Kingmaker

by Eric Zawadzki

CHAPTER 10

  “Have you moved on to solid foods?” the gap-toothed cook asked Butu, who picked at his teeth self-consciously. The cook grinned and handed him a plate piled with mutton.

  “That’s Retus and Lujo over there.” Nolen pointed with his chin at a table where three men sat. One of them looked up and waved them over, one seemed to be talking, and the third one Butu recognized.

  “Next to Karp?” He couldn’t keep the bitterness from his voice.

  “Who?” Nolen asked, leading them to the table.

  “Just some phutra I met this morning. Attacked me for no good reason.”

  Butu looked around and spotted Blay and Tirud together. He thought to go sit over there, but they sat with the sordenu with the jutting jaw. The conversation there looked less than friendly, and Blay’s frown only grew when the pimply sordenu joined them. Butu knew no one else here, and though he would meet many of the other sordenu in the coming months, today he wanted to be with people he already knew.

  He placed his plate down across from Karp, who looked up and, to Butu’s surprise, smiled genuinely, showing off yellowed teeth.

  “Hello, again. No hard feelings, right? I was just giving Blay a hard time. I’ve no quarrel with you.”

  Butu was not convinced. “Right. You meant to hurt Blay, instead.”

  Karp snorted and leaned over. “I was just telling your boys here. Blay fancies himself a born leader. He’d do anything to move up in rank — and don’t think he hasn’t tried a couple things that didn’t work — which is why so many sordenu aren’t too fond of him.”

  Butu kept his mouth shut. And you’re one of them, he thought. He looked over his shoulder at Blay, who had his head down while Tirud said something.

  “Two cycles he’s been at it, but he always gets turned down by the higher-ups,” Karp went on. “Now he’s suddenly a corporal?” He snorted again. “Myself, if I was in his squad, I’d be mighty curious to know what kind of deal he made.” Karp stood up and stretched. He spoke a bit more loudly. “Anyway, I wish all of you the best of luck in the sordenu. One final word of advice. Before you use magic, think long and hard about what you are doing.”

  “He doesn’t seem so bad,” Nolen said once Karp was out of earshot.

  “I’m not so sure,” Butu said. Exactly what should I see in him? “So, which of you is Lujo and which is Retus?”

  Retus had lived his life among the roving shepherds in the foothills of the mountains. He was taller than Butu by a couple inches but was still short for his age. He spoke very little during dinner, and when he did, his voice cracked as often as not.

  Lujo came from Kruk — one of the mining towns north of Jasper. He was taller than all of them and wore a small silver earring in his right ear. While not quite as talkative as Nolen, he was much more open than any of them, eager to insert a story into every conversation.

  Nolen and Phedam were not related by blood, but they were almost exactly the same height and shared enough facial features to pass for fraternal twins.

  “We’ve been shumi since we got to Pophir,” Nolen said seriously, and Phedam nodded. “So when Phedam’s mirjuva happened, about a week before mine, he was all set to go work in the fields.”

  “Too many bad stories about the mines,” Phedam said, staring off at nothing.

  “I said, hey, let’s be sordenu! Training and fighting and protecting and all is gonna be more fun than planting grain.”

  Retus and Lujo looked uncomfortably at their empty plates, and Phedam and Nolen met each other’s eyes.

  “Yeah,” Phedam said, into the sudden silence.

  “I want to know,” Nolen said, somewhat defiantly. “It had to be pretty much the same for everyone, right?”

  The subject was their mirjuva, and an awkward silence fell over the table. No one’s head had turned when magic was brought up, but the mess hall wasn’t the place.

  “Maybe we should talk about this somewhere else,” Butu said. Retus nodded fervently, and Lujo tugged his earring thoughtfully. Nolen and Phedam stood as one, dropping off their plates and leaving. The other three followed. The cooks grinned wolfishly at the boys as they walked by, and the gap-toothed one winked at Butu.

  “Where to?” Nolen asked. They looked at Butu, who shrugged.

  “The armory will be empty,” he said.

  “And sealed and guarded,” Lujo said with an annoyed edge to his voice.

  “Sure,” Butu said, “but it backs up against the half of the mess where they store the carts. No one will come close enough to hear or see us.”

  Nolen and Phedam grinned at Lujo’s stricken expression. He recovered quickly, though, and started into a story in which he won a horseless-cart race down a mountain with only two wheels working. They laughed quietly with him, walking and talking like any other group of sordenu.

  The spot Butu picked was perfect — carts came through here regularly, so the ground was firm gravel interspersed with a few brown, smashed weeds. They couldn’t see the rest of Gordney here.

  Retus flicked a scorpion away from him as they stood uncomfortably in a circle.

  “We’ve got about an hour before lights out,” Phedam commented.

  They murmured understanding, but the silence returned. Butu had the sense everyone was waiting for someone else to say something, first.

  Nolen let out a long sigh, and everyone focused on him.

  “I fell,” he started. “Well, slipped, more like. Broke two bones in my left arm.” He held up his arm to show them, even though it was completely uninjured, now. “It...it hurt. A lot. They had to put a splint on it. It kept the arm from bending in the wrong place, but it didn’t stop the pain. I cried for all three hours it took for the bones to mend. It still hurt a little the next morning when my foster father told me I couldn’t stay in Pophir.”

  He nodded, looking slightly relieved. Everyone else did, too. Butu began to feel more comfortable. He couldn’t sense anyone near their group. Nolen pushed Phedam forward, and Lujo rocked on his heels a bit, looking more confident.

  “I fell, too.” Phedam spoke next. “Not nearly as bad, though. I had stolen an orange from Basper’s fruit stand and was letting him chase me so the other kids could steal more of his fruit. I really don’t know why Basper bothers chasing kids, but he always does.”

  “And it always costs him a lot more of his fruit, in the end,” Nolen interrupted.

  “It’s my story, shumi.” But Phedam grinned. “I wasn’t even going very fast, because I didn’t want to lose him too soon. Then, somehow, I tripped over a tent rope and fell flat on my face. It hurt, and Basper caught me while I was too stunned to get up and run. Instead of carrying out all the threats he always makes when he’s chasing kids, he laughed and told me I could keep the orange. The next day ...” He trailed off.

  “If it wasn’t for me, he’d be in the fields.” Nolen smiled at his friend, and Butu felt a stab at the warmth there. It made him think of Paka.