75 - The duel in Komona’s eyes, beginning

“There’s an old strategic saying that’s quite simple,” I said. “Never besiege. Especially in your own land. And I didn’t want those reinforcements to catch me flat-footed. But I had to take it back; it was Vae Arahi.”

“Oh, I know, love.” My heart and my loins both stirred at the word, before I told myself she’d just said it out of old habit. “I didn’t know the ‘never besiege’ part, but I can see why not… I think.”

“Well—it’s all changed now, because of the wing. An enhancement that demonstrates further what I’d always been taught: it all depends on what equipment you have,” I said. “With good siege machinery, you can put yourself almost even with the defenders in a full assault, but otherwise, you’re always taking more losses. I had none, and I didn’t have time or money to build it. But, if you decide to starve them out, unless you have a large enough army to split, which I didn’t, it pins you to the one place, which you really don’t want if the enemy has numbers outside the siege, which they did, so…”

I suddenly realized, I was giving a strategy lecture to a senahera monk who had always been utterly pacifistic. Why, I wasn’t sure, except that she was listening intently. “I couldn’t imagine you’d propose the duel without good reason,” she said. “It’s good to understand it, though.” Though in truth I’d rather never have had to, her eyes said, like all of us.

“For the next two days, no one of either nationality could talk about anything but who was better, you or Kallijas. The Arkans kept saying he had experience over you, and that a duel on a mountainside for stakes like this was very different than in the Mezem. The Yeolis kept saying you’d been trained by Azaila Shae-Chila and had weapon-sense and your fifty blood-sport fights were the best possible training in dueling on the Earthsphere. I asked one of them how old he’d started fighting, he said eighteen, and I told him you’d started at thirteen… or else I’d just ask them, as if I didn’t know and was curious, ‘Chevenga had a title in the Mezem, what was it?’ so they’d have to say ‘Living Greatest.’ My little share in sapping their morale. The plain soldiers, common-rankers, realized I knew more about you than most and started asking; when I think about it, I suspect the only reason I wasn’t truth-drugged was that I was a woman and so therefore shouldn’t know anything about such things, in an Arkan’s eyes.”

“Or it just didn’t occur to Abatzas to do that sort of reconnaissance,” I said. “He was very good at not having things occur to him.”

“Still, I was terrified they would; if they scraped me, they’d learn… you know.”

I just signed charcoal. “They already knew, from scraping me in Arko. If they’d tried to spread it in Yeola-e, I’d just have claimed it was a lie. I’m glad they didn’t; it would be the worse for me to have the truth come out now.”

“Yes. It amazes me sometimes… you guard a secret for so long, thirteen years for me, and it’s as if it fades from existence inside you in a way… atrophies in your mind, apart from the rest of your life. Then to be in the shrine or a restaurant or on the street, and to hear someone just casually say it, ‘Chevenga thought he’d never make thirty’ or however they word it… it jars. It must be a hundred times worse for you. Poor love.” That word again. I took a deep breath. “I can’t imagine how hard that was for you.” I wanted her to hold me, my skin all over aching for her arms; I hadn’t thought I’d remember her touch so vividly, after everything. I knew she wanted it too, but neither of us would risk it. We’d both always been people of discipline.

“However much a fool Abatzas was, Kallijas was studying you,” she said. “The story was that he had a file on you this thick that he’d been given by Triadas. I know one thing; he came asking us where your old bedroom was.”

“Really?” Kall had never told me that. “But I hadn’t been in it for three years; my parents had one of my little sibs in it. What did he think he was going to find?”

“I don’t know. I know he’d been prowling around Assembly Palace looking for clues too. He knew the word ‘semanakraseye,’ the only Arkan I’d ever met who did. That’s part of what I mean when I say he reminded me of you. One thing we did find was a baby-blanket Naingini crocheted for you; she’d embroidered a dedication on it.”

“Blessed All-Spirit… that thing?” I remembered it on several levels; puzzling out what the woolen words meant at age five or so, looking at it and trying to remember being wrapped in it at ten, thinking I was childish to want to keep it at thirteen but keeping it anyway, shoved to the back of the drawer. If Surya was to be believed, somewhere in me I still remembered being wrapped in it. “I didn’t think it was still in existence.”

“He held it with a tenderness that was surprising—another way he reminded me of you. And then he got this look of, ‘What am I doing?’ and handed it back to me as if he’d done something wrong by seeing it, and went off sheepishly. Maybe I was giving him a look without meaning to.” Kall hadn’t told me this either.

“Knowing him, he felt as if it were somehow seizing an unfair advantage,” I said. “Because of the poisoned blade, he was absolutely determined that the duel would be clean, down to the hair. I wore no gauntlets, he took off his, I took off my helmet, he took off his, he even gave me some of his whack-weed because my vial of it was broken; he was deadly resolved about it.”

“I know. I watched it.”

“You… watched… it?”

It’s every sane warrior’s wish that no one who loves him will ever see him in life-and-death struggle, especially if not war-trained—particularly so when he comes so close to grief that it looks certain, even for a short time. I’d had some family watching—my parents, my sibs—and had reconciled with myself, and them, about it. But they were mostly warriors, or former warriors. The idea of Komona having seen it was somehow much more horrifying.

“Yes. Chevenga, you said you’d listen to my story, so will you hush and listen? You’ve made me get ahead of myself again.” I closed my lips tightly and sat still, taking deep breaths through my nose. “Thank you. That night Eosenas, that’s the governor’s chief assistant… he hadn’t called me to his bed for a while, perhaps three-quarters of a moon, because he was getting bored of me. But that night he wanted me, and he kept me there all night—it’s all right, Chevenga, please remind yourself you’ve already killed him—and what I felt in it was anger. He was thinking, ‘This is the last time, here.’ He was cruel—shh shh, love, you saved me, you protected me, you killed him.”

“Too cursed quick, I bet,” I hissed.

She slapped her fingers gently over my lips. “Don’t think that way, Chevenga, especially not on my account. It’s all in the past, you are not a torturer, you know torture makes worse barbarians of those who do it than those who have it done, and you’re going asa kraiya.”

I took a deep breath. Yes, it’s all in the past, I told myself. I wondered if I could ever get over the sense of having failed her, though. “I’m sorry, lov—Komona. Go on.”

“Don’t apologize to me, Chevenga—it’s yourself you hurt the worst with this.” She said it so intently that I suddenly wondered if she’d been conspiring with Surya. No, it was that she was senahera, All-Spirit strong in her.

“I won’t think that way,” I said. “I swear. Please go on.”

“They allowed the slaves to be up on the wall with the guards to watch.” All-Spirit—she’d had a really good view, too. “To further subjugate us with despair when we saw you killed, I guess. But of course that might not turn out as they planned.”

I felt points of red rise on my cheeks, with wanting to ask her, “How did I look?” and of course refraining. Gallant and glorious as I rode up in gleaming armour without a hair out of place, I thought. Less so sprawled senseless at Kallijas’ feet. I guess it’s not just concern for their terror that makes us not want loved ones to see us in such places, but pure and selfish shame.

“I saw the Yeoli party come out, with the banner, and thought, ‘I’m about to see him again.’ You know… I confess… out of pain, I avoided it, after I left you. You remember I sent my regrets, with an excuse, when you invited me to your wedding—”

“For which I forgave you.” It couldn’t hurt to remind her.

“Yes, but I also stayed away from the parade after the Lakan war, and when you did the Kiss of the Lake… it was easiest. I guess I knew, a moment’s glimpse of your face and I wouldn’t be able to hide from myself how much I still loved you.

“I… was right. You’d been only fifteen when I’d last seen you. Now in the full flower of manhood, you were so beautiful…” She touched my face again, with the tenderness of awe. Was she just being polite, or were the scars nothing to her? “At least it didn’t matter so much that I was in love with you, because every other Yeoli was, too. How else could it be? You carried all our lives and hopes.

“And I wanted you… but on the other side of the wall, and in your armour, you were a thousand day’s journey away. And I could not be with you, nor could anyone else, except in our hearts and with our wishes and prayers, when you drew your sword.

“You know, I don’t know anything about fighting, and didn’t understand what I was seeing. The Arkan warriors around me would go ‘Oh!’ or ‘Aigh!’ all at once, for what I’d seen as nothing but a blur, or else they’d say ‘Ooh, beautiful such-and-such,’ some term for a fighting move, that you or he did so fast I probably would have missed it even if I knew what it was. I tried to measure how it was going by reading your face or his, whichever was facing me, but—maybe it was the distance—both of you didn’t seem anything but—and I couldn’t fathom this… ecstatic.”

“It wasn’t the distance,” I said.

“Well…” She looked into my eyes in her studying way. “You and he fell in love over the sword, as the expression goes, as everyone knows. But I confess, Chevenga, I can’t begin to understand that.”

“I don’t know that any words I could come up with will help,” I said. “It’s something beyond words… well, maybe this way. You know how you can come to know a person by making love with them, in a way that you can’t in conversation or any other way?” She signed chalk. I was the first she’d learned that with and, as far as I knew, the last. “That’s true of fighting too. It’s… likewise, a communion of two bodies, minds and spirits… the most close and intense communion… you become so extremely aware of each other that he is your entire world, and you his. And neither of you can hide your true nature from the other. So Kallijas and I came to know each other that way; and what we knew of each other… neither of us could help but fall in love with.”

“But… you were trying to stick pieces of steel into each other.”




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74 – How it was for Komona

As if I’d been on Surya’s table, I wanted only to sleep; if that was any measure, then the Committee were indeed my healers. Blessing of blessings, now I could without falling behind on something world-shakingly important. This is what it is, I thought as I settled into the sweet pillow and closed my eyes, to put aside everything else to devote oneself to healing. The part of me that drank it in like water in a desert overbore, for once, the shame.

I woke next morning thinking, I have nothing to do. Everything is being taken care of by someone else that I put in place for it, or was already there. It was marvelous. Surya had said we would start again, but not yet; he’d judge, I could see, by my aura. “Will you take me up for a fly, love?” I asked Niku. “Not to go anywhere; just to commune with the clouds.”

“Yes, omores,” she said. “You haven’t had enough of that.” In a sky like sapphire between the peaks we were an ascending spiral on the rising breath of the earth. “You are not alone, Vaimoy Sala,” she said, using my Niah name, when we were breathing hard, the peaks great studded shadows and the Independent and Assembly Palace specks beneath us. “Here.” She gave me the bar, wrapping her arms around me. I could not kill myself without killing her and our child within as well, and that she knew I would not do.

In a moment I was blind with tears. How I had forgotten that ineffable harmony of arm and swing, wing and wind, that the A-niah cannot describe, since they need not to their fledgling young, so much it is in their half-bird blood. I danced on the muscle of the wind, now yielding so it enveloped us in waves of caress, now down-slashing through it so it scraped our skin like rough hands, screaming through the wires and burning our dripping eyes. Like one of the children who are bright birds over the beaches of Ibresi, I wheeled and banked and looped—she trusted me even to do that—until I was laughing like a maniac, and at the same time our bodies, clenched lightly together, grew hungrier for each other in the fondling of the breezes. We made sky-love again, as we hadn’t for far too long, all the world beneath us seeming one in ecstasy.

From above the shrine was a knot of dark green. I need to be there, too. I had meant to do a seven-day abstinence soon after I got home, but now with the Committee wanting me whenever they had questions, I couldn’t. But they weren’t having me in today. Once we were down—I had not forgotten how to do a double-wing foot-landing, either—and I had eaten a little, I went there.

In the calm green gloom of the woods and the stillness of the standing stones was a balm not new like the wing, but as old as my memories. I turned a corner where I heard the rasp of wooden tines on stones, and saw moving red between the green leaves of the brush; a monk was raking the path, working in the unhurried way they have that would last an eternity. I stopped short when I saw her hair and face. It was Komona.

We cried out each other’s names in delight, and hugged, though it surprised me. Thinking back, I marveled; I hadn’t met her for more than a greeting in the street, mostly during my year of peace, and not touched her at all, since she’d left me. She hadn’t seemed to want more. Had my deciding to go asa kraiya changed that? Something in me lifted inordinately at the thought.

“It is good to see you here,” she said. “As it is good for you to be here. All-Spirit!” She seized my face between her hands. “Everyone knows, now. How hard that must be for you.”

I took a deep breath. She was ever one to cut straight to the heart. “Yes. Everyone knows. That means I no longer live with the shame of secrecy.”

“True. And you have a healer, now, and hope.” I signed chalk. “Is that what brings you here, you seek the spiritual side of it?”

“I… hadn’t thought of anything quite that enlightened,” I said. “I just felt the need. So perhaps it’s true. I’m just as happy to talk to you, though. You know what my life has been all this time; I’m shamefully ignorant of yours. In the Arkan war… I’d heard things. Will you tell me, in full?”

She smiled the smile she did when she was a touch embarrassed. Monkhood had not cured her of that, it seemed. “If you listened in full to everyone’s story, you’d have no time for anything else even if you lived to be two hundred,” she said.

“Well, I don’t listen to everyone’s story. You… you know, everyone I’ve ever loved has part of me, and is part of me. I want to know because it’s you.”

“There are parts of it that will hurt you.”

“Every Yeoli’s story from the Arkan war has parts that hurt me.”

She led me by the hand to a wooden bench at a crossroads in the Shrine paths, and we sat.

†

When the Arkans were drawing close to Vae Arahi,” Komona told me, “we moved the government lock, stock and barrel further up into the mountains—I say ‘we’ because it could not be done unless everyone lent a hand, so everyone did.

“They sacked Terera, as you know, but not Vae Arahi itself. Instead they put up that awful black wall around it. I think they wanted to show that they meant to imprison Yeola-e only, not destroy it. They would own all that we were.”

I remembered Kurkas, sipping a half-century-old Tinga-eni wine and saying, “Many things to offer, your home has,” sounding as if he were a worldly traveler to my ears, until I understood he meant “many things for me to take.”

“Or perhaps Triadas was holding Vae Arahi hostage,” Komona said. “I don’t know. But we smuggled all we could out of the shrine after we’d done the government. I went back one too many times.”

I’d heard she’d been a slave, and my mind had shied away from it. Now in her presence it couldn’t, and I felt anger and shame tense me all over inside. I was not here. It was a thousand times worse imagining her violated than remembering suffering it myself.

“I don’t need to tell you, how it went,” she said. “They thought of me as beautiful, in a dark Yeoli way. The governor’s chief assistant had me…” She was telling me even less than she’d first meant to; my face was showing enough that she had decided to spare me. “You want to kill him, Chevenga…” Let’s just say, I didn’t feel very asa kraiya right then. “You don’t have to, because you already have, even if through someone else’s hand.”

“So I used my time with them—three months, in the governor’s office—to learn. Their language, their ways, their thoughts; it might in some way be useful. What do you strategists say: know the enemy? I knew there must be people working in the shadows in the occupied lands, people working to weaken the Arkans. I made contacts soon enough… passed on to them things I learned by overhearing the governor, who thought I was too stupid to understand, being a woman.

“The black monstrosity they built around Vae Arahi, I had a hand in; they may think of women as weak, but apparently we have the strength to heave stone when they don’t feel like doing it. To defend Vae Arahi against those to whom it belongs… how wrong, that you would have to besiege the place in which you were born and raised and should be serving.”

“I wouldn’t be the first,” I said, thinking of any number of other capitals the Arkans had conquered and garrisoned.

“Well… at least you were back soon. We were all heaving in sacks of grain and hanging up cow-meat to dry for the half-moon before, hearing that you’d killed Triadas and were on the move. I remember how I felt, seeing the dust against the sky, and then the dark fringe on the earth that was the army. ‘They’re here.’ Joyful but hit with fresh fears all at once.

“You were hurt, we knew; the Arkans were all talking about how you were supposed to die, though they never said why you should. I only found out later it was that Kallijas Ityirian had wounded you with a poisoned blade.”

“He was ordered to,” I said. “Either he did it or his general charged him with active insubordination—in other words, chopped off his head.”

“Ah, Chevenga. You’re protective of his honour, even now.”

“The last time I hear his honour impugned is the last time I’ll be protective of it. Though I know you aren’t… are you?”

“No. I met him… I’m getting ahead of myself, but I met him in Vae Arahi, the night before the duel. Even though he was Arkan, something about him reminded me of you.” I felt an odd pang, not of jealousy, but that hard-to-define feeling you get when you find out two people you’ve loved who ought never to have seen each other have crossed paths nonetheless. “Anyway, the Arkans kept looking for the smoke from your pyre, but didn’t mention his name. I think, on retrospect, they were all ashamed.

“Then you liberated Terera… that night the Arkans doubled the guard on all the posterns and confined us to quarters on pain of death, so we couldn’t even hear the celebrating from a distance. We told each other, ‘They’re afraid.’

“They told themselves it would be a long siege; there was enough food for four months if need be, but they were hoping for reinforcements from Arko long before that. And they were saying to each other, ‘The kid knows duels. He doesn’t know sieges. When’s he ever done one?’ That’s what they called you, the kid or the boy or the peach-chin; they’d found out somehow you were only twenty-two.”

“I let my age be known when I was in the Mezem,” I said, “trying to get through the Portals of Propriety in the library.” Her Arkan was good enough to use the Arkan words, I decided.

“The Portals of what?”

“The Portals of Propriety… that separate the rooms in Arkan libraries. There are books you’re only allowed to read if you’re seven or older, books you’re only allowed to read if you’re fourteen or older, books you’re only allowed to read if you’re twenty-one or older, books that only certain officials may read, and books that only the Imperator may read. Possibly, I imagine, there are books that no one is allowed to read; I didn’t personally go through that part of their statutes. Anyway, I told them my birthday was atakina 13 instead of 19 in case they happened to look in Lives of Notables and see atakina 19 for Fourth Chevenga, but otherwise it was when I was twenty-one, and the writers found out.”

She pursed her lips in mock reproach. “Lying about your age again, Chevenga. Shame.” But then she turned serious. “And of course women aren’t allowed to read any books at all. Arkans are an insane people.”

I suppose the last time I’ll be protective of Arko’s honour, too, is the last time I hear it impugned. “There are many who manage sanity despite their customs,” I said. “They even have some sane customs.” I was thinking of Jitzmitthra. “Besides, women are allowed to read now.”

“I am told I should ask you to recount in detail the Ten Tens,” she said.

“I’ll do that, sometime, sure. Though have a stack of kerchiefs ready, because I cry my eyes out with joy if I even think about it. But as I recall, you’re telling your story.”

“Yes… the kid, the boy, the peach-chin.” Her lips took on the trace of a teasing smile. “I took hope from it, because I knew it was their fear talking. Then they were saying, ‘Well, we were saying he knows duels, not sieges, weren’t we? Damned if the little shen-eater doesn’t want a duel instead of a siege.’ ”



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73 - Open him completely

When we went back up to the Independent, Niku went back to sleep right away but I did not. In my office I sorted through the papers on the desk, all manner of things I’d been doing that I’d had to leave or beg off to serve as Imperator for the second time. I had a few boxes of personal papers coming by ship and land from Arko, including the memoir, not that I needed it. I’d given up writing it after I’d started with Surya, since the wheels of the carriage of my life had come off, at least in how I looked at it, anyway.

Some time during my first term the Pages had proposed regularly putting out monographs culled from philosophical things I’d said at one time or another, and though it had felt a bit cultish to me, in the end I hadn’t been able to resist such a chance to frequently voice my opinions. Now they were collecting them all to publish as a book, they’d asked me to go through and make any annotations or refinements I might want to, and I’d been making Intharas wait for a good three moons now, much to his displeasure.

So I should finish, but I was also thinking that immersing myself in my own ineffable wisdom might keep my mind off the fact that in a few aer I’d be in front of a Committee of Assembly answering questions about my sanity.

No such luck. I couldn’t keep from feeling my words had the stain of madness upon them.

†

Kuraila Shae-Linao, Servant of Ossotyeya: I shall start by asking you a question to which we probably already know the answer, just to get your thoughts in your words on the record. Though we would not like it if a semanakraseye were unwilling to co-operate with what we are doing, so that we would have to legally compel him… I can well imagine why one would be, why he would not want his emotional innards examined publicly, his every secret probed and recorded and assessed by a public body. I can see why he might seek legal means to resist it, or at least try to dissuade Assembly from undertaking it. You, however, have made no objection at all, in Assembly or elsewhere, either by legal means or in speech; you are here and have sworn to answer everything we ask, without compulsion. Why is it you are willing?

Fourth Chevenga Shae-Arano-e: Well… the people wills. That must sound like a pat answer, but it’s what comes to mind. I know that after what I have revealed, the people of Yeola-e must have questions, must have doubts, and the traditional way we deal with such in this nation, and the best way in my opinion, is a public analysis. We hold, and I hold myself, that it’s better to have it all out in the open and dealt with than left festering in people’s minds, ‘Is he fit to be semanakraseye, can we trust him with that power and responsibility, are we safe with him there?’ I know that, depending on your findings, I might receive a strong confirmation that I should stay in the position; I also know I might be asked to resign and impeached again if I refuse. It will depend on an imperfect process; but it’s as perfect as any process can be, and I do not doubt you will be thorough in your research, and so I am willing to entrust my professional fate to it. This is one reason why I thanked you all for being conscientious from the start.

Kurai: Chevenga, I’m going to personally commend you again, on the record, for your courage and your equanimity. It is very impressive to me (assent).
4Che: Let’s see if I can keep it up for the next question (laughter).

Kurai: Well, to tell the truth, it sounds like you’ve got a bit of a taste for a challenge, so I’ll give you one. Our mandate, as you know, is to investigate your state of mind. So what is your own assessment, currently, of your state of mind?

4Che: (Laughing) You know, when I first reported to Hurai Kadari, as an apprentice general, and he gave me my first assignment… he says, “I want one brilliant battle-plan, as comprehensive and detailed as you’d have to give if you were me, both practical and inspired in every aspect, sure beyond a doubt to give us a great victory at slight cost—in short, an example of perfection in the strategic art—and I want it by this time tomorrow.” Now I feel that way again.

†

I’d forgotten; it came back to me as I walked down to Assembly Palace and the Committee’s chamber, as they sometimes can when the bit of them you retain is more a lizard’s tail than a wisp of smoke and so you can grab it and pull the entirety back into your mind. I’d had a dream.

I am swimming in water as cold as winter sun, burning my skin. I go under, look up, see the silvery underside of the surface like a rippling Arkan-glass mirror. I will not come up again before I pass out but there is no ritual monk and I think, ‘Shininao is now a fish.’

I’d spoken to Surya, and was trying to keep his words in my mind. “The Committee will be your healers,” he had told me. “That is not their task or their requirement, but they will act that way nonetheless. Their task is an investigation, and every word will be permitted to every person, so that you will have no choice but to undertake it yourself with them. They are going to do their utmost to understand you entirely, so you will gain equal understanding of yourself yourself.”

†

4Che: I’m not… depressed, I’m not mind-frozen, I don’t have fits or attacks, I haven’t lost touch with reality, I’ve been able to fulfill my duties; I asked to go on medical leave so as to concentrate on my healing, not because I was somehow falling short as semanakraseye. What I have, in terms of state of mind… what happened was that when I was a child, I came to believe that I would die, and I ought to die, at around the age I am now. And if you carry something like that for so long, it doesn’t go away easily. That’s my problem, and it is what I am working to free myself from, with the help of Surya Chaelaecha. That’s my own assessment, for what it’s worth. I’d trust Surya’s much more.

Lanai Kesila, Servant of Issolai (presiding): Many questions: sib gentlefolk, I ask that you make note of them. As Kuraila noted to our witness, we want to be gentle with him in terms of time.

Kurai: Thank you, Chevenga. What I am going to do next is have you elaborate on this by running you through a list of questions that I use in my own practice, so as to gain a summary understanding of my clients’ mental states, if you agree to that.

4Che: Yes, of course.

Kurai: Would you say your usual mood is reasonably good?

4Che: Yes.

Kurai: Do you ever have bad moods for which you have no clear explanation?

4Che: No; if I’m angry or nervous or sad, I generally know why.

Kurai: Do you feel in control of yourself, generally?

4Che: … Usually. Not always.

†

Without getting out of the silver-blue water, I somehow find myself face-down on a table, whether a healer’s or a Mahid’s, I cannot tell. Fingers shackle my wrists and ankles, leaning my mind toward Mahid. I am naked and they are talking over me in a language I don’t understand but which isn’t Haian, while laying cloths over me here and there, sliding a needle into the vein into the back of my shield-hand, putting a glass mask over my mouth and nose. I feel a hand gently grip my penis, and a tube slide up into the inside of it. I’ve never had that done while I was awake before.

†

Kurai: We’ll return to this if we judge it relevant. How are your relationships with family?

4Che: Well, it depends on the person, of course, but it’s much more good than bad… I have no kin I’d rather be without, let’s put it that way.

Kurai: How about with friends?

4Che: I’ve had the odd quarrel, but it’s generally very good.

Kurai: Those with whom you work?

4Che: Generally good. I always make sure there is love there, and lots of it, as best I can… that’s true with everyone, actually.

Kurai: Do you feel sufficiently loved?

4Che: Yes, I count myself very fortunate that way.

Kurai: Do you love yourself?

4Che: …That’s… that’s an interesting question. The answer that springs to mind is yes, of course—but I know I can’t entirely justify it when… you know… when I seem to hate myself unto death sometimes. I guess… most of the time I love myself… but not always, not in all ways, not with all things.

Kurai: How are you at forgiving yourself for mistakes?

4Che: Terrible. I… I can’t, with some of them… it’s impossible.

Chanae: If I may intercede, I wonder if that’s simply a consequence of being in a position of great responsibility, in which even small mistakes can have great results.

4Che: It might well be.

Kurai: Well, tell us—what happens when you make a mistake?

4Che: A lot of people suffer for it. During the war, the whole fate of Yeola-e hung on my not making mistakes.

Kurai: So that’s what comes to mind when you think of mistakes you’ve made.

4Che: Yes, always. My worse mistake ever was allowing the sack of Arko… which left the blood of thousands on my hands.

Kurai: Do you feel you have control over the course of your life?

4Che: Kahara, no, I’m semanakraseye, it would be illegal (laughter).

Kusiya Aranin, Servant of Terera-South: If he had control over the course of his life, he wouldn’t be here (laughter).

4Che: Seriously… beyond the necessary bounds of obligation, yes. I haven’t always, having been enslaved twice, but otherwise, I generally do.

Kurai: How do you deal with that which you cannot control?

4Che: Try to find a way in which I can, and until I do, grit my teeth and bear it.

Linasika Aramichiya, Servant of Michalere: If I may intercede… truly, Chevenga? You try to find a way to control, for instance, the will of the people, and until you do, grit your teeth and bear it?

4Che: No! I thought… did I misunderstand the question?

Li: I suspect not.

Kurai: Well, let me interpret; there is that which we cannot control that makes us suffer, and that which we cannot control that does not. I think Chevenga’s answer in truth applied to the former, going on the words “grit my teeth and bear it…” perhaps because in the previous answer he made reference to slavery.

4Che: Yes, that’s what I was thinking.

Kurai: That which you cannot control that does not make you, or another, suffer, Chevenga, how do you deal with?

4Che: I let it be.

Li: But sometimes the will of the people is going to make you suffer—

4Che: In that case, I accept it. I’ve done the Kiss of the Lake twice, Linasika; were you there?

La: I ask an end to the intercession so the questioning may continue.

Li: Certainly, sib President.

Kurai: Is there an event in your life, Chevenga, that you know has left a lasting mark on you?

†

I want to ask what they will do to me, but some sort of propriety forbids me. It is all following some sort of protocol that must be done absolutely properly, by strict standards and actions so tightly defined they are in effect rituals. I feel that in every movement of the surgeons, or torturers, in every touch. The sound of my voice would be improper, a crude stain on the pristine fabric of the procedure. I am the only dark thing here, everything else brilliant white.

“Open him completely,” says the person who is presiding.

†

Kurai: No reason to fight it, Chevenga. Just let it come freely. We are not judging you, as we swore. No one ever would anyway, for this.

4Che: (Weeping) I… it was so long ago.

Kurai: But you remember it like yesterday. Or even as if it’s happening, as if you are back in that time, as you recount it. That’s the nature of these things. Just let the emotion take its natural course. Again, we ask you, we require of you, that you be gentle with yourself.

4Che: … All right. It was by that, and the way he moved when they moved him, that I understood that he was gone, forever.

†

The blade, which is burning icy as if made of that same water, slices my back neatly and quickly from the nape of my neck to the start of the division between my buttocks. It is so sharp it does not snag on a single nerve to cause even a twinge of pain, just the blank flatness of the cut. I feel the coolness of the air and their gaze on my vertebrae, which lie open and drying.

Someone lifts my mask and gives me a sip of water from a Haian bottle, as they talk again in words I don’t know. I feel on the edge of making some of them out, as if I should, as if they are simply more complex or compounded terms for things I know, but they quaver just beyond my understanding. The first instrument is laid down for another. As if I have heard Surya’s voice, I breathe deeply, and make the white line. More slowly and with more force, it cuts down through the line of vertebrae, severing each in half in its turn.

†

4Che: The black-haired man, I knew, was someone very familiar to me, though I couldn’t put my finger on who, and that was bothering me, and I kept thinking about it. Then I happened to pick up my mother’s mirror and look into it. And I saw, he was me.

Kurai: Pardon me for interrupting, Chevenga, but I want it in the record that Chevenga is telling us this utterly without expression, his voice entirely flat. He has ceased to show feeling. This started when he began describing that the corpse had changed. Thank you, go on.

4Che: It was over the next few days that I calculated and started thinking about time. I would die young, not more than thirty. From then on, the way I lived my life was informed by that measure.

Kurai: At least until… you came to a different realization, working with Surya.

4Che: Yes.

Kurai: Chevenga, just now as you were telling us about recognizing that the black-haired man was you, what were you feeling?

4Che: … Distant. A little light-headed.

Kurai: Anything else? Any emotion?

4Che: No.

Kurai: I want you to become very aware of yourself, feel what you are feeling, know where you are. Are you with us?

4Che: …No. Not really. I’m… I’m half elsewhere. All right, I see that. I see it, I’m sorry.

Kurai: No need for apology, Chevenga, it’s just a natural reaction. I just wanted to address it for the record. This is something that you’ve kept locked in silence a very long time, and only recently revealed. And it’s not as if you’re not still answering us as required; I think you went out of yourself, in fact, to enable yourself to do it. How many times have you told it to anyone in detail as you have us?

4Che: I never have.

Kurai: Never?

4Che: No. Not in detail. I’ve said, “I had a vision,” or “I saw my own corpse,” but not in detail.

Kurai: Not even Surya?

4Che: No. You don’t have to tell him anything, he sees it all in your aura.

†

My spine bisected lengthwise, I feel I should lie very still, lest muscles pull out of tendons or joints come apart, balls falling out of sockets, just by my intent to move. I try to breathe imperceptibly, making the inhalations and exhalations so slow they shift my ribs only extremely gently. I keep the white line so strongly that my mind becomes the white line and the white line my mind.

I feel their gaze penetrate me deeper; then a finger pushes gently into the end of the incision that is on the nape of my neck, and then runs down along it, deep, but cautiously as if testing the edge of a blade.

“There.” I hear the voice of Linasika Aramichiya. It is his finger. “There is the thing he has always hidden from Yeola-e, the dark, evil thing. I knew it would take this.” In his anger his arm tenses too much and presses the edge, cutting his finger and my core at once. He gasps in horror. I can’t breathe. I feel his blood mingle with mine; through it his agony spreads through my body like blood through the water in the Greater Baths in the Marble Palace. I whisper, “I am sorry.”

†

Kurai: Are there other ways it touched your life?

4Che: Well, there was also the secrecy; it was so much a part of my life that I had to train myself not to let anything slip. I made a discipline of it… of anticipating what the slips might be in every conversation, so I could prevent them beforehand, of practicing acting like someone who didn’t know this, and so forth. This… wasn’t pleasant for me. I much prefer to live in the open, nothing hidden. With hiding there’s always a sense of shame. It’s all the worse for living a public life. And people who are perceptive will sense it, and because you are committed to not telling them, it can breed suspicion and distrust, and as semanakraseye I was, and am, subject to much more severe accusations. I know that Linasika, for instance, has never considered me entirely honest, and I can’t deny there’s truth in it, there is something that I have always been concealing from him, and from everyone. The one blessing behind this all coming out is that I have come clean and I no longer feel the shame and the fear that goes with hiding. The shame and the fear that goes with revealing, maybe, but at least that’s an honest fear and shame (laughter).

It drives me, and has since I was seven. I am always in a hurry, always pushing, always straining… always overworking, my healer—my Haian healer, that is, Kaninjer of Berit—would say. When I was seven I began thinking that if I wanted to get anything done in life, I’d have to do it fast and start it now. So I just adjusted everything, I put myself on an entirely different schedule.

I guess also… I feel close to death, or that death is close to me. I have felt that way since then. In ordinary life, in peacetime, people don’t think about it much; for me it has always been there. It’s more so among warriors, which perhaps is why I get along so well with them, though my intention now is to leave their ranks. As a warrior I have ended up in places where death was all around me, such as the Mezem in Arko, and fighting in war, of course, itself. Surya would say I am drawn to these things, by the death in me. With the Mezem in particular, I’m not so sure, because I didn’t actually go there by choice.

Kurai: Is it in your dreams?

4Che: Yes… I have dreams about time passing more quickly than I was thinking, which is a horror to me. I have a recurring dream in which Shininao renders me helpless, then makes love to me and kills me at the same time.

Kurai: How old were you when that started, and how often does it happen?

†

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72 - Reconnaissance on the Committee

Surya was right: after checking me on the morning of the fourth day, Kaninjer prescribed eight aer of sleep a night until further notice. He was barely out the door when I was throwing on my clothes to run down to Assembly Palace. It was just after dawn and well before the offices opened, of course, but, medical leave or not, I still had a key. The proceedings of Committees of the Assembly are public records, free for any citizen to see, even the one they’re about.

“Chevenga, you’re not supposed to go anywhere alone, had you forgotten that?” Niku growled from half under the covers. I had, completely. An Imperator in Arko has so many guards and staff around him all the time that he doesn’t notice that he’s never alone, but things are much looser in Yeola-e.

“So get up and fly me down,” I said, and told her why I was going. She growled and pulled the quilts over her head again, and I heard indistinct words that might have referred whiningly to morning sickness and perhaps also contained an invitation for me to copulate with a festering wound, but she got up anyway. She wanted to see what the Committee was up to as well.

“I’m getting this right?” Skorsas said hazily from his place in the bed, as Niku and I got dressed. “It’s a group of people… politicians… Yeoli politicians… arm-waving Yeoli politicians… who got together to decide whether you’re crazy or not, and it’s official, so what they say is going to be believed and become a law or something?”

“Like most Arkans, you got an unfair impression of Yeoli politicians, other than me, from the hawks,” I said. “They weren’t Servants of the people; they were the dregs of the most ambitious of the army, the worst that fall lowest and so, in typical upside-down Arkan tzen-kellin-ripalin way, end up at the top and in the Pages.”

“But they’re still politicians, not psyche-healers,” he sniffed. “Why isn’t Surya one of them?”

“Because he’s my healer already, and…” I quailed from trying to explain, yet again, the concept of ‘conflict of interest’ to an Arkan. They seem inclined by their very blood to consider it a lucky advantage. I’d taken special care to make sure Kallijas and Minis both understood it, and could only hope they truly did.

“And it’s not true that none of them is a psyche-healer,” I added. Kuraila Shae-Linao, Servant of Ossotyeya, served in Assembly and ran a practice in Terera at once, and was very well-regarded in both. “There’s another who used to be before she became a Servant.” That was Chanae Salhanil of Kaholil, who was a touch conservative for my taste, but still a conscientious and intelligent Servant. I had pored over the records of the eight Committee members, trying to tell myself it was not at all like doing war reconnaissance.

“Hrmph,” Skorsas said. “And I suppose you’re hungrier for knowledge of what they’ve been doing than for actual food, which would actually nourish you.” Needless to say, he had once again imposed steely authority over the Hearthstone Independent kitchen, hiring a chef and two sous-chefs away from a very good restaurant in Terera for I-hoped-Assembly-never-found-out-how-much money.

“Much hungrier. We’ll be back soon, love, and you can have it waiting.”

“Nothing for me,” moaned Niku, earning herself a short tandem lecture from Skorsas and me on how she should have eaten more the night before. “A-fahkad shkavi,” she spat at us and stalked out, with me following lamely. I knew better than to say anything while we glided down.

Through the empty and silent corridors of Assembly Palace, we crept like thieves to the archive, with its mixed smells of book-leather, paper and the polished wood of the cabinets and shelves. “Committees, here…” I read aloud, picking through the drawers. “Antiquity Preservation, Archival, Bridge-Building, Bursaries, Charities, ah, here—Chevengani.” The file was respectably thick for three days of work. “You’re not going to read the whole thing, are you?” Niku groaned. “I’m hungry.”

“Hungry...? Never mind. No—love, if I didn’t know how to find and read just the important bits, we’d be in Arko for another twenty years. If I had them. Em… well, maybe I do… never mind. Permissions, consents, apologia for confidential files missing, proceedings etesora 23, here we go.”

They’d started work right on the day I’d returned to, just to take leave of, Assembly. Once they’d chosen their president, secured a scribe and so on, they’d discussed at length how to interpret their mandate, which by the resolution was “to fully assess the state of mind of the semanakraseye and the causes for anything that might deleteriously affect his state of mind.”

Blessing of blessings, they had decided that they should read it broadly, exploring everything imaginable that was relevant, including my upbringing and even, on Kusiya’s urging, the customs and traditions surrounding the semanakraseyesin. I thought of how I’d taken off the seals and signet in anger, and then how Surya and I had decided to defer that until I got here; now the Committee was going to dig into it as well. I fought off dizziness with deep breaths. They had decided not to explicitly state their opinion on whether I was fit to be semanakraseye, though, so as not to embarrass me if it proved unfavourable. Small mercies.

Next, they’d discussed where they’d glean their information. They’d already had Kaninjer in once, to requisition files he had: Persahis’s record of healing me while I’d been in the Mezem, Alchaen’s record of healing me from Kurkas’s torture, First Amitzas Mahid’s record of the torture itself, and Perahin’s record of healing me after I’d been impeached. Kan had agreed to lend them all of it so long as he got my permission (as if I had any choice), and they’d requisitioned funds to hire Haian and Arkan translators.

Surya, incidentally, had never read or even glanced at them. To him such files were the groping efforts of the blind to describe what he could see at a glance. Nor was he inclined to keep lengthy notes or files himself; to him a person is an ever-changing and fluid entity, which he sees anew, entire, every time he looks. He’d never bargained for becoming so involved in politics, which can’t do without records and files, of course.

On the Committee’s list of people to question were me and Surya, of course, then four Haians, whose traveling expenses they’d pay: Alchaen, Persahis, Perahin and Tamenat of Haiuroru, who was a professor at the University of Haiuroru, studying suicide and self-harming tendencies. They’d felt they should have at least one witness who did not know me.

Everyone else on the list was family or close to it: my parents, Komona (which I didn’t understand until I remembered I’d revealed that I’d told her), Skorsas and Niku. “You’ll assert or at least imply to them I’m sane, I hope,” I said to her slumped form; she had sat and then lain her head and arms down on one of the tables, trying to catch a touch more sleep.

Her eyes popped open. “What?”

“You’re on their questioning list. I thought you’d consider knowing that worth waking up for… besides, if you’re asleep, I’m effectively alone, and I’m not supposed to be, had you forgotten?”

“Oh yes, sane, very sane, absolutely sane, no one saner,” she slurringly hissed, closing her eyes again.

The Committee had gone on to discuss methods, and Linasika had proposed that they truth-drug me. Less important to him than winning my trust and so earning my willingness to speak openly (as if I had any choice) was being assured that I spoke the truth, which he saw as only possible with the drug. Kusiya in particular condemned this as wrong and Arkan, but none of the others liked it either, and it was soundly charcoaled.

Immediately after, Darosera put forward that they treat me throughout with empathy and without judgment, since that was likely the way the Yeoli people would prefer, and I’d likely be more forthcoming. That was fairly soundly chalked. Go on, Linasika, I thought. Keep on shitting on me and inducing the rest to favour me more in reaction.

Then the Committee had done something quite striking, which made me start to see just how crucial Kuraila would be to their work. Saying that this investigation would be difficult and perhaps emotionally-fraught, and would challenge them in their own fears and prejudices and so forth, she had talked them into each revealing openly to each other what feelings they brought to it, about me and about the task, so that these things would be known and open to all of them and therefore be less likely to pollute the investigation.

I should not tease you, my reader, with mentions of proceedings and not a single quote:

Kuraila: So to do a good job of understanding and reporting, we need to be prepared for this, and the best way to prepare for it—again, from my professional knowledge—is to be utterly open to ourselves and to each other, as we are working in concert, as to what we bring to this work with him, in our own hearts—what we each feel about Chevenga already. I am sure I will have occasion to point out, as we work, ourselves doing what people do—confusing our own emotions with those of others—but it’s paramount that we disentangle such confusions. And that is best done when we are clear on what we bring in the first place.

So as an example, and I hope you will forgive me, Linasika, but you come to this with a dislike of Chevenga as we all know… but more exactly, a fear of him—

Linasika: I’m not afraid of him!

Kuraila: Again, I hope you will forgive me; but you said earlier, you always sensed something false about him, something wrong, something dark. These are words that fear uses; likewise you kept it to yourself, which is another thing that fear does. I do not, and no one should, condemn you for it, or think less of you for it, or demand that you not feel it, or anything of the kind. You have reason for it, even if not everyone else understands, that is valid. It is absolutely crucial that none of us judge or question any of the others for what we bring to this emotionally; that way we can all be entirely honest and open with each other, in the spirit of co-operation. The point is not to cure Linasika of his fear, or Darosera of her admiration—

Darosera: I make no bones about it. The man saved all of us.

It was going to be an interesting investigation.

They had actually done this, opened their hearts to each other, in confidence. A Committee can take parts of its meetings private, with no scribe recording, if all agree, which they did, appropriately enough. Oh, to have been a fly on the wall.

--

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71 - in which I attempt to fire Surya

Excerpt from the Proceedings of the Chevengani Mental State Assessment Committee of the Assembly of Yeola-e, etesora 23, Y. 1556:

Lanai Kesila (presiding): Our second item of business is to determine the scope of our investigation; third will be, to determine what sources of information we shall use. Our time allotment is given us, one season, which means the deadline is atakina 23 as today is etesora 23; we can of course request of Assembly an extension if necessary. My feeling, however, is that we should proceed quickly as we have already delayed close to a season so as to allow Chevenga to finish up in Arko, and this is a matter in which the people of Yeola-e are going to want answers as soon as they can get them (assent).

Now, discussion on item two? To reiterate from the motion, it was, “to investigate the circumstances of the semanakraseye and his state of mind.” There was mention by the proposer of how help could be given, help for the semanakraseye, but the Adakri did not enter that into the final motion and no one objected that she didn’t, so it does not fall formally into our purview. Thus we have two avenues of investigation: Chevenga’s state of mind and his circumstances as related to his state of mind. Servant of Michalere.

Linasika Aramichiya: My feeling, sib gentlefolk, is that we should investigate as broadly, as fully and as deeply as is possible. We should limit ourselves nowhere. I say this because Chevenga is so influential; even in the time he was impeached, he was still incredibly influential. He has, and will have, such a great effect on the people of Yeola-e, that they deserve to know everything. I am shocked—I know we are all shocked—I thought I knew the man, as we all did, and now we find out he has kept this immense secret his whole life, even to the point of lying by omission to the people, whom he has always said are sacred to him… it’s… I mean… I have hesitated all along to say this, but all along I’ve sensed something false about him, something wrong, something dark. I’ve had that impression his whole career, and indeed from when I first met him as a boy. But it seemed no one else but a few ever noticed, and after telling myself for all these years that it must just be me imagining it, to see it confirmed like this is, frankly, stunning, and yet not surprising. So, do I want to get to the absolute bottom of it? Of course I do. That’s why I stood to be on this committee. I want to know the full truth about Chevenga and all Yeola-e wants to know it, too.

La: Servant of Thara-e-Kalanera.

Darosera Kinisil: I must concur with Linasika in that our mandate as given in the motion is very broad: his state of mind, by which must be meant every aspect of his state of mind, and his circumstances as related, by which must be meant every aspect of his circumstances as related. And I think, quite frankly, though we can of course confirm this with him, that Chevenga himself will not be opposed to a thorough and complete investigation. Linasika calls him down for keeping a secret; but we are here because he has revealed it—

Li: Only by accident! It was overheard in Arko, that’s why they found out first, that’s the only reason we know.

Da: A less-honest person would have denied, would have claimed it was misheard, would have used his power as Imperator to conceal it all. I think Chevenga recognized that the time has come for it to be known. (Crosstalk) If I may finish, sib Linasika, thank you; as I was saying I concur that we should be thorough, but I would also like to stress that I feel we should approach this not destructively towards him or his reputation, but with good will and sympathy. I think this for two main reasons: first, that I think doing so would best reflect the approach the people of Yeola-e would choose to take; and second, I think we will gain the most information this way. Where will we get our information? Either from himself, or from one or more healers, who are naturally sympathetic to him; and should we appear antagonistic, they’ll be naturally less inclined to be open. I know that the letter of the law requires full co-operation on their part; but you always do better with these things when you don’t discourage people from adhering to the spirit, as well.

†

Towards the end of three days’ assigned bed rest, when you are no longer sleeping the day away, you have much time to think, and no choice but to think if your healer won’t even let you read, being fully aware that if he does, you will pick like a buzzard through entrails through every word of the proceedings of the Committee of Assembly struck to assess your mental state. My thoughts went everywhere, as they do—into regretful bits of the past, off to worrisome aspects of the future, up into the sky in imaginings of having the bar in my hands alone, into the earth beneath the stairs of a courthouse with seeping blood—but mostly gnawed unpleasantly on what was next for me.

As usual Kaninjer checked me morning and night; now Surya was doing the same, except that he’d look at my aura instead of feeling my wrists. He’d scan all over, glance here, peer there, sometimes squint and lean in closer. What sorts of things did he see? A spot of colour here, which means such-and-such emotion? A scene over here, showing a nasty memory? I wished I could have his gift for a tenth.

But I’d had a thought, and I told him it on the evening of the third day. The next day, I was scheduled to go before the Committee for the first time.

“I am thinking I no longer have need of your services… something I should have thought of in Arko, I know, before uprooting you, for which I apologize and will pay back however I can.”

I’d thought he’d be shocked, or at least surprised, but he just looked at me mildly and said, “You’re choosing to die, then?”

“It’s not that,” I said, pulling myself up to sitting against the headboard. “It’s… you know what it is? It’s that it’s all too much about me. My life is becoming about nothing but me, which I don’t want; I just want to do my part in the world, solve the problems I can solve, and leave it at that. And too many other people are paying attention to me, as well. I won’t refuse to go before the Committee, obviously—they’re mandated by the people of Yeola-e, and the people wills—but, I am thinking, why everything else? One person doesn’t rate that much… effort.”

“Mm-hmm,” he said. “Too much of you, so you must be reduced… I see.”

“Surya, that’s not what I mean!” I wanted to get up and pace, but of course I was still under Kaninjer’s order. I settled for kicking off the covers. “It’s just… why all this fuss, for me?”

“If you were dying with an arrow in you, would you think it was too much trouble for a surgeon to extricate it so as to save your life?”

“That’s different. He’d just take two or three beads. You’ve been working on me for months… and it’s going to be months yet, true?”

He signed chalk firmly. “Maybe even longer than I thought.”

“But Surya… honestly…” I stared him in the eyes. He gazed right back. “I know of two intended deaths that I’ve slipped now… even if one was a few years old. How can I still…”

He said nothing, just came onto the bed beside me on his knees, and shoved one hand between the headboard and my back, planting the other one on my chest. There was the internal clench of the truth-hold.

“I de… I deser… I…” I let out all the air in me in one great heave of breath. “I concede the point.”

“It’s your fear talking,” he said, “now that you have no other pressing business to distract you and so can go all-out on healing.” I grabbed my forelock and clenched my eyes shut just as he was saying, “it’s natural, would be the same with anyone, I knew it would come,” then whipped my hand down again, in shame for being caught in the shame of a shame mannerism.

“As well—speaking of excessive concern for yourself at the expense of others—I wonder whether those who love you or will have need of you for one thing or another in the future would concur with this?” I clenched my eyes shut and grabbed my forelock again, and this time didn’t cut the gesture short.

“So…” I said after we’d sat in silence for a bit—at least he’d taken mercy on me and not shamed me for my shame—“I’m yours, my will relinquished still. What now?”

“You have healer’s orders already; he’s going to check you tomorrow and decide whether to let you out of bed. My guess”—he did the auric glance—“is that he will, but he’ll prescribe more aer than usual of sleep each night for a while, with which I firmly concur. Tomorrow you go before the Committee; we’ll see what arises from that.”

“A-e kras,” I said blearily, with the salute. “I can’t wait.”

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