181 - Of all animals, we are the most naked

The eleventh bead clicked. Why had everyone else gone to bed without wondering where he was? It came to me: he’d told them we’d be doing a late session when he’d gone to kiss the children. Of course, he’d throw everyone off his trail but me.

Two beads, he’s been out there. How much would the cold have gotten into him by now? I tried to calculate. Wearing hardly anything, soaked through, ice falling, wind, no fat, so strong but weakened so many ways, had the usual dinner, no wine, in emotional crisis… he must be incapable of killing anyone who tries to stop him, at this point. If I run to Krero, he could have people swarming all over Haranin in a few tenths. Perhaps that would be everything going as it should.

Then it occurred to me that I was waiting in the utterly wrong place, if he did change his mind and come back, as I’d predicted, having taken a deep chill, which at this point was certain. If it was bad enough to affect his mind, he’d go straight into the hot-tub, forgetting that this was the worst thing to do, that it could stop his heart with shock, or make him faint and then drown. For all I know—he could have already. I took the stairs down three at a time.

All-Spirit spoke to me, beneath my conscious hearing. On the floor just inside the door to what they called the water-room, where in his right mind he would never leave Chirel, it lay; running, I saw it as I was about to step on it, and turned my step into a leap, over it. He was crawling on hands and knees, shivering so violently he could barely keep his balance even that way, his shorn hair white with snow. In his aura, which was weak overall, every other feeling was effaced by desperation for scalding hot water.

The room has a great stone Brahvnikian-style hive-stove; the fire was probably just coals, now, but the hearthstone was warm. When I carried him to it he tried to fight, cursing me with chattering teeth and slurring as if he were drunk, but he had no strength. His skin was death-pale and felt icy; his lips were blue. “You have to warm up more slowly,” I said. “Hot tub, yes, but only when you’re no longer half-frozen. Relax.” I opened the stove-doors, threw on two pieces of wood and closed them again, got his clothes off and him dry with towels, stripped myself and lay beside him on the hearthstone, pulling him close against me on his side, so fire warmed his front, the stone warmed his side and I warmed his back. The iron of the stove doors ticked steadily, growing hotter; I shifted his head as close to them as I thought would not burn him, and said, “Open your mouth and breathe in heat. That helps more than anything.”

“B-b-b-breathe in ac-c-c-cept-t-tance,” he rasped through chattering teeth.

“It’s the coldness in your innards that’s most deadly, so draw heat into them.”

“They d-d-die of brok-k-k-ken hearts, I know.” It might be a while before he made sense. But he obeyed me, his head quivering on my hand. “He s-s-said he would c-c-c-come back when we no longer d-d-d-did it. An-n-nother life. His sp-p-pirit-t was on a rock, as I was g-g-g-groping my way down. ‘I will b-b-b-be a twin again, Ab-b-ba. Ama is carrying t-t-t-twins. How many d-d-d-deaths do you rememb-b-b-ber, Surya?” So, he knew who was with him, at least.

“Breathe deeply. Draw it right down to the pit of your lungs.” With each good breath his aura grew visibly brighter, even from inside most of it.

“A-e k-k-kras. The Lak-k-kans have it all in their rec-c-c-cords of lives. T-t-t-ten thousand new names. I wonder if th-th-they will all c-c-come back in once place, or sc-c-catter all over the Earthsphere? Or mayb-b-be b-b-b-beyond the sk-k-ky, if people live on the stars. G-g-go… fly… g-g-go with the love of the one who s-s-s-sent you there.

“N-n-norii told me t-t-t-to write what I have lived… my life because it’s everything, ha ha. K-k-kyash, I’m sure I can’t hold a p-p-pen right now. ‘B-b-breathe in accept-t-tance of heat… Heat is life. Of all an-n-nimals we are the m-m-most nak-k-ked. We live d-d-d-defenseless, with no f-f-fortress of fur or f-f-feathers. We t-t-test ourselves in c-c-cold with our op-p-pen sk-k-kin. A lamb or a c-c-c-calf walks a moment out of the womb; a ch-ch-ch-child, a year. F-f-fifteen years later he p-p-p-puts on armour. D-d-did you put more wood on?”

So he knew where he was, too; that was good. “Yes, Virani-e. You needn’t worry about anything but breathing in heat, deep.”

“Thanks, Surya. T-t-tell me… what you f-f-felt about K-k-kuraila, d-d-do you think it’s th-th-that you knew her in a p-p-p-past life? D-d-do you remember liv-v-v-ving before?”

“Yes,” I said. “I will tell you as much as you want to know, later, when you aren’t so distracted. You keep forgetting: breathe in the heat, right down to there.”

“F-f-fair enough. I know what you’ve b-b-been trying to c-c-convince me, Surya. Th-th-that I am ent-t-tirely here. I have n-n-never felt I was. I have always f-f-felt part g-g-g-ghost to myself. On the f-f-field, where ev-v-verything is b-b-backwards anyway, th-the opposite of real l-l-l-life, it helps. If you are a g-g-g-ghost, st-t-teel cannot t-t-touch you. You n-n-need not fear d-d-d-death if you are already d-d-dead. I made the b-b-best of it.

“Sssssurya, you know what I did the other d-d-day? I wrote a poem… t-t-truly… ab-b-bout doing a back-flip in a d-d-double wing with Nik-k-ku. I’d b-be the last p-p-person you’d exp-p-pect to write a poem, except that-t-t I know a Mahid who’s a poet. Writes them all the time… he thinks in poetry. Bec-c-cause he was only allowed t-t-to think the fift-t-ty maxims… they are d-d-dark poetry in his mind, p-p-poetry of st-t-tone, p-poetry that d-does not die. B-b-but poetry… is immort-t-tal, yes? P-p-probably mine is c-c-crap… see what he thinks.”

I was suddenly ashamed I’d snooped in his papers. “Breathe in the heat, Virani-e. Concentrate on it.”

“I know my mind is g-g-going all over. M-maybe I can soul-t-t-travel.”

“No. Not right now. That’s an order. Stay here.”

“A-e k-k-kras. M-m-my will is yours ag-gain.” So he remembered reclaiming it, too. “M-m-mana was up th-th-there, t-t-too. He said, ‘Why d-d-do you think there is no warmth for you when th-th-there is s-s-s-so much, V-virani-e?’ Hey… I n-n-never t-t-told him that name. Maybe he’s b-b-been listening in on my c-c-conversations. C-c-can I get in the ky-ky-kyashin hot tub yet? Maybe if the wat-t-ter’s burning enough, the g-g-great person can wash off the f-f-fatal flaw.”

“When the shivering is gone,” I said. He tried to still it by will, managed only for a few moments. “It’ll be soonest if you breathe in heat, deep as you can.” He did that, putting his mind to it, saying nothing for a time, his chest rising and falling deliberately under my arm. The shivering faded more.

“I think... I might have been seeing things up there,” he said finally.

“It happens, with a bad internal chill. I wouldn’t worry.”

“I don’t even know how long I was outside… I didn’t know cold did that to the mind. What must it do to the minds of infants?”

Of course losing his sense of time would bother him more than the danger of wandering off a cliff. “Two beads,” I said. “It must be closer to twelfth by now. We get you past the shivering, you soak for a bit—not long—and then bed. And sleep in tomorrow.”

“I am asa kraiya enough that I can’t put a sword into flesh. Not even my own.” I said nothing. He wasn’t up to hearing what I would say, yet. “I should have known. Surya… I am sorry. For everything I said that hurt you, and especially for that which hurt you the worst, I am sorry. I… I was beyond thoughtless to you, I was cruel.”

“It was the death-in-you, Virani-e. Not you. I know that.”

“But the words came out of my mouth.” He tried to pull away from me, and I tightened my arms. “I’m forsworn, too, Second Fire come, before a judge.”

“I think most would say that if someone of your skill decides to do it with a sword and then doesn’t even manage to land a scratch on himself, it can’t really be called an attempt,” I said. He fingered his neck, under his jaw on the right where the artery runs and he has that impossible scar, a scar from a wound that should be mortal, from the Arkan Ten Tens. A drawing-outward cut, his sword-hand driving it deep… He’d held the edge there, trying to talk himself into it, for the entire time except when he’d been climbing up and then back down. The mark of it was in his aura. “I haven’t said anything to anyone,” I said.

“You are better to me than I deserve.”

“It’s not until tomorrow, that we’re going to talk about what you deserve. What you want and need is to soak in hot water, and it’s time. Do you think you can walk, or am I carrying you? If you’re going to try walking, take your time getting up.”

Of course he was going to try walking. I don’t know why I bother asking. He managed it, leaning on my arm and going very slowly. “So stiff,” he groaned.

“And you want to work the muscles, I know, as you normally would. Don’t. Your whole body is still colder than it should be.”

As he sat down in the tub, he gave a gasping moan of sheer this-is-what-I-was-waiting-for pleasure. He leaned his head back on the rim and closed his eyes. I got in with him. It felt better than I expected; I remembered, I’d had a tense night too. “Here,” I said. “Put your head right back, so all but your face is under. You know how much blood runs through the head; it will carry warmth to all the rest of you.” I pulled him next to me and held him with one hand under his head and the other under his lower back so he could relax entirely, half-floating. “All-Spirit, that feels good,” he whispered. “Thank you, Surya.” I kept him there until he was as warm as he should be, and dozing, then helped him towel off, and walked him to the couch in my office. Once he was asleep, I’d go upstairs and tell them I’d kept him because the session had been an intense one.

It occurred to me, it might not be entirely over. What if the death-in-him gained strength as he did? Just as I was starting to look for it in his aura, he said, with his eyes still closed, “My poor body. It’s been through the grinder… especially lately. I wonder sometimes whether one day it might just give out.”

That’s the most sensible thing you’ve said since I’ve known you, I thought. Will you take it to its conclusion? “That’s inevitable, in time, unless it’s prevented,” I said. “Any ideas how?”

“Quit putting it through the grinder,” he said, still without opening his eyes, as I covered him thickly with feather quilts. “Have mercy on myself.”

What I saw in his aura made me want to cry up to the sky.

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