The Totem-Maker (part one hundred thirty-nine)

The Totem-Maker

Chapter Thirteen

The Citadel

(part one hundred thirty-nine)

“Of a great plague. The noble houses, the lords and ladies, all had thrown their gold into the smelting pot, and massed their gemstones in a pile. Celebrated artisans made glittering effigies of all the pantheon, hoping to offend none…”

“But they overlooked Ioka, did they not? The troublemaker.”

Castor spoke. He had sidled up through the crowd, as we were by now dismounted and leading our ponies at a shuffling pace.

“Another story, Pravor Castor. Mine is that where the plague vapored off in the shimmer of a rainbow, when the Two Beggars brought their parcel of roots, which they had dug all that morning for their only meal.”

I sounded unbecomingly sarcastic, and had wandered far from the point. Which was no concern of Diira’s. She had left me and our talk, when Castor arrived.

“What news…?” I was not far from ending, have you been ferreting after?

“None much. I bade a messenger be sent to the palace…on your authority. We may save a day or two’s wait.”

“Why,” I asked, after those we stood behind had moved the length of half a canopied eatery, and we had followed suit, and Castor, by raising two fingers and hooking them towards us, had undermined my steadfast refusal to buy a cup of whatever liquid the proprietor was pouring from her array of urns and basins, “do we wait, in any case? The weather seems gentle. We can provide our own lodging, and… Thank you.”

I nodded at a hopeful face, sipped a sweet and bitter something, placed a benign smile on a mouth that might have puckered. The woman made a bow of reverence.

“Castor.”

I stopped him answering me. “That word, I do not wish to have go out. You have not been mystifying among the people here, on the name of Totem-Maker.”

He struck one of his poses, hand on chin. “Then I have not…if you tell me so. I have not been every place in the world, certainly. Of lore, I have read little. If I were to invent a name for myself, I grant you, how could I guess the name were not identical to one of legend in another land? An embarrassment, to call oneself Totem-Maker, then travel to the Citadel and find they have been expecting such a person.”

“I ought to have questioned you sooner. When will we have a private talk?”

“We are having a private talk. The people here don’t know our language.”

“Of course, some of them do.”

“Yes.” He sighed at me. “If my jests must make you a tedium, who worries at all meanings. But it makes no difference what you say to anyone. Or are overheard to say.”

I asked him again for what reason we stood in this procession.

“The one they await is meant to arrive humbly, to regard itself as of the common lot. It looks well in you.” He backhanded me between the shoulders, which I bore with common patience; I accepted from the hands of a stranger some wafers, folded triangles of dough, fried…his greased fingers relinquishing them, mine growing oily in turn.

143

Lore and Lessons

The Totem-Maker (part one)

(2018, Stephanie Foster)