43 - Esora-e writes but does not send a letter

Dear Papa:

A messenger came to the door of our chambers, from Hurai Kadari. Could he, Steel-Eyes, Salao, Kamecha and Dainena-e come for ezethra, one day soon?

If this wasn’t about someone whose initials, not to embarrass anyone, were che, ve, n and ga, I was an Arkan’s uncle. But what could I say—no?

We did pleasantries for about a blink of an eye before Hurai got to the point. “Esora-e… your shadow-son hanging up his sword, was this news to you?”

Shit… why did they have to ask me this? “When he announced it in Assembly? No.”

“You knew? And you didn’t talk him out of it?”

I swallowed my first answer, Have you ever tried to talk my shadow-son out of anything? “No. I didn’t.”

There was a thick silence in the room. They were all staring at me. Hurai slowly said, “You don’t… agree with it, do you?”

“Well… I wish he weren’t doing it.”

“I hear a ‘but’ there,” said Steel-Eyes. “You wish he weren’t doing it, but… what? It’s his choice?”

“With asa kraiya, who else’s choice should it be, do you think?”

“Some would say,” Hurai said gruffly, “that he’s bound to live by what the people wills.”

“Start gathering signatures then,” I said.

“He’s that set on it? He’d give up the semanakraseyesin?”

“I’ve never asked him that, tell the truth. But he’s very set on it. And you know how he is about things he is very set on.”

Kamecha and Dainena-e both looked like they’d had spears stuck through them by a friend; Salao was more disbelieving. Steel-Eyes just looked furious, of course. Hurai got up and paced.

“You know, I think of myself as one who understands a lot,” he said, which was fair. “But I can’t begin to understand this. In all my life, fighting all my wars, I never met anyone so wed to war, in every cell of his body, in every corner of his mind, in the very shape of his soul. Someone who’d come to a war-camp at age fifteen, be bothered by how many Yeolis got killed in the last engagement, decide to do something about it by sneaking into the enemy camp and killing their general, and succeed at it… I saw Yeola-e’s future then, do you know that? I saw Yeola-e’s future!”

“His warcraft is too beautiful a thing to lose,” said Salao.

So’s his life, I thought. Oh, and by the way? His life’s gone, his warcraft’s gone too.

“Why? Why? That’s what I can’t begin to understand, what none of us do. He never hated it!”

“In all my life,” said Steel-Eyes, “I never saw anyone who loved it more.”

“He never regretted anything he did or ordered on a battlefield. Esora-e, what do you know? Since he was in Arko, he’s walked a fine line between reason and madness; is it just that? Has it just got him completely now?”

Trying to think of how to explain what I knew, I wished Surya were here. The thought of him reminded me to take a deep breath. “No, I don’t think it’s got him completely. Hurai, I don’t really understand it. I just know that he believes, firmly, that if he doesn’t put down the sword, he’ll be dead in two years at the most.”

The bafflement on all their faces deepened. “But that makes no sense,” said Kamecha. “This is the man who can take anyone. What’s he thinking, he’s lost his edge? He went through torture beyond imagining, and all sorts of wounds, and never lost his edge.”

“It’s not that simple,” I said, feeling as if my mouth were full of stones.

“What are the complexities, then?” said Hurai.

I took another deep breath. “What if I told you it was an asa kraiya thing? I’m not asa kraiya. I know Azaila understands; maybe you should ask him.”

“Esa, his healer, Surya what’s-his-surname, convinced him, didn’t he?”

Great—they’d jump all over him. I preferred they jump all over me. “I wasn’t privy to their sessions. But I know that no one can convince Chevenga of anything that doesn’t somehow ring true to him. So don’t blame the healer.”

“Didn’t Surya do training in Haiu Menshir?”

“Yes, and that makes him an irredeemably-foreignly-corrupt ruiner of warriors, even though he was one himself and fought with no lack of bravery or honour. Listen to yourselves, for the love of All-Spirit, trying to pin someone else. Your argument’s with Chevenga, and Chevenga alone.”

Hurai paced back and forth a bit more. “Fair enough,” he said. “We want you to argue with him, with us.”

Shit. Here it was.

“Hurai—all of you—listen and understand. I am his shadow-father, but he is not a boy any more. I do not rule him now… if I ever did.”

“Neither do we—except as Yeolis our semanakraseye—but that doesn’t mean we can’t argue with him. As can you.”

My silence, I guess, told the story.

“Let me guess,” said Emao-e. “What he believes… you are worried is true yourself.” It was always surprising, when she was gentle.

“Well… let’s put it this way. If I were the one who talked him out of it, and then he did get killed…”

“You could never forgive yourself.”

“If it were you, could you?”

That put them all into a blessed silence. Too short, though. “But it makes no sense,” said Hurai. “Like every great warrior, he’s made enemies. Usually people like that last longer if they don’t put down the sword than if they do.”

“If it gets out he’s doing this,” said Daina, “every cutthroat-for-pay, vengeance-crazed Arkan and obscure idiot who’d just like to make his name forever as the Invincible’s killer will be infesting Vae Arahi like crabs in an Arkan’s crotch.”

“We should speak with Krero,” said Steel-Eyes thoughtfully. “He has Chevenga’s ear.”

And other parts, now, I thought. If only you knew. “I can tell you this much,” I said. “Azaila isn’t worried. I have to say, I wouldn’t worry about anyone attacking Azaila, in a thousand years. And he’s asa kraiya.”

“But what if Yeola-e were to get attacked? Azaila didn’t fight the Arkans, but we didn’t need him to. Chevenga, we do. What would Azaila say to that?”

“You’ll have to ask him.”

“If Yeola-e were to be invaded as we were by the Arkans… I can’t imagine Chevenga letting it happen and doing nothing,” said Daina. “I don’t think he’d be able to. How could he?” There were assents all around; none of them could imagine it.

“The question is, how much truth is there to this cursed thing he’s believing?” said Hurai. “I’d ask the healer, but after two years in Haiu Menshir, he’s probably going to say what Haians always say—hanging up the sword is the cure to everything.”

“By my measure,” I said, “whatever worth you all may put on it, the healer is extremely competent at seeing what’s inside people, and he is honest.”

“So he sees what Chevenga believes, sure—but does that make what he believes true?”

“Curse it, I don’t know!” It came out a yell, and now I got up and paced; Hurai and I wore down the floor-planks together in step, making our about-faces in unison. However it was with Chevenga, we had the life of war in every one of our cells.

He spun on his heel the other way, to meet me nose-to-nose. “Esora-e Mangu, you know as well as I do, that whatever a person believes, he can make true. Especially Chevenga. He can will himself out of this. You and I know that, as you started his training and I continued it. Sure the Arkans put his soul through the grinder, but he was healed of it on Haiu Menshir, else we’d all be slaves now. He can throw this crazy shit off if he really wants—you know that. It’s just a matter of him being convinced!”

“Whatever you and I know, Hurai Kadari, his healer doesn’t think this. And he will listen to his healer over me, or you, or all of us at once, or anyone.”

“So it is his healer.”

Shit. My cursed mouth. “His healer is just a healer. He is making the choices.”

“On the healer’s recommendations.”

“Hurai, you can try to talk to Surya if you like. He will say absolutely nothing to you about what he and Chevenga talk about, that I would stake my life on, because he keeps a confidentiality oath like a Haian’s. And he’ll listen patiently to everything you say. Then ignore it completely. I have never met a person so strong in what he believes, so certain—there’s a reason his name is Surya. I suggest not wasting your breath.”

They stood considering, Daina tapping a fingernail on her dagger-hilt as she has a habit of doing. For some reason today it was irritating.

“And you will say nothing to him?” Hurai asked me. Chevenga, I knew he meant.

“I didn’t say I would say nothing.”

“You will say…?”

“I will say what is appropriate.”

Silence hung in the air for a while, like smoke over a sacked city. Finally Hurai said, “Well, you can do, and we can ask, no more than that.” And they were up and gone as one, like a unit drilled hard together for years.

Of course Surya did exactly what I said he would. Chevenga blew them off. What else did they expect?

Ah my non-existent Papa, whose non-existent love I so cherish. I bet you agree with me, life is fools playing chase. And you’ll soon also agree that I deserve to have all my old wounds opened up again and rubbed in shit and salt at once, for telling them he’d listen to his healer over anyone.

Hurai Kadari and Emao-e Lazaila have never been do-nothing or let-it-go people.

It was that night or another a bit later or sometime that Chevenga told me, as we were making ready for bed, “It’s true, what Hurai and the other circle-collars were saying… I couldn’t let Yeola-e be overrun and not pick up the sword again. It’s not in me. I asked Surya if that would make death certain, and he didn’t know… but giving my life for Yeola-e was something I never grudged and never would.”

Kahara, Papa… of course he wouldn’t.

I put my arms around him. “The rest of us will have to fight all the harder, then, so you don’t have to. And if that means laying our lives down, so be it. I told you I would; I doubt I’m the only one.” I probably don’t need to tell you, that put him in tears.

Would he tell Hurai and company that? The last night they were in Arko—all set to march home and go stomping into Assembly to request that he be censured or required or threatened or something, anything, to make him not go asa kraiya—I asked them if he’d told them anything about his intent. No, they told me. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised; if he was going to say something like that to people other than family or very close friends, it would be in Assembly, probably.

“It’s not for me to say you shouldn’t go on pursuing this,” I said, “but, just between me and the five of you—if you tell anyone I said it I’ll deny it—you can set your minds at least somewhat at rest.” And I told them what Chevenga had told me, that leaving the sword down if Yeola-e was invaded wasn’t in him.

I thought they’d heave sighs of relief, not look as if I’d brought news the building was on fire. “Oh kyash,” two or three breathed. “Sal, go, catch them, now, go!” Emao-e barked, and Salao dashed out the door.

“That’s… that’s good, Esora-e” Hurai said to me. “Curse it—of course it’s not in him. We knew that. We said it, didn't we?”

He was very nervous all of a sudden, a sweat sheen breaking out on his pate.

“What was that all about?” I asked him, signing with my thumb toward the door.

They all looked at me with the kind of rock-hard casual look that we Yeoli military types get when we’re trying to hide something.

“I’ll only tell you if you swear second Fire come you’ll tell absolutely no one, and understand that if you do we’ll all deny it,” Hurai said to me.

I swore. This is just a letter to a person who is not.

“We’re calling back the two Arkan assassins we just hired to knock off Surya.”

Love into the abyss that is you from your son,
Esora-e.

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