Fleeing one embarrassing situation and casting herself into another, Miszatu was back in the plaza, now directly facing the crowd of night women who leaned together on the brick walls of one of the temple's storage annexes. Some of the women dressed the same as any mushkennu housewife, in light long gowns of deep greens, blues, and oranges. Others wore brilliant shawls of red and indigo only to emphasize their sex. A few very brave girls stood around completely naked, their pubic hair trimmed into a harsh triangle in the old fashion of their Lady. No matter what, all the girls were clad in some jewelry or amulet, bangles, necklaces, earrings, all as some token of their devotion in life to the Lady of the Rainbow.

After she scanned the crowd of them, as Miszatu walked towards them she averted her eyes. Then, reflecting on their beauty, she looked up at them again. There was a joy and a sweetness about their gathering that seemed so inviting. Yet, as Miszatu began to entertain such a notion, her gaze was met squarely by one of them. A tall and imposing barebreasted woman in a sheepskin skirt who wore a silver nosering. Miszatu turned her head to the ground as she walked past the group in the square but she lamented that she could still feel the woman's evil eye upon her, and it made her frantic with her personal god!

It was not that Miszatu thought less of the prostitutes when her vows were so different, but that it would be so improper for her to mingle with them and their lady. 'O Lady Ninanna, you are the goddess who brings abundance and brilliance to all things, all those things of fertility and life! Yet here I am. A fallow one. Someone closer to death than to life. It would not only be taboo to speak to them, I would only get in their way.' Miszatu berated herself as she walked away.

After brooding over such a discrepancy with her personal god for a moment, Miszatu felt her ears again and took hold of her legs, and she now searched frantically for the Weaver's House the Houri pair had told her about, silently pleading with her Lady that she would not need to return through the way she had come from.

In little time she found the weaver's house, which was announced by its arresting signage: a series of shrine niches, built into the outside wall of the house, displayed row after row of loom amulets, carved into the faces of animals, people, sacred symbols, and gods alongside personal offerings of fruit, nuts, and cheap incense. The shrine must have represented generations of weaver women and their families who fashioned their worn tools into protective talismans. Their haunting yet vacuous eyes seemed to pierce Miszatu with judgment.

She knocked lightly on the front door. There was no answer.

She knocked again. No answer.

She knocked again, this time as hard as she could! No answer.

'How could no one be in there? It's the middle of the day!'

She knocked hard one last time. She waited for a time, and then as she was about to be on her way, the door opened.

A noticeably sweaty and rather chubby bald and beardless man in a blue gown, holding a pitch black hardwood cane, like the one Miszatu's schoolmasters used to punish them with, emerged from the weavers' house.

"What d'ya want!!!?" the big man bellowed, somewhat before it seems he had even checked to see who it was.

"Shulmu sir, Anaku Naditu sha Nanshe. I am here because-"

Before Miszatu had even finished her introduction, the man had angrily ducked back into the workhouse and slammed the door behind him. Miszatu rushed up and pounded on the door as hard as she could, shouting for attention. She didn't stop pounding the door until she could feel the vibration of footsteps on the other end.

The huge man once again opened the portal. "Piss off!" He shouted.

"I am here on the authority of the palace! I work in service to Asqudum, the king's ummanu!" Miszatu declared.

"Fat chance! Go on! Get fucked!" He shewed.

"No, you bring me rolling clay, I will prove it!" she proclaimed, producing the seal which Asqudum had given her.

A moment later, upon inspecting the intricate scene of Miszatu's seal, the fat man's tone softened. "Ah-ha, my apologies, Beletiya. Plenty of people come by trying to distract my girls, and we're behind on our output, but I can't refuse the palace. Please follow me!" He implored, motioning her inside the weaver's house with his cane.

The moment she entered the workshop, Miszatu was hit by its oppressive air. The one room workhouse was small and tightly packed, the space not even so large as her lady's chapel, but filled with more than twenty women and girls working their looms dutifully and silently. Miszatu was struck by the stale atmosphere of dried out fabric. The workshop was lit by an open roof in its center, down through which shined the sweltering sun of midday, though the heavy dark shade of the mudbrick walls and the corners of the ceiling seemed to provide some relief from the heat. The bitter musk of ceaseless sweat was pungent throughout the room.

The old women worked the most elaborate looms, machines handed down from their grandparents and refurbished for perhaps a century. The machines were beautiful and elaborate, displaying ornamental decorations of goats, sheep, and birds, but their overall look was eclectic, with various equipment having been visibly repaired and replaced with less aesthetically pleasing parts over the years. The experienced weavers spun light colorful cloth, embroidering complex patterns of silver and goldleaf into the fine textiles.

At the other experiential extreme of the sweatshop, the youngest girls were not even ten years old, but sat at their mothers' feet, working together and daintly threading bewilderingly elaborate rugs and patterns with their small and precise little fingers. Their hands were already callused and bruised, and Miszatu recalled that she had often heard stories of careless girls with mangled fingers, already set on a tragic life of destitution for their infirmity.

A few of the expert weavers wove their traditional and ornate Akkadu styles: Beautiful floral patterns as pleasingly patterned and colorful as any specimen found in the royal gardens, kishkanu trees flowing with sacred waters, shawls inlaid with the celestial symbols of the gods. Most of the women and girls, however, wove cheap and uncreative fabrics. These were clearly meant as cheap knockoffs of Hatti fashions, using inferior dye and less refined fabrics, serving as the new mass-produced fashion for the well to do but struggling mushkennu all along the coast.

As Miszatu entered, the women scarcely even turned their heads up towards her. There was no joy in the whole place. Only a silent and somber resignation among these women to the indignity necessary for their very survival. 'How many more of these dire sweatshops existed in Kharani? Miszatu wondered. 'Thirty? Sixty? One hundred?'

The fat man followed close behind her, the threat of his cane outstretched. As he followed her path he inspected each of the girls, smacked them if their posture was bad, and then applied the tap of the cane to dictate the tilt of their head and the straightness of their spine. It once again reminded Miszatu of her cruel schoolmasters, yet these women did not labor for wisdom, but merely for the means to survive. Their chastisement should not have been so. It disgusted her.

"They are not normally so lazy, Awilatiya. The long shadows of midday makes their eyelids heavy. It is my mistake" the overseer cravenly explained.

Miszatu forgave them, but I did not forgive him. "If you don't mind, sir, I would like to speak to them woman to woman." She said. Implying that the gatekeeper should leave the room.

"Aye, I 'ear you!" said the man, seemingly chewing on something rather than listening to me. The fat man jabbed some of the young girls sitting in front and tapped irreverently on the sides of the ancient looms. "Oy, listen up! Quit your yammering!" he shouted, his bellows echoing through the workshop. None of the women, especially the master seamstresses, had been utterly silent, but she watched their sharp green and brown eyes drew to the man who humiliated them like daggers.

"Listen up! This lady 'ere is a messenger for the king! You know what that means? One word from her, and you're out on the streets or worse! I don't wanna hear you've been holding out on whatever she's here for!" The big man threatened.

Miszatu's face went white as Zumun's at the brute's introduction. The room stared at her with a cold contempt for her perceived authority. "I am sorry to bother all of you, but I am looking for someone who is missing a child."

"Who here isn't missing a child?" a sharp-tongued woman in the crowd retorted. Miszatu didn't see who she was, but a few of the women seemed to snicker and murmur.

"What did I just say!?! What did I just tell you!?!!" the fat man shouted, after having knocked the great looms again with his beating stick to signal his displeasure at his workers' honest response, like a stubborn child having a tantrum.

Miszatu hastened her solicitation: "It is painful to have to say that a boy's body was found in the river this morning. Has anyone you know lost a boy?"

"Maybe it was one of my boys." said a middle-aged woman sitting to my right. "I wouldn't know if they were gone one way or another. I barely see them more than putting them to bed in the evening. Who knows where they are most of the day? Maybe I forgot one." The girls laughed faintly.

Miszatu shot the fat man a look of scorn to preempt any temptation on his part to voice another outburst, but he just looked at her, confused. Miszatu turned back to the weavers.

Another younger woman spoke up. "On account of the Lady of Nanshe, Do any of us know for certain if we are missing a child?". The room was flooded in whispers at the query, but nobody spoke up.

Miszatu sighed. "Do you know anywhere nearby where I should ask?"

"You should talk to the Ladies of Ninanna in the square outside the E-anna. We know every night we can afford to feed our families. We're the lucky ones, Awilatiya." The earlier young woman replied.

Miszatu smiled, but privately she grew anxious about speaking to the prostitutes in the square. "Thank you all, I am sorry to interrupt you. For your time and your cooperation in this investigation, I must invite you that you are all welcome to come for a meal and extra rations at the E-Sirara if it so pleases you! The Lady Nanshe is very generous, especially in hard times like these!" The girls' faces seemed relieved at the promise of free food and a little more help getting by.

She continued. "Also, Ahaatiya," Miszatu turned around and pointed to the brutish supervisor. "If this one beats you on my account, or in any way harms you without cause, and if the chastisement is severe and brings unwellness which interferes with your health, speak to me of it! I will surely tell the king and hold his negligence to account."

The women could not believe what the naditu had just said! The sweatshop was filled in a cacophony of laughter and howls. The fat man's eyes widened and his brows furrowed at the sight of her. Miszatu smiled and as she marched out the door, she savoured the sound as the cries of impotent rage by the supervisor was drowned out in the defiant joy of the seamstresses.