103 - Consideration and celibacy

What Niah divorce laws are, I don’t know, but I do know Yeoli ones. So that people deranged by emotion, who might regret it on the return of calm, cannot tear their families asunder, you may not divorce all at once. The first step is “signing consideration,” which is to say, signifying that you think divorce may be best by a signature on the marriage certificate. The spouses are then required to visit a healer or a member of the senahera at least three times, and do their best to resolve their differences. After that, either the person who signed strikes it out, or the other spouse, or spouses, also signs, which makes the first phase of their parting official; it is not final for another year.

Niku and I had entered a certificate of marriage as part of our ceremony in Arko, and sent it to the registry of Vae Arahi . The way she had left, I knew she hadn’t signed consideration; I wasn’t even sure she knew the procedure, since we had never spoken of it, in the way of young couples who expect to be bound together by passion forever.

It was not what I wanted, but I thought it might be best; I also had in the back of my mind that we could well benefit from the aid of someone older and wiser. The hard part might be adhering to the rule that said person must not know either of the spouses, since so many people in Vae Arahi and Terera knew me; we might have to do what they do in small villages, travel to the next town over.

I’d tried to give the writers the impression that she’d just gone to visit home as we’d originally agreed, but she’d left noisily, so rumours abounded. I’d fuel them like a gale does a grass-fire by letting myself be caught signing consideration. Of course if they looked at the certificate afterwards, as anyone may, the game was up; I could hope they wouldn’t think of it, when it was the foreigner, who didn’t know such subtleties, who’d stormed out.

So I crept down to Assembly Palace in the dark of night, like a thief, using my key to the office section. By the light of one wan candle, I put pen to the certificate, then froze. Maybe this, and not her storming out, would be the true end of us; maybe she would say, “Chevenga, I didn’t really mean it—but now you do!” What my true reason what I thought it was? (I had learned all too well in the last few moons how little I truly knew myself.) Was the reason in my mind—to show her I took seriously her own doubts, and had my own, with what she’d done—only masking something more malicious underneath, an intent to slap her back, or frighten her? Was I being childish by doing this, which could be read as tit for tat? My judgment, which I had always trusted, was telling me to do this; might it be wrong this once, or anger disguising itself as judgment? Was I hoping the writers would find it, and side with me as the one wronged?

I took a deep breath. What is in the urge? What do I truly want out of this? I sat for a while in the gloom of the silent file-room, delving in myself. In time it came clear to me: more than anything else, I wanted at least one talk with her that went all the way to the heart, aided by a third person’s wisdom and caring for us both. It was beyond us to solve it ourselves, else we would have by now. I wanted help. So I signed, wondering as I did whether nine in ten people who sign do it for the same reason.

The next afternoon I’d be before the Committee again, and they’d send me back to Arko as a ringfighter, in my mind. In the morning, I ate early, before Skorsas was even up, and went down to the shrine.

I intended only to be in the peace of the stones and the silence of the pines, untouched even by a breeze, as it was too early for wind to have awakened. I did not intend to find Komona; or at least I don’t think I did. She was pruning along a path.

I had been lying awake at the death-hour a day or two after I’d spoken with her last when I’d thought the unthinkable. What Arkans do to female pleasure-slaves… she hadn’t said she’d suffered it, but it would be like her not to tell anyone something like that so as to spare them. Underneath the whirlwind my life had been, the question had haunted, like a burr inside my kilt.

I’d gone back and forth. Mostly I succeeded in telling myself that she knew what I’d suffered, and we were close enough, that she’d tell me, so I shouldn’t worry. But not knowing for sure allowed doubts, and they’d open their dark petals now and then, especially at the death-hour, the time that is outside the rest of the day’s time.

Each time I’d almost nerved myself up to ask her, though, the hopeful voice had prevailed. I wondered if it was, in truth, acting to protect my heart from truth.

“Chevenga!” she said, delighted, and held open her arms. “I haven’t seen you here, when I ought to have.” It had been, when I thought back, a little more than a moon. “Where have you been—chained in front of the Committee, day and night? No, I heard you went to Chavinel twice, once to bring back your shadow-father’s long-lost blood-father.”

I should ask her now, I thought. Just say, ‘I’m sure it’s not so, but just for my peace of mind…’ “Yes, though he was in Selina,” I said, as we hugged. “Trying to bring back Esora-e’s long-lost blood-mother, also; but she’s a much more hard-shelled nut.” We sat together and I told her some of it, at least, having the most fun quoting Esora-e’s account of how my parents had met.

“Tennunga, stumbled-tongued?” she said. “It boggles the mind. You never were.” I bet I will be, I said, when I ask you what I must.

“How goes it with divesting yourself of celibacy?” I asked, pointedly closing the top clasps of my shirt, which I usually leave open, and so earning her beautiful laugh.

“I should tell you, none of your business,” she said, shooting me a look under her raven lashes. “I mean… why would you want to know?”

Because part of me will always love whoever I’ve loved. “No reason, no reason, never mind!”

“You never told me that your shadow-father beat you within a finger-width of your life and you lay in the stream meaning to die there, after we broke up,” she said. “I wasn’t the only one punishing myself, it seems.”

“First, it was not within a finger-width of my life, and second, I didn’t tell anyone but my mother. And anyway, that would be worse than life-long celibacy, how?”

She heaved a deep breath. “Chevenga. It’s as I said; celibacy has its intense pleasures. Having said that… well, I shouldn’t tell you, I’ve rescinded the oath. You have very formidable spouses.”

“What, you mean still here in Vae Arahi?” I suddenly found myself wanting to tell her, love, I just signed consideration to Niku. But I could not believe I wanted to do that for anything that could resemble a decent reason.

“I’d hate to fall afoul of Niku,” she said, as if she’d read my mind.

“I heard that right? Rescinded?” She signed chalk, with a smile that looked peaceful, as if she’d lost a few years. I raised a brow, and felt a smile quirk my lip. “Might I receive a wedding invitation soon?”

A shadow passed over her face, clouding the smile. Some might say, that was all the answer I needed to my question. But I didn’t notice in that way, and went on. “Anyone you’ve got eyes for? Who I might happen to know? I’ve been known to arrange introductions, accidental meetings, and so forth.”

“No, no. Silly. And I know that.”

“There isn’t even one you’ve got eyes for?”

“Not at the moment. And I know I have the looks to draw someone, so you needn’t tell me.”

“Of course if you spend all your time hidden away here, no one will see those incomparable looks.”

“Then I will find someone also drawn to peace and contemplation, then, won’t I?”

“Rather than war and blood and power, yes.”

“Asa kraiya, Fourth Chevenga. Asa kraiya. Why do you keep forgetting your own intention, what you are truly drawn to? I know, I know—habit. Has your healer told you yet, habit is an idiot? I was thinking about this earlier, actually: what you said about him saying you could be a healer, and how you scoffed at it. You could be a monk, too.”

“Oh, come on—you’re kidding, right?” I hadn’t thought there could be anything more ridiculous than the idea of me being a healer; trust her to come up with it.

“I am not in the slightest bit kidding,” she said, fixing me with a very intense look.

“Biased then. You’re a monk yourself. Monks just want to make other monks. Then get another monk and make little monks.”

“And you make yet another sexual joke, because you’re afraid of All-Spirit,” she said, not taking the fire of her gaze off me at all.

“I’m not afraid of All-Spirit!” Where had she got that? “I’m not even afraid of the Arkan Gods, and they are much scarier than All-Spirit, trust me! Feh—monkish gobbledygook.”

“And yet people keep coming back for our gobbledegook, once they’ve gotten past the stage of saying ‘Feh,’” she said, the gaze easing to a grin. “Ah, Chevenga… you’ll see it when you see it.”

“I’m sure,” I sniffed, looking down my nose. “And everything is going as it should.”

“Yes. It is. In answer to your earlier question, about having eyes for someone…” There was the cloud again, casting a tinge of the faintest darkness across the perfect lines of her face. “Chevenga… I didn’t tell you everything.”

I had known that I feared it; I hadn’t known how it would touch me. The world seemed to float up off its moorings, and the pines and sky and serene path went dark and light by turns. I’m going, I thought in a distant, sanguine sort of way, to pass out.

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