The Grace of Kings (10 page)

The world was a book in which the gods wrote, much as the scribes did with their brush and ink, wax and knife. The gods shaped the features of the earth and the seas much as the knife carved wax into logograms that could be touched and felt. Men and women were the zyndari letters and punctuation marks of this grand epic that the gods composed on the fly, changing their fickle minds from one moment to the next.

When the gods decreed that only Rui would possess the gas that made airships float, it meant that they wished to elevate Xana above all the other Tiro states and bring about the Unification. When Emperor Mapidéré had a dream of soaring above the Islands of Dara on the back of a Mingén falcon, that meant that the gods wished to glorify him above all men. It was useless for the Six States to resist the might of Xana, because the gods had already decided how the story would go. Just as wax clumps that refused to be shaped properly would be scraped away by the writer, to be replaced by new, pliant wax, so would men who resisted the fates be swept away, to be replaced by those sensitive to the shifts of fortune.

What did it mean that the typhoons were sweeping the coasts of the Islands more than ever before? What did it mean that strange clouds and strange lights were seen all over Dara? What did it mean that the giant crubens were sighted surfacing and breaching all over the western seas but not around Rui? What was the message brought by the famines and plagues?

Above all, what did the scroll in the belly of the fish tell the men who gawked at it, as Huno Krima and Zopa Shigin held it up to the light?

“We are dead men,” Huno Krima said. “And so are our families. We've run out of time.”

The men, packed into the kitchen, held their breaths and strained to hear. Krima wasn't speaking loudly, and the fire in the hearth cast flickering shadows across their faces.

“I don't like prophecies. They upset plans and make us into pawns of the gods. But it's even worse to resist a prophecy when it has been given. If we're already dead by the laws of Xana, and yet the gods tell us different, then I'd rather listen to the gods.

“There are thirty of us here in this room. Throughout the city are many other corvée crews just like us, marching to Pan without hope of getting there on time. All of us are the walking dead. We've got nothing to lose.

“Why should we submit to the words written in the Xana Codes? I would rather we obeyed the words of the gods. The signs are everywhere that the days of Xana are numbered. Men have been made into slaves, and women prostitutes. The old die of starvation and the young of banditry. While we suffer and know not why, the emperor and his ministers belch from a surfeit of sweetmeats fed to them by the soft hands of servant girls. This is not how the world was meant to be.

“Maybe it's time for a new story to be told by the wandering bards.”

Ratho and Dafiro Miro, because they were the youngest and the smallest and seemed the least dangerous, were given the most difficult task. The brothers both had dark, curly hair, and small frames. Ratho, being younger and more impulsive, accepted the assignment right away. Dafiro looked at his brother, sighed, and nodded.

Carrying two trays laden with wine and fish, they went to the room of the two soldiers escorting the corvée crew and explained that the men wanted to do something nice for their guards—perhaps the guards could then look the other way while the laborers tried to drink themselves into a stupor?

The soldiers ate and drank heartily. The warm rice wine and spicy fish soup made them sweaty, and they took off their armor and uniforms and sat only in their undershirts to be more comfortable. Soon their tongues grew heavy, and their eyelids drooped.

“More wine, Masters?” Ratho asked.

The soldiers nodded, and Ratho rushed to refill the cups. But these cups were never to be picked up again. The soldiers leaned back on their cushions, jaws open, and fell asleep.

Dafiro Miro took out the long kitchen knife he had hidden in his sleeve. He had butchered pigs and chickens, but a man was something different. He locked eyes with his brother, and they both stopped breathing for a moment.

“I won't be whipped to death like Pa,” said Ratho.

Dafiro nodded.

There would be no stepping back from this.

Dafiro plunged the knife through the rib cage of one of the soldiers, right into his heart.

He looked across at his brother, who had done the same with the other soldier. The expression on Ratho's face, a mixture of excitement, fear, and joy, made Dafiro sad.

Little Ratho had always looked up to him, and he had always protected Ratho in fights with the other boys in the village. With their father gone early and their mother barely awake much of the day even when she was alive, he had practically raised Ratho. He had always believed that he would be able to protect his brother, and at this moment, he felt that he had failed.

Even though Ratho looked so happy.

Two Imperial soldiers arrived at the Leaping Cruben, the largest lodging house in all of Napi. Clearly new recruits, their uniforms did not fit them very well.

The entire second and third floors had been requisitioned by the city as temporary holding cells for the corvée laborers and criminals sentenced to hard labor. The soldiers guarding them stayed in the suite on the second floor closest to the stairs and kept their doors open to prevent anyone in the other rooms from leaving without being noticed.

The two Imperial soldiers knocked on the open door and explained that they had been sent by the local garrison to look for a wanted criminal. Would the guards mind if the two just took a look through the men under their watch?

The guards, who were playing cards, waved dismissively at the two newcomers. “Look all you want. Your man is not here.”

Huno Krima and Zopa Shigin thanked the guards, who went back to their liquor and game, and went to all the rooms one by one and explained their plot to the corvée laborers and criminals. This was their last stop. They had already visited all the other places in the city where men like them were held.

All over Napi, at midnight, the laborers and criminals rose up as one and killed their guards in their sleep. They set fire to the lodging houses and inns and congregated in the streets.

“Death to Xana!” they shouted. “Death to the emperor!” There was exhilaration in shouting the forbidden words, words that were on all men's minds. It made them feel invincible, just to say them aloud.

“Huno Krima will be king!”

Soon the men in the streets, the beggars and the thieves, the starving and the bankrupt, the women who had watched their husbands and sons taken away to be slaves under the sea and in the mountains, took up the same chant.

Brandishing only kitchen knives and bare fists, they rushed to the armory, broke in, and overwhelmed the soldiers guarding the doors. Now armed with real weapons, they attacked the army's granary, and soon bags of sorghum and rice and bundles of dried fish were traveling the streets, carried on the backs of men surging through the streets like flood currents.

They ran to the mayor's office and took over the building. Some­one cut down the white flag of Xana, charged with a Mingén falcon spreading its wings, and hoisted up a sheet on which the crude figure of a leaping fish had been drawn—silver-scaled, rainbow-finned, with a scroll around it filled with letters:
HUNO KRIMA WILL BE KING!

The soldiers of the local garrison, many of whom were from Cocru, refused to advance against their countrymen. The Xana commanders soon found themselves faced with the choice of surrender or being slaughtered by their own men.

Krima and Shigin were now in charge of a rebel force of a few thousand men—most of them desperate laborers, bandits, or soldiers in the Imperial army who had rioted along with the prisoners.

Those Imperial commanders who surrendered were promised rich rewards and paid immediately with money taken from the treasury of the city—tax money soaked with the blood, sweat, and tears of the people of Cocru.

Having secured Napi and sealed its gates against an anticipated counterattack from Xana troops stationed in cities nearby, Krima and Shigin set about the task of enjoying their spoils. The houses of merchants and nobles were looted, restaurants and brothels celebrated with special deals for the rebels, and contracts and debts were canceled. While the rich wailed, the poor celebrated.

“So we call ourselves kings now?” whispered Shigin.

Krima shook his head. “Too early. You and I need a symbol first.”

To provide a measure of legitimacy to their rebellion, Krima and Shigin immediately dispatched a delegation to Faça to find the heir to the ancient Throne of Cocru, rumored to be a shepherd in exile. The two declared that they would restore the lost heir to his rightful place.

Couriers were sent to all corners of the Islands of Dara, calling for the nobles of the Six States to return to their ancestral domains and join the rebellion. The Tiro states would re-emerge from the ashes of the Unification, and together, they would topple the Imperial Throne in Pan.