Noah ben Yehuda's eleventh painting was ruined again.
She sat slumped on the edge of a rooftop in the Upper City of Jerusalem, with a half-filled can of wine and water at her feet, and a piece of parchment spread out on her knees that was about to be scorched by the setting sun. What was painted on the paper was the sunset on the Temple Mount. It should have been magnificent and glorious, but her brushstrokes were soft and soft, and the golden color turned into a turbid muddy soup. Even the outline of the olive tree was distorted into a three-legged monster.
"Maybe I'm not born to do this." She muttered to the sky, held the paintbrush in her mouth, and fell on her back on the tiles. Lazy artist, this is the label she gives herself. Of course, the label given by others is even more unpleasant - "That Noah who only knows how to paint crooked pillars and still doesn't pay the rent." She doesn't care. Anyway, the small studio her father left to her can still last for three months, let's talk about it in three months.
A copper bell rang from under the roof, and a shrill female voice came through the alley: "Noah! Noah Ben Yehuda! You owe me ten shekels of paint money. If you don't pay back, I will take your paintbrush and set it on fire!"
Noah turned over and pretended not to hear. The creditor was an old widow who sold ore powder in the market and had a voice that could alert Herod's guards. While she was thinking about how to slip down from the other side of the roof, her eyes inadvertently glanced at the alley opposite - there stood a woman, wrapped in a black robe, with an unsheathed dagger hanging on her waist, her back leaning against the stone wall, her eyes as cold as the ice of Gihon Spring in winter.
The woman is looking at her.
To be precise, the woman stared at her with a pair of light gray eyes, her brows were slightly furrowed, and the corners of her mouth were bent downwards, with an expression that said "a waste like you deserves to live." Noah looked at her for about three seconds, and then looked away guiltily, thinking: Who is this person? Do I owe her money?
The next second, an arrow shot from the thorn, nailing into the tile three inches above Noah's head, and his tail feathers buzzed and trembled.
Noah was stunned for a moment. Then she screamed and rolled down the roof, causing paper, paintbrushes, and wine cans to clatter to the ground. Before she could get up, she saw that the woman in black robe had already moved - like a black smoke, passing over the stone wall of the alley, she raised her knife and dropped it, and the bowstrings of the two masked archers were cut. Then they fisted and kicked, and with two bangs, the two of them fell at Noah's feet like a stack of arhats, without even making a sound.
The woman in black robe sheathed her sword. There was no expression on her face during the whole process, and she didn't even breathe. She walked back to Noah, looked down at the grey-faced painter with rubble in his hair, opened her lips slightly, and uttered two words:
"Trash."
Noah got up, dusted off the dirt on his body, and stared at the other person: "Who are you? Also, that arrow was shot at you, right? I'm innocent, okay?"
The woman raised an eyebrow, as if she had heard some extremely ridiculous joke. She took out a bronze badge from her arms and waved it in front of Noah's eyes - the badge was engraved with a seven-branched lampstand and a crossed sword, which was the hidden emblem of the Temple Mount Guard.
"Michal Bart Jonathan." She announced her name as if she were pronouncing a death sentence. "Your father, Ben Yehuda, owed my father a favor during his lifetime. Now it is your turn to repay it for him."
Noah was stunned: "My father? He was three years ago - wait, what favor does he owe? He is just a painter of Bible covers, what can he owe you?"
Michal's gray eyes narrowed. She took a step closer, and Noah could smell the faint smell of myrrh and rust on her body. She lowered her voice, as cold as the back of a knife against her skin:
"He drew a map that he shouldn't have drawn. Now the Philistines, the Edomites, and some people in Herod's palace are looking for it. Your father hid it, in a certain painting, and you're the only one who has seen them all."
Noah opened his mouth and then closed it. She looked down at her paint-stained fingers, then at the two unconscious archers on the ground, and finally looked up at Michal and blinked:
"So are you here to protect me? Or are you here to kidnap me?"
Michal turned around, walked towards the shadow of the alley, and dropped his cold head: "Both. You have only two choices - follow me and find the map, or stay here and wait for the next group of archers to no longer aim at the tiles."
She paused, turned half of her face, and her gray eyes flashed in the dusk: "I suggest you choose the former. I am very busy and have no time to collect the body for you."
Noah sighed, bent down to pick up the dusty paintbrush on the ground, and put it back into his belt. She picked up the overturned wine can, took one last sip, kicked away the rubble at her feet, and stepped to follow the indifferent figure.
"Hey, Iceberg." She called from behind, "Can you at least tell me which painting the map is hidden in?"
Michal didn't look back: "You have two years and seven months to paint 321 works. Find them one by one."
Noah staggered: "Three hundred and twenty-one? Have you counted?"
"I've counted them." Michal's voice came from the front, still without warmth, "I've checked every one. You're really bad at painting, but you're pretty good at hiding things."
Noah grinned and pushed back his messy hair stained with paint. The setting sun stretched the shadows of the two of them, one behind the other, through the high and low stone alleys of Jerusalem, towards the mixed merchant district at the foot of the Temple Mount.
"Okay." Noah took two steps faster to join her, tilting his head to look at the frosty side face, "But I have to say it first, I don't kill people, climb walls, stay up late, and I must make sure to take a nap every day. If you feel slow, just do it yourself, I won't stop you."
Michal paused for a moment, glanced sideways at her with his gray eyes, and the corner of his mouth twitched almost imperceptibly - he didn't know whether it was a sneer or anger.
"If you keep talking nonsense, I'll let you sleep for the rest of your life."
Noah shrank his neck, but his eyes brightened. This arrogant iceberg beauty, although her words were poisonous, the knife at her waist had blocked her murderous intention just now. She vaguely felt that following this person would make her life less boring.
After all, in which painting she hid the map - she couldn't even remember.
Concept: Jerusalem Undercurrent, Pomegranate Garden, Olive Tree