151 - All is as usual, everyone loves you

The day wasn’t over. After the Committee let us go and we had began the climb back to the Hearthstone Independent, a herd of writers converged on me. Yesterday’s transcript had been read. “So you’ve never been formally commended for the war,” they asked me, “What do you feel about that?” and wouldn’t believe me when I said “Nothing!” I had to shut the Hearthstone door in their faces.

At least the next morning, I had a good excuse to avoid them. “Must fight in a game, so sorry!”

It was Toras’ semi-final, and he put me in his cavalry. Akaznakir, having not seen battle for so long, was rusty, or perhaps I was too tense; at any rate, he threw me mid-battle and either a rock or a hoof found my head. So I was told afterwards; I couldn’t remember anything from the start of the game on, frustrating a mock truth-drugging by the enemy general, whose warriors had gleefully taken me captive while I lay senseless.

I was lucky to come out of it alive, in truth, but the joy of it was that the writers had to leave me alone as I was being carried on a litter up to Kaninjer, being too dizzy to walk. I heard the words “commendation” and “petition” and “thousands” several times before Krero bellowed at them, “Can’t you insensate fools see he’s flat on his kyashin back?”

Once Kaninjer had examined me and given me the head-blow medicines, I had Tawaen run a note down to Artira, asking what was going on. She wrote back: “Everyone is feeling chastised, that it’s taken an Arkan to point out to them that you’ve never been officially commended for the Arkan War. So there’s been a petition launched in Terera; it had three thousand signatures by midday, so it will be everyone in town by tonight. Tomorrow they’re going to send flyers all over the country with it. Assembly voted today to discuss it officially tomorrow. In other words, my brother, all is as usual: everyone loves you.”

Kaninjer had confined me to my room, with only family and close friends to see me. When he came up to check me, I said, “I’m hurt badly enough that I need to be sequestered like this for three days, right? Anyone else would be too much strain and I shouldn’t be exposed to such, yes?” Three days would get me to my next game.

He stared at me, his flat brown Haian face baffled. “When did you learn such sense?”

I had family and close friends keep me apprised, though. Over the three days, the Terera petition grew to more than twenty-thousand, and other petitions started coming in from nearby places. Assembly resolved that they should do it, and began discussing how.

All-Spirit… my hand even shrinks from writing about this. The spirits of Skorsas and any number of other people are looking over my shoulder, though, and I hear their voices. “What is here that you do not deserve?” “You earned this, deny it?” “Chevenga… why does this make you squirm so?” “Let it happen. Everything’s going as it should.”

The way we honour people nationally in Yeola-e is usually to invest them in the Order of the People, but the semanakraseye is not eligible for that. Someone proposed that I be named Saviour of the People, the same award the commanders who’d won the War of the Travesty had received. Someone else proposed conceiving a new award—Champion of the People—for what I’d done, since it was unprecedented.

I wanted to crawl under the floorboards. Thank you, rock or hoof that brained me, I thought, so no one can see me now. How to arrange to hide for, say, another few moons?

“Why such discomfort? How are you diminished? Now they’ve seen they forgot, they’re doing it; semana kra. This shame, so severe… what’s in it?”

So the debate went within me, pulling me both ways, with more pain than Assembly was having of its debate, I am sure, especially in my head.

After three days I had to come out, but of course I could again say, “Sorry, I’m in a game!” It was a final and ran two days, but alas, I couldn’t arrange to get injured again. Mercifully, Assembly hadn’t decided by the start of my next game, so I could defer the questions.

“Chevenga…” It was the very astute Krana Verasa of the Terera Pages, her face baffled. “Why is it that you were so forthcoming, answering every question easily, after you were charged with breaking the Statute semanakraseyeni, but now you’re being lauded, you’re red-faced and tripping over the words and acting as if you want to slink away into a cave?”

How sweet that would be… the coolness of the rock walls, the serene sound of water dripping, the absence of harrying voices asking questions… ‘Because I do want to slink away into a cave.’ ‘I defer that question to the Chevengani Mental State Assessment Committee.’ ‘Is your other name Surya?’ I said none of these things. And yet the truth, that I felt it was all somehow wrong, I could not tell her. It was what Surya had warned me against, shame of shame.

“In the war, I was doing my duty, that’s all,” I finally said. “But I have no argument with what the people wills. I will accept what I am given.” Breathe in acceptance. Let it happen, Surya had said; how was I to stop it?

I couldn’t even talk about what I felt to family, now; they’d turn Surya on me the moment I did. Even as the pure heat of the hot-tub wrung out my muscles into laxness, my mind wouldn’t stop flailing against itself; fading into half-sleep, I had a vision of the two halves as a black leather-winged bat versus a white-feathered bird, both in a cage, wings battering and scraping against the bars, claws raking mostly air; but I couldn’t tell which one was me.

Healing had been, in a sense, like war-training; set to do something impossible, you beat yourself against the wall of it as your teacher commands, over and over, with unthinking discipline; then suddenly you break through and can do it, without remembering how and when you learned. When I looked back, I saw that hadn’t happened for a while in my healing, and found myself sourly doubtful that it ever would again.

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