The news came not from a caravan, but from a ragged, half-dead fugitive who stumbled into the outlying fields. He was a brickmaker who had escaped Uruk.
"The Coughing Death," the man rasped, his body wracked by shivers though the day was warm. "It burns through the city like a fire through dry reeds. The king has sealed the gates. They are dying by the hundreds... architects, potters, laborers... it shows no favor."
Lulal, who was inspecting a new series of drainage channels, froze. The polished measuring rod in his hand slipped and sank into the mud. His family—his father, a master mason; his mother; his two young sisters—were all inside those walls. The perfect, sterile city had become a death trap.
He found Enki by the great waterwheel, observing the flow with an engineer's critical eye. "Master," Lulal's voice was stripped of its usual confidence, raw with panic. "The plague in Uruk. My family is there."
Enki turned. The millennia in his gaze were a physical weight. "I know."
"I have to go. I can get them out—"
"You will not." Enki's voice was flat, the sound of a stone door sliding shut. "You would not reach them. The sickness would take you first. And if by some miracle it did not, you would carry its seed back here, to Ur. You would trade your mother's life for the lives of a thousand mothers here."