Agleam.net

John Aegard

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I awoke between crisp sheets. Gentle light—the sun, filtered by the last snows of the springtime—filled the room. My skin, fresh and pink, held neither the stain nor the stink of the cesspool.

Though all my faculties were with me, I didn't feel quite awake. Unless I wished otherwise, my mind was quiet. The only discomfort I felt came from my burned claw-hand. A steel armature had been placed in my palm and then wound outwards, forcing the hand open. Such was the skill of my healers that this treatment was not painful. Even the Emperor's roars were faint in this peaceful place. They were more like pleasant, distant thunder than the raging death-screams I'd heard before.

Orange-draped servants attended me constantly, bringing me food the equal of that served by my father's kitchens. My girth returned in days. Fine-fingered women checked my hand every midday, painting it with a soothing pink sludge. Under their care, my hand returned to me, stiffly at first, and then perfectly, without even a scar.

The physicians asked me if I would like work. I told them yes, and they allowed me to stand watch over their apparatus, over the flasks and torches and glass cauldrons that they used to prepare their elixirs. This was an uncomplicated but precise duty. I completed every batch exactly as I was instructed. They were pleased with me.

I stayed within their precincts, unwilling to risk my serenity anywhere else in the citadel, until one day when they instructed me to deliver a pastille of a medicine to an Equitark named sal-Jesic. The directions took me a league across the citadel and into a corridor whose windows were covered with heavy velvet, so I was not surprised to find that sal-Jesic was the veiled Equitark who had tormented me.

"Munificence?" I said into the darkness of his room.

"Spandos," he said, sounding unsurprised. "You have been told how to prepare the medicine?"

"I was told to burn it in a censer with three coals."

"Correct. When it is ablaze, bring it close to me.

I went out to the furnace and lit the censer and then, stepping carefully in the dark, returned it to him. "I am holding it at your breast now, munificence."

I heard the rustle of cloth as he bent over the censer and drew a deep breath. Suddenly he was quaking and coughing and spitting. Startled, I withdrew, but his hand was like iron on my arm. "No!" he rasped. "Bring it closer!"

He inhaled again and again, his tortures undiminished, and then, finally, he pushed me away. I put the censer aside and went back to him. In the extreme dim, I could see that he lay slumped in his chair, quaking and panting.

"Do you need water?" I asked.

His searching hand took mine. "No," he whispered, "but thank you."

"That must help your eyes—it will be worth it, someday," I said, remembering what my nurse had said about unpleasant medicine.

"My eyes will never heal," he said, his voice lifeless. "But my physicians fear their affliction may spread to my brain. The medicine arrests it, but only for a day. I shall need it again tomorrow. Go now, but return at the same time."

When I stepped into the light outside of his offices, I saw that my shirt was spattered with blood from his coughing. I stood in the hallway and stared down at my shirt for some time. I had always regarded the Equitark as a malevolent, vengeful monster, but now I knew that he was a mere man, a frail creature whose duties paid in blood and misery.

I was of two minds as I returned to my laboratory. I was sorry, of course, for sal-Jesic's torments, but to work in his presence, serving something good and important—that idea buoyed me.

A letter arrived from home. It had been sent at tremendous coast—up north, the passes were slow to clear in the springtime, and any rider who could navigate them could name her own price.

The letter bore my father's signature, but was composed in my nurse's hand. In the mildest words, they begged for news of me, and asked that I return home as soon as I could, because the house was diminished without me. I replied briefly, saying that I was well, although I did not know when I would return.

I fell into sal-Jesic's service that spring, bringing him his medicine, and then later his food and his clothes and then finally taking complete charge of him. We abided by an unspoken agreement not to discuss my embarrassing petition.

The Equitark treated me as kindly as I have ever seen a man treat a servant, and in return I served him with all my diligence. One day I found an idiot petitioner pulling down the curtains in his offices. I put my boot to this clumsy man's ass and watched with pleasure as he raced away.

My work pleased me. It kept my mind still.

With summer came the Court Festival. I helped with this when sal-Jesic could spare me. I went into the cellars and found every entertainer I could among the petitioners. There was a great surplus of them; I suppose that artists and jugglers and singers have more complaints than respectable men.

From the musicians among them, I fashioned a band. Horns and drums played a majestic march as the entire lawkult assembled in the citadel's greatest hall, which was decorated in a foreign style. Bolts of silk and lace hung in each of the room's thirteen corners. Cool-burning candles hung within them, lighting us with blue and green and pink.

The Equitarks seated themselves by the order of their pains. The Emperor did not attend, so the first and the saddest was sal-Hezas who, as a young Equiton, had refused to free an efficient woman from a slave contract signed by her great-grandfather. His pain calculations had failed to account for her children, and after returning to her master, she bore quintuplets, slaves also by the contract. As these children were put to work, the Equitark's back bent under their weight. Now he resembled a reddened fishing hook more than a man, and he needed two canes and two servants to aid him.

sal-Jesic was eighth to enter; his war wounds gave him some additional status. Last came wise old seni-Firkin, whose only regretful decision had been her refusal to sanction a careless physician. She suffered small, never-healing boils on her forehead. The doctor was clumsy with his lancet, we had heard.

A parade of amusements—poets, acrobats, singers, fools and sensualists—awaited the lawkult. My old self would have sold ten years of his life to see some of them, but the lawkult beheld them in utter silence, never clapping or cheering. I saw exasperation among them as they struggled for a response, and I found it impossible to treat them kindly afterwards. They were like children. If they knew of the noble sufferings of the lawkult, they would not shame themselves so.

The entertainment ended. The sensualists circulated among the Equitarks, cooing over their wounds and occasionally spiriting one away to privacy. Food and drink appeared from the kitchens. I aided those who could not serve or feed themselves, and spent some time trying to please seni-Beyer. Two years before, she had removed a highborn man from his ancestral home and wealth and placed a more deserving cousin in his place, and since then the best food and drink had tasted like dust to her. I brought her rum-cakes and rose creams and even some peppered apple vinegar, but nothing would awaken her tongue.

"Quite a wretched night," I said to sal-Jesic at the end of the night, as I guided him home.

"Every Festival is wretched," he told me.

"Why subject yourselves to them?" I asked.

"We are in search of our missing hearts," he said. He would not elaborate.

The Equitark was in a more jovial mood when I met with him later that month. I stepped into his darkened chambers, after his summons, and he called out his greetings pleasantly. By then, he knew the tread of my foot and could always distinguish my comings and goings from those of other servants.

"I've a judgment that needs your wisdom, Spandos," he said.

I had become quite casual with the Equitark, but of course, I'd never helped him with a judgment before. I was about to ask why when someone else interrupted.

"Spandos?" the voice—familiar, but unrecognizable—said.

"Quiet," said the Equitark. "Raise the lights, Spandos."

"Your eyes, munificence?"

"I am veiled. Raise the lights."

I found my way to the valves and turned them a quarter. Gas hissed, and in the dim light I saw that it was Getter in the room with us. He stood before the Equitark, his face hopeful.

"This is your friend from the cellars?" asked sal-Jesic.

"Yes," I said. In the presence of the Equitark, Getter wore better clothes. His head was bare and bald, and I saw he had a mark on his forehead, one that had been concealed by his old woolen cap. Approaching, I recognized it. It was the mark of my father's justice. Getter was an exiled thief.

"We have a petition here that you must hear," said the Equitark. "It is a matter of your father's lands, and also of the heart."

"I am no expert of the heart, munificence," I said.

The Equitark ignored me. "This man was a fearsome thief in his day. Nothing could be kept safe from him—he once stole the golden teeth from a sleeping columneer's mouth."

Getter nodded silently.

"He was captured two years ago," continued the Equitark. "His money was seized and he was exiled from the Spandos holding. If he returns, he will be beheaded. He asks that we instruct your father to allow him to return so he can tend to his wife's grave." His voice turned conversational. "It is quite a monument he raised to her, he says."

"I've heard of this monument," I said. "You called yourself Groder then—"

Getter nodded.

"Do the poets write about this monument?" asked sal-Jesic.

"Yes, I heard of it in a poem," I said sheepishly.

"Assume, for once, the poets speak truthfully. How does this petition move you?"

Getter was watching me intently. I looked away from him.

"My father will not abide thieves," I said.

"Yes, so much is apparent," said sal-Jesic. "But this man claims to love deeply."

I was silent.

"Mr. Getter suffers while you stand here dumbly," said sal-Jesic, his voice low.

"Love is the scoundrel's duty," I said.

"Not true," said sal-Jesic. "But that is a matter for another time."

"The poem's coming back to me," I said. "They say there's a fortune in jewels hidden somewhere inside the monument, so cunningly concealed that only its builder can retrieve it. It has been smashed to pieces by treasure hunters."

"They wrecked it?" blurted Getter. "Filthy sons of whores—"

"Quiet," commanded the Equitark. "So you think that our Getter here wishes to return to claim his hidden trove?"

"Who can say if the legend is true or not?" I said.

"Then what do you say to this petition?"

"You cannot trust a thief," I said, finally.

"Not even one who loves?"

I shook my head.

"I see," said sal-Jesic.

Getter's breathing was heavy, as if he were fighting down rage.

"If you follow that advice, you will be right more often than wrong," I said. "And even if the poets lie and there is no treasure trove, he may simply be returning so he may steal some more from my father. I wouldn't stake my health on his truth."

"You poxed little cockroach—" Getter hissed.

"Thank you, Spandos," sal-Jesic said. "You may go now."

More letters arrived from home. They felt like intrusions, and I suspected that if I entertained their contents, I might be yanked back from this good and noble world and back into the selfish old one, so I burned them unopened.

"Do you realize," said sal-Jesic one late summer dawn, "that it has been almost a year since you came here?"

We were standing on an eastwards balcony, awaiting the sunrise. The Equitark's veil would admit the sun's heat while rejecting its light.

"Your petition has not been decided," he said. "It must be so before the year is gone. Since I am so fond of you now, I am forbidden from deciding it. Instead, I have passed it upwards, to the Emperor. He wishes to see you, so he can judge it and end the matter."

"I can't see the Emperor—"

"He expects you today."

"This is ridiculous," I declared. "Why waste the Emperor's time? Find an Equiton—"

"This is not a command," sal-Jesic said. "You will not be dragged into His Majesty's presence." The sun licked the horizon, and sal-Jesic turned to face it. "You don't know the honor you're declining. His attention is a rare thing, especially these days. We don't know how many good days He may have left."

"If you think it necessary—"

"I think it wise."

"I will go then," I said, though I trembled inwardly at the thought of the great Emperor considering my ridiculous petition.

sal-Jesic called for the Emperor's special red-robed servants. They silently led me to the center of the citadel, to a great smithy where burly steelmen, their fingers alit with cool welding magics, assembled a cage around me. They took their metal from the twisted, bent remnants of older cages, which were heaped in a corner of the workshop.

Once caged, I was cranked onto a wheeled hook that rolled on rails hung from the rafters. The steelmen kicked my cage and I slid outside, into sudden daylight. I was in an interior square of the citadel, a sandy-floored place surrounded by windowless walls. So this was the hiding place of the Beast-Emperor, I thought. He had withdrawn from the Court after the war, and no one, not even my father, knew the details of his internal exile. I would have to describe this place to my father when I saw him next.

My father loved his Emperor dearly. Scarcely a month into His rule, he had come to the Court on behalf of all the frontier lords. After a time in the cellars—not even the highest-born could escape that duty—he petitioned the Emperor for an empire-wide mobilization against the greenies, to finish them for all time. The Emperor had boldly granted their petition, igniting first a rebellion from the cowardly kings of the interior who were unsympathetic to the frontiersmen, and then the long, brutal war against the greenies.

My father had never forgotten the Emperor's boldness, and toasted Him at every opportunity. But he never understood the price the Emperor paid. I knew that when I spied his Majesty for the first time.

He lay like a cat in the shadow of the citadel's inner walls, his massive bony head resting atop a fallen stone. My cage stopped an easy bowshot away from Him, rocking underneath its creaking catwalk, and then, with a rattle, it began to descend on its chain

"Majesty, I withdraw my petition," I called to Him.

That disfigured head rose to face me as the cage ended its descent. My feet now were perhaps a foot above the sand.

"There is no need for you—" I continued, but terror suddenly silenced me. The Emperor took to all fours and bounded towards the cage with His head lowered and His crown of bone aimed dead at my knees. Just before He struck the cage, I leapt upwards and wrapped my hands around its chain. The cage swung crazily around me. I braced my feet against its bars and swung along with it. The Emperor dashed His head against it again and again with terrible force. One of His horns broke off inside the cage and rattled on its bowl-shaped floor.

"I withdraw!" I screamed at Him. "I withdraw! Please, Majesty—" Two bars had loosed from the cage's floor. A third snapped away when He struck me again. More of that and the floor would fall away altogether, and when I lost my grip on the chain, I would fall along with it—

The Emperor withdrew, shaking His head as if to clear it, and then He paced around me. The legacy of His war was plain upon Him. His flanks were covered with weeping wounds, punctures and slashes and yellow bruises. Battle madness had infected His mind and then crawled outward into His skull, flaring it into a petrified crown of spikes.

He finished studying me and rose on his hind feet. He pushed the cage like a child's swing until it was sideways above Him. I lost hold of the chain and fell on the cage's side, above Him. My face was before His.

He rattled me gently.

"Majesty, I withdraw my petition!" I whispered.

He did not roar or gore. He simply looked at me, and I at Him.

The poets say that one can see into eyes just as well as one can see out of them, and as I beheld the Beast-Emperor's, I knew that the poets were, for once, correct. Despite the madness of their setting, his eyes were the sanest and I had ever seen. They were ruled by love deep and abiding, love that rendered pain and injury and lunacy powerless, love that had prodded Him to launch a war that had saved His lands from the greenie scourge but had cost Him utterly.

And I had come to the Court to ask Him to meddle in my stupid, courtly intrigues.

I trembled in shame, but the Emperor's gentle voice stilled me.

"Your petition is ended," He rumbled. Blood ran down His face, from His broken horn. "Go quickly. My madness will return soon."

"I'm sorry—" I began.

"We should never apologize for what moves us."

"You move me," I said. "Good-bye, Majesty, good-bye!" The Emperor turned away from me and paced back to His shade.

The cage was winding upwards again, but heart was suddenly so light I thought it might bear me upwards by itself.

"I had anticipated this," said sal-Jesic when I told him of my decision. "In all my years I have never seen anyone who loves as deeply as you, not even the Emperor. You know," he said, his voice lowering, "had you forced me to rule on your petition, I would have decided in your favor. It would have injured me gravely to kill a heart as great as yours, do you know that?"

"None of that matters now," I said.

"You will be a fine Equitark—"

"I care nothing for the rank," I interrupted. "I wish only to serve."

"If you acquit your heart's burden, then the rank will attend to itself. If wisdom preserves you, you will be Emperor someday."

"You flatter me," I said.

"I do not," he said, and then we sat down to the first of endless lessons.

It was winter when my old love came to the Court of the Beast-Emperor.

She had braved blizzards and sleet and snow to ground the dragons, and I nearly didn't recognize her when she limped before me. Her hair had lightened from gold to straw and now fell uncut to her damp shoulders.

I waved away my servants and sat in front of her, keeping my hood drawn and my face hidden. She observed protocol expertly, speaking the petitioner's creed and waited for my signal to proceed.

"Benevolence," she said, "I am in search of my love, Evan Spandos. He journeyed here on my behalf last year. Since I have read nothing from him since, I believe he had been held past the customary time."

"Continue," I whispered, for I suddenly remembered how I had loved to hear her voice.

"I am a frontier rider," she said, boldly. "I have killed twenty greenies with my own hands. And now I ask, in return for my service to the Emperor, that my Evan be released to me. Without him in my heart, I should not be nearly so zealous. So it is for the benefit of the Emperor's armies that he be restored to my side."

"It cannot be done," I said, struggling to disguise my voice.

Her eyes narrowed, but her voice remained even. "Damn the curse and the lawkult, then. I will tear this citadel down until I find him—"

"It is useless," I said. Something in my tone betrayed my true identity. She crouched beside me, stepping without care on the privileged carpets, and reached out to push my hood aside.

"Evan!" she said, her eyes widening. "What have they done to you?"

"They have done nothing." I blinked aside a tear. "I have chosen this."

"You can't be—"

"My love for you was childish," I said. "I used you to complete myself. This duty is—purer. It suits me."

She reached into my robes and found my hands. "I know the stories," she said. "It will kill you."

"Someday," I said.

"You would ask me to stand aside while you destroy yourself."

"I would ask you to do nothing."

She took me by my shoulders and pulled me to my feet. She was stronger than I remembered. "For the last year and a half, Evan, I have awoken with your name on my lips. Everything I did, I blessed with your name. I even slept alone in the winter—do you know what that means, to sleep alone in the outlands on a winter night?" She knelt before me and began taking off her boots. "It cost me two toes, because I thought you would prefer that I sleep alone. Shall I show you?"

"There were never vows between us," I said.

Her face hardened and she stopped struggling with her boot. In that instant, she became a stranger to me.

"No. I suppose there weren't."

She stood and turned away from me and limped from my offices with her shoulders high. My servants say she did not break her stride until she was atop her horse.

I never saw her again.

My sleep was as dreamless as death that night, and has been ever since. Laughter now passes through my heart like wind through a net. Smiles, I mimic from memory. It is the Equiton's heart, sal-Jesic told me. It is how our kind are blooded.

Every morning I say the lawkult's credo: the pain of the judged shall be on the judges, and thus shall pain be diminished. The pride in these words is the last thing in my heart. I know that even when all the other pieces of me are rent by the curse, it shall remain.