17 - I'd grudge not even my own life

Azaila’s letter came the day after Minis arrived, and read as follows:

Chevenga, my semanakraseye and student:

It is with rejoicing that I learn you are considering going beyond the sword, as with any of my students. This is the dearest reward I, as a war-teacher, can aspire to.

Ultimately, the sword kills all warriors who do not go beyond it. As good as you are at wielding it, and as many as the people are who have benefited by it, your spirit has always fought against the narrow limits the thin edge of steel has placed on your life.

Once we reach wholeness, we embody the emptiness of the circle. To become everything you must understand nothing.

To become asa kraiya, a person undergoes a ceremony, led by one familiar with it. If you do so choose, Chevenga, I hope you will accept my offer to perform this service for you. I would count it the highest honour.

My blessings for peace,
Azaila

Through my tears I wrote back to him saying I would accept his offer, counting it a higher honour still.

That night, my mother and my shadow-father arrived. They were tired from flying, but he pressed me even before they were bathed and changed and had chocolate cups. I was desperate to speak to my mother, but that was only for my own need; his was more pressing. I took him into a room that was eavesdrop-proof. I remember thinking, “Well, you asked.”

“I’ve never had such an awkward letter from you,” he said. “And yet it’s life and death, and this healer asserts it... it’s plain your blood-mother knows what this is about, so I assume you told it in her letter but not mine. She says it’s for you alone to tell me…”

“Actually I told her… earlier. Shadow-father…” I’d thought it might be easier to tell him than Niku or Kallijas, because he’d been there, when I’d seen my father’s corpse transform into my own, remembered my mother throwing her hand over my eyes. Surya had told me also that with each telling it would get easier, making me wonder just how many people he planned to make me tell. Now with Esora-e sitting before me, my throat clamped closed, and I was suddenly cold with sweat. It was all I could do to get it out, took a tenth-bead, and left the white-satin and gold-trim Imperator’s everyday office suit drenched.

He asked what I knew he would. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I barely told anyone. Mama, when I was eight—”

“She’s known since then? She kept it from me too?”

“Shadow-father—”

“Why would you not tell me of a danger to you, any danger?”

Because you’d lock me in a tower. I didn’t say it.

His lips stretched thin. “I know. I know, Fourth Chevenga. You thought I’d make more rules.”

“I knew you’d make more rules.”

“Why did you let me do what I did to you?” He was thinking of times he’d punished me for trying to grow up too fast. I remembered his wristlet cracking into my temple, my sight blurring.

“I let you do nothing to me.”

“If you’d told me, I’d have understood why!”

Now I said it. “You’d have locked me in a kyashin tower!”

“I’d have got sensible security arrangements made!”

I thrust out my wrists. “Chained me to a post, then!”

“You damned lunat—” He stopped himself, but not fast enough.

We stood staring at each other, both of us trembling. He broke off his gaze first, heaving a deep breath. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry, lad.

“Kahara help us, we are arguing over something I know we agree on... saving your life. Saving your life...” His eyes were suddenly wet. “From a sickness. Kahara help me, somewhere in me I’ve always known there was something wrong with you.” That sent a chill up my spine. “And now you have a healer who can cure it.”

“He thinks so,” I said. “He has great confidence.” I have none, I kept behind my teeth.

He suddenly grabbed my face between his hands, the right one thumbless from when he’d been captured in the Lakan war, and the Lakans had chopped it off. I froze. “Chevenga. My shadow-son.

“I don’t know how I fit into this, so that your healer called me here. I dread to know. But...” He licked his lips, searching for the words, and I went hot and cold all over, holding down sickness, and feeling as if I weren’t there. “But... Whatever I can do to help, whatever you need, whatever he says, I don’t care what, I will do it. Ask me, let your healer ask me, anything, Chevenga. I would grudge you absolutely nothing to prevent this—not even my own life.”

The whole world seemed to freeze, like a breath stopped by shock, or death. His eyes, so close, became all I could see. There was a breaking in my chest, and a cry came out of me, and next thing I knew I had flung myself into his arms and was bawling on his shoulder.

He held me as a father holds a hurt child, and that made the weeping come out of me in waves, on and on and on, until I was near to falling asleep on his shoulder, like a boy in the Hearthstone Dependent again, in their room with the bearskin rug. He stayed silent and still, but I felt tears on my temple, too high for my own to have flowed.

Out of cowardice, I suppose, I didn’t tell him that part of it would be going asa kraiya. Perhaps it was wisdom, knowing not to push my luck.

Done with him, I took my mother to the same room. Some news makes it necessary for two people just to cling for a while. In the light of all that my affliction had made her suffer, and me suffer in her witness, over all those years, we just silently hugged.

I tripped over my tongue telling her I’d go asa kraiya though, even though she was herself. In her way, she took it calmly. “Ah,” she said. “You know, that makes perfect sense to me.”

“It does? Why?”

“Some people will never go asa kraiya. With others you can see it coming... when I think about it, you show the signs.”

Why, I thought, do I imagine I have any secrets at all? “I do? What are they?”

“That's the kind of thing that Azaila is far better at explaining than I. Or many at the maesa asa kraiya...” Many times I’d heard those words, and they’d meant nothing more to me than the island on Lake Terera where people who’d gone beyond the sword had their refuge. That’s where I’ll go, I thought. It was the nearest to Vae Arahi.

“But you’ll fight it hard, my son, as I know you. Hard enough that you’ll probably get one or another illness before you finally give it up.” I remembered what Surya had told me, about how much illness he had suffered, in my army, before he’d gone asa kraiya. With some of what I had been feeling, I wasn’t surprised, though I wondered why Surya hadn’t warned me… perhaps he’d thought it would cow me into backing out? Yet illness was nothing compared to other things I’d been through.

“Mama… were you hoping that I'd do it before I died?”

She smoothed my hair off my forehead. “I didn't know. I thought you might have a chance.”

“Well… I have more of one now. Though I should say… Surya’ll probably say more when you speak with him… I shouldn’t count my chickens before they hatch, let’s put it that way. Even Surya says he’s not certain it's certain.” Gravely though I was speaking, I couldn’t help but laugh at the pun, which I’d made without intending to.

She was unfazed. “I know how good you are at pulling out slim chances.”

“Oh, mama! Don't say that.” I’m not usually one to make the gesture warding off evil, but I did now. “This might be the first one I blow.”

She just said, “Chevenga, look at how confident all the people are who are around you. It’s because they know you.” I didn’t argue further.

It was not until I had children of my own that I could have any idea what it was for her, to have one like me. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. I’ve imagined Tawaen telling me dry-eyed at age eight that he knows he’ll die before thirty, then as a youth coming to me in despair every now and then to say another fiancée has broken off an engagement because he told her, so he’s thinking of giving up on love; I’ve imagined him coming to me at the death-hour of night, sleepless and sweating, wondering whether he should reveal it publicly and risk not being approved as semanakraseye; I’ve imagined him coming in soaking wet and shivering from having tried to kill himself in the stream in sheer anguish. Just imagining makes my guts go to water. How she bore me actually doing all these things, I have no idea.




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