Chapter Four

Memories...

After they had cleared away his afternoon meal, So Ga left his study. Hin Lan had made no moves to continue his lessons for the day. In fact, after the maids had left with the dishes, Hin Lan, too, had taken his leave.

The afternoon sky had grown darker as the distant storm clouds approached. The air was colder and the wind stronger. The wall was closed and So Ga could barely see the swaying willow branches through the milky white squares of thin glass that made up his windows.

Three times a week So Ga was required to practice archery in the narrow back lane between the palace and its towering wall, but this was not a practice day, thank goodness. So Ga didn’t especially enjoy archery, as his physical weakness made it difficult for him to draw a bow and he found the entire process of this practice — overseen by the head of his bodyswords, Sen Rin¹ — to be both frustrating and tedious. Not to mention pointless. All kings of Láokoth, in fact all men of Láokoth, were trained in archery at some point in their lives, usually as children. It was unseemly for the crown prince to neglect this training, but with his poor health it seemed impossible. So Ga’s father had concealed his son’s weakness and illness from the court for this reason more than most, a weak man could not be a strong king. Whenever he attempted to draw the bow string, So Ga couldn’t help but wonder if that was true.

He had not been able to eat much of his meal, but had, at least, dutifully finished his soup. The Enlo cakes, however, remained untouched. So Ga had asked them to leave them and so the little porcelain dish with the painted birds and ivy all around its edge still sat on his table, the four little cakes piled thereon gleaming in the abundant candlelight.

As soon as he had seen the cakes, So Ga had remembered them. His mother had indeed favored them, but not to eat them herself. Rather, she had liked to give them to So Ga and his brother and sister, and also to the young servants of the Palace House. He had never once seen her eat them herself.

His mother had been a warmly maternal woman, and had embodied absolutely the idea that the queen consort was the mother of Láokoth. Her residence in the interior of the Palace grounds had always seemed to So Ga to emanate warmth. He and his little brother had spent all the hours of their days, when they were not studying, in their mother’s residence. She had managed the royal household together with the Palace Housemaster, an aged man who had taken the queen consort as his absolute master, obeying her in all things. Queen Nă Mor² had that affect on people. A striking woman, with long black hair, and a fine sharp nose, she carried herself with the grace of the ethereal attendants of Níoth³ from the ancient legends. Her warm smile never seemed to leave her lips, nor did the glowing light leave her gentle eyes. She commanded devotion in a way that even the king could not. There had been an air of power about her that had been conveyed alongside softness. All who met her would fall under her spell. Some said it was her blood, which was from an ancient and respected line. She had not, after all, been from the Sona House, but from Lăsoth House, which, as the head of the Fourteen Ancient Houses, was the most ancient and most powerful House in all Láokoth. The current Lăsoth Housemaster, Bo Han, was Nă Mor’s younger brother.

The king’s marriage to a member of the Lăsoth House had been significant news in Láokoth. Arranged when he was the crown prince by his father the king, such an alliance had solidified Lăsoth’s position at the head of the Houses. After her husband had taken the throne, Queen Consort Nă Mor had chosen to remove herself from the political workings of both her marital House and her birth House. She had maintained contact with her brother, however, even after he became Housemaster of Lăsoth. Some in court thought that the queen consort’s continued connection to her brother and her ancient House would challenge her obligations as the queen of all Láokoth. And that through her Lăsoth would wield untold power over the rest of the Houses.

But to her, the Lăsoth Housemaster was just her brother.

“The House bond,” she used to say to her children, “is not meant to make enemies of different Houses. Sona House and Lăsoth House are two great stones in the foundation of Láokoth. All Houses must work together to hold up this country.”

So Ga remembered that his sister Simna, the crown princess, had asked their mother, “Is the stone of Lăsoth House the same size as the stone of Sona House?”

Their mother had thought for a moment, then answered, “Some stones must hold a greater weight. For this reason, they must be larger.”

The Enlo cakes had been there on a little yellow dish in her residence at least once a week. Even Simna, who was cold and apart from the warm bond her siblings shared with their mother, could not resist the sweet, fried cakes filled with cinnamon cream and covered in sparkling sugar.

Every time So Ga had gone to his mother’s residence he had found her either in her courtyard among her fruit trees and rose bushes in the summer, or in her private quarters, warmed by a fire. Usually she was writing, sometimes she was weaving, an occupation she was fond of. Always the yellow dish was nearby. Sometimes it was laden with peaches or apples from her fruit trees or else little tomatoes cut into roses. Sometimes it was piled high with Enlo cakes. Her children were not permitted to take one until they had completed some chore for her in her residence. The children of the Palace House were sometimes given one as a reward for delivering a message or bringing her a parcel of weaving supplies.

On one occasion, when So Ga had been paying his daily respects to his royal father in his residence, he had seen a little paper-wrapped bundle on the king’s table. When he went closer he smelled the unmistakable sweet aroma of the Enlo cakes. So Ga eventually learned — eavesdropping on the gossiping maids — that his father had been particularly fond of this confection as a young boy and that the queen consort, having learned of this, had asked the kitchens to teach her how to make them after she had moved into her residence in the Palace shortly after the betrothal ceremony. Even then, before they had been officially married, she had had the cakes sent to him from time to time wrapped in plain white paper. And then, too, many years into their marriage, every so often she would personally make him a fresh, fragrant batch and take it to him wrapped in the same white paper. It was said among the servants that the king’s mood was always brightest on those days.

On the day the assassins had come for the royal family, So Ga and his siblings had been at their mother’s residence. It had been a dark winter evening some days after a heavy snow. Their royal father had been expected to join them after he had finished handling various official matters. The heavy snowfall had quieted the country and the court and so the Sona royal House had experienced a rare time of idleness when they could spend as much as an hour or two a day as a family. It was, So Ga recalled, a time of unequaled joy.

While they had been waiting for their father, Simna had been sitting with her mother at her loom, moving the shuttle according to her mother’s instructions. So Ga remembered that they had been talking quietly of Simna’s upcoming marriage which had become a significant concern to the court. So Ga’s little brother Nŭ Vo⁴ had fallen asleep in front of the great porcelain stove that warmed their mother’s private quarters. The cat Lí Lí had been asleep on his chest. For years So Ga had tried to remember what he had been doing on that evening, but the memory seemed to be lost. His frequent illnesses in those years had covered some of his memories in a thin fog.

Later they told him that the entire assault on the Palace had lasted less than twenty minutes. But to So Ga it had felt like hours, or lifetimes. The wound that had nearly taken his life on that night had caused him to drift in a dazed state through several days that followed. And though it had taken some time for him to recover completely, he had still been awake and able to get out of bed long before his father whose injuries had been severe.

There had been a moment, all those years ago, when the court had been preparing to put So Ga on the throne, with the Prime Minister — the king’s Oak Hand — acting as regent. Immediately factions had begun to form, some supporting the Oak Hand and others pushing for their own grip on the throne, and on So Ga as the last surviving prince. So Ga, a child, had watched all this unfold acutely aware that he had very little real power.

These thoughts distracted him in the cool afternoon as distant thunder rumbled through the stillness. And these thoughts weren’t exactly new. So Ga barely went through a day without recalling some memory of that terrible night or the terrible days that had followed. He had developed a certain level of comfort with the memories.

Taking the dish of Enlo cakes, So Ga left the candle-lit confines of his study. It would be some hours before his evening meal, which he took early, as he also slept early. Already the unusual strain of the day was beginning to weigh on him and the restlessness was combining with the fatigue to make him particularly melancholy. And there was only one way he knew to cure this kind of melancholy.

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1. Sen-RIN

2. Nee-ah-MOR

3. NIY-oth; the attendants of the Ădol in the ancient stories were mysterious, fairy-like creatures who served their divine masters absolutely

4. Niy-uh-VO