26 - In which I keep my mind on my safety

It was Imbas 11; the election was set for Anae 36, the last day before Jitzmitthra and the end of the 52^nd-last Year of the Present Age in Arko. That gave us sixty-one days.

Of course the Mahid had to be captured first, and we’d already set the appointed time, Imbas 13. Minis and they had come up with a plan in case they were separated by chance and needed to find each other. He was to place a classified listing in the personal section in the Pages, which would tell them in code which place out of six they had designated he would be, and on what date. “Southern-originated fessas couple seeking smooth-skinned boy for threesome,” for instance, meant Makabria, a town two days’ march south of Arko, in three days from the date of the Pages issue.

The classified had gone into the Imbas 8 Pages, setting Imbas 13 as the date and Jintila, a village about five days march west of the city, as the place. (Minis and the raiding unit, of course, would fly there.) Of course he couldn’t announce his candidacy while the Mahid were still free; they’d take it as meaning he’d gone over to me, know they were being ensnared and not show up.

Next morning at the first paling of the sky over the eastern rim, before I had to start in the office, I hauled Niku, Minis and Kaneka Iniya, the best raid-commander in the darya semanakraseyeni, out of bed to plan it.

It would have been simpler if one of the Mahid had not been Minis’s mother. Because Kurkas had thought this group might be the seeds of a new court, he’d sent some of the Mahid women along, to breed a new cohort of Mahid if necessary. Among them was Inensa Mahid, Second Amitzas’s wife, who had once been an Imperial concubine.

Minis had found out the same day I’d given him the note to get into the Imperial Archive. All he had ever been told was that his blood-mother was a Mahid concubine, never which one, and he’d never seen any sign from any of them that had revealed her as the one, in all his life. So naturally, the moment he had my note, he went straight to the Imperial birth records.

It was almost too horrible to imagine, what the life of an Arkan woman married to Second Amitzas must be. When Minis told me, his own face was almost Mahid, except for a pale tightness around the lips.

“It’ll be a mix of Yeolis and Arkans,” I said, as we sat in the Blue Filigree room to plan. “Best dark-workers. Kaneka, you’ll be my second.”

They all stared at me as if I had gone insane. “Your second?” Kaneka said weakly. “You mean… you…”

“Chevenga! You cannot, even if you are the best dark-worker!” said Niku.

“You want someone with weapon-sense there, don’t you?” I asked all of them. “Twenty-odd Mahid won’t be easy.”

“You’re you,” Minis said, a little pale. “You’re far too valuable to risk on something like this.”

“I’d say that’s for me to decide,” I said. “We’d better come up with a plan that ensures a minimal risk, at any rate.” Since he knew their habits and how they would find him, his part in planning was key. He went a little more pale.

“It’s not even something crucial, it’s just mopping up twenty Mahid,” Niku said. “You should leave it to people whose death wouldn’t be a national disaster for two countries.”

“It just needs a failsafe plan,” I said. “Minis, don’t worry. We’ll run over it a hundred times every way before we go.”

They stared at each other, the exchanged thought clear on their faces, he can stand on rank, as he usually does, and that’s it. What are we going to do?

Then Niku took a clever tack. As I had been among healers, she had also, by association. “Pehali, why do you want to do this?”

My mind blanked. I had not asked myself. Now I did, and the only thing I could think of was that it would be... well, fun. And I didn’t want to miss it. Insufficient reasons.

“To settle old scores?” said Minis. I still hated Mahid, always would, but that didn’t seem to name the urge that drove me.

Niku sighed, and said the thing that had the ring of truth. “Last chance.”

I was going to lay down the sword. I would never go on such a mission again. I ran my hand through my hair. An utterly unreasoning reason, entirely unworthy. I was caught out.

And yet... it would be good, perhaps life-and-death, to have someone with my abilities leading. Caught between choices, I looked for the middle ground, until Minis gave it to me. “I wonder what your healer would think of this?”

Could… The thought opened, like black petals, in my mind. Could the death-in-me be urging me to this? One thing about that sort of healing: you suddenly don’t know your own motivations. Or at least know you don’t know your own motivations.

“I will ask him,” I said. “And abide by what he says.” I got Krero to throw together an escort, pulled on the hooded robe and ran down to Bright Street. Surya was not busy, luckily, and invited me in.

“How much would I want to go on this mission if the will to death in me had no influence, if it could be shut outside the door of the room where the decision is being made?” I asked him. “What do you think?”

He pursed his lips. “Chevenga… you do remember, don’t you, not a few days ago I told you that something is coming, and you should take no risks, so as to make it slight as possible?”

For a moment we stood staring at each other. He had said that. I couldn’t deny it.

“No matter,” he said, making the brush-off sign. “That was only words; you were bound to forget. You asked me a question, whether I think you’d still want to go on that mission if the death-in-you was out of the room; never mind what I think—let’s see. Lie on the table, you needn’t strip.”

“See… you can’t just see it in my aura?”

“If the death-in-you was out of the room, you asked for. Lie down, relax, breathe.”

I stared at him. “You can do that?”

“How you are now, only for a short while. Breathe deeply, Chevenga.”

Once I was on the table and breathing deeply, he took up two rocks, one black obsidian, the other white quartz, and moved them in the air over me, his face deep in concentration. I cannot describe what I felt, though it was subtle, and painless. He touched them together; then, after a tense moment, slashed the white one through the air over me. It was like a sword-cut through me, but painless and shockless. “Tell me now,” he said, “how you feel about going on that mission.”

“You mean... right now the death-in-me is... out of the room?”

“Think of it, look inside yourself and answer my question.”

Am I insane? It would be the fight through the Marble Palace all over again, albeit with fewer hiding-places, but they’d be just as resolved and happy to die if they took us, me in particular, with them. The risk, just to eliminate the danger that twenty of them posed... I imagined how my death would affect the elections, the transition, the constitution, Yeola-e’s withdrawal. It would throw everything into chaos, and no one could know how it would end up. I went light-headed with horror.

“Good,” he said, when I was done telling him this. The stones were gone; now he moved his bare hands above me, for all the world as if he were sculpting my aura. Again I felt something subtle and painless and indescribable. When he was done, he said, “Now?”

It was as before I’d come here. Again I wanted to go, with this vague, dark sense that I would have pleasure of it.

When I got off the table, thanking him, the room spun end over end so hard I had to lean against the sponges on the wall. I felt myself trembling all over, held out my hand to see if I could stop its shaking, and couldn’t. I had felt two opposites, with equal clarity. I had been equally certain about both, in their turns. They had both been true enough to me to act on without question. But one of them was madness.

“Chevenga.” He took both my hands firmly. “You must be very, very careful. You are expelling this thing from you. But it can see its own end coming, and it will try to cling to you, try to defeat you. It will try very hard. In that way you are delicate right now, and you must watch yourself, as I said last time. It’s good that you came here to test your inclination on this, you were wise. Keep thinking cautiously, don’t do anything risky; keep your mind on your safety.” I said “A-e kras” and got out like stink.

“I’m not going,” I said when I got back to the Blue Filigree Room. “Kaneka, you’re commanding.”

“A-e kras,” he said. They all nodded or signed casually. As if I were inside their minds, I could hear them each thanking their respective deities.

They’d done a fair amount of tentative planning while I’d been gone, and I helped finish it, but found it hard to keep my mind on it, and in the end contributed less than I expected of myself. It was a crisp morning, just cold enough to see steam from your breath brilliant in the cliff-dawn sun, when I saw Minis and the mission contingent off. They were hoping to find the Mahid the night before the meeting date, so as not to involve Minis, but in case they could not and so they must allow a meeting, he was going. He was indispensable.

--