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

The Totem-Maker

Chapter Thirteen

The Citadel

(part one hundred forty-nine)

After my stay at the fortress of Lord Ei, I was versed in these eastern styles, where screens served for moveable walls, and woven pictorials more often were the shelter from drafts, than the skins we used at home. My chambers were dark and baffled in, the screens placed in pairs.

But I had a porch, and seated there I could view the gardens. The people of the Citadel, living inside a mighty chimney, worked marvels with vents and steams. The shrubberies were green, flowers bloomed, trees bore fruit, and creatures too exotic for the season slunk and scurried. This artificial warmth made mists, which by their arts the Citadelians enhanced, reflecting colors from silken cloths. (These might be lean-tos, awnings, even paintings after their fashion, and the servants went out at particular hours to adjust them.)

I was introduced to the servant who would be mine, an honor I would have refused. She was a zhatabe apprentice, thus I dared suppose her of importance, as to family.

“Tell me, is it an exercise in humility?” I asked Adzja. “As pupils climb the ladder, to the level of the council, they are given tasks and trials?”

“Nur-Elom, I serve you gladly.”

“And if I ask for a thing, you will bring it to me? And if I desire some errand performed, my bidding is done?”

As a young one, she could not disguise her wariness. But she said: “Done.”

“And so when I require of you that you answer me in plainest terms, withholding no information your good conscience tells you I seek, whether your training tells you otherwise, you will obey?”

She laughed. “I will tell you, that as beginners we are given a place at the foot…”

“The lowest rung, perhaps, but not lowly. I have come here from slavery and service, and I have no parentage known. But if you offend me, it will never be for words.”

“I call no one low.”

“I believe it. Now, find me whom I shall have dealings with. And tell this person, or these, that I have the Emperor’s conditions. I want those of the zhatabe.”

“You have been here hours.”

“I’ve eaten, and washed. My pony is stabled. And you are very nearly at war…”

She interrupted. We were on more suitable terms already. “No one can breach the Citadel. We can never be at war.”

“Adzja, I have breached the Citadel.”

I astonished her. But she composed her face, as an apt student ought, absorbing this. Then she left me.

153

The Citadel

The Totem-Maker (part one)

(2018, Stephanie Foster)