16 - Digression continued – where Minis was

Now, Minis’ blue-as-the-vault-of-the-sky eyes set in a kind of resolve. I could read his thought: he knows, now let things go as they will. He’d come here, I knew, to reveal himself; probably he’d meant to do it just after he presented me with the Book, but had been forestalled by a warbling note and a spring-dart.

A thousand thoughts flashed through my mind, and words crashed silent behind my teeth. What came out, finally, was perhaps the most stupid thing to say to an eighteen-year-old you last saw when he was eleven: “You’ve… changed.” In my own defense, it’s striking to see an obese boy transformed into a lean and wiry man. He hadn’t expected to laugh even for a moment once I knew who he was, I think, but couldn’t help it now. He didn’t put on the spectacles in his hand; I realized, they were part of his fessas disguise.

I pulled my mind back into order. “Gannara—don’t worry, I’ll have him shown in. I got your letter.” The pre-eminent Little Chevenga did look like me, astonishingly so, except that his hair was henna’ed a deep red and he wore it long—his disguise—and I could tell that when he grew up he’d be a handwidth taller than me. I guess he looked most like Rao Kyavinara. He seemed unsure whether he should do the prostration; finally he decided against, and said, “Semanakraseye.” I told them they need not worry about a thing, neither of them would come to any harm by my hand, ever, and was about to dig deeper when I remembered, the audience with Minakis Akam had been scheduled as two tenths long. I had to be back in the office in about as long as it would take me to call Skorsas to take over hosting the boys and dash there. I couldn’t speak with them again until late in the evening.

I tried to rush my meetings of that night, to no avail; it was near midnight when I finally won free. I wouldn’t have blamed Minis and Gannara for not staying up, but they did. I wondered whether they were close enough that I could speak to Minis about what was in the letter in front of Gannara. They were so close, as it turned out, that Gannara had helped him write it. Lovers? They acted more like a pair of brothers who are fortunate enough also to be best friends.

“First thing I’ll tell you: I don’t remember it, yet,” I said. “And I might never, which is perhaps just as well. Second, I do not blame or hate or despise or thrust you away from me for it. I think perhaps now you are too old to have me as the father of your spirit; but if you still want that, you still have it.”

“Told you,” Gannara hiss-whispered to Minis.

“I… I’m still second threshold.” His eyes had a look of struggling to master emotion. You want to be a man when the world never let you be a boy, I thought.

“What I meant was…” The best way to say it was to open my arms, so I did.

Eight years ago he’d been a child who’d known nothing, when comfort was offered him, but the urge to take it. Now he sat shaking, wavering between reaching and shrinking back, having had it burned into him that he had no right. Only one thing to do in that case; I grabbed his wrist and hauled him in. That undid him, as he needed to be undone. He bawled on my shoulder, from his very toes, like a baby, for a long time. I just rocked him and stroked his hair, with no words until the time seemed right.

“About what he did, Minis: you don’t truly understand what it was. I am sure he was lying as it happened, and you were only twelve, too young to know the truth of these things so you could know he was lying, or to have a mind free of his influence. You think of me as the victim and you as the violator, yes?”

“That’s as it was.”

“The violator has choice. Did you? Keep in mind here that you were a twelve-year-old child, legally under his command.”

“I had choice.”

“There was some way you could have avoided it? Truly? If you had laughed in the face of one threat, would he not simply have come up with another? And if you laughed in the face of all, wouldn’t he simply have had you seized?” I knew Kurkas’s style.

“But… I took pleasure in it.”

“I was made to feel pleasure against my will, many times. Minis, it does not reflect on what sort of person you are, any more than the stripe of a whip across your back would. Sure he spoke as if you were doing it by your will”—again, I didn’t need to ask, I knew—“but that was the lie.”

He looked as if he was considering it at least, not walling it out. I decided I would raise the idea of his seeing a healer later. “Will you give me the full account,” I said, “of your life from when you left Arko?” I knew he must want to.

†

My father, as you know, sent me out of the city shortly before you and your army arrived,” Minis told me. “We settled – I should not say where, but it is very remote, far from any people.

“I tried to order one of the Mahid, the way I always had, but he stood silent and did not obey. Second Amitzas handed me a letter, sealed by my father. It read, ‘Minis, you are not Imperator yet. I give you to Second Amitzas, and I order you to obey him as you would obey me, until you are of age. He has his orders.’

“Second Amitzas showed me the letter Father had written to him. It said, ‘Raise him as I should have been raised.’ “

“As he should have been raised?” How like Kurkas to pass the burden he should have borne onto someone else. And yet, in all the time I had known him, and in all the ruin he had brought upon his own people, it was the only sign he’d ever shown of seeing error in himself.

“Yes, as he should have been... He did not write, ‘how I should have raised him’.”

There was the child’s natural anger again, at being starved for what all children need, but with the adult refinement of being accurately directed.

“I read through the rest of the letter—it was short, but set out his plan for my life—and when I’d finished I looked up at Amitzas. Though his face was stone-dead, I could swear he smiled inside.”

“I know the expression.” I’d seen it just before he seared his initials into my skin.

“He said ‘Down and do fifty push-ups.’ I said, ‘What’s a push-up?’ ”

“You didn’t know? You watched us train.”

“I didn’t know what they were called. Amitzas said ‘I will demonstrate,’ got down and did one. I got down and started. Every time my arms gave out, he’d start the count over again.” The pain had returned to his arms, by his face. “It took me all day.” I began to see where his fat had gone.

“He seemed a harsh war-teacher to me, but then how would I know? I’ve never had any other. I hate him; his death would make the world a better place. But I am strong, and I have the skills of war, and he gave me that.” I yearned to spar with him then; who would ever have thought that would be?

“So my life became a routine. I barely remember the first three months, but once the fat came off I began to feel I could get through a day without dying. Meanwhile the rest of my education continued; my father had sent one of my tutors, Ailadas, with me, and given him the power to report me to Second Amitzas if I shirked or mocked. As you know, though, I no longer did that; you taught me that learning was something my mind had in truth hungered for, without my knowing it.

“He also sent Gannara with me.” So Kurkas’s hatred of me, he had tried to bequeath. “I was supposed to use him, to hurt him, to destroy him. But—I could not look at him, and not think of you. I used all you taught me, about how to treat people. I would pretend to hate him, for Second Amitzas, but it was not real. When he got curious about my books, I secretly taught him. When no one was looking, I started to show him how to use a sword, and found out he knew better than I did… he was being war-trained, in Yeola-e, before the Mahid kidnapped him. We ended up friends. I had a friend… only one, but that was one!”

“Not two, because you’d thought you’d lost me… first to death, and then to hatred.”

“Yes. So we were friends, which meant I was not alone. Each night I had him with me, the Mahid thinking I was using him; in truth we were being friends, though we could never laugh together loudly. I taught him Arkan, and he taught me Yeoli; I’d learned a little anyway in my know-your-enemy lessons. He was more free-minded than anyone I’d ever known… except you. I saw: Yeolis are that way from when they’re small.”

“It’s freedom, not restriction, of mind that is natural,” I said. “People have to have restriction beaten into them.” Since I’d started with Surya, this was happening more and more; I’d speak knowledge I didn’t know I had, nor where I’d got it, almost before I knew it.

“I started to see that. I saw it much more when I was in Yeola-e… I know it’s hard to imagine. I was sixteen when I felt I was old enough to ditch the Mahid. You can probably imagine my father’s plan for my life: that I should train and study, and then when I came of age I should secretly gather people to me, raise an army, take Arko back and become Imperator. But… it had been proved to me that I was his son, and just as he was not in truth worthy of the Crystal Throne and therefore lost it, neither am I. Secretly gather people to me? Raise an army? The spawn of Kurkas? Not likely.

“But his orders to Second Amitzas were that if I decided not to follow that plan, the succession changed to the Mahid – that’s an ancient law – so he, Second Amitzas, as the senior remaining Mahid, would become Imperator. Such a joke, isn’t it – him gathering people and raising an army… with all that heart-melting charm of his.” I couldn’t help but let out a snorting laugh.

“But of course his first proper act would be to kill me, as a traitor. So when Gannara and I ran for it, we had to do it well. We planned it for a month. Part of my education was studying the Book, so that was easy to take. Gannara and I stuffed our boots with jewels, we waited for a dark rainy night on a river big enough to swim… bought horses and pretended Kyriala—that’s my betrothed—was Ailadas’ niece, I was their fessas librarian and Gannara was a slave we were manumitting… all with different names, of course. After we got attacked by some thugs…” His face took on a distinct gloating smirk. “…we had a Yeoli escort all the way to the city.”

I’ve got to make sure Perisalas learns all this, I thought, so he can take comfort in having been defeated by truly worthy opponents.

“We left Ailadas and Kyriala safe in Arko… oh, and I voted against your impeachment, too… talked the man at the polling booth into letting me vote under my fake name on the promise I was voting for it. Part of the plan was to hide where they’d least expect us, and they’d have the hardest time tracking us: Yeola-e. With Gannara, it was possible. At least I was used to not wearing gloves. Well… you and I met there, in the library. I’m sorry we didn’t have dinner; you’d said I looked familiar, and I was afraid that you’d realize, any moment.”

The son of Kurkas hiding in Yeola-e, with part of Kurkas’s fortune in his boots; I had to laugh. “You do a very good fessas impression, I must say.”

“Thenk yeh, sor. One tends to do well when life depends on it.

“The first thing we did in Yeola-e was try to find out where Gannara was from. With what the Mahid did to his mind, he didn’t remember… the names of his hometown or his family or anything. But one of our Yeoli escort said he must be from the coast because of his accent, and I saw the way he was a on a ship… the deck could be tossing so that I’d be hanging on for dear life, and he’d walk as easily as if he were on land. That and a few other clues; we got a map of the coast and I got him to read off the names of the town until one… struck him.”

“Asinanai,” added Gannara. “I found out that my blood-parents were both dead… they’d got caught supplying the privateers. But my shadow-parents had moved to Arko to look for me. So we argued over what to do then…”

They glanced at each other and giggled, and I saw the free-spirited boys under the hardened sufferers, men too soon, that both of them had been forced to be. They’d brought it out in each other. No wonder they’d stuck together.

“We settled on going to Haiu Menshir. Because we knew we both needed healing… and also, the Mahid wouldn’t think we’d be there easy. And…” Minis shied away from saying something.

“You wouldn’t find us either, because by having spies on the island you’d be violating the world’s compact,” said Gannara, grinning.

“And your Haian talked you into sending the letter, which you did just as you were leaving so I could neither trace you, nor answer with all the reassurance you needed to hear,” I said to Minis. “Openness is always good with these things, and secrecy bad; that’s why he had you do it, though it hurt.” He nodded, though it was more in agreement than in understanding.

“Then,” says Minis, “we came back to Arko. We…”

“…wanted to see you do the Ten Tens, the second time,” Gannara said. “We camped by the Temple for the whole sixty days, to make sure we got in and got a good view. We were forty or maybe fifty paces away from the floor.”

“There was my poor Irefas man all over the empire searching for you, like two needles in a haystack,” I said. “And you were camped right in Temple Square.”

“I,” Gannara gleefully said, “was right behind you when the crowd carried you out, and when you threw yourself backwards for us to catch, I touched the back of your head.”

There was nothing to say to this. I clapped one hand over my face. Worthy opponents, indeed.

Minis’ eyes were suddenly bright with tears. “I had been trying to ignore the Gods, but they kept showing me how real they truly are. I knew then it was time to stop running. I applied for the audience list the next day.”

So he had indeed meant to reveal himself, and to relinquish his claim. I hadn’t read it wrong; his giving me the book meant that.

“We’re keeping you up,” said Minis. The sitting room we were in had a bead-clock, and I’d been purposely avoiding looking at it, though I knew in my bones what it said: at least two beads past even the latest reasonable hour I should sleep. Probably he could see it on my face. We’d have to discuss what was next for him; when I thought this, I realized I was so tired my mind didn’t even want to start to consider. There was so much more as well… the Imperial book, where he thought his Mahid might be, the Pages articles he’d written since we’d met before… tomorrow, I told myself.

My inclination was to keep it essentially secret that he was here; for one thing, if he’d turned sufficiently against his Mahid that he was willing to help us capture them, best they didn’t know he was my guest. I asked which inn they were at, so I could send someone to fetch their things; it turned out they were living in a house in the fessas quarter—fairly near Surya’s, actually—that Minis had bought with cash, so I’d be saving them nothing by offering free lodging. I’d forgotten about the fortune in their boots. They wanted to go back there; the Marble Palace, of course, must be full of all sorts of black ghosts, for both of them. I trusted them, but remembered that Mahid had been sighted in the city the same day I’d done the Ten Tens; with my luck, this would be the very night they’d finished casing the place and would kill Minis and Gannara both in a raid. For that matter, they could get mugged in the street. I had Skorsas room them in the bureaucratic wing of the Palace, where the décor is very different from the Imperial.

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