Geoff Ryman - The King’s Last Song

Oh, yes! thought Suryavarman. You will be my revenge; you will be my scythe. I pity the poor cousin who succeeds me.

‘I want to train you specially,’ said Suryavarman. ‘In the art of war.’

Everyone learned how the beardless Brahmin’s scheme had backfired.

Why exactly the King favoured his cousin’s son no one knew. A cousin’s son was there to be held hostage, ground down, watched and limited. Not raised up.

Instead, the King demanded that the case be taken up by the Son of Divakarapandita himself, who had consecrated three kings. This highest of the Varna was to go to the consecration personally and ensure the foundation was well done, and it was said, ensure that the slave girl had the right to return to her own home.

Some of the Brahmin said, see how the King listens, he is making sure they are separated.

Then why does the King show the boy favours? He gave him a gift of arrows, and sent him to train two years early. And why were the palace women – wives and nannies, cooks and drapers alike – all told to let the boy and the slave girl be friends?

The only one who seemed mutely accepting of these attentions was the Slave Prince himself.

The rumour went round the palace that on the night before the slave’s departure, the Prince had called for a meal of fish and rice to be laid on a cloth, and invited the girl Fishing Cat to share it with him.

The girl had knelt down as if to serve.

‘No, no,’ Prince Nia said.

But he could not stop her serving. She laid out a napkin, and a fingerbowl.

He reached up to try to stop her. ‘No, don’t do that.’

Cat’s sinewy wrists somehow twisted free. Out of his reach, she took the lamp and lit scented wax to sweeten the air, and drive away the insects.

‘Leave the things.’

Fishing Cat looked up with eyes that were bright like sapphires. ‘I want to do this. I won’t have this chance again.’

‘Don’t be sad. We will always be friends,’ he said. ‘I will still hear you talking inside my head. I will ask how should a king behave, and you will say, how am I to answer that, baby? And I will say, with the truth. And you will say, the King should not lie like you do. And you will remind me of the time I hid my metal pen and made you look for it. It will be like we are still together.’

‘But we won’t be.’

‘Huh. You will not even remember the name of the palace or one of its thousand homeless princes.’

Both her eyes pointed down. ‘I will never forget.’

The Prince teased her. ‘You forgot the name of your home village.’

‘I was a child.’

‘You are still a child. Like me. We can say we will always be friends and believe it.’ He smiled at this foolish hope.

Then Nia jumped as if bitten by an insect. ‘Oh. I have a present.’ He lifted something off his neck. ‘Soldiers wear these into battle. See, it is the head of the Naga . It means no harm can come to them.’ He held it up and out for her.

‘Oh, no, Nia, if I wear a present from you, I will be a target.’

‘Ah, but no harm can come anyway.’

‘It is for a well-born person.’

‘Like kamlaa warriors, who go to their deaths? Look, there is no protection really. It is just something to have. You don’t have to wear it. Just keep it.’ He folded it into her hands. ‘When you have it you will think, I had a friend who wished that no harm could come to me, who wanted me to know my parents.’

Cat looked down at the present and it was as if he could feel her heart thumping. I wanted to make her happy and now maybe she thinks I have sent her away.

‘Fishing Cat,’ he said, holding onto her hand. ‘I stand waiting with all those kids who hate each other, and I think of my last day at home. I was being taken away, and I was sad and frightened, but everyone in the house kept smiling. They had to look happy or risk being thought disloyal, but I didn’t know that. My mother was allowed to kiss me, once. She whispered in my ear instead and she told me, “We did not ask for this. We are not sending you away. I will think about you every day. I promise. Just when the sun sets, I will think of you.” So whenever the sun sets, I know my mother thinks of me.’

Fishing Cat thinned her mouth trying to be brave. The Prince said again, ‘I am not sending you away. I will think of you every day. I promise. Just as the sun sets.’

A slave cannot afford unhappiness for long. Cat managed to smile. ‘I will think of you too, Nia. Whenever the sun sets. I will tell my parents about you, and how you brought me back to them. I will ask them to offer prayers for you.’

‘And I will hear you in my head,’ promised the Prince. ‘Now. Eat.’

People heard the shots and thought at first that they were fire-works.

Then sirens streamed out towards the airport and ambulances screamed back. Soldiers had been shot. It was said the King had left his residence, his large dark-windowed car squealing as it pulled out of the drive.

Pirates in the back of pick-up trucks drove around the city, their faces covered with kramars. They had guns and took aim at hotel signs. All along the airport road, it was said, every hotel sign had been shot. Tourists walking on Sivutha Street had been screamed at. They turned, and saw a rifle and a deadly grin pointed straight at them.

Cambodians in town for New Year scurried to their cars with suitcases. Traffic began to build. More shots were heard. Buses full of tourists came back from the airport and gathered in the hotels, forlornly asking if they could have their rooms back. At New Year? ‘I don’t know what’s goin’ on,’ said an American. ‘But they closed the airport. No more flights and all these big ugly dudes are stopping all the traffic and checking everybody’s bags.’

Then the power went. The hotels outlined in Christmas-tree lights, all the blazing karaoke signs, and all the brightly lit forecourts fell dark. In an instant, the music booming out of beer gardens and bars went silent.

People panicked. The last time the Khmers Rouges attacked Siem Reap was in 1993, and it was just like this. They closed the airport and the power station.

Soon the streets leading out of Siem Reap were crowded with unmoving cars stuffed with plastic bags, aunts, and wide-eyed children. Workers trudged home, holding their good city shoes and walking barefoot. Dust billowed up like a fog. Murky car headlights crept through it. Motorcycles weaved unsteadily around pedestrians. A woman lay on the side of the road, unconscious, bundles scattered, her tummy being plucked by anxious, helpful passers-by.

Just outside town, the cars encountered the first roadblocks. Furious-looking soldiers pulled people out of cars and emptied luggage onto the street.

‘Our colleagues have been shot and killed!’ the soldiers shouted.

People despaired. Was war really still this close? All it took was a few shots, and here they were, repeating history. Evacuating the city.

It’s late in the evening at New Year, but the restaurants outside Angkor Wat are dark and silent.

The temple guards are glad.

Normally at New Year, cars stop at the crossroads to beam their headlights on the temple towers. From across the moat, the karaoke drums, the pounding of feet and voices, the revving of engines, the celebratory beeping of car horns and the light-scattering mist of exhaust fumes, all would usually have risen up as a haze of light and noise.

This New Year, poor people keep their privilege of having Angkor Wat to themselves at night. Only moonlight shines on the temple. The towers are ice-blue and streaked with black like solidified ghosts. Bats flit across the moon.