by Robin Hobb
The final treasure to be displayed was wrapped in a very finely woven mesh of reeds. The girl lifted it from the box, drew a small bronze knife from a sheath at her hip, and cut the mesh away. A tantalizing aroma rose from it. Soldier’s Boy could smell almonds, ginger, honey, and rum. Or something very like rum. The girl offered the cake to Olikea, saying, “These are baked once a year and mellowed with liquor for a year. They are special, cooked only for Kinrove’s enjoyment. He sends one to the new Great One and his feeder as a welcome gift.”
The cake that Olikea received was the size of a dinner plate and flat like a griddle cake. With her eyes on the girl, Olikea broke the dark brown confection into two pieces. She presented one to me, and then sat back in her place. She took a bite of the dark rich cake, chewed and swallowed it slowly, and then took another, and finally a third. After she had swallowed her third bite, she looked at me and said quietly, “I judge it safe to eat and flavorful, Great One. Perhaps it will bring you some small enjoyment.”
No change of expression passed over his face. He lifted the aromatic cake and took a bite. As he chewed, a symphony of flavors spread out on his tongue and filled his nostrils. In my whole life, I had never tasted anything as delicious as that cake. Sweet mingled with spice and tamed the heady taste of the liqueur that had mellowed it. The almonds had been ground to powder to produce such a fine texture. It literally seemed to melt away on my tongue. After I swallowed, the taste of it lingered, not just on my tongue but as a perfume in my nostrils. It was delectable.
Olikea was waiting. After she saw Soldier’s Boy swallow, she asked with feigned anxiety, “Was it acceptable, Great One? I hope it did not offend you.”
He did not respond immediately. When he spoke, it seemed he had considered his words well. “I am sure Kinrove enjoys such things and expected that I would like them as well. It was a kind gesture of him.”
This faint praise seemed to rattle the girl. She had been watching their expressions closely. I think she had expected them to praise the cake rapturously and was puzzled that they had not. So was I. It seemed an ungracious way to receive a gift. I was embarrassed at his churlishness, but Olikea seemed to expect it. She turned back to the girl and said, “My Great One is not offended by this token. He understands that it was sent as a sign of friendship.”
The girl and the boy exchanged glances. The lantern bearers shifted their feet and then stood silently. I listened to the rising evening wind. It stirred the loose sand of the beach. Behind us, the swelling tide was venturing closer. From the direction of the Trading Place, I saw other lanterns approaching. Those, I surmised, would be the ones coming to clear away our plank table and the bearers who would carry our purchases for us.
It seemed to me that the silence stretched too long before the girl spoke. “Would you care to accompany us to the camping place of Kinrove? He has many rich and wonderful foods to share, and offers you a place to soak in hot water, scented oils and men skilled in applying them, and soft beds with warm blankets for the night.”
Olikea was still. Then she turned to me, leaned closer, and asked softly, “Would the Great One be pleased by any of these things?”
Soldier’s Boy considered. To all outward appearances, he was calm, but I felt the quick energy that swirled through him. “I can accommodate Kinrove,” he said at last, as if he were granting the man a favor rather than accepting a graciously tendered invitation.
Again the young envoys exchanged looks. After a moment, the girl turned back to us. “We will return to him, then, to let him know you will be coming. We will leave a lantern bearer with you, to guide you to us at your leisure.”
“As you wish,” Olikea said. As if they were already gone, she turned her face away from them to look only at me. After a moment, she lifted her cup and drained off the rest of the wine. She appeared to be steeling herself to something.
Kinrove’s envoys retreated a short distance, briefly whispered together, and then departed. A single lantern bearer was left behind. He waited respectfully out of earshot.
“Shall we go to the camp of the Great One?” Likari finally asked them when he could no longer stand their continued silence.
“Hush, foolish one!” Then Olikea spoke on in a lowered voice, “Of course we will! This is a great opportunity. Do you know how long Jodoli waited before Kinrove sent for him? Over three years! And Nevare has been invited on the first day of his first visit to the Trading Place. That is unprecedented.”
The boy leapt up and kicked his feet in the air. “Then let us go!”
The scowl Olikea gave him would have curdled milk. “Sit down!” she hissed at him. “And do not move or speak again without my leave, or you shall be left here for the night to wait for us to return. This is not a time to appear foolish or eager. We must not be incautious. Kinrove is a man to fear. What he wants, he takes. Do not forget that. We have no cause to love or trust him. And he has begun his courtship of Nevare’s friendship with a veiled insult. Nevare is a Great One, Likari. Yet Kinrove sends messengers who are barely more than children, not even his lesser feeders, to give us this invitation. And they speak of Kinrove as the Greatest of the Great Ones, as if all must acknowledge that without discussion. All this he does to assert that he is above Nevare.”
Likari had sunk down onto his heels. He looked from me to his mother and scowled. “But all say Kinrove is the largest Great One who lives, perhaps the largest Great One who has ever lived. All respect him and acknowledge his power.”
“But that may soon change!” Olikea insisted, and she smiled. She looked, for that moment, like a woman who contemplated vengeance. “Look at Nevare. He eats without effort, for pleasure, not even forcing himself. And he grows quickly. Think how short a time it has been since his skin hung slack on him and he was almost too weak to move. Look how much of his weight he has already recovered. The magic has blessed this one. Already he is greater than many of the Great Ones from the other kin-clans. Surely you have seen how Jodoli looks at him, knowing well he will be supplanted by Nevare in less than a year. If our kin-clan turns to him, if he is fed on the best foods, on the foods that nourish his magic, I think that in less than two years he can equal Kinrove, and perhaps surpass him.
“So we do not go to Kinrove now, shaking our fingers in humility and groveling to him. No. We go to let him see that he has a rival, and to demand his respect from the very beginning. Nevare must bear himself as a contender if he is to be seen as one He cannot be seen as desiring too much what Kinrove offers him. He must accept it as if it is natural and perhaps less than what he expected.”
“But—but the food, and the steaming waters and the oil rubs and soft beds!” The boy spoke in a longing whisper and his mouth hung half ajar with wanting.
“We will go. We will enjoy those things, but we will not appear surprised by them or appear to enjoy them too much,” Soldier’s Boy directed him.
Olikea suddenly looked a bit less pleased. “I am not sure we should take him with us. The boy is too young for such things. And there are dangers in Kinrove’s camp, sights that I do not think he should see. Perhaps it would be best if he remained here. When the servants come to clear the dishes—”
“Likari will go with us. And he will be seen as one of my feeders, and treated as one of my feeders, with honor and respect.”
“What will they think of you, having a youngster in such an important position?” Olikea objected.
“They will think,” Soldier’s Boy replied heavily, “that I am a Great One who does things differently. One who has a different vision and would lead the People in a new direction. Now is not too soon for them to become accustomed to that idea.”
The tone he used effectively put an end to the conversation. Olikea sat back slightly and considered me as if she had never seen me before. Perhaps, I thought to myself, perhaps she knows now that it is not Nevare she speaks to, no matter how she names him.
The table servants reached us. We rose then, but slowly, stretching and
telling one another what an excellent meal we had enjoyed. Olikea was very particular as she spoke to the servants who would carry our possessions. They had brought a beast of burden as she had charged them. It was a strange animal to my eyes, dun colored, with toes rather than hooves, a skinny body compared to a horse, a drooping sad face and long flopping ears. I heard her call it a quaya. When she was satisfied as to how they had loaded our possessions, she left them and walked ahead to our lantern bearer.
“You may guide us now,” she told him.
He gave us an uncertain look, as if he could not decide whether to be haughty or humble. When I got closer to him, I realized that although he was as tall as a grown man, he was still a youth. Soldier’s Boy frowned. Olikea was right. There was a slight insult in that they had not sent any full-fledged adult with the invitation.
Our bearers had brought their own lanterns, so Olikea deigned that Kinrove’s lantern carrier would walk well ahead of us. I think it was so that she could converse freely without worrying that he would eavesdrop.
He set an easy pace, perhaps because he was accustomed to the unhurried gait of a Great One. We followed, and once we had left the loose sand of the beach we struck a surprisingly good track. It was level and wide enough for a cart, let alone pedestrians.
“Are not you going to thank me?” Olikea asked after we had gone some small ways. Likari had fallen behind, fascinated with the quaya and its handler, so they had a small measure of privacy.
Her tone had made it plain that he owed her thanks for some special feat of cleverness. “For what would I be thanking you?” Soldier’s Boy demanded.
“For making Kinrove take notice of you so swiftly.”
Soldier’s Boy felt a prickle of surprise. “It was my intent that he notice me. For that reason only, I came here to trade.”
“And not because you might find yourself shivering in the cold as soon as the rains of winter began, of course!” Then she dropped her sarcasm and said, “No matter what you brought to trade, Kinrove would have remained aloof to you. No. It was not what we traded with or what we bought, but what we refused to trade that brought this swift invitation to meet him.”
He did not need to think long. “The Ivory Babe. The fertility charm.”
Olikea smiled smugly in the darkness. “Kinrove has six feeders. Six. But of them, there is only one who has been with him since the beginning of his days as a Great Man. It has taken her much work to remain his favorite and to keep his attentions to herself. But Galea grows older, and she has never borne him a child. She knows that if she does not soon produce the baby that he desires, he will turn to another feeder, to see if she cannot serve him better. She grows desperate with her need to become pregnant in order to keep his favor.”
Soldier’s Boy slowly processed this thought. “So we are invited tonight not because Kinrove wishes to meet me but so that his feeder can find a way to persuade you to give her the Ivory Child.”
“So she thinks!” Olikea exclaimed happily.
“I do not wish to part with that item,” he told her firmly. “It means much to me.”
She turned to look at him in the dim and shifting light cast by the lantern bearer. Soldier’s Boy glanced at her and away. “It would please you if I bore you a child?” she asked. Her delight was evident in her voice.
Soldier’s Boy was startled and spoke perhaps more harshly than he intended. “It would not please me to trade away something that Lisana treasured as much as she treasured the Ivory Child. It was important to her. I would keep it to honor her memory.”
Olikea took half a dozen more strides in silence and then said with sharp bitterness, “It would serve you better if you learned to value the efforts of a woman who is here rather than preferring your memories of someone who is a tree now.”
I heard the hurt behind her harsh words. Soldier’s Boy heard only the disrespect to Lisana and the other tree elders.
“I suppose you must strive to be important now,” he said sharply. “For you know you will never earn a tree for yourself.”
“And you think that you will?” she retorted angrily. “Remember, at the end, a Great One is at the mercy of his feeders. Perhaps you should seek to build a bond and some loyalty, so that when your time comes, there will be someone to take your body to a sapling and fasten it correctly and watch over you until the tree welcomes you.”
That was as savage a threat as any Speck could ever offer to a Great One. I felt his shock that she would dare say such a thing reverberate through our shared soul. I would have, I think, sought to mollify the woman, as much for the deep injury she obviously felt as for my own future well-being. But Soldier’s Boy said only, “You are not my only feeder, Olikea.”
They both fell silent. Darkness was closing in around us now, making it difficult to see the terrain we crossed. We followed the beach, but our path gradually led us farther and farther away from it until the crash of the incoming waves was a muted whisper. Our trail took us up a gentle rise through an open field, and still not a word was spoken between the two.
So it was that they were at odds as we approached Kinrove’s encampment. I had pictured a campsite with tents and cook fires. When we crested the small hill, what we looked down on was far more like the temporary encampments that a military force on the move might set up. It was a small town of folk, with a perimeter marked by torches and straight streets between the sturdy pavilions. It was also, I perceived, a substantial walk away, and even though our journey would be downhill, the darkness was deepening every moment and my legs were already weary from the long day of standing and walking. I could feel Soldier’s Boy’s displeasure at the situation. A sound like distant music, oddly muffled, reached us.
A few more steps, and the sensation was not mere displeasure. A sudden wave of dizziness swept over him, followed by the clench of nausea. He groaned suddenly and halted, swaying. Strange to say, the lantern bearer leading us had already stopped. Even as Soldier’s Boy took long, deep breaths to counteract his queasiness, the man lifted his lantern and waved it in three slow arcs over his head. Then he grounded it again and waited. The vertigo swirled Soldier’s Boy around again and then, just as suddenly as it had come, it was gone. Soldier’s Boy took a deep gasping breath of relief and next to me Olikea did the same. As he recovered, a question came to me, one that I thought desperately important. I pushed it strongly at Soldier’s Boy. “He guards his boundaries. Why? What does he fear?”
I could not tell if I’d reached him or not. He made no response to me.
For the first time, our lantern bearer spoke directly to us.
“Kinrove’s guardians will admit us now. Kinrove, Greatest of the Great Ones, will quick-walk all of us to his pavilion.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
KINROVE
I had no more time to ponder who or what Kinrove guarded against. To be presented with the idea that he was powerful enough to quick-walk our entire party down to him from such a distance was unnerving. But the lantern bearer said only, “Walk with me,” and stepped out. We followed, and the night blurred around us. In a single step, we stood before a grand pavilion. That show of raw power was nearly lost on me as I looked about at the display of might that greeted us. Ranks of torches illuminated Kinrove’s pavilion and the open space that surrounded it. The music I had heard in the distance now sounded all around us. A fine dust hung in the air, the smell of burning tobacco was thick, and everywhere crowds of folk churned past us. The sudden assault on all my senses overwhelmed me for a few moments as I struggled to make sense of the scene around me.
Substantial timbers supported the pavilion’s leather walls. The walls were painted in ocher, red, and black in designs that were strange to my Gernian self yet familiar to Soldier’s Boy’s eyes. The music came from half a dozen musicians on an elevated stage. They blew horns and pounded drums, but there was no melody to their music, only rhythm. And the churning folk that had at first so confused me were actually a train of dancers, each one tou
ching the shoulder of the one before him, and dancing in an endless chain that encircled not just Kinrove’s pavilion but wove a serpentine path through the smaller tents of the encampment. Many of the dancers carried short-stemmed pipes with fat wooden bowls. Soldier’s Boy blinked as the dance wove past him.
The dancers were all manner of folk, men and women, young and old, some brightly dressed in rich clothes and others looking worn and ragged. Women and girls predominated. Their bare feet had pounded the hard earth to loose dust. They did not dance lightly: every footstep landed with a thud. Their feet kept time with the rhythm of the music and stirred the dust that hung in the air all around us. Some looked fresh but most of them were worn thin as sticks.
Their faces were what arrested me. I did not know the theme of their dance, but they all wore expressions of fear. The whites of their rolling eyes showed, as did their bared teeth. Some wept, or had wept. The dust clung to the wet tracks down their cheeks. They did not sing, but there was moaning and sighing, a dismal counterpoint to the endless drumming and the blatting of the horns. When they drew on their pipes, they took deep breaths and then expelled the smoke in streams from their nostrils. None of them took any notice of us. They danced on, an endless chain of misery and rhythm.
We stood for what seemed a long time watching them pass. Likari appeared at my side and leaned close against me, obviously both dazzled and frightened. Olikea’s face was pale; she reached out and seized her son by the shoulder and abruptly pulled him closer to her, as if danger threatened him. Soldier’s Boy patted Likari absently and looked round for the lantern bearer who had guided us here. He had vanished, leaving Soldier’s Boy, Olikea, Likari, and the bearers with their quaya standing in the midst of this organized chaos. We waited, inundated with noise and dust, long enough that Soldier’s Boy began to seethe at the slight. Just as he turned to Olikea to complain of it, the door hanging of the pavilion was whisked aside and the plump young woman who had earlier visited us emerged.