A/N: Hello, my lovelies! Been a while since I posted a YGO fic, eh? I'm kinda happy that I finally wrote a fic that let me get into Egypt Nerd mode. And it's also the first (…only?) fic where I've tried to fit it into the actual canon….
But yeah, as always, this started out as something… different… than what it is now…. Hmm. Oh well.
Disclaimer: If I owned Yu-Gi-Oh, I would not have to sink my entire summer earnings into buying the complete manga series, now would I? :P
Greatest
Her son comes home. His hair has been pulled into spikes, and one eye is swollen, shiny and purple.
"You've been fighting," Batya says.
He thumps down onto the stool to watch her pull feathers off the dead goose they'll eat for supper. The wide, sulky mouth she gave him is screwed up in anger, wrinkling his little chin. "Why'd you give me a girl's name?" he says at last.
Ah, so that's what the fight was about. She cuffs him, lightly, on the side of the head. "It is a good name. You should be proud of it."
"But it's a girl's name."
"I named you after my sister," says Batya. "It's a good name. She was a talented thief. Some even expected her to become Greatest Thief, someday."
He looks slightly mollified, and starts kicking his feet back and forth. But his eyes narrow in suspicion. "...But could she really have become Greatest Thief?"
She laughs. "Aiyehhh, no, never! She didn't have the right head for it. But she was still a very good thief. And I loved her. Be proud to be named after her!" She plucks the last feather, then dumps the bird-carcass into the cooking pot, guts and bones and all, and stirs it into the water. Her son still watches, even though she should make him cut up onions or fetch bread to eat with the stew. He is no longer angry. He looks thoughtful.
"I could become Greatest Thief instead," he declares.
"Aiyehh," she repeats, smiling, "no. Never."
Bakura broods, rubbing at his purpled eye, as the stew comes to a boil.
. . .
Kul Elna is an unnatural city – all those criminals and cutthroats, crammed together, watching each other with suspicious eyes. But somehow, it survives. The wittier inhabitants sometimes call it Set-Ma'at, the Place of Truth, after the isolated city built long ago outside Thebes, where the artists labored their whole lives on the tombs. And it's a fitting comparison. The inhabitants of Kul Elna are artists; their art, more honest than any other. But it is a thieves' village. No matter what witty names they give it, that has never changed.
The tomb-robbers gave birth to the village – the bones of it, the first few huts slapped together. They needed a place in the cliffs to store their stolen goods until it was safe to begin reselling them, and to use as a hideout, if necessary. They hid some squat little houses in the folds of the high rocks. And then someone thought to make the tunnels, and once those were finished – long, cold passages through the cliffs themselves, leading straight to the tombs carved into the valley below – then the tomb-robbers multiplied, and word of the hideout started to pass through the right alleyways, across the right tongues. And it was probably then that the thieves started to come.
The Sea-People, the Nubians, the Eblaites, the Hebrews, the coppery, arrogant Egyptians – the chaff of polite society, the glory of the world's underbelly. Unlike the tomb-robbers, the thieves didn't come to hide. They lusted after the nearby royal city, with all its wealth. They came to live and steal. And no matter who built the first houses, it was the thieves who first made Kul Elna a village, and not a huddle of huts on a cliff.
Of course, it wasn't so easy. Even now, the tomb-robbers and the thieves don't mingle much. The tomb-robbers are rooted; they stay by their tunnels and scuttle around risking nothing but the gods' wrath. And the thieves leave when they want; they strut about and risk only fleshy physical death. But the best wine is brought in by a thief who married a tomb-robber, and good alcohol smoothes everything over. After a few bowls of wine, it's all really the same profession, anyway.
So they are all thieves, the world over. And in Kul Elna they are all artists, whether they lift amulets from coffins or pluck hidden treasures from the houses of unsuspecting lords. But out of all of them, there is only one Greatest Thief in Kul Elna.
Greatest Thief, everyone says, smiling. When something is stolen, it leaves space behind; the shape of things changes. With enough time, enough hard work, enough luck, Greatest can change the shape of the world.
Greatest does not just mean the one who can take the most gold, or escape the cleverest traps, or steal the largest, most impressive treasure – although you must certainly be able to do that too. It is something else, something beyond mere silence or skill. Greatest does not mean you are more than a thief – it means you are one, a thief in every breath and bone and dream, every stretching muscle, every trailing finger. Greatest is the one with the most pride in what they are, the most joy at what they can accomplish. Greatest Thief means you can do the most, take the most, want the most – and can think of nothing better than that. Greatest shapes things.
The stories of the Greatest Thieves pass through the pubs and alleyways. They are famous. They are fact. Kul Elna always has a Greatest Thief.
But sometimes... sometimes...
Only sometimes, the starts of stories are passed around – just the starts. "They have found a Favored." Then wide eyes, glances upward, hush, hush.
Favored does not have to be a thief. Favored might never steal anything.
Favored means you walk under the eyes of the gods.
Greatest might be lucky, might be the most brilliant of all the thieves – but the Greatest Thief is only human. Sooner or later, Greatest will miss a jump and fall. Greatest will lose a fight. Greatest will be caught.
Greatest Thieves' strength is that they are prouder, and more human, than any other. The Favored...
"The gods watch over Kul Elna," some people say, and laugh. They are referring to the skill of the thieves.
But the inhabitants only smile when they hear that, and twitch their artists' fingers.
. . .
Whose child is that? the village asked.
Batya had left Kul Elna with her earrings flashing and her sister keeping pace beside her. She had come back a year later with her ribs showing and her earrings still bright and nothing but a bundle of dirty cloth in her arms. And the village shut her out.
"It's mine, obviously," she snapped.
Yours and whose?
But Batya just tossed her head in impatience and tipped her bundle back and forth in a way that might be called rocking. "You know who I am," she said, "and my business is my own. Will you let me in or not?"
The village murmured. No new babies, they said. They're helpless. They cry. We cannot have a baby here. We are a village of thieves, and without silence we cannot survive. Leave it outside, or leave this place – yes, even you.
Batya didn't do either. She paced outside the village, every day – a week, two weeks. The thieves could look over the waist-high wall and see her, a figure of sharp jutting bones hiking back and forth over the craggy rocks, a bundle of cloth in her arms. They waited. She waited. They never saw her eat or drink. Everyone expected Batya to survive this waiting period – and cheerfully – but they watched the bundle for some sign of life, or lack thereof. But it just lay in her arms.
Then Nachala the weaver found that some of her herbs were missing. And Amisi was short a few licks of honey. Rehema, a loaf of bread. Hebony, several bites of fish. So the village found out that Batya had been in their kitchens, acting the part of the thief. The wall around the village was, after all, only waist-high.
"But it's not enough," Shemei, the laundress, said at last. The rest of the village nodded. Enough to keep a skinny, stubborn woman alive. Not enough for her body to make milk. Not enough for the baby.
Shemei led a group out to Batya the next morning. Batya stood, hand planted on one hip, the still, silent bundle balanced against the other. Shemei nodded deeply to her, then said bluntly, "Well, if you could come in whenever you wanted, why didn't you?"
Batya lifted an eyebrow. "I can get in. But I can't live there if I'm not wanted, even if I'd rather not find somewhere else."
Shemei nodded again. "You are welcome back." Her eyes darted to the bundle, and then she burst out, "Batya – I am sorry about the child."
The village shifted its feet. Batya just looked puzzled, then laughed.
"What are you talking about? He's inconvenient, but I don't mind him that much."
Shemei blinked. "But – the child – it's starving, we would have heard it crying, or – you mean it's not –"
The bundle twitched. Batya lifted it up, and a fold of cloth fell back to reveal a sour-looking baby-face, with Batya's eyes and a tuft of hair – white as the moon – sticking out over its forehead. Alive. Stubborn and skinny as the mother. It stared at the thieves, solemnly sucking on its fist.
"He never cries," said Batya, and a proud grin spread slowly across her face.
The village followed her as she walked through the gap in the wall. She walked past the well. Down the only street, with the storehouse and the pub. Past the path that led to the tomb-robbers' homes and the tunnels. The baby was silent the whole way, and the village for most of it.
Then, in back, someone whispered, "But where's her sister?"
Batya ignored the whisper, stepped into the house that had been hers, and shut the door.
. . .
It is true, what she tells her son: he will never be Greatest Thief. Bakura is quick and clever, yes, as the Greatest must be – quicker and cleverer than the other dusty children of the thieves, and with a stubborn streak of patience at his core – and he has a love for the shine of things that are not his. The makings of a good thief.
But a thief should be small and light, able to slip through grasping hands. Bakura presses against the walls and traditions of the village, and gets caught on the edges of things he doesn't like. A thief should be invisible. He has inherited the father's shock of white hair, conspicuous on the brightest day and the darkest night. Above all else, a thief must be silent. Bakura shouts a lot. He is loud, even when he doesn't shout. He is loud, even when he is fast asleep. The air tastes different around him. It is a not-quite-taste, a not-quite-smell. A burning in the back of the throat. A prickling of the hairs along the arms. It announces him as if he were shouting, all the time. Batya cannot think what it is, but it is a horrible handicap. It will ruin him. Or reduce him, at least.
But eventually, he tells her about it. "A buzzing, in my head," he says. "Voices." They tell him which child is telling lies about him – where Batya hid the honeyed almonds – when people are watching – when he can steal. They deflect the sun and the stares of the village.
Batya does not think about it too much. She keeps busy. But, still...
If not Greatest, then perhaps Favored...?
She keeps busy and lets Bakura's voices fill the village.
. . .
Knives fascinate Bakura. When he was a baby, Batya thought he just liked their shine, and then, when he was a toddler with cuts along his hands, she thought he was just stupid. But now she wonders, and lets him hold her set of knives, the one her father stole from the captain of the royal guard the year Batya's sister was born. Bakura touches the knives at first with reverence, then with familiarity, like a boy holding the hand of his sweetheart.
But then he becomes too familiar. The knives start disappearing from their place by the door and reappearing in Bakura's hands as he plays in the dust outside. He juggles them or pretends to attack the other children. This is annoying, but Batya supposes it's fine as long as he doesn't nick the blades.
The neighbors, however, disagree. So Batya finds Bakura, grabs the handle of the knife he's holding, and holds it above the ground until he gets tired and has to let go.
"Not these," she says, as he glowers up at her. "They're mine. You're big enough to get your own."
She waits to see if a miracle occurs, if the Favored – but no, Bakura is young, and clumsy, and thieves are particular about their knives. Even when he does manage to steal one, pretty soon the villager comes screaming after him to take it back. So in the end, he has to settle for a long rock that he sharpens himself. It doesn't shine, but Batya can see the glow of pride in his face when he shows it to her.
. . .
"Aiyehh!" hisses Batya, hands on her hips. "Little boys should be in bed. Go home."
Bakura juts out his chin. "I won't. You're going thieving, and I'm coming."
He will never be Greatest Thief, and if he stays out late tonight, tomorrow he will be tired and cranky. But he must have been following her since she left the village, and yet she didn't notice him until she'd gotten halfway to the River. That is worth something. So she smiles and nods for him to follow, although she doesn't shorten her strides for him. He jogs along at her elbow. His voices mutter.
They reach the royal city at midnight, when the moon is at its highest. Batya shows him how to find footholds in the great wall around the city. They jump from the top to the roofs, and then Batya leaps across the houses like stepping-stones, her silent feet inches from the slaves sleeping in the cool night air. Bakura follows her shadow through the empty streets.
She leads him through the tall, narrow gate to the temple complex, where the temples are huge geometric shapes printed against the deep-blue sky. They run across the grounds of the gods. Bakura keeps pace with her, his little legs a blur. The moon splashes everything the same silver as his hair; Batya is the one who stands out, dark against the white sand. Bakura's voices murmur, loud, obvious, pushing them in gusts like the wind itself. They wonder what Batya plans to steal.
The palace is surrounded by another wall, thicker this time. But the slaves are forgetful. They often leave doors to the street open. Batya and her son are inside in a moment. They pass through gardens without crushing a single blade of grass. They slip through the kitchens without stirring the oven-ash. They run down a long open passage, striping the silvered columns with their shadows, breathing perfume. This is the harim, the women's building.
Batya opens the door.
It is a lovely place. Fragile and serene. The queen's attendants lie on mats, scattered around the room like seeds tossed onto black earth. In the center of the room, sleeping in a grand bed on a round raised dais, is the queen, with her delicate head bare and her baby in her arms. Their breathing is so quiet that even Bakura's voices fall silent to listen.
As for Bakura himself, he turns to help himself to the earrings lying on the makeup-table.
Batya grabs his wrist. "Don't touch," she whispers.
"We came all the way to the palace. I want something."
Ah, well, he is young. Batya shakes her head in mock despair. "Aiyehh, a Greatest Thief would never say such a foolish thing." Bakura's mouth snaps shut. She goes on, "What do you need with earrings? Your ears are not pierced. You're too young for a sweetheart. What do you need with any of the things in this room? They are girlish or gaudy or too delicate or too big for you to carry. You don't need them. You don't even really want them. You just want a token, something to prove to other, stupider people that you did something smart. A Greatest Thief," she says, "only takes things of value, things he truly wants or truly needs. There is no joy or pride in stealing just to steal."
Bakura stays still and thoughtful, a darker silver space in a patch of moonlight.
The queen makes a noise in her sleep. It's just an ordinary, deep-sleep noise, but Batya goes over to look at her anyway. The queen looks small without her customary jewels, and even smaller with the big baby boy curled up on her chest. Batya looks at the queen's unadorned ears and touches her own earrings. Although the hoops are old and dented, Batya has kept them polished.
Bakura creeps forward. He goes right up to the edge of the bed. He draws away the sheer curtain. He leans in, slowly, quietly, until his face is inches from that of the sleeping prince – close enough, if he wanted or needed, to quietly choke the life from the future of Egypt with his callused little hands. Their breath mingles.
Batya waits.
Even more slowly, even more quietly, Bakura touches the prince's nose with one fingertip. He runs his finger down to the prince's chubby, soft throat. A pause. Then he gently lifts his hand. The prince's eyes flutter for a moment, gleams of blood-red in the darkness, then close again.
Bakura understands. Batya can tell because his voices rise up, all at once, a ripple and a rip in the air. The queen stirs. Batya steps backwards into the shadows, reaches for her son's hand, flexes her knees – and then, as the queen sits up, they vanish. Or as good as, anyway.
As they leave the city, empty-handed, Bakura laughs out loud. They have to sprint away to avoid the guard.
"Silent,"Batya scolds as they run. Bakura just grins at her, his eyes wide and dark beneath his glittering hair.
. . .
Kul Elna is growing. Not just its size – this is the most people Batya can remember it holding, nearly a hundred if you count the children – but also its reputation, apparently, has spread. For the first time, a nomad tribe has stopped here on its way to the royal city. Thieves often wander and nomads often steal, and the dirt turns everyone the same shade of brown. So the mood is friendly when Batya leads a group down to the desert to greet the tribe.
Bakura comes too. But when they get close to the nomads, he suddenly stops walking. His eyes go huge. He has fallen instantly, totally in love with something in the crowd – probably a bracelet or a particularly gaudy shawl. Batya sighs, then whispers not to get caught, and he dives into the crush of people.
She wanders through the crowd, exchanging gossip, admiring the wares the nomads flap at her. Finally, when the air begins to cool, she starts to look for Bakura. Through the layered arms and legs, the thieves' white and the nomads' bright, foreign clothes, she sees slivers of his silver hair. She cheerfully elbows her way towards her son. Maybe he managed to get his hands on whatever it was he wanted. Hopefully, nobody will notice – or at least, not until the nomads are safely on their way again.
She steps into the heart of the crowd, and sees him.
At first she thinks it's the girl's necklace that he's fallen in love with: Hung around her little throat is a rope of child's treasures – shiny stones, shells, shards of painted pottery, broken beads. But it's the girl herself that Bakura's interested in. He has his forehead pressed against hers; their noses touch. They stare cross-eyed at each other. His hands are clamped tight over the back of her head, holding her like something fragile that is about to fly away, his fingers wound into her hair –
White hair. Long, matted white hair –
Like his –
Batya stares at the little white-haired girl. Then something explodes, acidic, in the pit of her chest. She turns away and starts to shove through the crowd again, pushing hard, knocking people away. This is never happened before. This has never happened. Her chest hurts, a burning-bright hurt, but the rest of her feels so heavy. She looks all around. None of the nomads has white hair. All the men look kind.
But eventually she finds a woman who is watching the white-haired children – a small, frail-looking young woman with hair cut off sharp at her jawline, sitting at the edge of the crowd, hands busy but keeping one eye on her daughter.
Batya's breathing shudders. She goes right up to the woman. Her smile gashes her face open. As the woman looks up, Batya hisses at her, "And how is your damned husband?"
The woman stares at Batya. She glances back at their children, at Bakura's hair, then at his mouth, his eyes – the things Batya gave him. Then the woman's face softens, like strong earth worn away by the River. She stands – she is tiny, barely reaching Batya's chin, Batya could swing a fist and shatter her – and squares her shoulders, and looks straight at Batya. Her face flickers with a thousand things she wants to say. But then she just offers a small, slow smile that crumbles at the corners.
"I am not married," she says simply.
The heat drains out of Batya. She looks at the little woman, standing with her shoulders set like someone carrying the weight of the sky. She cannot think what to do. What to say. She starts to speak, stops, lifts a hand, stops. The woman's face smoothes in understanding. How humiliating. So Batya spits out the first thing that comes to mind, like they were thief-children forming their first awkward alliances: "What's your name?"
The woman is surprised. In her surprise, her smile turns wide and sunny. "Ebé," she says. "My name is Ebé."
Batya hesitates again. Then she reaches out, like a child, like her son. She curls her fingers into the hair at the back of Ebé's neck. Bakura's voices hum in her ears – gentle, gentle, hush. Ebé's face flickers again, but she tilts her head back a little into Batya's hand.
"How long... how old is yours?" she asks.
"He's seven," says Batya. "Yours?"
"Six."
"I see."
"Yes."
They stand, sharing the weight of the sky, and watch their children fall in love.
.
The nomads leave just before sunset. The thieves watch them go.
Bakura looks angry enough to kick a donkey, so he must be very sad indeed. Batya grabs him and hoists him up onto her shoulders, and he lets her, though he does yank her hair a little. "Help me look," he orders.
Batya does. It's easy to spot the flash of white hair. But there's another flash, as well. Woven into the girl's hair, and in amongst the other treasures on her necklace, are now the long gold teeth of a comb. Batya's pretty sure that comb was one that Nanu, her neighbor, stole for her hair, that Nanu is terribly proud of that gilded comb, that it must have been no easy task to get it, and break it, and weave it into the necklace. She drums Bakura's ankles with her fingers. "Nanu won't be pleased," she says
"Shut up," Bakura snarls. He scrubs at his eyes. "It looks better on him anyway."
"Yes, yes." Batya turns away, then pulls up short. "'Him'?"
Bakura leans over to look at her, a puzzled look on his face.
"Hmm. Nothing." She glances back. Ebé is marching forward, her son's hand clamped tight in hers. Her shoulders are still set, proud and straight. The same set of Batya's shoulders as she holds up her own son.
"Aiyehhh," Batya murmurs softly, "what a surprise."
She turns back towards Kul Elna. The setting sun throws her shadow ahead of her, a long purple shape rippling over the rocks.
. . .
It has become a fairy tale. The two girls who wished to become Greatest, standing with their identical sulky mouths pulled tight in concentration. The village gathered around them, to see them off. Go and settle this, the village said. So the girls left, silent, and disappeared into the desert.
One sister came back, her fingers slithering with gold. Riches, breathed the village, how they glitter against her hands and hair! And the thief told a story about the beautiful house she had stolen it from, the lotus pools and spicy-smelling kitchen, how she had slipped, so quiet, into the lord's room and plucked a golden necklace from his throat while he slept. She had taken the best of his possessions, ruined him. I am Greatest Thief, she declared. She clutched the gold close as proof.
The other sister came later. Her hands were empty. What did you take? asked the village. Did you bring nothing at all? And the thief smiled and told a story about the beautiful house she had crept into, all the fine alabaster vases and gilded statues, and oh, the lady's jewelry, the tiny pots of oil for her body and paint for her eyes! It was all so lovely. And so the thief had slipped, so quiet, into the lord's room while he slept, and put her hand over his mouth, and whispered into his ear about his fine, fine things. "I will take the most precious thing you own," she told him, and left.
What did you take? asked the village. Jewels, offerings, important documents?
The thief smiled wider. "The next day, the lord ran around locking up his gold and hiring guards and setting traps. Protecting all his fine, fine things. So," she said, "while he was busy with all that, I took his maiden daughter."
The village muttered. Where was this rich daughter? What use had they for an outsider? Ransom, maybe? But that was foolish, and besides, there were only the two thieves. Where is this girl?
"I walked with her and bought her a honey-cake and kissed her. Then I left her at the nearest temple. Her father will find her by evening."
The village murmured in confusion. So the thief took nothing?
She took a warm kiss from a rich pretty girl, and she took a lord's idiocy and held it up for everyone – including him – to see. "And," she said, flicking her head, "the girl gave me her earrings, so I would remember her fondly. They're pretty, aren't they?"
The village murmured.
.
They are plain, battered old earrings, just simple hoops. But Batya wears them proudly, and polishes them so they flash in the sun whenever she tosses her head.
. . .
Thieves are silent, even if it kills them.
Batya wakes at the sounds of the soldiers – their clattering armor, their heavy grunts, some strange, inhuman roar. There are no other noises.
Bakura was sleeping on the roof; she steps aside automatically as he slides through the door in the ceiling, and he crashes down – hush, hush, even when he cracks a knee against the floor he says nothing. "Hide," she hisses at him, grabbing her dusty knives. And then she is out in the alleys of the village, a dark space in a darker night. She thumps an elbow against the wall beside her – that will wake Nanu – and then a fist against a window-shutter – that will wake Shemei. Hopefully, Batya won't even need them. Hopefully, they can all go back to sleep soon. Batya slides her knives back and forth in her fingers.
But the roaring – it's not Bakura's voices, which whisper through every corner of the village now, familiar as family. That roar, sucking air – It makes her stomach shrivel. She cannot think what it is, but she knows that sound.
There's a large water jar ahead, leaning against the wall of Nachala's house. Batya runs at it – one foot on the lid, she hears the clay crack – up onto the roof. Her skin prickles. She sees the glitter of light along the plated armor of the soldiers – many of them, all around, in the rocks around the village and gleaming in the alleyways and streets; of course, a waist-high wall would not slow them. Too many for a hundred sleepy thieves to fight. They will have to get away through the tunnels, though Batya hopes to fell a few soldiers as she goes.
Her shadow stretches out before her, folding and arcing over the roofs of her city, and she smells something smoky-sweet. She turns.
The sun is rising in the middle of the night.
No.
The tunnels are on fire. Sweet oil and wood, burning. The tunnels are burning.
She realizes it, and at the same moment, a wail goes up. The silent thieves break into noise. Doors slam open. Husbands shout. Wives shriek for their children. It is Batya's job to gather everyone, and lead them – lead them to the fight, knives up, or away from it, heads down – the tunnels are on fire, they are on fire, choked but roaring with it. It is Batya's job to gather the thieves, and the tomb-robbers are rooted to their tunnels even as they burn.
She leaps down from the roof. Nanu is there, at her elbow. "They're everywhere, Batya, what do they want –"
"Get everyone away from the tunnels," Batya says, "and towards the other escapes –" but the soldiers are everywhere around, the thieves have no way out – "and if the soldiers want our stores of gold, give it to them –"
"Give it to them?" Even now, with half her face lit orange by the fire, Nanu looks appalled.
"Give it to them," Batya snarls – but the soldiers are wearing the armor of the royal guard, the pharaoh must have raised his hand at last and what use has a god for gold? "I'm going – I'm going to bring the tomb-robbers away from the fire – Tell the men to fight and run!" She sprints back to her house, shoving through the crowd of bare-chested, bristling-blade thieves who flow from the huts. Her house, her sister's house. The rough-hewn table, the soft-carved statues, the knives and bundled herbs – empty, all empty – Bakura is gone, and his rock-knife with him. But she can hear his voices screeching all around. By all the gods, what a stupid child! Her hands rise up to clutch at her face. Her stupid, stupid child, alone in the village as soldiers attack.
The tomb-robbers. For now, she must focus on getting the tomb-robbers away from the tunnels. Kul Elna will not be able to stand the screams if they burn.
She runs out again. The thieves are still screaming, and the fire is screaming, and the soldiers roar like thunder. Someone appears in front of her, outlined black against the firelight. He does not move like a thief. No time for blades. Batya strikes him in the throat with her knife-handle, and leaps over him. The fire is tall now; she can see the flames over the roofs of the houses. She hears Shemei's voice, feels Shemei's hands grabbing her wrist and shoulder, but she shrugs her off and bursts into open air, the main street of the village, the one place in the village they bothered to cobble and line with stone walls. The village is all here, a bristling knot of people, lined with knives like thorns. Soldiers stand at every alley, glittering immoveable statues. Shemei's voice permeates the smoke-fog in Batya's brain – "Surrounded."
Batya does not know whether to laugh or cry or cuff every single person here upside the head. We are thieves, she wants to shout, and yet we are herded here like cattle – we have flown across the roofs of the royal city, we have pulled gold from the underground grip of the dead, we have shaped our world, we cannot simply –
Bakura is running along the stone wall that lines the street. He is just above the heads of the soldiers. They must see him – his flashing white hair; they must hear him – his teeth show as he shouts – yet he is safe, somehow, untouched by everything. The gods watch over Kul Elna? – no, but they are watching her son, as he shines bright as a blade in the fire's light. Favored, after all. She cannot help but smile, proud.
Bakura's voices bellow. The soldiers all flinch, their hands rising to cover their ears.
The thieves of Kul Elna explode outward, dark shapes lit by the gold trophies on their throats and fingers. There is always one more way to escape, one more place to slide through the bars of a cage. They just need to find it. The soldiers push back, walls dressed in the will of Pharaoh. Batya hits out with the knives her father gave her, the blade and hilt and handle, and when she loses the knife she swings with her fist. Bakura has dropped out of her sight, now. He must have slipped inside one of the houses. He'll hide there for hours, like a fool, if she doesn't go and grab his hand and drag him out. She thinks she sees her sister's face in the crowd, wild hair and sulky mouth – but that's ridiculous. The fire is getting to her. The smoke. She feels the heat like weight laid along her skin, pulling down her arms, making her stumble – thieves should never stumble. And Favored or not, Bakura is waiting.
Batya shakes her head until her earring clatter into music. She drives her shoulder into the gut of the soldier ahead of her. The blow wrenches her arm, and she hisses – she cannot hear Shemei – the heat is horrible, pressing all around – the hands of the soldiers –
She stumbles.
But until the village burns, until the thieves are nothing but ash, it is still Kul Elna – and she is still the greatest of all of them, with her bright earrings and her skinny stubborn son like a slash of the moon itself, she is still Greatest Thief, the Greatest Thief of Kul Elna.
. . .
Bakura sits facing the tunnels. Everything is quiet, and dark. There is a carpet of ash over everything, everything that used to be houses and homes, streets, pens – all the things that make up a village. Quiet and dark and muffled by ash. Bakura breathes with his mouth closed.
There is no one left here.
The voices are softer now. They whisper to him, instead of shout. But there are more of them. If he listens hard enough, stares hard enough into the burnt blackness of the tunnels, he can pick out familiar voices. The lady who wore combs in her hair. And the laundress who laughed from her belly. And the old woman who smelled of wine and grave-dirt, and slipped him secret drinks that made his throat burn. And Batya.
He is the only one left in the village.
Bakura sits cross-legged in the center of the village. Cobblestones press hard against his ankles. He looks into the tunnels. There should be buildings in the way, but there aren't. Everything is dark piles and ash.
He is the only thief left in Kul Elna. The Greatest Thief at last.
Bakura slowly flexes his fingers around the sharpened rock he holds. It's hard to get up. His muscles are stiff, and his skin burns, and the voices flare up when he moves, weighing down his head. But he gets up, and walks, clumsily, through the piles of things that used to be the village. The moon is very bright as it sinks towards the horizon. He shakes ash out of his hair, and then he's bright too.
He reaches the tunnels. When he puts his hand against the wall, his fingers come away black. But the voices whisper.
On on on Go on Hush hush We will protect you Love you Just stay silent and keep moving, you must keep moving, you must keep on – Do not stop, and keep silent, you stupid child!
He takes a deep breath that tastes of smoke and the heaviness of gold. Then he clutches his knife close, and steps into the dark, silent tunnel.
A/N: A bit of history. :)
1. "Bakura," as we all know, is a Japanese family name. But it's also a Hebrew given name, albeit a female one. I, uh, had fun with that. "Batya" is another Hebrew female name.
2. Kul Elna – Although a city comprised exclusively of thieves would be unusual, communities or, more often, small groups within a community would often form around the old profession of tomb-robbing. Since so many people had to be involved to pull off a successful robbery, I thought that the concept of a whole village devoted to the profession wasn't too much of a stretch, particularly if most of the inhabitants only hid there temporarily.
3. Since I went with the "3,000 years ago" timeline, the royal city featured here is actually Djanet (Greek name: Tanis), a city which only housed the royal court for a single dynasty. ::glowers:: There is, like, no information on Tanis. Anywhere. It's very annoying.
4. Egypt always had tribes of nomads traveling up and down the Nile. However, they were universally regarded as bandits and criminals, and part of a pharaoh's duty was to kick them around. Still, I'm, uh, fairly sure that on certain days tribes would be allowed into the royal city…. So yeah.
5. Did you see the gemshipping I snuck in there? I'm like a ninja. A gemshipping ninja.
So… yes. This started out as a fic about why Bakura has a girl's name. And it ended up as this. This thing about Bakura and his hot mom. I do not know why my fics keep morphing like that. ::sigh:: But I hope y'all enjoyed!
…Review?