M. Barker: The Man of Gold

His clan-brothers told him he was a fool to wed one so young and so pretty. Mrika was Aridani, and once she had settled into Tumissan society-and tired of Aijuan-she would certainly go on to marry other, higher-placed, better looking, and younger husbands. Arjuan had no illusions; he was only a stepping stone-a fact he knew would one day cause him great pain. For now, however, Mrika was indisputably his bride. Men Looked after them and whispered admiringly. They attracted attention on the street, in the official receptions of the Palace of the Realm, in the temple of Lord Thumis, and everywhere they went together. For. the present he was happy to have her.

Perhaps, just perhaps, this marriage might revive Aijuan’s ailing career. Like an old and tattered scroll that is taken from its pigeonhole and given a new coat of shining varnish, he might still rise in the Palace of the Realm and be promoted to High Copyist when Genemu hiNayar, his superior, retired. (Already the old man had three young apprentices to clean up the blots and scrawls his aged fingers left behind!) With Mrika as the cynosure of all eyes, Aijuan could go on to Bey Sii, even to a post within the Chancery at Avanthar itself. A dream, indeed, but no longer just a fantasy to be yearned for in the grey hours before the Tunkul — gong called him to his morning chores at the scriptorium. The Weaver of Skeins might yet have a golden thread or two to spare for Aijuan hiDaranu.

Aijuan rattled the door-clappers. Mrika had not been well these last several days. Some depression, some nagging worry, had darkened her mood, and she had taken to lying abed longer than was her wont. Some slight by the gossiping, clacking wives of Aijuan’s colleagues, some female problem-he did not know, and she did not say.

The hook beside the door was empty; no Meshqu plaque hung there to inform visitors of the current disposition of the occupants of the house. Strange. No, worrisome. He fumbled with the latch and the door swung open. Mrika had not bothered to drop the bar from within.

The outer chamber was dim with the murky shadows of late afternoon. The acrid smells of inks and chemicals vied with the warm fragrances of reed-paper and Hmelu — parchment. Underlying all of these were the pleasantly remembered redolences of meats and spices and savoury cooking.

Aijuan left his sandals at the door and padded across to the dais upon which they sat to eat and rarely to entertain. It had only three tiers, as Mrika repeatedly reproached him, but was that not enough for a middle-level copyist of Imperial documents? A three-tiered dais was all they required to show respect to their social equals and to his immediate superiors; he could no more expect anyone higher as a dinner guest than he could hope for the company of the Lord Governor himself!

The silent room was oppressive. He stopped, hesitated in the middle of the floor, and bent to pick up a document. The scarlet and black scrollwork illuminations of the Temple of Lord Karakan were still not quite dry upon it.

The parchment drew his attention. What was it doing here? Mrika-? No, she had nothing to do with his work, and she was always tidy. She never asked, never pried, never read any of Arjuan’s tediously accurate accounts and records. He squinted. The paper was a requisition for scholars and materials for some projected voyage to Livyanu, and portions were in cipher-which Aijuan copied laboriously without knowing their contents. It bore the seal of one of Prince Eselne’s privy chamberlains. This was not at all the sort of thing one should leave lying about!

Concerned now, he went around the hearth to the door of their sleeping room. It was shut. More, it was barred from within, and no little Meshqu plaque hung here either to tell him Mrika was sleeping or indisposed. He tapped twice upon the panel, but there was no response. Again, louder. Then he tried the latch, but this time it was locked.

Was Mrika ill? Did she sleep so deeply, then? Worse, his little internal voice asked, had she left him? Was this the day he dreaded? He pounded on the door, then spent anguished minutes fishing for the latchstring with the key-rod that he kept hidden under the hearthstone.

The door opened upon blackness. Mrika always kept the one window covered against the midday blaze. She did not like sunlight and, like many girls of the lower clans who longed to be pampered aristocrats, strove to keep her complexion as pale as possible. It took more time for his eyes to adjust so that he could see what lay inside.

It was the smell that struck him first, however: an odour of milk gone bad, of spoiled food, of garbage left too long on a muddy riverbank. There was a huddled form beneath the clean Firya — cloth sheet upon the sleeping platform. Mrika must have been terribly sick, vomited perhaps, and then passed into unconsciousness.

He ran to draw back the sheet.

What he saw was so unexpected that he could make no sense of it at all. The fabric was stained with a greyish, milky mulch that stuck to his fingers. Beneath, scattered roughly in the shape of a human body, were objects, things that he could not recognise, strange lumps and wetly shining bluish-white blobs of a substance that resembled spoiled cheese! They stank, and they lay in a pool of pallid, oozing wetness.

Revolted to the core of his being, Aijuan thrust himself away, furiously wiping his hands upon his ink-stained kilt. He gagged and staggered from the room. When he could think again he found himself outside upon the hot flagstones of their clanhouse verandah, clutching his stomach and still vomiting into Mrika’s neat bed of Naludla-flowers.

His thoughts whirled round and round but always came back to the one logical conclusion. She had left him. She was gone. Certainly that was not Mrika there on the sleeping mat!

What else was possible?

Yet why? Why not tell him, at least? Why this awful affront to his dignity-the hideous, insulting mess upon their sleeping mat? He might not have been the most ardent of lovers, but that-! The humiliation was unbearable. He flung back his head, cursed, groaned, and beat his fists upon the damp stones.

Their neighbour, Betkanur hiFashan, found him thus, took him inside, cooled his brow with a damp cloth, gave him strong Dna — grain beer, and sent his little daughter scampering to the Temple of Lord Ketengku to summon the physicians.

By evening the tale of Mrika’s vanishing had spread. The city watch came with questions for him, and his superior, Genemu hiNayar, also arrived with a priest and two senior scribes from the Palace of the Realm. What had happened to Mrika was riddle enough, but these worthies were even more concerned about the copies of various documents-some important-in Mrika’s handwriting concealed within her gaily painted cosmetics box by their sleeping mat. And what was the amulet they found there, too? An amulet made of some pale, bone-like substance, covered all over with spidery writing in a tongue no one could identify? The script, opined one of the Genemu’s colleagues, was clearly nonhuman, but it was not of the Ahoggya, the Shen, the Pe Choi, the Mihalli, or even the dreaded Ssu.

Aijuan hiDaranu denied all knowledge of the affair. He begged them to find Mrika, but no one heeded him much. The priests, soldiers, and later a blue-and-gold uniformed officer of the Omnipotent Azure Legion only pestered him with serious-sounding inquiries about such matters as spies and agents, Yan Kor and Mu’ugalavya, and the like. He did not care. He pleaded ignorance, and eventually they all went away.

He curled himself into a ball upon Betkanur’s unfamiliar sleeping-mat and wept.

The drooping Ja'atheb — tree fronds sketched a ballet in silver silhouette above the Shadow Gods’ ponderous temple pyramids. It was not yet dawn, and the city of Tsamra still slept, although Siyuneb could hear the yawning, querulous voices of servants from the labyrinth of buildings and gardens below. The palace of her master, Lord Ketkorez Tanakku, was awakening.