by J. Naomi Ay
I pretended I didn’t hear this kind of stuff.
Then, I decided to run away. I hid inside the first limo I could find in the courtyard, and as it turned out Gramma Moira was taking it to go visit her sister. She let me come with her, and I stayed with her there for a long time.
We returned to the Palace after her sister died. I think I was about eight. When we came back I discovered that my dad had gotten hurt somehow and there were lots of rumors that he was sick in the head as well as his leg. My Gramma Moira told me to not pay attention to these rumors. I should hold up my head and act like a prince no matter how many times I wanted to cry. She took me to the galleries during the opening of Parliament and I watched my dad there as he sat on his throne.
“See,” she whispered. “He looks well and very regal. You have nothing to fear.”
I wanted to believe her and I nodded and smiled, but there was something in his voice and his face that was different. I sat up there, high above the crowds, next to my Gramma, and I prayed to my daddy to look at me, see me, smile at me again. He didn’t, and when the Parliament was done, he walked away, clutching his cane, never once shining his eyes even briefly in my direction.
My Grandpa Sorkan came to live with us after that for Lord Taner and Uncle Berkan thought I was spending too much time with Gramma Moira. Petya whispered that they feared I would end up like Gramma’s son Akan who was dead before I was born because my mom had killed him.
My Grandpa was nice, and always he was smiling. He loved the Palace and the forest and told me every day how blessed we were and to thank God for that which he had given us even if right now it didn’t seem much of a blessing at all.
Grandpa would walk me back and forth to my school room and take me out on the beach and show me how to skip rocks in the ocean. He would order up great desserts and treats from catering even when Auntie Luci said I wasn’t allowed because I didn’t finish my math homework. Sometimes we would even go back to Karupatani and live for a while in his little house there.
One summer when I was in Karupatani living with Grandpa, my dad came for a ceremony for a few hours. I was allowed to go too because I was already ten or eleven at that point. We were all on our knees and supposed to be praying but I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to say to God.
“The prayers will be in your heart,” Grandpa said. “You need only to listen to them.”
My heart felt empty though and all I could hear was the rumbling of my stomach and so I just watched the others around me. My dad came in, and he knelt down on the pulpit with his arms out and let my Uncle Rekah cut him and put all his blood in a vase and then everyone went and dipped their finger in the vase and tasted my dad’s blood. Then my dad left. He walked away, right past me. I looked up at him and the prayer in my heart spoke loudly and clearly, “See me, Daddy, see me.”
I guess it wasn’t loud enough.
Chapter 17
Taner
Two days and nights after Berkan and I had found Senya in the forest, I was sitting in a chair next to the window in the infirmary. Sorkan has just left for the night. Rekah has gone back to Karupatani. Berkan was in the offices holding meetings and going about the business of the Empire, and I was sitting here as I had done so many times before.
What would become of this Empire when Senya died; if not this time, then the next? Shika was specifically exempted from inheriting his father’s crown, and there were only cousins such as Rekah and a few on the Kalila side who would not even begin to be capable of such a position. Was this all meant to fall apart after Senya’s demise? Was the Empire of Rehnor only intended to last a few years, and then break up again, each planet once again going their own way for better or worse?
“Why did you build this, Senya,” I asked the inert body in the bed, “if it was only meant to fall apart again?”
Of course, there was no response, just a quiet bleep from the overhead monitor and a faint hiss from the respirator. His left leg was wrapped from hip to foot and immobilized in a series of casts with a separate brace around his reconstructed knee.
“Ach, Senya.” I sighed again and watched the rain pound against the window. My cell buzzed in my pocket as a new email arrived. I ignore it for a while. I had been getting emails all day long responding to my statement to the press. My official statement had been that HIM was injured in a fall and hospitalized with non-life threatening injuries. Little did they know how much more we feared the damage in his head than any on his leg.
There was a noise outside, and I stood for a moment and gazed out the window. There were people out there even in this dreadful storm. Light flickered from the candles they held as the rain and the wind blew them about. There were lights as far as I could see, trailing down the hill and into Old Mishnah.
“Thousands of people are out there,” I told the man in the bed. “They love you, Senya.” What a tragedy that the love of millions, perhaps even billions could not be enough. What a tragedy it was when your heart had been given to only one, and she had left with it in her keeping.
My cell buzzed again and reluctantly, I took it from my pocket and looked at the annoying message. It did not say who the sender was and I considered deleting it as spam. I open it anyway wondering if I had just destroyed my cell with a virus. The title was intriguing, The Constitution of the United Planets of Rehnor, and those on the distribution list included Berkan and the Lords of the Council.
I settled back in my chair, put my feet on a stool and began to read.
“When the time has come to pass that the MaKennah ka Rehnor, Emperor of All Rehnor, ceases to live in the body and spirit of a mortal man, the Empire of Rehnor shall cease to exist. In her stead shall be the United Planets of Rehnor governed not by a single man but by the word and laws of the Heavenly God as laid out here before you in this our Constitution.”
It took me all night to read, and I understood very early on that it was written by Senya in all the dark hours of the nights when Berkan and I excused ourselves and retired to our beds, but he remained there at his desk and had not moved when we returned in the morning. It was everything he thought, everything he believed, here in a manual telling all who would come after exactly how to govern the future.
“Did you read it?” Berkan said, walking through the door.
I look up from my cell after closing the link.
“It took me all night,” I replied.
“Me too,” Berkan nodded and I saw that his eyes were puffy and red as were mine.
“He is brilliant,” I said. “Do you think it will work, this Constitution? Will the Empire survive without him?”
“For a while at least,” Berkan shrugged. “And then it will break apart again and descend into a morass until the next MaKennah comes along in another thousand years or so. Isn’t that the way it has always been?”
“Has it?”
“Throughout all history, ours, the Humans, every civilized planet, great people have been born and risen up to do wondrous things and then stupid people manage to destroy it again and again.”
“Is it good against evil?” I asked. “Is it the Heavens battling against Hell and we, the simple people are their armies?”
“You could ask Senya that,” Berkan replied. “Or you could read the writings of Karukan right before he nuked Rozari.”
“Have you read it? Is the answer in there?” I looked at Berkan with surprise.
Berkan shrugged. “You’ll have to read it and decide for yourself if Karukan was a prophet or a raving lunatic. In the meantime, what I would really like to know is how Senya managed to email us while lying there comatose.”
“So you didn’t send it out?”
“Not I,” Berkan laughed. “Nor you obviously.” He sat down in the chair beside me.
“I thought surely you had,” I said. “Perhaps you were channeling him again and didn’t realize it.”
“Come to think of it,” Berkan frowned. “I have had a strong craving for pizza and beer all night long. I
also feel desperately in need of cig though I haven’t smoked in years. Do you think if we put beer in his IV, he will wake up faster?”
“Maybe,” I shrugged. “Put a cig on his lip and see if inhales.”
“I wish he would come back.”
“Me too,” I agreed.
“Not the Emperor, not HIM.” Berkan shook his head as the sun rose in the window behind me. For a time at least, the rain ended. “I wish just plain old Senya would come back. He was my best friend.”
“I know.”
“I miss him.”
“I miss him too,” I whispered.
Senya underwent another surgery a few days later where the muscles of his thigh were reattached to the bone and within a few more days, his blood count rose enough that his eyes started to shine again and he woke up from his two week sleep. His first words were, “Ach fuck, what happened?”
He could not bear weight on the leg for several more weeks and so was confined to the hospital wing which was not pleasant for any of us. If he was miserable before, I couldn’t even begin to describe what he was now. A few choice profanities were lobbed at us all including Sorkan and Rekah who dared to suggest that his wings be clipped until he was better able to control his appetite for fresh blood.
When finally he was released from his bed prison, he experienced great pain. We all watched with bated breath as he fought to stand, the color draining from his face and the light withering from his eyes. For months, he stood only with crutches and then forever afterward, a shiny ebony cane with a gold handle was always at his side.
Why he could not heal himself as he had so many times in the past, no doctor could ever explain. When I queried Senya directly during one of the few brief moments when he was calm and lucid enough to speak with me, he replied only that he was being punished and deservedly so. The pain was now a constant reminder that he was merely the servant, and never the Master and the task set before him was his sole goal.
“What do you think he was talking about?” I asked Berkan later who smiled again and referred me back to the writings of Karukan the Infidel. It was my own fault for not taking up his suggestion for perhaps I would have understood many years earlier what this task and Senya was all about.
Whether it was the pain or the realization that nothing had changed for the better, Senya retreated back into his shell and we all resumed our slow slide into Hell.
Chapter 18
Sorkan
I had a new lady friend. Her late husband was a chief of one our largest villages. When we were young, he was one of my soldiers. He was to play a pivotal role in the great raid that never happened. Afterward I did not see him for many years. Now that I had returned to Karupatani, to the life that I was raised in, I had tried to renew my old friendships. It had not been easy. My reputation was severely tarnished. I was sober now though, and after a time, my great charm unblemished by drink, won everyone over.
My friend and his wife were among the first to welcome me back, and I was grateful to them for that. I was glad that in those few short years of my return and my friend’s subsequent death of heart failure, we were able to once again enjoy each other’s company.
After a time, whilst I was in the village visiting the new chief, I called upon my friend’s wife, Loora and asked after her. We found comfort in each other’s company. We had been together once before, she had told me although this I did not recall. I had been with many girls of Karupatani when I was young.
“I do not look as I did then,” she told me, holding her dress in front of herself. “I have had four babies and forty years of aging since last you held me.”
“And I have had forty years of aging too,” I assured her. I was not the youth I was, and the drink had not served my body well.
There was a certain pleasure in a woman of my age now though. I did not wish to be with a girl who wondered why I do not stand so firm and tall. I did not wish to be with a girl who knew me only as the Emperor’s father and not as the man I was before he came to be.
Loora’s body was warm and soft, and when we spoke, we remembered those who were amongst us in our youth.
I had dinner with Loora’s children, their spouses and little ones. I enjoyed this family, and they enjoyed me. They loved to hear my stories and asked for the same ones over and over. I spoke of the wars, the great battles we fought with the Mishaks, my marriage to the Princess Royal, and though they did not believe me, I insisted that I did love her.
They asked of my son, and I told them what I knew; what I had read of him, what I had seen of him from the distance, for never had I been granted an audience. Only when he came to Karupatani did I see him in person and even then he chose not to speak with me.
Loora’s family hung on my every word, and the little ones clambered to climb upon my lap. They called me Papa now, for they no longer recalled the memory of my friend. I honored him and told them great stories of our youth, and I only embellished his warrior accomplishments a little bit.
I was at peace now yet still there were open wounds in my heart. I had made amends for my sins, to my father, my daughter and my grandson. My son would not grant me forgiveness, and still turned away whenever I tried to speak with him. I watched him from the distance and saw how hard his heart had become, how he turned his back on everyone, not just me. This was the cause of my pain.
“There is nothing you can do for him,” Loora said. “He is unlike any other. He is born of your seed but was never your son.”
She was wrong. He was like me, like all men who had loved and lost.
“You have found another,” she reminded me and kissed me. “He will do the same in time. Karupta kings are not meant to live alone without women.”
He was too much like my father, though. I knew he would not.
Chapter 19
Taner
“I need to go to Rozari.” He had just come back from a weekend visit to Karupatani and was looking agitated and ill as he sat behind his desk going through the documents Berkan’s second undersecretary presented to him. His heavy gold cuffs clanged as they slapped against the desk. It was the ninth year of his reign, eight years after the lady had disappeared.
“Rozari, Sir?” Berkan asked, coming forward to take the signed papers.
“Yes. I need to go to Rozari. Arrange it.”
“You are not allowed to go to Rozari, Sir,” I said as gently as I could.
The silver eyes slowly panned up to my face. Though they were not nearly as bright as they once had been, they were still formidable.
“I need to go to Rozari. I don’t care how you do it but you will arrange it.”
“Whereabouts in Rozari, Sir?” Berkan asked.
“The Karupatani continent. I need to go to the Holy Temple.”
“Alright, Sir.” I bowed and motioned for Berkan to follow me outside.
“How in the bloody hell are we going to get him to Rozari?” I hissed.
“How should I know?” Berkan snapped back. “We can try and open a diplomatic channel, but they haven’t been very cooperative in the past as you well know.”
“As he well knows,” I agreed.
“Yes, well, maybe he would like to shave his beard and color his hair red, and wear blue contact lenses or something and then we can get him a false passport and everyone can pretend they don’t know it’s him.”
I stared at Berkan who started to laugh. “Your hair’s gone white,” I realized. He was as snow white as Loman always had been. Why hadn’t I noticed it before?
“Yes, well, there’s been a bit of stress in my life these last few years,” Berkan replied. “You’re all grey.”
“Yes, but I’m older than both of you, I’m entitled to look like it. I ought to be approaching my golden retirement years.”
“Taner, you’re not going anywhere.” Berkan took my arm. “Not until I’m allowed out of this hell hole too. Come on let’s get a coffee and figure out how to get the Mad Emperor to Rozari.”
Berkan and
I were sitting in the cafeteria. We had just spoken to several members of the ambassadorial staff and had been told yet again that there was no way to get HIM into the Alliance legally.
In the last few years, the Empire had absorbed five different Allied Star Systems leaving the Alliance only five remaining, two of which were Earth and Mars, and Rozari. The Allied Prime Minister, President and anyone else with any sort of influence cut off all ties diplomatic and simply refused to speak to us. Any attempt to negotiate the release of poor Katie was rebuffed. The lady had crashed on Derius II, which at the time belonged to the Alliance. Recently, the Derian System has made overtures to us. If the lady was there and had not been moved by the Alliance, we were quietly hopeful that we would be able to find her once we took over the planets.
“So we are basically left with two options,” Berkan said, picking at a donut. “We can try and sneak him in incognito but if they find him, we most certainly will have to take evasive action to get him out, and that could get messy.”
“Or?” I had chocolate donut, too.
“Or, we take over Rozari which is probably what he wants anyway.”
“Are you crazy? We don’t take over planets.”
“Yes, we do,” Berkan replied, powdered sugar all over his mouth. “Where have you been?”
“We don’t aggressively invade and force them into the Empire.”
“Maybe Rozari wants to be part of the Empire.”
“If they did, they would have made it well known. Berk, there is a huge Allied government presence there. There are landbases. There are orbiting spacebases. It would be like taking over the heart of the Alliance. There is no way we could take on Rozari.”
“Earth is the heart of the Alliance.”
“Granted, but Rozari is the brains. Mars is the liver, and everybody else were just the fingers and toes.”
“Alright then, Taner.” He got up and fetched more donuts. Berk had put on weight too. He was not nearly the size of Loman, but he was getting there. “How do you suggest we get the Evil Emperor to the Holy Temple?”
