by Peter David
Raising him.
My gods. I have a son?
I knew when he had been conceived, of course. It had been the
one night that Entipy and I had been together. The night when we had blended our bodies and then, come the harsh rays of the morning light, I had spotted the birthmark she bore that was identical to the mark I myself carried. The unique family crest that indicated we had the same father. We were half-siblings, but that relationship had been sufficient for me to end our union…and wound up getting myself tossed into prison for my efforts.
But that was all a long time ago. A lifetime ago.
My mind snapped back and reminded me where I was: in the middle of a vast track where everyone around me had gone mad. People were moaning and wailing from the stands, horrified at the horrendous turn of events that they had just witnessed. Guards had swept in and were carrying the corpse of the Rama out of the place. Doctors were speaking to me and I was not fully registering their words because my attention was so thoroughly scattered.
“Get him out,” I said abruptly to the doctors, gesturing vaguely in his direction. “Get him out of here.” I then moved away from him and toward the seating booth where the royals and their guests had been seated. I watched mutely as the Rama was hauled away. He seemed so little at that point. He had never been especially imposing even when he was in his prime. But now, with the life stripped from him, he looked vulnerable and helpless. Well, yes, of course helpless. He was dead. One really isn’t more helpless than when one is dead.
“Apropos!” An alarmed female voice sounded from across the way. I turned and saw Clea coming toward me. She was bleeding from a couple of superficial cuts on her forehead, but otherwise she seemed unharmed. The arrogant and self-absorbed teenager whom I had met some time ago was gone. Instead she was a terrified young woman whose entire world had just been turned on its ear. “Apropos!” she called again, and her arms were flopping about as if she were a recently landed fish.
Having no idea what else to do, I took the hysterical young girl in my arms and held her tightly. “I don’t believe it. I don’t believe it. Lama is dead. He’s dead!”
“I know,” I said as softly as I could. “It’s all going to be all right…”
“A ll right? All right?!”
And then she started to laugh. I pulled my head back and looked at her in surprise. There was no bereavement in her voice, no sadness. Her face was twisted in delight. “It’s more than all right! I’m in bloody charge, Apropos! I’m the ruler of Rogypt now! The reign of my idiot brother is finally at its end!”
I could not believe the words that were coming out of her mouth. I stepped back and stared at her with open incredulity. “You’re…happy about this? He was your brother!”
“He was an idiot,” she replied brusquely, dismissing any compassionate thought about him. “He was foolish enough to bet the entirety of his kingdom on a horse race. I have no idea what happened out here today, nor do I care. All I know is that fortune has favored us by ridding us of that fool.”
Never in my life have I hit a woman. And never in my life have I been as sorely tempted to violate all those years of practice and belt one right in the face. Indeed, my hand curled into a fist and trembled with the desire to drive straight into her nose and shatter it. I envisioned her blood spilling out and even if she then ordered the guards to cut me down, it would be worth it for that one brief moment of satisfaction.
But then I mentally pictured the guards slicing me to bits and, as was always the case, my interest in my self-preservation reined in anything monumentally stupid that I might do or say.
“Of course,” I said and patted her shoulder. “Yes. Of course.”
Then she took me by the shoulders and spoke to me in a low, intense voice, “I must have you. Right now. I am the Rama and my word now commands all. Even you.”
“I live to serve,” I said tonelessly. I did not sound defeated, although gods knew that I was.
She smiled broadly and draped an arm around my waist. The groomsmen had emerged and were rounding up my animals to bring the poor, confused beasts back to their stables.
Clea went with me back to my room and I simply stood there as she removed my clothes. I forced a smile and stared down at her, but there was no joy in my eyes, no pleasure in my face. Fortunately for me, she wasn’t remotely engaged with my face.
I took her then. I did so without a shred of enjoyment or caring about whatever pleasure she might have derived, and as I thrust into her, I imagined that I was slamming a dagger into her, skewering her as if she were some manner of wild beast that I had confronted. She certainly seemed to enjoy it, crying out in something that was a combination of pain and joy. I said nothing. I did my business in silence, and when we were done, she lay there with an idiotic smile on her face.
“I need to go out,” I said in a low voice.
She gestured lamely. “Go ahead.”
I dressed myself quickly and headed out of the room. Ahmway was standing guard as per usual, and yet oddly I could not even look him in the eyes. Instead I turned away as if I had something to be ashamed of, which I knew was not the case and yet I felt as if it were.
“If someone were injured, where would they be taken?” I asked.
Ahmway quickly guided me through the vast hallways to what I only assumed was some manner of medical wing. That was definitely the case because Mane was lying there on a cot. His right leg had apparently been reset and it was propped up in some manner of bandage that hung from above. The wounds he had sustained in falling had been attended to, although I saw that his left eye was swelling. That brought me some degree of pleasure, but not much.
A doctor was hovering near him but Mane waved him away. The doctor bowed to him; obviously Mane still maintained a measure of respect in the palace. The doctor hastened out of the room and I strode up to Mane. For a long moment I simply stood there, staring at him.
“My full name is Germane,” he finally said. “Since my father’s name is Apropos, my mother thought it an appropriate moniker.”
“Germane.” I said it slowly, allowing it to roll off my tongue. “Fitting.”
“I’m relieved you approve.” There was no sarcasm in his voice but I sensed that he was being sarcastic nevertheless.
“What did your mother tell you about me?”
“Everything. About how you bedded her. About how you left her. You broke her heart. And you left her pregnant with me.”
“Yes, obviously.”
He continued to stare at me, almost as if he were seeing me for the first time. “If you had known what you had done, would you have left her anyway?”
I had been thinking about that very topic ever since he had first revealed his identity to me. “I don’t know. It would have been a very hard decision for me. I might likely have encouraged her to ingest some medication that would have served to terminate the pregnancy.”
“Why?” When he spoke his voice was barely above a whisper, and I was reminded of just how youthful he truly was. “Why would you do that to me? Why did you do it to her? How could you have—?”
“She was my sister.”
That caught him off guard. Of all the excuses that he could possibly have come up with for why I did what I did, I was reasonably sure that explanation had never occurred to him. “Ex…excuse me?”
“My sister. Well, half-sister, if we’re going to be wholly accurate. We have the same father.”
He stared at me, not fully comprehending what I was telling him. “That…that isn’t possible. The king would never have cheated on his wife!”
“That’s very true. Unfortunately the same cannot be said the other way around.”
“You lie!” He spoke with such violence that he nearly managed to yank his leg clear of the bandage suspending it and knock himself clean out of his bed. As it was, the cot tipped precipitously and it was only by my placing my foot against it and pushing it back into place that it didn’t topple over completely
. But he was still clearly having difficulty processing what I had told him.
“Happily and often,” I replied. “But not about this. Your mother has a birthmark on her…body. I have the same one. Apparently it’s family lineage. I spotted it the morning after we had our assignation that resulted in you nine months later. Upon seeing that revelation, I then understood who and what she was.” I leaned on my staff, my shoulders feeling heavy from the weight of reflecting upon moments long lost to me. It had been many years since I had dwelt on that morning, which was conceivably the worst morning of my life that was quickly followed by the worst entire day of my life. Typically I didn’t dwell on such things, but my face to face with Germane made it impossible to avoid. “That is the truth of why I left. You can believe it or not believe it as you see fit, but that is entirely your decision.”
He was silent. I could see by his expression that he was still uncertain of what to think. Gods knew he had spent the entirety of his life forming his opinion based upon whatever the hell Entipy had told him…
Entipy…
“How fares your mother?” I asked.
“Do you care?”
“Of course I care. I’ve often wondered what became of her. Is her father—?”
“Dead. My grandfather died some years back.” Then he paused. “Except he was not truly her father, was he. You just said…” I shook my head and he continued, “So who was? Do you know?”
“Odclay.”
It took him a moment to place the name and then his jaw dropped. “The jester? The jester?”
“That’s correct.”
“You’re lying!”
“Oh, I wish I were,” I sighed. “I wish that I were spewing calumnies to you right now, but I am most definitely not. My mother was a tavern wench, you see, who was raped by a group of knights out and about to enjoy themselves. Odclay was amongst their group and was compelled to join in their merriment. For a man who became acquainted with my mother through assaulting her, he was actually a rather reasonable fellow.”
Germane was clearly having difficulty processing what I was telling him. Small wonder, that.
“So my mother,” he said slowly, “is not actually descended from the king. Which means when she took over the throne, she did not have the right to do so.”
“Well, her mother is the queen, at least to the best of my knowledge. But technically, if she is ruling now—which I assume she is—then she is doing so illicitly, yes. The throne should go to her mother, I suppose. Or perhaps the men would come together and simply choose a new ruler. Or fight over who gets to rule. That is a popular pastime, so I’m told.” I cocked my head slightly, curious. “How is she as a ruler? I’m curious considering that during the time I knew her, she was somewhat…unstable.”
“She is an excellent ruler,” Germane said fiercely. “Her subjects adore her. She is a superb adjudicator. And on the occasions when she has had to employ force, she has done so with ingenuity and cunning.”
“You must love her deeply.”
“I do.”
I leaned forward. “Then what the hell are you doing out here?”
He was about to give a quick answer, but then his jaw clicked shut without providing a response. He sat there silently for a time, and I could see that he was endeavoring to decide whether he should be honest with me or not.
“I left,” he said finally, “because there was no place for me in her kingdom.”
“As I recall, the kingdom was rather spacious. Hard to believe that you could not find somewhere to fit in.”
“That’s not what I mean. People knew who my father was,” he said, making no effort to keep the bitterness from his voice. “Her father advocated exposing me at birth. Leaving me to die on a hillside somewhere.”
“Runcible wanted that?” I could scarcely believe it. Runcible had always treated me well, up until he decided to throw me into prison when I had rejected his daughter. A move that, ultimately, I could not really blame him for. Were I in his position, I likely would have done the same thing. But I wasn’t about to tell Germane that.
“He did indeed,” said Germane. “I was somewhat young, so naturally I don’t recall it. But my mother was strident that I be allowed to live. She supposedly threatened to depart the court forevermore if her father’s suggestion were carried through. And so I was permitted to stay. But I was never given the respect and courtesy that should have been accorded a prince, because I wasn’t one. I was just a royal bastard and was treated like one. Even the lowest stable boy had a higher standing than I did, and no one ever let me forget the circumstances of my birth. I had no friends, nor did I ever have a lover.
“And so I left. At the age of thirteen, I fled the palace because I had had enough. I left the city, left the country, put it all behind me, determined to do two things: make my own way in the world, and find you so that I could kill you.”
“You would certainly not be the first who desired my death,” I informed him. “If you lay them end to end, you could likely cover the length of Isteria.”
“I’ve no doubt.” Then he was silent for a time, considering. “Although now that I know why you departed, I suppose—as much as I despise admitting it—that it is understandable.”
“It’s a rare event for anyone to be understanding of me.”
“I would not go that far.”
“Well, thank you for clarifying that.”
“So anyway,” Germane continued, “I made my way across various countries, and eventually the ocean, until I wound up in Afrasia. There, in what I assumed was the random garden of some rich individual, I encountered Lucy Anno. It was shortly before she ascended to ruling the land, and she found me extremely interesting. One thing led to another and eventually we became lovers. We could never be more than that because I was an outsider and they have laws against marriage with foreigners.”
“How extremely generous of them,” I said sarcastically. “But how did you wind up here in Rogypt?”
“Because Lucy Anno had wanted to conquer this land ever since she came to visit as a child. But she was loath to declare war, especially when there was no provocation. So she sent me here, instructing me to endeavor to become close to the Rama and develop a means of unseating him peaceably.”
“And you conceived the notion of betting on the race.”
“That’s correct.”
“And let me guess: you were Lucy Anno’s horse master. So you knew that you would be driving her team. But why did you try to convince me not to win?”
“I didn’t trust you, obviously,” he said in annoyance. “And clearly for good reason since you drugged the horses.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Don’t lie to me…”
“I’m not lying. It wasn’t me. My best guess is that it was Nuskin…” My voice trailed off as I thought of her for the first time. How devastated must she have been? She had looked upon the Rama as if he were her own blood. Her “son” had just died horribly. She was, to put it mildly, likely not in the best of moods. After I was done with Germane, I would have to seek her out and see how she was holding up.
“Nuskin?” He stared at me disbelievingly. “How would you know that? How would it even have occurred to her?”
“I, uh…I may have mentioned to her that it was something I had done.”
“Hah!” said Germane. “Then it was your responsibility!”
“I imagine that it somewhat was,” I had to admit. “I didn’t encourage her to do it, but she likely got the notion from me. So to that degree, yes, it was my responsibility. Satisfied?”
“Yes,” he said. He shifted in his cot, clearly trying to make himself more comfortable, which was problematic considering that his foot was elevated. “Yes, I am. I don’t know why I am, but I am.”
“I can tell you why,” I told him with grim confidence. “It’s because you’ve spent the entirety of your existence blaming everything that’s gone wrong on me. So being able to blame me for this,” and I g
estured toward his leg, “and everything else that happened simply tracks with the way you’ve lived your life. So congratulations. You’ve achieved your goal.”
His expression soured. He clearly didn’t like what I was saying, but he had no way in which to refute it. So he simply nodded and then angled his head so that he was staring upward. Then, very softly, he said, “I imagined this moment for so long. But of all the ways in which I thought it would go, somehow this was never one of them.”
“You will find that’s generally the case when it comes to life.”
Then we sat there for a time, no words passing between us.
“You should tell her,” he said abruptly.
“Tell who what?”
He turned his gaze back upon me. “You should return home and tell Entipy why you left her.”
“Tell her she’s my sister?” I laughed at that. “Why in the world would I tell her that?”
“Because she might be able to start living again.”
“I don’t understand what you’re talking about.”
He stared at me for a moment, looking surprised that I wasn’t following what he was saying. “There was never anyone else after you. Gods know people tried. She had plenty of suitors. Most of them, I imagine, simply wanted to share in the power she wielded. Some saw marrying her as a way to tighten allegiances. Who knows, perhaps one or two even loved her as much as they could. But she was never interested in any of them.”
“Why not? Did she ever tell you?”
“One night, when she was in her cups, yes. She was convinced that whomever she chose to wed would eventually betray her, as you had done. As she believed you had done,” he quickly amended. “So she shut down her heart and refused anyone who endeavored to claim it.”
“I…am sorry to hear that.” And I truly was. I had lived the entirety of my life without ever truly knowing love or finding an individual whom I could have considered my soul mate. But it was not a conscious decision on my part. It was simply the way things had turned out for me. I had never determined to avoid love. It had simply managed to avoid me.