These mountain people didn’t live in towns like the plains-people did. They had no space for fields, paddies, vineyards, or orchards. They didn’t need to build high walls to protect against the elements like desert-peoples. When camps grew big enough and wealthy enough to be permanent fixtures, they were always situated in special places. The Shak’s camp was the biggest of all, so it stands to reason that the Saoshak was the specialist mountain of all. Towering above the rest of the range, with its peak, visible only on fine days, always releasing smoke up to the heavens, like an eternal prayer candle.

To Rae, what set the Shak’s camp apart was the buildings. Every other camp had only one or two permanent structures. A main house, a meeting hall, a guest house, very rare were camps that built more than these. In Kaolin, most people slept in small houses strung up in the trees, supported by stilts.

In the Shak’s camp, even servants lived in houses built from wood and stone. The nicest houses were crammed into any flat land that could be found, and the rest were perched tentatively on cliff tops.

This camp didn’t just have a meeting square, it had streets! Streets wide enough to pull a cart! And some did pull carts there as if they were plains-people collecting the harvest.

Rae tried to focus on these novel sights as he and Gaori made the final leg of their journey. His arm, treated with ice all night, still throbbed and felt weak. The pain of it did serve a helpful purpose: it stopped Rae from thinking too hard about what else might be in store for him when they arrived.

The Shak’s palace, a main house to end all main houses, was built mostly on a large, rocky plateau, extending into the forest on one side, and accessed by stone steps from the rest of the camp.

The meeting hall was a building of red lacquer and gold leaf, looted from desert-people in some conflict centuries passed. When Rae and Gaori reached it, a sentry rushed inside, and a man came out to greet them. He was in his fifties dressed in a pale blue wool cloak, with white fur trim.

The sight of that thin, white face and long, greying beard gave Rae pause.

“Duke Bejuk?”

“It is you. Young master Rae-” he said before stuttering to a stop. His forehead furrowed, as he looked Rae up and down.

“What on earth has happened to you?” he asked first. Duke Bejuk talked fast, and Rae was often struck dumb by difficult questions.

“Is this all you’ve brought with you? Where is Duke Kaolin?”

All Rae could do was look at Gaori.

“Duke Bejuk, my father sent me in his place to accompany the new Shak,”

Bejuk’s face was red with disgust, “does he not know the dangers? We’re lucky he made it here at all…” he muttered to himself.

“Well, enough of that. You must be tired but we can’t delay. The Shak-“ Duke Bejuk paused, his face scrunched up as he spoke “the late Shak. You must bear witness, and pay your respects. I’ve set aside a room, and prepared his… prepared him…

Of course, you should have something to eat and drink first. A little time to prepare yourself, and talk about what happens next. Duke Ashem and the Shana are waiting inside,”

Rae’s stomach turned, and he didn’t know if it was the thought of meeting with his stepmother, or his father’s corpse.

Never mind. He did know.

“I’d rather see him first,”

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He couldn’t avoid seeing her as they passed through the meeting hall. The Ashem Shana, who had been small and sharp as an acupuncture needle the last time Rae had seen her, was massive. Rae didn’t know if it was the weight of the overdue child or the weight of the grief, but the woman looked crushed. Paler even than Bejuk, the skin around her eyes stained purplish black. When Rae entered the room, she hid her eyes in a bow.

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“Your majesty,” the man beside her sneered.

Rae might have hated the Ashem Shana, but her father was the worst of two evils. Rae’s bruised and battered body felt even smaller under his gaze.

“It appears your journey was eventful?” he said, the closest anyone in the Ashem clan ever got to humour was thinly veiled threats.

“His majesty will see to the late Shak, before any other matters,” Duke Bejuk said, using his gentle but decisive strength to guide Rae along. Rae didn’t tell him he remembered the way, thankful for the firm hand on his shoulder.

They left Gaori to deal with the Ashems and proceeded to the Shak’s temporary tomb.

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Rae had seen dead people before. These mountain people didn’t live coddled lives. Illness and injury struck people from camp Kaolin no less commonly than anywhere else, and the scattered tree-houses offered little privacy.

The Shak was lying in the chamber, as if asleep if not for being dressed in his full regalia. The leather armour he wore to see invaders from the plains or desert off. Swords, ceremonial and practical, at his waist. His thinning hair was neatly braided and crowned with a thin gold band.

Duke Bejuk guided him into a kneeling position by his father’s side.

“Myself, Duke Ashem, and young master Kaolin will stand vigil outside. I’ve been burning herbs to bind his spirit to the earth. When you’ve seen him off, extinguish the burners and come join us outside. I’ll have the kitchens prepare something for you, and we’ll discuss the state you’re in,”

Then, Duke Bejuk left.

The burning herbs let off a strange, sickly smell. Rae got a mouthful of the stench when he breathed a sigh of relief. To be left alone, in this room that the dead couldn’t leave and the living wouldn’t enter.

Seeing his father again.

“Baba,” Rae said softly, touching his cold cheek with a finger. He really did look to be asleep.

He had never seen his father sleep, and the look didn’t suit him. Even armed and clad as he was, he looked far too vulnerable.

The body had no stench, despite the fact that his father had been dead for just over a week. Rae wondered what Duke Bejuk had done to the body to keep it fresh. Maybe a spirit couldn’t linger in a rotting vessel.

“Baba, will you go see Mama?” Rae said, not daring to speak his next thought aloud. Mama’s been wanting to see you all this time.

Rae knew the funeral rites. The body would soon be burned, and the ashes buried on the quiet mountainside behind the palace. With fresh horror, Rae realised he would likely be expected to conduct the ceremony, to choose a suitable place. He might even have to compose an epithet. But all he knew of his father were hazy memories of being hoisted up onto his shoulders as a toddler. A booming voice, often jovial, but always with an undertone of judgement. The dark, terrible state he fell into following Rae’s mother’s death. Rae, leaving the capital with no goodbye, and never being asked to return.

“If you still have room in your heart for me as your son… I’ll be needing guidance and protection in the coming days. Please watch over me,”

“If you can pass on a message to Mama… t-tell her I’m sorry for not visiting her for so many years-“ Rae’s sentence was broken with a sob.

“And I’m sorry to Nukaim too-“

Rae was too repulsed to rest his head against his father’s chest or arm as he longed to. Instead, he pressed his forehead against the cold floorboards, next to his father’s head, and looped the loosest section of his silk sleeve through his fingers.

“Baba, I’m sorry for being a bad son,”

If his father had called him back, Rae wouldn’t have gone, he now realised. The guilt ate at him, almost as much as the bitterness. Seeing him here, Rae wanted to kick and scream. To hurl taunts and insults at him. To beg for his forgiveness. But he was painfully aware of the thin walls between him and the Dukes and Shana waiting outside.

I might have been born weak. A disappointment. Something replaceable. But you died weak, pathetic, a failure. And now I replace you.

What wicked child would think such things, Rae wondered as he sobbed into his hands.

Rae sat in the room for a long time after his tears dried up. By the time he began extinguishing all the candles and oil burners, the smell had started to sting his eyes. He rubbed them, then gave up. After all the crying, there was no way they wouldn’t be bloodshot. Duke Bejuk wouldn’t mind it, so long as Rae was still in a state to converse. And Duke Ashem could go to hell.