Adahnys Shahar awoke as the ruler of a great kingdom this morning. Yet I feel no different than I did yesterday, or the day before, he thought, rather dull. He unrolled himself from his silk sheets, his joints crying and cracking with pain as he flexed them, as though he had awoken free from a century long hibernation in the ice. It was always the hardest part of the day. He pushed past the thin violet curtains around his bed, putting on his silk white robes, lined with purple.

Across the bedchamber, a young slave prepared his breakfast, a bowl of sliced fruits. He hadn’t seen this one before. She was a pretty thing. Slender, with pale skin and wavy orange hair like liquid fire, wearing a clean, modest white robe, covering her from neck to toe.

Adahnys approached, quiet on his feet. “You’re new,” he said as she poured a cup of lemon-infused water from a flagon.

She turned quickly. Her eyes widened and she let out a sharp shrill, dropping the flagon. It shattered on the marble floor, and then the slave slipped over as she tried to lurch away from Adahnys, falling to the soaked ground.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to frighten you.” He almost tried to help her up, and then saw his grotesque hand, covered in scaly coarse patches and red pockmarks running all the way up his arm and torso. How easy it was to forget he had to keep his distance from everyone.

“M-My deepest apologies, y-your highness!” she squeaked, trying to slither out of the mess she’d created. Her petrified eyes never left Adahnys, though. It was a look he was long used to. After so many years, one became numb to the feeling.

One time, he might have wanted to have her whipped for looking at him like that. For acknowledging his affliction. He knew the thought behind those eyes and the courtesy. You think I’m a monster, don’t you, girl? Spawned from the loins of a demon. Everyone thought that. But now he was older and wiser. Or number.

“There’s nothing to apologise for. You’re not the first.” He smiled. “You may leave and clean yourself up, if you wish.”

She slipped again whilst trying to grab the chair to hoist herself up, tumbling back down. “I-If it please you, your h-highness.”

Against his better judgement, he slipped a glove on from his desk and reached his hand out for her. But she only scurried further, just a little, perhaps subconsciously. Adahnys recoiled, and maybe his disappointment at her refusal of his offer for help showed a little too plainly, for the girl burst into tears and threw herself to her knees, arms at his feet in the water. “I-I humbly beg your forgiveness”—she sniffled—“if-if I have given offence, m-my shophet. They t-told me about… you… b-but I just got scared!”

He sighed. “It’s okay. What is your name?”

She looked up at him with glistening blue eyes. Her face lightly spotted with freckles. She looked like a Rodevian, though spoke the Chosen Tongue like a native. “M-My name?”

“Yes.”

She bowed her head down once more. “Danaca, your highness.”

Adahnys nodded. “You may leave and change your clothes, Danaca. Have a rest.”

The slave slowly got to her feet, still eyeing him with some suspicion. “Thank you, y-your highness. You are most merciful.” She said it without so much as the hint of a smile, only terror on her face, and scurried out of the royal apartments. Even a slave couldn’t pretend he looked somewhat appealing if her life depended on it. That’s what hurt the most, when their disgust could not be hidden, even when they tried to hide it. He sighed, glum. A cruel jape.

He still had to adorn his most important piece of attire before the day's appointments.

My face.

It was a mask, in truth. But it was the face he showed to the world. An exquisite piece of ivory carved in the shape of a smooth, handsome, solemn face. Inlaid with elegant patterns depicting the sun, with Yariki calligraphy lining the edges of the face.

He put it on, ready to face the world as the shophet of Yarikhad.

Before long, the knock came at the door.

“Enter,” he called.

The two polished ebony doors swung open, pushed by a pair of bronze coloured slaves, heralding the coming of Batonam Taal. “Good morning, your highness,” he said, bowing. His golden necklaces hung and swayed from his neck like pendulums, waving gems of ruby, jade, and lapis lazuli, glinting bright among his black robes. “And I wish you a most joyous sixteenth name day.”

“I thank you, councillor Taal,” Adahnys said, rising from his desk. “Though I had not expected to see you smiling. My regency is at an end, so it would seem you now find yourself without work?” He said it smiling, but Batonam would not see it because of the mask. But by now, those closest to the shophet could tell his emotion by the tone of his voice. He became quite good at expressing himself that way.

Batonam Taal grinned, running his jewelled fingers through his long black beard. “I may not be your regent anymore, your highness, but I retain my position in the supreme council nonetheless. And I am certain you will continue to cherish my friendship and advice for many years to come, for have we not ruled this great city together for the last three years, since the death of the noble shophet Adibaal?”

“You did the ruling. I was happy to watch in silence.” Adahnys bowed his head. “To watch… and listen. Father always told me the wisest men listen to their advisers, did he not? I had a wise advisor.”

The old councillor smiled. His long black hair came down in curly tangles past his lined, olive face. His dark brown eyes looked near black, and he had the nose of a big bird. “You honour me, highness.”

“Shall we attend the council?” Adahnys said. “It would be rather inappropriate for me to appear late on my first proper day as the shophet, would it not?”

“Of course.” Batonam waited for the shophet to move first. “Lead the way.” They walked across the royal plaza, a citadel with high walls perched atop Yarikhan’s Hill.

Adahnys decided he hated whoever designed the royal plaza, placing the royal palace and the supreme council chamber on the opposite sides of the citadel. The walk across felt like an eternity, each painful step sending pain through his knees and legs. They had offered him a walking stick on multiple occasions, but he stubbornly refused. He would not carry himself as an old man at the age of sixteen.

Step. Pain. Step. Crack. That was his routine. The way he saw the much older Batonam gliding across the floor with such ease made him jealous. And sometimes it would stir a dull resentment every time he saw anyone walking normally.

The house of the supreme council sat on the opposite side of the royal plaza. A large white, rectangular building, the entrance of which was marked by a series of tall marble columns. Within was the council chamber, and today the members of the supreme council had gathered early.

Here they are, the true rulers of Yarikhad, the shophet thought, rather bitterly. The richest men in Yarikhad made up the supreme council. Members descended from the old Pyrridonian dynasties, of which Adahnys himself was. Others belonged to ancient Durnese families, settled in Yarikhad long before the shophet’s own ancestors conquered it; they were shades browner than the pale Pyrridonians. And others tended to be self-made (or inherited) merchant princes and their relatives, rich and fat from the opportunities Yarikhad presented to any citizen.

Adahnys Shahar walked into the marble veneered, cool room flanked by two guards, with Batonam Taal following behind at a distance. All the councillors rose as he entered. Sunlight beamed in from windows on the ceiling and high up on the walls. The mosaic floor beneath was as much a work of art as it was luxury furnishing. Within the marble floor was laid a big circle, half of which depicted the fiery sun, the other half the silvery moon, surrounded by clouds and eagles and fabled winged men from the heavens. Slightly elevated were the seats of the council, all in a ring facing the throne at the back of the room. Between thirty to forty men made up the supreme council nowadays.

“Most noble councillors, I bid you good morning,” Adahnys said. The councillors bowed and sat down. “Sit with me, councillor Taal.” He waved the councillor over, and went to sit in his esteemed spot in the supreme council chamber, the polished ebony throne, overlooking the room, decorated with gold and ivory and more jewels than he cared to count. As he sat, his aching spine and knees settled, and he breathed a sigh of relief, settling into the chair. Batonam took a seat as close to the throne as he could get.

Adahnys looked around, letting the silence linger for a moment. “So, what instructions do you have for me today, my noble councillors?”

Light-hearted laughter echoed from the stands, bouncing around the room. The shophet laughed along with them, but he wasn’t joking.

As the laughter died down, a pale fat brute of a man, with a belly like a barrel and a long black beard laden with gold rings that covered his multiple chins, rose up from the stands. “Your highness, with the greatest respect, the supreme council is only here to inform and seek your guidance on matters of state. We serve at your pleasure. First of all, and I think I speak on behalf of all of my fellow councillors here in wishing you a blessed sixteenth name day! A most glorious day for the end of your regency, to be sure.” Melqart Hiram waved his hands around as he said it. His green and golden robe could barely hide the rolls on his belly, and he seemed to jingle every time he moved for all of the golden trinkets he wore on his person. Signet rings, necklaces, chains, earrings, and a nose ring.

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The supreme council murmured in agreement, with some clapping here and there.

“You have my thanks, councillor Hiram.”

Melqart Hiram smiled and nodded to the shophet, and then unrolled a scroll that he picked from under his sleeve. “To begin the matters of state for the day, we can release the funds to pay for the shophet’s name day feast tonight, and the list of guests has been finalised. Becoming a man in Yarikhad is the most ecstatic of celebrations, and not a penny should be spared.”

The councillors continued rambling on about coin and taxes and shipping. Adahnys had grown long used to it by now. It was just another day. He never needed to say much before, nor did he think to say much now.

Until the issue of a foreign envoy came up.

“We have received troubling news from the borderlands of Rodevia,” Melqart said, reading from his scroll. “Two Rodevian men of the Dumori tribe wish to plead a case before the shophet and supreme council.” At that, Adahnys rose from his seat, his curiosity peaked. Finally, something exciting. Something he may actually be able to intervene in. Foreign issues and war was a power the plump noblemen had yet to strip Adahnys and his family of.

The fat councillor signalled to the guards to open the door, and in came two pale, ragged looking tribesmen. One was an old man, using a walking stick, with a short yet thick grizzled grey beard, bald on the head. His droopy eyes gawked at the council chamber in amazement. The other was a younger man, broad shouldered and strong, with chestnut brown hair that went to his shoulders and stubble across his strong jaw. A true warrior, that one, Adahnys thought. Both wore simple brown tunics. The younger man’s blue tribal tattoos slithered out from under his sleeve across his left forearm.

“We welcome Berislaf, son of Kresimir, of the Dumori tribe. And his travelling companion, Jaroslaf,” councillor Melqart said. “You may plead your case before the supreme council.”

Berislaf’s eyes found the shophet, no doubt his gaze gravitated towards the throne, and he approached. Until Jaroslaf blocked him with his crooked walking stick. “Step no closer, Berislaf!” the old man snapped, eyeing Adahnys with fear… or disgust. “That is the one who carries the affliction.” His thick Rodevian accent dripped from every word.

The young warrior stopped, raising a brow at the shophet, stepping back. “So it is you.”

The shophet stood up and walked down a couple of the stairs towards his guests, despite the protest of his knees, his arms out wide. They retreated a few paces. “Indeed, it is me. Fear not, scaleskin is not so contagious as the plague. My physicians assure me. But yes, I am the scaleskin of Yarikhad.”

The supreme council chuckled.

The two men gulped, staring at him, still as statues. Adahnys returned to his throne. He’d gotten so used to people avoiding him, fearing him, seeing him as dirty or unclean, or a sinner, that he almost made a joke out of it. But scaleskin was not a joke, it was an affliction that deformed his face to the point he’d looked like a twisted demon, robbing him of his mother’s jade eyes and bleaching them milk white, save for his pupils, and covered large parts of his skin in hideous red pours and hard crusts, almost resembling the scales of a serpent.

“Plead your case,” he said as he returned to his throne, and the two men calmed down.

Berislaf nudged his head at the old man. “Go on, tell him all you told me and my father.”

“Your highness.” The old man stepped forward with reluctance, his walking stick sending hollow echoes throughout the chamber as it clattered off the marble floor. “A village not far from the Tane river was pillaged by an Orisian legion. They left no man alive. Crucified the ones they didn’t kill immediately, along with their women and children; and those that did not get the sword nor the cross, got chains around their wrists, and collars around their throats.”

“Why?” Adahnys leaned forward. “Did you provoke them?”

Now Berislaf stepped forward. “No. The village was small, mostly farmers and hunters with few warriors. How could they possibly threaten a legion across the river? My father, the Chief Kresemir, has informed me of other such attacks all along the river. Everywhere the legion goes, it leaves crosses, bodies, and fire. Our tribe is small, but there is fire and fury in our hearts. We cannot fight because most of our warriors are away fighting your battles.” He spat that last part out. The supreme council muttered amongst themselves.

“Mind your tone,” Batonam Taal warned. Berislaf’s lips pressed themselves into a line, and he clenched his fists.

The shophet held up a hand for silence, and the voices died down in a calm wave. “Have we had any word from Orisium of late?”

Near the back of the chamber, a slim ferret of a man rose, draped in loose white robes, a golden cap with a white headdress that flowed down his shoulders like a drape. “None, your highness,” Farzad Zadeh said. “No delegations, envoys, or letters.”

“And from Mahonad in Rodevia?”

“No.”

More muttering.

Adahnys nodded. “Strange…” My first test. The Orisians were testing him. They would have known a shift in power was on the horizon, and perhaps they weren’t threatened by a sixteen-year-old boy. More so when that boy had inherited a kingdom that had already been defeated by the Orisian Republic twenty years ago. Before he was born.

Adahnys had not seen Yarikhad defeated with his own eyes, but he very much lived in the shadow of Orisium’s victory. Shophet Adibaal would rant about battles lost and ships sunk in his black moods, cursing traitors and merchant princes for robbing him of his victory with their greed and sapping the throne’s divine authority as he was brought to his knees. “Like vultures flocking to my bloody crown, plucking it apart piece by piece,” he would often moan.

But it wasn’t just the Orisians testing him, it was the supreme council too. Gauging to see if he would be a pliant, obedient shophet, much how his father was in his final days. I have power, I have my rights. And by the gods, I will use them. Especially at the hands of unprovoked butchery and injustice.

“This was an unprovoked attack on our sovereign territory,” Adahnys Shahar said, louder so his voice carried through the chamber with authority. “And a violation of our peacetime treaty which the senate of Orisium themselves sanctioned.” He turned to his scribe sitting by him, scribbling away on his parchment. “Jebel, send word to general Ithobaal Tanirad in Mahonad that he is to send as many Rodevian warriors back home as the Chief Kresemir requires, as well as one thousand of our own auxiliaries and five hundred horses. They are to repay villages on the other side of the Tane river in kind, and not a step further. Raid unguarded villages only. No Orisian soldiers are to be harmed.” The scribe scribbled the words down on his parchment and rolled it up, sealing it with the royal mark.

Berislaf’s face soured. “You say Rodevian as though we are all cut of the same cloth! I won’t march with Vulovi beasts who dine with goats, or Tonevi who drink piss. I want my Dumori warriors.”

The shophet raised a brow. He forgot how prickly Rodevians can be. “Very well. Amend that, Jebel. Dumori and our own auxiliaries only.” The scribe scribbled the order on the parchment, his quill bobbing.

“Thank you, my shophet!” Berislaf yelled, nodding with a savage grin. “Blood for blood!”

“Patience, highness!” a councillor barked.

To which another shot, “Coward! String the criminals from the trees!”

Most of the councillors erupted in a rage, while some sat in silence, or shook their heads. Very few clapped in agreement. “Your highness!” Melqart Hiram snapped, shooting up from the stand. “This is a rash action! We strongly urge you to reconsider. Let us calm ourselves and send a delegation to Orisium to answer for this crime, and we can resolve this with diplomacy.”

He squeezed his palm until his knuckles cracked. There it is, the coward speaks. Fearing for his money and his ships and his trade, some of which, Adahnys knew, was dealt in Orisium. “When they gave us no such courtesy?” the shophet replied with a cool tone. “Whatever their reasoning for these raids, it would have been proper for us to hear about it before such instructions were given to their soldiers. They have sent no word, so we shall not. Jebel, have that order sent.”

“Your highness!” Melqart screamed, his head going red like a cherry. “You would risk war over… over an insignificant Rodevian village!” The two tribesmen glared at the fat man, but he paid them no heed.

“War?” Adahnys scoffed, shaking his head. “This isn’t war. This is a pissing contest. We treat them how they treat us, any less and we will look weak. They will sniff the fear on us, I will not have it.”

“But if we just—” Melqart tried to continue, but the shophet raised a hand for silence.

“I am merely exercising my legal rights, councillor Hiram.” Adahnys sat upright, straight as an arrow. “You may decide what happens within Yarikhad’s walls, but I very much decide what happens outside of them. That is my final say on the matter.” He turned to his scribe once more. “Now run along, Jebel.” The slender, copper-skinned boy packed up his paper in a leather sachet and hurried out of the council chamber.

Loud murmurs rang across the council chamber, and Melqart Hiram glared at the young shophet the whole time, shaking his head. My first test passed. His heart cooled a little. It was stressful, Adahnys was very much fighting battles outside and inside the walls of Yarikhad, except on the inside it was harder to tell friend from foe. He looked at the tribesmen. “You two may leave now.”

“Thank you, my shophet.” Berislaf bowed. Jaroslaf nodded his head, bowed, and the two Dumori men left the hall, escorted by the guards.

Adahnys stood up. “If our business is concluded, I believe I have a feast to prepare for. I trust I will see the majority of you at my palace once night falls. Good day, councillors.”

The members of the supreme council got up one by one, in each and every direction there were hushed whispers, private conversations, and angry stutterings. He could very much feel the mood of disappointment hanging in the room like a stormy cloud. Cowards, all of them.

“A strong move, your highness.” Batonam Taal walked next to him, though still kept his distance, like everyone did. But Batonam always hovered closer to the shophet than most, bar his own family. “Though I would take care not to alienate the supreme council so soon.”

“I had no choice. Had I stood and done nothing, these incursions would have continued, and then once we lose our vassal tribes in Rodevia for failing to protect them. Who do you think these fools will point the finger at then?”

Batonam nodded. “You, of course. I only mean to say, don’t push them away. Speak to them more softly, use sweet words to calm their anger, like a piper taming a cobra. These merchant princes are very proud, and their pride swells every day, but it does not get less fragile. If you are too prickly with them, they will erupt.”

“You think I should apologize?” Adahnys said to his old advisor as they walked across the chamber, standing over the sun/moon circle in the center.

“I think it would help heal their wounded pride. It would not do to have you at each other's throats.” The councillor had such a calm, diplomatic demeanour about these things. He had been like that as long as Adahnys could remember. Even when he advised Adahnys’s father. He didn’t really want to apologize to Melqart Hiram. He wanted to scream at him and call him a fat pig and a coward, and to keep his nose out of matters that don’t concern him. As with all the other councillors who protested, they were all greedy cowards. But Batonam was the man who could convince him to try to reconcile these people. Maybe he is the piper, and I am the cobra.

“Very well. They’ll have their bloody apology when I host them at my home tonight,” the shophet complained.

“You are most wise, your highness,” Batonam said, bowing. The shophet left the hall thinking of soothing melodies and dancing serpents.