48 - in which I quit

Approaching the door of Surya’s office had become gradually less frightening over time. But now the fear came roaring back, as bad as ever except the second visit, when it had frozen me entirely on his walkway. I had to breathe deeply for about a twentieth outside in the corridor before I could bring myself to tap.

“Before you ask me, I’m scared shitless again,” I told him as I closed the door behind me. “I don’t know why.”

“Yes, you do.” Surya contradicting me like that was a bit like Jinai Oru doing it, said with such lack of bad intent that I couldn’t even think of being so much as piqued. I took a deep breath. The wound hurt a touch. “You just need to think for a bit to see it. What’s been on your mind?”

Visiting him in the Marble Palace, my habit was to get out of the Imperial suit and into a bathrobe—not the black silk one I’d had before, as he’d forbidden me it the first time he saw it, but a bright emerald one that met with both his and Skorsas’ approval. At least the robe was easier to take off than an arsenal of blades. He didn’t have me strip this time, though, except the faib skates, but motioned me to the talk-healing chair.

“What do you think’s been on my mind? The Constitution of Arko and the Imperial election.”

“Mm-hmm… you know I mean in your spare time.”

“Surya… it’s as I said before. If my healing is going to ruin me for the semanakraseyesin then I should quit it and die.”

“It’s as I said before, healing ruins nothing for anyone; it only reveals truth. Is there some truth you are afraid will be revealed?” He scanned my aura as he said this. Knowing from the surge of fear that my aura was saying yes, I thought my tongue might as well say the same, for appearances’ sake, if nothing else. “Yes.”

“Chevenga”—my aura must have flashed all through with the red stab of unworthiness that hit me when he said it—“here’s the thing you need to understand. Always, you choose. What you do with what you learn in the course of healing is entirely your choice. In that sense, you cannot be ruined for the semanakraseyesin, except by your own choice, because healing only enhances one’s power to choose.

“I think you are afraid that you will be ruined for the semanakraseyesin through losing some kind of innocence, some kind of purity of mind that enables you to remain in the choice of that commitment,” he said. “Does that ring true?” Though I wasn’t entirely sure I knew precisely what he meant, it rang true enough that I signed chalk. “Or more exactly—the state of being unquestioning. You were born into the position, and you accepted it from childhood as children do—unquestioningly. You are afraid of what will happen if you allow yourself to question, aren’t you?”

I couldn’t speak. I stabbed my hands out, double chalk.

“And you are going to make me question everything,” I said, when I could, my voice more gravelly than I intended. “No stone left unturned, no aspect of my life left untouched. That’s how you work, I can see that.”

“There’s no aspect of your life the death-in-you does not touch, because death is the end of every aspect of life. You said the Committee set its mandate broad, to look at every aspect that might touch on your mental state, yes? It’s not going to leave any stone unturned either. You might as well come to an understanding here so you can answer them clear and complete as is required.”

“Yes but if I do that, how will I be able to hide anything from them?” I said, with more of a whine in my voice than I’d intended. He just chuckled and patted my shoulder.

“Here’s the thing, Chevenga. Healing takes us out of being unquestioning, yes. But it also brings us to the place of being able to choose, in full knowing, the same thing we chose unquestioning, that we thought we could only choose unquestioning. In other words, for your own case: you did not originally choose freely to be semanakraseye. It was required of you. But you will come to the point of being able to choose freely to be semanakraseye, if it’s what you wish—or if you feel the requirement is just and accept it.”

“I see,” I said. “I have to admit, I’d feel better about this if I was certain that this were entirely legal in Yeola-e.”

“What do you mean? It’s legal for a semanakraseye to resign. Even acceptable, if he’s performed extraordinary service for the people.”

I jumped up out of my chair and started pacing, twitching all over. “Surya, is this what you want, to ruin me for the semanakraseyesin?”

“Deep breaths, kraiyaseye. Bring back enough calm to see that’s not what I’m saying, that’s an order.” I whispered “A-e kras,” and obeyed. It was very hard. “There’s a lot of feeling there, you see that?” I signed chalk and counted out the next breath. He waited in his patient way, and when I could I sat down again.

“Surya…” I was still shaking, but I could speak. “I do feel the requirement is just, and accept it. I always have.”

“Do you?” He peered at my aura here and there. “When you were in the bath the other day, what happened?” Kahara, I can hide nothing from you, curse your guts.

“I… I had a realization about the Kiss of the Lake. I… it’s a shaming… I should have put it on the list.” He waited, mercilessly. “I… I saw…” I curled in the chair, burying my face in my hands. “It’s as I said last time, they ask a lot of us.”

“What exactly? Say it—it’s very important that you do.”

“A-e… k-k-k-kras…” I was sobbing now, in the dry-eyed way that comes with terror. “They ask… our lives…” Shivering was making my elbows bang against the chair. He put his arm around my shoulder. “Th-th-they ask… they require… I… d-do not deserve… t-t-to live… unless… they ag-g-gree.” But for his arm, I felt, I’d be flung into blackness in pieces.

He tightened it. “Just be with that for a bit. Be with it, Chevenga.”

Chevenga! The sound of it went crazing through my bones, as if the name itself was an accusation. A semanakraseye’s name, a warrior’s name… I have no other! “You don’t deserve to live unless they agree, stay with it.” His voice was close to my ear and very firm. “Stay with it and let the feeling come up and out. Don’t question it or word it or name it or try to understand it, just allow it.” It feels like full-blown madness, I thought. “It’s not,” he said. “It is also not without limit. And I have you.”

What wanted to come was a scream, so I threw back my head and let it. More screams came crowding after. I did as he said, let it remain nameless and not understood, just freed it in pure voice. It reminded me of screaming I want to live! in the first session, full of the same desperation, as if my life hung in the balance, and the balance was my voice. When I ran out of screams and thrashings—he gently pinned me to the chair all through—I still had what seemed like a sea of tears. “We’ll deal with it with words later,” he said. “Go to exhaustion.” I did, and slept on the chair for the nine tenths of the bead we’d scheduled that were left.

†

I am not working hard enough, else I wouldn’t wake up at the death-hour, I thought, staring up into the pure darkness of the far-too-high Imperial bedchamber. My mind and body rang with the echoes of some restless, oppressive dream I’d just had. It had a feeling of Elera Shae-Tyeba, the man who to me was envy embodied, as if he’d been after me again.

Kallijas, feeling my wakefulness even in his sleep, I guess, turned over and put his arm around me, making me know I couldn’t slip out of bed without waking him. Lovingly protective though that arm was, I felt the prickling desperation inside my chest, of being trapped.

My death, I thought, will come at the hands of someone like Elera. The usual shame I felt for anger at a Yeoli came up, and I ignored it. It will be the small-minded, the envious, the vicious, the cowardly, who will do it, I just know it—because who else would it be? Who else is it, ever? And I have no defense against them. In the face of that, I am so destroyed, I just want to throw down my weapons and say “Fine, if that’s how you feel, take me.”

I was speaking to Surya in my mind; it happened more and more often these days. I can’t stand it, I can’t bear it, I thought I understood when I had the run-in with Elera, we made peace and became friends, but now it’s killing me again and I’ve lost the understanding. They need but speak and I am destroyed; why? Why is that, Surya? Why is it that the people who would cut me down for the most bitterly petty reasons, I feel I can’t fight? Why do I feel so helpless, as if I’m Lakan-bound, as if I can do nothing against it?

When I spoke to Surya in my mind, he sometimes answered. He did now. “Chevenga, is this the same with Arkans and Yeolis?”

Of course not—I clenched shut my eyes, and took deep breaths to keep my tension and my trembling from waking my loves. Yeolis. Semana kra. Surya, I have always lived, always live, and always will live, by semana kra. Elera is semana, so, Elera wills. Those people don’t want me taken down for things I’ve done, or might do, that would be wrong in their minds, but for who I am; so, by semana kra, to accede to their will, I must cease to be. As semanakraseye I had no right to disagree. I clenched my eyes shut and buried my head in Kall’s neck. He tightened both arms around me. In that refuge, I could sleep again.

The next day—it was Anae 20 by the Arkan calendar, I will always remember—I had a lull for paperwork when someone cancelled mid-morning, and I couldn’t keep my mind on it, for a nameless anger. I gave up fighting it after a while, asked myself ‘What is in it?’ It came to me like a splash of icy water. ‘They ask my death; how have they the right?’

I sat stunned, shaken, as you are after feeling the instant purification of perfect truth, like a cleansing with fire. Everything was surreal, as if only what was in me was true, all the rest of the world a sham. This problem was hardly a problem at all, when the solution was so clear and simple.

I took off the golden bracelet-rings of the Imperator, and the nephrite seal-ring of the semanakraseye, and laid them before me on my desk. That was it. I was free. “I quit,” I said, to no one in particular, though Kallijas was there. I should tell the writers, though, and Binchera wasn’t within calling distance, so I got up to skate to him. My head exploded with stars and lightning, fading to night’s black.

†

I am crushed under a great weight, but it’s more on my arms, pinning them, than on my chest. Something pulls at my hand, pushes at my finger, something sliding onto it, clasping my wrist it’s Kall, curse you, what the fik, my head, “Kall, get off me!” The nearest part of him to my face was his silk-kilted butt. He was sliding one of the gold-chained thumb-rings of the Imperial seals onto my thumb.

“Are you out of your mind!?” he hissed over his shoulder. “You can’t quit!” We were in one of the tiny private rooms, where he’d carried or dragged me.

“You know, Kall,” I said, “Surya said that as I change, people will try to stop me. I didn’t quite believe him. But, Gods, he wasn’t joking.” I tried to raise my head, felt a swirl of dizziness and sickness, and let it fall back again. “Of course he also says ‘always you choose’ is the truth of life. The fool. My father, too.”

“Sheng, I’m sorry I hit you. But you were going to be out of the chambers fast as lightning on those forzak wheels, where everyone would see you, and the writers would be there just as fast. Whereas if you think reasonably for an eye-blink, you’ll realize the wrong. Don’t you fikken see how many people would die?”

“‘Always you choose’ isn’t the truth of their lives, either? Really—why should every life or death be in my hands?”

“Sheng, what’s come over you? Maybe they shouldn’t be, but they are, curse you… fik, fik, fik, do I have to shennen tie you up? Yes, fik, I’d better, you’ll pretend to give up and then be out of here calling the guards on me the moment I loosen my grip, you’re the most devious whoreson in the fikken world…” By the oneness we had, he knew me. I’d been planning more or less exactly that. He’d trussed my wrists together with a curtain-rope, and ankles immovably together with his belt, well before my head cleared enough for fighting, then hauled me up onto a chair. “Skorrr-saaaaassss!”

My chamberlain stood frozen staring once he’d come in the door, his perfect blue eyes white all around. I think he was going to call the guards when Kall said, “He’s gone out of his head again. Go get Surya!”

Neither he nor I was sure what to say while we waited—I'd never been taught the etiquette for quite this situation, nor had he—so we waited in silence. The purity was beginning to fade, and I was starting to see his point, when my healer came in. Kallijas told him all that had happened, unapologetic for his part. Surya didn’t seem to condemn him for it.

He ran his eyes over my aura. “You can untie him.” Kall did it with relieved eagerness. I took a very deep breath.

“Chevenga… not that it isn’t understandable, but I think you are the worst person in the world for not biding your time,” Surya said. “It’s what, a little over a half moon until the election, and about the same time you plan to stay to help switch over—so a moon and a few days before you are home in Yeola-e for good. Where you can thrash these things out freely because everything does not depend on you, or possibly nothing depends on you if you take that half-year leave… and you’ll even have a Committee of Assembly to help you do it.”

“Well it’s you who got me letting out emotion,” I said, taking off the seals again, to Kallijas’s gasp, and then putting them back on on the correct hands.

Surya pulled a bit of a face. “I’m still getting used to working with you,” he said, something so uncertain it was a delight to hear. “All right, Chevenga: I don’t usually say this to clients, but you, as I’ve always said, are unusual. Or perhaps more exactly, your position is. We’re going to hold off, at least this aspect of the work, for now—hold it still in you, like when you are practicing a move and your teacher asks you to freeze.”

“Probably a good idea,” I said. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Kallijas sign a very emphatic chalk to Surya, thinking his hand was out of my sight; I got the sense he was doing a double-chalk. When had the quintessential Arkan started doing that?

“I’m not sure we shouldn’t make him play out what would happen if he did quit,” said Kall, laying his hands on my shoulders. Definitely, he’d been fraternizing with too many Yeolis, corrupting that quintessential Arkanness.

“It could bring everything we’ve worked so hard to build come crashing down,” I said. “I know. I know. Kall… I’m sorry to have even thought it. You were right to hit me.” I took another deep breath. “On behalf of the people of Arko and Yeola-e… thank you.”

Inside, a part of me smashed itself, as against the inside of a thick stone wall.

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