Chapter Eleven #2
“We don’t have to buy anything,” she reassured him. “But it’s fun just to look, isn’t it?” Ethyr hesitated before nodding. “Then let’s go!” she said cheerfully, and started into a building. He hurried after, glancing around at the guards as they took position to his sides and behind him.
He had to admit he preferred being on the same level as everyone else.
It was strange, unnerving even, to be sitting high above them as they passed through the streets.
But above or at level, it didn’t stop the stares and murmurs and merchant solicitations.
Someone even reached out as he passed by, not grabbing him, but to let their fingers brush his shirt and arm.
Ethyr leaned away but the guard at that side had already taken hold of their wrist and shoved them away with a barked, “Hands off!”
Despite the apparent lack of intimidation people felt, the crowd still made way for them wherever they went.
As soon as they approached a shop or stall they were given space to reach the front, and the seller was quick to bring out their most expensive item and extol the quality of it.
Ethyr looked at ribbons, lace, jewelry, fabric, ready-made clothing, tapestries, belts, pelts, fruits, games, coin purses, sweets, carved trinkets, knives and axes that looked more like art than tools, and more, more than he’d known was possible to exist in one place.
Anything that someone might need or want could be found in one of the buildings.
He had to wonder if anyone here ever lifted a finger to make their own things.
Over the next few hours, the only things bought were little pockets of bread filled with meat for a quick meal, and a small sweet that Poyut insisted on Ethyr trying.
It had a brittle casing that burst open in his mouth to a delicious pool of honey.
At the very least the food wasn’t exorbitantly expensive, though it was certainly more money than Ethyr would have ever paid himself.
They were at a stall selling accessories, ignoring the owner’s ranting—Ethyr had gotten good at that—when a set of jewelry he had seen several times by then drew his eye.
Two little pieces, sometimes precious gems, sometimes metals warped into a design, but always sold together.
These two had the same hooked metal top that seemed ubiquitous for the jewelry, but dangling from them were slender, teardrop stones Ethyr had never seen before.
They were almost the color of pearl, but even more iridescent, and where light hit them they rippled soft blue and pink and orange.
“What are those?” Ethyr asked Poyut, pointing. The merchant pounced before she could reply.
“Do you like them, Your Divinity?” he asked, lifting the little cloth they were attached to. “You have excellent taste. They would certainly shine best on you, against your dark hair and skin.” He paused. “But your ears aren’t pierced, Your Divinity.”
Ethyr stared blankly at him.
“They’re earrings,” Poyut explained. “You can pierce your earlobes with a needle, and they go through the holes to hang from your ears.”
He had seen people with things hanging from their ears, but hadn’t thought they were literally hanging from them, only attached superficially somehow.
“They are quite popular these days,” the merchant said. “And you won’t find earrings as beautifully, delicately crafted as my own.”
Every vendor said the exact same thing. Ethyr ignored him. “Does it hurt?” he asked dubiously.
“I don’t know,” Poyut admitted. “I’ve never had it done, but it doesn’t seem to hurt terribly. Even young children have their ears pierced sometimes.”
“Look.” The merchant pulled them from the cloth and offered them. “Hold them up to your ears.”
Ethyr furrowed his brow, but when the man pushed them encouragingly towards him, he obliged, taking them and doing as told. The merchant pulled a little framed square from below his counter and held it up.
It was a mirror—not big enough to show his whole face, but large enough to see the area around his ear, and the earring dangling below it. He couldn’t help but turn his head one way, then the other, admiring how they looked contrasted so nicely against his hair and neck.
“Do you want them?”
Ethyr looked up at Poyut’s encouraging smile and lowered his hands. “Oh, no, better not.”
Despite his words, she turned to the seller. “How much?”
“Four sulra.”
“Two sulra,” Poyut countered.
“Three sulra, fifty quios.”
“Two sulra, twenty-five.”
“Three sulra,” the merchant replied with a firm air of finality.
Poyut considered this.
“Two sulra,” Ethyr spoke up before she could agree. “Or I don’t want them.”
The man looked between them, almost as though he expected Poyut to deny this, but she only looked back at him with raised eyebrows. His shoulders dropped a little in defeat. “Two sulra, then,” he agreed. Poyut handed silver coins over and a little wrapped package was given in return.
Two sulra. Still hundreds more than any amount of currency he had ever held, but it was better than six kith.
“Anything else that catches your eye, Your Divinity?” the merchant asked. “This necklace, perhaps? It would go perfectly with the earrings.” Ethyr shook his head and the man did a poor job of hiding his disappointment.
“It’s getting late,” Poyut said, pulling him from the stall. “We should head back.”
Ethyr followed obediently to the horses, ignoring the man’s calls to tell everyone where he got the earrings from.
As they rode up the mountain, before they reached the long road to the palace, Poyut halted them in front of an enormous building, its stairs framed by wide columns. The top of the stairs, to one side of the entrance, hosted a regal statue of Catocus.
Poyut beckoned Ethyr down from his horse so he dismounted.
“This is the administration forum,” she told him. “As king, I think you should be familiar with it.”
“Oh.” He had assumed with the additional guards that they weren’t going to go here. “It’s all the government officials, right?” he asked, looking and sounding as innocent as possible. “Surely they wouldn’t hurt me. I can’t imagine I need guards in there.”
The guards looked at each other.
“I’ll go in with him,” Poyut reassured them.
“We’ll be back in a few minutes.” She herded him towards the stairs before any of them could protest. “They’re going to tell the High Priest you were here,” she murmured as they trod up the steps.
“It might get you in trouble again. So if you don’t want to, you don’t have to go in. ”
“I want to,” Ethyr said confidently. Yorith could stub a toe.
“Why do you want to talk to Lyrian anyway?”
“I… have questions I think he can answer.”
She halted by the doorway and gripped his arm to stop him from entering. “Lyrian isn’t that different from Yorith,” she told him quietly. “He’s ambitious and scheming, and uses people for his own gain. You have to be careful with him.”
Ethyr met her gaze boldly, the warning not chipping his determination in the slightest. Fight fire with fire, after all.
Poyut sighed. “Follow me.”
Inside the wide halls were more columns, holding the ceiling from the center.
The floor was polished marble and the walls were the same material as the columns, which was the material that made up the palace.
It occurred to Ethyr that the temple, palace, and this building must have been the oldest ones in the city.
They were built from a cruder material that wasn’t as pure white as most of the other buildings.
Poyut started down the right side. Tapestries filled the walls, depicting more legends like the ones in his room.
Here and there between tapestries were pedestals holding busts or miniature statues.
The people they depicted were unfamiliar to Ethyr.
According to Poyut, they were made in the likeness of great officials, past and present.
Occasionally along the sides of the corridor stood a guard, who didn’t acknowledge them.
Ethyr had initially thought all the guards wore the same uniform, and they almost did.
All wore sturdy sandals with sensible tunics, their forms a bit bulky from what Ethyr had discerned was some kind of armor underneath.
But their swords, in the scabbards attached to their leather belts, had different colored cloth wrapped around their hilts.
Originally he had thought they were randomly colored, but he had noticed that all palace guards, Poyut included, had hilts wrapped in red and gold.
The guards in the forum had blue hilts. And he remembered the one who had found him on the side of the road had had a green and yellow hilt.
He was sure the colors meant something—ranking, most likely.
But he didn’t have a clue how the guards were ranked, so it wasn’t exactly helpful.
They didn’t make it far before they were accosted by two people walking up the corridor.
“Your Divinity!” one exclaimed, stopping short. “Whatever are you doing here?”
He glanced at Poyut. She stood with her hands behind her back and chin down, like she did with Yorith. He assumed he couldn’t count on her help now. He opened his mouth, then closed it to stifle the “uh” that almost popped out. It was habit from his lessons now.
“I wanted to see the administration forum,” he answered after a second. “This is where all important decisions are discussed and made, correct?”
“Most of them,” the woman agreed. Her voice sounded familiar.
He had to think she, both of them really, had been at the inauguration feast, so he would have met them.
Which meant nothing to him, because even if he could discern who they were without masks of paint, he hardly remembered any names or titles from that night, weeks ago.
Though he was certain he hadn’t heard the name ‘Lyrian.’
“Would you like us to show you around?” the other woman asked.
“No, thank you,” he said quickly. “Poyut is showing me.”