by J. Naomi Ay
“Eagle?” A guard said.
The creature screeched and tore off into the night sky.
Senya was sitting on the beach steps the next morning in his filthy pajamas with bare feet even though it was subfreezing temperatures. He had a nasty bruise on his cheek from where Loman had smacked him. He was smoking a cigarette when I found him and his eyes were glowing. I threw a cloak over his shoulders and sat down beside him.
“You're in big trouble,” I said.
He shrugged and blew a ring of grey smoke into the air.
“Was it worth it?”
He shrugged again. “Maybe.”
“You're going to get flogged again, you know. The King has already sentenced you to six lashes this time even though Akan lobbied for twenty.”
He didn't respond.
“I need to take you to the infirmary so the doctor can see if you've got an infection from cutting out the chip. Then I need to take you for your punishment.”
“I dun't 'ave no infection.”
“You know that? You are a doctor or something?”
“Yeah,” he smiled and tossed the cig into the sand. “A doctor or something.”
He got up and started to head up the stairs.
“You stoned?” I asked. His gait was a little wobbly, and he was too happy considering what was about to happen. “You do a little Horkin before you came back?”
“Sure, Taner”, he laughed. “Might as well enjoy me flogging, eh?”
Berkan went home for good. Senya was now considered a bad influence on the boy, and neither Loman nor Rucia wanted him around. Berkie cried like a baby, but Senya was nonplussed. Of course, he was very sore and didn't get out of bed for nearly a week too so Berkie's predicament was hardly the top of Senya's concerns. The next few weeks were relatively quiet although I have to say I was truly worn out by the time Saint's Day approached and the start of the spring. Working twenty-four seven even if it was just babysitting was exhausting and I began to feel like my whole youth was going to be wasted. I had a girlfriend for a time before I was placed on this assignment, but once Senya became my life, she left for more available pastures. In my exhaustion, I had a tendency to snap at Senya more than I should have. I’m sure he believed he brought out the nastiness in everyone after having been threatened by Akan many times in the last year, slapped around by Loman, flogged by the King and then yelled at by me. His self-esteem was undoubtedly in negative territory. I apologized profusely after I yelled at him, but he would just shrug it off. Despite that, we had no more incidents of live bird eating, and for the most part his behavior was under control. He was still tutored daily and often dined with the King or stood beside the throne at ceremonies and events. He grew about a foot while living with us, and the King made sure there was plenty of press coverage so that every young girl could stare dreamy eyed at his image whenever they wanted to.
The King announced that Senya would attend the Saint's Day service at one of the largest churches in the country in the city of Kirila. This was something a member of the Royal Family did every year and this year the King had decided that Senya was capable and old enough to make his first public appearance outside of the Palace. I would accompany him of course along with about a dozen guards. Senya's task was very simple. He need simply walk up the aisle to the dais, make obeisance before the icon of the Saint, kiss the icon and then he may take a seat on the dais while the priests conducted the rest of the service. I didn't realize that nobody had told him what to do ahead of time. This was one of the first occasions that I was told to wear a Chamberlain’s robe and medallion, and I was very excited and probably spent more time attending to myself than to him. I had stared at myself in the mirror far too long that morning imagining myself Lord Chamberlain of all of Rehnor when Senya became king. It was a heady feeling, and I wondered if Loman had known this would be my destiny when selecting me to find Senya out on the streets. Of course Akan might be successful and kill Senya long before that happened and then I would probably be killed too, but I didn't want to think about that. It was Saint's Day, and I was now a high ranking member of the Palace staff, and tonight there would be an incredible party to celebrate the occasion. First, we had to get through the ceremony.
As we entered the church, Senya turned to me and asked what this was all about.
“It's the Saint's Day celebration,” I whispered. “It happens every year. We give thanks to the Saint for saving us on Rozari and bringing us to Rehnor. Haven't you ever gone to church for it?”
He shook his head, and a worried look crossed his face.
“Don't worry, Senya. We've got the building surrounded by guards. Just go up the aisle with the priests, they'll flank you on both sides and then…”
“I can't do this Taner.”
“Why not? Of course, you can. You don't even have to say anything except that you thank the Saint, your lord and then you kiss…”
“I can't do this Taner!”
The music had started, and the priests were standing in front of us. They bowed to Senya and I pushed him forward.
“Taner?” he pleaded.
“The King wants you to do this!” I snapped. “Now do it!”
I followed him down the aisle as I was supposed to. The audience had risen to their feet. Easily the chapel was filled with ten thousand people. It was a very big church. We got up to the dais, and someone brought forward the icon. Senya stood there. The audience knelt. I knelt. The priests knelt. Senya stood there. “Make obeisance,” I thought as loudly as I could think hoping he would read my mind as he so often did Berkan’s. One of the priests gently nudged him and indicated that he should get down.
“I can't do this,” Senya said softly, and his hands started to tremble.
“Sir?” the Head Priest said. “You must bow before the Saint and kiss his Holy figure.”
“Markiis Kalila is not a god,” the boy replied. He's swayed on his feet, and his eyes grew very bright.
“Sir?” The priest rose to his feet.
“Markiis Kalila is not a god,” the boy enunciated louder as if we were all too stupid to realize it.
The Head Priest looked stricken. There were audible gasps and murmurings throughout the chapel.
“You, of the blood of the Infidel, dare to come into our Holy Sanctuary and blaspheme the Saint?” One of the secondary priests came up beside the Head Priest and pointed his finger at Senya.
“Markiis Kalila was just a man,” Senya declared. “You worship a false god. Your whole religion is a lie!”
“Senya!” I tried to interrupt.
“You, Karut heathen!” the Head Priest began to shout and waved his arms around. “You shall never sit the throne of Mishnah! Some blessed patriot will execute you before that will ever come to pass unless you renounce your evil ways now and accept the Saint as your lord.”
Senya's eyes flashed. His hands shook wildly. I glanced around and looked for our guards, but there were none to be seen, so I clambered to my feet and moved next to the boy.
"Come on," I told him. "Let's get out of here." He didn't move. In the back of my brain there was still a seed of a thought that this boy was the Infidel reborn as Akan had said all along. The Devil could have given him all these weird powers, blind silver eyes and fangs. Here he was blaspheming the beloved Saint in this Holy place. Maybe I shouldn't protect him. The silver light turned on me.
“Fuck you, Taner,” he said and waved his hand in an arc across the dais. The Holy Icons burst into flames. “Fuck all of you!” he hissed and the sacred ornaments exploded as if rigged with dynamite. The church was amassed with confusion and screaming as people ran to get out of the way. Remnants and shards of the Holy ornaments came flying off the dais.
“Infidel! Infidel!” the High Priest screamed as he was caught in the hailstorm of Holy shrapnel. The screaming got even louder as the other priests clambered to get back down the stairs and scramble out of the building as it began to quake.
“Stop it Senya, st
op this!” I grabbed the boy and shook him. “Are you doing this? Stop it now!” A piece of candlestick came flying at me and banged me in the head. I dropped my hold on the boy. He immediately turned around and disappeared, while I did everything I could to stay upright and conscious.
I was in the car returning to the Palace. I already had three calls from Loman screaming his head off. The King was on the verge of a cardiac episode. Akan was demanding that Senya be declared ineligible to secede.
“We are so toasted this time,” I mumbled. “We are dead meat. We are beyond dead meat. We are meat that is rancid and crawling with maggots.”
“Aye Mr. Taner,” the driver turned around and nodded at me. “I think the boy just blew his last chance.”
“Aye,” I agreed and felt like crying. Just hours ago I was parading around calling myself the Lord Chamberlain, and now it was more likely my head would be on a pike outside the Palace gates.
The vid rang again. Again it was Loman. His head would be on the pike next to mine.
“Did you find him yet?”
“No, sir,” I mumbled.
“Get your ass back to Old Mishnah,” Loman screamed. “Go look for him and take an army with you.”
“He wouldn’t be back with Berkie, would he?” I asked hopefully.
“No!” Loman snapped and rang off.
I didn’t need an army. I had lived with the boy long enough to know that nobody and nothing will find him when he didn’t want to be found. For all I knew, he could be sitting up in a tree eating a rat somewhere on the other side of the continent. I would be dead anyway, what was the point of working anymore? I chose to sit out on the balcony to the beach. I stayed there all the rest of the day and into the night although Loman thought I was scouring Old Mishnah. Instead, I watched the waves curl up, and the rain pelt the sand. I thought, how sad my mother would be when I was executed. I had rung her before church yesterday so she could see me in my robes and she had cried the whole time we were on the vid telling me how handsome I was and how proud my father would have been.
Just before sunrise, Senya emerged from the forest barefoot and in a tattered and filthy version of his formal dress robes. He walked up the steps to sit down beside me.
“What happens next?” I asked. I was smoking a cig thinking how this was one of my few and last pleasures.
“You need to understand, Taner,” the boy said, speaking the Noble Mishnese with his street lilt. “Markiis Kalila was just a man. Karukan de Kudisha was just a man too. No one can make me proclaim them as gods.”
“So the religion of half a billion people here on Rehnor, and equally as many people back on Rozari, is all a lie because you say so?”
“Yes,” he replied, lighting his own cig that appeared in his hand from nowhere.
“And you know this how?”
He took a long drag and then exhaled. “I just do.”
“You just do,” I repeated with a sigh.
“Taner,” he said in a voice that belied his youth. “All is as it should be. Your destiny is intact. You will not die today nor tomorrow. You will be as you wish to be and your mother will be very proud.”
I snorted and huffed. “What do you know of my mother?”
His silver eyes flickered at me, and he smiled as if indeed he knew all.
“What about you, Senya? What are you? Are you just a man or are you something else?"
He turned back to the sea. "I am who I am, Taner. I am what I am." He took his cigarette and held it flat in his palm.
I looked at it not burning his hand. "So?"
He curled his fist and in his hand now was a ball of silver light. With a flick of his wrist, he tossed it into the still dark sky. The ball soared up like a bolt of lightning in reverse, breaking apart the clouds and letting a billion stars shine through. Now it turned into a comet shooting among the stars and then it exploded into a million multi-colored sparks of light like a great pyrotechnic rocket.
“You are a boy who can light up the sky,” I said and glanced over at his face.
“That I am,” he replied as his eyes reflected the colors that burst above us in the night sky. I stared at him and I then understood that he was something more, something with a power that may indeed save or destroy this Rehnor. I was not afraid though. I saw in his face another light, a light I had never noticed before. There was a glow surrounding him, a heavenly aura. It made me feel like weeping for no reason at all.
“Chill out Taner,” he laughed and then clambered to his feet and went inside.
The King was so angry he wouldn’t grant audience so that Senya might explain himself. Instead, Senya was escorted off and flogged again, then returned to me later that evening. The Palace issued a press release announcing that the Crown Prince was, in fact, the same religion as his father and the people of Karupatani but held the Sainted Mishnese in the highest regard and respected their faith immensely. Had his mother lived, he might have been raised Sainted but since she did not, his father's family had an overwhelming influence upon him. Akan was furious beyond measure that Senya was not declared ineligible and two nights later just after midnight at the Saint's Day ball, Senya was shot.
I don't know how to explain how he got out on the roof. He had not moved from his bed in two days and was still in a great deal of pain. I was sleeping in the outer chamber, and so he would have to have crept by me to climb out onto the terrace or through a window. Somehow he got on the roof though and somehow he crossed nearly a half of a mile on rooftop. Somehow Akan's goons followed him and somehow, right above the Crystal Ballroom where the Saint's Day Ball was in full swing, Senya was shot three times in the back puncturing a lung, breaking three ribs and slicing his spleen. The impact forced him to fall off the roof, and onto the terrace of the Crystal Ballroom, three stories below, fracturing again the arm that had been broken the last time he was shot.
“It's time,” I said. “When he wakes up, I'm going to take him there.”
“If he wakes up,” Loman said. “Why don't you go get some rest? I'll stay here for a bit.”
“I've got plenty of rest,” I snapped. “Nothing more for me to do than rest.” I glanced up at the monitor watching the steady blip of Senya's heartbeat.
“You watch it all day and all night long,” Loman said. “You don't sleep.”
“It's my fault. He said I couldn't protect him and I couldn't.”
Loman sighed and sat down in the chair across from me.
“We've been through this Taner. When he wants to get out, he gets out. There is nothing you could have done. There is nothing anyone can do about it.”
I nodded because I had heard this before and Loman would keep repeating it unless I acknowledged it whether or not I believed it. With a heavy sigh, Loman got up and moved closer to the bed.
“Poor kid,” he said and ran his hand across Senya's forehead. “Berkie misses him terribly.”
“I do too.”
“Yep, I'm sure you miss all the trouble he causes,” Loman smirked, but he looked fondly at the boy. “He has Lydia's eyes. Not the silver of course but the same shape. She had long dark lashes like that. Her eyes were a very light bluish gray. Striking really.”
“Look at his eyes now.” I motioned for Loman to pull up one of the tightly shut lids.
“Same color,” Loman gasped. “How about that? Where does all the silvery stuff come from?”
“Doctor says he has a strange protein in his blood. That's why he can't transfuse him with anything. I guess it's the protein that blocks out his real eyes, and now when he is so low on blood, you can see they are clear.”
“I wonder if he was awake he would be able to see?”
“Who knows. Doesn't matter though. He can't wake up like this. Doctor says he may be in a coma for weeks or months.”
“Yeah I know,” Loman sighed again and gently closed the eyelid, patting the boy on his hand. “At least he'll be all healed everywhere else by the time he wakes up. A few scars and he won't even reme
mber how he got them. Get some rest Taner. It's going to be a long haul.”
“I don't trust anyone else to sit here, Loman,” I said. “I'm not moving until I can take him to Karupatani.”
Loman nodded. “I'll drop by tomorrow.”
I fell asleep, dozed really. It was one of those times when I had a vivid dream of absolute nonsense but could still hear everything going on around me. I heard the blip of the monitor and the nurse coming in and typing something and then leaving. I heard someone else come in and sit down, but I still couldn’t wake myself fully. I don't know how long I slept for, maybe ten minutes, maybe an hour but when I finally did rouse myself enough to wake, I saw it was the King in the chair opposite me. Awkwardly, I bolted to my feet but nearly tripped and fell on top of Senya on the bed.
“Come now, Lt. Taner,” the King said. “Sit back down and rest yourself. I can see you are overly tired.”
“Thank you, Sir.” I bowed and then sat.
We sat there in silence for a bit, the King gazing at Senya.
“Quite a young man,” he stated, and I was surprised to hear the fondness in his voice.
“Yes, Sir. Indeed.”
“My lady wife, the Queen, does not believe he is Lydia's son. She is wrong though. I do see Lydia in him.”
“The eyes, Sir?”
The King smiled. “Yes, the eyes. Lydia's long lashes would grace her cheeks just like that as she slept. I used to think her the most beautiful child in the world. This boy is a beautiful child.”
“Especially when he keeps his mouth shut,” I murmured.
The King chuckled. “Yes, he does have quite a mouth on him. He is brilliant, is he not? And magical too. Who could have imagined he would have such capabilities? Who could have given him such gifts if not the Saint or perhaps the Karupta god?”
We both pondered the boy for a moment.
“I did the right thing, Mr.Taner,” the King said. “I sacrificed my daughter for this boy, and it was the right thing to do. In time, everyone will see that.”