Methods Devour Themselves

by Benjanun Sriduangkaew

  The past and future orientations are also located in above and below perspectives. The perspective from above represents the preservation of the state of affairs, whether reactionary or liberal, whereas the perspective from below, in both its backwards and forwards gestures, challenges this narrative. Benjamin and Amin’s claims about history are unified in the latter.

  In a world where the most powerful nations and corporations promote their perspective as synonymous with reality, the retrograde historical narratives––which are narratives from above––demarcate the boundaries of this reality that, as with the shipworld Krungthep, are “like living in amber.” We are taught that there is no alternative to the progress of capitalism; even when we place our hope in the acceleration of technology we remain chained to the singular teleology of this static doctrine of progress. Conversely we are told, by the reactionary factions of the ruling classes and nations, that our hope lies in a return to backwards dogmas of tradition––patriarchy, family values, racism, and a manifold of anti-scientific, mystified, and culturalist ideology.

  Hence, as the Amin passage cited earlier begins, “History is a weapon in the ideological battle between those who want to change society and those who want to maintain its basic features.” The historical perspective that resists dominant narratives is one that is immediately in conflict with the present state of affairs; the understanding of past and future are unified in combat with an oppressive and exploitative present. What past sequences do we face, what wreckage reminds us of our anger? What future horizon––what alternate historical process––do we realize through combative assemblages of resistance and ruin? In 2017 the Canadian nation celebrated its 150-year anniversary in order to justify its settler-colonial present that will be pushed into the future for as long as Canada exists as Canada: 150 years of occupation, genocide, exploitation, and imperialism. Simultaneously, in the same year, revolutionaries around the world celebrated the 100-year anniversary of the October Revolution: the perspective derived from this historical sequence––including all the failures, all the betrayals, all the sacrifices that still resonate with the wretched of the earth––promotes a different kind of future. And such a perspective, along with many others, is at war with reactionary perspectives for the meaning of the present. Within this war opposing fidelities, subjectivities, and duties are generated.

  As Marx once remarked, “dead generations weigh like a nightmare on the brain of the living.”26 This weight is often difficult to bear: we are haunted by innumerable sacrifices; the historical necessity we have inherited is harder to accept than the historical narratives fed to us by the current state of affairs. Thus, it is often much easier to drop out, accept business as usual, and abide by normative doctrines of civilizational progress. We cannot always blame those who abandon hope. Engaging in struggle puts people at risk or, at the very least, exhausts them. Even those who have literally nothing left to lose and are aware of this fact––those who will persist when others are discouraged or bought out––can be pulled into hegemonic historical discourses. The world capitalist system is adept at socializing everyone into believing there is no alternative. For those who have no hope and nothing to lose, nihilism often becomes normative.

  At the conclusion of Krungthep is an Onomatopoeia the character Gullaya is nearly broken by the weight of history. Having returned as the wreckage of the past, having been forced to murder the woman she loved who was contaminated by this past, and now being submitted to the surveillance of the static present, nihilism appears to be the only option. But the historian Suranut proves capable in “steering [Gullaya] from the away that is irrevocable.” Suranut accomplishes this reclamation by injecting solidarity into a relationship that was otherwise alienated by the past’s subjection to the static present. “Shall we introduce ourselves?” Suranut asks, “You’re Gullaya, the pilot. I’m Suranut, the historian who wants to see the sky, and I’m here to help you want to see it again.” In the end the radical historical sequence is possibly reclaimed. Historical hope is rediscovered through solidarity.

  Chapter Five

  That Rough-Hewn Sun1

  Benjanun Sriduangkaew

  In a time of siege, familiar topography becomes foreign and fluid. It is not a matter of deprivation but a strangeness that’s descended like mirage, making a labyrinth of Kemiraj’s streets, ribcages of Kemiraj’s tapered roofs. The architecture and avenues that Lussadh knows as well as the working of her own muscles, the teeth and wheels of her mind, all have become displaced from memory.

  She thinks this as she scales the western wall, up toward the Gate of Glaives. She does not hide her face. Now of all time it is imperative that she is seen, the prince, the king-in-waiting climbing the ramparts. It is symbolic; she performs. There is no grit in the wind to shield her eyes from, that too has changed. The air is damp, vaporous, thawed ice gone to mist.

  One last step mounted. She is shaded from the day, which in spite of the siege remains itself, gold-white and lethal. She is also obscured from the sight of marksmen, though conventional combat has ceased months past. For the moment she is not at risk of bullets. Enemy soldiers, parched and sun-blind, retreated ignobly in a disaster of strategy and logistics. Their general is a fool. The desert is its own world, a terrain that has created its own laws. Every last infantry must be armed with comprehension of the human body: the proportion of liquid, when to replenish it, how to tame the demon of thirst. The balance of the flesh is not a lesson foreign invaders can learn overnight, or even over months.

  Lussadh puts a spyglass to her eye. Once a situational instrument, subjected to the whims of sandstorms. Now the skyline, viewed from here, is always clear. She peers, expectant, searching. It is not as though her naked eye, however inured to the glare and the terrain, can match the seer-scouts and their paper hawks. But she wishes to see for herself, and they report to the king first, not to the prince.

  Empty, as they have said. But toward the vanishing point she sees a trim of white upon the bronze, mantling the shoulders of a dune. This pallid stippling seems closer than it was the day before yesterday, evidence of a gradual advance. A trajectory that gathers speed, little by little, the direction relentless.

  The Winter Queen, it is told, does not require food or rest.

  Her division of the palace, the wing where corridors bristle like briars, the doors deceptively petal-soft, the walls sibilant with guard snakes. This part used to be different, sombre geometry and dressed panels, but in the last three years the current look suits Lussadh better. It has made her wing difficult to enter, the hallway that separates it from the king’s court thick with thorns and bifurcated tongues. The architecture answers to her moods.

  One of her tigers is waiting by the inner gate, serene, not especially eager. She strokes its head, its fur passing like silk water under her palm, its ears twitching briefly. This is the entirety of its obeisance, its greeting, and for this she has found tigers much preferable to people.

  “My lord.” Her aide Ulamat steps from the ophidian shadow, almost as quiet as the tiger. He takes her outer robe from her and bows. “Colonel Zumarr awaits your pleasure.”

  She sheds her gloves, hands those also to him, and imagines a world in which she may rove about her city without performing the role of her birth. There are lesser cousins of the al-Kattan name, there are those who have abdicated their responsibilities; she is not one of them––ambition and hunger, as the king says, are too addictive a thrill, too delicious a force for those like her and Lussadh. Though the pleasure has grown wan, these past few years. But in a time of siege it is not a choice. Her window of opportunity has passed since. “I’ll receive xer in my study.”

  There is not much to clean off, the weather being what it is, but she changes into something lighter and polished. Whatever the occasion, it is important to appear in total poise. The bloodline of the sun. She wears gold, by tradition, a glimpse of the divine fire at her throat or earlobe. But the rest of her attire is indigo mor
e often than not, save for court functions.

  She limns her eyes, a dusting of rose, a line of kohl.

  Zumarr stands at attention when she enters, drops to one knee. “Rise,” says Lussadh.

  “Little has changed, Highness.” Xie cuts a narrow figure, profile nearly as trim as a blade turned sideways. Stronger than xie looks, beautiful muscles; Lussadh knows personally. A paper wasp perches on xer wrist, one of xer many familiars. “The queen marches and where she treads, the land alters. She leaves a wake of winter. One would’ve thought it would evaporate behind her. When we cut her down five days past––a clean shot through the spine, one through the head, another through the heart––she merely got up again, as before.”

  Three points of severance, simultaneously. It usually kills most things. “I do wonder why it is that we call her by her preferred title.” The Winter Queen. An arrogant way to call oneself, but she has given no other. Far and wide, among her subjects or to her enemies, she is addressed only as this. A title, an office, not a name or a person. “Normally you mock your enemies. You give them unflattering nicknames. Yet here we are, being prim and proper about her. How far away is her envoy?”

  “They arrive tonight, in I would say six hours. Alone, not any more armed than would be ordinary. On horse.”

  “On horse,” Lussadh repeats. “How have they survived.” In the desert the air itself hosts vultures. Carrion beasts in the sky, carrion beasts roaming across the rocks and beneath the sand. When the queen’s soldiers did not fall to the heat of the sun, they fell to the lynxes of the winds, the golden chameleons that hunt at daybreak. A thousand dangers for those naive to the terrain.

  A pause, abashed. “We think it is some protection bestowed by the queen. No predator approaches the envoy. Nor do they appear to thirst or fatigue.” Zumarr does not admit or betray fear. Xie is not a creature given to anxieties. Even so there is a slight faltering. “But such protections are not impossible. A potent alchemist of the spirit can alter skin to endure extreme temperatures, the digestive system to forget hunger.”

  Lussadh does not ask whether her grandaunt the king has received this same report; it is moot. But Zumarr is one of a handful who do, after all, come to her first. She gazes out the window, at the flat sky. Her room is higher than most, though nowhere can be built very tall. When she goes abroad it is the towers that engage her the most, their marvellous height. Palaces, the scriptoriums of temples. Sites of proximity to the sky and therefore to apotheosis, so much of the world believes that. To fly is to be liberated from the earth, from primate origins. “My thanks. That’ll be all. On your way out, can you tell Ulamat to bring me the count of their casualties?”

  “Of course.” Xie rubs at xer mouth, a nervous tic. “And if I may, my lord, Her Majesty will not want to see you in indigo. It has been––some time.”

  It has been three years, though xie is much too polite. “I’ll take that into account.”

  Three years since the king had her execute a girl from Shuriam, the land of bone fastnesses and ivory sentinels. Three years since the king had her execute her first lover.

  Yet she does not wear indigo to mourn that, or even the annexation of Shuriam. She wears it to mourn her own faith, her own certainty.

  But that truth belongs to her alone.

  The envoy is called Crow.

  As Zumarr promised, they arrive at night. By the Gate of Glaives, under the eyes of seers and snipers, Crow surrenders their weapons. One rifle, a knife, and a sword whose white blade ripples and whispers as it cuts the air. They bow to her with fluid grace, a gesture of foreign courtesy. “I did not think I would be received by the prince herself.”

  Lussadh appraises the envoy. They are almost as tall as she is, long-waisted and thick-boned. Their jawline is prim, their skin as starkly pale as that of the queen they serve. She searches for any sign of frost, a suggestion of unnatural chill, but Crow seems as much flesh and blood as she. “We wish to accord the Winter Queen’s ambassador the highest honour.” She grips their sword by the hilt; it enters its scabbard with sweet smoothness, satin-soft. This and their other weapons she straps to her back. “I’ll personally take care of these, and will see to it that when they return to you, they will be spotless.”

  “I would be grateful. The sword is Pious Pledge; it’s of sentimental value, and has seen me through many battles. And I’m sure I won’t require it in Kemiraj.”

  They take a circumspect path through the city, down tight alleys where seers’ familiars––moths and wasps, dragonflies and detached mandibles––can relay what they see to snipers stationed at high windows. Lussadh watches Crow, their gait, their bearing. Solid, easy. If they are aware or afraid of the snipers they show none of it. But then they would not. Kemiraj has never welcomed an enemy emissary. The empire destroys or takes; it does not negotiate. There are no treaties, have never been. Until now.

  On their part Crow is polite, hardly the swagger of a winter agent secure in diplomatic immunity. They take in the lamplit streets, the sloping roofs, the mystic quartz hummingbirds that glint atop lampposts. She would judge that they are surveying with a traveller’s eye, connoisseur interest, rather than a scout’s. Confident of their queen’s strength, or perhaps sharing her immortality.

  At the palace she sees them to their quarters, closer to her wing than the king’s. “Her Majesty Ihsayn, Sun-Bearer, will see you before midday.” She holds out a heavy, thickset key. “Breakfast will be brought to you in the morning, and lunch after the audience. Which hour would suit you?”

  Crow gives her an odd smile. “Truly I did not expect the prince to be so kind.” Their hand brushes her lightly as they take the key––she’s startled to find their skin is warm rather than ceramic-cool, the way she imagines the queen’s would be. “Yours is a country that resembles a beautiful dream; any hour in it would suit. I wish you a restful night, Your Highness.”

  A disarming person. No doubt this quality serves Crow well in their duties, even if winter bargains from a position of strength. And as Kemiraj never negotiates, neither has winter, until now.

  Either way she does not mean to sleep. There is business to take care of before dawn. She dresses; she arms herself. Out into the streets once more, her steps light across the roofs. Zumarr would be watching, but for a time she will have the illusion of privacy. She finds a spot on the mezzanine of a gardener’s shed and waits. There is dew in the air, a dampness that might have been welcome once as benison, reprieve from the killing sun.

  She keeps her calling-glass close to her ear. Zumarr’s voice soon comes through. Her cousin Nuriya has left the palace grounds, intent on taking advantage of the emissary’s arrival, the opening it has created.

  Like Lussadh, Nuriya knows the city well, intimate with the fall of each shadow, the curve of each intersection. Beyond the walls ey would, too, be closely familiar with the contours of every dune. None of them is raised indolent, and none of them is permitted to do less than excel at whatever they choose to pursue. Arms, strategy, commerce. Even at poetry and song, an al-Kattan must be worthy of their name. Those who do not answer this definition are fostered out to vassal houses. Aristocratic, but shamefully lesser.

  There was a time when she might have let this be, allowed Nuriya to forsake dynasty and responsibility.

  She shadows Nuriya, moving in parallel. Her cousin nears the Gate of Gloves but does not head straight for it. It will not open this time of the night save by command from the king or Lussadh herself. Nuriya instead turns to a narrow street, from there into the back of a narrower house. To wait out the day, slip out with a scout contingent or a supply train at dawn. In Lussadh’s ear, Colonel Zumarr lets her know what is inside the house: not much. A painter and his child. Not rich, not poor, kept in moderate comfort by Nuriya’s stipend. A lover, though she hopes the offspring is not Nuriya’s. Every bearer of the al-Kattan name watches closely for where they sow, one way or another. The king does not like illegitimate loose ends. The painter keeps to h
imself, according to Zumarr, and Nuriya has been seeing him for some two years.

  She enters from the roof and winds, snakelike, through the window frame. Crouches in a shadow, the way court assassins have trained her, making use of perspective and natural blind spots: where the eye will fall upon first, where the eye will overlook. By function a court assassin should undertake this, but they are bound by word and seal to guard al-Kattan flesh; they may not harm it. It falls to the king and the prince to carry out royal executions. Not that the king would risk herself––she would be accompanied. The blow that severs mortality is the one that counts.

  There is furniture in this bedroom, but few belongings. The wardrobe is almost empty. A broken doll on the ground, cracked clay and beaded hair. Pigment jars, their bottoms thick with dregs of primary colours. Empty paint-smudged cups that might have held brushes and pens. Rolls of discarded paper, cross-hatched with charcoal. This is the look of decampment, possessions that matter packed away, perhaps sent ahead in a train and hidden among some trader’s cargo. Commerce continues apace, whatever the season. War, peace, stalemate.

  Voices through the rough thin wall, from the stairwell. They speak of sedating the child for the journey; she cannot tell from Nuriya’s inflection whether it is al-Kattan offspring. There is a split-second decision to make depending on whether it is the painter who enters first, or Nuriya emself.

  Nuriya, to her fortune. Easier this way.

  The painter would have been oblivious, for the first minute or three. Nuriya is sharper. Ey sweeps the room with eir gaze, visibly relaxes for a moment, before realizing––by sight as much as smell, palace perfumes––that ey is not alone. The immediate alertness, the coiling and readying of locomotion, individual ligaments and muscles tensing. A gun is drawn.