, and at least an entire day to make it back with supplies. If he didn’t explain to Adah where he was going, she would think he had abandoned her. What if she wandered down the mountainside to find him? She was too far along to journey the brittle cliffsides without an experienced hand to guide her.

  But what would she say when he explained himself? Her dreams hadn’t stopped, and she would resent him for breaking his promise.

  He kicked the leg of a table and pain shot up his leg. He coughed, cradled his foot, and wiped the wetness that flooded his eyes. He felt like a fool for crying, b
ut he hadn’t left the mountains in years, and the way Father laid unresponsive reminded him of Mother’s pallid skin. Worse, the help they had relied on all these years had suddenly disappeared. And to help his father, he would likely need to betray his promise to Adah.

  He observed the thatched ceiling and wished it were the stars. At least then maybe they could help him chart some middle way. But he could no longer trust the stars.

  He exited Father’s hut, returned to Adah, and shook her gently. She smiled and said, “Hello, love.”

  He sat cross-legged, but his voice was like the dry hiss of wool rubbing wood. “We need to talk.”

  She pushed herself upright, struggling with the awkwardness of her belly. Her green eyes grew concerned, and she brushed her hair behind her ears. “What’s wrong?”

  “Father’s not feeling well. I found him this morning in bed. He’s feverish and won’t wake. I don’t know what to do.”

  “What do you mean?” Her voice sparked with suspicion. “Why not make an herbal compress?”

  Lamech paused, wondering if he should continue.

  Fool, he thought. You’ve gone too far to turn back now.

  “When the time comes, you’ll know what to do. And you’ll do it.”

  Adah was staring at his shaking hands. He clasped them, swallowed the stone in his throat, and said, “We have no more herbs. I hadn’t told you because I didn’t want to worry you. But—”

  “Won’t someone bring more soon?”

  He shook his head. “Not this time.”

  She twisted the covers, tossed them away, and leaned forward. “What do you mean, ‘Not this time’?”

  “They should have been here weeks ago.” His face warmed as he avoided her calculating gaze so it would no longer addle his mind. “They’ve never been late. Not in all these years. We could wait and hope they’re on their way, but . . .”