by Marc Secchia
As the fat red gem winked in the corner of her eye, frailty not of herself seemed to infect her limbs. She could not rise. No response could she make. Fra’anior … oh … her throat felt dry, scoured out by fire, and her heart hammered great, thick clots of blood into her arteries. Respond. She must speak!
“I –” His great, thick boot rose and slammed into her ribs. “Aaah!” She felt as if she had been kicked by a Dragon. She writhed on the ground, coughing blood.
All at once, a sound like raging rivers of fire filled her ears and it seemed to her that a mighty presence assuaged the tempest of her pain, a deep and stern and tremendous power that terrified as much as it inflamed her; that at its elegiac summons to enter the fray, she could do nought but rise and obey.
The whip hand obscured the suns.
“Enough!” A raw explosion of sound tore from her throat.
Unbelievably, she was on her feet once more, prickling all over and swaying as if she were drunk. Tytiana confronted her father, knowing in this moment that she would pay the price for her defiance.
* * * *
Jakani cried out as the High Master kicked Tytiana brutally in the ribs. Freaking feral father! That had to be a bone-breaker. Yet she popped back up to her feet shouting something. Was she protecting Isimi? No way – he could not cry out – his feet seemed welded to the sward as the confrontation developed. Juzzakarr’s disbelief. His mother’s apparent gasp of horror. Tytiana’s back straightening, the wildfires dancing in her eyes … he knew she had inner steel, but holy Fra’anior, this was above and beyond anything he had expected of the heiress – dreadful, unmissable, poignant!
His heart crowded up into his throat. What a Dragoness! You show him, Tytiana!
Even as he sent the strength of his thoughts her way, two things happened at once. Her father raised the whip threateningly. At exactly the same moment, her hands and hair ignited with the crimson magical fire Jakani had sparked in her before. This time, however, Tytiana’s hair seemed to ripple and spread behind her with ominous purpose, almost as if the red and golden tendrils spread out underwater. Her arms hung a little apart from her sides, but the hands had formed into rigid crimson blades. Juzzakarr faltered. Her hair settled somewhat.
His fist rose. Her hair swelled immediately as if preparing to lash out in battle, and the radiance of the fire sheathing her hands up past the wrists, intensified. Not that she knew the first thing about fighting. Her ready posture was truly disastrous, he observed inanely. Yet with that tempestuous hair swirling about behind her all ablaze, she made an arresting sight.
Such a silence gripped the crowd, Jakani felt a cold sweat break out upon his forehead. The enchantress ablaze. The High Master looming above her like a thundercloud, the great ruby of office upon his chest seeming to capture and wink back her fire.
Tytiana said, “If you hurt these people, father, I will heal them with my fire.”
“They are lamko, not people.”
“Nonetheless, I will do as I have said. And you will not stop me. I will not oppose your decree lest the curse of dishonour be visited upon our lives and dwellings, but as the Choice of this House, I may exert my own will in this matter. We require workers. Able workers. Whipping them bloody will in no way restore the fortunes of our House.”
What Jakani heard was, ‘I will act to right this wrong.’
This was the moment that for the very first time, he recognised the song of his soul, and knew that he loved this woman. It was a helpless, falling, soul-melting feeling. Not a choice. Had he any choice, he must not, for many good and sound reasons. This was an imperative more profound than he could fathom; as the stars had stood immutable since the beginning of time, so it seemed that this destiny had waited for him but to apprehend it, and there would be no greater travesty in all the sweep of time past or time to come than to deny its reality.
It was the pinnacle of truth, and the very nadir of foolishness.
Tytiana faced her father like a slim young flame confronting a confused, blundering ralti sheep, and for the longest time, it seemed he had no rejoinder.
Then, the High Master snarled, “But, will you touch these diseased lamko?”
“I have no need to.”
Haughty. Perfect. Astounding.
And he saw another emotion darken her father’s face. Pure hatred.
“I want to smell their blood!” he thundered. “Get started! I have better things to do than stand here watching traitorous, accursed monkeys be lashed for their obstinacy and lies!”
Juzzakarr spun on his heel and stormed back inside his white mansion, his huge crimson cloak snapping behind him. It seemed to him that a red blot disappeared between the tasteful white columns with their frost and snowflake detail, which he had never noticed so keenly before. Jakani wondered who had designed this house. Surely not that brute? Maybe his wife, Tytiana’s mother? It certainly seemed to have many feminine touches.
The icy talons of inanition which had gripped him seemed to lift with the High Master’s departure. As the lamko began to line up in front of their overseers, lamentation thundered through his being. Many rolled up or removed their shirts, for they could not afford the repair of even one item of clothing. Mothers began to weep as their children joined them, and the stiff mien of the fathers softened. He heard people murmuring, but none dared to speak an ill word against the master in public. Just look at Tytiana now, speaking kindly to and hugging her sisters, before she sent them off on some errand.
Then Tytiana was walking out toward him with that slight but touching hitch in her stride, like red flame forging through a lake of dark heads, calling, “Dirt Picker Jakani. Come help me.”
Heads turned. Him? Now he felt like a lone partridge waddling through a sea of hawks. He hated being picked out, but the toss of the Choice’s head left him no choice. “Have to go,” he muttered. “Choice wants me.”
Whap! Whap! The fat whips bit deep. He flinched. They sounded like women beating carpets, just with a duller sound. Whap! One strike would not break the flesh. It took four or five precise strikes in the same location, and many of the overseers did not care to layer their blows that way. Some looked sickened, he saw, but most carried out their duty either without expression, or with deviant smiles that betrayed their enjoyment of an opportunity to exercise their arms freely. Whap! Whap-whap!
Tytiana said, “I need you to bring people to me for healing. They’re too scared of me.”
“Ah …”
“Youngest first. Or oldest. I – I don’t know how long I’ll last.”
“Aye.”
“That old man –”
“I’m sorry. He passed on,” said Jakani.
Her fire flickered toward a duller colour. “I’m sorry too. I’ve sent my sisters for medical supplies. All the bandages we can spare.”
“Thank you, Choice Tytiana.”
She smiled wanly at the emphasis in his voice. The gratitude. “It’s the least I could do, after …”
After her father.
So it was that noontide that Jakani passed amongst his people wondering if they or he were lamko or Nikuko, and he sent infants and children over to Tytiana, one after another. Many were openly fearful of her sorcerous flame. She hovered her hands close to their bodies – taking pains not to touch them, for the overseers were watching closely. Being bathed in that radiance brought immediate healing, or at least relief from pain, as Jakani had experienced before. A mewling infant suddenly stopped crying and gurgled in patent delight. She found the man who had been sliced through the gut and helped him. The man settled on his pallet, breathing easier. “Tha – thank you … honoured Choice.” Now she bathed the stump of a boy who had lost his right hand to a bandit’s blade in her gleaming fire, and the skin closed over the exposed bone to form a neat, complete end.
The boy smiled and said something to his parents, who had been looking on anxiously. Tremulous smiles greeted Tytiana’s work. The family bowed as one. “Hai-hakairi!”
&n
bsp; Jakani wanted to weep.
“Next,” he said. “Any small children? Any babies?”
When another family said the same after she had treated their toddler son, Tytiana called to him, “What are they saying?”
“Hai means ‘be honoured’. Hai-hakairi is an ancient blessing. I’m not even sure how to translate it.”
Isimi touched his knee. “The best I could say is that it means, ‘The blessings of ancient stars light your life, honoured one,’ o Choice Tytiana. These words are not lightly spoken, nor often. I may have heard it once, over twenty years ago.”
Jakani called loudly, “Anyone need bandages? Go see the honoured Choices, ah –”
“Zihaeri. Quiraeli.” Tytiana pointed them out.
“Your sisters? Good.” He bowed in their direction, despite the pulling sensation of his shirt against his bloodied back. “Bandages over there! Herbs and supplies!”
The twin suns blazed fiercely overhead in a white-blue sky. The steam of early moisture burning off the gardens, rivers and orchards had given way to a dry, almost airless heat now, an afternoon in which even the insects grew somnolent. A haze of smoke hung over Helyon. Much remained to be done to preserve the all-important orchards, but the High Master had decreed this punishment. With thousands of people to whip, even the most zealous overseers soon grew weary, but long before that, Tytiana’s fire began to flicker and her face paled. She drove herself on from healing to healing until she collapsed insensate. Even when House servants had borne her inside on an improvised litter, people continued to bow in the direction of the House, saying, ‘Hai-hakairi.’
He knew that was in no way meant for the High Master.
The lamko watched. They knew.
All the while, he wondered what new troubles the events of this day would bring. How would Juzzakarr make his daughter pay for what she had done?
Chapter 11: Tidings Strange and Pleasing
ZIHAERI SAID, “SO, how is our handsome assistant, dear sister?”
Tytiana made a noncommittal noise in her throat, and continued to brush out Quiraeli’s damp hair.
“Our very long-lasting assistant, might I add?” Zihaeri persisted. “He is raffish, isn’t he, Qui? The dashing young man balladeers love to praise, with that wild flip of dark hair.”
“Oh, I don’t know.” But Quiraeli wriggled a little on her seat in front of the mirror, and a hint of colour crept into her cheeks. One had to look for these tiny signals with her. “We are not supposed to think these things about lamko.”
“We are not supposed to think many things!” Tytiana flared.
“Ouch.”
“Sorry, sweet-Qui-pea.” She untangled the brush and smiled past her sister’s gleaming tresses at the image in the mirror. A nasty, jealous Dragon had just thrashed about inside her heart to hear Zihaeri talk about Jakani in that way. “I’ll be gentler.”
“You’re always gentle with me.”
“Erm, right. Good joke, but thanks for being sugar-sap-sweet. You looked like you needed some pampering this morning.”
The drapes of her bedchambers were still drawn shut, but the lamps shone brightly and the sisters were enjoying a lazy morning. Sariaki had crept into her bed in the early hours following a nightmare, and the remaining hours of the night had seen an elbow twice bop her in the nose, followed by a super-sleepy cuddle and a slap upon the neck as her sister thrashed about. She slept like four dragonets wrestling. Then Quiraeli had slipped in at dawn, crying because she missed their mother, and Zihaeri was up early as usual … well, so it went. Sariaki was still snoring gently in her nest of blankets. The eldest sister lounged upon the huge bed, idling over a scroll while cleaning beneath her fingernails with a pick and depositing whatever she found upon the clean sheets. Quiraeli had just emerged from her bath.
Was it too much to say that she felt like the mother around these three?
“Humph. You are far too beautiful for your own good, Qui. And I know how hard it is for you – for all of us – but I wanted to say this.” Tytiana sighed. “I’m glad you look so much like Mom, because I have a living reminder of her. You say you feel like a shadow, or somehow, a lesser replacement. Maybe that’s true in the sense that you share so many of her traits, but you can never be her and you don’t need to be. You are Quiraeli. You are unique and gifted and –”
“Frail! Fearful! Unable ever to stand up to father’s bullying like you did.”
“Wow,” said Zihaeri.
“That’s not true,” Tytiana protested. “I only dared because of his fire – the fire, in me.”
Zihaeri gave her a puzzled glance. Oh no. What had she let slip now?
Was that true? Was it his fire, or hers? She could no longer tell the difference, and this in itself was a terrifying realisation. Zihaeri had been right to warn her about showing the slightest regard or favouritism toward a lamko serf. Father was watching. Always watching. And she had the Annual Choices’ Ball coming up, by which time she was ordered – in no uncertain terms – to find herself a husband, or face being locked in the dungeons for the rest of her life. Not that the House had a dungeon. But Juzzakarr had promised to have such a facility built especially for her. The notion was certainly not beyond him, given how she had provoked his ire.
‘Find one! Snag some hapless heir; ensorcel him if necessary!’ he had sneered.
Curious how Zihaeri had questioned her, however, about her sudden desire to help the lamko. How could one explain what changed deep inside the heart? How the tides moved the Cloudlands? How the stars turned? That they shared humanity – blood, breath and life. That being wealthy or dral-less, this caste or that, did not matter so much as what lay inside of people? That the unfairness and injustices of life could be so gut-clenchingly brutal? Zihaeri had thanked her soberly afterward, but true to character, had not herself opened up to reveal what she herself thought – only to comment that perhaps Helyon’s ancient system was not the only one in the Island-World, and perhaps not the best.
Cheeks flaming scarlet, Quiraeli exclaimed, “There’s more of mother in you than you think too, Tyti! She was strong and passionate and I daresay, even a little –” her voice dropped to the tiniest whisper, “– magical. Wouldn’t you say? The way she used to sing …”
Tytiana sheepishly picked up the hairbrush from where she had dropped it. “You … you think … oh.”
Her younger sister touched her cheek. “It’s alright to cry, sweet pea.”
Zihaeri joined in the hug with a laugh-sob. “Aye. Listen to the wisdom of the Qui. That’s another mother-thing she does. So, big news of the day. Father has approved our expedition to the hot springs – under heavy guard, of course.”
“Great!”
“It’s a ‘yay’ then, I guess?” Quiraeli inquired. “What are you and the titan up to?”
Zihaeri said, “Looking in on the Askarmyn Tiger this crazy sister of mine was petting a while back, collecting special botanical samples for analysis, bathing in the hot springs and – wait for it – going to talk to the Dragons.”
Seen in the mirror, all three sisters had wide eyes and flushed cheeks. Talking to Dragons!
“I suppose you shall have to take Mister Handsome with you, Tyti?” Quiraeli teased, but then her voice turned plaintive. “Are you saying lamko are people just like us? I mean, it sounds childish to admit this now, but I suppose I’ve never really thought about them that way. It’s not how we’ve been taught to view such lesser, well, creatures. But when we were passing out the bandages, and they were bowing to you, I wonder … it’s weird. I mean, I was thinking: is it right that we should be rich and live in this beautiful house and all those people who work for us wear rags and don’t even have shoes and we should watch as if it were some stage drama while … while that poor old man just … died …”
She buried her face in her hands.
The sisters held each other desperately tight.
Something fundamental was shifting in their world, and Tytiana fretted over what
that might mean for her family, her way of life, and all that she knew. Certainly, their father desired no change to arrangements here at the estate. Could they somehow temper his violence and greed? Could they work out or anticipate what this latest spate of attacks might mean? For it seemed inexplicable to her that so many bandits could land undetected upon Helyon’s shores when there was meant to be a Dragon guard upon the Island. Jakani had briefly described how the guards upon the watchtowers had all been silently ambushed and their throats torn out. Could they even ask the Dragon mercenaries such a question without causing colossal insult?
Was an unknown power campaigning against Helyon itself? Or was this the ugliest side of House politics, as insidious as it was deadly, spelled out in the deaths of countless lamko?
Then Sariaki piped up from the bed, “Is it morning yet? Where are we going? Who’s Mister Handsome?”
* * * *
Zihaeri threw up her hands in disgust. “Seems no-one knows anything.”
Her sister was quite the networker, Tytiana thought. She had never imagined Zihaeri as the consummate spy, but having helped her spend the morning extracting coded intelligence from a perfect storm of letters that had arrived from the Choices and Young Masters of other Houses, all purportedly expressing excitement at this or that liaison or arrangement for the Annual Choices’ Ball, her admiration for her sister’s cunning had hit a new peak.
“Less intelligence here than your average ralti sheep.”
This system of coded messaging linked Choices and Young Masters of a number of Houses, a liaison network headed by none other than Zihaeri herself. An excellent way of exchanging information under the suspicious noses of, in a number of cases, tyrannical parents and leaders. But no result. Plenty of theories of course, as to which House might be pulling the strings regarding what was being called ‘the Dragon situation,’ but nothing substantive.
The situation that might just spell Helyon’s downfall.
Tytiana nudged her sister’s shoulder. “You’re quite the politician, Zihaeri.”
