R. Bakker - The Judging eye

A strange aroma permeated the interior air, pleasant despite the bitter overtones. Like orange peels burning. He stood rigid, his eyes adjusting to the enclosed light. The recesses of the pavilion were largely unfurnished and unadorned: simple reed mats for flooring, various accouterments hanging from posts, a wicker-and-wood cot covered with empty scroll cases. The Circumfixes embroidered into the ceiling canvas cast vague shadows across the ground.

Anasыrimbor Kayыtas sat at the corner of a camp-table set against the centre post, alone save for a bald secretary who mechanically inked lines of script, apparently adding to the stacks of papyrus spread about him. The Prince-Imperial leaned back in his chair, his sandalled feet kicked out and crossed on the mats before him. Rather than acknowledge Sorweel, he gazed from one papyrus sheet to another, as though following the thread of some logistical concern.

Sorweel's wizened guide knelt, pressing his forehead to the stained mats, then withdrew the way he had come. Sorweel stood alone and breathless.

"You're wondering," Kayыtas said, his eyes fixed on the vertical bars of script, "whether it was a deliberate insult…" He set a final sheet down, following it with still-reading eyes as he did so. He looked to Sorweel, paused in appraisal. "Having a slave bring you here like this."

"An insult," Sorweel heard himself reply, "is an insult."

A handsome smirk. "I fear no court is so simple."

The Prince-Imperial leaned back, raised a wooden bowl to his lips-water, Sorweel noted after he set it down.

It was no small thing, to stand before the son of a living god. Even with his hair trimmed so close and so curiously to the contours of his skull, Kayыtas closely resembled his father. He had the same long strong face, the same pearl-shining eyes. He even possessed the same unnerving manner. His every movement, it seemed, followed preordained lines, as though his soul had mapped all the shortest distances beforehand. And when he was still, he was utterly still. But for all that, Anasыrimbor Kayыtas still possessed a mortal aura. There could be no doubt that he faltered as other men faltered, that his skin, if pressed, would be thin and warm…

That he could bleed.

"Tell me," the Prince-Imperial continued, "what do your countrymen call it when men trade useless words?"

Sorweel tried to breath away his hackles. "Measuring tongues."

The Prince-Imperial laughed at the cleverness of this. "Excellent. A name for jnan if there ever was one! Let us dispense with 'tongue measuring' then. Agreed?"

The secretary continued scratching characters across papyrus.

"Agreed," Sorweel replied warily.

Kayыtas smiled with what seemed genuine relief. "Let me speak to the matter then: My father needs more than your city, he needs the obedience of her people as well. I suppose you know full well what this means…"

Sorweel knew, though it had become more and more difficult to contemplate. "He needs me."

"Precisely. This is why you're here, to give your people a stake in our glorious undertaking. To make Sakarpus part of the Great Ordeal."

Sorweel said nothing.

"But of course," the Prince-Imperial continued, "we remain the enemy, don't we? Which I suppose makes all this little more than a cunning ploy to win your loyalty… a way to dupe you into betraying your people."

It was too late for that, Sorweel could not help but think. "Perhaps."

"Perhaps," Kayыtas repeated with a snort. "So much for not measuring tongues!"

A dull and resentful glare.

"Well, no matter," the Prince-Imperial continued. "I'll keep my end of our bargain at least." He winked as though at a joke. "I may not have the Gift of the Few, but I am my father's son, and I possess many of his strengths. I find languages effortless, as I suppose this conversation demonstrates. And I need only look at your face to see your soul, not so clearly as Father, certainly, but enough to sound the measure of you or anyone else before me. I can see the depth of your pain, Sorweel, and though I think your people have simply reaped the consequences of their own foolishness, I do understand. If I fail to commiserate, it's because I hold you to the same standards of manly conduct as would your father. Men weep to wives and pillows…

"Do you understand me?"

Sorweel blinked in sudden shame. Did they have spies watching him sleep as well?

"Excellent," Kayыtas said, like a field captain pleased by the vigour of his company's response. "I should also tell you that I resent this charge of my father's. I even resent this interview, not simply because I lack the time, but because I think it beneath me. I detest politics, and this relationship my father has forced upon us is nothing if not political. Even still, I recognize that these passions are a product of my own weakness. I will not, as other men might, hold you accountable for them. My father wants me to be as a brother to you… And since my father is more God than Man, I will do exactly as he wishes."

He paused as though to leave room for Sorweel to reply, but the young King could scarce order his thoughts, let alone speak. Kayыtas had been every bit as direct as he had promised, and yet at the same time his discourse seemed bent to the point of deformity, charged with a too-penetrating intelligence, pleated with an almost obscene self-awareness…

Who were these people?

"I can see the embers of sedition in your eyes," Kayыtas resumed, "a wild hunger to destroy yourself in the act of avenging your father." His voice had somehow scaled the surrounding canvas panels, so that it seemed to fall from all directions. "At every turn you struggle, because you know not whether my father is a demon, as your priests claim, or the Saviour the Men of Three Seas know him to be. I do not begrudge you this, Sorweel. All I ask is that you inquire with an open heart. I fear proof of my father's Holy Mission will come soon enough…"

He paused as though distracted by some unexpected thought. "Perhaps," he continued, "if we're fortunate enough to survive that proof, you and I can have a different conversation."

Sorweel stood rigid, braced against the sense of futility that whelmed through him. How? was all he could think. How does one war against foes such as this?

"In the interim," the Prince-Imperial said with an air of turning to more practical matters, "you need to learn Sheyic, of course. I will have an instructor arranged for you. And you need to show my Horse-masters that you're a true son of Sakarpus. You are now a captain of the Imperial Kidruhil, Sorweel, a member of the illustrious Company of Scions…" He lowered his chin in a curious smile. "And I am your general."

Another long, appraising pause. The old secretary had paused to cut a new tip on his quill, which he held in fingers soaked black with ink. Sorweel caught him stealing a quick glance in his direction.

"Is this agreeable to you?" Kayыtas asked.

"What choice do I have?"

For the first time something resembling compassion crossed the Prince-Imperial's face. He breathed as though gathering wind for crucial words. "You are the warlike son of a warlike people, Sorweel. Remain in Sakarpus, and you will be little more than a carefully managed captive. Even worse, you will never resolve the turmoil that even now chokes your heart. Ride with me and my brother, and you will see, one way or another, what kind of king you must be."

He scarce understood what was happening, so how could he know what he should or shouldn't do? But there was heart to be found in the sound of resolution. And besides, he was developing a talent for petulant remarks. "As I said," Sorweel replied, "what choice."

Anasыrimbor Kayыtas nodded, rather like a field surgeon regarding his handiwork, Sorweel thought.