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IT COMES AS A GREAT relief that no one needs me the morning after the festival. I send Relka away and lock my door, leaning against it with a sigh. The tension slowly eases out of my body as I exhale. It’s always like this when I haven’t prayed in a while. Lines of worry and stress curl up my body, and the short prayers I’ve managed to whisper have done nothing to ease them. With Uncle Jeffett’s visit and the hubbub of the festival, I haven’t had a quiet morning to myself all week.
How fortunate today is Jemaah day. Not that anyone else is keeping track. In many ways, it’s like the secret Jemaah services I used to hold with Mikal—though now I don’t have the spectre of my aunt or uncle barging in on us.
I murmur a soft prayer of apology as I go about collecting the various things I have hidden about my rooms, a precaution I am not willing to let go of just yet. I don’t feel secure enough, especially with the tensions rising from the changes in the law we’re proposing. I could always force them through, but I don’t want a revolution on my hands.
No more war, no more violence. I have promised myself—and all my people—that.
Hence, allowing my father and uncle to continue meddling because of their influence and experience. I’m not too proud to leverage their wealth of knowledge, even if it weakens my present position. It’s not the first time I’ve wished that either one of them would just take over. They have the standing and the clout. I am...
I am the firstborn of the firstborn; the throne is my birth right, I remind myself.
Unfortunately, it’s not quite that simple. Succession in Bayangan is expected, but not guaranteed. Unlike Terang, where the throne is always passed to the firstborn male, the Bayangan Raja’s successor is elected from a pool of candidates who fulfil certain criteria.
First, they must have been present at the prior Raja’s death and funeral. Second, the candidate should be a prominent figure in court life or be well-known by the citizens of Bayangan. Third, and last, is that there must be a consensus or majority vote for his or her rule.
This was one of my forefather’s methods to help Bayangan break away from Maha’s dynasties—their dictatorship, he called it—where the Sultan’s family ruled with an iron fist. Yet over the years, things have drifted. Terang instituted the Majlis Maha, a council of seven, to curb the power of the Sultan; in Bayangan, while theoretically the Majlis DiRaja can depose the Raja if he falls out of favour, in practice the Raja does whatever he wants with little repercussions. It has also become almost a given that whoever the Raja appoints as his Raja Muda—normally his eldest son—will be voted in as the next Raja upon his death.
You wouldn’t be in this position if you weren’t Garett’s son. If you weren’t Jeffett’s nephew. If Aunt Layla hadn’t appointed you as Raja Muda.
I push my whirling thoughts aside and light two candles, measuring into the censer two spoons of the incense Han had smuggled in for me two months ago. Han didn’t bring any this time, so I will have to make it last until I can find another troupe from Maha to bring me a new supply. I hang the censer in its holder over the candles and fragrance fills the room.
O Kudus, Maha Esa, berkatilah hamba-Mu dengan kuasa ajaib-Mu.
Familiar Amok Strength thrums through me. It binds me tighter to the land I’ve left, to the Temple I cannot set foot in.
Oh, how I long to return to Your Temple. But I cannot. Why have you placed me here only to be surrounded by my enemies, to be thwarted at every turn? If You would have Bayangan turn to You, should You not make this easier?
But Kudus is silent. The Strength ebbs and I am left kneeling facing Suci with an ache in my heart. I open the Firman and read from it, but the words do not stick in my mind. My eyes skim the text and my lips whisper the words, but I do not understand what I am reading.
Have You left me? What have I done wrong? I am trying to do what You ask, but I cannot see the way.
The smoke that rises from the censers is cloying, making me choke in its thick stench.
Speak to me, O Kudus. Let me hear Your voice again.
Silence surrounds me. I slump where I kneel, the Firman slipping out of my hands and falling to the floor with a soft thump. I don’t bother to reach for it. Let it lie where it fell. I should get up. I should clear all this up before someone comes for me, before someone finds me blatantly breaking the laws I’m meant to uphold.
I find my thoughts back on that pier, watching the ships disappear, wishing they would take me with them. But I’d made the decision to stay. I knew then that my place was here. I know it now, even though I long to be elsewhere. It is this strange dichotomy of being that tears at me the most, the way I belong and yet do not belong, the way I am pulled in two directions.
Am I Mahan or am I Bayangan? If I am Bayangan, why do I have the Amok Strength? If I am Mahan, what am I doing on the throne of Bayangan?
I hope you discover who you need to be.
The ship is long gone. Mikal is long gone. I stare out over the water. The straits have always been a border for me, a barrier to the freedom I once yearned for. Now that I’m here and free, it is still a border, separating my past and my present. I don’t know about the future.
Meaningless, meaningless words! Maybe I am meant to be nothing more than myself.
Shouting from outside startles me. I jump up to look out the bedroom window and see a crowd of soldiers crossing the courtyard. I scramble to blow out the candles, pouring what remains of the liquid incense into the bottle to be reused, and stuff the bottle back into its drawer. There’s no time to clear everything, so I stick the Firman under my mattress. Relka changed the sheets yesterday, so no one should poke at it until I return, I hope. I straighten the covers so that the servants will assume that the bed has been made.
The commotion grows louder.
“Tuanku! Tuanku!” Relka calls.
I muss up my hair, tugging at my clothes, as if I am still getting ready for the day.
Seconds later, the Royal Guards admit Relka into the room.
“What’s going on?” I don’t need to fake the alarm in my voice.
Relka bursts into tears.
“Relka? Why are you—”
“Oh Tuanku, I’m sorry! But your parents have been murdered!”
My breath hitches, spots appearing before my eyes, my head light. I hope against hope that it is all just a prank. Ayah is trying to make some obscure point. Or Uncle Jeffett is. I’ll go there and I’ll find them alive, laughing at me for falling for it.
But I am swept along in a knot of Royal Guards, soldiers, and frazzled servants to the small two-storey house on the outskirts of the city that my parents call home. Its cheery yellow porch, normally empty, seems to sag with the weight of the swarming soldiers. The windows above are shuttered, and I half-expect Ibu to fling them open, stick her head out, and yell at the gathering crowd trampling her carefully tended vegetable garden.
Everywhere I look, I see another stiff back, another sharp uniform, another grim face. They push away the stragglers and the gawkers but let me through. Azman is by my side, though I don’t recall when he joined me. He grips me by the elbow, propping me up and steering me upstairs to my parents’ bedroom.
“Steady, Yosua,” he says in the voice he uses to calm horses in a thunderstorm.
Breathe. “I’m fine.”
He gives me a look, then orders the guards to give us more space.
“I’ll be fine. Give me a moment.” I hold onto the door frame, taking deep breaths.
This can’t be real.
“Are you ready?” he asks when my breathing slows.
I nod, swallowing hard. He pushes the door open.
It swings open with a creak, revealing a gruesome scene. O Kudus.
My parents are splayed out on the bed, their bodies hacked open. A keris bathes in the blood that has pooled on the floor. It’s an inelegant killing for such an elegant weapon. Inefficient. Wasteful. Their eyes have been gouged out. When I realise that the little pieces of flesh resting on their lips are the tongues cut out of their mouths, I lose it.
I fall to the floor, retching. There are voices shouting over me, and hands pulling at me, but I stay where I am, trembling. Who would do this? Why would they do this?
Ayah—Garett Regis Baya—is respected as their lost Raja Muda, honoured as a survivor of the war, a returned Tawanan, Regent for the short few months until I came of age. Ibu—Marla Ishi—is loved as the returned sister of their longest-serving Regent. To desecrate a body this way is to deny the dead any peace in death. Bayangans believe that each person will be judged by their works after death. Gouging out their eyes symbolises that they will not see justice. Cutting out their tongues means they cannot explain their deeds, whether good or evil. It ensures that they will not be able to defend or justify themselves in the afterlife, leaving them open to unfair judgements. It’s the worst thing you can do to the dead here.
It’s more than a statement. It’s an indictment. I cannot imagine any Bayangan doing it to one of their own.
Azman leads me out of the room. I follow him down to the kitchen where I rinse my mouth and splash water on my face, leaning over the sink to retch again, heaving though there’s nothing left in my stomach. Then he guides me to sit at the dining table.
There are too many people in the room, too many voices talking to me, at me, around me. Then there is a growling thunder, coiled anger striking—slowly, it quietens.
I blink.
The scene is almost normal, as if everything I saw upstairs were a distant dream. It has to be a dream. A steaming cup of tea sits on the table in front of me, thick and black. I lift it to my lips. Strong and sweet. Like Ibu makes it. I swallow my tears.
Azman sits on my right, watching the door. There is no one else in the room.
No, there is someone else. He’s been so still that I hadn’t immediately registered his presence.
But now, Uncle Jeffett raises his head from the table. His eyes are dry but red, and there is a terrible, terrible fury on his face.
“Vengeance is mine,” he says in a low, silky voice.
It is the loudest, most terrifying thing I’ve heard all day.