It was three bells past the midnight’s alarm when the last guard fell, their body hitting the fire-pillar. The sound woke him from his fading consciousness and he tried to see how long he could hold out. His grandfather’s desk was pressed against the door but it wouldn’t stand the pressure of twenty arms ramming a giant log in; once, twice, with a mighty third push they would make the first crack.
The wrought-iron edge of the bed dug into his back as Paher Mahir tried to blink out the sweat dripping into his eyes. It was sweltering now, the fire in his throat spreading down his chest to his stomach. There was a good reason it had its name, the Samvartaka’s essence raising hell’s flames from within a body. They didn’t find it here, the soil uncorrupted for its bearing. It would have been reared among the poisons of nurtured toxins.
“What’s taking so long!” someone yelled, a young voice impatient to end the siege. There were always those who were one leap away from a crown, time seeming too long between its fall and rise onto their head.
What was taking so long, he wondered too, but his thoughts were directed to his missing son. Mogh was supposed to have answered the call for help with reinforcements. His head hit the canopy’s post as he pulled his weight from the mattress, grinding his teeth as his body rebelled the impudence.
Rebellion wasn’t new to this body though, nor to Mahir.
The door rattled, teak bearing the brunt of the intruders’ fury, and Mahir’s fingers tightened around the untied curtain behind him. The dandelion print seeped crimson from his palm, making him notice that he hadn’t wiped the blood off his hands. He didn’t know if it was his or his victims’, unnamed spoils staining up to his wrist and lower still. He was probably also letting his thigh’s wound drip all over the carpet, he couldn’t say with the edges blurring in his vision.
“Again!” the command came in tune with the second impact, snapping his eyes back to the door and then looking to his right at the open window. The full moon sat serene in the faraway peace, unwilling to offer privacy through clouds, and he let out a laboured breath. He could jump out, the fall would snap his limbs but -
A dead-end made fools out of the fortunate.
His hand flew to his throat as the air seemed to be lead blocking his lungs. He didn’t have the luxury of surviving a jump. He couldn’t survive anything.
“A-,” his voice refused to let the whisper complete and he dragged his feet, moving towards the table he had jammed to the door. The blue robe skimmed his ankles, one clasp undone at his shoulder and letting the fabric twirl between steps. It felt inane to think about how this robe had been the only present remaining from his brother, but the thought held his mind in a vice. One steps, two, four and a heaving collapse against the desk had the King clawing at the leather surface of his intended destination.
There was muffled yelling from outside but Mahir couldn’t pause to pay attention and his hands reached for the first drawer of the desk, gripping the brass knob tight as he opened it. Seal, inkpot, quills - his palm connected with the solid wooden box finally and he dragged it out.
The motif of a dripping sun stared back at him before he clicked it open, almost weeping in relief at the sight of the safely tucked into the dark velvet.
If there was nothing else to lose, then there was everything to put at stake. Nobody knew that better than a dying man with unending regret.
“Break it open!” the command echoed and Mahir dragged one last gulp of courage into his burning lungs before pulling the artifact out of the box. It was still just as he remembered, the twin swirls fit together as a seal. Night and day, one of the dark sky and the other of the noon sun formed a contrasting spoked disc of half-and-half at the center. It would do nothing for him, he knew that just as he knew it on the day he hid it safe from prying eyes. He hadn’t learnt the skills for it even when he had been offered the chance to learn and it had once been a proof of his magnanimity.
If you can find this, please forgive me, he prayed as he clutched the trinket in his right hand, pressing the left onto his chest to keep the pain at bay.
He knew what would be done when they finally came in, knew how this worked, and he turned to the window to look up at the moon one last time.
I tried, he offered an unspoken confession before he threw the box out the window with all his might. He grabbed anything he could find from the drawer and kept throwing, uncaring of what it was that came to hand. In between insignificant things, he threw the sealed treasure, nondescript in its form. One who didn’t know its worth would see it as something broken. One who knew its worth wouldn’t open it without the missing part. It was futile to one and dangerous to another but Mahir hoped that it would find whom he had kept it from finding.
The final slam came with a splintering crash and Mahir turned to face his attackers just in time for the desk to ram into him under the force. He felt himself fly backwards at the impact, catching the eye of the young man who had wanted to get into his room for so long.
Who are you, he thought feebly before his head hit the window-pane and his neck hit the edge of the wall with a resounding crack that he couldn’t hear completely. The last sound Paher Mahir heard before his mind stopped was the rip of his robe, finally parting from his shoulder in his end.
It took three more bells to ring before reinforcements could come and there was nothing left to save in the King’s chambers. The Queen had been secretly sent to her sister-in-law’s place when the attack had begun and she didn’t witness as her husband was lifted out from under his own desk, eyes unseeing of the guards who knew nothing of what truly killed him.
The attackers had fled the scene and those who were caught were scapegoats in disguise. Nobody knew name or face of the men who had dared to murder the Aga Angara in his own home and the matter was kept hushed in details within those who roamed Paheri Nok.
“The king suffered from a mighty stroke,” the royal announcer repeated as instructed, in the noisy market and the hushed lakeside, “His heart gave out and he could not be saved. The prince shall return soon from his unavoidable voyage and until then, the Royal Advisor Mihira will be responsible for the kingdom.”
The entirety of Agapura mourned the demise of their kind king and nobody thought to refute what was not revealed. Paheri Nok was silent in its grief, a rolled away secret waiting to be picked up.
