Jayama
J Simon
I
It was a good breeze, a warm breeze, a breeze bearing the scents of citrus flowers and overripe fruit, rain-dampened earth and mysterious spices. Sometimes, inexplicably, it carried the scent of the ocean, even though I lived a third of a day’s walk away. All around me spread the heartland of Jayama valley; beyond it came the dense fringe of forest where the inhabited lands stopped; and then came the vertiginous walls of the towering volcanic mountains that formed our island. To the northwest—mountains. To the southwest—mountains. To the east, if you walked far enough to see it—ocean. Jayama valley isn’t the only inhabited part of the island, but it’s the most beautiful. I think. It’s a little hard to say, given that I was sitting on my porch with a bag over my head.
Someone stopped on the path in front of my house. I couldn’t possibly have known who it was—right? I’ve told people, over and over, that I’m not a shaman. I have no special powers, no magic knowledge. Not that they asked, but someone had to put the idea in their heads.
“Hello, Bhagath,” I said.
“How did you know?” he asked, shocked.
I smiled inwardly. I could imagine Bhagath’s face—dark flashing eyes, black hair touched by steely grey, a self-deprecating smile that seemed to come easy to him. And, of course, he was preceded by the powerful scent of the cinnamon that he worked with.
“Lucky guess,” I said mildly. “I’m not all-knowing or anything. What a pain in the ass if I was. Some say that a new eye appears on a sage’s back every time he says something wise. That’s why I try to say so many deeply stupid things. There are some sights the world is better off without.”
“I guess that makes sense.” Bhagath hesitated. “I have to ask, Jatha… why are you wearing a bag over your head?”
“Oh, that?” I said. “Think about this: Starting from my house, there are seventeen waterfalls I can walk to without stopping for lunch. Further, I’m told, being shat upon by such spectacularly stupid birds is an honor when they have such long and beautiful tails. Perhaps I take these things for granted. I was born in Jayama. I’ve lived here all my life. I’ve seen other people come and go—traders, tourists, seafarers, pirates—but I’ve always stayed. How can I know what I have if I never stop seeing it?”
“And now you can’t see anything at all,” Bhagath said, fascinated. “Is it working?”
“It’s terribly exciting. I walked into a table when I crossed the room this morning. Or! Secret assassins hate my shins! Who can say?”
“Even your enemies are better than mine,” Bhagath said ruefully. “I have the feeling, if I ever wore a bag over my head, children would mistake me for a party effigy and beat me with sticks. Farewell, Jatha. See you tonight!”
I listened to the sound of his feet on the path until he’d moved out of sight. I took the bag off my head and went inside, smiling. Pieces of wood were scattered across my workroom, but refused to come together into anything useful, making me grapple with the eternal question of whether the world really needs more chairs. I’ll tell you a secret: I’m not very good at furniture-making. I need help.
A warmth began to seep into my arms and back. Bhagath must be telling everyone the latest stories about Crazy Old Jatha, giving them my words, my doings, my turns of phrase. And those people would tell others, who would tell yet others. In no time, there’d be a hundred people thinking my thoughts and saying my words. Don’t ask why everyone in Jayama acts like a crazy person. Every now and then, when something you do or say catches on, it all becomes worth it.
My vision grew sharper, my mind clearer. A dozen little aches and pains dropped away as the power came over me. When your shadow catches fire, they call it. I looked down at the chair I was working on. Everything was so easy, so obvious. This piece goes here. This piece goes there. Adjust like so. Perfect. And why not weave the slats into a fun little pattern? A screaming skull, say. I wouldn’t normally try anything more complicated than a square, or—if I felt particularly daring—a rhombus, but now… well, now it was the easiest thing in the world.
I emerged from my fugue state, the scowling skull of a cursed pirate chair glaring back at me. Wait. I’d done this on commission, hadn’t I? I really hoped that Melendi liked pirates… or saw the benefit in owning a bizarre, conversation-starting chair. One way or the other.
Glancing out the window, I was startled to see how dark it had gotten. I’ve heard of places where people eat dinner in sad little groups of five or six. Jayama doesn’t share that defect. What better time is there to show off for each other, to perform for each other, to commit deeds ranging from the unforgettable to the unspeakable upon each other? If you make a big impression—wear the clothes that become the new fashion or say the words that become the new catchphrase—your shadow could be aflame for months.
I left my house and turned left, joining the others who were streaming toward the Festival Grounds. All around me, terraces of reddish-orange earth stepped up and down knife-edged hills, each topped by a green swath of carefully tended crops. For a time, the winding path paralleled the lazy, muddy Jayama river. Strangely, the water contained more and larger chunks of ice than usual. My eyes strayed toward the mountains, which rose and joined into the mountain. It towered over the valley, vast and implacable, white-capped with the glaciers that have forever gifted us their ominous splinters.
The river made a sharp turn to the right: I stayed on the path, which turned left and climbed into the forested lands at the foot of the mountain. Moss covered the ground, and lichen-encrusted trees grew so thickly that I couldn’t have strayed from the path if I wanted to. The sound of many voices reached me. I was close, and getting closer. The path twisted once more, and I was there.
Some people say the Festival Grounds should be a sacred place, rarely approached and rarely seen, thus keeping it as wondrous and inexplicable as the day it was first found. Exposure, the thought being, allowing people to get used to it. I’m not so sure. Plenty of trees in Jayama have an orchid or two clinging to their trunks and branches, but the Festival Grounds takes it to a feverish extreme. Quite simply, the canopy overhead was packed solid with them. Orchids—everywhere. Flowers—everywhere. The canopy was an endless, upside-down sea of foaming, fragile, purple-speckled white that waved in the breeze like a strange and scented sky. I just stood there, staring and staring until my eyes ached. A light rain started to fall, but I hardly noticed. There was just too much to see.
“PRANKED!!” bellowed a girl’s voice, just before I was hit from behind by about an ocean and a half of ice-cold water. I spun. Behind me stood Bhagath’s niece Kemmi, a girl of about fourteen, who held a wooden bucket dripping and empty in her hands. Bhagath sprinted over to us, his dark eyes flashing. Several passers-by elbowed each other and grinned, certain they were about to have a show.
“Blug,” I managed, still too surprised to say anything more coherent.
“Kemmi!” Bhagath cried.
“It was a prank!” she said defensively. “Look! Everyone’s laughing! Or they will, later, once they unravel all of the subtleties and figure out how funny it was!”
I wrung water out of my dripping sleeve. “This has gone far enough. Bhagath… are you doing to do something or not?”
“I’m not so sure that’s a good idea,” he said somberly. “I’m a weak man, Jatha. My sister asked me to dress Kemmi, once, when she was little, and I found her reply—’NO!’—so persuasive that I ran around nude for the next quarter-moon.”
“Well, that explains the quarter-moon when I inexplicably went blind every time I saw you,” I mused. “But still—” I shook my sleeve at him. “—don’t you think this demands an answer?”
“Well, of course. But am I really the man to punish her?” he asked dolefully. “Kemmi has outsmarted me before. She says she’s deathly afraid of grown men prancing about in bee costumes, but the last time I tried to punish her by doing so…” He cocked his head to the side. “Let no one tell you that honey can’t taste traumatized.”
“At least swear to savagely beat the one who hit me,” I pleaded.
“What?” Kemmi said, shocked. Bhagath stared at me. Catching his eye, I slowly winked.
“I so swear,” he cautiously said.
“Fine. Since it was water that hit me, you just swore to savagely beat everything that’s… um… wet.” I glanced down at my still-soaked clothes. I looked at Bhagath. With a high-pitched shriek, I sprinted away as the spectators laughed and applauded.
I slowed as I reached the far end of the Festival Grounds. I could feel the creeping warmth that meant that people were talking about me, sharing my deeds, repeating my words. These communal dinners were certainly good for those of us who were facile with words. What of those whose skills lay in other areas?
At the far end of the Grounds, I found Old Dhalmas sitting cross-legged behind a pot that looked like a knotted tangle of necks pointing in every conceivable direction. I stared at it, trying to figure out whether I’d be able to put flowers in it without the world suddenly turning inside-out, only to find that the vase was putting flowers in me. Other people sat behind their own artworks, or craft pieces, or miniature models of the spectacular and unlikely houses they wished they’d been commissioned to build. At the far corner of the Festival Grounds, several squares were marked off on the ground, the people within performing playlets whose towering heights of gasping, wide-eyed drama didn’t affect me at all. I mean, obviously Ghanna was the father, and not any of his six evil twins. How dumb did they think I was?
“Jatha,” said a quiet, amused voice. I turned to see Ireth, Kemmi’s mother and Bhagath’s sister, smiling at me. Her head was backed by a headdress like a great sunburst fan of reeds, with a different flower impaled on the tip of each reed. I wasn’t sure the look would catch on. Then again, I’m not sure I cared.
“Ireth,” I said smoothly. “It’s only proper for Jayama’s sweetest flower to be gifted its second-sweetest, er, um?” My bow went off perfectly, the concealed flower appearing as if by magic in my hand. The effect might have been better if the sad, soggy wad of color that had once been a flower didn’t squish soddenly in my hand and squirt water in her face. Ireth laughed, delighted, and accepted the weird little thing.
“I love it,” she assured me. “I was trying to figure out how to punish Kemmi for what she did to you. Raving on and on about the flower you gave me? Perfect. She still thinks her father is coming back.”
“But he’s not,” I said guardedly, struggling to keep it from sounding like a question.
Ireth’s smile slipped, if only for a moment, then came back stronger than ever.
“You know I was Pirate Queen, right?” she asked.
“So many things make sense, now!”
“Well, I am. Was. That is, I retired. Not voluntarily. The mutiny, I expected. The execution, I savored. What an honor it was, seeing them bring out two thousand warriors, three hundred island mystics, ninety assorted witches and half a dozen elephants to do me in! Getting the elephants out to sea was an even better trick. I escaped, of course. Don’t ask how,” she said cannily. “You’d go mad with wonderment if I spoke even a word of it.”
“You escaped thanks to black pepper up your sleeve and a dazzling new trend you started of wearing kite-shaped cloaks,” I suggested. “You don’t know what sneezing means until you’ve heard half a dozen elephants go off at once!”
“Then again, I’m not sure if anyone would be able to tell the difference if you did go mad,” she mused. “Fine. We’ll go with that.”
“And her father…?” I prompted.
Ireth grinned. “He was a tiny little man with tiny little thoughts, as I eventually realized. I took him out one day with my pirate fleet. Exposed to such amazement and grandeur, he shrank away by comparison until there was nothing left but a speck of dust screaming ‘I’m important!’. Let him try coming back to Jayama. I’ll make him walk the plank, I will!” She glanced sidelong at me. “Anyway, I was looking for you. Come sit with me at dinner.”
“Just you?” I asked, my pulse soaring.
“And Bhagath. And Kemmi.”
“Oh,” I said wryly. “So it’s not about me… you’re just looking for ways to punish her?”
“No, that part comes later when we strip naked and spank each other with dessert.”
“Umble,” I said, blushing.
“Look! Look at your face! I go through all this effort, designing a fascinating new headdress,” Ireth cried, “and you go and turn a universe-shattering shade of red without even trying!”
“I’d be delighted,” I finally managed. “The first part. Eating with you. Please. Yes.”
We walked back across the Festival Grounds, pausing to study the artworks on display, as well as talking to the people who sat behind them. They knew me, of course, by reputation if nothing else. I was Crazy Old Jatha, after all. Ireth, though, knew them, asking about their families, their lives, their aspirations, their hopes. It was instructive to watch. About halfway down, we came to a man sitting behind a still-wet clay model of a house—
“PRANKED!” bellowed his son, leaping out to smash the thing with his fists.
“NOOOO!” screamed the father, waving his hands dramatically. His son laughed rudely and ran off.
“Staged,” I said, making a face. “But for what? Does anyone think that’s funny?”
“See for yourself.”
The boy’s movements grew impossibly smooth, powerful and fast, reflecting a level of power I’ve only felt once or twice in my life. Adults didn’t seem to notice or care what he did, but his fellow youths were taking it all in with wide eyes and barely-concealed grins.
“Huh. I wonder if I could appeal to kids?” I mused. “I suppose I could make a big show out of eating a bug.” I frowned. “Then again, what if that only gave me the power to eat more bugs, faster? I need to think about this.”
We reached an area where many long tables had been set up in rows. Merchants paced back and forth in front of it, eagerly looking for anyone they could sell to. Ireth spotted Bhagath and Kemmi sitting at one of the tables and hurried over to them.
“I’ll be right there, okay?” I called after her. I wandered off into one of the many side galleries in the weird and winding forest tunnels that made up the Festival Grounds. There. I spotted a girl of ten or twelve sitting with her back against a tree, looking bored.
“You,” I said, snapping my fingers at her.
“I have a name,” she said waspishly.
“Congratulations! What an amazing accomplishment. I’m sure you must be very proud. Now—” I made a pass with my hands, and a cinnamon quill appeared in them. “—what would you say to giving me a complete list of all pranks that are currently popular, and which could be performed here, now, today?”
She glanced from the cinnamon to my face. “I’m not sure I like you.”
“Even better! A mere few words, and you can leave me a sad, defeated man, utterly bereft of cinnamon.” I waggled my eyebrows at her. She thought it over, then judiciously reached out to claim her prize.
Once I had the list, which was a mere two or three dozen items long, I worked on thinking up an equally long list of answers to being pranked. Then I made my preparations, buying what I needed from the vendors. Tea leaves up my left sleeve. Dried cane powder up my right sleeve. Bamboo shoots strapped to my left ankle. Mango slices strapped to my right ankle. And more, much more, each hidden in their own unique spots. Why would I go to so much trouble, not even knowing if I’d be pranked again? To put it simply, when a truly insane amount of effort is required to pull off what looks like a tiny, insignificant effect, people generally credit magic instead.
I was halfway back to Ireth’s table when an excited murmur passed through the crowd. Craning my neck, I spotted a line of filthy, exhausted men and women marching into the Festival Grounds. I recognized most of them, though they’d been away on duty for months—and still should be. At a casual guess, more than half of Lake Watch was here… an ominous development if I’d ever seen one.
I glanced up at the great mountain—well, at the dense beflowered canopy which utterly concealed it—and shuddered. High up the mountain, in the lofty realm of glaciers and snow, lurks a tremendous glacial lake. It holds so much water, they say, that if the ice dam ever failed, Jayama would be gone. Just that: Gone, wiped clean, everyone in the valley dead. Could it happen? Optimists point out that we have no record of it ever happening before. Pessimists point out that we have no record of it ever happening before—in records which stop very suddenly about a hundred and thirty years ago. Our compromise is Lake Watch, a rotating roster of folks who spend half-year shifts high in the mountains, watching the lake and the ice dam for any sign of trouble. The theory, I suppose, being that a natural disaster won’t hurt as much if you stare at it for a good long while before it hits you. I’ll have to try that on the next wildfire I come across.
When it became clear that the people from Lake Watch weren’t talking—not yet, at least—I shrugged and moved on. I found Ireth sitting next to Kemmi, with Bhagath across from them. At first, I thought Kemmi and Ireth were sitting snuggled close together in a touching picture of a loving mother and daughter. Then I realized that, no, Kemmi was physically shoving her mother as hard as she could, pushing Ireth all the way to the end of the table so that I couldn’t sit next to her. Shaking my head, I sat next to Bhagath instead. Ireth turned excitedly, waving to someone she knew, and in the process whapped Kemmi in the face with her headdress fan of reeds. Her furtive smile made me wonder how much of an accident it had really been, but let’s keep in mind the important part: Kemmi couldn’t prove anything.
“So. Jatha.” Kemmi looked distastefully at me. “You really don’t have to talk to me.”
“Oh, but I want to talk to you! You’re such a darling little girl,” I gushed.
“Let me rephrase that. Don’t talk to me. Or else.”
“Sorry. Can’t do it. I have too much to tell you! Starting with tales of wonder and joy nearly as lovely at the flowers in your mother’s hair!”
Kemmi groaned. “Is there any way I can shut you up?”
“Nope,” I said pleasantly. “I won’t stop until you’re as full of beauty and sweetness as just one of those flowers.”
Kemmi’s eyes narrowed. “And then you’ll stop? Is that a promise?”
“Huh?” I glanced at her, confused. “Sure. You have my sworn word.”
“Sucker! You didn’t say I had to get the beauty and sweetness from you!” Kemmi snatched a flower from her mother’s hair and popped it in her mouth. Her chewing slowed as the bitter vegetable taste hit her, her eyes narrowing as she realized that I’d just tricked her into eating a flower.
“Yrrh a dehh mahh,” she said darkly.
“It’s only a prank,” I said mildly. “It’s funny.”
Kemmi spat out the flower, her mother watching with dancing eyes. “It doesn’t work that way,” she said sullenly. “A crab pinching a bully is funny. A bully smashing a crab to pieces is tragic. You’re the bully. You’re big and powerful. When I do a prank, it’s deep and philosophical and important. Also hilarious. When you do a prank, it’s just sad.”
I glanced at her, surprised. “That actually makes sense. You’ve really thought this through, haven’t you?”
Kemmi shrugged. “Maybe a little. The other kids make fun of me, sometimes, for really thinking about our pranks… but if you’re just running around smashing things, and you don’t even know why…” She shrugged. “I like to do things that make sense, you know?”
I steepled my hands together. “I have to say, I’m curiously impressed by your willingness to think long and hard about the philosophical implications of the fart noises you make each time I sit down.”
A loud hissing passed through the crowd as people shushed each other. One of the women from Lake Watch was standing next to her table, hands upraised. I squinted. Ketha, wasn’t it? Tall, mid-twenties, mediocre at building boats but a five-time volunteer for Lake Watch. What can I say? Some people like hardship and cold. Some people like licking millipedes, too. Takes all kinds to make a village, I guess, even if they’re demonstrably wrong.
“Things are looking bad,” Ketha said curtly.
“We can’t hear you!”
Grimacing, she climbed atop the table, spread her arms, and raised her voice so that everyone could hear.
“Things are looking bad,” she said loudly and slowly. “Cracks in the ice dam. Water spraying out of seams that weren’t there a season ago. Ice formations we’ve known for decades melting away. We’re calling for a second look. One of you has to come up to the ice dam, and you folks down here have to think about them, focus on them, until their shadow comes aflame like crazy. It’s going to take a lot of power to see through the ice and see what’s really going on.” Ketha shrugged. “Maybe it’s time to panic, maybe it isn’t. We need to find out.”
She climbed down from the table, took her seat, and resumed eating as if nothing had happened. A concerned murmur circulated through the Festival Grounds, but it was Old Dhalmas who finally stood, wincing a little as he pressed a hand to his back.
“I’ll walk to the coast and take word to Lord Droghu,” he said. “First thing tomorrow, I’ll go. I’m guessing he’ll send an expedition up the mountain the next day or two after that. Would that be soon enough?”
Ketha shrugged. “Probably. Dam’s lasted this long. Maybe it’ll last forever. Not sure I’d bet on it, though.”
“Then it’s agreed,” Old Dhalmas said, sitting down.
Ireth turned to me. “Do you think we’re in any danger?” she said, wide-eyed.
“Well, what you have to remember—”
“PRANKED!” screamed a boy’s voice, just before I was hit from behind by about an ocean and a half of ice-cold water. Someone sprinted off behind me. Dozens of people stared at me, mouths agape. No doubt they’d breathlessly report this to everyone who hadn’t seen it. The question was, who would the story be about, and whose name would everyone be repeating? I smiled thinly and pulled over an empty cup. Squeezing the water through the leaves in my left sleeve, I began to make tea.
* * *
The next morning dawned clear and bright. Actually, I’m not sure how it dawned, given that I was still asleep at the time, since I’m sane and not one of those bizarre self-flagellating ‘early risers’ you hear so much about. I was finally woken by the sound of someone knocking loudly on the doorframe of my house.
“Mrrrg?” I managed, lifting my head. It was still fairly dark out. Dark! I waited patiently to transcend to godhood or whatever happens to early risers. I mean, given how smug they are, you have to assume something like that is in the offing. Nothing happened. Well, to be precise, something did happen. The knocking got even louder.
“All right, all right, all right!”
I shrugged on some clothes and dragged myself to the door. Ketha and the others from Lake Watch were on my porch. There was also Old Dhalmas, looking disgustingly healthy for a man his age. Shouldn’t rising this early cause his heart to explode, thus making him dance and flop about in a heartily amusing manner? There was also his daughter Melendi, an intriguing young woman dressed in many colorful scarves. Next to them stood my brother, Ganly the Nameless. Ganly changes his name six times a day in the hopes that one of them will catch on: The actual result, of course, is that no one can remember any of them.
“What is it this morning?” I asked him.
“Sulataqua the Seducer, Lord of Passion and Thief of Hearts.”
“And what did your wife say when you told her that?”
“Once she stopped giggling? I’m not sure. Eventually I got tired of waiting and just left.”
I turned to Dhalmas. “It’s an honor to see you. Truly. Thus, if I threaten to kill you for waking me this early, it’s actually a compliment. I just want the honor of looking at you all the time, once I nail what’s left of you over my bed.”
Old Dhalmas shrugged, unfazed. “We’re on our way to see Lord Droghu, and we need your help.”
“And you shall have it! Leave, and I’ll begin a wildly potent good-luck ritual which involves holding very still while I speak a monotonous, droning chant into my pillow.”
“You’re coming with us,” Ganly said. “You owe me, remember?”
“You’re still going on about that? It washed out, didn’t it?” I said defensively. I turned back to Old Dhalmas. “Why do you need me? I tell funny stories and make crazy chairs. Which part of that is supposed to impress Lord Droghu?”
Old Dhalmas smiled tiredly. “You heard what Ketha said, last night. You know how important it is that Lord Droghu listen to us. We’ve had certain… issues… getting through to him in the past, and you… well, you’re known to have certain pro-Droghu sympathies. Maybe he’ll heed what you have to say.”
I winced. “‘Pro-Droghu sympathies’? Are you referring to that ranting ‘Lord Droghu must die!’ manifesto that The Resistance asked me to copy out for them?”
“You did illustrate the frontispiece with a very pretty dedication, for some reason, to Lord Droghu himself.”
“It was called ‘The Bitter Fruit of Injustice’,” I protested. “I thought it was a treatise on making wine!”
“Nonetheless. We need you.”
I groaned. My reasoning, when the Resistance came to me, had been impeccable: Refusing to help looks bad, but doing work well earns more of it. The obvious solution? Do the work willingly… and poorly! Make their manifesto a laughingstock and a tragedy, and see how quick they’d be to ask again! Who knew it would lead to this?
“Of course,” Old Dhalmas said, “if you want to publicly and openly refuse to help us, we’d be happy to leave… and tell everyone exactly what kind of person you are.”
“That’s blackmail!”
Dhalmas smiled. “Yes,” he said, “it is.”
“Fine,” I said wearily. “I’ll go. Just come back in five or six hours—”
“We’re going now.”
“Good for you! I’m sure all three of the other people who are awake at this obstreperous hour are impressed by your zeal. Go on ahead. I’ll catch up.”
“We’re going now,” Dhalmas said patiently. “You, too.”
I sighed. My shoulders slumped. “The tragedy of the sea-god,” I said wearily, “is that no one can tell when he weeps. The tragedy of being me is that no one cares.”
“You can get your things, if you want. I’ll count to six. Then I start shouting about how you refused to help Jayama.”
I winced. “Could you count to eight thousand? No? Fine. Forty it is.”
Not long afterward, he were hiking along the north road as it gradually curved east and headed toward the sea. For a long while, we passed terraced hills whose ledges of reddish-orange earth foamed over with vigorously growing crops. Old Dhalmas, as always, was a font of bad jokes and creaky old stories I’d been hearing for decades.
“—which is why the potter had a glazed look. Get it?”
“No,” I said, “explain it to me.” And, so help me, he did. I idly wondered why Old Dhalmas couldn’t be bothered to prance about noisily dying. It was terribly inconsiderate, really, the way he insisted on remaining healthy and whole. Meanwhile, Melendi walked a little closer to me, colorful scarves streaming in the breeze as she showed me a hesitant smile.
“You know,” she said, “if I punched you in the nose, people wouldn’t stop talking about it for days. It would be good for both of us!”
“No,” I said flatly.
“Look. There has to be some blood, to get people talking about it, but if you’re squeamish I can throw an extremely small pig at your face, and—”
“No.”
“Well, what if I hit you with a—”
“No.”
Melendi scowled and lengthened her stride, leaving me behind. I found myself walking beside Ganly the Nameless. Odd, how little my brother and I generally have to say to each other.
“Have you figured out what your name will be this afternoon?” I finally asked.
“Don’t know why I even bother changing it,” he said. “It never accomplishes anything… but…” He glanced at me. “What about Shabazak Death-Killer, Lord of Torment?”
“You forgot Fish-Hearted,” I helpfully pointed out.
“Fish-Hearted?”
“Cold, slimy, and devoid of mercy.”
Ganly nodded. “From now on, my name is Shabazak the Fish-Hearted. Remember it.”
Melendi drifted back over to me, her appealing smile half-hidden by a diaphanous sky-blue scarf. “I’ve decided to honor your wishes, Jatha. I’m not going to hit you. I figure pushing you off a cliff will get people talking just as… wait! Where are you going?”
Old Dhalmas looked gratified as I fell in at his side again. “Say,” he said, “have you heard the one about the potter and the pirates?”
“Does it matter what I say?”
“Once upon a time, Yeba the Potter was amazed when a parrot landed on his shoulder and squawked out a most unusual request…”
The path slowly curved, following the Jayama river toward the sea. The land flattened out into a series of gently rolling hills where great groves of cinnamon trees produced our most valuable export. Workers were already out in the groves, tending to the trees or scraping their bark into quills of cinnamon. Still the path went on, the sun climbing higher and higher while Dhalmas cheerfully told his stories. At last, we arrived at the mouth of the Jayama river. There, overlooking the sea, stood the palace of Lord Droghu. Black volcanic stone had been stacked into tall and forbidding walls, but that was only the base of it. Lord Droghu had imported architects and materials at great expense from far-distant lands, and you could track his mercurial interests by looking from left to right. Great domed towers shining with gold gave way to a bristling forest of minarets sparkling a subtle blue-green, followed by straight tall walls of snowy white, and then bulging rounded towers whose tile mosaics boasted every color an orchid has ever bloomed. Old Dhalmas led us to the Great Door. After a brief discussion with the guards, our party was led inside. It wasn’t long before we reached the throne room. It was echoingly large and almost completely empty, save for a handful of courtiers and an equal number of guards. Everywhere I looked was plain stone, illuminated by a few lonely lanterns. I was disgusted. Come on, Droghu! Dangle glass spheres filled with treasure over our heads on chains! Commission paintings of yourself proudly standing over the weird mythical creatures you’d supposedly killed, then hire taxidermists to composite together those exact monsters and pose them on all sides! Get people talking after an audience with you. Do I have to do everything?
The guards led us right up to the throne and then stopped. So, perforce, did we.
“Lord Droghu,” Old Dhalmas said, dropping to one knee and bowing his head. The rest of us quickly did the same, though I stole a peek at our ruler. Lord Droghu was about the same age as me, but his lined and weather-worn face looked older. His expression reminded me of certain sulky children who are good-mannered enough not to throw a tantrum, but want to make it perfectly clear that they’d like to throw a tantrum. In deference to his vast and awesome person, let’s assume that he was suffering some noble form of indigestion far beyond the comprehension of us mere mortals.
“Most people bring gifts,” Lord Droghu said, his rasping voice as rough as his skin. “Where are my gifts?”
Old Dhalmas frowned. “We, uh, offer our deepest and most sincere praise, of course…”
“Praise?” Droghu said. “The last people who petitioned me hired performers that never stopped singing about my greatest deeds. Those petitioners, they really understood how good I’ve been for Jayama. Where are my singers?”
“We beg but a moment of your time,” Old Dhalmas said. He flapped his hand at Ketha. She shrugged impassively, still on her knees, and quickly explained about the troubles at Lake Watch.
“—and so we’re calling for a second look,” she concluded. “We’re calling for someone to come up the mountain—”
“This is stupid,” Lord Droghu said peevishly. “Look at the trade deals I’ve made. Plenty of people thought they could get the better of me. I beat them all, every one. And now you’re trying to make me afraid of a little ice?”
“It makes sense to take another look,” Old Dhalmas said patiently. “The devastation would be overwhelming and inescapable if the ice dam broke…”
“It’ll never break,” Lord Droghu said flatly. “It can’t. Too big. Too strong.”
“A fine statement, and easy enough to prove, my lord. Just send someone to take another look.”
Lord Droghu gazed at him through narrowed eyes. “I see. You’re a boring little nothing who’s found the only way to make people notice him—you run around screaming ‘LOOK AT ME! LOOK HOW IMPORTANT I AM! LOOK AT ME OR YOU’LL DIE!’ You can’t fool me. I’m smarter than that. No one’s going to Lake Watch. No one. The subject is closed.”
The guards half-shoved, half-escorted us out. Old Dhalmas stared at Droghu, his mouth working. Before he could come up with something to say, however, our audience was over.
* * *
It was a little past noon by the time I finally got back to my house. I went inside and stared, uninspired, at a bunch of disassembled pieces on my workroom floor. Really, why does anyone even need a table? The ground’s right there, people! Being flat is practically the only thing it knows how to do!
I’d just about convinced myself it was time to take a break when I noticed movement outside of my window. People were walking along the path—many of them—and they were all going in the same direction: Toward the cinnamon groves and, ultimately, toward the palace. Spotting Ireth, Bhagath and Kemmi, I jumped out the window and hurried over to them.
“Where’s everyone going?” I asked, falling in beside them.
“Didn’t you tell me once that you knew everything?” Ireth said mischievously.
“Putting aside for the moment what I may or may not have implied, suggested, insinuated or intimated, I certainly never said so, explicitly, in words. I mean, it’s not like I’m a magic wizard or something.” I picked my teeth with a sliver of “wood” that was actually steel, and which I scraped against the flint I’d previously tucked into my cheek. I squinted, picked a spot, and spat sparks.
“I tried to learn everything, once,” Bhagath said wryly. “I taught myself the language of birds, given that they go everywhere and see everything.”
“What happened?” I asked, interested despite myself.
“Not much. Birds speak a beautiful language which, I’m afraid to say, contains a grand total of three words, only one of which is fit to say in polite society. Also, I’m fairly sure they were making fun of me most of the time.” His eyes slid over to Ireth. “Like certain sisters I could mention.”
Ireth’s eyes narrowed. “I can conclusively prove that I’m innocent, sweet, and pure.”
“Can you tell me where everyone’s going, first?” I hazarded.
Ireth smiled at her brother, appearing not to have heard me. “Start with the assumption that I’m wonderful and sweet. Obviously, accusing me of malfeasance (ludicrous!) would so completely contradict reality that you’d go insane with horror. And insane people, as we all know, hallucinate constantly. Therefore, every good thing I do is real, and every bad thing I do is a hallucination brought on by your own twisted belief that I’m capable of doing what you’re seeing me do. Therefore, I’m innocent no matter what. Proved!”
“Help?” Bhagath asked me.
“How much money do you have?” I shot back. “I mean, if I were an incredibly powerful secret wizard… which, by the way, no one has ever conclusively disproven… I’d have all kinds of spells against evil that I could sell you.”
“Evil?” Ireth said dangerously. In her latest attempt to innovate a new fashion, she was wearing a hat that was basically just an incredibly tall cylinder of fabric teetering perilously atop her head, and it came close to clobbering me as she leaned in my direction.
“Or annoyance,” I hastily said.
“You have spells to ward off annoyance?” Kemmi asked. “Sounds like an accident waiting to happen. How often do you accidentally banish yourself?”
“Shouldn’t you be spitting down wormholes and shouting ‘PRANKED!’ I said nastily. “Because they’d think it was raining, I mean. The worms. That you were spitting on.”
“Shouldn’t you be limping home on a supposedly sprained ankle?” Kemmi shot back. “Because we’re on our way to depose Lord Droghu. There’s going to be fighting. Maybe killing. Bet your ankle just felt a twinge, huh?”
I blinked. “Wait. Everyone’s on their way to depose Lord Droghu?”
Ireth grinned. “No, no, of course not! Sure, his refusal to let anyone go to Lake Watch was just his latest unforgivable sin, but so what? The people of Jayama are happy friends together, and we’re all going for a lovely picnic by the ocean’s edge. Hooray! The only problem is, I screwed up the invitations and everyone’s bringing the same thing.” She winked hugely. “Knives.”
“And I’ve worked very hard choreographing a fun new dance,” Bhagath said drily, “which looks curiously like we’re throwing rocks at Lord Droghu. I hope he enjoys seeing it, as we intend to show it to him over and over until he runs away crying.”
“But why didn’t anyone tell me?” I asked, puzzled. “Did you tell Ganly?”
“Your brother? Ah…” Bhagath rubbed his neck, looking uncomfortable. “I told someone who looked like Ganly the Nameless, yes, but it was probably his evil twin. I’d certainly never heard the name he told me before.”
“My own brother didn’t tell me what was going on,” I mused.
“Can you blame him?” Ireth said. “Everyone knows about your ‘sympathies’. It’s been a little hard to forget the special illustrated edition of ‘The Bitter Fruit of Injustice’ that you brought out.”
I winced. The Resistance had stopped asking me to copy things for them, yes, but once they learned that I could draw…
“It wasn’t that bad,” I said uncomfortably.
“Which part? The many illustrations of Lord Droghu posing heroically, or the fact that they were all nudes?”
“It’s more artistic that way!”
“Can we please talk about something else?” Kemmi said, making a face.
“That. That’s your problem right there,” I told her. “You lack the up-for-anything drive it takes to do really stupid things, and the sweaty, say-anything desperation it takes to pass them off as wisdom, afterward.”
“Oh, really?” Ireth said, her eyes dancing. “You look desperate enough, Jatha, and pretty sweaty, too. Convince me that your ‘illustrated edition’ was a good thing. I dare you.”
“The Resistance should be down on their knees, thanking me with tears in their eyes!” I insisted. “Who pays attention to a manifesto? Who even remembers it a day later? I made it must-see and completely unforgettable,” I argued. “I knew what I was doing from the start.”
“Huh. That actually makes sense,” Ireth admitted. “All right, I guess I can make you part of the invasion force. How many certain-death suicide missions can I put you down for? Six?”
“What a wonderful idea,” I said cautiously, “but there may be a better way I can help. For one thing, I write deeply inspirational poetry.”
“Poetry,” she said carefully.
“Well, I assume it’s inspirational. Once I subject people to enough of it, they no longer fear death. That’s got to mean something.”
“I wrote a poem, once,” Bhagath admitted. “A memorial for my dear departed uncle. Who promptly rose from the dead, when I started reciting it, expressly so he could come to the funeral and beg me to stop. Puts a man in his place, that.”
We walked in silence for a time, other groups of would-be rebels walking both before and behind us on the path. I glanced at Ireth, at the tube of fabric teetering atop her head, at the whimsical little happy-face tubers I hadn’t noticed dangling from her ears. It didn’t escape me that civil wars aren’t the safest place to be. She could be hurt. She could be killed.
“They don’t need you,” I said quietly. “There’s plenty of folks to carry on the fight without you. You could turn back.”
Ireth’s smile was strangely fragile. “I have a daughter,” she said simply. “When someone threatens her with death, I kill him. It’s what I do. Now, the ice dam might break, or it might not… but when someone threatens my daughter with a chance of death, I guess I throw rocks at him until he goes away.” She smiled radiantly. “It’s just the way I am.”
I glanced at Bhagath. “What about you? Can’t you convince your sister to go home where it’s safe?”
“If I got her to go home, I’d be reducing the chance of the Rebellion working and thereby threatening her daughter with a one-in-sixty-thousand chance of death,” he said morosely. “That’s enough to make her blow her nose at me. Believe me, I keep track.”
“So you can’t stop her,” I said gently, “but what about you? Why are you here?”
Bhagath shrugged. “I guess I should say, ‘because it’s the right thing to do’—and really, it is—but I have a sister who’ll go with or without me, and a niece, too. I love them. If anything I do helps us win faster, it’ll reduce the risk to them.”
I nodded slowly. “And what about your daughter?” I asked Ireth. “If this is all about protecting Kemmi, why let her come?”
“Oh, I tried to stop her,” Ireth said, smiling ruefully. “That’s the thing about owning a child. This whole ‘will of their own’ thing pops up way too often. The third time I caught her sneaking out, I realized that I could let her come with me… or have her sneak off alone. She’s safer with me.”
I looked at Kemmi, who avoided my eyes. There was something going on there. Why had she worked so hard to sneak out?
“So you’re eager to join the rebellion?” I asked. “Why?”
“I heard that Droghu was full of candy,” she snapped.
“Uh-huh.”
“Plus,” she said, as if she’d just thought of it, “ if I’m the first to prank him, afterward, they’ll never stop talking about me!”
“Sure.”
Kemmi reddened. “Why do you care, anyway? There’s going to be fighting and pain, Jatha. Scary! Isn’t it time for you to hurt your ankle and turn back? Or! This one’s for free. Go off in the bushes, count to six, and start crying. You can tell us you hurt yourself peeing and need to stay behind, lying face-down so it doesn’t swell up and explode. Plausible!”
“That’s pretty good—and I reserve the right to use it, later—but I’m going to see this out,” I said, a little surprised to hear the words come out of my mouth.
Ireth glanced at me, intrigued. “You are? Why?”
I struggled to put what I was feeling into words. “Years ago, I stood at the very edge of a cliff with nothing under my toes but the rain, and stared across the sea until tears of awe streamed down my face.” I shrugged irritably. “I don’t know. Something about it seemed important. Sometimes that picture comes to me when I’m struggling with a chair or mangling some dumb joke, and I wonder what I’m doing with my life. Not often. But sometimes. And this rebellion… this is important. This is meaningful. If I let this pass me by, if I run away from it…” I grimaced. “Well, I don’t know. I’m here, all right? Isn’t that good enough?”
“Yes, Jatha. It is. Thank you.”
We went on, sometimes talking and joking, sometimes walking in silence. Kemmi was acting a little strange, I thought, but I didn’t want to press the issue while her mother was around. It wasn’t until Ireth dashed off to make use of the bushes and Bhagath fell behind arguing with a pair of raucous birds that I was able to confront her about it.
“You know, I’d be interested to know why you’re really here,” I said casually.
Kemmi glared sullenly at me. “Leave me alone.”
My normal reaction to being ordered around is to smile inscrutably and do absolutely nothing—for days, if need be—until the other person gets nervous and goes away. That didn’t seem like the best strategy at the moment.
“You don’t have a bucket of water or worms or whatever for pranking Droghu,” I reasoned. “I’ve seen you throw rocks, and we both know you don’t have much to contribute in that area. So what is it, really?”
“I’ll tell Mom you made me cry,” Kemmi said ominously. “Just imagine what she’ll do to you.”
Now that was a daunting thought, but I tried not to show it. “What harm could there be, telling me what you’re up to?” I said persuasively. “I swear not to tell anyone. And who knows, I might even be able to help you.”
“No deal.”
“Fine,” I said, shrugging. “Too bad. I guess I’ll just cling to you closer than your shadow, and give you an unrelenting dose of ‘inspirational’ poetry the whole time.”
“Don’t you threaten me!”
“So talk.”
Kemmi looked me up and down, a calculating look in her eyes. “Well… you are bigger than me… and you could carry a lot…”
“Kemmi?”
She glanced around to make sure that no one would overhear. “Listen,” she said quietly. “If Lord Droghu is deposed, there’ll be one precious moment after his guards are gone, but before the new lord has catalogued his treasury. We can take whatever we want, and no one will ever know!”
“Huh,” I said thoughtfully. “It’s not a terrible idea. You think being rich will make you happy?”
“Who knows? Maybe I’ll be miserable. I think I’m rather brave for risking it. So, you want six percent for carrying everything I can load you up with?”
“I… need to think about this.”
“Fine. Just don’t tell anyone.”
I nodded unhappily. I didn’t see how she could pull off her scheme, but given the promises I’d made, how could I stop her from trying?
Ireth rejoined us, and—after a while—so did Bhagath. Kemmi tossed jokes and insults around as though nothing had happened. I rubbed my brows, thinking hard, trying to figure out what I should do.
* * *
It was late afternoon by the time we arrived at the palace. The day was clear, the sky blue. A sizeable mob milled in front of the Great Door, unsure what to do next. There were guards atop the walls, but they merely stood there and shot the occasional worried glance at us. It wasn’t like Lord Droghu to show restraint: If I had to guess, they’d probably failed to notify Droghu what was going on. After all, if he ordered them to murder their own siblings, it might make going home to dinner with Mom and Dad just a little awkward.
“Now what?” I asked Ireth. She grinned at me.
“Now, Master Jatha, we rally behind our great leader as she absorbs our adulation, raises power until her shadow catches fire, and becomes invincible!”
“Makes sense,” I said approvingly. “How do you test people to find out whether they’re truly invincible—stab them with knives, and see whether it bounces off or goes in? I like it! Whether you end up with a live hero or a dead martyr, either way, you win!”
“I like the way you think,” she purred. “But never let it be said that I’m not the very heart of fairness and generosity. You, Jatha, can be our first martyr. Ahem. I mean ‘hero’. Go ahead! Dance around, tell some jokes, and I’ll stab you in the nuts to see just how invincible you are. One way or another, we’re going to see something funny!”
“Have you been talking to Melendi?” I asked suspiciously.
Before she could answer, someone shouted for silence, calling the mob to order:
“Eyrah! Eyrah will be our hero! Eyrah will lead the way!”
Eyrah Dreamer-of-Beasts was a woman of about my own age: Stately, respected, and usually dressed as an animal, she was well-liked and much imitated. Today, she was dressed as a lynx. There aren’t any such animals in Jayama, of course, but everyone knows that the lynx has amazing eyesight, a fact she’d represented by giving it more than two eyes. A lot more. Her outfit was furry, and there were definitely ears on it, but it was hard to see anything else under the vast preponderance of eyes. Every time she moved, a couple dozen vaguely shocked, staring eyeballs popped off and bounced on the ground.
“Friends and allies!” cried Eyrah Dreamer-of-Beasts, “too long have we suffered under the tyranny of Droghu! Today is the day we must FIGHT!”
“Right. And I’m the man to do it,” rumbled the unmistakable bass of Big Vath as he stepped out of the crowd. He’s about a head taller than anyone else, yet is so youthful of face and soft of body that he doesn’t come across as threatening. Even so, everything about Big Vath is more, especially to hear him tell it.
“I’ll take it from here,” Big Vath told Eyrah Dreamer-of-Beasts. “Who’s big enough to break that wall? ME! Hell, I break people by accident half the time I shake their hands. Imagine what I could do if I did it on purpose!”
Eyrah snorted. “Do we really want a leader so clumsy he breaks people by accident? We need someone clever, capable, competent. By uniting behind our chosen hero and champion—”
“Aw, you’re cute,” Big Vath said, amused. “Itty-bitty and dressed like… a mouse, I want to say?… but a fight wants a big, strong champion. That’s me. I pick my teeth with castle stones. That’s what we’re wanting, here.”
I grimaced. Neither Big Vath nor Eyrah Dreamer-of-Beasts appeared willing to step down in favor of the other—and with the two of them going at each other instead of promoting themselves, neither was raising very much power. The rebellion, such as it was, was in grave danger of failing.
I stole a glance at Ireth. Could we sneak home and pretend nothing had ever happened? I doubted it. What kind of life would it be, waiting for Lord Droghu to hunt down and destroy those who had opposed him? No. We had to win, and we had to win today.
Someone touched my arm. Looking around, I saw Melendi standing just behind me.
“No,” I said automatically.
“But you haven’t even heard my latest idea!” she said, exasperated. “You get to punch my pig! See? That makes you virile and manly. It also justifies me punching you! And once people hear about the unusually large amounts of blood, we won’t be able to stop them from talking about us! We both win! Well, except for my pig. And your nose.”
Who could lead us? I looked at Eyrah Dreamer-of-Beasts and Big Vath. Still at each other’s throats. No good. Ireth wasn’t well enough known. Bhagath wasn’t well enough liked. I wasn’t trusted, especially by those who only knew me as “Crazy Old Jatha”. Old Dhalmas was a possibility, but I didn’t know where he was. And that left—
“Address the crowd,” I quietly told Melendi.
“What?” she said, startled. “I can’t—”
“I’ll tell you what to say. Just get their attention.”
“Jatha—”
“This’ll be huge for you, I promise. You’re going to be our hero.”
Melendi looked at me, bemused. Then she turned, waving her hands and shouting for attention.
“Hey. HEY! LISTEN TO ME!” She paused as I whispered in her ear. “I will be your hero!” she shouted. “I will lead you! I’m cleverer than Eyrah and stronger than Big Vath!”
“Stronger than me?” Big Vath demanded.
“I’ve seen you lift boulders, tree trunks, even whole houses. Pathetic,” Melendi said, pausing as I continued to feed her lines. “But I’ll tell you what. I’ll choose something, and whichever of us can hold it the longest will win the other’s support.”
“Ha!” Big Vath cried. “It’s a deal!”
“Fine! In that case, I choose breath. Let’s see who can hold theirs the longest!”
Big Vath just stood there, his nose flaring as a huge amount of air blew in and out. Finally he smiled. “All right,” he said mildly. “You got me.”
“But not me,” said Eyrah Dreamer-of-Beasts. “Do you really think you’re smarter than me?”
“Let’s find out.” Melendi paused as I continued whispering. “I’ll play the Riddle Game against everyone here, one by one. You can have everyone who beats me, or everyone I beat. Your choice.”
Eyrah looked thoughtful. “I don’t think you’re that smart. I’ll take everyone who beats you.”
Melendi turned to the crowd. “Listen. Listen! If we’re divided, we will fall! But we can unite our forces… if every one of you loses the Riddle Game to me on purpose! Try hard, and we’ll be split in two, and we will fall. Lose on purpose, and every last one of us will be united on my team, and we will win! The choice is yours.”
Big Vath looked amused. He stepped in front of Melendi.
“I concede,” he rumbled. “Whoops. I lose. Guess I’m on your team, huh?”
“I concede,” I told her.
“I concede,” Ireth said merrily.
“Fine,” Eyrah Dreamer-of-Beasts said irritably. “I concede, too, if that’s how it’s going to be.”
I stepped back, given that I was no longer needed. Melendi swung into a typical rah-rah rally-the-forces speech. Now that there was only one person vying for attention, winning the crowd over was easy. People started to cheer her, excitement passing like wildfire through the crowd. Melendi looked pleasantly surprised as the power came over her and her shadow caught fire.
“—the time has come at last!” she concluded. “Too long have we worked for free: Let FREEDOM work for US!”
The crowd screamed their approval. Her face flushed, Melendi strode over to the palace wall. The guards watched, but still didn’t do anything. Choosing her spot, Melendi threw her fist at the unmarked, pure white surface. It broke, badly dented. She flung her fist at the wall over and over again, moving with inhuman speed as she pounded a sizeable indentation in the smooth white surface.
“DOWN WITH DROGHU!” she bellowed, kicking the battered plug. It broke free, ripping a roughly door-sized opening in the wall. The crowd screamed their approval and poured through the gap, following her into the palace.
Ireth came up to me, her eyes dancing with excitement. “I saw you whispering into Melendi’s ear. You did this, didn’t you?”
I staggered. “Who, me? Do I look like the sort of person who would take dangerous personal risks?”
“That depends. Dancing a Melendi-shaped puppet around and counting how many arrows she got shot with afterward, that’s a personal risk?”
“If might be, if it was my grandmother’s puppet I was dancing around. I have a real emotional attachment to that thing.”
“All right, all right. Come on—let’s go!”
Ireth and I were the last two inside. I found myself in an unfamiliar wing of the palace, which was just as empty and plain as the part I’d seen before. So disappointing. Come on, Droghu! At least get muscular men to press their buttocks into the plaster as it dries. You know. Make people think.
We followed the mob this way and that and emerged, quite unexpectedly, in the throne room. Lord Droghu stood at bay, hiding behind a small cluster of guards and courtiers.
“KILL THEM!” he screamed, but his personal guards didn’t move. They didn’t even draw their battle knives. What could they hope to accomplish? There were a lot more of us than there were of them.
“Stand aside,” Melendi demanded.
The guard captain ruefully shook his head. “I took an oath, you know, an oath to protect his life. A man who doesn’t keep his word doesn’t have anything.”
“What if we promise not to kill him?” I suggested. “Would your oath be fulfilled then?”
The guard captain smiled. “I suppose it would,” he said, stepping aside.
“STOP!” Droghu screamed. “COME BACK! I COMMAND YOU!”
The few remaining courtiers, finding themselves unguarded, bleated in fear and abandoned him.
“COWARDS!” Droghu screamed. “COME BACK AND FIGHT!”
Ireth nudged me in the side. “I can’t decide whether this is hard to watch, or fascinating to watch,” she murmured.
“I vote for fascinating. Lord Droghu is incredibly funny. He just can’t stop telling jokes.”
“You’ve got to be kidding!”
“Why don’t we make a bet? A nice lunch, say?”
“You’re on!”
“GET HIM!” Melendi howled. The mob surged forward, grabbing Lord Droghu and struggling to pull him free as he desperately clung to his throne.
“YOU CAN’T DO THIS TO ME!!!” he screamed.
“See?” I told Ireth. “Silly potentate. Listen to him, saying that they can’t do what they’re doing at the exact moment they’re doing it. If that isn’t a delicious bit of irony, I don’t know what is.”
“Agreed. You don’t know what is,” Ireth said merrily.
“I AM LOVED—LOVED!” Droghu howled as his grip gave out and many hands carried him to the window. “LET GO OF ME RIGHT NOW, OR EMBRACE YOUR OWN DEATH!”
“Get it?” I said, elbowing her.
“Get what?”
I rolled my eyes. “People like hugs. And an embrace, obviously, is just a hug that uses too many fancy words. He’s inviting all of us to give Death a great, big, comfy hug! If that’s not a howler of a joke, I don’t know what is.”
“Agreed,” Ireth said, smiling obscurely. “You don’t.”
“YOU CAN’T DO THIS TO ME!!!” Lord Droghu shrieked, going back to the classics as the mob counted one-two-HEAVE! and threw him out the window. To judge from his incoherent shrieking, the bushes outside the window must have had thorns.
“Well, I guess you win the bet, then,” I said mock-regretfully. “I’ll have to take you to a nice, expensive lunch you may or may not feel obligated to repay me for, later.”
“Wait,” Ireth said, realization dawning.
If she said anything else, it was drowned out by the cheering, laughing, celebrating crowd. It took a while for all the shouting and teary-eyed jumping around to die down. Once it did, people started to exchange uncertain glances, unsure what they were supposed to do now.
“All hail Lord Bhagath?” Ireth hazarded.
“Oh, no!” he protested. “You’re not doing that to me! I may have forgiven you for training your dog to snap up treats the exact shape and texture of my nose, with predictably hilarious and/or tragic results, depending on your identity and outlook… but this is a step too far!”
“Do you really have a choice?” she said menacingly.
“Jatha! Help!”
I sighed, but Bhagath was my friend—and I doubted he could rally everyone behind him, anyway. I stepped forward to address the crowd.
“I have no power to predict the future, no magic knowledge of everything that is or ever will be,” I told the crowd. “For example, if you make him our new Lord, Bhagath will almost certainly not trip out of his robes and flop around naked in front of everyone, thus forcing him to order a mass execution in order to preserve his dignity. Making him Lord will not lead to the horrible and untimely death of every single person who chose him.” I laced my hands together in front of me. “Probably.”
“All hail Lord Dhalmas?” someone suggested.
“Do we need a lord?” Old Dhalmas hastily said. “There are ways to delegate power to the people themselves. It’s been done before. In the Union of the Archipelagos, for example, before… well, before everyone started eating each other. But if we write the rules better, that won’t happen here!”
People settled down to discuss what should go into the founding charter of New Jayama. A little bored, I looked around—then looked again, frowning. Kemmi was nowhere to be seen. I glanced at Ireth and Bhagath, but they were both watching with evident fascination as the rules of the new government were written. They didn’t notice a thing as I slipped silently out of the room.
* * *
The palace seemed abandoned, though it was hard to tell since it was so dark. The servants had evidently run off without bothering to refill any of the lanterns. How selfish can you be? Don’t looters deserve light, too?
I hurried up one hall and down another. Every one of them was featureless and plain. Would it have killed Droghu to make his home a little more interesting? You could seal a corridor with tumbled stone as if the ceiling had collapsed, and behind it install bellows that sounded like the slow, even breathing of some vast, stygian beast. There. Was that so hard?
I slowed down, spotting a tiny door hidden in the shadows. I opened it and cautiously poked my head inside. An extremely narrow corridor stretched in front of me, crossed by countless others. This had to be the network of quasi-secret passages that Droghu’s servants used to materialize wherever they were needed. I guess the Quality prefer living in a haunted palace where things just happen, to actually having to share their hallways with disgusting, filthy commoners like me. I went back to fetch one of the few lanterns that was still burning, took a deep breath, and stepped inside.
The network of half-width corridors seemed to wind through every part of the palace. I didn’t see any sign of a treasury. Wherever Droghu kept his money, it was well hidden. After a while, I stumbled into a much larger room with peepholes built into the wall. Choosing one, I found myself looking into the throne room, where Old Dhalmas and many others were still working on Jayama’s founding charter. Presumably there was a hidden door nearby, so that servants could bring food—or soldiers rush in with battle knives drawn. I paused. This room was kind of hidden, yet was close to the throne: If Droghu wanted to hide something, this wouldn’t be a bad place to put it. The question was, where should I look?
I turned in a slow circle. On the wall behind me was a painting that stretched from floor to ceiling, depicting a pirate ship manned by curiously foppish dogs, perhaps the only piece of decoration I’d seen in the entire palace. I frowned thoughtfully. Why would Droghu put something decorative where only servants would see it? Unless it was something more than just decoration?
I carefully pulled on the left side of the painting. Nothing. When I pulled on the right side, though, it hinged open. Beyond was a plain stone corridor which went straight for a dozen paces, then hooked hard to the right. I stepped inside and springs pulled the painting shut behind me. I raised my lantern, squinting into the darkness.
“Who’s there?” came Kemmi’s echoing voice. “I can explain! Also, don’t come any closer. This whole place is—”
I strode around the corner. I had one moment to stare at the sight of Kemmi’s head poking out of an otherwise solid floor, and then I was plunging through stone-looking quicksand. My arm flailed, and burning oil spewed from the lantern and spattered the wall. I had just enough time to see ripples disturbing some, but not all, of the watery “floor”, and then I was mired neck-deep next to Kemmi under the cover of near-total darkness. Ah. Of course. There must be stepping-stones… and presumably Droghu alone knew where it was safe to walk.
“Find lots of treasure?” I asked politely, since it’s a byword among the fashionable and well-mannered that you can’t go wrong by taking an interest in your companion’s interests. In the meantime, I struggled to move my arms. I could move back and forth a little, but it was hard to make any real progress. It looked like I was going to need help getting out of here.
“I told you not to come closer,” Kemmi snapped.
“While we were on our way to the rebellion, you also told me to go stick my head in a volcano,” I pointed out. “I think we can assume that I obeyed, thus dying and allowing my evil twin to take my place. You murdered the you-trusting Me and left alive only the Me who ignores everything you say. Thus, I think we can conclusively prove that this is all your fault.”
The last flickering fire went out, leaving us in total darkness.
“You’re not helping,” Kemmi said, in the unnaturally calm tones of someone who’s gone so far into hysteria that she’s come out the other side again. “Can you get me out of here or not?”
“Oh, that’s all you want?” I said negligently. “Easiest thing in the world. Just start screaming, and someone will eventually come along and save us.”
“But I won’t get any treasure if—” Kemmi stopped. I could almost see her looking suspiciously at me. “Wait. Technically, if we started flicking boogers at each other, someone would eventually come along and save us. The amount of time that passes is the determining factor, not what we do to fill that time.”
“My statement is still a true statement,” I said placidly. “I never said that screaming would cause someone to come. Just that, after you’d screamed for a sufficiently long period of time, someone would come.”
“You’re horrible and I hate you. Also, hold your hands together like a basket. Maybe I can use that as a step up.”
“I don’t think—”
“Too late! Trying it!”
I hastily complied. Maybe it would have worked if we’d had light; what actually happened was that Kemmi kicked me in the crotch repeatedly. I think her apologies were genuine.
Time passed. I tried to think of a way out, hoping that intellect and experience would somehow overcome the disadvantage of being totally blind. Kemmi struggled to pull her arms out of the mire, but couldn’t get more than one at a time. We finally stopped moving and just stood there, waiting for someone to find us.
“When they come,” Kemmi said hesitantly, “maybe we can convince them that we ran straight here to guard the treasury?”
“A wonderful idea!” I said supportively. “Telling your Mom that your hand was in the candy jar because you were afraid that MONSTERS were going to steal it—works every time!”
“Stop being condescending!”
“Counterpoint,” I said, and made a rude noise with my mouth.
By the sound of it, Kemmi struggled to get at me, at least for a moment, but she gave up all too soon. When she spoke again, her voice sounded too tired for tears. “This is hopeless, isn’t it?”
“Well, you got me stuck here,” I said encouragingly. “That’s a prank, sort of.”
“Sure, but it’s not a good one,” she mused. “I mean, pranking people, it’s about being loud and brash and confident and sticking it to the grown-ups.” She sighed. “Maybe I got you, but I got myself, too. That means my friends would laugh at me as much as you. Maybe more.”
“You’ve really given this pranking thing some thought, haven’t you?”
“Yup,” Kemmi said, sounding amused. “I guess that’s another reason I’m so bad at it.”
We fell silent for a time. It wasn’t completely impossible to find purchase against the heavy, wet sand: I tried to slowly and laboriously swim to the left, but it was impossible to see whether I was making any progress.
“What do you think they’ll do when they find us?” Kemmi said quietly. “It’s not just looting they could accuse us of. It’s stealing the collective property of Jayama itself. We’ve offended against everyone.”
“We?”
“Me,” Kemmi whispered, her voice barely audible. “You’re right. I have to take the blame, don’t I?”
“You’d do that?” I said, surprised.
“Jatha—” I could almost hear the tears in her voice. “I’m young. I have time. My reputation can recover. Could yours?” She laughed, the slightest shadow of a breath. “Counting by dog years, you’re older than the universe.”
“I’m an adult,” I said uncertainly. “Doesn’t that mean I have a duty to protect you?”
“I’m an adult, too. Well, that’s what I keep telling people. Maybe I can finally prove it.”
I stared at the wall, unsure what I should say or do. Suddenly, light spilled around the corner as someone opened the painting.
“—right where his servants said it would be,” came Old Dhalmas’ voice. “According to them, we need to be careful not to fall into the—”
Dhalmas rounded the corner and stopped, the lantern in his hand swaying. My brother Ganly was right behind him, and Bhagath, and a handful of others. They stared down at our two heads studding the seemingly innocent floor. I smiled back. Kemmi averted her eyes.
“What’s going on?” Old Dhalmas managed.
“Fine,” Kemmi breathed, her eyes tightly closed. “I’ll tell you. Just… let me be the one to tell Mom, all right? So she doesn’t have to hear it from someone else?”
“Tell her what?”
“Why, that she tried to stop me, of course,” I was astonished to hear myself say.
“What?” Bhagath asked.
“What?” Kemmi echoed, her eyes flying open.
I showed them my most winning smile. “I guess I was just too wise for my own damn good. It turns out that leading a life of blameless asceticism doesn’t make avaricious thoughts go away—it just bottles them up until they grow stronger and stronger and finally burst free. Much like vegetarians eventually erupt in a murderous bloodlust, strangle a cow with their bare hands, and devour it raw in a single sitting—”
“Wait, what?” Bhagath demanded.
“—the realization that the treasury was unguarded sent me into a screaming avarice-frenzy, possessed of an unstoppable need to own everything. Kemmi alone realized what I was doing. She followed me here. Quite selflessly, she tried to stop me, and, well… here we are.”
“Kemmi?” Old Dhalmas demanded. “Is that true?”
Kemmi looked searchingly at me. I showed her only my smile.
“Yes,” she reluctantly said. “I guess it is.”
Old Dhalmas looked grim. “I don’t know, Jatha. The laws regarding looting are… not forgiving. You didn’t actually take anything, so there won’t be any official charges, but we can’t stop people from talking about this. Your reputation might never be the same.”
“I understand.”
Bhagath and several others worked to haul Kemmi out of the quicksand. After a brief discussion as to whether they should even bother, they helped me out, too. Kemmi couldn’t meet my eyes. I just kept smiling, unsure whether I’d done right, unsure what I could do or say to put my life back together. Soaking wet and caked in sand, I was escorted out of the palace. People stared at me as I passed, whispered rumors spreading faster than flame as they gossiped about my not-so-secret shame. Tired and cold, I set out for home.