16 - Time always takes care of that

Yet if this is power, I thought, it’s not absolute. Had I not felt such injustice at Esora-e’s words, I would not have called on it at all; it would have had no base in truth.

Anger came creeping back, goaded by the pain of my bandaged hand. I thought, and still think, my blood-father would have combed me lightly, if at all. A few days later I dallied with a girl who shall remain nameless on the mountain, thought I knew it was training-time. I’ll miss a day, I thought; so what? I’m so far ahead of the others anyway. Provoking Esora-e, I have to admit, was at the back of my mind.

What I didn’t think of was that he might worry I was lying in a gorge somewhere, helpless with a broken leg. The girl and I looked up absently from what we were doing, to see a search-fan of people threaded across the valley below, small as ants. We watched bemused for a time, wondering which child had gone missing, until I heard a snatch of their calling with the name in it on the wind. “Che-ven-gaaaaaaaaaaah!”

For a while I considered lying down, pulling a rock or two on top of me and faking it. I could say I’d thought it was broken and dared not move. I considered fleeing over the pass and joining the Sinere Circus for good; Aguro would be delighted. I considered leaping off a cliff. In the end, I kissed my lover goodbye, squared my shoulders and walked down to face them, with only the truth. My mother would see through any story anyway, if I disappeared everyone would think I was dead, and if I jumped off a cliff I would be.

Esora-e gave the class to one of the senior students, and took me into the inner chamber of the School. I had never been here before. The walls were bare white but for the circle, the symbol of the Void.

“It was a girl, wasn’t it?” he asked. I signed chalk. “I thought so.” He knelt for a time wordless, his gray eyes under the thick dark brows turned to the floor, that strand of hair was trembling. Finally his hand reached, and played with my necklace, rolling the stones over his fingers. “Do you know how you look in this?” he asked, deadly quiet.

“Good enough, I’m told,” I said, the truth.

“By children, who are easily amused. To us, you look ridiculous.” He touched the grip of my father’s ivory comb. “And this… can you name me one other person, lad, who wears his comb showing like that?” I could think of no one, so I said nothing. “You’re all over the mountain with every girl you catch a glimpse of, tempting them with talk of marriage. And now you take it on yourself to decide whether you need to war-train or not. All these things say one thing: you are reaching beyond your grasp, seeking to be something you cannot be, trying to be greater than you are.”

“That’s strange, shadow-father,” I said, deadly quiet, just the same as him. “I seem to recall it was someone other than me who chose that I should be the world’s greatest warrior.”

“But you agreed to it. And so you will be, if you are a warrior at all, which you also chose, else you will have done less than your best. But that’s when you’re grown, not now. That’s it, Fourth Chevenga, that’s the whole of it: you are trying to be older than you are. That is why it’s laughable; a child trying to pass himself off as an adult always is.”

Esora-e, my shadow father. I know you will read this, and I hope you will take it to heart. I know I never gave you the truth that would allow you to understand. That was my choice. I considered telling you, but decided to err on the side of caution. You thought good had to be beaten into me, so I didn’t think, if I told, you would leave my choices to me. If I was wrong, I am sorry and I beg your forgiveness.

The room went dark for a moment, except for his grey eyes staring into mine. I felt my nails pressing into my palms hard enough to hurt, and my muscles twitching and bristling all over.

“Am I wrong?” he said softly? “Are you a grown-up? Prove it—no, not here.” I followed him, trembling, to the anteroom. Before the sword of Saint Mother, he held out his hands, fingers spread.

So it was my shadow-father took the part of the stone wall set before me in my mind, though he didn’t know it. I would smash it down; I would crush him, throw him to his knees, grind his face on the floor; I, who by his own doing would be the greatest warrior in the world, who I chose to do something always did it, here in sight of the talisman that told the people my destiny, would crumble his hands to dust in mine. I would make my fingers steel, like the claws of Shininao, that nothing can ultimately withstand; I would be tireless as the waterfall, for all hands might seem like stone; I would break them if they would not bend, for all they seemed bronze-cast, for all it hurt, for all my fingers became fire, for all my tendons felt like they were tearing and my wrists strained to near-breaking, for all I might weep with the pain of it…

I took stock. He was holding, our hands locked between us, unmoved from when we started. Though his knuckles were white and forearms hard-ridged, his eyes showed no effort.

That was all he did, while I kindled my anger again for another such surge, and another, giving all my strength. When I began to feel truly spent, his chin rose, almost too slightly to see, his eyes narrowed a touch, and he started truly using his strength.

Esora-e knew a thousand finger-wrestling tricks. He used none of them, to show he didn’t need to, save one: lifting the hands, which you use if you are the taller. Otherwise, it was plain strength. I fought him so hard the pain did make me weep, aloud, but it made no difference to his bearing me down, as if my strength were nothing at all. When he said, without even strain in his voice, “Concede, lad; I don’t want to hurt you,” I shouted, “Never! Not even if you break both my wrists!” He finally took me to my knees with a down and forwards jerk. I was so tired that when he let go I fell on my face.

I’d once seen one of Artira’s dolls, broken and cast aside, on a floor somewhere, and wondered how that would feel, if it could feel. Now I knew. I heard the faint creaking of the chains of the sword of Saint Mother. Someone, I couldn’t see who, happened in; lying at Esora-e’s feet, I saw him wave them away. He knelt beside me, taking my head on his knee, and took out his vial of whack-weed. “Under the tongue, lad.” I let him give me the drops, and he took my shield-arm and began massaging it, with surprising gentleness, in his great callused hands.

When I had the strength, I tore the necklace from around my neck and hurled it across the room, and did likewise with my father’s comb.

Esora-e stroked my hair. “One day you’ll be able to beat me,” he said. “Time always takes care of that, for those who are patient.”

Time will take care of me! Eighteen years: that’s all, shadow-father, that’s all the time I have to trouble you, if I take time away everything else I do. Eighteen years, that’s why I’m in a kyashin hurry, that’s why I want to get the training part of my scrap of a life done with! Eighteen years—I call you out to do chiravesa, try being me! Try being me with eighteen kyashin years!

The words stayed locked behind my teeth.

“Up,” he said, after he’d kneaded all the muscles I’d strained. “Onto the ground.” There he trained with me alone, for as long as usual, so that I was doing my other work until late into the night.

My mother waited up. I meant to kiss her goodnight without saying anything, but she noticed the necklace missing.

“My precious child,” she said, when I explained. “My little Warm-arms… it’s just a few bright stones and a shining chain.” She took my face between her hands. “You are you. Do you really think you are not handsome enough without it? Do really think no one notices or admires you?” No one else had put it that way.

When Esora-e gave me back the necklace the next day, I found it had changed overnight, looking overblown. I gave it away shortly after.

When he gave me the comb, it was as if a sword went through my heart. It lay in two pieces in his hand, one of the end tines broken off.

In my place of comfort in my room, I held it to my forehead and swore a hundred times I would never again throw anything precious in anger, an oath I have kept, except once. I asked at the market and found it could be repaired strongly enough with glue to be displayed, but not used; the knots in my hair would take that tine off again in a moment. So my father’s ivory comb remained that way, as long as I carried it.

†

In the winter of 1539, Enjaliansi’s heart seized up, killing him right on his throne. His son Kranaj replaced him without the succession troubles one often sees in a monarchy, whose contenders often consider themselves above law.

King Kranaj and Tyeraha met at Nefra ostensibly for trade talks, but in truth to make friends, which they did. Finished meeting, they hunted deer together in the great forest, with their respective heirs as squires.

This was the first time I’d ever been entrusted with something so important. I was doing well enough in my aunt’s eyes, apparently, because as we rode to the forest she said to Kranaj, “My friend, why don’t we exchange squires for the chase? That’ll keep the boys’ eyes sharp, and it’s this one you’ll be dealing with, instead of me, in eight years.” I kept my face impassively pleasant, though I wanted to caper through the trees. Alone with a foreign king; it would be so grown up.

Kranaj’s son Reknarja was fourteen, two years my elder. His freckled cheeks darkened between his two brown sheets of straight hair, and he blurted, “What, that slip of a boy? Father, his head hardly comes to my shoulder!” upon which Kranaj kicked him. Maybe Reknarja thought I knew as little Enchian as he knew Yeoli.

He swallowed a yelp and his jewels tinkled; then a silence fell in which everyone looked at everyone else. Reknarja’s eyes flashed angrily from me to his father and back, full of words he dared not say. My aunt, knowing it was my policy to challenge older children who insulted me to sparring-duels, gave me a look that commanded, “Don’t even think of it.” Kranaj’s eyes, wide-set and blue-grey under his fringe of straight forelocks, flicked between mine and hers, trying to judge how we had taken it, and his, furious. All the fragile goodwill that had been built up so painstakingly over these past years could be destroyed in a word.

I saw what I should do, and did it: smiled eagerly at Kranaj and said, “I’d be honoured to be your squire, amaesti,” as if I’d heard nothing. There was no one in the School of the Sword even a year older than Reknarja who I couldn’t take, so I knew I could carve him up at my leisure if it came to it; that always helps. “And I’d be honoured to have you as my squire, daifena,” my aunt said to him smoothly, easing the anger from his face. The smile came back to Kranaj’s face. “Yes, let’s swap them. It will be good training in manners.”

Everything fell smoothly back into the course it should follow, and Reknarja and I changed places. When the king and I were alone, I said, “I hope my smallness does not displease you, amaesti,” to let him know I had heard after all. “Of course not, anaraseye,” he said. “A boy with wits is as good as one with size. Or better; size will come to you. You forgive Reknarja, I hope.”

“Yes, amaesti. I know how it is, yearning to be older.” Make use of what you know, I was always taught.

A foreign monarch doesn’t necessarily reflect his people as a semanakraseye reflects Yeola-e, but I still began to learn tolerance of Enchians from Kranaj. They had invaded us, and an Enchian had backstabbed my father, but here was another Enchian who would explain to me the old stag’s trick of running over his own trail to mislead his trackers instead of just commanding me to follow, which was all that was required of him, or let me correct his pronunciation when he called me “Sievenka” as Enchians generally do, and even try a few times to get it right.

Even if he resembled only himself, it still proved that they varied, same as us, for all my shadow-father would argue that they’re all the same, and evil. It sowed in me the seed of the thought that is necessary for peace: that it is injustice to hate a whole people for what one of them has done.

At any rate, after this and some other efforts, our worst enemy became Astyardk, the king of Laka, who seemed to be trying to provoke something, perhaps. The raids came more often, the gifts and diplomatic visits ceased, and in training it became a Lakan instead of an Enchian whose imagined heart we thrust into.