Loved Him to Death: Haru of Sachoné House

by K. M. Frontain

  “You can’t think to live here!” Intana said.

  “Yes, and with my entire crew,” I replied. I bellowed inward to the house mother, careful not to open my lips too much. “Yrrylos! I need a bigger apartment than my usual!”

  “What?” came a loud cry from further within. “You don’t pay me enough to house stinking street urchins!”

  “I’ll buy the house!”

  “I live here!”

  “I need a place for my crew! Yrrylos! Take them for a few days at least, until I find a house to purchase!”

  “Oh, fine! But send them to the bathhouse first!”

  “At least feed them beforehand! They’ll die of starvation before they get clean!”

  “And you call me impolite,” Intana interrupted. “Here you are, haggling at full throat in a doorway.”

  “Haggling is never pretty,” I said.

  “Neither are these things filing past,” he answered, meaning the children rushing in heedless of him. They only cared that someone had mentioned food. “You’ve just taken on a crew you don’t need, a crew of rags and bones. You’re haggling at a loss,” Intana said.

  “I’ll find a use for them and regain my loss.”

  I returned within. We had a meal yet to finish, and I would not let Intana’s resentment deter me from enjoying it.

  Seldom on a westward run did I visit Yrrylos’s establishment because the winds were too precious to waste. But on a return journey, with tacking necessary most of the voyage, my men would become weary of sailing and would need their rest. Then I made use of the apartment I rented from Yrrylos. No doubt she didn’t leave it unused during my absences, but since it was always clean when I returned, I never had cause to fuss.

  In this case, my westward run had been interrupted, but I doubted Yrrylos had given the room over to anyone else. Her complaints, upon seeing me on her doorstep earlier, suggested the apartments on the upper floor were as empty as the common areas.

  With my new crew seated in the centre of Flower Court, and making a smell not the least pleasant, I decided to retreat to the apartment for dessert. Intana conducted himself politely at first, if only because he did not speak, but he commenced to tread back and forth on the polished wood, going from open balcony to fern decorated wall and back again, his expression perturbed, and his black and silver eyes spearing me with discontent on every pass.

  “He’s wearisome to watch,” Yrrylos said after ten passes. “Does he dislike my dessert so much?”

  “There’s no meat in your desserts, love. Now if you were to drizzle this fruit sauce on a prawn…”

  I hadn’t expected her to take me literally, and she didn’t, but I found myself shoved back onto cushions and my trousers undone, and sauce splashed over my torso and groin.

  “Here, you,” Yrrylos called to Intana. “Your dessert.”

  Intana stalled before the balcony and stared. Yrrylos huffed an impatient noise and bent to lick the sweetness pooling in my navel. In a flash of motion, Intana crouched to my other side and shoved her off. Yrrylos tumbled backward onto her bottom. Purple and green silks floated upward. Plump legs rose in the air, but Yrrylos laughed at Intana’s irate countenance the moment she regained her balance.

  “Intana!” I shouted. I lurched up, took the pitcher of sauce and threw it all on him. He yelped. Yrrylos laughed again and tossed on me a bowl of chilled berries resting on shaved ice. This time I yelped and squirmed beneath icy berries that had fallen where I was most sensitive. Yrrylos worsened my predicament, shoving an entire sponge cake on my lap.

  “There!” she said. “Eat, you too jealous turd of a god!” She stood, stomped to the apartment door, and slammed out.

  I lay back on the cushions and groaned. “Ah, hell, Intana! Must you ruin everything? We could have had fun sharing her!”

  “I don’t want her!”

  “Go to the highest mountain and bring me the oldest snow on this island!” I shouted.

  “Haru! How am I to know which is oldest?”

  “Go!”

  He went. I put a hand over my eyes and contemplated the feel of near frozen berries packed in cake against my scrotum.

  “Yrrylos! Come back and help me! I sent him away!”

  The door opened. I lowered my hand, and there was Yrrylos, her expression terrified. At her back crowded guards of the imperial palace.

  Chapter Fifteen

  I looked at the soldiers, immaculate in beautifully wrought chain armour and green silk. They looked at me, the epitome of bad table manners. Into the uncomfortable silence, I said, “I hope you will consider letting me wash before you take me up to see your emperor?”

  They were very considerate about it, and only the captain stayed to watch Yrrylos and her girls clean me up and help me dress in my ceremonial outfit. This comprised my best trousers of white-beige coarse silk, loose in the Brellin style, but again tight at hips and waist. It had a matching jerkin, which I wore over a pale rose shirt with baggy sleeves. Gold and rose embroidery decorated both the trousers and the jerkin.

  Yrrylos rebraided my hair with a rose silk cord woven into the strands. In my ears, I hooked shark-shaped gold earrings with ruby eyes, and off I went to see the emperor of Verdant, wearing my best boots. I was very glad I’d kept them. They looked particularly good with my ceremonial outfit.

  I saw no sign of Halva and my new crew when I walked through Flower Court, and I supposed he and the children had hidden the moment the emperor’s men had knocked on the door of Yrrylos’s establishment. I didn’t think poorly of them for it. A good crew knew when to run from a storm.

  A boxed palanquin waited outside. More tired than I’d let on, I fell asleep inside the conveyance on the journey up the mount. I awakened when the door opened and a servant politely called to me.

  My eyelids fluttered open. I blinked at undyed cloth, very similar in colour to my beige outfit, and realized I looked upon the skinny old man whom I had last seen wearing the imperial green that denoted trusted service to the emperor.

  “Aren’t you the emperor’s chamberlain?” I asked.

  “No longer,” he said. “But that is of no consequence just now. Please come.”

  No consequence? This man had obviously been dispossessed of his office. “It is most upsetting to find you greeting me in sackcloth,” I said.

  He threw himself flat on the parade ground. “Forgive me, Eminent One. I shall withdraw and send a better man to conduct you within.”

  And what would happen to him, the lesser man, if he did? “No, thank you. You will do fine. Shall we discuss this matter of no consequence later?”

  He rose onto palms and knees. “If Omos… If Vaal permits,” he whispered and glanced nervously to either side.

  Yes. The parade grounds. It was decked out with a fine exhibit of military paraphernalia—draped upon hot and sweaty men. It seemed His Imperial Majesty desired I should inspect his army.

  Following the former chamberlain, I walked down an aisle between colourfully outfitted soldiers lined in rows. Small spaces divided their sections, and flags of leadership made known the Houses of the officers, not that I was familiar with any.

  The weaponry captured my attention the further along I travelled. The swords became larger, each wicked, one-edged blade sharp in the sunlight. The warriors in possession of these impressive scimitars displayed the weapons athwart their chests, and they had very large chests, because they were very large soldiers. Feeling a little provoked, I wondered how much of the meat on the parade ground would survive the first manhood rite in Blood Bay.

  Into the palace I went, up a staircase lined with more soldiers, and through double doors of gilded wood. The doors were twice as tall as an average man. The red and gold hallway beyond could have held four schooners without masts lined end to end. Up ahead loomed another set of double doors, these ones taller than the first.

  The people of Verdant had made much of themselves in their long history of Intana’s slavery, and made less of everyon
e else as a result. I knew ambassadors approached the emperor on their knees to show respect, but I had no intention of doing so. I risked offending His Imperial Majesty because of my resolve, but I wasn’t an ambassador. I was a prince of my people and I would conduct myself as such, now that I had been summoned to court.

  We Brellin did have a functionary in the city to perform all the proper bowing and scraping, but he was only that, a functionary. Perhaps the noblemen of Verdant thought him important, but our ambassador was in fact a man who didn’t mind acting. Verdant’s patriarchal society looked down on ours and refused to deal with a woman of good standing, and so we appointed our actor.

  We placed him there to avoid trouble and went about with our business, our trade, our voyaging to places of greater importance, and pretty much ignored the petty dealings of a minor imperial court on an island in the middle of the Umber Sea. Yes, Verdant was a significant harbour, but only insofar as it made sea trading easier, not that it was entirely necessary.

  And so I had never visited the imperial court before. The noblemen of Verdant didn’t know me as a prince of Brellin. Truth is, in our culture, a prince isn’t nearly as influential as a Chief Grandmother. We men of Brellin stand by our usefulness rather than our command of pomp and pride. I was, and always had been, first a sailor, and I was about to be reminded of it. But that His Imperial Majesty expected me to feel a sense of shame for this, I found insulting.

  I entered the imperial court, a vaster and redder structure than the hallway from which I had emerged, with enough gold gilded to its surfaces to suggest a minor earthquake might bring it all crashing down in an instant. It was very hard on the eyes. Splendour in ugliness. I was suitably stupefied, but endeavoured not to show it.

  Not a word issued from any mouth as I walked the wide carpet to within seven cubits of the imperial throne, but I felt the censure, the resentment, the fear, the barely controlled rage. When the former chamberlain threw himself face down, I halted, bowed to His Imperial Majesty, and sat crossed-legged on the carpet to begin dealing, just as I would with another merchant—only I had to look up a flight of five steps and through a field of suspicious personal guards. His Imperial Majesty proved difficult to see over the hedge of pikestaffs.

  After a protracted silence, in which the entire court seemed to have frozen in time, I looked at the leery guards and sighed heavily. “Was there something you wished to discuss?” I asked.

  “You are Haru of Sachoné House of the Brellin?”

  The voice wormed out from between the fence of muscular men. I liked their armour. Beautifully worked chain mail fastened to hard leather. Links hung from the hems in a triangular parade. Such workmanship. If any of these men were to fall off a ship, they’d sink to the ocean floor in a trice.

  “Yes,” I answered.

  “You are a prince of your people?”

  “Some might say so.”

  “And you are a priest of your temple?”

  “We don’t keep a temple.”

  Lovely boots. They had curled up toes, but I didn’t think this went well with the very narrow trousers these men sported. Now on me, that sort of boot might do fine.

  “Are you not a priest of your god?” said the voice.

  “I am more a spiritual guide to the boys of my village.”

  “There was one here who named you a priest.”

  “Priest was perhaps a convenient word to help you understand my function, but we do not have a temple, unless you count the ocean, and I do not speak for my god. I only advise children how to be men.”

  “This is not how your ambassador described you.”

  “Yes. Where is he?”

  Silence. A bleak silence for me, one filled with barely restrained satisfaction for them…and a stench of controlled fear.

  “Am I to understand the Ambassador of Brellin is not present with us?” I asked.

  “Not at this time,” came the answer.

  “When will he be present?”

  “He’s…unavailable.”

  Dead. Very dead. I hoped they hadn’t torn his intestines out.

  “Haru of Sachoné House. Are you or are you not a priest of your people?”

  Simpler to just admit it. These people didn’t seem to have the sense to think outside their over-structured tradition. “Yes. I’m a priest.”

  “And yet you are a merchant sailor.”

  “My people are merchant sailors,” I said. “At least we men are. Did you wish to make some point?”

  “I would ask you a question.”

  “You’ve been asking many, and been so rude as to do so behind the cover of large men bearing weapons. If we are to speak honestly, I would see with whom I deal.”

  A mutter of displeasure started to the side, but ended quickly when someone hushed the speakers with a sharp hiss. To my side, the former chamberlain trembled violently and then went still again. I had the presentiment that whatever fate I suffered, so would this poor man.

  “Step aside,” said the voice. The soldiers stomped to the flanks of the steps, and I won my first sight of the emperor of Verdant.

  The ceremonial robes did justice to the walls: very red, very ornate, loaded with a fortune in gold thread and ruby studs. I saw nothing remarkable about the man within the finery, not that I bothered looking for long. He wore very nice boots. Curled toes again, and the only red things in that court I enjoyed looking at. I thought they might be fashioned from crocodile skin dyed the imperial colour. Marvellous.

  “Emperor Calura,” I greeted, giving a small bow from my seated position.

  He stared at me without moving, and I thought he seemed perturbed that I wasn’t more impressed with him.

  “The question you wished to ask?” I prodded

  “Yes,” he murmured. “I would ask, Haru of Sachoné, has your god departed? Has he left Verdant?”

  I frowned faintly. “Left Verdant? Do you mean to swim the sea around it?”

  “No. Left. Forever.”

  “I doubt so.”

  The mutters started up again and were hushed as quickly.

  “Why did your god attack us?” the emperor asked.

  “How do you mean ‘attack’?”

  “He set upon Celestial Dome and made if fade into the sky!”

  “Oh, yes. That was very…startling of Him.”

  “Have you no explanation?”

  “I could ask Him the next time I see Him.”

  The emperor frowned down at me, and I looked up with utmost blandness. Presently he spoke again: “What does your god want with Verdant?”

  “All of it.”

  “Then your people invade us!”

  I blinked, looked around the massive chamber, and then back up at His Imperial Majesty. “I see no warriors of my people here other than myself, and I do not bear a weapon at this time. Do you call this an invasion?”

  “You have admitted that your god wants Verdant!”

  “And so He does. That has nothing to do with my people, although He has sent for my family to come and educate yours. I think this is very patient of Him and I advise you to think the same.”

  “Your family…?” The emperor stood upon his magnificent boots, and I found them so fascinating I didn’t listen to what he said next. I only noticed the echoes of his accusations after.

  “Sorcerous demon summoner! Do you admit to stealing Intana from us and murdering good citizens of Verdant that your family might reign here?”

  “What was that? You have such gorgeous boots. Would you tell me the name of your cobbler?”

  “Infidel! Felon! A swath of destruction you wreaked from the temple to the harbour! And you speak to me of boots!”

  “They’re a delightful red. Is that crocodile skin?”

  “Kill him!” the emperor commanded.

  I laughed, and his eyes widened in alarm. He must have thought I’d send demons to swallow him, and so must have his soldiers and supporters, because not a soul in that great hall moved.

 
; Well. Except for the poor chamberlain prone at my side. He shook so violently I heard his head knock the carpeted floor.

  “I have swum with Little Brother, little man of Verdant,” I said to Calura. “You cannot frighten me with outraged bellows and commands to slay me. There’s a stench of fear to your every question, and dread in every breath you take. If your men were so certain of your continued power, they wouldn’t hesitate to slaughter me, but they do hesitate, because deep in their hearts, and even deep in yours, they know the reign of Omos has ended. The god that supported your throne has faded away, and into the emptiness your people created, with your faithless use of Omos’s divine son, Vaal has swum.”

  I rose to my feet and still no one moved. I pointed at His Imperial Majesty’s boots. “I want those. In exchange for letting you live, you will give them to me.”

  Emperor Calaru was motionless for many tense seconds, and then he sat, removed his boots and set them on the topmost step. The chamberlain at once scuttled upward, seized the boots and scrabbled back down the steps to present them to me. I accepted them, thanked him, and turned my back on His Imperial Majesty and his imperial court.

  The chamberlain and I walked from the immense hall listening to only our footsteps, but the muttering, the moment the double doors shut behind our backs, mimicked the distant roar of a tidal wave coming to crash through the wood.

  I stood outside, my face toward the front entrance far down the red and gold corridor, and I couldn’t believe I had done such a bizarre thing as to steal His Imperial Majesty’s boots. I thought I had better hurry out to safety, but somehow could not find the energy to do so.

  Running offered no lasting safety. As large as it was, Verdant remained an island, and I could not leave it while bound to Intana. I wondered if he’d found the oldest snow on Verdant yet.

  “Master?” the chamberlain said. “We should run.”

  “Am I your owner now?” I asked.

  “Yes, Master.”

  “How did you displease the emperor so very much?”

  “I said that we should bow to the new god. He stripped me of my rank. He intends to execute me and my family, but first I am to sully myself serving you. Forgive me. These were his words, not my own.”