Nile Builder: The Architect from the East

Chapter 87: Chapter 9: Rumors Rise Again — The Rebels Spread Their Fear

The first sound of the rumor came from under the grain bulletin.

That morning, the crowd stood before the notice wall at the south gate as usual — the crowd that gathered there every day since the grain bulletin began, the crowd that had made the wall’s foot a meeting place. The clerk had just pasted up the new grain bulletin, pressing the corners flat with his brush, and was reaching to take down yesterday’s, when someone in the crowd said, in a low voice:

”Paste it, paste it. The numbers on this bulletin — who knows whether they’re true?”

The voice was not loud, but half the circle heard it. The clerk’s hand stopped in mid-reach; he turned to find the speaker. The crowd stood packed and dense — dozens of faces, all wearing the same expression, and no way to tell which one had spoken.

”Who said that?” The clerk asked, the old bulletin still half in his hand, his eyes searching the faces.

No one answered. The crowd murmured, like a pot of water just before it boils — the murmur rising, then falling, then rising again, the sound of a crowd that has heard something it does not know how to answer. The clerk stood at the wall, and the crowd stood with him, and the morning hung between them.

”I heard,” another voice drifted out from behind the crowd, ”that the relief army outside has long since withdrawn. General Horen’s men will be back on the western line before winter. The western line is hundreds of li from here — and once the relief army leaves, we...”

”Nonsense!” A bold voice cut in. ”There’s smoke over the wall every day, and the torches on the towers burn all night. If the relief army had withdrawn, who’s been sending up the smoke?”

”Smoke?” The voice laughed coldly, the laugh carrying through the crowd. ”The smoke is for us to see. Just like this bulletin. Things made to deceive — you can make as many as you like, and the making gets easier every day.”

The crowd erupted in a buzz. Some believed, their faces going gray; some cursed, the curses loud and immediate; some gripped their grain sacks tighter, their knuckles white, as if the sacks could be snatched away by the words themselves. The clerk stood at the foot of the wall, the old bulletin in his hand, not knowing whether to take it down or leave it up — the paper trembling a little in his grip, the question of the paper suddenly the question of the city. In the end he left it up, and pasted the new one beside it, and the two bulletins hung side by side, yesterday and today, both asking to be believed.

That afternoon, in a lane north of the city, another thing happened.

An old woman of sixty-odd years, clutching a cloth bundle against her chest, slipped out to the lane mouth while her family was away — the bundle held the way a woman holds a thing she has been told will save her. She meant to go east — to the old temple, to offer incense to the god Amun, to bow her forehead against the stones and ask forgiveness for a city she did not understand.

”I dreamed it.” She said to the warden who stopped her, her voice small and certain at once, the bundle pressed to her chest. ”I dreamed the god Amun stood on the city wall, and his beard was white with anger. He said the people of this city had turned their backs on him, and he would not protect them anymore. I must go and kowtow... kowtow, and the god will not send down his punishment. The dream told me so.”

The warden could not persuade her — the fear in the old woman’s eyes was older than any argument. Then her grandson came home from his lessons, running, sweating, and threw his arms around her legs, the way a child holds on to the one thing he will not lose:

”Grandmother! Have you forgotten? Last time you coughed so badly you couldn’t get out of bed — who cured you? It was Priest Imset! He walks the streets every day; he said it himself — sickness is cured by people, not by gods! He doesn’t believe in the old gods, and he still saves people!”

”That was sickness.” The old woman said. ”This is divine punishment. It’s different...”

”It’s the same!” The boy said. ”Priest Imset says there is no divine punishment in this world — only man-made disasters. The water was cut by the rebels; the grain was seized by the rebels; the war is being fought by the rebels. If you go and worship the god, the god is outside the city — he cannot save the people inside it!”

The old woman was stunned. She looked at her grandson, then at the bundle in her arms, and the looking went back and forth a long time. At last, holding the bundle, she moved back toward the house, step by step, the bundle still against her chest, but the steps slower than the ones that had brought her out. The warden watched her go, sighed, and said to the man beside him: ”Do you see? This isn’t worshipping a god. This is fear — and fear has a thousand faces, and this one is the oldest.”

Fear spreads from person to person — the way fire spreads in dry grass, faster where the grass is thinnest.

The worst night was at the ferry landing west of the city.

A few young boatmen squatted in the boathouse and talked discouragement all night. One said: ”What if the relief army really has withdrawn?” Another said: ”The way I see it, we might as well... might as well open the gates. Open the gates, and at least we don’t go hungry.” Before he finished, the boathouse door was kicked open.

It was A-Tu. He stood in the doorway, the oar he had wiped for decades gripped in his hand — the oar that had known this river for thirty years — his face dark as the bottom of a pot, the dark of a man who has made up his mind and will not be moved.

”Open the gates?” His voice was not loud, but every man in the boathouse felt its weight, the weight of the river behind it. ”Any of you who wants to open the gates — get off my boat first. Every wave on this river knows me, A-Tu — I’ve rowed this water through thirty years of seasons, and I know which men belong to it. Anyone who wants to be a weak spine — this oar of mine will be the first to refuse him.”

”Uncle A-Tu,” the young boatman who had spoken was flustered, his voice rising: ”I... I was only talking. Just talking, that’s all.”

”Talking?” A-Tu said. ”The rumors in this city started with ’only talking.’ Your mouths grow above your heads — not heads above your mouths. From now on, anyone who says that one word — ’open’ — gets off the boat and goes to drink the rebels’ thin porridge outside the city.”

The boathouse was so quiet that the sound of the river could be heard. From that night on, the boatmen of the landing never spoke those two words again.

On the third day, at a well east of the city, a stranger in the queue ”kindly” warned the people waiting — he spoke in the tone of a man doing them a favor, his voice pitched to carry: ”Those of you with grain at home — hide it tight. The granary’s bulletin is a lie; the granaries are long empty. They’re just waiting for some night to come and take back the grain they hid with you.” The words settled into the queue the way a stone settles into mud — slowly, and deep.

”Nonsense!” A woman shook with anger, the bucket in her hand trembling. ”The officials’ grain is lying in my own cellar, with the number in the register and the seal on the bulletin! I counted it myself this morning!”

”A seal?” The stranger sneered, the smile not reaching his eyes. ”In this city, what’s worth the least right now? A seal. Seals are for the trusting — and the trusting are for the taking.”

The woman wanted to argue further, but the people beside her pulled her away — ”Don’t answer him, don’t answer; the more you answer, the more he talks” — and the words followed her home anyway. On the way home, the more she thought, the more unsettled she grew; she counted her own cellar’s grain twice, and got up three times in the night to go to the cellar mouth and listen for sounds inside, her ear pressed to the wood.

Things like this happened a dozen times in a single night.

In the two days when the rumors were strongest, the dark came down early over the lanes.

At dusk, every house shut its doors, the door planks going up earlier than they had in weeks. The doors shut, but the talk did not. Through the walls, one could hear the neighbors speaking in lowered voices, the words muffled but insistent — and the talk always came around to the same three questions: Has the relief army gone? Has the god’s anger fallen? Is there still grain? The questions went around and around, and no answer satisfied. The timid ones blocked up their windows too, saying they were afraid the wind would blow the talk into the walls — and into the house, and into the heart.

But there were those who were not afraid. Old Montu of the south went up on the wall every day, as always. Someone urged him: ”Uncle Montu, the talk outside —” He tucked his stone chisel into his belt and said: ”I’ve built walls all my life.” Old Montu said, the chisel settling into his belt. ”Whether a wall has a seam in it, I can feel with my eyes shut — my fingers have known more seams than most men have known days. That talk outside is just wind blowing against the wall. Wind can make a wall sound — it cannot knock a wall down. Have you ever seen a wall knocked down by talk?”

”But what if—”

”There is no ’what if.’” Old Montu said, and his voice was the voice of a man who had built walls through droughts and wars and lean years. ”The wall is in my hands, the hammer is in my hands, and the materials are behind me. With those three things, the sky cannot fall. A wall is not built by wishing; it is built by hands — and my hands are still here, and they have never once failed a wall.”

His words spread faster than the rumors — the words of a man with lime on his hands carried further than the words of men with nothing in their hands at all.

In a lane east of the city, a man got up in the middle of the night and moved the grain jar from his cellar to under his bed. His wife scolded him: ”What are you fussing about?” He said, in a low, stubborn voice: ”I heard the granary’s been empty for a long time, and they’re just waiting to take back what’s in our houses.” His wife snapped at him: ”You go to the issue point and draw grain every day. Where does the grain come from? Does it fall from the sky?” The man did not answer, but he moved the jar anyway, the jar settling under the bed with a thud that seemed to settle the argument for him. His wife watched him and said nothing more, but that night she did not sleep either, and the two of them lay listening to the house in the dark.

A small trader south of the city closed his stall and did not go home; he squatted at the city gate, staring out at the city beyond the wall. Someone asked what he was watching. He said: ”I’m counting the torches beyond the wall. They say the relief army has withdrawn. I counted all night — not one torch is missing.” The next day, his eyes red with exhaustion, he told everyone he met: ”They haven’t withdrawn. Truly, they haven’t.”

And on the lintels of a few houses, white marks had appeared overnight — marks drawn in white lime, the lime still damp when the morning came. No one knew who had drawn them, or when; the marks had simply been there when the doors opened. Some recognized them: the horns of the god Amun — drawn so that when the rebels entered the city, the household would be spared. The horns curved on the lintels like a charm, and the houses that bore them were quieter than the others.

When the chief officiant heard of this, he was silent for a long time — the silence of a man measuring what the marks meant. Then he said to the night patrol: ”Where you see white marks on the lintels — don’t wipe them off, don’t ask, don’t shame the households. Only note which households bear them, quietly, in the patrol’s book. When this war is over, those marks will disappear by themselves. When fear lives in a heart, let it be marked first — a fear that is marked is a fear that is half known. When the fear scatters, the marks scatter with it.”

The night patrol was the first to feel that something was wrong. The chief officiant gathered the reports from every lane, and his face darkened. He went to find Lu Zhu the same night.

”Three kinds of talk.” The chief officiant said. ”One says the relief army has withdrawn. One says the new ways have angered the gods. One says the grain bulletin is a lie. They’re all told with real faces and real details — and each one aims at the softest place in a man’s heart.”

”Where do they come from?” Lu Zhu asked.

”Investigated.” The chief officiant said. ”One needle-seller south of the city; two unfamiliar faces north of it, all lodging in the small inn north of the city. These are the same ones who spread the ’the government will seize the grain’ talk a while back. They’ve changed their tune — now it’s ’the relief army has withdrawn.’”

”What are they after, spreading talk?” Lu Zhu wrote the three rumors side by side on a wooden board under the lamp. ”Read them together — the relief army gone, the gods angered, the grain finished. Three things added together leave one meaning.”

”Open the gates and surrender.” The chief officiant said.

”Right.” Lu Zhu said. ”They’re opening a door in the city’s heart in advance. The day they truly come to attack, that door will be ready-made.”

He stood up and walked a few steps across the room, his shadow moving over the wall: ”The war beyond the wall, they cannot win — so they bring it inside the wall. This war costs no arrows and no grain. It costs hearts — and hearts cannot be re-made, the way a wall can be re-built. We have to hold them with what we have.”

”How do you hold hearts?” The chief officiant asked.

”They use words; we use real things.” Lu Zhu said. ”Real numbers. Real words. Real people. Set them out one by one, in the open.”

”There’s one thing to fear.” The chief officiant said. ”Some people’s ears work better than their eyes. However real what you set out is, they’ll believe the wind they heard first — the wind is always the first thing a man hears, and the first thing he believes.”

”So setting it out isn’t enough.” Lu Zhu said. ”Set it out — and set it out every day. The bulletin pasted daily; the numbers checked daily; the words spoken daily. One day, two days, the wind is just wind; ten days, half a month, the wind stops by itself. Rumors are like cracks in a wall — leave a crack unpatched and it grows wider; patch it every day, and it cannot grow.”

”Then we patch every day.” The chief officiant said.

”Right.” Lu Zhu brightened the lamp-wick a little. ”They throw lies in; we dry the truth in the sun. We’ll see whose roots grow deeper — a lie roots in the dark, and the truth roots in the light. And the sun has never once failed to come up.”

The next day, the notice walls at the four gates carried one thing more.

It was a war bulletin.

The first war bulletin was drafted by Lu Zhu’s own hand, copied by Mery’s — only five lines. But those five lines had not been written casually: the night before, Lu Zhu had called the three ”men who supply the numbers” to the granary’s back courtyard and questioned each one, item by item.

Mery supplied the grain numbers. He spread the grain bulletin’s accounts on the table, the pages open under the lamp: how much had come in, how much had gone out, how much was hidden, how many days the issue would run — reporting each figure, his finger moving down the columns. When he finished, Lu Zhu had him re-check the total of the Register of Grain Among the People, and Mery read it back, number by number, until the last figure matched the first.

The adjutant supplied the war situation. He handed over the day’s sentry reports: whether the rebels’ camp had moved, what stirred on the fire line south of the city, whether any arrows had come in the night. Lu Zhu questioned each item, and in the end kept only five characters: ”No fighting last night.”

Shafi supplied the hospital’s numbers. She reported the most closely — the register open on the table, her finger on each line: thirty-one wounded, seven critical, twenty-four light, not one dead. She read the numbers slowly, the way a person reads a thing she has counted herself. Lu Zhu said: ”That number must be written. What the people of this city most want to see is the two characters ’not one.’ Not one dead — that is the whole bulletin in two characters.”

The three people’s numbers became five lines. Mery copied the bulletin three times — one for the east gate, one for the south gate, one kept at the granary. When the copies were done, he marked a small sign in the corner of each — a sign only he could recognize.

”Not one character false.” He said.

And so the first war bulletin carried only five lines, each written large enough to read from the back of the crowd. First: the royal army south of the city raided the rebels’ fodder grounds last night and burned four stacks. Second: the West Bank’s grain boats entered the city three days ago, the grain and medicine all in the depot. Third: the wall-head has been issued two thousand new arrows, sent in from the west bank camp. Fourth: the hospital treated thirty-one wounded today, not one lost. Fifth: the smoke beyond the wall reports twice daily — today, peace.

Below the war bulletin was the day’s grain bulletin, and below the grain bulletin, the seal of the official granary, pressed in red.

”From now on,” Lu Zhu said to the clerk who pasted the bulletins, ”war bulletin and grain bulletin, same wall, same day. What is true cannot be made false; what is false cannot be made true.”

”And if some don’t believe?” The clerk asked.

”Then let them go to the wall and see, go to the transfer depot and count, go to the hospital and ask.” Lu Zhu said. ”Our things are all set out there. Visible, touchable — a man can put his hand on them. Rumors are shadows; when the sun comes out, the shadows shrink. And the sun comes out every day — it has never once failed.”

That day, a few people whose hearts the rumors had unsettled actually went.

An old man went to the wall. He stood on the wall-head for the better part of a double-hour, his hands on the stone. He saw the smoke beyond the wall rising straight, one column holding in the still air. He saw the torches on the towers burning all night without a gap, the flames steady in their brackets. He saw the carts of arrow bundles coming in through the west gate, the bundles wrapped in oilcloth, the drivers’ faces tired and ordinary. When he came down, he told everyone he met, the words coming out in a rush: ”Rumors! All rumors! The smoke beyond the wall — I saw it with my own eyes, straighter than any cook-smoke! The torches — I counted them, not one missing!”

A woman counted the grain in her own cellar, then ran to the grain bulletin and checked the figures against it. When she had checked them all, she stood under the bulletin and shouted to the crowd: ”The bulletin is true! My household’s grain — not one measure short!”

That is the way of the human heart. It panics fast, and it steadies fast — as long as what is set out is real.

But Lu Zhu knew that the bulletin alone was not enough.

”The bulletin reaches those who can read.” He said to Imset. ”Those who cannot read, who cannot leave their houses, whose hearts are sick — someone must go to them, and stand in front of them.”

”I will go.” Imset said.

Imset’s street rounds began that afternoon.

He carried an old medicine chest on his back — the strap worn smooth by years, the wood darkened by use — with Shafi and two medicine boys following, and walked from the east of the city to the west, from the south to the north. He walked, and looked at sickness as he went, and talked as he went, the talk as much a part of the cure as the herbs. Wherever he stopped, the people of the place gathered around him, the circle forming of itself, the children at the front.

The medicine chest held little, but everything in it was chosen for the rounds. There was a small packet of herbs for diarrhea, the leaves dried and bundled; a small jar of honey, its mouth sealed with wax; several rolls of clean cloth, cut to the width of a wound; and a box of seeds for children’s stomach-aches, the seeds counted out in little paper twists. Shafi kept the register — which household had what sickness, what medicine was given — entry by entry, the charcoal moving in her small even hand. By the third day, the register carried more than forty names.

”This register,” Shafi said, holding it up for a moment, ”will be the street rounds’ account from now on. Whose sickness has healed, whose still hangs on — one look and you know. A healer who does not keep accounts is a healer who has no memory — and the sick deserve to be remembered.”

In a lane east of the city, a child who had had diarrhea for three days was brought to Imset — the child limp and listless, the eyes sunken, the small face gray. Imset looked at the tongue, felt the forehead, asked a few questions of the mother — how many times a day, what color, what had the child eaten — and said:

”Well water has to be boiled, then left to cool. The child is small; his guts are tender. From now on, three bowls of warm boiled water a day — stronger than any medicine.”

”But they say outside,” the mother said, in a low voice, ”that this sickness is divine punishment...”

”Divine punishment does not reach a child’s belly.” Imset said. ”That belly was spoiled by drinking raw water. From now on, boil the water — don’t make the fire too big; let the water roll three times, and then it’s done.”

The mother nodded, held the child, and went. At the lane mouth she turned back and asked one more thing: ”Priest — those words outside... are they really... false?”

”Feel your child’s forehead.” Imset said. ”The fever is gone — that is real. Realer than any words, realer than any rumor, realer than the voices that speak them. A cool forehead is the best evidence in the world.”

The mother pressed her hand to the child’s forehead, and the child leaned into the touch, and the mother’s shoulders came down a little. She nodded, and went, holding the child close.

Farther on, a man with a carrying pole stopped him. He did not want to see about sickness; he only asked, in a low voice: ”Priest, I heard that if you surrender, you can leave the city. My mother is seventy; I was thinking...”

”Thinking what?” Imset stopped.

”Thinking — if I could get my mother out...”

”Out of the city — to where?” Imset said. ”Beyond the wall is the rebels’ camp, and the camp gives two bowls of thin porridge a day — and the porridge is thinner every day, I have heard it from the deserters. Your mother’s sickness, the city can treat; who beyond the wall will care for her? The rebels did not march here to heal the old.” He paused. ”Open the door, and the first thing the rebels do is seize the grain. The grain in your house, the medicine for your mother — none of it will be yours anymore. The door you open for mercy will be the door they take everything through.”

The man opened his mouth, and said nothing. After a long moment, he set his carrying pole across his shoulders: ”Then I won’t think it. I’ll go carry water. The city’s wall still needs water to live.”

”That’s right.” Imset said. ”A man alive must live like a man alive — carry the water, mind the wall, keep the house. The living of it is the answer to all the talk.”

Walking on like this, by dark Imset and his people had seen more than twenty patients — the sick carried out to doorways as they passed, the old ones brought to the lane mouths on stools, the mothers holding their children out like offerings. The medicine chest was half empty; the register had filled several pages, the entries running close. One medicine boy’s heel had been rubbed raw, the blood dark on the strap; he limped along without complaint, and when someone tried to take his bundle, he would not give it up. When they returned to the hospital, Imset sat under the lamp and went over the day’s words. He said to Shafi:

”Sickness, the visible kind — see one a day, and one is cured. The sickness of the heart, the invisible kind — it must be talked to, day after day, until the patient raises his own head. That is when it is cured.”

”Teacher,” Shafi said, ”in the new capital, you only wrote prescriptions. Now you’ve started prescribing for hearts too.”

”The prescription for the heart,” Imset said, ”is harder to write than the prescription for herbs — the herbs act on the body, and the body obeys; the words act on the heart, and the heart must be coaxed. But write it right, and half the city’s sicknesses are cured.”

”Priest Imset!” Someone called. ”My father coughs at night — would date broth boiled in well water do?”

”It would.” Imset said. ”Add three slices of dried ginger. No ginger? Then boil it half a stick of incense longer.”

”Priest,” a woman pressed forward, ”those words going around outside...”

”Which words?” Imset asked.

The woman hemmed for a long time, and repeated the rumors as best she could. Imset listened to the end without hurrying to refute — and only asked: ”Do you believe them?”

”I... I don’t know.”

”Then come with me.” Imset said. ”Walk one street.”

The woman followed him down a street, her steps hesitant at first, then settling into the rhythm of his walking. On that street, Imset saw three patients, wrote two prescriptions, and set a child’s arm right — the child’s cry stopping as the joint went home, the mother’s thanks following them down the street. At the street’s end, he turned and asked the woman:

”What did you see me do?”

”I saw you... treat the sick.” The woman said.

”Right. Treating the sick.” Imset said. ”I treated them like this in the new capital, and I treated them like this on the West Bank, and I will treat them like this in any city that needs me. In a healer’s hands, there are only sickness and medicine — no true and false, no divine punishment, no east and west. The words outside say the gods are angry. But whether the gods are angry — the sun does not know, the river does not know, and the rice in your pot does not know. The only ones who know are the mouths that speak the words.”

The woman lowered her head, thought for a while — the thinking visible in the set of her shoulders — and said: ”Priest, I believe you.”

”Don’t believe me.” Imset said. ”Believe what you saw. See what you see; believe what you see. A man’s own eyes are the only witnesses he can’t be made to doubt.”

That sentence spread through half the city the same night.

In those days, the hospital also drew people who were ”neither wounded nor sick.”

There were those who came for an answer; those who came, sat a while, and left, the sitting itself the medicine; those who came holding their children and asking ”will anything happen?” — the question asked with the child held close, as if the answer were written on the small face. Shafi and Sister Wei did not send anyone away. They brought warm water, and let the people sit on the benches in the yard. Sit a while, and the heart settled a little — the way a shaken jar of water settles if you set it down and wait.

”This hospital,” Sister Wei said, ”treats more than wounds now. It treats fear — the fear that comes in the door holding its stomach, the fear that sits on the bench and cannot say what it is afraid of. The bench is half the cure.”

”Fear is also a sickness.” Shafi said. ”The treatment is the same — first sit down, then talk, and at the end, see something real. A heart that has seen one real thing can stand a hundred rumors.”

One evening, an old woman came and said nothing at all. She sat in the yard, her hands folded in her lap, and watched the lamp that never went out — the flame small and steady in its clay bowl, the light falling on the ground. She watched it until the dark was complete. Then she stood up and said to Shafi: ”Girl, I understand now. This lamp is like the torches on the wall — it lights the road for people. A lamp that burns through the night is a promise that the night will end.” She walked to the door, and turned back to add: ”Tomorrow, I’ll come again.”

”Come tomorrow.” Shafi said. ”The lamp is kept for you.”

The people of the city, reading the words day after day, came to know the bulletin the way they knew the wall — as a thing that stood, and stood, and did not fall. ”See what you see; believe what you see.” They began to carry the words around — the way they carried their water jars and their grain tokens, as a thing of use. The next day, twice as many came to the notice wall for the war bulletin. The third day, twice and a half. Before the bulletin wall, from morning to night, someone was always standing — the wall had become a place people passed and paused at, the way they paused at the wells.

And in the small inn north of the city, the three ”word-sellers” had not left their rooms for three days — the doors shut, the lamps dark, the needle baskets and the date baskets both put away. The innkeeper knocked once, and got no answer, and did not knock again.

The city’s days slowly returned to their proper track — or as proper as the days of a siege can be. The lanes that had been hushed found their voices again, and the voices were the ordinary ones: the bargaining, the calling, the scolding of children.

The flatbread stall at the lane mouth south of the city was set up again; the date-selling woman moved her stall back to the street corner. The talk in the queues at the wells had changed too — no more ”has the relief army gone?” but ”is today’s water clearer than yesterday’s?” A few bold children played at attacking and defending the city in the lanes by day — one played the rebels, three played the craftsmen, the roles assigned by solemn argument. The one playing craftsman took a stick for a rammer and ”rammed” the wall, bang, bang, the blows measured, the feet braced — the posture of the wall-builders copied exactly, the way children copy what they see all day.

”Do the rebels retreat?” A child shouted.

”Retreat!” Another shouted. ”The wall is repaired — they can’t get in!”

The adults laughed on the side. Laughing, someone looked up at the sky beyond the city. The sky was the same sky; the clouds were the same clouds. But somehow, they looked friendlier — the way a familiar face looks friendlier when the fear has gone out of the room.

The peace boards went up on the third day.

Forty-seven wooden boards, made overnight by the carpenter gang. The boards were not large — chest-high — and stood at the mouth of every district’s lanes. The faces of the boards were whitewashed, and on the whitewash, three lines of writing changed every day: one line was the day’s grain price and issue hour; one line was the war bulletin’s summary — ”smoke beyond the wall: peace” ”no fighting last night”; one line was the hospital’s news — ”free treatment today on East Street” ”boil your water; do not drink raw.”

”These boards,” Lu Zhu said to the wardens, ”are the mouth of every lane. The granary’s words, the wall’s words, the hospital’s words — all go out through this mouth. Every evening, you read them aloud once — read them slowly, so that every word lands. Those who cannot read, listen; those who can, read. Let the whole city know, every day, what this city is thinking — and let the knowing be a habit, and the habit be a wall.”

On the first day, the wardens read haltingly, the words stumbling over the unfamiliar shapes; the listeners corrected them, and the corrections were a kind of reading too. On the second, they read smoothly. On the third, no one had to urge them — at dusk, people were already coming out of the lanes with their stools, waiting, the way a village gathers for a storyteller. The boards had become the lanes’ evening voice.

”Finished?” Someone asked, the stool still under him.

”Finished.” The warden said.

”That’s all?” The man smacked his lips, the way a man smacks his lips over the last bite of a good meal. ”Read a little more.”

”That’s all.” The warden laughed. ”Three sentences, and every one of them true. If you want more, go to the four gates tomorrow and read the war bulletin.”

The crowd scattered then. Someone walked along, repeating the words: ”Smoke beyond the wall: peace... peace.” As if memorizing the most important sentence in the world.

Some really did go. The war bulletin walls at the four gates became the busiest place in the city. Those who could read, read; those who could not, listened; when they had listened, they discussed in groups of three and five. In the sound of the discussion, the rumors melted like snow lions meeting the sun — a little at a time.

Under the east gate’s bulletin wall, there was a blind old man who came every day, led by his grandson, the boy’s hand in the old man’s, the steps slow and sure. He could not read; he stood and listened, his head tilted to the reading voice. When the reading was done, he had his grandson read it once more, to be sure. Once, when the grandson read ”smoke beyond the wall: peace today,” the old man suddenly said: ”I hear it — there’s still the sound of water.” The people around laughed: ”Old man, that’s your good ears, hearing the river.” The old man laughed too: ”Good, good. The smoke is straight, and the river flows. The straight and the flowing are both still here — so this city is still here.”

Lu Zhu went to listen once himself.

He stood in the crowd, saying nothing, only watching — watching the people’s expressions as the words were read, watching the shoulders come down, watching the talk turn from whispers to ordinary voices. Someone recognized him and moved to bow; he waved it off, the gesture small and quick, so that the bow became a nod and the moment passed.

”Master Builder,” an old man sidled up and said, low, ”tell me — when will this war really end?”

”I don’t know.” Lu Zhu said.

”Then why do you still paste the bulletin every day?”

”Precisely because I don’t know,” Lu Zhu said, ”that I paste it every day. Day by day, we get ’today’ clear. Today is peaceful; tomorrow we keep holding. Hold one day, and it’s a day gained. String the days together, and we’ve outlasted it.”

The old man thought it over, and nodded: ”You’re right. The words on this bulletin — I read them every day, and what I read is the two characters ’today.’”

Lu Zhu said no more. He stood outside the crowd and looked at the wall. On it, the war bulletin was pasted, the grain bulletin was pasted, the ink shining black in the sunset. Below the wall, the voices murmured like a pot of warm porridge.

”This wall,” he thought, ”is the city’s other city wall. If it falls, that one cannot be held either.”

The chief officiant’s open talk was held in the Old Market Square.

The night before the talk, he went alone to the old temple.

The old temple had long been sealed; the seal strips on its gate were gray with dust. He did not go in. He only stood outside the gate for a long time. In the dark, the temple wall stood black and heavy, like a great beast crouching. He stood there for a long while, and at last, facing the temple gate, he made a slow bow.

”I served inside you as a priest for twenty years.” He said, low. ”Today, I will speak words against you in the square. These words are not aimed at you. They are aimed at the people of this city — the ones who fear you.”

When he finished, he turned and left. The wind-bells under the temple eaves rang once, softly, in the night wind.

The next evening, the square held more people than a market day. The chief officiant stood in the open middle of the square — the ground before the hospital’s door, the hospital’s lamps behind him, the dark crowd before him.

”I served in the old temple as a priest for twenty years.” His voice was not loud, but the square carried it, word by word, to every ear — the acoustics of the square doing for his voice what the temple walls had once done, the sound moving out in rings. ”Twenty years, I recited prayers to the god’s image every day. The inner sanctuary was so dark, so still — when I spoke a line, the walls hummed the echo back, and the hum seemed to come from the god himself. In those days, I truly believed it was the god listening.”

The crowd was still enough to hear the wind.

”Later, I went to the new capital and saw a temple without a roof.” The chief officiant said. ”The sun poured into the altar — the whole altar full of light, the light lying on the stone like a garment. Thirty-five hundred people stood in the square, listening to the speaker on the platform, and every word reached them clear, carried on the shape of the walls themselves. It was then I understood — the god is not in the dark room. The god is in the light, above the head of every person.”

He paused, and said: ”Now, outside, there are people spreading word that the new ways have angered the gods, that only by turning back to the old gods will there be a road to live. I served as a priest for twenty years, and I ask only one thing — which of you has ever seen a god protect his people by shutting their city gates, burning their grain carts, throwing dead sheep into their wells?”

”No one!” A voice in the crowd shouted.

”There is no one.” The chief officiant said. ”So that is not divine punishment. That is man-made disaster — and man-made disaster is cured by men. The wall breaks; the craftsmen cure it. Men are wounded; the healers cure them. Bellies are hungry; the granary cures them. Every thing in this city has someone to see to it. Believe in the gods if you will; believe in the sun if you will — but first believe in the people before your eyes, believe in the real things in their hands.”

”I believe!” An old woman in the crowd said, loudly, her voice carrying over the square. ”I believe in the grain in my cellar! I believe in the sun over my roof! I believe in Priest Imset, who cured my grandson!”

The whole square laughed — the laugh of relief, the laugh of a city that had remembered what it was made of, the laugh that ran from face to face and came back again. The laughter rolled across the square, across the wall, and into the night beyond the city, where it died among the campfires of the besiegers.

When the crowd dispersed, the dark was complete. The people went home in twos and threes, and the lamps of the lanes came on, one by one, the lights threading through the dark the way they had threaded through every night of the siege. Someone hummed a tune without a name; a child rode on his father’s neck, counting the stars, and the counting went on a long time, because the stars were many.

”This city,” the chief officiant said, standing in the square beside Lu Zhu, ”is like a man. He was sick; the fever has broken.”

”The fever has broken — but he must still be nursed.” Lu Zhu said. ”Nursing the heart is slower than nursing the sickness.”

”Then nurse it slowly.” The chief officiant said. ”There are the war bulletins, and the grain bulletins, and the healers on their rounds, and the lamps of the whole city — and the lamps are the slowest medicine of all, and the surest, because they never stop. The heart will be nursed back.”

The next day, in a lane north of the city, a small stir broke out.

The needle-selling spy was squatting at the lane mouth, his basket of wares before him, just striking up a conversation with an old man — the same easy, neighborly opening he had used a hundred times — when a half-grown boy cut in, the boy’s voice carrying down the lane:

”Needle-seller! Last time you said the relief army had withdrawn — has it? Last time you said the grain bulletin was a lie — my grandmother checked the accounts yesterday, not one measure short. Are you selling needles — or selling lies?”

The spy’s face went white, then red. He grabbed his needle basket and made to leave, and the boy called after him: ”My grandmother says — better to trust the well rope than to trust you!”

The people of the lane roared with laughter. The spy, head down, walked off quickly. From that day, no one in the north of the city saw him selling needles again.

The children made a new song. This time the adults did not slap them; they only laughed and said: ”Sing it, sing it. Sing it where the wind can carry it — that’s the best of all.”

The spy did not give up. Two days later, he changed his disguise — no more needles; he carried a basket of dried dates, the dates dusty and ordinary. And he changed his words: no more ”the relief army has withdrawn”; instead, ”the war bulletin is false too — the men who write it are deceived themselves, and the deception runs deeper than anyone knows.”

This time, before the children could speak, an old woman buying dates laughed first:

”False or not, I went up on the wall and saw it myself. The smoke beyond the wall rises, one column after another. You sell your dates — don’t sell your mouth. In this city, mouths are the cheapest thing.”

”That’s right.” Someone backed her up. ”My brother carried goods at the transfer depot yesterday. The depot is full. You’ve seen a full granary — and you still believe in an empty one?”

The spy opened his mouth, and in the end no words came — the words had been used up, and the truth had answered them all. He went off with his basket, his shoulders bent. The dates in the basket — not one had been sold, and the dates sat in the basket like small, uneaten questions.

That night, the chief officiant’s night patrol watched the lodgings of the three spies closely. The chief officiant said: ”Don’t arrest them. Let them stay. Every move they make, we record. When they stop moving, it means they’ve admitted defeat. Arrest them, and the outside will send new ones. Keeping these three is keeping three rats that report to us.”

”Rats don’t bite?” A patrolman asked.

”They bite.” The chief officiant said. ”But a rat that bites in the light is better than a rat that bites in the dark — you can see the wound coming, and you can see where it will strike. Keep them where they are, and every move they make is a move we have already counted. The three of them think they are watching the city. They do not know that the city is watching them — and the watchers have the better view.”

The spies’ report went out on the third night, slipped through a loose brick at the foot of the north wall — the brick drawn out by practiced fingers, the strip pushed in, the brick set back flush, the whole motion taking less time than a man might spend tying his shoe.

The sheepskin strip bore ten characters: ”The words don’t work. The hearts are steady. Hard to move.”

Beyond the wall, a roving rider took the strip at dawn, bending from the saddle as if to adjust his stirrup. The next morning, it lay on Nekhem’s desk, unrolled and smooth, the ten characters standing in the morning light.

Nekhem read it, and did not lose his temper — the temper had been left behind years ago, in the years of waiting. He held the strip to the lamp and watched it curl into ash, the characters blackening one by one, a little at a time, before he said:

”The heart of man,” Nekhem said, ”strike it once, and it bends once. They learn fast — faster than I expected, and they learn from the same book I learned from. War bulletins, grain bulletins, peace boards, healers on their rounds — one by one, they’re driving nails into the heart. When the nails fill it, rumors can’t find a foothold.”

”Then...” The man in white began, and stopped.

”No hurry.” Nekhem said. ”The war inside the wall will be fought slowly. The days of endurance are long yet. When they have driven all their nails into what’s before their eyes, they will stop seeing what’s beyond. And at that time—” he raised his eyes, ”the news from the north will speak for us.”

”The north... has it stirred?” The man in white lowered his voice.

”It has.” Nekhem said. ”The messenger who crossed the river arrived long since — he came in the dark, by the route we keep for such things. The Hittites’ whetstones are being ground; I can hear the sound of it from hundreds of li away, the way a man hears a mill turning in the next village. We only wait for them to raise the blade.” He paused, and his voice cooled, degree by degree: ”When that day comes, let us see whether the people of this city still believe in their smoke signals.”

He walked to the corner of the tent, where an old wooden chest stood locked — the lock worn bright where his hand had worked it. From the bottom of the chest he took out a roll of sheepskin — the reply the river messenger had brought back, the wax of the seal still on the ties. The letter held only a few lines; what was written there, the man in white did not dare ask, and Nekhem did not say. He only saw Nekhem read it through, his eyes moving down the lines once, and then, slowly, roll it up and put it back at the bottom of the chest, and lock the chest again.

”Everything has its order.” Nekhem said. ”When the smoke rises in the north, this game will truly begin — and everything that happens before that hour is only the tuning of the board. What we must do before then is wear the hearts of this city down to their thinnest — thin enough that when the news from the north arrives—” he raised his eyes, ”one touch, and they shatter.”

Beyond the tent, a line of gray cloud lay along the sky’s edge. The wind came from the north, carrying the smell of the river.

And on the official road thirty li west of the West Bank, an ox-cart was creaking southward.

Two people rode on the cart. Asaf drove, the reins loose in his hands, his eyes on the road; Tia sat at the tail, holding the old rattan case against her breast. The case was wrapped in three layers of oilcloth, the rope knots tied dead — the knots of a person who means the contents to arrive, whatever happens to the carrier.

They had set out from the new capital seven days ago. The royal army had escorted them to the West Bank; the remaining thirty li, they walked themselves, the ox plodding, the wheels creaking. On the road, they did not stay at the inns; they stopped wherever refugees gathered — at the ferry landings, at the well-heads, at the crossroads where the dispossessed sat with their bundles — listening to their talk, recording their stories, the charcoal moving in Tia’s hand.

On the first day, at the West Bank’s ferry landing, they recorded an old farmer’s story: his son had been seized for corvée labor by the rebels during spring plowing — taken from the field, the ox still in the traces — and no word had come since. The fields lay fallow, the weeds standing where the wheat should have been; a family of five lived on half a granary of old grain, counting the days to the harvest that would not come.

”Corvée.” Tia wrote in the register. ”Forced labor in wartime; no compensation; no return date.”

On the second day, in a ruined village by the river, they recorded a refugee woman’s story: her mud house had been burned by the marauding soldiers, one fire and it was gone — the roof falling in, the walls crumbling, the few things she owned turning to ash in the space of an evening. The family of four had slept in the open for seven days, and the youngest child had burned with fever and talked nonsense, the mother holding him through the nights, counting the hours to the morning.

”Dwellings.” Tia wrote. ”No standard, no protection; one fire and they’re gone.”

On the third day, outside the camp on the west bank, they recorded the stories of a few wounded soldiers: arrow wounds festering for half a month, the cloth of the bandages dark and stiff; the camp had only one healer, not enough medicine, not enough cloth — the soldiers tearing their own tunics for dressings; some men’s wounds had rotted, and the men still held on, their faces gray with the effort of living. Tia wrote it all down, the charcoal moving steadily.

”Clinics.” Tia wrote. ”Too few, too little medicine; the wounded have nowhere to go.” She wrote it without looking up, the charcoal moving, and the soldier who had told the story watched her write, and nodded once — as if the writing itself were a kind of treatment, a bandage for the record.

On the fourth day, they reached the West Bank’s village granaries. The grain was moving in and out — the carts coming and going under Meru’s new schedule — and the accounts were a clean account, every entry in order. But the old granary keeper said one thing that kept Asaf writing half the night, his brush moving under the lamp: ”However well the official granary is built, it only protects the officials’ grain. The common people’s grain is still in houses that leak wind — the rats eat half, and the damp rots half. Build a granary for the people, and you’ve built a city.”

”Official granaries and household stores.” Tia wrote. ”The officials have granaries; the people have no stores. When war comes, the people’s grain runs out first.” She finished the line, and the old granary keeper, watching the charcoal move, nodded slowly — as if the writing had given his words a place to live.

She finished writing and looked up. It was nearly dark; in the distance, Thebes’s wall showed as a black line in the dusk. Along the wall-head, torches were coming on, one by one, the lights stringing out along the stone like beads on a thread.

On this journey, Tia’s feet had worn four blisters — the blisters of a woman who had walked more than she had ever walked, through dust and through mud. She did not complain; in the nights, resting by the cart, she pricked them with a needle and daubed them with the plant ash she carried, the motions quick and practiced, the wince hidden. Asaf saw it, and the next morning he said: ”Tomorrow you ride on the cart; I’ll walk.”

”If I ride, how do I record?” Tia said. ”Every word at the roadside has to be heard close — a story told from a cart is a story half lost. The more we record now, the less the people will suffer later. My feet are a small price.”

Asaf did not argue again. He shifted the ox-cart’s shaft a little toward his own side.

That night, at the West Bank’s ferry landing, they met Meru’s fleet. The fleet was preparing its second run south. Meru stood at the bow and saw them, and waved:

”Asaf! Tia! What are you doing here?” Meru’s voice came over the water, surprised and glad.

”Keeping the accounts.” Asaf said. ”Recording the losses the common people have suffered in this war — the corvée, the burned houses, the wounds with no medicine, the grain with no granary. Someone has to write it down while it is still being lived.”

”Record them.” Meru said, the pipe turning in his hand. ”Record them finely — the names, the numbers, the dates. When the war is over, the first person to settle accounts with the court will be me — for my hands’ wound-medicine money. A merchant’s accounts are his honor; these will be the city’s.”

”The fleet moved off into the night, the boats dissolving into the fog one by one, the oars whispering, the lamps hooded. Asaf and Tia stood at the landing, watching the boat-shadows, one by one, melt into the fog on the river — the fog that hid both enemies and friends, and gave passage to the ones who knew it. When the last shadow was gone, the river lay empty and white, and the two of them stood a while longer, the rattan case between them, before they turned back to the ox-cart.”

”Asaf,” Tia said, ”what do you think the people in the city are doing now?”

”Waiting.” Asaf said. ”Waiting for the smoke signals, for the grain bulletins, for the dawn — the way a field waits for rain.”

”What we’ve recorded,” Tia said, holding the rattan case a little tighter, ”needs people waiting for it too. Waiting for the war to end; waiting for someone to read it.”

”Someone will read it.” Asaf said. ”We write it so that people will read it.”

The ox-cart creaked on toward the west bank camp, the wheels turning slowly in the dusk. Behind it, the dust settled quietly, and the road was empty again, the way a road is empty after the last traveler of the day has passed.

And at that hour, before the notice boards at the city gates, a good many people still stood — the boards had become the city’s evening meeting place, the way the wells were its morning one.

The light had gone; someone held up half a candle, reading today’s war bulletin word by word, the flame leaning as he read. The listeners stood in a ring, their faces quiet, the quiet of people hearing words they could trust. When the reader reached ”smoke beyond the wall: peace today,” a soft breath of relief went through the crowd, as if the whole ring had been holding it.

”Peace.” An old man said. ”Peace is good.” The two characters came out soft, the way a man speaks a thing he has been hoping to say for days.

He turned and walked home. After a few steps he stopped, and looked back once. The words on the notice board shone in the candlelight, steady and black.

The wind came through the lane mouth; the candle flame jumped — and did not go out. The old man cupped the flame with one hand, shielding it from the wind the way a man shields a thing he means to keep, and walked slowly into the depth of the lane.

And in the north he could not see, at the end of the official road, a rider on a lathered horse was racing south through the night — the horse’s flanks dark with sweat, the rider bent low over the neck. In the rider’s breast lay an urgent dispatch sealed with wax, the wax still warm from the seal. The hoofbeats ran fast and urgent, like a string of drumbeats calling a man to his death.

(End of Chapter 9)