Work Text:
GRAY KING
Donal, the Gray King,
gray-haired and gray-hearted in peace,
sat beside his brother’s widow.
Groped for something to say.
He was no longer a young man,
but he still knew how to lead armies,
had executed an enemy
only weeks before
and taken no joy in it.
He did not know how to do this.
“How’s my little nephew?”
he asks, in his hesitant Meqingese,
as if there’s any doubt which one he could mean
because it’s easier than saying Connol’s name.
Mei, in fluent Innish:
“Playful. He loves to draw,
and he has a clever hand.”
(Connol the elder had been erratic,
his scrawls childlike,
sketches of things he had never seen
with the eyes in his skull.)
“He rides well, too.”
She sees something in Donal’s face, because she adds,
“Not like Xau—nobody could do that—
but like Keng.”
“The prince?” Donal asks.
Really, he’s a king now—
had been since the fucking dragon said so—
but Donal still can’t really believe it.
Despite all the pageantry, the white mourning dress,
can’t admit that the fucking Horse Boy is gone.
“Our brother, Keng,” said Mei.
“So tall and proud on his horse,
knowing himself to be a prince,
and, princely, always gallant enough
to give someone else a turn.
Even Xau. Even me.”
Donal nodded.
“Connol is everyone’s friend,
but I am glad he is not a prince.”
That had been the old-fashioned way
of making alliances:
marrying people off to spouses they did not love.
Mei and Connol.
Xau and Shazia,
though they had come to love each other
with all the energy,
all the singlemindedness,
they put towards everything else.
Donal and Fian,
and how fucking well
had that worked out for Innis?
Now things are different.
Xau had raised Hana to a throne,
used his crown
to silence any advisors who spoke ill of her.
Rose had remained by Donal’s side
for seventeen years—
longer than Xau’s entire reign. Fuck.
Peace with Sumbral
sealed not with a wedding feast
but a funeral.
The first time he had met Mei,
Donal had thought:
Xau was right.
Her Innish really is impressive.
Had said nothing, of course,
because it was a state visit,
and he resented his new ally,
too perfect, too insufferable.
Only Connol had fucked it up,
strong, strange, Connol,
who had borne the brunt
of their father’s rage.
She was still beautiful,
though more solid now,
an interpreter, not a princess.
He was the one who had changed.
So instead he said,
“We’ll have to visit some time.
Tiarnan should get to know his cousin.
And learn some Meqingese.”
He was a king—
would always be welcome
anywhere in Innis,
just like he’d always been free
to spend the night wherever he journeyed.
It was just a question
of how many swords would be needed.
But Mei—
Mei was the one who,
in spite of everything,
had made Harmouth her home.
King Hao’s four sons
all dead now,
but his daughter the one who had lived,
who was spreading Meqingese
through the land of the barbarians.
NEW BALLADS
“A hundred cavalry rode forth,
each mounted in his saddle.
They kicked their horses, whipped their necks
to drive them into battle.”
Years later,
a crowd gathered around the fireside,
listening to the young bards.
“But when the horses saw him,
they would not harm the king.
They turned and fled retreating,
and this is why we sing…”
The chorus is full of nonsense
la-la-las and the like,
but it’s catchy.
Even Enlai has to admit.
“The ground itself in Jian-Jian
would tremble and would shake,
Till Xau arrived to calm it,
a man they could not break.”
After the song ends,
a young boy boasts:
“I want to be a hero like King Xau!”
His mother shushes him.
It is not a question of station:
his father and grandfather
were simple woodsmen,
and a boy like him
more likely to be eaten by a dragon
than sit on a throne.
But he is young and threatens nobody.
He will learn.
Instead she fears
that he will think battles beautiful things.
Bids him be silent
and hopes he never has cause
to learn the truth firsthand.
Another singer takes over.
This is a slower melody,
not the kind Enlai would have composed,
and the lyrics are new, too.
“No cells were in that prison,
no iron bars to rust.
The desert sky above her,
her pathway made of dust.
No shackles on her ankles,
yet she could not be freed.
The beast possessed her fully,
she served its every need.
But she remembered nothing
until she was released.
What miracle had happened?
What force could best the beast?
‘It was the king from Meqing,’
her kinsfolk did respond.
‘He bargained with the monster
to free you from your bond.’
‘Oh where then may I thank him?’
she asked with grateful zeal.
‘I’ll journey to his palace
and at his feet I’ll kneel.’
‘The beast’s toll was exacting.
It made him howl and bleed.
It crushed him in his manhood.
It cast off all his seed.’
‘You think me such a child
I’d faint to see a scar?
He came from distant Meqing;
I, too, can travel far.’
‘The beast was cruel and cunning.
It flayed him in the arms.
Maimed him with small incisions,
a thousand tiny harms.’
‘A thousand leagues and farther,
I’d walk to kiss his hand,
a tribute for my savior,
so selfless and so grand.’
‘Oh, seek not Xau in Meqing
unless you’d kneel alone
before a well-swept gravesite,
a monumental stone.’”
Singing about long journeys
leads them to “Dance of the Two Eagles,”
and then someone wants “The Clever Boar”
and “How Silver Cloud Won Her Husband.”
Enlai has stopped listening.
It’s all made up.
Anyone who’d really been possessed by the beast
would remember the whole thing,
remember being a prisoner in their own flesh,
know immediately who and where and when they had been freed
if not the how, if not the why.
“I want to be a hero like King Xau!”
says a little girl.
Her father says nothing,
as if it could happen again,
as if it’s perfectly prudent to let children believe
that this is duty:
being tortured, crushed, mutilated,
hour by hour,
to save a stranger or fourteen.
The silence scares Enlai more
than the worst of songs.