by Richard Nell
Pyu children, and it seemed children everywhere but the Ascom, were usually single-born. But this did not make them aberrations. The child smiled and reached as if to suck at the one pinky Ruka had left. In the Ascom, he would not yet have a name.
“I trust him, sister.” The king looked at Ruka as he spoke. “He is not some rabid beast, nor some unnatural monster. He is just a man. A brilliant, worthy man. And he is my friend.”
Ruka returned the look, feeling stunned. It hurt his chest somehow, to be called this Pyu word ‘friend’. It meant informal allegiance and perhaps made sense in a land where you were born beneath a chief without your choosing, in a world where kin was not all.
He thought of Trung and the dogs and the girl in the pit, then he thought of his mother.
The world is dark and cold and cruel, my son. Take it by the the throat and throttle it.
It had been good advice, once, and needed. But in this moment, he did not wish to.
Kikay stared at him with hatred in her eyes, and the boy’s mother sweat with fear. But the boy’s father, a great king and a wise man, looked at Ruka with a smile and kind eyes.
In that moment he thought perhaps the world could truly change with words, and perhaps by constructing weirs and better ships and forges and with great minds in friendship, building instead of tearing down.
The world eats weakness and spits it out, said Beyla. Then she had died in a field.
Ruka knew this too, was true, as he knew Bukayag smiled with the same lips as Ruka. He remembered the taste of a man’s flesh even as he bounced the boy on his knee. And in his grove, uncertain, hopeful, and terrified, Ruka wiped away his tears.
* * *
“I’m sorry.”
Farahi sighed over his book. He and Hali were finally alone, and he could hear her brushing her hair too hard, and sitting too still.
“I knew he wouldn’t hurt him. I wouldn’t have done it if I thought there was any chance.” Farahi scanned the same page in his book without reading. Kale was with his nurse-maid now, his brothers in another room, all likely asleep, all guarded by expert men.
“I trust you.”
“Then what’s wrong?”
Normally when she was angry she would say ‘nothing’ and he’d have to push, and only much later would he have the truth of it.
“You and Kikay.” She spoke over her shoulder. “You should fix it.”
Farahi set down his book, and sighed. As usual, Hali surprised him, and though at the moment it annoyed him it was one of the reasons he loved her. And, of course, she was right.
“I will try.”
She looked at him through the mirror, finally, and smiled. She shrugged the straps off her shoulders so her thin shift slipped down as she brushed. His eyes followed.
“Tomorrow I’ll take her sailing,” he added, “just the two of us.”
The shift kept slipping and she arched her back, shaking out her long hair as she put the brush down.
“And?”
“And I’ll apologize for what I said tonight.”
She stood, slip falling to the floor. Then she was naked and crawling towards him along the sheets like a cat.
“And?”
“And I hate this game.” He threw away his book and waited, knowing he wasn’t at all convincing.
“You like winning it. And?” She’d stopped, and he watched her curves from the front, the mirror behind.
“And I’ll tell her all about my plans for Trung.”
Such as they are, he thought, and I didn’t say when.
She smiled and kept coming, sliding up his legs till she lay on his chest, kissing up at his neck. “You win,” she sighed, as if resigned, and her eyelids drooped as she stared into his eyes.
Farahi never needed to tell her what he wanted or how. She read him like he read his books, her reaction to his every touch instant, as if they had been husband and wife all their lives.
They made love until the candles dimmed, the game long forgotten, and slept like the dead.
Farahi dreamed his mad dreams of death and destruction. He woke as he always did before the city rose, creeping from the bed so as not to disturb his lover. Later he sat alone at one of many desks in a room that faced the sunrise as he wrote down what he’d seen.
He had died again, of course. This time he had been older but not that old, and still ruling the isles. A great storm blew across the Northern sea from Nong Ming Tong, impossible and unnatural. He saw ships that looked like his, friends as enemies and enemies as allies. But it was vague and unclear and maybe impossible. Perhaps it was just a dream.
When he woke from such things, his first thoughts were always of Hali and her son. He knew he cared for them too much. He gave her too much influence, favored her father far more than he deserved, ignored his wives and hardly even slept with them since Hali arrived. No doubt they whispered to their families or servants and all his enemies knew of his affections. And so what?
In truth his position as king was all but secured. He had two important wives, both now with young, healthy sons. His navy was trained and finally paid properly and less corrupt than it ever had been under his father. On Sri Kon, there were few men left who dared oppose him openly, and none of the islands dared challenge Sri Kon. Yet he could do little but stay in power, and the many problems of the isles continued to swell.
Trung’s boldness said much. The old man was losing his mind, arrogant as Kikay thought, or he had friends and a plan. It was no secret that Sri Kon’s many nobles hated Alaku sons and their century-long rule. Perhaps the local lords would revolt if Farahi went to war, though he’d planned for this and might have enough men to deal with both. He could hardly believe how much they hated him, though he knew it wasn’t actually him they hated. He was the last Alaku, and they’d been so close. He was a constant reminder of their failure, and the status quo. But they were fools to think killing him would improve their lives. Only one could be king.
“My lord?”
Farahi recognized the voice of one his bodyguards, so he kept watching as red and gold pierced through cloud and darkness, hung for a moment in morning perfection—when light and life won their victory over the endless night.
He imagined a knife entering his back while he looked away, and thought at least it would be a good way to die.
“What is it?”
“The barbarian, my lord…he is outside. He asks to see you.”
Farahi never chastised his servants for calling Ruka ‘the barbarian’. Despite all his gifts it remained an accurate description, and in any case didn’t bother the man.
Farahi chose not to show his surprise at the uninvited arrival. He had not yet brought Ruka here to play Chahen, but at this point, he put nothing past his newest servant.
“Let him in.”
The soldier’s sandals shuffled as he obeyed, and Ruka’s footsteps echoed through the rampart gate. He would have to stoop as usual to enter, his massive height impractical in most Pyu buildings.
He bowed his tiny bow that was more like a nod, and sat beside Farahi awkwardly in a chair made too small for him. He was barefoot and glistening with sweat, the coarse, dark hair more like fur exposed on his chest and limbs.
“Still not used to the heat, my friend?”
“I am not.” Ruka grimaced as he finished squeezing his bulk into the wooden frame, looking prepared for it to snap.
“How did you find me?”
The giant squinted his eyes as if uncomfortable with the light. “With my white-demon magic.”
Farahi smiled and almost laughed, perhaps because he was tired.
“You expect some mental miracle.” Ruka shrugged his sun-burned shoulders. “It is the best, safest view of the East in this wing. You are not so unpredictable, Farahi. Except in Chahen.”
Farahi nodded, and they watched the sunrise together in silence. In truth the foreigner’s words disturbed him because he spent a great deal of time and effort being unpredictable. Ruka was a creat
ure of intense logic and observation, though, and if he predicted this than Farahi had erred.
Must I give up beauty, too, to protect the future?
He looked at the strange man who might be his friend and thought on the even stranger months they’d shared—the disbelieving blacksmiths, language tutors, historians and academics of all stripes.
“He is lying, my king,” said Master Aleki in the second week. “He knew these things before and pretends now to learn. No man can learn so much and so quickly.”
Farahi had said little and been prepared to accept this, but he had urged patience. He no longer believed he was lying.
Ruka could now draw a vast map of the known-world—in perfect detail, with rivers and cities, forests and mountains, exactly and without pause. He knew the huge maze of the palace better than the servants. He questioned everything—how the islanders made their ships, how they cleaned their water, how they handled waste and floods and great waves and droughts and where they grew their food. Sometimes, his questions haunted Farahi’s dreams.
He took a deep breath and broke the silence. “Why are you here, Ruka?”
This seemed a good question for the giant, both now and perhaps more broadly, but that bigger question could wait.
Trust was important to establish first. Unlike Chahen it was not composed of mathematics. Trust did not have tiles or pieces; it was a deep, dark well, and a man need draw a hundred times before he drew the hundred and first with certainty.
Ruka shifted and his chair creaked. If anything he’d gained weight since he arrived, yet still his muscles were sharp and angled, though he seemed to do no exercise.
“I told Chief Builder Hemi to buy property along the Kubi,” he said, as if it pained him. “He may do so, and he may tell his friends. I thought you should know.”
Farahi snorted. He understood without asking why, and didn’t much care. In all his dreams he had seen the project succeed.
“Tell me what it’s like in your homeland today. In this moment.”
His ‘guest’ made no sign of thinking first as anyone else would have done. The words seemed just to come as if plucked instantly from his mind.
“It is winter, and very cold, king. The lakes and rivers have frozen so solid now that a thousand warriors could cross them together, save for the mountain river men call Bray’s Tears. It lies furthest North, and I believe is heated beneath the earth.”
Farahi shook his head. He struggled to imagine the Ascom, though everything about it fascinated him. Ruka had spoken often of the weather, the gods, the people, and Farahi balked at the very existence of a place so untouched by the world.
“How do your people survive it? Truly? Are they like us or are they a different race of men entirely?”
Ruka paused, as if seriously considering this. “They are different, and yet the same. To survive they store up salted meat and bread, letting it freeze in the cold then warming it by the fire when needed. In the far South, it is even more difficult. Hunters travel and build houses out of ice, walking on the snow with wide wooden shoes, or in carts pulled by dogs, tracking beasts or cutting holes in the ice to fish all winter.”
Farahi closed his eyes in memory, thinking of his one and only journey to the continent as a boy. Even then he had thought the world so vast, so complex, that he would never understand it. But now already it had grown, and if new land could exist to the South, why not elsewhere? Perhaps there were whole new continents yet to be found, new peoples with new ideas.
How mysterious and wonderful it all was, he thought. But also how dangerous.
“I would like to see the pirate, now that I can speak to him,” said the giant after a pause.
Farahi kept his face passive to hide his surprise. Ruka had not asked once since the night with Kikay’s torturer, and he had to admit a certain curiosity.
“Arun is still with the monks. Bato is a holy place. Foreigners are unwelcome there.”
“But perhaps not a king’s servant. I will do whatever is required.”
Ruka’s boldness never ceased to amaze. But a man who understood his own worth did not bother Farahi.
“I will try to arrange it.” He paused as if to think, though he had planned a version of this long before. “In return you’ll take Kikay with you. For both our sakes, I expect you to do everything in your power to befriend her.”
The giant twitched an amber eye, and Farahi fought a smile through long seconds of silence.
“Your sister dislikes me. The feeling is mutual.”
Farahi cleared his throat to prevent the laugh.
“She dislikes everyone. But she is clever, loyal, and dangerous. She could have you killed already, my friend, or worse. You must learn to work with even those you dislike, or you will spend your life fighting enemies.”
They looked out at the fading half-moon for a time, the sun rays spread below like a lady’s fan.
“I will try.”
Farahi nodded, thinking of his same word to Hali in the night. He pat the man’s shoulder as he rose.
“Better to succeed.”
His guards bowed and followed as he left the rampart to face his day, mind turned now to court and how best to isolate Trung from his allies without force, and how to begin the fledgling steps towards alliance with King Kapule, and a thousand other things.
Tomorrow, he hoped, he would still have a sister, as well as a strange but brilliant foreign friend who had come from an endless sea. And perhaps, if he was lucky, even a half-monk killer with Trung’s name on his lips.
But a king must be ready to lose anyone, he knew, especially those he loved. It was worth the gamble for the future he desired, the future his people deserved. And two out of three wasn’t bad.
Chapter 21
They woke Kikay before breakfast and put her on a boat with a killer.
Her dead son’s birthday was a day away; her blood had come earlier than expected, and her face was bloated from crying. She had a hundred merchants to soothe, intimidate, and bribe because island lords kept attacking ships and saying it was ‘pirates’.
I don’t have the time or patience for this nonsense.
But Farahi was insistent, and also the king. Neither meant she had to like it.
She glanced at Ruka as he leaned out over the front of the prow like a child, almost giggling in the sun-touched spray and bouncing boat. The morning at least was beautiful, but the savage ruined it just with his presence.
It particularly annoyed her that Farahi hadn’t even asked himself. He’d sent a messenger with one of his bloody notes:
“Please, sister, try to see his value. The pilot is deaf so you are free to speak as you wish. I don’t ask you to trust Ruka. Learn his uses, his weaknesses, understand him. Do this for me, and I will listen to your advice.”
Kikay had crumpled it and tossed it in the sea for Roa. Bloody arrogant shit of a man. Farahi had an infuriating habit of being right, which Kikay respected and loved but also sometimes hated because it led to his always thinking he knew best, even in matters beyond his insight.
Kikay breathed in the salty air of the sea and adjusted her cushion. The day was warm, windy, and increasingly cloudless. She wore a wide-hat and held an umbrella to block the hot sun—a sun she hoped fried the barbarian like an egg.
If they had ignored Farahi’s wishes and sailed in silence for the brief journey while she worked, she’d have been perfectly pleased. But no, the barbarian ruined that too.
“Princess Alaku.” He sat across from her with all the grace of a falling rock. “I will not insult you by acting friendly. You mean little to me.”
She met his discomforting stare and shook her head. “I’m devastated, savage. I just think the world of you.”
He ignored her tone. “We need not be enemies. Perhaps we can learn from each other.”
She took a deep breath and exhaled. “Very well. Here is your first lesson: I can utterly destroy you, no matter what my brother says or wishes. So let’s begin
with some advice. Don’t speak to me, or get in my way, and while you’re at it tell my brother not to waste my time with your nonsense.”
The barbarian squinted, and Kikay almost grinned from the pleasure of annoying him.
“You need only move past your prejudice, Princess. I can be useful, to you and your brother. I intend to be.”
Kikay scoffed. And here she’d thought Farahi was arrogant. “If you could hold my umbrella, savage, that would be most useful.”
With that she put Ruka from her mind and looked back to her ledger and a list of merchant names, marking how she’d handle each, and calculating expected costs.
The wind blew at her papers and pulled at her hand as she held up the shade, but she managed, lost in thought. Could she start setting traps for the various ‘pirates’? Could she turn the court against Trung with ‘evidence’ of wrongdoing? She’d prefer to send the entire fleet and destroy him utterly, but Farahi was adamant. There would be losses and risk, yes, and what of it? They had too many ships and marines and losing some would reduce the expense.
The sun blotted out and Kikay jerked in surprise. Ruka’s fist closed around the stick of her umbrella before she’d noticed him move, and she pulled away. Her ledger bounced off her lap and half carried off over the edge of the hull, several papers scattering in the sea.
“Shit!”
She clamped down on what was left with both hands and lost her hat as the chin strap slipped. She stared up at the barbarian, who glanced at the papers with perhaps some form of chagrin.
“I’m sorry, I meant…”
“To frighten me? What did I tell you? What did I just say?”
He was so close she could smell his thick foreign sweat.
“I did not intend, I meant to hold this, to show…to do as you asked…”
“Look at you!” Kikay stood and almost screamed. “You’re disgusting! You’re so ugly your own mother must have started at the sight of you! Of course I jumped! Have you learned no manners with that big, impressive brain of yours?” She grabbed at the umbrella in his hand. But he had stilled utterly, as if paralyzed, and didn’t let go.
