The Beggar King

by Michelle Barker

  “Rabellus said Theophen and his guards surrendered,” said Elliott.

  “Ha!” cried Sarmillion. “That’s one way of putting it. Another way is to say that the Brinnians offered Theophen a deal.”

  “Theophen would have given his life to protect this city,” said Jordan. “What kind of deal would he have accepted?”

  “One like this,” said Sarmillion. “Give up, or we’ll kill everyone who’s hiding in the palace. Including the high priestess.”

  Including my mother, thought Jordan.

  “Thank goodness Theophen wasn’t too proud,” said Elliott. “It must have been hard for him to back down.”

  “Indeed,” said Sarmillion. “And now they’ve been taken away, and no one knows where. It is wickedness; it’s an outrage. He chose our feast day for his coup.”

  “The one time when no one would be on their guard,” said Elliott. He looked up at one of the rounded windows. “Where will you go?”

  The undercat sighed. “Omar, perhaps. Some folk are headed north to Circassic but that’s too far for my tastes. I intend to fight back.” He pressed a pointed tooth against his bottom lip. “I fear the worst for our old tales,” he said, his voice cracking. “I shall smuggle as many as I can out of the palace library.”

  The library. Jordan’s thoughts turned to that strange brass door he’d found near the library archives. He scanned the Meditary for the wild-haired grandma who was now a door-maker but she must have left. Maybe Sarmillion would know more about that door.

  “Can I bring the parchments to you?” the undercat was saying to Jordan’s father.

  “Of course. It would be my pleasure to protect them.” Elliott hunched towards him. “I can’t help but wonder how that Rabellus character ever got hold of our Book of What Is. You told me the high priestess keeps it under lock and key.”

  Sarmillion coughed so hard he was nearly choking. It took him a minute to compose himself. “Brinnians,” he hissed. “Long have they wanted to control Cir. I can’t fathom how they managed to cross the mountains.”

  Elliott shook his head. “Not everyone will want to chase them away, you know. Some are ready to abandon the traditions. The Brinnian ways will appeal to them.”

  “Well! Do you know what the Brinnian word for ‘foreigner’ translates to in the Cirran tongue? Underling. Cirrans aren’t fools. Even the ones with a modern bent will sense their loss before long. And no one will put up with such brutality.” Sarmillion’s whiskers curled into a frown. “I shall keep my ears open for any news.”

  They took leave of each other in the traditional way, and then Sarmillion touched Jordan lightly upon the cheek. Jordan was surprised. The undercat had always been friendly but never affectionate.

  Jordan attached his sandals and followed his father out of the Meditary and across the palace courtyard. Neither of them dared to speak until they were on the cobblestone road leading down the mountain.

  Finally Jordan tried to say what was on his mind. “Do you think, I mean, is it even possible that they’re — ?”

  “We have to believe they’re all right, Son,” Elliott said. “They’re all right, and they’ll come home.”

  Jordan’s mother had often said that while it was Elliott’s sharp tools that cut wood, it was his voice that smoothed them into works of art. Jordan took comfort in that gentle tone now.

  “What will happen to Malthazar?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. But the high priestess named the year well. Year of the magpie.”

  The twin moons were still full — though not true-full anymore. They looked like two round eyes, watching Jordan. And then something struck him. “Has Maelstrom’s moon gotten darker?”

  Elliott squinted up at the sky. “Maybe it has.”

  “Do you think it means something?”

  “Who can say?” said his father. “These are dark times.”

  “You told me people call it the undermagic moon,” said Jordan. “But the undermagic could never come back to Katir-Cir, could it?”

  “Anything can happen if we allow it.”

  Jordan glanced back at the holy tree that hadn’t burned on the Feast of the Great Light. Its branches were black against the dusky sky — its branches, and the dark outline of a hanging body, had transformed the mystery of this beautiful tree into menace.

  Five

  LADY DESTINY

  SARMILLION HAD ALWAYS FIGURED HE COULD tiptoe through life without ever waking Lady Destiny, but she must have heard about the raucous nights of mug-wine parties and decided it was time for some payback. Or maybe she just wanted to test his mettle. Mettle, sure. Rabellus and his men had scarcely mentioned hanging before Sarmillion was pulling out the key kept in a hidden compartment in Balbadoris’s study and leading them to Arrabel’s onyx chest, which he’d unlocked with trembling hands. An important detail, that: his hands did tremble when he gave up the precious Book of What Is. He’d been aware of the enormity of his treason even as he was committing it.

  And then last night there was Mars, one of his closest friends, telling him, “Ye should stay in Cir, underkitty. It’ll be the best means of defeating the Brinnians. Only way inside the palace now will be to work there and we’re gonna need all the information we can get.”

  Mars was staying on as palace gardener. He had nothing to feel guilty about. The hunchback would never have given up the priceless book, not even if they’d tortured him.

  “No, can’t stay, can’t stomach this regime, got to get out,” Sarmillion had said to Mars. He intended to get as far away from this life of parchment and ink as he could. It would be the only way for him to sleep at night.

  “Tragic, his burning the Book of What Is,” Mars had said, and Sarmillion had replied, “Oh yes, tragic. Don’t know how it could have happened.” It had taken every bit of Sarmillion’s willpower not to howl with anguish. There was no telling how great a loss this might be. Some of the prayers and spells were known to Arrabel alone, and she might be dead. Would the magical incantations even work now that the book was destroyed?

  At first light Sarmillion packed his belongings into a canvas bag, including Balbadoris’s sasapher pipe. He took up the scholar’s walking stick, and then turned his long brass key in the door to his apartment one last time. He crossed the tatty rug in Master Mimosa’s apartment, went through his private weedy courtyard and out the rusted metal gate, pulling it shut with a gentle squeak. That was the sound of the past, ending. And even though it seemed as if he was pulling a long sack of years behind him as he tramped down the steep Cirran streets, he felt an end as surely as if he’d written it himself after the hard work of a manuscript was done. The end.

  When he arrived on the open-air cobblestone Common, a knot of enthusiastic Cirrans was talking to Mars who was already dressed in his gardening overalls and carried a long pitchfork.

  “We’ll form the resistance!” cried one.

  “We’ll thwart every slagging project Rabellus starts,” said another.

  “We won’t let him get away with nothing!” hollered a third.

  Sarmillion’s whiskers twitched. He sensed action, heroism, fame and fortune. “I’ll join you,” he said. “What can I do?”

  Mars eyed him up and down and fingered his canvas bag. “So ye’ve decided not to stay,” he said, with a short nod of his bald head, and Sarmillion prepared himself for an outburst of scorn. Instead the gardener addressed the others. “This underkitty’s got a way in or out of just about anything. Our group of Loyalists has got itself a burglar and a spy.”

  Sarmillion clapped his hands. “From scribe to burglar in one morning. Who would have guessed?” and they all laughed.

  “Burn your robes!” one of the men shouted, and it occurred to Sarmillion that if he was no longer a Cirran scribe, he might wear real clothes. Imagine, a silk smoking jacket. Mauve. Sarmillion had always fancied a smoking jacket: cocktail hour, candlelight, and a good long pipe of sasapher. The colour would set off his grey fur beautifully.

/>   “Embers and ashes,” he said, pulling the robes up and over his head. “Let the rebellion begin!” He threw them to the ground in a heap and someone lit a piece of parchment and tossed it onto the fabric and there was a poof and the zigzag robes went up in flames.

  “I will not be a scribe for the Brinnian Empire,” he roared, one furry hand punching the air. “I remain loyal to High Priestess Arrabel and the Cirran mysteries.” Liar, hissed the voice in his head, but Sarmillion ignored it. “Long live the priesthood. May the Great Light shine upon you all,” and the crowd that had surrounded the undercat and his little bonfire cheered. Sarmillion noticed the tanned skin and dark curly hair of the Elliott boy among them.

  Suddenly there was a whistle and the call of “Landguards” from someone who’d been watching. An older man in work boots hurried to stamp out the fire and Sarmillion eased himself into a group of Cirrans and made his way off the Common wearing only a pair of silk pants and sandals.

  Mars grabbed him by one arm and fixed him with those eyes that shone such a bright blue in his weathered face. “Are ye going to Omar, then?”

  Sarmillion nodded.

  “Listen well,” he said quietly. “We’ll need to find out where they’re keeping Arrabel and the others. Keep yer eyes and ears open, underkitty. Omarrians talk, specially in their taverns. And I expect them black boots will be about, as well. Stay out of trouble, now.”

  “You know me,” said Sarmillion.

  “’Tis exactly what worries me,” said Mars, but the way his bushy eyebrows rose and fell, Sarmillion couldn’t help but smile.

  As the undercat set off on the road to Omar, Jordan caught up with him.

  “You’ll get yourself arrested acting like that,” he said, though Sarmillion noted with pleasure that the boy’s green eyes were warm with admiration.

  Sarmillion puffed out his furry chest. He could become the self-appointed saviour of precious Cirran parchments before Rabellus destroyed them. He could steal them. Burglary could be his redemption.

  “My boy,” Sarmillion intoned, “We’re going to fight this Brinnian rogue. We’re calling ourselves Loyalists. We will — ” he stopped. “Why aren’t you in school?”

  “No time for school.” Jordan had that same gleam in his eyes. “I’m going to be a Loyalist, too.”

  Sarmillion swatted the air. “Oh, absurdity. Oh, recklessness. You shall do no such thing. Your father would never forgive me. Besides, you need an education.”

  “I’m getting one,” said Jordan.

  The road sloped downwards and they followed it for several minutes without speaking.

  “Do you know anything about a brass door near the library archives?” Jordan asked.

  Sarmillion’s whiskers drooped into a scowl. “That door is forbidden. It’s no place for a child. And how ever did you hear of such a thing?”

  Jordan coughed. “A scullery maid showed it to me.”

  Sarmillion studied the boy, who immediately focused upon a hideous display of porcelain rooftop ornaments, and then the undercat understood. He could sniff out a lie as easily as a piece of fried trout. “What sort of mischief have you been dirtying your fingers with?”

  “Nothing. I told you.” But Jordan still refused to look at him.

  Sarmillion put an arm around his shoulder. He admired anyone who had the courage to follow the dark and twisting labyrinth that led to that door. A person could get lost. And there were spiders.

  “You didn’t touch it, did you?” he asked. “It’s enchanted, you know.”

  “Enchanted?” Jordan said and pulled away.

  “Your maid forgot to mention that, I suppose,” said Sarmillion. “Scullery maids know their nutty-buns, may the Great Light shine upon ‘em, but when it comes to enchantments their only education is whatever they learned on their grannies’ laps. Once long ago Master Mimosa touched that door, I’ll have you know, and two weeks later his great uncle dropped dead of a heart attack. I’m telling you, it’s a hazard. It should never have been put there, but there’s not a thing anyone can do about it now.” He grunted. “Next you’ll be telling me you opened the blasted thing.”

  They walked in strained silence for another minute and then the boy asked, “Does anyone know what those runes say on the outside of the door?”

  “Indeed,” said Sarmillion. “They say, ‘This door does not open for fools, rascals or teenaged boys. Period. All fools, rascals and teenaged boys who find themselves in front of this door should take themselves home immediately and douse themselves in cold water and then perform ten years of penance for their stupidity.’”

  “It doesn’t really say that,” said Jordan.

  “I forgot, you’re wise beyond your years,” said Sarmillion with a good-natured chuckle. “No, it doesn’t say that. But I’m under palace oath to keep certain secrets.” Like the secret of the Book of What Is, for example. The thought came unbidden, and he was quick to stuff it back down where it would keep quiet. “In Arrabel’s time there was always a Landguard posted at the entrance to that hallway. You wouldn’t have gotten within a hundred feet of that door.”

  “Why? What’s behind it that’s so dangerous?”

  Sarmillion wagged a finger at him. “I told you, I’m sworn to secrecy, loyal to Arrabel and all that.” He cringed inwardly, for a memory had come to him all at once, the way bad ones always do, as if they’ve been called by one of those high-pitched whistles only dogs can hear. It had all been foretold, his treason, long ago and when it had had little meaning, by Willa — in the days when she’d still been a seer.

  He’d been fifteen, Jordan’s age now, and his father had taken him to her to determine if he might truly have the writer’s gift of tale-spinning. Willa had taken one look at him, just one, and declared, “Liar! Traitor!” which had scared the fur off Sarmillion’s teenaged self. But his father had been elated.

  “We have a writer in the family,” he told all the neighbours.

  Sarmillion had all but forgotten the incident. But now, as he fled the scene of his own traitorous crime, he realized he had fulfilled Willa’s prophecy.

  Besides, hadn’t he snuck down that very hallway once in his life when the fellow guarding it had slipped away for his nightly nip of mug-wine? The truth was, Sarmillion had gone to seek out that door specifically to read the ancient runes he’d heard had been set into them. He’d never forgotten them; blast it anyway, he’d absorbed the words through his fingertips until they’d sunk into his blood, and wasn’t that why the door-maker had done it? Of course it was.

  Beware this door, beware your soul! May this door never be opened, or the beggar shall be king. Think twice and thrice, for if it be opened, this door can never again be shut.

  Now he remembered another one of Balbadoris’s questions. “How would one rid the world of the Beggar King if ever the circumstances arose?” the old scholar had asked him.

  “If the circumstances arose?” Sarmillion had scoffed. “But they never would. How can you rid the world of an idea?”

  “By drowning it in the River of the Dead,” he’d hollered. Oh, Balbadoris’s ire had been great that day. He did not share Sarmillion’s view that the Beggar King was merely a metaphor.

  But there it was. Sarmillion had considered it silliness then, and he thought it so now. Even if there was such thing as the Beggar King, a person would have to be dead before arriving at the River of the Dead (hence, the name) and so would not be much use as far as drowning was concerned.

  The sound of the river brought Sarmillion back to himself. The Balakan River ran grand, clear and wide, spanned by the twelve bridges which connected the mountain-island city with the rest of Katir-Cir.

  “Can I come to Omar with you?” Jordan asked.

  “You most certainly cannot. And if the Great Light knows what’s what, there won’t be a single bridge in Cir that will grant you passage. Now, go back up that road and get to school. Learn something that will make your father proud.”

  He leaned towar
ds the boy and confided, “A Loyalist needs to know his history if he wants to fight with the sharpest weapons.” Then Sarmillion gave a gallant bow. “May the Great Light shine upon you.”

  But something must have occurred to Jordan, for his forehead wrinkled and he asked, “What robes will you wear? What will you do?”

  The undercat shrugged. “I won’t take robes under Brinnian rule. I shall live by my wits, boy, and stout glasses of mug-wine.” It sounded impressive, but in reality Sarmillion didn’t have a single idea what he would do now, and he wasn’t convinced his wits were sharp enough to earn him even a place to sleep.

  He gripped Balbadoris’s varnished oak walking stick and set his foot upon the stone Bridge of Resolve, which admitted him immediately.

  Six

  SPELLS FOR BOYS

  JORDAN GAVE SARMILLION A SAD WAVE as the undercat embarked upon the stone bridge. But as soon as he was out of sight, Jordan moved towards the same bridge. He was going to Omar to find a door-maker named Willa and ask her about a brass door that should have been guarded, but wasn’t. Jordan grimaced. He hadn’t just touched it, he’d opened it — and hadn’t Sarmillion told him about Master Mimosa’s great uncle who had died just because the scholar had touched the door? What if Jordan had doomed his mother? Great Light, what had he done?

  He approached the Bridge of Resolve with a determined stride. But as soon as he tried to put his foot down on the stones, he felt a force like a giant hand push it back and knock him to the ground.

  “Slag,” he said as he got up, rubbing his backside.

  Each of the twelve bridges connecting Cir to the mainland possessed a particular wisdom which people had no choice but to respect. You were granted passage upon the bridge that best reflected your state of mind. It forced you to think every time about why you were entering or leaving the Holy City. Practically speaking, it sometimes meant you had to walk for miles before you found a bridge that admitted you. Sometimes it meant not crossing at all.