158 - Everything I've ever been

I almost thrashed off the table, the way a hooked fish tries to flip itself back into water. He gently grabbed my shoulders.

“Chevenga, here’s the thing you need to remember: no one’s ever given you any accolades that you didn’t deserve. The name you have as a warrior and a general, both in the world and in your own mind, you’ve earned, entirely, as warriors always do, with your sweat and blood. If you think the same as everyone else does, how likely is it you’re wrong? It’s natural to feel pride; you’d have to be inhuman not to; you have every right to. It’s the same with everything you feel. I asked you to list them off, and it was hard for you; but there is no one in the world who wouldn’t feel all the same things you do, in your position. Do you see that?”

I had to close my eyes and take this in for a deep breath or two.

“I’ve thought of myself as the best general in the world, too,” I said finally. “There’s no one else alive who’s led the conquest of anything like the Arkan empire.”

“Right. So, of the remaining third, how much—?”

“Not all of it. I take pride in being semanakraseye, too—the peacetime part—more exactly, being a good administrator, because I did it as Imperator, too. And a thing or two else.”

“Between the two, warrior and general, how much?”

“I… I’ll guess… seven-eighths.”

“All right. Seven-eights of your pride in yourself.” He made a motion of his arm across me, as if he were wiping something away, hard. “Gone. You’re asa kraiya. You’re neither warrior nor general. What do you feel?”

I lay shaking on the brink for a bit before I went over. “I’m not semanakraseye either. It’s medical leave, sure, but I’ll only get it back on Assembly approval, and between what the Committee concludes and having been convicted of breaking the Statute semanakraseyeni and going asa kraiya—to be realistic—what are the chances? They might even decide for my own sake. ‘He’s given his share, look what it’s done to him, let him rest…’ I’ve lost everything, Surya; everything. Everything that I’ve ever been, I’ve lost.” Then I curled up and wept like a baby, and he held me in his arms.

When I’d gone for long enough to mostly burn it out, he said, “The feeling you just let take you, name it.”

“Despair,” I whispered. Maybe I could learn to take pride in being good at this.

“Yes,” he said. “You feel that, though I think there’s some lying to yourself in it. Everything that you’ve ever been would include the name Virani-e, and that you are senahera, your plan to work towards abolition of the stream-test, and the love you have for everyone you love, would it not? But you’ve lost none of these things.”

“That’s… true.”

“You still haven’t named the biggest emotion. You’re very determined not to see it… don’t take me wrong. I don’t blame you.”

I couldn’t help but make a sound like someone makes when an arrowhead is pulled out of him. “That wasn’t it?” I grabbed two handfuls of my own hair, not caring whether he pointed it out as a shame-mannerism, and turned away from him.

“You’re in it—right now, this very moment, you’re in it, Chevenga! Just name what you feel.”

I froze, and it came out, again, like the arrowhead comes out. “Shame.”

“A person loses seven-eighths of what he takes pride in, and he’s going to feel shame.” It was indeed the biggest one. I couldn’t move. “You had a setback, Chevenga. You think the setback is letting Riji do to you what he did, yes?” I signed chalk. “You’d be dead wrong. That was a huge step forward. The setback was the Games.

“There you were, on top of the Yeoli military and strategic world, impressing the you-know-what out of everyone with awe at your prowess. But one of the things a person must do to go asa kraiya is give up his warrior-pride, which in your case is understandably huge, and seven-eighths of all your pride. So you set yourself back, winning as best overall warrior and so forth. No coincidence that something happened right after to drive you so hard forward.”

“That little foaming-at-the-mouth mad-faced-sane-faced demon was my healer, too!” I spat. “No wonder I’m doing so well, with such healers.” And yet I knew in my bones he was right.

“You were your own healer, Virani-e. You left him the opening by wearing the chain. This is why I said, you didn’t break your oath. You who have the usename Invincible, who have never tasted defeat, had to—only that way could you begin to accept yourself as no longer a warrior and no longer invincible. I’d thought, and hoped, you might get it some easier way: with a man who’ll take a sword through a lung as a lesson, I should know better. You never do anything by half-measures.”

I just lay still with my eyes closed. I felt as if I’d taken a blow bad enough to paralyze but leave me conscious, and was just waiting for the killing-blow, the enemy aiming his sword at my throat or my heart at his leisure.

“You are asa kraiya,” he said. “You just have to accept it. Yes, that does mean something dying, as I said at the start. But here’s the thing you have to understand: though you were defeated, you are still here. You’re not dead. You may feel like part of you is gone, or you are not quite real. But”—he poked me gently—”there’s the evidence that puts the lie to that feeling. Even defeated, you are still here. And you still deserve to live. You were defeated and yet still deserve to live—that’s what you have to learn.

“Acceptance is the secret, the thing we are always working towards. Acceptance is healing; inside, you know that. The person who accepts everything instantly suffers nothing, ever. No fear, no sorrow, no anger, no shame. You know what we’re going to do next, don’t you?”

I did. “Tenar menhu,” I whispered.

“You get a reprieve; Kaninjer hasn’t cleared you for exertion yet, and isn’t going to for a good half-moon, I think, with two concussions within such a short time. So we won’t do it yet, but I mention it to you because by my doing that, your mind will start doing the work even without you willing it. You are in shock, not acceptance—in such shock that you could not name the main emotion without a lot of help. The extreme juxtaposition is a shock, so it cures shock—remember what you know, likes cure likes, yes?—and brings acceptance. And acceptance banishes shame, fear, sorrow—all of them.”

It suddenly came to me what had changed between him and me. As much as a healer to a patient, he was speaking to me as a teacher of healing to a student—an advanced student, who already knew a fair amount. He’d never said things like this at the start.

“But I’ve done with you what I’ve done today—”

I knew, so like the student, I spoke up. “To get me started making sense of what happened, so that I’ll have at least a slight clue what to say to everyone who’ll be asking tomorrow.”

“Exactly.”

“You’ve succeeded. I do have a slight clue. Thank you, Surya.”

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