by Anna Banks
Tarik himself has not had time to mourn. In the days since King Knosi’s passing, he’s been rushed to session after session of council gatherings. His coronation ceremony was a hurried, informal affair to which the public—and surrounding kingdoms—had not been invited.
If it had not been for Rashidi, Tarik is certain he would have buckled under the pressure.
Rashidi continues to disagree. “You were born a ruler,” he insisted. Something else Rashidi sincerely believes. But Tarik has not had time to correct his father’s—and now his—closest adviser. He has not had time to take in a decent meal, either. A fact that his stomach reminds him of now—and loudly.
Sethos cuts him a look as if he’d done it on purpose, as if somehow the people gathered along the procession road could hear it above their wails and weeping as the chariot passes by.
He sighs. Sethos relieves anxiety through combat. He always has, and he’s probably looking for a reason to start a brawl with his brother, king or not. Tarik knows if his brother can make it through one public appearance without causing a scandal, he will count himself fortunate. Sethos’s moods have the tendency to swing as if on a hinge, and he can go from brooding to elated within moments—and brooding nearly always means a display of temper. It’s his only flaw, as far as Tarik can tell, but a crippling one at times. Even his tutors complain of it. But their father never kept Sethos on a leash. And neither will Tarik. No matter how many moans and groans he hears from the council.
He will allow his brother to mourn in his own way—as long as his now-clenched fist does not make it to Tarik’s jaw on this day.
5
SEPORA
I’m not of the traveling sort, I decide as I stop for the second time in as many hours to rub my aching feet. My calves burn with the task of digging my feet out of the sand with each heavy step. I haven’t eaten in three days. I would trade enough spectorium to build one of the legendary Theorian pyramids for a single apple or a sliver of smoked meat. I’m out of water again, too, which means I’ll have to brave the banks of the River Nefari to refill my jug.
The river is a fickle snake of water, widening in places and thinning in others, flowing straight for a day or two, only to become a winding stream, with strong visible currents lapping at the surface. Sometimes the water runs brown and muddy, and sometimes it changes to a deep red. I get drinking water only when it runs clear, and not just because it tends to taste better.
River Nefari is home to the Parani—evil, finned creatures with webbed hands and humanlike faces and a craving for the flesh of a man. I’ve never actually seen one, but I’ve heard stories about them and they are the stuff of nightmares.
In Serubel, parents warn children of the river by telling the tale of Ragan, the boy who was dared to swim in the river alone. While his taunting friends watched from shore, he made his way across the stream, taking care not to splash too much for fear he would alert the Parani to his presence. Even so, right before he reached the other side, he disappeared from the surface as if snatched under. Within minutes, two Parani sprang toward the bank where the other children stood screaming, and with one steady hoist, they tossed the full skeleton of Ragan at them, the bones clattering at their feet. The only flesh left was the skin keeping the hair attached to the skull.
It’s with this in mind that I head toward the river with my jug, feeling fearful yet silly and superstitious all at the same time. Steps away from where the water meets shore, I glance around me and unsheathe my sword. If a Parani wants to surprise me, well then, I’ll surprise it, too. With sword in one hand and jug in the other, I take the last few steps toward the river, squatting to refill my jug. The water is warm and not unpleasant, and it takes all my willpower not to drink it as soon as I’ve collected enough to gulp down. Uneasily, I keep my eyes on the river flowing past me, looking for shadowy figures below the surface or splashes of movement above it.
I see nothing. For several timeless moments, I stay and watch the waves and the current and the water separating me from the opposite embankment. Fear ebbs away from me as if caught up in the flow of the river. The story of Ragan simply could not be true. It would take more than a few moments to separate a boy from his flesh, and if the Parani were so predatory then why hadn’t anyone else ever been eaten? Certainly not because all children obeyed their parents and stayed away from the river henceforth. I knew a servant boy who would exercise the Defenders and come back from the Underneath with hair as wet as a mop and sopping clothes to match. I told Aldon once about the boy and Aldon had said that sometimes young men get the ideas of bravery and stupidity horribly mixed up. But he didn’t deny that the boy swam the Nefari when he went to the Underneath.
The Nefari is clear here, and the bed of it is full of round pebbles with small aquatic plants that look like weeds sprouting in between them. A bath would be nice. I’ve no soap, but mud would do for scraping most of the dust from me, and my hair might be more manageable if it were wet. It’s in sore need of rebraiding as well.
I could keep my sword with me and be watchful. I could be quiet as a cloud. And I could be clean.
I set down my leather satchel and place my water jug next to it. Bathing nude is risky. Aside from the obvious exposure to unexpected strangers, it makes for a sloppy getaway in the unlikely case of a Parani attack. If, of course, I make it out alive, which, if I’m to believe the tale of Ragan, is also highly unlikely. And, well, my clothes need a thorough rinsing if truth be told, and if I do it now, they’ll have time to dry before it gets cold. The Theorian desert is a flat, parched, unforgiving adversary during the day but at night is when it becomes truly miserable. At night is when the crawling and slithering and flying creatures come out, and the air is so cold you can see your breath in the moonlight.
Despite all of this, I convince myself that a bath is a good idea. Not only a good idea, but an absolute necessity. The only things I remove are my tattered, worn servants’ shoes. Shoes that were meant for padding around the castle floors and across bridges and perhaps into the Serpen stables, but were never intended to walk for days across the Tenantless or traverse across a scalding desert whose tiny grains embed themselves into my feet, in between my toes, rubbing the skin there red and raw.
At first the water stings the blisters that gnaw on my heels, and I gingerly scrub the sand out of the open welts. I breathe a sigh of relief as the pain begins to subside and my feet become used to being unrestrained. The pebbles feel smooth and inviting and before long I’m completely submerged, basking in the way my body feels weightless instead of encumbered by the terrible burden of my own flesh and limbs I’ve been dragging around for days.
Slowly, I dig a hole underneath the pebbles and get to the muddy riverbed, scooping up a handful of the rough silt. I tackle my face first, scrubbing it violently until I’m sure it will shine in the midday sun. Next I scour my arms and legs and neck, careful not to get mud inside my clothing. Rinsing is a thorough affair, and I spend more time doing it than I do actually cleaning myself. My servant dress is lavender linen, and the stains easily disintegrate from it in the warm water with some wringing and twisting.
Feeling pleased and refreshed, I untangle my braid and begin to sort it out into something more manageable. Just as I tie the end back in place, an immense dunking sort of splash, a mere Serpen-length away, startles me from my vanity. A bit of terror steals through me as I imagine a large fin making just that size ring of ripples swelling outward ahead of me. It was something big. It was something that isn’t there anymore, something that could be here now. Part of me wants to tear out of the river as fast as I can, to put distance between myself and the ripples. The other part knows that would be a mistake. That the clamoring sounds of escape would only attract attention to myself.
But so will the sound of me trembling in the water, of my teeth chattering in fear, of my throat closing around a whimper of desperation to flee. These are things I cannot keep quiet, these are things that no longer fall under my control and
so if I’m to be loud, I’ll be loud while retreating to the safety of the riverbank. Making no further attempt to keep quiet, I leave my sword abandoned in the water—oh why had I put it down in the first place?—and sludge toward shore and—
Run directly into the largest man I’ve ever seen. My head doesn’t even reach his shoulders. Where the water hits my waist, it hits him at the groin. With the sun shining behind him, I can only make out his gigantic silhouette. But I do recognize when he raises a fist above him. And I wait for the blow.
6
TARIK
Sethos hoists himself up on the balcony rail and settles against the column at his back. He pops a grape into his mouth and gives Tarik an expression sweet enough to match the fruit. It is an odd feeling, to be entertaining his brother in the king’s day chambers—a place Sethos had never been allowed. This is where decisions are made, wars are planned, peace is negotiated. It is not a place for boys. At least, it hadn’t been a few weeks ago.
“You know what would help with all this tension,” Sethos says after a while.
“I hadn’t noticed any tension,” Tarik says absently, moving some scrolls aside to review more of them on the table at which he sits. No wonder Father was always busy, even taking scrolls to his bed in the evenings.
“You may be able to discern a lie, brother, but you certainly cannot tell one. Anyhow, I was thinking how much stress would be relieved after a visit to your new harem.”
“It’s Father’s harem, and there is nothing new about it.”
“It’s your harem now, Tarik.”
A harem. Out of all the responsibilities and obligations Tarik inherited, his brother is most concerned with a harem. A harem full of beautiful women with beautiful mouths to feed: a burden in its own right, as far as Tarik is concerned. “You’re too young to be visiting a harem, even if I could change the law to allow it.” But the law is, and always has been, that the king is the only man who may look upon the royal harem. The king, and eunuchs. When Tarik asked to dissolve it and send the women on their way, Rashidi had laughed. Apparently when one is king, one must keep a harem as a matter of prestige.
“Rashidi says you haven’t even visited. It’s your duty to inspect your own harem,” Sethos says, pouting a bit.
“I don’t want to speak of duties just now. Or harems.”
“You’ve always been the odd child.”
“And you’ve always been the obnoxious one.”
Sethos grins. “A boy after his father.”
“That couldn’t be more true.” Their father wasn’t known for his discretion and was delighted when he’d found that Sethos had the same temperament. It was an easy relationship between them.
With Tarik and his father, not so much. It wasn’t that the king wanted his heir to be more like his second born; he recognized their differences and accepted them. But Tarik had always gotten the distinct impression that he was not all that he could be to his father, even in his own way. Rashidi says it was because Tarik is so much like his mother that he was a painful reminder of her death to King Knosi. His mother had been a Lingot and was very useful to his father at court. She had trained Tarik when his Favor was first discovered, but after she died three years after giving birth to Sethos, his education had been turned over to the Lyceum. The king was proud of Tarik, he’d said as much and Tarik could discern he spoke the truth. But there was always the impression he could be doing more.
That he could be more. And he’s not sure he disagrees.
“Did you hear that the princess of Serubel fell to her death? What was her name? Magar, was it?” Sethos asks.
Tarik nods. “Rashidi informed me.” A terrible accident, he’d heard. Somehow she’d fallen off her flying beast and down to the Underneath; the River Nefari apparently ran close by as she’d evidently been swept away by the current. As far as Tarik had heard, they never recovered the body. She probably became a royal meal to the Parani lurking there, is what the rumors say, and Tarik is obliged to agree with them.
Rashidi had made him send a caravan of condolence gifts, even though the Serubelan king had failed to acknowledge the death of King Knosi. “We are not the barbarians,” Rashidi had reminded him. Not that Tarik was set against sending condolences, but an entire caravan for a princess he’d never even met? The fact was, most people had never met her. Most thought her a recluse or a snob. Though she met with a tragic end, Tarik can’t help but be more interested in the fallout of the catastrophe. Since the princess’s death, the Serubelan king has not traded out his spectorium—and Theoria relies on spectorium for many things, including the research of the Healers.
“She was supposed to be beautiful,” Sethos is saying, daydreaming at the sky. “Rumor has it that her beauty is why her father never allowed her outside the kingdom. That he planned to marry her to the king of Hemut, and so he hid her away from company and such.”
Tarik analyzes the rumor, turning it over in his mind. Sometimes he can discern the truth from secondhand information, but not always. It usually depends on how much the person relaying the message believes it. And Sethos wants to believe it badly. Tarik shakes his head. “I believe she was beautiful. But I don’t think he kept her to himself for that reason.”
This makes Sethos curious. He sits straighter and pops another grape in his mouth. “What do you think it could be?”
“Perhaps she was ill-mannered. Or irretrievably stupid.”
Sethos bursts out laughing, startling some birds on the balcony behind him. Tarik is grateful for the sound. His brother has not been himself of late. “Not everyone can be as smart as you,” Sethos says.
“If I had a daughter who was irretrievably stupid, I would hide her from the world, too.”
“I doubt you’re capable of producing a stupid daughter. But while we’re talking about heirs, have you plans to marry anytime soon?”
Tarik nearly snarls. He’s barely managing the kingship and now he’s expected to manage a wife? “Are you truly not capable of talking about anything other than women?”
“Is there something more interesting than women? Someday, brother, a woman will knock the breath out of you at the sight of her, and you’ll know why the rest of us think of little else.”
Tarik highly doubts that, but arguing about women is a waste of time with Sethos. “The matters of the kingdom might interest you.”
Sethos rolls his eyes. “I am a fighter. I’ll leave the politics up to you.”
“This illness is something that affects us both, Sethos.”
His brother leans back and contemplates. Their father just died from what the citizens are now calling the Quiet Plague. Tarik knows he takes that seriously, at least. “Curious that it doesn’t touch the Baseborn class, isn’t it?” Sethos says. “Perhaps it comes from some food not available to them, something too expensive for their table. Or perhaps the Serubelans themselves are immune.”
“The Healers are looking into both of your theories, actually. Neither has been ruled out. For now, we have no answers.”
“The people won’t blame you, you know. For the plague, I mean.”
For not being a Lingot, Sethos is perceptive at times. It was exactly what Tarik was thinking. That if he doesn’t find a cure for the plague, the people will leave Theoria. They’ll feel safer elsewhere, that their king cannot protect them. And everything will fall apart. Everything his father worked so hard to keep together. Everything his ancestors had worked so hard to build and establish. Could it really all end with one bad king?
Tarik thinks of all his history lessons of the barbaric kingdom of Serubel. Long ago, its succession of terrible kings led to the creation of the four surrounding kingdoms. Of course, Theoria had been the first to leave, when the king’s high councillor Vokor—now recognized to be one of the Favored Ones, probably a Lingot—fled the king and formed his own government in the safety of the empty if somewhat harsh desert. After the Princess Ailan died and Vokor went to war with Serubel, other sects began to break away
from that once great kingdom. Wachuk became an encampment for refugees who had taken asylum in the trees just south of Theoria. After the blood and loss they experienced in the Great War, they preferred to live a spiritual existence, worshipping fire as their god and keeping pillars of fire burning day and night as sacrifice. They even stopped communicating with words, insisting that actions speak volumes over words, which could carry deceit in them. To this day, they continue to speak in hand signals and primitive clicks of the tongue.
Too, Pelusia was formed after the Great War. The haughty Serubelan king had rewarded his highest general for his excellency on the battlefield and had given him the coastal area of Pelusia, a vast land stretching along the coast of the immense northern ocean. Though Pelusia keeps to itself mostly, it has always had a relatively friendly rapport with Serubel. Princess Magar’s mother had been from Pelusia, if Tarik is not mistaken. Pelusia is known for its people’s skills in building ships and other seafaring structures, and prefers to trade mostly with foreign lands across the ocean, though its fish-preserving factories produce much of the food consumed by Serubel.
And, of course, there had been the ice kingdom of Hemut, which started out as a family wanting to improve their quality of living, having survived under the king of Serubel’s oppressive thumb far too long. That particular king, Tarik believes, was called the Cracked King. He starved his people on purpose and regularly fed them to the Scaldlings—his favored flame-breathing Serpens—as entertainment. The sizable Hemut clan saw an opportunity that other citizens either failed to see or were not brave enough to attempt, in making the ice lands a place of holiday for the other kingdoms. Their success was limited at first, and many perished from the harsh conditions of the icy terrain, but eventually they made the unclaimed icy territory their own. Many merchants from the surrounding kingdoms eventually chose to take up living in that icy paradise rather than return home in favor of the wealth bestowed upon them from visitors there for a good time.
