99 - Five years just looking

“One, one cup only, for me!” Krasila crisply ordered. In her grey-walled parlour, the smells of stone, iron and ancient cook-smoke overlaid by the aroma of the meal we’d just had, we settled on her wood-wrought furniture, the arm-rests polished only by hands, the only padding a thickness or two of wear-shined leather, and loose sheepskins. Her wine-cups were simple too, rustic ceramic in the old Chavinel style, with running whorls and meanders. They went well with the wicker-basketed clay flasks Tyirya had fetched the wine in; maybe that’s what he had been thinking. His bright, curio-bedecked parlour came back in a flash in my mind.

Krasila looked away, I surreptitiously topped her up, and she pretended not to notice as she quaffed. When she’d had what I estimated was about two, she actually leaned back on her own couch, her bony old form cradled on sheepskins.

“Well,” said Esora-e, a touch loosened by his own quaffing. “What are we going to talk about?”

“The wars we’ve fought, of course!” I said. “Swap tales of our greatest deeds.”

We did that for a while. She and Tyirya were old enough to have fought as marines against Kranaj’s grandfather’s Enchians when they’d taken Asinanai, and had helped liberate it in 1509. She’d retired from the field to devote herself entirely to teaching in 1525. Remembering that Esora-e’s farewell letter had been dated 1523, I wondered if she’d quit to avoid being stationed in a Chavineli unit in the same army as him, but didn’t ask.

“This is terrible. I have classes to teach tomorrow.” Was that a trace of a drunken slur I’d heard, from her whose diction was usually sharp as a sword-stroke?

“We’ll help you, shadow-grandma,” I said, topping her up again.

“I’m ineb… inbre… ibne… inibne… drunk.”

“Aaaaaahhhhhhh ka,” I said. “That’s the Niah word for it. Same means splatted on the ground after you’ve fallen out of the sky. Hey, you’re more so than I, I have to catch up. Shadow-granddad, please…” He topped my cup to the brim.

“Sssso,” she said. “Why?”

“Why what?” Esora-e and Tyirya were letting me do more than my share of the talking, I noticed, when things got deep, understandably.

“Why d’you three come’n bother me?”

“I told you last time I was here, shadow-grandma, and it’s the same with all of us—”

“Disssshturb me. Throw my life upside-down.”

“If the room looks upside down, you must be—repeat after me—inebriated.”

“In… inerb… inbred… inurbed,” struggled Esora-e. She glared at him in suspicion he was mocking her but let up before he noticed.

“Tha’ wash th’word I was looking for. One… only one… thank All-Shpirit I’m not having more ’n one.”

“Of course,” said Tyirya. “Eeerrbrinated.”

“Eeeebeeriated,” said Esora-e, and we were all laughing helplessly.

“You. You fool,” she said to Tyirya. “You could always make me laugh.”

“He came here to get you drunk and thus overcome your reservations,” I said.

“I did not!” my shadow-grandfather snapped, mortified. “He lies!”

“Oh?” Who’d ever have thought that Krasila Mangu could look at a man with languid, half-lidded eyes? “You wanted to overcome my reshervations, onsh.” Tyirya stared, amazed. “There,”—she stabbed out a vaguely-aimed finger towards Esora-e—“is the proof, you old sheep-diddler.”

I was happy to sit back and watch this, but Esora-e felt he must rescue one, or perhaps both. “No, no, mama. We came back to steal back my papers.”

“Lies! All lies!” I snapped, as if mortified.

She waved her hand towards his old bedroom. “They’re yours. Take ’em.”

“I did want that, once, yes, ’tis true,” Tyirya said musingly.

“Wha…? The papersss… or me?”

“He thinks that just because they all ssshhay ‘Dear Papa,’” Esora-e said, “he can read them.”

A fit of giggles seized me. “Let me, ha ha, let me show you, hahahaha, how it’s done… Ahh… em… urk… uhhhh… gack… stutter… hahahahaha!”

“Actually, your mother found that endearing,” Esora-e said.

“Do I look like him when I do it? ‘So, Karani, I.... I -I-I-I-I-I-I-aiiigghhhhh.....’ hahahaha…”

“Youths,” Krasila snorted. “All lust-juices.”

“What!? You know what I’m talking about?? You read them all, too??”

“All!?” Esora-e gasped. “Shhchevenga, I thought you just read the one bit!”

“It would be a very bad idea for me to want you, Tyirya,” she said archly. “Only one, boy, one!”

“I did only read the bit; I want to read the rest,” I said as I topped her up. Esora-e made a bit of a ‘gurk’ noise, perhaps as Tennunga had.

“I’ve kept and dusted ’em for thirty year... never set out t’read ’em but caught words as I moved ’em.” Tyirya refilled Esora-e’s cup fast, and he emptied it equally fast.

“Every word true. Lousy shit as a wife… lousy shit as a mother… barely capable as a war teacher.” She bent up as if to rise, and failed.

“That’s not true!” Esora-e said, in horror.

She looked at him as sharply as if she’d been sober. “No?”

“No; you’re maybe a little harsh, but you produce good warriors,” said Tyirya.

“You produced him,” I said, pointing my thumb at Esora-e.

“Harsssh’s a whetsshtone, my da always said.” She settled down again.

“You had a da?” said Esora-e.

She thrust her cup at me. “Only one, Tennunga-shhpawn!” I poured it full.

“What was he like?” Esora-e asked, like someone nervous in a fight making a first tentative feint.

“Beat my ma to death in the privassshy of the housh and curshed near did me too. Warrior like a rod.”

I heard the metallic tinkling of the coals of the cook-fire as they died, and someone laughing down in the street, distantly, in the ocean-deep silence that fell. “Wha….at?” Esora-e finally whispered.

“Had a brain-bursht, the Haian sshaid, an’I looked after’im the lasht five year of hish life. Gave me time to heal the bruisshes.”

Tyirya seized his cup and drank with a desperation he hadn’t all evening. “Ahh, Tyiri...” she said, almost with a purr in her voice. “I couldn’t tell you this shit!”

I knew what I must be: Surya. “Now you can,” I said. She held out her cup, gesturing with one finger of her other hand, and I poured.

“Easssy to hate. Toooooo eashy, to hate. Never good enough. Lasssht five years was even longer than the first ten. I did my best. He couldn’t talk.”

“Did he beat her to death slowly or all at once?” I asked.

“Fourth Chevenga Shae-Arano-e!!”

“Secrets kill, Esora-e. Think about it.” His mouth clamped shut.

“Broke her left arm and ribs firssht. Shaid’t was a training accident at the school. She agreed. I sat in the baby cage in their school. Baby cage… ha… Concussion often ’nough that the Haian started asking questions. Nothing for a while then.”

Her brown eyes, black now that we were down to lamplight, stared off into air as if seeing what she remembered happening again before her. “I was clumsy. Always bruised. Falling over my own feet. Hitting my own head. Clumsy. A poor student. One only!” I poured her more, but only a little.

I wasn’t sure what put the question into my mind, but remembering what Surya had said, that he didn’t always know why he felt inclined to do what he did, in healing, I asked it. “Did he use his wristlets?”

“Lassst time... said she was looking wrong at him. He had… had… to beat th’…wrongness out of her eyes. Tears on her face... but ssshtone-faced. Not a concussion… not that time. I thought I’d killed him.”

I had a feeling she was back in two different times at once. “You thought you’d killed him?”

“He was beating me. Yesh, with the wrisshlets. I pushed back... he got up from the matting and then fell down again… turning blue… I ran for the healer. Couldn’t get a Haian… wouldn’t matter.” She was stone-faced herself, with no trace of tears.

“He never talked again. Five year, jussht looking… looking… he died in his shleep.”

“I don’t blame you, shadow-grandma,” I said.

“Oh no, I was good,” she said. “I did the right thing. I nursed him through lung fever, more ’n once. Our house was the storage shed… shhhtorage now… this school. Aw, kyash… I’ve ssshpilled my guts. He always said I would. Mama fell off a cliff called Da.”

“You did right spilling your guts, shadow-grandma,” I said gently. “That was his story, that she fell off a cliff?”

“Shpill my gutsh... betray him. Never good enough not to.”

“Tell the truth about him.” She blinked and squinted at me, as if at a person speaking a foreign tongue. “He didn’t have the right to be protected from truth by you.”

“Everyone knew he was a kyash-eater. Everyone knew. No one saw. He was my da.”

“How old were you then?”

“Fifteen.”

I glanced at Esora-e, and then at Tyirya, both of whom looked stone-cold sober, though that was impossible. “We came to hear this, shadow-grandma,” I said. “Even if we didn’t know that’s what we were coming for. It was to hear this.”

“I still sit for him... in the grove. And for her. I don’t know which I love or hate more.” I held out my arms to her. She pushed away her cup, hard enough that a tongue of wine sloshed out and spilled on the wooden table. “No more drink,” she hissed. “None. Ever. Too much.” She wormed awkwardly and softly at once into my arms, and I tightened them. In a moment her wiry body went stone-heavy with laxness, her head lolled on my shoulder, and she was snoring with a faint whistling through her lips.

--

Read More......

98 - The all-out assault executed

It was a fair flight to Chavinel, with a delay, but only a day’s. By the time we had my escort and flyers all roomed up in an inn in town, and the wings all folded and stored, it was close to sunset, the time Krasila would free the last class and go upstairs to start dinner. The perfect time. I knocked on her iron-strengthened door, as per the plan.

“Fourth Che—” She froze, as if every joint had fused steel-hard at once, when she saw it was not just me, and her eyes told her the other two were who her mind could not believe.

“Krasila, my former wife,” said Tyirya, with perfect smoothness. “I just wanted to say to you what I should have said years ago. I’m terribly, terribly sorry.”

“Shadow-grandma, good to see you again!” I said, throwing my arms wide.

“M… m… ma…. I… visit… just once… me… you… die…” Esora-e croaked.

Krasila’s hard old face stayed boot-leather, but her eyes looked as if she were seeing ghosts. I saw her try to armour the feeling by swallowing hard, but one hand crept up over her mouth anyway.

“Tyiri… damn you… is that…” She was staring at her son, who stared equally frozen back at her, the hawkish lines of face they shared reflecting each other.

“Mama,” he whispered.

She shrank back into the door slightly, probably the only time in her entire life she’d ever beat even a hint of retreat.

“For the love of All-Spirit, shadow-grandma, don’t leave us standing out here on the street.” She snapped her hand toward herself, beckoning us in, with something of her usual whip-crack motion, but too jerky. “Thank you,” I said. “You were running a severe risk of me hugging you publicly, there.”

When we were inside, I held out my arms. It was like watching a rock-face crumble; unmoving except for the faintest trembling, she stood with tears growing, glistening, in her eyes. This had not been in our deviously-laid plan; one can make them forgetting the tides of the human heart, if one has some fear of them. At least it was simple to know what to do.

I stepped closer, in the most cautious, tender way I had in me. She didn’t back away or stiffen worse than she already had, so I closed my arms around her, with the greatest gentleness, like a healer handling someone badly wounded. It was as if she needed to be held together, or shatter into shards. Behind me I heard a choked sob from Esora-e.

In time, she took a deep breath and seized herself, patting me on the shoulder, like a wrestler giving the tap that requests release from an inescapable hold. “I should have known. I should have seen this coming.” Her eyes pierced me. “You… sit. Esora-e, there’s water in the kitchen for us to get cleaned up. Tyiri, you said you needed to tell me something?”

I will admire my shadow-father always for what he did then. “I’ll get the water in a kyashin moment, mama. It’s been years.” He strode over to her and grabbed her in a hug.

“I know where the water is,” I said, but kept my ears pealed as I slipped out to the cistern.

“Young man, that is no way to speak to your mother,” she said, utterly without force.

“How’s this then: I love you.” Like the most brilliant of champions, he was doing far better than the plan.

“I... I thought… you had left forever. You’ve gotten so big…” It was like a foreign language to me, to hear words spoken to him that were the kind said to a child. “I have no time for this nonsense of the heart… that’s enough.” It was still utterly without force. He was still holding her when I came back with a filled basin. I put it down and wrapped my arms around both of them, and my shadow-grandfather piled on, throwing his around all of us so we were a four-person knot.

Krasila took in a sharp breath, again seizing control, and shook us off. “More than enough. And you…” She peered at Tyirya. “You came along to help keep me off balance, hmm?”

“Of course,” he said, with his sweetest harbour-merchant grin.

“Only the devious spawn of Tennunga could have cooked this up,” she said, looking darkly under her eyebrows at me, precisely as Esora-e did. I grinned my non-denial. “Well, I was just starting dinner. Since I was not expecting the lot of you, you can just go down to the market and make up the lack.”

“Just tell us what you want, shadow-grandma,” I said.

“I’ll be the procurer,” said Tyirya. “Esora-e should stay here, and if Chevenga went, we’d have to take his whole escort.”

She gave him her list: chicken, mangoes, parsnips to make Chavinel-style, which Esora-e hadn’t had for years, and I had heard him speak of fondly, but never tasted myself. She hadn’t cooked them for a long time either, so they had to put their heads together to remember the recipe, a joy to see.

“I have enough of everything else,” she said curtly. “If the three of you insist on something else other than water or juice to drink, get it.”

“Wine,” said my shadow-grandfather. “Got it.”

“No one could cook parsnips Chavinel like you, mama,” said Esora-e, mistily. She fixed him with a glare to peel off the skin, thinking, I gathered, that he was flattering her; he froze like a rabbit before a snake. “So, shadow-grandma, how’s your health holding up?” I asked affably and quickly.

“Lots of wine,” said Esora-e. Tyirya signed a firm chalk and was gone fast.

“Well enough, semanakra… shadow-grandson. Well enough.”

“That’s good to hear. How are the students?”

“As well as can be expected.” She drew us into the kitchen, and we started preparing what she already had. “Some of them are cultivating sloppy habits... you know how it goes. I assume you wish to spar again tomorrow? Still with wood?”

I lit up my face with a smile. “You’re inviting us to stay over? Thank you, shadow-grandma, I am honoured! Yes, I’d love to, and yes, still with wood. But Esora-e and Tyirya can do it with steel, and Tyirya makes a better account of himself than I think you’d expect.”

Of course the three of us had sparred, once we’d recovered from our hangovers and me from the Committee, shortly after I’d brought Tyirya to Vae Arahi. I remember how it went. “I’m not that good, really, especially since I ruined my knees,” Tyirya had said. “I’m not as good as I was before I lost my thumb to the Lakans,” Esora-e had answered. “I’m so crazy I’m not allowed to spar with anything but wood,” I’d said. “A fine threesome of cripples we are; we’ll have a great time.” We had.

“I do know about your continued training, son,” Krasila said. “The darya semanakraseyeni should be giving you enough to do.”

“Oh yes, and teaching,” he answered.

“I have the two beds and the couch,” she said brusquely, to let us know that the topic was hers to rule, by changes when she felt like making them. “I believe it would be correct if my son takes his old room. You shall have mine, Chevenga; Tyirya will be able to make do on the parlour couch.”

“His old room, fair enough,” I said, “but I can’t take yours! If it’s anyone you should give it to, it’s Tyirya, in respect of his age. I can probably sleep more comfortably on the couch than anyone else.”

She blinked. She was so unused to not having her orders unquestioningly followed, to not being able to slight people unanswered. “If you insist, semana, em, Chevenga.”

“If he gets as much wine as he should, we might all end up sleeping on the floor,” said Esora-e, with an unmistakable tinge of hope.

“I’m comfortable there, too,” I said, making him snort. Krasila sniffed, but we all went on chopping vegetables, working together like family, which was warming to my heart. Tyirya came back shortly with several flasks, and poured for us as we were still preparing. “One cup only for me!” Krasila said strictly. “No more.”

“I bet she’s a very cheap drunk,” I whispered to Esora-e when she’d stepped away for a bit. He shushed me with a hiss. It occurred to me, once we were all happily full of chicken and parsnips, and settling down around in the parlour with a cup of wine each in our hands, that Esora-e, Tyirya and I had diverged from our plan. All three of us, apparently, had forgotten about Esora-e’s papers.

--

Read More......

97 [July 29] - Planning the all-out assault

As Esora-e came up to his room in the Independent after his grilling by the Committee, we ran into each other in a corridor, and both stood staring at each other. Is he angry? Is what we gained this morning lost again?

But a big meaty half-lax arm was thrown around my neck, and a second around his. “The two people I love most in this town,” said my shadow-grandfather, kissing both our brows through our forelocks; he’d been in the Committee with Esora-e, then walked him back up here afterwards, to lend his support. “I know it hasn’t been that long since last time, but you’ve just been spit-roasted about what sort of father you were by a passle of politicians, and your wife’s just left you—both fair excuses to get drunk, I think.”

We decided it would be just the three of us, and it would be in Esora-e’s room. A fair way into the evening, we got to talking about Krasila. I wondered whether Esora-e even remembered he’d written his letters, until he said, in the heavy way of a man who’s had numerous cups of wine, “I love calling you Papa. Back when I was… more… trivial-minded, I used to write… my thoughts… I always addressed them Dear Papa, and pretended I could send them to you.”

“Writing is trivial-minded?” I said, in the same heavy way.

“No, no, no, Ssshhevenga! Not if it’s war-manuals, as you’ve done, rather than the foolish narrating of one’s own life, as if anyone would care. Be easy.”

“You wrote letters… to me?” Tyirya asked heavily. “I want to read them. May I?”

“Krasila has them,” I said, while Esora-e sat staring at his father so stunned I thought he might actually be sobered up. “She keeps them very carefully.” His gaze turned to me, frozen, as if I’d thumped him with an invisible stick. “Shadow-father, I must confess… I read one of them.” I took advantage of his speechlessness by retelling it. It was my inebriation, I suppose, but neither of them seemed to find my blood-father’s attack of fumble-tongue in front of my blood-mother nearly as funny as I did.

“I’ll bet a full merchanter brigantine that Tennunga wasn’t good enough for her either,” said Tyirya.

“Actually, I got a lot of ‘You should be more like him,’ until she soured on him,” said Esora-e, somewhat recovered and returned to appropriate drunkenness. That’s where he got it, I thought.

“Soured… on him! Why?”

“He was too free-minded for her. And began to draw me away. Maybe she knew somehow where it would lead.”

“If you can’t or don’t want to get those letters back for me to see, I will understand, though I would be bitterly disappointed,” said Tyirya.

“She’d burn them, or the like, if I asked,” said Esora-e. “Just some trash she kept too long, you know… a child’s scribblings…”

“If you meant to send them to me, they are in effect mine.”

“But….!” His lips flapped for a bit, fish-like. “You exist. I didn’t think I was writing them to anyone who truly existed.”

“Esora-e… she denied me seeing you grow up. Seeing you take your first steps clinging to my fingers, carrying you when you cried, putting your first marya over your head, sending you out to play…” His eyes were suddenly full of tears. “All of it, gone. Except for your loving words sent out into the dark, not knowing if I even wanted you.” Esora-e’s eyes were suddenly full of tears too, and they stared at each other sobbing.

I was in command council then. A plan was required of me. The state of mind is more distinct when I’m drunk, and I feel inspiration more intensely. Probably I shouldn’t, but my life has become so much about revelation that I will reveal another military secret of the Arkan war. Three of my battle-plans, I won’t say which three, except that none of them was among the worst three, I conceived while stone drunk.

“I managed to get her to put me up once,” I said. “I could do it again, and this time steal them.”

“It breaks my heart that you couldn’t send them, that I never knew,” Tyirya wept.

“Father, you have me now,” Esora-e sobbed.

“I’ll kick down her door if I have to,” I said. Then came the sweet flash through my mind. “Shadow-father and grand-father, chen!” I still have the gift of command while I am drunk; they both straightened and faced me with full attention, cheeks soaked.

“You know the concept of the all-out assault? Throw everything at the enemy all at once? We’re going to do that.”

“What are you drunkenly blathering about, Fourth Ssshevenga?” Esora-e hissed.

“All three of us will go to her school.”

“Wha… who… why… bad idea… very very very very bad idea.”

“Shadow-father, for the love of All-Spirit, pay attention. I’m talking about how to get your papers back. Maybe the dear-Papa letters weren’t everything. Who knows what she has?”

I opened the stone-stove, sooted my finger and drew a fast map of her house on the table, sketching out our positions. I’d always found in war that a clear map helped the subordinates understand even simple assignments, especially if they were impaired at the time.

“I knock on her door. Esora-e, you’re here, you tell her you had to come visit just once before either you or she died. Tyirya, you’re here, and you say, ‘Krasila, I just wanted to say what I should have said years ago. I’m terribly, terribly sorry.’ And I, from here, say, ‘Shadow-grandma! Good to see you again!’ and throw my arms wide.”

Esora-e stared with open mouth again, but Tyirya started laughing. I had him, and he’d help bring Esora-e around.

“She’ll have to let us in,” I continued. “And once we’re in, Tyirya, you engage her in talk in the kitchen, here, while I say, ‘Esora-e, you’ve got to see this’ and we go into your old room here. You just pick up the box of papers—it was here, but if it isn’t still, I’ll spot it and point it out to you—and take it under your arm… and just keep it there. What’s she going to do, say ‘You can’t take that!’? Just have it under your arm the whole rest of the visit. If she asks us to stay for dinner, Tyirya and I will help her in the kitchen, while you hang onto the box.”

“She won’t know what to do, which way to turn,” snickered Tyirya.

“Of course not, exactly. That’s the whole idea of the all-out, to confuse, terrify and overwhelm.”

“I’m confused, terrified and overwhelmed,” said Esora-e.

“If she asks us to dinner… she’d be more likely to have a brain-burst right there on the spot!” said Tyirya.

“Maybe I’ll drop a broad hint, about how good her cooking was last time,” I said. “It was, actually.”

“But… but…” Esora-e was a gaffed fish again. “I don’t even want to...”

“I’m good to go tomorrow. We’ll double-wing the two of you, be there in a day and a half.”

My shadow-father finally found his will. “Fourth Chevenga Shae-Arano-e, you lunatic, NOOOOO!”

It’s when the troops quail that the commander must be strongest. I seized him by the shoulders, and put my nose almost against his. “You know... I’ve sparred her. And I’ve sparred you.” His eyes widened, and he tried to pull backwards and away. I tightened my grip. “I’ve been waiting for you to ask.” He swallowed twice, and shuddered. “Maybe I should ask you.... how do you think you’d do against her?”

“She’s my... mother. I... I shouldn’t even think that way.”

“Mm-hmm. Well, Esora-e, let’s just say… she’s never had the benefit of Azaila.”

“Oh.” He looked oddly crestfallen, to my surprise.

“Or any of the other best of the School of the Sword.”

“Or… Tennunga…” he said, shyly.

“Or Tennunga. Exactly.” I let go of him, seeing the shrinking of defeat. “So. Etesora 49th, we take off at dawn. Unless anyone has any prior commitments more pressing.”

“Nothing could be more pressing,” said Tyirya, and snapped off a salute with his cup-unencumbered hand. “A-e kras!”

“You… really… think… it’s important enough…”

“Shadow-father, are you kidding? There are probably all sorts of other salacious details about my parents!” Tyirya snorted with laughter, spilling wine down his shirt. “I want to read them all!”

“Maybe I’ll burn them myself,” Esora-e said.

“We have to get them out of her house to burn them, unless we’re going to burn down her house,” I said, “and that would be unlawful. So we still have to do this.”

“So you do want me up in one of those things, at my age,” Tyirya said.

“Shadow-grandfather, flying is the most wonderful thing in the world… you’ll love it. I’ll be the one who flies you.”

“No you won’t, Chevenga!” Esora-e snapped. “Your strictures… no piloting, that was one of them.” It’s a curse, when the troops catch you in error. Put it down to the wine.

“Strictures?” said Tyirya.

“So I’ll be double-winged myself; slight change, otherwise the same.” I had a feeling, though, that Esora-e would tell Tyirya all about my strictures while the three of us were preparing, since their rooms were next to each other. Perhaps while I was begging leave of the Committee for yet another trip.

That was next morning, and I tried not to look too hung over. The purpose they’d support, I knew; they’d heard a thing or two about healing extending back and forwards through generations, and so knew that if we managed to reconcile Krasila and Esora-e, it would be good for me. Of course Linasika was against it so it went six chalk, one charcoal. Leave of my loves was even easier, since only one remained, and the children were two fewer.

--

Read More......

96 [July 28] - Let him kill me, what difference does it make?

“Deep breath,” he said.

“Surya… did he talk to you about this?” Though I was immersed in water, my mouth and throat were bone-dry. “Is that why…”

“No. My papa.” Of course. “Deep breath, Chevenga. Do I need to say it again, sorry?”

“No.” The word came out a croak. “I don’t think… it hurt me that badly. But then… Surya keeps pointing out to me… things that I thought… didn’t hurt me… but did… so I can’t know… it hurt like fire at the time… but I was just a kid.”

“Yes, you were,” he said, firm in the resolve of apology, even as the tears now spilled. “You did not deserve me doing that.”

“But… you didn’t… know. You couldn’t… I didn’t… tell you.” It took everything in me to get the words out, against some hot force that was rising up in me. I wiped his tears with the backs of my fingers.

“Chevenga, quit looking after me… It’s not your responsibility. I made you look after me over and over again, and I was the father. You even found my father, who is everything to me now.”

“You would have that undone? You needed, and I really understand, now, why you so needed. I’ve met your mother.”

“Chevenga, you were just a child, and I’m all right, and you don’t have to look after me. It’s all kyashin backwards.”

There was something else to his transformation, I realized, even through my emotion. He was going to go before the Committee today. Now he’d be able to tell them he’d apologized to me for what he’d done. My heart hardening a little, I wondered if they’d ask him when.

“I need to look after myself,” he added.

“I know a very good healer.”

He laughed. Almost from my first visit to Surya, I’d been in the habit of recommending him to people, so much so I now had a reputation for it. “This family has certainly given him a lot of work,” Esora-e said with a snort.

“Mostly one of us,” I said.

“Something Papa said to me last week: people get mad when they are scared. It doesn’t mean they don’t love you, even if they’re yelling at you... I never... I couldn’t... see it...” Are you trying to prove to me that you love me, I thought, or trying to prove it to yourself? But he added, “I’ll bet your Niku... is wildly scared of a whole passle of things we couldn’t know. When she comes back you’ll be able to figure all that out.”

“If she comes back.” Best I get the word ‘when’ out of my mind.

“And if Skorsas overheard any of this... fine. It’ll all come out in the Committee reports and he’ll be able to read anything he likes anyway.” He shifted from one side of the tub to the other, sculling the water with his hands, and I wondered what it felt like with one hand thumbless.

“Shadow-father, I forgive you.” Your eyes beg for it; can I say no?

He twitched in slight shock nonetheless, and his eyes filled with tears. “Thank you, shadow-son,” he whispered.

“At least I think I do,” I said. “Maybe I can’t really know whether I truly forgive, if I don’t know how much it might have hurt me… I forgive you in principle.”

“Right… well…” He clenched his eyes shut to squeeze the tears out and then threw water over his face. “If you need to hear it again, I’ll say it again.” His eyes flicked to the sword-side of mine; I realized I was rubbing the temple he’d hit with my own hand, with a tender pressure like a healer. His eyes stayed there; I dropped my hand.

“I promised I’d do anything in my power to help you...” He reached, and touched the spot with three fingers of his sword-hand, the same hand, with such gentleness it seemed the dream of a touch in the mind of one who has desperately yearned for it, more than a real one. I closed my eyes. “I’m sorry,” he breathed again, wrapped his arm around my head carefully as if I were broken, and touched his lips to the spot the same way. “You didn’t deserve that.”

I found myself letting out a deep choking sob, then more. Tears came up burning, then words, that I couldn’t say in more than a whisper, that I had never told him or anyone. When I look back at how I recounted it in this memoir, even, I did not say these things, as if I had forgotten them.

“It felt like you were killing me,” I whispered, my throat strangling dry, and roaring in my ears. “It felt like you were killing me. My mind was flying into pieces. I thought, ‘He’s going to kill me. I don’t care.... I don’t kyashin care.’ ” His arm tightened around my head, and his whole body trembled with sudden sobs.

“ ‘So I die right now. Who kyashin cares? What kyashin difference does it make? Let him kevyalin kill me, it doesn’t matter. What’s anyone losing? Fourteen measly years, tops.” He started crying Aigh! with each breath. “So I’ll keep glaring at him till he kills me.”

“And I… I…” he gasped, “I was thinking… ‘I’ll make him respect me; I have to’…!”

I turned to stare at him, shock and anger cutting through the two curtains of my own tears and his. “I respected you! I loved you!”

“I’m sorry…! I’m sorry! Aiiiggh, Kahara, I’m sorry!”

“You were my shadow-father and you were going to kill me!”

“I shouldn’t have done it! You didn’t deserve it... I knew that... even then... or part of me did... aigh… aigh… aigh…”

“I guess I need to talk to Surya about this,” I said, from the sensible part of me, which stood off watching as always.

“Anything I have to do to help, Chevenga,” he said again, “I will. I can’t undo it… let me try to make up for it. If anything I can do will speed things up or make them easier for you…”

My strength had all drained out of me, I realized, as I whispered, “I’ll take you up on that, if there’s any way, if it’s necessary.” It wasn’t a matter of wanting to lie down, but having to, just as after the first visit with Surya, and many that had followed. “I’m done,” I said. “I mean, for the day. If this were the Marble Palace I’d call for a carrying-chair.”

I made a move for the steps out of the bath, dragging like an elder. He steadied my elbow. “I might be old but I can still carry you.” I didn’t let him, but I did let him take my arm over his shoulders, like a friend when you are wounded. Skorsas, who was hanging outside the door, took my other arm.

“Thank you,” I breathed as they helped me lie back in bed. “I love you, shadow-father.”

“I love you, too.”

I wanted his hand on my temple again, so I pulled it to and laid the four fingers there, laying my own across the stump where his thumb had been. I closed my eyes, and in a moment my thoughts began scattering along nonsensical paths, as they do when I am falling asleep. It was still before noon, but I had slept badly the night before.

I don’t remember it, but he told me later that as I was drifting off, I thanked him, calling him, “Dad,” as I never had in my life. Skorsas confirmed it, having learned the Yeoli word from hearing my children calling me it.

†

Excerpt from the Proceedings of the Chevenga Mental State Assessment Committee of the Assembly of Yeola-e, etesora 48, Y. 1556

Miniya Shae-Sima, Servant of Tinga-e-Pekola: You don’t remember how many times you struck him?

Esora-e Mangu: Not the exact number, no.

Mi: Can you approximate?

E: Maybe ten times.

Mi: Chevenga himself thought it was more than ten, but he wasn’t sure.

E: It could have been more. I… I was not counting. Or thinking.

Linasika Aramichiya, Servant of Michalere: You certainly weren’t.

Mi: Esora-e… while you were doing this, did you have any… doubts… by which I mean, did you have any thoughts of, it’s the mind of an anaraseye I’m jarring to semi-consciousness here, a mind whose good functioning is important to the future of Yeola-e?

E: Well, I was doing it for Yeola-e, in the sense that if he didn’t learn to sufficiently respect the authority of parents as a child, he wouldn’t sufficiently respect the authority of the people as a semanakraseye.

Mi: I understand your stated motive, but… all right, let me put it this way. Did you feel that the risk that he might not sufficiently respect the people’s authority as semanakraseye was great enough that it would be better to possibly damage his mental function through blows to the head, so that he would become one whom Assembly would not approve?

E: No! I didn’t think anything like that!

Mi: Did you just… not think it possible, that you could cause damage to his mind?

E: I… I was controlling the force of the strokes!

Mi: But you took him to semi-consciousness; you’ve admitted that, consistent with what he said and with the notes of the Haian. Are you not aware that that can cause lasting damage?

E: Yes, I am.

Mi: Were you not then?

E: Well, I wasn’t as… as aware as I am now. That night, the Haian came and spoke to me and told me exactly the chances… that I might have hurt him permanently and we could only know for sure over time. He told me even that, it’s rare, but it can happen that a person who’s been hit and not even that badly stunned can… die of it, a few days later. I was devastated… I’d never meant to really hurt him… if I’d killed him I’d have killed myself. I can’t say how desperately I hoped that I hadn’t, and how happy I was when it turned out he was all right.

Mi: So you didn’t have any such concerns at the time you were doing it?

E: No. It’s as I say, and the Servant of Michalere says, I was not thinking. I’ll regret it as long as I live.

Mi: Since that time, have you ever spoken with Chevenga about what happened?

E: Yes.

Mi: Have you and he made peace about it?

E: Yes.

Mi: How long ago was that?

E: This morning.

†

Omonae Shae-Lemana, Servant of Thara-e-Tinanga-e: Esora-e, when we had Chevenga before us on this topic, we asked him what he felt was the most painful thing you did to him, and he answered without hesitation that it was not striking him, but telling him, in any number of different wordings, that he was a son unworthy of his blood-father. That Tennunga would have disavowed him, or Tennunga could not have produced such a son, or Tennunga would have been ashamed of him, this manner of thing. How many times did you say the like to him, when he was a child?

E: I… I don’t know.

O: You mean it was too many to have kept count of in your mind?

E: Yes, I didn’t, who would keep track of that?

O: When he had grown up, did you say the like then too?

E: I have… a few times.

O: Have you made peace with him about this?

E: Uh… no.

O: Why have you not?

E: I… didn’t know it was so painful to him, until now.

--

Read More......