The Beggar King

by Michelle Barker

  Slowly Jordan rose and left the forest. He eyed the black Bridge of No Return. Why had it allowed him on? Passing it at a determined pace, he set his foot instead upon the uneven and carelessly nailed planks of Ne’er Do Well. His mind spun with marching Landguards and Sarmillion drinking mug-wine, and Willa who’d allowed him to think he might be destined for something greater than picking corn in a sweltering Cirsinnian field. It’s a powerful gift, came one thought. You could be great, came another.

  It was only when he’d finally arrived home and breathed deeply of its safe smells of wood chips and sasapher that he relaxed. He could hear the rasping of sandpaper as his father worked in the courtyard out back. Jordan would have time to wash the scents of Omar from his skin and hair before facing him. Erasing the afternoon from his memory would be harder. That man in his torn and dirty robes — just the thought of him made Jordan’s skin crawl.

  Seven

  DARK MOON RISING

  AS THE DAYS AND WEEKS AND months passed, Jordan found his mother’s empty chair at the kitchen table the hardest thing of all to bear. At least Elliott had put away her sandals that always sat beside the front door. The chairs and tables accumulated dust. The windows stayed shuttered for days at a time. Jordan and his father ate too many meals of boiled cabbage and crusty bread. They took turns watering Tanny’s herbs and flowers, but it wasn’t long before most of the plants shriveled and died. Only the stoic peppermint and wild-evergreen ivy managed to survive.

  On Jordan’s bedroom wall he had pinned up a map of the lands of Katir-Cir. Every night before bed, he stood with a candle in one hand, his eyes moving slowly from the top of the map to the bottom. Where are you? Where have they taken you? The light flickered uncertainly.

  He didn’t sleep well anymore. Often at night he would sit on the rooftop patio and watch the sister moons, and the moons would watch him. It was the darker moon that had captured his attention of late. Strange ideas came to him on the rooftop. He imagined having the power to make the Brinnian Landguards vanish in a puff of smoke. He thought up the words to possible curses, dreamed of evaporating potions and vaporizing oils.

  Sometimes he fantasized about collecting all the Brinnian flags and setting fire to them on the Common, or defacing every likeness of Rabellus with black horns. He thought of enlisting a couple of school friends in his plans, but when it came down to it, he didn’t.

  He tried desperately to imagine himself in robes. He could see the ceremony and all the people in the audience, but he could never quite glimpse the colour of the homespun fabric he would wear.

  By daylight, as often as he could, he visited Mars at the Balakan Gardens that bloomed along the riverfront. It was from here that Mars quietly led the Cirran insurrection. With his hunched back and gentle ways, he was the last person anyone would suspect of sabotage.

  “I hear the Loyalists might try calling up the undermagic to get rid of the Brinnians,” Jordan said to him one day.

  At this, Mars’s great eyebrows rose into bushy arches. “Who’s been feeding ye such nonsense with yer supper? That would be like sending in the cobras to manage yer toad problem. Ye’d have no more toads, to be sure, but then what would ye do about them snakes?”

  Jordan didn’t have the courage to tell the gardener this was one of his rooftop ideas. It had come to him one night while he’d been gazing at the twin moons. “But it would work, wouldn’t it?”

  “Blast, Jordan. That depends on what ye mean. Is the undermagic strong enough to rid our city of Brinnians? ‘Course it is. But ye can’t wash yer hands of dark magic as if it’s horse manure. It don’t come off.”

  “Let me join up,” he begged. “I want to be a Loyalist.”

  But Mars only tilted his weathered brown head to one side and laughed. “Jordan Elliott, ye can’t be a rebel. Ye got school to attend and robes to be taking.”

  Robes. He thought about them listlessly. Some of his friends had already taken theirs. One boy was now a carpenter’s apprentice, and a girl he knew had left last month to be apprenticed to a healer.

  “A shoemaker’s helper wouldn’t be such a hardship, would it?” Elliott asked one night. And in the next breath he said, “I’ll call upon Uncle Eli in the provinces. I think he’s still looking for a shepherd.”

  One day Jordan was buying onions at the market when a tall woman in saffron robes and a veil came to stand beside him. Her shape wasn’t entirely familiar but he recalled that one of the seven seers was about the same height.

  “Hello, Grandma Mopu,” he said.

  “No, Jordan, it’s me.”

  Ophira? “What happened to making potions?” His legs felt wobbly.

  Ophira held her arms at the elbows. “It didn’t work out.”

  “It’s the grandmas, isn’t it? They make you wear the veil.”

  “Of course it’s the grandmas.”

  Jordan gaped at her as if she were an apparition. The veil was made of thinly spun mellowreed that covered her head entirely, sheer enough only to hint at her face.

  “Why won’t they let you do what you want?”

  “Jordan, must you know everything?”

  He leaned towards her. “They want you to replace Willa, don’t they?”

  Her only answer was to squeeze his hand.

  Seers never married. If they tried, something terrible would befall their fiancé. Jordan remembered what had happened when Grandma Mopu had tried to marry. Her beloved had been a fisherman, tragically drowned. Most people had called it an accident, but Ophira had told Jordan the truth: it was the curse of second sight.

  “What about you?” she asked. “Do you have an idea yet which robes you’ll take?”

  As if it was up to him. Robes were not something you chose. They chose you.

  “Oh, sure,” he said, “I’m going to be a mystery keeper.” When Ophira didn’t respond, he added, “Anyway, who needs robes? We’re Brinnians now.” Jordan walked away without taking his onions.

  No longer did songbirds sit upon the holy tree’s branches. The dead bodies that hung there became so commonplace no one bothered to mention them anymore. The emperor had issued a decree that the customary feast-day celebrations for the Great Light this year would be replaced by Brinnian festivities involving roasted deer, dried dung for smoking, and mug-wine. There would be no flower ceremony at the holy tree, and no Beggar King to chase across the Bridge of No Return.

  The last time Jordan had been to Somberholt he’d heard Cirran tunes being sung as they worked the saws on the giant cedars. He’d seen Cirran arrowheads red with the blood of deer. And on the Common, Cirran folk gallivanted about dressed like underrats, with velvet outfits and flashy buttons and all manner of shiny jewelry.

  One night after dinner his father set down two hot mugs of lemongrass tea and sat across from him. “Your instructors tell me they see you in class more regularly these days.”

  Jordan shrugged. “Nothing better to do.” He waited for the lecture that was sure to come. An education is the foundation of all the blah blah blah. But Elliott just sipped his tea and gazed at the shuttered window.

  “I’ve been thinking,” said Jordan. “I might not take robes.”

  Elliott picked at something brown that had hardened onto the table. “Tradition and ritual are the mainstays of our world, Jordan. They hold great power. If you don’t take robes, it’s another victory for the Brinnians. Is that what you want?” But all the fire in his voice had been doused.

  Jordan left the room, taking the stairs two at a time up to the roof where he could be alone.

  The setting sun had lost its merciless heat, though he could still feel the warmth rising from the roof stones. He stood and listened to the day empty itself of working sounds. The smell of cooking fish wafted through the air. Leaning over the railing, he surveyed the city he loved. The sun glowed red, casting a glorious pink onto the Cirran stone, and in the east the twin moons began to rise.

  Jordan stared at the two round yellow moons glaring back at h
im as if they were the eyes of some great creature, one bright, one just a shade darker. What the Cirrans needed was inspiration, someone to remind them of who they were. He studied the darker moon in particular. It had more shape to it somehow, more contour and possibility.

  Soon he wasn’t looking at the moons anymore. He was imagining the white Cirran buildings without Rabellus’s likeness painted upon them. He could see the holy tree covered in flowers and then later, beneath the true-full moons, he saw it burst into flames.

  Suddenly he knew what to do. He knew where he would do it, and he knew when. For the first time ever, he looked forward to his sixteenth birthday. The next morning when he awoke, he went around the house and opened all the shutters to the rising sun. He ran up to the market on the Common and stole two freshly baked nutty-buns and a hunk of goat cheese, brought them home and set them on the table. He was pumping water into the kettle when his father appeared in the kitchen doorway rumpled with sleep.

  “What’s got into you?” he asked.

  Jordan smiled. “Breakfast,” he said with a grand wave of his arm.

  As the days passed he had only to glance at the Brinnian coat of arms and think of the hawk’s meaning: “Do not rest until your objective has been achieved.”

  Eight

  THE COBRA AND THE MONGOOSE

  SARMILLION SUCKED HARD ON HIS PIPE of dried dung, one hand jammed into the pocket of his smoking jacket. A breeze blew steadily off the Balakan River into the open-front bar, making the torches dance and bringing the mingled scents of tar from the boatyard and fried food from the nearby restaurants.

  Sarmillion’s eyes were focused on the centre of the room, the so-called pit that gave the Omarrian bar its name. At this hour the pit was roped off to prevent fools and drunkards from doing something they’d regret. Mug-wine and billy beer were secondary here. The Pit was a gambling den. You came here to play, or you stayed home. For sheer excitement it beat a stack of dusty parchments any day.

  In the corner of the room sat one of the members of the Rubber Band, a tall thin man named Binur who played a mean twanger and had some talent as a flutist. He also had a sense for snakes. That was how he’d described it to Sarmillion the first time the undercat had come here.

  “It’s a whole dance thing, ye know? Ye fix its eyes with yours and ye play the music and ye sort of move the way it moves, and it works, ye know?” And he’d asked if Sarmillion wanted to try, and Sarmillion had eyed the cobra coiled in its wicker basket and said no, thank you, he didn’t think he had a sense for snakes at all. Besides, he always bet against the snakes and he had a feeling they knew this and were only waiting for him to get that flute in his hands before they took their revenge.

  Now the peculiarly intoxicating flute music was dying away and Binur eased himself into the crowd that had formed around the pit. The cobra froze and for a second Sarmillion felt sorry for him. Probably all he wanted to do was slither home and go to bed, but the show had to go on.

  Into The Pit strode Jack-Jack, an underrat who kept himself shaved right down to the pink skin. In his spare time when he wasn’t drunk or breaking into people’s homes, Jack-Jack was a mongoose trapper.

  “Here’s Mojo!” he called, holding up a mongoose in a metal cage, and everyone cheered.

  Every mongoose he brought in was called Mojo. Mojo number forty, or whatever it was, would probably be dead within the hour. Most often the mongooses were the winners in these fights, but this cobra was an uncommonly feisty contender. This would be his fifth mongoose, if he succeeded. Sarmillion was probably the only one in the bar who had put his money on the mongoose tonight. Not even Shasta was betting on it, and she usually shared his soft spot for underdogs. She stood beside Sarmillion, wearing high heels and a short skirt, bright blue colour around her eyes, the rhinestones on her long underrat tail glittering in the torchlight.

  With its small pointed head and long body, the mongoose seemed more like a furry pet than a predator, especially when compared to the swaying, spitting snake. There had been fatalities in The Pit. You had to stay on your guard in this game, even as a spectator. Just because the animals started out behind the ropes didn’t mean they stayed there. Sarmillion had never seen a cobra attack one of the patrons, but he’d heard stories. He gripped his stubby dung pipe and backed a safe distance away from the commotion.

  A lot of folks came to The Pit for the blood and action, and of course for the chance to win big coin.

  “Got your money on Mojo, eh, Scribbler? Eh?” said Jack-Jack.

  “I am a great believer in brains over brawn,” responded Sarmillion.

  Jack-Jack set the mongoose cage onto the dirt floor with a clatter, and unlatched the door. “Brains over brawn, ha, that’s funny, I hope that bartender’s got some free drinks for ye there cuz you’re not gonna have no slaggin’ money left, eh, Ex? Eh?”

  Ex approached the bar with his slow, cool underrat stride. He was tall and thin, and wore a black bandana and a long black goatee. He looked like a lead twanger player in one of those hard core bands that toured the Circassic port town taverns.

  “Free drinks, yuh,” Ex said.

  Sarmillion puffed on his pipe, making the dried dung glow and sizzle. When would he hit bottom? This had to be it, hanging out with underrats, betting on cobra fights, working for Piccolo. He’d promised himself he’d spend every morning writing poetry. He would be halfway through his masterpiece by now if he’d started when he had intended to. Certainly he wouldn’t be here, eye to eye with a spitting reptile.

  Well, he had one eye on the reptile. The other was trained on the beaded doorway. One of two people could walk through it at any moment. He was hoping it would be Grizelda, a white Persian undercat who painted her claws red and had this way of rolling her ‘r’s that made Sarmillion’s stomach do back flips. She often showed up here on Saturday nights.

  He hoped to see Grizelda, but it was also possible Piccolo might walk in. Piccolo was expecting a black velvet sack bearing the weight of silver Cirran candlesticks that Sarmillion hadn’t been able to get hold of just yet.

  The mongoose had begun his game of strike and retreat, tiring out the cobra, biding his time, waiting for the perfect opportunity to kill. He was smart, and he was faster and more agile than he looked. But would he be a match for this snake? Slowly the cobra moved around the pit’s perimeter. Every time he drew close to people’s legs there was a collective “aah” and the sound of shuffling as the spectators edged away and then back again.

  Sarmillion hunted for a stool to perch on at the bar, but they were all taken. He kept feeling something slithering around his legs, but it was only Shasta’s bejeweled tail. She had her paws on a leather-clad underrat named Marco who stood on the other side of her. Marco liked to play with knives and he had this way of not paying attention while he was doing it that made Sarmillion nervous.

  The beads jingled and Sarmillion swiveled and saw two Brinnian Landguards stagger in. They held each other steady and almost stumbled into the pit ropes before someone guided them back to relative safety.

  Now here might be a stroke of luck. While Sarmillion had been charged to eavesdrop on any Landguards that showed up in the Omarrian taverns, he’d discovered that most of them were tight-lipped and kept to themselves. Sneaking into the palace was proving to be unfeasible. Every time the Loyalists had attempted it, they’d been caught. Many were in prison. A few had been hanged. The upshot was that no one had found out anything about High Priestess Arrabel and the other prisoners.

  “You make a decent Elderberry Blaster in this place?” one of the Landguards shouted to the bartender above the hollering crowd.

  “I gots mug-wine and billy beer — bloody or not,” said the bartender. “Them’s your choices. Place your bets and take your drinks,” he said with an icy glare. Sarmillion glanced at the mongoose darting in and out of people’s legs, and then edged his way towards the Landguards.

  “I’d put my money on the mongoose tonight if I were you boys,” h
e said. He took a deep breath. “Buy you a drink?”

  The two exchanged a look, and then shrugged. Sarmillion called for mug-wine, and the bartender took their bets.

  “Off duty tonight?” asked Sarmillion as the mugs of greasy brown liquid slid across the bar towards the Landguards’ burly hands.

  The rounder, pock-marked Landguard burped and said, “Gonna have to work double time round that Cirran feast day, so the Emp give us some extra days off now.”

  “Before things heat up, like,” said the taller thinner Landguard, who had a particularly long face and protruding front teeth. The unfortunate combination gave him the appearance of an idiot. It was this that buoyed Sarmillion’s confidence.

  “I suppose all the men have to do a tour of duty guarding the Cirran prisoners, huh?” he asked casually.

  “Yeah, what a pain in the butt that is,” said Pockface with a groan.

  They’re alive, thought Sarmillion. But where? Where are they?

  There was an eruption of boos as the snake struck out at the mongoose and missed. Sarmillion winced.

  “I hope you haven’t lost us our coin there, undercat,” said Buckteeth.

  Sarmillion gave a sly smile. “I’ve got a feeling about the mongoose tonight. I think he’ll get his man, so to speak.” He pretended to take a sip of his drink as the two men gulped theirs.

  “Tastes sort of meaty,” said Pockface.

  “You get used to it,” said Sarmillion. “So, what’s so bad about guarding the prisoners? You get to travel.”

  “Damned hot down there,” said Buckteeth. “Nothing to do. Skunked if I know why the Emp sent them to the desert. We’re the ones gotta go down and watch ‘em there. He gets to stay in that fancy palace.”

  The desert. It could only mean one thing: Ut. This was bad news. Ut was a vast land that was notoriously hard to cross because of the challenges of weather and distance. There were nomadic tribes that knew how to survive in such conditions, but none of them was Cirran. Or Brinnian, for that matter. Brin was, for the most part, a land of cold snowy winters. Sarmillion wondered how the guards were handling the heat. Perhaps the prisoners were being held near one of the coastal towns.