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and do something: find Mom, make a plan, something .
    The rest of him wanted nothing but sleep. His muscles felt heavy. When he closed his eyes, it felt as though he were sinking into his mattress—slowly, like quicksand. From time to time, all the things that had happened in the last few hours made his eyelids snap open. He’d notice the sunlight on the ceiling, the shadows of the leaves, and his lids would droop again. He started drifting, floating away on shadows as though on currents of water . . .
    â€œDavid, you awake?”
    His eyes sprang open. Back in his bedroom. Had Xander said something?
    â€œDae?”
    He turned his head. Xander was on his own bed, his head propped up on his arm.
    â€œHow can you sleep?” Xander asked.
    â€œI’m tired.” The words came out as though his tongue were too big for his mouth.
    â€œMom’s gone. We need to get her.”
    â€œWe will,” David said. He blinked slowly at his brother, some of what had been on his mind coming back. “We gotta work together. Stop fighting Dad.”
    â€œI’m not fighting him. It’s just . . .” Xander dropped his head onto the pillow and spoke to the ceiling. “It’s just that Dad and I have different ideas about how to get her back.”
    â€œDifferent how?”
    â€œLike now. Look at us, in bed when we should be searching for her.”
    â€œEven soldiers sleep, Xander. I can’t even think straight.”
    Each time his lids came down, David forced them open again, waiting for Xander to say something else. But he didn’t. His brother just kept staring up at the ceiling. Finally David’s eyes closed, and he let them stay that way. Xander’s breathing grew louder, more steady. David thought he heard a snore. And then he was out.

CHAPTER nine
    734 BC
    OUT SIDE SIDON, ASSYRIAN EMPIRE
    The assassin lost sight of his target. Smoke from the burning city behind him roiled in the sky like mud kicked up from the bottom of a pond. It blotted out the sun and cast shadows over the land. The assassin squinted at the last place he had seen the fleeing man and spotted him: There! He was halfway to the distant mountain range, where the assassin knew the man hoped to find refuge in one of the many caves.
    The land between the two men was hard-packed earth, cracked like snake scales from a long season of drought and heat. Why his king wanted this barren country, the assassin did not know. But then, he was often commanded to kill for reasons known only to people more favored by the gods than he. His duty was to kill, not to ask questions. It was for this labor that he had been taken from his family on his eighth birthday and trained for over a dozen years. During this time, his abilities of stealth, resourcefulness and, he learned later, ruthlessness, set him apart from the other boys. So his masters had sent him away for special training under the tutelage of Gilgamesh, a man whose skills in the art of death were legendary. The assassin had discovered they were also very real.
    He looked back at the crushed city. Against the shimmering blue backdrop of the Mediterranean Sea, the clay walls of its buildings rose out of the desert like a mirage.
    From the city itself, smoke rose in columns like the blackened trees of a long-dead forest. The vast Assyrian army had pushed against the walls and poured into the streets. He was not part of that powerful force, though he worked to accomplish the same goals of protecting the empire and conquering new peoples and lands. If the army was a battering ram, he was a dagger. The army crushed whole cities, while he sliced at the few men who could rally those cities’ legions or rebuild them from afar.
    The prince he was after was just such a man.
    The assassin had slipped into the city well ahead of the army. His task: to kill the king and his two grown sons. He had found the father and one son together, planning their response to the approaching