M
y father had once declared, to a room full of stone-faced lords, that hedonism had turned the heads of our kings rotten. Even as a child I had known he did not truly believe this—this was after the rebellion, you see, and he had merely wished to keep his head—yet my solemn epiphany was quickly drowned by a chorused round of agreement, glass clinking against metal as fifty wineglasses were emptied, all at once, down the bowels of an iron chamberpot. Just like that, frivolity, in a ritual near-traitorously ceremonial, became a thing of the past. Deed done, they were monarchists no more. In one silent line they shuffled back to their seats, where a cold dinner and a cup of flat ale awaited.
(The champagne would not be opened until dessert.)
Festivals had once been as common as sandgrouse in the court of the Sun. It is hard to imagine, no? Hard to imagine even for an Ieshan. Yet in my father’s father’s time, there were celebrations for everything. For the birth of a son; for the triumph of a generalissimo; for the end of summer; for the reaping of the grain; for the joining of two families in marriage. It was Calvhura II who had started the tradition of celebrating the birth of daughters, and in that year, the streets had run red with wine.
Wine, or blood? For Solterra, it is either one or the other.
§
The sun cake, hot from the ovens, melts like butter on my tongue. I bite down, flood my mouth with honey, wince when my teeth strike metal. “You have followed the recipe exactly,” I say, with a laugh.
“Yes,” says the baker, his breath the white of flour. “I was worried at first, putting the coins in—afraid they wouldn’t hold.” He shakes loose a batch of golden cakes from their oil-slicked molds. Tongues of honey drizzle over their crust. I pluck the sun coin out and hold it up to the oven’s leaping fire.
The baker looks over. “I think that is the only one in this batch, your majesty. What luck, eh?” He smiles at me warmly; and because I was born a prince, I know approval (filling up the space left open besides contractual civility) when I see it. I smile back.
“Is it really?” Through the open window wafts in the crisp, hot smell of senita pastries. I toss the coin into the air. “What luck.”
It is the morning before the festival, hours before the first bell of the Noon Feast will be struck. The palace kitchens are hazy with black smoke and white flour and bubbling conversation, riverine and lax.
I offer to carry the platters to the feasting table three times, and three times am waved away by a sigh and a bitten-back smile. “Oh, come now,” I say to the fourth, my eyes crinkling up to slyness. “It is tradition. It would be cruel to let me go out empty-handed.” She hesitates, bites her lip, looks from her tray of flan to me, princely eager besides her. I do not yet know how to be a king. This is the trick; this is the currency I will use until they tire of it.
The platter drops gently into my grasp. Set it between the basket of anemones and the flagon of Deluminian wine, she whispers. The anemones and the flagon, I repeat, before ducking victoriously out into the courtyard.
a shard of god
in my mouth
as a note, Adonai is walking through the courtyard where the feasting table is placed!
BRIGHT SPLASH OF BLOOD ON THE FLOOR. ASTONISHING RED.
(All that brightness inside me?)
(All that brightness inside me?)
♦︎♔♦︎
