Kings of Ash

by Richard Nell

  “Put all your weapons on the table, pirate, and if I were you, I’d do it slowly.”

  Arun raised a hand towards the giant as if for calm. He smiled and unfolded several blades from his clothes, placing them down in a neat line.

  “Please be very cautious, princess. Our friend was tortured by the last royal family. It has left him…most anxious.”

  Kikay rolled her eyes.

  “I don’t care if your friend is anxious. Have him put his sword down, or I’ll fill him full of arrows.”

  “Happily, my lady.” Arun’s face grew a bead of sweat. “But I believe he would rather kill me. We’re already in danger of violence, I think. Please be quite cautious.”

  Kikay looked at the the barbarian’s bizarre, ugly face. She couldn’t read it, but a quiet voice told her to be wary. She took a breath, knowing Farahi would remind her to be patient.

  “Very well.”

  She gestured, and the guards put away their weapons, but moved forward to collect Arun’s knives. They gave the barbarian a wide, anxious berth. When the room had stilled and Kikay nodded, at last the real Farahi emerged from his viewing room, calm as a Bato breeze.

  “You’ll have to forgive my precautions,” he said. “You are either a man of great talent, or a ruse sent by Trung to kill me.” He signaled for the guards to back away, and took the seat furthest from the barbarian. “Either way, you’re a man to be taken seriously, yes?”

  Kikay felt the same anxiety she always did when her brother was in danger. He wore several metal plates beneath his silks, but the monk was possibly skilled enough with his hands to reach him and twist his neck before he died. I should have had them both tied up or chained. I will suggest it for next time.

  Their dangerous guest stood and bowed, smiling with his soft, quick eyes.

  “I expected nothing less, great king. But please be careful with the barbarian, he is a wounded tiger in a foreign land.”

  Farahi nodded, disinterested as ever in small talk or anything other than his purposes.

  “I’ll buy the barbarian and pay you fairly, but that’s not why you’re here.”

  The pirate’s lips curled.

  “You want Trung dead.”

  Kikay winced in her seat. Of course he knew. Farahi had long ago quietly told any thief or pirate in the isles he would buy stolen merchandise from Trung’s castle. But what he truly wanted was proof of a man who could get inside.

  No doubt the pirate had arranged all of this purely to establish his credentials. To take a big savage from the prisons was about as impressive a gift as a man could make. Now he would ask for a price beyond imagination.

  “I want his heirs dead, too,” Farahi said, “as many as possible.”

  Arun raised his eyebrows, nodding very slowly. “That could be difficult. His sons are guarded, and not often together. But his first heir is possible, yes.”

  Farahi shrugged. “That is acceptable. Name your price.”

  Kikay watched the greed sparkle in the pirate’s eyes. She decided again he was too clever and skilled to be useful—too ambitious to be trusted. Farahi wouldn’t listen, of course. He had gained that look of impossible certainty, that intense and far-away stare that told her he had moved beyond and decided already, so bent now on his goal.

  “I’ll need some time to consider,” said the pirate, and Kikay nearly spit.

  As if the treacherous little villain hadn’t considered it a thousand times. No doubt he’d been dreaming of this day for months, or even years. Men were so predictable. They waved their hands and denied their ambitions or their motives, but in truth they never truly changed their minds.

  She looked at her brother and took a deep breath, imagining the hours of near-useless debate. She could always go to Hali, she supposed—the king’s concubine. Whenever a man’s passions interfered with good sense, a spent penis was a good tonic.

  But she looked the king’s eyes and saw the iron that sometimes made him great, if also vulnerable—the mark of a man not afraid to make decisions, and bear the cost.

  She looked, too, at Arun’s easy smile, and the effort to conceal a fragile pride. With the right prize and mask she could perhaps understand his dreams, change his ambitions, and bend his future to her will. But in the end, a scorpion was a scorpion, and she wasn’t yet sure what sort of beast he was.

  At the thought it became impossible not to glance again at the blotchy giant sulking and staring at the end of the table. He stared back at her with his strange, bright eyes. She looked away.

  “Take all the time you need,” Farahi said. “In the meantime, you and the barbarian will stay here at the palace as my guests.”

  The pirate smiled, and why shouldn’t he? He was safe now, secure in his knowledge that the richest man in Pyu wanted his help. No doubt he’d sleep deep with dreams of wealth.

  “Of course. Most generous, my lord.”

  Kikay thought perhaps she’d have him killed once he’d accomplished his task, if he survived. She’d save a great deal of coin, or whatever other ridiculous reward the man wanted, and wipe out a threat in the same stroke.

  She held back her smile, wondering exactly how she’d trap an ex-master of the Ching, but sure she’d find a way. There were other killers, other low-born men of talent willing to do what was necessary to rise. The thought gave her some comfort, and she settled back looking forward to the duck she’d heard the chef boasting about for days. Then she jumped as the giant leaned forward, and blew on his soup.

  Farahi and Arun stopped talking, equally fascinated as a pale-faced servant replaced the savage’s plate with a new bowl from the fire-heated pot.

  The giant watched it all carefully, then at last lifted the new bowl with a lopsided grin. He drank, steam rising as he took great gulps and emptied it, removing his hand for the first time from his sword.

  “Soup. Good,” he said, his sounds almost correct, his voice strong and deep. At the sound of it a near-by servant dropped a tray of appetizers, and the giant smiled. “Like mother’s milk.”

  Kikay blinked in the silence, trying to recover by re-arranging her lap-cloth. After another moment, she remembered to close her mouth.

  Chapter 14

  Ruka wasn’t precisely sure what he’d said. He knew the words referenced soup, but considering the reaction of the matron, he might have said it tastes like horse piss. It didn’t really matter. The point was the same: I can learn your words and how to use them. It worked well enough.

  After, they’d all jabbered at him as if with these few words he had mastered their tongue. He’d responded once or twice but mostly shrugged and ignored them. Then they left him alone for a time, and he ate a series of new and incredible dishes of food brought by their servants.

  Now he sat on the edge of an opulent bed—similar to the one he’d found in a rich farmer’s home near the coast of the Ascom. His stomach felt stuffed in an unfamiliar, and rather uncomfortable way, and it drooped his lids and sapped his strength.

  He ran a finger over the wood base of the bed’s crossing boards, then the carved, flat, square edges and posts at the corners. He lay on it for quite some time, feet dangling off the end until curiosity won out, and he cut into the huge cushion that covered the entire base. He wanted to know what made it so soft. The answer was feathers, down feathers, as if from hatchlings. He marveled at such a thing.

  They’d given him his own room, which contained the bed, a ‘cupboard’ on the floor with a deep bucket for waste, a smooth table holding water and fruit in clay bowls, and a large, unbarred window. They’d even left him Ahrune’s sword, and a servant with a noise-maker, who seemed to gesture if rung he’d come running. Ruka almost dared Bukayag to tell him to flee.

  After the ‘revelation’ at supper that Ruka could speak, ‘Keekay’ and ‘Farahee’—formerly Long-neck and Square-head—had assaulted him with words. The dead men in his Grove frantically searched for meanings and sounds in his word-lists, and though time was slower in the world of the
living, it had been difficult. He’d made them understand his name. They’d introduced themselves. For now, he could manage little more with any certainty.

  It also became clear that Ahrune was trying to sell him, or had already. Why exactly these people should pay, Ruka wasn’t sure, but they seemed a better breed of owners, and if they kept him fed and gave him time to learn it was more than enough.

  He’d spoken up in the first place because he hadn’t liked the way they ignored him—the way they referenced him with tones that implied something lesser, with subtle glances as towards a rude guest, wary but not afraid. Perhaps he was still just an animal in their eyes, but now at least he was a talking animal, and that surely made a difference.

  He went over everything again and again in his mind, everything he’d seen and heard for the past few days. It would take time to understand. But it seemed, at least for now, time was something he had.

  Sleep, brother, we’re safe in this war-fort. It is different than the other.

  “I do not feel safe. This place is a prison.”

  There are no bars, brother, no chains.

  “There is more than one kind of prison. You should know.”

  Ruka snorted because he supposed that was true. He used the thin folded coverings of the bed to mop at his sweat, then drank all the water from his bowl. There was never any sediment in the water, he’d noticed, not even the faintest hint of dirt. He had no idea how they managed it. But he intended to learn.

  When he’d lain long enough to grow restless, he rose and reached for the small and only door, forcing Bukayag to leave their sword behind.

  “It will be locked regardless,” his brother growled.

  Ruka reached for the smooth, rounded handle. When it turned, he grinned, and stepped out to find two guards holding spears. They stiffened when they saw him, and for a moment he only looked out at the world lit by a sliver of moon.

  The halls had the same clear-glass candles that smelled of fish as the previous war-fort. Ruka raised his hands and moved slowly, gesturing down the hall as he made a walking motion, assuming the guards would jab their spears at him till he turned around.

  Instead they bowed and followed, staring at his ripped, stained pants, and his welt-marked, naked chest.

  “The illusion of freedom,” Bukayag whispered, “don’t be a fool.”

  Ruka imagined the guards exchanging glances at his alien words, but he didn’t look back.

  Instead he focused on the breeze blowing across his skin, slick still with sweat, and the pain flaring from every plant-stick gash and bruise. He stepped with bare feet along the cold stone, feeling his pulse in the place his few missing toe-nails should be.

  In his mind he looked again at the torturer’s faces as they’d seen his feet. By their expression, he believed they’d never seen the wreckage of frostbite, nor perhaps the hardened callus and wear of a man who lived half his life as an outcast in an open plain.

  He mapped the palace halls as he walked, as well as the features of the land outside. High buildings dotted the landscape, their slanted roofs pointed with strange carvings. The huge river snaked towards the sea, the strong current audible even from the fortress.

  Ruka took deep breaths because it seemed easier at night, and the walking refreshed him. His mind wandered even as he memorized, considering all the things he could learn from these little brown Northmen—these lucky inhabitants of paradise. We must see their larger ships, he decided, and their maps, if they have them.

  But this was only one of a thousand things he wished to know. He would somehow need to find the words and men to discuss winds and seasons. And farming, and irrigation; and stone-masons, artists, blacksmiths, priests, builders and fishermen!

  Ruka realized he was almost running by the concerned pants of his guards.

  His pulse raced, but not from the effort. They stood near a balcony now that overlooked the city, and the incredible light of it drew Ruka to the railing. His sentries sagged against it, bracing spears as they put their hands to their knees. Ruka grinned at them.

  He looked out in open awe, a feeling so new and indescribable, closest perhaps to the warmth of a fire on a cold back. Hope, he thought it, surprised, trying to feel some version of it from his childhood, perhaps the feeling is hope.

  The wind beside his head hummed, and for a moment he thought it nothing—only an insect, perhaps. Then one of his guards fell back with a thin black shaft of wood stuck in his throat.

  The night filled with buzzing and the clatter of wood on stone as Ruka threw himself backwards, dragging the other guard with one hand. Little arrows dropped beside them, then metallic ringing roared as hooked, anchor-like weapons latched to the balcony railing.

  Ruka and his guard found their feet. They were far enough back now to avoid the arrows, or whatever they were, but with so many hooks they were clearly vastly outnumbered. Bukayag woke as if from a sleep, his fists clenched and a growl in his throat. He wanted to fight.

  We are unarmed, brother, and these aren’t criminals with knives. We must run.

  “I grow very tired of running.”

  The young guard’s eyes had widened in panic, locked now on the bloody, gurgling death throes of his ally. He stood poised and rigid, twitching as if each second he considered fleeing, then rejected it.

  Ruka searched his word pile and gambled without being certain.

  “Where king?” he tried to say. The boy’s eyes widened further, if that were possible. He mumbled something Ruka couldn’t understand, then shrugged.

  But the words didn’t much matter. There was no time. Somehow the intruders had already climbed up.

  Black-hoods and long sticks emerged from the balcony, and more buzzing and hissing sounds filled the air as Ruka fled down the hall, one hand on the back of his guard.

  More sounds came from ahead—more hooks landing on balconies along the outer wall.

  These corridors were too long and narrow, the fall too steep to jump off the side. Ruka knew he’d be shot to death before he ran out of range, too. But he couldn’t run past them fast enough. He was utterly trapped.

  In his Grove, he stood in the training ground before a dozen dead men holding bows, practicing trying to dodge the missiles.

  No, he thought, catching arrows to his body no matter how he tried to dodge. We will need a shield.

  “You don’t fucking say.”

  Turn back. This hall goes on forever and there’s nowhere to hide.

  Bukayag seized the guard by the neck and spun him, sprinting and hoping he could rush past the few up top behind him and round the corner. But Ruka knew it was too late. At least five little Ahrune-like shadows had climbed the rail and gathered by the wall, mouth-tubes at the ready.

  It’s too high to jump off anywhere, and there’s no moat here.

  “We can use the guard as a shield.”

  Ruka had already considered it. But the boy was thin and unarmored, fidgety and afraid. He wouldn’t cover them well. He would fight, too, and if he lived he would despise them and say who knew what to the king.

  The shadows were coming forward, and there was nowhere to run.

  “We can’t die yet,” Bukayag growled, or maybe whined. “There’s too much to do.”

  The shadows moved forward firing their tubes. The dead men in the practice field fired their bows.

  In his Grove, Ruka lifted a huge, square shield from his armory. It was thicker than he needed, made to stop swords and axes and perhaps to stand in a wall with other men. But, of course, it didn’t exist.

  He had toiled over the edges, the boss, the grip, drawing runes carefully when he was finished—but here in the world, here where it mattered, it was all in his mind.

  Bukayag didn’t seem to care. He raised his empty arm—as if imaginary Grove-steel from the land of the dead could protect him just as well, as if imagination worked the same as reality.

  And why not, Ruka thought, enthralled. Had Ruka not already done the impossible? Had he
not overcome sleep, crossed an uncrossable sea, and rested like plants and beasts? If Ruka could do that, couldn’t a world exist where a man’s will became truth? And once imagined, didn’t thought itself make it true?

  Take it, brother. Its yours. Show me how.

  Ruka closed his eyes and willed it so, then stood in open awe as his shield shimmered and faded from his arm. Imagination in reverse.

  He grunted as the walking corpses’ arrows struck home, blunted tips pummeling his chest. But in the real world—the land of the living—he heard a sound like a sword ringing free of its scabbard.

  Sparks flew and lit the narrow corridor. Molten iron formed as if pulled from the forge and struck by a blacksmith’s hammer. The flames arced and sizzled in the air as the image of Ruka’s attackers vanished behind a wall of darkness.

  Ruka hardly noticed as the darts bounced and rattled and fell away. He stared at the curved, rectangular shield from the land of the dead—a shield cut, forged and inscribed with runes by his hand in an imaginary smithy.

  And this, brother, he whispered, still in awe.

  Ruka lifted a short, stabbing sword from his armory, and Bukayag reached out his other hand. His eyes glazed as fear replaced with bloodlust. He grasped it as if he had always done so, dragging back his arm until nothing became something, two feet of tempered iron hissing and sparking into being from a scabbard of air.

  The light and sound came heavy now, lighting the hall like flashing lightning, every inch of the blade scraping the air as if cutting a path towards existence.

  Bukayag lowered his guard enough to see his enemy. The little shadow-men stood in the hall staring, their tubes momentarily forgotten.

  “You’d best build a few graves, brother,” Bukayag snarled.

  Ruka agreed, but it could wait. The moment his brother seized the sword, he had gestured at the dead to light his forge, arranging his tools across the closest bench. I’ll make some armor, he thought. But what are the limits? What else can I bring?

  Bukayag’s hands twitched as he focused on his first target—a man trapped before his fellows in the narrow passage.