The Totem-Maker (part seven)

The Totem-Maker

Chapter Two

Jealousy

(part seven)

“We ride to the fields and take measure of each planted, each left fallow, what grains are sown. We inspect the vineyards, the new leaf. The landholder pays in that portion, and if for drought or blight the harvest falls short, he is free to make appeal. But there is no appeal if he hasn’t paid his taxes.”

“And when the emperor’s portion is taken, do your soldiers join you?”

I spoke to show I listened. You, who read my tale, heed: I had been taught to be well-spoken, to approach my elders as a student. I had sought, for that, to be quick and clever to them…useful, apt. I was alone in my status; they were many in theirs. But the world is a large place.

Here was a lesson I had not learned: that slaves could belong, in the eyes of some, among the dogs. That upon a man like Cime’s deputy, Mumas, I—my being, my looks, my voice, my sayings, the mere parting of my lips—grated. To appease this man, I could not have debased myself to a low enough humility, or silenced myself beyond the stirring of his fears.

“It would make a show,” Cime allowed. “But the farmers don’t resist openly, so threatening the mailed fist, when I ought to…” He grinned back from his saddle. “And maybe I will. Signal to them that the gods are wiser than they, and I have a creature who speaks to the gods. Ha!” He laughed for a moment, relishing the picture, and Mumas looked back at me, too.

“Well. Today we see how the crops stand in the fields. And nothing, if I have not numbered it, can be taken to the exchange. Close as we watch, I promise you, there is not one farmer doesn’t winnow by night, doesn’t sell over the border.”

“Because it’s not much effort to them, we are so near.”

He reined up, letting Mumas trail ahead. “Here. We have room for you at my left. I did that work once, riding the boundary road, before my present honor.”

“And what post,” I asked, after thought, “do you hope to rise to? If you don’t prove indispensable as a tax collector?”

“Emperor,” Cime said, very low. “I see your joke, creature. And that is the answer of answers, you’ll agree.”

The owners of these fields were of the Eight Houses, else the high merchant class; the farmers were their tenants. The town behind its wall sat at sea’s edge, high in a bowl amid fertile slopes. These slopes descended from a naked peak, leagues off…the great god Ami’s mountain, I learned. Cime’s boundary road ran alongside a river, the Dagossa, the small branch of which had broken from the mud of Lotoq, to become again the Edagossa, the native river of my old home.

No one feared now that I would gain my bearings and flee. No, and for those months from spring to autumn, I counted myself content. I believed I had the grace of my lord and lady. I had work to do, and would grow in giftedness, to ornament the house of Decima.

7

Jealousy

The Totem-Maker (part eight)

(2018, Stephanie Foster)