Like herself. Like D'en, wherever he was.

An amazingly loud belch erupted suddenly behind her, and Hezhi smiled. Tsem was no god. He was mortal, pure-bred, despite his parents' different races. Mortal and happy to be so.

"Pardon me," Tsem said sheepishly.

Hezhi bit back a rude retort, but she did move upwind.

"It's not just the flood that buried the lower city, you know."

"No?" Tsem asked.

"I always imagined, la, and the flood covering the city, and then the Third Dynasty building this one upon that. But really, most of the lower city was filled in on purpose. To raise up the new one."

"So the next flood wouldn't be as bad."

"Right. The River isn't supposed to flood us, his children, but…" Hezhi shifted uncomfortably. "I've heard the River sleeps a lot. That sometimes we just have to fend for ourselves."

"Why not wake him up?" Tsem asked.

"I think that might be worse," Hezhi replied. But she made a mental note to look for books on that, too. Priests wrote most books, so there should be more than a few about the River. In fact, that might be another angle to consider. The new palace had aqueducts and canals crisscrossing it, so that the sacred water would always surround them, enclose its children. The old city must have had such ducts, too.

"There must have been at least a few pipes," Hezhi mused to herself.

"You've changed the subject, haven't you?" Tsem said, his brow wrinkled.

"Hmm? Oh, yes. The one useful book I found was on the reconstruction. There were no maps, and that was a disappointment. But it talked about what they did. They filled in the courtyards with sand and rubble. Houses back then were mostly courtyard, and the walls were even thicker than the ones in the palace are now, so with the courtyards filled in, they could build on top of the old buildings, even if the rooms were still empty. That's why the floor cracks in the old sections, sometimes, and there are spaces underneath. That's why we haven't gotten anywhere; even when we find a suite of rooms that aren't full of sand or water, we eventually hit one of those filled-in courtyards. But you remember that one pipe? The one we found about a year ago?"

Tsem grunted. "The one I couldn't fit into?"

"Yes. I bet that was one of the sacred water tubes, built to carry water to the interior canals and fountains."

"And? It was blocked off, too."

"It had collapsed. Recently, I bet. If we could just find those… If I knew where the old temple sanctuaries were…"

"Princess!" Tsem's eyes were wide. "Temples? We can't go into temples!"

"Why not? After all, one day there will probably be a temple dedicated to me, like there is one for my father."

"But not to Tsem, Princess. Tsem is not safe from sacrilege, and he guesses that you aren't, either, whatever you may think."

"Hmmf. Well, I'll find that out, as well."

"Princess, you spent all day in there and found only one book."

"You have to admit, it's better than bumping around in the dark the way we have been. In one day, I understand more about the problem than I did this whole past two years."

"Well, I'm all in favor of keeping you from bumping around in the dark."

"And yourself," Hezhi added.

"That, too," Tsem admitted.

IV

A Drink with the King

Perkar's palms stung with the shock of his blow; the axe twisted off the grain of the wood and whistled down, out of his control. Angata swore and danced aside, the heavy blade barely missing his calf.

"Pay attention to what you're doing, you fool," Angata snapped, glaring at Perkar from his new vantage two strides away.

"Sorry," Perkar grunted, barely meaning it.

"Sorry wouldn't help if you'd gashed my leg down to bone," Perkar's cousin retorted. He shook back his brown hair, his green-eyed gaze still hard.

Perkar shrugged. "Sorry is the best I can do."

"It's not helping us get the fence built, either," Angata complained, waving his hand vaguely at the split-rail snake winding back into the woods, then at the half league of pasture that remained to be crossed.

"I know," Perkar sullenly acknowledged. His gaze followed the line of Angata's finger off into the woods.

Angata stared at him a moment and then shrugged. He sank down to the soft, new grass of the pasture, folding his legs up beneath him. "I say we rest, then." He sighed. "You've been like this all morning, and I have no desire to hop back to your father's damakuta on one leg."

"Father wanted this fence done by the new moon."

"He didn't say which new moon, did he?"

Perkar shook his head ruefully and flashed his cousin a brief smile. "You've got me there. Maybe I should sit down for a bit."

"Yes. Until you can get your mind back on building your fence."

"My father's fence," Perkar corrected him, his voice a bit sharp.

"Oh. Oh. So that's it, eh?"

Perkar chewed his lower lip a moment before reluctantly replying. "I was seventeen yesterday, Angata. Seventeen. And I'm still working on my father's holding."

"Your father is a great man."

"Yes, yes. My father is a great man. Rich in Piraku. Yet what do I have?"

"His good looks." Angata grinned.

Perkar glared at him. "I should know better than to talk about this." He turned his face back toward the forest. An awkward silence grew up between them. Perkar, brows knotted, clenched around his frustration; Angata's broad flat face was set in an exasperated scowl.

"You know the answer," Angata muttered, breaking the silence first. "Get yourself a woman. A woman with a good dowry, a father-in-law with a lot of land."

"Why don't you just say 'marry Bakume's daughter'?" Perkar snapped.

"All right, you stupid fool. Marry Bakume's daughter. The Agasapanyi Valley has some of the best pasture in the world. Bakume offered you two pastures, twenty cows, and a good bull to go along with her. Not that anyone would need all of that to marry Kehuse. You'll find no lovelier bride."

"I don't like her."

"Perkar, I heard your father say he would offer you ten cows into the bargain himself, if you would marry her."

"Oh, he did? So now I have a dowry?"

Angata reached for him, but Perkar pulled away. "You should forget her, Perkar," he hissed, and Perkar knew they were no longer speaking of Bakume's daughter.

"Easy for you to say. You've never known her."

"No," Angata said, a little heat of his own rising into his tongue. "No, I've never lain with a goddess. But I've lain with women enough, and they're all pretty much the same, Perkar. I can't imagine that even a goddess would be that different."

Perkar's lips flattened into a line, and his voice quavered a bit when he whispered, "I… I wouldn't know."

Angata had a retort ready, but it dropped from his open mouth as he gaped at Perkar instead. "Never? Never? Wait, what about last haygathering? Kenu's girl."

"I couldn't. I just… I couldn't, Angata. I tried."

Angata touched his brow and muttered a little blessing. His intense eyes had lost their purpose, and they wandered now, embarrassed instead of certain.

"It must be some kind of witching," he said at last, almost apologetically. "There must be some way…"

"It isn't a witching," Perkar said. "She says the same things you say. Find a Human woman. Have children. Raise cattle. Be a man. But I can't, Angata. I don't know that I will ever be able to."

Angata shrugged again. The certainty was returning to the ridges of his brow; furrowed, they worked the problem around. Angata loved riddles, Perkar remembered. "Sex is only the tenth part of marriage," Angata quoted, from somewhere. "You can learn, Perkar, over time. Learn to love a Human woman."