12 - The greatest warrior redux

“Tell me,” he said, looking at my aura. He never squinted or strained or looked as if it took much effort when he did, incidentally, nor did his eyes take on any strange gaze; he’d look at it as you or I would scan the sky for weather. I only knew when he was doing it by where he looked. “Tell me about when you knew you didn’t want to be a warrior.”

I stared at him. “Knew I didn’t want to be a warrior? If that happened… I’ve forgotten it completely.”

“Mmm,” he said, scanning my aura again. “Changed my mind: on the table.” At least he let me stay dressed, and even laid a light quilt over me. This time when he had me breathe deeply, he commanded me to relax completely and close my eyes too, and I remembered what he’d said in the first session: don’t close your eyes, that puts you in the past.

“You’ve completely forgotten a number of things in your life, other than the first two or three years, which is natural,” he said. “The most significant one, other than your stream-test, is when you were tortured in Arko… something we needn’t delve into for our purposes at the moment. Maybe someday you’ll want to heal it entirely.” I’d given up on that, figuring it wasn’t worth it for such a short time left in my life; I’d have to rethink that now. “Knowing you didn’t want to be a warrior, though, you definitely want to get back.”

“I really didn’t, at some point? You sound so certain… you see it in my aura?” I thought back through my past, right to childhood, and could find nothing of the kind. I knew better than to deny it entirely, though.

He laid his hands on either side of my head. “Close your eyes again, Chevenga. All-Spirit… giving an order with that name… well, I’m just going to have to get used to it.” He actually didn’t seem even in the slightest bit fazed. “Breathe deep, breathe in total laxness… let every muscle, every sinew, every cell go loose.” His fingers touched my temples then, and suddenly I was falling into myself. I’d been in trance before, in particular with Alchaen, but it had always taken some time. Surya somehow had in his fingers the power of bringing it instantly.

“Your family all mourned your blood-father… your first war-training class after that,” he said, very gently, his voice filling my mind as I were on truth-drug. “Go to that time.”

Of course it came back as if it had never been gone. I even remembered that I had retained the memory of it recently enough that I’d recounted it in the memoir I’d written in my private time. Not a year ago, and it was gone… I tried to swallow the horror of the fragmentedness of my own mind.

†

It was after the three days of full mourning for my father were over, the first day I went back to training. Esora-e and Urakaila, one of the other teachers, sword-sparred to inspire us as they often did. Always before it had given me joy; now I found myself thinking, ‘What are they doing?’ Then when it came time to wrestle, it was, ‘What am I doing?’ I was with Mana first and he kept beating me, miming breaking my neck or crushing my throat with the usual glee; but each time I got him into a position where he was at my mercy, he would somehow squirm loose, my hands losing their strength when it came time to finish him. Against Sachara and Krero and Nyera it was exactly the same. I felt Esora-e’s eyes on me.

This was something to deal with, I saw, and to decide on. What worried me most was that I might be a coward at heart, my father’s death having brought it out in me. Simple to remedy: I would climb Haranin to the edge of the highest cliff I knew the way to, search my heart, and, if I did see I was indeed a coward, throw myself off. Yeola-e never needs a coward for a semanakraseye.

Before I could slip away, though, Esora-e stopped me at the gate of the School of the Sword, led me into the antechamber where the Sword of Saint Mother hangs, and sat me down with him before it. A year before, when I’d entered the School for the first time, and wrapped my hand round the grip of the Sword as is traditional for new students, I’d also lifted it, which had created a big stir. I remembered the sound of the chains from which it hung, like a brook’s trickling. Yet now this beautiful thing had a stain on it. What was bothering me came to me in a flash: what I was learning to do in this place was what had been done to my father.

I thought of my bright promise, the polished wristlets I would get on my graduation, the triumphs I would lead through the town as I had seen my father do, flowers and streams of wine raining on me, and Chirel, forged in the perfect curve which, extended, would form the circle of rya-kya, nothing/everything—all these things I’d looked forward to making my life about. All lies, this beauty—all a mask worn by death. My body suddenly didn’t seem my own, going hot and cold by turns. It, and my soul, were being shaped into those of a killer; the joy of training itself was a betrayal. Even my name, which means “lion’s heart,” was a thing of war, and it was my only name. I wanted to scream for mama, or flee into some dark warm cave where no one would ever see me again, like the one I’d crept out of not so long ago. Or leap off the cliff.

Esora-e put two very gentle hands on my shoulders. “Chevenga, tell me what’s in your heart.”

“I never want to be a warrior.” With my eyes buried in my hands, I could not see his expression, but I heard a long deep breath, a readying one like before a fight.

“Well… it took courage even to say that.” He was worried about the same thing, that I was in truth a coward. “Look at me, my child, and tell me why.”

I looked him in the eyes. “I never want to kill anyone.”

His moustache twitched. I thought of how he liked to show off his scars, and tell what happened to the warriors who’d given them to him; how he talked of “full-splitting the child-rapers” and seeing their blood fountain, laughing, while my mothers both pursed their lips. I thought of my blood-father; I’d picked a flower on the mountain, and he’d said, “You’ve killed it. Up here where summer is so short and so it takes so long for them to grow back… well, there are many more. But never forget what you are doing. That’s the hardest thing, in war: never forgetting what you are doing.” He understands best, I thought, as always. Understood; now he is picked.

“Anyone?” said my shadow-father. “Even if he is trying to kill you?” He spoke the name of my father’s murderer, which I never write so that it will be forgotten. “What he did was twice wrong: murder, and for mindless hate. We kill for the same reason Saint Mother gave us the Sword: life, and only in fair fights within our borders. Play that out in your mind, lad; you have before.”

I did as he asked, imagining, as a child will, the enemy as a monster. I parried the blows in my mind as always, but when the time came to strike him dead, my hand in my imagination went weak as it had in real life in the class. “I couldn’t win,” I said. “I should not be there.”

“Play it properly. He will kill you, if you don’t kill him. You know that.”

This time I made the enemy truly dangerous, awakening my own fear, and it went as it always had before; any feeling for him was gone from my heart. But afterwards as he lay dead, he turned from a monster back into a man, and I saw him on a pyre like my father’s, heard his wife and his small children weeping, and felt remorse to my bones. But the next enemy was coming, and the next… I would never tire, for that would be choosing death, but keep going, kill, regret, kill, regret, all my life. With any luck I’d die before it drove me mad. Never imagine children cannot see their future.

In this tangle there had to be a thread of pure rightness somewhere. I thought furiously, my hands curled into fists, until I found it, shining with truth’s magnificence. “There shouldn’t be any wars!”

I thought his face would light up with inspiration, as my heart had. Instead he laughed bitterly, and pulled a lock of my hair. “Nothing truer! Yet those pesky foreigners keep attacking us. You’d think they’d never heard the wisdom of the great sage Chevenga.”

I’d thought it was brilliant; certainly not deserving of mockery. As always, anger made me stubborn. “When I’m semanakraseye, I’ll end it. There won’t be any more wars. That’s what Saint Mother really wanted.”

His dark brows went up under his fore-curls, which had no grey in them then. “You will? By not being a warrior? You’ll go visit King Astyardk in Laka and charm him into stopping his thugs from raiding our farmfasts? When King Enjaliansi of Tor Ench lays claim to our port towns because they were inside the old empire a thousand years ago, you’ll say, ‘You can’t have them, but I don’t like killing people, so let’s not have a war, all right?’ You’ll sweet-talk the herd-raiders: ‘I’m not a warrior, so will you dear fellows kindly stop absconding with our sheep’?”

“I’ll make them listen,” I said, stabbing three fingers of my sword-hand into the stone floor as I’d seen Servants do on their desks when making a strong point. “Like when two of us quarrel and Mama makes us do chiravesa, imagine being the other, I’ll say ‘You be me and I’ll be you.’”

“So that you will gain understanding of why they abscond with our sheep, and they, why we’d like to keep them?” He laughed again. “Don’t look at me like that, Fourth Chevenga. It’s not you I’m making fun of, it’s your age. You’ve spoken and I’ve listened; now I’ll speak and you listen.” He took my face between his weapon-callused hands, his eyes turning the grey of storms.

“You think there is always a parent standing over people who are arguing. But with you and some greedy tyrant, there will be none. This is foreigners we speak of, ‘those who will not listen to your words of justice and sense.’ She was right; they came. And they still come.

“While you were showing off your naivete you were also insulting your ancestors. You think you were the first ever to think of making peace? But it cannot be done without a sheathed sword at one’s side, to show the other he’s best off being reasonable. Otherwise what he will demand, ultimately, is all our land and all of us as slaves. All-Spirit, why am I saying this? You know your history, at least the shape of it… you’re just saying you don’t want to kill. You’d leave it to others.

“Well, all right, no one has to do everything; we serve each other best by giving each other our greatest gifts. True?” Knowing what this was leading up to, I didn’t answer. “Of course. And what are you better at, than fighting?” He was right; I was good at my book studies, but a semanakraseye is not an advocate or an academic. I was competent enough at playing the harp and flute and making things with my hands; I had no other uncommon gifts to offer. Then something came to me: “Making friends.” I had succeeded in befriending anyone I’d wanted to, as long as I could remember.

He waved it off. “You can’t make friends with foreigners. Oh, they might fake it; then when you are fooled, thinking what great friends they are, they’ll stab you, and Yeola-e, in the back. Of the other skills, from which come callings, you are best at fighting—deny it?”

I signed charcoal but said, “I have a calling: I’m going to be semanakraseye.”

“Ah, well, yes,” he said, “I was coming to that. Tell me, will you send out others to do what you yourself would not?” It fell to us to command; thus we became warriors. My blood-father’s words; I felt weak and sick.

Plenty of semanakraseyel, in fact, have not been warriors, including my aunt, who served as regent after my blood-father was killed. The old age of kraiyal-semanakraseyel ended with Notyere’s starting the War of the Travesty to make himself king, after which it was made illegal for a semanakraseye to fight for a century and a half. It will likely never again be compulsory. But my grandmother and blood-father had both done it, and I had always intended to.

“Imagine, the Enchians invade, and you send out an army to die on Yeoli furrows while you sit safe in Assembly Palace. The numbers are even, but we lose and ten thousand die. Those who are left bind up their wounds and wonder what went wrong, how it could have been different. ‘I know one thing,’ one will say. ‘Fourth Chevenga would have been a great warrior had he not quit his training, because he didn’t want to kill anyone. With another First General First as good as Tennunga, think how the battle would have gone.’ Another will say, ‘My father got killed by an Enchian too, and I didn’t quit my training.’ All down the line they’ll curse you, and why not? You’ll have denied them your greatest gift.

“Think of those who rightfully envy you! ‘I wish I had the strength and quickness he was born with; I’d have a better chance of living, and Yeola-e a better chance of winning. And he’s the semanakraseye…! If he doesn’t give his best, why should anyone?’ ”

I threw my hand up between his to grab my forelock, tears burning in my eyes and sickness in my guts.

“You were bred to be a warrior, Chevenga. Your blood-parents—too gentle, he was, and she is, they wouldn’t tell you that. He and his blood-mother before him married warriors so that their children would be better warriors. Why do you think the Shae-Arano-el still do the stream-test, and the old way? You will win the tournaments and gain the promotions and be loved by all who fight under you, not by chance. All their choices led up to you. And you would throw it away—what do you think your blood-father would think if he knew?”

I didn’t answer. I was thinking only of the cliff, and how free I would feel with the wind rushing through my hair, faster and faster, knowing the answer to all dilemmas was an instant away.

“Chevenga, we are all bound to duty. Should you turn from yours, you’ll be proven a coward, for all you are fearless of death; a coward is, after all, one ruled by fear of what he must do. In the end, my son and Tennunga’s, I don’t think you are. Grief will turn anyone’s head for a time. But in the end, it lies with you to prove it. Whatever hinders you, you’ll have to conquer, or fail entirely. Think about it.” He got up and walked away, leaving me alone with the Sword.

As I climbed Haranin, his words rang in my ears, but the words of the dead spoke truer to my heart. Unwaveringly, my father had said, “As always, you choose.”

I had sometimes thought they were harsh words; now I knew they were the ultimate tenderness. Everyone loved me; only he had understood me. Now I knew fully how alone I was, with him gone.

The wind sang through the crags, growing cool; clouds covered the sun and the many-hued striations in the rock turned dull. Past the tall pines and then the stunted ones I picked my way up. On the edge I sat, dangling my legs, the shining scythe that was Terera Lake, and the anthill that was the town below, paled by distance.

I felt my limbs whose strength showed when I wrestled, my hands that were faster than anyone else’s at hot hands and five stones; tightening my arms I took my weight onto them, while a hawk flying far above the green forest below hung tiny as a dust-speck between my feet. I flexed my muscles, which I had always, wrongly, thought were mine. Esora-e was right; he’d only adhered to what I’d already been taught. But my blood-father was right too. Even in the time of our greatest helpless, our path always has a fork.

As always, I would choose; go on with my training, or leap. My life was bound to the semanakraseyesin, and the semanakraseyesin, at least for me, to the sword; but I was not necessarily bound to life—less so, now, than most. I shifted forward a little, so my hips were just on the edge. Had the right wind blown then, my story would have been this short. None did, but for a moment I leaned, and thought I was gone.

There was a rushing like a waterfall through my ears. The ground was suddenly tenuous under me, as if the nothingness beyond its edge somehow made all solids near it dubious. The wind filled with song, the notes of the harmonic singer, one the dark and steady tone like a stone flute’s, the other soaring high and bitter and wild like the wind itself. Bound to one core like those of a jewel, facets of my life flashed in my mind: my turquoise, blue and purple cloak, the height of the mountain racing all through my legs after a fast climb, the oyster of the chicken in honey sauce, Assembly Hall with its sacred solemnity, the thousand fascinations of the marketplace, the wildness of the grown-ups dancing at the love-feast, the swelling of pride as I found I could do something I had not been able to do before. From the green land close to me, all the things and people I knew called me to return to them; from the land blued by distance, all those I did not know yet called me to wait for them, their voice the breath of All-spirit, their collective name Yeola-e. The song ran through my head: “Do we defend it grimly, like a miser his gold? No; stiffness is the way of death. We choose; always, we choose. Do we subsist and grasp? No; for goods are not happiness. We celebrate life, and live a celebration.” Life itself sang to me, roared and turned silvery in my heart, and my tears were like those we weep hearing music too beautiful to bear.

When the wind’s voice faded to a whisper again, I lay flat on the rock and wept. For my blood-father, the first tears I shed that were for his loss, not my own. For myself, fated to lose life too soon. For all people who ever died, whom I imagined in their terrible number, more multifarious than any currently-living crowd could be, doing and using things that were incomprehensible to us now, a thousand peoples who had died as one with their devices and arts and knowledge beyond imagining in the Fire, never properly mourned because not enough were left to mourn them. I wept for the cow slaughtered, the starflower picked. I wept for all that must die: all that lived.

In the story of the Fire as my grandmother had told it to me, power had been in the hands of kings so that people could do little, but everyone had known it was coming. I asked her, “What did they do?”

“No one knows it all, but you can imagine. Some excised any thought of it from their heads and lived as if there were no threat. Some lived like warriors, fast and reckless and with no thought for tomorrow, since there’d be no tomorrow. Some went insane, turning frozen or berserk; some withered inwardly and died in spirit, then in body. Some prepared for it, building strongholds deep in the land, and ended up yearning for it to come just to end their fear. Some debated and protested bravely in the attempt to stop it. Some prayed, and trusted in gods to prevent it. Some resigned themselves to it, and some hoped beyond hope it would not happen.”

“But they all died,” I said. “So, in the end, what they did didn’t matter.”

“No,” she said. “But while they lived, it did.”

I made the first of my personal laws then. I had, I guessed, about half the time I might have otherwise expected, so in that time I should do two times as many things as others, and love people two times as hard, to make up for it. I think of it in the childish wording to this day.

I got up from the edge of the cliff and went back down to the School. The Sword hung black between walls of plain white, unadorned, ungraven. We do not surround our sigil of war with scenes of glorious battles or splendid triumphs, of the nobility of war nor even the drama. The Sword hangs plain, neither celebrated or despised, neither reproaching nor praising, neither dark nor light, but equal parts of each, entwined with and contained by the other. The pain is there, and the joy; the loss and the win. “Never forget what you are doing,” my blood-father had said. He’d never said either, “Do it” or “Don’t do it.” I had not known the dark half; then when I’d learned it, I had forgotten the light. Now I saw both.

I curled my fingers around the grip of the Sword. ‘Esora-e wants me to fight because it’s what he wants,’ I thought, ‘not because he sees this. He doesn’t. Well, I see it, so I’ll fight for it, nothing else, and if he doesn’t like it, too bad, but I bet he won’t notice.’ Once again the Sword rose in my hand.

†

Next day, we had kraiya-long wooden sticks, and I was swinging mine absently, waiting for Esora-e to call us into line, when the whim struck me to aim it at Nyera’s head, the closest target at hand, for a joke. To my horror, she did not duck, but stood dead-still like one blind. I was not quick enough at that age to check its flight, and so for an instant had to helplessly watch what my hands did, the knobbed end streaking in, a hand-width, two finger-widths, one finger-width, away from her blond ringlets—then hitting with a thwack that hummed through my fingers.

She stumbled one step, then turned around, her face first pop-eyed with surprise, then black with rage. To her credit, she dropped her stick and came after me with her hands. Being angry while I was bewildered, she was on top of me in no time and grinding my face in the dirt when Esora-e lifted her off me.

He got an earful of truth without asking. “He hit me with his stick!” “I didn’t mean to hit her, she didn’t duck!” “I was looking the other way!” “So you should have ducked anyway!” “How could I!? You snuck up on me!” “I wasn’t sneaking, you knew I was there, you’re just trying to get me into trouble!” “I am not! Sir, he’s lying! I wasn’t looking and he knows it!” “You still should have ducked!” And so on.

To my surprise, since in my mind I was entirely innocent, Esora-e was looking darkest at me. By this time all the children in the ground had gathered around, standing on tiptoe to see over each other’s heads. “Fourth Chevenga,” he said finally, “I’d like you to demonstrate what you think Nyera should have done.” He picked up my stick, and handed it to her. “Turn around.” I did. It was a pleasure to turn my back on her.

It was pleasure she planned to have, too. No one relishes revenge so much as a child granted permission to take it. She brought the stick around whistling, and I ducked just as he’d asked.

Silence fell. “Again,” he said. This time Nyera aimed from the other side. I did the same. The other children stared as if they were seeing magic. Why is this such a big thing to them? “Again.” This time she did a down-stroke and I side-stepped. “No fair!!” she screamed.

He had Nyera give me the stick then, much to her disappointment, and tied his spare sweat-rag around my eyes, making sure not a single crack of light could get through. As always, in training, he was wearing his sword; now I felt him draw it, and kneel down in front of me to match my height. Slowly at first, he ran me through the Eight Blocks. I’d only ever practiced them with my hands before, but of course I’d seen them done with swords, so it was easy enough to extrapolate. I heard him spit, before he checked my blindfold, then tied another rag over it. The second time he went faster. By this time the children were all yelling with delight, cheering me on, and I was enjoying myself. “Try harder, shadow-father,” I teased him. Instead he banged his sword into its scabbard, ordered Urakaila to watch us, and leapt up from his knees straight into a dead run, his footfalls thumping towards the door of the School.

“How are you doing that?” Mana said to me. His full name, by the way, was Mana-lai Chereda, and until his death at twenty-one he was my best friend.

I yanked off the rags. “What do you mean? It’s… it’s… it’s the feel without touch. Like when you watch a fight with your eyes shut.” He just stared at me. “You’re all staring at me with your mouths flapping,” I said. “Why?” It took them some time to get it through my skull that none of the rest of them could do this, not even Urakaila; if they could not see or touch a weapon, they didn’t know where it was. That filled me with horror, and then awe for their courage; how could they even consider becoming warriors, so handicapped? Then my shadow-father came back with Azaila, who was the war-teacher of all the war-teachers, and a good half of the other war-teachers.

He got me to do it again, and when he pulled the blindfold off, the younger teachers, grown-ups all, sweaty with the exertion he’d drawn them away from, were staring at me no less astonished then the children had.

From then on I was Azaila’s, and only Azaila’s, student, at least formally. Always I marveled, at how his old crack-skinned arms could so easily guide my clumsy smooth ones, till they became less so.

That same day, after training was done, Esora-e took me back into the room where the Sword hung.

“You thought everyone had weapon-sense like yours, didn’t you?” he said. I signed chalk. I had been thinking; this explained the strange apparent blindnesses afflicting other people that I had always noticed. His eyes were bright as if he’d just been fighting, his cheeks flushed. “Azaila does; that’s why it must be him who teaches you. So do some of the other teachers. But they’ve trained fifty years for it. You were born with it. Do you know what that means?”

I found myself afraid to know, my heart drifting back to the edge of the cliff. I signed charcoal. He took my face between his hands again.

“If you always work as hard as you can in training, always do your best—which you always have so far—you, Fourth Chevenga Shae-Arano-e, could be the greatest warrior in the world.”

I stood silent. I didn’t know what to say. His face split into a wide grin, and he touseled my hair. “Aren’t you glad you chose to stay with it?”

†

I felt Surya’s fingers on my temples, and his table under my back, and tears in my eyes. I couldn’t remember forgetting, of course, but I was fairly sure I’d never wept over it before. He said nothing, only changed his hold on my head into a cradling, to let my emotion run its course, and my mind take its time coming back to the present.

“I was Azaila’s student,” I whispered finally. “But Esora-e gave me extra, as my shadow-father. His heart was set on it; from then on, it was his sacred task. Surya… I didn’t think I could forget something that major.”

“You concealed your unwillingness to kill from yourself very thoroughly afterwards. Forgetting was part of it. It’s natural. You essentially had to, once you’d decided.”

But I had remembered now. I lay silent for a while, feeling laid open and naked as a new bone-deep wound, my head in his hands. I had to lie here in stillness and silence and his caring, I saw, to get to the point of being able to bear it.

“Now I know,” I said, when I could, “I remember feeling echoes of it, across my whole life. When I was telling them in the Mezem that I wouldn’t fight… it was familiar, and I didn’t know why. No meant death; but when I said no, I felt so free.” Tears came again. He changed his grip again, leaving one hand on the back of my head taking its weight, and laying the other across my brow. His touch was almost more gentle than I’d known was possible.

After another wordless time, my emotion washing itself out, he had me take three very deep breaths, and said, “Tell me now, how you feel about going asa kraiya.”

That freedom flashed through me again, blinding, as long as I could bear, which was a bare moment. Then emotion seized me. I had asked Surya earlier why his walls were lined with sponges; to dampen sound, he told me, so that his clients could fully voice their feeling without the entire neighbourhood bearing witness. It washed itself out all over me, right down to my toes, leaving me so spent I slept for half a bead right on his table. When it came time to sling back on all my weapons to leave, my hands did it unthinkingly as always, but neither the weapons nor the hands seemed my own.

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11 - in which I am outed

An eight-day after Surya and I sent our letters to my mother and shadow-father, I got a pigeon-message, saying they were both coming, by wing. That was the same day as my third session with Surya. As I closed the door behind myself, he said, “You’ll be sad to hear this, but it couldn’t be helped. I know who you are.”

I didn’t understand, no doubt because I didn’t want to. What does he mean, he’s always known exactly who I am, I can hide nothing from him, what in…? I guess confusion showed on my face.

“Semanakraseye.”

I froze, feeling my cheeks go red and sudden tears behind my eyes. Well, why not? What feeling of mine had I ever hidden from him? And yet the tears stayed behind my eyes, locked there by my knowing he knew my name. I took a long casual breath and said, “Call me Chevenga. You know me well enough.”

“You can never take off the armour of your name, except here with me, can you? Have you ever had that before, in your life?” I signed charcoal, unable to speak. “Once you’ve got all the weapons off, just sit down and let it out.” Chevenga or not, I hadn’t lost the habit of obeying him. Blinded with tears, I had to grope for the hooks to hang my swords. Once I’d sat down, he put his arms around me, and I wept on his shoulder.

“You’ve lost nothing, I’ll make sure of that,” he said. “You know how it is, how first impressions stick, and define a person no matter what else we learn. To me, you are still the man who came in through my door, whose aura I saw full of death, and who wanted so dearly to live. Do you think your aura has changed? I knew the size of your burden before; now I understand its nature, and that will be help, not hindrance. I think it was best that I didn’t know before I got you to relinquish your will to me, though; I don’t know that I’d have had the nerve. That makes me think I was blinding myself to it, actually; I knew in the deeper me that it was best I didn’t know, so the deeper me kept me from it. I’ve had things like that happen before. Don’t worry. Everything is going as it should.”

“In a sense my will has always been relinquished to you,” I said, as he handed me one of his goodly stock of kerchiefs. “Semana kra.” We shared a little laugh. “How did you find out?”

“I received a visit from the Captain of the Darya Semanakraseyeni, Krero Saranyera.”

I cringed inside, imagining. He spared me further imagining, if not further cringing, by telling me the full story. Later that same day I got Krero’s version of it, too.

†

Surya had guessed that I was high enough in the ranks that he’d probably know my name if he heard it. He’d thought no further than that. A day after the second session, as he was working with his healing-room door slightly open (he'd leave it that way if the client wasn't yelling, so as to hear taps), a very authoritative knock came on his door. At first he ignored it, thinking that the visitor, having read on his sign that he was a healer, would realize he was working. They usually did. Krero knocked again.

“I must work as uninterrupted with this patient as I will with you, if you’d be so good as to come in and wait!” Surya called pleasantly on the third knock, in Enchian.

“I’m here on business of national import!” Krero barked unpleasantly, in Yeoli.

“My patient is Arkan, thus in effect Yeoli, thus, semana kra, so business of national import can wait, kere,” Surya answered in Yeoli. “You are welcome; please, come in!”

With four of his escort, Krero did, and sat fuming for half a bead.

The poor patient scurried out through the gauntlet of full-geared Yeolis, Surya offered them all ezethra, and Krero introduced himself and began grilling him. “Where are you from? Who are your parents? Where did you get your healer training? Are you war-trained? Why did you move to Arko? Did you ever live in Arko before?” And so on.

Having nothing to hide, Surya answered it all willingly and thoroughly. When Krero ran out of questions, he asked, “May I know why I have been asked these things, especially in person by someone as highly placed as you?”

Krero stared at him. “You don't know, when you have who you have as a patient?”

The healer, Krero would tell me later, looked baffled. “Who I have as a patient? What do you mean?”

Long delays never improved Krero’s mood. “Surya,” he snapped, “I’ve tried to be patient. All through waiting, I tried, and I am still trying now, and I don’t know how long I will be able to succeed. You pose as professional enough to have some knowledge of your patients; would that be enough to know their names?” (“Are you sure you should be trusting this fellow?” Krero asked me as he told me the story. “I know sometimes healers’ heads are in the clouds, but this is ridiculous.”)

“Well, come to think of it,” said Surya, “there is one whose name I don’t know. It didn’t matter to me for the healing, and I guess it doesn’t matter to him either because he hasn’t told me, so it’s never come up. I’ve always had the impression he has some sort of high position, actually; maybe he’s why you’re here? Medium height, black hair, a nasty cut-scar down his right cheek and a square of brand-lines on his left, wears two very fancy Arkan-looking gold bracelets chained to rings on both hands, which he won’t take off even when I make him strip...”

One or two of the escort snickered, but Krero was in no mood. “How could you not know his name? How could you not know his face?”

“I drew him in and onto the table before he had a chance to introduce himself, and then we were too deep in the session… I’ve never thought about whether he looked familiar.” Now he did, searching back through his memory, just as it was occurring to Krero that I might have purposely gone incognito and forgot to tell him. Like every warrior who’d fought for me, Surya had seen me speak, albeit from a distance.

“Blessed All-spirit,” Krero told me in his account. “Nothing in my life has ever prepared me for a healer even knowing words like that. Of course he’d been in the army, that’d be how.” Surya apparently blushed right down to his hands, as well. I’ll rue as long as I live, however long that is, that I didn’t get to see it. The escort all burst out laughing.

“He’s Chevenga,” Surya spluttered. “That explains …a lot.” But he said no more, mindful of confidentiality; and telling Krero he now understood entirely why he’d been questioned, and for the sake of the nation, two nations, he was appreciative of his diligence, he sent them on their way.

†

“So I must pay you back this,” he said, handing me the seven silver chains I’d paid him last time. “We may be in Arko, but I am Yeoli and have not left our ways behind. I do not charge the semanakraseye.” He was polite enough not to ask how I’d had them. I took them, and stifled my happiness that I’d also slipped him the five gold in the hope he would not see it in my aura. He said nothing and we went on.

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10 – Telling three

I stayed in the office late that night to finish the letters—the one to Esora-e probably the most awkward, tentative thing I’ve ever written in my life, the one to my mother much easier—and sent them off with the early-morning semanakraseyeni wing-courier. Personal business, yes, but, when I thought about it, did the Yeoli and Arkan taxpayer not own me anyway?

Then I took Kallijas and Niku into one of the very private rooms in the Imperial chambers.

It was harder getting the words out than it had been telling either of them of my foreknowledge in the first place. I found myself swallowing tears, and my hands trembling; alarmed, they each wrapped an arm around my shoulders. “You know I went to a healer?” I said. I hadn’t told them, but Krero had. “It was... what he did to me... he’s incredible... I have to... aigh.” I did what I knew Surya would advise if he were here: took a deep breath.

“Is it about when you were tortured?” Niku said gently. I signed charcoal.

“The sack?” Kallijas whispered. I signed charcoal again.

“The impeachment?” I signed charcoal. They glanced at each other, stumped, having hit on all the points in my life when my mental health had been clearly questionable. “You’re sure it’s nothing to do with the torture?” Niku said. “Omores, I’ve never seen you so tongue-tied except when you were trying to talk about that.”

“It isn’t, I swear,” I said. “Kyash, I feel like an idiot. I’m sorry. I had no idea this would be so hard. When I do manage to spit it out, you’ll be astounded.” They held me closer, wishing me comfort, strength, telling me not to reproach myself, to take my time, that they understood it was something difficult.

“My foreknowledge,” I finally said. “I’m seeing him about that.” Their eyes fixed on me, growing graver, and my tongue locked again. “He has... he thinks he can... kyash, kevyala, loves, I’m sorry, if I could just tell you I would—! He thinks he has a way to...aigh.”

“Help you take it better?” Kall said, in a whisper. “Though I can’t see how you could.”

My hand stabbed out charcoal. I sprang up out of their arms, needing to move, to walk off the trembling, the nausea. “It’s not so simple as foreknowledge,” I said. “He made me see that. It’s something I am carrying in me. Obligation...” They glanced at each other, their confusion deepening tenfold. I was sweating now. “Something I am carrying... something I can... put down.”

They both froze, as if they’d been stabbed. I remember the stillness in his sky-blue and her earth-brown eyes, like yesterday.

“Omores, you mean...” I watched Niku, ever daring, fight to say the words. “This healer thinks he can save you?”

I thrust both my hands out chalk, and buried my face in them.

There was a moment of silence like death; then Niku grabbed me by the hair on both sides of my face, Kall my shoulders. “Chevenga, this healer—do what he says, don’t buck him like you do Kaninjer, Sheng, we are with you, pehali, ask if there is anything we can do to help, we will do it, no matter what it is, but you have to do what he says...”

“I am,” I said. “I’ve relinquished my will to him, same as in war. I’m acting on one of his orders now; he told me to tell you two.”

The questions came thick and fast. I explained as best I could—now I’d got the main news out, it became easier—how Surya worked, how often I would see him, what he had done both visits. To the question of how long it would take, I had to say I did not know; nor did I know whether he was willing to come to Vae Arahi once I went back there, though if his theory was true that he had been called to Arko to save my life, then presumably he would.

Speaking became a struggle again, when they asked me how it was possible, which really was the more incriminating question of why, if it were possible now, I had always thought it impossible. Though on reflection there seemed no sensible reason to be more ashamed of having an urge to death due to things I had been taught than foreknowledge, I felt more ashamed of it somehow, as if it were somehow more my own doing. Or as if I had lied to them, though I had believed it with all my heart.

I could not explain well; I resorted to telling them I’d get Surya to, or they could go to him for the full explanation, which I learned later they did.

Then when we were about to go back to the bedchamber, where Skorsas would be, it came to me that it was hardly fair to tell two of my loves why I’d been so rattled for the last three days, and not the third. Now that my death was not certain, I realized, his forbiddance need no longer apply.

If I happened to have a dream that foresaw my death, would you want me to tell you? It had been four years ago now, shortly enough after the Sack that I'd still had my arms in casts, after I'd told Kall; I thought I should tell Skorsas too, but also felt fairly strongly that he might well not want to know. How better to find out than just ask? I said it very casually, pretending it was hypothetical. “No!” he answered. “No no no no no—I wouldn’t want to know that.” So I’d honoured it.

Now, I took him off to the same eavesdrop-proof room. In a way it was easier than with Niku and Kall, since they’d already known and made their peace with the first part; in a way it was harder, for exactly the same reason.

“My little professional—I mean my great noble God,” he whispered. When he was really thrown, he could forget he’d been elevated. “It was real. You asked because it was real.” That casually-worded question had stuck in his mind, it seemed. “You never cease to amaze me, Jewel of the World. Muunas…” He looked at me as he was seeing me for the first time again, as people often do when I tell them. “That makes so much about you make sense.” Then when I told him the second part, that I’d learned now it was not foreknowledge, but obligation, he said, “That makes everything else about you make sense.” A bit of a chill went up my spine. Was I so transparent?

“So now—you’re fighting it. Ha!” he said, triumphantly. “No fear, any time you fight anyone or anything. I’m in the gate behind you, Living Greatest, as always, with perfect confidence.”

On retrospect, we’d both done right, I to ask hypothetically, he to answer honestly. He went straight from blissful ignorance to hope and confidence that I would overcome it, never living in the darkness of the certain thing hanging over his head, as Niku and Kallijas had. Skorsas has a gift, for somehow escaping the worst, and coming out with a smile on his perfect face, his clothes unwrinkled and his panache untouched. I wish I had it.

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9 - A thousand things I think about myself

“We need to look into how you learned this,” said Surya. “Your shadow-father—he is key. Is he alive? Is he here?”

“He is in Vae Arahi,” I said, feeling a sudden queasiness in my guts. I could see it coming, Surya wanting me to write him, ask his opinion of my laying down the sword, as if I did not know it already. Forestall, I thought. “Surya—you don’t mean to suggest bringing him into this, do you? If he knew what you were saying, that... well, I have it right, don’t I, he in effect taught me I should die young?” I flinched even from imagining Esora-e hearing this. “He’d think I was out of my mind, that you were out of your mind... I think he would cut me out of his life entirely and forever. And I don’t think I could blame him.”

The shock and concern I expected on his face did not appear; my words didn’t even give him pause, as if every client said something like this. “Mm-hmm,” he said. “He’d be mortified at the suggestion, you mean? I should hope so. He doesn’t know of your foreknowledge, does he?”

“Is that in my aura?” I said, unable to think of anything else to say to play for time.

“Breathe,” he said. “He is in your aura, and everywhere he is, is edged with pain. And anger. You tried to grow up fast, understandably. He thought it was too fast, and tried to stop you. He was very severe... struck you nearly unconscious once. Yes, that is in your aura. Why did you never tell him, give him the knowledge which would make him understand?”

“I... I was afraid of what he would do.” I felt the points of my cheeks come up red.

“What were you afraid of him doing?”

“Limiting... Shortening my leash. I... I wanted to live my life my way, insofar as I could, do what I could in the time I had. I was afraid he’d lock me in a tower or some such thing, to try to keep me alive... and that would be no life at all.” The queasiness grew. I had never said this aloud in my life.

“You were afraid he would not leave you your choices.”

“He tended not to.”

“But it would have been to protect you.”

“His brand of protection would have been a living death!”

“I am not saying it wouldn’t have,” said Surya. Now anger was flowering all through my arms and legs, making them itch to leap up, move, find a fight somewhere.

“Kraiyaseye,” he said softly. “I see some of what you use on the field, what usually you can make come and go at will.” That brought me out of it some; I had always done it unthinking, never wondering about its source. “The one time I don’t have to tell you to breathe deep,” he said, with a trace of a smile; I was doing it, quite naturally, being set for a fight. “We aren’t on the field, though. Tell me when you are calm enough to hear sense.”

That came soon, but for good measure I got up and shook it out of my limbs. When I sat down again, he said, “Look beyond your fear into the core of what you expected from him. It was protection. He may not have been wise about how to go about it, but he did wish you long life. Like any parent.”

“True.”

“Any reason not to think he still does, and would help in any way he could?”

I got up again to pace again. “But... I would have to tell him.”

“Yes,” he said. “It’s too late for him to lock you in a tower, isn’t it?”

I paced some more. This was all so strange. I realized why: whether because I was more often right, or more devious, or more firm in conviction, or the power of my position discouraged the opposition, I had gotten used to winning debates. “I don’t know why I’m trying to argue with you,” I said. “You’re not going to leave me any choice in this anyway, are you?”

Surya smiled, and said, “This is why I got you to swear that oath.”

“All right then. I will write him. Azaila and him both, tonight.”

“Ask him to get here as soon as possible.”

“G...get here?” I felt the blood drain out of my face.

“I can write him as well, if you like, to give it the healer’s stamp. You need him here, for the sake of your life. Do you think he would deny you that?”

This was strange too, wanting to say what I never wanted to say: Hold on, wait, slow down. “Why do I need him here?”

“So the two of you may settle your disputes, give each other truth. I mean, you weren’t going to tell your own shadow-father that you have always thought you were going to die young in a letter, were you?”

I ran both hands through my hair, catching them in the knots. That was exactly what I had been planning to do, of course. “Kahara help me, he won’t want to come here, he hates everything Arkan, he hates everything foreign. This can’t wait until I get back home, after the elections and the transition?”

He just said, “What do you think?”

“Shit, Surya... I can’t... for the sake of my life... I don’t think I could bring myself to write that in a letter.”

“As I said, I can send my letter with yours, and word it as definitely as is true. And it will carry my credibility. Yes, it is asking a lot of him; but what he stands to gain is worth it a hundred times over: to not be mourning his shadow-son in a matter of months. Tell me, how much do you think he would grieve for you? Have you ever thought about it?”

I never had. It came to me in a flash, though. It would be like my father. I suddenly felt tears pressing behind my eyes, a knot in my throat. “He’d be devastated,” I said.

“But until now you were not going to tell him you knew it was coming. Would he have found out afterwards?” I signed chalk, thinking of the autobiography I had set to go to the Workfast Literary once my funeral was over, and threw my hands over my face almost before he said, “Mm-hmm. A good way to get even, I suppose.”

There are a thousand things you think about yourself which are not true. I felt them crashing down around my head now, like beams in a housefire. “You’re right, you’re right, Surya, I’ll tell him, you’re right. Kahara... I can’t know if he will even believe me. Why should he? It will all sound to him like madness.”

“How can he not believe you, when it will answer so many questions about you?”

There was no arguing with the child-raper, nothing to say but “A-e kras’.” He took out pen and paper to write his, and since there was nothing else for me to do, he suggested that I write mine. He signed and handed his page to me while I was still struggling over my first few words.

We went on to other things, then, most of which I can’t remember, which probably means they were of great significance. In time he said, “Well, I think we’ve done enough for today,” and had me list back the orders: finish writing Esora-e, write my mother and Azaila, tell my closest. “Oh, while I’m thinking of it,” he added, “I have another order. You will consult with Jinai Oru, asking him to look specifically for your death.”

I guess fear must have lanced through my aura as it did through my body, for he said quickly, “Not tomorrow, though—you’re definitely not ready for that. Sometime in the future, we’ll know when the time is right. Don’t worry about it for now.”

I rose to go—no chair needed this time—and saw a troubled look on his face, an expression of which I hadn’t imagined him capable. He looked as if he were wondering how to ask something awkward. I stood there for a long moment like an idiot before I realized: he doesn’t know I am semanakraseye. I have to pay him.

For the last session, as well as this one; he’d been polite and trusting far beyond the usual, to not have mentioned it yet; of course he would know I was honest from my aura. But he’d just moved to Arko, he must not have many clients yet, and it was Mella 26, ten days left before rent-time, probably. Needless to say, I had come carrying not so much as a single money-chain. A note that he could take to the treasury, then—no, I’d have to sign it. I realized I also had no idea what he charged, since I had never asked, and again, he had been too civil to bring it up.

I cast my mind back to my year of peace, to remember how to word this. I, not we. “How much do I owe you?”

“Normally for someone such as yourself,” he said, relief easing his face, “three silver chains per visit, which would come to six for both—but seeing as the first was so short—”

“No, no,” I said, “it’s six, then, never mind the shortness; if it’s for significance to me I am paying you, then it should be three gold, or more, for that first visit.” Of course for all I knew of the going rate, he could be rooking me blind, or I him; the treasury had handled all my previous healing bills. But I could not imagine even a trace of either the cheat or the dupe in him.

“I am not carrying so much,” I said. “May I send it to you later today? I can leave you something for surety if you wish.” I was thinking of one of the pair of gold pins I was wearing on my shirt-collar, but he said, “No, no, I trust you. And yes, it’s in your aura. Come back in... three days.” I’d have to cancel something else. No matter.

I sent him six plus one extra silver by way of apology for the delay. I learned later that the messenger told him, “From the Imperator.” He had been struck, to find he had a client close enough to Imperium that it was paying his healer bills. I also sent him, a day later, an anonymous donation of five gold, the kind of money an Imperator can scrape up by searching through his coat pockets, but which should do much to ease a healer’s mind about making the rent, and perhaps smooth matters with his better quarters.

--

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8 - Surya's story

“I am from Kabiri, a village near Tinga-e. When I was a child, I could see auras a little, and I knew something of what they meant. But people thought I was imagining them, would say ‘Oh yes, those certainly are nice colours around so-and-so, what an imagination you have.’ It got fainter and fainter, and stopped altogether when I started my war-training.

“We were very much a warrior family, my shadow-father a war-teacher by trade. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with my life as I was growing up; I didn’t like war-craft enough to follow him, and though I helped in my parents’ shop, I couldn’t see myself doing carpentry all my life either. I fought against the Lakans for three years, then married. My husband and shadow-wife did cabinetry, my wife did running for the Workfast Proclamatory, and we had children; I dedicated myself to them, and to the garden and the herd, because I still was not certain what else I wanted to do.

“We were all four warriors, so that when the Arkans invaded, we were devastated; you know how it was with warrior families. My shadow-father, my mother, both of my wives and a good half my in-laws all got killed within three moons. Anchera and I had the children cared for and wet-nursed by someone up in the mountains who wasn’t even family, so we could fight.

“When it turned around and we started winning, all was well for a while, but then I started getting sick. It was just aches and pains and nausea at first, but it worsened as we fought through Yeola-e and then into Arko. I started feeling tired all the time, depressed, I’d get fits of panic, nightmares, and catch every little thing that was going around. We thought it was grief from bereavement—but releasing my grief, crying out my heart many times, did not touch it. I went to one army healer after another, Haians, Yeolis, even an Enchian, and none of them could do anything. The Haian remedies would work for a short time, then I’d be back to where I had been before. The Haians told me it was because I was a warrior and I should quit—but you know Haians, they always say that. After everything, I was hardly not going to see it through to the end.

“The only person who really helped was a Yeoli war-master. He told me that I shouldn’t worry, that the reason for it all would come clear... that I didn’t have, and this is exactly how he put it, a case of sickness, but a case of change. What that meant, I hadn’t a clue, and I guess he didn’t explain because at that time I could not possibly have understood. But he said that I shouldn’t worry with such conviction and firmness that I believed him, and that helped.

“At Porfirias I had to drag myself onto the field. They were nothing but old men and boys and cripples, all that Arko had left. They’d stopped fighting, we were just slaughtering them as they ran, when I came to a point where something in me would not be denied. I couldn’t do this for a moment longer. I said so to Anchera, and threw down my sword. And then...”

Surya paused, gazing off over my shoulder, his face full of the memory, which seemed both wondrous and horrific. “My gift came up, full-blown.”

“Full-blown?” I asked him. “You mean—all of a sudden you were seeing everyone’s auras?” He signed chalk. “Sakra Mahaiyana... the wounded, the dying...? That must have been... I can’t imagine.”

“It was as if the land was burning, a sheet of flame of agony and anguish and rage... I fell to the ground and curled up into a ball. Anchera thought I’d taken an arrow. He and someone else carried me to the infirmary. The Haians figured it out fairly quickly, when I started telling them about things that had happened to them as children. There was a man across from me who was refusing painkiller, though he was in agony. I kept wanting to scream, ‘Force it down his throat!’ So, they knew what it was, but not what to do. I felt the only person who’d have a clue was that war-master. Anchera, bless his soul, went out and found him. Azaila—that was his name—”

“Azaila! Azaila Shae-Chila, of the School of the Sword in Vae Arahi?”

“Yes... well, I guess you would know him.”

“He was my war-teacher.”

Surya laughed, and said, “Ah, I should have known it.” His eyes took on the aura-seeing gaze.

“Oh yes, there he is! I see the spirit of his teaching in you.”

“What does his aura look like?”

“Oh, it is very beautiful, very strong, the colours all like jewels, everything integrated and well-formed, nothing out of harmony. It is a wonder to see.”

“Not like mine.”

Surya smiled. “Give yourself as many years as he has had, to learn and grow.”

Having shut me up thoroughly, he went on. “Azaila and Anchera took me out into a forest near there, far away from the camp or the killing-field or any other people. There, he ran me through the asa kraiya ceremony.”

“Azaila does that?”

“Of course—he’s a war-teacher.” He shook his head, and a smile quirked the corner of his mouth. “You kraiyaseyel don’t know anything.”

“You know, Surya Chaelaecha,” I said, “I’ve never had anyone make me feel as much of an ignoramus as you since I came of age.”

“You’re welcome. It’s a healer’s calling to serve. Azaila, your war-teacher...” I’d already learned to fear Surya’s scheming look. “Did he give you your wristlets?” I signed chalk. “So you must be quite worried what he will think of you going asa kraiya. I have your next order. Do you know if he is in Arko, still, or back at the School?”

“Back at the School. I wish he were here.”

“You can’t speak to him, then—so: you will write him. Ask him his opinion of your doing this.”

I took a deep breath and said, “A-e, kras’.”

“No later than tomorrow.”

“I hear and obey.”

“Good. So anyway, he took me through the ceremony. Not that it was my true moment of laying down the sword; that had been when I had thrown it down, literally. But the ceremony formalizes it. And celebrates it. And then he suggested that I go to Haiu Menshir to be trained in how to use my gift. We had to smuggle ourselves onto the island because it was occupied by Arko then, but we managed; I got help from the semanakraseye, a letter for our privateers.”

It almost slipped by; I had to let it echo again through my ears. I got help from the semanakraseye, a letter for our privateers. I froze, shivers spreading outward from my heart, sending prickles flowering all down my arms and legs.

All through, Surya had never addressed me by name or by title, except kraiyaseye. I had thought it was to show me that my position was not important. Now I saw—it was that he didn’t know who I was. No—he knew better than anyone who I was. He did not know my name.

“The semanakraseye,” I said wonderingly.

“Yes—Chevenga himself,” he said, with a slight but unmistakable pleasure in dropping my name. “I guess it had to go that high, it was going to be tricky.”

When I thought back, I could vaguely remember it coming across my desk, after Porfirias, vaguely recall scribing and signing a note to my privateers, to get a warrior secret passage to Haiu Menshir to train a gift that had incapacitated him.

I played it out in my mind. The first session, he’d started saying things that shocked me so fast I’d forgotten to introduce myself. When he never asked, I had come to assume he knew by my face or the seals or the signet or the brand-marks, or Megidan telling him, which I knew now she hadn’t. But then how had he missed the clues all over me? They are surface things, I thought. He doesn’t look at the surface, at what I make myself appear to be; he looks at the centre, the truth, at what I really am.

Surya looked at me puzzled; of course whatever I felt showed plain as light to his eyes. I opened my mouth to tell him the truth and apologize for not doing so earlier, and felt my tongue lock. Something in me did not want to; asking myself, I saw right away what. Not knowing my name, he knew me, not it and everything associated with it in his mind, whatever that was. To him, I was just myself, not Fourth Chevenga, conqueror of Arko, Invincible, Beloved, Imperator, Son of the Sun, and so on. I wanted to stay that way to him so badly it almost hurt.

So I shrugged, and said, “Just a thought—one that’s best to tell you later, I think.” As if he’s going to let that go, I thought lamely. To my amazement, he did, and went on with his story. I felt like the child who walks onto the wrestling ground against the giant, and pulls off a victory.

“Anchera saw me settled on Haiu Menshir, and then went back home to reclaim the kids, since the war was over. I studied there for two years, then went back home, and I have been practicing ever since. My Haian master gave me the name ‘Kinamun,’ which means ‘certainty.’ I’ve just translated it to Yeoli.”

I could see why he’d been given that name.

“Now I understood, I had not known what I wanted to do with my life because my best talent had been hidden from me. I was practicing in Tinga-e until about a month ago, when All-Spirit told me that I should come here, for some reason. Anchera and Janinara-e—my new shadow-wife—and the children were not pleased; but I had to come.”

Surya lifted his teacup for a sip, and said, “Now it looks to me like the reason was to save your life.”

“Surya, you are extraordinary,” I said, “and all who come to you are blessed, that in the way of All-Spirit you were given such a gift. I should not waste it.”

He shook his head. “That’s it—enough rest, nose to the grindstone again. Do you hear what you are saying? You should not waste my gift, as if that is the crucial consideration in whether you live or die. Before it was Yeola-e would lose you as a warrior, as if you losing you was of no consequence at all. I do have my work cut out for me, don’t I, having to convince you your life is worth anything, for its own sake?”

I couldn’t speak. I had said those words, there was no taking them back, no pretending that meaning was not in them.

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