Geoff Ryman - The King’s Last Song

The nanny fought her way to her feet. ‘Oh! You must be disciplined.’

‘So must you.’ The young prince turned, and stomped up to the guard. ‘Your sword.’

‘Now, now, little master …’

Cap-Pi-Hau took it.

The woman called Mulberry knew then the extent of her miscalculation. She had imagined that this quiet child was meek and timid.

‘What are you going to do?’ she said, backing away.

He charged her.

She turned and ran and he slapped her on her bottom with the flat of the sword. ‘Help! Help!’ she was forced to cry.

The children squealed with laughter.

The tiny prince roared with a tiger-cub voice. ‘Stop, you pual! Talk to me or I will use the blade.’

She yelped and turned, giving him a deep and sincere dip of respect.

‘Hold still.’ he ordered. ‘Bow.’

She did, and he reached up to her face and into her mouth, and pulled out her wooden false teeth. He chopped at them with the sword, splintering them.

‘These teeth came to you from the household. For hitting a prince, you will never have teeth again.’

She dipped and bowed.

‘Now,’ said Prince Hereditary Slave. ‘I ask again. How do I find a particular slave girl I like?’

‘Simply point her out to me,’ the woman said, with a placating smile. She tinkled her little bell-like voice that she used with anyone of higher rank. ‘I will bring her to you.’

The guard was pleased. He chuckled and shook his head. ‘He’s after girls already,’ he said to his compatriot.

The next day, Cap-Pi-Hau found the girl for himself.

It was the time of sleep and dusting. He bounced towards her. ‘We can play slippers!’ he said, looking forward to fun.

She turned and lowered her head to the floor.

‘Here,’ said Cap-Pi-Hau and thrust a slipper at her. She had no idea what to do with it. It was made of royal flowered cloth, stitched with gold thread. She glanced nervously about her.

‘You do this!’ said the Prince. He flicked the slipper so it spun across the floor. ‘The winner is the one who can throw it farthest.’ He stomped forward and snatched up the shoe, and propelled it back towards her. She made to throw it underhand.

‘No, no, no!’ He ran and snatched it from her. ‘You have to slide it. It has to stay on the floor. That’s the game.’

She stared at him, panting in fear. Why was she so worried? Maybe she had heard there had been trouble.

Cap-Pi-Hau said to her in a smaller voice, ‘If you make it go round and round it goes farther.’ It was the secret of winning and he gave it to her.

She dipped her head, and glanced about her, and tossed the slipper so that it spun. It twirled, hissing across the wood, passing his. She had beaten him first go, and Cap-Pi-Hau was so delighted to have a worthy adversary that he laughed and clapped his hands. That made her smile.

His turn. He threw it hard and lost.

The second time she threw, she lost the confidence of inexperience and the shoe almost spun on the spot. The Prince experimented, shooting the slipper forward with his foot. So did she. The two of them were soon both giggling and running and jumping with excitement.

He asked her name.

‘Fishing Cat,’ she replied. Cmâ-kančus .

The name made him laugh out loud. Fishing cats were small, lean and delicate with huge round eyes. ‘You look like a fishing cat!’ Instead of laughing she hung her head. She thought he was teasing her, so he talked about something else, to please her.

‘Do you come attached to the royal house, like a cow?’ he asked. Groups of slaves were called thpal , the same word used for cattle.

‘No, Sir. I was given away, Sir.’

This interested the Prince mightily because he had been given away as well. He pushed close to her. ‘Why were you given away?’

Her voice went thin, like the sound of wind in reeds. ‘Because I was pretty.’

If she was pretty, he wanted to see. ‘I can’t see you.’

She finally looked up, and her eyelids batted to control the tears, and she tried to smile.

‘You look unhappy.’ He could not think why that would be.

‘Oh no, Prince. It is a great honour to be in the royal enclosure. To be here is to see what life in heaven must be like.’

‘Do you miss your mother?’

This seemed to cause her distress. She moved from side to side as if caught between two things. ‘I don’t know, Sir.’

‘You’re scared!’ he said, which was such an absurd thing to be that it amused him. He suddenly thought of a fishing cat on a dock taking off in fear when people approached. ‘Fishing cats are scared and they run away!’

Her eyes slid sideways and she spoke as if reciting a ritual. ‘We owe everything to the King. From his intercession, the purified waters flow from the hills. The King is our family.’

The Prince said, ‘He’s not my family.’ Fishing Cat’s head spun to see if anyone could hear them. The Prince said, ‘I miss my family. I have some brothers here, but my mother lives far away in the east.’

Cat whispered, ‘Maybe I miss my mother too.’ Very suddenly, she looked up, in something like alarm. ‘And my sisters, too. And my house by the river. We lived near the rice fields and the water. And we all slept together each night.’

Cap-Pi-Hau saw the house in his mind.

He saw the broad fields of rice moving in waves like the surface of the Great Lake, and long morning shadows, and the buffaloes in the mire, and rows of trees parasolling houses along the waterways.

He saw home.

He himself had been brought from the country, carried in a howdah with nine other distressed, hot, fearful children. He dimly remembered riding through the City, its streets full of people. Since then, he had not been allowed outside the royal enclosure.

Cap-Pi-Hau had only been able to hear people from over the walls. The calls of stall owners, the barking of dogs, the rumbling of ox-cart wheels and the constant birdlike chorus of chatter. For him, that was the sound of freedom. He kept trying to imagine what the people were like, because he heard them laugh.

Cap-Pi-Hau asked, ‘What did you like doing best?’

She considered. ‘I remember my brother taking the buffalo down to the reservoir, to keep cool. It would stay in the water all day, so we could too.’

Cap-Pi-Hau thrust himself up onto her lap, and suddenly she was like an older sister, tending the babe for her mother.

‘I want to stay in the water all day,’ he beamed. ‘I want to drive water buffaloes. Great big buffaloes!’ Something in the sound of that phrase, big and hearty, made him explode with giggles.

Finally she did too. ‘You are a buffalo.’

‘I’m a big big buffalo and I smell of poo!’ He became a bouncing ball of chuckles. Even she chuckled. Laughter made him fond. He tilted his head and his eyes were twinkly, hungry for something different. He writhed in her grasp. ‘What else did you do?’

She had to think. ‘My brother would catch frogs or snakes to eat. He was very brave.’

‘You hunted snakes and frogs?’ Cap-Pi-Hau was fascinated. He could see a boy like himself, skinnier maybe. They would hunt together in the reeds. He mimed slamming frogs. ‘Bam! Bam!’ he grinned. ‘Flat frog! Yum. I want to eat a flat frog.’

She joined in. ‘I want to eat mashed cricket.’

‘I want to eat … monkey ears!’

That joke wore out. He asked about her family. She had six brothers and sisters. They were the nias of a lord who lived far away from the perfect city. Their canal branched off from the meeting of the three rivers, far to the south. She could see all of that, but she could not remember the name of the place.

All of her brothers and sisters slept in a tidy row on mats. When one of them was sick, that child slept cradled by their mother. So they all pretended to be sick sometimes. One night, so many of them said they were sick that Mother turned away from them all. Then their mother got sick herself. With no one to work the fields, they had to do something to feed all the children, so Fishing Cat was sent away.