Knossos

by Laura Gill

  Rusa did not blame him, after the fires yesterday’s quake had triggered, and considered going himself. He kissed each of his girls, then struggled to rise. The skin behind his knees stung afresh every time he flexed, and his entire body ached. The sensible thing would have been to stay where he was, but he needed to find Isiratos, to see with his own eyes that his firstborn was all right.

  “Should you be doing this?” Dusani asked.

  “Yes.” Rusa accepted the hand she gave him, and stood. “If there’s a fire, and we’re here on the third floor...” He did not finish the thought for the girls’ sake, but his mind wandered, imagining overturned lamps and scattered hearth embers. “Zabibe, please.” His throat burned. He needed something cool to drink, and badly. The servant woman raised her head. “See to Beruti’s burns.”

  He would have gone himself, so his wife could have stayed with the children, but required Dusani’s help to negotiate the debris in the corridor. In some places, the plaster had cracked from the walls, taking with them pieces of expensive frescoes. What servants he encountered were injured, battered and burnt, and milling about with blank expressions; one woman lay motionless on the floor. Rusa peered through every doorway, but did not find Isiratos.

  However, he did find Kikkeros leaning against a second floor balustrade, surveying the street below. His hands were bandaged, and his temple lacerated and bruised where the deafening boom had knocked him against the wall. “You shouldn’t be here,” he told Dusani. “It’s not a sight for gently-reared noblewomen.”

  When Rusa hobbled forward to see what his father-in-law was talking about, Kikkeros pointed out a scene in the street right before his house. Two men were heaving an object resembling a flayed animal onto a wheelbarrow. Kikkeros shook his head. “Those caught outside had it much worse.”

  Rusa looked again. The flayed animal was, he suddenly realized, a human corpse. He swallowed, thinking of all those displaced people encamped in the fields, and Minos Hammuras in his canvas tent, and then the Minos’s blasphemous words came back to him. Nausea clamped his stomach hard as he realized that if he had insisted on sleeping outside with the other fearful earthquake survivors last night, or if he had risen early and gone to work as usual he would without a doubt now be dead. His wife and children might now be among the corpses being carted away. A vision of Dusani’s beauty reduced to raw meat passed through his mind, haunting him even as he tried to banish it. “This is the gods’ punishment for last night’s sacrilege.”

  He was not aware he had voiced his sentiments aloud until his father-in-law nodded agreement.

  “We’ve managed to rescue the household gods,” Kikkeros said. “This evening we’re going to gather at the main hearth and beg the gods for forgiveness.” Rusa tried to look attentive, but had begun shifting his weight from one heel to another as he discovered the discomfort of standing still for any length of time. Unfortunately, Kikkeros noticed. “Dusani, you shouldn’t be helping him hobble around like this. Take him back to bed.”

  Rusa shook his head, “I should be doing something.” He managed to get control of himself enough to force back the nausea.

  Kikkeros dismissed him with a gesture. “I suspect there will be work for you soon enough.” He frowned when Rusa did not budge. “Do as you’re told, Dadarusa. We will manage.”

  On the way upstairs to their chamber, Dusani commented on the loss of the hanging flower pots she liked so well. “Oh, Rusa, look!”

  What a strange observation for her to make at a time like this! He felt nothing for the withered plants. “There are more important things to worry about.”

  Dusani inhaled sharply. “You think it frivolous, don’t you? But it’s more important than you realize. If these flowers are wilted, then what of the vines and groves, and fallow fields?”

  Rusa did not know what to think, because thinking exacerbated his headache. The narrow view from the portico had revealed a wasteland of dull brown and gray, of ashes and ruined buildings and bodies in the street. Had every living thing besides themselves been destroyed, as Dusani feared?

  Isiratos had since returned from an errand helping his uncle’s servants haul debris outside. Immediately, Rusa noticed him wearing a haunted look no thirteen-year-old should have worn. “There are so many dead, Father.” Isiratos related what he had seen in a dull monotone. “I saw a woman with her skin hanging like rags off her face, then in the road there was this child whose stomach burst open and—”

  “That’s enough.” Dusani took him in her arms to offset the harshness of her tone. “You’ll frighten your sisters.”

  “Stay inside where it’s safer.” Rusa raked his fingers through his son’s hair to comb away powdery ash. If the gods sent another burning death cloud, and Isiratos was caught outside... He did not want to visualize his firstborn becoming an unrecognizable mass of raw meat like the corpse the two men had loaded into their wheelbarrow earlier.

  He stayed with his children and father until his wife got the bedchamber in order. Yikashata slept, drugged beyond all sensation. Rusa wondered whether he would ever wake again.

  Nefret finished tending Beruti’s wounds. Still frightened, and now unable to get comfortable, both girls were crying. Rusa did not know what else to do but hobble to the mattress they shared, ease himself down and extend his hands to his daughters. “Papa hurts, too,” he told them.

  Beruti squeezed his fingers when she saw it would not hurt him. “Is our grandfather going to be all right?”

  “I don’t know,” Rusa admitted.

  Anath coughed. Neither girl should have been lying in that filthy bed, but there was nowhere else for them to lie. Heedless of the dirt, Isiratos sat on the floor against the wall, hugging his knees to his chest while staring despondently into space.

  “Why are the gods angry?” Beruti asked.

  Rusa could not tell them about the Minos’s blasphemy, as they would not have understood. “Only they know.”

  “Because they hate us!” Isiratos snapped. “Because they wish we were dead!”

  Anath and Beruti started sobbing simultaneously. Hugging them with one arm, Rusa rounded on his son. “Shut your mouth, young man!”

  Isiratos challenged him from the floor. “Why? It’s the truth, isn’t it?”

  “Are you a priest now?” Rusa gestured to Nefret to come console the girls while he handled his incorrigible son. He hated the picture of weakness he presented—bandaged and hobbling—but he was not going to let Isiratos get away with that kind of insolence simply because he was physically incapacitated. “Well, are you?” Isiratos stubbornly refused to answer. “I didn’t think so. Then you leave this matter to the priests, and shut—”

  “The priests haven’t done anything,” Isiratos shot back, struggling to his feet to avoid having his father loom over him. “The gods don’t—”

  Rusa slapped him hard across the face. “Well-bred young men don’t question their betters.” He regretted the necessity, because those very thoughts also tormented him, but evidence of what the gods could do when men foolishly opened their mouths surrounded them. “If you want to be useful, gather up these blankets and air them out. Get a broom and start sweeping. But don’t ever let me hear you challenge the priests or the gods again. Is that understood?” When Isiratos, face turned from his, refused to reply, he reiterated. “Is that understood?”

  Dusani appeared in the doorway, broom in hand. “What’s going on here?” Her aggravated gaze moved from Rusa to Isiratos. “Is there some argument?”

  “Isiratos is about to apologize for his sacrilegious words and make amends by doing useful work,” Rusa replied coldly. He glanced over his shoulder at the bed, where Nefret coddled the girls. “That bed needs to be aired out.”

  “I have two hands, four children, and a husband who can’t help,” Dusani answered irritably. She strode over to her eldest child. “Whatever you said to insult the gods or your elders, you get down on your knees right now and beg their forgiveness.” When Isiratos h
esitated, she gripped his arm and tugged. “Now!”

  Red-faced, the boy obeyed, getting down on the dirty floor. “I’m sorry for being insolent, Father.”

  “It’s the gods whose forgiveness you need,” Rusa said. He hated such displays. Humiliating his children hurt worse than any physical blow. “And you had better pray they show mercy.”

  Feeling sick and despondent, he hobbled unaided next door, where the floor had been swept and the bedding aired out as well as could be expected on such short notice. Physical labor would have been just the thing to clear his head and lift his spirits, but his body was shaking uncontrollably, he was suddenly cold, and he knew deep down inside it was not on account of the confrontation with his son.

  “Rusa.” His wife stood in the doorway. He had not heard her approach. “Lie down.” Her voice was gentle now.

  The bed did not look like a place of rest. “The servants are working, and many are injured. I could hold a broom, or...”

  “No, you can’t.” Dusani came over, and tenderly touched his cheek with a dirty hand. Ashes smeared her face. “You need to rest.”

  Rusa reluctantly agreed to lie down, but had never liked lying on his belly. Not to mention that the weight of the blankets Dusani pulled over him chafed his burns, and he felt alternately hot and cold.

  “Close your eyes, Rusa.” Dusani stroked his hair. “I’ll bring you something for the pain.”

  She went out, and shortly returned with bread dipped in wine mixed with poppy juice. “The bread will settle your stomach.”

  The bread tasted like wet ashes, but the poppy dulled his senses enough to let him meander in a drowsy haze. “Give some to the girls,” he mumbled.

  Rusa did not attend the household prayer vigil that evening, but mouthed whatever chanted prayers reached his ears from downstairs. “Mother Rhaya, filled with mercy, attend your faithful. Mighty Velchanos, Lord of the Thunder...” He mumbled the words as best he could. “Father Poteidan, Lord of the Heavens and Earth, we beseech your forgiveness...”

  The prayers followed him into a restless sleep, where he kept repeating them. When Dusani awakened him the next morning, he was sluggish, unwilling to stir even when she delivered news he did not want to hear.

  “The Minos has sent for you.”

  “I’m not going back to him,” he mumbled into the pillow.

  “Minos Pyramesos.” She nudged his shoulder where he had not been burned. “The Minos is dead. Long live the Minos,” she said drily. “Now get up. There’s a big Hellene downstairs who’s waiting for you.”

  Rusa was stiff from lying so long in the same position, unsteady on his feet, and his wounds were hurting again. Dusani had brought bread and wine, which he ate while she rummaged through the clothes chest for suitably clean attire. “Ashes have gotten into everything,” she observed.

  The Hellene awaiting him in the entryway had a bullish neck, crooked nose, and wore thick bandages on his arms. He did not speak, even to give his name, but merely acknowledged his charge with a curt nod and started outside. Rusa hobbled after him on the walking stick Dusani insisted he take.

  The fashionable neighborhood where Kikkeros and the new Minos lived was being cleared at an industrious rate. At the end of the street, people were dousing the smoldering embers of a fire that had claimed one mansion, while next door men were throwing down charred roof tiles and preparing the exterior walls for a fresh coat of plaster. Smoke still pervaded the air, however, and through breaks between the houses Rusa noticed substantial damage to the temple mount.

  Nonetheless, priests of Poteidan and Velchanos were out in force, chanting prayers beseeching the gods for forgiveness. Rusa and his silent escort encountered a procession of black-robed priestesses of Hekate wailing and tearing their hair and beating their breasts as though at a funeral. Hellene mercenaries wearing boar-tusk helmets and carrying ox-hide covered waisted shields patrolled the neighborhood.

  More Hellene men thronged the Minos’s mansion, milling about the inner court or standing sentry. Their coarse manners and stern demeanor intimidated many locals, and they rarely mingled with or welcomed outsiders to their enclave in the northwest part of town. Rusa negotiated around them with eyes downcast, on account of the stories that claimed a Hellene mercenary would as soon murder someone for looking askance at him than ignore the insult.

  Pyramesos sat in his audience chamber, alone but for his bodyguard, a night-black Nubian called Massa, his personal scribe, and a priest wearing the vestments of Poteidan. Hairline cracks damaged the wall frescoes. Several ceramic idols—some in fragments—occupied the hearth curb.

  “Dadarusa,” Pyramesos said quietly. By omitting all titles and salutations, the new Minos made it plain that he was not standing on court ceremony. “I was not aware of your injuries.”

  The statement was not license for Rusa to plead disability against whatever task Pyramesos meant to assign him, simply an observation. Pyramesos himself had not escaped unscathed. His arms were bandaged to the elbows, and another bandage sat awkwardly on the right side of his face. His tunic was soiled with dirt and what looked like dried blood, and its embroidery was unraveling. He wore no jewels, not even a simple seal stone, but then again, Pyramesos had always been a hard man, as tough and dour as the Hellenes whose company he preferred.

  Rusa inclined his head, yet did not speak.

  “Master Scribe Ankeros is dead,” Pyramesos announced, as abruptly as though commenting on the bare walls. Rusa remembered his colleague with a twinge of guilty conscience; he had forgotten all about the old man after fleeing Minos Hammuras’s tent. Ankeros had not deserved to be struck down along with the blaspheming old Minos.

  Pyramesos at least had the decency to observe a moment’s silence before continuing, “There have been great losses among civil and temple officials. Were you acquainted with a man called Didikasos?”

  Though the name sounded familiar, Rusa could not assign it to any particular face or office.

  “He was the Registrar of Deaths,” Pyramesos said. “Now he himself is dead, unfortunately, when his services are most needed. I require an experienced scribe with impeccable references to perform his duties.”

  Rusa did not like where this conversation was going. Who could have recommended his name for such an unsavory task? He chanced a look at the smug man stationed beside the throne. Ramush betrayed nothing.

  Pyramesos continued, “A competent registrar is needed to tally the human losses both here and throughout our territories. I have already selected scribes to scour the outlying settlements and go to Amnissos, Archanes and Tylissos to gather information. Numbers of injured and dead. Damage to buildings. Food stores. Others will handle the tallies of damage and supplies. Meanwhile, I am sending you to assess the situation in Katsamba. You will record everything you find. You and your father have contacts there, yes?” Rusa nodded. “Speaking of your father, I will want Master Scribe Yikashata’s assistance here at court. Tell him to expect my messenger.”

  Rusa cleared his throat. “Forgive me, Minos, but he was badly injured—burned by yesterday’s wind—and cannot come. I do not even know if he will survive.” He checked himself. Pyramesos would not care about those details.

  Pyramesos’s narrow face showed no emotion. “I see. You will begin your work tomorrow. A priestess of Hekate will instruct you in the rituals the Registrar of Deaths must observe. Two junior scribes will be assigned to assist you. You will also have a crew of laborers, and whatever materials you need. I am also assigning Kleonikos to act as your bodyguard.” He indicated with an abrupt nod the Hellene who had escorted Rusa. “Master Scribe Ramush will arrange your weekly wages. Do you understand and agree to these conditions, Dadarusa?”

  Registrar of Deaths. Rusa did not want the position and was not even sure he could perform in his condition, but he swallowed his objections. When the Minos commanded, servants such as he had no business being incapacitated.

  Kleonikos escorted him home and left him, all without sa
ying a word. Of course, Kikkeros and Dusani wanted to know at once what the new Minos wanted with him. “Pyramesos needs me to act as his Registrar of Deaths.” Rusa was in no mood to answer questions, so he tried to forestall them by adding brusquely, “I dread the position, but it’s something.”

  Thankfully, neither his wife nor his father-in-law complicated the matter by fussing. “I’m surprised Pyramesos sent for you to grant you that office,” Kikkeros observed. “There are already rumors circulating that he’s not going to reinstate his father’s former councilors. He’s not even providing for Hammuras’s surviving servants. Those of us who can will aid them, but...” Slowly he shook his head.

  A decent heir would have provided something, whether or not he meant to retain his father’s staff. Perhaps the new Minos had not had the opportunity to see to Hammuras’s servants, and simply did not require any more advisors. Rusa thought it far too early to judge. “Has Father improved at all?” he asked his wife.

  Dusani did not conceal her distress. “He’s still asleep, and there was blood on the bandages this morning. I gave him another dose of poppy while you were gone, so at least there’s no pain.”

  Taking that as his cue, Rusa hobbled upstairs to visit his father. The children were gone—his daughters spending time with their cousins under their aunt’s supervision, Isiratos with his uncle, and Khasos asleep next door—leaving him an opportunity to speak intimately with the drugged Yikashata.

  “Forgive me, Father.” Gritting his teeth, he sank down on the footstool. “I have neglected you on account of my own suffering, and now this business with counting the dead means I will have to neglect you further. Minos Pyramesos—yes, Father, there is a new Minos—he will take no excuses.” Rusa touched that part of Yikashata’s arm that was not bandaged, just to let his father have that human contact. “You taught me to obey without complaint, and I am obedient, but also torn. I have a duty to you, and to Dusani and the children.” He wished his father would twitch or mumble, or give any indication that he heard.