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MIKAL PEERS OVER MY shoulder at the register.
“How could he?” Mikal asks, anger and disbelief in his voice.
It’s the same question I want answered.
“Who?” Bendahara Siti echoes.
Suraya says the name I cannot form, “Jeffett Ishi.”
I’d thought Azman a traitor, giving Jeffett a way to oust me. He’d sneaked into my confidence and stolen my letters, presenting them to Jeffett as evidence of my faults. Everything from there on had been my own fault because I hadn’t wanted to give in. I hadn’t played by their rules.
But this betrayal is even worse. There are no rules now.
“Wait. What do you mean Jeffett Ishi?” Temenggung Hakim asks. “His own uncle? The Regent?”
“Do you have any other proof?” Laksamana Rizal sounds more thoughtful than shocked.
“Nothing written,” Suraya replies. “We didn’t want to risk losing the evidence if we were stopped by a patrol during our travels. You’ll be able to see physical evidence in Bayangan.”
Laksamana Rizal frowns. “That’s not enough. A document like this can be forged or signed under coercion. Someone else could have taken the keris and written Jeffett’s name. Surely you have something else to corroborate.”
“Witnesses, again in Bayangan.” Suraya answers with a wolfish grin. “We have servants who are willing to testify if we can guarantee their safety. The keeper of the records will testify that Jeffett himself signed this. Others saw Jeffett leaving the castle with the keris. We have the remains of his bloodstained clothes.”
“But why did he leave the keris behind?” Mikal asks.
Suraya sounds unsure when she replies, “It’s likely he overlooked it in his distress. Cold-hearted or not, what he did still took a toll on him.”
“Speculation aside,” Laksamana Rizal interjects, “Raja Yosua still needs enough evidence to ensure there is a case to be brought against Jeffett. It will not do to send him back on half-speculations and undelivered promises.”
“We might be able to get some correspondence, but it’s difficult.” Suraya resumes her clipped pace as she gets back to more certain facts. “Jeffett doesn’t keep many of his letters unless he’s planning on using it for blackmail. He tends to just burn everything. We sometimes find scraps in the bin or in the ashes of a bonfire—which is where we found the clothes—but they’re not always useful. But we have witnesses who are not afraid to testify.”
“How can this be?” I’m sure I look as dazed as I feel. “Where are they now?”
“The witnesses? They are still in Bayangan, but we’ve smuggled most of them out of the city and hidden them in sympathetic kampungs for their safety. Jeffett has never paid attention to the servants and the slaves in the castle. Some of them being replaced is not a matter that he would pay any attention to. It also gives us a way to replace them with our spies.”
“He paid attention to Relka,” I insist. “Why would he not—” I cut myself off. Hadn’t I already learnt this with Mikal three years ago? Because they’re not important.
“He only paid attention to Relka and his family because they were a means to an end,” Suraya reminds me, “a way to spy on you and to pressure you into obedience. Now that you’re gone, he has no use for them any longer.”
“What did he do—”
“They’re safe,” she interrupts. “We got them out.”
My head is reeling. “Who is this ‘we’ you keep mentioning? As far as I know, you’re part of a Mahan troupe on the run. How would you know anything of this?”
Suraya looks at Mikal and the other Majlis members for approval.
“You might as well tell him,” Bendahara Siti says. “Stop teasing the poor boy.”
“Not a boy,” I growl.
“Wait, what’s going on?” Mikal sounds as confused as I am.
“Did you ever wonder why Amanah’s troupe was only made up of Mahans?” Bendahara Siti asks.
I had found it curious but hadn’t thought too much of it. It just was, like there were many travelling troupes that were only made up of Tawanan, though mixed troupes were more common than solely Mahan ones. Not many Mahans liked being part of a travelling troupe, preferring roles tied to a permanent theatre. They looked down on it as a low-skilled, low-paying job, the kind only those in a bad situation would take up as a last resort.
“It was an experiment Bendahara Siti set up,” Suraya takes over the explanation. “We needed a way to get more information from Bayangan that neither you nor your father could provide. Trade was too slow, and merchants didn’t have the kind of access we needed. We couldn’t send a paderi or a justice, no matter how well disguised—that would break all our agreements with you and we didn’t want to put Garett on the spot.”
“Han managed to get Ayah’s agreement,” I remind them.
“Yes, but that was purely Mikal trying to muscle his way in.” Siti smirks.
Mikal scowls at her.
Suraya continues, “So we put together a dance troupe made up of spies and soldiers. And we sent ourselves in.”
“You tricked us.” They’d seemed like a real troupe. I remember Amanah telling me about collecting folklore from the northern kampungs. Had they done that just for subterfuge?
“Not really. We really are a dance troupe—all of us are professionally trained. We do have a very good repertoire. Besides, collecting stories from the kampungs and creating routines out of them gave us a great excuse to talk to people. Put our ears to the ground. Not something any other visitor can do freely.” Suraya looks proud of herself.
“Did you know?” I turn to Mikal.
“No. This is the first I’ve heard of it.” He doesn’t look happy.
Bendahara Siti apologises. “We weren’t sure if it would work—”
“You’re not meant to be keeping secrets from me,” Mikal growls.
“Ampun, Tuanku. It was an experiment,” Bendahara Siti says with a sigh. “Amanah was supposed to return after performing at the Bayangan Castle and report how it went. If it succeeded, we would then present it to you as the solution you’ve been searching for. If it didn’t, we’d just cancel the project. It wasn’t supposed to spiral so badly out of control.” She eyes Suraya sideways. “You weren’t supposed to spend months touring Bayangan without any word.”
Suraya shrugs in reply, unapologetic.
“I’m sorry. Amanah was a good man.” I wince as I say it, feeling that it comes out trite when I was the reason he was killed.
“He knew the dangers. And he wanted to do it,” Bendahara Siti says. “All of them were volunteers. We didn’t send anyone who wasn’t willing.”
“The question now is, what are you going to do?” Laksamana Rizal asks, bringing our attention back to the issue at hand.
I gape at him. “Me?”
“Yes, you. Now that you know your uncle engineered everything in order to declare war on Terang, what are you going to do about it?”
“I’m not sure I can—”
“Don’t hide behind your exile, Yosua. Your people are crying out for justice. Your nobles stood against Jeffett to save your life. You say you are burdened for your people. So, what are you going to do about it?”
I bristle. “I don’t like the insinuation—”
“I don’t care what you say, Yosua. Talk is cheap.”
“Pak Rizal...” Mikal says.
“Don’t defend him. He wants to call himself Raja, he must prove his worth. He can’t forever hide himself away and do nothing.”
I haven’t called myself Raja in months. I haven’t called myself anything in months. All I’ve done is cry out to Kudus to save my people. He hasn’t done anything to help me, and I don’t know what else to do.
I stalk out of the room as their voices rise.
––––––––
“REACH FARTHER TO YOUR left. Stretch. That’s it. That’s how the form is supposed to look.” Suraya grins at me from where she stands.
I keep facing forward, studying her in the mirror as she folds herself into another pose.
“Your face doesn’t look contrite,” I say with a snort.
“I’m not apologising to you,” she says. “I’m telling you to apologise.”
Now I turn to face her. “To whom? For what?”
“Are you playing at being oblivious or are you just a jerk?”
I frown at her.
“What are you trying to achieve?” she asks.
Oblivion. I want to forget myself, my calling, my failure, my uncle’s betrayal.
“Privacy,” I say.
She rolls her eyes. “Forget I said anything. Resume your pose.”
I turn back to the mirror and reach again.
“Put more into it, like you mean it. Like you’re grasping for your homeland.”
I close my eyes and reach for Maha. That doesn’t feel right. I reach for Bayangan instead, but that doesn’t fill me either. I drop my hands. “I don’t have a homeland.”
“If you want to dance, you need to believe what you’re saying, Raja Yosua. You need to know in your heart and hold in your core who you are and what you’re searching for.”
“Stop trying to manipulate me.”
She lays a hand on my shoulder. “I’m not. I’m telling you what my teachers taught me.”
“None of mine told me that.”
“They didn’t need to at the time. Why tell you something you already felt in your very bones?”
“What do you know? You weren’t there!” I pull myself back together. “I’m sorry, that was rude. But you don’t know me. You don’t get to tell me anything about myself.”
“I do know you, Yosua ayell Garett. I may not have known you while you were growing up, but I have spent months learning about you, listening to what people say about you.”
“And you think that’s enough?”
She sits cross-legged on the floor, back straight, hands on her thighs. “Why don’t you tell me?”
I mirror her pose. “There is nothing to tell.”
“Really? Have you not heard of Hikayat Putera Tawanan?”
The tale of the hostage prince? “What?”
“They whisper of a pure-hearted prince brought up in the courts of his enemy. No matter what the enemy did to sway him, to lure his allegiances away, his heart stayed true. Even when the enemy prince sought to influence him using love, friendship, and family, the hostage prince resisted. He knew that his country would always be his first love, even if he had never set foot in it, even if he never would.
“Luck finally looked his way, and the hostage prince escaped from the enemy’s grasp. He returned to the country of his ancestors, falling to his knees and weeping at the state that he found it in. Immediately, he set about rebuilding his kingdom. But some people grew bitter with his rule. The changes he sought to bring about were too many and too quick; he sought to better all his people, but to help the poor, he had to take from the rich.
“So whilst the poor loved him, the rich schemed against the pure-hearted prince. They blackened his name, saying that his heart had not been pure all along, that the enemy had corrupted him and was using him to bring ruin to them all. Yet the hostage prince stood firm in his beliefs.
“Soon, there was a schism in the kingdom. A false king rose and sent the hostage prince to meet his fate at the enemy’s hands. Fear and terror troubled the kingdom again, but the people whispered, assuring themselves that the hostage prince would return to save them once more.”
Ridiculous. I scoff, yet there is something about it that calls to me.
I harden my heart. “I’ve never heard this tale before.”
“No one would dare perform this in the city. Would you perform it amongst the people whom it villainises? But it’s gaining popularity in the rural kampungs.”
“You made it up.”
“All stories are made up,” she challenges.
“So how do they tell the ending?”
Suraya smiles. “There is no ending yet. None of the troupes have found one. They’re still asking the people for their answer. How would you like to end it? Would you return to save them?”
“You’d turn my life into a folktale? To ask the kampungs to supply the ending they wish? I am not a farce to be bandied about, Suraya.” My fists ache. I hadn’t realised I’d been clenching them so hard that my nails have gouged deep furrows in my palm. I uncurl my fingers one by one, slowly, deliberately.
“It’s not a farce. We merely tell this to discern the mood of the people. To see who they will follow. The answers are...encouraging.”
“Encouraging for whom?”
“For you, should you decide to return. They long to see their pure-hearted hostage prince in the flesh.”
I cannot look at her any longer, dropping my eyes to avoid her piercing gaze. “They will hate me once they see me and find that I have long been corrupted by the enemy.”
“Have you?”
I run my hands through the hair I’ve been growing these past months. “Kudus and the Mahan’s Amok Strength are not palatable to the Bayangan public. They do not want Yosua ayell Garett, the would-be raja who worships a foreign god and possesses forbidden magic. They want Yosett Regis Baya, your pure-hearted prince. But I cannot be him.”
“They do not need to know.”
“You want me to lie to them? How would that not be playing into the narrative of this false king? It wasn’t slander, what they accused me of. It was the truth. The trial is on public record. They will know who and what I am if they bother to look it up. I cannot return to them with a lie, Suraya. If I return, they must know the truth. It might be the people who kill me after all.”
She looks down at her hands. “There is another version, one that is even more popular than this one. One that ends.”
I raise an eyebrow at her. “Fine, I’ll take the bait. Tell me.”
Elegantly, gracefully, she rises to her feet. Then she closes her eyes and dances.