CHAPTER EIGHT
Alad
After paying close attention to the sounds these small humans make, I’m closing in on their speech.
It’s an unknown language with a syntax I don’t recognize.
I might as well be living on a distant planet for all that it makes sense in comparison to The First Language spoken by the gods, but luckily, I’ve inherited a gift for tongues from my mother.
The Goddess of Mediation needs words. The bringing of peace requires communication, so she was created knowing all languages. As her son, I can tap into that magick, if I dare.
But using magick that isn’t my own to improve my fluency will alert the gods to my location.
And once my mother knows where I am, she’ll come fetch me—and I’m not ready to be fetched.
For the first time in my life, I’m free: free of palace intrigue, free of those who love me insisting I play my part, free of the fallible gods and their dictates, and free of all requirement, at least for a while.
All I need to do at present is to focus on Char.Lot and decide what her presence in my new existence means.
And I need to learn where and when I am. I can’t start building a life here until I know.
I meet her gaze. Unlike Karu’s expression, which always seemed a little conniving and a lot disingenuous, Char.Lot meets my eyes directly.
There’s a purity to her character I can feel.
Even her silver aura is mostly unmuddied.
She’s a whore, she must be, but one whose profession doesn’t seem to have tainted too much of her soul.
Plus, she was willing to sacrifice a necklace that obviously meant a great deal to her.
I can’t imagine Karu sacrificing anything.
When I reach up to touch a lock of her hair hanging decorously from the rest, she blushes, charming me completely.
A mystery, when I love unraveling mysteries. She doesn’t shrink from me. She heats with lust. I smell it on her beneath her flowery scent, and the perfume is… magnificent.
But she looks like Karu. Different enough that I know they are not the same person, but I’ve yearned for both. One was hard wood. One is bendable reed. They’re not the same, but the initial attraction I felt for them is.
Which is worrying. I don’t want what I’m beginning to feel for Char.Lot to simply be a physical attraction, not when I’m coming to admire her so.
The fact that she was prepared to sacrifice her necklace to clothe and feed me deserves my respect.
She certainly merits more than my lust, though she’s got that.
Every time I glance at her, I rise higher within these blasted instruments of torture I wear.
But, why her? Why here? I became entombed by a curse while staring into Karu’s eyes. I awoke from the curse because of Char.Lot’s touch. They’re physically alike. They’re spiritually different. And I can’t seem to get a grip upon what it all means.
All magick has rules. The warp and weft of it must always align with Fate, which even the gods are powerless against. But the pattern is unclear.
I can’t read it. I can’t see it over how fast my heart beats in Char.Lot’s presence, how my body insists the best way to find answers is to lay her upon a soft mat and enter her fragrant kir.
Disquiet rolls through my belly until one of the men, Al.Bert, distracts me with his groan. He throws down his cards. “Ugh, not again. Are you sure you’re not a cardsharp, mate?”
The man on the other side, Ro.Bert, claps me on the shoulder. He’s a good-natured fellow, but he’s a poor player of the game. They all are.
Come to think of it… “What is?” I ask him, raising the thing he has called a card.
“Card.”
I shake my head. “No. What is?”
“Paper?” His dark brows close in above his nose. “Where are you from that you don’t know paper? Or board. Board is a harder version of paper, like many thin layers pasted together.”
Fascinating. I understand enough of his explanation to know the card is created of something similar to the papyrus of Kemet.
Papyrus… paper. Is there a linguistic connection?
If so, where am I? I flew over this land to the edge by the sea.
It looks similar to Kemet, but less fertile, and though I spotted a river, it was not the sacred Nile.
Plus, there aren’t any pyramids like those built before the Flood.
Far too many buildings in styles I have never witnessed dot the landscape.
So, not Kemet, but where?
Char.Lot grows tense under my questioning. “He’s foreign.”
The others nod as if what she says makes sense. Good enough.
I scrape back my chair. Taking up my winnings, I hand them to her, even as her eyes grow wide.
I don’t know the monetary system, but I have more than doubled the amount I was given in exchange for a single Uruk gold shekel.
In my time, a gold shekel could purchase a small estate, but I’ve no way of knowing its worth in this place.
“So much?” She blinks up at me after studying the pile she holds in the skirt she stretches between her hands.
“You.” I point, attempting to convey they are hers.
She shakes her head, but a cloud covers her expression.
Before I can investigate why my giving her my winnings has created distress, she swishes over to the barkeep and proceeds to transfer the wooden coins into metal ones and large cut strips of what I now know is paper.
He hands her a leather pouch into which everything disappears.
When she turns towards the stairs, I wrap my arm around her waist. Her low gasp is a thing of beauty in my ears as she looks up at me. But some of the tension melts from her small frame. I don’t know what frightens her, but it doesn’t appear to be me.
I guard her up the staircase and down the hall to the room on the end. When the door swings open, I step in front of her, wary, searching for danger, but all that I see is a simple room empty of anything but furnishings and a candle burning within a clear case.
One of the first things I’m going to do is find out what the case is made of. It’s… intriguing. It resembles the blue glass from which beads and sometimes household objects are made, but I’ve never seen anything so clear.
I wanted to fly. I wanted to experience the wide world outside Gil’s palace and my mother’s smothering. Well, ask the gods and receive, though what they’ll choose to give is always the question.
After closing the door, Char.Lot tries to hand the pouch to me, but I refuse. If she was about to barter a small bit of gold for sustenance, she has need. Helping her is the least I can do.
“I can’t take money from you, Alad,” she says, trying to force the bag into my hand. “I’m not your mistress or your doxy for the evening. I don’t need to be paid for…for…” But her voice trails off.
“You,” I repeat, pushing the pouch towards her as gently as I can. “You need.”
She shakes her head, her expression glum.
Damn it to Hell, I need words. Now. “Gilgame? dumu kunga.” Because it’s Gil’s fault I’m here, creating chaos in her life.
I need to find him. He’s immortal. He must be ruling somewhere, perhaps still in Uruk.
If I can find the city, perhaps he can explain why I left the world staring at Karu and re-entered it to Char.Lot’s caress.
“Read. Me,” I remind her as she stands frozen.
As if awakening from stone, she nods, breaking her stillness. “Fine. I’ll hold the money for now, but this matter isn’t concluded, Alad.”
Char.Lot crosses to the bed and picks up a handful of rectangular objects. She gestures that I should sit in the chair pulled before the lightly glowing embers in the hearth. When I submit, she places the objects in my lap.
Leather, and the substance called paper, but thinner sheets than the cards.
Leaning over my shoulder, she points and lifts the exterior.
“Words. These are written in English. This heavy one is our religious text, and the heaviest is a dictionary. These thinner ones are for enjoyment, as is this work.” She runs her finger along the spine of the last, pausing as she says each word distinctly.
“Mrs. Murdock and the Ghost of Grisbey Manor.”
I repeat the sounds. The figure “M” is the easiest to decipher into sound as it is repeated three times. I find the “G” and the “r.”
She reaches for one of the smaller works.
“‘The Case of the Midnight Menace.’ There existed a gentleman thief with the same moniker some fifteen years back. I don’t know whether the series accurately reflects his story, but in later episodes, he marries the daughter of an army colonel and lives happily ever after, except for the madcap case of his dog falling in love with a cat and leaving dead offerings in his office. It’s quite the tale, actually.”
I wish I understood what she was saying. The fondness in her expression as she traces the letters fills me with an intemperance I shouldn’t feel, as if every second I fail to comprehend risks… what? What do I possibly have of which I should be afraid?
And suddenly, I do understand. I’m afraid the curse will bind me into stone again.
I’m afraid that calling on my magick will summon my mother and that, on behalf of all the gods and my king, I’ll be ordered back to Uruk.
I’m afraid this fragile, tangible connection I feel between me and Char.Lot will disappear because I’ve been caught unprepared.
With a sigh, I settle into the chair, studying the pages of the smaller book that makes Char.Lot look content.
She hunches over my shoulder and begins to read out loud, holding my hand in hers as she strokes my finger over the marks.
Her breath is warm against my ear. Everything in me stills, sputters, and explodes with a yearning deeper than any I’ve ever felt.
My chest aches along with my i?arum, wanting nothing more than to stay in this moment forever. At the same time, the impossibility of maintaining it makes me want to cry.