| |
I STAND ON THE BARE stage, facing rows of empty dining tables and chairs. Eyes closed, body still. Waiting. My feet move of their own accord, following the beat in my head that grows ever more insistent the longer I stand there.
My body remembers. Without thought, it falls into familiar rhythms. Familiar patterns. Time slows as my awareness reaches out.
This is the story of:
Faith.
Trust.
My hands falter. I cannot form the last one. I cannot form Kudus.
“Again!”
I open my eyes. And stare at the ghost looking up at me.
Han stands at the bottom of the stage, arms folded. “Start over,” he says.
“Han—”
“Your form is off. Have you forgotten everything I ever taught you?”
“I’m sorry—”
“Shut your mouth and do it again. Ready, five, six, seven, eight,” Han calls.
I follow his beat, obey his cues. It’s comforting to lose myself in my body, letting the forms and the rhythm take over, quieting my mind. If Mikal relies on his silat forms for calm, dance now does the same for me.
At the end of the hour, I’m tired and sweaty, but at peace. My hands have not faltered, nor have my feet broken their rhythm.
“Better,” Han says with a sharp nod of his head. He turns to go.
“Han, wait!”
Han slows, but doesn’t stop.
“Why did you—how did you find me?” I jump off the raised platform and hurry towards him.
“Everyone knows you come here in the afternoons.”
“Everyone?” I reach his side, but I don’t know if I can look him in the face.
“In the palace, at least. It’s the best gossip they’ve had all year. A drama worthy of the best troupes. They ask if I’ll make a new performance of it.” He stops walking, turning to me. “Baginda Paduka also warned me about your presence when I arrived in Maha yesterday, in case I wanted to avoid you.”
“Han, I’m sorry. I tried my best but—”
He takes my chin, tilts it up so I look him in the eyes. “If I held a grudge, I wouldn’t have come looking for you.”
“Still—”
“It was not your fault.” He drops his hand, but I keep my gaze on him.
“It was,” I say. “It was my court, my judgement—”
“I took the risk. I went to Bayangan knowing the danger. It’s what I signed up for when I became a spy.”
I gape at him.
“My hands were a small price to pay for being able to assure Baginda Paduka that you were all right. He worries about you, you know.”
“You were spying on me for him?”
He shrugs. “In a loose sense of the word. He wanted to know things like, ‘Does Yosua look happy? Is he eating enough? Is there anything he needs from Maha?’ Things he wouldn’t have known from just reading your letters. Not that he didn’t appreciate those.”
“But all the political—”
“They weren’t his main concern. You could have rejected every proposal of his and he would still ask first how you were doing.” He makes an irritated noise as he leans against the edge of a table. “You see him every morning. Don’t you talk about any of this?”
“I don’t—he doesn’t—”
“Do you even talk?”
My shoulders drop. “Not much. Mostly we just spar.”
Mikal has been teaching me how to fight with the keris for a month now. Although I carried a ceremonial keris with me as Raja of Bayangan, I never learnt how to use it. I mentioned this to Mikal once during my convalescence, and he invited me to join him during his morning spar so he could teach me. Using the keris is more of a rapier-like thrust than slashing with the parang, with which I’d been training in Bayangan. The more I learn, the more I realise that if I hadn’t had the Amok Strength that night, the soldiers would have killed me in the blink of an eye.
“Talk to him,” Han says, flexing his stiff fingers. “It will make both of you feel better.”
I nod. “How bad are they?”
“The fingers?” He wriggles them at me. “They’ll never recover their full flexibility, but I do well enough. Just as well that I don’t dance that often anymore. Perks of managing your own troupe—you can assign the tricky roles to other people.”
“And the troupe? Did everyone—”
“They’re fine.” He gets off the table, straightens and stretches. “Since you’re getting into practice, you might as well train with us. If you want to.”
“I don’t want to intrude—”
“You won’t be. We always need spotters and prompters. Who knows, we may even have a role for you to fill.”
I follow him out of the formal dining hall. “I can do that.”
“You should get your hair trimmed,” he says as he disappears down the hallway.
I touch the strands that are now touching the tips of my ears. No matter how acceptable short hair was in Bayangan, I don’t want to walk around Maha with a servant’s short cut, reminding everyone of who and what I used to be. They’re at a weird length, long shapeless strands after the shaving, too short to tie in a proper bun. I know I should do something about it, but I can’t bring myself to.
It’s just one more thing I have been avoiding.
––––––––
ALTHOUGH MIKAL ASSURES me that he believes in my innocence, I find it difficult to talk to him. My mouth is so filled with apologies—for what I did to Han, for what Jeffett did to Amanah—that there is no space for anything else.
Despite his assurances, my freedom here came at a price. Five of the seven Majlis Maha members voted to have a Justice prove my innocence. I don’t blame them for being suspicious—Temenggung Hakim had gruesome pleasure telling me about finding Amanah’s severed head on the dock. Only Penghulu Bendahari Hanna and Laksamana Rizal, both of whom knew me growing up, agreed with Mikal that they could trust me.
Justice Jujur’s entry into my mind wasn’t as smooth as I remembered Rahsia’s being. Where Rahsia had been delicate and swift, skimming with a light touch, Jujur’s touch felt like she was pulling out chunks and stuffing them back in, pushing the line from uncomfortable to painful. Either Jujur’s skills are amateurish in comparison, or she does not see any need to be gentle with me, since I am a Bayangan, an exile, and a political prisoner for the foreseeable future. Yet in the end, she cleared me of any evil intentions, however grudgingly.
Han is right, though. This lack of conversation between Mikal and I is unnatural.
Talk, Yosua. Say something, I admonish myself as we bow to each other at the start of our next spar.
“Is there still no Uskup Agung then?”
“Not yet,” Mikal answers as he thrusts. “Uskup Farouk has been standing in.”
“So why not appoint him?” I parry, blocking his blade with mine.
“Good job.” Mikal steps back, rolling his shoulders. “Suci hasn’t come to an agreement. Some of the higher-ranking priests think Uskup Farouk is too young...and Kudus has not yet spoken. It’s not just the leadership in Suci who must agree. Kudus himself must decree it, but He is silent.”
It feels as if Kudus has withdrawn himself from not just me, but all of Terang.
We take our ready positions again.
“It’s as if Kudus doesn’t want to appoint an Uskup Agung,” Mikal continues. “We have fasted and prayed, but nothing. Uskup Farouk thinks we must fulfil the Covenant of Salt first.”
I eye him as we circle each other. “You’ve mentioned this covenant before...what is it?”
Mikal gives me an odd shrug. “No one living knows. Most of the records were destroyed during the sacking of Suci, and the Secretkeeper is still piecing together the rituals and laws from the Memories. We can’t do anything until we know what it is we’re supposed to do.”
“Oh.”
Mikal sighs, lowering his arm. “Terang is vulnerable right now, Yos. As I said, I’m sorry we cannot help you more, but we have a lot of work to do to rebuild Terang and fulfil the Covenant before we can think of anything else.”
“I understand. I’m not asking for anything.”
We fall back into silence as we begin again.
Mikal has always told me things—told me too many things—and this shift is possibly the hardest to bear. Yet I understand it. He is no longer Mikal, my friend, but Sultan Mikal, who bears the burdens of Terang. And I am his hereditary enemy. There is no way we can return to what we were before, no matter how unnatural Han thinks it is.
The fact that, despite their suspicions, the Majlis is fine with me wielding a keris in the presence of their Sultan is astounding. My morbid mind expects that if I were ever to slip and give Mikal even the shallowest of scratches, a soldier will arrest me for attempted murder.
“The keris!” I stop mid-parry.
Mikal pulls back to avoid stabbing me. “What keris?”
“The one that killed my parents. Whom did it belong to?”
“How would I know?”
I make an irritated sound. “I know you don’t. But...that’s the question, isn’t it? Keris in Bayangan are made specially for each person. It’s not a common weapon, like it is in Maha. I thought I recognised it. But I don’t know whose it is.”
“Are you sure it was not Garett’s?”
Uncle Jeffett had asked the same question—but I know my father had never commissioned his own keris.
“What was distinctive about it?” Mikal asks when I tell him so.
I describe it to him, as much as I remember anyway. Halfway through, I stop. “It feels like I’m describing half of my family crest.”
“So, a royal blade?”
“No, there are marked differences. Maybe that’s why it seemed familiar.”
“Who else would have a blade like that?”
“Half the more pretentious nobles in Bayangan,” I reply with a wry smile. “Even Jeffett has...Jeffett has one like that. Mikal, oh Mikal, could he have—?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. No matter what the man schemes or how hard he pushes for war, I cannot believe that he would murder his own sister. And wasn’t your father his best friend?”
“That was a long time ago, before Ayah was taken captive. When we returned, Jeffett acted friendly, but they weren’t close anymore.”
“Still, I don’t believe he could do such a thing.”
Mikal is adamant, but I am not sure. Jeffett is a man of strong convictions, and his convictions have often overridden his relationships. How else would he have found it in himself to sentence me to death?
At the same time, I cannot say for sure if the keris is his. Surely someone would have known and mentioned it if Jeffett’s keris were missing. I’ve suppressed my memories so much that it’s hard to remember, but the more I think about it, the more I am convinced that I am wrong. Jeffett had been wearing his keris as usual. It must have been another similar blade, one that belonged to a rich noble family with ties to my family. And there are many of those.
At the end of the spar, Mikal is taking a hand towel from Ahmad, his new personal servant, when he asks, “You’re not still angry at me for making you submit to the Justice, are you?”
“No. Why would I be? I agreed to it.”
Ahmad offers me a hand towel as well, and I thank him as I take it.
“Oh. Han thinks you’re angry at me. He made a marked note of it the last time we spoke.”
“I’m not! He’s just reading too much into things.”
Mikal looks up from rubbing the sweat off his face. “Into what things?”
I gesture at him and then at me. “Us. Our ‘lack of conversation’. Whatever that’s supposed to mean.”
Mikal looks sceptical, but continues wiping down his arms.
“You’ve done more than enough for me, Mikal. You fought on my behalf with the Majlis. You let me stay here—although you didn’t have to. You even argued Temenggung Hakim down to one guard trailing my very boring footsteps.”
“Which reminds me,” he says, handing his towel back to Ahmad, “the reports on your boring footsteps that Hakim insists on giving me confirm that you haven’t been to Jemaah since you arrived. Any reason why?”
Fear. Disappointment. Fear of His disappointment.
“Not really,” I say.
Mikal raises an eyebrow at me.
“I’ll go when I’m ready.” When I stop avoiding Kudus and my failures.
He bites back whatever it was he was going to say, thumping me on the back. “There’s a place on my pew for you.”
“How generous.”
“Visiting royalty and all, you know,” he says with a wink.
I watch him leave, Ahmad trailing a step behind, just like I used to.