155 - Such an idiot

I’d invited everyone to the Independent for an end of Games party. I didn’t know it, but the crowd had overflowed even the Independent, extending right out into the sticky snow. Angry as he was at me, Kyirya knew he should at least put in an appearance; Toras and Tasera were both too honourable to bear each other ill will, and so when they’d mentioned they were going there, Kyirya offered to take them up the shortcut, which he knew well from coming up to visit me.

Distant at first, they heard yelling, then knew my voice. When Riji’s brother cried “Someone’s coming, kill him now!” it was in Arkan, of course, so only Toras understood it. The good general always knows that he should put his strength where it will be most effective; accordingly he gave his Aras-finger to Kyirya.

Senjalias, for that was Riji’s brother’s name, as I’d forgotten, drew his own sword as Toras, utterly unarmed, came in on him; Tasera crept around behind and bare-fisted Senjalias from behind, downing him. Here they were, two brilliant people, set up by chance so that one must lay waste the dreams of the other, and still they could act in concert like two fingers of one hand.

Kyiri ran up to the Independent for help while Toras and Tasera wrapped me in cloaks, stanched the bleeding as best they could, and trussed up Senjalias with Tasera’s hair-thong. They held me and spoke reassurances to me, the best thing to do with someone who’s in shock. I don’t remember it, but apparently I said, over and over, “I am asa kraiya.”

I next remember being on a table in Kaninjer’s clinic, as he was stitching me. I had thirty-odd small wounds all over me, five medium and one medium-severe, and had lost enough blood that he’d vein-linked me, but he could not give me strong painkillers, as he explained, because I’d been knocked senseless twice, only twelve days apart. So I hurt; but I couldn’t help thinking, while he worked, that I had a houseful of people waiting in shocked silence instead of roaring with drunken laughter as they ought to be.

The only way I could keep the party from being ruined worse than I’ve already ruined it, I knew, was to show myself, properly. So I set my teeth and had myself carried out on a litter, and harangued everyone I saw to quit staring at me, cheer up and raise their cups, as best I could without lifting my head from the pillow, which Kaninjer had forbidden, until the party was going again. Both comforts I yearned for the most—the hot-tub and wine—he also forbade me. At least Niku and Skorsas were close, holding my hands and very gently stroking my hair, and my mother sat with me for a while. I didn’t last long before I felt tiredness pulling at me all over, and Surya pushed gently—nudging others’ auric ribs with his auric elbows, I guess—through the crowd to order me to bed.

Not that I’d get much rest, on the concussion regimen. I’d suffer it for three nights in all, Kaninjer decided, because the last time had been so recent.

I was so spent I slept nine and a half aer that night nonetheless, falling right back to sleep after four wakings, no less. When I truly awoke, Skorsas was sitting on the bed next to my pillow, doing healing homework, books and papers spread out before him, and Niku was lying hugely beside me. I laid my hand on her swollen womb; feeling one of the twins move would make me feel more bound to life, I knew, and thus better, which it did.

Skorsas gave me the medicines lined up on the night-table and a Haian-bottle full of water, helped me with the piss-bottle, and sent Tawaen to fetch Kaninjer, Surya and Krero. What hurt worst, enough to drown out all the smaller pains, were my testicles; groping as delicately as I could, I found they were swollen huge and burning hot. Worst comes to worst, I thought, while my hand felt a tiny hardness shift inside Niku, I already have a lot of children, either born or about to be.

Surya arrived first. “I’m asa kraiya,” I said.

“I know.” There is no bringing an aura-seer any news about yourself, except by letter.

“Before you tell me, Surya… I understand. I have to renew my oath, yet again.”

I thought my jaw would drop right off my skull when he said, even while plainly looking at my aura, “No. I don’t think you broke it this time.”

“You don’t?”

He laughed, then looked at me and laughed again. “Virani-e, you have no idea how much you look like the boy caught with his hand in the honey-pot.”

Something has changed, between him and me. A sea-change. I was too amazed to laugh with him.

“Oh, you’re going to catch it from Krero,” he said. “But… well, we need to hear your account before I understand how it happened. But your aura says what it says.”

I’m asa kraiya, I thought. That’s why. It’s changed everything. I suddenly remembered how I’d itched with not having had a leap forward for a long time; doesn’t that always happen just before we have the greatest one? And it isn’t it always true that even though we know it’s always that way, we still never expect it?

Kaninjer came in then, examined me, told me again not to lift my head or sit up without help until further notice, and then began anointing each wound with marigold salve, which would take a while, except that Skorsas joined him to double-team it. Kaninjer had actually made a written list of the cuts, and was checking each one off as they did it.

Krero came in a moment later, closing the door slightly harder behind himself than he had to. He was in his full gear, glittering, even carrying his helmet under his arm, as if he were about to march onto a battlefield. He sat near the foot of the bed. “You’re going to think I’m such an idiot,” I said. Might as well start off on the right foot.

“You’re such an idiot. Now we’ve got that out of the way, tell me what happened.”

“I… I don’t know how much you know about the game between Toras and Tasera, and the hearing…”

“I know all about it.”

“Afterwards, I wanted to be alone.”

“You are such an idiot.”

“It was snowing, I know the way well and not many others do, I went without a light,” I said. “It’s Yeola-e...”

“Says the one whom Yeolis have plotted to kill, in Yeola-e.”

When I told him I’d waited for the person with the light, thinking it would be rude not to, he grabbed the hair on either side of his head. “Aiggghhh! Idiot twice over.”

It gets so much worse, Krero, I thought, as I told him what had happened next. “He cold-cocked you, I know. What I don’t understand is how the fik that was possible.”

“Krero,” I said, casting a quick glance at Surya, “I want you to understand, all the idiocies are mine, it’s all my fault; please don’t blame anyone else. A few months back... Surya made something for me... a neck-chain that he infused with a property…”

Surya threw up his hands over his face and said “Oh kyash!” at just the same time I said, “It blinds my weapon-sense.” His whisper was sickly thick. “You were still wearing it.” Even now, some part of me couldn’t help but enjoy his being discomfited, it was so rare.

Krero leapt up out of his chair so fast that Skorsas flinched as he hadn’t for years; even Niku started.

“What sort of drool-spewing madness in the all-encompassing universe that surrounds the garden orbicular would possess you to make something that would blind his weapon-sense?”

I sat up, making pain from my privates lance up through me like a glowing-hot spear-point, and throwing the room into spinning end over end so hard I didn’t know what was making me still stick to the bed. Part of it, I realized distantly, had to be Niku’s hands trying to haul me back down.

“Krero! I said don’t blame anyone but me! It’s part of my healing! It’s something spiritual, something asa kraiya, understand?”

He grabbed his hair again. “Some... thing... spiritual!”

“I am learning how it is for everyone else… and another gift... I’ve been using it for that. Aigh…”

“Lie down!” said Kaninjer. “Didn’t I tell you not to sit up without help?” Skorsas whispered, “Easy, Jewel of the World,” and their arms were suddenly pressing harder against my back and the back of my head; I’d weakened. I let them lower me, trying in vain to slow-breathe the room back to stillness.

“So you walked outside... alone... unarmed... unarmoured… wearing something that blinds your weapon-sense.”

“The senior students of the Circle School had me wear it for the last final, as part of the scenario. I’d gotten used to it enough… I cleared it with Surya.” Kyash, why did I say that, I’ve got him into more trouble. But, as always with Krero, everything would come out anyway, even if he had to truth-drug everyone in the county. “With all that was on my mind with the hearing... I forgot to take it off.”

“Fourth… Chevenga… Shae… Arano-e… you… are… such… an… idiot!”

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