The Totem-Maker (part ninety-three)

The Totem-Maker

Chapter Nine

The Recalcitrant One

(part ninety-three)

“No, I won’t rush you.” He had made to rise, sank again. The fingers of a hand began to tap. “I ought to find the educated ones, the lawyers. And the talkers, the courtiers…convene a mission of dissemblers, offer sweets to the zhatabe. Forgo my attacks.”

He waited my appreciation. That I had said something unmilitary, and with distaste. That he mimicked this manner.

“Your aggressions,” I said.

He laughed aloud, but furthered his point. “Pass years in talk, make ceremony of deciding whether a line inked on cloth, or on paper…there! Decide that first! Shall we record these dealings by your means, or by theirs? My people record nothing. Every important matter of my life, of my charge, I can tell you now.”

“You gain something in memory from those things Wosogo keeps on your behalf.”

For this, he gave me a near hug, a hand on each shoulder, pulling me towards him. I felt my difficulty again, some wish outside propriety…

“You have a way, Nur-Elom, and it settles me. If you are this Totem-Maker as well, that is for Elberin… For Lord Ei perhaps, who, if you do not know, is captain over the city of Balbaec. For any such men as care for a thing I never have, to be thought clever.”

“They care to not be thought unclever.”

“You,” he said. “You see a difference.”

“But my Prince. All I am telling you lies in what you took a moment ago for cleverness. You flatter me, and I like it. I don’t possess that holiness to hold myself above it. I can bed down very cozily in flattery. In sweets.”

I lifted one, a Balbaecan fried cake stuffed with milk curds. He took it, and returned me half.

“In admiration,” I listed on. “In offices, riches, at length a legend of myself. I could be angry with you, or with any who sought my wisdom, and did not revere me properly. Withhold my gifts if you dared doubt my glory.”

“I do. I doubt your word. I reserve opinion as to your glory. But foresighted is foreguarded, is it not?”

“Foresight is a blessing, to be sure, but you see my meaning. I have a weakness. Lotoq loves me more than others, but he does not love me. Then, Vlan, do I only charm you, or have I made you understand that weakness of yours I ask you to consider?”

“Count me a poor student. We have talked too long, and I’ve forgotten.”

We lay on our cushions, alone in this room, sharing trifles and bantering. And I felt immensely flattered.

How many times, I asked him at last, are we certain in our lives of untested things? I favor the trying, when the risk is only the answer of no.

“And who is to refuse what?”

“The Zhatabe. To receive a visitor. When I see him, I shall tell him I am there to look and learn, and to carry my discoveries back to my Prince.”

“Why?”

“Because he’ll know it.”

97

The Recalcitrant One

The Totem-Maker (part ninety-four)

(2018, Stephanie Foster)