Rae had seen dead people before. These mountain people didn’t live coddled lives. Illness and injury struck people from camp Kaolin no less commonly than anywhere else, and the scattered tree-houses offered little privacy. 

The Shak was lying in the chamber, as if asleep if not for being dressed in his full regalia. The leather armour he wore to see invaders from the plains or desert off. Swords, ceremonial and practical, at his waist. His thinning hair was neatly braided and crowned with a thin gold band. 

Duke Bejuk guided him into a kneeling position by his father’s side. 

“Myself, Duke Ashem, and young master Kaolin will stand vigil outside. I’ve been burning herbs to bind his spirit to the earth. When you’ve seen him off, extinguish the burners and come join us outside. I’ll have the kitchens prepare something for you, and we’ll discuss the state you’re in,”

Then, Duke Bejuk left. 

The burning herbs let off a strange, sickly smell. Rae got a mouthful of the stench when he breathed a sigh of relief. To be left alone, in this room that the dead couldn’t leave and the living wouldn’t enter. 

Seeing his father again.

“Baba,” Rae said softly, touching his cold cheek with a finger. He really did look to be asleep. 

He had never seen his father sleep, and the look didn’t suit him. Even armed and clad as he was, he looked far too vulnerable. 

The body had no stench, despite the fact that his father had been dead for just over a week. Rae wondered what Duke Bejuk had done to the body to keep it fresh. Maybe a spirit couldn’t linger in a rotting vessel.

“Baba, will you go see Mama?” Rae said, not daring to speak his next thought aloud. Mama’s been wanting to see you all this time.

Rae knew the funeral rites. The body would soon be burned, and the ashes buried on the quiet mountainside behind the palace. With fresh horror, Rae realised he would likely be expected to conduct the ceremony, to choose a suitable place. He might even have to compose an epithet. But all he knew of his father were hazy memories of being hoisted up onto his shoulders as a toddler. A booming voice, often jovial, but always with an undertone of judgement. The dark, terrible state he fell into following Rae’s mother’s death. Rae, leaving the capital with no goodbye, and never being asked to return.

“If you still have room in your heart for me as your son… I’ll be needing guidance and protection in the coming days. Please watch over me,” 

“If you can pass on a message to Mama… t-tell her I’m sorry for not visiting her for so many years-“ Rae’s sentence was broken with a sob.

“And I’m sorry to Nukaim too-“

 
Rae was too repulsed to rest his head against his father’s chest or arm as he longed to. Instead, he pressed his forehead against the cold floorboards, next to his father’s head, and looped the loosest section of his silk sleeve through his fingers.

“Baba, I’m sorry for being a bad son,” 

If his father had called him back, Rae wouldn’t have gone, he now realised. The guilt ate at him, almost as much as the bitterness. Seeing him here, Rae wanted to kick and scream. To hurl taunts and insults at him. To beg for his forgiveness. But he was painfully aware of the thin walls between him and the Dukes and Shana waiting outside.

I might have been born weak. A disappointment. Something replaceable. But you died weak, pathetic, a failure. And now I replace you.

What wicked child would think such things, Rae wondered as he sobbed into his hands. 

Rae sat in the room for a long time after his tears dried up. By the time he began extinguishing all the candles and oil burners, the smell had started to sting his eyes. He rubbed them, then gave up. After all the crying, there was no way they wouldn’t be bloodshot. Duke Bejuk wouldn’t mind it, so long as Rae was still in a state to converse. And Duke Ashem could go to hell.