195 - Something unearthly pure and good

My hand shrinks from writing this, just from the memory of the shame. Of course my shame is already known to you, in all its fullness. I just felt it worst then.

Through all those invitations to Shininao, that I had never even counted up until the Committee made me, I had never felt the horror of what I was doing. Now I did. Each time, I had tortured all who loved me. I had not seen it. My shame was double; for doing it, and for the blindness.

I stayed under the covers. I did not want Iyinisa Windsword to see my face. I didn’t want anyone to see it, ever again. I wanted to die, and this time make it final, except that doing so would so compound my shame. I ripped at what was left of my hair.

“Good for you,” I heard her say, her voice distant through the quilts. “Take a deep breath.” Good for me? “It’s not unusual for warriors to want to kill themselves so as to stop living the horror of dealing death to others, so don’t feel that you are alone with it.” No one on or before the Committee had told me that. Not even Surya had. “Now you’ve come to the point of realizing the horror of dealing death to yourself. This is why I say, good for you.”

“I don’t know how I’m going to look anyone I love in the face again,” I said. I couldn’t bring myself to come out.

“Why? Because you understand their feelings?”

Now the tears came. She patted me on the back through the quilts. “Just feel it, Virani-e.” Integrity—I don’t deserve that name.

“I’m sorry, Iyinisa, I’m sorry... I’m not fit company.”

“No shame, Virani-e. I went through the messiness myself. Not suicidal, but other things that made me unfit company. I am staying to sit with you.”

“All-Spirit… Why on the Earthsphere do they still love me? How many times... The Committee... They took a tally but there’s one they don’t even know about. It was after they were pretty much done their report... I should tell them.”

“You feel criminal, so you want to turn yourself in,” she said. “As if you have not been, and will not be, judged plenty enough, this year.” She found the back of my head with her hand, and gave it a little shake. “You’re here for a while now, anyway. You should make no major decisions until you know yourself again. Trust me on that.”

This had too much of the ring of truth, and experience, to argue with. “All-Spirit,” I whispered. “I don’t even know how I’m going to bring myself to come out from under these covers, I’m so ashamed.”

“That’s fine. You can spend a month under there if you need to. Every now and then we’ll come in and throw some water on you and the sheets.”

I laughed in a gasp, in spite of myself. “Kyash,” I said. “It’s not as if I can hide any kevyalin thing.” I threw them off.

“I went through something like this myself,” she said. “I spent about ten days just helplessly asking ‘why? Why did I do this?’”

“Why did you go asa kraiya?”

“Why did I do anything. Was I mad? Why had I fought, why had I stopped fighting, why had I trained, why had I spit on my training, as people said—why, why, why.”

“But you eventually did figure it all out.”

“Oh yes. I spent a day and a half under the covers.” I stared at her. She was so admirable, so graceful, so sane and sensible, I couldn’t imagine it. “You’re doing well, Virani-e, only hiding there for a bit.”

“I… I might go back under.”

That made her laugh. “I did two or three times more. I even hid under the bed once, I was that upset.” That made me laugh, a snorting giggle, for which I apologized immediately.

“You should hear the stories of how it was for Azaila. We’ve been through all our versions of it.”

“Azaila? Now you’ve said that, you have to tell me.”

“They are his to tell, but he’s willing to tell asakraiyaseyel. I’ll just say one thing…” A smile quirked her lips. “Ask him about the tree.”

“The tree.”

“Yes, the tree. Ask him.”

“The tree. I will, if I can bring myself to look him in the face.”

“You feel bad,” she said. “The feeling is not the reality. Virani-e, think of the relief those who love you are feeling now.”

“Maybe. They don’t know I won’t... kyash.” Tears seized me again, as I realized: I had given them not only pain, but fear. How could they trust me, never to do it again? “Pardon me, Iyinisa.” I burrowed back under the covers.” She put her hand on my back again, gently.

“I need to talk,” I said, when I could, “to everyone in my family... not until I’m done here, I guess. Except my mother... if she’s here.”

“She is here.” The urge to run to her arms and the urge to fling myself on my face in front of her in shame were about equal.

“I could write letters… no, what in kyash am I talking about, something like this has to be in person.” Did I have a pen? Had I brought anything? I hadn’t thought about so much as a change of clothes.

I lifted my head enough to look around the room. It was very plain, in a Second Nainginin sort of way, furnished with just the bed, the night-table, a wardrobe and the stool on which Iyinisa sat. I saw one familiar thing: a chest that I knew from the Hearthstone. “Skorsas sent that down,” she said. It would have everything I could conceivably need, then. “You may want to write down what you wish to say, and hold onto it.”

“Or let my mind settle first. As you keep saying.”

“Yes. This is good. I don’t think I need to toss you in the lake yet.”

“Toss me in the lake? Is that a healing method?”

“Yes,” she said, without allowing a smile. “Highly recommended by eccentric old asa kraiya masters.”

“Ah. I suppose it will happen to me when I most need it, which would coincidentally be when I least expect it.”

“Yes,” she said relishingly. “You will stagger out of the lake yelling, ‘And you told me you were going to! Kyash!’”

“This sounds like you’re planning it,” I said. “Maybe I should just jump in and save you the trouble. All-Spirit… Iyinisa, I can’t tell you how much like shit I feel.”

“I know, Virani-e. Don’t worry.” Everything’s going as it should. I didn’t need Surya in the room; he was in my head.

“It seems like the only possible relief is to throw myself at their feet... beg for.... no, I’m too ashamed even to beg for forgiveness. I guess I’ve gotten what I deserve; the whole world knows what I have done to them. It’s been studied, discussed, graven into the Yeoli public record. The people will choose to keep or toss me, in the light of it. But my family…” I was seeing their faces one by one, now, and imagining how it must have been for each. Niku… Kallijas… Skorsas… my mother… my shadow-father… Again, he’s done it… so close… how is he… will this end before the time he succeeds? The thought sent my hands to my hair again, pulling hard enough to cause pain. “Maybe,” I said weakly, “I need to speak to Surya. But if he’s not here—”

The door was still open. She called out through it. “Surya! You’re needed here.”

He looked the same as ever, perhaps the one thing in my life that was not changed. He ran his eyes over my aura. He didn’t look as if he was seeing anything he didn’t expect. He sat beside me on the bed. “Perhaps you should look at it like this, Virani-e,” he said. “Everything you could be ashamed for is the stroke of the past.” I hid my eyes in my hands, the sobs starting again. “Tell me,” he said gently.

I talked. I took breaks whenever the weeping was too hard for words. “Kyash, Surya, can you believe it? I’ve forgotten the kevyalin number again... I never did chiravesa, never once, never even thought to care about what they felt, as if I had no heart!”

“When you are in severe enough pain, it is impossible to think outside it,” he said.

“I thought I was... every time, I felt I was doing the world good by erasing myself from it. I felt it was the right thing. Tamenat and the Committee hit it exactly. But it wasn’t... that’s what’s hitting me. How wrong it was.”

There was something unearthly pure and good in these words, as if I washed out my soul by saying them. I hadn’t been so honest even with the Committee, and I’d been under oath. I’d been incapable. “Surya,” I said, voicing the realization as it came to me. “I had to have the steel taken out of me before I could see this.”

“Yes, you are exactly right,” he said.

“I think I just need to lie here... in this... for a while,” I said. “I am stepping away from that… from all of it... all these death things. And I guess I don’t know what I’m stepping into. Integrity... I know that’s what a Haian would say. Like the House of. Wholeness… my shattered parts knitting themselves together. And I don’t have to do anything... it will just happen. Same as a bodily wound.”

“Yes, all correct,” Surya said, and Iyinisa signed chalk.

I had just woken up, but suddenly I was exhausted. If I closed my eyes, I knew, sleep would take me like a rock in the temple. It was trying to drag down my eyelids. I remembered what Surya had told me and I had then learned from experience: severe emotion is the more tiring than anything, even fighting. “Sleep if you feel like it,” said Iyinisa. “That’s what this place is for.” I was free, here. I was gone like a candle blown out.

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