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"Go," murmur the spirits. "Go and save Uruk."
Enkidu is the clayfields; he is the wilderness. He is not a creature of bindings, he is - he is free.
The spirits whisper, save us.
He is of the wilds but he is also, sort of, a king. There are things you do, when you have been crowned.
Shamhat touches his shoulder. The pads of her fingers are smooth, free of callous; she smells sweet, of a world he has never touched. Her hair falls like a river against his skin and he breathes in, breathes in.
There are spirits clustered around her, waiting. They press at her shoulders; their eyes gleam.
"This is magic," she murmurs, snapping her fingers to beckon a spirit to create light, held within them.
No, he does not say, this is slavery.
He does not yet understand what it is, to be bound.
The spirits of Uruk are tired and wan. The brightest of them bounds off the wall and sketches Enkidu a sloppy bow, in the form of a stone creature with huge eyes.
Enkidu thinks perhaps they are not intended to be sad but he is used to wolves and the spirits they bring with them; he can see the sorrow even in pitch darkness.
They are caught in a way Enkidu never was. It is a matter of moments to cast them aside.
Freedom has its own strength. It can never be defeated by anything less.
"Gilgamesh!" he calls. "King of Uruk, come and face me."
The walls are all covered in cobwebs - magic, Shamhat calls it - holding it all together. To Enkidu, they look like chains.
He rips them apart.
"Was that really necessary?" chirps the first spirit, in a low, drained voice. It is a flailing bird with loose feathers everywhere and when Enkidu turns to look at it it squeaks, pulling its wings over its eyes with the tired desperation of one long-since defeated.
Enkidu's fingers are caught in a particularly messy tangle. It bites at his thumb but he manages to get it apart; the brick collapses into clay dust in his palm. "Yes," he says. "Don’t you agree?"
The spirit rolls its eyes and slumps against the ground. "You mortals," it sighs, "always breaking things."
Gilgamesh comes. He emerges from the ruins of Uruk's walls wearing gold about his wrists and throat; his eyes gleam with a fierceness none of his slaves could muster.
He is lean and strong and surprised to see Enkidu, sitting on the rubble, legs stretched out and dirty.
"I speak to spirits," Enkidu says. It is only fair to explain himself. "You are not fit for this crown you wear."
Gilgamesh raises an eyebrow. He is like Shamhat, Enkidu thinks; unaware, blinded by the trappings he wears. "I see," he says. "Forgive me if that's a little difficult to believe, coming from someone who's never so much as washed."
Enkidu has to laugh. "Will you not yield, then?"
They stare at each for a long moment. The air catches in Gilgamesh's throat and Enkidu rises to his feet, to his full height which, he realizes, matches Gilgamesh's exactly.
The king of Uruk breathes in.
Enkidu exhales, and then they are at each other's throats.
Gilgamesh's hands are not intransient like those of the spirits, like their fire that dissipated before Enkidu like so much smoke. They are solid against Enkidu's flesh and for once, he welcomes them.
"I don't get it," says the spirit - Bartimaeus, murmured Gilgamesh, I charge you to watch over Enkidu; now don't fuss, Enkidu, I’m still the King and it makes me feel better - "you and him just punched each other for a day and a half and then you were fine?"
It is in the form of a bright-eyed bird but Enkidu can see all the layers of it, the inky multicoloured coils of something mortal eyes weren't meant to witness spilling through everything of its form.
He rubs his eyes. "Spirit, you wouldn't."
Enkidu himself does not quite understand. It is just: there was a moment, Enkidu pressed against the king, their sweat and their blood dripping onto each other, mingling with the dust of Uruk's walls: Gilgamesh looked at Enkidu and it was like looking into a clear pool, like his own eyes.
There was something in there, something – something else. Something better, something different.
He stood up and Gilgamesh murmured, "Enkidu," and that was -
it was like undoing a knot of an enchantment tied around an animal's leg. It just - it made sense.
The bird tilts its head to the side. "You always say spirit," it says. "Not demon."
"That’s what you are, isn't it?"
"Well, yes," the spirit says. "But it's not usually something your lot are - adept enough - to pick up."
Enkidu has to laugh. "I think you'll find," he says, "there's not a lot I have in common with them."
The bird spreads its wings and is a girl, lithe and young, with dark hair rippling down her back. "No," she says, sweet as honey-cake, "there isn't, really."
"The problem with you," Bartimaeus says, skipping at Enkidu's side in the dress of a servant-boy, "the problem with you is that you don't actually care."
It’s the sort of thing Gilgamesh would say - does say, often; suffused with curiosity in those quick, flashing eyes.
Enkidu is fond of this spirit. Uruk is all subterfuge and artifice: lies upon lies except for Gilgamesh and his wry ostentatiousness, his bluster overwhelming but comforting for all of that. Even he is a chameleon, but the courtiers around him far worse. Bartimaeus is charged not to lie but Enkidu thinks, it is not in his personality to.
In as much as spirits can have personalities, is what Gilgamesh would say.
Enkidu says, "Why should I? None of these people are free. There is no choice here; they are bound to act as they do. I might as well do as I please."
Bartimaeus tilts his head, like the bird. "None of us are free," he says. The sunlight is warm on his hair and all the swirling vortex of his essence is bright, beautiful, and shot through with sorrow.
I am free, Enkidu thinks, but why did he come to Uruk? It is all so many chains.
They have rebuilt Uruk's walls. When he walks past them he can see the links in the chains flickering through them. They make him gag.
"Be free," Enkidu murmurs.
Bartimaeus, the bird with its wings folded neatly at its sides, looks at him, a question: are you sure?
Gilgamesh says, "Are you sure about this?" He catches Enkidu's eye and rubs his mouth, as though the taste of Enkidu is still on his lips.
"Yes," Enkidu says. "The spirit is all cheek, anyway."
Bartimaeus covers a laugh. It was meant as a compliment.
"All right then," Gilgamesh says, dubious. "Don’t move, mind - it'll try to eat you if either of us makes a mistake."
Enkidu raises an eyebrow. He has picked up many mannerisms here: he does not know if this one is Gilgamesh's or Bartimaeus'.
"Not that I expect it would have any success," Gilgamesh amends.
Enkidu is learning discretion: this is what the city has done to him. He shrugs. "Thank you for your service, Bartimaeus."
The spirit sketches a mocking bow. Gilgamesh's voice finds the rhythm of the dismissal - a strange, arcane arrangement of sounds as alien to Enkidu as the markets were, when he first came - and then Bartimaeus' eyes are gleaming so bright he has to look away.
"You’re not going to die," Gilgamesh whispers. His eyelashes are dark against his skin. His mouth is a downward curve that Enkidu longs to kiss.
Enkidu can feel the life draining out of him, as he has seen the essence swirl like a whirlpool out of a hundred dying spirits. (He has flinched, every time: spirits are not of this world and their deaths are not - warranted.)
"Stop trying to be funny," he replies, mouth dry, throat aching, "you know you're no good at it." He closes his eyes, turning his face into Gilgamesh's warm hand, and allows the dark to wrap around him, just for a little while. (A little while that will soon be forever, forever in the house of dust.)
He wakes to the familiar deep sound of Gilgamesh's voice around those unfamiliar syllables, rending at the heart of him. He hasn’t enough strength or bile so he presses his back against the bed and breathes in, breathes in.
"Hello," Bartimaeus says. Enkidu would recognize that voice anywhere: a marker of that first step into the city, that first shedding of the wilderness, that first donning of shackles, the same shackles that are pulling Enkidu now into the dark. That voice that is cracking, just a little. "What kind of mess did you get yourself into?"
I asked you if I should stay, Enkidu hears.
"It’s my fault," Gilgamesh whispers.
"Shut up," Enkidu says, coughing. "It’s not. It doesn't matter, anyway. What are you doing here?"
Bartimaeus shrugs. By the look he exchanges with Gilgamesh Enkidu understands: I am here to save you. Entirely honest in Gilgamesh's mouth; entirely impossible in Bartimaeus'.
"I’ll just - give you a moment," Gilgamesh says. His mouth twists, ugly; in all this time he has still not learned to appreciate the contradicting whims of others. His fingers are warm on Enkidu's wrist and it is difficult to not whisper stay. "I’ll be back soon."
Bartimaeus is mostly that strange, ethereal substance: Enkidu can grasp some kind of form that he has tried to lay over it but it's pointless, now. He is too tired for illusions.
"He seeks immortality," Enkidu murmurs. "He’ll seek your aid, for him, for me."
"Demand it, probably," Bartimaeus replies, wry.
"I never understood why you were kind to me." Enkidu's fingers clench in the blankets; he closes his eyes. To breathe is to be stabbed, through the heart, through the soul.
"Big eyes," Bartimaeus says. "Big eyes and you looked sad all the time. And I’m lazy, you know. The other option was rebuilding that fucking wall, probably just in time for you two to take it apart again."
Enkidu chokes on a laugh, sobers himself with the pain in his chest. "Don’t let him do it," he whispers. "We are mortal. He is mortal. He always forgets but it would - it would, I think, be a greater curse."
There is a hand on his - fingers cool, slender. "He’d be an awful spirit," Bartimaeus agrees. "Terrible at following orders."
"Just like you and I," Enkidu says.
Bartimaeus kisses his hand like yes. He must be in human form but it is too much effort to open his eyes so Enkidu doesn't. "I’ll go and get him."
Enkidu almost says, please stay but instead he just takes a deep breath and thinks it, over and over and over, until the words all blur together.
"I still don't understand," Bartimaeus says, a cross-legged boy who looks a little like Gilgamesh; same nose, same mouth, but young and lean and unlined. "You’re here, in the city; you've stuck around. I can get maybe a bit, for curiosity, but he's stopped with the business with the virgins and you're not exactly a model citizen."
Enkidu sighs, wine too sweet in his mouth. "Do you think I could go back? It’s not - I’m not a spirit, Bartimaeus. I cannot simply dissolve and go home."
"You could try," the boy says. The set of his jaw is light, insouciant.
The air falls thick on Enkidu's shoulders, over his throat. He almost says, let us leave this, but instead he twines his fingers through each other, like a chain. "We all die," he says, "all of us. Not simply if we are injured, if we are slain in glorious battle; by the fact of our existence. When I was wild I did not know this. Now I do."
It is not the same for djinn. That is what Gilgamesh has told him; that is what he knows. When he was young Enkidu thought himself a spirit.
Now he understands about flesh.
The boy presses his fingers together, looking away. "I’m sorry."
Enkidu has to smile. "It ends your enslavement, does it not? There are worse things." It will be battle, for him and Gilgamesh; this is something he feels, deep in his bones. There is honour in that.
Maybe he has been in the city too long.
"You won't be saying that when it's your turn," Bartimaeus says. His tone is sharp but Enkidu thinks, maybe there is the faintest hint of sorrow in it.