Page 29 of The Ragpicker King
Lin was surprised. “Really?” Mariam had never evinced any interest in this aspect of Lin’s studies before.
“I’m so grateful for all you’ve done for me, Lin.” Lin started to protest, but Mari waved her words away. “But—I feel as if my fate is entirely out of my own hands.” Her dark eyes searched Lin’s face. “Do you understand that?”
“I understand that feeling,” Lin said. “Only most of the books are—”Stored at the Black Mansion,she was about to say; she had never felt truly safe keeping them all in her house since the time the Maharam had barged in and confiscated her precious tomes. He’d had to give them back after the Tevath, but the memory stung.
“I don’t care if they’re forbidden,” Mariam said. “Lin, the only choice Icanmake is to rely on you to save my life. And I do—I trust you entirely—but surely it cannot help either of us for me to know so little. I want to understand what you’re doing. What is happening inside me.”
Lin felt a lump in her throat. “Mari—”
There was a perfunctory knock on the door; a second later Chana was peering into the room, her eyes bright under the scarf that bound her hair. “Oren Kandel is outside,” she announced without preamble. “Lin, he has a message for you from the Maharam. He says it can’t wait.”
Lin’s hands flew to her bodice. “I can’t meet the Maharam wearingthis.”
Chana shook her head. “He said no delay, chicken. Better to meet the Maharam wearing that dress than to keep him waiting. Just keep that wrapped around you.” She waved a hand at Lin’s shawl.
Lin turned to Mariam, who was looking anxious. “Mari,” she said slowly. “That foreign tea you were looking for—I have some on my kitchen table. It’s only one flavor of tea, but it’s a good one.”
Mariam mouthedthank youto Lin as Chana fussed her out of the room and down the hall. Lin barely had time to wrap the shawl more tightly around herself before she’d been hurried outside, where Oren was waiting for her in the street.
His dark eyes seemed alive with hostility as he watched her approach. “The Maharam has requested I bring you immediately to the Shulamat,Goddess.”
Oren flicked his gaze over Lin, from her bare head to her slippered feet, and it felt like a garden rake scraping her skin. She could feel the hunger and loathing in his eyes as he looked her over. As if he were starving but the only food he could find was something he detested.
Lin crossed her arms over her chest. “And what is this about, Oren?”
He smirked. “The Maharam will explain.”
There was no point arguing. Oren had the upper hand and was clearly enjoying her discomfort. Lin resisted the urge to pull her shawl even closer and followed him without another word.
They set out into the blue twilight. It was the time just after sunset when the sky was not yet dark, but shadows had begun to gather thickly into corners and beneath trees. The air was velvet-soft, carrying a trace of salt so vivid it seemed as if one could taste it.
As they walked, Lin’s mind raced. Could it be the Sanhedrin? But the Maharam had said they would not arrive for at least anotherfew days, and besides, the Sanhedrin were a full caravan of dignitaries. The gates would have been thrown open for them, the Sault’s council of elders assembled to greet them. It was not the sort of event that could have passed unnoticed.
Had the Maharam decided it was time to stop hinting around and demand that she admit she was not the Goddess Returned? She wondered if he had spoken to Mayesh. The two men disliked each other, and they had clashed before over Lin, but surely the Maharam would not take action against her without Mayesh’s knowledge. Her grandfather was too important a man for that. And Mayesh would have warned her—despite the distance between them, he would have warned her. He was still angry at her, he had been since the Tevath, but he had also kept her secret. He had not told anyone he disbelieved her claim to be the Goddess, though she knew he did. That had to count for something.
They had reached the Kathot, the main square of the Sault. The flowering fig and almond trees at its heart cast great shadows across the flagstones, and hawk moths rustled in the darkness. The blue tesserae atop the dome of the Shulamat glowed under the light of the dimming sky. As Lin lifted her heavy skirts to make her way up the steps, she thought of the pride, mixed with resentment, she had always felt at the sight of the temple. Pride in the beauty of the architecture and in her people’s knowledge and history. They had fled Aram with nothing, and built so much; they carried their wisdom, their traditions, as if they were precious goods, passing them down like heirlooms from one generation to the next.
Yet those same traditions had blocked her from the knowledge she desired.I would not have claimed what I did,she thought,save that I had no choice.
She raised her chin, straightened her spine. Stepped around Oren, entering the Shulamat before him. The Goddess did not follow a man like Oren Kandel.
She moved down the central aisle of the Shulamat, to the raised dais where Maharam Benezar sat, Oren hurrying behind her. TheMaharam was in his usual chair, his staff across his lap. At his shoulder stood a stranger.
The stranger watched Lin as she made her way down the aisle. He looked older than Lin, but was still a young man—twenty-nine, perhaps, or thirty. His hair was the color of bronze: a dark, tarnished gold. His skin had probably once been fair but was deeply tanned. He was clearly Ashkar; wrapped around each wrist and crisscrossing up both forearms were the slender black leather straps of the Rhadanite traders. He bore their markings as well—inky tattoos written in their pictographic shorthand—on his arms, his hands, and his throat where the laces of his shirt were open. He was plainly dressed in the dust-stained linens of a traveler, his boots thick brown leather.
Lin looked from the stranger—expressionless, his posture ramrod-straight—to the Maharam. She could hear Oren behind her, breathing harshly. A flash of terror went through her, sharp and hot as a razor’s bite. She had thought only of the Sanhedrin, but this was a traveler come with news. News from the Gold Roads. News for her.
“Josit,” she whispered. “Has something happened to my brother?”
The stranger glanced at Benezar. “She has a brother?”
Confusion cut through Lin’s anguish. Before she could repeat Josit’s name, the Maharam said: “Lin. This is Amon Aron Benjudah. Our Exilarch.” His deep-set eyes bored into her. “He has come to test the Goddess Returned.”
Lin’s stomach cartwheeled in a mixture of relief and shock. This was the Exilarch? She had seen pictures of Exilarchs, of course—men in rich robes, bearing medallions of silver. Yet here stood this stranger, in much-washed linen and a buckskin vest, sleeves pushed up, one bootlace partly untied. His bronze hair was thick and untidy, his cheeks grazed with stubble. Nothing about him spoke to his high position. Amon, she knew, was the name he usedceremonially, but the common people referred to him by his birth name, Aron.
“Now?” Lin kept her voice low, hoping it would not tremble. “Surely the test cannot be now. I have had no time to prepare.”
“Is preparation necessary? Should the Goddess not simply be... the Goddess?” Aron’s voice startled Lin. It was deep, rich, and musical. The voice of a descendant of Judah Makabi, the protector of the Goddess, who had gone with her people into exile.
