The Prince of Shadow (12 page)

Chapter Seven

LLESHO discovered that he actually enjoyed laundry duty. Den taught him the simple tasks of washing and hanging and darning and sizing with a wellspring of patience that reminded him of Adar, who had been much thinner, but who shared the love of humble work. “If a digger of ditches receives a pittance for his service to the land, how much more must a king serve his people to merit the honors they bestow on him?” Adar had asked. When Llesho was six, spending a chill afternoon in the mountain clinic, the answer had included a broom.

Master Den had lessons for him as well, which he taught through the stories he told as they worked: stories with a moral Llesho was supposed to understand but usually didn't. Neither of them minded much, since the stories were interesting anyway. When the time came that he needed the lessons, they both knew Llesho would figure it out, like he'd learned the mopping and the laundering, and the prayer forms before breakfast.

Den himself was a puzzle. Everyone in the training compound bowed to the washerman and called him master. He led prayer forms every morning, and the most skilled among the fighters came to Master Den for instruction. None of his stories touched on the master's own history, although the names of many famous gladiators wandered through the tales. Master Den told his tales with an air of authority, as one who had seen the events and knew their actors, which Llesho supposed he must have done. After all, when the compound emptied for the competitions on the mainland each month, Master Den disappeared with the fighters. He wasn't doing laundry at the games; that came back in stinking bales to be cleaned and mended on Pearl Island.

Llesho could not imagine anyone of Master Den's girth fighting in the arenas, but he'd never seen the man bested at hand-to-hand either. When Llesho asked about his master's place in the stories, however, the launderer would shake his head and insist, “They are only tall tales, boy,” as if Llesho had let the famous names distract him from the purpose of the story. Which, he eventually figured out, he had.

For all his skill, Den worked at one of the lowliest jobs. So had Adar, of course, cleaning up the slops of his patients with his own hands. And Shokar, eldest of the princes, had worked the land as a farmer when their father had not needed him for statecraft. That Master Den was involved in Pearl Island's own narrow struggles of statecraft seemed clear. Before the old minister, Lleck, had died, he had taught his young prince enough of strategy to understand that Overseer Markko played some game of power and nerves with the humble teacher, but why or with what stakes he could not guess.

In a lot of ways, Master Den reminded Llesho of Lleck, though the old minister, like most Thebins, was short and slight with a round bronze face and Master Den was tall and pale as the belly of a whale, with a shape like a mountain. Like the minister, though, Master Den spoke most softly when his words were most valuable and taught using stories that meant more than they appeared on the surface to be. Over the months he spent in the laundry, Llesho came to believe that, like the minister in the longhouse, Master Den hid a whole life and identity beyond the washing vats and drying lines. When he asked the older gladiators questions about the master, however, he discovered that no one knew anything about his past. Den had always been a part of Lord Chin-shi's stable of fighting men, according to the oldest of the active gladiators. Master Jaks might know more of the washerman's history, but when Llesho considered asking the weaponmaster, he decided that his answers might cost him more than he could pay for them.

In spite of his unsatisfied curiosity, Llesho found that he actually enjoyed the three months he spent in the laundry. His lessons in combat kept his mind as well as his body sharp, and during their time in the steaming washroom, Master Den was starting to fill the great gaping hole in Llesho's defenses where Minister Lleck used to stand. Llesho didn't fool himself that his teacher felt the same devotion to Thebin and its prince that old Lleck had. If it hadn't been for hand-to-hand practice, Llesho would have believed Master Den liked him.

Standing in the shade of a billowing length of cloth on the drying lines with Bixei and the other novices, however, Llesho concluded that the teacher must surely hate him, and simply hid it well during laundry duty. If he could have figured out the problem Master Den had with him, Llesho would have changed it. But the harder he tried, and the better his skills became, the more he met with the sharp side of Den's tongue.

“Don't think, boy! Move! A decent opponent will have you on your arse before you decide to hit him at all.” A shift of his weight, a flip of one wrist, and Master Den had demonstrated the fault by dropping Llesho to his knees. Then he moved on to Bixei, and his tone softened; Master Den played out the same move, but slowed many times so that the students could see how the wrist twisted and how a nudge with the side of one foot brought the man down. “Good,” Den said, and slapped Bixei on the back while Llesho seethed.

He had thought that his swift improvement would win him the praise of his teacher, but in fact Master Den ignored him much of the time, except to correct him for imperceptible flaws in his technique, while calling upon Bixei to partner him when the master wished to demonstrate a new combination. Llesho had stopped trying to impress his teacher weeks ago, and found that the forms came even more easily now, when he
didn't
think. If Master Den had shown some appreciation of his skill, the students might have shaped their attitude toward him around their teacher's good opinion. But as Master Den became more disapproving, his classmates became more distant. Llesho could have ignored the others, except for Bixei.

Bixei had two things which Llesho did not: Stipes, and his work assignment as Markko's messenger and servant. He protected both against the newcomer, and Llesho could not convince him, no matter what he said or did, that he wanted neither Stipes' attentions nor the favorable eye of the overseer. The laundry suited him just fine, and he preferred girls.

His move to the laundry had come to him with deceptive casualness, just a word at the end of a practice session as if nothing important had happened at all. Llesho was therefore unprepared for the way his whole life seemed to shudder and tilt on its axis when Bixei arrived late for instruction with the announcement, “His Honor the overseer wishes to summon the novice Llesho to serve him for the coming cycle,”

Expressionlessly, Den bowed to acknowledge the command, which Llesho himself heard with dread. Llesho would take Bixei's position with the overseer, while Bixei himself would rotate to weapons. With one announcement, Llesho made two enemies: Bixei, who had already passed through weapons repair, resented his loss of position. And Radimus, who should have rotated to the overseer's office, likewise resented his return to mop duty.

“I am content to work in the laundry,” Llesho said with a humble bow, his eyes downcast to hide his very real fear at the change. Since his first days in the compound he had avoided the overseer's cottage, which had terrified him from the start with its vague sense of watchful evil. Since he had seen the witch-finder skulking around it, he'd put a face and a reason to his dread. And it was Bixei's task assignment, or had been. The other boy was not pleased.

However much of this Master Den understood, he said nothing, but pointed out with an arched eyebrow, “Lord Chin-shi is not in the habit of giving slaves their choice of assignments. One does, however, have the option of taking up one's task with a beating or without one.”

“Without, Master. I apologize for my pride.” Llesho fell to his knees and knocked his head into the sawdust of the practice area. Master Den accepted the apology with a small bow and broke the class into partners to practice the most recent lesson, Llesho found himself alone and staring into the face of the golden boy, Bixei, who glared back with a cold glitter in his eye. It was worse even than Llesho had guessed.

“Are you going to strike me down with your witchcraft, pearl diver, or will you pretend to use the arts Master Den teaches?” Bixei asked, his arms folded across his chest. So much for the overseer's opinion of him.

“I am no witch,” Llesho stood up to face his accuser.

“Witch,” Bixei repeated. “Everyone knows you consorted with a witch who now stands accused, and that you use the magical powers she taught you to conquer your opponents rather than fight fairly.” Bixei meant more than the training exercises: he was furious to have lost his position in the overseer's office. Llesho thought he might even believe the charge, which frightened him more than his opponent's jealous fury.

Witchcraft had an evil reputation in the camp. Llesho had attempted to warn a hunted witch and had spoken to spirits. But his own present danger meant nothing: Llesho reacted to the taunt with all the rage and the pain of a lifetime of losses knotting his hands into fists. His home was gone, his brothers scattered, his sister murdered. And Lleck was dead, nothing left of him but his demanding spirit. Kwan-ti was gone, disappeared just ahead of the witch-finder, though only the gods knew how she had escaped. Without realizing it, Llesho had reached out to Master Den for the kindness he had lost, but his teacher watched him as if he was one of Master Markko's experiments, and said nothing in his defense.

“Lord Chin-shi has put a bounty on her head, and you will be next. You will burn in her place.”

“No!”

Technique fled in the face of Bixei's shattering denouncement. Looking into the eyes of his opponent, Llesho felt in his blood that it had come to a killing moment between them. He reached for his accuser with his fists, not to knock Bixei down or control him or even kill him with one clean blow. He wanted to tear the golden boy apart with tooth and claw, to stomp his flesh into a pulpy stew in the sawdust and rip the pieces into shreds when he was done. But his rage made him clumsy; Bixei deflected his blows, though he had to struggle to match the insane speed with which Llesho attacked.

“She's not a witch,” he growled, and landed a blow that knocked the wind out of his opponent.

Bixei had been waiting for the moment, luring him in, and even while Llesho was glorying in the feel of his fist impacting on the body of his foe, Bixei grabbed the extended hand and twisted his arm, flipping him on his back with an elbow in his throat.

Llesho thrashed on the ground, ignoring the pressure on his throat and trying to get a purchase on his enemy.

“What is she, then—your lover?” Bixei taunted while the students, and Master Den himself, looked on. Llesho shook his head, though the motion ground sawdust into his hair and brought Bixei's elbow closer to strangling him. “Teacher,” he gasped, and Bixei smiled as though his teeth were a trap that was about to close on its prey. “Are you her sorcerer's apprentice, then?”

“She was good,” Llesho insisted. He knew Bixei would consider him a fool if he said any more, and probably the other boy would be right, but he had to try and make him understand. More important, he had to make Master Den understand. “She taught me that goodness could still exist in a world I thought the gods had abandoned.” He looked into Bixei's eyes when he said it, willing the other to understand something he didn't quite understand himself.

“It's a shame she didn't teach you how to fight.” Bixei pressed his elbow tighter against Llesho's throat, so that he stopped his opponent's breathing altogether. Then, having won his point, he released Llesho and offered him a hand up. “She tricked you. Evil rules the world now, and she is part of it.”

It was hard not to believe, with Thebin under the power of the Harn and everyone he had ever loved dead or lost to him. But the spirit of his mentor had given him hope. So he took the hand Bixei offered, and kept hold of it when he was on his feet again.

“First we take the world back,” he said, “and then we see who helps us and who tries to stop us.” It felt like a pledge, and Bixei met his level gaze uneasily. But he offered his other hand, and they clasped, their wrists crossed in the age-old symbol of allegiance. Neither knew exactly where it would take them, nor how soon the unspoken pact would be tested. They both knew in their hearts, however, that this was something slaves did not do. Llesho expected Master Den to stop them with a lecture on humility, but their teacher watched them with the look of a merchant toting up a trade in his eyes.

 

 

 

Where success had earned him fear and envy, Llesho's failed attack on Bixei had created a wedge of sympathy that Llesho was quick enough to foster with occasional well-timed lapses in his performance. Master Den no longer watched him with faint disapproval, and even pulled him out of the class on occasion to demonstrate a new move or an improvement on an old one for his classmates. Llesho hated his new assignment in the overseer's service, but even that worked to his advantage. If Bixei was still jealous, at least he didn't blame Llesho for his lost status. They might never be friends, but Bixei seemed to have abandoned the feud he'd waged since Llesho arrived at the compound. He could imagine their uneasy alliance more easily in moments like this, however, when Bixei was not present.

Llesho was sitting on the covered porch with Radimus and Stipes and others from his bachelor group and dinner bench. His chair was tilted on two legs so that the narrow, slatted back rested against the coral blocks of the barracks wall. Bixei was still at work in the weapons room, so Llesho had relaxed more than usual, listening to the others trade stories when Radimus, who leaned against the railing to watch him, asked, “Why a trident? That's a tall man's weapon, like the pike.” Radimus, who preferred the pike, pulled himself away from the railing and straightened to his full height as a demonstration.