Geoff Ryman - The King’s Last Song

She dared not look at him, but her mouth swelled out with unhappiness. Abruptly she stood up and took little whisking steps towards the entrance.

Cap-Pi-Hau tumbled out of the door after her to see if he could join in.

She took nipping steps down the front steps to the ground, holding up her beautiful skirt, palace-blue with gold flowers. What was she doing?

‘Ha ha!’ he said, a harsh imitation of a laugh to show this was good, this could be fun.

She held up her mournful face. She took her cloth to the ceramic water butt and wrung it out. ‘What are you doing?’ he demanded.

‘I will dust the floor again,’ she said, and turned away from him.

He followed her up the stairs. Suddenly, his feet felt weighed down. He hauled himself back into the gallery and saw the floor patterned with his dusty footprints.

Cap-Pi-Hau only slowly realized that the weight he felt was sadness. He had wanted to make the little girl happy, he had wanted to have fun, and now he had a terrible sense of having destroyed something.

He felt his eyes swell out, as if to burst like fruit into tears. Why did everything turn out bad? Why was fun never possible? Why was it always learning, chanting, sleeping, bowing, and silence?

The girl knelt down and began to dust again. Maybe she would get a scolding or a beating.

Cap-Pi-Hau trundled towards her, softly now. ‘I have a thought,’ he said.

Her swollen, sad face still would not look at him.

He had thought of a way to make dusting fun. Gently he coaxed the cloth out of her hands. ‘I’ll show you,’ he whispered.

He laid the cloth flat on the floor. Then he stepped back, ran at it and jumped.

The floor had been smoothed by years of cleaning. It had to be free of splinters so that bare feet could walk on it.

Cap-Pi-Hau landed on the cloth, and it slid across the floor, bearing him forward, harvesting dust.

He giggled and turned back to her. ‘See? See?’ he demanded.

A butterfly of a smile fluttered briefly on her lips.

He laughed and applauded to make her smile again. Then he walked all the way back to the edge of the pavilion and ran. It seemed to him that he shook the entire house. When he jumped onto the cloth, physical inertia swept him even further across the floor.

‘I am the Great King who leads his people!’ he shouted. ‘I am the Great King who leads troops in polishing floors!’

The slave girl giggled and hid her mouth.

‘You go!’ Cap-Pi-Hau insisted. ‘It will be fine. I will say that I ordered it.’

The girl gathered up her skirt. Her ankles looked like twigs. In comparison, her feet looked big, like the heads of buffaloes. She ran and jumped and slid only a moment.

Not enough. She spun and commandeered the cloth, and stepped back and ran again. She was older than the Prince and her co-ordination was better. She pelted down the floor, leapt and was swept on. She stood erect, skirts fluttering, and she turned to him and this time her mouth was swollen with a huge, smug grin.

The next day Cap-Pi-Hau asked one of the nannies, ‘Where do slaves come from?’

The old woman waved her hands. ‘Oh! Some are the children of people taken in battle. Some are presents given to the King. Many are given to the temples, simply to get rid of them. Most are attached to the land, like cows.’

The woman had a face as hard and polished as wood furniture. Taken in battle? Given away? Do they know their families did not want them, did not love them?

The other six- and seven-year-olds were corralled together outside in the shade of the enclosure temple. There was to be a great procession soon, and they would have to learn their parts.

The royal temple of the Aerial Palace, Vimana-akasha , rose as a holy mountain in stone and stucco layers. Painted red, black and gold, the temple baked in the heat. Birds landed on the steps and hopped away back into the air, the stones were so hot. The palace children roasted inside their quilted jackets.

The Prince demanded, ‘If I wanted to find one of the slave girls, how would I do it?’

‘Oh!’ The nanny showed her false teeth, which were made of wood. ‘You are too young for that, young prince. That will come later.’ She beamed.

‘If I want to be friends with one of them now, how would I find her?’

The smile was dropped suddenly like an unleashed drapery. ‘You have your cousins to be friends with. Your destiny is to lead troops for the King. I should not grow too attached to the slaves of the royal household. You will not always live here. Your family lands are off in the east.’ She looked suddenly grumpy, and for some reason wiped the whole of her face with her hand.

The children, seated in ranks, stirred slightly with the light breeze of someone else getting into trouble.

The nanny’s face swelled. ‘You will be turned out of this house. You forget your real situation. The time has come to stop being a child.’

Before he thought anything else, the Prince said aloud, ‘Then we are all slaves.’

The nanny’s jaw dropped. ‘Oh! To say such a thing!’ She gathered her skirts and stood up. ‘It shows your foolishness, Prince Whoever-you-are. Slaves work, while you sit still in your jacket. You will be at the head of the troops so that the enemy will kill you first, and that is your destiny!’

She started to strut. The thin line of her mouth began to stretch into a smile. ‘You think you are a slave? We will call you slave, ah? Khnom! Or are you a hereditary slave, a nia ? Shall we call you Prince Hereditary Slave?’ Her voice was raised. Some of the Prince’s cousins, rivals, giggled. ‘Children, children listen.’

The nanny grabbed Cap-Pi-Hau’s shoulders and pushed him in front of her, presenting him. ‘This young prince wants to be called Nia. So will we call him Nia? Ah? Yes?’

This was going to be fun. The children chorused, ‘Nee-ah!’

The Prince tried to shrug her off, but she held him in place.

‘Nia! Ni-ah-ha ha!’ chuckled the children of other royal wives, other royal uncles, other royal cousins. They had already learned they had to triumph over each other before they could triumph over anything else.

The nanny settled back down onto the ground, full and satisfied, as if she had eaten. The laughter continued.

Cap-Pi-Hau also knew: there are many princes, and I will be nothing if no other princes follow me.

He strode to her and faced her. She was sitting; their faces were level. His gaze was steady and unblinking.

Seated, the woman did a girlish twist and a shrug. What of you?

The Prince felt his face go hard. ‘I am studying your face to remember you, so that when I am older you will be in trouble.’

From a prince of any degree, that was a threat. She faltered slightly.

The Prince turned his back on her. He said to the other children. ‘This woman is a slave. This is what we do to slaves who mock us.’

Then he spun back around and kicked her arm.

‘Oh, you little demon!’ She grabbed him.

Cap-Pi-Hau sprang forward and began to rain blows about her face. Each time he struck her he called her, accurately, by the name of her own lower category. ‘Pual!’ He said it each time he struck her. ‘Pual! Pual! Know your place!’

‘Get this monkey god off me!’ she cried.

Perhaps she had also been hard on the other women, because they just chuckled. One of them said, ‘He is yours to deal with, Mulberry.’

Her legs were folded, tying her to the spot. She could hit back, but not too hard, even if this was a prince far from the line of succession.

Finally she called for help. ‘Guard!’

The bored attendant simply chuckled. ‘He’s a prince.’

‘Nia! Nia! Nia!’ the other children chanted not knowing if they were insulting him or cheering him on.