The West Is Dying

by David C. Smith

  “They sought by rebellion to overthrow your empire!” Elad yelled.

  Beside him was Ogodis—and beside the imbur, Princess Salia. Chilled by the cold and disgusted by the spectacle, Abgarthis, frowning, stood tall beside Elad, and to one side of him were representatives of the High Council.

  “Set fire,” Elad called, “to the death ship!”

  Horns picked up his command, and two hundred Khamars stationed on the docks sent flaming arrows into the sky. Down they came, like clouds of fiery locusts, landing on the deck and masts and sails of the gore-filled galley. The ship already had been doused with jars of oils, tar, and naphtha; now a tornado of flames rushed up, eating the severed heads of the dead from Sulos, taking the galley in hungry waves of fire. As thousands watched from windows and rooftops, the death galley and its cargo trembled on the cold gray waters and pushed out rolling columns black smoke that smelled of hell.

  Abgarthis was furious.

  The galley was towed out into the sea and the line cut free. The court adviser watched, with Elad and the others there, as the ship listed awkwardly, pushed by the waves, and slowly sank as it burned.

  Abgarthis leaned against Elad and whispered to him, “You do this to impress the Gaegoshan and his daughter.”

  Elad turned on him. “I do it because I am a king. I guide my country, not a band of criminals.”

  “Criminals?” Abgarthis corrected him: “These were merchants. These were people with working hands. These were their children.”

  Elad noticed the Imbur Ogodis smiling at the fiery war galley with approval. “The only way to be a strong master and remain a strong master—” he spoke loudly and quite frankly to Elad “—is to demonstrate that one is, without question, a strong master. I do such things often in my own land.”

  Elad thanked him and glanced the Princess Salia, who did not seem impressed by either her father’s comment or the violent display.

  Abgarthis, however, meant to have his say. “This is wrong, Elad,” he pursued, whispering.

  “Nonsense.” Elad continued to smile at Salia until, unencouraged, he turned once more toward his adviser. “I will not have these revolts within my nation. It ends here.”

  “It does not end here. You have martyred them. You have given those who live a standard to bear. You acted hastily—”

  “This is neither the time nor the place, Abgarthis.”

  “It is precisely the time and the place. Your father would never have acted this way.”

  “That is sufficient.” Elad faced the old man with a cold expression. “My father never had to deal with such radicals and rebels.”

  “But of course he did,” Abgarthis replied. “He did, Elad. Only he met them halfway, in private, and tried to be king to all, not just to those close by the throne.”

  Elad was offended. “You cannot speak to me this way.”

  “‘Be to me as you were to my father.’ Were those your words? How would you have me speak to you, then? Not speak at all? Dismiss me, then. Do what you will. I am too old for this.”

  “Enough!” Elad said strongly to him.

  Faces turned to them, and Elad leaned closer to Abgarthis.

  “We will speak of this inside, when I so choose.” He straightened and turned to leave the balcony. Then, leaning close once more: “And this…rebellion ends here.”

  Elad nodded then to Ogodis and his daughter and raised his right hand, indicating that they might return indoors. He himself led the way from the rooftop, walking to where Khamars guarded the portal in the roof and the inner stairwell.

  Abgarthis followed, not at all intimidated by Elad’s show of temper. But he thought, with regret, that Elad was not the man his father had been and that he might never become so. Which could make for a dangerous situation, indeed, within this palace.

  On the sea, the last of the blackened galley sank under gray, cold waves, displaying a tall column of acrid black smoke, which spread to the shoreline with the odor of an atrocious cloud or a plague.

  * * * *

  At last Adred had been able to buy passage on a ship to Sulos—the first vessel out since the lifting of the official ban. With his gifts, and with very little money left in his pockets, he walked restlessly along the rails all afternoon, finding no comfort in the swell and rush of the waves. He spent a night working himself into a near-panic, in fact, so worried was he. When his ship finally docked, early the following evening, it was with only the greatest restraint that Adred refrained from throwing himself onto the dock without first waiting for his belongings to be carted ashore.

  He hired a carriage and urged the driver to hurry to Count Mantho’s address. But when he arrived there, he found that the apartment building was now a dark shell, and abandoned. No lights burned, and the doors at the top of the entrance stairs had been locked with a chain. A wooden placard with the city seal hung on the chain.

  “Where is Count Mantho?” Adred asked his carriage driver. “Killed in the revolt? Do you know?”

  But the man knew nothing. So many had been killed, after all, and who had kept track of them all? Adred ordered the driver to take him to the local military office, and there he learned that his friend’s name appeared on the official roll of those murdered or missing during the rebellion. But neither Orain’s nor Galvus’s name was on any list.

  “Are you certain?” Adred asked.

  And when the officer in charge began to lose patience with this insistent son of money, Adred at last revealed, “They are royal blood! Don’t you have any record of them at all?”

  “Royal? Count Adred…your honor…no, our records indicate that no one so high born or related to the throne is—”

  Adred made a sound and turned away. He walked into the street. Surely Galvus and Orain, if they hadn’t been killed, would have left some hint of their location. But where? In what manner?

  Exhausted and in an ill humor, he ordered his driver to take him to the closest inn. There he advanced money for a few nights’ stay and had his things portered to his room; then he began a methodical search for the refugees.

  He searched and questioned, without success, until late that night when, at last, cold, hungry, and utterly fatigued, he returned to his room and succumbed to a deep sleep.

  Awakening late in the morning, he breakfasted in a hurry and resumed his search. By mid afternoon, Adred had questioned the officers of the last temporary shelter in the city; none had any record or recollection of Prince Galvus or Princess Orain. The authorities did not seem particularly alarmed by this fact; as royalty, the mother and son had probably done all that they could to keep their identities a secret and then, as soon as the port was cleared for traffic, returned to the capital.

  Depressed and anxious, Adred had to admit that this was most likely. Yet there was only one way to make certain, short of sending a letter to King Elad himself on the next boat out: take that boat himself. So Adred went down to the docks to buy passage. Told that a merchanter was set to leave at dusk, he had little to do but hire a man to trundle his belongings to shipside, then loiter the rest of the day on the docks.

  The afternoon was cool. There was a light snow on the streets, and the air was sufficiently chill to send Adred indoors after a while. Into a shop he went and ordered himself a meal; he sat at a table by a window and stared gloomily out through the wavy, frosted glass as he ate broiled fish and sipped hot tea.

  He was watching the thin crowds in the street when he noticed Galvus outside, walking in the company of a large man who appeared to be a sailor.

  Adred was stunned. He stared, a bite of fish half lifted toward his mouth. He rose from his chair, staring out the window, watching the young man and the sailor as they casually passed by.

  “Galvus?”

  In a flurry of movement that left his chair knocked to the floor and his tea glass dripping on the table, Adred ran outside and raced down the slippery, wet street, waving his arms like someone possessed.

  “Galvus! Galvus! By the go
ds, it’s me, it’s—”

  The youth and the large man turned and regarded him.

  Adred slowed in his run. Was he wrong? Was this Galvus?

  “Adred,” the young man said.

  Adred caught Galvus’s hand, then threw his arms around him and hugged him madly. “I thought you’d been killed! I didn’t know where you were. Mantho’s house was chained and bolted, and I had no idea that—”

  He babbled on and on, gripping Galvus by the shoulders—until he realized that the youth didn’t seem excited or pleased to see him.

  Adred was perplexed. “What’s wrong? Galvus—aren’t to glad see me?”

  He seemed more confused and upset than joyous. “Yes—of course I am.” He turned to his comrade. “Sars, excuse me, please.”

  “Surely.” The sailor nodded agreeably to Adred and said to him, “Good day to you, sir.” He turned and walked off.

  Adred was astonished. “Galvus! What’s happened? Where’s Orain?” He panicked. “She’s not dead, is she?”

  “No, no, she’s all right. Mother’s alive.”

  “Then—” Adred didn’t understand this at all. “Are you staying here? On the docks? What’s happened?”

  “We do want to stay here now, yes,” Galvus said to him. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be rude. Come on. This way. We have a place a little way down. Come on.”

  They had a room on the second floor of an old apartment building, Galvus and Orain, where they lived in conditions no better than those of ordinary dockworkers. Adred was surprised to learn that, but he was relieved when Orain greeted him with a warm hug and a smile and said, “Rather cozy, don’t you think? Adred, this is wonderful! How did you find us?”

  “Pure luck,” he said. “Looking out a window at the right time. I was afraid you were both gone. Or dead.”

  Galvus, still preoccupied or in his distant mood, moved to a chair by the window, took some nuts and dried berries from a bowl on a table, and began to munch.

  This was all so strange. The sense of their being here, the both of them acting as though they had been here their entire lives, and Adred feeling completely out of place—

  He asked Orain, “But when are you going back?”

  “We don’t intend to go back.”

  “You’re going to live here?” Adred asked in disbelief. “Why?”

  “Because,” Galvus told him, “most people live this way. What’s wrong with it?” To Adred’s silent stare, he patted the copy of Radulis, which was on the table beside the fruit bowl. “These words live for me.”

  Adred’s answer was an outburst of honest laughter. He roared with delight at the irony of it, the madness of it—the perfection of it.

  “Don’t,” Galvus warned him in a cold tone. “Don’t mock us.”

  “Mock you?” Adred returned. “Gods on high! Mock you? You’ve totally shamed me! All I’ve ever done my whole life was walk around feeling guilty—and buying you books to make you feel guilty, too, I suppose is what I was doing. And then I worry my head off because I was sure you were dead, the prince and his mother killed in some street fight. Gods!”

  “Shhh!” Orain cautioned him, raising a hand. “No one’s to know who we are!”

  “No one knows?”

  “We’re aristocrats, yes. Homeless because of the rebellion. There are many of us in this building. We’re weary of it all and sympathetic to the people. That’s all anyone knows of us.”

  “You’re right, of course,” Adred agreed. “It’d be dangerous.”

  Orain told him, “Adred, we’ve begun to make friends. We live here because we’re happy here.” She paused thoughtfully, then pulled on a heavy coat. The coat was old, and Adred had never seen it before. It was the attire of a cobbler’s wife, not the mother of a prince. Who knows where she had found it, or what army officer had given it to her so that she could stay warm during everything that had happened? “Adred, let’s go for a walk.”

  “All right.”

  Galvus nodded to his mother as she and Adred left.

  Outside, in the bracing cold, they walked until they came to some benches alongside a building. There they sat, adjusting themselves on the cold stone, and Orain confided to Adred, “Galvus wants this. Do you understand? Adred—” She reached for his hands and held them, and he was taken back to a cool evening in the palace gardens. “Adred, this is my son. He’s Cyrodian’s son. Sooner or later, he must inherit the throne, and you and I know that. He understands that. But he, he has things in him. Not much of his father, thank Hea, but much of people like you and me and Yta. He believes in things, Adred. The things his philosopher has written about and the things he’s seen. Look at what he’s been through, and where we are now. The people here have been treated like animals. We did that. We didn’t mean to, and we didn’t actually do it, but we did it. Galvus is sensitive to all of this, and he knows it’s wrong. That’s how much good there is in him. More than there is in me or you or anyone else. If this had been any other time, any other place—if Elad had taken the throne honestly, and if there’d been no rebellion—I’m sure Galvus wouldn’t be acting this way. I don’t know how he’d be. But we live in dangerous times, and he’s part of it. He wants justice. He reminds me of Dursoris in that way. He’s trying to find himself, Adred. He’s a young man.”

  “I can understand why you’re indulging him.”

  “Don’t say it that way. He and I have only one another. I’m his mother—he’ll be the king one day, will of the gods. Consider that.”

  “If the empire lasts that long.”

  “Yes,” Orain replied, unafraid of the implications of that sentiment. She looked away from him, looked up and down the street. “Adred, Yta had visions before she, before she left. We talked the night before she went away. I don’t think we’ll be here very long, I really don’t.”

  “What did she say?”

  “What you just said. It’s as though she saw this coming. But you can’t blame Galvus for wanting to be with these people and wanting to help them. These are our people! He wants to work honestly and speak freely, and all he’s ever seen is treachery and, and blood and evil.”

  “I don’t blame him,” Adred said. “I’m impressed by his strength.”

  “He is strong,” Orain confirmed. “And he’s wise, too. He’s so wise for his age. In another year he’ll be a grown man. And by that time I’m sure we’ll be back in the palace. And then Elad will have to listen to us and listen to Galvus. He’s living, Adred. He’s living life, he’s facing it in ways that Elad knows nothing about. Can you imagine the kind of king he’ll make?”

  “You want that for him.”

  “I do. He’s all I have,” she told him. “And I don’t want him to be another Elad or another Cyrodian. Not like his father.”

  Adred told her, “I have to admit that Galvus is right, what he’s doing.”

  “He is, isn’t he?” She smiled, pleased that Adred understood.

  “Elad has no place for him now, I’m sure. But Athadia will need him.” He chuckled. “Kings in the old days dressed up like beggars and went into the streets in disguise.”

  “I know those stories.”

  “They were good kings, paying attention to people that way.”

  They sat silent for a few moments and stared at the wharves, at the great ships, at the people and the sailors. The empire.

  But then Adred turned grim. “Mantho was killed, wasn’t he?”

  “Yes,” Orain told him. “We saw him die. One of his own servants murdered him. Euis. You remember him.”

  She relayed what she had heard about the revolutionaries—the ones who had taken over the governor’s mansion on the Shemtu Square—how they had faced their deaths nobly, not even begging for the lives of their children, and how the army commander, Lutouk, had wanted to treat them fairly. They had given him a list of grievances to present to Elad.

  “But he had to kill everyone,” Orain said. “Elad ordered it. What kind of man is he? I thought I knew h
im, Adred.”

  He said nothing.

  “It was like slaughtering cattle. Some of the people cheered. I’ve never seen anything—”

  “You watched it?”

  “No,” she said. “I couldn’t. How could I? But Galvus did. I don’t care how much violence they committed. I don’t. I look around here now, where we are now—look at how these people live. Adred, what’s happened to us? What’s happened to our country? We used to stand for everything strong and good. People were proud to be called Athadians, and everyone shared that, we were great, we weren’t…evil and corrupt. We’re evil and corrupt now. What happened?”

  He didn’t have an answer for her. There were too many different answers, too many different reasons. There were the facts of what had happened, step by step, the mistakes and the foolishness and the greed and incompetence, and then there so many different ways of twisting those facts, so that everything had come to feel like a lie, and everyone seemed a liar, whatever was said. Nothing connected any longer in any true way.

  Still, thinking about it, Adred told Orain, “We made promises, Orain. The people believed us. And we failed them.”

  “We failed them deliberately, Adred,”

  She reached into an inner pocket of her coat and pulled out a piece of cheap paper; on it, a crude printing device had stamped a message.

  “They pass these out down here constantly,” she told him. “This is what the rebellion is about. These are the people we betrayed. It breaks my heart to read words like this. I’ve been reading Radulis, now, too. Do you know where I got this? From a merchant who sells fish. He’s barely able to make a living. He lives in an alley. But there are people here with money who complain because they’ve been inconvenienced by the riots, and now they can’t get fresh fish whenever they want it. Oh, Adred.…”

  He took the paper from her and read it.

  Te so keth ellulu k. se kofuti.…

  It is the privilege and the duty of men and women in a civilized society to create a cooperative community of common good for all. Where that commitment weakens or is lost, or where that ideal is reduced to intolerance, injustice, or much for the few and little for the many, then the aspirations that that civilization claims for itself are a mockery. People are born free to realize all that they may become. This is how we come into the world, and it is how we leave the world—alone with the consequences of what we have made of ourselves. When a government or an economy, a religion or any authority places one person above another without that person’s consent.…