54 - The caged king

There was no need to draw Astalaz out about the troubles in his family, it turned out; it was common knowledge, at least now. Both Astalaz and his sister Klaimera, who served as Laka’s national high priestess, had always blamed their father for killing their mother; since Az (as those close to him called him) was King, now, it was commonly accepted as truth, as is required in Laka. No slight grievance, if true.

Klaimera struck me from the moment I met her. She had the family height and almondine eyes, their darkness flashing with life; in her, the family quickness was less scholarly and more incisive. Her hair was marvelous, falling in a shimmering black waterfall over curving crimson or leaf-green or gold, whatever color her gown was today, all the way to her calves.

When I watched her perform rituals, any doubts I ever had that Lakans truly believed in their Hundred Gods were snuffed. As she raised slender arms with fingers pointed to the sky like two whips of brown flame, it was a clear fire in her, infusing every motion with grace; a Yeoli would say it was the God-In-Her. Perhaps a Lakan would, too, albeit in different words; perhaps, I thought, we disagree only on the name and origin and number of that which is Divine.

She was nineteen, and neither married nor betrothed; her position, Astalaz told me, required she remain a virgin. I put all thoughts out of my mind that my body had put into it.

“J’vengka, you want to learn how to play mrik?” Astalaz asked me one day. I’d heard of Laka’s most famous board-game, which Lakans say is strategy itself in miniature, so I was curious. “The board’s in my true office. Well… you might as well come up. Why not?”

He led me up several flights of stairs into a huge room, for an office, lit only by one tiny flame; as my eyes cleared to the dark, I saw the usual satin ceiling-drapes and tassel-fringes and gold arched screens. A curtain of thick gold-threaded ropes hung from the ceiling, all across my vision; then, pausing to speak, he reached his hands out open, in what seemed unthinking habit, as if he could lean on them.

Just as I was wondering what I should do if he got hurt falling when they slid and swung away from his fingers, they took his weight, not moving a hair’s width; they were solid, not ropes, but bars, gold-leafed, fashioned to look like ropes. “When I must think hard,” he was saying, as he opened a gate in them that only became apparent as he did it, “I come in here, my old home… it’s calming, it takes me back to playing the game from the side. Of course when Astazand gets old enough it will be his.”

I remembered the boy in the cage in Inkrajen’s tent, who had turned out to be his son. It is a tradition for Lakan heirs. As every Lakan storyteller will tell you, everyone lusts after the throne, and none more than the next-in-line, bred and educated for it and taught to think himself deserving, impatient, perhaps disagreeing with his father’s ways, and knowing power will be his once the king is dead.

What more natural, therefore, for the king or lord than to take precautions against his firstborn? I thought of my father, assassinated in my childhood; how grief for his loss had been my whole world for a time, and shaped my growing. I thought of my aunt Tyeraha, after a long lesson on statecraft, touching the semanakraseyeni signet to my chin and saying, “Hurry up and grow, lad, I want all this off my hands.” Of course not everyone lusts to be semanakraseye, because of the prices the Yeoli people exact. But wouldn’t love, I thought, be a better defense? After all, the cage had hardly worked for Astyardk.

“You’re a very capable one,” Astalaz was saying just then. “Surely you’ve had at least the urge to off your aunt… what is it, my son? You look as if you suddenly saw the Many-Tentacled One. She—a woman, of all things!—must have very strong friends indeed, to make you so afraid.”

All I could say was, “She’s my aunt!”, which, of course, explained nothing. Ever polished, he adroitly changed the subject.

The scent of expensive incense in this place was undercut with the mixed smells of sweated clothes, book-paper, dust and mildew; coming closer into the light I saw beyond the bars a wide desk heaped with papers, inkpots, quill-pens, a wall-high column of shelves crammed full and messily of books and curios, sculpted heads, incense burners, waxboards, pieces of stone, jewelled earrings, all layered thickly with dust. Necklaces were strewn on the night table, heaps of satin clothes spilling onto the floor from the bed, a collar worth five farmsteads slung carelessly over a screen. There were even swords of various length and shape foundering in the floor-clutter.

How does he live in this mess? No slave could get away with this, I realized: it had to be this way by his decree. I said nothing, of course.

After a while of searching, muttering, he found the board under the bed, inlaid with lapis lazuli, and the stones, onyx and marble. Lakans say the game was already ancient at the time of the Fire, and they hold it almost sacred. The board is empty to start, and the stones once placed cannot be moved; the trick in capturing ground is all in where one places them. The rules are simple, but the choices touch the infinite; also as in real strategy, one can get a sense of where one stands by a glance at the board, as on a map, and play by feel; nor does it usually end with a decisive victory, but when the players agree they have no more to gain by going on.

I began with the novice’s handicap of nine of my stones placed in advance. We played about every third day, and by the end of my time there I’d worked it down to two, not that far from his match. And I learned things from the game that I have since used in war-strategy.

“J’vengka,” he said one day, “You carried the Yeoli royal sword, didn’t you? And must have been plundered of it.”

I signed chalk, then, remembering, said, “Yes.”

“At…” Something seemed to be dawning on his face. “The second victory of Kantila?”

Victory for them, I quickly translated in my head, and said, “Yes. No one ever told me what became of it… I meant to ask you, in time, if I may, whether it might be… retrieved.”

“Perchance was it made by Nekari, in his usual style?” I felt my brows rise fast. Who’d have thought a Lakan King would know the name of an ancient Yeoli swordsmith? But he collected them; that’s why there were a few floating in the sea of his things.

“Yes.”

“And the pommel is a ring—of course! The symbol of Yeola-e, like the stone circles on your borders. Blessed Kazh!”

He began delving, throwing up papers and sandals and silken underwear and objects whose names and purposes I didn’t know, cursing the mess as messy people invariably do. “Where… it’s right around here somewhere…”

When his fingers found it, it flared clear into my weapon-sense, my soul knowing that curve, and my eyes that shoulder-scabbard. He lifted it with reverence; even buried in a King’s priceless clutter, Chirel could command that.

Klajen did not know swords, obviously, and so had thought by its plainness of look it was just one of the lot. Of course the sword-dealer he’d taken it to, who’d know a Yeoli smith’s mark is never to be found on the blade, but hidden on the tang, among other fine points, snapped it up, probably barely saving the edge from a rough Lakan whetstone, Hundred Gods be thanked. So it was twice, poor Klajen got rooked, once for me, once for my sword.

The dealer, in turn, had given it with his compliments to the new King. In Laka such a gift makes for dividends generally better than the selling-price. “It’s been cleaned and oiled since it was last used, but not sharpened; I think the dealer felt that was beyond his skill, and it’s beyond mine also.”

“It should be done,” I said, without thinking. “A sword not kept sharp forgets its edge—a Yeoli saying.” I looked at him awkwardly as I held it in my hands, feeling the soaring in the heart I’d known I’d feel as soon as I got it back. Could I ask for it back, as a peace gesture? Or was it more correct to offer him money? I had no idea what might make him angry, and what would not.

He read my eyes, I guess. “Show me how you put it on.” I did, feeling the soaring so hard that tears began in my eyes. He smiled. “I’ve never seen that sword looking to be where it belonged, until now. It’ll be better on you than the one you’ve been wearing.”

The tears came too hard to hide. I didn’t even know whether I should thank him. “Don’t worry, my son,” he said gently. “Giving it back to you is no loss to anyone; remember, the dealer gave it compliments to me, and of course he will still be rewarded; it’s the thought that counts.” So Chirel returned into Yeoli possession.