and beat your newly-scrawny arse.”

The man gave his horse a hasty check-over,

hoisted the saddle blanket.

Gan grunted.

Three hours with the man so far,

a whole weary week ahead.

The technical challenge hard enough:

playing a pair of traveling traders,

letting slip sufficient clues

that they were king and king’s guard.

Harder still not to punch out

the man’s teeth.

An hour on horseback

before Gan simmered down.

The rhythm of the horse,

the dense honeyed smell

of the fields of flowering rapeseed

worked him past anger to anxiety.

He kept glancing up at the sky:

a pair of vultures paced their progress.

Spies? Sent by the Sumbrese beast?

Was that possible?

Somewhere,

Gan hadn’t been told where,

the real King Xau was at risk,

traveling in secret,

traveling to war.

King Xau had been only a boy

when Gan had first guarded him

in truth not pretense,

a raw, puny, earnest boy

who’d treated Gan

as an equal, as a friend.

The king’s safety now dependent

on Gan and an idiot

too lazy to saddle a horse.

FIRST LESSON

Scene: Prince Keng sitting on a rock.

The dragon enters, flying down.

DRAGON

Good morning, Princeling. Have you come to
admire my magnificence?

KENG

My father sent me. He said you would teach me
to be king.

DRAGON

Your father? Your father is your greatest
threat aside from me.

The dragon menaces the boy, who holds his place.

DRAGON

Good. You’re brave. You’ll make a fine king.
Now go away.

KENG

That’s all? Don’t you have advice for me?
I thought....

DRAGON

An excellent habit for a king, thinking.
You should try it more often.

KENG

[Kneeling] Please. Teach me what a king
should know.

DRAGON

A king should know that he cannot know
all he should know. Men’s lives are
too short.

KENG

Then teach me what I most need to know.

DRAGON

I tried to do so. Perhaps you weren’t
paying attention.

KENG

You said men’s lives are short. That my
father is my greatest threat—why? Why is
he a threat?

DRAGON

Because men will measure you against him,
and find you lacking. No matter how hard
you try, his reputation will outmatch you
as the tiger outmatches the rabbit.

KENG

That would be true of anybody you chose as
king. No one can equal him.

DRAGON

No one? As for you, if you ever take the
throne, I advise you to begin badly.
Quickly quash people’s hopes. Then any
mistakes you make will be no more than they
expect, and any successes will appear the
greater.

KENG

No.

DRAGON

No?

KENG

If I am king, I will do the best I can.
From the beginning.

DRAGON

Good.

KENG

But you just said I should begin badly—

DRAGON

Indeed. And I may argue the merits of that
at a later date. What pleased me is that
you didn’t blindly agree. However wise his
advisors, a king should weigh their words
for himself. And so ends your first lesson.
You may come back tomorrow.