Books by Maggie Shayne (312 page)

The irony of it all was far from lost on Nathan. Particularly when he could hear the sirens in the distance and when Sheila took a corner too fast and the car rocked up dangerously, flirting with a two-wheeled stunt before gripping the pavement with all fours again.

“It’s all right, Sheila,” he told her. “They’re not chasing us. At least I hope not.”

She slowed down, but not by much.

For a decade, Nathan thought, he had cultivated the most mundane, most placid, staid, uneventful existence any man had ever known. And now he was breaking into a mental hospital to kidnap a patient and then speeding through the night in a getaway car. All because of a single glimpse of Nidaba’s face.

She had always had this effect on his life. Always.

He held her now. Her upper body lay across his lap, her shoulder against his belly, her head resting just above his heart. The car swayed and shuddered, even now that he’d told Sheila it would be all right to slow down a bit. Streetlights fought with shadows for the right to bathe Nidaba’s pale face. He pushed her hair away.

“I’ve got you now, Nidaba,” he whispered. “Can you hear me?” With one hand he stroked her cheek. “I know you can. If you want to, you can. And I’m going to keep talking to you until you do. You’re coming back from wherever it is you’ve gone, Nidaba. Whether you want to or not. I’ll bring you back.”

The car slowed a bit, Sheila finally getting the idea that the police had been left far behind them, if they’d ever been after them in the first place, which was doubtful. Or perhaps she was only distracted by listening to Nathan’s soft-spoken words.

“How are you goin‘ to care for her, love?” she asked him.

He glanced up, met her eyes in the rearview mirror. “Take her home, clean her up, put her to bed ...”

“She needs nourishment, Nathan. She can’t eat in that state. She ought to have an IV. She could dehydrate in short order without one. She can’t go to the bathroom on her own. She needs a nurse, Nathan, and how you’re goin‘ to hire one without answerin’ a lot of uncomfortable questions is beyond me.”

He swallowed hard. “I’m not going to hire a nurse. Whatever care she needs ... I’ll do it myself.”

“And I can help,” George announced, looking anxiously at the woman lying so still in Nathan’s arms.

“You’ve got no clue what you’re saying—neither of you.”

“Yes, I do.” Nathan looked down at Nidaba, at her long lashes, blackest velvet lying against her cheeks. She had always had the thickest, longest lashes ...

“Besides,” he said, forcing the words past the lump in his throat. “It will only be until the drugs have a chance to clear out of her system.”

Sheila sighed. “They don’t drug mental patients into a state of catatonia, Nathan. She’s ill.”

“No. No, you don’t understand. Nidaba... she has a ...
reaction
to certain drugs. Most tranquilizers have a magnified effect on her. As if she’d been given ten times the normal dose.”

Sheila’s silence made him look up again to see her frowning ferociously into the mirror. “How do you know all this, Nathan?” Then she blinked. “And didn’t I once hear you say something similar about yourself?”

He nodded very slightly, averting his eyes as he did so. “We have the same ... sensitivity to chemicals,” he explained quietly. “For all we know, without all the drugs in her system, Nidaba could be perfectly sane.”

“Or completely insane!” Sheila said.

There was silence in the car for a long moment. Then George asked. “Didn’t the newspaper say she jumped off a building?”

“They can’t know she jumped,” Nathan answered quickly.
“She
certainly didn’t tell them so. She could have fallen... or been pushed.” To his own ears his voice sounded defensive and childish.

“But... but, Nathan, didn’t she break somebody’s arm in the ambulance?” George pressed on.

Sheila caught Nathan’s eyes again. And he could see that she was once again suspicious of him. She was not a foolish woman. She knew he was keeping secrets— that there was something about him that wasn’t quite . . . normal. He’d seen this look in her eyes before. But she was also a woman with her own secrets to keep. So she had never pressed him to reveal his.

This time, though, he might have pushed her too far.

“We’re just going to have to wait and see,” Nathan said softly.

George turned around, one big arm anchored on the back of the front seat as he stared back at Nathan. “I hope she doesn’t break
my
arm, Nathan. That would hurt.”

“I won’t let her hurt you, George. You’re my friend. I don’t let anyone hurt my friends.” He lifted a hand, gave George’s shoulder a squeeze. “You trust me, don’t you?”

Nodding hard, George looked a bit more at ease. “My arms are pretty big, anyway. It would be awfully hard for her to break them, I think.”

“I’ll bet it would.”

The remainder of the long ride back passed in relative silence. George fell asleep, his gentle snoring keeping an odd rhythm. Sheila stopped asking questions, but Nathan caught her eyes on him every now and then, wide with worry, and on Nidaba, narrowed in distrust. The next several days were not going to be easy.

Then again, nothing with Nidaba had
ever
been easy. Or calm, or boring. He sometimes thought the Gods had decided to give turmoil a physical body, and his Nidaba had been the result.

She feared nothing. She dared anything. Consequences be damned.

It had always been that way. Nidaba was ... chaos.

* * *

She learned fast, the littlest novice priestess in the temple of Inanna at Lagash. At first, Prince Eannatum had simply thought her to be unusually brilliant. At first... but soon, he, like everyone else in the city-state, began to wonder about her origins. Particularly after witnessing her powers firsthand.

For more than a year after that secret rite they had performed together, fishermen had been hauling more bounty from the Euphrates than they ever had. So many fish that the excess had to be salted, packed in barrels, and shipped upriver to Nippur and Kish and downriver to Ur and Eridu. And Natum wasn’t vain enough to believe
he
was responsible for the magick they had wrought that day. No. It had been
her
doing.

There was something
more
to Nidaba. A power that surged through her. Made her somehow ... more than anyone he’d known before. More alive. More beautiful. More passionate, more inquisitive. Just more. As if she truly were the child of a Goddess.

Though she would have likely punched him in the belly if he said so aloud.

Yes, she would. Despite that he was a prince. That was one of the things he loved about her. She dared
anything.

They had been studying together for more than three years, and she had become a far more talented scribe than he would ever be, when he one day set aside his tablet and stylus and stared at her across the table. “I am tired of lessons,” he said.

“Then what shall we do?” She had seen thirteen seasons by then. He had seen fifteen, but she had already grown nearly as tall as he.

He shrugged. He didn’t know what he wanted to do, but he was restless. His father said it was natural for a boy of his age. That did nothing to ease the feeling, however.

“Shall we attempt some divinations? Or visit the
cella!
We could drop pebbles from the uppermost windows onto the people as they pass below!” Her smile was as bright as her eyes. And her eyes were brighter than any he’d ever seen. But even their excited gleam failed to reach him today.

“We do those things all the time. I want to go outside. I want to swim in the river and roll in the dirt!”

Her beautiful smile faded, and she tilted her head to one side. “Perhaps if you ask the guards ...”

“Pah, they would only tell me I must behave with dignity at all times!” He shook his head. “Everywhere I go, they follow. They watch. Soon I will be finished with the
edubba,
and my father says my lessons here will end soon as well. It is time for me to move on, now. To learn the skills of battle, and of war.” He heaved a sigh. “My life is nothing but lessons and responsibilities. I would give it all to be free, like you.”

Nidaba got up from her chair and came round to where he stood. “I know it is difficult for you, Natum, but don’t assume it is any easier for me. I too have duties, responsibilities—”

“Oh, come! The priestesses let you do just as you please! They are too afraid of you to do otherwise!”

She took a step back as if he’d struck her, and he instantly regretted his words. He reached out for her, parted his lips to speak the apology he knew he should give, but she held up a hand to stop him. “So that is what you think, is it? Let me set your mind to rights,
my prince.
They
let
me do nothing, here. I do what I please because I
dare
do what I please. I am free because I insist on my freedom. It is too valuable to me to give it away without a fight. So I do what I want, and I break their silly rules. When I am caught, I am punished for it, believe me. But the punishment is the price of my freedom, so I take it without complaint.”

He crossed his arms over his chest, certain that a slip of a girl such as she would not know punishment if she saw it. “Do you, now?”

“You doubt me?” she asked, eyes going wider.

“I doubt you know what real punishment is,”‘ he said. “I would be beaten were I to defy my father. Don’t you doubt it. And if you faced such consequences as I, you would understand my frustration far better.”

She lifted her brows. Then she turned her back to him, and before he could guess what she was about to do, she pushed the white gown from her shoulders, letting it fall, baring her skin to him and catching the garment again only just above her hips. Her arms, her back, were unclothed, and for an instant he felt an unknown pull in his groin, and a tightening in his belly. But only for an instant. For though her flesh was bared... it was also marred.

Natum leaned closer, eyes widening at the strips he saw crisscrossing her slender back. He lifted the candle-rack from the table, and the golden glow fell across her coppery skin, illuminating the angry red welts, and the darker places where the skin had been ripped and the blood had encrusted.

“By the Gods, Nidaba ...” he said on a breath. Tears stung at his eyes, and his throat went taut, even as an unfamiliar rage rose like fire in his chest. Gently, he reached out, lifted her dress up, and righted it for her. Then, placing his trembling hands on her shoulders, he turned her around. “Who did this to you?” he demanded, surprised at the depth of emotion in his voice, and the churning in his belly. “Tell me and I will have his head on a pike by dawn!”

She smiled at him, very slowly. “Listen to you, already sounding like some mighty king.”

He didn’t like what he was feeling. The churning in his gut, the pounding in his chest.

“I am but an orphan child, and I belong to the temple—as much as I am capable of
belonging
to anything or
anyone.
The priestesses are kind and loving. But you know how stern the old High Priest can be.”

“Lathor did this to you?”

“Yes. Your father’s most trusted adviser, the High Priest of the temple, has a fondness for the scourge that goes, I believe, beyond what is holy.” She shrugged. “He enjoys it, I think. But for the most part, I am able to avoid him.”

“And what grave offense brought about such a punishment?” Natum asked, his anger still seething.

She shrugged. “I took a date from the offering plate set before the stone image of a deity in the
cella.
I have done so for years, whenever I please. This time he saw me. And when he asked for an explanation, I replied that the goddess lives in me, and therefore I have every right to eat her dates.”

“You
said
that?” He was amazed.

“Lathor called it blasphemy and took the scourge to me.” Again, that slight shrug. “He is very lucky that I have learned to control my anger,” she said softly. “I wanted to bring the entire tower crashing down upon his hairless head.”

And for some reason, as she said it, Eannatum had the feeling she could have done exactly that.

“I still believe I am right and he is wrong,” Nidaba went on. “And I told him so, when he finished whipping me.”

Lowering his head, shaking it slowly, Natum tried to quell the nausea in his belly. “Gods, Nidaba, do you fear nothing?”

“What is there to fear?” She shook her head. “I wanted the date. I knew the consequences of taking it—
if I
were to be caught. I usually am not, you know.” She shrugged as if it mattered not in the least. “You want to go outside without your guards, and you know the consequences of doing so—
if
you’re caught. So tell me, is it worth the risk to you, Natum?”

“How can you even speak of this when your back bears the marks of Lathor’s scourge? He must be made to pay!”

She rolled her eyes. “You do tend to change the subject, Natum. I am used to Lathor’s scourge. It doesn’t hurt so much after the first day or so. And if he deserves to be punished for what he does to me, the Goddess will see to that. Or, I will, when I am grown and no longer under his care.”

“You will not have to. And this will not happen again. Mark my words, Nidaba.”

She smiled very slowly. “Do you want to go out without your guards, my prince, or don’t you?”

Looking into her eyes, he managed to put his anger aside. They glowed, her eyes, with a gleam of excitement, and somehow, despite his fury at the High Priest, he felt an answering excitement well up within him. One that only she seemed able to provoke. “Yes,” he said, “I do.”

“And do you dare to do as you please, despite the consequences?”

“I do,” he repeated.

“Then come with me.” She offered her hand. He took it, felt the tingling sensation he always felt when they touched, and let her lead him through the ever-darkening hallways of the ziggurat tower, down sloping passages and hidden stairways, into the very bowels of the place, and lower. He grabbed a torch as they passed. Otherwise, he thought she’d have gone in utter darkness and been content.