“Laban, son of Ekenos. It is I who summoned you today. Had you not been the queen’s brother, you would be in the executioner’s hands rather than here.”
“Anyone who has sinned against Your Majesty deserves punishment, whatever his family. Pray enlighten this foolish servant.”
“Where are the prince and his mother?”
Laban remained silent for a moment, his head bowed. Sabina grew more tense, her breathing louder. At last, Laban raised his head.
“Your Majesty, when I returned today after leaving the royal city last night, I was greatly surprised. That the prince, the very foundation of the kingdom, should remain unfound for two nights! Surely the captain of the guard ought to lose his head and the maids their hands. How can those who neglect their duties without fear of punishment be so utterly without regard for their country?”
Laban spoke so calmly that one might have thought he had failed to understand the meaning of the king’s accusation. Roandros frowned.
“Are you denying what you have done?”
“I have no need to deny what I have not done. If I had hidden His Highness and his mother, why would I have come into the palace of my own accord?”
“Do you know why I suspect you?”
“I believe you summoned me because I passed out through the city gate last night.”
“So you know. Then who was the woman with you?”
Laban bowed his head again, then raised it.
“To explain everything to Your Majesty, I must speak of matters that ought never to be uttered before Her Majesty the Queen. Forgive my shamelessness. First, I should tell you that the woman is already back in the royal city.”
“What? Speak! Where is she?”
“She is a maid named Shumi, belonging to Andora, who does business in the capital. I have been acquainted with Andora for some time and visit her house. I had taken a liking to the maid. When I asked to borrow her briefly last night, Andora readily agreed. I paid two gold coins called makarios. Send soldiers to inquire, and you will find it exactly as I say.”
Sabina’s face stiffened. Roandros glared at Laban.
“Why did you have to go all that way beyond the city gates?”
“Shumi has a husband, so I had no choice but to take her far away to avoid being seen. I chose a secluded place, lay with her, sent her back ahead of me, and returned to the city late this afternoon.”
It was a succession of sordid details little short of an insult to the king. But Roandros had told him to speak, and could not rebuke him for doing so. His face flushed as he struggled to contain his anger.
“If you mean to prove your words, you will give every detail. Where is this woman, and what does she sell?”
“Andora runs a large brothel in the alley behind the Pigeon Well near the south gate. It is well known. It will not be difficult to find.”
“What do you think I will do if I catch the criminal who concealed the prince and his mother?”
“I understand that he will be torn limb from limb, and his family beheaded.”
“Exactly. You have just been suspected of that crime. Why, then, have you shown no fear?”
“On entering the palace, I wondered why Her Majesty had summoned me. First, I had already heard from my family of the calamity that had befallen the royal house. Thus, I thought that at so terrible a time, she could hardly have called me merely for a private conversation between siblings. I considered whether she might wish to ask for help. But I am the youngest and least experienced of Ekenos’s sons. Unless all my elder brothers had gone abroad, there could be no reason to summon me for that. Then I thought she must, for some reason, believe that I knew something. But what could an inexperienced youth like me know, a man who has never even commanded a small ship? After turning these things over, I realized that I was under suspicion. My leaving the city last night must have become an issue. I feared that this might cost me my life. Even so, I resolved to explain myself to the end and, if I failed, to die cleanly rather than flee and live my life branded a criminal. That thought brought me peace, and I was able to remain calm even under Your Majesty’s questioning.”
A short silence fell. Then Sabina spoke for the first time.
“Your Majesty, did I not tell you?”
Roandros did not answer. He summoned his chief chamberlain.
“Go with Laban, son of Ekenos, to the place he names and determine whether his words are true.”
The chamberlain bowed and left. Laban followed him. Without a word to Sabina, Roandros departed through the door on the other side of the inner chamber.
Left alone, Sabina bowed her head and clutched at the folds of her dress. After a long time, a low sigh escaped her. It was not a sigh of relief.
Sabina felt no easier. Laban’s account had been a lie from beginning to end. The very idea that he frequented brothels was absurd. Even after eight years without seeing him, Sabina knew that much. Above all, he had turned away from her again today. He had refused to meet her eyes to the very end. He had not changed. Not at all, not since that day when Sabina had trampled his peace into the ground.
Until he entered, she had harbored a faint hope that eight years might have blurred his hatred. She had made her once-kind brother into what he was, then hoped, without any effort of her own, that time would settle things. If she had any excuse, it was only that he had never tried to understand her either. Had Laban understood even a little of her heart, he could not so easily have spoken of marrying and having a child.
Why had he lied? Sabina slowly searched her own thoughts. He truly had something to hide. What was it? As the gate captain had confessed and Laban himself admitted, he had taken a woman out of the city the night before. Who was she? Was a woman whose identity he had to conceal even at the risk of his life a lady of good family whose reputation must not be stained? A criminal who must not be discovered? A woman Laban had newly come to love?
Whoever she was, there had to be a reason to take her outside the gates that night, of all nights, when the watch was so strict. He had deceived the captain, yet had to reveal that he was the queen’s brother to ensure he could leave without trouble. Had the gate soldier not risked reporting him later, Laban might have escaped altogether.
No. He had returned to the city. Then he had been dragged into the palace and told those lies with perfect composure. Roandros had believed him. Had anyone but Laban been speaking, Sabina might have believed him too. Had she not been his sister, who could see straight through him.
Suddenly, Sabina remembered a lie Laban had told long ago. She had been in her early teens. She had grown fond of stealing her senior mother’s jewelry. Whenever a feast emptied the woman’s room, she would slip inside, take one piece at a time, and bury it beneath the floor of her own quarters.
Her senior mother, lamenting the lost jewels, threatened to cut off the culprit’s hands if she caught them. It never occurred to her to suspect Sabina, who could easily get jewels merely by coaxing her father. For years, Sabina had never been caught. Or so she believed. Until the day she returned from a relative’s house and saw workmen entering the annex where she lived, carrying crowbars to demolish it.
What was happening? Too frightened to call even her mother, Sabina asked the maids. The senior mistress had complained of rats and ordered the building pulled down and rebuilt. The men were already swinging pickaxes into the walls. At this rate, it was only a matter of time before the jewels beneath the floor were found.
Sabina stood frozen, white with fear. Then Laban appeared from somewhere and bounded into the annex, almost dancing. Soon there was a scream, and the workmen came hurrying out in confusion. Laban’s arm had been struck by a pickaxe. The child emerged shortly afterward, his face deathly pale.
Their father rushed over at the news, and the work stopped. Furious that his cherished youngest son had been hurt, he severely scolded the senior wife who had ordered the demolition. For several days, the house stood neither repaired nor demolished. In that time, Sabina secretly took the jewelry out and threw it into a lotus pond.
Had it all been coincidence? She wondered, but could only hold her tongue. If she asked too soon and was wrong, she would only be confessing to theft with her own mouth.
She did not learn the truth until years later. One day, when they were grown and seated side by side on a bed, the jewels in the pond came up. Laban said, “That was the price of the whip.”
The boy had deliberately put himself in the path of a pickaxe for an older sister who had a different mother and had never once been kind to him. He had not done it out of love. He had done it out of fairness. He knew Sabina was stealing the jewelry, but thought she had reason enough. Believing that an unjust outcome had to be prevented, he had done something almost impossible to imagine. He was capable of that.
Waking from the old memory, Sabina shivered. Her intuition felt terribly likely to be right. It must not be. Not for her sake, not for the family’s, and not for the old bond between them, already shattered.
Could that woman truly be Erektina?
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