169 - Equanimity

Shininao stands before me, as always—but this time I see his face. I never have before, so clearly.

It is perfect; the features remind me of Kallijas’s, but without the flaws that humans have on their skin, and with black eyes that shine with the hint of an impossible purple, beneath brows like raven’s wings. Where the light catches his straight black hair, which hangs to his waist like an Aitzas’, it too glistens purple, more vivid even than the brilliant purple blooms on Ibresi.

His is that beauty which is so astonishing it stops your breath with awe, and you cannot turn your eyes away, for fear that it is too good to be true, and so will vanish before you bring them back. I never knew he was so beautiful; why did I not see it before?

He catches my two wrists in his shield-hand as always, graceful and effortless against all my strength, and raises his sword-hand, his eyes full of aim like an archer’s, to reach between my lips, as usual, to seize and end my life.

But I set my teeth.

His eyes catch mine, shining with intent, freezing me. The lines of his cheeks, his nose, his lips, are what painters strive for all their lives, the face that inspires instant, helpless love. He lays his sword-hand on my cheek, and feather-caresses me down to my neck and collar-bone, sending a susurrus of joy all through me.

“You know you want me.” I have never heard his voice before; it is barely louder than a whisper, deep and musical with the faintest hint of bells.

“I want you,” I say, with a deep breath. I was never so clear on it until now, hiding it from myself no doubt; why hide it any longer? I want him so, my body aches with it. It reminds me of how I wanted Kallijas after the duel. But I tell him the truth: “I want something else more.”

He looks down. He has long lashes, like the down on a raven’s breast; I wonder what they’d feel like on my lips. He slightly tightens his fingers on my wrists, gentle and immovably steely both at once, as if to remind me he has me. Studying my chest carefully first, he suddenly brushes a finger across one nipple, soft as a kitten’s fur but for the slash of nail, then the other.

Pain-ecstasy shoots down to my groin, hot and instant, making me gasp and thrash once from head to toe. My breaths want to come fast; I seize control of them. His gaze and his sword-hand aim for my mouth again. I make my teeth into a wall, tighten my lips like the bar on a gate.

“You know that you have lived the life you have, and done all that you have done, only because of me,” he says.

“Yes,” I say. “I don’t deny it. But I want to live longer, if more ordinarily.”

His gaze travels down me, to my manhood, which I know is standing hard. With gentleness so extreme that I can barely tell when the moment comes that the touch of air turns to the touch of his hand, he grips me, slowly tightening. I reel, eyes clenched shut, panting helplessly through my open mouth, caught in sensation overwhelming from every side like a fly in amber. Even so, I think: I know where both his hands are.

Then there is the faintest zephyr of breath on my lips, scented of hot and sweet manliness, and his tongue touches mine, on fire. I flinch back, fight-staring him, jaws clenched, forcing slowness on the breaths that hiss between my teeth.

“You know I made you all you are,” he breathes, with a sudden clench that brings me near fainting, for a moment, with pleasure.

“Yes,” I say. “You made me all I have been.

“But I’ve changed!”

Changed—anged—anged—anged echoes through all the world and across all time, just as when I cried “No!” in the assassination dream.

Both his hands let go. I am free. “As always,” he says, “you choose.” A faint twitch of his purple-black wings, translucent in the skin between the spars, and he vanishes in a wisp, like smoke.

I am left, triumphant, but aching in my heart. It is not only the loss of what might have been, with him; I feel as if something of my own has been torn away.

†

I woke dizzy, but not with fear. It was so straightforward, I hardly need ask Surya what it meant, just tell him triumphantly that I’d had it; but when he came in to do the morning aura-exam, I did ask him the one thing that puzzled me.

“I’ve never seen him as so beautiful. I did want him, every cell in me wanted him, there was no way I couldn’t; and yes, it showed me, that has always been there. But why, now, did he show himself to me in an aspect so… gorgeous?”

“Because every other way has failed. The phases I spoke of; he has them too, in his way. He was haggling with you. ‘I cannot get you through your fear any more, or your anger, or your despair, or your dutifulness… but perhaps I can through your pleasure-urge.’ All other tactics fall short, you use the last-ditch one.”

I heaved a long sigh. Anything Surya took into his mind always came out making such complete sense.

He looked at my aura, his face full of careful consideration. “We work every day, for now,” he said. “As I said, it’s accelerating.” I wondered, however, if he was thinking more in terms of our time being limited, and didn’t want to say that to me as he wanted me to have no deadlines. I counted in my mind. My asa kraiya ceremony was only eighteen days away.

The dream of fighting the Arkan escort had stayed with me, very strongly. It demanded to be wrestled with. “I once loved myself for that,” I said to Surya, now. “For having that skill and that… will to destroy, in me. But another part of me hates myself for it. I realize… I want neither to love nor hate myself, for it. Is that odd?”

“No,” he said. “What do you want to feel?”

I took a deep breath and stretched, feeling my limbs as I had felt them for so long I remembered nothing else: suffused with the skill, the experience, the training, of war. And yet I had done so much else; I had a sudden memory of lying staked down in the woods near Terera, feeling all the life in the earth and the air around me.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I want to say, though it’s too strange to say: nothing.”

“That’s perfect,” he said, to my surprise. “You want to take it with equanimity. That means, complete acceptance.” He chuckled. “Why do you think we did tenar menhu?”

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