The Totem-Maker (part fifty)

The Totem-Maker

Chapter Six

A First Road

(part fifty)

When I’d eaten, when the servant had come with the cloth, and I had cleaned my fingers, I began idling with my tablets and tiles.

This drew every eye.

The general left his seat to grimace overhead. A minute of watching, then: “Are you starting…what, this afternoon? What has become of Jute?”

I answered the question I could. “I will cast for you, vlan, and anyone able to wait, as the light lasts. Tomorrow, to start again. How do you propose keeping a record of all that is done, and all that remains to be done?”

“The word of my men.”

“But…the word of a horse? A quiver of arrows?”

Silence. “Is it a scribe you need?”

“And a couch and low table. And, how do you suppose? Let us begin with twenty, each man, his weapon.”

“They are not mine to command.”

“No, vlan. As the Prince would have you do, you must do. But they are not mine.”

He did not have the luxury of expressing himself in a language untranslatable to me. He shouted up an adjutant. “My couch. This room, for your work. Every officer will dine in his own chamber.” Voice raised; to the adjutant, softer: “Have the table found, and…”

“Great respect, my general, but may I ask, is this job of a scribe’s a thing the woman can do?”

“Has she promised so? I would not trust her lies.”

Anything in Jute’s manner revealing, I let pass quickly through memory. “Jute has not, I think, told me as expected.”

“Jute is your servant. She will go when you go.” And vex my life no more. The general was content with this picture, leaving me, saying: “You will cast me some later time.”

The adjutant said: “She is a northern woman. We battled an outpost of a king’s son, at the river’s mouth of their realm, twenty years past. We gained the city of them. When the god showed his great wrath, we…we ourselves, who fought there…saw the omens. Rains fell, rains of mud, and the river overflowed its banks. The priests told the Emperor, it is not the god’s mind to hold this place. The Emperor refused retreat, but a captain…”

A nod, to the passage the general had taken.

“…said, imprison them all, and carry them away. The northerners will remember that. And fortunes are such, now, we are ruled by a northern prince.”

“But Jute was of that royal house. She is a slave here.”

“She is. Her task—that chokes her, I must guess—is to interpret for you the northern speech.”

“Soldier,” I counted. “Weapon. Beast. Slave. Servant. Wife. There are bead sellers, in the town below?”

“Hardly a town. But you will have beads. Eight colors, more than six, should you need them. A table. A scribe, perhaps. Enough?”

“I’m pleased. If you will visit me midday tomorrow…”

“You may cast me, then, yes. I have no fear. And I will take your orders.”

54

A First Road

The Totem-Maker (part fifty-one)

(2018, Stephanie Foster)