The Totem-Maker (part twenty-three)

The Totem-Maker

Chapter Three

I Am the Cause

(part twenty-three)

The mouth drew in at the corners. “You bring a message from Lord Cime. Yes. It is his sort of humor.”

“The message is mine. Please keep still a moment. You,” I spoke on, approaching him, holding his eyes, so that he would keep still, “will choose the weapon. That is your right, by the law, as you know. You see I have none.”

He gave no order to his slave. Knights were expensive articles, and Mumas might support no guard. I put my hand on his belly…which, you have guessed, Reader, was symbolic in these matters. And if the challenge followed, it must be answered.

“I charge you as assassin. You have killed my friend Lom. You will fight me, Mumas. I, Cime Decima’s slave. I have never heard the law forbid it.”

The law did not. It was not done.

I had learned this city’s ways at times I was told a new thing. A slave (even a jester, bought for novelty) hasn’t business affairs, and errands to perform only as commanded. Only when I’d found myself wandering, cursed for stupidity by shopkeepers, or household stewards blockading their lords’ empty villas, was I cured of misjudgment. My early life in the shadow of Lotoq had been my book of law and custom. Often, I was wrong.

Mumas harried up his two helpers, and I walked between them to his door…being thrown out, if it pleased Mumas.

“Tell your master to make his petition before Lord Sente’s new relative.”

“Exactly those words, or may I know what person you mean?”

He meant the Prince, cousin of Lady Darsale. He would not shout this name over his threshold, to a slave. A sad trap for Mumas, and I’d done nothing to rig it. I had expected to be taken seriously. Scorned and deplored, even wished dead…but comprehended.

I would have to think of a greater provocation.

I sat on the steps, so far delinquent now, I felt a peculiar reunion with my life under the old woman’s care…

When, finished with chores, I was sometimes free. She called me Fate’s child, not her own. And so I was allowed to walk the ashy countryside until nightfall, numbering the small green things that willed to live, and no one had wanted me.

I did know Cime wanted me, and expected me. I had every sense he indulged me; little fear he would not excuse me. But for a day, it seemed, I could please myself.

Shutters folded back, my friend of the stable yelling, “Why are you loitering there? Go to your master!”

I waved in good cheer. “Tell your own he has not answered what the law demands.”

24

I Am the Cause

The Totem-Maker (part twenty-four)

(2018, Stephanie Foster)