30 - My emotions make me a traitor

When I got back to my rooms, my desk, I sat chewing on the end of my pen wondering what I could write Raikas without it being treason. I finally wrote that the tiles in the Marble Palace Throne room were being ripped up because my father had big plans. And that he was looking forward to lots and lots more Yeoli wines and wools coming into the Empire soon.

If he could figure it out he’d have a warning of some kind. And I wouldn’t be able to send any more letters for him. I sealed the note and tucked it into one of the romance novels I had just gotten from the Pages. I wrapped it in paper and called a servant to deliver it down to the Mezem.

Then I sat for a time, doodling on the next blank page down. I kept drawing eyes and swords and Mahid needles dripping things. “Chip of the Effulgent Light.” Tafis stood in the door with a pair of skates in his hands. “Did you want to play a game?” He meant a full game of faibalitz in the steel bowl. They’d sent him to draw me out, but I didn’t feel like watching them play ‘Who is best friends with Minis today’ while playing faib.

“No. I’m busy.” I paused a moment. “Go play with yourselves.” He bowed and took himself off. I hooded my pen and tossed it onto the desk. I didn’t want to be nice to any of them, but I realized I should try. I couldn’t bear Ilian. Tafis wasn’t much better. Tomeas I wasn’t sure.

I didn’t expect to see the servant again the same day that I had sent down to the Mezem with the book for Raikas but he presented himself to me not a full bead later.

“Spark of the Sun’s Ray,” he said from the door. I looked up from the textbook I was reading.

“Yes? What is it?”

The man’s voice was soft. “This lowly one was unable to place the parcel into the gladiator’s hands, Spark of the Sun’s Ray, and this miserable worm believed the intelligence as to why might be of some interest to the Son of the Sun.”

I beckoned him over. “Tell me why you could not.”

“This simple one was informed, exalted personage, that the gladiator in question was unable to receive the gift because he had been removed from the Mezem by an escort of Mahid.”

“Oh?” My stomach clenched. My warning, such as it was, was too late. “And did they say where he’d been taken?”

He ducked his head slightly as though I had raised a hand to hit him. “This one does not know for certain, Spark of the Sun’s Ray. But…” He took a breath. “…speculation was made that the Mezem dog in question was brought to the Marble Palace.”

Of course. I really looked at the man, seeing him for the first time, rather than a flash of uniform. The Marble Palace livery, unchanged from the garish, ancient Piinanian style was mostly red with stylized wings on the over-tabard, the dark blue belt tipped and banded with gold, silver, copper, white or red in the various combinations denoting which floors of the Palace they were assigned to. I had never paid attention before, just accepting the fact that Binshala wore her belt banded with gold, tipped with silver, that gave her access to all parts of the palace except my father’s rooms. All of the highest Imperial servants’ belts were plain gold.

“What’s your name?” He had taken a risk coming back to me, to actually report that he had not succeeded in fulfilling his task for me. He was a young man, unfortunately balding young, a fessas length fringe all around the back of his head.

“Antras Rioras, fessas, Spark of the Sun’s Ray.” He was paling, slowly, under my gaze, though his perfect palace demeanor didn’t change by so much as a hair. I could almost see him wonder if he’d made a serious mistake.

“Good work, Antras. Very diligent, thank you.” I had twisted a decorative topaz button off my shirt earlier without noticing and picked it out of my pen holder and handed it to him. “Here. You may have this… let us say, for taking initiative.”

I was starting to get used to the half-hidden startled looks I was getting when I was polite. The button vanished into his glove pocket as if by magic. “This lowly one thanks the exalted Heir for the kind attention lavished upon this miserable dog.”

I waved him away, already trying to figure out how I could find where Raikas was. He’d be in the Mahid cells were I was politely but firmly discouraged from visiting unless escorted. I could go to Meras’s office and see if the listening tubes there would give me a clue.

The Senior Mahid had means to listen in on any one of a dozen cells, the sound channels piped through the stone. He could listen to training sessions, interrogations, tortures, or to prisoners who thought they were alone, just by uncapping the appropriate tubes. When I was much smaller I had thought them a marvelous invention for dropping marbles until he had requested of my father that I be forbidden to do so, as close to a rage as any Mahid ever showed.

It took me some time to find out which cell held Raikas, simply by deciding to play Conquer the Rebellion with the Companions and ‘hiding’ in Meras’s office when he was reporting to father about something or other. I had to uncap four of the tubes – and had to listen long enough to what was going on, on the other end to be sure of finding Raikas -- before the Gods were kind and I overheard Raikas speaking to someone. I knew his accent, his voice.

I didn’t catch the name of the person he was talking to. “…das. What does that mean, Durakis? I’ve only heard it once before and it was not defined. First time you said it I thought it was an odd version of “Raikas.” That was him. I knew him. He was, as usual, asking questions.

I felt I should know the voice who answered him, but couldn’t make the name come to mind immediately. “It is a title. Honourable Foreign Ruler would be close.”

“I’m not a ruler,” Raikas said.

“I understand,” came the reply. They weren’t interrogating him. The person speaking to him was no Mahid. “You are counted the least of your people as opposed to the first and do what you are told.”

“You’ve been studying us?”

“Yes. But most Arkans cannot understand that kind of world and there is no Arkan word that suits. So Durakis is polite. You could translate it as ‘Honorable Foreign Representative.”

There was an edge to Raikas’s voice. He was the Durakis? The Yeoli Durakis? “You hardly need be polite, Triadas.” General Triadas. One of the ones my father was charging with the conquest of Yeola-e. And they were just talking, in a Mahid cell? I had my ear pressed to the opening of the tube, the ring pressing almost painfully into the side of my head.

“I choose to be polite when I can.”

“There’s no time you can’t.” That was Raikas to the bones. On a Mahid table informing an Arkan general that politeness was always in someone’s control. “But I don’t know that I have the strength to argue that.”

"No need to argue.” Triadas answered quietly. And for a moment they sat in silence. I heard the click of the latch and had enough time to cap the tube and move over to another one, apparently listening raptly to someone weeping.

“Spark of the Sun’s Ray.” Meras’s deadly voice.

I sat up away from the tube, playing with the cap in my hands. “First of the Mahid.”

“You recall you are required to leave off dropping objects through the sound tubes?” He came over and took the cap out of my hands, plugging it back into place more firmly than was absolutely necessary. I pouted but gave it up willingly enough, along with my story.

“I do, First Meras. Um… have you seen any of my Companions looking for me? We were playing ‘Crush the Rebellion’ but they’ve not thought to look for me, here. I am playing the Rebels and the Rejin hasn’t tracked me down yet.”

“I respectfully suggest, Spark of the Sun’s Ray, that you not play at all in the Mahid quarters, as your Companions very sensibly worked out.”

“I suppose. But I thought it made sense to come to a place they wouldn’t look.”

“About as sensible as going to the Imperial Quarters where they cannot go, Spark. It develops into a boring game.”

“I’ll keep that in mind, Meras.”

“Spark of the Effulgent Light.” He shut the door behind me, also a trifle harder than he had to. Sometimes even the Mahid slipped.

Raikas was the Durakis? He was the Yeoli Durakis? My best friend in all the world was someone my father had just launched a conquest upon, and made my friendship with him not just wrong-headed, but treason. I had said I loved the man. He was good to me. I didn’t feel like a traitor to Arko, and there was no one to ask.