Thern, Fir of Marla: 28 Xiven

Morning greeted Kayin with a headache, a sore throat, and stomach pains that wouldn’t go away, even when he ate the mushrooms and berries by his bed. Confusion fueled the headache throughout the morning; the old lady that bathed him last night made him change into even different clothes: this time, some sort of breeches with a green shirt that went all the way down to his knees. Why he needed even more clothes was beyond him.

“Shoes,” the lady announced. Kayin stared at her, too exhausted to even shrug, until she pointed to a pair not too far away. “Your shoes, My Prince.”

“My name is Kayin,” he croaked as he approached them.

“My apologies,” she said. “Your shoes, Prince Kayin.”

“That’s not what I meant….” But maybe her age dampened her hearing, because she didn’t acknowledge what he said as he shoved his feet into the fur-lined leather.

“How am I supposed to walk in these?” he thought aloud as he laced them shut. They constricted him, and while it felt nice while sitting on the stone, how was he supposed to walk with something on his feet?

“You will grow used to these customs, Your Highness.”

“You don’t have to call me that.”

“My apologies.” The woman bowed lowly, her face nearly parallel to the floor. “You will grow used to these customs, Prince Kayin.”

“You don’t have to call me that either.”

“You are far too humble. We don’t deserve your graciousness, Prince Kayin.” His confusion was only overshadowed by his distaste for the new title.

“What do you call the king?” he asked.

“Why, we call him the king, of course, Prince Kayin.”

“Does he have a name?”

“He is King Dawak of Yatora, Your Grace. He prefers to only be called by his title. Do you wish the same, Young Prince?”

“I’d rather just be called Kayin….”

“You are as humorous as you are humble, Your Royal Highness.” Maybe she was sincere about it, but the words left Kayin with a permanent furrow to his brow that carried throughout the rest of the day.

After he figured out how to sort of stomp around in the shoes, the lady that dressed Kayin directed him to some room on the first floor of the castle, then left. It wasn’t grand like the others, just simple: a few benches and a lectern, at which an old, plump man sat. Kayin was silent and sat down at the indicated bench, unfortunately next to Sepik, who wrote a full dress over her leggings. It was undoubtedly a display of status: the closer to the ground the dress touched, the less movement made available to the wearer, the higher their purpose. Sepik didn’t need to move. People would do everything for her.

The few other children that sat amongst them had shorter tunics than Kayin, he noticed. But their clothes were still made of the softest fabric he’d ever seen, flawless, without mending marks or patches.

Kayin kept silent as the old man started to list off important things that happened in the past, all determined by a giant book on the lectern. He started from a hundred years ago, when the last known empress ruled, and continued backward from there. It was difficult to think as far back as the man said. A hundred years ago, thirty years before that, forty before that. All of these people and names he’d never heard of, names that didn’t quite register in his mind. Was that what they would become, after they died? A name listed in a book read to sad children? A pang in his chest reminded him that Aunt Aayin would never be included in his listing, no matter how much she mattered.

The man continued reading from his lectern, “Before Empress Pank was Empress Irlir. Empress Irlir ruled for over fifty years, and is known for her strict organizational skills. She categorized every person by talent and skill, and would regularly transfer people of skill to other villages to balance the world. She is why certain places are so specialized in trade now, as some places still follow such traditions. Before, when Yatora could trade with other cities, Yatora was considered to be the best place to get any poultice.” The old man never looked up to the kids that sat in chairs in front of him.

Kayin frowned. “That Empress lady would take people away from their families?” he asked when the man never noticed his attempts to gain his attention. He jumped, as if surprised by the question, and blinked at Kayin for several moments. He almost looked afraid to speak, with a hand on his chest and wide eyes.

“Oh, um. Excuse me, Prince Kayin.” The man bowed his head, though still sat behind his desk and held his finger at his spot on the page. “From our understanding, that is—from the books we have, or from the historical accounts we have—that is to say, from the writings that we can read, and those that we can infer from, suggest that there was some sort of exchange with the families for this. Some sort of, uh, how would we put it—some sort of barter system, Your Grace.”

Sepik was the one to reply this time, “So they would be bought,” she said simply. Her tone could have been a whole of a lot nicer, in Kayin’s opinion, but he settled with rolling his eyes.

“Your Highness,” the man replied with another seated bow, “we cannot be certain, but we must assume that this peaceful exchange was advantageous to all peoples. The…uh…skilled workers would bring their cultures to their new homes, and learn new cultures! Much like how you might be learning new traditions now, Your Royal Highness.” While the old man returned to his book, Kayin watched Sepik scoff.

“How would she know what people were skilled at?” Kayin asked suddenly. He couldn’t explain why, but part of him hoped for a reasonable explanation as to why people were moved so often—at the very least, to spite Sepik. The old man blinked as he glanced between the two children. He seemed to almost shrink in his chair.

“I, um, I can only give my assumptions, Your Highness. I do believe that—what I mean to say is, it is possible that skills were proud family traditions taught from mother to child. My Prince, I do think there would be an exchange for use of people with this skill to be taken to other places.” The two grimaced at one another, while Sepik let out a loud sigh.

“So they were slaves,” she said flatly. “She found people good at stuff, then made them slaves.”

Kayin glared at her. “You don’t know that. He just said that we don’t know.” As if she needed to scare the poor man any more!

Sepik looked at him for the first time since last night. “Oh, no. You are as stupid as they said you were.”

“At least I’m not as mean as you.”

Another scoff. “Yes, that’s what’s going to bring us to the Golden Age.”

“Children!” The call forced the half-dozen eyes to the back of the room. A couple kids whispered to one another when they noticed Tidesa, in a different baby blue dress from yesterday, standing at the back of the room. “Pay attention. Please, Teacher Proko. Continue your lesson.” Kayin stared at her, squinting, skeptical. But she pointed to the front of the room with such authority, he spun back to the teacher before he even realized it.

“Right. As you wish. Ahem…. Empress Irlir was preceded by Empress Sadsith. She technically only ruled for ten years before her advisers deemed her as insane, and spent the next forty years passing and erasing many laws that contradicted one another before Empress Sadsith initiated and won a coup….”

Kayin, unfortunately, had to continue sitting next to Sepik throughout the rest of Teacher Proko’s lecture. But they both remained silent while Tidesa stood like a sentinel at the back door.

When Rinesa was due to bless the castle in her warm rays for the afternoon, she remained hidden behind cloud cover. Servants scurried around the castle, replacing candles to make up for the lack of light, muttering curses to Ichaemi for not blowing away the harsh weather. Kayin was directed to a massive room with drapes and gems hanging from the walls and ceilings. A bulky table that sat eight was in the center, accented with chairs of red velvet and gold stitching. Tidesa directed Kayin to sit in the rightmost chair, close to the head of a table, right beside Sepik, even though he groaned and complained.

Beside Kayin sat another child around their age, but rather than the lavish clothes that the adult nobles around them wore, he wore a leathery mix with metal plates over his various joints. He looked like a miniature guard, not too different from the ones Kayin saw last night. He decided not to look in that direction, and was gratefully distracted by a ridiculously ceremonious display put on when the king entered the room. Everyone was directed to stand, greet him individually, and they all sat at a simple wave of his hand. It seemed very unnecessary, and Kayin wondered why he didn’t just sit first, if everyone had to wait for him. But he kept his mouth shut, after experiencing what his questions would get him this morning.

Things were silent for a maybe a whole minute, until the king clapped his hands three times. Servants poured from a door Kayin hadn’t been through before, holding ceramic platters with strong, savory scents wafting around. This was edia, cut into little cubes with flowers and leaves splayed around them. And everyone got a whole platter to themselves.

“We get to eat again?” Kayin asked, wide-eyed. Why? Where did all of this come from? Were the hunters for the castle that skilled?

“Wait,” Sepik asked, squinting at the charred bits of flesh in front of her. “Is this edia?”

“You are right, Your Royal Highness,” one of the servants said as they piled mushrooms beside it. Why did they all get so much?

Sepik grimaced. “I thought that if we were rich, we’d get to eat different things?”

A loud, boisterous laugh erupted from the other side of the table. Kayin shrunk at the sound, but the other nobles seemed pleased, straightening their backs with pride as if they were the reason for the laugh.

“Your future queen is absolutely right!” the king announced. “Bring her something suitable for a royal!” As the man clapped his hands, the adults applauded, smiling, laughing. The ceramic plate before Kayin vanished before he could say anything. The servants were just as fast at taking the plates away as they were serving, but this time they dumped any food that was on the plates into a burlap sack before piling them on a side table.

“What are you doing with that?” Kayin decided to ask one of the servants. The idle whispers from the nobles halted.

“The trash goes to the dirt, Your Highness, for fertilization of our farms.” Trash? Kayin tried to ask what she meant with his expression, but none of the servants looked at him directly. And when he turned to the other adults in the room for an answer, he found no one looked at him directly. No one looked at him at all.

As one set of servants cleared the plates into bags, the other set returned from the kitchens with new platters, new leaves splayed in a new formation, with slices of something saltier than edia. It looked darker, but wasn’t burnt.

“What’s this?” Sepik was quick to ask once a plate was set in front of her.

“This is braised peka, Your Majesty,” answered the servant that placed it. Kayin and Sepik actually looked at each other, jaws dropped.

“Peka?” Sepik echoed.

“Yes, Your Grace.”

Kayin tried to look at the other nobles at the table, to try and gage if this was maybe a joke of some sort.

“The big, hairy thing with a beak?” Kayin asked the same servant, raising his arms as high as they could, “This tall, with claws?”

“The very same, Your Majesty.”

Kayin had only heard of the things, haunting the forest, hunting in packs. They were fast, brutal, and stealthy. They decimated entire farms in just one night, left hardly anything behind. They screeched as communication, the only sign that you were about to be attacked. How the castle got a hold of any sort of creature like that was beyond Kayin, let alone killed it for food.

Still, he took the pieces and pecked away at them, grimacing at the saltiness. He, of course, still finished everything on his plate, even though his stomach now ached from having too much food. He didn’t know that could happen. For a short moment, he wondered if that’s all stomachs were meant to do, was ache.

Lunch ended when the king finished his food and ordered the servants to take the plates. Some people didn’t get to finish eating, it seemed, because of the scraps left on the plate. Kayin watched as the servants dumped the excess food into a burlap sack yet again. All of this perfectly fine food was going into a bag, to be piled onto some dirt. Eight perfectly good edias, a pound of mushrooms and berries and flowers, all going into a bag because Sepik didn’t want to eat it. And none of it went to a person.

The adult nobles, and the weird kid, all left with permission by the king, but Kayin still watched the servants. They didn’t seem bothered by what they were doing…. Before Kayin could ask another question, the room’s bustle halted at the sight of a white-haired woman in the doorway. She smiled at everyone as they froze.

“Here to deliver the children’s schedules,” she announced, holding up two pieces of paper. She strode in, hardly acknowledging the servants as they bowed to her. The king remained at the table, watching passively. Kayin took that to mean that he wasn’t supposed to leave yet.

“Princess Sepik,” started Tidesa with a piece of paper. “You will be met by your handmaiden when you are ready to proceed to your tutoring. She will ensure you have everything necessary to begin your education. You can see here,” she said as she pointed to the page, “that you will have a couple weeks of history every morning, but we will then transition you to strategy when you’ve caught up. Every night, we will have a private tutor meet you to help your reading comprehension. Do you understand, Your Majesty?” Though she didn’t look like she did quite understand, Sepik took the paper and left, just as expected.

“Here’s your new schedule, Prince Kayin,” Tidesa said, now holding a paper to him.

“Don’t call me that,” he said reflexively. Tidesa’s smile fell. “My name is Kayin. Just Kayin.”

The woman stared at him pointedly, measuring him up. Would she do the same thing that old lady did this morning? She actually looked at him, though. It wasn’t like the old lady or Teacher Proko. She stared him right in the eye, almost like she challenged him the way Aunt Aayin would when she caught him in a lie. But Tidesa must have deemed this an unworthy fight, and started again as if he never said anything.

“Here’s your new schedule, Kayin. You will follow it every day.” Did he get tutors, too? “You’ll see that the mornings will be private tutoring of history, like you had today. Then, you have a math class to attend to, then Herbalism and then Life Skills.” Kayin looked up at her and took the paper, then furrowed his brows. “In each class you will be assigned an additional reading segment that will help you strengthen your literature for the next few months, so that you can start learning new languages. Do you understand? It’ll help your vocabulary.” Kayin continued staring at the paper as she spoke. Was he supposed to know what these squiggles meant? He knew they were letters; Aunt Aayin showed him some a while ago, he remembered with a pang in his chest. “Are you having some trouble reading? Here, let me do it for you.” She reached to him, but he moved the paper out of the way.

“No!” he barked defensively. “I—um…fine.” Tidesa watched him as he continued to stare. “Math,” he started, recalling what she said, “Herbalism and… Um… Life…yeah.” Kayin pursed his lips, but finally looked up to Tidesa. She raised a brow, staring at him the same way as before.

“Are you sure?” He nodded. “All right. Just be sure to show up right on time. They’re meant for the staff’s children, so please respect their time and be prompt. The times that the classes start are next to the names.” He consulted the paper and was only rewarded with more scratched lines he didn’t understand. His whole day would be like this? Every day? Surely, there wasn’t that much to learn.

Kayin looked up, past the king that still sat in his giant chair, to the door.

“Why do we have to learn all this?” he asked.

“To give you the best chance at your future,” said Tidesa. Kayin glanced to the king, but the old man stared at his lap, relaxed, breathing evenly. Or wait. Was he asleep? Did he just fall asleep? Tidesa nudged Kayin in the arm. “Run along, now. Math will start soon.”