“The Age of Cunai, eight thousand two hundred years,” Queen Arlene said, “and if you do not spell it right, you will write out this entire list a dozen times. The Secra: Myra, the first of all Secrai. The Age of Yudah: two thousand three hundred years. The Secra: Alìda, second of all Secrai. The Age of Lisha - I hope this is all on your paper. Why have you stopped?”
Rafen was looking the word ‘Yudah’ over, wondering if he would end up writing his report another dozen times.
“I am checking my spelling.” He tried to say the words with the Sianian vowels Queen Arlene had taught him.
Queen Arlene was particular about his accent. She said it was ‘vulgar’, and she had him practice his vowels, ‘r’s, and ‘l’s every morning to eradicate the Tarhian ‘lilt’ from his speech. If he said them wrong, she would strike his hand with a stick she called a ruler. He knew Queen Arlene had the impression this hurt. Rafen didn’t mind it at all. He was used to being knocked around with metal picks and shovels. Besides this, every time Rafen heard his accent creep back he mentally struck himself too. He wanted everything Tarhian about him to be eliminated.
“If you must check your spelling, it is wrong,” Queen Arlene said loftily, smoothing out a wrinkle in her pearl-colored gloves.
“Sorry, Your Highness.”
The cabin door flew open, and King Robert waddled in.
“You are disturbing us,” Queen Arlene said without looking at him.
“Rafen, my dear boy,” King Robert said, “I have wanted to have a discussion with you for some time. However, I wished to make sure you were quite recovered from your exhaustion before we did talk. Are you feeling quite well now?”
“Yes, Sire.”
They had been traveling six weeks, and though Rafen’s lash wounds still pained him occasionally, they were almost healed. To his disgust, Etana had said that he would have the scars for life.
“And you are quite at ease?”
“Yes, Sire.”
“Then I feel you are ready. No need to get up, my dear, I’m happy to stand,” King Robert said.
Rafen had no idea why King Robert was under the impression Queen Arlene might offer him her seat, because Queen Arlene had not stirred or looked his way since he had entered.
“You might write down any useful information though, my dear.” King Robert moved over to the desk and shuffled around the parchments until he found a blank sheet and spare quill. He shoved both before Queen Arlene, who looked rather like he had forced her to examine a dead rat.
“Now,” said King Robert, still wobbling a little from his exertions, “I want to ask you a few questions, Rafen.”
Rafen turned in his seat to face the king. Information he never wanted to share rushed through his mind: the killing of a guard in the mine; Torius, reeling with blood on his shirt; a phoenix feather Rafen so desperately wanted…
“My apologies for being abrupt,” King Robert said. “You see, Rafen, in order to avoid being made responsible for a war between Siana and Tarhia, and in order to avoid being accused of offense to Tarhia, I must prove Talmon was entirely to blame for the incident that brought me to his coast. Do you understand? I can’t do that without two witnesses. Etana is my first, and you may be my second. The information you give me will go in a letter to King Albert, the ruler of Sarient and emperor of the provinces of Tarhia, Siana, Ruya, Rastia, and, well, many others. All right?”
Rafen nodded, though he wasn’t really following King Robert. He wondered why he had never heard of this until now.
“To help me do that, you need to tell me, Rafen, what your living conditions were like in Tarhia, what you think Talmon has been up to for the past few years, and why you think Talmon captured Etana. Just so we can get a little character sketch on the man. All right?”
Taking a deep breath, Rafen nodded again. Now he understood. King Robert wanted to shift the blame of any fighting between Siana and Tarhia to Talmon, so that Sarient, which ruled Tarhia and Siana, would punish the Tarhian king. His eyes gleamed.
“I am ready.” He glanced at Queen Arlene, who surprisingly had her quill poised above her blank parchment.
“You could have asked the scribe to do this,” she said meaningfully to King Robert.
“It will mean more in your hand, my dear. So, Rafen,” King Robert said, “where did you live in Tarhia?”
“In a cell.”
“A prison cell?” King Robert asked in surprise.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I was a slave.”
“Slaves don’t generally live in prison cells, Rafen. Did all the other slaves live in prison cells?”
“Some. The important ones. The others lived in hovels or cells in the mine.”
“So you were an important slave?”
Rafen hesitated. “Talmon didn’t like my name.”
Scratch-scratch-scratch, went Queen Arlene’s quill.
Next King Robert asked where Rafen’s cell was, what was within it, and whether Rafen had a blanket or window. Rafen wondered why these questions were important. He supposed it was King Robert’s obsession with light evincing itself. King Robert was forever telling Rafen to ‘spend more time in the light’. As a result, Rafen’s eyes were much stronger than before, and his skin was no longer pale and blotchy.
“What did you wear?” King Robert went on.
While speaking, Rafen was surprised to discover he couldn’t remember when his clothes had been issued to him, or how often the guards changed the children’s clothes.
“Did the slaves’ clothing ever fall apart?”
“Two-three-two lost all his clothes. He got beaten because of it.” Rafen shifted in his chair and looked away.
“Two-three-two?” King Robert inquired.
“A slave.”
“Was he given new clothes?”
“Not for a long while.”
“Why not?” King Robert asked softly.
Flushing, Rafen shook his head. Queen Arlene shuddered, and Rafen sank lower in his seat. King Robert changed the subject.
“How long did you work in the mine?”
“Eight years.”
“How long a day? Wait—” King Robert suddenly realized what Rafen had said. “Do you mean to say you started working in the mine when you were four?”
“Yes, Sire.”
King Robert blew air out of his cheeks. “How many hours did you work there a day?”
“Five o’clock in the morning until nine o’clock at night.”
Scratch-scratch-scratch, went the quill furiously.
The conversation turned to food. Rafen remembered Torius wrestling his bread off him. He had hated him for it then. Now he would gladly have given Torius all the food on one of his mealtime trays.
“What work did you do in the mine?” King Robert asked.
Rafen explained the daily labor.
“Did they call you ‘Rafen’? Not a strictly important question, I was just wondering.”
“We all had numbers. Above our right ankles.”
Rafen vividly recalled the terrible burning when he was branded at age four.
“You were never called by your name?”
“Sometimes. Toward the end. Nobody knew their name except me. My friend told me my name. Torius made up his.”
Rafen screwed his hands up in his lap, and Queen Arlene mouthed something while she wrote.
“Tell me how the guards treated you,” King Robert said.
An explosion of unwanted images flashed on his mind’s eye, accompanied with voices and sensations.
“What?” Rafen panted, rising. “Why? No!”
Scratch-scr, went the quill, stopping abruptly.
King Robert’s face scrunched into worried wrinkles. “I will not press you if you do not want to talk about it,” he said gently.
“Talk about it!” Rafen shouted, surprising even himself, his Tarhian accent strong and clear. “You think you know but you don’t understand! YOU WEREN’T THERE! YOU’RE
LAUGHING AT ME, I KNOW YOU ARE!”
For a moment, Queen Arlene’s white mask of dignity fell from her face, and she twitched nervously in her chair, the quill hanging from long fingers.
King Robert’s face crumpled. “My dear boy…”
Rafen fell back into his chair, slammed his elbows on his report on the desk, and held his face in his hands. He shook as if with cold. Facing the sea, he wished it could wash all the memories away.
“I’m sorry,” King Robert murmured. “I didn’t realize how upset you still were about it.”
‘Upset’ made it sound petty, childish. Rafen straightened, breathing quick breaths, trying to steady himself.
“Perhaps we should talk about it another time.” King Robert turned to leave.
“Wait,” Rafen said. Torius wouldn’t have given up at this.
King Robert paused, looking back at him.
“I’m ready,” Rafen said flatly.
The quill was lowered to the paper. Rafen started murmuring the accounts he had never wanted to voice, because that made them all the more real. After what felt like forever, King Robert cleared his throat with the noise of a dying seagull.
“Thank you, Rafen,” he said quietly. “That will be enough.”
Without another word, he took the pile of parchment from Queen Arlene, who was leaning back in her chair with tears glistening in her eyes. He left the room, the door closing with a soft thud behind him.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Thomas’ Murderer
Over the next few weeks, Rafen grew better at sword-fighting. He was also doing well with his studies. Queen Arlene had even said his pronunciation of the Phoenix Tongue was perfect.
Still, he worried about their impending arrival in Siana. After all his efforts, what if he had nowhere to live?
He leaned against the railings of the Phoenix Wing, watching men move rapidly on the decks of the Sianian Crest nearby. King Robert came and stood next to him, his face thoughtful.
“Hello,” he said absentmindedly, without looking at Rafen.
“Hello, Sire.” Rafen brightened a little.
When they had been able to talk normally again, Rafen had found their friendship had deepened. Somehow, King Robert’s shock at Rafen’s accounts had won his trust.
King Robert was thinking about self-defense. Rafen knew it because Alexander had been scolding him that morning. Alexander gave both Rafen and King Robert regular fencing lessons, and Rafen had proved the better pupil.
“Do you really think I’m horrible at fencing?” King Robert asked.
Rafen glanced at him in bewilderment. Talmon would never ask a boy his opinion of his fencing. Staring at the waves, Rafen tried to read a tactful answer out of their diverse forms.
“I thought so,” King Robert said.
“Thought what, Sire?”
“That you agreed with Alexander.”
“I don’t,” Rafen said hurriedly. At this point, Talmon would have his pistol out.
“You’re not telling the truth, Rafen,” King Robert said heavily.
Rafen flinched, almost feeling the blow the guards gave his face when they barked, “Tell the truth!”
“You are trying to be nice, I suppose,” King Robert said. “I expect Tarhia taught you to tell pleasant lies.”
“Tarhia hasn’t taught me anything,” Rafen said through his teeth.
King Robert flinched. “I’m sorry, my boy. I know you hate to be associated with Tarhia. Unfortunately, Rafen, we do learn things from even our worst mentors.”
There was a painful pause. Rafen stared at the sea, fear pulsing through him.
“My brother was good at self-defense,” King Robert said. “He always was. He was too good to die.”
Too good to die. At those words, Rafen could see Torius’ skinny form amid the shapes in the waters.
“Then again, Thomas never did like to fight,” King Robert continued.
Thomas?
“What did he look like, Sire?” Rafen asked. He had recently concluded his dream about the phoenix feathers must be partially true, because the Sianians had mentioned the Phoenix and Fritz several times. Yet no one had spoken of Thomas.
His brow furrowed, King Robert turned to him, and Rafen realized then whom the king had reminded him of when they had first met.
Thomas had had pale blue eyes too. His nose had also been long, and wide at the bottom. Their hair was the same length, and King Robert’s cheekbones were high like Thomas’. Even King Robert’s current surprised expression was uncannily similar to Thomas’, when Alakil had turned on Fritz.
“Strange you should ask that,” King Robert said. “Many say he looked a lot like me. Of course, he was taller and skinnier. So skinny that now and again he seemed to disappear altogether. Thomas was talented at disappearing. He was forever hiding. Yes… I think we looked a little alike. He had black hair though, not red, and he liked to wear it to his shoulders like our young Sartian noblemen. He had something of a moustache on his upper lip, well groomed. He looked noble, Rafen. In that way, I suppose we weren’t at all alike.”
“How long ago did he die?” Rafen whispered.
“He died in Forty-Eight, Parath.”
Queen Arlene had taught Rafen about Parath, the Age of the Compass. They were now in the Age Terek al Keren. Rafen did the arithmetic. Thomas had died twenty-four years ago.
“How did he die, Sire?”
An eerie feeling of being watched crept over Rafen. He remembered the voices from Talmon’s Master’s rod. Something was telling him he shouldn’t be probing into these things.
King Robert gave a long sigh. “Well, he stopped learning kesmal with his tutor. He stopped fighting. He said he didn’t want to be a warrior, didn’t want to be whatever his Uncle Fritz had wanted him to be. That was after Fritz’s death, a whole seven years before Thomas’ own. Seven years of apathy! Then Thomas was called to Siana to marry Arlene and bear this.”
He put pale fingers to his forehead and moved aside some locks of stringy red hair, revealing a thin gold circlet that crossed his brow. In the middle of his forehead, it bore a single, deep-blooded amethyst.
“Someone has been after this a long while,” he said quietly. “On Thomas’ voyage, the sailors said an apparition appeared to him, in his own cabin, at night. It bound him with kesmal and stabbed Thomas over and over, then vanished.” King Robert shuddered. “I knew I should have gone with him. I didn’t have much to keep me in Sarient – just a special friend – but no, I didn’t go, and he died. Then I was called, and I had to come and rule a people I didn’t know, do a job I wasn’t trained for, marry a woman I didn’t love. Zion, what a life! Thomas would have done a much better job.”
Rafen gripped the rail, absorbing King Robert’s words. “You are a good king,” he said, dragging his gaze off the sea and looking into King Robert’s boyish eyes with pity.
“Do you mean that?” King Robert asked, his face alight. Then he frowned again. “Ah, how would you know?”
Rafen didn’t know what to say.
“Alexander is very morbid, Rafen,” King Robert said. “He keeps speaking as if he expects my brother’s killer to murder me while I’m at sea. Our ship is so much better protected than Thomas’ ever was, poor soul. And I’m not a Runi, like my brother was.”
Queen Arlene had explained that Runi were kings with extraordinary kesmalic abilities.
“That made all the difference,” King Robert said. “That’s why he was after him.”
“Who was after him?” Rafen asked.
“It was ghastly. They think he’s gone now. Vanished. Eaten by Nazt. They gave the most gruesome descriptions of him. After he rose to immortality, he was invincible. No one could hurt him, not even with kesmal. He had the typical Ashurite dreadlocks, you know, but smelling fetid, and pitch black. His skin was gray and dripping…”
Rafen’s insides churned. “Wait,” he said shakily. “What’s his name?”
“His name? My blood, Rafen, n
o one really knows, he has so many.”
“Alakil?” Rafen said.
The color drained from King Robert’s face, and he gasped. “Who told you that name?”
“He killed Fritz as well, didn’t he?” Rafen questioned. “Did he carry a big rod? A copper one?”
“Blood of the Phoenix,” King Robert said, quivering, “where did you hear all these things, boy?”
His eyes were fixed on Rafen, and his doughy face sagged.
“In Tarhia,” Rafen said. “He’s in Tarhia. He’s Talmon’s Master.”
There was silence for a moment. Then King Robert said sharply, “You have seen him then?”
“Yes… well, in a way.” Rafen couldn’t bring himself to talk about his dream. “I heard his voice. I know it was him, I felt the rod.”
He began to explain how he had been interviewed that day at seven years old. King Robert listened intently.
“This tells all,” he said. “Yes, it is him. How could it be anyone else? This is why Etana was captured. Talmon would never think of doing such a thing himself. Don’t be fooled, Rafen. He did not transport you back to your cell. There is no pattern of kesmal for moving other people in quite that manner. The general returned you to your cell that day, and even before you got there, the Lashki was nearby. He put you into a trance. From there on, the whole thing was in your head. When he ‘sent’ you back, he merely woke you from your trance and departed from your cell unseen. The Lashki Mirah is well-known for such kesmal.”
“The Lashki Mirah?”
“He called himself this after he became immortal.” King Robert’s hands tightened on the ship’s rail. “Rafen, what did he say to you? You told me how he came to interview you, but what did he say?”
Rafen bit his tongue hard and looked away.
“He asked… things about my parents,” he said. He looked back at King Robert. If he told the king everything, he might begin to think the Lashki would follow them because of Rafen.
“Is that all?” King Robert said. “Surely he asked you about your name.”
“Not really.”
“Did he tell you to do anything?”
“To answer.”
Rafen (The Fledgling Account Book 1) Page 14