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5
Lord Ramyon felt sick. He paced up and down at the window, ignoring the lovely distant vista. Only a distant foggy glow was visible of the Obayyo. Ramyon felt devastated, beyond anger, beyond betrayal. First, he despaired of his poor judgment in keeping this overgrown lap monkey of a human. He should have castrated him and tossed him from the highest wall at the first sign of buckdom. Worst, he wondered how he could bring himself to tell his son in law of the defilement. Or would word of ridicule sweep through all of Oba, bringing Lord Dumonhi the Elder down upon Castle Ramyon with his retainers and horde of barefoot warriors? Ramyon was a proud man, and he would suffer the stings and snickers that would henceforth surround him even in his own castle. But the flower of his garden was now defiled, Ramy, his youngest. Had he erred with her somehow in her upbringing? Of course, by bringing the monkey to his court. That was the price of fad and fashion, he thought bitterly, he being a hard, leathery warrior who had often slept in the saddle and fought in the same saddle, having barely gotten off to squat. These women and their courtiers, he raged, pulling his sword. Hal'ya! he cried, whacking off the upper half of a woven basket. The steel sliced through as if the basket were made of air. Ramyon made a figure-eight twirling motion that snapped over his head like a pair of firecrackers, making the air hum briefly; in the same motion, he returned the sword to its scabbard.
Fingers tapped at the bottom of the rice paper screen separating his antechamber from the corridor. He could see the long claw-fingernails, low down, of a senior eunuch groveling on all fours.
"What is it?" He snapped. He'd meant to bellow, but his voice grew small at the thought that his flower was on her way, along with her baba. If there was any joy left in his soul, it now shriveled in the acids of his stomachs.
"Lord, the sisters."
It was a trusted male servant, and Ramyon remembered the leader's duty to cultivate loyalty through the four virtues—kindness, rightness, honesty, and unbendingness. "Wait one minute, then bring them in and leave us alone." Ramyon went to his raised dais and sat crosslegged on the huge pillow there.
"Thank you, Master," breathed the servant in relief, probably glad not to have his eardrums flayed, nor to witness what might happen in this room.
The door slid soundlessly open, and two tearful figures hobbled in, prostrating themselves before the dais. Ramy-ba and Ramy-baba wailed and raised their arms beseechingly. Their faces were contorted with weeping and moaning.
Ramyon fumbled with the wooden gavel at his side and swung blindly, just catching the Call to Order gong. Several servants in the corridor scrambled like rats being flushed out. "Privacy!" Ramyon bellowed. Then to the two females: "Silence!"
Ramy stayed on her knees, face pressed to the carpeted wooden floor in her hands so that her fingers dripped with tears and snot. She sobbed continuously and convulsively, trembling in fear all the while. The baba sat upright like a monolith, holding her hands over her face in shame and mortification, for it was she who had reported the trysts to the Mistress baba, sister of Ramyon's wife. They had taken charge, the babas, as unfortunately was their right, before he could intervene, and the result was this bleak chaos.
The ancient sage had lamented: "Winter comes again instead of Spring, when my heart is betrayed, and the shoots of life wither. Nature is thrown out of Harmony. It rains in Heaven."
As he stared at his daughters, Ramyon became speechless. He boiled with suffering and anger, until he bit down on his protruding tongue. It was a Shurian's way of expressing anguish upon betrayal by a loved one. He would bite his tongue until the pain equaled that in his heart. Then he would say what he had to say before the tongue swelled his mouth shut, so that he long could not speak.
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