36 - Treated as I always ought to have been

“I can’t believe the turn my life has taken,” I said to Surya, after I’d rested for a while. “Everyone knows. Tomorrow I set off for Yeola-e, to announce it officially there… All-Spirit knows how people will take it. I’m so stunned I’m spinning. How has this all happened? I can’t comprehend.”

It was a rhetorical question for which I didn’t expect him to have an answer; I was next going to ask him, and plead with him if I had to, to come to Yeola-e with me so I’d have him near.

“Remember those five phases?” he said. “I think now you can tell me which one you’re in.”

That was easy. “Disbelief.”

“Remember, it’s just a phase. Everything is going as it should.”

If I’d been up to grabbing him by the shoulders, I might have. I know I fixed him with narrowed eyes. “You speak as if you planned it!”

“I…!” He so rarely tripped over words, I’d come somewhat to enjoy it. “I didn’t… I meant only, Kahara kra, it was meant to be… and, this is all part of the path you’ve taken.”

“It is? Whichever miserable pissant of a servant went and blabbed my life’s secret to the Pages was being my healer too?” He laughed. “Seriously… I heard that right… you think of it coming out as a necessary part of my healing?”

He signed chalk. I threw one hand over my face. “Probably best you didn’t warn me,” I said. “I think I might well have taken the coward’s way. But… why? Why did it have to be? Why couldn’t I have just have told my closest, left those who didn’t know unknowing, and changed what I thought seamlessly with no one the wiser?”

“Left everyone you had no tie to in the dark, you mean?”

“Exactly.”

“You know, Chevenga, a healer learns something from every client. One of the things I’ve learned from you—though I don’t know how often I’ll make use of it—is how life is for someone who works for an entire people rather than just his family or his clientele or his workfast. You’re saying you’d prefer to have left everyone you have no tie to in the dark. Fair enough, and understandable. In Arko or Yeola-e, who would that be?”

It’s odd how sometimes, when you see a person’s point, your eyes want to clench shut. I sat with my arms folded, the one hand over where the sword had gone in, the other arm locked over it; the wound had the habit of hurting when I spoke with Surya, and because the pain ran right through my chest to my back, it always whispered, ‘You shouldn’t have survived this.’ Now it was as if the people of Arko and Yeola-e held the sword.

“I understand,” I whispered. “Now that everyone knows the truth about me, I’m finally going to be treated as I always ought to have been.”

“Exactly,” he said. “Tonight fifty-thousand Arkans all took the time and trouble, leaving off whatever they were busy doing, to come into the square and light candles to show you they think you deserve to live.”

“Aigh!” I threw myself back on the bed. “They won’t be so kind in Yeola-e! I could be charged for it, in Yeola-e.”

“If you don’t think Yeolis will be ten times more eager to light candles or do whatever they will do to show you, Chevenga, you’re being willfully blind.”

I just lay clutching the wound and trying to breathe deep and evenly enough not to feel any pain.

“Let me ask you this,” Surya said. “When you saw those fifty thousand candles, you were so stunned it almost knocked you senseless. Why? Why was it so surprising?”

“Well…! When you go from something kept sacrosanct inside for twenty-one years to everyone on the street knowing it…”

“But you knew they knew it; it was when you learned what the candles meant that you reeled. Why?”

“Well… it was just… I can’t believe… Surya, I sacked their city. Not that long ago.”

“You already know you have been forgiven for that, by at least as many Arkans; you learned when they voted you back, for they filled the same square.”

“Well, that was very surprising to me, too.” Changed my mind. I don’t want you with me, damned healer. Go away.

“But how else would they react, what else would they do, learning what they have? Chevenga—do chiravesa with them here. Say you have a friend, someone you love, someone whose accomplishments are great and have benefited you so you dearly appreciate them, someone you think the world of. All is going well for him, he’s on top of the world, he seems to have everything well in hand. Then suddenly you find out he’s been carrying this conviction that he should not live longer than another two years, for almost his whole life. All the time you’ve known him he’s been haunted with it, but he’s never said a word or let slip the slightest clue, so you had no idea. But, he tells you, he’s seeing a healer and trying to overcome it. What do you feel? What do you want to tell him? I’m calling you out: chiravesa.”

I wondered desperately if Kaninjer would consider me strong enough to do this. A ridiculous thought; he’d cleared me to work with Surya two days ago. “I’d… I’d be, I’d think…” It kept intruding that it was me. “Take yourself out of it,” Surya commanded. “For a moment, you know nothing of any Fourth Chevenga Shae-Arano-e. Just this situation on its own.”

“I… I’d be stunned. I’d say—I’d want to say, ‘How can you think that?’ ” Tears welled again, as it crept back into my mind, like acid, that it was me, and I was thrown out of the imagining.

“Imagine it was Mana-lai Chereda,” he said. “Imagine this had come out about him.”

That drew me completely in, and undid me completely too. “All-Spirit! All-Spirit! How can you think such a thing!? How could you keep that inside for all that time, when there is so much love for you, when we are all around you? How could you so condemn yourself!? Of course you deserve to live! Blessed All-Spirit, what can we do to prove it to you? You deserve to live! How could anyone think different? Are—are you kyashin crazy?”

I could express nothing but tears then. I could barely think thoughts. I had said it, and heard it, at the same time. “You see?” he said through the haze. “You love him, you say that. Why is it a surprise that fifty-thousand people who love you would say that to you?”

When I couldn’t answer for tears, he said, “Just be with it. There is a yawning emptiness in you, twenty-one years old, that’s being filled for the first time ever. I know it’s the hardest thing, but don’t resist the filling. Let it happen.” I let my head fall back on the pillow, and he put his hand on my brow.

“It won’t be the same in Yeola-e,” I wept. “To Arkans it isn’t a betrayal by secrecy; to Yeolis it is.”

“We’ll see.”

“You kyashin child-raper, I want you with me there, can you do it? Is it possible? Not just for this trip, but when I go home for good?”

He smiled. “Why do you think I didn’t want you to introduce me to the writers, and fill my practice to bursting here?”

†

“What in fik?” I said, at cliff-edge, seeing my and Niku’s double-wing was a regular one, no winch. “I specified relay, as clearly as ever!”

“And I overrode that,” said Niku. “No, I should say, Surya’s standing orders overrode it; I just adhered to them. Besides, I wouldn’t relay you eight days after being plugged through the lung in a thousand years anyway. Chevenga, what were you thinking?”

“Oh kaina! Now the news will get home before I do!” I noticed how she hadn’t said she was doing this until everything was set to go, the wingers all in harness and waiting. I’d wondered vaguely why Surya hadn’t said anything about not knowing how to relay. I could imagine her thought: he’ll swear like a soldier; let him.

“Fikken kyashin kaina kevyala marugh mamaiyana miniren, my life has turned into a nightmare! The Pages’ll get there a good day before us and my name will be kyash when they find out I stayed another night to please the fikken Enlightened Followers, All-spirit help me I am so fikked!!”

“I think they’ll be more understanding than that,” Surya said mildly as he strapped in. “You’re not judging it clearly, for nervousness. And yes, I’m seeing that in your aura. Along with the stab of pain you just got in the wound from yelling.”

“You wouldn’t be able to relay wrapped from head to toes in eiderdown quilts and wearing a pure-air mask and bottle when we’re high as Kaninjer ordered anyway,” Niku said. “No lap-desk either, he said; he wants you to be so bored in the air you’ll catch up on your sleep. We’re doing the three-day way, so you won’t be that far behind the Pages.”

I could stand on rank, and risk losing two healers. That would probably be the same, in effect, as leaping off this cliff wingless. I looked over the edge, thinking, it would be easier. Niku’s arm was suddenly linked with mine, hard. “Chevenga, omores… can you go back to stamping and swearing?” I stood frozen for a bit, caught between despair, rage and laughter, and Surya said, “Take a deep breath.” They were right; it might be the death-in-me wanting to relay. I stamped and spat “Kaina kyashin marugh kevyalin miniren!” a few times, then let them bundle me up, strap me in and mask me. I almost forgot to order another pigeon sent, to tell Artira I’d be a day later than I’d thought.

I didn’t think I would sleep much, even at night, but I did, for several beads each day, rocked on the wind with my head on Niku’s shoulder, the clouds brilliant in the sunlight or silver in the moonlight like sheepskins and pillows below, my dreams full of candle-flames. I had needed to catch up more than I knew.

I was awake when we passed over the circle-stones marking the border of Yeola-e, and I felt a welling of fear. The second night, we stayed as usual at the town hall in Thara-e. The sight of the people of the city going about their business in the streets just before we touched down, the greetings of the Yeoli catchers in the wing-ground, the salutes of the warriors, all made me sick with terror.

I went straight into hiding in my room; let them put it down to wound-weakness. Niku, Krero and the other flyers all ate and then bedded down immediately, as I usually did myself, but I’d slept, as had Surya, and it was barely past sunset. I wondered if I would sleep at all tonight. Surya knocked on my door, and my saying I knew he must be tired and didn’t wish to trouble him did not stop him from commanding me to let him in.

“This isn’t just fear of disapproval,” he said, taking my hands, whose trembling I could not control. “You’ve been impeached before.”

“By Arkans,” I said. “The Yeoli vote was seven-in-ten to keep me. This would be very different.”

He glanced at my aura. “Yes,” he said. “If they did, you would give up.” I knew what he meant, and did not deny it. “No wonder you are afraid.”

We talked; he worked my aura; I exercised; I tried to release it; I took remedies; we hadn’t brought any strong calming juice; nothing touched it. “There is only one other thing I can think of, that I’m certain you would not prescribe,” I said. “To get piss drunk.” I meant it only half in desperation, the other half in jest, since I couldn’t imagine in a thousand years he’d approve. To my amazement, he did.

I wanted to get into an embarrassing state and see no one but him, so we had the wine brought to the room. “Slow down!” he said, as I drained the third cup straight. “You’ll just throw up!”

“Oh nonsense! Everything is going as it should, you keep saying, so this must be, too.” He snatched the cup out of my hand; when I put the flask to my lips, he snapped, “As you relinquished your will to me, slow down! And pour me one!”

My memories of that night are not the clearest. At some point I changed my mind about not wanting company, and staggered down to the mess. Once people found out I was there, a proper party started. Surya, who didn’t drink too much to keep an eye on me, told me later he was afraid the whole time that someone would ask me why I was making the trip—because Thara-e is inland, we had outrun the Pages to here—and I would blurt out the whole answer, but that didn’t happen.

What I did talk about was how afraid I was, about something I assured them they’d all find out soon enough. I did it by giving accounts of other frightening things I’d lived, ending each with, “But I was not nearly as afraid then as I am now.” (It was a good lesson for the peach-chins, who had all sincerely believed that The Invincible had never felt fear.) In fact we all got into a contest, of who had suffered the most terrifying experience in his life. Because Thara-e had been sacked and then occupied, there were many awful stories, but they voted me the winner for being put in full restraint naked and told, by Kurkas, that I was about to be tortured to insanity. “And yet,” I slurred, “even then, I was not as afraid as I am now.” Thank All-Spirit I was feeling it only at a great distance.

I don’t remember Surya hauling me to bed, though he assures me that when he made it a command, I said “A-e kras’!” and snapped off an impressively crisp salute for a man who was in such a state of inebriation. I don’t want to imagine what people were saying the next day; and the less I write of how I felt, as we swooped skyward in the brilliant morning sun, the better. By the time we reached Vae Arahi I felt just an unreal numbness.