“I want to speak to the oracle.”
“Then you shall.”
“I want . . . I want to be a jester.”
The darkness parts. Lionheart sees white teeth flash in a smile.
“Is that all, my child? Is that the deepest desire of your heart? To be free at last to become the person you have always wanted to be?”
Lionheart turns his gaze from hers. “I . . . I don’t know. I need to find the temple. That’s all I know.”
“You shall. And you shall find it as a jester.”
She vanishes.
Lionheart closes his eyes and sleeps once more.
Lunthea Maly, the Fragrant Flower of Noorhitam, was capital of the greatest empire in all the known world and home of his Imperial Majesty, Molthisok-Khemkhaeng Niran.
Who died.
People have a tendency to do so once they reach a certain age. Or, as in Emperor Molthisok-Khemkhaeng Niran’s case, they reach a certain level of importance and acquire a certain number of enemies, which the emperor’s brother-in-law insisted was the case.
But not to worry! Molthisok-Khemkhaeng Niran, though relatively young when he expired, had survived long enough to produce a male heir, the new Emperor Khemkhaeng-Niran Klahan.
Who was nine.
What a blessing it was, then, that the boy emperor had an uncle so loving to guide him in the way he should go, to gently take the reins of the empire from such tender young hands and steer it on a safe and true path until such a time as the young Klahan should be old enough to rule in his own right. Just like his father.
In the meanwhile, the boy emperor must be crowned.
“I want clowns,” said the emperor.
“Imperial and Everlasting Glory,” said his uncle, one Sepertin Naga, who looked rather like a snake with arms and a mustache, “you must take heed. The rites of your magnificent forefathers must be maintained, the holy words of the Sacred Cycle said in accordance with the passing of the spheres, and—”
“We never have clowns,” said Emperor Khemkhaeng-Niran Klahan. “Not funny ones. The only clowns I’ve ever seen always teach a moral.”
“Such is the role and duty of those who strive in the comedic arts, to instruct and enlighten their Sacred Father.”
“Who?”
“You, most Glorious One.”
“Oh. Yes.”
The emperor was small even for his age, with a round, soft face. He looked frail as he sat cross-legged on a cushion in his schoolroom, contemplating the list of coronation regulations his uncle had spread on the floor before him. Sepertin Naga liked the look of that babyish face. It reminded him of his dear, departed sister. She had been a most pliable girl.
But there was a set to the emperor’s jaw that his uncle failed to see. This jaw he had inherited from his father and a long line of emperors. Dynasties are not made of weak links. Young Klahan was certainly not about to be the breaking point in this chain of history.
And he knew what he wanted at his coronation.
“I want funny clowns. Clowns that do tricks. And sing amusing songs.”
He turned his black eyes from the list of coronation regulations to his uncle’s face. He was nine. He was his mother’s son. He should be malleable as wet clay.
“As you wish, Light of Endless Noon,” said Sepertin Naga through his teeth and backed out of the room, taking his list with him.
The Dark Brother devour all funny clowns!
But if clowns were required, clowns there must be. Sepertin Naga sent men to all corners of Lunthea Maly, searching the streets and inn yards, the docks and the alleys, bazaars and bandit dens, anywhere clowns might be found, and rounded them up. All of them, loaded in carts and wagons, were hauled up the central hill around which Lunthea Maly was built, at the very top of which sat Phak-Phimonphan, the great Temple of the Emperors, and just beneath it, the Aromatic Palace.
Somewhere, stuffed between a fire-eater and a contortionist, was a clown in outlandish Westerner’s garb with strikingly brown skin and a strong accent. He’d been found in a back alley not far from the docks, performing a comical song for a crowd of peasants, who were at least as intrigued by his unusual garb as they were by anything he said.
“Is he funny?” a guard sent from the palace to collect performers asked one of the gathered peasants.
“You bet your eyes, he’s funny. Just listen to him butchering the language. He’s trying to speak Chhayan now. Listen to that!” The peasant dissolved into asthmatic laughter.
The guard, who was a Kitar and therefore didn’t understand the Chhayan dialect, couldn’t see what was so amusing about the foreign fellow other than his odd, bell-covered hat. But he was getting plenty of laughs. The guard shrugged his way through the crowd and placed a heavy hand on the clown’s shoulders.