Blood and Science

The Emperor Kahnab relaxed on the steps of his palace, enjoying the midday sun. His robes eagerly soaked up the blood seeping from the freshly killed rabbits piled around him. In the city below, a hundred thousand of his citizens went about their day in the desert heat.

Kahnab picked one of the rabbits up by its hind leg and cut it open with the end of his knife. He thrust his blade into the carcass, twisted it and pulled back out. Organs and other red things spilled out through the gaping hole and hit the floor with thick wet splats. Kahnab picked through the mess with his finger and thumb, carefully separating the rabbit's guts into their constituent parts and arranging them in rows on the marble stairs.

"It doesn't have a heart, this one," he pondered out loud to his assistant, Tajj.

Tajj knew his Emperor was talking nonsense, but knew better than to say so.

"Maybe it's left in the carcass somewhere, my Lord," came the tactful reply. Kahnab grabbed the now hollow rabbit and lifted it to eye level, tilting it towards the sun to help him see inside better.

"No there's nothing in there. It didn't have a heart," Kahnab said. "Maybe it's a special type of rabbit that doesn't have a heart. Scratch my head for me, Tajj. At the top. My hands have blood on them."

Tajj obliged, but he was still dubious about the outcome of his Emperor's investigations.

"Reach in, my Lord. Have another look."

Emperor Kahnab pulled the furry skin over his hand like a glove and hunted around excitedly. He turned his arm so the rabbit's head was facing Tajj.

"Hello Tajj!" The rabbit said, in a chirpy voice Kahnab created for his furry deceased puppet. "I don't have a heart! I'm a dead rabbit with no guts and I'm going to steal YOUR guts while you sleep tonight!" The rabbit nodded vigorously then lunged at Tajj, who humoured his Emperor with a hearty laugh. It never ceased to amaze him that this puerile man-child had managed to rule one of the world's mightiest empires since his father's death nearly a decade ago.

Kahnab pulled his blood soaked hand from the rabbit, bringing with it a fleshy crimson lump that looked suspiciously like a little heart.

"Ah you've found it my Lord, well done."

Kahnab was disappointed. Whilst he now had a full set of organs, this meant he hadn't found a special type of rabbit. Aside from its experience as an Emperor's talking hand-puppet, this bunny was no different to any other. He diligently placed the heart on the marble steps next to the rest of the innards.

"All ready Sir?" Tajj asked.

"I think we're ready, yeah. Get him in," he said, wiping his bloody hands on his black silk cloak.

Tajj motioned to a guard stood silently in ornate gold armour at the top of the stairs, who in turn nodded to someone out of sight. Moments later a quite skinny teenage boy, about fifteen, walked slowly out of Emperor Kahnab's palace and down the steps, squinting in the sunlight through his dark floppy hair. The boy stopped a few steps above where Kahnab was sat, unsure of correct protocol on such occasions. Kahnab pointed his knife at the boy and beckoned him forward.

"Lay down."

Kahnab pointed to the step next to him. The boy was shaking. He stepped down and hesitated.

"On your back," Tajj said.

The boy lay down as instructed and looked up at the sky.

"What's your name?" Kahnab asked him.

"Farzal, my Lord," he said, trembling. "The eldest son of the Rhumas family of West Ghullanan. My father-"

Emperor Kahnab interrupted him. "I'm not interested about your father. Unless he was a slave. He wasn't a slave was he?"

"He was not my Lord. Not ever," Farzal reassured him. Tajj backed him up.

"He has always been free my Lord. As were his family, as far back as our records show."

Kahnab was satisfied with the boy. He wiped the rabbit blood from his knife with his cloak and lifted it up to the sunlight. It was a beautifully crafted weapon, as long as a man's arm, with a white steel blade and a hilt crafted from mammoth bone. Farzal caught a glimpse of it out the corner of his eye but he turned his gaze again to the blue sky above him, unaware of his fate, his thoughts swirling like fighting cats. He couldn't look at his Emperor in the eye. Were he to die here, he'd rather his last view of the living world be a beautiful blue summer sky than the two robed men looking over him. Thousands of the city's population could see the three of them at this very moment, but they were much too distant to see who they were or what they were doing. They could most likely see the streams of blood trickling down the steps of the palace above them, but this was a common sight in The city of Kaana.

"I cannot tell you what I am about to do," Kahnab started. "Because to know your fate before it befalls you is to undermine the favour of science and the will of God. You are brave to come here and serve your Emperor and his people by giving your blood and your body to me. With your courage and in your actions you serve the Kaana Empire and my father Emperor Hrillha, who serves as the Lord God in the Kingdoms above, with his ancestors who counsel him and together guard our people against disease and famine, infidels and enemies."

Kahnab brought the point of his knife to Farzal's abdomen and rested it there. His flesh sunk a little under the knife's weight but it didn't yet break the skin. The boy twitched, holding his breath, but stayed silent. Tajj looked away towards the city below.

Kahnab applied the faintest of pressures downwards and the skin punctured. He noticed Farzal's fists tense, his arms quivering. Blood seeped immediately from the wound and trickled down the steps. Kahnab scored a clean, straight cut a few inches long and pulled his knife out. The pain hit Farzal and he drew a sharp intake of breath. Three more times Kahnab cut him, each time straight and parallel to the last, until there was a row of long gashes, like the gills of a shark. All the time Farzal lay almost still, but for his arms and legs tensing and twitching as the pain ripped through his body. The Emperor's assistant Tajj fixed his stare on a particular little cloud in the sky and forced himself to wonder where it had come from and where it would go next. It helped him ignore the suppressed gasps of the boy and the sight of his blood, which was beginning to pool on the steps below.

Kahnab leaned back to assess his work. Seemingly satisfied, he chose a piece of his collection of rabbit organs and, with his index finger, slid it into the first of Farzal's wounds. He continued down the cuts in his body, methodically filling each with a different part of the innards, then sticking a bandage over the top.

"Why, my Lord?" Farzal gasped through the pain. "Please, why?"

"Experiment." Kahnab replied.

He did not like to be disturbed while concentrating. For several agonising minutes Tajj and Farzal did their best not to flinch in uneasy quiet while the Emperor continued his surgery.

Eventually, when Kahnab appeared to be finishing up, it was Tajj who broke the silence.

"My Lord, there is a foreign merchant who has been waiting to see you. He has travelled a very long way. Might he speak with you now?"

"Why would you waste my time with a merchant? Let him see one of the traders in Wideen market."

"Forgive me Lord," Tajj insisted, "but I have kept him waiting a long time to see you personally. I believe in this instance you would rather not have the Wideen marketeers barter on the Kingdom's behalf. You will want to see his goods for yourself. May I present him to you?"

"What's he got?"

"Errr... I... he tried to describe it to me earlier...it's... It's stuff that makes... he said... I'm not sure. I think I should bring him over, my Lord."

Kahnab was both annoyed and intrigued by Tajj's inability to describe the traders wares.

"Get him in."

Tajj waved to the guard at the top of the stairs and out walked a tall, muscular man with shortish brown hair just past his ears. He was dressed in golds and yellows with a smart sequinned neckerchief. The merchant strode confidently down the stairs, squinting in the sun, though he did hesitate briefly when he saw Farzal laying stricken and bleeding next to the Emperor.

"What do you have?" Kahnab asked.

"I'm not sure I want to show you now I've seen the state of him," the merchant replied, gesturing at Farzal. "If you don't like what I've got will you cut me open too?"

"This isn't a punishment," Kahnab informed the trader as he prodded at Farzal's wounds. "It's an honour. This boy has pledged himself to his kingdom in the pursuit of science and discovery. What do you want to sell me, you big pleb?"

"This," the trader said, pulling a little bright yellow stone out of a trouser pocket. "It's called 'yellow'."

"Yellow?!" Kahnab replied incredulously, without even looking. "You have come all this way to sell me a colour? We have yellow already in Kaana. Look at the desert beyond my city's walls. Nothing but yellow for hundreds of miles!"

His joke fell flat on his audience, so he scowled up at Tajj until he obediently produced the required level of laughter. Kahnab continued.

"Come on then trader, tell me, the truth this time, what - AAAAGGHH! You son of a whore!" He sprung to his feet in a fit of rage and looked across at his pile of rabbits, then back at Farzal. "You, boy! Your dirty blood is on my rabbits! You've contaminated them. You useless peasant shit!"

Kahnab took a run up to the pile and kicked it as hard as he could. Blood sprayed in all directions and limp rabbit carcasses cascaded down the marble steps.

"Get me more! He's made them dirty," Kahnab shouted at Tajj. He'd injured his foot kicking the rabbits and tried to hide his limp as he sat down again. "What is it then, trader? Hurry. Show me. I'm losing patience with you."

"This," he repeated, holding the bright specimen out so Kahnab could see it. "Yellow. It's a drug, Sir. Better than any other in the world."

"Like what the pirates have? The happy grass? That stuff's cheap. I can't make enough money out of happy grass, why are your yellow stones so different?"

The trader chuckled at Kahnab. "Sir. That happy grass stuff is cheap and weak. This is much, much better. A good piece of yellow will take your mind to a higher place. Your thoughts and your feelings will fly and twist and turn like a flock of a thousand starlings dancing in the sky."

Kahnab looked sceptical but Felix continued his pitch with heightened enthusiasm. "Do you remember the first time, sir, that you climbed up a tower and saw the city from above? How the same city you see every day looked so different? The roofs of all the buildings and the people buzzing and scurrying like ants. Yellow helps you see the world differently, in a different light, from a perspective you couldn't even imagine until you breathed the yellow smoke and opened the door to a secret room in your brain that had always been locked. Yellow does that to you sir, only a hundred times better, taking you to a different plane to anyone around you. Or, like my friend Rick, you'll see half a dozen rhinos shagging a rainbow on your front lawn. It depends on the person really." The trader flicked the little stone up in the air and caught it.

"Sit down with me," said Kahnab. "What's your name?"

"Felix, Sir," he replied, holding out his yellow specimen for Kahnab to inspect. "Try some. Expose it to water and air and it will pop. Breathe in the smoke and let it open your mind."

"Where do you get it from?"

"Haha, I'm not telling you that. All you need to know is you will be able to sell this stuff all over the world. And I can get as much as you want. We'll be the richest men ever to have lived."

Felix leaned back on the marble steps, closed his eyes and basked smugly in the sun, revealing from underneath his neckerchief what looked like a thick scar right around his neck. Kahnab instantly knew it looked distinctly like the marks left by a neck shackle. He quickly jumped to his feet picked up held his knife to Felix's throat.

"You're nothing but a dirty slave. You think you can con an emperor out of his money? Get the fuck out of my Kingdom!"

Felix was assuredly unmoved. "Take your knife away from my throat. I'm no slave. And you should try the yellow before you decide whether to kill me. No one else will sell it to you."

Kahnab stopped to process Felix's logic and consider his next move. Without moving the blade, Kahnab called out.

"GUARD!!!"

Within seconds the guard had reached Felix and, without making a sound, substituted his sword for Kahnab's at Felix's windpipe. The guard was a damn sight less clumsy with a weapon in hand than his Emperor. Tajj arrived seconds later and the three of them surrounded Felix.

"This liar is a slave," Kahnab told them. "He has scars on his neck from shackles." He pulled the neckerchief off to expose the thick scar across his throat.

"Do I look like a slave to you?" Felix asked softly, holding his elaborately decorated cloak up to Kahnab's face and stroking the golden silk between his finger and thumb. "The mark is not from shackles. It's a scar from when I was a boy and my brother hung me from a tree with a belt. I was too light for it to strangle me, so I hung there for a whole day and night, with the belt cutting into my skin. The scar has never gone. Look now, I think you should try the yellow and decide what you will pay for as much as my horse can carry to your city." Felix's calmness at knifepoint was unnerving.

"He's got a point Sir," said Tajj. "I've not seen many slaves in clothes like this. And there's been no reported escapes anywhere recently."

Kahnab took the small piece of Yellow and inspected it, scratching it with his fingernails and smelling it as Tajj and the guard watched with interest.

"Boy," said Kahnab, turning to look at Farzal, who had been lying quietly shivering in shock at his earlier ordeal. "Sit up."

Kahnab held the little Yellow stone under Farzal's nose, took out a water flask and flicked some droplets at it. It hissed and made a cracking noise like a bonfire.

"Breathe it in."

"Breathe it deep boy," Felix encouraged him.

Farzal inhaled deeply and the four men watched the wisps of thick yellow smoke disappear up his nose. His head recoiled backwards and he blinked repeatedly as if peering into the sun.

"What do you feel?" Kahnab asked.

"Give him time," said Felix.

"I can feel it in... my head Sir," Farzal said lethargically. He looked a touch frightened. He rubbed his head and pulled at his hair.

"Is he ok?" Tajj asked.

"He took a big hit," said Felix. "It's alright Farzal, boy. Hold on."

"What's it like? Is it good?" Kahnab persisted. He held the yellow underneath Farzal's nose again and fumbled with his flask cap. "Do more. Do more," he said as Farzal pushed his hand away.

Farzal twice stood up and sat back down again. He was breathing heavily but he had a faint smirk on his face.

"He looks like he likes it," said Tajj.

Felix chuckled. "Tajj boy, believe me, you can't not like Yellow. I bet your cuts don't hurt now do they Farzal boy?"

Farzal looked down at his wounds, still stuffed with rabbit guts. With a grin he shook his head.

"It's better Felix," he said. He hunched over and squeezed the cuts to prove it didn't hurt. He winced a little, but he was clearly not in the agony one would expect. Drops of blood fell on his bare feet and he bounced and giggled as they tickled him.

Kahnab, Tajj, Felix and the guard watched aghast at the horrific slapstick in front of them as Farzal tripped over a discarded rabbit and landed in a shallow pool of blood. First he examined the blood closely, then proceeded to use it to polish the steps. He continued this self-appointed task for at least five minutes, his nose an inch from the steps and focussed so hard he didn't seem to notice Felix enjoying the spectacle bent double and howling with laughter.

Eventually Farzal tired of polishing and sat back to watch something of his mind's creation in the middle distance. Of course, as they couldn't see it, the four spectators weren't sure what it was, but by listening to Farzal's occasional contented ramblings they deduced it was big and stripey and it was singing to him.

Needless to say, Kahnab had seen enough and Felix had made his sale. Felix took his leave and walked away from his new customer, back up the steps, still talking as he went:

"I'll be back in two months. You'll pay me twelve hundred gold coins for as much Yellow as my horse can carry, plus a quarter of your profits from sales all over the world. See you soon boys," he declared as he disappeared from view.

"Come back in the morning. I'll need to see which cuts have healed," said Kahnab, watching Farzal who was now joyfully attempting handstands on the palace steps.

"Yes Sir, thank you!" Said Farzal, cheerily waving his emperor goodbye.

Kahnab turned to Tajj and whispered. "Have the trader followed. Send men we can trust."