When he flung the door open, the Royal First Phagorian Guard stood on duty outside, its ranks of long jaws and horns unmoving. That was something worth seeing anyway, he told himself, trying to dispel his black mood.
He walked in the air before the heat rose. He saw the sea and felt the breeze, and heeded them not. Before dawn, while he still slept heavily from drink, Esomberr had come to him. Beside Esomberr stood his new chancellor, Bardol CaraBansity. They had informed him that the Madi princess he intended to marry was dead, killed by an assassin.
Nothing was left.
Why had he gone to such trouble to divorce his true wife? What had possessed his mind? There were severances the hardiest could not survive.
It was his wish to speak to her.
A delicacy in him restrained from sending a messenger up to her room. He knew that she was there with the little princess Tatro waiting for him to leave and take his soldiers with him. Probably she had heard the news the men had brought in the night. Probably she feared assassination. Probably she hated him.
He turned in his sharp way, as if to catch himself out. His new chancellor was approaching with his heavy, determined tread, jowls jolting.
JandolAnganol eyed CaraBansity and then turned his back on him. CaraBansity was forced to skirt him and Yuli before making a clumsy bow.
The king stared at him. Neither man spoke. CaraBansity turned his cloudy gaze from the king’s.
“You find me in an ill mood.”
“I have not slept either, sire. I deeply regret this fresh misfortune which has visited you.”
“My ill mood covers not only the All-Powerful but you, who are not so powerful.”
“What have I done to displease you, sire?”
The Eagle drew his brows together, making his gaze more hawklike.
“I know you are secretly against me. You have a reputation for craftiness. I saw that gloating look you could not conceal when you came to announce the death of—you know who.”
“The Madi princess? If you so distrust me, sire, you must not take me on as your chancellor.”
JandolAnganol presented his back again, with the yellow gauze of his tunic patterned red with blood like an ancient banner.
CaraBansity began to shuffle. He stared up abstractedly at the palace and saw how its white paint was peeling. He felt what it was to be a commoner and what it was to be a king.
He enjoyed his life. He knew many people and was useful to the community. He loved his wife. He prospered. Yet the king had come along and snatched him up against his will, as if he were a slave.
He had accepted the role and, being a man of character, made the best of it. Now this sovereign had the gall to tell CaraBansity that he was secretly against his king. There was no limit to royal impertinence—and as yet he could see no way to escape following JandolAnganol all the way to Oldorando.
His sympathy with the king’s predicament left him. “I meant to say, Your Majesty,” he began in a determined voice, and then became alarmed by his own temerity, looking at that bloody back. “This is just a trifling matter, of course, but before we set sail from Ottassol, you took from me that interesting timepiece with three faces. Do you happen to have it still?” The king did not turn or move. He said, “I have it here in my tunic.” CaraBansity took a deep breath and then said, much more feebly than he intended, “Would you return it to me, please, Your Majesty?”
“This is no time to approach me for favours, when Borlien’s standing within the Holy Empire is threatened.” He was the Eagle as he spoke.
They both stood, watching Yuli root in the bushes by the palace. The creature pissed after the retromingent fashion of his species.
The king began to walk with measured pace in the direction of the sea.
I’m no better than a damned slave, said CaraBansity to himself. He followed.
With the runt skipping beside him, the king speeded his step, speaking rapidly as he went, so that the portly deuteroscopist was forced to catch up. He never mentioned the subject of his timepiece again.
“Akhanaba had favoured me and set many fruits in my life’s way. And always to those fruits an additional flavour was given when I saw that more were promised—tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow, and the day after that. Whatever I wished, I might have more of.
“It’s true I suffered setbacks and defeats, but that within a general atmosphere of promise. I did not allow them to disturb me for long. My personal defeat in the Cosgatt—well, I learnt from it and put it behind me, and eventually won a great victory there.”
They passed a line of gwing-gwing trees. The king snatched down a gwing-gwing, biting into it to the stone as he spoke, letting the juice run down his chin. He gestured, clutching the despoiled fruit.
“Today, I see my life in a new light. Perhaps all that was promised me I have already received… I am, after all, more than twenty-five years.” He spoke with difficulty. “Perhaps this is my summer, and in future when I shake the bush no fruit will fall… Can I any longer rely on plenty? Doesn’t our religion warn us that we must expect times of famine? Fah!—Akhanaba is like a Sibornalese, always obsessed with the winter to come.”
They walked along the low cliffs separating land from beach, where the queen was accustomed to swim.
“Tell me,” said JandolAnganol carelessly, “if you as an atheist do not have a religious construction to put to the case—how do you see my difficulties?”
CaraBansity was silent, setting his beefy red face towards the ground as if guarding it against the king’s abrasive look. Work up your courage, he told himself.
“Well? Come, say what you will. I have no spirit! I have been flogged by my whey-visaged vicar…”
When CaraBansity stopped walking, the king followed suit.
“Sire, I recently to oblige a friend took into my establishment a certain young lady. My wife and I entertain many people, some alive, some dead; also animals for dissection, and phagors, either for dissection or for bodyguards. None caused as much trouble as that certain young lady.
“I love my wife, and ever continue to do so. But I lusted after that certain young lady. I had a contempt for her, yet I lusted after her. I despised myself, and yet I lusted after her.”
“But did you have her?”
CaraBansity laughed, and for the first time in the king’s presence, his face lightened. “Sire, I had her much as you have that gwing-gwing, the fruit par excellence of dimday. The juice, sire, ran down… But it was khmir and not love, and once the khmir was quenched—though that was certainly a process… that was summer process, sire—once it was quenched, I loathed myself and wanted nothing more of her. I established her apart and told her never to see me again. Since when, I learn that she has taken to her mother’s profession, and caused the death of at least one man.”
“What’s all this to me?” asked the king with a haughty look.
“Sire, I believe the activating principle of your life to be lust rather than love.
“You tell me in religious terms that Akhanaba has favoured you and put many fruits in your path. In my terms, you have taken what you would, done what you would, and so you wish to continue. You favour ancipitals as instruments of your lust, not caring that phagors are in reality never submissive. Nothing really can stand in your way—except the queen of queens. She can stand in your way because she alone in the world commands your love, and perhaps some respect. That is why you hate her, because you love her.
“She stands between you and your khmir. She alone can contain your—duality. In you as in me, and perhaps as in all men, the two principles are divided—but the division in you is as great as your state is great.
“If you prefer to believe in Akhanaba, believe now that he has by these supposed setbacks given you warning that your life is about to go wrong. Make it right while the chance is offered.”