52 - Compliments of the King

I stand for all Yeola-e, speaking to him, I thought. He is new, and knows nothing of us; I am the first he will know, so I’d better make no mistakes.

So I smiled a lot and listened carefully and was as charming as I could be. It was small-talk at first, how the journey had been, how did I like the city and the palace so far, all of which I answered with the best mix of honesty and admiration I could manage.

As we spoke, servants came and went, refilling our water-cups or bringing flowers or cool towels or what-have-you, and he acted as if they were not there but for their hands, going right on with whatever he was saying, whatever it was, as if it didn’t matter that they heard. The first who did a service for me I thanked, using the Lakan word I’d learned; I couldn’t help it. The man blinked with surprise that I even met his eyes.

As if he were not there, Astalaz said, “Ah, J’vengka, you must not thank the servants; it discomfits them.” I couldn’t argue with that. “As well, it makes you appear as if you have never had them before. Is it a Yeoli custom?”

“I have never had them before,” I said. “Everything is very… different in Yeola-e.”

“My lucky sons, getting to see such a strange and exotic place,” he said, without a hint of insult.

We got deeper, swapping life-stories in summary, and going on to politics. Though I was not sure he’d believe the ways of Yeola-e possible, let alone proper, he questioned me on them, showing at the most a deep puzzlement, but his questions full of intelligence. I explained the vote to him, the Assembly, the tax and child-bearing laws, and, what he seemed most interested in, the position of semanakraseye. I described the Kiss of the Lake, which he told me he wouldn’t have believed possible except that I was telling him it was, and told him the story of the War of the Travesty. He even wanted to learn a little Yeoli, the political words with no equivalents in Lakan or Enchian.

In return he explained to me how power flows in Laka. What struck me most, aside from the violence inherent in it, was the informality. They had written laws, but they were very few, and it was as common for two men to resolve a dispute with swords or lances as it was by the arbitration by another man of higher rank, which is as close as they have to a court.

We went on to the war, very cautiously, as we must. He looked at it all as a hill-top general does, and so I answered his questions as another general would, being vague and taking liberties with the truth where necessary. I omitted, for instance, how much hand I’d had in our battle-plans, except where it was known, such as against the mamokal. When he spoke with regret of the ten-thousand, saying, “Of course I do not blame you for that,” I bit my tongue.

He asked me if it was really true I had assassinated Inkrajen, led the Yeolis assigned to the mamokal and defeated a champion in a single stroke, not because he doubted but so as to open the way for me to tell the stories. But to him it was as if it were all a game on a distant board, so I recounted in little detail.

Now and then we touched on the act of fighting itself; and though he had had war-training in his childhood and his youth, as he told me, and affected a manly air of experience, half-hidden was a fascination that reminded me of my wide-eyed friends at thirteen. I’ve fought and killed more your age than I can count, I thought, and you’ve never even seen it. It made me feel older than I would ever be.

I wondered if he would challenge me to spar, guessing that as guest I should not challenge him; but quite openly he said, “I’d take up the wooden sword against you, J’vengka, if that were not too unequal a prospect for a King ever to expose himself to, in propriety. Not to worry, though; I imagine you’re going to want to exercise, so I’ll set you to doing so in the company of some worthy opposition, tomorrow.” (By which he meant tomorrow night.)

By the long way round, we came to speak of his father. I took a chance, asking him whether Astyardk had been sore-pressed in his decision, to let us kill the ten thousand.

“No, as a matter of fact. Not at all. He hardly blinked. ‘Too many peasants and too little land, that’s the whole trouble, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘Now the Yeolis give us a solution, and even offer to take its execution, so to speak’—he laughed at that, he thought that was hilarious—out of our hands. So be it, then, and thanks to them.’”

I froze, chills running all over me. I realized distantly I must be gaping in an undiplomatic way. But that night, present as it always was in the back of my mind, came to the fore. I heard the one single in scream in thousands of voices, saw the thrashing and the fire and the sticky bodies, again, close as yesterday.

“Cynicism ruled then, J’vengka,” he said, politely not waiting for me to answer while I was tongue-tied with horror. “It wasn’t always that way. Ten years ago he would have grieved on the palace steps. False tears, of course, but at least he’d have made the gesture. One glosses over those acts that are unpleasant but necessary, for a king—you’ve been taught that yourself, of course—but that was too much. He stopped caring for the people, and that in the end would have brought Laka down.”

It was then, I think, I truly started to like Astalaz. A Yeoli talking falsely might say that, citing a common ideal to give an impression; but in Laka it is a notion for a king to hold in private if at all, so I knew it was sincere. In other words, for me, caring for the people is only to be expected, since I was trained to it. In him, it was extraordinary.

Yet, I thought, here I am with a man who barely a month ago arranged the deaths of his father, his two brothers and who knows how many others he’d lived and shared food with. It was the only way to dethrone a king, of course; he might even have done it to save himself, since if enough had wanted Astyardk gone and he’d left it to someone else they’d have killed him too, fearing he’d seek to avenge his father in the Lakan way. If he felt any regret for it at all, I saw no sign. Perhaps it was Lakan custom to hide that. I decided to ask him once we knew each other better, if we ever did come to know each other that well.

All told he seemed honest and good-spirited to me, sincere in wishing for lasting peace, a touch scholarly, and sheltered without being spoiled. He was not good at fast retorts, which in someone intelligent, is nine times out of ten the mark of a loner. And yet he’d succeeded in a coup; so many mysteries.

The next day or so, I settled into my guest-chambers, and they were indeed more than one: anteroom, bedchamber, parlor, study, games-room, midden-chute, my own personal courtyard, and five body-slaves of all colours—for variety, the head one told me—all of which I was welcomed, indeed urged, to consider my own and make full use of. I thought back to the war-camp, and the slave hut. Quite a change.

Not that they’d paid no heed to my aunt’s letter asking that I be put up austerely; this was their idea of austere.

After the first night, bathed and undressed in my bedchamber in the morning, and hoping that solitude would ease my spinning head, I lifted my silken covers to find a woman lying naked under them. She was breathtakingly beautiful in the Lakan mode, with shining black dark-lined eyes, perfect arms and legs shining brown and smooth in the dawn light, a fall of arrow-straight hair like a black waterfall. She smiled at me with full lips that I itched to kiss, and eyes full of the meaning any man knows. I felt it hard between my legs.

“Em…” I said. That was about it.

“You wonder how I am here, timnimuz akdan,” she said in a voice in which the Lakan accent was musical and hotly exotic. Barbarian master, the Lakan words meant. “You need not worry that I have designs on your heart. I was sent compliments of the King.”

By the old measure, that the civilization of a country is to be judged by how it treats those who bear its children, Laka is quite barbaric; forbidden rather than trained to fight, and held to be inferior, women are very much under the heel of men, kept as brood-slaves, having to marry or sleep with whomever they are commanded to. In some parts of Laka, a widow is expected to kill herself out of grief, even if she doesn’t actually want to. It is quite normal also to feed and love daughters less than sons, and then believe women are born weaker than men. Sent compliments of the King, she had as little choice to be here as I’d had to serve as stud for Klajen.

“But you are not free,” I said finally. “I cannot know whether you truly want me.” She was doing her best, it seemed, to put paid to that, by her caresses of my shoulders and cheeks. The air all around us filled with the fragrance of the sandalwood oil she wore.

“What are you saying?” she asked, her eyes full of bafflement. “We all drew lots for the honour of being the first!”

“The… first?”

“Yes, of course. One of us Palace concubines will be here to please you every night.”

You do not see your own chains, I wanted to say, you are only making the best of your lot, it’s force even if indirect and I cannot take advantage of that… She took one hand off my chest to pull one ringlet of my forelock out straight and let it go to spring back, then laughed a long rippling laugh, making her perfectly-curving breasts jiggle in a way that made my manhood reach out harder. She could see that, of course. “I could do that all day. Come now, beautiful Yeoli Prince—what about you could I not want?”

Right about then one of her deep red-painted fingernails just happened to brush across one of my nipples, and that was the end of my conscience’s protest.

Afterwards, wrapped in the fragrance of sandalwood, Lakan beeswax, the rosewood of the carven screens and the warm scent of sex, I drifted to sleep with my head on her shoulder.

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