linked to his thoughts

yet acting on their own.

At year’s end,

Tahj and the beast

bent their attention

back to King Xau.

BENEATH THE BLADE

On the brink of war, courtesy abandoned.

Prince Cyrus strip-searched

before they let him enter King Xau’s palace,

yet that insult trivial

beside the debt he owed to Xau,

a debt he had not forgotten,

a debt he could not repay.

Cyrus’s doom decreed two months ago,

but that doom drawn out, delayed.

As if his head were bent

beneath a blade,

and his brother, the executioner,

savoring his torment.

His brother Tahj,

the Emperor Absolute,

whom Cyrus had idolized

when they were both boys,

that devotion moderating

to respect as they grew up,

respect turning late to doubt,

and doubt, at last, to dread.

Two months beneath the blade,

his family forfeit—

Cyrus’s wives, his children

hostage to his brother.

Two months,

during which Cyrus met the monstrous beast

that had corrupted his brother—

its den drenched in blood,

its touch a trap

that linked its mind

to any creature it would bind—

a hundred horrors

Cyrus had witnessed in that place

and known that his sons, his daughters

would feed the beast’s depravity

if he defied Tahj.

(Out of those hundred horrors,

one with him every night:

a little boy,

hands controlled by the monster,

mouth left free to scream

in the slow red hour

while the boy castrated himself

with a blunt knife.)

A hundred horrors,

yet Cyrus unscathed,

his mind his own

so that King Xau, touching him,

would sense no monster

steering his hand,

would trust him.

A trust misplaced.

Tahj’s commands clear:

Cyrus must deliver either

Xau’s surrender or his death.

Outside King Xau’s audience chamber

guards searched Cyrus again,

probed his flesh from scalp to toe.

Two months beneath the blade.

Time now run out.

EQUINOX

1. Xau.

Dusk on the spring equinox,

light and dark in balance.

In the audience chamber

of the palace at Lipoh,

King Xau set his hand

on Prince Cyrus’s forehead,

reaching for darkness,

for the taint of the beast

that preyed on pain.

Not there, the prince himself.

Xau drew back his hand, bowed,

his heart in that moment

light as a boy’s.

A moment only, the friendship

they might have shared

shadowed by Tahj,

Cyrus’s brother.

2. Li.

Li, captain of Xau’s guards,

released his hold on Cyrus

at Xau’s signal,

saw the king’s gladness

spill into his smile.

The king quick to trust.

One of many reasons

Li valued him

at more than his crown,

but it made it harder

to shield him.

He stayed within sword’s reach

of Prince Cyrus,

watching the language

of Cyrus’s muscles.

3. Siak.

With practiced precision

Siak translated,

preserving nuance and tone—

King Xau’s open warmth,

Prince Cyrus’s hesitance.

Opening pleasantries

and then, laid bare,

the price of peace

as Cyrus presented

his brother’s demands:

King Xau to acknowledge

Emperor Tahj’s supremacy,

to render monthly tribute

of slaves and silver and silk

in such and such amounts,