The Beggar King

by Michelle Barker

  When he rose at dawn, the woman was waiting for him.

  “You must go in front of me,” she said. “It’s not right for an Uttic woman to lead a Landguard. They will know something’s amiss. I’ll whisper the directions from behind you. Also, you must walk the way they do, as if with every step you’re killing something.”

  “All right,” said Jordan. “Which way?”

  “Straight ahead,” she said, and he set off, forcing his feet down hard, an arrogant swagger in his hips. Behind him came the quiet instructions to turn here, follow this road, now head east. Before long they had left the town of Utberg and were back in the bleak dunes. Jordan could already feel the rising heat.

  It wasn’t long before the landscape was playing tricks on his eyes. Once he thought he saw a vulture person rise out of the sand, her robes long and black and oily. Once a raven followed him, and Jordan could feel its eyes pulling at the centre of his back, while the wanting swelled inside him. He heard the name of the Beggar King, heard it and then forgot it, and then heard it again.

  The sun was high in the sky when Jordan finally asked, “Is it far?”

  “Not much farther,” the woman said, yet he could see no prison, no sign of life at all besides the sun-dried bones of animals in the sand. They crested a large dune and below it a valley came into view, a city of tents surrounded by barbed wire. In the distance he could see a group of people working, though he could not tell at what. He was sweating under his black uniform.

  “Mind how you go,” the woman said. “They’ve littered the sand with shards of glass. Many times we’ve cut ourselves.”

  When they arrived at the gate, the guard nodded to Jordan, then sniggered at the woman. “Mine could use a shine today, Missy,” he said with a leer. As soon as they had passed, Jordan thought one word — sickness — and saw the guard stumble to the ground, his face almost green, his arms folded over his belly.

  After they were out of earshot of the guard the woman said quietly, “The kitchen is to the right. It’s the big tent, at the end.” Jordan walked, and she kept talking. “Don’t knock. None of them ever knocks. Just barge in and demand something to drink.”

  Jordan blanched at the powerful smell of urine. There were Landguards everywhere. “Sickness,” he murmured as he passed them. Some doubled over in pain, but many simply continued without complaint. If his new powers failed him now, he’d be doomed. Every one of the Landguards was armed.

  It will want feeding. “All right then,” Jordan said to the air, “take what you want.”

  They approached the kitchen tent. Outside there were large clay ovens, as well as the impossible sasapher garden blooming yellow in a patch of fresh black soil. Jordan pushed at the canvas flap of door, clomped onto the rough wooden floor and shouted, “Give me a drink of water.”

  There were three women chopping vegetables at a rudimentary table, their backs to Jordan. He recognized his mother, her small plump body, long blonde hair pinned up. His knees threatened to give way, but then he saw a Brinnian guard sitting in the corner with his feet up on a table, watching, and he forced himself to stand straight.

  One of the other women said in a snide tone, “This fellow would like a cup of water.”

  “Mind that smart mouth, girl,” snapped the guard.

  “Water!” Jordan barked. “Now!”

  It was Tanny who leaned forward and pumped some rusty liquid into a rusty cup. Then she turned and came towards Jordan, her head down. Her freckled skin was burnt by the sun. Jordan willed himself not to move. She stood before him, looked up, gave the smallest cry, and dropped the cup.

  “What’s wrong with you, woman?” cried the guard, his boots landing on the floor with a thud as he pushed his chair away and stood. “Can’t you keep hold of a damned cup?” He stomped over to Tanny with one arm raised as if he might strike her. Another woman was already hurrying to fill a second cup as Tanny knelt to wipe up the mess.

  Instinctively Jordan bent towards his mother and helped mop up the water.

  “In the name of all Brinnian lords, soldier, that’s woman’s work. Get up off your knees and show some respect for your regiment.”

  Jordan stood and glared. “I have no respect whatsoever for your regiment, soldier. I am Cirran born. My name is Jordan Elliott, the carver’s son.” A small shiver went through him. “I have come to free my people.”

  “I think not,” said the guard, whipping the dagger from his belt. But just as quickly Jordan pointed a finger at the guard, and the man thrust his dagger into his own chest.

  Twenty-Four

  THE FULL PRICE

  TANNY, STILL CROUCHED ON THE FLOOR, stared wide-eyed at her son. “What darkness have you brought to this place?”

  Jordan smiled. “A power strong enough to free you all.”

  The Landguard’s blood pooled on the wooden floor. Jordan helped his mother up and they held each other for a long moment. Then she pulled away and studied his face. “What have you brought, my son? Tell me. Your eyes — something isn’t right.”

  “I’ve brought something for Arrabel. Don’t worry. I’ll give it to her, and she’ll know what to do with it. I’ll be fine.”

  “Tanny, let him go,” said one of the other women.

  “But you’re alone,” said Tanny. “How will you get to her?”

  “He won’t be alone,” said the Uttic woman. “We’ve waited a long time for the chance to rid our country of this Brinnian plague. I passed the word last night to the men. They’re preparing to storm the camp gates as we speak. They’ll help you.”

  I won’t need help. But Jordan kept that thought to himself.

  “They’re holding Arrabel apart from everyone, in a cell underground,” Tanny explained quickly. “Leave from the back of the kitchen tent and then keep left. There are two guards posted outside her cell. Great Light, I don’t know how you’ll get by them.” She placed a hand on Jordan’s cheek. “You are changed. It’s not just time that has touched you. There’s something else.”

  “I’m fine.” Jordan was bounding towards the back door when Tanny yelled, “Wait! Your uniform. The Cirrans won’t know you. You’ll be in danger.”

  “I’ll change,” said Jordan.

  He turned to one of the other women. “Go spread the word to Theophen and the others, now, while surprise is still on our side.”

  The bright sun nearly blinded Jordan as he left the tent. The black Landguard uniform he wore drew in the stifling midday heat, and beads of sweat trickled down his temples. In his mind he chose a white suit of Uttic fabric and commanded the change, but the change did not come.

  Jordan’s eyes darted from the rows of tents to the barbed wire barriers farther away. Thanks to the sickness he’d inflicted on some of the guards, Uttic soldiers had already burst through the north and south gates of the camp and were felling Brinnians with their arrows. An arrow flew past Jordan’s shoulder and he cursed. A second arrow grazed his leg.

  He had no choice; he would have to disappear. He reached behind him and tugged at the air, taking himself out of the Uttic camp and back onto the dark path, but he found it was dark no longer. The vulture people and their candles milled everywhere around him, some alone and others clustered in small groups. Farther away on a platform near the riverbank sat the Beggar King. He was perched not on any simple chair but upon a golden throne, his eyes fixed on Jordan.

  “It will want feeding, carver’s son. It is inclined to want, just like you. Have you anything to give it?”

  Jordan shouted, “Give it what it wants. I can’t afford to be without it now.”

  “As you wish.”

  Jordan used his hidden path to find his way to Arrabel’s tent. The world he’d left behind was now in chaos, with Brinnian guards running in every direction. Some languished near the gallows at one end of the camp, while others struggled to flee. Many were so sick with Jordan’s curse they could do nothing to save themselves. Theophen’s men had gathered planks, hammers and anything else they
could use as weaponry. There were the hard, heavy sounds of wood making contact with human limbs. Jordan heard cries of pain and the sound of bodies hitting the ground. In the distance he could hear Theophen issuing commands.

  When Jordan arrived at Arrabel’s tent, there were two wooden chairs sitting at the entrance but no guards. He re-entered the world, snuck inside the tent where it was cool and smelled of damp sand, and nearly fell into an enormous hole in the ground.

  “My lady?” he called down into the opening.

  “Who’s there?” Her voice was clear and strong.

  “My lady, it’s Jordan Elliott, Tanny’s son. I’ve come to set you free.” He spied a rope coiled in one corner of the tent. He fastened one end to a metal bar that must have been intended for that purpose, then dropped the rope into the dark hole and shimmied down.

  It was so dark in the underground cell that, without thinking, Jordan pulled the candle from his pocket so that he could see. Arrabel was in a corner, her arms and legs fastened with ropes, her blue robes stained and torn, her long blonde hair in a tangle. She was staring at him with terror in her eyes.

  “Don’t worry,” he said, fingering the black lapel of his uniform, “this is just a disguise.”

  “Where did you get that candle?” she asked. Her words were almost inaudible over the grunts and calls of battle that sounded above them. “Jordan, what have you done?”

  “It was the only way, my lady. Nothing else would have saved you in time. Watch.” And with his gaze he made the ropes fall away from her limbs.

  In an instant she was on her feet. “Do not use that detestable power on me.”

  Jordan shoved the candle back into his pocket.

  “Give it to me at once.”

  He took a step away from her. “No.”

  “Jordan. Give it to me.”

  “Listen to the battle above us. That’s thanks to the undermagic. I was only able to get here before half-moons because of it. Don’t you see? Nothing else would have worked.”

  “You don’t know the price you’ve paid for it.”

  “I felt ill, at first. That was the price, and I was willing to pay it to save my people.”

  Arrabel stood rigidly straight. “Is that what you think?”

  She grasped his arm, covered his eyes with her hand and said, “Look!”

  At first Jordan saw only darkness, but gradually it gave way to visions that faded in and out, one after the next: crows, as far as the eye could see, darkening the whitewashed stone of the Holy City; vulture people lurking in the shadows; yellow finches dropping from the sky. And the seven seers gathered together, chanting the prayers for desperate situations over the inert body of Ophira.

  “It needed feeding,” he heard the Beggar King say. “You told it to take what it wanted.”

  Jordan’s knees gave way and he sank to the ground. “I didn’t know,” he cried.

  “It was the Beggar King who came to you, was it not, Jordan?” asked Arrabel.

  “Yes.” His voice was small.

  “He’ll say anything to make you do his bidding. And he will never reveal the full price of what he provides until it’s too late.”

  “Is it?” he rasped. “Is it too late?”

  “I can’t say. We’ll have to return to the brass door. I cannot make promises. No one has ever brought the undermagic back to Katir-Cir. The runes upon the door itself say that once it has been opened, it can never be shut.”

  Arrabel’s blue eyes were steely. “It was Sister Lucinda, our bright moon, who wrote those words, Jordan. Her warning was meant to be heeded. It took all of her power — her very life — to seal that door.”

  “But maybe we could use this,” he held up the candle. “Couldn’t it heal Ophira? It certainly brings sickness quickly enough.” And he winced, for he had said more than he’d intended.

  “The undermagic is what’s making her sick, Jordan. It does not have the power to heal. This is a magic that brings curses, and twists the world into the shape of your desire. It chooses darkness. Only the power of the Great Light can heal.” She put out her hand. “Give me the candle.”

  Jordan held the candle before him. He did not give it to her.

  “We are all inclined to want, my friend. But the Great Light provides, if only you ask.”

  “Cirrans have been praying for a full year for you to come home, and nothing has happened.”

  “Are you so certain of that?” In one movement she knocked the candle from his hand.

  “It can’t touch my skin,” she said. “I’ll have to find something to contain it.”

  Jordan was doubled over, holding himself tight at the elbows. Every part of his body ached. Sweat formed on his face and he clenched his teeth.

  “I know a potion that might help,” she said. “It requires sasapher, which your mother has in her kitchen garden.” She stroked his head. Her hand was cool against his face. “You know, I had such a terrible premonition about you on the day of the coup.”

  He had scarcely the energy to nod, but he remembered how she had looked at him that day so long ago, on his fifteenth birthday.

  “That was the day I first saw him,” he breathed.

  And while the battle clashed above them he lay down in the sand and she began to sing, a soft sad tune that made Jordan think of falling leaves and a north breeze. He rested in the gentle light of her gaze.

  Twenty-Five

  THE SEVEN SEERS OF CIR

  THE POSTERS AND ANNOUNCEMENTS WERE PLASTERED on walls all across the Holy City declaring that a Half-Moons Festival would be held in a few days at the palace. There would be feasting and mug-wine and contests, and sometime that afternoon Emperor Rabellus would make a grand statement. Sarmillion didn’t know what this would entail, but he feared the worst. Jordan had been gone for four days now, disappeared from the guest room of the seers’ house. And it was entirely his fault.

  He’d encouraged the boy. Blast it anyway, he’d damn near begged him to open that brass door. “We’d both be heroes. Glory, girls and groder. It’s the only way to save them.”

  He cringed at the memory. That night — the night it had all happened — Willa had stood there, her eyes blazing. “I knew ye never cared for the boy,” she’d said. “Yer a selfish undercat, right down to the bone.”

  Sarmillion had left the Alley of Seers with his head down and his heart heavy, and had hidden in The Pit, drinking Bloody Billy’s and listening to Binur charm the cobras. He’d burrowed into his grand apartment, and even went shopping — the known cure for every ill, though he’d come home empty-handed. The truth was, he did care about Jordan. That was the trouble.

  This was no metaphor haunting the Holy City streets, he had to admit it now. All his scribing wisdom and fancy words and pretty little ideas — oh, fat-headedness, oh, conceit! There was evil in the murders of crows that blackened the sky. The nights bore the evidence of imbalance in the moons themselves, one now unmistakably darker than the other. Sarmillion had thought the stories of ghoulish vulture people appearing with candles were sheer nonsense, until last night when he’d seen one himself. He’d been a fool, a pretentious, hot-aired pumpkin head who had never truly believed in the undermagic until now that it prowled the city streets.

  What could he do? He had to do something.

  He spent that night at the Elliotts’ empty house, setting lanterns in every window and hanging two more sets of glass chimes outside. He tried to coax green out of what had once been wild-evergreen ivy, but no amount of watering could undo this curse. The new growth of poisonous stinkweed choked even the stubborn peppermint plants.

  The next morning, Sarmillion awoke at dawn — an hour he usually only saw if he’d happened to stay out all night — and headed out. The sun rose with a shadow across it, barely brightening the whitewashed Cirran stone.

  “Be gone!” a butcher cried, as crows flew at the meat he was setting out at the market, but they paid him no heed.

  Down the road Sarmillion spied a tall
, bearded man dressed in brown robes, walking at a determined pace and talking to himself. The robes bespoke a tradesman, but there was no mistaking the clipped stride, the aristocratic tilt to his nose, and the way the fellow’s expression soured as he passed the agricultural stalls. He acted as if he expected someone to throw flowers in his path or touch the hem of his garment. And why not? For this was none other than Emperor Rabellus himself. Emperor Rabellus, disguised as a commoner.

  No jewels? No fanfare? What in the name of dried dung is he up to? There was only one way to find out. The undercat followed him.

  Eventually it became clear where he was headed, to an alley where the doorways were closely set, and the air was already heavy with prophecy and the scent of frying fish. It was the Alley of Seers, Sarmillion’s own destination.

  There they were, all seven of them in veiled saffron, sitting on their front stoops. Mama Bintou held her knitting on her lap but she just stared straight ahead. Next to her sat Mama Cantare, humming a mournful tune. Appollonia’s eyes were fluttering open and shut as she discussed something heatedly with Mopu the Monkey-Maker, while Willa and Petsane were engaged in a passionate argument about which healer should be summoned next. Manjuza sat with her veiled face to the darkened sky.

  The undercat tucked himself into a shadowy corner and watched.

  Emperor Rabellus strode right up to Manjuza and then stood there. Probably he was waiting for her to offer him one of the Brinnian greetings, “Glorious Rabellus,” or, “Emperor be praised,” but she kept gazing up into nothing as if it was by far the more interesting view.

  “Feirhaven!” he barked.

  “Eh?” She pressed a small bony hand to her face and peered at him as if he were a curious specimen of lizard. “Well, if it ain’t our fine Mister Mucky-Muck, the man what pretend to be king, wearing his slumming clothes.”

  His face reddened.