The Totem-Maker (part fifty-two)

The Totem-Maker

Chapter Six

A First Road

(part fifty-two)

I etched my wheel on the first tablet. I placed the tiles. The captain’s luck was doubtful, although—

“You have a son?”

I glanced at Jute, who stood below the steps, clutching the tapestry. “Bring me that. Ask Depwoto.”

“Two sons,” she told me.

“The heritage of one will prosper. You are to travel and not return.”

A smile, at Jute’s translation, came slowly over his face. She told me he wished to know if there were glory in his death. The sixth hour’s tile was the cat. It was quite fair for me to interpret this as success, for the cat catches its prey. I told Depwoto…I did not wish to look away from his eyes…yes, there is glory in it.

He rose, not hearing Jute say my words again, and I used my flint to cut the thread, that bound a shining black stone with white specks.

The only thing I have ever wanted was my own life. And if you care to live, you do not make yourself an envied obstacle.

The wealthiest man in our land was a brother of the Emperor, who stood at the imperial elbow, winning small gifts for timely praises. Only a patch of land, a bit of coast barely arable; only a detachment of knights to protect it.

The Emperor made errors. His brother did not.

The wealthiest man in our land had no ambition to take another’s place. Cime had made me know of him, Lord Teomas, a visitor to the House of Delia, which is to say the quarter where the imperial lineages lived. The mother of Lord Teomas, the second wife of the last Emperor before my time, had been aunt to Lady Nyma.

“So bearing the weight of a king,” I’d said, “is proof of the gods’ disdain.”

“Yes, just that. When cannot Teomas make free use of his brother’s house, and stable, and fleet? Of all he desires. A day ends, another begins. We will never enjoy better all we have feasted on, all the music heard, yesterday.”

I recall I laughed. “Lovely words. Not yours, surely?”

“No, some ancient’s I was tutored on. Mumas, what name do I want? The drowned priest who speaks forever as a burbling spring?”

I was liked by Cime, disliked by Mumas.

“Why…Gosse. Gosse, who was made the river god.”

Servant to the Houses of Decima and Treiva, dressed in new clothes and seated on my pony, where the least of our people had no mount and labored by foot… I was proud. I was blind to this pride and felt myself humble, aligning my thoughts with what I believed Cime’s. As I sit now, far from my youth and place of birth, I impart to you this lesson. We are not well with the will of the gods. Never, having not their eyes to see—but least when we are certain of it.

56

A First Road

The Totem-Maker (part fifty-three)

(2018, Stephanie Foster)