The Nine Oceans

Chapter 9

Opat

Tor stood rigidly in his place, stoically not watching the Prime systematically and methodically destroy every plant and ornament in her garden. It had been three years since the last outburst, which he only remembered the timing for because it had happened during his first month of duty here at the palace. Her form and ability now was as untalented as it had been then. Her contained fury, which had stayed with him in memory, was also just as raw and fierce as he recalled. He almost laughed at himself now. Back then he'd wondered what angered her so much.

Lightning brightened the early evening for a split second, tearing open the sky and finally making good on the threat of the torrential downpour which had been only heavy rain from a menacing sky for the afternoon. The windows covering the garden amplified the sound of each drop and vibrated under the battering, the noise rivalling the thunder. The Prime stopped in mid-swing and looked up at the windows above. She dropped the broken stick – the last of the garden's ornamental driftwood – and walked over to the pond opposite her rooms.

She waded into the knee-deep water and lifted a stone from the pile at the base of the fountain slab. The pile was supposed to break up the flow of the fountain water and create a comforting sound similar to a happily burbling creek. Tor thought it sounded more like the trickles of stagnant water leaking from the walls in an underground mine. The only thing missing here was the clanking of tools, and the clinking of the chains tying people together.

She tossed and caught the stone a few times, eyeing the overhead dome, then stepped back for better balance and threw it at the overhead windows. It hit one and came back down. The Prime had been watching the stone closer than any of the aides and she got to where it landed first. This time she hurled it. Tor knew if he smiled right now he'd be questioned later, but it was a definite internal fight to keep a straight face when one glass pane shattered as the stone rose and another as it fell. The one between the broken two shook in the wind and then swung from its suddenly loosened frame to flip end over end before smashing on the paving stones of the path below it.

She walked to the place where the rain poured into the garden, appearing not to notice how her soft slippers were shredding on the broken glass or the trail of increasingly bloody footprints from the first cut until the place she stopped. Then she turned her face up to the storm driving down to drench her.

Tor shifted uneasily (at least he expected it looked like uneasy shifting, it did when he practiced in front of a mirror) and settled into a position allowing him to continue watching the Prime. Careful to ensure he wasn't observed, he stared directly at her. After a moment, she lifted her hands high over her head and reached with open fingers into the rain and wind, a smile pulling at her lips. She didn't move from the spot in the storm until the rain decreased to a sprinkle, and only after looking around at the damage she'd caused did she pick the direction for where she was going next, which was back to the last stick she'd been swinging. Once clear of the broken glass, she pinched at the few pieces of glass stuck in her feet, removing them and tossing them aside, then picked up the broken stick to resume her assault on her captivity. This time her target was the sapling fruit tree in the center of the garden paths and patio.

Tor understood, now. He'd wondered at her anger three years ago when he'd started serving in the palace, how she could be so unhappy in such a life. Like his companions in the guard who were also new, they thought perhaps she was insane. He'd watched her grow listless and despondent during the months following that outburst, angered because – as the Prime, their country's leader – she seemed to not care at all for anyone outside her garden walls.

After these past three years of living and working in the palace, though, he knew she wasn't this country's leader. She'd been bestowed the title, lived inside the palace, and was put on display in public as if having everything else that came with it, but she wasn't leading anything. She was a show piece kept by those who were supposedly the Prime's Administrators. Tor and the rest of the aides and guards were her jailers. His companions who'd thought she was perhaps insane when they'd started here now fully believed it, but Tor had other theories which wouldn't be popular so he kept them to himself.