187 - Habit creates a strange sort of loyalty

I did not sleep that night. A few times I tried to write, in my mind, the address that the crowd would demand after I was commended. No words came to me. What could I say? ‘Oh, All-Spirit, yes, I am Champion of the People now!’ ‘Thank you, I agree with you that I deserve this!’ ‘This is a fine thing, it is!’ ‘Vote for me!’ Perhaps I would just stand on the dais in surly silence until they gave up chanting, “Speech! Speech!” for the first time in Chatty Chevenga’s life. Perhaps I’d just say, ‘Sorry, I’m speechless.’

Fine, I decided: if I can’t do that, I’ll write the address I should give about going asa kraiya, that I’ll say just before I go up to the School of the Sword. Words failed me there, too. It was not for the same reason, that the only ones I could think of seemed shamefully inappropriate; it was more that I couldn’t think of any at all. Why was I doing this? Not to save myself; I’d been set free of that. I had once not wanted to be a warrior, but then I’d been one, so what did it matter? Besides, what if I changed my mind; how embarrassing would that be, after the golden words I’d spew, touting the necessity and sanctity of asa kraiya?

I could change my mind, I thought. It’s just as he said; people sometimes even change their minds in the middle of the ceremony. Hurai and the others would welcome me back into their arms, and those who feared war again without me would be relieved. I was more likely to be reinstated in a moon, too.

That’s fear of change talking. Don’t listen. I was suddenly reminded of my mother telling me on Haiu Menshir, when my courage had deserted me and my morale was low as a worm’s belly, “That is a thought. It is not you.” What is me? I wavered between two realities: the one in which my name was carved across history in red, but only a short slash, and the other in which the vista of life lay long before me like a view of Celestialis, this delicious mystery called asa kraiya awaited, and I had a name under which I’d never commanded any killing.

You’d think the choice would be easy. But habit creates a strange sort of loyalty, like a child’s to his home. He clings because he knows it, and because he feels it is him. I can’t be that, the voice whispered in me. I’ve always been this.

What would Surya say? Nothing, at this point, I thought, except with his hand, ripping the sword out of me.

Even the trace of a thought of what that would feel like turned my guts to water. But sometime today it would be done. Surya had never said it was a point of no return, but it seemed like the most final point of no return possible.

And yet it is my choice. He has always said he cannot pull it out unless I let it go. Would I be able to choose that? Was I… healed or grown or learned or senahera enough?

I should roust him out of bed to ask him, I thought. He’s a healer, that’s why he’s there, isn’t it? But I imagined the brass handle by his door, that led to the chain and bell that would wake him, and thought, That’s for emergencies, such as suicidal urges, not the inane banal tepid mental meanderings of a patient pathetically quailing at what he chose long ago to do.

I thought of fighting Younger Riji again. I already was asa kraiya. All rendered moot by one perfectly-done heart-thrust by Kyirya, who’d cast me aside as a mentor. Has he been able to talk with someone else, since he no longer has me, about what it was to kill, what it meant? About the worth of the life he took? Has he made sense of it?

Would I have been able to help him make sense of it anyway?

So went my night, my mind flapping in circles like a moth trapped indoors, my body itchy and restless so I knew I must be disturbing my loves (how beautiful to have Kall beside me again). I went to the couch. I must have slept some, though it seemed like moments only, because I dreamed of another life. I smooth the gossamer of my gown down around my body, feeling its silkiness through my lace-backed gloves, and straighten the mask.

He did not come for sex, though, this worn-eyed Aitzas. He wants to talk. “It’s just flesh flopping against flesh,” he says. “Skin rubbing against skin, only skin deep. Then an expulsion, like a pimple erupting. Maybe you have another son from it—grand, if that happens. Hire another nurse. I once thought it meant feeling more. It’s only women who aren’t supposed to feel anything. I dreamed my wife chopped off my dick with a glass knife. Is there something wrong with me?”

There’s no problem that cannot be solved by giving of ourselves, the Fenjitza teaches. The more completely we give, the greater problems we can solve. But how do I give myself to this dried bread-crust of a man? He frightens me. When will I stop being so young? Who is Imperator? Who asks? What kind of silly question is that? Everyone knows it’s Kurkas Aan.

Doma at the orphanage once said, ‘To understand men you have to understand swords. If you don’t understand swords, you won’t understand men.’ Made perfect sense, so I got a chip to go to the Mezem one day. I saw it, in all its glory. Swords plunging into flesh, thrusting into bodies.

There’s one brown-skinned savage who went in stark naked, and his thing rose as soon as he came out of his gate. He pulled on it all through his fight and when he won, jismed in the other man’s face and mouth as he died. They told me he does that every time. Mamafenj’, I think I do understand it; men go there so as not to be people. For this one it’s a bursting pimple. I’m just as happy to feel nothing there. Which Kurkas? Who are you and what sort of question is that? Fourteenth. What must being a Ring-fighter be like?

I opened my eyes to dawn.

--