They’re all so careful to match my pace exactly, with the same diffidence I’ve seen throughout this voyage around the domain. They bow and simper and answer all my questions, barely asking any of their own.
This is obviously how they treated Chazen Saril. But Saril’s dead and gone. These people must learn how different a ruler I am.
Kheda headed for a temporary pavilion set up among the palm huts. Polished berale wood supported azure cotton embroidered with fan-shaped midar leaves shading a bank of plump indigo cushions. Hopeful maidens in simple silk dresses of yellow and white that flattered the warm bronze of their bare arms and faces stood holding beaten brass plates laden with dainties. Idling uncon-vincingly among the crude huts, men and women clad in sober unbleached cotton eyed the spectacle.
‘Please, join me.’ Kheda swept a hand around to include all the spokesmen in his invitation.
Dev was already moving to take a tray of goblets from a girl who had found time to weave crimson striol-vine flowers into her glossy black curls. He surprised her into a giggle with a mischievous wink before offering the salver deftly to Kheda, eyes dutifully downcast.
‘Admire if you want but lay a finger on any of them ‘ Kheda raised the goblet to hide his lips ‘—and I’ll cut it off.’
Naturally, my lord.’ Dev’s answering murmur dripped with sarcasm.
Kheda sipped velvety sard-ben-y juice, its richness quenching his thirst as the heady scent cleansed the lurking memory of the rotting oysters.
‘My lord Chazen Kheda.’ Another of the islanders’ spokesmen addressed him, stumbling over his words. Kheda searched his memory for the stained yellow talisman the man wore on a leather thong: a tooth from some piebald whale either taken by a valiant ancestor or washed up on these shores as a sign to bemuse anyone other than a seer or a warlord. ‘Isei, isn’t it?’
Tell me, why is your fist so tight around the stem of that goblet that your knuckles are white?
‘You come dressed for war, my lord.’ Isei cleared his throat. ‘I was wondering how the western isles fare. Are the invaders finally defeated?’
Some of the other spokesmen edged away to dissociate themselves from such boldness and a few closed their eyes, helplessly struggling to hide their expressions of pain.
Do you think I would disapprove of such a question? That I don’t have my own unwelcome memories of the destruction that swept across your islands not even a year ago?
‘I was taught to always travel armoured.’ Kheda shrugged.
Taught by my father, Daish Reik, warlord of the stronger, richer Daish domain to your north, a man to be treated with all due respect lest he make your lives intolerable by closing the seaways to you. Who would ever have foreseen that his son would become your warlord? Not Daish Reik. Not me, that’s for sure, when I was Daish Kheda. Not Chazen Saril. But then none of us foresaw the invasion of Chazen by brutal savages from some unknown land beyond the southern horizon.
He looked slowly around the circle of intent faces. ‘As for the invaders, we wrought your vengeance with the death of nearly all of them in that first sustained assault, with Daish lending their swordsmen and ships and warriors from Ritsem and Redigal domains coming to our aid as well. The last sony remnant disappeared into the thickets of our most remote southern and western islets. We continue to hunt them down, making sure we have cleared each island entirely before we move on to the next. But we are being cautious, yes. I don’t intend to spend a single Chazen life for the sake of a hundred savages, not if I can help it.’
Kheda paused and drank from his goblet, noting one of the spokesmen pressing the back of a burn-scarred hand to his tight-shut eyes.
He hardened his voice. ‘Their savage wizards are all dead, so they cannot visit the foul evils of their magic on us ever again. They have no ships, so they cannot escape. Our triremes keep vigil along the seaways and crush any of their log boats trying to put to sea. Few of the islands they hold have water year round. They’ll be as thirsty as these reefs before much longer into the dry season.’
He gestured at the temporarily flourishing greenery beyond the pavilion before startling the assembled spokesmen with sudden entreaty. ‘Leave me and the warriors of Chazen to serve the domain in fighting these vermin. Let us take your vengeance on a people so debased they brought magic to fight their battles for them. Your strong arms and backs are better used in rebuilding your homes and your boats, in restoring your vegetable gardens and grain plots, in recapturing your house fowls. Then, when we have put the last invader to his richly deserved death, you will be ready to help restore those islands in their turn:
‘You don’t fear that the presence of such vile savages will have corrupted those islands beyond cleansing?’ Isei’s free hand strayed to the hilt of the dagger at his plaited-leather belt.
Crescent-moon Chazen dagger like the one I wear now, not the smoother curve of a Daish blade like the one my father gave me.
Kheda looked him straight in the eye. Not after every trace of their foul presence has been burned to ash and scattered to the seas and the winds.’
For retribution as well as purification, for the sake of all those innocents they slaughtered and all the villages they burned in their accursed rampage.
‘My lord, something to eat?’ Borha broke the tense silence with a snap of his fingers at the waiting maidens. One immediately proffered candied lilla fruit slices set on cakes of steamed sailer grain glistening with honey.
‘Thank you, no.’ Kheda smiled to mitigate the rebuff ‘Passing by the oyster vats has left me without an appetite. Tell me, are the divers convect? Are we going to see a good harvest of pearls for the Chazen domain?’
‘It’s early days yet, my lord, but yes, I think it will be a truly splendid year.’ Borha’s smile was wide and ingratiating.
‘Let’s go and see for ourselves.’ Kheda abandoned the pavilion and strode towards the crude awnings sheltering those sifting through the pearls already won from the close-mouthed oysters. The assembled spokesmen hurried after him, other islanders trailing after.
Let’s keep you all looking to the future and let’s hope it’s a favourable one. Let’s not remember the invaders who brought chaos and death last year. Let’s not recall the calamity or your erstwhile lord Chazen Saril dead in exile from his birthright. Let’s not wonder how rumours of my own death turned out to be falsehood or contemplate those events that set me over you as your new ruler. Let’s not ponder just why it proved impossible for me to return to my home and my family and the Daish domain I was born to rule.
Borha drew level with Kheda’s elbow. ‘We filled the vats within a few days of starting to dive. They were already rotted down enough to be emptied yesterday. We’ve had a fine haul of pearls and there are plenty of shells warranting a closer look’ He gestured to the baskets of dark mottled ovals in the midst of a gang of old men sitting cross-legged on a stretch of faded, sandy carpet.
‘My lord.’ One acknowledged Kheda with easy self-assurance. His hair and beard were white in stark contrast to skin as wrinkled and dark as a sun-dried bevy. Unhurried, he studied the empty oyster shell, fine-bladed knife hovering around a sizeable blister marring the iridescent nacre that so closely mimicked the pearls it bore.
Kheda found he was holding his breath as the old man scored a fine line around the bulbous swelling. A trivial omen, but an omen nevertheless. Will he find a pearl? Or will this be one of those pockets of stinking black slime?
The old man eased the sharp steel into the nacre and the swelling burst to leave a perfect milky sphere rolling in the hollow of the shell. ‘Should clean up well enough.’ Putting the pearl carefully in a cotton-lined box, he took another shell from the basket and contemplated a cyst of three half-moon pearls clinging stubbornly to one edge.