Esther Read Free Page A

you?” Yvrit twisted her body to look back at me.
    â€œHush . Turn around.”
    The soldier had shifted his attention to the girl behind me. He was yelling, “A drunken old man could walk a straighter line than you.” But still he could have heard my true name, and guessed my secret: I was Jewish. My mother had named me Hadassah, as if she had foreseen her own violent death or the march I would one day be forced to make. Hadassah meant “myrtle,” a plant that only gave off its sweet fragrance when crushed.
    â€œNow I am Esther, and you . . . Cyra. ” Cyra was the word for “moon.” I was certain that Yvrit wished for the moon to replace the sun as soon as possible. Everyone knew that even scorpions died if they attempted to cross the road during the noonday heat. Though the sun had only risen halfway to the top of the sky, sweat poured down my neck, and my tunic stuck to my body.
    â€œSpeak no more—only walk,” I said, “no matter if your feet blister or you wish to lie down in the road.”
    The soldier stopped yelling at the girl behind me. I felt his eyes upon me. “You wish to lie down in the road?”
    â€œNo, sir.” I was careful to keep all feeling from my voice.
    â€œThen take off your head scarf .”
    His horse stepped so close that I felt the short, sharp hair of the animal’s large flank against my arm. But I would not show this soldier or any other that I was hot and tired and full of fear.
    â€œYou can pretend not to hear my words but you will have a harder time pretending not to feel my whip,” he said. I glanced up to see if he was reaching for it. It sat untouched upon his hip. He leaned down to look at me. “The people of your village may have thought you beautiful,” he said, his eyes moving over me, “but you are no longer in your village.”
    More hooves pounded up from the rear, driving the soldier’s horse ahead of me. “The king wants these girls unharmed, Dalphon,” the second soldier said. It was Erez.
    â€œThough this one looks down, her back is too straight,” Dalphon replied. “She is too proud for a peasant girl going peacefully to the harem. I want to better see her eyes.”
    I could have told him I was descended from the great king David, the second king of Israel who had lived some five hundred years before, but then he would know I was a Jew. Besides, however royal my line may have been at one time, it was true that my parents had been closer to peasants than royalty.
    â€œThe king does not concern himself with what you want, and neither do I.”
    I gazed from the corner of my eye. By the butt-spikes of the two men’s spears I could see that one was a soldier, one an officer. But not as I had hoped. Erez had only a silver butt-spike. Despite how he had spoken to Dalphon—an officer—he was just a soldier. Except that, unlike any of the other soldiers, he rode a horse so huge it could only be a Nisaean, one of the king’s most sacred mounts.
    â€œYou are lucky the king likes you, Kitten Tamer, or I would take your tongue. But Xerxes is no less fickle with soldiers than he is with harem girls. When your valor at Thermopylae is forgotten, I will have you sent to the farthest reaches of the empire.”
    Erez rode closer to Dalphon. I was glad to see that the closer he came, the smaller Dalphon looked. “You are only an officer because your father is an adviser to the king. You are no more a rightful officer than I a king.”
    Dalphon’s voice no longer overflowed with confidence. “The men are behind me.”
    â€œThey are behind looting and plundering. You matter little to them.”
    â€œI think I will not send you to the farthest reaches of the empire, but to the gallows.”
    Erez lowered his voice. “You assume your father will always be powerful. But perhaps, Dalphon, it is he who will end up upon the gallows,