The Emperor's Ostrich

by Julie Berry

  “Go help somebody else, please.”

  “And I’m keeping a close watch over all of them. Your little plot looks ready to topple a proud and ancient dynasty and turn Camellion over to the hands of traitors.” She forgot about the branch and hovered in midair before the old man’s face. The duck, if he’d noticed this, would have wondered where her wings were.

  When he made no reply, she rapped his knee with her wooden spoon. “A-ha. The whole empire’s in peril. Not even you can argue with that.”

  “He’s got to get out of this mess himself.” The old man rose. “He’s not worthy of the empire if I must do all the rescuing for him.”

  “But the stakes! Consider the stakes. You’ll have others to answer to if the dynasty falls. Especially if it’s known that you caused it.”

  The old man’s feet began to vanish, followed by his ankles, his shins, his knees. “It would have fallen anyway, with a toad like him on the throne. If he doesn’t rise to this moment and prove himself, then all I’ve done is hasten the inevitable.”

  And he was gone. The woman fumed a bit, then noticed the brooding ducks and made a soft cooing quack of greeting before disappearing herself.

  But the duck was now fluffing his feathers for his evening rest, nestling down with his well-fed mate. He couldn’t be bothered with anything else. Humans and their squabbles meant nothing to him. Not with ducklings on the way.

  21

  DUNGEONS, AND UNLIKELY FRIENDS

  Afternoon, in the dungeons.

  Not that the Imperial Butler could know what hour it was. Neither sun nor moon had ever penetrated the hold of the emperor’s fearsome dungeons. Prisoners went mad in the darkness there.

  The butler had no idea how long he’d slept deep below the earth. The first thing he felt upon waking was pain.

  His whole body ached. He felt as though he’d been pummeled by a herd of gorillas. His hips, his elbows, his back—everything hurt to the touch.

  And his head! His head was on fire. Waves of pain, like scorching flames, radiated out from the back of his skull. Thrum, thrum, thrum, keeping time with his barely beating heart.

  He tried to open his eyes, but they wouldn’t open. He tried and tried again. What curse could this be? Then he realized: his eyes were open, but the dark was so complete he couldn’t tell.

  He remembered the night before and his visit to the chancellor’s room. The first few steps, being dragged down the palace stairs, until, mercifully, he’d lost consciousness.

  If only this could be a bad dream. Was it too late to go home to his family and abandon this folly of a fine life in the palace? Clean clothes and dainty food and elegant shoes?

  Yes, it was. Everlastingly too late. And those elegant shoes, he realized, wiggling his toes, must have fallen off when they dragged him down here.

  He tried to sit up and felt so dizzy that he almost abandoned the attempt. But after a while, he managed to get his body upright. He felt around with his hands. A cold, gritty floor of packed earth had become his bed, if not his coffin. A few stray bits of straw littered the floor. Something else—small bones? He shuddered. The dried remains of a long-dead rat.

  He began to crawl around the floor. He needed to know how big of a space he was in. He came to the soft form of a human body and pulled back in fright. Had he been shut in with a corpse? He listened and realized the corpse made the wheezy sound of labored breathing. Gingerly, he felt the form. Yes, here was a wispy beard, and here, here was the robe, draped over the round belly. They’d put him in the same cell as the chancellor. No sign of his spectacles, though. He’d be blind without them.

  Finding him there brought a kernel of comfort to the dejected young butler. At least he wouldn’t die alone. But as he poked the chancellor and he didn’t wake up, the butler began to worry.

  “Chancellor,” he whispered. “Chancellor!”

  The old man snorted and sniffed the air, then smacked his dry tongue against the roof of his mouth and settled back down into sleep. Well, then. He would probably pull through.

  Sounds of distant footsteps froze the butler where he crouched, but curiosity got the better of him, and he crept across the floor in search of where the sound came from. He hit a wall, followed it, and realized it was a corner. His cell was L-shaped. Rounding the corner, he came to a space with a little bit of light, just enough to show a set of black iron bars closing him in and another set of bars a little beyond that. His cell and some other poor soul’s.

  The palace dungeons. Deep below the earth. Hollowed out centuries ago. He’d never leave them. Never again see the light of day. His whole life stretched before him. He was much too young to rot out the rest of his years this way.

  The footsteps were close now, and with them came men’s voices and the wavering light of a burning torch. He watched in wonder as a tall, strong man was dragged in, fighting and struggling every step of the way. It took four palace guards to wrestle him into a cell. They were panting by the time they locked his door. He hurled insults after them until they left, taking the light with them.

  But not all of it. What little light remained came from a guttering candle on the guard’s table down the hall some distance. By its weak orange glow, the butler watched the newcomer sink to the floor and bury his head in his hands. A colossus he may have been, but the captive butler pitied him.

  “Are you all right?” he whispered.

  The newcomer jerked upright.

  “Who’s there?”

  “Nobody much,” answered the butler. He waved his hand in the dimness. “Look. I’m in the cell just opposite yours.”

  The tall prisoner squinted.

  “Your eyes will adjust to the darkness,” the butler said. “Why are you in prison?”

  His companion’s voice was full of woe. “I got married today.”

  “Ah.”

  “That wasn’t the reason,” the tall man said. “I couldn’t pay the wedding tax.”

  The butler scratched his head, then wished he hadn’t. It hurt. “What wedding tax?”

  “Search me,” the man said. “I never heard of it before. What’s a youngster like you doing in here?”

  Talking to someone took the edge off his headache, just a little bit. But how to answer this question puzzled him. Why was he here? How could he explain it?

  A well of loneliness and self-pity flooded the Imperial Butler’s heart. There was no one to miss him, no one to care that he was taken. No one but this new prisoner to hear his tale of woe and mourn with him the cruel injustice of fate.

  “Do you work in the palace?” the butler asked.

  The man shook his head. “I’m a woodcutter. Call me Tree.”

  “Is that really your name? Tree?”

  Tree shrugged. “If I ever had another one, I don’t remember it now.”

  The butler accepted this explanation. “Call me Butler,” he said. “It’s what I do. It might as well be my name.”

  “Good to meet you, Butler,” said Tree, “though, if you don’t mind my saying so, I’d rather we hadn’t met.”

  “I’m not offended.”

  “You were saying?” Tree asked.

  “Ah. Well, then. I think I arrived in the dungeons last night.”

  “You think?”

  “I’ve been unconscious,” the butler explained.

  “Oh. Sorry.”

  “Before last night, I was the Imperial Butler. Meaning, I brought the emperor his milk at night, his juice in the morning, and anything else he wanted to drink throughout the day.”

  Tree held up a hand. “And his food, right?”

  “No. He had six Breakfast Bringers, nine Luncheon Servers, twelve Dinner Presenters, and several Fetchers of Snacks.”

  Tree frowned. “That’s indecent, that is,” he said. “It’s full-out wicked.”

  The butler didn’t feel like arguing. “It’s a job. Anyway, I’ve been the Imperial Butler. But here’s the thing.” He lowered his voice to a whisper, just in case. “The empe
ror has been missing from the palace now for several days.”

  “Off traveling?” asked Tree.

  “No. That’s just it. He vanished suddenly in the night. No one knows where or why. Some of the staff believe it’s the work of demons.”

  “Demons,” Tree repeated. “Is that what you think?”

  The butler frowned. “I wish I knew. Since he’s been gone, three nobles have taken over. I hope someone has stopped them by now, but I’m afraid for the empire. They’re vicious. They captured the old chancellor and dragged him down here last night. They caught me when I found them doing it. Now one of them, Duke Baxa, I think, has named himself chancellor, and there’s no telling what he’ll do next.”

  “Chancellor,” murmured Tree. “Something about a new chancellor…”

  “How’s that?” the butler asked.

  “The soldiers who arrested me,” Tree explained, “said something about a new chancellor that all the soldiers liked, or something like that.”

  The butler whistled low. “In one day! How did he win them over so fast?” He did some counting on his fingers. “If he wrote the letters last night and sent them out by rider first thing this morning, yes, yes, the nearest army posts could’ve received word by midmorning. Oh, but he’s a cunning one. I’m sure he promised them loads of money to play along. If only the emperor would come back!”

  “Do you think he ever will?” asked Tree. “Maybe if he did, he’d pardon me, and I could go home. My new wife, she’s awful pretty, and if she is a bit talkative, I’ve got nothing better to do than listen, have I? And she had a baby.” His voice grew soft. “I was going to be a father.”

  “Shh!” The butler gestured toward the candle. From far beyond it, they heard more approaching footsteps. In time, two guards appeared, each holding a small, drooping young man by one elbow. His clothes were shabby and dark, clinging to his skin. He put up no resistance.

  “For a dangerous kidnapper,” one of the guards said with a sneer, “you haven’t got much spirit.”

  “Take me to the chancellor,” the bedraggled man’s hangdog face spoke to the floor.

  “Sure we will. Right after you take tea with the emperor,” his heckler said.

  “Is the old chancellor dead?” the man asked.

  The butler sat up a bit straighter in his cell. The old chancellor snorted in his sleep just then, and the butler prayed no one had heard it.

  “What do I know?” said the talkative guard. “But it stands to reason, there wouldn’t be a new one unless the old geezer had died, now, does it?”

  The greasy little man drooped like dirty laundry. With a laugh, his tormentors tossed him effortlessly into a cell. As the newcomer fell, the butler got his first proper look at his face.

  “Oh!”

  The butler’s intake of breath made one of the guards pause. He turned and peered into the butler’s cell. The butler quickly stared at the floor.

  The guards left. The echoes of their boots on the floor died away.

  Tree took hold of the bars of his cell and whispered across the way. “Butler. Why’d you say ‘Oh’ like that?”

  “It’s nothing,” he told the woodcutter. “I only … for a second I thought his face reminded me of someone. It seemed like it was someone I knew, and knew well.” He scratched his head once more and again regretted it. “But who? Already I’ve forgotten. It’s the strangest thing.” He turned toward the new arrival. “You there,” he called. “New fellow. Whom did you kidnap?”

  In reply, the man curled himself into a ball and lay down on the floor with his back toward the bars of his cell, and thus toward the butler and Tree. “Leave me alone.”

  The butler persisted. “It’s lonely down here,” he called. “Speak. Let us hear your voice. At least we can pass the time in conversation.”

  They both listened. The newcomer made no sound. Until, that is, they caught the noise of a faint sob and a sniffle.

  The butler and Tree looked at each other. The emperor’s dungeons made them both want to cry, too. No telling when either of them might give in to the urge.

  Silence stretched between them. After a while, the butler gathered a few bits of straw for a pillow. Sleep was now the only escape from the horror of this place and the aches in his limbs. He settled down on one side and tried to get comfortable.

  Tree’s voice reached him through the darkness. “Is it really true?” he asked. “The emperor’s gone, and some greedy villain has taken over the throne?”

  He shifted his weight, hoping to find a position that would hurt the least. “It’s true,” he said. “We need to get out of here. You need to see your wife and baby. I need to tell people what those villains have done.”

  “Hey, new fellow,” Tree called softly into the cage next to his. “Are you here because of that rotten new chancellor, too?”

  Boots sounded a third time, just one set, along with the jingling of keys. The guard stationed down the hall, whose candle was their only light, appeared between the cages of the new friends. In one hand he held the bone of a large leg of goose from which he gnawed the last bits of meat.

  “No more talking,” he barked.

  Tree rose to his feet and gazed down at him. His muscles flexed. Even behind bars he made the guard shrink back a bit.

  “We were just trying to get acquainted with the new prisoner,” Tree said. “Is there a law against that?”

  “Yeah,” said the guard with all the cockiness a set of iron bars can give the weaker party in a fight. “I make the laws down here. I don’t feel like listening to your voices buzzing away like crickets.” He tore the last bite of meat from the bone, tossed the goose leg into Tree’s cell, and wiped his greasy hands on his shirt. “Anyhow, your new friend over here, all curled up like a worm, is the traitorous scum who kidnapped the emperor.”

  22

  MEETINGS, BUT NOT THE WISHED-FOR KIND

  Chrysanthemumsy walked the dusty roads as if stuck in a bad dream. She kept wondering if she could wake and find herself back home, with Peony and Begonia, instead of carrying this baby in her arms and trudging across Camellion, searching for her vanished daughter, in the company of this odd stranger.

  The baby, despite the backache he was giving her, she’d grown fond of, and that was a comfort.

  The woman talked incessantly. She’d eaten up most of Chrysanthemumsy’s food. She let Chrysanthemumsy bear the burden of carrying her solid little son. And she didn’t seem anywhere near as fearful for Begonia’s safety as Chrysanthemumsy thought she ought to be. Altogether, in her own blithering way, she was a comfort, too.

  Her name, she said, was Song.

  They had come to the fork in the road where Song said she’d encountered Begonia the day before. They took a gamble and followed the right-hand fork in the road for hours, because that was the way Song had been traveling, in the opposite direction, the day before, and she felt certain that Begonia would’ve trusted her advice over that of the woodcutter, now her husband. Anyone with sense would, she said.

  They passed through a strange mile or more of countryside that seemed overridden with cats. Not wild, feral cats, but cats accustomed to being pets. At least half a dozen had approached the travelers, rubbed against their ankles, and purred as if to say, “You may take me to your couch by the fire where I belong. Also, did you bring me any milk?”

  They came to a small bridge where the road crossed a stream. They decided to follow the stream through the woods because, the woman said, her husband’s cottage was not far from where the other road met this stream, and she wanted to take a look at what would have been her new home.

  The heat of late afternoon made the air along the streambed muggy and oppressive. Any other day, Chrysanthemumsy might have enjoyed a stroll through the woods. Today, Begonia was all she could see—though not on the path before her. Every flicker of sunlight reflecting through stirring spring leaves swelled her hopes, only to dash them again.

  In a clearing, Chrysanthemumsy noticed rec
ent footprints in the soft soil. A cow’s hooves were easy enough to spot. Alfalfa? What’s more, there was a shoe print that might’ve been Begonia’s. Chrysanthemumsy’s heart leaped into her throat. Then it sank again and froze with fright. Next to the cow’s footprint was one so ghastly it couldn’t be real. A long, narrow, monstrous foot with only two frightful, clawed toes. A dragon? A vicious beast that might eat a young girl? Chrysanthemumsy gritted her teeth and forced herself to believe the footprints meant nothing. Begonia and Alfalfa, yes; the freakish creature must’ve come along later.

  But her chattering teeth reminded her that her heart couldn’t believe her own little fibs.

  They reached the road and turned toward the right, southwest. Before long they came to a cottage that must’ve been the woodcutter’s. Rows of stumps like jagged teeth surrounded the cottage. The path to the front door was strewn with wood chips. No smoke came from the chimney, and no one answered the door.

  Song walked around the house and peered in the windows. “It is what it is,” she said. They walked on.

  “It’ll be dark before long,” Song said at length. “We’ll need a place to sleep.”

  Chrysanthemumsy felt tears well up in her eyes. “My daughter has no place to sleep. I’ll keep walking.”

  “Here,” said Song, “let me take the baby.” She took the infant in her arm and kissed his cheek. “You know,” she said, “that cottage is partly mine now. We could go back and find a way in, and we could rest there tonight.”

  “Thank you.” Chrysanthemumsy took a deep breath. “For now, I’ll keep walking. If you want to go back, I understand.”

  Song stayed with her.

  Eventually, strange noises met Mumsy’s ears, and clouds of dust obscured her view. Chrysanthemumsy’s tired legs found new strength. She began to run. Travelers of any kind might mean people who had seen Begonia.

  It was a long caravan, heading slowly in the same direction as she. At the rear was a motley group of people—a pair of incredibly tall men and half a dozen astonishingly short people. An enormously fat woman and an impossibly lean one whose skin was covered completely in tattoos. A carnival. A circus. That’s what it was. She headed toward the performers until a wiry-looking man belched out a blast of flame, and Chrysanthemumsy decided she’d keep searching until she found a warmer welcome.