The Barbarian's Tale

Duke Ashem’s son! Rae hoped the ground would open and swallow him up when he saw that cocky face of his. What kind of joke was this? So tormented by questions and still forced to act natural in the presence of the Dukes, Rae wished he could go back and spend a little more time with the corpse.

If seeing Ven again so soon hadn’t been shocking enough, immediately after, Duke Bejuk showed Rae his sleeping arrangements. Gaori was led away by a servant to his rooms, while Rae was taken to a section of the palace he knew all too well.

Rae was the new Shak. And the Shak’s rooms were the grandest and most comfortable one could find perched on any mountainside. A bed bigger than the entire floorplan of Rae’s treehouse in Camp Kaolin piled high with silks and furs and partially obscured by crimson curtains. Chaise lounges and plush seats scattered around a smouldering fireplace. Along one wall were fine dressers, one with a stone basin and silver mirror placed on top. A side room with a lacquer writing desk overlooked the private tea garden. Truly, they were magnificent rooms.

But only a week ago they had been his father’s.

Unchanged since the last time Rae had seen them. And that bed! Rae didn’t ask if it was the bed his father had died in. He knew it had to be.

“I had hoped to return to my old rooms…” Rae said, imagining how much nicer it would be to return to his childhood bedroom. To walk the gardens he and his mother had played in, feed the ducks in the pond...

Duke Bejuk shook his head.

“They are in the Shana’s palace. It’s not appropriate. Not even for one night,”

Right. His and his mother’s rooms had been given over to the Ashem Shana long ago. And weighed-down with maternity as she was, Rae couldn’t very well force her out. No matter how much he’d love to see the look on her face.

Before Rae could begin to think of any more excuses to not sleep in this room, Duke Bejuk had started talking again.

“Well, out with it. How did you end up looking like this?” he asked, gesturing at Rae from head to toe.

“I was attacked at a guest house not far from here,” Rae said.

“Duke Ashem? I didn’t expect him to make a move so soon,”

“I don’t know. I thought so at first, but Ven Ashem was the one who stepped in to save me, so now I’m not sure…”

What had seemed simple on that terrible night, Rae was now unsure of. Could Duke Ashem have sent that assassin? Who else might have? Why had Ven helped him escape?

Duke Bejuk frowned.

“I’m not too familiar with young master Ven, keep your wits about you. There’s no telling what his intentions might be,”

He didn’t need to tell Rae twice. Rae felt like he might well have been hog-tied and frown into a river, these last few days. If he had, he would have come out with just as many bruises and only half as confused. Every day, he was jumping from pure terror to being comforted so gently, so sincerely, to teetering on the edge of terror again. If Ven Ashem’s intentions were truly good, Rae didn’t know how he could ascertain that. Not least with enough certainty to put his restless heart at ease.

Alas, Duke Bejuk might have been a master of the healing arts, but he specialised only in physical injuries. Any mental anguish would be Rae’s to cope with on his own.

“Your arm looks sore, let me take a look,”

It was sore. And Duke Bejuk’s examination did little to help that.

“It’s not broken, But I can tell it’s causing you quite a bit of pain. I would offer to treat it myself, but I think there’s someone else more suitable,” he said, hurrying off to find a servant before Rae could offer his agreement.

Duke Bejuk found a girl who was just sneaking out after changing the linens and sent her to work at once.

“Go to my residence and fetch Sebi, tell him it’s urgent,”

The poor girl was quite startled by being shouted at, but she knew not to keep Duke Bejuk waiting. She dropped the linens at her feet and ran off to the Bejuk house.

While she was gone, Rae told Bejuk that he was worried he’d have trouble sleeping that night, after all that had happened, and the duke was kept busy mixing a tonic for him. While the duke was at work at the desk, Rae settled down on a chaise lounge - anything but the bed - and took pleasure in the silence.

Rae was close to dozing off when the person who had been called arrived.

He was stunning like a water nymph or a star maiden. Snow white hair reached down to his waist, accentuated by porcelain skin and the pale grey robes of a healer. In the evening gloom, and Rae’s drowsy state, he seemed to glow with otherworldly light.

“You’re here at last,” Duke Bejuk said, startling Rae out of his half-dream.

“How shall I be of service?” The man, who Rae deduced was little more than a youth, asked. His voice was low and stern, laced with even more stubborn certainty than Duke Bejuk’s often was.

The Duke must have seen Rae’s incredulous expression, or at least have known that this individual was one of note, because he then explained to Rae who this was.

“Meet Sebi Bejuk. He has no parents so I took him in as my own, and he has apprenticed under all the masters at Camp Bejuk. Among our people, he’s unmatched,”

Rae suppressed a groan. Duke Bejuk might be relentless and single-minded, but at least he had some humanity. A little magnetism. This prodigy of his stood still as a rock while his praises were sung, and didn’t so much as smile.

“Sebi, his majesty has an injury that’s causing him some discomfort. I’ve already prepared him something to help him sleep, but can you see to his pain,”

Sebi’s eyes flitted across Rae, before landing on the injured arm.

“I can,” he said as if he’d been asked if he could go draw water from the river.

“Well, if that’s all that’s needed of me, I’ll retire for the night,” Duke Bejuk said, pausing for half a second to allow Rae a chance to stop him, before leaving with a flap of his sleeves.

A moment of silence passed between Rae and Sebi. Rae was too tired and in too forlorn a mood to try and make friends.

“I’ll need you to lie down on the bed,” Sebi said. Rae followed his gaze to the sleeping tonic the Duke had mixed for him, sitting on a dresser.

“I’d rather sleep here,” Rae said.

“It will be bad for your back, get on the bed,”

Of all the terrible things Rae had imagined might happen when he arrived at the Shak’s camp, being ordered around by a girly-faced healer with no social skills was the last thing he’d been worried about. All Rae could do was stare at that impassive face, framed by wisps of white curls.

“You’ll need to strip down to your underclothes too,” Sebi said when Rae sheepishly got up.

“What kind of treatment is this?” Rae asked.

It was cold even in the valleys, so Rae’s people, even stripped down to their underclothes, were not a particularly erotic sight. A long linen undershirt covered Rae’s modesty, but the healer’s forceful nature still made him want to hide.

“It’s a kind of acupressure, and I use an oil with numbing properties. Get on the bed,”

Rae did, reassuring himself that the linens were fresh, and his father’s spirit had already long departed.

Sebi took Rae’s arm in his hands. It was red and swollen, and there were a few places where the skin was broken and raw. Just looking at it made Rae wince, remembering how it had been scraped and bashed about in the initial fall and the crawl out of the boxwood. Sebi cradled it like no one had until now, and Rae was shocked that it didn’t throb like it had when Bejuk had examined him earlier.

Out of a pouch on Sebi’s waist, he pulled a jar, filled with a translucent green substance.

“Tell me if you feel any discomfort,” Sebi said and gently rubbed the oil onto Rae’s arm. He worked in circular motions, starting at the elbow, all the way down until he was caressing his fingertips -Treating his fingertips! Poor Rae. So lacking in experience and starved of affection that even a medical treatment felt like a lover’s touch.

“How did the injury occur?” Sebi asked. Rae didn’t expect that Bejuk’s prodigy would have the ability nor inclination to make small talk. It was his shock at this fact and definitely not the cooling, soothing effect of the oil, paired with the firmness and warmth of Sebi’s hands, that made Rae too muddled to give a proper reply.

“F-fell,” he gasped.

Sebi didn’t ask him for more details, or to explain, just continued his work diligently.

“You must be getting tired,” he said, and Rae couldn’t even find the strength to agree.

For a few moments, that pleasant pressure left Rae before Sebi returned with Bejuk’s sleeping tonic, a pale, odourless liquid in a small soup bowl.

Sebi placed his hand behind Rae’s head and helped him sit up and take a few small sips of the tonic. Bejuk’s creations were always very strong in taste, and there was still more than half left when Rae started coughing.

“T-tastes bad,”

“I’ll leave the rest here,” Sebi put the bowl on the bedside table, “is there pain anywhere else?”

Rae thought that Sebi’s treatment would also feel very nice on his sore knees and ankles, or his aching back. Maybe it could even soothe the headaches that often plagued him. In this sleepy state, the thought of the healer caressing his temples and stroking his hair as he drifted off to sleep… Rae couldn’t help but see the appeal.

Even so, his sense of propriety hadn’t quite left him.

“That’s enough for tonight, thank you,” he forced the words out while wrestling to keep his eyes open.

Warmth. Warmth from every direction. Something soft to press his cheek against. No matter the circumstances, it was nice to sleep in a bed again.

When Rae’s eyes opened, light was streaming through the study windows. The gentle sound of flowing water. A warm, hearty smell.

“Who’s there?” Rae was startled into a sitting position when he heard the sound of a boot hitting his floors.

Across the room, having just filled a basin with warm water, and left a steaming bowl on the table, was the servant who had been accosted by Duke Bejuk the previous night.

“Your majesty, I apologise,” she said.

The previous night! The last thing Rae remembered, was he had been lying on the bed, in nothing more than an undershirt, waiting for Sebi Bejuk to leave. He had hoped that once he was gone, he could take the nicest of the furs and go to sleep on the chaise lounge. That hadn’t gone to plan. But somehow he had still ended up buried under a dozen blankets. Rae started to feel a little feverish as a mortifying possibility dawned on him.

“Your majesty?”

The servant was so little that she might have been a child, but upon closer inspection she was about the same age as Rae, with a ruddy, freckled complexion and thick dark hair.

Rae covered his discomfort with a cough.

“Is that for me?” he asked of the bowl on the table.

“Yes! It’s good you woke up, it’s still nice and hot,”

Before Rae could protest she had brought the food to him on a tray. Rae must have spent too long in the backwater Kaolin camp, here it seemed even the servants were taking the lead. Some Shak he was.

In the bowl was hot chicken soup, with a selection of herbs that could have only been requested by Duke Bejuk. The taste was so strong he needed to take breaks between each mouthful, he took that chance to get to know the servant.

She was called Laela and had lived in the Shak’s camp since birth. Unmarried and not promised to anyone, the second girl in her family. She had served in the palace for four years, Rae thought about asking her how his father’s health had declined but decided against it.

“Were you around last night? Do you know what time young master Bejuk left?”

“Sebi? Yes, I waited outside for him to finish, I was hoping to get another look at him. But I waited long past midnight and there was still no sign of him, so I went home,” she said, and Rae started to doubt all the servants in the palace were quite so gutsy as this girl.

“A look at him? Why?”

“Because he’s so handsome. Don’t you think? He’s number one for a reason,”

“Number one?”

“Oops, please don’t tell him I said that,” she asked, and Rae shot her a look that said, explain or I’ll expose your depraved ways to the handsome healer.

“Well, there are a lot of handsome young masters who visit the palace… and us serving girls… we almost all agree that Sebi is the best of the best,”

The best of the best, eh? So good looks trump conversation skills among the serving girls in this palace, Rae thought.

“Almost?”

“Well there’s no accounting for taste is there? And in their defence, Sebi does have some stiff competition,”

“Alright, then who’s second place?” Rae had to gather as much info as he could, so he could have a good laugh watching Gaori attempt to climb the rankings.

“Your Majesty is embarrassing me! I’ve already said far too much,” Laela laughed, before taking the empty bowl and hurrying away.

After washing and dressing, Rae stepped out into the tea garden to get some air. He had slept almost till noon. Someone, probably Bejuk, must have taken mercy on him and convinced Duke Ashem to let him rest. Taking a deep breath, he went to find where the Dukes would be meeting with him today.