The King nodded, but he had long fallen out of the habit of
listening to the Minister of Religion, and continued buttering his feet. He
then rose to his full height; the courtiers instinctively crouching as he did
so. It is not wise to be taller than the king; during the reign of King
Kontisharriv the Brief, members of the court were distinguished by their aching
backs or lacking heads. Pranyabattishur then tied a silk handkerchief over the
royal eyes, and the King backed onto the bridge, taking three full steps before
sliding off and disappearing. In the face of all reason, the Cook insisted that
it was the King’s sins and not his slippery feet which had led to disaster. “It
was the very best butter,” he said stubbornly.
None of them had volunteered to be sacrificed; not even
Pranyabattishur, who was always eager to make a good impression, and always
failed. Still, they had – most of them – taken it philosophically. In the bad
old days, half the court would have had to die that the soul of the King might
have servants and company in the next world. Now, a mere seven were selected,
along with any number of clay figurines who, it was alleged, would magically
come alive in the next world and do the donkey work (there were several clay
donkeys, too).
Davadina, in only three days, had come to loathe the other
members of the party. Fifteen is a hard age at the best of times, and the
knowledge that she wasn’t going to get any older was no comfort. Too, she was
furious at having been selected to accompany her father (if he was her father;
she rather hoped he wasn’t). “Twenty-three other daughters and nineteen sons;
you’d think one of them would have had the simple decency to volunteer.
Ravstasha, for example; there is absolutely nothing he can do in his life which
could equal the simple grandeur of renouncing his chance to be the new king and
having his heart cut out with a flint knife to save his beloved younger sister.
But no; brothers are just selfish. That’s all there is to it.”
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