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The Seer King

By Chris Bunch

ONE

Exile



The Seer King, Emperor Laish Tenedos, is dead. A courier
brought the word this morning, and the prison warden declared a
holiday.

I suppose I should not have called him that, but rather the
Prisoner Tenedos, just as I am no longer Damastes a Cimabue,
no longer Damastes the Fair as some called me in the silken
pavilions of Nicias, no longer First Tribune a Cimabue, Baron
Damastes of Ghazi, but merely the Prisoner Damastes.

I knew what tidings the ship bore, even before it docked from its
gay buntings and the cheers of my guards as they read the signal
flags.

They say the emperor died of natural causes, that his heart
failed. Perhaps. But it would have taken only one enemy among
his guards to cast a sorcerous spell, slip a bit of poison into his
mat, or arrange a simple fall when he took his long walks along
the coast, as I do, staring off toward the gray horizon, hoping for,
but never being granted, the slightest glimpse of the great
country of Numantia he brought to greatness and then sent down
into ruin.

Sergeant Perak, who heads my guard detail, a man I have grown
fond of in the year since my captivity began, said he believes the
official tale, but it wasn't disease, but the malaise

of exile that sent him to his grave. A broken heart, a romantic
might have put it.

But he said this very quietly, after making sure no one might
overhear him. It would not do for a jailer to show the slightest
warmth toward his prisoner, nor toward the cause the prisoner
vowed to serve until death.

At even-meal I noted the garrison's officers looking at me. I knew
what they were wondering: How much longer would I be
permitted to live?