2 - It was meant to be

I threw some water over myself, towelled off, and met the healer at the roof-gate. I did know her, through having been needful of her services some years back on the island of healers. “Megidan! What are you doing here—I thought you’d never leave Haiu Menshir again in your life. Especially to come here.” She was a full empath; for nine months she'd been kept prisoner in the Marble Palace dungeon, in punishment for healing me. How could she stand to return to Arko, or be on the mainland at all, with all the black and twisted things that are in our hearts?

“Fourth Chevenga!” She seized my hands, partly to demand my full attention, partly as if grabbing the gate-post of the long-traveled-for destination, to prove to herself that she really had got there. “You must listen to me, you must trust me. I have come here because I had a dream, a vision, about you. It said I must journey here, and refer you to another healer, whose name would come clear to me once I was here. It did, and here is his card. You must see him.”

Surya Chaelaecha, healer, I read. And his address; that was all. A Haian healer referring me to a Yeoli one?

“But, Megidan, I’m not sick. Why must I see him? What would I tell him?”

“I am sorry, Chevenga... the vision didn’t show me so much. He is a very powerful healer, perhaps you need tell him nothing.”

“Just, ‘Here I am, and I don’t know why, except that Megidan sent me’?”

I meant this half-jokingly, but she said, “That would do fine; he knows, he is expecting you.”

I stood thinking. This could hardly be an assassination attempt or some other skulduggery, not with Megidan involved. She certainly had no doubt of what she’d been enjoined to do, or of its importance, or its validity, else she wouldn’t be here, much less with so much anxiety that I might not agree to it pinching her kindly Haian face. Of course, if I said I’d see him while secretly deciding not to, she’d know.

“What of you?” I said. “Do you plan to tell me this and then turn straight around and sail back home?” She stared at me so taken aback, so obviously not having thought at all about what came next, that I couldn’t help but add, “I hope you’ll partake of our hospitality instead, at least for long enough to have made the journey worthwhile.”

“If you visit Surya, it will have been worthwhile even if I leave this moment.”

I read the card again, as if it had any answers. Surya Chaelaecha. Healer. 37 Bright Street, Fessas Quarter. By Appointment. No clue even as to what sort of healer he was. “So important that I go to this person. Why?”

She clasped my shoulders, pulled me close and whispered in my ear. “It is... please trust me, Fourth Chevenga, semanakraseye of Yeola-e, Imperator of Arko, trust me for the sake of yourself, of all who love you, of all the good you might yet do in the world. To save your life. No less.”

She was one who didn’t know—or at least, whom I hadn’t told. I could not know what precisely she knew, by feeling my feelings. The one I was having now, for instance, that came along with this thought: Save my life? That’s a hopeless prospect.

“He said whenever is good for you; he will clear time for you. You need only give the word. If you tell me now, I will convey it to him.”

“I... I don’t have my calendar here.” I found myself leading her down and into the Imperial office section, through the servants’ corridors; it wouldn’t do to have anyone see me unwashed and all but naked here. My secretary Binchera was still in, working late; he gave me an odd look, and let me know when I asked that I was booked solid, as always. Evenings, meals, festival days, everything; I was already down to one in four days training instead of every day, for which my fitness was suffering. The soonest free bead was a month and a half away.

Megidan pressed her face into her hands. “It is more urgent than that.”

The three of us all stared at each other, at a loss. I could see plain on Binchera’s face, curiosity as to what this was about, and a certain resignation that he would never be told.

“Spirit of Life rules in these things,” Megidan finally said, touching her pendant, the one in the form of a poppy that all Haians wear. “If it is meant to be, some time will open for you in the next few days, and let you see him then.” That settled that.

I told no one, not even Niku, Kallijas or Skorsas, with whom I share my bed and my life; I just said Megidan was here visiting, and got Skorsas to see her properly hosted for the night; she had decided to turn around and travel home the next day after all, no surprise. And I put it out of mind. I thought that might be hard, with such an odd and striking thing, but somehow forgot completely.

If it is meant to be. Kahara kra is how we Yeolis say it: All-Spirit wills. We all say it every day, of course, but to trust to it so completely as Megidan had, journeying all the way from Haiu Menshir with such urgency, seemed foreign, at least to me. I have too much of a controlling cast of mind, perhaps; I tend to try to arrange things the way they should be, much more than let them go there of their own accord. For which I have been roundly criticized. Chevenga kra. Now the idea of Kahara kra stuck in my mind, poking a thought through every now and then during the next two days, even as I forgot why.

The third day after, I was scheduled for a three-bead afternoon meeting with a delegation from Korsardiana on constitutional matters. They sent a pigeon begging to postpone, as their head delegate had suddenly taken ill. I would have filled it with some other Imperial business, except that Binchera asked me, “Didn’t that visiting Haian want you to see someone if some time came open?” Kahara kra. It was meant to be.

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