He inhales sharply, his grasp of my body tightening, though not painfully so. “You enjoy testing me.”
Maybe I do, which means my fear of him is waning. I don’t know if that’s good or bad. “I’m sorry, you told me to speak freely. Would you rather I bite my tongue and smile like a mindless fool?”
“In front of others, that would be ideal.”
I peer over my shoulder and up at his handsome though hard face, and flash him the widest, fakest grin I can muster. “Better?”
With a strangled sound, he releases me, only to set a hand on the small of my back. I coax myself into relaxing against his touch and together we walk forward.
Boaz’s expression is pinched. “Your Highness, would it not be better if a guard—”
“As you are,” Zander cuts him off as we pass.
Apprehension laces the aging couple’s face as we approach, the stench of unwashed skin filling my nostrils. The man’s shoes are torn, his toes hanging out. “Your Highness. Your Highness,” come the murmured echoes. The woman curtsies deeply before us. The old man attempts to bow, but it’s clear his hip won’t allow it.
“Please do not trouble yourself, sir,” Zander says with kindness in his voice that surprises me.
Up close, the woman reminds me of Inwood Park Ina, a woman who lost everything to medical bills and crippling depression after her husband passed away. When she wasn’t doing daily safety checks of her fellow homeless friends, she could be found down by the river, building inukshuks on boulders. I heard she died last year, alone by the water.
I reach into the bag and drop a handful of coins into this woman’s waiting hand.
Her eyes widen. With a sputtered whisper of “Fates bless you, Your Highness!” she glances around furtively before tucking them into her pocket for safekeeping.
Zander guides me along to the next shanty. “Maybe one per person going forward? My generosity is not bottomless.”
“And yet you live in a castle painted with gold,” I mutter.
He snorts. “That is rich, given what you have come from.”
A three-hundred-square-foot studio apartment with a noisy toilet, I want to say, but I know he isn’t talking about me.
We work our way down the street, the horses moseying alongside us, their riders ready to leap at the first sign of trouble. These people are not looking for anything but help. They’re visibly nervous as we greet them—varying degrees of fear and confusion in their exhausted eyes. Some have rattling coughs, the kind that never goes away. They remind me of the destitute I knew in New York, a community who guard their meager belongings while looking out for their neighbors, who move slowly, with limps in their step, and hunches in their shoulders, whether from physical pain or simply too many years of bearing the weight of a heavy life. Many of these people are missing limbs.
This rookery is full of people who were once slaves to the immortals. I see the scars in their ears, holes that will never close after so many years filled by metal tags. On some, the cartilage is damaged as if the cuff was too tight and cut into their flesh. A few are missing entire chunks of ear where the marker must have been torn out. Those people duck away, attempting to hide their secret with scarves and hats, as if afraid of being apprehended.
I merely smile and slip two coins into their hands instead of one, because their situation must have been especially grim for them to maim themselves. But that begs the question—what did they run from? What have these people endured?
By the time we reach the end of the road and the end of the velvet bag, my chest is both light and heavy, the bleakness of these people’s lives climbing under my skin.
Zander helps me into the saddle and remounts behind me. “You enjoyed that,” he says with bewilderment. It’s not a question.
“I don’t think enjoyed is the right word.” It was depressing. Back home, I can’t pass a homeless person on the street without digging through my purse for some loose change, a few dollar bills. It’s never enough. “Can we do that again?”
He takes the reins from Elisaf and the horses begin again at a steady canter, Boaz’s command laced with his eagerness to get away from these people. “We’re not emptying the royal coffers for the rookery, if that’s what you’re asking.”
How many of those bags of coin does he have, anyway? Perhaps with my newfound freedom, I’ll be able to find my way to these coffers. I would love to divest His Highness of some of his riches before I escape this place. “What is the rookery?” Besides crammed with old and sick ex-slaves who look like they’re waiting to die.
“It’s where many mortals go once they are of little value to Islor.”
“Of little value,” I echo, taking a moment to absorb those words and for my disgust to root.
“The crown gave them these quarters by the water, and the people pay us a small fee in rent for the privilege of living within the city walls.”
“The privilege.”
“Must you repeat everything I say?”
“I’m trying to understand this.” It’s basically a subsidized housing program for elderly human slaves Islor has discarded, only it’s little better than an alleyway of cardboard-box homes.
Is he proud of it?
“You do not approve that we should do this for them?” He pauses. “Some in my court would not be bothered. They say they are a drain on our resources. They’d rather put them out of their misery.”
“Maybe some in your court belong in your death square,” I throw back, my anger flaring. My father would fall under the “of little value” umbrella in this world. These Islorians treat humans little better than lame horses or dairy cows that stop producing milk.
From the corner of my eye, I catch Elisaf’s eyebrows climb halfway up his forehead. I can only imagine the look on Zander’s face, if it isn’t stony.
“Why do you care what happens to the mortals?”
Because I am one. Though I know I should stay quiet, I find myself unable. I’ve lived in poverty. I’ve seen the many ways that systems built to help people have failed them when they’re at their lowest. This is the first time I’ve sat next to someone who has the power to do something about it. “They spent their entire lives serving you, and now that they’re old and broken, you corral them into this squalor and pat yourself on the back for your benevolence? No, I don’t approve of this. I think you should do more. They’re people, even if you can’t find a use for them anymore. They’re not inferior to your kind.” My feelings tumble out, unrestrained and unmeasured.
He is quiet for a moment. “Did you know that the crime for ending the life of any mortal Islorian, regardless of age or capability, is death? It’s a law my father decreed and that I will uphold without compromise.”
“A person can plead for a dog’s life while still locking them in a cage.”
“And what more would you have me do for these people?”
“How about you don’t enslave them?”
“Yes, of course, I’ll just snap my fingers and change all of Islor. How everyone thinks and lives.” There’s a curious edge to his voice.
“Aren’t you the king?” I quip, but even I know it isn’t that simple. “I don’t know. Why don’t you start by melting down one of your thousand gold pillars and build these people something nicer? Outside the city, in the countryside?” I know it exists. I can see the rolling hills in the distance from my balcony.