31 - A giant healing needle

The first night had been easy, and I always felt better a while after Idiesas did healing on me; he did it a few more times. Though Krero hadn’t charged him, and wouldn’t, he had in effect confined him to the Marble Palace, for his own safety, and planned to until the Pages in which I would absolve him came out. Idis stayed away from the training-space on the roof also, and so had nothing to do, except while away the time in conversation with the other person in the Marble Palace who was barred from work. We got to know each other much more thoroughly.

But the wound pain became worst at night. It was as if his sword were still in me, and my nightmares would curl around it like flame around an empty spit.

“Night is the time when all that is living is living less strongly,” Surya told me. It was as if none of my other wounds ever really hurt, until this one. When he got me talking, I found myself saying things like, “I have lived for pain; there is no pain I didn’t in some way relish. The Arkans didn’t have to work too hard, to get me mixing up pain and pleasure. Until this one—it’s pure pain.”

When I was closer to sleep I asked him why it felt like something was flowing out of this wound, even though I was closed up. “It is as you say,” he answered. “This wound is the outward course of the pain you’ve taken and carried. It is the outflow, the expression… I can see it pouring up and out of your body, as out of the mouth of a river.”

“But it’s also as if this wound... is linking, tying me to... something. Am I making any sense at all, Surya? I don’t know what I’m saying, I’m just opening my mouth and letting come out what comes out, should I shut up?”

“No, no, sometimes by allowing yourself words entirely freely, you’ll find wisdom. Maybe if I explain it this way, you'll see everything really is going as it should: it is an ancient expression, he who lives by the sword dies by the sword, but it is also true that he who lives by the sword may be healed by the sword. What do Haians do with their healing needles? Make a tiny wound. Just think of Idiesas’s sword as a giant healing needle.” Laughing hard hurt, but I couldn’t stop for a while anyway.

†

Three days later, Minis came in, bright and smiling. The raid had gone off perfectly. All but two of the Mahid men had used their poison teeth to kill themselves on capture—one of the two was Second Amitzas, too cowardly in the end to do it—but all the women had been taken alive. They were all in custody in the old Mahid section.

“So,” Minis said. “We talk you out of going, we go, it all comes off flawlessly, and—you get badly wounded nonetheless! How do you manage these things, Chevenga?” I just shrugged on the left side as I’d learned to. I was well enough that Kaninjer had assigned an apprentice to be with me most of the time so he could treat other patients, but right now he happened to be here checking on me, and I think he gave Minis a look. “Em… never mind. You’re recovering well anyway, I hear.”

“I meant to announce your candidacy as soon as you got back,” I said, “but I can’t now… I’m sorry. Kaninjer won’t let me do any work or talk to writers until tomorrow, and I think he’ll want me to be quick with them, just the one topic.”

“Correct, Chivinga,” my healer said firmly.

“You need to explain what happened here,” said Minis.

“I had a training accident,” I said. “Aside from making sure everyone understands Idiesas wasn’t at fault, what’s to explain?”

He pursed his lips. The raiding party had probably found out about it from the Pages on the way home, I realized; all of the party being elite, they’d have known that it should not be possible, and said so.

“You and Kallijas could announce it without me, for now,” I said. I hadn’t told Kaninjer that Minis was not Minakis, but whatever was said in this room he would not take out of it, by his healer’s confidentiality oath. “Up to the two of you. Kall? Are you around here somewhere?”

“Hsst!” I’d raised my voice more than Kaninjer would tolerate. “Planning discussions are work, Chivinga.” Kallijas was elsewhere anyway, so once Minis and I had shared a hug, him for reassurance and me for healing, he was gone. Neither of them wanting to the face the writers without me beside them, they decided to wait. I promised I’d heal as fast as I could.

Emao-e also came in while Kaninjer was there, having just debriefed Kaneka on the raid. “Sem’kras’, a question about what we’re doing with these Mahid.”

“That sounds like something you’re supposed to be covering for me. Can’t you consult with someone else?” With my healer in the room, I wanted to make it look good at least.

“Well, no. I was thinking of giving them the same choice as we did with them before, swear allegiance or die.”

“But there’s the minor detail that that would now be completely illegal,” I said.

“Shit.” She smacked herself on the brow. “I didn’t even think of that. You know, I’m not great with this peacetime business, I have no head for subtleties of law... hurry up and heal, Chevenga. Good thing I asked before I did it, anyway. Illegal... piss-pots.”

“Not that anyone would say anything,” I said. “Everyone hates Mahid, the Arkans no less than us. In fact...” I thought, and my healer’s look grew more reproachful. I was definitely forbidden thinking. “This will just take a moment, Kan. In fact, if I recall rightly, it actually isn’t illegal by a special section of law governing the Mahid... different law. I think, but you’ll have to check, that if a Mahid cannot swear allegiance to the Imperator under truth-drug, his life is forfeit. I can’t remember the section number... well, it’s all in Arkan anyway, you’ll have to...” Bring the book here, I was going to say, but seeing Kaninjer’s look I changed it to “get Anamas in the office to find it and translate it for you. But—whatever you do, don’t forget this—when you ask them to swear allegiance to the Imperator, you must specify me the Imperator. Because they have a line of succession in their minds which they see as the true one, and it goes from Kurkas, to Minis, and then to the chief Mahid since Minis is now a traitor to their mind. That would make Second Amitzas Imperator in his own opinion, so that if you don’t specify, he might choose the oath and keep it to himself that he’s swearing to himself.”

“Hah, tricky. Mahid law, Anamas, you the Imperator, got it. Thanks, Cheng. But that still leaves what I first came here for.”

Kaninjer cut in. “Perhaps, general, someone else can help you with it?”

She chopped charcoal. “No. It’s a personal matter, healer, personal to him. Ah, Chevenga, I know now what you’re going to say anyway... it’s illegal. And yet... everyone hates Mahid. And—assuming we’re going to kill him, which seems a pretty safe bet—no one need ever know.” I had thrown off the covers in the heat. She touched the tip of the scar on my stomach that was Amitzas’s first initial with her finger. “The child-raper who did this to you is in our hands now. We’ve been wondering if there is anything special you want done... or to do yourself.”

That’s what she had truly come for: to offer me my chance for revenge. I tucked one hand behind my head and lay back, feeling a little smile grow on my face. My Haian was seeing it; but he also saw the scars, every day.

I remembered how helpless I had been on Second Amitzas’s table, and thought of how he must feel now, equally helpless, not so far from that same chamber.

I had even more freedom to do what I liked than he’d had with me, which he must know. I imagined how he must be tormenting himself, not to have used his poison tooth, how he must be suffering the double agony of fear and shame mixed. Had he got too proud, thinking of himself as Imperator, to do it? Or was he too used to thinking of himself as being on the giving end, never the receiving?

And yet... perhaps it was wound-weakness, but when I truly imagined myself standing over him, I felt sick. They say that the most willing torturers are those who’ve suffered torture, and the least willing torturers are also those who’ve suffered it. I found I was in the latter group, at least right now. My life would be happiest if I knew the man were dead without my ever being in the same room with him.

So I told her that. “Please yourselves,” I said. “For my part... well, you were right to say there is a question of legality... a question that might take some time to settle.”

Her smile grew to match mine, as she understood. No one knows, no one can imagine, so many and such terrible tortures, as a chief torturer who knows he is at the mercy of his one-time victim. The only mercy he had to pray for was a quick end. The torturer never wreaks the worst on us; we only wreak it on ourselves... Second Amitzas had taught me well. However eager or reluctant, the best torturers are those who’ve suffered torture.

I’d been right about the Mahid law. The men were asked to swear under truth-drug, and both failed. I don’t know all that my people did to Second Amitzas. I just asked if they’d pleased themselves, and was answered yes. Only one thing got back to me, told me by Krero, which perhaps was inevitable: for the last part of his life and into the grave, Second Amitzas Mahid wore my initials.

We did not tell Minis’s mother about this; though Minis had seen no signs whatsoever from her stone-like Mahid face all the way back from Jintila, she might feel something for her husband. I gave leave to First Amitzas, Imperial Pharmacist and the eldest of the Mahid who still lived, who had come over to me right away, to speak to the women. Of the eleven other than her, seven did change their allegiance, presumably because there was no one else left to be loyal to, and so passed.

Inensa had said two words to Minis, on her capture—“You turned”—and barely more. All the way home from the raid, he had tried to speak to her, telling her he knew he was her son, explaining that he was going to run for the office, begging her to swear to me and stay alive, bringing her meals. She said absolutely nothing, showing him only her back when she could.

In the Marble Palace dungeon she’d requested, and we’d granted her, every issue of the Pages. How she could be literate when it had been illegal in Arko for women to do so until I’d struck out that law, I wasn’t sure, but I had known she had a good mind. Minis had to have got his intelligence from somewhere.

What he and she agreed to, finally, was that she would continue to refuse to swear, but we’d hold off executing her until the elections, and then she could decide to swear to the Imperator-elect or not depending on whether it was her son or not. As if the vote-count wouldn’t be nerve-wracking enough for Minis already.

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