92 - Scared shitless, same as you

Next day I was before the Committee most of the day. It was on how I’d been raised, as that has much bearing, psyche-healers will say, on a person’s mental state. I hadn’t thought it would be harrowing at all—I have always considered myself coming from a good and loving family—but, as ever, they found sore spots where I hadn’t known I’d had them, and many more than I’d imagined I could. By the end of the questioning, my eyes ached from weeping, my soul felt beaten all over, and I wondered if my parents would disown me, Esora-e first in line. My mood could have been better.

Niku’s, too; it was the sort of day that always put her out of sorts, grey and thick with rain that hammers down on the roof with a heavy dead sameness that makes it sound as if it will never end, making flying too dangerous and so pinning her down. She always hated being closed in anywhere, and it was worse when she had a worry eating her, as she did now. We’d planned that she’d take off for Niah-lur-ana in three days, taking Roshten, of course, as he was still nursing.

When I got up to our rooms there was a towel thrown over the parrot’s cage, not a good sign. Just lately Kvas had learned to yell “Idiot! Idiot!”, from one or more of the kids, and Niku had a tender skin about that sort of insult that made me think that someone had called her the like rather too often when she’d been a girl. Another example of the upbringing affecting the mental state, I thought.

Or was it just the Committee that had pulled my mind that way? “More pecking through my emotional entrails like buzzards on the battlefield,” I said, when Niku, curled miserably by the rain-streaked window, ask what had transpired in the session. “Next they’re going to drag in all my parents who are alive.”

“And I’ll bet that fakhad shkavi never let up on you… I wish I could kick him all the way down the mountain.” Actually Linasika had been more quiet than usual. The topic wasn’t finished; maybe he was saving it up.

“I never thought in my life I’d testify to a Committee if Assembly about my shadow-father whacking me in the temple with his wristlet,” I said. “I have a feeling he’s going to catch a world of shit for that when they have him… I cringe in waiting.”

She stared at me, the skin at the centre of her brow going darker as it did when it furrowed. “Your shadow-father doing what?”

I thought I’d told her; apparently not. “Whacking me in the temple with his wristlet… when I was sixteen. The Committee stayed on it for a bead, I swear… they took it very seriously.”

“He hit you with his wristlet? In the temple?”

“Yes… didn’t I just say that?” She should understand a little testiness on my part, I thought. I was stripping off my Assembly clothes for a bathrobe; the hot tub would hold a world of solace, though she was unlikely to join me, being angry at water right now.

“How did he manage not to kill you?”

“By a heroic effort of admirable self-control.” She didn’t laugh. “Seriously… all he wanted to do was stun the defiance out of my eyes.”

Her lips were pressed into a thin dark line. “Shit, Chevenga… stun the defiance out of your eyes? That’s, that’s...” Words failed her.

“Maybe that’s why I’m so fikked in the head,” I said. “And why the Committee so dug into it. I had my brains thumped too many times when I was sixteen.”

Her stare grew even more astonished. “He hit you more than once?”

This was not, I realized, going to help produce the happy shadow-father-daughter-in-law reconciliation I’d always yearningly imagined might happen some day. She was taking it no less seriously than the Committee had. “Yes. He kept going for… a while.”

“How many times?”

“Aigh! This is the questioning all over again! I don’t know. I was half-stunned. Maybe you should read the transcript.”

She got up and drew herself up to her full height, fists clenched. “How dare he!” Then, her face changing more to horror and pain, “How could he?”

“It’ll be interesting to see what he says when the Committee asks him that. Too bad you’ll be gone… I can send you the transcript.”

“Chevenga.” Her eyes searched mine deep; with infinite tenderness she touched three finger-tips to my shield-side temple. “Love.”

“Other one,” I said. “He was back-handing. I had a tough upbringing… that was really pointed out to me today. But I kept thinking, ‘So what? What’s it matter? What does it have to do with the death-in-me?’ The worst of the toughness was after I… took it on. They keep saying they set their mandate broad… I guess this is what they meant.”

Her touch on the temple he had struck went right through me, as if there was no skin or skull between outside and in. I put my arms around her, leaning on her a little, closed my eyes and took it in.

I had a long soak, then went to bed early, sleep seizing me; being put through the emotional grinder, I find, is more tiring even than battle. At the death-hour I woke up, knew I would not sleep soon again for spinning thoughts, and went to the office to finish a letter to Stevahn. A half-bead later there was a tap on the door I knew was Niku’s. “Chevenga? Who’s with you?”

“You of all people needn’t tap, love. The kids never do. You couldn’t sleep either?”

“Chevenga.” No luck, trying to divert her from her question. “You relinquished your will, Second Fire come, to Surya.”

“What am I going to do to myself in my office, stick my pen through my heart?”

“I didn’t say that, I was just pointing out that you shouldn’t be by yourself.”

“I can see the press-pages. ‘Ceremonial semanakraseye inflicts fatal paper-cut on own throat.’”

Her lips narrowed. “You can be flip as you like, Fourth Chevenga, but please quit doing this.” When she’d picked up from Yeolis the habit of adding the number to the name when reproaching me, I wasn’t sure.

“If you came for my company, we can sit here, if you want, or somewhere else. Or go to the kitchen; you’ll be less sick in the morning if you eat something now.”

She sighed, and pulled at the teal silk pareo she’d thrown around herself. “When you’re done.”

“I’m just writing a letter, it can wait. All my letters are personal now, they’re never pressing.” I put down the pen and got up.

“I guess you miss it.”

“What—the semanakraseyesin? Well... yes, of course I do. But I am doing what I have to, now.”

“Putting all your mind on your healing, yes.” We said little as we headed down, by the light of the hall kraumaks. Something was eating her, but it always was now, and I knew what it was, and didn’t know what to say.

“You sit, love, and I’ll make it,” I said when we’d lit the kitchen lamps and brightened up the stove-fire. She wanted plain bread, no butter, as she often did when pregnant, and chamomile tea, on my suggestion.

“I’ll miss you,” she said, picking at the bread.

“I’ll miss you too. I think it’s best, though.” She looked away, as if faced with a truth she couldn’t stand.

“Chevenga... will you tell me what you still feel about Roshten’s brother?”

Surely she isn’t picking a fight… I told myself not to be silly. “He died in the stream,” I said. “What’s there to feel?”

She looked at me for a long time, with an expression I couldn’t read. The kettle whistled. I’d already hung the tea-ball in the pot. I poured. “Why do you ask?”

“Because… I still feel things and can’t imagine that you don’t.”

“Niku… everyone I’ve ever loved, who I lost, I still feel something for. Even a child who died in the stream, stonehearted Yeoli though I am.”

“I didn’t say you were stonehearted,” she said sharply.

“You want it strong or weak?”

“Strong, please.” She ripped the slice of bread in half and put both halves down. “It’s good that Esora-e’s father came for a visit,” she said. “I like him.”

We were safe for now, it seemed, as we talked a bit about the difference between Tyirya and Krasila. But she ripped the halves into quarters. “Love, don’t savage your food—eat it,” I said. “You know how it goes; if you don’t eat now, you’re in a Hayel of puking in the morning.”

“I know that.” She stuck one distastefully into her mouth. “It tastes like sawdust.”

“I know, but the two little ones hunger for it anyway.”

She chewed slowly for a while, eyes closed, looking as if her thoughts were enraging her, then finally said, “You never answered me, on the mountain.”

“Which question?”

“Whether you really need more children for the line of succession.”

I took a deep breath. “The line… is pretty solid. Tawaen wasn’t tested and I’ve always called him anaraseye and no one’s objected, at least publicly, or said he shouldn’t be approved. That’s five… pretty safe. But… how do you explain to one child, ‘I stream-tested you but not your little brother or sister?’”

She stared at me as if I had the deaths of the two within her on my hands already. “Niku, I know how you feel,” I said. “I’m terrified too.”

“You know how I feel?”

“Scared shitless. Same as me.”

“Because we threatened any of our children we must threaten them all?”

Try to get her to look into the future, who only understood now, or understand unfairness, who only thought of whoever she was thinking of at the time. I took another deep breath. “It’s a consideration, that’s all. I thought I should raise it.”

I poured her cup full, but she pushed it away. “I don’t want the tea, and I’m leaving tomorrow, not the day after.” Anger flashed through me. As ever, I was being made the villain for disagreeing with her. “You should go back to bed with Skorsas. I’m going to see if I can sleep on the couch in the glass room.”

“I beg your pardon, a thousand times, for being so loathsome that you don’t want to be near me.”

“That’s not funny.”

“It’s not a joke, it’s sarcasm. The tea should help you sleep. Maybe if you can pretend it didn’t come from my hand you’ll drink it.” I turned and walked out.

“Chevenga!” I kept going, not looking back. “Chevenga! I’m too fikken heavy to chase you, you know damn well!”

“I guess you can’t catch me, then!”

“Why can’t we finish this?” she yelled at me down the corridor. “Why does it keep coming back?” As if you don’t bring it back every fikken time, I thought.

I kept going, fast enough not to hear more, and went back up to the office. I finished the letter, and a few more, though they can’t have been my best, my mind too full of black clouds. Sleep was a thousand days’ journey away.