Esther (30 page)

Bodies lay all around us: two of my servants, the two Immortals who stood guard inside my chambers, and two men in dark tunics and no sandals, like the man who had attacked me. “Who has sent you?” I asked him.
“Who has sent you to kill me?”
But it was too late. The man was choking and making horrible gurgling noises.

Three soldiers carried the bodies of the attackers from my chambers. The bodies bounced against their backs, blood pouring unevenly down the soldiers' legs.

I heard Ruti choking and noticed blood pooling upon the marble tiles around her head.

“My servant,” I cried. “She must be tended at once!”

I stumbled past Parsha, to where Ruti lay upon the floor. The blood poured from a long wound upon her face, some into her own mouth. I turned Ruti's head to the side so she would not choke to death, my hand nearly slipping from her face because of the blood gushing down it.

“Have you not tended to each other in battle?” I yelled at the remaining soldiers, who I now saw were Immortals. I wondered where the Immortals who stood guard outside my chambers were. The ones before me did not follow my command with any urgency. One pulled Ruti's back up against his chest and pressed his fists into her stomach until she threw up blood.

I stood and grabbed Ruti's shaking hands. She flinched and I quickly let go of the one which was cut. My surviving servants reentered my chambers and one immediately rushed over with a cloth and began to wipe my hands. I grabbed the cloth from her and pressed it to Ruti's face. “Can you not see with your own eyes who is injured?” I asked the servant. I knew from looking at her face that she was ashamed she had run away. She moved to hold the cloth against Ruti's face while keeping her gaze low.

“You will be cared for by the best physicians,” I promised Ruti as she gazed at me out of huge, terrified eyes. “And when you are well again you will be elevated to the highest position I can make for you.”

I instructed one Immortal to rush Ruti to the physicians' chambers. He threw her over his shoulder like a captive, ignoring the servant who tried to keep the cloth pressed to her face.

“No!” I yelled at him. “In your
arms,
as you would carry your own child, with a servant to stop the blood flowing from her face.”

The Immortal pulled Ruti back over his shoulder. I had to bite my lip to keep from crying at the sight of her bleeding face. I ordered two additional servants to see to it that Ruti was brought to the physicians, and then report back to me. They looked at me incredulously. They were not accustomed to reporting on Immortals. “Go!” I said.

As the Immortal who held Ruti disappeared through the doorway, one of the other Immortals looked at me and muttered, “
Child.
”

Did he truly think I could not hear him? I remembered Hegai's words: “It takes more than a crown upon your head to be a queen.”

Parsha had wandered deeper into my chambers, and he was looking around with what seemed to me to be too much care. I could not think of any good reason for him to be memorizing the layout of my chambers. He turned and gazed at me with more scorn than I would have thought could fit on just one face. He was standing near my bed, and this unsettled me almost as much as if he were within arm's reach of me. “Are you surprised no man has thrown himself behind your cause? Only one man is fool enough, and he is not here. Men do not willingly give up their lives for a girl who has temporarily fooled a king into believing she is worthy of him.”

“If you spoke for an entire army you would not need to send men sneaking into my chambers to kill me.”

“Another woman will occupy this bed soon,” he said quietly.

“Seize this traitor,” I commanded the two remaining Immortals.

One of them began laughing. The third did not meet my eye nor do as I had commanded. He followed Parsha, advancing farther into my chambers. He stopped to pick up the goblet that lay overturned and empty upon the marble tiles next to the cushions I had fallen asleep on. He smirked. “So it is as we have heard,” he said to the other Immortals. As though I was not there. As though I was not queen.

I fought to keep the distress from my voice. “The king will hear of this.”

“He seems to have desired only one night with you, and you cannot approach him uninvited unless you wish to die,” Parsha said. “By the time you see him again you will probably have forgotten this slight, buried it beneath all the other slights you are certain to receive each day you play at being queen.”

I looked about for an ally. The servants stared at the floor or busied themselves with small tasks. One hurried to wipe the tiles where my goblet had lain.

I knew there was only one threat that would send Parsha hurrying from my chambers. An offense the king would not hesitate to put a man upon the gallows for. I approached him and stood so that not even a cubit separated us. He did not smell as terrible as he had on the march, but still there was an unpleasant odor about him, something both bitter and sour at the same time. “Get out now,” I whispered, “or I will tell the king you sought to take what he has claimed for himself. Even if I have to risk my life to do so.”

Parsha considered me a moment. “Your life is worth little now,” he said, “and so I believe you.”

He brushed past me as he left my chambers, taking the remaining two Immortals with him.

In addition to the two Immortals who had died in my chambers, two of the four Immortals who stood guard outside my chambers had died of the injuries they had sustained when they were set upon by the five men who had come for me. The two Immortal guards who had not died were being tended to by the physicians. Of the five assassins, the two who had not made it into my chambers had not given up their secrets, and they were all dead now. Perhaps Parsha had made certain of that. This is what Hegai told me after he entered my chambers without knocking.

“Have I no guards?” I had demanded when he stepped in unannounced. I was studying the new dent in the plate over my palm in the daylight that had just begun to peek under the balcony doors. I had not dared open those doors or any others. The servants I had sent with Ruti had returned to report that she had indeed made it safely to the physicians. I had sent one of them back for news of Ruti's condition and the other to bring word of the attack to the king. I was pacing while I awaited their return.

“Unless you find eunuchs to be suitable defenders, then yes, you are unguarded.”

“This cannot be true. If it were I would not still be alive.”

“Seven of my own men are outside your door. Soldiers will soon take their place.” He smiled sadly at his own jest.

“Some wine for my guest,” I told one of my servants, in my distress forgetting that Hegai did not drink wine.

“I desire privacy,” Hegai said, “and nothing more.”

I instructed my servants to wait outside the door. Hegai did not speak until it had been closed behind them.

“You have survived an attack of Immortals. When I was informed of the attack upon you I had one of my men follow the attackers' bodies as they were carried from your chambers. They have the cuts and calluses of archers. While all Immortals must have some skill with a bow and arrow, these Immortals specialized in it. Haman, or whoever hired them, did not get the best men for the task. I suspect Haman is involved because Dalphon does not seem to have reported any men missing from the ranks.”

When I wrapped my arms around myself Hegai gave me a look that told me he liked this gesture no more than he liked crying. I dropped my hands to my sides and assumed a more regal posture.

“Do not think this is an attack only upon you, little queen. It is also the king who is attacked. There are always those who desire the king's position. The king's own army could mutiny if incited. Surely some ambitious noble would be happy to spread word that choosing you proves Xerxes is unfit and that the tides have turned against the king. Perhaps he will whisper that this is the decline of the empire.” Before I could ask him what he had heard, he said, “I do not know if this is already happening. The only things I do know are that you should not hold out hope for Ruti and that you are in great danger.”

“Ruti was alive when she was taken from my chambers, and if she was properly tended to she is alive now,” I said. Before he could respond heavy footsteps sounded toward my door. Hegai did not have to tell me to hide. I rushed to my wardrobe and hid there until Hegai came calling for me.

“You are guarded by whole men again, my queen. Four of them will escort you to the king. He has sent for you.”

I started toward the door of my chamber but Hegai stopped me. “You may want to refresh your cosmetics, Your Majesty. And do not forget your crown.”

When Hegai opened the door a few moments later there were four Immortals I had never seen before standing guard. Erez was not among them. I was reminded that I had one less ally than I thought I did the week before. Or two, if Ruti did not recover.

“Take me to my husband,” I told the Immortals.

Hegai fell in behind me.
If I am only to have one ally, I am glad it is the most cunning man in the palace.

A servant rushed to kneel before me. Despite Hegai's words from a few moments before, I was flooded with hope for Ruti. “Yes? Speak.”

“Your Majesty, the physicians have tended to Ruti and she is resting.”

“She will recover?”

“Yes, Your Highness.” Though the servant went silent after this, I could hear that there was more. Something the servant was afraid to say.

“Fully?”

“She will be deeply scarred, Your Majesty. Her face . . .”

“It is her mind and her strength which concern me.”
Without them she will not survive here, and the attacker will have taken from her what he meant to take from me.

“The king awaits, Your Highness,” Hegai quietly reminded me.

I resisted the urge to look frantically about as we made our way to the throne room. Perhaps no one would know how closely I listened if I kept my head straight and my face expressionless.

I must see from the corners of my eyes and with my ears. I must act as though nothing has happened.

We stopped in front of the guards who stood before the entrance to the throne room. If they resented me the way Parsha and some of the other Immortals did, the only way to deal with them was to make them love or fear me and I did not have time to make them love me. “My husband awaits,” I told them in a voice that would have caused a dead man to rise up and do as I commanded. The guards stepped aside and the doors were opened. Though I was queen, and though I had been summoned, I was not allowed in the throne room until the king held out his scepter to me. Only the king's advisers were permitted to enter freely.

I held my head high as I was announced by one of the king's eunuchs. I wanted the king to know his queen was strong, even in the face of danger. Strong enough to bear the son who would rule the empire Xerxes was building for him.

Xerxes himself appeared far from strong. He sat—huge and fragile-looking—upon his throne. He stared down from the slightly elevated platform upon which his throne was mounted, his head lowered and hair falling forward from his crown. His face was half-hidden from me. Advisers crowded around him, Haman closest of all. Behind them was a sparkling backdrop of treasures that did not seem worth the burden of ruling a kingdom.

If I looked only at Xerxes, shutting everyone else out and letting my eyes blur the crown from his head, he was a large man weighed down by his thoughts. When I let everything come into focus again, I saw that he was weighed down not by his own thoughts but by theirs, and by the crown upon his head.

I wished I could pluck him out from the circle of advisers and just for a moment lift away the crown. If he were not king, what sort of man would he be? How would he speak to me? How would he touch me?

Haman smiled slightly as Xerxes continued to stare down at the floor. The king did not seem to hear that I had been announced. I stood tall, struggling to keep my fear from making its way onto my face. Finally he heaved a great sigh. He held his scepter out to welcome me before using it to wave the circle of advisers away. He still had not glanced up.

My escort stepped aside to make way for the king's advisers to exit. Haman lingered, not looking at me directly. I knew he was aware of me because he moved into my path and turned away from me, trying to claim the king for himself. But he was not large enough to completely block my view of my husband.

Still without looking up, the king waved his scepter at Haman. As Haman stepped back I watched him just barely stifle an indignant huff or grunt of some kind. He narrowed his already narrow, kohl-ringed eyes at me on his way out, passing much closer than any man should come to a queen. Almost as close as his son had come to me not long before.