# Chapter 1
That morning, the earth of Wringin Anom was already hot.
Raka Wulung urged his black horse along the rice-paddy embankment. Its cowhide saddle gleamed with fresh oil. Its hooves, washed with flower water the night before, were still clean. Below, farmers planted rice with their backs bent.
Raka did not slow the horse.
Mud sprayed high, dirtying their legs and backs.
“Move! Move! Lord Raka’s horse is coming—can’t you see where you’re going?”
A little boy slipped in fright. His mother quickly pulled him away. No one dared curse out loud. Only whispers.
Raka chuckled. That was how it should be. Fear was the same as respect. His father always said so.
At the market entrance, he stopped his horse carelessly in the middle of the road. Traffic came to a halt. People carrying baskets and shoulder poles stopped too.
“Auntie Sari! Where are the bananas you had yesterday? The sweet ones.”
Auntie Sari, the elderly banana seller whose back had long since bent, hurriedly offered him her finest cluster of king bananas. Her hands were dirty with sap.
Raka looked at those hands and frowned.
“You’re going to give them to me with hands that filthy? Wipe them first.”
Auntie Sari wiped them with her ragged cloth. Raka took one, bit into it, then threw the rest onto the ground because he thought it wasn’t sweet enough.
“Bring me some water. Quickly. My horse is thirsty.”
He did not pay. He never paid. Everything on his father’s land belonged to his father. And he was Kala Dipa’s only son.
At the edge of the market, Kertra, a plowman’s son his age, was lifting a sack of rice grain. Sweat dripped onto the ground.
“Hey, Kertra,” Raka called. “Come here.”
Kertra came with his head bowed. Not out of respect.
“My horse crapped in the yard this morning. You haven’t cleaned it up. Clean it with your hands. I don’t want to see any trace of it when I get home.”
Kertra clenched his fists. The smell of his sweat grew sharp with his restrained anger.
“Why are you silent? Are you deaf?”
“I’m carrying the District Chief’s rice grain, Lord Raka,” Kertra replied quietly.
Raka dismounted. His fine leather shoes stepped into the market mud without hesitation. He shoved Kertra’s shoulder.
“The District Chief’s rice grain can wait. My orders can’t. Or do you want me to raise your father’s tax again because his rice paddy flooded yesterday?”
It was an ordinary threat. His father often raised the tax on anyone who resisted. Kertra finally bowed even lower.
“Yes, Lord Raka.”
Raka was satisfied. He climbed back onto his horse. He liked the sound of his shoes pressing into the earth while people fell silent. It felt like authority.
He urged the horse toward the town square. There was supposed to be a water allotment for the rice paddies today. His father was supposed to sit in the pavilion while Raka sat beside him, accepting formal bows.
But the town square was crowded. Far too crowded. Not for the water allotment.
Farmers who usually kept their heads down along the edges of the paddies were now packed together at the front. The smell of their sweat mingled with the odors of dried mud and dead rats from the market drain.
Mothers carried empty baskets. Children sat atop the bamboo fence. Everyone was staring at the center, at a wooden post.
His father was tied to it.
Kala Dipa. For seventeen years, that name had made the village head bow lower than anyone else. A man who could raise the measure of the tax with one blink and lower it with one smile. A man who had given Raka a horse, an ivory-sheathed kris, and the right to command.
Today Kala Dipa was not wearing silk cloth. Only a ragged piece of cloth. His hair, usually slicked with fragrant oil, was now limp with dust. A rope was tied around his neck. Two Bhayangkara soldiers from Trowulan stood on either side of him, their spears upright, their eyes refusing to meet the people’s.
Raka urged his horse forward a step. Dust rose.
“Move,” he said. His voice still carried the tone he used in his family’s courtyard—the voice of a nobleman’s son ordering around a sweeper. “Move aside. That’s my father.”
No one moved. An old man who had once managed his granary instead spat on the ground beside Raka’s horse’s feet. The spit was thick.
A black-clad envoy stepped forward. The emblem of the Majapahit Sun was emblazoned on his chest. His face was hard and sunburned.
“You’re Raka Wulung, Kala Dipa’s only son?” he asked. His tone was flat. Not respectful.
Raka lifted his chin. The heat made his temples throb.
“I am. Release my father. My father is friends with the Tumenggung in Daha. There’s been a mistake in the measurements. Call the District Chief here. I’ll speak with him myself.”
The envoy did not answer. He unrolled a palm-leaf manuscript.
“In the second year of Sri Jayanegara’s reign, Kala Dipa, the nobleman in charge of water and taxes in Wringin Anom, was proven to have hoarded two rice granaries, forged the kadipaten seal, and taken more than the state’s rightful share. Causing loss to Trowulan. Causing loss to the people. Sentenced to death.”
The words fell like stones into mud.
Raka laughed. It was a short, cracked laugh, his throat dry.
“Impossible. My father was the one who kept these fields green when other villages suffered famine. Ask them. Ask all of them!”
He pointed at the crowd. His eyes searched for the faces that usually smiled at him.
He saw Karno, the head of security in his village, whom Raka had once rewarded with a silver bracelet for beating a chicken thief. Karno was wearing the bracelet now, standing beside the soldiers, one hand gripping the end of the rope binding Kala Dipa.
He saw Auntie Sari, the masseuse he had once kicked because her hands were dirty while she massaged his feet. Auntie Sari hugged her grandchild tightly, her eyes red.
He saw Kertra, the plowman’s son his age, whom Raka had once ordered to clean his horse’s filth with his bare hands. Kertra looked at him without fear. For the first time.
No one answered for him.
Kala Dipa raised his head. Dried blood stained the corner of his mouth. He looked at Raka on horseback. There was no pride in his eyes. No anger. Only exhaustion.
“Raka,” he rasped. “Get off the horse.”
“Father—”
“Get off.”
Raka dismounted. His feet touched the town square’s ground, hot as embers. The soles of his fine leather shoes felt thin. For the first time, he felt that heat truly seep into his feet.
The envoy gave a signal. One of the soldiers drew a long kris.
It was not his father’s kris. His father’s ivory-sheathed kris had been broken by the soldiers that morning and trampled in front of the granary. Raka had heard the sound. Like dry bamboo snapping.
“In the name of the Prabu’s justice,” the envoy declared.
The spears rose. Not a kris. The punishment for a corrupt nobleman was not an honorable beheading. The rope was loosened. Kala Dipa was shoved to his knees.
Raka wanted to close his eyes. He couldn’t. His instincts, trained since childhood to watch people’s movements in cockfights and sparring matches, made him see everything with terrible clarity instead. He saw his father’s shoulders rise and fall. He saw his father’s hands clench. He saw Karno turn his face away for a split second before the rope was pulled.
The sound was not loud. Only the sound of someone falling into mud. Only the sound of breath being cut short.
There was no scream.
Only the buzzing of flies, suddenly deafening above the silent town square.
The heat still bit into him. Sweat ran from Raka’s temples down his neck, salty.
It was over.
The envoy rolled up his palm-leaf manuscript. He did not look at the body again. He looked at Raka.
“Raka Wulung.”
Raka was still kneeling on the ground. His hand touched the dust where his father’s shadow had fallen. The dust was hot.
“Did you hear the decree?”
Raka did not answer. His throat was full of dust.
The envoy raised his voice so the entire town square could hear.
“All property, rice paddies, buffalo, and houses belonging to Kala Dipa are confiscated by the state. His family is stripped of its titles. From this day forward, there will be no more Lord Wulung in Wringin Anom. Including you, his son.”
The crowd, silent until then, erupted in whispers. Not cheers. Worse than cheers. Whispers filled with his father’s name, his mother’s name—she had died long ago—and his own name, repeated again and again with disgust.
Raka rose on trembling legs. He walked toward his beloved horse, a black horse with the finest cowhide saddle.
Karno stepped forward and seized its reins.
“I’m sorry, Lord Raka,” Karno said. He spoke the title as though mocking him. “This horse is part of the seized property. Trowulan’s orders.”
“That’s my horse!” Raka shouted. His nobleman’s voice returned, cracked. “I bought it with my own money. You, Karno! I’m the one who gave you that bracelet!”
Karno looked at the silver bracelet on his own hand. Then he took it off and threw it onto the ground near Raka’s feet. The bracelet clinked.
“I already paid for it, Lord Raka. Two years of beating your father’s people.”
Raka swung his fist. It hit nothing. Two farmers restrained his arms. Their hands were rough, callused, and smelled of mud—the same hands that once had not dared touch even the edge of his cloth.
The envoy had already mounted his horse. He looked down at Raka the way Raka was accustomed to looking down at others.
“You are not being sentenced to death because the King still shows mercy to children. You are being banished. You are no longer part of this village. If you are still here when the sun rises tomorrow, you will be treated as a rice-field bandit.”
He kicked his horse into motion and left, abandoning Kala Dipa’s body, still tied to the post, and a seventeen-year-old boy standing in the middle of the town square in silk clothes that now felt far too heavy.
People began to disperse. No one helped take his father’s body down. An old woman who had once received rice from his father during a famine laid a ragged piece of cloth over Kala Dipa’s face, then hurried away in fear of being seen.
Kertra passed in front of Raka. He did not spit. He only spoke softly, just for Raka.
“Don’t be here tomorrow, Raka. Or we’ll have to drive you out with stones.”
Raka stood alone. The heat of the town square now burned through the soles of his feet and his thin leather shoes. Karno led his beloved horse away. The bamboo barricade had already been placed across the door of his house at the end of the village.
On the ground, Karno’s silver bracelet gleamed in the sunlight. Beside it, the broken ivory kris scabbard of Raka’s father had been trampled underfoot.
For the first time in his life, there was not a single person waiting for his orders.
And from the direction of the market, a boy shouted with laughter, creating a new name that would follow him everywhere.
“Look! Ragged Lord! Ragged Lord!”