The imposter king, p.1
The Imposter King, page 1
THE IMPOSTER KING
BOOK ONE IN THE IMPOSTER KING SERIES
ELI HINZE
CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Continue the Series
Thank You
Historical Note
Your Free Book is Waiting
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Other works by Eli Hinze
Copyright © 2022 by Eli Hinze
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
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Cover by Seventhstar Art Services
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Published by Regale Press
“The handsome young man, the lovely young woman—in their prime, death comes and drags them away. Though no one has seen death’s face or heard death’s voice, suddenly, savagely, death destroys us, all of us, old or young.
And yet we build houses, make contracts, brothers divide their inheritance, conflicts occur—as though this human life lasted forever.
The river rises, flows over its banks and carries us all away, like mayflies floating downstream: they stare at the sun, then all at once, there is nothing.”
ANONYMOUS, THE EPIC OF GILGAMESH
1
Ahsan ignored the eyes glued to his back as he entered town. The wealthy often attracted the gazes of those less fortunate, with their crimson-dyed robes and pleated tunics edged with beads, but he had tried to dress as plainly as possible. Yet somehow the crowds milling through the square and bazaar could pick him out, sights following him with curious intensity. No one had looked at him like this during his travels back to Sippar, and none of them could’ve known what lived within him. So, what drew their attention now?
A band of men pressed into the square, some with sheathed swords slung over one shoulder, others with spears in hand. Fangs and shriveled, preserved eyes jangled from their necklaces as they traipsed through the crowds, not stopping to consider the people around them. Most bristled at monster hunters, but still everyone inclined their heads as the men passed through. Though a raucous lot, they got the job done—with ruthless, oftentimes cruel efficiency. A cold chill passed through Ahsan.
One of them grimaced at him. The man stuffed cured leaves in his whittled bone pipe, then jammed it between his wrinkled lips, sights never leaving him all the while. Swallowing, Ahsan slipped out of view. Avoiding the major streets would be best for now. He ducked behind a laden donkey and made for one of the side alleys, and though it reeked of piss and spoiled food scraps, it was blessedly empty, save a few weather-worn cats.
One sniffed the air in his direction, its pupils cut into thin slivers by the daylight.
“Not you too,” he said. “Are you going to tell on me?”
The other two felines raised their noses in his direction as well. One stroked up against the side of his robes. A small smile pulled against Ahsan’s mouth. He had a soft spot for cats, even if the feeling wasn’t always mutual. He gave each a scratch behind their ears and, from his shoulder, Ahsan slid his pack off and rummaged through its contents. Already back in his home city, he wouldn’t need the rest of his travel rations—he could restock before he left—and the strays needed the food more.
The cat that just rubbed up against him whipped around to hiss.
Ahsan frowned, though he knew he should’ve expected as much. Animals always detected what he was, eventually.
He put a tanned finger to his lips. “Our secret, alright?”
After tossing the cats a piece of dried goat, their qualms with him evaporated. He continued down the alleyway.
Most people would be happy to return home, but the city of Sippar held no such sentimentality for him. It was where he was born and raised, yes, but his connection to the place ended there. He had made sure of it.
The town of his forefathers, Ahsan himself had little to do with Sippar. He hadn’t inherited his father’s business, though it was rightfully his as his father’s only son, and while he could have gone to the Town Assembly and brought a suit against his father, he chose not to. He didn’t want the business. In all honesty, when his father had given it to his sister’s husband as her dowry, Ahsan had breathed a sigh of relief. He would be lying if he said the oversight didn’t smart, but it was ultimately a good thing. He didn’t want to stay here. Instead, he’d struck out on his own to sell wares in far-flung towns and seaports. Had scraped together a profit for himself, enough to afford three sets of fine clothing, the lapis studs in his ears, and one of the carved pendants that rested against his broad chest. He had even thought about getting a donkey, though it was a needless luxury. The flat-bottomed river boats that bobbed along the Tigris and Euphrates would do well enough.
It was in a port crisp with sea breeze, with waters like uncut jade, that a messenger had come to him bearing a letter demanding his return to Sippar. Ahsan had wanted more details, pressed the man for them, but got nothing.
“I can’t leave my livelihood without sufficient reason,” he’d insisted, though he very much could. Free as the wind, he answered to no one but the market. Such freedom did not like being told when to step aside, no less by someone he’d never seen in his life.
Either the messenger did not believe Ahsan, or had been told otherwise. Still, he left—only to return a week later. Ahsan had tried to make himself scarce, but in the end the messenger found him hiding in a granary, bearing news that his mother had fallen ill.
By that day’s end, and after unloading the rest of his wares for an unfairly discounted price, Ahsan got on a boat headed north. Of course, it was the one time he was in a hurry to return home that he had to travel against the river’s current. Even as he tried to sleep under the thick stars, tried to let the waves lull him to sleep over the snoring men and braying livestock, curiosity squatted in the back of his mind. What had befallen his mother? Or was it actually his father who was ill, and the messenger had been instructed to say it was his mother? Anyone who knew Ahsan knew he wouldn’t go out of his way to so much as sneeze in his father’s direction, much less attend to his bedside. Was it his duty? Probably. But that didn’t mean he cared to fulfill it.
The alley ended, opening up into the market square at the nexus of the commoner’s district. On the far side were a few shrines to agrarian deities, incense rising from each, and the much larger House of the Deep Waters, temple of Ea. Crowds filtered through the apothecary shops, and taverns lined the square. Green and crimson tarps shaded the produce vendors with their jewel-toned eggplants, dried mint and marjoram. Men picked through baskets of beads to adorn the braids twisted through their beards. At different temple stalls, groups of ladies sorted through fertility amulets and potions, one side for those looking to boost their fertility, the other for those looking to suppress it. Dotted throughout the square were carts with caramelized onion flatbreads and roasted red peppers and honey mixed ale. He sighed. Any other merchant would have fought their way into Sippar’s streets for a chance at becoming one of its many wealthy families. But no other merchant had as good a reason to leave.
Perhaps he ought to pick up a garlic flatbread for his mother. It was her favorite, and it was rare that he got to treat her. It was better for her this way, safer the farther he was from everyone and everything, but he was already here. Ahsan pushed farther into the square. A few people sat under the shade of a nearby tarp, eating skewers of fish and onion, some dipping bread into tahini, and a larger crowd congregated by the entrance to Ea’s temple. A bard, likely hired by the temple, sang a favorite tale of the wily god. A few priests watched on, nodding their approval.
Passing the commotion on his way to the flatbread cart, Ahsan turned an ear towards the storyteller.
“Mighty sickness swept the land! Swallowed by drought and plague, humanity was, yet still their wickedness persisted. And so the gods said, humanity has become too loud for us to bear. Let us make a flood. Let us impose a flood upon creation for its wickedness, and all will be silent.”
The priests, bystanders up until now, flung their arms wide to sprinkle a smattering of rain drops over the crowd. It took three priests to conjure up the power to do so. Ahsan couldn’t imagine how much stronger the might of the gods was, able to create such roaring floods with but a simple command.
The children in the audience squealed with glee as the raindrops hit their skin, but the adults only sighed. Like Ahsan, they knew what came next in the story.
“But one man, chosen by our god of wisdom, was preserved. Instructed to make a boat, he was, the designs given by Lord Ea, and told to put aboard the seed of all living things.”
Ahsan tore himself away from the performance. It was not one he cared to hear. The seasonal floods didn’t need anything to make them more terrifying than they already were, and he was the last person who needed reminding of how cruel the fates and gods could be.
Ahsan approach ed a familiar flatbread vendor’s cart.
“One garlic flatbread, aunty,” he said, digging into his pack for shells or stones to barter with.
The woman nodded, looked up from her work, then paled. Her eyes widened. “Ahsan-Sin! Is that you?”
Though the bard continued on, the faltering buzz of the crowd didn’t escape Ahsan’s notice. He rubbed the back of his neck, shifting from one foot to the other.
“I hope you’re in good health, Aunty Humusi.”
It stung to remember her. He remembered playing with her sons when they were mere children throwing balls of packed earth at one another, poking at lizards and spooking chickens—until one day a rooster chased them to the edges of the city. It was memories like those, dangerous memories that made him wish he’d never had to leave Sippar. But most of all, he resented being so easily recognized. If only because that made him easier to find.
“My, look at how you’ve grown!” She scurried around to the other side of the cart and crushed him into a hug, her meaty arms swallowing him up. The feeling was oddly reassuring. She pulled away, but still held him by the shoulders despite that she was a head shorter. “So tall, but too skinny. For you, the flatbread is free.”
“I don’t mind. Really.” Ahsan stood there, blinking as she walked back to her station. “This is your livelihood. Would you like something else, maybe?”
He rustled through his pack again in hopes of finding something she would barter for, but she reached across the sizzling griddle and put a hand on his arm. The woman shook her head, wrinkly jowls swinging. Ahsan shifted under her gaze, but complied, slinging his pack back up onto his shoulders. As she worked over the hot surface, flipping the various breads and slathering on their toppings, the bard’s voice continued to lilt in the background.
“The man looked out his porthole and wept, for all of mankind had returned to clay.”
A moment later, Aunty Humusi wrapped not one, but two flatbreads in a scrap of old linen and held them out, one topped with garlic and another with toasted sesame seeds.
He opened his mouth to object—
“You ought to go see your father.”
Ahsan bit back a curse. So it was his father. He ran a hand through his hair, one of his rings catching in his sun-burnished tangle of waves.
“Blood of the gods.” He yanked his hand free and took the flatbreads, trying to hide his sigh behind clenched teeth. “Thank you, Aunty.”
She touched a finger to her brow in farewell, and Ahsan felt her watery eyes on him as he left. Felt a few more people’s eyes on him, too. Sweat wicked up the back of his neck. Whether the stares were out of hate or jealousy or pity over his father’s condition, Ahsan didn’t intend to find out.
Ahsan’s calves burned as he trudged up the hill Sippar was perched upon, walking through the gradient that defined the city: the wealthy lived higher up, in the quieter and more refined sections of the city, with all its pomp and self-importance, and the poorer lived down the hill, by the sewage and stench. Clay pipes funneled most waste down and out of the city, but on hot days the smell carried. It was nothing a drop of scented oil under the nose couldn’t help, but the poor could not exactly afford such luxuries.
From this high on the hill, Ahsan could see all of Sippar sprawl out around him. Not only the city proper that thrived within her walls, but those outside of them: the herdsmen, with their goats and sheep in clusters picking their way across the rolling hills; the farmers, using pulleys and buckets and irrigation channels to feed their crops. They were situated on the side of the city opposite the Euphrates, so Sippar did not starve after one of the region’s many unpredictable floods. At least, did not starve as much as they would have otherwise. Of course, being further away from the river made irrigation channels more difficult to fill during the just-as-common droughts, but in the land of extremes, the weather was no different.
Hiding places grew scarce the farther Ahsan ventured into the city, the homes in the wealthier districts spaced farther apart and with wider streets. At least here, no one was staring at him. Here the gated homes had enough room to breathe, surrounded by courtyards and garden beds full of blooming vines that perfumed the air with jasmine and honeysuckle. The scent pulled at his heart, surfacing memories with it. His mother always smelled of jasmine, dabbing fragrant oils at her wrist and neck as she drank her morning tea. Even now he could picture her in their sunlight-drenched courtyard, mint leaves dancing in her lacquered cup, glass beads looped through her braids.
With a sigh, Ahsan stopped in front of his father’s house.
He could still turn back. No one would be any the wiser. A jumble of words built up in his throat, ready to defend himself should his father scream at him like he once had, should his father throw pottery worth what a peasant would make in three crop seasons
Ahsan shook his head. No. He would go in, if only to say he did. If things got bad, he could turn right back and leave. He owed his father nothing, but his mother was a different story. And he still had her flatbread.
Ahsan stepped through the arched gate, passed the rustling hibiscus bushes and the stump of a once-knobby acacia tree his father had cut down because it messed up the tile path. Young Ahsan had cried over the loss of his favorite climbing tree. If he was honest with himself, adult-Ahsan was still upset over it too.
He knocked against the verdigris-crusted door. The other side was quiet. After waiting a long moment, he knocked again, and when no one answered he pushed in the door. The entryway was dark, empty save for a rug and shrine in the corner to the god Shamash. Ahsan did not stop to pray at it.
The light that spilled in from the door to the courtyard was the house’s only source of illumination. None of the oil lamps were lit, and it smelled like the kitchen hadn’t seen use for a day. Had his parents gone out? They rarely did much of anything together, and it would be especially unusual if one of them was unwell, but he wouldn’t put it past his father to ignore his health. After Ahsan dropped his pack in the entryway and switched his sandals for house slippers, he massaged his shoulders and stepped into the courtyard sighing with yet more blooms. Underfoot, the once-glazed tiles from his childhood were now dull. The home was divided into two levels, common spaces like the lounge and kitchen and shrine on the bottom floor, the bedrooms on the top. An added luxury, his father had this house built with windows that faced inside and outside. Open to the courtyard were shutters, spotted cuckoos and vibrant blue kingfishers painted onto their surface like a menagerie captured in wood.
He crouched down to sniff one of the blood-red flowers, and its yellow filaments tickled his nose with pollen.
A crash sounded from behind him. Ahsan whirled around to see his family’s serving girl, Taram, on the top floor. A hand clapped over her mouth, she looked first at him, then at the blunder by her feet. Judging by the bright copper light streaking across her face, he assumed it was his mother’s hammered tea tray that she had dropped.
“Sorry to have startled you.” He rose and moved towards the stairs. “Let me help—”
Without stopping to pick up the tray, Taram darted towards the room just opposite the stairs. His old room. His brows pulled together. Had his parents repurposed it into a lounge area? Were they entertaining company? Ahsan ascended. A few steps from the top, he bent over slightly until his line of sight was even with the floor, then squinted. Feet peeked out from under the dividing cloth hanging at the room’s entryway.
Picking up the tray in his free hand, he walked closer. “Ama? Baba?”
The feet stopped shuffling, turning towards the sound of his voice. Whoever it was wore slippers, clearly not an intruder, but he’d never known his father to pace either.
