82 - What would it be to take my own?

Niku walked me down to Assembly Palace, as someone must. I carried a vial of calming essence in another pocket. I took five doses just as I was coming up to the Committee room door. Why care who saw? No secrets.

As in Assembly, though, the formality was a comfort, as was the austerely-elegant oak lining the room, and the matching massive table, both rebuilt and polished to gleaming in precisely the same six-century-old style in which they had been originally wrought. The room even smelled the same as it had when I’d been growing up, and then a new semanakraseye. These things were a constant reminder, from all around me, that what I was doing here was for the people and thus sacred.

I felt as a balm also the tone in which Assembly committees generally conduct their business: reasoned, measured, smoothly articulate from long practice, sometimes painstakingly procedural, and with everyone treating everyone else with the sort of old-fashioned unfailing gentility that comes of them knowing every word will be noted and then scribed into classic Yeoli for all to read. Even snideness is delivered with an understated elegance.

They did as I had expected, asking me to summarize every incident, then examining each one in detail. As I unfolded the list, I wondered if they’d be impressed that I’d taken the trouble to write it, or struck that I could not recount it all by memory. I couldn’t know.

Having it stood me in good stead, though, my own black writing on white paper giving me something to tether my mind to while it flailed, wanting to fly out the window or melt and soak through the cracks between the tiles of the floor, or at the very least forget parts. I ended up thankful even that Surya had had me number it; two or three times the Committee, usually Miniya Shae-Sima, caught me skipping lines.

I wept, of course; I couldn’t even get through the short account of the first time, when I’d gone up on the mountain at seven after the talk with Esora-e, thinking to throw myself off if I were a coward, without tears. They, especially Kuraila, kept telling me to be easy on myself, not feel ashamed, let it out and so forth, which helped.

Their exact wording was “times you felt inclined to kill yourself,” which, blessing of blessings, got me off mentioning either the official or not-so-official times I’d done the Kiss of the Lake, at least at first. It didn’t, however, spare me from having to tell about going up on the mountain after I’d learned about the Statute semanakraseyeni sections 21-1 and 21-5-7. Linasika, of course, seized on that, asking me whether he’d heard it right that I’d known then that I was legally required to reveal my secret to Assembly. I told him the truth, that I was not sure and had chosen, on my mother’s advice, to hold off deciding. When he pressed me, Lanai saved me by steering us back on topic.

Of course it came up again, when I told them about lying down in the stream after Komona left me, at fifteen, since part of my despair had been from thinking Assembly would never approve me if they knew, but Lanai headed Linasika off again.

The wording “feel inclined” also meant I should not include the lung-wound in Arko, since I hadn’t felt inclined. “I think you have missed one, Fourth Chevenga,” Linasika said, then accused me of leaving it out falsely. He disbelieved me when I said I’d had no intent that I knew, enough to threaten me with truth-drug, which everyone else protested. I saw annoyance at him on several faces, and the others were more gentle to me for a time afterwards. Keep it up, my friend, I thought.

I got through the list with many more doses of calming essence and a few more bouts of tears, and then we took the first rest-break. Living by “no secrets,” of course, means being given thoughts inconceivable to you before, because they come from other minds . Recalling what you’ve known only in pieces as a whole also allows other people to reflect on it as a whole. If one of them is a healer, all the better.

“There is one clear pattern I notice here,” Kuraila said when we came back from the break. “The incidents became more serious as you got older. At seven, you just had thoughts; thirteen, fifteen and twenty, you changed your mind each time; the three from twenty-one to twenty six were all such that you would indeed have died if you hadn’t been prevented; with the incident in training, you were wounded so severely you were almost killed.”

I, of course, had not noticed this. All I could think was, when you grow up, life gets more serious. She, in the way of psyche-healers, came up with reasons that made more sense. As I came closer to the age by which I expected to be dead anyway, I would be giving up fewer years, she pointed out; as well my responsibilities had increased with my age, and I’d often been driven by the sense I’d somehow failed or erred in them. It did not escape her eagle eye also that all the true attempts had been after I’d been tortured in Arko. All-Spirit, I thought, am I going to find out in time that everyone knows me better than I know myself?

Then Miniya stepped onto the ground I had never dared, asking me what the common thread in all of them was.

Common thread? I poked at the memories with my mind like a sore tooth with one’s tongue. Death sits on my shoulder anyway, and always has. My own, and others’ at my hand from before my voice stopped being a piping child’s. It was easy for me and became easier as I worked my way up the ranks, from killing tens to hundreds to thousands and then hundreds of thousands. What would it be to take my own?

I said, “I have always felt close to death; never afraid of it. Thoughts of it… come easily to me, maybe more so than most.” Of course Miniya asked me why. “My habitual answer to that would always have been, ‘I’m going to die before thirty.’ Shininao sits on my shoulder; I always felt so.” But I was under oath, and so I told them about not being able to say “I deserve to live” when Surya had me in the truth-hold. Why can’t you just ask him?

”Would it be fair,” Miniya asked me, “to say that you value your life little?”

In those times, I valued my life none at all. I saw it as a scrap on the wind… “It would have been fair to say that before I started seeing Surya,” I said. Perhaps partly out of wanting to duck the question, I think on retrospect, I spoke about fighting, and about how you can’t worry about your own life when you do or else your mind will freeze and you’ll get killed, and how if that is madness, all warriors have it.

Attempted duckings of questions can turn out revealing more, in the presence of someone sharp. “If I may intercede,” Kuraila said, glancing through the notes she’d taken, “I notice none of these times were during war. Between times you were fighting, yes, and one, the most famous one, almost the moment the war ended.”

I stood stunned for a moment, before acknowledging that this was true. Knowing they’d ask why, I threw out what came to mind. “I imagine I am close to death there already, and so feel no need to be closer.” I almost heard Surya say Mm-hmm in my mind.

“Or else you value your life more, there; might there be truth to that?” Kuraila said. The other people on the Committee never objected when she interceded, and in fact often gave their questioning time to her, for good reason. She’d now scored the heart-thrust once again; I signed chalk.

When I think back, every time I tried or felt or was inclined, it seemed utterly natural to me, inevitable, the only correct thing; my body and mind were in utter agreement, at least up to a point. But in war—I imagined myself in the chakrachaseye’s tent in a war-camp, and suicide was a thousand ways wrong and a thousand day’s journey away.

“I am most needed there,” I said. “When I imagine… it would have been a disaster for Yeola-e. Not so much in the Lakan War, before I was chakrachaseye, but in the Arkan war—utter disaster. For which I would never have been forgiven, I think, understandably.”

Kuraila began scrawling fast on her noteboard, as if she’d been struck by something, but didn’t say it.

“Further questions with respect to the summary?” Lanai asked around the table, meaning to finish this phase. Miniya signed.

“I hope you will forgive me for this, Chevenga, but as I am sitting beside you I have been unable to help glances at your notes, and thus could not avoid noticing that, some of the times we’ve pointed out to you that you had missed some numbers, you did not read the line you’d passed over, but rather altered the number of the next as if that line did not exist.” Linasika took in a sharp breath. “I do not doubt for a moment that there is a good and legitimate reason for this, but I ask you to share with us what it is.”

Kyash… what did I have to do, hide the list in my hands? At least I could easily answer the truth. “I was asked by the Committee to recount the times in my life that I felt inclined to kill myself,” I said. “The incidents to which you refer are not ones in which I did.”

“Ah. Then… if you will forgive me for asking… are they somehow similar to suicide, or feeling inclined to it? No, cancel that question, answer this one: are they somehow relevant to your mental state?”

That was it; I wouldn’t be spared after all. I spoke and signed chalk (you can’t just sign but must speak, as all words are being scribed), and he said, “I ask you to recount them.”

“Well…” Why doesn’t Assembly Palace have secret passages like the Marble Palace, that I could just vanish into rather than revealing I have the Kiss of the Lake on a suicide list? “Before I do, I want to reiterate very strongly that these were not times in which I felt inclined to kill myself, or had any of the related thoughts and feelings, but undertook it as the most sacred rite. It is on my list because it is a… chiravesa of suicide.”

“You are referring,” Miniya said amazed, “to the Kiss of the Lake?” I said and signed chalk, feeling myself go hot on two points on my cheeks. “But…” His eyes flicked down to the list and back up to mine. “You are referring… only to the Kiss of the Lake?” I said and signed chalk again. “But you’ve done it twice—once at the outset of your term of office, and then again when you rejoined the army in Ossotyeya… but it’s five items on your list you omitted.” Were you a Niah wing-scout in a past life? “Will you explain?”

“Two of the five are the times you mention,” I said. “The other three were times that I rehearsed it in private.”

“Rehearsed it in private?” They all stared at me. “To the full extent?”

“Yes,” I said. “Each time I wanted to know whether I’d be able to do it when I must, so it had to be to the full extent.”

Miniya had been dark-haired before he’d gone to salt and pepper, and his eyebrows were still mostly black; now they drew down hard in perplexity. “Three times, you did this? When?”

“Twice before I became semanakraseye and once after—it was on Haiu Menshir, before I came home from Arko.”

“If I may intercede,” said Linasika, “I’m getting again that feeling I so often get with you, that I am so raw to and that is such a curse, Fourth Chevenga: that you’re hiding something. What is it?”

I felt the points come up much hotter, and thus much redder, on my cheeks. “I… I am embarrassed by this.” That is not answering his question, and I am under oath. “I… I am not telling you what age I was, the times before I was semanakraseye.”

“Well, then, tell us!”

“I was eleven. Both times; they were in quick succession.” Esora-e… I hope you will forgive me. They’d have the whole story out of me, if not now, later.

Kusiya stared at me, his kindly old man’s features stretched in a gape, his dark grey eyes white all around. He was so gob-smacked he didn’t even say ‘If I may intercede.’ “Chevenga, did I understand that right? You are telling us you did the Kiss of the Lake when you were eleven? Twice?” I spoke and signed chalk as I must.

“But our tradition is and has always been that a semanakraseye should not have to do it more than three times. You saw your grandmother’s brand-scars, that they were never more than three! Three times is sufficient proof that a semanakraseye can be trusted to enact the will of the people even unto death, for anyone in their right mind. Now we find out you’ve done it five times, in your few years, and two of them as a child!” He stood up hard, and grabbed his crystal in his fist. “I swear, second Fire come, if I find out that you plan to… are you planning to do it again?”

“Yes, of course,” I said. “I’m overdue; I only put it off because I was so pressed for time in Arko. I mean to do it next spring, since the end of my medical leave will fall in winter.”

“Right, then,” he snapped, “I have found out that you plan to do it again. So I tell you, on my crystal, second Fire come, I am going to propose a resolution to Assembly not to request that you not do it again, as I don’t think that will be strong enough, stubborn soul that you are, but bar you from doing it again. Legally.”

I froze all over, my eyes locked in his. “I’d chalk that,” said Darosera. “I too,” said Chanae, and two or three others signed agreement.





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