102 - in which I receive the brass chain

Excerpt from the proceedings of the Chevengani Mental State Assessment Committee, etesora 56, 1556:

Persahis of Telurit: He came to me. He said it was on the recommendation of Iskanzas Muras of the Mezem.

Ikrena Shae-Sansera, Servant of Tassumai: What reason did he give for wanting your help?

Per: Bear with me, please. He said, and I quote from my notes: “I’m afraid being in the Mezem is unhinging me. I’m afraid I will lose myself. I’ve been taking my own measures, meditating and so forth, but I’m worried I’m losing myself anyway.” And he mentioned the grium sefalian, which I told him right away I could do nothing about, that to have that cured he must go to Haiu Menshir. But I said with the sense of losing himself, and the fear, I could likely help him.

I: How did he appear to you? Did he seem mentally touched?

Per: He seemed ill-at-ease, as most people do when they come to a psyche-healer. He looked tired, and there was pain in his eyes. He showed no sign of insanity; he looked like anyone of right mind in circumstances that impose extreme strain, and who is afraid, because he can’t extricate himself from those circumstances, that he will not be able to maintain equanimity over time.

I: What was it in his circumstances that imposed extreme strain? I ask because I know he is a warrior, no stranger to killing, and not perturbed by it, and, as I understand, he wasn’t made to suffer any privations, and hadn’t been tortured yet.

Per: Well, he had been, actually; he’d been flogged more than once, and he’d also been forced to watch the torture and execution of an Arkan whom he had contracted to aid him in escaping, by the time he came to me. But the killing did trouble him, because, as he put it to me, he counted his war-training and his skill a sacred thing, to be used only in the service of defending Yeola-e, so that doing it for the titillation of a crowd was a travesty to him.

What I observed was that things kept getting worse for him. First it was these things; seeing the man tortured affected him very deeply, as he felt responsible, and in fact it was what led to his first visit. Then the war started and he was truth-drugged and his true identity discovered by the Marble Palace, then he was truth-drugged many times for Yeoli war information and injected with the grium sefalian, then thwarted in escaping again with Niku Wahunai, then… do you want the full list? It was deeply impressive to me how well he did maintain his equanimity, in the face of everything he suffered. My help sometimes seemed to me like spitting into a house-fire. But he stood in the face of it all like rock. His strength was nothing short of inspiring.

I: And yet… he was affected, was he not, by what he suffered?

Per: Yes, of course he was. But less than most other people would be, less than all but the very rarest of people, I would think.

†

“My life isn’t about love,” I said. “It’s about power. And will be even after I go asa kraiya.” What Tyirya had said about me being suited to healing drifted through my mind again, along with its answer: but I do have a calling.

Surya and I sat across from each other in his soft-cushioned chairs, sipping ezethra. The joy of that night had faded on the journey home; we’d been grounded for a day by pounding rains in Michere, and the grey of the sky seemed to call me back to reality, at least part-way. Arriving home to no kiss from Niku or hugs from Vriah’s and Roshten’s little arms did the rest.

I’d hoped for a letter or pigeon to have come while I was gone, and there was one, but it said, “Chevenga, I know you wish to write me, to try to persuade me to return. Please do not. I must make up my own mind.” As if anyone but her would ever make up her mind, no matter what I wrote.

As well, I’d be in front of the Committee tomorrow, with Surya, to talk about those most joyful things, the Mezem and the grium sefalian. I just wanted to say, “I was made to kill when I didn’t want to, and the stuff eats away your brain. Can we leave it at that?”

“It cannot be about both?” Surya said. “What if you choose to use your power in a way informed by love?”

“Well, that—” I had been about to say, “That would be best for all who have power,” but the thought cut off the words: that is what I have always done. I stared at him, not daring to believe something so self-serving. A smile grew on his face, and he chuckled.

“Yes, you should believe it. It is true.” Did he read my mind not just now and then, but always, and just hold back out of politeness? I got a shiver. “Go ask others, if you don’t believe me.”

I’d been recounting the trip; with the strictness of his confidentiality oath, it was safe to tell him Krasila’s revelation, which shocked him less than I’d somehow wanted it to. Do you know other cases of Yeolis killing each other? Of course, he knew of one who’d been planning to, as all Yeola-e, indeed all the world, did. The grey in my mood thickened at the thought.

He did not share his thoughts on Krasila and all I had learned. "Let it settle into you, and your heart make of it what it will,” he said. He has allowed me that, and let me spar, I thought; am I making progress? Though I had not told him I’d gone wood-on-steel with Esora-e—well, maybe now I had, by letting the memory flit through my mind, of the whack of steel through wood and the sudden and somehow delightful lightness of what was left of it in my hand. But he said nothing about it.

“I don’t know why, but I got the inclination to make you something, which I was working on all last night,” said Surya, his eyes flashing over my aura. “It needs testing, though. Go get Chirel and meet me back here.”

“Go get what?” He’d said it so casually. I almost didn’t feel I could call it mine any more; I’d barely even seen it since it had been pulled out of my hand by my friends, while they were getting me onto the ground while Idiesas’s sword was through me. I only knew it was hung in my training room, where I had barely been since I’d got home, in the Independent, because Skorsas had assured me he’d carefully put it there.

“Chirel.” Was I allowed to walk through the corridors of my house holding it? I guessed so, if he was ordering me to.

The polished oaken floor was strange beneath my feet; without me training here, now, hardly anyone else did. The earth-curve of the blade and its brilliant sharpness, familiar as my hand, seemed foreign at the same time. I wondered whether I’d forgotten how to sling it onto my shoulder, until I told myself to do it without thinking, so that my hands had done it almost before I knew it. I hoped no one would see me with it on as I slunk back to Surya’s rooms like a thief.

Surya asked me to take it off and lay it on a sideboard, and handed me a fine neck-chain in the Arkan style, with a small black stone worked into the links. “You are a goldsmith, too?” I said.

“No, the chain itself is not my making, and besides, it’s brass; I got it from Skorsas. My part was the property I instilled into it. Put it on.”

“Property you instilled into it?” I was afraid to ask.

“Put it on and you’ll find out.”

I obeyed, and he watched my aura as I did. “Don’t forget,” he added, “we are safe here, and no one has any ill intent for you. Don’t give in the urge to tear it off.”

Thus reassured, I fastened the clasp. As I did, I felt an internal cutting, similar to what I had felt when he’d used the quartz and obsidian over me when I had wanted to go on the Mahid raid. This cutting made me bristle all over, though, like a dog hearing the cry of a monster that humans cannot hear.

“Now turn away from me.” I did, realized I did not know where Chirel was, and felt suddenly faint. “I’m walking towards you,” he said. His voice was a touch closer and I heard his light-footed steps. “Do I have the sword, or not?”

It was very hard not to give in to the urge to tear the chain off, even though I would have had to fight the faintness to do it. Head-faintness turned to nausea and then clenched around my heart. Deep breath, I told myself. “Wonderful,” I gasped. “I don’t feel defenseless enough, I suppose, so now you’ve got to saddle me with jewellery that blinds weapon-sense.”

“Can you not feel where the sword is, at all?”

“No.” I tried, my mind probing everywhere in itself for the familiar sensation, straining to remember weapon-sense, as if I could regain it if I remembered hard enough. Deep breath… deep breath… With rising panic came self-contempt: what everyone else lives with as a matter of course, you cannot bear. “Be assured, Surya, you’ve done your work well. You or anyone else could sneak up behind me and whack my head off in perfect safety and comfort.”

“As is the case with most people,” he said, as if reading my mind again.

“Most people don’t have so many other people who’d like to whack their heads off.”

“Tell me when you first feel it.” When he’d laid the flat of the tip cold on my shoulder, sending a sickening shock all the way to my toes, I said, “Now.” I swallowed the urge to throw up.

“Good!” he said, like a war-teacher to a student who has just done some difficult move well.

“I suppose now, for my further enlightenment, I have to wear it,” I said weakly.

“No, no. Not as far as I know. It’s as I said, I don’t know why I made it. So you needn’t wear it”—I could barely unclasp the cursed thing fast enough, and feel Chirel come blazing back into my perception—“but carry it. I think you are going to need it for something, unimaginable as that may seem.”

I curled it into one of the pockets of my belt-pouch, and forgot it was there almost as soon as I walked out of his room.

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