38 - Ashamed for my Father

I skipped Shefenkas’s ninth fight but I had to go to his tenth because Father insisted. He was getting more and more fascinated with the Yeoli and credited me with the same good taste.

Shefenkas's tenth fight was against a Tor Enchian. The man paced out of his gate, circling, cautiously. I couldn’t restrain myself and jumped up to see. I heard Father chuckle at my enthusiasm. “Enjoy yourself, son. Shefenkas displays his skill for us.” He popped a ham-wrapped love-apple into his mouth and smiled at me, offering one to me from his own fingers. I took it, licking the salty sweetness off my lips as I turned away from him and looked back into the blinding golden sand.

Shefenkas stopped a moment, realizing Father and I were both in the Imperial box, turned away from us. He didn’t even have the kraiya in his hand yet. The Enchian raised his sword and struck. Shefenkas drew, blocked and slashed all in one blinding move. The Enchian stood frozen for a long moment, face completely surprised, as if he’d run into a wall. A thin red line blooming diagonally across his torso splitting wider and wider, even as Shefenkas flipped his kraiya to sling blood off it. The Enchian’s sword fell straight down out of his hand and the man sagged forward, falling forward onto his own internal organs tumbling out onto the sand into the spray pattern of red.

Shefenkas’s face was empty again, as though he’d cut his own heart out instead of the other man’s. So fast. The whole bowl of the Mezem was shrieking, cheering the move, mourning the dead man, crying out in disappointment that their sex boys didn’t have the time to build them up to climax before the death. I could hear it even in our booth as Shefenkas wiped and sheathed his kraiya and walked over to the director’s stairs to receive his victory chain. He didn’t look at Father and I, even though Father raised a congratulatory hand to wave. Less of an honour than anyone in the crowd would think, the gesture full of irony. Father didn’t care to see the other fights so the other four men died without our presence.

That night, Father sent word I needn’t attend him at dinner. It meant He had a private one with someone.

“Spark of the Effulgent Light…” It was Binshala. “Please eat more than this.” She looked at the wreckage on my plate and the amount of food I had left. I sighed and picked up another pinch-claw in butter, ripped the tiny little claws off and sucked them clean, peeled the meat out of the tail with my front teeth, before dropping the shell onto the plate, followed it up with half a dozen cream stuffed honeycomb mushroom caps. She relaxed a bit and I risked patting her arm after I dropped my dirty napkin on top of the mess.

“Thank you, Nurse,” I said quietly and pushed away from the table. “I will keep my weight up. I don’t want you to worry.”

She ducked her head and whispered. “Thank you, Spark.”

I was curious as to who Father had as a private dinner visitor and went up to the viewing galleria at the highest point under the glass roof over the middle gardens, really more a conservatory. I leaned on the balustrade with my elbows checking to see if any of the servants were on this level at all. I had a secret that when I thought about it made me smile.

I had found the architectural diagram in the oldest part of the Imperial Archives, the brittle old paper thrust into the wrong book, between a record of an ancient Triumph and the treasures it contained. I wasn’t particularly interested in the accounting of the gold coins… but the crumbling old page with its faint blue lines had become one of my three secret treasures of architecture.

Behind me, a lamp servant came trundling along to re-fill the lamps and trim the wicks along this galleria, with his wheeled cart containing the jar of alcohol and bundle of wicks and tools following along behind him, pulled by a miniature donkey, its hooves felted for the work in the Marble Palace. The miniscule hauling donkeys were all house, or rather, palace broken so no one had to clean up behind them. The carpet keepers would have been very unhappy with that. I waited for him to finish, the muffled clump of hooves fading down around into the Presidius level.

The column next to me was where the gallery turned, with a marble filigree wall there to support the corner. The filigree had gaps in the pattern that were a tiny bit wider and deeper, just enough to put a hand or toe in. To climb all the way to the ceiling, looking through the marble down three stories to the floor below with its raised gardens and fountains was frightening enough still to make my breath come short even though I had done it before.

It had taken me a dozen tries to find the right golden lotus in the ceiling, marking out an opening between two electrum bands. The inside cavity was painted and gilded to looked exactly like the ceiling outside it so no one could see the opening. It was patterned so well it was hard to see, even close up.

I wiggled inside and followed the low crawlspace. Once away from the opening it became smooth marble that a small adult could crawl into. I was fat enough I had to squeeze through the last portion where it narrowed, over a wall I thought. At the end of the crawl was a hollow that would allow me to turn around when I wished to leave but not big enough to sit up. All around the space were capped listening tubes leading to rooms in the Imperial Chambers. One had been filled with poured stone and I wondered if that had once let someone hear into the Bedchamber itself.

I pulled open the tube I knew led to the Lesser Cerulean Chamber, where Father tended to eat when he wanted an intimate dinner, and pressed my ear to the tube.

“…impleminded barbarian that you are,” Father was saying. “My advisors were actually against Arko taking Yeoli.”

“Truly,” Shefenkas answered. It was Shefenkas. Of course.

“Yes… As Imperator, of course, I see above their little concerns. Bureaucratic cowardice, you know. You must deal with such nonsense,” Father continued. There was a murmur from Shefenkas that could be agreement or disagreement or just neutral.

“So…” Shefenkas said quietly. “You’ve been telling me all about being Imperator. Tell me, since you are the head of the Temple and speak to the Gods for your people, how do you hear the Ten?” I inched up a bit as though I had slid down, straining my ear. Would He lie to Shefenkas? What would He say?

“The voices of the Gods?” I could hear the amusement in Father’s voice. “You barbarians have such atavistic concepts! You’re as good dupes for the gods as the uneducated! Wait a moment – you’re Yeoli, an atheist. Aren’t you? I thought that was a sophistication we both shared. Don’t disillusion me, Shefenkas.”

There was a bit of silence and I imagined my friend hearing this for the first time. Father believed that the Temple was tremendously useful but only against the credulous. “I am athye but I don’t claim otherwise,” Shefenkas said quietly.

Father laughed and called for dessert, for Him it was His wet nurse. “What you have on your plate, Shefenkas, is this delicacy in refined form.” Human-milk cheese was what Father was talking about. I didn’t like it much, it never seemed rich enough and sometimes dry. Father didn’t honour anyone else -- other than me -- to share His wet nurses.

I found myself hot and blushing up in my hidey-hole. I didn’t understand at first what I was feeling. What would Shefenkas be thinking? I wanted Father to treat him with respect. I wanted Him not to say those things. I realized then, I was embarrassed for Father and Shefenkas both… and myself. Father didn’t care, but suddenly I realized I did.

I pulled my hot, aching ear away from the listening tube and turned my head to put the other ear down. I wanted to squirm, caught between wanting to run away and not hear Father be so rude, so careless, and needing to stay to hear the two men talk.

I was angry. Father could choose to behave differently, if he cared, if anyone around Him were real. Shefenkas had shown me that the awful people around me were just people reacting to my own bad behaviour.

“You have ten chains now, Shefenkas. Tell me, before you go into the ring do you feel fear?” I cringed again, imagining my friend’s face, hearing Father ask the typical slavering fan question. I couldn’t bear it and pulled my ear away, putting the plug back into its place.

I slid out of the hiding place and back down the filigree ladder. How could He act like that? How could He be so… so… I had no words for the emotions washing through me but I was ashamed to be His son.