The Resourceful Little Slave Girl Chapter 20

I will now write about my audience with Ea.

The gods’ council chamber might have been the interior of a crystal, if crystals flowed and respired. Ther floor seemed almost intangible and surrounded a shallow pool that reflected nothing, not even the echo of my own body.

They are called the Seven but only one figure waited for me, surrounded by imposing avatars of the others. She had the figure of a matron, rippling and tall, her hair a shifting veil of silver that moved in slow waves whether or not she turned her head. Her body seemed to be made of translucent blue alabaster. Her robe was not cloth but a liquid membrane, refracting the light into razor-thin rainbows. Her feet never touched the ground.

She regarded me with neither warmth nor enmity. She did not need to impress or threaten; her presence was the vapor, the water, the blood in my veins.

"Zhou Yu," said Ea. Her voice was the susurrus of rain on glass, the tide at midnight. "You have questions."

I did not bow. The air in this place dared me to show subservience. I planted my feet wide, arms at my sides, and let the tremor in my hands become a fist.

"Why?” I said. I had planned to begin with an accusation, but it came out as brittle exhalation. I tried again: "You took me from my kingdom, my life. Why?"

Ea’s eyes were blue, but in them spun the blackness of the deep ocean. "We claimed nothing that was not already owed. You, of all mortals, must understand that."

A scoff from my own lips, more venomous than intended. "Owed? I made no contract with you. I owe the Seven nothing."

A ripple ran down her arm, and droplets flew from her fingers before evaporating in the electric air. "Have you forgotten or did we make you forget? You made a contract with yourself when I swept you from Gaius’ villa to my temple in Thamud.

“Every choice you have made since the first day you drew breath on this world. Each time you seized control. Each time you bled or killed or gave yourself to love, you renewed the bargain with us."

The heat rose in me, slow but inexorable. I thought of Idris, the unreasoning tenderness with which he kissed my body, the vows we made in darkness, the way our children’s faces mirrored my own. I thought of the price I’d paid for every inch of progress, every treaty, every moment of peace that followed the decades of bloodshed.

"I would have fought my way through the rest of my life, and died in peace, if you had not intervened." I said.

A faint, regretful smile on Ea’s mouth. "And you would have died. You would have watched the world you built unmake itself, stone by stone, until nothing remained but your own story, told and retold by those who never knew you. Is that what you would have preferred?"

The chamber shifted—just for an instant—and all the water in the pillars shot upward, coalescing in midair.

Ea stood, her robe cascading in rivulets that did not wet the air. "We simply ensured that your story did not end with the first draft."

Ea approached. The water at her feet crept forward, a tide in miniature. She extended her finger, and I felt a pressure behind my eyes, as though the weight of every river on An was pushing against my skull.

And in that moment, I remembered everything.

“Why?” I managed after what seemed like an eternity.

"For this," she said. "For the unification of your world, so that the mistakes of Ki are not repeated. For the continuity of memory. For the preservation of all you have ever loved. You will leave this place and shape the continent in your image. Is that not what you always wished?"

The words rang false, but the pressure was real. The terror of her presence pressed down on my very soul.

"Why me?" I whispered.

Ea’s expression softened. "Because you have always belonged to us."
It was not her expression which convinced me in the end but her face; not her look of sympathy but the entire shape of her being. Because I knew from the moment I stepped into Ea’s audience chamber that my course was set however much I raged inside.

For my face was the mirror image of hers and of the acolyte who raised me; their masks removed for once in order that I fully appreciate my helplessness.

"What must I do?" I said, finally.

Ea withdrew her hand. "Write. Remember. Become what you always were. And, when the time comes, choose the world over yourself."

She bent down, so that her large face was level with mine. "You are a solution," she said, the words cold. "A weapon against entropy. Left to itself, this continent will fracture along the same lines that destroyed the old world. You are here to prevent that. To create what mortals call empire, but what we call continuity."

I started to protest, but she pressed a wisp of water to my lips—cool, definitive, the final punctuation on a life I had not written.

"You are permitted one question," she said, her smile gentle and absolute.

I closed my eyes, and in the darkness, saw Zeinab’s face as a child, open and unspoiled, and Safin’s as a toddler, fierce and hungry for the future.

"What has become of my children?" I asked.

Ea’s answer was a whisper, but it filled the space, "They are alive. Both are strong. Both remember you, though in very different ways. You will meet them soon, but not as you left them. Your husband is also alive. You have wasted your only question."

It was enough. Not forgiveness, but some charity and a tether, a direction in the chaos. Ea rose, her body flickering with reflected light, and gestured toward the pool’s far edge.

"There is a door," she said. "You may leave when ready."

I nodded, and as she turned away, I called after her: "I am not your instrument."

She paused. "No," she said, with what might have been admiration. "You are your own. That is why you are here."

It seemed like a lie told to a child.

She vanished, and the ring of water overhead dissolved into mist, falling in soundless sheets around the chamber.

I stood for a long time then walked to the threshold, braced myself, and stepped through.

*

I spent the last hours of my captivity alone, if time could be measured in a place where nothing changed and no clocks dared intrude. The acolytes, my sisters in Ea, provided me with the clothing of a Qin merchant, a sword, and some money. Then dispatched me like a trained animal to the edges of a Qin city, the very one from which I now write.

The desert air was not sterile; it stank of dry grass and decay. My vision blurred with tears, but they were driven by wind and chill, not weakness.

One thing Ea had said haunted me, though I pretended otherwise: "They may not welcome what they do not recognize."

I whispered my children’s names, once each, then started down the path, into a world that had learned to live without me.