51 - Pride and gold

My memories of that night are not the best. When I think back, I am not sure whether it was in real life or in a dream that I rode a mamoka covered with flecks of brilliant moonlight, its gait as ponderous as that of a living mountain beneath me, with the King of Laka handing me an ivory-and-mirror-handled mamoka-stick and saying “Tap him gently right there.”

The next day, after my head was my own and painless again, I packed some of my things to go back to Vae Arahi, including my library, and some to go with me to Tardengk. As a guest of the King, I would stay in the Palace of Kraj.

Later I learned that there were some rumbles in Assembly protesting that its approval for sending me to Laka had not been sought, and it was wrong for me to be exposed to three solid moons’ worth of foreign corruption at my tender years. But a semanakraseye is free to make such a peace agreement, and there were precedents in mutual fosterings with Tor Ench.

My thought was that everything I learned about Laka would serve us well, if needed, in future wars. No reason why a fosterling can’t be something of a spy.

I would wear the peace-sigil the whole time, as would Astalaz’s little sons, but the Lakans assured me that I was welcome to come armed. It was the custom for Lakan men in the Palace of Kraj to wear swords all the time in waking, even though the city is nowhere near any borders or coasts, and as a guest I was free to do the same.

When I asked the royal aide who told me this who they expected to be attacked by, he said, “Ah, Yeoli Prince, it’s not that; it’s that a man is not really a man without a sword.” I had always thought the defining item was something more a part of him than that, flesh rather than steel, which he thrust into another’s body for ecstasy and new life, not pain and death, but as a Yeoli, what did I know?

So the next morning, after a day of preparations, I swapped my armour for the immaculate tunic of a diplomat and the peace-sigil, while keeping on my new standard-issue wristlets and elite-issue sword. I made my hugging and kissing farewells, happy to know that this time I had little cause to fear anyone would be dead when I came home. Between the assembled armies, Astalaz’s three sons and their nurse came out, all holding hands, and I went out to meet them half-way. After formally clasping hands with each little brown dazzlingly-jeweled boy, I sent them off to the Yeolis, and went myself to the Lakans.

By the agreement, we were still in Yeola-e; but I couldn’t help but feel I had entered Laka again once I was on the great black horse they lent me and everyone around me had brown skin and straight black hair.

†

Slavery was a different world than I had ever known. Being treated as royalty by Lakans was, too, but far more so. It defies belief.

I knew the central Lakan ethic, that one soul lives many subsequent lives, and is rewarded or punished in the next for what one did in this, so that the favored are considered innately better, and their iron-fisted rule of all less fortunate, just and sacred, since they must have been more virtuous in previous lives. It’s one thing to know they think this; it is quite another to see it in practice, permeating Lakan life down to its smallest act.

A true Lakan noble casts cloak off shoulders unthinkingly, for it never occurs to him that someone might fail to leap to catch it; he will sit trusting his weight to air, never thinking a seat will not instantly be placed under him. He need never walk anywhere; that’s what carrying-chair slaves are for.

I need only mention a wish, and they’d sweat blood to see it was provided me. Every Lakan around me, including my envoy guide, who was a noble himself and thus had more money in the smallest of his treasure-chests than would pass through my hands in my entire life, bowed, deferred, demurred, called me Akdan and hinted at everything instead of just saying it until I wanted to scream, “What are you really thinking?”

When one speaks of rich in Laka, one doesn’t mean just having a house on the lake or a bigger herd of goats or several fine shirts instead of one. There are houses that hold fifty in Tardengk, owned by one, clothes that we would put only on a semanakraseye on the most sacred of days being worn by citizens every day, sets of jewels bigger and more ornate than I’d dreamed possible for anyone to afford.

As I would learn in the Palace of Kraj, each Lakan noble is a law unto himself, thinking himself worthy by will of the gods. Each has what power he can muster through wealth or force or friends or religious fear, to wield according to his will. Not that there are no national laws, for there are; but as the King considers himself above them, having made them, the nobles consider themselves above all but the King’s will, and sometimes not even that, if they can combine against him, as with Astalaz: no wonder so many get assassinated.

What binds the nation together is a common language and Gods, an incredibly complex lattice-work of fealty oaths, blood and marriage-bonds, friendships and quickly-shifting pragmatic alliances. When I first understood this, I saw why their armies were less well-ordered than ours, and why so many nobles and kings get assassinated. I didn’t understand why the whole country wasn’t starving.

Yet it is in part starving, and holds a good half of the people in it in chains; these riches have to come from someone, who would have liked to keep them. Laka is a country of almost-mountains, tipped with naked rock but not snow-capped, of great hills cloaked in vines and cypress, of forest so thick its green is almost night-dark; beautiful, but cut all through, everywhere, with the mark of domination.

Commanding every town is a castle, with three-faced turrets in the Lakan style; every person we passed made scraping obeisance to us; every village had its stocks and impaling-pole, with someone in them or on it as often as not. Once I came around a bend to see a pale corpse, his back in darkening shreds, being cut down hastily from a tree; out of courtesy they’d thought to get him out of my sight, but had been too slow. Someone probably got flogged for that.

In Tardengk, which is as large as Brahvniki, they gave me a scented kerchief as we went down into the city. Hovels slapped up from planks and broken tiles seemed to stretch to the horizon; through a chink one would see the wan flicker of a smoky lamp, and hear a child’s weak mewling or voices raised in quarrel. The stink of rot and excrement mingled with the aroma of kri, across the rutted dirt street a dark creature scampered that I thought must be a dog, until I saw its naked tail, long as its body: it was a rat, big enough to steal a child.

Yet every house, however poor, had a frontispiece larger than its front, even if only an unpainted board, and people came out waving dirty kerchiefs and palm-fronds to welcome back the King as if they knew him. These people, who must wonder how they would feed their children tomorrow, put on appearances. Since riches are virtue in Laka, gold is pride, so pride in some way can substitute for gold.

The houses grew larger and finer as we approached the Palace. Passing through a gate framed with tassels thick as tree trunks that looked like solid gold, I kept my eyes forward and my face blank, as if I had always lived among such splendors, (so Lakan I was, after only seven days journey) my guide ushered me on without a word, thinking I had, and all was as it should be.

Seeing it from the rise coming into the city, I’d thought it was built on a hill, all starred with twinkling lights and three-sided golden turrets; now I dismounted and was gestured with a flourish into a chair, and carried just as Astalaz was being carried inside. We did not go up, but straight in, the corridor not turning to tunnel but remaining corridor, and I saw the Palace was not on a hill, but was the hill, built up over centuries from the level.

They claim the foundations predate the Fire, but I suspect they are Iyesian work; Lakans have only been here seven centuries. The lavish gilt-wood corridors run seemingly without order or sense, not even keeping to the four directions, but running slantwise or curving; sometimes we’d came to a jog in the hallway, as if its builders had started from both ends agreeing to meet in the middle, but mismeasured by a handspan or two. I’d find out later that I’d have to order a chair as much for guide service as to be carried, else it would take the full three months to learn my way around.

I noticed the slaves, of course. Palace of Kraj slaves, men and women, never wear more than jewelry and codpieces, and are of every race on the Earthsphere, exotics being a mark of rank for their owner. I saw people who were coppery red, olive, golden like a dried corn kernel, so black they shone almost blue, and even one woman seemed to have no color in her at all but the red of her blood, her hair white as an ancient’s, and her irises a strange flesh-like pink beneath white lashes.

They were nothing like farm slaves. While I had always thought it a moot point where one was if one was not free, they most certainly did not; they took pride in having been the pick of the market. Some even got to keep their real names. The highest irony, I think, was Astalaz’s Arkan slaves, who all wore their blond hair down to their waists, that being the mark of an Arkan noble, which to a man they were. They let you know it too, noses high in the air. People denied pride, like people denied food, will take it in whatever form they can.

During the journey, the envoy had urged me to stay up later and later each night, and sleep in later and later each morning, pointing out to me that the King was doing the same. I understood when we came in at dusk and I saw that everyone, free or slave, was walking either briskly or sleepily, as if they had just got up.

I’d heard stories that Lakans were nocturnal, like forest animals; before they had come here from their old island, they had all lived that way, even farmers, sowing and reaping by the light of moon and stars. The story is that it was a decree laid down by Kazh, their High Father God, after the Fire. The rest of Laka has changed since; but the Palace still lives that way. I would have to get used to it.

After a chance to bathe and change and rest for a bit—all of this conducted with what seemed like scores of obsequious servant’s hands—I was welcomed formally in the throne room, which is as big as Assembly Hall at home but with much more satin and gold. Astalaz called me “My son,” even though he was only perhaps ten years my elder; it was custom, meaning I was as precious to him as his own children in Vae Arahi. I was introduced to the Kin, as the Palace nobles are called, clasping hands with one long-hair-earringed man after another who wore enough jewelry to buy a house and a gem-hilted sword on his hip, and whose name I forgot instantly. Finally I got to see noblewomen: they wore more gold than the men, and long gowns cut to cling to their figures in every brilliant color one could imagine; their black hair hung to their hips or past. Though I wore satin, I felt plain; mine was black, and not embroidered.

We ate a light meal—their breakfast—and every man dined with his sword on his hip except for me, who wore it on my shoulder, as if this dazzling hall were a war-camp. When it was done and I’d received the last delicate lip-dabbing by a servant with a silk napkin, King Astalaz invited me to sit with him in a private parlour.