An Elegy of Heroes

by K. S. Villoso

  He felt a familiar pain, long forgotten, and without really thinking about it glanced at Moon in a silent plea for her to take him away from all of this. She complied, taking his arm. Nobody stopped them. Bannal remained staring into his cup of coffee, his eyes burning blue. It was only much later on that Kefier realized how much he looked like a Dageian.

  Chapter Two

  Last week, Sume had been a cook, a dishwasher, and an occasional errand girl serving on a Kag ship. That, coming from a simple village girl from Akki, had been overwhelming enough. Sume knew no less than ten women from her hometown who would have jumped at that opportunity.

  Tomorrow, she would be wed to a Gasparian lord. A concubine, true, but wed all the same. The older women assured her it was a great honour.

  Sume felt a great disconnect, this leap from one to the other. And it wasn’t as if they’d waited for her opinion on the matter. She could still recall how that serving girl, the one with eyes like fire, had showed up in her room the morning after the dinner party and told her that the old lord wanted her in his bed. She hadn’t even known how to reply to that, let alone know what to think. The woman insisted that she had no choice—it was all up to Ylir. Apparently, by Gasparian law, he owned her.

  That had been when the whole situation still felt comical. Now...

  Now, she was sitting in front of a mirror while two veiled servants worked out the knots in her hair, wondering what her father would think. Lord Mhagaza seemed to regard him as sort of a hero, a daring warrior with a heart of gold. She couldn’t wrap her head around that. She’d heard things, growing up, but she had never even really considered that her decrepit father was Goran Kaggawa. That the same man who would be found vomiting in the neighbour’s potted plants was the same man who could kill a man with a flick of his dagger. That face in the mirror—that eighteen-year-old staring back at her with haggard eyes—if she really was Goro Kaggawa’s daughter, shouldn’t she have come up with a brilliant plan to escape by now? They said Goro had no less than five tricks up his sleeve at all times. And furthermore, since her father was this famous youngest member of the Seven Shadows, shouldn’t she be completely revolted? She shouldn’t be sitting here right now, considering if maybe this wasn’t the right choice for her family. Concubines were allowed to hold land, they said. They were given salaries. It was all right to send it to her family, should she so choose.

  It was pitiful. But then, so was that look in Dai’s eyes when he admitted he’d stolen something, the one that had threatened to break her heart. No matter how hard I work, even if my fingers bleed, I could never earn enough coin to take that look away. Her brother killed men. Her brother, writing to her that one night six months after he’d left, had said, “I still see his blood on my hands every time I close my eyes. It made me sick, sinking that knife. I couldn’t stop thinking about him, if he had a family, what he did for a living. I wanted to say I was sorry. I was doing this for my family, too. Someday when you get older you might ask me if there were other options, and why I didn’t take them. And I’ll tell you, it’s because I couldn’t risk it. I couldn’t risk your lives against my pride.”

  Dear goddess of the high seas, she was actually considering this.

  She got up and took a quick draught of the tea the women had left on the table. It tasted faintly of peppermint and did a lot to calm her nerves. She smiled at them, and they left. Once they did, she bolted the door, and without really thinking about it opened the window and jumped down.

  It wasn’t as dangerous as she imagined it to be. Gasparian architecture demanded alcoves every couple of feet or so, and so it was almost like descending stairs in the darkness. She felt her heart hammering in her chest. If she could make it past the stables, maybe she could make it all the way back home. Maybe. It was difficult to say, and it was too dark for her to even think coherently.

  She’d gone ten steps, maybe twenty, when she heard someone clearing his throat behind her. She whirled and came face-to-face with Ylir. She knew it was him even though it was too dark to see. His scent, probably. That thought made her cheeks hot.

  “I thought you left,” she said, before he had the chance to say something first.

  He coughed. “And I thought you were smart enough not to do this. You do know what happens if one—especially a woman—offends a Gasparian lord, do you not? It involves tickling and swords, and it’s not as fun as it sounds.”

  “I wasn’t escaping. I wanted fresh air.”

  “Fresh air,” he said. There was a note of humour in his voice. “Here? You can do so much better. The air here smells like horse dung and desert sand.”

  “I don’t have much of a choice, master. Not that I did with anything else.”

  “Look, about that—” He sighed, and she drew back, feeling his hand on her shoulder. “I wasn’t expecting that. I brought you there as a—companion. Something to make me stand out against the backdrop. I knew Mhagaza was interested in the Seven Shadows, but I didn’t realize he would take the kind of interest he did with you. By the time he approached me, it was too late.”

  “Too late?” she breathed. “That’s the best excuse you can come up with?”

  “You want me to state the obvious then? If I had backed out, we’d both be dead. You’ve already thought this through. You know what he’s offering you is better than anything you could ever have back in Jin-Sayeng.” He sounded frantic, which was unlike him and made her want to push him over a ledge.

  “It’s cold,” she conceded. “I’m going back to my room.” She started to climb back up and heard him following her. He followed her all the way through the window. She realized, from the way he was dressed, that he’d only just arrived. He was still wearing his riding boots and cloak.

  “I mean, seriously,” he said, slumping on her bed as if he belonged there. “What was your best prospect back home? That merchant’s son you were always with? What he would have given you was hardly any better than where you were.”

  Sume bit back her desire to smother him with a pillow and glanced back out into the night. “Tetsung was a friend. A kind one. One I wouldn’t have in this place, if I stayed here.” She swallowed. “This isn’t the kind of life I expected to have.”

  “Oh?” he asked. “And what kind of life was that?”

  She couldn’t even meet his eyes. “I don’t know,” she conceded. “A quiet enough life. I must’ve dreamt, as a child. I stopped dreaming when my mother died.”

  He was quiet for a moment. “Your mother,” he finally said. “Was it that woman they were talking about, back there?”

  “Maybe.” She shrugged. “I knew she wasn’t born in Akki. That she had no family left. I also know that I found her hanging dead from the kitchen rafters when I was little. One usually does not consider such a thing a happy ending.”

  “Oh,” he said again. He ran his hands through his hair. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

  “Of course you didn’t. You’re just a man.” She wanted to strangle him, now. That would be more satisfying than merely smothering him. She sat down at the other end of the bed. “You better leave.”

  “Probably.” He laughed, then. “Can’t imagine what Mhagaza’s men will do to me if they find me here. I’ve heard stories.”

  “Have you?” She was still holding it in. “You could’ve warned me.”

  “I didn’t want to scare you.”

  She laughed. “In case you haven’t realized by now, I don’t scare easy.”

  “No, you don’t,” he agreed. And then he was quiet again. She found the courage to turn to him. This man, whose stature and bearing had intimidated her back on the ship, now seemed so young. His hair was in disarray, there was stubble on his cheeks, and his shirt looked slept in. She suddenly remembered something, and before she knew it she’d reached out to touch his shoulder.

  He turned to her, his eyes angry, and she quickly pulled away. Her fingers burned. She didn’t understand. If he was so convinced that their situation was irrepa
rable, then why come here at all? Did he mean to offer her comfort? Or did he want to convince himself that she was happy, or about to be, or at least not entirely miserable with her situation?

  Men, she admitted, were idiots.

  She wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. She was eighteen, by the spirits and the goddess or whatever it was out there that could hear her out here. Choices, unfortunately, had never been part of her life. She closed her eyes and prayed for Dai to understand what she was about to do. Spirits and goddess protect him, shield him from life a little longer yet. She was probably never going to see him again.

  When she opened her eyes, she saw Ylir kneeling next to her. He had one hand on her knee. She felt the heat rush to her cheeks. The door was still bolted and it was very late. There was no reason for anybody to come knocking for her at this hour, not when she was supposed to be wed tomorrow. Why in Sakku’s name am I thinking like this? She felt him rise a little, leaning forward, lines of tension running along his jaw, and did not know why she felt powerless to stop him.

  His lips met hers as she fell back against the bed. Everything felt slow, and the taste of him was—she couldn’t explain it, her mind was blank. She felt his hands slide up her neck and he pulled away long enough to graze his lips right where his fingers encircled her skin.

  “Let me make this up to you,” he murmured.

  She woke up. Pushed him off, just as he was starting to play with her dress. “You better leave,” she said.

  He looked confused. A child, she thought, getting angry—he was nothing more than a child. She straightened her clothes, got up, and pointed at the window. “Leave. Now.”

  “They won’t catch us,” he said, finally gathering his wits about him. “I’ll seal the door. For all they know—”

  “Sakku, it’s like you have straw in place of brains. Get out. I mean it. I don’t want this, not tonight, not—”

  “If you marry Mhagaza tomorrow, we might never get the chance to—”

  “Do mages land on their feet, like cats? Because I swear to Sakku if you don’t shut up and leave right now I’m going to push you through that window.” The tone of her voice must have got to him, then, because he finally got up. He sulked along the wall for a few moments, hoping perhaps that she would change her mind, which made her start thinking that strangling was so unsophisticated; it was probably easier to cut him with a knife and drop all the bits in the lake for the fish to feed on.

  The next time she looked up, he was gone. She slid the window back into place and bolted it. And then for the longest time in that long, long night, she stood there with her forehead on the glass, her thoughts a thousand miles away.

  The dream begins like almost every dream she has had for the past two years. She wakes up in her room, legs stretched over the child-sized bed, and gazes at the exterior wall. It is made of red clay, patterned with a darker stain that bled across the surface when scratched. In one of the corners, there is a deliberate fingerprint at the end of a long stroke. Her gaze lingers over the familiar mark like a starving dog over a plate of food.

  Outside, a rooster crows. She gets up, wary, and walks over the raised step leading to the main hall. Dai smiles at her from the kitchen. “Come and eat.” The door is on the wrong side, from what she remembers, and there are strange plants growing along the terraced entrance, but she doesn’t care. She sits at the table and glances at her father from across it.

  “Today is your wedding day,” Goro says, smiling toothlessly. His words are not as slurred as they were the last years of his life. She smiles back at him, pressing her hand over his own wrinkled paw. His eyes disappear beneath the folds of skin on his face.

  “Do we meet his family now?” Dai asks. “Are we having the koragaya? Mother says I get to dress up, and if there are other kids in his family—”

  Her father interrupts him with a snort. “Silly boy. Today is her wedding day, which means we had the koragaya weeks ago. Don’t you remember?”

  “But you’re both wrong,” Sume says, smiling still. “He hasn’t got family. He’s all alone in the world.”

  “Oh.” Dai looks disappointed. He pouts a little, playing with the smoked fish on the table. He looks back at her. “You aren’t marrying Tetsung, then?”

  She laughs. “Goodness, no!”

  “I can’t believe it,” her father says, pulling her to her feet. “My little princess is getting married. You’re all grown up.” His eyes brighten and his hair, suddenly, is as black as it had been before her mother’s death. He whirls her around once, like how he says they dance in the Kag, and she bows to him. She can feel the hollow tapping of the bamboo under her feet.

  She puts on her mother’s old wedding dress and goes out into the rain. Her father holds her arm and walks her to the end of the street, right at the corner where the soldier’s widow had set up her store. “Sume!” she calls, mole on her cheek, her smile as friendly as always. “Don’t forget to visit!”

  “I’m not moving away, auntie,” she says.

  Goran shakes his head and pats her arm. “But you are. Remember? As soon as the ceremony is over, you’re boarding the ship.”

  “Oh.” She doesn’t argue. She takes her father’s hands into hers and kisses them. “Then I’ll visit. And I’ll write. I’ll write a lot.” She looks at him, and then back down the street where their little house stood. She sees Dai lounging aimlessly by the window, flicking marbles through the cracks on the stone. She remembers making paper boats with him when they were younger and floating them down the canal when it rained like this.

  “Goodbye, Sume,” Goran says. “We’ll miss you.”

  “I miss you already,” she replies, grinning. But she bears it. She doesn’t cry. She walks on, alone in the rain and in a wedding dress, all the way to the temple. Her groom is waiting for her by the steps.

  “Are you ready?” he asks, holding out his hand. “Let me make it up to you.”

  She smiles back at Ylir and wakes up.

  It was dawn. For a long, painful moment, she believed she was still in her bed back home, and turned to close the wooden shutters. Only then did she realize that she was in a large, foreign room, and that today was the day she would pledge herself to a Gasparian lord as his concubine.

  The women arrived to get her ready. Her dress was nothing like in her dream—it was stiff and yellow, dotted with pieces of gold. Beads were strung to her hair and paste was applied to her face and her eyes. When she looked into the mirror, she could barely recognize herself.

  One of the women stood close to her and pulled off her veil so she could see her face. “Little girl,” she said. “Be happy. Were you a man, born to the choices in your life, you might be dead by now.” And Sume, thinking of her brother, of Dai, could only nod to stop the tears from flooding her eyes.

  The ceremony was short. It was not, after all, the wedding of a man to a first wife who would bear him immediate heirs without question. Papers were signed and a holy shaman came to bless their heads with the flat of his sabre. Mhagaza took her hand and led her back to the crowd, bowing to his other wives as he walked.

  She didn’t smile at any of them. They were whispering in a foreign tongue and the looks they were giving her were far from friendly. So when they entered the dining hall and she saw Ylir among the crowd there, her heart fluttered. She struggled against this feeling all the way to the table. One of the attendants seated her at Mhagaza’s left side. His true wife, a proud-looking woman about as old as Mhagaza himself, sat at his right. She distracted herself by wondering what the woman was thinking about all of this. He had four other concubines already—she would be used to this by now. But was it a good thing, getting used to one’s husband having other women in his bed?

  Sume turned to the other concubines, each seated at intervals along the table and beside Mhagaza’s children of varying ages. Some had chosen to hide behind lace veils, though this was not required of them. She had been told that being chosen, as she was, was a consid
ered an honour in Gaspar. But there was something in those women’s eyes that made her want to reach out and hug them the way she used to do whenever her father would go missing and she would catch Hana crying outside in the dark. The thought came as a surprise to her because Hana, unlike these women, unlike her, married for love.

  Maybe it makes no difference, she thought, biting her upper lip when Mhagaza patted her hand. He had a pleasant enough face when he smiled. He offered her a plate of roast goat, which she refused. She had not eaten anything since that morning, but she couldn’t muster up the appetite. She caught herself looking across the room, trying to spot Ylir. He was nearly as dark as a Gasparian, but he was shorter, too, so it shouldn’t be so hard. She couldn’t see him. Once again, that feeling came and went. She shouldn’t care. What did it matter if she saw him again? He was nothing more than the only friendly face in a sea of strangers. An irony, in that.

  She was so wrapped up in her thoughts that she almost jumped from her seat when she heard that voice behind her. “My Lord,” Ylir yn Ferral said, approaching Mhagaza’s seat with a bow. “You’ve received my gift?”

  “Yesterday, Ferral. A most splendid gelding. I am at awe that you procured him on such short notice.”

  “I’m flattered you think so, my lord, but our company has many contacts. All I did was ruffle up a few favours.” He smiled that smile, the one that said, I’ve got you. There’s no point fighting it. She remembered last night’s kiss and involuntarily gave a shudder.

  He was now holding a bottle of wine, and nodded at Mhagaza. “If you’ll allow me to pour both of us a cup, my lord, I would be most honoured. This vintage is from Hafod. It is said that it was made for kings.”

  “An exaggeration, no doubt. Let my man sample it first.” Mhagaza clapped his hands. A veiled slave dropped to his knees in obeisance before taking a cup. Ylir uncorked the bottle and gave him some. He drank deeply and bowed again.