Ken Liu - The Grace of Kings

But Maing awoke something in him. Was it the way she never lamented her fate, though she had been turned from a duke’s daughter into a slave? Was it the way she never treated herself as a slave, holding her head high and looking straight at you? Was it the way she found joy in the simplest things, teaching the other serving women in the kitchen to turn the dripping of leaky faucets into music and to make finger shadow puppets dance against the wall in the light cast by the fire in the giant cooking hearths? He didn’t know, but he knew he loved her.

They began to converse, and he felt that she was the only person who really understood him, who saw that he was more than the sum of his duties, who knew that he sometimes wrote poetry about watching the melting ice in spring and the summer stars spinning slowly overhead, about loneliness in a crowd, about the emptiness in the heart caused by touching too much silver and gold and not enough of a friendly hand.

“I am but a glorified slave,” he said to her, and discovered that it was true. “Neither of us is free.”

Finally, being with her taught him the meaning of real intimacy. Though he had thought he was close to Ré, they were, after all, not equals, and true intimacy required equality.

One night, Emperor Mapidéré held a banquet for his generals, and Pira wanted to wait until after the banquet, when the emperor would be in a good mood, to ask a favor of him. He would ask Ré, his old friend and playmate, to release Maing from her servitude and let him have her.

Maing served the swordfish steaks that night. She passed before the emperor’s table, the platter of fish held high before her. The emperor had been bored, and he chose that moment to look for something to divert himself. He saw Maing’s narrow waist. He saw Maing’s flowing light-brown hair. He saw a thing that had long belonged to him but which he had been too busy to enjoy.

He summoned her to his bed that night, and she became Lady Maing, another of Mapidéré’s many consorts. Mapidéré had never designated an empress, preferring the new to the old.

Pira’s heart died that night.

Though this was a fate dreamed of by all the other slave women, when Pira came by to wake the emperor in the morning, Maing looked frightened, not joyful. She avoided Pira’s gaze, and Pira carefully spoke in an even voice. In his dreams, he said good-bye to her again and again.

Lady Maing became pregnant, and the courtiers and servants congratulated her heartily. As the consort who brought another royal child, Lady Maing’s place in the palace was secure.

But she said nothing to the well-wishers. As her belly swelled, she looked only more and more withdrawn.

The baby, a boy, was born two months early, and yet he was healthy and hale, and weighed as much as any other boy carried to full term. The doctor, suspicious, sent away the servants and nurses and interrogated the exhausted Lady Maing for an hour. When he finally got the truth out of her, he hurried to Pira with the news.

Since then, Pira had relived that day a hundred thousand times in his mind. Could he have saved his son? Could he have saved Maing? Could he have silenced the doctor with gold and jewels? Could he have thrown himself at the emperor’s feet and pled for mercy? Was he such a coward that he could not even protect the one person in this world he loved? He imagined himself leaving everything behind so that he and Maing could have escaped in a small fishing boat, bound for ports unknown and a lifetime of looking over their shoulders — but she would be alive, alive.

Yet, every scenario ended with the same result: death to his entire family — his parents, his wife, his uncles and aunts. Treason was a taint in the blood, and a traitor’s sin was borne by the whole family.

He could not think of what he could have done differently, but he blamed himself nonetheless.

He had gone to Emperor Mapidéré and told him what the doctor said.

“Who is the father?” the emperor raged.

“She wouldn’t say,” Pira said, his voice dead.

He wanted to try to reason with Réon, to explain that he had met her before Réon wanted her, and so they had not really committed treason. Yet, as chatelain, he knew the laws of the palace well. A slave girl belonged to the emperor, even if he never touched her, even if he didn’t know her name, could not recall her face. They had indeed committed treason, starting with the minute that he looked at her as anything other than the emperor’s possession.

And so he watched, and said nothing, as the boy was smothered in front of Lady Maing. He watched, and said nothing, as the Imperial Guards strangled her. Then he went to dispose of the bodies, and he strained to show nothing in his face as his hands touched her cold skin.

He did make a vow, though: He would avenge her and bring down the House of Xana. He would truly, spectacularly, really commit treason.

“Chatelain, they keep on pestering me with these reports of rebellion. What should I do?”

“ Rénga , these are mere bandits and highwaymen, beneath your notice. You demean yourself by even wasting a second of your time to think about them. Announce that whoever brings you reports of such petty matters should be put to death. Let the regent take care of them for you.”

“You are my only real friend, Chatelain. You always think of what’s best for me.”

“Thank you. Now, what shall we do today? Shall we go to the Imperial Zoo and Aquarium so you can pet the baby cruben? Or would you rather see the new virgins brought from Faça?”

THE BIG ISLAND: THE THIRD MONTH IN THE FOURTH YEAR OF THE REIGN OF RIGHTEOUS FORCE.

While wine flowed and gems sparkled in his toy empire, Emperor Erishi’s real empire was in tatters.

By now, a force of twenty thousand men had rallied around the fish-prophesied flag of Huno Krima and Zopa Shigin. They had plucked the rightful heir to the Cocru throne, a twenty-three-year-old shepherd, from his quiet life in the northern countryside of Faça among his flocks and restored him to the throne as King Thufi.

Although the young man had spent his entire life so far having authority only over sheep, he soon took to the role of commanding men with grace and ease.

“See,” Ratho Miro said to his brother, “the blood of the royal line is special. There’s no other explanation for how a boy raised to be a shepherd could suddenly look so comfortable being in charge of a whole country! Such grace. Such command!”

Dafiro rolled his eyes. “If a bunch of well-dressed men came to me and told me that I was destined to be king, followed me around all day, and acted like I was so wise and clever and nodded at everything I said, and if they then gave me a big, heavy crown and a yellow silk robe to wear and put me on a golden throne, I’d probably also end up acting all confident and king-ish, as though my backside belonged on that throne all along.”

“I don’t know,” Ratho said, looking over his brother skeptically. “You’re good only at bossing me around. I think if you put on a silk robe you’d end up looking like a circus monkey.”

At the grand old Temple of Fire and Ice in the middle of Çaruza, Thufi prayed to the goddesses Kana and Rapa, protectors of Cocru.

“The sins of Xana are many,” he said to the assembled multitudes in the square. “But the day of reckoning is here. All the Tiro states have re-risen, and the world will be put aright.”

Before a crowd throbbing with anticipation, King Thufi named Krima the Duke of Napi, Marshal of Cocru, and Shigin the Duke of Canfin, Vice Marshal of Cocru. They were given orders to attack Xana forces everywhere until all former Cocru lands had been liberated. Krima and Shigin marched out of Çaruza at the head of an army as the people showered them with flowers and fine white sand shipped from Çaruza’s beaches.