Between the Wild Branches Read online

  Against my better judgment, my gaze was drawn to Lukio, and I startled when I saw that he was watching me over the king’s shoulder while Mariada addressed her father. Warmth spread outward from my chest, tingled in my fingers and toes, as something inexplicable and weighty passed between us. When his eyes narrowed slightly, going to Teitu at my side, I had the odd sensation that he was jealous of his own manservant. But when the king spoke to him again, his attention was drawn away from us.

  “I will watch out for him,” said Teitu.

  “Zevi?”

  He hummed in response. Then, so swiftly I had no time to react, he reached out and pressed something into my hand. “Both of them,” he said, then turned to walk back over to where Zevi and Igo waited in the shade.

  I curled my palm around the object, not needing to look at it to know that Lukio wanted to meet with me again tonight. And risky as it was after Amunet’s pointed warning, after hearing Teitu speak of Lukio’s unexpected compassion toward those in need, I doubted I could stay away.

  Eighteen

  “Where is Kina?” I asked Galit as soon as I’d taken my place beside her on the wine cellar floor. Usually the young woman was the first to arrive, and more often than not, was brimming with secrets she was eager to share with us after spying on her mistress. Out of all of us, Kina was the most enthusiastic about her mission, taking great pleasure in her ability to be surreptitious, yet always ready with a bright smile, in spite of the dangers. Her absence made the dark cellar a bit more shadowy.

  Oshai and Avel were engaged in a hushed conversation in the corner, their expressions unreadable. Although I’d been glad to attend our usual shabbat meeting, I could not help but hope that Oshai would hurry through the traditional prayers tonight. Midnight was not far off, and the terrace was on the opposite end of the palace from here.

  “She’s attending the king’s second wife, along with both of her handmaidens,” said Galit. “They’ve all three come down with an illness and required aid.”

  I’d heard that Orada had been ill as of late, but it wasn’t a surprise, since she seemed to be a sickly sort and eschewed spending much time with the other women in favor of seclusion in her chambers. But to hear that others were suffering the same illness was worrisome. I’d seen entire families stricken by fever in Beth Shemesh and for weeks had been terrified that my own children would contract whatever curse had swept through.

  “Has anyone else in the palace fallen victim?”

  Folding her arms and leaning them forward to her knees, she nodded. “One of the cooks. She spent days in a fever calling out for her mother who died years ago. But she recovered. She’s been pale and fatigued but has been back in the kitchen.”

  “Then perhaps it’s not anything too serious.”

  “We can only hope.” She leaned in closer to me. “Have you spoken anymore with your . . . old friend?”

  I shifted on my seat and cleared my throat. “Not yet.”

  She arched her dark brows.

  “He sent another shell,” I said, twisting my fingers in my lap and avoiding her gaze.

  “And you are going?”

  “I shouldn’t.”

  “But you’ll meet with him anyway.” There was no question in her voice.

  I worried my lip with my teeth, embarrassed that she could read me so easily. “One last time. There is too much at stake to continue. Though I cannot help but wish . . .” I let my words die away, confident that she knew me well enough to read my underlying meaning.

  “I understand.” She frowned, something pinching between her brows as she squeezed my hand. “Perhaps more than you know.”

  Before I could ask what she meant, Oshai called us to order. “Let us offer up a prayer of thanks to Yahweh for these moments we have together, and then Avel will share some news about an unexpected rescue that will undoubtedly lift our spirits.”

  I stifled a yawn with a palm, my early morning wandering out to the festival grounds catching up to me, as Oshai began a half-whispered prayer of gratitude to the Eternal One. My mind wandered as the meeting dragged on, revisiting Lukio out in the valley, my conversation with Teitu, and the boy whose past might well be similar to my own. If this was my last time speaking with Lukio, I had quite a few questions about what he had planned for Zevi.

  “. . . we can be glad,” Avel was saying, when my attention shifted back to its proper place, “that somehow our friends rescued the two girls in time—”

  The latch on the door juddered, halting Avel’s words. Then, in the next breath, an ominous clank of metal on metal followed at the same moment Oshai snuffed out the lamp. Within the next two frantic heartbeats we were moving, just as we’d practiced.

  Ten steps forward in the pitch black brought me to one of the wide, waist-high storage jars that lined the back of the cellar. Holding my breath, I squeezed between it and its enormous neighbor and tucked myself in the narrow space between the frigid limestone wall and the ample stores of wine and beer.

  The lock made another terrifying grind before the door swung open, but I could see nothing more than a dim spill of light from the corridor, which illuminated the back wall far above where I crouched in the darkness.

  For all the months we’d been gathering here, we’d been close to discovery twice, both times when the king’s steward came to fetch a cool jar of wine, most likely to remedy a restless night of sleep. But both times the man had been unaware that five Hebrews were hiding in the deepest shadows, measuring their breaths and praying that the God Who Sees would blind the man’s eyes to their presence. But tonight, whoever stood at the door carried no lamp and did not bustle in with purpose. Instead, a rasping whisper stretched across the space between the threshold and my hiding place.

  “Shoshana?” said the voice.

  All the hair on my neck and arms answered the call, but I was no fool. I remained pressed as close to the floor as possible while my mind whirled with all the possibilities of what my name in the mouth of a stranger at the door might mean.

  I gripped my hands together while they shook like palm branches in a thunderstorm. Was my time in this palace at an end? Would I never see my daughter again after this moment?

  “Shoshana” came the whisper again, the deep timbre of it more familiar this time but also more inconceivable. One of my shaking hands slammed to my mouth. Surely it couldn’t be . . . ?

  “Tesi?” he said, confirming the most bewildering of my suspicions. On instinct my head reared back and knocked against the wall, adding a spike of pain to my confusion.

  Blinking against the rattling sting against my skull, I slithered around the jug until I could see the partial outline of a man in the doorway, one that nearly blocked the muted flicker of the lone lamp illuminating the few stairs behind him that led down into this cold cellar.

  “I’m here to help. Come out.” The familiar form with far-too-broad shoulders took another couple of steps forward, his movements stretching his long shadow on the back wall. “Your friend in the shed sent me. You all are in danger. You must scatter.”

  If this was a ruse to trap us, it was certainly a strange one. What possible reason would the man in the shed have for sending the champion of Ashdod to warn us? But for as perplexing as the situation was, I knew in my bones that one thing had not changed over the past ten years—I could trust Lukio with my life.

  I scuttled out of my hiding spot and stood, but the rest of my companions remained silent and hidden.

  “How did you . . .” I began.

  “There’s no time,” he said, his features still shrouded in shadow. “Everyone needs to leave this room. One of your friends, a young woman, was taken, and there is reason to believe that she will be forced to divulge your connections.”

  Kina? Dread wrapped tightly around my throat. I could not fight off the image of the sweet young girl suffering the Philistines’ notorious abuse of prisoners. A crowd of questions pushed forward. But as he’d pointed out, I had no time to interrogate him.
/>
  “Friends,” I said, stepping forward until I could see Lukio’s features more clearly. “Cover your faces and go. I know this man. I trust him.”

  Galit emerged first with her scarf pulled over her mouth and nose. Her dark brows arched high when she saw who was standing in the doorway but she said nothing as she walked by me. However, she brushed my hand with her free one as she passed, and I could almost hear the silent admonition to be safe as she slipped out of the room and up the stairs.

  Avel came out of hiding next, his eyes wide at the sight of the champion of Ashdod standing in the center of the room, but with his hand over his face and his head bent low, he too escaped the room without a word.

  “Where’s the guard?” I asked Lukio, surprised that the man who’d obviously opened the locked door for him was not nearby.

  “He’s gone. Another is being sent to replace him,” said Lukio. “One who knows nothing. That’s why we must leave right now.”

  Oshai approached last, not bothering to hide his face. “What do you know of the girl they took?”

  “She’s been accused of cursing the king’s second wife in the name of Yahweh,” said Lukio. “Orada is dead, along with one of her handmaidens.”

  My knees wobbled. How could an innocent girl be blamed for the deaths of two people who’d fallen ill before she was even sent to help? “But she—”

  “I’ll tell you what I know, but not here.” He reached for my hand and tugged me toward the door. “We need to go before the other guard comes. I don’t know how long we have.”

  I followed Lukio up the stairs from the cellar while Oshai latched the door behind us.

  Oshai paused for only a brief moment in the corridor, his gaze briefly flickering to where Lukio still gripped my hand in his. “Thank you. I don’t understand any of this. But I am grateful.” Then he snuffed out the one lamp that still flickered in a nearby niche and jogged away, leaving the two of us alone in the dark. I opened my mouth to let free the first of a thousand questions but instead Lukio’s fingers entwined with mine, locking me in his grip as he pulled me in the opposite direction Oshai had gone.

  “Come,” he said as I tripped along behind him into the blackness. “I know you are perishing of curiosity. Let’s find somewhere to talk.”

  Nineteen

  To my surprise, instead of finding myself led to the terrace where we’d met before, Lukio took me to the garden shed. He tugged me inside, and after checking to make certain no one had seen us enter, closed the door.

  Heart pounding from our flight through the palace, I let silence lead, waiting for him to explain himself. But all I could hear was the sound of his labored breaths.

  Finally, after a long exhale, he spoke, his disembodied voice strange but comforting in the blackness. “You met Zevi.”

  “I did. How did you find him?”

  He told me of what he’d witnessed when the latest group of captives had been dragged into the courtyard, how he’d been given permission to use the men for his building project and that he’d managed to convince the king that he wanted to teach the boy to fight.

  “The women are long gone,” he said, his voice rough. “There was nothing we could do once they were transported south. But Ja—” he paused—“your friend in the shed somehow managed to get the two girls out of the temple. I don’t know how. It seems as though he has a wide network of others who are involved and that he will not divulge details, but he assured me they were indeed safe.”

  “That was you?” I whispered. It must have been this same story Avel had been in the middle of explaining when Lukio had burst into our meeting. “You were part of freeing those girls?”

  “Only in that I told him where they could be found.”

  “It is enough,” I said, my eyes misting over as I breathed a prayer of gratitude that he’d been in the right place at the right time.

  “But how could you possibly have known anything about what we’ve been doing?”

  “I saw you,” he said, “coming out of this very shed on the day that I purchased Zevi. When I confronted the man you were speaking with, I discovered that he was known to me. In fact, I’d had an exchange with him earlier that day.”

  That certainly answered the question of how he’d known the significance of this room. “You saw him in the palace?”

  He took a deep breath. “I think it best to leave his identity a mystery, as well as the reason I knew him, both for your safety and that of his family.”

  I’d not given much thought to the man’s identity outside of our secret meeting place, other than to conclude that he was a man of privilege from his talk of wagering silver on Lukio’s fight. But to hear that he had a family who might suffer should our connection be revealed made my respect for him grow even more. I would include his family in my prayers for his safety from now on.

  “Did you somehow coerce the information from him?” I asked.

  “In a way.”

  I frowned, guessing he’d used his influence with the king to his advantage, perhaps had even promised to reveal him unless he explained what I was involved in.

  “I did not threaten him, if that is what you are thinking,” he said, with a note of amusement in his voice. “I can hear you scowling even in the dark.”

  He still knew me so well after all these years. He did not even need to see my face to know what went on inside my mind.

  “I had valuable information to offer him in exchange,” he said, “something he was as desperate to know as I was to ensure your safety.”

  I ignored the way my chest warmed at his words. His worry for me was only out of respect for our former friendship. “Many precautions are taken to make certain I am not in harm’s way. I carry messages, that is all. For the most part, all I risk is censure from Mariada for not attending to my duties in a timely manner.”

  He made a soft noise of frustration. “I should think that tonight would disabuse you of the notion that you are invulnerable, Shoshana.”

  I brushed past the admonition. “So, this man trusted you enough to have you come warn us? Whatever you hold over him must be damaging indeed.”

  “Not damaging in and of itself,” he said, “since the man has proven his worth in his position. But it would certainly cause Nicaro to ask questions.”

  “And you won’t tell me what bargain the two of you made?”

  “I won’t tell you something that could endanger you further. The less you know, the safer you are. You should know that from your dealings in this . . . this group you are part of. The Philistines are not gentle with their methods of making enemies talk.”

  “So that is what is happening to Kina,” I said, my voice warbling as I thought of the vibrant young girl and her melodic laughter. “She’s being tortured?”

  “I don’t know. Our friend only said she’d been taken somewhere for questioning and that her heritage was at the center of the accusations. I’d known that Nicaro harbored animosity toward your people, but until that day in the courtyard, I hadn’t known the extent of his hatred. He doesn’t just mean to take over Hebrew territory and demand tribute, or even just to control the tradeways. He means to either kill or enslave everyone.”

  “Why?” I asked. “Other than lust for our land and resources like the rest of the kings, what makes him so determined to wipe us out?”

  “His father and mother were both buried under the rubble of the temple in Gaza,” he said, “along with the three older brothers who should have inherited the throne ahead of him. That left Nicaro, at barely seventeen, with a city-state to rule. He was the only king of the Five Cities who was against the idea of sending the Ark back. He wanted to destroy it. And he means to find it now and remedy that oversight. He believes it is a rallying point for your people, one that keeps them from capitulating to his constant barrage of raids and skirmishes.”

  “They are your people too,” I said, “in a way.”

  His soft laugh was rueful. “Yes, because I was so warmly embraced by th
e people of Kiryat-Yearim.”

  “There were far more people on that mountain who did accept you than did not, Lukio. And a good number of them who loved you dearly. But you refused to accept that love.” I gentled my voice to speak the truth. “You outcasted yourself in many ways.”

  “Perhaps” was his soft response.

  I was somewhat stunned to hear him make such a concession. It was one of the few disagreements he and I had during our talks in the woods. I’d told him how much I admired Elazar’s family, but he’d done everything he could to downplay their kindnesses.

  “When I saw Zevi in the courtyard,” he admitted, “I could not help but compare him to Yonah. Perhaps it is only his age or his black curls, but whatever it was, it made my decision for me.” A note of amusement leaked into his tone. “I remember how he used to follow me about. Smiling. Always smiling and chattering at me like a blackbird.”

  He paused again, and I was certain that, could I see his face, there would be regret in his eyes. “Was he truly so devastated when I left?”

  The deep well of contrition in his voice was purely that of the Lukio of my childhood, not the arrogant champion of Ashdod. This was the man who, regardless of the way some of the townspeople treated him, secretly delivered firewood to some of the families who could not collect it themselves, either because of illness or age. Neither did anyone other than me know that some of the reason he didn’t like Yonah following him about was because he worried the boy would get hurt, either by falling trees as they worked or by his Gibeonite friends who mocked the deformity of his foot. But I felt compelled to be honest with Lukio, even if it wounded him. He needed to know the damage he’d caused with his disappearance.

  “He was,” I conceded. “He was inconsolable for days, thinking that you’d decided he was too much of a bother. And for months after that he barely left the house. No matter what Eliora told him, he felt he’d driven you away.”

  “That could not be further from the truth.”

  “I know that. But you were anything but open with others beside me. I could never understand why, when I would have given my right hand to be part of Elazar’s family, that at times it seemed you were angry with them for their kindness.”