The Ring of Solomon

everything?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘In that case’ – this was a good one; I’d been saving it for a while – ‘why didn’t you kill Solomon?’
    There was a silence. I placed the ball of parchment on the balustrade, the better to fold my arms in a decisive, calmly superior sort of way. The girl hesitated; her hands gave little tremors of uncertainty. ‘Well, I didn’t need to. He’s powerless without the Ring.’
    ‘But you were ordered to kill him. In fact that was the top priority, if I recall. The Ring came second.’
    ‘Without his Ring, he’ll soon be dead,’ the girl said. ‘The other magicians will finish him off as soon as they find—’
    ‘That’s still not answering my question. Why didn’t you kill him? You had the dagger. Or you could have got me to do it. I’ve killed kings before now, oodles of them. 2 But no, we just slipped away without giving him so much as a dead arm or Chinese burn. One more time for luck: Why didn’t you kill him? ’
    ‘I couldn’t do it!’ the girl cried suddenly. ‘All right? I couldn’t do it, with him just sitting there. I was going to, when I went over with the knife, but he was helpless. And that just made me—’ She gave a curse. ‘I couldn’t do it out of hand! Solomon didn’t kill me when he had me in his power, did he? He should have, but he held back. And just like him, I failed.’
    ‘Failed?’ I gazed at her. ‘That’s one way of putting it. Another way might be—’
    ‘But it doesn’t matter,’ she said. ‘I’m going back to Sheba with the Ring.’ Her face gleamed at me in the darkness like a fierce, pale star. ‘I’m not going to fail in that .’
    I drew myself up. It was time to go for the jugular now. Her self-assurance, though still vigorously expressed, was failing her; perhaps it had already failed. If I got it right, I figured I could cut things short, save myself a painful journey back to Sheba carrying that burning Ring. Who knows, it might also save the girl. ‘Let me hazard a guess here,’ I said, and again it was good that I was in the form of the Sumerian spear-bearer, and not one of my more unusual guises. Home truths are difficult enough to swallow without having them delivered by a pop-eyed imp, a winged serpent, a miasma of poison gas or a four-faced demon, 3 to mention but a few. ‘You couldn’t kill Solomon,’ I said, ‘because, in your heart, you know he was telling you the truth about Sheba and the Ring. No – shut up a moment, and listen. And that, in turn, means you know your precious queen got it wrong. You don’t like that revelation. You don’t like it because that means she sent you here mistakenly, and everything you risked was for nothing. You don’t like it because, if your queen’s not infallible, it calls into question the whole purpose of your sad little life, doing what she says, sacrificing yourself for her. Doesn’t it? Oh yes, and just maybe it calls into question your mother’s sacrifice too.’
    The girl gave a start. Her voice was very faint. ‘You know nothing about my mother.’
    ‘I know what you told me. She died for her queen.’
    The girl’s eyes closed. ‘Yes. And I watched her die.’
    ‘Just as you expected to die on this mission too. Part of you even hoped for it.’ Something crumpled in the girl’s face here. I waited and drew back a little. ‘So, when was it?’ I said. ‘Recently?’
    ‘Long ago.’ The girl looked at me. The fury was still there, but it was cracked and broken now, and there were tears in her eyes. ‘I was six years old. Men of the hill-tribes, angered about taxes. They tried to kill the queen.’
    ‘Mm,’ I said musingly. ‘Assassins attacking a head of state. Sound familiar?’
    The girl didn’t seem to have heard. ‘My mother stopped them,’ she said. ‘And they—’ She looked off into the gardens. It was still very quiet out there, no sign of any trouble. On sudden impulse, I took the ball of parchment down off the balustrade. It struck me that its muffled aura might be visible from afar.
    Asmira leaned back against the stone, hands resting at her sides. For the first time in our association she was truly still. Of course, I’d seen her not moving before, but always as an interlude amid swift action. Now, whether it was my words, or her memories, or something else entirely, she seemed suddenly slowed, deflated, uncertain what to do.
    ‘If I don’t take the Ring,’ she said in a hollow voice, ‘what will I have