Rook is bowing. And I don’t mean medieval take-a-knee bowing. I mean straight up this-is-your-lord-and-god bowing. He’s prostrate: belly on the ground, arms and legs spread out. His beak is making little scraping sounds against the brick. Rook’s got a beak because he’s a demigod, first-generation product of divine-human miscegenation. Check him out: nine feet tall, bodybuilder physique, tar-black feathers from the ribs up—and that raven head.
He’s bowing because he’s in the court of Ishtar. You may have heard of her. I’ll save you the Wikipedia trip: “Assyrian and Babylonian goddess of fertility, war, love, and sex.” Yikes. That’s a baaaaaaad chick. What it is, Rook?
“I need you to do something for me,” she says.
She’s perched on a golden throne. She’s sporting a loincloth and serpent armbands. She figures why should she be carried along with the currents of fashion and taste? This is how they rolled back in the Bronze Age. You won’t catch her “selecting a tasteful outfit.” She’s got things to tend to. She’s got courts to hold. That throne ain’t going to sit in itself. Immortality has made her crazy and bitter. She got implants in 1987. A score of Cambodian souls does her nails every fortnight. They did them magenta last Thursday; so now she’s got magenta nails, and she’s rapping them on the throne-armrests.
“It’s important,” she says, “or at least as important as you can handle. There’s a shipment happening tomorrow night. It’s coming through Atlanta. Azrael might be involved. Probably not, but—you know. It’s a staff. I honestly don’t know what it’s about. Maybe it’s just a staff. Maybe it’s just sentimental value—R.I.P.-for-the-Dead-God stuff, you know? But who knows? Anyway, I’m sending some interference, just perfunctory stuff to make them think they beat me. Once they break through, I need you to track them, see where the staff ends up, and get it for me. It’s probably nothing, or else I wouldn’t send you to do this, but, you know, who knows? If it’s anything interesting, and you retrieve it for me, you might get rewarded somehow. I’ve been in your dreams; I know what you want. Maybe you’ll get that.”
Rook breathes. His feathers bristle. He’s suppressing his thoughts so she can’t read them. He shows Ishtar emotion alone: excitement.
“Nothing will stop me, Lord.”
Boring. Ishtar checks the tablet her giant-slave is holding out for inspection. Next on the appointment-list: “Nergal, fire-lion lord of Sheol, consort of the lord’s sister Irkalla, god of all rats and plagues, etc: Four o’clock p.m.”
“Don’t come back,” Ishtar says, “Until you’ve got the staff.”
|