When Aloe Pricks a Mare upon the Mountain Bluff Left Yekunde

For most of my life, the thought of leaving my home to visit the cobbled-­together Tetrarchia had not been even a dream, a desire, or a possibility. After all, it was important to me that a Zobiski presence remained in Yekunde.

That city had originally been Zobiski land, but its conquest by Loasht, followed by millennia of the Grand Suzerain’s rule, had dispersed my people. Sometimes in order to weaken us, Zobiski were forced from Yekunde into internal exile; other times, droves of my people left for opportunities in parts of Loasht whose denizens may not have learned to hate them. In my time, there were satellite Zobiski communities near Yekunde, but the community within the city itself had shrunk and shrunk and shrunk.

Despite our size, I’d lived a happy life there, and so, like many around my age, I had only a vague notion that things could turn—a feeling that our neighbors disliked us deep down in their hearts. I, and those who thought like me, often wondered if this was simply paranoia. Others of my generation saw themselves as fully Loashti, and felt certain their own children would be safer and better treated than we were. The Zobiski memory I have described was only a dull thrum in the background of my life.

Five years before I met Kalyna Aljosanovna, Aloe Pricks a Mare upon the Mountain Bluff returned to Yekunde, and that dull thrum became acute.

For much of my adulthood, Aloe and I had both worked as faculty scholars at the Yekunde branch of the Loashti Academy. I did not consider him a friend, but was friendly toward him: after all, we both researched the history and traditions of sorcery, albeit for different reasons. We would loan each other books, smile whenever we passed one another, and chat about our research at meals. We also engaged in quite a few spirited late-night debates under the influence of palm brandy or bhang paste; debates that I thought were in good faith. Aloe struck me as intense and inflexible, but so were many of my fellow scholars. (I always fancied this would improve if they slept around more, but that was likely a personal bias.)

He was a man of about my size and age, who had a bright smile when he was relaxing but always looked entirely serious when engaged in courses or study. Despite the lack of copper tones in his closely cut hair, his family was originally from Talverag, which was much closer to the geographic, and administrative, center of Loasht than Yekunde was. He seemed to find some great importance in this, and our debates were often about family history, in some sense or another, which should have been a clue to what the future held.

But then, looking back with what I know now, I may be grasping for meanings that weren’t there.

About seven years before I was ejected from Abathçodu, Aloe left Yekunde to pursue studies at another branch of the Academy, and I attended his going-away dinner. Twenty of us sat outside, talking and laughing on one of those summer nights where the humidity becomes pleasantly buoyant, as though you are relaxing inside of a cloud. We circled the Academy’s beautiful old table, which was cut lengthwise from a tree, with bark still at its edges but its surface smoothed to a shine. We ate, drank, and snuck bits of a nutty bhang paste into everything, floating down the winding rhetorical roads that scholars and teachers do when they get to enjoy themselves. The torches around us flared the slight blue-green of a flame alchemically treated (although the Tetrarchia might call it “enchanted” or “ensorcelled”) to ward off insects.

More than once, someone would point out into the dark and distant swamp, swearing they saw a crocodile. Then everyone would laugh.

“The flames won’t keep them away!” someone called out.

“We’d better get louder and scare them!” replied Aloe, pounding the table. “More drinks!”

We toasted, we laughed, we made a little light fun of Aloe, and he got even more talkative than usual. For all of his seriousness, he was a man who loved to be the center of attention, which was something I could understand.

Feeling emboldened by the general air of play, I said, “And to think he is leaving all of this”—I motioned to the table and the surroundings—“to go . . . what? Research that oafish ancestor of his!”

There was muted laughter, but some were clearly wondering if I’d gone too far. Aloe stood up and moved unsteadily toward where I was sitting, and the laughter quieted entirely. Because I’d had a decent amount of bhang—my head was quite high up in the stars at this point—the few seconds it took him to get to me felt like an eternity. He leaned down and put an arm around my shoulder. Then he laughed uproariously.

“You always keep me on my toes, Radiant!” He grinned and shook me affectionately.

I shrugged, smiling lazily. Others began to laugh again.

“More than anyone else,” Aloe continued, “you, Radiant, are always able to surprise me! To head me off at the pass. Your mind”—he put his fingers playfully in my hair, assuming a familiarity that I did not interrogate at the time, and shook my head lightly—“is always moving!”

“My mind is only ‘moving,’ Aloe,” I laughed, “because you are shaking it!”

He slowly disengaged his fingers but didn’t seem particularly chastened, which was fine with me, just then. He had taken my joke in the spirit with which it had been given, and so in that moment, Aloe was my friend. I turned my head slowly, languidly, up toward him.

“And what was so surprising, Aloe? I’ve criticized that last Minister Investigator who graced your line before.”

“As have I, Radiant, as have I!” he replied. “But it was the word ‘oafish.’” He giggled to himself and rested his forearm on my shoulder. Then he lifted the other hand, one finger out, as though trying to make a point. “Do you . . . I say, Radiant, do you know how my ancestor—Fragrances was his name, everyone, by the way. Radiant, do you know how he died?” He giggled some more.

I shook my head. No matter how much I had imbibed, I knew better than to say that I hoped Fragrances had died at the hands of those he’d so brutally oppressed.

“He was, well, he was gored.” Aloe affected a mock seriousness. “Terribly. By a cassowary.” Then he grinned. “Which he was trying to train into a fearsome mount!” He burst out laughing at the image of his forebear attempting to ride an angry, murderous bird.

There was much more laughter, from myself as well. I don’t know whether I actually found this funny or was simply relieved. Perhaps I was tickled by the thought of a man whose memory still haunted my people dying such a stupid death.

“So ‘oafish’ is quite appropriate!” Aloe added once his laughter had died down, and he could breathe again.

“It is!” I replied, nodding slowly. “I had no idea. Why, every Zobiski I know would be gratified to hear”—I began to slow down as I realized Aloe’s smile was disappearing—“about the undignified demise of one of our chief . . .” I was too far from the world to stop myself from finishing the sentence and muttered, “. . . tormentors.”

“Now, Radiant”—Aloe patted my shoulder and then gripped it tightly—“this is all a matter of public record for those of us with access to those records.” He motioned to the surrounding scholars. “But I don’t know that it should be shared with, well, with everyone. You understand.”

I was suddenly very much reminded that I was the only Zobiski at the table.

“But Aloe,” I tried, “you must understand that—”

“That Fragrances is seen, by your people, as having been a vicious person. Yes, I know, Radiant. We’ve discussed it before.”

“That, too, is a matter of record.”

I immediately regretted saying it; I regretted having ever brought up Fragrances in the first place. I did not want to be dragged back down to the ground and into this silly disagreement, but I had crossed the line from friendly jibes into something that bothered Aloe. It was his party, after all.

“But Radiant,” he said, sounding (as always) as though he truly wanted to convince me, “you must understand that he . . . that I . . .” Aloe grasped for words—after all, he was no more sober than I was.

I reached up and patted his hand. “Aloe, the way that I—the way that we—see him doesn’t need to reflect on you. So he was vicious? My father was vicious.”

I immediately felt guilty for throwing my father to the table as a sort of sacrifice. (And sacrificing was one of the many things Zobiski had once done that got them branded as “occult.”) It felt wrong, in such company, to expose any Zobiski as imperfect. But then, I had always used the divulging of (carefully chosen) secrets and deeply personal feelings to gain trust and protect myself.

Thankfully, my friend and colleague, Casaba Melon Water Soothes at Noontime, saw my discomfort and immediately gave an excessive account of how her father had beaten her in childhood. It made everyone very uncomfortable, but it took the attention off me and showed that such behavior was not, somehow, Zobiski. She did this on purpose, because she was a great friend.

I then largely dropped out of the discussion and gazed off into the distance. I think that for a moment, I actually did see, in the distance, the vague outline of one of our upright crocodiles loping through the darkness on its two legs like a stooping mockery of a human. I suddenly imagined the thing dashing into our midst, biting and tearing into us—even though they weren’t known to dash, or to attack large groups. I didn’t point the creature out to anyone and soon it disappeared.

Neither did I tell anyone at the Academy that I found myself relieved to see Aloe go, because I was ashamed of the feeling. I was not the only one who found him frustrating at times, and I don’t know that he had much in the way of close friends. I did not hate or even strongly dislike him, and so it felt unnecessarily mean to admit my relief to others behind his back—to admit that I looked forward to fewer awkward exchanges in my life.

When I returned home that night, Silver understood the truth of his departure better than I did.

“Good riddance,” they said. “I hope he falls in a ditch, breaks both legs, and gets carted back here on a manure cart.”

“Now, he may not be the most tactful person,” I replied, “but that’s a little harsh.”

“Is it? Didn’t you tell me he’s going up to Talverag to justify his family history?”

“To study it, Silver Petals Alight on Sand. He’s a smart man; justification may not be his conclusion.”

“Is he smart, Radiant, or does he just read a lot?”

I didn’t have an answer to that, so I said, “Well, I can tell you one thing he’s read . . .”

I then told them about how Fragrances had died by cassowary. You had better believe I would go on to tell every Zobiski I knew.

Looking back now, I wish Aloe had stayed in Yekunde to irritate me forever. There he could have toiled away in the obscurity of our great libraries and perhaps not become, well, what he became. That celebratory dinner of seven years ago feels so recent that I fancy I can reach out and change it: convince him to stay and stop so much unpleasantness.