Kings of Ash

by Richard Nell

  The two layers of armor was sweltering even in the relative coolness of the night. He felt like a pig covered and roasting in the ground, and hoped the fighting ended soon so he could send it all back to his Grove. If he even could.

  But for now there was only battle—for Bukayag, glorious and sweet as he dominated other men and splashed their blood on the uncaring stone. He screamed and laughed and showed men the vicious price of ignorance, the cruelty of strength wielded against the weak.

  At last he emerged from the wall over a ring of corpses, panting with nostrils flared to approach the king’s soldiers. They stared at each other as their blades dripped with a shared enemy’s blood, and some few finished the dying.

  “Your city burns. Will you stand by, or put these murderers and traitors to the sword?”

  The men’s eyes took him in and perhaps on any other night would have been afraid, but their bloodlust was up. Their captains gestured and the men spread out into red streets, many at Ruka’s side.

  He knew they hated, and why. These were men of Sri Kon, and must have sat upon their king’s high wall cursing, helpless with rage in the palace while they feared for friends and neighbors. Ruka looked at the bright killing moon, and knew there would be no mercy this night.

  He led those who followed, his eyes finding rebels even in the deepest dark. They quickly found the loudest, wildest men, drunk on wine, detached from sense by fear and anger, lust and greed.

  The kingsmen impressed even Bukayag. They cut off noses and lips, hands and genitals—they staked men to the ground and left them for their victims.

  “They’re yours,” they would say to young sons who’d lost their fathers, or watched sisters raped. Each scene of horror left them colder.

  “I will bear it,” Bukayag whispered. “I will wake you when it ends.”

  Ruka closed his eyes and knew he shouldn’t.

  But he was tired of the heat, the pain, the armor—of marching through a foreign place just to kill. He went away to his Grove and slept in his mother’s house, leaving his brother to butcher and stand tall as if half a man’s weight in steel were nothing. Tomorrow, he knew, he’d feel every bruise and muscle stretched to tear.

  Feeling guilty, for a time he helped the dead build graves. There were so many now they had to expand the fence. Ruka at first thought it should always be him—that he should give each man or woman he killed his full attention. But this feeling passed. It seemed right the dead should care for their own homes like living men, and he left them to it.

  He wandered away to see others finishing the ship, reinforcing the stern, good pine tar made for proofing slathered by hand along the ribs. The sail and ropes would be next, and very complex, and they would need his help to start.

  The ground of his palace was taking shape now, too, the earth dug and leveled and delved more deeply than he’d believed possible before he’d come to Pyu.

  Soon they’d dig moats and criss-cross the walls and levels to disrupt tunnels and sieges like the ‘Mesanites’ of the continent. Ruka had read of these and other things in his books—even a giant, flat ‘bow’ built to launch arm-sized arrows vast distances, used in battles and in sieges to deadly effect. The world of men was just full of innovation.

  Finally he walked back to his mother’s house. He lit the hearth and spread out furs, and lay down with the Book of Galdra as he had so many times as a child, humming one of his mother’s lullabies. He summoned perfectly the smell of her hair, the feel of her arms as she rocked him to sleep. He tried not to watch as Bukayag slid a begging rebel down the shaft of a pike.

  * * *

  Ruka blinked and almost yawned, as if waking from a dream. His legs were sore and trembling, his arms and back aching with strain. He looked at a stone-tile floor in confusion, then realized he was kneeling at Farahi’s feet. Arun knelt beside him.

  “Twice now you’ve spilled blood for me, Ruka, though just a humble servant in my palace. How should I reward you?”

  Kikay sat at the king’s side, aloof, in a chair of green, sanded rock like the ‘Enlightened’ feet, and a dress of scant purple silk. The hall was empty otherwise—just another plain chamber of tables, chairs and banners the king cycled through at random.

  Ruka scrambled for something to say. He felt disoriented and lost, wondering how much time had passed and what exactly his brother had done. But he knew he must adapt. He accepted what was happening because he had no choice, and settled on what he truly wanted.

  “I ask only for your help to return home, King Farahi.”

  He almost laughed as Kikay sat up, clearly thrilled. The king’s face, though, dropped, subtle as it was.

  “A humble request. Is my hospitality so poor?”

  “No, king, but my place is with my people.”

  It hurt Ruka’s jaw to talk. He realized his hands were blistered and bruises covered his arms and no doubt elsewhere.

  Farahi breathed and looked away. “First, finish your weir. Then, if you still wish it, of course I’ll send you home.”

  Ruka bowed his head, wondering if when he finished this task there would be another waiting, and then another, and always just ‘a little more time’ and ‘this one last project’.

  The king looked to Arun next.

  “My sister says you scaled my walls and killed two assassins tonight, Master of the Ching.”

  The monk bowed low and said nothing.

  “These were careful, dangerous men who waited for my soldiers to leave, yet you found and bested them. Most impressive.” Farahi paused, his voice turning less pleasant. “Except, I understand, the monks had not yet released you.”

  Arun still said nothing and kept his eyes on the floor.

  “What to do.” The king rose, wandering back behind his chair to a table hidden from view. He lifted one of Ruka’s javelins, which had apparently been gathered and piled behind him. He balanced it in his hands and pricked his finger atop the point. “Tell me, pirate. Are you afraid of dying?”

  “No more than other men,” Arun responded at once.

  Farahi nodded and approached. He moved past and around them, bouncing the javelin’s length on Arun’s shoulder. He leaned and whispered, and Ruka heard it, too. “And what of my sister’s death?” He held there as seconds passed. Then he jerked to a stand, arm back—and flung the spear hard at Kikay.

  The monk uncoiled, hand thrust up. He snatched the steel like a fish from his people’s lake, and spun on the king, ready to kill.

  Ruka stood at once, his hands outstretched and ready to seize the smaller man and at least hold him. He felt a moment of fear at the thought of being struck by his own weapon. He did not know if he could take it back, or if the agile little monk would pierce his guts with his own creation.

  Guards poured in from doors both real and fake, and Ruka almost sighed with relief.

  “Kill me, Arun, and she’ll die skinned and screaming,” said the king.

  Kikay sat rigid as glass on her throne, as if subdued with fear and ready to break.

  Ruka watched them all, every face and detail stored away to examine later. Farahi’s stone was all but impossible to pierce, as usual. But in Kikay Ruka saw deception. He had seen her once trapped in true fear, and this was not how she looked.

  A ruse, he realized. A patient, clever ruse. His respect for the Alaku siblings grew.

  Arun’s grip, though, wavered. He did not see it, and did not know.

  “Or serve me,” said the island king, “and she’ll go on safe and whole. And so will you.”

  The monk’s eyes flared then blanked. The javelin rattled to the floor. Guards scooped it up and went to haul him away, but the king waved them off, and returned to his seat.

  “You didn’t tell me you made an arsenal, Ruka.”

  Farahi’s voice was so steady, so normal, despite his momentary flirt with death. Ruka admired the man even more, though he wasn’t sure what to say.

  Any rebel survivors would swear ‘the demon’ made weapons fro
m fire, but Farahi wouldn’t listen. He would assume Ruka had stashed arms and armor in the city—forged them in a smithy somehow with his own hidden coins, or brought them from his homeland and hid them long ago. He would find some logical explanation, confined to the reality he understood.

  “I like to be prepared, king.”

  Farahi stretched his lips in a pleasureless smile, nodding his square, symmetrical head. “I think that’s more than enough excitement for today. Thank you both, now go back to your rooms.” He stood and waved at his bodyguards, then left out a door that looked like a curtain.

  His sister paused then followed him. Before she disappeared, she turned with a brave smile, and one last lingering look at Arun.

  Ruka watched this, too—very carefully—and saw the shy flick of her eyes, the downward slant of her face.

  His mother had given such looks to useful men—a gaze that promised interest, mixed with a false sort of weakness. It was vulnerability mixed with hope, innocence with guile. And though a wide sea stood between both women, the look seemed the same. A clever queen’s beautiful, terrible lie.

  The monk smiled back and bowed his head low. He did not see what Ruka saw, or perhaps, did not wish to see it. He was a fly trapped in a spider’s web, and had not yet tried to move.

  A push in the right moment could knock the man free, no doubt, and drive him to rage and treachery. But a more useful time would come. Ruka could wait.

  Chapter 28

  Three months passed as Ruka built his weir.

  The season changed from dry to wet; a huge moon signaled the islander’s version of a spring festival, and all over Sri Kon feasting and merriment disrupted the norm. Traders from Nong Ming Tong came in clusters of huge grain ships, their wealth and sailors and merchants filling the foreigner’s square of the city and bringing more abundance and cheer than Ruka could have imagined as a boy. Chief Builder Hemi whined through all of it.

  ‘Not enough time’, ‘not enough men’, ‘too much mud, or rain, or heat’, he said at the dawn of each new sun. Ruka was surprised Bukayag didn’t strangle the man. In fact his brother had been oddly quiet since the rebellion. Perhaps ‘sated’ was the right word.

  Despite the whining, their great project continued, and Hemi proved to be most useful. He’d even become rather friendly.

  Every day his men dug trenches and reservoirs upstream with competence and speed. At night, before going home, they’d drink rum or beer in common halls, and just as often as not, Hemi would go with them, and never failed to invite Ruka along.

  ‘Good for morale’ said the chief of the builders. Then he’d rant for hours after a glass of something stronger than he was, and complain about his wives and his children, trade and the nobles, typically in that order.

  He told Ruka that Farahi was stringing up rebels in court—that he made them point broken fingers at Trung and others for treason. He said trade and all travel to Halin was banned. The nobles banged their fists and swore loyalty publicly, then gathered and moaned because it was wine and gaming season, which was renowned on Halin, and who wanted politics and war?

  All of them ignored the rules and squabbled. Young lords and princes disguised as pirates attacked coastal vessels, robbing merchants traveling East and West and even those heading to the islands. Smugglers went to Halin anyway, and all assumed things would go back to normal soon enough.

  But Hemi, apparently, knew differently. Pyu’s kings trained their navies like farmdogs, he said, though who knew for what side when the time came.

  “War in the isles is coming,” he’d promise to empty cups. “No one alive’s ever seen a real war, my friend. May the Enlightened help us all.”

  After such proclamations of doom he’d always finish with a religious gesture—like Ruka’s people and the mark of Bray—then shake his head as if at man and all his folly.

  Ruka did not begrudge him his fear. He had not seen true war, either, though at least his people knew violence and hardship, so it would not be so shocking. Even in the Ascom, soft-bellied builders were never fond of war.

  Day by day the weir took shape in good earth next to the Kubi. The men grew accustomed to Ruka, or at least stopped staring, and when he’d shout orders out across the mud they’d answer ‘ka’ as they would for Hemi.

  All the builders were common men, yet had ‘wives’ they’d been allowed to choose. They had children to feed, masters to pay, kin to support. They were decent men with modest homes and modest vices. And to his surprise, Ruka found he liked them.

  Many were good story tellers. They practiced nightly, matching and raising one another with tales of ‘loose’ women and gambling, silly children and stupid bureaucrats. They were not braggarts like Ruka’s people, and their stories were never to build their own reputations. All listeners expected a certain humility, a certain mockery of one’s own deeds and life, or else soundly thrashed them even before it ended. Ruka was astounded at the way the men spoke to each other. They laughed and insulted as a matter of course, howling with pleasure as each found new and harsher ways to point at another’s flaws. Such words would bring men of ash to violence.

  Despite the typical good humor, though, the mood could turn sour. The builders spoke of the ‘Night of Demons’—their name for the rebellion—of dead nephews or neighbors or friends with pregnant daughters who had been ‘shamed’ by the rebels. Ruka knew by ‘shamed’ they meant ‘raped’, and thought compounding suffering with scorn seemed a foolish tragedy.

  He listened closely to the men when they spoke of Farahi. They believed their king had summoned an army from the underworld clad in human masks to put down the doomed uprising. “He’s an unholy sorcerer,” said a man once, which seemed generally agreed. “At least he’s ours,” toasted another, and many laughed. No one blamed the guardsmen for their cruelty, and no one thought the ‘Bear-Headed-Demon-Lord’ that led them was Ruka.

  Time went on, fast and steady.

  Each night Ruka stumbled back to the palace and his room, his new ‘bodyguards’ in tow. Since the Night of Demons he was followed everywhere by silent men who informed him they worked for the king. Whether these were to watch him, or protect him, he wasn’t sure. In either case they didn’t bother him so he paid them no heed, working and drinking with Hemi and the builders, each night dropping his exhausted body onto his gaudy bed in the palace.

  He met with the king only once, and then only briefly. Farahi informed him he would be very busy for the next few months and that they would renew their game when things were less hectic. His expression had been friendly, almost apologetic, but his eyes looked tired and drawn.

  Ruka started noticing subtle changes around the palace. Young, female servants became the norm all around his room. All were pretty girls who glanced up shyly then looked away as he passed, their clothes thin and bodies fit. Ruka felt his brother’s desire and understood—it was like Trung’s dogs. Farahi dangled ‘privilege’ to be earned by submission. As was his way, he did it very subtly, very cleverly.

  “A pleasant prison is still a prison,” Bukayag growled, “a slave to pleasure still a slave.”

  Ruka wanted to but could not disagree. Several times he also sought Arun but couldn’t find him, and hadn’t since the night of their ‘rewards’. The servants would look surprised then baffled when he asked.

  “There’s no one by that name in the palace, Master Ruka,” they’d say, then dash off as if fearing some disease.

  Meals were now always given in his room. He could eat in the kitchens too, but the servants would chew in silence and look at walls, shuffling off with half-full plates. The girls drew Ruka’s baths with warm water on request; they swept his floors every day, washed his sheets and dumped his pots. Otherwise, they ignored him.

  On the days Hemi and his workers rested Ruka wandered the city.

  After the initial shock of the size and complexity lessened, he was surprised to see Sri Kon was so free of dirt, and assumed it must be the rain. Even in the ‘dry’ seaso
n it poured more than the Ascom, and far more heavily with each fall. Plants abandoned as weeds, full of juices and springing up like his homeland’s thistles, grew even in shade near buildings, despite being trampled.

  People gawked at Ruka from docks to the square, rich or poor, holy or base. His only respite came in the Alhunan temple—a gawdy thing raised from marble and clay, supported by pillars made from wood and stone and cut to resemble angry gods. All around its edges was a soft, yellow metal they called gold, which seemed to sheath even its roof-tiles and walls. Priests roamed the grounds and corridors wearing silks and jewels better suiting a princess, and made the white cloth shawl of the Galdric Order seem plain and austere.

  Despite their pomp, these men smiled and welcomed Ruka without a fuss. They let him walk their temple and left him alone to peer at huge statues of fat, smiling monks in the inner circle. Some of the statues were gold, too, or at least plated. Ruka wondered what the holy halls of the Galdric Order looked like, for he’d never seen their bastions of power save for the ancient rocks at Alverel. In any case they would not be so grand, nor surrounded in such splendor, of that he was sure.

  Sometimes he even knelt with the monks as they hummed. Their throats buzzed with a deep growling drone as they swayed up and down, hands together in a frozen clap. Their teachings were all peace and wisdom, balance and order, a sort of endless fate that spun like a wheel, good luck and bad turning high or low. Only the gods gave the wheel pause.

  Island gods however were not great creators or wise guides, but disruptive and petty things, both jealous and cruel. The Pyu-priests blamed all terrible things on higher powers, all good on the works of men. Ruka sympathized, but disagreed.

  We do both, and they do nothing, he’d thought. You’re all wasting your time.

  He found it utter arrogance to thank themselves for all their success. On the streets and beaches of paradise Ruka found complacency everywhere. Roads were plugged with too many carts going too many ways; dead dogs festered near street-side produce; the incredible coins were made with weights and textures mismatched and sloppy, faked and refused. Street-gangs owned by merchants threatened neighbors, or bribed officials, and yet were not obliterated. Orang-kaya played favorites or conspired to manage prices, ballooning city costs and ruining things for all. There were laws, but poor enforcement, and it all ran in daylight without fear.