“I’m feeling good, I’m feeling good, I’m feeling good,” Andraescav said. I didn’t ask him why. I knew why. He told me anyway. “We get to see the boss today,” he said.
He was puffed up, pushing his substantial chest forward. His neck was tight with tendons. His mustaches quivered with aggressive delight. None of it was really aimed at me. Vaenahma, who was seated on the windowsill, was the intended audience for his preening.
Vaenahma rose to the bait. “The boss,” they snorted. “The king is not ‘the boss.’ Haendil is ‘the boss,’ if anyone is.”
“Not a boss,” I said mildly. “Just your captain.”
Andraescav dismissed me with a glance. He was handsome. He was muscular. He was even mildly intelligent. But he had decided, in some tragic moment of his youth, that he was not worthy of his own admiration. So he had looked around for someone who was also handsome, muscular, and mildly intelligent, and he had settled on the king. Not that Poritifahr the Fourth ever paid any attention to him, or to any member of our garrison. We are the Garrison of the Courtly Palaces, more commonly known as Everyone Else’s Guard. Since the day he joined us, poor Andraescav has wanted to leave us. If he were to become a member of the King’s Guard, he tells himself, he and Poritifahr would be the closest of friends. Well, not friends, maybe, since friendship can’t survive such naked admiration. But close, in the way that a dog and its master are close.
I’m an old man. Maybe I was like Andraescav when I was young. I think I remember believing that I could be a hero, if only someone would only notice me. I didn’t mean the common people. Their notice was beneath my contempt. I had accepted all of the notions of hierarchy and status that make a kingdom a kingdom. I wanted the king to notice me, or his mother, or one of his brothers.
I know them all, and some of them remember my name. But none of them think that I’m a hero, and by the time this story begins I was very content to accompany a princess or two on a trip to the marketplace and then go home to my hammock. It was a very nice hammock, woven of soft Yenceyan goat hair and sewn together by my daughter-in-law, who coddled me in my dotage. My four grandchildren would run in and out of the little bowery where I lay, swinging back and forth under two strong but slender maple trees, watching as the leaves turned from the delicate green of spring to the flaming red of autumn. My second son, Nolio, is blind, and he would often come and sit beside me on a stool and recite poetry to me as I swung back and forth.
I planned to step down from my post within a few years, and no doubt I would be honored in a short ceremony by the king, who would deign to recognize my presence for once and would repeat my name when some seneschal whispered it in his ear. Then I would spend almost every day in my hammock, laying in my bowery in the warm months and in the solarium at the top of the house in winter, sometimes getting drunk, but often not, chatting with my sons and joking with my grandchildren. Until then I could be patient with the daily task of keeping Andraescav and Vaenahma from killing each other.
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In truth, I much preferred Vaenahma, who would have been welcome to sit beside my hammock at any time. Vaenahma was flow, and had been one of the six flow champions of the ill-fated Prince of Kemestmahlae. Vaenahma was the only flow champion to escape the Battle by the River, and they had washed up in Rahasabahst and presented themself to the king, who had taken one look at them and decided that they should be in my company, and not in the King’s Guard. Poritifahr has his prejudices, and those prejudices are immune to the presence of true heroism. I thought, at first, that Vaenahma would be a problem. I imagined a long line of curious merchant’s wives and countesses and princesses and even serving girls gathering outside of headquarters, waiting to hear the champion’s tragic story. Many sympathizers had worn the shiekahdodo flower pinned to their robes during the time of the Prince’s Campaign, and I still saw them sometimes, embroidered on sleeves or painted on fans. But Vaenahma had no interest in retelling the story of the Prince’s foolhardy battles. They were grieving, and I allowed them their stupor, as long as it didn’t affect their work. I found it rather strange that it was hatred for Andraescav that woke them up, as nothing else had.
So these were two of my four lieutenants. One was a preening bully and the other was a morose hero. Every day I sent them out on different errands, so that the only time they had to be in each other’s company was when we met in my chambers in the mornings and evenings. I often threatened them with night patrol if they couldn’t be civil to each other. But Boebdan and Fritkaemar had night patrol, and I couldn’t replace either of them in that role. Boebdan claimed that he could see in the dark. Fritkaemar claimed that she could only sleep during the day. So I was stuck with Andraescav and Vaenahma as the companions of my own lazy watch, and they knew it, although they were polite enough to pretend to be worried about my threats. Humoring an old man. They, too, were probably counting the days until my retirement.
But this particular day, the day when everything started to go wrong, was different, because Princess Iyedraeka had announced her desire to visit the shrine. Now, the royal family of Rahasabahst is not very devout. They are civilized, or tell themselves that they’re civilized, and their bandit ancestors embarrass them. Usually they only go to the shrine once a year, on The Day of the Glorious Enthronement, when they all enter the inner sanctum and sit in the dark so that the founder of their dynasty can express his phantasmal disappointment. But Princess Iyedraeka was cut from a different cloth. She had come from Raensapal, and had a sister who was one of the oracles of Raensapal Shrine. Despite her piety, Iyedraeka only went to our own humble shrine three or four times a year, as even she couldn’t stand the company of the royal ancestors for long. Still, whenever she was troubled by something, off she went, with us as her guard, although I never noticed that the worry lines on her face were much eased by her hour of sitting in darkness.
On this day something quite remarkable had happened. Word had come down that Poritifahr the Fourth intended to accompany his daughter-in-law on her trip into the forest. Hence my prolonged meeting with my lieutenants, and Andraescav’s puffery, and the sharpness of Vaenahma’s comments. Still, I thought that it would be a boring trip, and belittling, with the King’s Guard looking down their noses at us, and a whole procession of unnecessary courtiers, and a whole lot of slaves carrying picnic baskets for the royal repast that would come after the strenuous work of sitting on one’s ass in a cave. Why couldn’t the King’s Guard just guard everyone, and give us the day off? But they couldn’t be distracted from Poritifahr’s royal personage, so we would be stretched thin, herding the rest of the cavalcade.
An annoying day, but nothing more. Until the coup attempt.
