24 – No one will ever own you

Everyone who has just revealed such a thing must for a time wish their listener tongueless. I saw her throwing herself into the arms of the first friend she saw in the Hearthstone, and spilling it all. But I reminded myself she was no oathbreaker. As far as I know, she never did tell anyone.

I did not dog her. She wanted to be away from me to think about it, obviously; when she was done she would seek me. That night I slept a little, exhausted from the night before, in which I had not slept for a moment. My father was insomniac; in that way too, I follow him.

She met me after training. When I saw her face, I truly regretted telling her, wished it all back and buried, wished indeed that I had never courted her, never touched her life at all. I knew for certain what she would say when she clasped me in greeting, for her touch was like that of someone clutching that which is wrong to clutch, being impossible to keep.

I spoke more than she did, as she tried to explain, when we were private in the woods. “I know how it is,” I said to her. “You looked ahead at life, and saw it would be too much a prison of schedule. I know exactly how it is.”

“It’s not right that I should be able to escape it, and not you!” she said, her green eyes filling with tears. “Kahara… for all I know, you might outlive me. I’m a warrior.”

“I know how it is,” I said. “The difference is not between short life and long. It’s between knowing and not knowing.”

There are many people who, when I asked them, “Do you wish you’d known what would happen to you in adulthood when you were a child?” have told me, “Thank any Gods that exist that I did not; it would have crushed me; I’d never have been able to face the day.” It is true even for myself about things other than my death. We rise every morning on nothing but our plans, which so often fail, and our hopes, which we can always renew the next morning, in happy ignorance of the true future.

“And you will be semanakraseye… I don’t know what it means politically, except that all Yeola-e will mourn you.”

It was about that time, in the hard part of my mind that was not riven with emotion, that I resolved not to fall in love with anyone who had a good understanding of politics or law, or who aimed to make her living in it, if I meant to keep the secret. Such a woman might well realize that she was morally, if not legally, bound to betray it. That meant eliminating a good half the prospects in Vae Arahi, all of them like-minded. But what else could I do?

“I mean to make it worthwhile,” I said. “So that in the end, people will appreciate what I have done in my life more than they will mourn me.”

Part of me wanted to scream at her, “Am I not worth it to you?”, to hear my ruin justified in detail, to make her apologize and beg forgiveness even more times than she did, as if that would form some sort of mythic half- or spirit-marriage between us, so I need not feel flung from the world. As it was I just forgave her everything she asked to be forgiven for, and told her to stop apologizing, for I understood why better than anyone. As always we choose, my father had taught me, and choice was her right.

She and I agreed upon our story, that we’d just decided we were incompatible, and then hugged long, but didn’t kiss; that would hurt too much. So this is what it is to be a heartbroken lover, I thought, as I walked wooden-legged back down to the Hearthstone, separate from her.

Some have called her a coward. They should try being her, at her age. I am stuck with foreknowledge; if I could be free of it, I suspect I would leap at the chance. How can I blame her?

I lived in blackness for a while. Everyone knows losing teenage love, too, and with me it had its special pangs; I lay awake at night seeing myself a childless bachelor at twenty-nine, being hauled into Assembly and asked why under oath, so I’d have to tell the truth, being charged under 21-1 and 21-5-7 and impeached, and dying in disgrace. But I could not know everything, and in that lay hope.

†

It is customary for an Ascendant’s first foreign month away to come after he turns sixteen. But the next spring, fifteen and a half, I pestered my aunt to send me now, since I had my wristlets. My first idea was Laka. I could make friends with anyone, as all agreed. Maybe I could prevent the war; who knew, until it was tried? Without glance or expression my aunt answered, “Are you completely out of your mind?” When I asked her what Astyardk had against me, she said, “Well, you can start with the five of his people you killed two years ago. Of even more interest is your position as future king, as they put it, of the patch of land he is most interested in seizing. You, a hostage—it might start the war. I know, lad, you want to be the hero, and you will be, and you feel its sproutings in you. But heroes have heads as well as thews. Out of my office, until you use yours.”

The next day I returned, having thought and seen her point, and asked to go to Tor Ench instead. “There’s an alliance to be made there,” I said. “If we go to war, they’ll get so much less Yeoli grain, which they’ve just admitted to us again they need.”

“Where have you been?” she said. “We’ve been talking about it around the Palace for two months; you insult us all, to act as if only you have thought of it.” On the mountain with Nyera was where I had been, of course.

“I’m sorry,” I said quickly. “But I’ll bet you didn’t think of sending me.” She admitted she had not. “I get along well with Kranaj; remember when we went hunting? And there won’t be any incidents this time; Reknarja wouldn’t call me a slip of a boy now. If he did…”

She sent me to Brahvniki.

The ship I went on was fully soldiered and armed. Better safe than sorry, I suppose. A year before a Yeoli merchant ship carrying weapons had been boarded by Arkans, searched, its captain tortured and its full cargo confiscated, all on suspicion that she intended to sell them to the Srians, with whom Arko was at war. In answer to my aunt’s protest, the Marble Palace had been very polite and proper: it had been a mistake, but we were best to avoid the risk of such a thing happening again by refraining from shipping weapons through Kurkas’s waters. Whether it was his waters or ours, I hardly need say, was a matter of dispute. “It’s the way Imperators are raised,” I remember my grandmother saying. “Spoiled as year-old meat, so they grow up thinking they’re Gods. If you behaved so, Tennunga, I’d comb you.”

I always said the same thing, whenever she made that mistake. “The hair, Grandma. Look at the color of the hair.”

“Oh,” she would answer, “did I call you Tennunga again? I’m sorry, Chevenga.” Or sometimes, “Oh, did I call you Chevenga again? I’m sorry, Tennunga.” Either way, I would say, “No matter, Nainginin. There are worse people you could mistake me for.” It had become a ritual.

As we sailed away from Yeola-e, the design of the ships, with their nameplates in several languages or devices for the illiterate, grew stranger.

As we came to the city, the strangenesses compounded, until I felt as if I were in a story. The Benai Saekrberk, where I would stay for half my time, was as big as I’d imagined a king’s palace must be, the walls a glistening blue that glowed almost purple in the russet light of sunset, the many onion-shaped white domes of its towers burning orange like fires against a dark purple sky. The customs clerk openly wore riches that could only have been the fruit of bribes; they peace-bonded Chirel with wire and a lead seal that I saw a good pull would break. Thus are protocol and practicality melded, in Brahvniki.

The corridors of the Benai smelled sweet like flowers, because scent had been mixed into the mortar. Yet despite all this grandeur, which I understood foreign leaders were given to, I thought the Benaiat Ivahn was an artist when I first saw him, for he was painting an onion-arched mandala in the office I’d been shown to.

He was healthy then, for all his age. His step down from the stool had spring in it, and the grip of his hands an old hardness as if he had once trained with staff or spear. I already knew several people who struck awe merely by their presence; here was another. One could not find the source of it in any one thing; his brown eyes were plain, pinched narrow over a long nose like a beak, his lips a touch severe; all in all, he was vaguely birdlike. But the bird was an eagle, such as sees the peaks of mountains from above; those eyes apprised themselves of all things. He hated formality; it wasn’t long before we’d shared the salt, Brahvnikian-style, which signs the end of form and the start of frankness.

We liked each other right off. Foreign or not, he was just like the Senahera elders: able to find truth in a dust-speck, and accepting all things, good or terrible, with seemingly impossible grace.

The monks of the Benai do several things Senahera wouldn’t dream of, including acting as a bank, and making the famous distillate that bears its name, which he gave me my first sacred sample of. First came the scent, sweet and strong as musk; then the liquid itself, which seemed to burst into flame as it struck my tongue. Foreigners have interesting sacraments.

When we’d each had had three, and I was feeling it much more than him, I’m sure, he talked me into going into the city with him in disguise, to hear about ourselves. This was something he’d been doing for forty years. He went as a ragged old man, and I, in a plain voluminous-sleeved Brahvnikian shirt, as his grandson, Vik, mute so as to hide my accent. We went to a tavern called, as I can best describe it, a “K,” a clearing of the throat, then Nota Voorm, best for news, but somewhat rough, and full of people of races I had never even heard of.

In the way of foreigners, none gestured properly, but twitched and waved their hands unintelligibly, some still gripping mugs. Any Yeoli who travels should know to expect this, and not misconstrue it if a stranger fails to put down what his hands are doing to speak. For the first time I saw Arkans, a clutch of marines, heads high and long golden hair tossing, one with a full steel breastplate lacquered red; they hid their gloved hands under the table, as if ashamed of deeds they had done.

It was there I first heard my name dropped; one of the sailors from my ship was telling someone I’d killed ten Lakans at Krisae, and liked to eat rocks for breakfast. I also heard someone say, my first time for this too: “I wonder how much Astyardk would pay for Fourth Whatsisname’s head?” All part of my education.

By the month-away customs of my people, I became a novice of the Benai for the first half of my time, and then I was to stay with certain Clawprinces, as the moneyed barons are called, after the Brahvnikian currency, the dragon-claw. They treated me as an honoured guest, and indulged me with all manner of Brahvnikian entertainments. The deference of everyone other than the spectacularly rich constantly scraped the skin of my soul. I was always wanting to say to obsequious servants, “Why do you act less than human? Do you think you’re fooling me?”

Of all of it, I remember best the concert Ivahn took me to, composed and conducted by Ilesias Janisen, whom he introduced me to afterwards. Ilesias was a bejewelled Arkan, not more than twenty-five, with a sheet of golden hair down to his waist, who had been born into the okas caste, higher only than slaves, so that he’d had to flee Arko to pursue his calling; okas aren’t even permitted to be literate, let alone become composers.

But even more, I remember the conversation Ivahn and I had on the ferry returning; he laughed at something I said about politics at home, and said, “Ah, Chevenga. No one will ever own you.”

I stared; he was the sort of person one could easily expect augury from, and this had the sound ring of it. But I thought again, and answered, “That cannot be. My people will own me.” Own me; such a foreign turn of phrase. Even conversation here was exotic, like smoky spices.

“Oh, I don’t mean you’ll turn into a tyrant,” he said. “That’s not in you. It’s just the more your people know you, the more they’ll command you to do what you choose.”

The law unwritten, I thought. The harbor wind, licking up from the black water, was suddenly chill. “I won’t allow that,” I said.

“Oh?” He smiled. “You’ll prevent it by imposing your will on them?” Ilesias’s music was still soaring and thundering in my head; its echoes and these words have become inextricable in my memory. He laughed. “No, no. You misunderstand me, lad. They will love you, and being in awe of your judgment they will command you to do as you advise.” Then he changed the subject. It came to me this was the same thing my father had told me; but from a foreigner it somehow struck as deep again.