Chapter Five: Power And Imbalance
NILHIN'S ARMS WERE covered in dirt and mud. He had tried to wash them off in the water, as well as he had tried to prepare the animals he had caught for the children to eat, too, but dirt stuck in the crevices of his elbows and his forearms, and under all his long nails. He would have to cut his nails when he found an instrument to do so, because no matter how much he wanted to just drag them down the side of a tree, he couldn’t imagine how terribly those nails might catch on his clothes or his friends alike. They were really sharp, just like his mother’s, except she always knew how to be careful with them. Nilhin wasn’t used to them, and had cut his pants in two different places since they randomly grew out. It must have been more magic that he used accidentally.
“Maer?” Nilhin asked, guiding the buffalo back to the cart. He found Maer spread out on the bench, asleep, and the children were all asleep too. Nilhin was shocked for a moment, but glad that nobody had come across them to hurt them a second time. He set the pika and voles he caught up against the wheels before he hooked the buffalo back to the cart.
“Maer?” he asked, this time patteding Maer’s hollow cheeks as he did so. Maer’s eyes slowly opened, and he blinked a few times. The boy stared up at Nilhin, his eyes widening unusually large.
“You’re doing it again,” Maer said. “You’re glowing.” Nilhin looked away from him. If it bothered him, then he didn’t have to look at him. Maer grabbed him by the face, turning his head back. “I don’t mind, I just thought you’d want to know. It was a little weird to wake up to, but not bad. Did you find food?”
“Yeah, I have some berries,” Nilhin said, pulling a few handfuls of plump blackberries from his pockets. He remembered that Nehe said he had eaten poisonous berries and survived, so Nilhin hadn’t picked any of those when he found him. He knew that blackberries were safe because his aunties ate them too. He did eat some of the other berries for himself while he was there, though, ‘baneberries’ or whatever Nehe had called them. Nilhin set those on the bench before he reached down to pick up the creatures he had killed. He had only put them in his mouth a little bit, so they weren’t that bad. He really just needed to shake them hard enough to break their necks, and it turned out he was really good at knowing how to do that.
“I caught these, but I don’t know how to clean them properly,” Nilhin admitted. Maer got up on his knees.
“You killed all of these?” Maer asked. “It’s only been a chas and a half. You’re a really good hunter!”
“Thanks,” Nilhin said, looking away because his face was feeling warm, and his stomach felt fluttery like when his mother told him how pretty his calligraphy was or how nice his poetry sounded. He held them out to Maer. “I already ate one, so these are for everyone else. There’s two pikas and three voles there. They didn’t even see me coming.”
“You ate one? Raw?” Maer asked. “Won’t you get sick?”
This was the second time someone questioned him eating raw meat, first with Nehe and the fish, and now Maer and the pika he devoured. Was it uncommon to eat raw meat? He hadn’t paid much attention to his aunties eating, since they didn’t like to be watched when they ate -- they said it was unbecoming for ladies to eat at all so they had to hide it, especially from men (Nilhin had been offended they considered him a lousy man).
“I think I’ll be okay,” Nilhin said with a smile. “I think I can practice that fire spell now. I feel really warm already.” Maer hopped off the cart and took the animals from Nilhin. Nilhin built a small fire on the side of the road and with a shaking hand, fearing that they wouldn’t be able to cook these without fire and everyone would starve, he tried to cast the spell, and it worked, a plume of flame that nearly rose past the treetops in height easily set the small wooden pile ablaze.
“Whoa!” Maer cried, only for him to cheer more enthusiastically a minute later. “That’s amazing!”
“Thank you,” Nilhin said, looking at his hands. He had never done that before. It really was amazing, but that warmth was gone from him, and he felt cold again. He had no reason to use his spell again, but he feared that he may not be able to replicate it. He wondered how he had been able to properly channel his energy the first time. Maer and Nilhin had to use all their muscle to pull the skin and fur from the animals in their hands.
“We need to get their insides out,” Maer said. Nilhin turned his head. He knew that fish insides had to go, they didn’t taste very good and they weren’t very nutritious either, but these creatures weren’t fish, and Nilhin couldn’t reason why they would throw their juicy insides away.
Nilhin used his newfound nails to slice the animals open, and Maer tossed their insides out by the handful. Nilhin caught a liver in his hand and stuffed it into his mouth. Maer stared at him again.
“You eat their organs, too?” Maer asked.
“That’s the tastiest part,” Nilhin said. “Why don’t you eat the insides?”
“Because they don’t taste good,” Maer replied. Both of them tilted their heads, clearly not believing each other. Nilhin certainly couldn’t understand why Maer wouldn’t like the organs of his hard earned prey. “How about we keep a few of them, and we can roast them, too. I’ll try them, and then you eat some of the cooked meat too, so you can see if maybe that tastes better.”
“That’s reasonable,” Nilhin said with a nod. They saved some of the better organs and Nilhin skewered them on a stick before setting it up by the fire to roast. One-by-one, they roasted the rodents on sticks over the fire. The scent of cooking meat must have woken up the hungry children, and Nilhin helped them evenly distribute it amongst themselves. As they finished roasting the last vole, and as the gaggle of children under their protection started to doze from the recent increase of fats and meat in their starved little bodies, Maer scooted closer to Nilhin, pressing their knees and hips together.
“Here,” Maer said, holding out a piece of cooked meat.
“I’ve eaten cooked meat before,” Nilhin said with a laugh, but he leaned forward and snatched it from Maer’s hand with his teeth. It tasted like cooked meat, although it lacked any spices. It was fine. He held the skewer out to Maer to try the organs, and Maer looked at it dubiously before he pulled the end heart off with his teeth and chewed it. Hearts were pretty chewy, though, since they were mostly muscle.
“I don’t like how chewy it is,” Maer decided. “I don’t hate the flavour though. Does it taste differently cooked?” Nilhin leaned closer to Maer and pressed his lips to his, pressing his tongue into his mouth. Maer shrieked and pushed Nilhin away by the shoulders. Maer jumped to his feet. “What-- what was that?”
“I was tasting the heart you just ate,” Nilhin said.
“I meant for you to taste one of the other hearts we cooked,” Maer explained. Nilhin took a bite from the skewer, not having much problem with chewiness since his teeth ripped the muscle to shreds. He probably had better teeth than Maer though, because his mother made sure he took very good care of them, and she used to check them when he was young, too. He knew he had very good teeth.
“It doesn’t taste as good, but I won’t ask you to eat a raw heart. I know people think that’s weird,” Nilhin said. Maer’s nose scrunched up.
“Friends don’t do that with each other, by the way,” Maer said, walking back to the cart. Nilhin gave the skewer to the kids so they could eat what they wanted, and followed behind Maer.
“What do you mean?”
“Friends don’t kiss each other,” Maer said. The vehemence, the disgust in his voice made Nilhin feel smaller than before. If friends don’t kiss each other, Nilhin hoped that they didn’t talk like this to one another either. He felt like he was being scolded for a mistake he didn’t know he had made, and maybe that’s what was happening, but it was worse because he was scared he could lose his first friend because of it. “I guess you wouldn’t know that, though. Your mother’s a whore, isn’t she?”
Now Nilhin cringed away. That word. That one that everyone always said around the brothel, when they looked down at the women inside, when they scolded them for virtue or lack of it. Nilhin had never hated anything in his life more than that word: whore. What a disgusting and pejorative term that did no one any good.
“She’s a courtesan,” Nilhin corrected him.
“That’s the same thing.”
“Why are you being like this?” Nilhin asked. “I just… I just did that, and now you’re calling my mother--”
“I already knew she was a whore. I’m saying you’re following in her footsteps!”
Nilhin stumbled back, his head tilting to the side. Maer had just said… Maer had just…
“It was just a kiss, Maer,” Nilhin said. Kisses weren’t bad at all. That’s how people expressed their affection. His mother kissed him, too, maybe not like he kissed Maer, but he didn’t like Maer like he liked his mother. They had a different kind of relationship, and he had been so happy. He hadn’t thought. He should have known…
“I don’t want to kiss you,” Maer said. “I thought you wanted to meet a nice girl. You can’t kiss boys if you want a nice girl, Nilhin.”
“I want a nice boy, too,” Nilhin said. “They’d get along, and we’d be very happy together. All of us.”
“You’ve lived in debauchery for too long to realise how messed up that is,” Maer said. “Normal people, people who didn’t get raised in a place like a brothel, know that you can’t do stuff like that.”
“I won’t do it again,” Nilhin said. “Let’s just… let’s just pretend that it didn’t happen.”
“I can’t,” Maer said. “How can I trust you to not teach the kids this? Do you want them to learn that what you did was okay?”
Nilhin was still shocked, and he didn’t understand what was so bad either.
“Why would they have to know?” Nilhin asked. Maer sighed and shook his head, looking down. It wasn’t just shame that blossomed in Nilhin’s chest, but the feeling of someone’s disappointment in him weighed heavily as well.
“I don’t want your perverted ways to corrupt a bunch of perfectly fine kids,” Maer said. “I should have known you were weird ever since you turned into a dog. You killed two people!”
“I saved us!” Nilhin shouted back. Maer had started it, though. He took a deep breath. “I saved us, and what did you do? What could you have done, huh? You were helpless without me. You’d remain helpless without me. You need me!”
“I don’t need you,” Maer said. “I just wanted to help my friend, but now I don’t even want to look at you.”
“Who will keep you safe?”
“I’d rather be in danger than have to be around you and your freaky glowing problem, and eating raw meat, and growling sometimes. You’re weird, and you’re disgusting on top of it. I don’t know why you’d stay alive with the world stacked against you like that. A whore and a freak.”
Nilhin’s lip quivered, but he refused to cry. He refused to… to be seen as weaker than someone else. He refused to ever truly be weaker than someone else ever again. He would never be at someone else’s mercy, not like Nehe. He would find a way to be strong, even if that cost him what pride he had, because whatever was wrong with him then, he never wanted it to happen again.
“Don’t wait for me,” Nilhin said. “I won’t come looking. When I’m powerful -- and I will be the most powerful -- I won’t even think of you. After all, what would someone like you have to offer someone like me? Even now, I’m a whore and a freak, and you don’t even have that, do you? What can you do, besides wait for someone else to come and save you from your own failures?” Nilhin turned to walk away. He didn’t say goodbye to the children they had been caring for together for the past few days. He pretended like he didn’t know them. It was better that way. He walked the street in the dark, and held his necklaces firmly against his chest. He was covered in dirt and grime, and now blood from his prey. He didn’t stop when the wagon passed him many chas later, and they disappeared far ahead of him. He didn’t need them.
When Nilhin finally got to Capvita, he didn’t blend in very well at all. They were so pristine. Everyone was dressed in clean, colourful robes in the city of Seritium, and as he passed the vendors, people looked at him and clutched their money and their children to them (away from him). He had cleaned up as much as he could, but he was still wearing tattered clothes, and his hair, while it wasn’t tangled, was still slightly a mess since he hadn’t had any soap to make it nice and clean or oil to make it properly shiny. Capvita was in the center of the city, a sprawling kingdom made of tall buildings carved from blocks of imported white stone. There were gardens and pristine fountains in the distance. Nilhin walked up the dozens of steps and finally entered the kingdom proper.
He continued through some of the halls, until he had no idea where to go. He passed by a group of disciples, dressed in the customary white silk uniforms of the Luc Clan.
“Excuse me?” he asked. The trio stopped and turned to him. “This one is Nilhin, and I’m looking for my father, Luc Gallus. Perhaps you can direct me to him?”
The group was quiet for a moment, looking between one another and then back to him. Suddenly the middle boy started to laugh.
“You came all the way here to talk to Clan Leader Luc? Don’t you know it’s his son’s birthday today? Come back later and he may not shame you as bad for daring to approach him,” the boy said.
“Apologies, but this one cannot wait. My mother is very ill, and she insisted that my father could help. I can’t--”
“We’ll show you to the clan leader,” one of the other disciples said.
“Ah, this one thanks you, brother.”
The boys laughed, but waved their hands for him to follow. Nilhin trailed after the impossibly tall disciples and they led him through the labyrinthian maze of halls, but Nilhin knew he could navigate them perfectly now. He was very good at recall and memory. He saw, in a garden, people had joined together, some in clothes from far away and some from nearby.
“Clan leader,” one of the disciples said, bowing alongside the other three members. Nilhin similarly bowed just to be safe. “This boy here is claiming to be your son. He says he must speak with you. It’s urgent, and he refused to leave without your audience.”
“Refused to leave?” the man, Luc Gallus, his father, asked. The tone he said made Nilhin nervous. “It’s my son’s birthday -- my worthy son’s birthday. Surely you told him.”
“We did, but apparently his mother is more important,” the disciple said.
“Let me see him,” Luc Gallus said, and the disciples parted to reveal Nilhin. Luc Gallus looked him up and down, appraising his value and worth based on his appearance, before he scoffed and stood up. “Who was your mother, boy?”
“My mother is Nilbi, father,” Nilhin said, bowing again. “She’s really sick--”
“I don’t care,” Luc Gallus said. There were some laughs from around them, not just from the disciples, but from the guests attending the birthday. The boy, looking just like Luc Gallus, and very much like he and Nilhin could be related, was a bit older than Nilhin but not much. He looked upset though, and Nilhin didn’t mean to disturb his birthday party, but surely he could understand that his mother was dying and she needed help more than this boy needed another lavish birthday.
“Fath--”
“Don’t call me that,” Luc Gallus interrupted again. Nilhin nodded.
“Clan Leader,” Nilhin began. His father didn’t stop him, “Perhaps I should wait…”
“No, no, you’re already here, aren’t you? Tell me what you need, and maybe I can help,” Luc Gallus said.
“My mother’s really sick. She sent me here to help you, she raised me to be useful for you, but… but I just want her to get better. I was hoping you could spare a doctor to maybe save her…”
“You want me to send one of my doctors to help some whore?” Luc Gallus asked. Nilhin cringed at that word again. “Because that’s what your mother was, a whore. How do I even know you’re my son if she has a profession like that?”
“She insisted that--”
“Because I’m the richest client that had ever bothered to entertain himself with her, I’m sure,” Luc Gallus said. “And you came all the way here, in your stinky clothes, to try and get her a doctor. I’m glad you didn’t seem interested in being a disciple here, because I wouldn’t ever let something like you into Capvita.” Nilhin stepped back, but the disciple came to stand behind him, keeping him from escaping. “Stinking, helpless, poor, and pathetic. Why, you’re barely better than a whore yourself, having come from one. Why don’t you make yourself useful and follow in her footsteps. Nobody here wants you. Why would I?”
“She said you love her,” Nilhin tried, but Luc Gallus scoffed.
“Did she really believe that? No wonder, for a whore who could both read and write, she was always so stupid. Things like her don’t get to fall in love with the king in a golden tower. That’s just a romance pathetic women cling to because they’re too useless to do anything themselves. She was as useless as you, and she even managed to pop out a filthy brat in an attempt to trap me. What a conniving wench. If she wasn’t already dying, I should have someone execute her for trying to steal power from my rightful and good son.”
“She would never--” Luc Gallus slapped him, and Nilhin’s body crashed back against the disciples at his back. They pushed him forward, and he swayed on his feet.
“Don’t contradict me, ingrate,” his father said, leaning closer to him. “The audacity you must have had to come into my home and make demands of me--” his father tsked his tongue-- “on my precious son’s birthday, no less? Come here.” Nilhin didn’t move towards his father, a cruel and mean man that his mother must have been tricked into loving. “I said come here!” Nilhin stumbled forward when the disciples pushed him again. He walked towards his father, and the man reached out to pat his hair before his fingers clawed into his hair, grabbing him and jerking him off his feet.
Luc Gallus dragged Nilhin out of the garden and through the winding halls. There was a procession behind him of the guests that watched, some with horror, some with fascination, others with indifference. Nilhin tried to pry his father’s hand free, but he was too strong to force away from him. Nilhin tried to get back on his feet, but everytime he gained balance, his father would pull him off balance. The man threw him off the side of the raised balance. Nilhin hit the ground, landing in one of many reservoirs that were seemingly used to move water throughout the area. This one stunk of refuse, though.
“Learn your place, and don’t ever come back. You belong in the trash just like your whore mother,” Luc Gallus said. The man pulled a fan from the golden belt around his waist and fanned himself with it like he hadn’t just thrown Nilhin down a twenty-foot drop into wastewater. Nilhin picked himself up and walked away. The laughter and jeers from behind him, from his father, rang like loud music to fuel his rage. It was too soon, though. Nilhin wasn’t strong enough to get revenge right now. It may take one year, it would probably take more than five, but it would happen, and Nilhin would make Luc Gallus regret his actions and his words. He didn’t know how, but he knew he would humiliate the man as much as he humiliated him, and he’d have hundreds more onlookers to watch that ‘king in a golden castle’ fall from where he thought himself so high and mighty.
There was only one place left to go after such an experience: back to his mother.
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