Nile Builder: The Architect from the East

Chapter 101: Chapter 7, Part 2: The Edict Is Read — The Door Closes Behind Him

The envoy arrived in Thebes on the seventh day.

He had come by water — the Nile running south made the journey two days faster than the road. His boat put in at the beach west of the gate, where the guild’s men were unloading lime from the morning boats, and Meru’s people received him and led him into the city. The envoy carried the decree in a bamboo tube slung across his back, and he had not let it out of his sight since the capital. The envoy said: ”No rest. First, the temple. Every moment this decree is read earlier is a moment the whole city is settled earlier.”

Before the stone steps of the great temple, half a street of people had already gathered.

There were no gongs, no drums. But the news had grown legs, running in from the West Gate all the way through the city: the decree has come. The people put down their work and walked toward the temple. The date-seller folded his stall. The water-carrier set down his buckets. Even the children of the Haven were brought by their parents. The children did not understand what was about to happen; they understood only that the whole city was standing still, and they stood still with it. No one shouted. No one pushed. A city that had been tempered through four months had learned how to stand — and how to wait. The waiting had been the hardest lesson of all, and this was the day it was to be paid for.

Among those standing were people of every age, drawn out of every lane and every quarter of the city, and the silence among them was the silence of a crowd that knows it is about to hear the word it has waited fifteen days to hear. Old soldiers who had held the west wall from the first day of the siege. Women who had gone to the beach every day to ask after their sons. Children who had lived three months in the Haven. And a blind old woman, led by her granddaughter, standing at the very edge of the crowd, her face lifted toward the temple the way a face is lifted toward the sun. She said: ”I cannot see anything. I am here to listen — to hear how that word ’settled’ is pronounced.”

Lu Zhu, the chief officiant, and the old centurion stood at the foot of the steps — the three men who had held the city together through the siege and the settlement, standing now as witnesses to its formal end. The envoy mounted the steps, turned to face south, unrolled the decree, and read it out, word by word.

The decree was not long. Its meaning: Nekhem raised an army in rebellion, and his crime was beyond pardon; the words of the decree ran on over the heads of the crowd like water over stones, and every ear caught the same handful of them: but in consideration of his ceasefire and his halting of the killing, and his protection of his believers, his life was spared. From this day, he was confined to the great temple of Amun for life, and was not to set one step beyond its gate. The great temple of Amun was not to be torn down or defaced; the offerings were to continue as before. His believers were not to be prosecuted for the past; they were to be registered and settled, to return to their trades and their fields.

When the reading was done, the envoy closed the decree with a motion that had been practiced in the capital, and said: ”Nekhem. Receive the decree.” The street held its breath.

The temple door opened.

It opened only as wide as one man — slowly, the way a door opens when the man behind it has had fifteen days to think about the opening. Behind him, in the dark of the hall, the lamps of the nine burned steady. Nekhem came out through the door, still in the white robe — only the robe was old now, and he was thin enough that it hung loose on him. He walked to the middle of the steps, stopped, and bowed deeply toward the south — the direction of the new capital.

”I, the guilty man Nekhem,” he said, ”receive the decree.” He spoke the words the way a man signs his name to a document he has already read twice.

His voice was not loud, but the whole street heard it. No one spoke. The wind came off the river and lifted his white robe, and let it fall.

He turned and walked back. At the temple door he stopped, and without turning his head — the street saw only his back, thin inside the old white robe — said, low: ”Thank the pharaoh. Thank this city — for keeping the temple, and keeping the people.”

The temple door closed slowly behind him.

Below the steps, the silence held for a long time — the silence of a street that had expected one thing and heard another, and was still measuring the distance between them.

Then someone wept. It was not for Nekhem that they wept — it was for the four months, for the dead who had not lived to hear this word, for the walls and the wells and the burned houses. The tears had been stored up, and the word ’settled’ had opened the sluice. A woman’s voice began it; then several; then a dozen; and at last half the street was weeping. The crying was not loud; it was held in, but it joined into one sound — like a rain that had been four months late, finally falling.

At the edge of the crowd, the blind old woman kept her face lifted. Her granddaughter asked: ”Grandmother, how was it pronounced?”

”It is pronounced.” The old woman said. ”That word ’settled’ — it was pronounced steadily.” She stood a moment longer, her face toward the temple, and then she let her granddaughter lead her home. She nodded toward the temple door. ”Steady is good. Steady means the sky has cleared.”

”Let them weep.” The chief officiant said from the foot of the steps, and he did not try to stop the weeping. ”When the weeping is done, this page is turned.”

The believers of the river bend heard the news that evening, carried out from the city by the men who came to the flats for the evening meal.

”Life spared. Confined to the temple. No prosecution for the past.” Twelve words, carried from the beach to the water’s edge, passed from mouth to mouth like a rope being hauled in hand over hand. Of the three thousand, some let out a long breath; some crouched down and buried their faces in their knees. The old believer of Reed Village who had laid down his knife stood at the river’s edge and bowed three times toward the temple.

”High Priest,” he said, low. ”You kept our lives for us. This debt — the people of Reed Village will remember it for the rest of their lives.”

The old temple’s doors were formally opened the next day.

For four months the old temple’s front hall had slept refugees, its colonnade had held prisoners, and its doors had never once been shut by day. The temple had done its part in the war without being asked; it had held the city’s broken people the way its stone had held the city’s broken walls. But the chief officiant said that was not truly opening the doors. The true opening was lighting the incense before the god’s image again; it was polishing the dust from the altar; it was giving this temple of several hundred years back the look of a temple.

”Inside,” the chief officiant said to the wardens who had come to help, and his voice carried the weight of a man who had spent four months deciding exactly these words, ”the temple is a temple from now on. But on the stone steps outside the door, I want two tables set up — one to register the men going home to their villages, one to register the men looking for work. This temple has served the god for centuries. It is time it served people too.”

”Serving the god and serving people both?” A warden said. ”Chief Officiant — will the god in this temple take offense?”

”If the god would take offense at that,” the chief officiant said, ”then in these four months, everyone in this city who saved lives, mended walls, and ladled out porridge would long since have been struck by lightning.” He straightened his priestly robe. ”What is a god? A god is the hope that lets people live like people. When this temple helps people, the god is in this temple.”

That same day, the two tables were set up below the stone steps of the old temple, and the people who came to register lined up in two queues. The chief officiant stood on the steps a while, watching; then he turned and went into the temple, and lit the first stick of incense before the god’s image.

The incense was very thin, and its smoke rose very straight. The smoke drifted out through the temple door, over the two tables, over the heads of the people in the queues, and on into the dusk of the city — carrying, the chief officiant thought, the temple’s first blessing on the city’s ordinary days.

From that day, the two tables grew busier every day, and the queues before them crossed and recrossed like the threads of a loom weaving the city back together. Men going home came to receive their road grain, the five sheng measured out in front of them and tied into their packs. Men looking for work came to press their thumbprints, and the prints went down in rows in the register, dark and even. A child helped grind ink at the side of the tables, and his hands were black with it. When the chief officiant passed, the child held up both black hands and said: ”Chief Officiant — look! I am working for the city too.”

”You are.” The chief officiant said. ”The ink you grind records the destinations of thousands of people. This work is heavier than mending a wall.”

”Heavier than mending a wall?” The child’s eyes went wide.

”Heavier.” The chief officiant said. ”A wall is dead; people are alive. These pages of yours record where living people are going. When the living are settled, this city is truly standing.”

The child did not fully understand, but he went back to grinding the ink. The smell of the ink mixed with the dust, and drifted from the stone steps into the dusk.

Before the envoy left, he asked Lu Zhu and the chief officiant to the way-station, where a lamp had been lit against the dusk and a pot of tea stood waiting on the table.

”The decree has been read.” The envoy said. ”I leave for the capital the day after tomorrow. Before I go, I have two words of confidence for the two of you.” He lowered his voice. ”The pharaoh’s meaning is this: the war of the south may now be considered turned. From now on, the mind of the court is bent on two things — one is the defense of the northern border; the other is the great deliberation in the court.”

”The great deliberation?” The chief officiant asked.

”Asaf and Tia’s records — the pharaoh has seen the table of contents.” The envoy said. ”On the matter of the four great statutes, the pharaoh has said: when the south is put in order, a great assembly of the whole court will be convened, and the statutes debated face to face. When that day comes, the old party is certain to spring up. So the pharaoh sends this word: on the side of Thebes, gather all the solid evidence of these four months. Witnesses, objects, accounts — let nothing scatter. When the assembly opens, these will be the blade of the new policies.” The envoy said the last words with his eyes on Lu Zhu, as if measuring whether the Chief Builder understood the weight of what was being entrusted to the city.

”Gathering the evidence.” Lu Zhu said. ”I will remember. The city’s accounts, drawings, and registers are all here. When the day comes, not one will be missing.”

”Then all is well.” The envoy said. ”And one private word more. When I left the palace, Asaf asked me to carry a message to the Chief Builder — ’the trunk is still on the road. Wait for us to come back.’”

Lu Zhu heard it and smiled. ”Tell them — the lamps of the city are kept burning for them.”

From that day, the gate of the great temple never opened for him again.

The settling of the believers began the next day, with the registrars’ tables set up at first light and the queues already forming before the ink was ground.

The three thousand of the river bend, together with the surrendered men of the East Camp and the North Camp — fifteen thousand and more in all. Those enrolled in the work-teams received work-tallies. Those who wanted to go home received road grain — five sheng for each man, and the supply points along the road would provide hot soup. In the first three days, more than three thousand were released to go home — men who had come south with the army a year before, walking north now with grain on their backs and the smell of the river behind them. They went out of the city, crossed the river, and walked south along the official road. Some reached the top of the slope and looked back once — the king’s banner on the city wall flew bright in the wind.

”What are you still looking back for?” A fellow traveler asked.

”One look.” The man said. ”In four months, this is the first time I can stand on this slope and look at this city in peace.”

The released men walked the official road south. Every fifty li stood a supply point. The keepers of the points had their orders: any man released to go home was to be given a bowl of hot soup. If an old man could not walk any further, the keeper would share half a flatbread with him. In the first days, the official road carried strings of men, like ants returning to the nest.

”This is not a release,” a supply-point keeper said to his companion. ”This is sending home, one by one, the families that four months scattered.”

”Can they be sent home?” His companion asked.

”They can.” The keeper said. ”When the men go back, the land has someone to plant it. When the land is planted, the grain enters the granaries. When the grain is in the granaries, this country will never have to fight a war like this again.” He called down the road: ”Walk steadily, all of you! Thirty li ahead, there is more soup!”

The men on the road waved to him. A half-grown lad walked along, shouting back over his shoulder: ”Thank you! When our village brings in its first harvest, the first basket goes to the official granary!”

”Noted!” The keeper called back. ”The lad from Reed Village — I will remember you!”

On the wild ground beside the road, winter was not yet over. But the lines of footprints, one string after another, were all pointing toward home.

Those who stayed were all enrolled in the work. On Mery’s ledger, the work-grain column grew longer every day. The old sergeant now devoted himself entirely to the roll call; every morning he stood on the high ground of the surrender point and called the teams, one by one. When his voice gave out, he drank a mouthful of water and went on calling, and the men answered to their names the way they had answered in the camp — only now the answering meant a bowl of porridge instead of a place in the ranks.

”Old sergeant,” someone laughed at him, ”your voice is louder now than it was in the camp.”

”In the camp,” the old sergeant said, ”I called ’all of you, up!’ Now I call ’all of you, come and eat!’ Are those the same?”

The whole ground laughed at that — the most solid laughter the month had heard.

The family of Reed Village left on the fifth day.

The surrendered young man, his mother, his niece — and the old believer who had laid down his knife. They were, it turned out, all of one village. On the day they left, Nefer came with the women of the Haven to see them off. The gifts were few: half a sack of seed grain, two new-forged hoes, and a roll of house drawings that Lu Zhu had had made. The seed grain came from the granary’s stores; the hoes had come hot from the smithy that morning, and they were still warm to the touch.

”The house,” Nefer said, ”is to be built by these drawings. Thick walls, bedded foundations, a sloped roof. What these drawings carry is the pattern that this city worked out with four months of lives. If your village builds first by this pattern, it will be the pattern for all Egypt.”

”Aunt Nefer,” the young man said, holding the drawings to his chest, ”Reed Village will build exactly by these drawings. When the house is done, we will ask you all to come and drink the wine of the new house.”

”The wine can wait.” Nefer said. ”Settle your mother first. These months she has gone to the beach every day asking after you. Now that everyone is together — that is better than any wine.”

The old believer bowed toward the city and said: ”Thank this city. Thank the people of this city. Reed Village was picked up off the ground by this city. From now on, when the fields of Reed Village grow grain, the first basket comes to this city.”

”To the official granary.” Mery said from the side. ”The granary will take it, recorded in the name of your village — the first ’people’s grain’ to enter the granary.”

”Good.” The old believer said. ”The first basket goes into the official granary.”

The family walked south along the official road. The young man carried his mother on his back, and every few steps he looked back once. The banner on the city wall flared and dimmed in the wind. He looked back three times; at the last, he did not look back again.

The survey of the damage was taken in hand by Lu Zhu himself.

He took his three apprentices — Hapy, who had come back from the new capital; Mery, who had freed himself from his ledgers; and two clerks of the Chief Construction Bureau — and began at the south gate, street by street, the way a physician begins at the head of a patient and works downward. Which stretch of wall had fallen; which granary leaked; which channel was blocked; which quarter of houses had burned — item by item, drawn on the maps and written in the registers.

After three days of recording, the register was half a finger thick, and the charcoal sticks of the surveyors had worn down to stubs. The four of them had eaten their midday bread standing, leaning against the ruined walls they were measuring. Every entry had been measured twice and written once; a survey that was not exact was a survey that would cost lives later. Lu Zhu spread the maps on the stone table in the courtyard behind the official granary and said to Kamon: ”Look at this map. The city’s wounds are heavier than its people’s.”

The maps were covered with charcoal marks, each one a wound that had a number and a place and a remedy waiting for it: the walls — the south section and the east section hurt worst; the granaries — five, and three of them leaking; the houses — in the east and the north of the city, nearly half burned or fallen; the channels — seven-tenths blocked. Only the water was sound: the wells still stood, and the channels could still carry water.

During the three days of mapping, Hapy and Mery worked beside him — Hapy with the measuring-rod and Mery with the brush, the two of them moving through the ruined quarters like a pair of surveyors from a story. Hapy did the measuring, walking a measuring-rod along wall after wall, calling out each figure; Mery did the recording, writing each figure as it was called. When they reached the burned quarter in the east of the city, Hapy measured it and said: ”Teacher — this quarter: twenty-seven houses. Nineteen have fallen. Of the eight that remain, the walls still stand, but the roofs are gone.”

”Where the walls stand, the house can be saved.” Lu Zhu said, and he said it the way a builder says the one sentence that decides the shape of all the work that follows. ”Record it — ’walls standing, repairable.’ When the mending of houses begins, these are mended first. Walls are dead things; people are alive. While the walls stand, the people suffer half the loss.”

”And the ones that have fallen through?” Mery asked.

”The fallen ones are cleared to the ground and built anew.” Lu Zhu said. ”Built by the new pattern. In the clearing and the building, the whole row of houses comes to one pattern.” He paused. ”Remember this: in rebuilding after a disaster, the worst thing is to patch one corner here and one corner there. Either mend the old or raise the new. The mended must be made as strong as the new, and the new as serviceable as the old.”

”That is the ’unified method of building.’” Kamon said.

”Yes.” Lu Zhu said. ”When the method is unified, the management is easy. The way the official granary manages grain is the way the houses manage houses.”

That night, Lu Zhu had Hapy copy the house drawings three times, by lamplight, the copies laid out to dry on the courtyard table: one copy for Kamon’s work-teams, one to keep in the Haven, one for the archives of the Chief Construction Bureau. ”These drawings,” he said, ”are the standard for houses from now on. Whoever builds a house looks first at these drawings.”

”Teacher,” Hapy asked, ”and for the whole country?”

”For the whole country,” Lu Zhu said, ”we wait for the statutes. Until the statutes come down, let Thebes first stand up by this pattern. When one city stands, a hundred cities have their example.”

”So,” Kamon said, ”we mend the wells first?”

”The water comes first.” Lu Zhu said. ”Water is life. Then the granaries — grain is next. Then the hospital — the sick cannot wait.” He pointed at the map. ”The houses, the streets, the temples — all of them come after. When a house falls, people can live in shelters first. When the water is cut, one day is already too much.”

”This order,” Kamon said, ”I will remember. Tomorrow the work is ranked by it.”

”One thing more.” Lu Zhu said. ”The mending of the houses must follow one unified method. How high a house is built, how thick its walls are rammed, how its roof is pressed — follow the Haven’s method. Otherwise every house mended by its own hand, and one rain brings down another row.”

”The unified method.” Kamon said. ”I will adapt the Haven’s drawings and copy them out for every team. From now on, the houses of this city are built by this pattern.”

”That is right.” Lu Zhu said. ”The most important lesson of this war is that houses cannot be built carelessly. Mark my words — in the Egypt of the future, building a house will be a matter of rules.”

In the temple, the days were counted one by one, from the day the decree was received. The nine men inside had no calendar but the lamps — so many lamps trimmed, so many days gone — and the routine of the hall was the only clock they kept. The counting was not done aloud; it was done in the way the white robe portioned the grain, and the way the old priests trimmed the lamps a little later each evening, to make the oil last.

Nekhem rose early, before the first grey showed through the high windows. Before dawn he sat in the middle of the sanctuary and chanted, his voice low and level, the same passages he had chanted in this temple in the years before the war. When the chanting was done, he wiped the old scriptures, roll by roll, by the light of the eternal lamps — the same rolls he had counted and wiped on the last afternoon at the river bend, when the war was already over in everything but its words. The old priests each had their work: one swept the hall, one tended the lamps, one took the water jar from the white robe when he came back with it. The temple was very still — only the chanting, the footsteps, and the wind passing over the eaves.

”High Priest,” the white robe asked once, ”from now on, you will... just be this?”

”This how?”

”Just sit in this temple until you are old.”

Nekhem did not answer. He walked to the window and pushed it open a crack. Through the crack: the city of Thebes, the river, and farther off, one point of lamplight. He looked for a while, his hands resting on the sill of the window, and then said: ”Do you know what they are doing out there now?”

”Mending the city.” The white robe said. ”Day and night, they are mending.”

”Mending the city.” Nekhem repeated. ”Four months ago, they were mending the city too — and my men were mending their camps. Four months later, my camps have become a timber yard, and their city is still being mended.” Slowly he closed the window. ”In this world, what is left in the end is always the people who are willing to mend things. All my life I tore things down. Sitting in this temple now, I have come to understand — tearing down is a skill; mending is a discipline.”

”Then you...”

”I will not mend.” Nekhem said. ”I will stay here and watch them mend. Until the day they have mended this country into the shape they speak of.” He paused. ”If that day truly comes, I will say a good word for them, here in this temple.”

The white robe asked nothing more. He withdrew and straightened the wicks of the eternal lamps, one by one. The lamps of the whole hall burned up together, and cast Nekhem’s shadow, long, at the feet of the god’s image.

That night, when the lamps had burned down to their middle height and the old priests had gone to their mats, Nekhem took something out from inside his robe.

The ram’s-head emblem of Amun. Bronze, polished until it shone. Through the four months of war he had kept it against his skin, and had let no one touch it. Now he held the emblem in his palm, looked at it for a long time by the light of the lamp.

”High Priest...” The white robe called, softly.

”Four months ago,” Nekhem said, ”it was with this in my hand that I walked out of this temple. In those days I believed I could carry it back into the old days of Egypt.” He said it slowly. ”Now the old days cannot be returned to. Held in the hand any longer, this thing is not a token of faith — it is evidence of guilt.”

He stood up, walked to the god’s image, and laid the emblem on the offering table. The bronze struck the stone with a single clear note — very light, and in the empty hall it rang for a long time, the way a bell rings in a room that has no other sound in it. The white robe and the old priests stood without moving until the note died.

”God,” he said. ”This thing — I leave it with you. My heart — I leave it with you too. From this day, this man keeps your temple for you. Until the day I can no longer keep it.”

He stepped back one pace and knelt. His white robe spread on the stone floor, like a small patch of snow fallen at the feet of the god’s image — and the man who had worn that robe out of this temple with an army at his back stayed kneeling until the lamps had burned lower still.

Nekhem’s illness worsened on the fifth day after the decree. The coughing that the medicine had held at bay came back in the night, and by morning his voice had gone to a whisper.

He coughed so badly that he could not sleep through the nights. The white robe paced in front of the temple gate in distress, from the steps to the corner and back, and the gate guards — who had orders to watch the door, not to watch a man pace — reported it to Lu Zhu. Lu Zhu thought a while and said: ”Ask Priest Imset to go.”

”Will he go?” The guard asked.

”He will.” Lu Zhu said. ”A healer does not look at the temple door.” He said it without having to think about it, the way a man states a rule he has lived by so long it has become part of his bones.

Imset entered the temple that evening, carrying his own medicine chest — the same chest that had gone with him through the siege, its corners worn pale. Shafi followed behind him, and the temple door opened a crack for the two of them: the first outsiders to enter since the decree. The temple door opened a crack for him — the first time an outsider had entered the temple since the decree.

In the hall, Nekhem sat leaning against the feet of the god’s image, wrapped in an old robe that had been washed so many times its color had gone soft. The eternal lamps burned around him in their rows. At the sound of footsteps he opened his eyes. When he saw who had come, his gaze steadied. For a long moment the two men looked at each other across the width of the hall — the man who had signed the exile order, and the man who had been exiled.

”Imset.” He said. ”I know you.”

”And I know you.” Imset said. He set down his medicine chest, and his voice was level as a bowl of water that had been left to cool. ”Many years ago, the case against my family — you handled it yourself.”

The hall went very still. The old priests held their breath, and the chanting that had filled the hall all day stopped as if a door had been closed on it. Shafi stood behind her teacher, her hand tightening, without thinking, on the strap of the medicine chest; she had never heard this part of her teacher’s story told to his face before.

”It was I.” Nekhem said. He did not flinch, and he did not look away — the voice was level, the voice of a man who had spent four months deciding what he would answer for, and a man who has decided does not flinch when the question comes; a man who has spent four months deciding what he will answer for does not flinch when the question comes. ”That year, your father stood in the way of the temple’s land. I dealt with it by the law.” He paused, and added: ”By the law of that time.”

”By the law of that time,” Imset repeated. ”Of my family of five, some were exiled and some died of sickness. What I did in this temple, you know well enough.”

”I know.” Nekhem said. ”You have come — to heal, or to call me to account?”

Imset did not answer. He walked over, crouched down, reached out, and laid his fingers on Nekhem’s wrist — the wrist of the man who had ruined his family, thin under his fingers, the pulse running light and uneven. He held it a long moment, reading it the way he read every pulse, as if it were any pulse. After a long moment he said: ”Cold in the lungs; the long coughing has worn the breath. If it is left any longer, this body is finished.” He opened his medicine chest. ”I heal.”

Nekhem looked at him — looked at the hands pressing on his own wrist. After a long time he said: ”You do not hate me?”

”I hate.” Imset said, and the word came out clean, with nothing behind it but the truth. ”I hated for half my life. Later, I opened a medical house on the West Bank. In the first year, I saved an old mason who had broken his leg. When the old mason thanked me, I understood at last — these hands of mine are for saving people, not for keeping grudges.” He bent his head to the medicines, his hands steady. ”So I came. Lie down; I will treat you. When you are well, you stay in this temple and chant your scriptures. I stay outside this temple and see to my patients. The old account — we do not reopen it.”

”The old account,” Nekhem said, ”is not reopened.”

The medicine was mixed with the same care Imset gave every medicine — measured, stirred, tasted once — and he handed the cup to the white robe and said: ”Twice a day, decocted and drunk. In three days, I will come again.” He packed up his chest and turned to go. At the door of the hall he stopped, and without turning his head said: ”One thing more. When you handled my family’s case, you used the old law. Out there, a new law is being raised. On the day the new law stands, I want you to see it clearly, from this temple — see how this world takes the word ’old’ and changes it, character by character.”

Then he stepped out of the hall.

Outside, the sky was fully dark. The lamps of the city were lighting, one after another. Imset walked in front, Shafi behind; the footsteps of the teacher and the student rang softly on the stone steps.

”Teacher,” Shafi said, low, ”do you truly... not hate him anymore?”

”Hate or not,” Imset said, ”we are both old men. What is there to hate in a man who is already scattering? When I took his pulse just now — it was scattered. What is there to hate in a man who is already scattering?” He looked up at the sky. ”Come. There are patients outside waiting.”

Three days later, Imset went to the temple again, as promised, and the temple door opened for him without the guards having to be asked.

This time the eternal lamps of the hall burned in even rows, and Nekhem’s color was a little better. He sat by the feet of the god’s image and spoke first when Imset came in: ”The medicine works. These two nights, the coughing has been lighter.”

”Lighter is good.” Imset laid his fingers on the pulse. After a moment he said: ”Take it five more days. After that, change to one dose every three days. This illness was brewed over four months; it must be nursed back slowly.”

”Slowly.” Nekhem said. ”What I have most of, now, is days.”

The hall was still. Two old men — one taking a pulse, one watching the lamps. After a long while Nekhem said: ”Imset. That sentence of yours — I have been turning it over for days.”

”Which sentence?”

”The day the new law stands, you said, you want me to see clearly how the word ’old’ is changed.” Nekhem said. ”I have thought about it, and I answer you with one sentence: the word ’old’ can be changed, but what cannot be changed is what people hold in their hearts. If your new law lets people live better than they lived in the old days, I will watch you change it from this temple. And if it does not...”

”If it does not,” Imset said, ”you need not remind me. The people outside will change their days back themselves. This world was never anyone’s world. It is something people build, bit by bit, with their own hands.”

Nekhem said nothing more. He closed his eyes and leaned against the feet of the god’s image, as if he had fallen asleep — but the white robe, watching from the door, saw that the hand resting on his knee did not tremble, and knew he was awake, and thinking. Imset packed up his chest, nodded to the white robe, and withdrew on light feet.

Outside the hall, the sound of the city’s ramming came in waves, near and far, over the roofs of the mended and the unmended quarters alike. Imset stood on the stone steps, listening, and said to Shafi: ”Do you hear that? That ramming is the first character of the new law.”

The chief officiant and the white robe met at the well on a still grey morning, when the city lay between the hammering of the night shift and the hammering of the day shift, and the well was the quietest place in Thebes.

The white robe came every day to draw water; the chief officiant made his rounds every day. The two of them — one carrying a bucket, one carrying a lamp — met at the old well in the west of the city. The white robe stepped aside to let the officiant pass. The chief officiant said: ”No hurry. You first.”

”Thank you, Chief Officiant.” The white robe drew up the water and said: ”The High Priest’s color is better these days. Priest Imset’s medicine works.”

”That it works is good.” The chief officiant said. ”His life, now, is held up by two things — half by the medicine, and half by this temple.”

”And the other half?” The white robe asked.

”The other half,” the chief officiant said, ”is the thing in his own heart that will not let him fall. I understand you who serve the god. While the god stands, the man stands.”

The white robe said nothing. He picked up the bucket, bowed to the officiant, and went back toward the temple. The chief officiant watched his back and said, suddenly: ”When you go back, tell him — the lamps outside are lit every day. Whenever he wants to look, he only has to open the window.”

”I will carry the words.” The white robe said. ”But the High Priest has said he does not look outside anymore.”

”Not looking,” the chief officiant said, ”is well enough too.”

At night, Lu Zhu went to the great temple, walking alone through streets where the lamps were burning low and the last of the day’s hammering was dying away.

Not to go in. He stood below the stone steps and looked up. The lamps inside the temple were burning. The two gate guards saluted him; he waved the salute away and asked: ”How have things been inside, these days?”

”Quiet.” The guard said. ”Chanting by day, lamps by night. The white robe comes out twice a day, for water and for grain. He takes the least of both — half a bucket of water, one sheng of grain.”

”Half a bucket, one sheng.” Lu Zhu repeated, and the two numbers hung in the air between him and the guard like a question neither of them could answer.

”Yes.” The guard said. ”He says nine men in the temple do not eat much. And more than ten thousand men outside are waiting to be settled — every mouthful of grain saved is a mouthful for them.”

Lu Zhu said nothing. He stood at the foot of the steps and looked up for a long time. The temple door was a black mass; the light in the crack of the door — one thread, very fine.

”This man,” he said, low, ”fought all his life. And when the fighting was over, he learned to save grain for the men outside.”

He turned and walked back. The city at night was quiet and bright. Every lane mouth he passed had its lamp; every door he passed had its light. He walked slowly, as if he wanted to look at this city, inch by inch, once more — a man reading a letter he has waited four months to receive, and does not want to reach the end of.

Four months before, he had walked through this city the same way — then, the city belonged to others, and he had come in by dark with his head full of how to hold it. Now the city was his own, and he was in no hurry to reach his lodging. He saw the two lines of whitewash on the wall-foot below the south gate, still there — ’The South Camp is leveled; the four gates stand open. Remember the men who went out; do not forget the men who held the lamps.’ The words had been there since the morning the siege ended, and no one had ever thought to wash them off. He saw the new-mended wall in the east of the city, straighter than the old one. He saw the lamps of the Haven, stretch after stretch, warm to the point of thickness.

He thought, suddenly, of the place he had come from — the river there, the fields there, the windows lit at night there, all of it as far away as another world, and as close as his own skin. There were nights like this there, and lamps like these. How long had he been here? He could not reckon it. He only remembered that he had spent his life mending things — granaries, temples, walls, roads. And mending them, he had mended himself into the very bones of this city.

”Chief Builder,” the soldier on the night patrol saluted him at a lane mouth, and the soldier’s lantern swung as he brought his hand up, throwing a fan of light across the packed earth.

”Good work.” Lu Zhu said. ”This city is ours now. We must mend it until it is worthy of these four months.”

”Yes.” The soldier said.

He walked on. In the dark, from the direction of the north of the city, came the sound of ramming — a new row of shelters rising beside the Haven. The ramming answered, stroke by stroke, the chanting inside the temple, across half the city — question and answer.

(End of Chapter 7, Part 2)