The Beggar King

by Michelle Barker

  Robes. Jordan sighed. He still didn’t know which ones he would take. Arrabel had told him not to worry, that she had given it great consideration.

  Elliott observed him with a furrowed brow. “You’re pale.”

  “I’ll be okay,” said Jordan. He gazed up at the twin half-moons, shut like two eyelids. You couldn’t really look at the light one without seeing her darker sister.

  Thirty

  ROBES

  ONE WEEK LATER, JORDAN STOOD BEFORE Mama Petsane’s blue door wearing his short pants for the very last time. From behind the closed door she yelled, “Ach, Jordan, it’s open.”

  He entered the kitchen. All seven old women were seated around the table, and Mama Bintou was knitting.

  “Big day,” said Mopu the Monkey-Maker. “Any guesses?”

  “Potato peeler,” said Jordan. “Pipe carver. Chicken butcher.”

  “Praise the chicken butchers,” said Cantare.

  “At least we know he won’t be wearing saffron,” said Ophira from the divan.

  Jordan was still. Only his eyes moved towards where she sat. When he realized she was wearing the dark green robes of a potion-maker, his jaw dropped. “But I thought . . . where are your prophet’s robes?”

  “There’s only seven seers in this family, boy,” said Willa.

  “No need for another,” said Mopu, and she flashed a smile at Ophira. “Girl’s gotta get a real vocation, now.”

  Ophira’s face was still ghostly pale but the colour had returned to her lips.

  She stood and asked her grandmas, “Can I go up to the holy tree with Jordan?”

  “Off ye be, then,” said Petsane. “We ain’t ready to leave yet. Don’t steal nothing along the way, Jordan. Those days be over now. And mind ye walk slowly. ‘Phira ain’t strong enough for cantering up the city streets quite yet.”

  There was a gleam in Mopu’s eye.

  “Give me a hint,” Jordan whispered as he passed her. “What colour will they be?”

  But she shook her head and said nothing.

  Outside the sky was a clear bright blue. Not a single crow, as far as the eye could see. Gone were the poisonous mushrooms and thorn bushes. Instead flowers bloomed in every pot and along every alley and from every rooftop. They even sprouted between some of the cobblestones.

  All the portraits of Rabellus had been painted over, and the Brinnian flags taken down. In their place flew the Cirran doves. Some Cirrans had called for Arrabel to hang the Brinnian prisoners. Others felt they should languish in prison until they died. But after much deliberation, Arrabel decided to send the remaining soldiers home, led by a contingent of Cirran Landguards all the way to the mountain pass.

  “They’ll just turn around and come back,” some folks said.

  But Arrabel promised that was the one thing they would not do. A strong weave of spells would guarantee it.

  Jordan took Ophira’s hand as they wound their way uphill. He welcomed the slower pace. At least he wasn’t the only one taking robes today. Some of his school friends would be alongside him, in front of the crowd. And Sarmillion would be there.

  He paused near the Cirran Common and stood before Ophira. A chicken stopped its pecking at the cobblestones and squawked at him.

  “When you got sick,” he began, and then thrust his hands into his pockets.

  “Jordan, you don’t have to explain anything,” Ophira said.

  “Yes, I do. That night, I went back to the brass door. I took him the undermagic. He said it would need feeding but I never dreamed — if I had known . . . ”

  “It’s okay.” She cupped his face with her hands. “It’s over.”

  “But that’s just it.” Jordan lowered his voice. There were groups of people milling about the market stalls, most of them headed up to the ceremony at the holy tree, where, amongst other things, he was about to be celebrated as a hero. “It’s not over.”

  “The Beggar King is dead,” said Ophira.

  Long live the Beggar King. That interminable procession of unnatural light. Where had the vultures gone? And how long before they came back?

  “The undermagic.” Jordan faltered. “There was no way to get rid of it, Phi.”

  Ophira fixed him with a grim expression. “You mean the vultures,” she said.

  Nearby a set of glass chimes tinkled as if moved by the breeze — but there was no breeze.

  “He woke them,” said Jordan. “And I helped.”

  “But this city has come back to life,” said Ophira. “And so have I. Wouldn’t it all be different if the vultures were really awake? You killed the Beggar King. You put out the candle that mattered. Wasn’t it enough?”

  “Maybe,” he said. “Maybe it was.”

  They resumed walking. The afternoon was warm, but the stifling humidity of the past weeks was gone. As they reached the palace plateau, they stopped so that Ophira could catch her breath. Groups of Cirrans were sitting on blankets on the grass, some on benches or by the fountains, some in the olive grove.

  Flowers overflowed around the holy tree as if today were the feast day, and Jordan could hear someone playing a sweet tune on the mellowreed flute.

  He kissed Ophira lightly. “I’d better go over with the others,” for he could see a group of young men and women waiting off to the side of the tree, their faces solemn. He took his place beside them and wished the day were already over. A moment later Sarmillion joined them dressed in freshly pressed scribe’s robes. He squeezed Jordan’s arm.

  “My,” he said, his eyes darting from one end of the crowd to the other. “Oh my.”

  The assembly went quiet as Arrabel made her entrance, flanked by crimson-robed mystery keepers, as well as the young girl chosen to be robe-bearer for today’s ceremony. Jordan tried to spy the colours in her arms but each of the robes was well covered in its black silk bag. The high priestess stood beside the holy tree. The sunlight made her hair shimmer, and reflected off the many beads and buttons of her robe.

  “My dear friends,” she said, gazing into the crowd as if singling out each person. “How overjoyed I am to be here.”

  She spoke of the coup, of the Brinnians’ brutality, of the terrible necessity of accepting imprisonment in order to prevent the slaughter of scores of innocent Cirrans. When she spoke of Jordan’s heroic part in the battle at the Uttic prison camp, he didn’t realize at first that she was talking about him. He noticed that she left out certain details about the brass door and the undermagic. He tried to catch her eye, to let her know he was grateful for her discretion, but her attention was on the crowd.

  She called upon Sarmillion, awarding him a medallion of honour for service befitting a scribe.

  “My lady,” he said, his head bowed as he accepted his award. When everyone applauded he looked as if he had settled beside a warm fire. Jordan noticed a white-furred undercat amongst the crowd wearing an elegant turquoise dress covered in sequins, her eyes trained on Sarmillion.

  A tall, broad boy was called forward to accept his farming robes — brown, streaked with yellow. As acting scribe for the ceremony, Sarmillion took up a peacock-feather pen and ink to inscribe the boy’s name and vocation into the book of civil records.

  Two girls, one after the next, accepted the emerald robes of scholars. That afternoon there was also a new metal worker in Cir, and a gardener, and a bone-setter. And then it was Jordan’s turn.

  “Jordan Elliott,” said High Priestess Arrabel. He came to stand before her, certain his legs would give way.

  “Today you take your robes,” she said. “These robes mark your departure from childhood, and your entrance onto the path of Cirran adulthood. Son of a carver, son of a baker: stand tall and declare your gift.”

  The entire mountaintop fell silent, but for the chirping of songbirds.

  Jordan looked at the furrowed surface of the holy tree. “I have none,” he said.

  “You have shown cleverness, and great courage,” said Arrabel. “Strength, and also stubbornness. But above all, y
our experience has won you an understanding of this world that few will ever be graced with. Mystery has two sides, and we must see them both.”

  Jordan tried hard to read her kind, wise eyes but they revealed nothing.

  “I am told you’ve been known to spend more time in Somberholt Forest than in our Cirran classrooms. Is this so?”

  Jordan chuckled nervously. “I guess so.”

  “You have a deep connection to trees.”

  He thought of his father’s suggestion to keep the cedar groves, how insulted Jordan had been by the notion mere weeks ago. Now it occurred to him that spending his days surrounded by the good and healing magic of the cedars would be a pleasure. “I do love trees, my lady.”

  “Good.” She reached over and touched the blackened bark of the holy tree. “This one in particular will need your attention.” She stepped forward and announced, “Jordan Elliott, on this day I declare you to be keeper of the holy tree.”

  His forehead creased. “But . . . there’s never been such a keeper.”

  “It’s an oversight I’ve been meaning to correct for some time.”

  The young robe-bearer had removed the black silk bag and was thrusting leaf-green robes into Jordan’s arms and then somehow the robes found their way over his head. They were as soft and light as a breeze. Just above his heart was embroidered a tree with black twisted limbs.

  “I will do my best to merit this honour, my lady,” he said.

  She held him by both shoulders. “You’ve proven yourself worthy already.”

  Sarmillion’s pen scratched upon the parchment but he looked up from his work long enough to catch Jordan’s eye and give him a wink. The nearby mystery keepers came over and shook his hand, and then he was swept into the crowd. Even in such a din he could hear Grandma Mopu’s guffaws.

  “You’ll have to learn your tale of the holy tree by heart,” she said, patting him on the back. “Prayers and incantations, too. My word, boy, you’ll even have to wield a shovel!”

  Ophira gave him a congratulatory kiss and whispered, “Green suits you.” And then his parents were before him. His mother clasped him in a teary embrace and kissed him on both cheeks. Elliott T. Elliott rested a hand upon the green fabric of Jordan’s robes and murmured, “Well. Keeper of the holy tree. Who would have thought it?”

  Jordan was surrounded by people offering him good wishes. He slipped one hand into the pocket of his robes and realized with a start there was something in it. He pulled out his hand and stared in disgust. In it was an oily black feather. He dropped it and stamped it into the grass with his heel.

  The seers were in a deep discussion about whether or not a guard should be set at the Bridge of No Return. No Return. Well, that wasn’t quite true. He had returned and he had no intention of going back.

  He went to stand by one of the fountains, where he had an unimpeded view of the beautiful white city below. His eye followed the winding streets all the way down to the glittering river and the twelve magical bridges that spanned it. Commander Theophen came to stand beside him.

  “It was worth fighting for, wasn’t it,” said Theophen.

  “Yes,” said Jordan. “It was.”

  Michelle Barker’s short fiction has been published in journals across Canada. She has also published non-fiction in magazines, newspapers and literary reviews, and she won a National Magazine Award in personal journalism. Her poetry has been published in literary reviews around the world, including the 2011 Best Canadian Poetry anthology. A chapbook of her poems, Old Growth, Clear Cut: Poems of Haida Gwaii, was published by Leaf Press in 2012, as well as a mini-chapbook, Glimpsing the Stars, with The Centrifugal Eye. She has worked as an editor and leads creative writing workshops

  Barker is studying for her Master’s degree in creative writing at UBC’s optional-residency program. She lives in Penticton with her husband and family. This is her first novel.