by Marc Secchia
Sokadan chortled throatily, “But we shall not speak of what you thought, eh, brother?”
Jakani squirmed worse than his four year-old sister as he considered how to salvage the dregs of his honour from this family conversation. Usually he was the joker and the tease, but this time the jest was firmly upon him and his family all knew it. How he burned!
He said, “I could tell you she’s as temperamental as a Dragon with haemorrhoids –”
Thump-thump-thump. Without warning, their door shook. When Hanzaki threw it open, the lamplight spilled upon a dozen or more angry lamko faces, and a man cried, “Hanzaki, this time your son has gone too far! He broke my boy’s arm!”
“Jakani?”
“Aye, Jakani, that troublemaker you call your honoured second son,” said another man. This was the voice of Laodazi, the headman of the village which the boys came from – he spoke more peaceably than the first man. “A word?”
“We’d be honoured,” said Jakani’s father, with a glance over his shoulder that was as loaded as a cart groaning with produce. “My home is your home.”
Even as the men crowded inside, the one who had spoken first was fulminating and threatening all manner of reparations for the slight to his son’s honour and the honour of his house. Trying to compose himself, Jakani surveyed his accusers. All were lamko, rugged men of the Eastern mould, with tan faces lined by the harsh outdoors lives they led. He saw tough bare feet and knotted calves and strong shoulders and hands callused by all the hard manual labour; he saw deprivation, anger and hopelessness underlying the wrinkles upon their faces. Yet they were men of honour – mostly. Less so the youths who had attacked him. They were all older than he, and bigger, and one had his arm cradled in a rough sling.
That would be the one whom he had sent flying. Poor little sap.
“What happened?” Hanzaki asked.
“He attacked my son Yanze!”
“Jakani? Explain yourself.”
“There were four of them, and they waylaid me on the path,” he replied as coolly as he could manage. He tugged the neckline of his shirt aside. “See these bruises? They tried to strangle me with a rope. I only defended myself.”
The boys all started shouting, and the aggrieved father too, but Laodazi boomed, “Silence! I will have the truth. How many were you on the path? One? Or more?” So many shuffling feet, such a coughing and muttering kafuffle. Jakani smoothed an incipient smirk off his lips. The headman snarled, “Am I speaking to worms, or to men?”
One youth said, “We were five, but Tao refused the dishonour of going through with the plan.”
Laodazi’s stare could have ignited damp wood. “Four? On one? There must have been great provocation. Who attacked whom first? Yanze?”
In short order, the matter of the fruit basket came to light, followed by an accusation of his unearthly speed, the plot to repay him for escaping with a bounty that should have been shared, and Jakani was forced to embroider a brief lie that aye, he had been neglectful in collecting the ripe fruit from the Choice’s arboretum and she had beaten him for his oversight before ordering him to remove the glut to his family home lest vermin invade her workspace. At this juncture he knew only that only one detail could sink him. The flight into the tree.
Time for tactics. When invited to speak his piece, he said, “So, you believe I fly over the ground like a Dragon, did I hear that right?” Lifting his foot, he plunked it on the table. “I see plenty of good red dirt between these toes, don’t you? Tell me, is that arm really broken? Of course, I apologise if it is. Or are you just embarrassed at failing in your ambush? Had you simply asked with common lamko courtesy, I would gladly have shared, but as you know my first duty is to my family.”
The youths stared at him as if he had slapped them, which effectively, he had. The father of the household had full authority over resources. If he wished, he could choose to feed one child and starve another, and few would dare to question the action.
His heart gripped his throat. Thud. Thud-thud. “Next, you’ll probably be saying I threw you over a tree.”
Clearly goaded beyond prudence, Yanze spat, “Aye! That’s exactly what happened!”
“Way up into a tree.”
“What, over a sapling?” Sokadan puzzled from the hearthside.
“No! He threw Yanze right up into the top of a tall fenturi!” one of the others elaborated. “Yanze flew like a Dragon.”
“No, I broke my arm falling out of the tree.”
If the silence before had been awkward, this one was in danger of embarrassing itself.
One of the men – probably a father of the boys – sighed. “I see how it is.” He smacked the one called Yanze across the ear and shoved him toward the door. “Get out. Out! And take your idiot friends with you!”
He turned to Hanzaki and bowed stiffly. “I apologise for disturbing the peace of your house with this puerile nonsense.”
The disgraced youths slunk out in silence.
Laodazi bowed too, as Jakani’s father replied with a bow of his own, and then all the men in the room stood with the exception of Sokadan, and bowed to one another. Next, the men from the delegation all bowed to Isimi, and congratulated her on raising a fine son.
He did feel a touch nauseous at this point.
Departing, they heard the headman growl, “Flying serfs? Whatever next! I’m going to thrash these fools until …”
Then, Jakani caught his father’s eye, and he knew he was in deep, deep trouble.
Chapter 6: What You did to Me
ZIHAERI DUNKED HER sister’s hair in the basin with rather more enthusiasm than Tytiana thought strictly necessary. “Black, black, black as soot, you’re going to look like a lamko’s foot!”
“Ha. Very funny.”
“So, do you really intend to leave all your work to that lamebrain lamko?” Strong fingers massaged the black hair dye into her troublesome locks, trying to get the last touches around her scalp just right. “Surprised if it isn’t all dead when you return.”
“Oh, he’ll be alright. He follows instructions at least. Basic instructions.”
Affecting boredom would not dissuade Zihaeri from pursuing her course, but she was a little narked by this casual dismissal of the Dirt Picker. She wondered what he would be doing with his rest day. Probably playing in the dirt outside some hovel with his fifteen brothers and sisters. Practising his fake dance moves. He would most certainly not be sitting in a marble and gold bathroom big enough for ten persons, inside private chambers which could likely have housed half of his village.
She had made a few inquiries. Apparently he had a reputation for fighting authority – no surprises there – and the family name was Sakazi. No-one knew his first name, and one overseer had queried why a dumb lamko would need one at all. Weren’t the scum all the same anyways?
Well, Dirt Picker Sakazi, would you even know how to use a proper bathroom, with actual running water?
Tytiana imagined his wide-eyed amazement at such luxury, and then frowned. Actually, she felt sad. Sad about her pretentious, frankly offensive thoughts. What did she know about his way of life? His family values? His … what his people even ate? Or where on the estate they lived? Her stomach twisted uncomfortably. Maybe she was the true fool, overindulged and insufferable. Maybe she had never even cared to think where these workers must come from. Nor looked at them as people.
Ever since she had met him, her thoughts seemed not her own. Why was she even concerned about this lamko’s situation?
“Two weeks. Two! People are talking,” her sister prattled on meantime. “Word in the orchards is, you’re losing your touch.”
“My fire, do you mean?”
Zihaeri sighed, “I wish mother were here. She was so good with hair – all our hair. I’m never going to get this black off my fingers. There, got this bit right, at least. Tilt your head back a touch.”
“I miss her.”
“You? Honestly, sis, you don’t half show it with all yo
ur moods. Try being one of us for a change.”
“Oh, forgive me for my porcupine personality,” she flashed back.
Not that either of them had ever seen a porcupine, but they had seen drawings in a children’ scroll they had once enjoyed reading together. Good times. Lately, Zihaeri had been getting stuffier and prissier by the day, and Tytiana had an unexpected urge to shock her – especially since she had mocked her for missing their mother.
“Do you want to see something?”
“Er, alright?”
Tytiana raised her hand. “Watch this.”
Zihaeri almost fell off the stool she was kneeling upon beside the washbasin. “Islands’ sakes! Put that away!”
The rosy glow around her fingers and wrist faded as Tytiana dropped her hand. In a tight, small voice, she said, “It heals. I’ve tested it on several of the servants. Minor injuries, that sort of thing.”
“Heals?” The ice-blue eyes considered her queerly. “That’s … amazing.”
Didn’t you mean, ‘that’s aberrant?’ Instead, Tytiana whispered, “Do you think we’re really sisters?”
The stool crashed over properly this time.
With a soft sob, Zihaeri pressed her lips tenderly to Tytiana’s burning forehead, her blonde hair sliding down to pool upon her bare shoulders. “You ridiculous pollen brain, is that what you’re afraid of? Oh, I guess I never told you. I never told anyone. I was there the night you were born. I might have been young, but I do remember that moment very clearly indeed. I peeked from behind the curtains. And it was definitely you, with this cutesy little tuft of red hair just springing off your scalp, and a pair of lungs that could scare Dragons out of hiding.”
“Seriously.”
“I saw you; I saw our mother, and you can’t fake a memory like that. You look an awful lot like her, you know – just –”
“The hair.”
“Aye. One head of hair freshly dipped in a volcano, please, with extra lashings of gold and crimson fit for a Princess of yore. Why, thank you. That will do very nicely.” Zihaeri kissed her again, which was not entirely comfortable territory for Tytiana. Even her own sisters thought she was too volatile to touch. How long had she been a lamebrain, flame-brain? All her life? “You are definitely your mother’s daughter. Father – well, that’s another Isle, isn’t it?”
“What? You don’t think – you do!”
“Now, don’t you go getting all steamed up again, my glow-up-a-storm sister.” Ice-blue eyes smiled down at her, and their colour was not cold. Not in the slightest. “One, I can keep a secret. Two, you are precious to me. Three, you’ve always been a smidgen windward of the weird side. Four, did you know that there’s such a thing as spontaneous Shapeshifters? You know, people with true Dragon fire in them.”
A white-hot spear seemed to slice into her belly. Her sister recognised the fire!
“You aren’t saying – hooooo-leee … Zihaeri! You’re scaring the living spiders out of me!”
“No, no … no! Sorry. But when I sense you’re deliberately setting out to shock your darling big sister, payback is only fair. I am serious about father, however. We may only be half-sisters. You have thought about that, haven’t you? I’ve seen the questions in your eyes.”
Tytiana clenched her jaw. “Aye.”
She felt limp and wrung out. And far more transparent to her sister than was at all comfortable. Now she was terrified by thoughts she had never even entertained. Spontaneous Shapeshifters? They were legends, illustrious legends of a long-ago time when it was said that the brutal Sylakian Empire had ruled the Island-World north of the Rift, and two girls had risen up to throw off the yoke of tyranny. One of them, it was said, had possessed the power to change herself into a Dragoness.
Tales for children, or truth?
Her right fist clenched by her side. One thing was certain. One thing. Before the day that egg had turned up and the lying lamko with it, all she had known was that her temper burned hotter than many. She had likened the feeling within her to flame, raging unquenchable. Now it was growing in uncontrollable ways.
Tomorrow, she must twist the truth out of him, one way or another.
She considered her fingers. Ready, o implements of torture!
* * * *
As Jakani ran through the orchards on the first windy morning since the dry season began, he realised that the mists were almost gone. The season was turning.
Trouble had a slow way of brewing in the Sakazi household. Rather than speaking to him as he had promised, his father had bidden him walk with him into the farthest orchards, where he had spent dawn until suns-down testing Jakani on everything he had learned. He performed all of the kata or formal exercises he knew in every branch of their martial heritage – hand to hand fighting, wrestling, sticks, staves, axes, spears, swords, throwing weapons, jumps, kicks, and offensive and defensive techniques. Then his father had questioned him about every aspect of his knowledge, and the motivations underpinning his use of this knowledge of the fighting arts and strategic warfare. That was the morning’s work. The afternoon was spent sparring, chasing, tracking, climbing, sneaking, ambushing and generally being thumped in every possible manner until he lost count of his bruises and abrasions, and had dealt a fair few to Hanzaki in return.
He knew his father was testing him for something he did not understand as yet. He was patient and careful in probing for answers.
Then, in the dying embers of the suns-set, they had knelt opposite each other in the rich red dirt, in a place where the rubescent suns painted every detail of the orchard in lavish colours, and his father had said, “Tell me everything that happened yesterday.”
Jakani spoke candidly both about what he had done, and his resultant fears. He described the feeling that came over him when he had tossed the youth into the top of the tree, and how he had outrun the professional messenger without becoming half as tired as he had expected.
Hanzaki received the news with a firm nod. “You are Nikuko. You have the Nikuko spirit, which stirs and burns within you.”
“What does that mean?”
He said, “Nikuko is both the name of our people and the way of our people – it describes our unique skills and heritage.” Never had Jakani heard his father speak like this, with pride that radiated from his rod-straight back to the serenity of the posture of his hands, resting palms-up in his lap. He said, “I was a fool not to see this in you before, son. I … I drove you so hard! Listen to me now. You are not lamko. You are Nikuko. Repeat it.”
“I am Nikuko.”
“That we have fallen upon hard times makes us no less Nikuko. We are honourable. Just. Always seeking the good, and never letting our skills be turned to evil. A true Nikuko warrior is a peerless fusion of body, spirit and fire. That is the essence of this strange strength you sense stirring within; this potential will grow and develop within you as you enter the next phase of your training. I myself don’t have what you have – some call it magic, some call it ability, but I can guide you into this heritage with the knowledge I received from my father and his father before him.”
All he could think was how he had pitied Tytiana the curse of magic, and now his father had revealed he might well suffer the same misfortune. The horror!
“Do you mean the darkness I felt?”
“Those who follow the Great Dragon name him darkness, for he is in manifestation an almighty Dragon of Onyx, yet it is said that he created the manifold magnificence of this Island-World we live in. Darkness is not inherently evil, son. That idea is a cultural construct.”
“Oh.”
He felt very small and ignorant, but his father leaned over and clapped him upon the shoulder. “Man to man, I could not be more delighted, Jakani. I never realised how much I was looking forward to this day. Too wrapped up in my own pride. Now, you are my pride. It’s getting late. We should start walking home, and we can talk more on the way.”
There was more than one way of floating over the ground. Jakani knew it fo
r a fact.
That was yesterday.
Today, he floated for a quite a different reason. He was actually thrilled to be running to work! Another week in the arboretum, and he would have spent longer serving the Choice Tytiana than any other servant in recent memory. He ran fast, but not too fast. There was a constant presence now of soldiers patrolling the orchards and manning the watchtowers twenty-seven hours per day, so his favourite lookout was now out of bounds. His powers must not be disclosed. Their martial arts training needed to be five times more secretive now. The wooden ‘swords’ were well hidden in secret locations around the village, and they made certain they were unobserved when they left to train.
Father had received news last night that the House of Jade’s Dragonships had come under direct attack, but they had beaten a lone Dragon away with some loss of life.
He raced up to the arboretum. The crysglass structure was a towering fifty feet tall, and roughly one hundred in diameter, indeed the biggest single chamber he had ever walked inside. It dominated even the main mansion, rising behind it like a peculiar yet beautiful afterthought. Choice Tytiana kept it crowded, however, with the many experiments she conducted. Hmm. If they raised her worktables onto platforms, maybe they could plant some shade-loving vegetables beneath? She always claimed to need more space to investigate more species and varieties. Would she appreciate a suggestion? Or roast him with one of her verbal broadsides?
If he was already Nikuko, how could the application of her fire have changed him? Yet, he knew it had – uh-oh. She was waiting right in the doorway, and she looked … dangerous. Dangerously calm. He could smell something about her posture, and it was not her usual perfume.
He paused at once to make his bow as he crossed the granite-paved courtyard that separated the main white mansion from a number of subsidiary structures, primarily storehouses, offices, workshops and research laboratories for the many trades that served the estate.
“Dirt Picker, come quickly!” she called.