The Beggar King

by Michelle Barker

  “You come about the girl,” said Mama Bintou, and her knitting needles clattered to the cobblestones. Rabellus’s face contorted as he tried to come to terms with the fact that these women really could see what others could not.

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he said.

  “Sure you don’t,” said Grandma Mopu.

  He huffed and said, “I would prefer to have this discussion in private.”

  Manjuza waved away his concerns. “Our visions are like meadows to us, Mister Mucky-Muck. We all tramp about on them in our bare feet. Ye got no secrets here.”

  “Where is she?” he said huskily. “She was supposed to come to my chambers. She hasn’t been there these several nights.”

  “Ophira has taken ill,” said Grandma Mopu, “and has suffered many days of fever. You will not disturb her. In any case,” her eyes hardened, “you don’t seek her for her prophecies.”

  “You come about the girl,” Grandma Bintou said, “when you ought to be coming about the undermagic.”

  Rabellus stiffened. “Don’t speak of such absurdity around me,” he said. “There is no magic, and there is no undermagic.

  But, as it so happens, I’m also here to inquire about this,” and he waved his hand vaguely at the sky. “You are creating chaos.”

  “Us? We’re the ones causing a rumpus in this city?” said Willa.

  “This thing you’ve brought on, this is the work of charlatans.

  Seven crotchety con artists who use trickery to call birds and kill plants and make foolish peasant folk believe they see vultures that are part-human. Fah! You will cease and desist with this claptrap or I shall throw you in prison. You’re spoiling the mood for my festivities.”

  Mopu chuckled. “Spoiling the mood, are we? Ah yes, I’d forgotten, everything in the Holy City is about you now. The universe revolves around the emperor. Careful, big man. This world will make a monkey of you yet.”

  “Guard your tongue, feirhaven,” Rabellus growled. “I control this city now.”

  “Even the crows, Mister Mucky-Muck?” said Manjuza.

  “The devious birds,” said Willa. “Messengers of death. They come to Cantare.”

  “Praise the birds!” sang Cantare. Her short hair stood so rigidly on end it made the top of her veiled head prickly. Her singing was wretched but three crows responded all the same, flying over and landing on the steps next to her.

  “But watch this,” she said. “Praise Emperor Rabellus. Praise our Brinnian leader.”

  Rabellus cringed at her voice but seemed impressed when a hawk came out of nowhere to land at his feet. And then, as if it had been shot with an arrow, it slumped to the cobblestones in a dead heap.

  Rabellus pressed his thin lips together. “So you do call the birds. Are you really such fools as to prove me right?”

  Manjuza smiled. “Not fools, just old women who see farther than you. What do ye figure on a dead hawk at the feet of Mister Mucky-Muck, eh Petsane?”

  The heavyset woman barely fit on her front steps and was already sweating despite the early hour. “Who can say?” she chortled.

  Rabellus shifted his feet. “If you know something, you are obliged to tell me. I am the emperor.”

  “He is the emperor,” said Mopu, puffing out her chest.

  Petsane waved her meaty hand in the air. “We don’t need to tell you nothing, big man.”

  “I got something to tell him,” said Appollonia. Her glass eye shone so brilliantly even through the veil that Rabellus had to look away. “Doom, she travels by riverboat.”

  The other women grunted their agreement.

  “What in the name of Brinnian good sense is that supposed to mean?” said Rabellus. “This is fraud. I ought to throw the lot of you in prison.”

  “Praise perplexity,” sang Cantare. “Praise the mysteries of this world.”

  “He’s gonna throw us where?” asked Willa.

  “Prison,” said Bintou.

  “Ach,” said Petsane. “I’d like to see him try.”

  Rabellus stomped one foot and said, “Where is the girl? I demand to see her.”

  “She is dying, big man,” said Mopu. “And unless you leave this city with all of your black-booted toads and restore our high priestess to power, she will die.”

  “I’ll send my finest physicians,” he declared.

  “Quacks, all of ‘em,” said Bintou.

  “I will have her healed by sundown, and then you will resolve this bird matter at once. Tomorrow — ” Rabellus cleared his throat, “I mean to make an announcement of great significance, and I want the mood to be right. This bedlam in the streets will make me seem like an addle-head.”

  “He’s worried about what he looks like!” said Petsane. “Maybe ye should’ve thought of that before. Scores of Cirran folk hanging from our holy tree — ye should be ashamed.”

  “There’s blood on yer hands,” said Manjuza. “The vulture people will smell it before long. They’ll come for you. They have a fondness for murderers.”

  “Mind you keep yer doors locked,” growled Willa.

  “Murder, murder,” several of the women chanted. This had the general effect of waking up the neighbourhood. Doors opened, and people came out to the Alley of Seers in their nightclothes.

  “Confound these fortune-tellers!” Rabellus sputtered, and then shouted at Manjuza, “Your people died because they couldn’t follow the rules.”

  The prophetess stood, and though she was small and elderly she seemed anything but frail as she faced the emperor, hands balled into fists and pressed against her hips. “Don’t you be treatin’ us like buzzards and then expect our help, feirhart. If ye want to set things right, you’d best be willing to look the truth right in the eyeball. There’s evil on our streets, a dark magic that’s beyond any power we got. Our high priestess could help, but she ain’t here, is she?”

  “It’s your spells and drivel that have done it,” snapped Rabellus.

  “You’re the one in charge,” said Bintou. “It must be your fault.” And all seven women laughed.

  “Your high priestess left this city by choice,” he said, speaking each word with precision. “She abandoned her people. How can I be held responsible for her cowardice? She might have stayed, if she’d cared to.”

  “Foolishness and jabber-blabber,” cried Mama Petsane. “Ye turned yer knives upon our lady and sent her to the desert to die.”

  The crowd moved closer. Everyone was listening.

  Manjuza, who was still standing, now raised a finger and pointed it at Rabellus’s chest. “You’ve trampled Arrabel’s traditions into the dust. Bring back our priestess. Then maybe we’ll talk about the undermagic.”

  Rabellus’s eyes narrowed. “I could take you away right now for the way you’re speaking to me.”

  Manjuza trained her small black eyes on his. “Go ahead.”

  Rabellus grabbed the seer’s arm. There was a moment, a knife’s edge of hesitation, when he might have shaken off this confrontation. He eyed the crowd of Cirrans.

  “You’re coming with me,” he hissed at Manjuza.

  Immediately the other grandmas rose and formed a circle around him. Petsane pulled a long wooden spoon from her saffron robes and waved it at Rabellus.

  “You so spineless, you arresting old ladies now?” she said.

  But Manjuza shook her head and said, “Sit, sit. Let destiny take its course.”

  Rabellus’s face fell. “What do you mean by that?” He scanned the other women’s faces. “What does she mean by that?”

  “If only you knew, eh?” said Mopu.

  Willa strode over to the emperor in her great galumphing rubber boots and growled, “Leave the Holy City now, while you still can.”

  Rabellus turned and walked away. He led the seer by one arm so gently you’d think he was helping her cross the street, while the eyes of the six other grandmas burned into his back. And the gossiping crowd didn’t miss a thing.

  When he judged th
at Rabellus and his captive were a safe distance away, Sarmillion crept out of his hiding place.

  “Go away, underkitty!” hollered Mama Bintou. “We’ve had enough excitement for today.”

  “Our mighty emperor just took Manjuza away,” said Grandma Mopu.

  “I saw,” said Sarmillion. “It was unjust. The people won’t stand for it.”

  With one of her large hands, Mama Petsane clutched Sarmillion’s arm. “Spread the word,” she said. “Tell everyone what ye seen here this morning. And then tell them to come to that high-falutin’ party Mister Emperor’s got planned. Tell them that at half-moons, the hawk is gonna die.”

  “Okay, right away, whatever you say.” Sarmillion clapped enthusiastically, hoping this would encourage the woman to let go of his arm, which she finally did.

  “So?” she said. “What’re ye still doing here? I tell you what to do. Go do it.”

  The undercat cleared his throat and pressed the toe of one shoe against the cobblestones.

  “He’s worried about the boy,” said Mama Bintou. “But he doesn’t want to tell you that on account of he feels guilty.”

  Sarmillion was about to explain that he wasn’t selfish at all, merely short-sighted at times, and that he was ready to go anywhere and do anything to bring Jordan home. But then he caught sight of Petsane’s stew spoon and felt Willa’s grey eyes on his face, and it occurred to him that this knitting grandma had just read his mind. Appollonia’s eyes were crossed and Mopu was bouncing from one foot to the other like she wanted to hang something upside-down, and the singing grandma was poking at the dead hawk like she might just make a sandwich out of it.

  Bintou pointed a knitting needle at Sarmillion. “You got a jumbly mess in that head of yours,” she said. “I can’t make kitchen curtains out of it.”

  “I’m, I’m . . . ” Sarmillion stammered. “Jordan’s been gone for days. I’m sorry about what happened, I really am. Isn’t there something I can do to help?”

  “Ach, come back later,” said Petsane. “You’re getting on our nerves and we got a sick girl to tend to.” And then came a piercing cry from behind one of the doors and three of the grandmas were up and inside even before the sound had stopped ringing in Sarmillion’s ears.

  Mopu had a grip on Sarmillion’s bicep. “Come,” she said. “Come see what that brass door has done to our girl.”

  Sarmillion entered a room of blinding lantern light. It had the claustrophobic smell of sickness to it. There was the impossible girlfriend lying on the divan, blankets pulled to her neck.

  “She won’t be kept in a darkened chamber. She insists on being down here in the light,” said Bintou.

  Sarmillion was horrified at the change in her. Her skin was white, her eyes ringed with dark circles, and she looked skinny and frail. Without warning she gave another shriek of, “No!” and then went so still Sarmillion feared she had passed on, right then and there.

  “Get a cold compress!” Mopu commanded. When he came back from the kitchen with the cloth, his hands were shaking.

  “We been speaking the prayers you wrote,” said Bintou. “But we might already be too late. We’re in great need of our high priestess.”

  “What can I do?” Sarmillion said, backing away from the grandmas.

  It was Appollonia who answered from her rocker. With her good eye closed, and her glass eye shimmering in the light, she said, “Put the undercat in Manjuza’s chair and make him write the spells for haste. Arrabel’s coming, and she’s with Jordan, but she ain’t coming fast enough. He can say the spells with us in Manjuza’s place. Bid him sit.”

  “We can’t do that, Sister,” said Bintou. “Our word isn’t powerful enough to move the river, and he’s not kin.”

  “Not kin, no,” said Mopu, “but his bond with Jordan is strong.”

  “We must try,” said Cantare. “If Polly says it’s so, we must try.”

  Before anyone else could argue, parchment and pen were thrust at Sarmillion, and he was sitting at the kitchen table wracking his brain for the spells that might help. He scribbled them down, dipping his pen into the ink so rapidly he left sprays of black upon the parchment.

  “Mind yer mess, now, underkitty or we won’t be able to read nothing,” said Willa.

  When it was done, Sarmillion waved the parchment dry and tried to ignore the moans that were coming from the near-dead girl on the divan. The six remaining seers gathered around the battered wooden table. Sarmillion took Mama Petsane’s sweaty hand in his left and endured Mopu’s man-like grip on his right.

  “You begin,” said Bintou to the undercat. “Customary incantations, you know how it all goes. And don’t be skimping out on even one word, and don’t be saying any of them like you don’t mean ‘em. Understand?”

  Sarmillion nodded, and began with the opening incantations to the Great Light, which he knew by heart. When he came to the spells for haste, he spoke each word with care.

  “Precipitate, facilitate, nimble-footed, wings on wind,” he said, thinking of Jordan and High Priestess Arrabel. Arrabel was coming, Appollonia had said, but how? On the river? Could these simple words really make it flow faster? Could they bring Jordan back, too?

  The spells ended and they all fell silent, but no one let go of Sarmillion’s hands. As his eyes closed, he swore he could feel something flow through all of these arms and clasped hands. It was a river and it was moving quickly.

  Then Appollonia said, “Go to the place with the snakes. Be there tomorrow, at daybreak.”

  Petsane let go of Sarmillion’s hand, and waved one arm in front of her. “Yeah, yeah. Go to Omar, then. Now, get out of our way so we can help our dear ‘Phira.”

  “Omar?” he said with a squeak.

  “Remember the riverboat,” Appollonia said. “Go to the boat.”

  “Now, git, and spread the word about our Manjuza like Mama Petsane told you to, before we chase you off,” said Grandma Mopu. “We’ve got curses in our pockets,” and she jiggled her robes, which was enough to set Sarmillion scuttling on his way.

  The next morning, when he saw a group of Uttic travelers disembarking from a riverboat in their ghostly white robes and headdresses, he knew he had seen this all before — even though it was only happening now. It was like someone had taken time and bent it backwards.

  While the group climbing off the riverboat looked for all the world like tourists, Sarmillion recognized them. A year of harsh desert living had darkened their skin and traced its sharp fingers around their eyes. They wore their Uttic headdresses in the traditional fashion, covering everything except the eyes. No one would know them. The eye was indeed a liar, and today it would lie to everyone. But he knew who they were.

  The grandmas had given him a job that for once he was qualified to do — spread gossip. He didn’t much understand how this would help, but he’d have to trust them. He recognized the erect and proud bearing of his priestess, and hurried to meet her.

  “My lady,” he said softly, “the seers require your most urgent assistance.”

  She said nothing, but her eyes were fixed on a point on the far horizon and she strode quickly past him.

  The undercat glimpsed the stout and stalwart shape of the true commander of the Landguards, Theophen. At last he spotted Jordan’s green eyes and moved towards him, his heart swelling with gratitude and blissful relief.

  Twenty-Six

  THE NEW COMMANDER OF

  THE BRINNIAN GUARD

  CITIZENS FROM OMAR AND ACROSS THE Cirran provinces flooded the palace courtyards. Even a group from Ut has come, thought Jordan with a wry smile. Emperor Rabellus stood on a platform observing the contests, surrounded by Brinnian flags, his jeweled breastplate dull in the weak sunlight. This was probably not the scene he would have chosen to survey. The grassy courtyards which had once been brilliant green were now yellowed and dry. Over the past few days the flowers and shrubs on the palace grounds had shriveled and died. In their place grew thorn bushes and clumps of poisonous mushrooms. Th
ere was a persistent stinking haze that hung at the top of the mountain, compounded by the afternoon’s incessant heat. Waves of crows darkened the bruise-coloured sky.

  Nevertheless, the emperor tried to put on a good show. Trumpets blasted fanfares. The scent of roasted deer competed with the putrid smog, and merry cries came from the off-duty Landguards who were already knee-deep in mug-wine. The emperor looked gaunt and pale. Ophira’s poison was taking its toll — it might even have done the job, eventually, if she hadn’t fallen ill.

  Rabellus planned to announce the deaths of Arrabel, Theophen and the others, deaths he’d had confirmed when a courier hawk had brought him a scroll that read, “It is done.” A hawk sent to him by Theophen. In truth, not a single Brinnian remained alive in the prison camp near Utberg. And not a single Brinnian in the Holy City knew about it.

  Jordan stood in the centre of the blazing courtyard. Everyone wandered restlessly from the various games to the banquet tables, and yet they all kept their eyes on the emperor. A group of his school friends swept past him and he almost called to them but stopped himself in time. He imagined himself picking up one of the bows, shooting an arrow into the haystack. Laughing along with the other boys.

  Jordan’s arms and legs were aching. He had not tried to disappear since he’d found Arrabel, but he heard an echo of wings in his ears and knew he could do it. The Beggar King was with him still.

  “Are you all right?” his mother asked him from her place at his side. “Maybe we should move into the shade. You don’t seem well.”

  He took her arm. Despite the sasapher potions Arrabel had prepared for him he was dizzy when he stood, dizzy when he lay down, nauseous almost all the time. Slowly and gingerly he walked with his mother to stand beneath one of the canvas awnings set up along the edges of the courtyard assembly.

  “Try your luck with the hammer throw?” said a Landguard.

  Jordan was about to say no, when an odd procession caught his eye and he saw him — Elliott T. Elliott. Tanny gasped and grabbed Jordan’s arm, for her husband’s hands were tied behind his back and he was being led across the grounds by two hooded Landguards. Behind them followed another pair of hooded guards leading Mama Manjuza, and behind them another with the chief healer, Malthazar. There were other prisoners as well but Jordan didn’t recognize them.