“I will send someone to talk to them. And where are my allies your kinsmen?” I said. My cousin—my father’s nephew—had reported that Hagarlat’s allies might number five, even seven thousand or more.
“They will come,” he said, pushing a bundle of qat into his mouth before he left my fire.
“I no longer trust him,” Maqar said after slipping into my tent. The moon was dark—a fine night for an ambush. But so far, the scouts had seen nothing.
“Because he is a north man?” I said, as we reclined against a pile of saddlebags. I smoothed the hair from his face. It was the first time I had touched him in days.
“No. Because he does not look at you as the others do.”
I laughed. “How should he look at me?” The tribesmen were hard and weathered men. Maqar, too, was a warrior, and a maker of warriors, but at twenty-five still untouched by the flint that so quickly struck war in other men’s hearts.
“You don’t even realize it, do you? You are otherworldly. I have never seen you like this, as you were on that day. Do I dare touch you, Daughter of Almaqah?”
“You must.” I leaned back against him and his fingers lit like a breath against my cheek. Outside, it had begun to rain.
“Makeda . . .”
“It is Bilqis now,” I murmured, capturing his thumb with my lips.
“And yet, I will always think of you as Makeda, even when you are my queen, long after you’ve married some noble or even the Pharaoh in Egypt. Long after you’ve forgotten Punt, and me.”
I bit him, if not hard. “Never say that. Besides, have you not heard the rumors? I cursed my betrothed and so he died. And do you think Khalkharib and the others have not seen you coming into or leaving my tent? They know I am no virgin, if they did not know it before.”
“They will quickly forgive both when you are queen.”
“It doesn’t matter. If not you, then no one.” I did not say that I had begun to rethink my vow that I would never marry him. Time enough for that.
His laugh was soft and, I thought, sad. “So you say now. But the day will come when your councilmen will advise you to make alliance with someone far more powerful. And if they do not, I will.”
“You swore to stay by me.”
“And so I will, even if not in your bed.”
“Why do you say these things?” Had I wounded him so much those first nights after our return? “There are other ways to make alliance. You said yourself, I am clever. Do you think I could give myself so easily—or at all—to another, knowing you are near? No. I will not let you go.”
He was quiet as I lay back against him, but it didn’t matter. I would prove my words with time. I could not imagine life—here or in Punt, or anywhere—without him.
But then . . . a pit twisted in my stomach.
“Surely you considered this possibility,” I said slowly. “That I would hold to you, even if I became queen as you meant me to.”
“Can you really ask that now?”
For a moment there was only the thickening patter of rain. When I said nothing, he sat up abruptly.
“You said you would never make me king and I accepted it. And it has cost me more than you know. Do you not see the way they look at me? The way your nobles go silent whenever I approach? They are too cautious to show their disdain, but it is there because I have your favor.”
“They are jealous!”
“Even so, I say you must marry for treaty out of love for you, when I want only to possess you! What more will convince you? I give you my pride, my body, my life!”
I leaned up and clasped his shoulders. His words shamed me. “Forgive me,” I said. And then, in a whisper: “Forgive me.” After a long moment the stiffness slowly left his frame.
“The politics of these tribes is infecting us both,” I said. “And you and I . . . have slept too long apart.”
I smoothed back the fall of hair from his neck. He turned his head and even in the darkness I knew the question in that gaze. And then I was in his arms and clasped tightly, the patter of rain drowning out his sighs.
FOUR
I gathered with my tribal leaders at dawn in a broad patch of scrub on the desert’s edge. Six cairns in crude imitation of Marib’s temple pillars marked its use as an open air sanctuary by nomads and travelers.
Niman, my cousin, had provided the ibex kid bound before us. Niman himself might have been king, had his father survived Agabos’ campaigns. But none of Agabos’ sons had survived except for my father, and so the throne had passed to him. The kid bleated intermittently, the young starts of its horns curving slightly toward one another, forming a perfect crescent atop its head.
Niman had also brought another item I thought never to lay eyes on: the markab.
I had seen the markab only in depictions of my grandfather’s victories on the bronze temple door. But now here it was, as though lifted from the frieze of legend itself.
An open-frame ark of acacia wood decorated with gold and ostrich plumes, the markab was both battle standard and war trophy. Gold horns rose up from the base on either side of it—their exaggerated crescents evoking the moon god’s familiar, the bull. My grandfather’s army had carried the ship, as its name meant, into battle, a bare-breasted virgin riding within it, and no tribal force had ever captured it. But the markab had become lost in the last years of his reign, or so I had heard.
A hush fell in camp at sight of it as ten men carried it overhead and twenty more jogged alongside, reminiscent of the day when warriors shackled themselves to its frame so that they might defend it and the virgin battle queen to their last breaths. When they brought it to the clearing, I saw the fittings by which it could be mounted atop a camel.
I was guided into the clearing by an acolyte at each arm; an hour earlier Asm had given me the bitter datura, the root of the moonflower, to drink. I had retched immediately and refused the rest, then vomited twice more.
I knelt before the markab, mouth acrid, my unbound hair falling to the earth and coiling atop my thighs. A robed figure towered above me, blotting out the sky. Asm. The gilded skull of Almaqah’s bull seemed to hover atop his head, its eyes black and endless holes, the nasal cavity like a toothed grimace so that I almost screamed at first sight of it.
He spoke, and though I knew the gravel of his voice well, it seemed the skull formed the words with phantom bovine lips as the mountain rumbled to the west.
“We make the gift of blood—water, salt, and ocher of life—that you hear the petition of your daughter. Almaqah, god of moon and thunder, hear your servant and answer!” His hand lashed out. Five runes hovered, impossibly, in the air before they skittered to the ground. Two of them lay upturned: the liver rune, and the blood rune.
“Almaqah, hear and answer,” murmured the tribesmen surrounding the clearing, worshippers of Amm and Sayin, Athtar and Wadd—gods of sun, moon, and morning star, of field and rain and thunder—the gods of their territories and ancestors and clans. Every tribesman swore by the gods of the lands they visited, as I had sworn by Sayin on the coastal plain and by Amm in Qataban. But we were in Saba’s sovereign territory now.
Saba and Almaqah, over all.
The priest turned to the east, where the pale sliver of the waxing moon had begun its day-rise over the desert. The crescent knife shimmered in his hand, twin to the sickle in the sky.
“Almaqah, grant victory to your daughter and swiftness to the swords of these, her kinsmen and allies. Reveal whether they march on Marib this day! Grant clear omen and be remembered for your favor to your people. Grant victory, that you may be worshipped forever. Saba and Almaqah, over all!”
The tribes strike their own deals with the gods, I thought abstractedly. As all men must. But my bargain, struck days ago, had been between the god and me alone.
Asm was kneeling over the kid, holding it by the head. I didn’t remember seeing him move. The knife flashed downward, impossibly fast, and curved slowly upward again. For a suspended moment, blood brimmed in a ma
cabre smile across that creamy throat before spurting a red arc into the air.
An acolyte fell to his knees to catch the blood in a golden basin and I watched it fill until my vision dotted like the crimson splatter on the bowl’s edge. There was no wind; the metallic tang of it was in my nostrils until I could taste it.
I stared, transfixed as the life of the animal grotesquely failed before me, the bound legs lifted so stiffly from the ground falling limply to the dust at last.
When Asm moved to carve open the belly, I told myself to look away and thought that I had, even as I watched the acolyte pull on the edge of that gaping wound.
Reek of bowel . . . rend of flesh like the ripping of so many threads . . . Asm, bloodied up to his forearms, cutting free the liver . . .
With dread amazement I watched him examine and then delicately slice it open, peeling it apart like a fruit.
“The omen is favorable,” he announced. “We march on Marib today!”
A shout went up from the tribesmen, shocking the pulse that drummed too quickly, too loudly in my ears.
“What of the outcome?” one man called out.
The priest passed the red mass to the one acolyte and accepted the bowl of blood from the other. I realized, belatedly, he had come to kneel before me.
“Daughter of Almaqah, look into the bowl and tell me what you see.”
I tore my eyes from the black sockets of the skull.
There, the bowl. So much blood. I leaned forward, peered into that red well, the welter of life and death. And for a moment it seemed that I was not in this clearing, or even here, on the edge of the desert, but in the palace. That I was a girl clinging to her dead mother, strands of her hair caught in my fingers. That I was twelve again, and desperate for salvation, the rubies of my mother’s bracelet as deeply crimson as the flecks of blood against that golden rim . . .
My vision shrouded, closing over me. A sharp ringing deafened my ears.
“My queen, what do you see?” Asm, from very far away.
“Incense. Frankincense,” I heard myself say.
I reached for him, but he had gotten to his feet. I fell forward, flailing for purchase. My hands landed on the edge of the bowl, sending it over.
“The spice road,” I heard him say as though from a distance. “The spice road!” he roared. “Almaqah grants prosperous reign!” The tribesmen erupted in shouts—all except Maqar, who seized me by the shoulders, my hands outstretched between us, fingers dripping blood.
He caught me up in his arms, calling for water, something for the queen to eat. When he looked down at me next, his face was clouded as the western sky. I touched his face.
We had mended things silently, if desperately, in our nomadic bed through the night and again, just before dawn. And I had sworn to myself in the quiet moment of sunrise that we would be married by summer’s end. I did not care what his father’s intent had been. He could have the satisfaction of thinking he had contrived it. It did not matter; the gain was mine.
A man came running from camp. I struggled to stand, only then seeing the blood I had smeared across Maqar’s cheek and chest. “Tribesmen, coming in from the north!” the man shouted. “Hundreds!”
All around us, hands instinctively went to swords, but the man from Aman loudly announced, “You see, my queen!” He jutted his chin toward the large company on the horizon. “My men have come.”
As the men made ready, I paused near the markab to slide a finger over the gilded horns. I plucked idly at an ostrich feather. The gold leaf was very fine, very smooth, without even a nick. As was the acacia wood, as far as I could tell. The feathers were pristine—too pristine and new to have ever entered the field of battle so long ago . . .
Very clever.
We rode west out to meet the tribesmen of Aman on the plain of Marib. The man had been right; there were hundreds. They joined our number, filling our right flank. It was by now almost noon and rain had begun to fall, matting hair to head and veil to face. More men had come from nearby villages throughout the morning and we were by now nearly four thousand in number, a unified royal escort, a show of militant accord.
Ahead of us, across the Wadi Dhana, which ran parallel us to our left, the edge of Marib’s southern oasis lay green against the encroaching sands of the desert. My heart began a steady drum.
I had not thought to see these fields again or to ever count it a blessing if I did. But now my spirit surged at sight of the raging wadi, that watercourse of dreams come to life once more. And there—the temple within the southern oasis, connected to the capital by a narrow causeway over the waters.
When we broached the eastern edge of the smaller north oases, Niman abruptly turned in his saddle. Raising his spear, he shouted, “Saba and Almaqah, over all!”
Those nearest us took up the refrain, and within minutes it became a cry four thousand strong, drowning out rain and waterway both.
But just when we should have seen the walls of Marib rising up from the western horizon, the horizon itself seemed to waver, like heat waves over a dusty road. For a moment, I thought it the aftereffect of Asm’s tea—what few drops I had actually retained of it. And then I saw.
Lines of north men. Lines and lines of them.
Nabat signaled a stop. A short blast from a horn issued midway back, carrying the order.
Maqar drew close and said, low, “Have your priest usher you across the causeway to the temple. Now.” And then, to Yafush: “Keep her safe.”
I stayed Yafush with a hand. “No.”
Maqar leaned in urgently. “You cannot safely watch the outcome of this. Not against so many men!”
“I will not run for walls as others fight in my name.”
“Go now, while there is time,” he hissed.
“And what—wait for some report? A messenger, to say whether I am queen or not?”
“This is meaningless if you are killed! I will come for you myself when it is over. You will enter the city in triumph. But until then you at least will have sanctuary there.”
He did not need to finish his sentence for me to hear the rest of it: If we fail.
“And what would I do with sanctuary? Live out my life as a priestess, never to set foot outside those walls again?” I shook my head. “I will not leave my markab. And I will not leave you.”
“Forget me! I must be nothing to you now! For the sake of Saba—”
But something—something too long latent, and too long forgotten rose up in me. Righteous, furious indignation. A refusal to renounce my birth name or birthright again out of shame or fear . . . or to ever cower again. Every thought of disgrace, every dread terror of the past, fell away from me like a shell all at once.
“Do you not think I knew the danger when I agreed to return? That I might have been killed the moment we set foot onshore, or any moment since? I am my mother’s daughter and I will not hide!” I said, my voice rising in volume. I ripped off my veil. “I am the daughter of the king, the anointed of Almaqah!” And then I was turning, shouting back to those around me. “I am the granddaughter of the great Agabos, the unifier of Saba! Whose markab do you think that is? It was his. It is mine. It is ours!”
Cries from behind me, swords raised to the air. Ahead of me, Khalkharib and the others had turned back to stare. It did not matter that it was not the lost markab of my grandfather. It would be now. I rose up in the saddle.
“Can men defeat the chosen of the gods? We are the children of Almaqah, who has promised prosperity in measures unseen to come! Saba! And Almaqah! Over all!”
The shouts rose to a roar.
Beside me, Maqar’s face was stark. His mouth was moving, his whisper inaudible, but somehow I heard the words that fell from his lips.
Who are you?
A horn sounded. The lines of north men had begun to advance, closing half the distance between us. Ahead of us, Nabat was studying them intensely, seeming to murmur to himself. Khalkharib, beside him, leaned forward in the saddle and then said some
thing swiftly to Nabat.
Nabat shouted back to us through the din. “They are too few! We have the advantage!”
“We have every advantage,” Niman said with a dark grin. “Saba and Almaqah!”
In the split moment before the men surged forward, the field fell away. There was only Maqar, looking at me with that same unreadable expression of one who knows and does not recognize another, at once.
And then the ranks rushed forward, carrying everything and everyone with it like the monsoon raging down the highland ravines.
We surged across the northern oasis. A thousand men on camels seemed to flow past me. Three thousand on foot closed in their wake—tribesmen urbanized by city and village returned in an instant to fierce nomadic roots like the tamed animal turned feral at the first scent of blood.
Perhaps it was the lingering effect of the datura, but even though I knew I had never ridden so hard in my life—and not even as fast as those tribesmen streaming past me with beautiful ferocity, their colors and those of their camels streaming behind them in violent mosaic—for a moment I thought I floated, the she-camel beneath me so much like the rolling of waves and not the jarring walk I had lived with for weeks . . .
Yafush closed in tight against me, grabbing for my reins, Maqar against my other side, sword drawn. I, armored in linen and silk, and armed with only my dagger.
Ahead, the first line of north men seemed to falter and break to one side. At a sharp double blast of the horn, my archers—kneeling in the saddle—sent a volley straight for them. Far ahead, men fell at random, like gaps in a line of teeth.
But there—they were wheeling, the line not breaking so much as sliding like earth from a hill, toward the left flank. Nabat was bellowing at Khalkharib, who seemed not to hear as confusion spread like a gust through our number.
I was slowing, the sheer loss of speed like pain, as ahead of me the same men who had fondled their camels like beloved pets around the fires shouted their names now as war cry.
Something was wrong. I looked back at the great gap opening in our company—not the forward separation between those mounted and on foot, but between the right flank and middle. There was a long moment of confusion . . . and then the sudden clash of blades and lightning of iron where there should not have been.