The First Life of Tanan Read Online Free PDF Page B

he said, eliciting an impish grin from Kirkik.
    Kirkik walked into the audience chamber and Nim closed the large wooden doors behind him. Kirkik glanced around and was not surprised to find himself alone with the King. He stopped twenty paces from the Dias upon which sat the King, and dropping to one knee, held his arm out in an exaggerated bow. “Your illustriousness!”
    “Can’t you bow any lower for your King?” asked Dannap. “Are you not sufficiently awed by my magnificence?”
    “I’m awed by the fact that you’ve managed to remain King for so long without being chased off the island for incompetence. You’re lucky they choose heirs based on order of arrival instead of intelligence, or you’d be bowing to me, your most splendid highness.”
    Dannap rose from his throne, laughing, and walked over to Kirkik, “I can’t argue with that logic. I’ll give you this crown right now if you want it. It makes my head itch.”
    Kirkik stood up and faced his brother. Both men were smiling as Kirkik followed Dannap out of the throne room and through a small door behind the throne. The King removed the itchy crown and dropped it carelessly on a chair, and then tossed his formal robes across the arm of the same chair.  He plopped down on an overstuffed red velvet couch and looked up at Kirkik.
    “How was your trip? Did you thoroughly investigate the taverns and single women of Port Billen?”
    Kirkik dropped into a chair across from Dannap’s sofa, beside a gigantic fireplace.  “Damn!” he said, “I knew I had forgotten something.”  The brothers laughed again.
    “You got the census problem straightened out, I gather?” asked Dannap.
    “Actually, I didn’t,” said Kirkik.  “I spoke with the local Abbot, the one who filled out the census, and he didn’t know anything.  When I talked to the boy’s father… he gave me the same story from the census report.  Said an Abbot had asked him to adopt the child.  But he seemed nervous.  Same with the local Constable who, by the way, is so old he probably pees yellow dust. There’s just something not right.  They’re hiding something.”
    Dannap kicked his feet up onto the sofa and was staring up at a five hundred year old ceiling fresco depicting old King Komisa’s arrival on the island. “Why would these villagers be nervous about this?”
    Kirkik picked a bit of lint from the arm of the chair and threw it into the cold fireplace.  “I have a suspicion, but I have no evidence.”
    The King turned his head to look at his brother.
    “I think the boy might be a Lataki,” said Kirkik.
    “Why do you think that?” asked Dannap.
    “A boy mysteriously appears in the village closest to the mainland.  There is no record of birth father or mother.  Everyone I ask about it is either completely ignorant or starts sweating when I bring it up. I think the boy is Lataki.  It would explain everything, and the simplest solution is usually the most accurate solution.”
    Dannap sat up and faced Kirkik.  “And you believe the local Constable would hide this from us?”
    Kirkik shrugged.  “As I said, the Constable is an old man. He’s been in that village for something like sixty years.  It wouldn’t surprise me if he turned a blind eye to something like this just so he wouldn’t have to deal with it.”
    Dannap stood, walked to a window and looked across the expansive royal garden behind the palace. After a couple of minutes, he turned back to Kirkik.  “I need you to go back.”
    Kirkik started to object and Dannap held up his hand.  Brothers or not, Dannap was his King.  He sat back in the chair and listened.
    “I need you to go back and find out.  But there is no reason to rush. Mother’s seventy-second birthday is in three weeks and she will expect you to be here.  After that, return to Port Billen and relieve the Constable of his duties, with gratitude from his king and all that.”  Dannap made a dismissive gesture.
    “You will serve as