The Totem-Maker (part ninety-five)

The Totem-Maker

Chapter Nine

The Recalcitrant One

(part ninety-five)

He answered with a long sober silence. Then: “I will want Wosogo. I should summon Lord Ei as well. Wosogo has told me not to speak to you, that if the god Lotoq favors your people he is the enemy of ours.”

“He does not favor my people.”

I myself wanted Wosogo. He had given me, of information, useful things. The useful thing I must know was whether the Prince found dishonor in the work of spies. For the worm enters the apple and tunnels weakness into the heart, yet the hand that plucks it from the tree finds the flesh firm.

But a rotten apple he will not mistake.

“Or I might say rather…” I said this aloud. “That asses trample the fence and devour the good fruits of the orchard, leaving the gleaners to salvage what they may. Or the farmer with his neighbors will divide the harvest, and his neighbors keep their asses penned.”

“This is why I long to have Lord Ei your dinner companion.”

And if we were all companions together, I would laugh. I said: “My Prince, you would like to strike a great blow upon the Citadel, and afterwards count consequences. You will number the dead. You will measure the foot-paces gained. You will stack your weapons and find the sum suffices. Go so far, you may well, as to calculate that fewer of your men put less strain on your stores of food, fewer horses your stores of hay, and to mark…no. All your lore is in your memory, so you tell me with pride. To have Wosogo, if he survives, recite numbers to you, larger and smaller numbers. You will feel confident you progress, and your siege may be prolonged. Any good that can be found in strategies of war, I see only in the spending of each soldier, each animal, each weapon, each drop and crumb of confiscated goods, sparingly…a match near exact to purpose.”

“Be quiet.”

He spoke in such a gritted way, I felt I’d enraged him. No, I am not your sparring partner. I am your demon, I have said it. I thought this as though a hard concentration would reach his mind, and he would hear my many, many words to his inner torture.

“Will I let you go? Are you only my prophesier when I allow you all liberties? Because I cannot have made you believe you please me. Waiting is too costly. I hadn’t planned it.”

He was, though, saying yes to me, not no.

99

The Recalcitrant One

The Totem-Maker (part one)

(2018, Stephanie Foster)