54 - The caged king

There was no need to draw Astalaz out about the troubles in his family, it turned out; it was common knowledge, at least now. Both Astalaz and his sister Klaimera, who served as Laka’s national high priestess, had always blamed their father for killing their mother; since Az (as those close to him called him) was King, now, it was commonly accepted as truth, as is required in Laka. No slight grievance, if true.

Klaimera struck me from the moment I met her. She had the family height and almondine eyes, their darkness flashing with life; in her, the family quickness was less scholarly and more incisive. Her hair was marvelous, falling in a shimmering black waterfall over curving crimson or leaf-green or gold, whatever color her gown was today, all the way to her calves.

When I watched her perform rituals, any doubts I ever had that Lakans truly believed in their Hundred Gods were snuffed. As she raised slender arms with fingers pointed to the sky like two whips of brown flame, it was a clear fire in her, infusing every motion with grace; a Yeoli would say it was the God-In-Her. Perhaps a Lakan would, too, albeit in different words; perhaps, I thought, we disagree only on the name and origin and number of that which is Divine.

She was nineteen, and neither married nor betrothed; her position, Astalaz told me, required she remain a virgin. I put all thoughts out of my mind that my body had put into it.

“J’vengka, you want to learn how to play mrik?” Astalaz asked me one day. I’d heard of Laka’s most famous board-game, which Lakans say is strategy itself in miniature, so I was curious. “The board’s in my true office. Well… you might as well come up. Why not?”

He led me up several flights of stairs into a huge room, for an office, lit only by one tiny flame; as my eyes cleared to the dark, I saw the usual satin ceiling-drapes and tassel-fringes and gold arched screens. A curtain of thick gold-threaded ropes hung from the ceiling, all across my vision; then, pausing to speak, he reached his hands out open, in what seemed unthinking habit, as if he could lean on them.

Just as I was wondering what I should do if he got hurt falling when they slid and swung away from his fingers, they took his weight, not moving a hair’s width; they were solid, not ropes, but bars, gold-leafed, fashioned to look like ropes. “When I must think hard,” he was saying, as he opened a gate in them that only became apparent as he did it, “I come in here, my old home… it’s calming, it takes me back to playing the game from the side. Of course when Astazand gets old enough it will be his.”

I remembered the boy in the cage in Inkrajen’s tent, who had turned out to be his son. It is a tradition for Lakan heirs. As every Lakan storyteller will tell you, everyone lusts after the throne, and none more than the next-in-line, bred and educated for it and taught to think himself deserving, impatient, perhaps disagreeing with his father’s ways, and knowing power will be his once the king is dead.

What more natural, therefore, for the king or lord than to take precautions against his firstborn? I thought of my father, assassinated in my childhood; how grief for his loss had been my whole world for a time, and shaped my growing. I thought of my aunt Tyeraha, after a long lesson on statecraft, touching the semanakraseyeni signet to my chin and saying, “Hurry up and grow, lad, I want all this off my hands.” Of course not everyone lusts to be semanakraseye, because of the prices the Yeoli people exact. But wouldn’t love, I thought, be a better defense? After all, the cage had hardly worked for Astyardk.

“You’re a very capable one,” Astalaz was saying just then. “Surely you’ve had at least the urge to off your aunt… what is it, my son? You look as if you suddenly saw the Many-Tentacled One. She—a woman, of all things!—must have very strong friends indeed, to make you so afraid.”

All I could say was, “She’s my aunt!”, which, of course, explained nothing. Ever polished, he adroitly changed the subject.

The scent of expensive incense in this place was undercut with the mixed smells of sweated clothes, book-paper, dust and mildew; coming closer into the light I saw beyond the bars a wide desk heaped with papers, inkpots, quill-pens, a wall-high column of shelves crammed full and messily of books and curios, sculpted heads, incense burners, waxboards, pieces of stone, jewelled earrings, all layered thickly with dust. Necklaces were strewn on the night table, heaps of satin clothes spilling onto the floor from the bed, a collar worth five farmsteads slung carelessly over a screen. There were even swords of various length and shape foundering in the floor-clutter.

How does he live in this mess? No slave could get away with this, I realized: it had to be this way by his decree. I said nothing, of course.

After a while of searching, muttering, he found the board under the bed, inlaid with lapis lazuli, and the stones, onyx and marble. Lakans say the game was already ancient at the time of the Fire, and they hold it almost sacred. The board is empty to start, and the stones once placed cannot be moved; the trick in capturing ground is all in where one places them. The rules are simple, but the choices touch the infinite; also as in real strategy, one can get a sense of where one stands by a glance at the board, as on a map, and play by feel; nor does it usually end with a decisive victory, but when the players agree they have no more to gain by going on.

I began with the novice’s handicap of nine of my stones placed in advance. We played about every third day, and by the end of my time there I’d worked it down to two, not that far from his match. And I learned things from the game that I have since used in war-strategy.

“J’vengka,” he said one day, “You carried the Yeoli royal sword, didn’t you? And must have been plundered of it.”

I signed chalk, then, remembering, said, “Yes.”

“At…” Something seemed to be dawning on his face. “The second victory of Kantila?”

Victory for them, I quickly translated in my head, and said, “Yes. No one ever told me what became of it… I meant to ask you, in time, if I may, whether it might be… retrieved.”

“Perchance was it made by Nekari, in his usual style?” I felt my brows rise fast. Who’d have thought a Lakan King would know the name of an ancient Yeoli swordsmith? But he collected them; that’s why there were a few floating in the sea of his things.

“Yes.”

“And the pommel is a ring—of course! The symbol of Yeola-e, like the stone circles on your borders. Blessed Kazh!”

He began delving, throwing up papers and sandals and silken underwear and objects whose names and purposes I didn’t know, cursing the mess as messy people invariably do. “Where… it’s right around here somewhere…”

When his fingers found it, it flared clear into my weapon-sense, my soul knowing that curve, and my eyes that shoulder-scabbard. He lifted it with reverence; even buried in a King’s priceless clutter, Chirel could command that.

Klajen did not know swords, obviously, and so had thought by its plainness of look it was just one of the lot. Of course the sword-dealer he’d taken it to, who’d know a Yeoli smith’s mark is never to be found on the blade, but hidden on the tang, among other fine points, snapped it up, probably barely saving the edge from a rough Lakan whetstone, Hundred Gods be thanked. So it was twice, poor Klajen got rooked, once for me, once for my sword.

The dealer, in turn, had given it with his compliments to the new King. In Laka such a gift makes for dividends generally better than the selling-price. “It’s been cleaned and oiled since it was last used, but not sharpened; I think the dealer felt that was beyond his skill, and it’s beyond mine also.”

“It should be done,” I said, without thinking. “A sword not kept sharp forgets its edge—a Yeoli saying.” I looked at him awkwardly as I held it in my hands, feeling the soaring in the heart I’d known I’d feel as soon as I got it back. Could I ask for it back, as a peace gesture? Or was it more correct to offer him money? I had no idea what might make him angry, and what would not.

He read my eyes, I guess. “Show me how you put it on.” I did, feeling the soaring so hard that tears began in my eyes. He smiled. “I’ve never seen that sword looking to be where it belonged, until now. It’ll be better on you than the one you’ve been wearing.”

The tears came too hard to hide. I didn’t even know whether I should thank him. “Don’t worry, my son,” he said gently. “Giving it back to you is no loss to anyone; remember, the dealer gave it compliments to me, and of course he will still be rewarded; it’s the thought that counts.” So Chirel returned into Yeoli possession.

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53 - Duels over dinner

I came to know my way around, got used to and in time came even to like kri , and learned the basics of the language at least. I did some study, of Enchian works on Laka, first from the Palace library and then from Astalaz’s collection when he knew. He did indeed invite me to exercise, with the elite of Tardengk’s standing army, every man of which I sparred at one time or another, learning all manner of Lakan swordwork.

As in Brahvniki, when my work of studying was done, they treated me to lavish entertainments. Mostly it was music or acrobatics or plays, delivered with utter melodrama in the Lakan style. Once I was shown to a courtyard by a passle of laughing nobles, along with Jarengkt, the envoy who’d been assigned to me. On the dais was a long pole on two supports like saw-horses, several burly men in black and gold Lakan pantaloons, and a naked man in chains who looked very afraid. “You certainly don’t get to see this in Yeola-e, from what I’ve heard,” Jarengkt chuckled. When all were assembled… I will write no details, except that they began impaling the prisoner, with all the watching Lakans laughing and exclaiming and taunting the victim with delight.

I leapt out of my chair and towards the door; Jarengkt chased after me saying, “Timnimuz akdan, this displeases you somehow?” I just said, breathless, “I’d prefer no entertainments that are torture or execution.” I couldn’t think of how to explain why without it seeming like insult. “You sick, dirty, pain-lusting, perverse, barbaric savages!” wouldn’t do.

Every false dawn I had dinner at Astalaz’s left hand, not the place of greatest honour—that was his right—but close. That morning, he said to me, “You’re a warrior, J’vengka. You’ve seen all manner of carnage, that must have been far more gruesome than a simple impalement, on the field; how is it you couldn’t bear this?”

He said it without contempt, only curiosity. I thought before I spoke; he clearly wanted honesty and so I should give it, but without insult. “It’s not the blood,” I said finally. “It’s the wish. On the field, if enemies die in front of my eyes it’s because they chose to risk that; if friends die in front of my eyes, they likely want me near, for comfort and perhaps mercy. I can’t know that this man wants me to see him die, especially in such a slow and painful way; I can’t imagine he would. So it’s not for me to be there—at least to my mind.”

He looked at me in his quizzical way. “But he’s a condemned criminal—that one was sleeping at his post. And had displeased one of the Kin. Why care what he wants? He didn’t want to die, either, but he did.”

And that wasn’t punishment enough, so he had to suffer being leered and laughed at in his agony and terror? I bit my tongue. “It must be that I’m Yeoli.” We left it at that, and they refrained from inviting me to the like again.

I baffled them, though they took pains to tell me that was intriguing, not offensive. I had a god’s son’s pride, they told me, which in the Palace is the highest praise—I had no idea what I’d done to earn it—and yet I actually spoke to servants as if I owed them words (I couldn’t help it) and thought it odd to wear my sword to dinner in a Palace.

The whole Kin feasts together in the Dinner Hall, every man armed with at least one sword. The third or fourth dinner, there was a yell and a bang and I saw one lord had leaped to his feet fast enough to knock his chair over backwards, bellowing something in Lakan; across the room another did the same, and with the scrape and ring of steel they both drew. The tables are set up in a great rectangle, with open floor inside with no carpets; when they both strode into it, I understood why.

Would they kill each other? Right here? They seemed earnest enough, moving full-speed, striking sparks off each other’s edges, and letting out war-cries as sincere as I’d heard on the field. “J’vengka,” Astalaz said, “should we get you a different dish, don’t you like that? It’ll get cold.” I stared at him, then around the tables, even as I appreciated the irony of the idea that Lakan food could ever get cold. Everyone but me was still eating.

“No… it’s very good… as always,” I said weakly, lifting a morsel to my lips. (Lakans, like us, eat mostly with fingers.) I didn’t know because the challenge and acceptance had been made in fast Lakan, but it was only going to be to first blood.

It ended with one getting a long gash in on the other’s outer arm; the vanquished made a grudging obeisance to the victor, sheathed his sword, and walked back to his place dripping blood. The woman next to him—his wife, presumably—wrapped it tenderly with a serviette, and he finished his meal even as blood soaked through the pale silk and began running down onto the table-cloth. To not finish eating afterwards is considered cowardice, if you are merely flesh-wounded.

I witnessed four dinner-duels in all when I was there. The knocking-over of the chair, I soon learned, was ritual, done every time. I hoped none would be to the death; I was not so lucky. I remembered the saying, ‘warrior enough to eat dinner downwind from yesterday’s battlefield on a hot day, and still enjoy it,’ and kept eating, even as they hacked sheets of flesh off each other, and finally one went down with a blade through his entrails and was finished by a blow to the throat.

I thought about it when I woke, too early, in the afternoon after the first duel I saw, the woman of that particular night snoring softly beside me. Understanding came: even in peace, Lakans are at war, with each other. It is rich against poor, free against slaves, nobles against other nobles, nobles against king and king against nobles, all for power. All the aspects of war are there: the weapons, the blood, the harsh punishments, the oaths, in essence, of relinquishing will, and the deaths. They carry it to their very hearths.

The next night I asked Astalaz, “What if one of them challenges me, because I killed his brother in the war or something; what do I do?”

“Don’t worry, my son. No one will, because as a fosterling you are under my protection. But being that that is the case, it would be unmannerly to give anyone cause to, so keep as civil a tongue as you have so far—people know to cut you some slack for not knowing our ways, so you haven’t really offended anyone yet—and don’t cuckold any one man too often.” As if I could possibly want or even be able to do that, I thought, when there’s a woman in my bed every night.

One morning at dinner, a man fairly near me stood up with his hand on his sword-hilt, and said words that seemed very like the challenge-words, fight-staring me. He hadn’t knocked over his chair, though. I looked at Astalaz, saying with my eyes, ‘I thought you said no one would challenge me!’ He leaned over to whisper, “That’s Korsharend, the best warrior among the Kin. He’s challenging you only to spar, no blood.” Right, I thought: chair knocked over, blood, no chair, no blood. “I thought he would. Everyone wants to see what you’re made of.”

Thanks for the warning. “Um,” I whispered, “should I do my best?”

The King drew back and up, his brows coming down black and hard, his lips tightening to a line. Whether he was truly angry or putting it on, I couldn’t know; that’s another thing about Laka. “You’d even think of doing less?” he snapped. I got up fast, unclipping my sword.

“Could you all at least do us the decency of quitting eating?” I wanted to declaim as I faced Korsharend in the centre of the space between the tables. As it turned out, they mostly did. Lord against lord was old hat, but most of them had never seen Yeoli swordcraft before. I also think they wanted to understand better the enemy who had just fought them to a stalemate.

Korsharend sparred as intensely as a warrior can spar, and was good, but not as good as the best of the Tardengk elite. Of course he had it all over me in size and strength, a good head taller than me with a moderately massive build; but I had over him that I’d learned so many Lakan tricks and he knew no Yeoli. I also was in much better shape than him—Lakan nobles are fairly lax in this, I learned—and we went long enough that it mattered.

Though of course they favoured him, they applauded my good moves too, and I found myself drawn back to Rao Kyavinara, at least in his performing rather than captive incarnation, as a Lakan would say. I went for spectacle, doing down-the-back parries and whirling dodges and flying kicks, making as if I’d leap over a table then throwing a back-flip off it instead, and so on. Chuckling with delight, Korsharend went right along, finding a bit of the acrobat in himself as well.

But I didn’t forget the purpose, to show them what I was made of. I was standing for all Yeola-e in that, too. I got in three or four touches for his every one, including the first one, and the first killing one. Afterward he said, through an interpreter, “I’d heard the stories, but stopped believing them when I saw how young and slight you are. And thought I’d trounce you. I believe them again.” All the men showed me a deeper respect than they had before, from then on, and the women flirted more. War permeating their every waking moment, they love nothing more than a good warrior.

I should note, the Kin are as free with sex outside marriage as we are, or perhaps more so, even though it’s considered a deadly crime outside the Palace, as is sex between two women or two men. Though—or perhaps because—they marry in pairs only, it’s considered boorish for a nobleman to object to another nobleman having his wife, unless they keep at it long enough that she seems to be changing her affections, in which case there might well be a duel. A wife, of course, wouldn’t dream of objecting to her husband sleeping with whomever he pleases.

The difference between them and us is that we are plainspoken and direct about it, saying chalk or charcoal as is true, and no one pretends that everyone doesn’t know. In Laka, it’s all meaningful looks, battings of long black eyelashes, hints, double entendres delivered in the most flowery of phrases, fleeting caresses, and pretenses of secrecy. A woman might flirt unmercifully, and either mean that she’s dripping wet for you right now, or absolutely cold but enjoys teasing; your challenge is to discern without coming out and asking, which is considered boorish. Living a life of ease, they must entertain themselves as best they can.

I became something of a rage among the noblewomen. Everything is fashion in the Palace; men and women both would wear dung on their heads if they imagined it gave them an air of sophistication and newness, and of course I was exotic. To everyone under twenty-five I was “love” and “darling” and “heart’s delight.” It made it hard even for me to remember myself that I’d been killing their countrymen only days ago.

The moment I most enjoyed was at a party that went decadently late into the day, and was attended by a girl named Inzithera, who told me she and her father had come to town for her debut at court tomorrow (night), but hadn’t wanted to miss the fete. Her hand was on my shoulder when she said, “Ah! Father! My love, I must introduce you to him.” He’d spotted her hand on my shoulder, and fathers of unbetrothed women are less forbearing than husbands.

Seeing him approach, I had to set my teeth to keep from laughing. It was Klajen. When he saw mine, his eyes went wide and his brows darkened at the same time, and I thought he might challenge me to a duel anyway. “Oh father!” Inzithera said, her sweet voice turned scolding. “Stop that stormy face; they suffered as much as we did in the war, you know that. Besides, he is a prince—Fourth J’vengka, heir to the throne of Yeola-e and the esteemed guest of the King.”
Klajen’s expression eased—I had position over him now, which is everything in Laka—but I could still see the coins flashing in his eyes as he estimated how much he should have got for me.

I raised my wine-cup, and said, “To old acquaintances.” By the ethic of the Kin, he must do likewise or seem unrefined, so he did, and then we were both laughing.

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52 - Compliments of the King

I stand for all Yeola-e, speaking to him, I thought. He is new, and knows nothing of us; I am the first he will know, so I’d better make no mistakes.

So I smiled a lot and listened carefully and was as charming as I could be. It was small-talk at first, how the journey had been, how did I like the city and the palace so far, all of which I answered with the best mix of honesty and admiration I could manage.

As we spoke, servants came and went, refilling our water-cups or bringing flowers or cool towels or what-have-you, and he acted as if they were not there but for their hands, going right on with whatever he was saying, whatever it was, as if it didn’t matter that they heard. The first who did a service for me I thanked, using the Lakan word I’d learned; I couldn’t help it. The man blinked with surprise that I even met his eyes.

As if he were not there, Astalaz said, “Ah, J’vengka, you must not thank the servants; it discomfits them.” I couldn’t argue with that. “As well, it makes you appear as if you have never had them before. Is it a Yeoli custom?”

“I have never had them before,” I said. “Everything is very… different in Yeola-e.”

“My lucky sons, getting to see such a strange and exotic place,” he said, without a hint of insult.

We got deeper, swapping life-stories in summary, and going on to politics. Though I was not sure he’d believe the ways of Yeola-e possible, let alone proper, he questioned me on them, showing at the most a deep puzzlement, but his questions full of intelligence. I explained the vote to him, the Assembly, the tax and child-bearing laws, and, what he seemed most interested in, the position of semanakraseye. I described the Kiss of the Lake, which he told me he wouldn’t have believed possible except that I was telling him it was, and told him the story of the War of the Travesty. He even wanted to learn a little Yeoli, the political words with no equivalents in Lakan or Enchian.

In return he explained to me how power flows in Laka. What struck me most, aside from the violence inherent in it, was the informality. They had written laws, but they were very few, and it was as common for two men to resolve a dispute with swords or lances as it was by the arbitration by another man of higher rank, which is as close as they have to a court.

We went on to the war, very cautiously, as we must. He looked at it all as a hill-top general does, and so I answered his questions as another general would, being vague and taking liberties with the truth where necessary. I omitted, for instance, how much hand I’d had in our battle-plans, except where it was known, such as against the mamokal. When he spoke with regret of the ten-thousand, saying, “Of course I do not blame you for that,” I bit my tongue.

He asked me if it was really true I had assassinated Inkrajen, led the Yeolis assigned to the mamokal and defeated a champion in a single stroke, not because he doubted but so as to open the way for me to tell the stories. But to him it was as if it were all a game on a distant board, so I recounted in little detail.

Now and then we touched on the act of fighting itself; and though he had had war-training in his childhood and his youth, as he told me, and affected a manly air of experience, half-hidden was a fascination that reminded me of my wide-eyed friends at thirteen. I’ve fought and killed more your age than I can count, I thought, and you’ve never even seen it. It made me feel older than I would ever be.

I wondered if he would challenge me to spar, guessing that as guest I should not challenge him; but quite openly he said, “I’d take up the wooden sword against you, J’vengka, if that were not too unequal a prospect for a King ever to expose himself to, in propriety. Not to worry, though; I imagine you’re going to want to exercise, so I’ll set you to doing so in the company of some worthy opposition, tomorrow.” (By which he meant tomorrow night.)

By the long way round, we came to speak of his father. I took a chance, asking him whether Astyardk had been sore-pressed in his decision, to let us kill the ten thousand.

“No, as a matter of fact. Not at all. He hardly blinked. ‘Too many peasants and too little land, that’s the whole trouble, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘Now the Yeolis give us a solution, and even offer to take its execution, so to speak’—he laughed at that, he thought that was hilarious—out of our hands. So be it, then, and thanks to them.’”

I froze, chills running all over me. I realized distantly I must be gaping in an undiplomatic way. But that night, present as it always was in the back of my mind, came to the fore. I heard the one single in scream in thousands of voices, saw the thrashing and the fire and the sticky bodies, again, close as yesterday.

“Cynicism ruled then, J’vengka,” he said, politely not waiting for me to answer while I was tongue-tied with horror. “It wasn’t always that way. Ten years ago he would have grieved on the palace steps. False tears, of course, but at least he’d have made the gesture. One glosses over those acts that are unpleasant but necessary, for a king—you’ve been taught that yourself, of course—but that was too much. He stopped caring for the people, and that in the end would have brought Laka down.”

It was then, I think, I truly started to like Astalaz. A Yeoli talking falsely might say that, citing a common ideal to give an impression; but in Laka it is a notion for a king to hold in private if at all, so I knew it was sincere. In other words, for me, caring for the people is only to be expected, since I was trained to it. In him, it was extraordinary.

Yet, I thought, here I am with a man who barely a month ago arranged the deaths of his father, his two brothers and who knows how many others he’d lived and shared food with. It was the only way to dethrone a king, of course; he might even have done it to save himself, since if enough had wanted Astyardk gone and he’d left it to someone else they’d have killed him too, fearing he’d seek to avenge his father in the Lakan way. If he felt any regret for it at all, I saw no sign. Perhaps it was Lakan custom to hide that. I decided to ask him once we knew each other better, if we ever did come to know each other that well.

All told he seemed honest and good-spirited to me, sincere in wishing for lasting peace, a touch scholarly, and sheltered without being spoiled. He was not good at fast retorts, which in someone intelligent, is nine times out of ten the mark of a loner. And yet he’d succeeded in a coup; so many mysteries.

The next day or so, I settled into my guest-chambers, and they were indeed more than one: anteroom, bedchamber, parlor, study, games-room, midden-chute, my own personal courtyard, and five body-slaves of all colours—for variety, the head one told me—all of which I was welcomed, indeed urged, to consider my own and make full use of. I thought back to the war-camp, and the slave hut. Quite a change.

Not that they’d paid no heed to my aunt’s letter asking that I be put up austerely; this was their idea of austere.

After the first night, bathed and undressed in my bedchamber in the morning, and hoping that solitude would ease my spinning head, I lifted my silken covers to find a woman lying naked under them. She was breathtakingly beautiful in the Lakan mode, with shining black dark-lined eyes, perfect arms and legs shining brown and smooth in the dawn light, a fall of arrow-straight hair like a black waterfall. She smiled at me with full lips that I itched to kiss, and eyes full of the meaning any man knows. I felt it hard between my legs.

“Em…” I said. That was about it.

“You wonder how I am here, timnimuz akdan,” she said in a voice in which the Lakan accent was musical and hotly exotic. Barbarian master, the Lakan words meant. “You need not worry that I have designs on your heart. I was sent compliments of the King.”

By the old measure, that the civilization of a country is to be judged by how it treats those who bear its children, Laka is quite barbaric; forbidden rather than trained to fight, and held to be inferior, women are very much under the heel of men, kept as brood-slaves, having to marry or sleep with whomever they are commanded to. In some parts of Laka, a widow is expected to kill herself out of grief, even if she doesn’t actually want to. It is quite normal also to feed and love daughters less than sons, and then believe women are born weaker than men. Sent compliments of the King, she had as little choice to be here as I’d had to serve as stud for Klajen.

“But you are not free,” I said finally. “I cannot know whether you truly want me.” She was doing her best, it seemed, to put paid to that, by her caresses of my shoulders and cheeks. The air all around us filled with the fragrance of the sandalwood oil she wore.

“What are you saying?” she asked, her eyes full of bafflement. “We all drew lots for the honour of being the first!”

“The… first?”

“Yes, of course. One of us Palace concubines will be here to please you every night.”

You do not see your own chains, I wanted to say, you are only making the best of your lot, it’s force even if indirect and I cannot take advantage of that… She took one hand off my chest to pull one ringlet of my forelock out straight and let it go to spring back, then laughed a long rippling laugh, making her perfectly-curving breasts jiggle in a way that made my manhood reach out harder. She could see that, of course. “I could do that all day. Come now, beautiful Yeoli Prince—what about you could I not want?”

Right about then one of her deep red-painted fingernails just happened to brush across one of my nipples, and that was the end of my conscience’s protest.

Afterwards, wrapped in the fragrance of sandalwood, Lakan beeswax, the rosewood of the carven screens and the warm scent of sex, I drifted to sleep with my head on her shoulder.

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51 - Pride and gold

My memories of that night are not the best. When I think back, I am not sure whether it was in real life or in a dream that I rode a mamoka covered with flecks of brilliant moonlight, its gait as ponderous as that of a living mountain beneath me, with the King of Laka handing me an ivory-and-mirror-handled mamoka-stick and saying “Tap him gently right there.”

The next day, after my head was my own and painless again, I packed some of my things to go back to Vae Arahi, including my library, and some to go with me to Tardengk. As a guest of the King, I would stay in the Palace of Kraj.

Later I learned that there were some rumbles in Assembly protesting that its approval for sending me to Laka had not been sought, and it was wrong for me to be exposed to three solid moons’ worth of foreign corruption at my tender years. But a semanakraseye is free to make such a peace agreement, and there were precedents in mutual fosterings with Tor Ench.

My thought was that everything I learned about Laka would serve us well, if needed, in future wars. No reason why a fosterling can’t be something of a spy.

I would wear the peace-sigil the whole time, as would Astalaz’s little sons, but the Lakans assured me that I was welcome to come armed. It was the custom for Lakan men in the Palace of Kraj to wear swords all the time in waking, even though the city is nowhere near any borders or coasts, and as a guest I was free to do the same.

When I asked the royal aide who told me this who they expected to be attacked by, he said, “Ah, Yeoli Prince, it’s not that; it’s that a man is not really a man without a sword.” I had always thought the defining item was something more a part of him than that, flesh rather than steel, which he thrust into another’s body for ecstasy and new life, not pain and death, but as a Yeoli, what did I know?

So the next morning, after a day of preparations, I swapped my armour for the immaculate tunic of a diplomat and the peace-sigil, while keeping on my new standard-issue wristlets and elite-issue sword. I made my hugging and kissing farewells, happy to know that this time I had little cause to fear anyone would be dead when I came home. Between the assembled armies, Astalaz’s three sons and their nurse came out, all holding hands, and I went out to meet them half-way. After formally clasping hands with each little brown dazzlingly-jeweled boy, I sent them off to the Yeolis, and went myself to the Lakans.

By the agreement, we were still in Yeola-e; but I couldn’t help but feel I had entered Laka again once I was on the great black horse they lent me and everyone around me had brown skin and straight black hair.

†

Slavery was a different world than I had ever known. Being treated as royalty by Lakans was, too, but far more so. It defies belief.

I knew the central Lakan ethic, that one soul lives many subsequent lives, and is rewarded or punished in the next for what one did in this, so that the favored are considered innately better, and their iron-fisted rule of all less fortunate, just and sacred, since they must have been more virtuous in previous lives. It’s one thing to know they think this; it is quite another to see it in practice, permeating Lakan life down to its smallest act.

A true Lakan noble casts cloak off shoulders unthinkingly, for it never occurs to him that someone might fail to leap to catch it; he will sit trusting his weight to air, never thinking a seat will not instantly be placed under him. He need never walk anywhere; that’s what carrying-chair slaves are for.

I need only mention a wish, and they’d sweat blood to see it was provided me. Every Lakan around me, including my envoy guide, who was a noble himself and thus had more money in the smallest of his treasure-chests than would pass through my hands in my entire life, bowed, deferred, demurred, called me Akdan and hinted at everything instead of just saying it until I wanted to scream, “What are you really thinking?”

When one speaks of rich in Laka, one doesn’t mean just having a house on the lake or a bigger herd of goats or several fine shirts instead of one. There are houses that hold fifty in Tardengk, owned by one, clothes that we would put only on a semanakraseye on the most sacred of days being worn by citizens every day, sets of jewels bigger and more ornate than I’d dreamed possible for anyone to afford.

As I would learn in the Palace of Kraj, each Lakan noble is a law unto himself, thinking himself worthy by will of the gods. Each has what power he can muster through wealth or force or friends or religious fear, to wield according to his will. Not that there are no national laws, for there are; but as the King considers himself above them, having made them, the nobles consider themselves above all but the King’s will, and sometimes not even that, if they can combine against him, as with Astalaz: no wonder so many get assassinated.

What binds the nation together is a common language and Gods, an incredibly complex lattice-work of fealty oaths, blood and marriage-bonds, friendships and quickly-shifting pragmatic alliances. When I first understood this, I saw why their armies were less well-ordered than ours, and why so many nobles and kings get assassinated. I didn’t understand why the whole country wasn’t starving.

Yet it is in part starving, and holds a good half of the people in it in chains; these riches have to come from someone, who would have liked to keep them. Laka is a country of almost-mountains, tipped with naked rock but not snow-capped, of great hills cloaked in vines and cypress, of forest so thick its green is almost night-dark; beautiful, but cut all through, everywhere, with the mark of domination.

Commanding every town is a castle, with three-faced turrets in the Lakan style; every person we passed made scraping obeisance to us; every village had its stocks and impaling-pole, with someone in them or on it as often as not. Once I came around a bend to see a pale corpse, his back in darkening shreds, being cut down hastily from a tree; out of courtesy they’d thought to get him out of my sight, but had been too slow. Someone probably got flogged for that.

In Tardengk, which is as large as Brahvniki, they gave me a scented kerchief as we went down into the city. Hovels slapped up from planks and broken tiles seemed to stretch to the horizon; through a chink one would see the wan flicker of a smoky lamp, and hear a child’s weak mewling or voices raised in quarrel. The stink of rot and excrement mingled with the aroma of kri, across the rutted dirt street a dark creature scampered that I thought must be a dog, until I saw its naked tail, long as its body: it was a rat, big enough to steal a child.

Yet every house, however poor, had a frontispiece larger than its front, even if only an unpainted board, and people came out waving dirty kerchiefs and palm-fronds to welcome back the King as if they knew him. These people, who must wonder how they would feed their children tomorrow, put on appearances. Since riches are virtue in Laka, gold is pride, so pride in some way can substitute for gold.

The houses grew larger and finer as we approached the Palace. Passing through a gate framed with tassels thick as tree trunks that looked like solid gold, I kept my eyes forward and my face blank, as if I had always lived among such splendors, (so Lakan I was, after only seven days journey) my guide ushered me on without a word, thinking I had, and all was as it should be.

Seeing it from the rise coming into the city, I’d thought it was built on a hill, all starred with twinkling lights and three-sided golden turrets; now I dismounted and was gestured with a flourish into a chair, and carried just as Astalaz was being carried inside. We did not go up, but straight in, the corridor not turning to tunnel but remaining corridor, and I saw the Palace was not on a hill, but was the hill, built up over centuries from the level.

They claim the foundations predate the Fire, but I suspect they are Iyesian work; Lakans have only been here seven centuries. The lavish gilt-wood corridors run seemingly without order or sense, not even keeping to the four directions, but running slantwise or curving; sometimes we’d came to a jog in the hallway, as if its builders had started from both ends agreeing to meet in the middle, but mismeasured by a handspan or two. I’d find out later that I’d have to order a chair as much for guide service as to be carried, else it would take the full three months to learn my way around.

I noticed the slaves, of course. Palace of Kraj slaves, men and women, never wear more than jewelry and codpieces, and are of every race on the Earthsphere, exotics being a mark of rank for their owner. I saw people who were coppery red, olive, golden like a dried corn kernel, so black they shone almost blue, and even one woman seemed to have no color in her at all but the red of her blood, her hair white as an ancient’s, and her irises a strange flesh-like pink beneath white lashes.

They were nothing like farm slaves. While I had always thought it a moot point where one was if one was not free, they most certainly did not; they took pride in having been the pick of the market. Some even got to keep their real names. The highest irony, I think, was Astalaz’s Arkan slaves, who all wore their blond hair down to their waists, that being the mark of an Arkan noble, which to a man they were. They let you know it too, noses high in the air. People denied pride, like people denied food, will take it in whatever form they can.

During the journey, the envoy had urged me to stay up later and later each night, and sleep in later and later each morning, pointing out to me that the King was doing the same. I understood when we came in at dusk and I saw that everyone, free or slave, was walking either briskly or sleepily, as if they had just got up.

I’d heard stories that Lakans were nocturnal, like forest animals; before they had come here from their old island, they had all lived that way, even farmers, sowing and reaping by the light of moon and stars. The story is that it was a decree laid down by Kazh, their High Father God, after the Fire. The rest of Laka has changed since; but the Palace still lives that way. I would have to get used to it.

After a chance to bathe and change and rest for a bit—all of this conducted with what seemed like scores of obsequious servant’s hands—I was welcomed formally in the throne room, which is as big as Assembly Hall at home but with much more satin and gold. Astalaz called me “My son,” even though he was only perhaps ten years my elder; it was custom, meaning I was as precious to him as his own children in Vae Arahi. I was introduced to the Kin, as the Palace nobles are called, clasping hands with one long-hair-earringed man after another who wore enough jewelry to buy a house and a gem-hilted sword on his hip, and whose name I forgot instantly. Finally I got to see noblewomen: they wore more gold than the men, and long gowns cut to cling to their figures in every brilliant color one could imagine; their black hair hung to their hips or past. Though I wore satin, I felt plain; mine was black, and not embroidered.

We ate a light meal—their breakfast—and every man dined with his sword on his hip except for me, who wore it on my shoulder, as if this dazzling hall were a war-camp. When it was done and I’d received the last delicate lip-dabbing by a servant with a silk napkin, King Astalaz invited me to sit with him in a private parlour.

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50 - The war was over

“A good chance, but not the certainty—don’t break out the peace-flasks yet.” That was the gist of Emao-e’s speech to the army. Astalaz might ask for something we would rather fight than agree to.

The news did come, from Ikal people with the Lakans. Astalaz, supported by enough of the nobility that he could make it stick, as that’s who counts in Laka, had overthrown and executed his father.

How much disagreement about the war against us was part of it was hard to say; of course Astalaz would keep his lips tight about that until the peace was signed and sworn, so as not to give away his position at all. But their defeats at our hands, and even their victories, had been costly, for not that much land, really; you need only add up the death-counts. Because the war was being fought on our land, we’d lost more than they, counting those who were not warriors, but we’d still made them bleed a lot for what they’d gained, and if they tried to keep it we’d make them bleed more.

The ideal for us, of course, was the return of all those captured, all our land back and some of Laka as well, in compensation for our lives lost. But with everything in the valley up to Kantila in their hands, we weren’t in a position to press for that. Tyeraha felt the best we could hope for was a return to the borders as they had been before, and perhaps the return of captives. That was my first lesson in the greater unfairness of aggression; we would have to agree to injustice, and perhaps even to allow them to have gained by their wrong against us.

I remember lying awake burning with anger that first night, and wanting to agree to nothing, but go on fighting them until they begged for any terms we set out. In the sweating dark, I tried to thrash answers out of my own mind, while my friends snored: how could we have been stronger? How could we have fought better? How might our strategies and our tactics be improved? How could we make sure this never happened again? I was going to make a study of it, I decided.

We had to stand pat, waiting for Astalaz to get here, so I had not much else to do. Then I thought, why study secretly; why not pick the brains of my teachers, the generals? So long as I was civil and clear that I was looking to the future only, not pointing fingers, they had no true reason to be offended. I went to the one with whom I was least shy, Hurai. “Excellent,” he said, laughing. “I was going to assign you to do exactly this, because it’ll make you think like a semanakraseye.”

I’d been right; if any were offended, they didn’t show it. My aunt gave me the best advice: “Don’t tell anyone their mistakes; instead ask them what they were, saying you want to learn so as to be a better semanakraseye.” It worked perfectly; they were forthcoming to a person, starting with her.

I won’t go into detail, as those conversations were private. Putting it all together, I envisioned an impossible yet beautiful thing—the war as if it had been tactically-perfect on our part—and learned a great deal.

A surprisingly-large dust-cloud heralded the coming of the new Lakan king; naturally he had a substantial escort, about two hundred, plus two mamokal, in red, black and gold tapestries for headpieces and saddle-cloths that seemed dotted with stars as bright as the sun; the cloths had thousands of tiny bits of mirror sewn onto them. Astalaz himself, however, rode the finest of Lakan black destriers, with a cape so thickly gleaming with mirrors it was hard to look at.

As well as a wish to negotiate the peace himself, Astalaz’s presence meant he felt himself firm on the throne; one thing I’d been taught about monarchies is that kings won’t leave their capitals if there’s a substantial threat there. It seemed he had purged his father’s supporters fairly thoroughly, every prominent noble among them, and even his own two younger brothers. The rest of the nobility didn’t count this as madness or cruelty, according to our spies, but thoroughness, and cause to respect and obey him.

They arrived in the late afternoon, and we went through the first formalities, exchanging greeting-gifts and so forth, but did not begin discussions or even share a meal with them that night; there is an order to these things, and no peace had been made yet. The next morning we began the discussion. With his permission, and wearing the peace-sigil but none of my decorations, I sat in.

Astalaz was in his mid or late twenties, I guessed, a tall, broad-shouldered and thick-armed man, thoughtful of face, with the long straight square-ended hawk-nose that is classic of Lakan nobility, and thick black hair. His full whiskers hung fine and straight as they do on Lakan men, scented with oil. He had a hidden knife, though by the parley-oath we were all unarmed, but from how he moved and the softness of his arms, his war-training had ended years ago and he hadn’t particularly excelled, so I knew I could make short work of him if he drew it. Arzaktaj, who was acting as his aide, was unarmed.

With any luck Astalaz would feel some of the shyness that is natural for people never blooded in the presence of those who are, with me there. Of course I could wear no weapons, nor impress with my string-bean barely-seventeen-year-old muscles by taking off my shirt, ostensibly because of the heat; but an elite warrior moves like an elite warrior, so I decided I’d get up and pace, or offer some service in aid of the talks that would let me move.

He spoke perfectly unaccented Enchian, and was very formal and painstakingly polite, which we answered in kind. His offer was to set the border where it had been; I think he knew we would fight for anything less. “Some might say that is generous, I respectfully note to the Regent Queen,” he said, “since it means we Lakans will have fought, and lost many lives, for no gain.”

“Other than what I might most modestly draw the Lakan King’s attention to: our people sold into slavery in Laka?” my aunt asked. “That was done with such dispatch that it was clearly part of the plan. By our count it is some fifteen thousand, mostly non-warriors. In Lakan currency, if it pleases the King that I may ask, how much would they be worth, in total?”

“Well, the Regent Queen and I might speak of exchanging captives for captives,” Astalaz answered smoothly, “had the ten thousand seized in Kantila been kept, rather than massacred.” That made me itch to get up and pace, but now was not the time.

“In good faith, we had already offered them to Laka, for what might have been a fair exchange, had the King of Laka of the time been willing to negotiate,” my aunt said. “May the semanakraseye of Yeola-e also make note that we have neither captured nor killed nor thumbed a single Lakan who never raised a weapon against us.”

Something in that gave Astalaz pause; I got the sense it was the mention of his father’s recalcitrance. I also sensed he didn’t like to make decisions fast; there was a trace of awkwardness to him that I had a feeling came from the position being new to him, as if the king’s mantle was still a little stiff on his shoulders.

Still, the justice of the matter is in truth window-dressing in such a negotiation; what would truly determine it was how strong they still were against us, and us against them, and our respective estimations of that. “The Regent Queen asks that Laka draw all the way back to the border, giving up the walled cities, which we might otherwise hold, and return all captives as well?”

“I hope the King of Laka and my aunt the semanakraseye of Yeola-e will pardon me,” I said, and got up and paced, keeping an appropriate distance from the Lakans, of course. Now was the time. Of course I’d move most smoothly if I did not think about how smoothly I moved or how I looked or about moving at all. I did my best not to.

“I most respectfully note,” said my aunt, “that the warriors of Yeola-e have proven their capability in recapturing our walled cities even without a great advantage in numbers. I note also, and it is most striking to me, that the King of Laka speaks of holding walled cities rather than of the strength Laka traditionally relies upon, its magnificent horse and impressive mamokal, an admission, if I may be so bold, that we have succeeding in countering those strengths.”

“If I may painstakingly observe,” said Astalaz, “Laka retains the strength of its numbers, which when combined with walled cities, I imagine might prove a daunting barrier.”

So it went, all day. I got up to pace three times in all, and when we broke for noon meal I took the trays from the servers and laid them out, moving as much like an elite warrior as I could; whether it was making a difference I could not tell.

Of course Tyeraha and Astalaz both had in their minds the line they would not allow the other to cross; for peace, of course, we had to hope the two lines were close enough. It came down to the number of Yeoli captives they’d release, for all it rankled me that this meant some would be freed and some not. I decided to speak up, sensing Astalaz would not be offended.

“If the King of Laka and the semanakraseye will pardon me for interceding,” I said, “how is it decided which captives get freed and which don’t? And”—I surprised myself—“what of captives forced to breed; what considerations might there be for their children?”

Astalaz made something of a scoffing sound, albeit in a polite way. Before I could stop myself, I was staring at him, my fists curled and my lips hardening into a line. Catching myself I took my eyes off him, turned away and took a deep breath, cursing myself inwardly. “I ask the pardon of the Regent Queen, to ask the Prince, if I may,” said Astalaz, “as I know he himself was once captured. Did that happen to him?”

Kyash, kyash, kyash, I thought. Now my kevyalin children, if I have any there, are pawns in the negotiation. I’ve just given them to him as hostages. But when I faced him again, his eyes seemed, to my amazement, sympathetic. “Yes,” I said.

Astalaz had paper, on which he’d been taking the odd note. He picked up his pen now. “I abjure you, Prince, to tell me all the particulars. I’ll look into it and remedy the situation—as a favour to you, not part of the peace-agreement at all.” I stood frozen, and he added, “My oath on it, Parshahask strike me down, second Fire come if I am forsworn.”

I came to understand later. He was a king; on the scale which he lived, it would cost him little more than nothing to set free one or two or three babies, even if he compensated the owners. A slight cost, against the benefit of how much I would appreciate it and thus how much he’d gain my good will.

And yet he’d decided to do it so instinctively, without even a thought, as if he was setting a wrong right, even though he was a slow-choosing man; I was baffled by that until I came to understand more about cultures with aristocracies, later. In short, he couldn’t help but translate his own habits of thinking onto us. To his mind I was a prince, albeit a Yeoli one, the children of princes should not be enslaved, and so as one royal doing a favour for another, he’d correct that.

I told him the Yeoli dates I’d been in captivity—he’d have to translate them into Lakan, because I didn’t know how—and that my owner had been Klajen son of Kla-something, the dates I’d been made to do it, and the names and owners of the two women for whom I knew them. He wrote it all down carefully. I remembered what Mirasae had said, that things could change and avenues open. I’d had no idea it could happen so fast.

I didn’t realize it until later, but by doing that, he countered entirely what I brought to the talks.

In the end, the agreement was a return to the previous border, and the last seven thousand Yeoli captives freed. That meant leaving the rest, but it was as good as we could get. It was most likely we’d be able to retrieve none at all by fighting, even if we fought them back to the border and even beyond. The war was over.

But Astalaz wanted to seal the bargain, by an exchange of fosterlings. All three of his sons, he proposed, in return for me, in respect of my warriorhood.

Some might say even three to one it was a bad trade; the oldest was six, so it wouldn’t take him as long to replace all three as it would Yeola-e to replace me, if that were even possible. Afterwards some people whispered that Tyeraha had been taken for a fool, and the whole peace negotiation had been a sham on Astalaz’s part to take me captive again. But by the way he spoke of them, when Tyeraha asked him to say more, we could tell how much he loved them.

“It’s a risk, Chevenga,” my aunt said to me in Yeoli. “I won’t send you without your consent.”

As if she didn’t know what my answer would be; still, she had to ask. “I give my consent,” I said.

“Done,” she said in Enchian to Astalaz, and it remained only to celebrate.

--

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49 - in which I refrain, with difficulty, from smirking

It was fall now. I turned seventeen. The war stood still, the Lakans sending home many of their serfs to bring in the harvest; of course many of us had to do the same.

The army had been reconstituted, with many people moving up ranks to replace commanders killed or thumbed, while I’d been away enslaved. In an army that promotes by election, a place cannot be kept even for someone who is expected to be back except at his existing rank, and perhaps not even that. And an anaraseye cannot just be jumped up ranks, but must work his way. Yet Tyeraha, Emao-e and Hurai all felt that the faster I did, the better.

Now a milakraseye’s second who’d been laid up with a festered wound died, leaving the position open. Hurai called me into his tent.

A second is chosen by the commander, with the unit’s approval; the mila was Taisha Nokiri and she was well-loved, so the generals figured that whoever she chose, the thousand would go along with. They were reconstituted, a mix of survivors of Kantila and fresh troops; the latter would expect her second to be chosen from the former, which would make it a little easier.

“Taisha’s going to be talked into it,” Hurai told me. “But not by me—by you. That’s an order. To which she is not, and won’t be, party, by the way.”

I could have argued, by saying that an order whose fulfillment depended on the choice of another person besides me wasn’t a fair order, but I didn’t. I knew what he was thinking; if I wasn’t up to persuading her to choose me as her second, I wasn’t up to being her second. I had a feeling Tyeraha and Emao-e were with him on this.

As I went to Taisha’s tent, I was suddenly very aware of the sparseness of my hair. It had grown out a little since it had been hacked down almost to nothing by Klajen’s minions, but to even it up Mana had had to take it down all over to a finger-width long, hardly enough to show it was curly. But you can’t put on your helmet for such a meeting. I felt acutely the holes in my earlobes, from my slave-earrings, too; they’d stopped hurting, but still showed as small red scars.

I was no longer the proud bearer of Chirel, either. A wise chakrachaseye will have good spare swords on hand for new elite warriors joining whose families don’t have or can’t afford one, or those, like me, who somehow lose the family blade on the field. Thus I was issued one, along with armour, as soon as I got back, and quickly had a shoulder-scabbard made for it. It was good, but it was no Chirel.

All these things I tried not to think about as I waited for Taisha to be finished the business that had come before me. She was a milakraseye who was happy to stay a milakraseye, feeling it fit her mind and heart to command that many, no less and no more. She was at least three times my age, and had fought in the Enchian wars; with distinction, I’d heard, and the glittering of her collar attested. She had a square, severe face, tanned with the deep tan, lasting even through winter, that a person gets who is out in the sun all the time. Two sparse frizzy clouds of gray stood beside her temples, her hair otherwise brown and tied neatly back in a club.

“You next,” she said to me when my turn came, in the voice unthinkingly accustomed to command that a person only gets from doing it for twenty or thirty years. I was going to try to acquire it fast. She cocked her head and stared at me quizzically. “Fourth Chevenga?”

“Yes. I know I look… a little different.”

“Well, war changes us all. I know you were captured honourably, I hope you didn’t suffer too much in their hands , and I commend you for arranging to be ransomed for a bargain. What may I do for you?”

“Well… I know—I don’t know how close you were to your second, but my condolences—I know the position is in need—”

“Of filling and so you’d like to fill it,” she said.

Of course it’s that obvious, I thought; why else would I be here? My hair seemed very short, suddenly, the ear-scars very red and the sword very much not Chirel. “Em… yes.”

“To do that, Fourth Chevenga, I would have to pass over five setakraseyel who’ve been fighting under me through most or all of this war. Now you know—or maybe you don’t, yet—how it goes in such a case; out of five, on average, two are happy to be seta for life, two would like to be promoted someday, don’t feel ready yet, and yet would accept if they were asked, and one feels that he’s capable and would be promoted right now if life were just. So you have to persuade me not only that you’d be good enough, but sufficiently better than three other setal who are capable that it would be worth frustrating the one who’s itching. Go ahead.” She sat down on her folding stool, and fixed her eyes on me.

I found myself tongueless all of a sudden, thinking, all the best things I’ve done, she already knows, because everyone does. But I had to say something. “I… what you don’t know, probably, is that I didn’t just command against the mamokal—that was four-hundred and fifty people—but conceived the plan in all its details—”

“I knew that.”

“I’ve conceived quite a lot that people don’t know about, apprenticing for Hurai and sitting in on command council—”

“I heard that it was your idea to threaten to kill those ten thousand prisoners; is that true?”

I signed chalk. And I came up with the way of killing them. I decided not to mention that. “But maybe you didn’t know it was me who found the Kadrini pike-method, that’s worked so well, in a Lakan general-craft book.”

“That I admit I didn’t; but how does it make you the best second?”

“Well… I…” I suddenly found myself annoyed, and it cut through the nervousness like a splash of cold water on the face. What was wrong here? Why was I so tongue-tied? It came to me; I’d been so immersed in shame in Laka, had so much of it thrust down my throat, that some of it at least was still in me. I shook myself like a dog throwing off water.

“Look, milakraseye Taisha, everything you know I’ve done, you know,” I said. “I quote Hurai Kadari, ‘The person who has the gift of finding ways to bring victory single-handed is rare, but we are blessed to have one,’ meaning me; you can confirm that with him. You can ask Emao-e too, what she thinks of me, or any of the generals. Or you can look at this”—I ran my finger across the sparkling of decorations on my collar—“because it’s all here. Of course I’m sufficiently good to be worth frustrating the seta who’s itching. How can you doubt that?”

She looked at me sternly for a moment; then a smile played around her lips. “Boasting goes against the grain for you, doesn’t it, lad?”

“Yes.” I took a deep breath. “Yes, it does.”

“Listen, and take this as a lesson. War is full of things that go against the grain, as you’ve learned. The thing a warrior must learn is to have no grain, so nothing goes against it. That way you are entirely free, you see that?” I signed chalk. It was another way of saying what Azaila always said, that the perfect state in which to fight is equanimity as untouched as a pond with no ripples; not that I’d attained that. Probably I wouldn’t live long enough.

“Sometimes, you have to boast,” said Taisha. “Sometimes it’s best. Say you are somewhere where, for some reason, you have to make a call to arms in some place where no one knows you. You want to convince them to obey your orders, you have to convince them you know what you’re doing. Or you’re in some place where it’s intimidate the enemy or die; things the like of what you’ve done scare the shit out of enemies—if they’re presented right.”

Again a grin quirked one end of her lips. “Or you get an order from a general to go talk a mila into making you her second. It’s invaluable there.”

I stared at her, feeling the two points on my cheeks burning, and so knowing they’d gone red. She laughed. “Ah, don’t worry, my child. There’s no conspiracy between him and me, to set you up. I only know because he did this same thing with your dad, some twenty years ago.”

All my breath heaved out of me. Maybe she hoped she’d strike me speechless, but the perfect answer to this came to me. “Did you choose him as your second?”

She laughed again. “Of course. As I choose you—subject of course to the thousand’s approval.”

They chalked it by a good majority, and if the seta who was itching felt hard done by, she never showed it. (Taisha told me which one she was.) After the vote and introduction assembly, I did with all the setal and their seconds what a Yeoli officer does to let warriors get to know him: shared a campfire, ate, drank, sparred everyone who wanted to spar me and gave myself to everyone who wanted to have me. We Yeolis know how to forge ourselves into one.

Next day I called the drill as a new second traditionally does. At the end of it I felt ready to face a million Lakans, if Astyardk sent them. I wanted to pester the generals. We were shorthanded but so were they; why wait? Then the Lakans called parley, and as usual I went in the escort.

After all the usual royal-message pomp, the Lakan herald read: “My King Astalaz son of Astyardk, Blessed Hand of Parshahask, Soul of Gold in the Eternal Gaze, Light in the Eye of She of Destruction”—and so on—“requests a cease to all hostilities and to meet in good faith with the Regent Queen of Yeola-e to negotiate a reasonable peace.”

We must all have looked like gaffed fish. Hurai spoke my thought: “Son of Astyardk? Only one way that happens in Laka, that I’ve ever heard.” By “Regent Queen” I realized they meant Tyeraha. Meanwhile Emao-e had our herald ask for a direct parley with Arzaktaj, with an escort of one. He brought one of his aides; Steel-Eyes took me.

“Pardon me, General, but I didn’t quite hear the name of the sender, only ‘son of Astyardk’; I heard that correctly, did I not?” Emao-e said, in her most polite and formal Enchian.

“Astalaz son of Astyardk,” Arzaktaj said, in his thickly Lakan-accented Enchian. “He is the eldest of the late King’s sons.”

“Late King? He came to grief… somehow?”

“He did,” the Lakan general said, tightly. It would come out how, soon enough, by other ways.

“And Asta…lasa… wishes to parley directly with our semanakraseye, I understood that right?”

“Yes, General.”

No need to ask Tyeraha, Emao-e decided; I felt the same myself. If the Lakan king was willing to come all the way here for peace-talks, he truly wanted peace. “That is agreeable to us, General. No hostilities on our part indefinitely”—she took her crystal—“as sworn by myself as chakrachaseye, second Fire come if I am forsworn, if you will be so good as to swear no less strongly.” The Lakan did it with the usual miming of striking off parts of his own body.

Would they go so far as the other cease-fighting tradition? Emao-e unslung her dagger in its sheath and handed it to me; Arzaktaj did the same, handing it to his aide, who took off all his weapons and his helmet. I did likewise. “Remember you go down on one knee and present it on the back of your shield-hand, crosswise,” Emao-e whispered.

Arzaktaj’s aide and I crossed on the open ground between the two parties, matching our steps. I went down on one knee before Arzaktaj, seeing for the first time how ornately he liked to dress and that his hair-earrings were a good half-arm long. I put Emao-e’s dagger on the back of my shield-hand and presented it to him with my hand crosswise, so the blade was pointing at no one. Behind me his aide was doing likewise with Emao-e. “Thank you,” Arzaktaj said, and took it in a stiffly formal way. “Prince Fourth J’vengka.” My shoulder-scabbard, my youth’s build and my decorations identified me to him at least.

Then he went still, his eyes fixing on me, studying. His black brows lowered and darkened, as he took in the shorn hair, and the scars in my earlobes. I could see him thinking, I tallied up our ransom earnings, and I never saw the amount a prince is worth.

Do not smirk do not smirk do not smirk do not smirk, I intoned to myself. He said nothing. I turned and matched my steps to his aide’s again.

“Good,” said Emao-e as I returned to her side. “There’s a fair chance, my lad, that the war is over.”

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48 - We wrap ourselves in shame

Their hands were too newly-healed to touch, but we could hug. We did, desperately. Esora-e seized my sword-hand in his, as if he had to know for certain the thumb was still there, and kissed it hard. “This is the one Yeola-e must not lose,” he said.

My friends were there, too; they had been freed after all, as the Lakans had left the town to advance; some Lakan above Klajen decided that flushing them out of the prison would be too costly, I suspect. They mobbed me, of course, and that night got me thoroughly drunk and made me tell the story, so I could enjoy telling it. (“You were put to stud? That doesn’t sound so bad!”)

Though for some reason I didn’t expect it, I was decorated again: another Crystal Dagger and the Ruby Sword for excellence in single combat. I’d almost forgotten my very short duel against Sakrent. There is no decoration for surrendering, but there is for being captured treacherously, Saint Mother’s Garnet, so I got that too, as well as another Bronze Circle for duping Klajen into selling me back for the price of a setakraseye.

Of course I’d lost all my previous decorations, though they’d be replaced, along with my parade gear and all my other things in the place I’d been billeted at in Kantila. They were all in some Lakan marketplace or merchant’s earlobe. I made an accounting in my mind. Fortunately I was never too wedded to possessions, knowing I’d be allowed none in adulthood, and so like traveling even lighter than is required in war. I had decided my father’s ivory comb was too delicate a thing not to leave in Vae Arahi. I’d had a letter to home half-done; since it had read, “They are coming with 30,000, we’ve barred ourselves in Kantila, and so we wait,” it was just as well I’d have to do it over.

Being captured also earns you a thorough debriefing, from Tyeraha and Emao-e in my case, and, a day or two later when you’ve had some rest, a conversation with one of the staff psyche-healers. I hadn’t known that, though I should have. Back to Mirasae I went.

She made no mistake and no assumptions this time. I’d realize eventually that she missed the mark with me about the ten thousand Lakans because she could not conceive that someone young as me would be allowed to witness it, let alone could have even a part in conceiving it. That was understandable, in truth. Being captured is straightforward and makes equals of all, though, and there is a list of questions the psychs always run you through.

How were you captured, were you kept in bonds, were you tortured, were you raped, and so on; I answered it all honestly, and felt what I felt, while she made notes, which I gathered would go into my record.

Then she asked me if I had been threatened with maiming, and I told her about Akdan saying he’d cut my balls off if I didn’t get the Lakan Yeoli women with child. She blinked, and checked her notes, and stared at me. “You just answered ‘no’ to were you raped,” she said.

“Well, I wasn’t,” I said. “For a man, doesn’t that mean up the anus? No one did that to me.” It was a horror to think that if they’d wanted to, I could have done nothing to stop it.

“For our purposes, it means anything sexual forced on you.”

“Well… the women weren’t forcing me,” I said, feeling two points of red come up on my cheeks as if I’d been caught in a crime. “They were slaves as much as I—more so, much more so. And they didn’t hurt me, they pleasured me… and I felt what I felt. I’m a male youth, you know, a quivering bag of insatiable lust; I couldn’t help it.”

“You said they kept you in bonds the whole time, so that must include then,” Mirasae said. “And a Lakan was saying he’d castrate you if you didn’t get them with child. Chevenga, that’s having sex forced on you. Answer me this: have you been telling yourself, hard, that it was nothing, trying to forget what it felt like, and locking it away in a remote part of your mind as if it was not part of your life?”

That was the first time I ever had a psych say something that showed me she understood my mind better than I did. Oh, for it to have been the last.

“Yes,” I said, feeling as if I’d been caught in a crime again.

She took my hands in hers, and looked very deeply into my eyes. “Listen carefully, Chevenga. This is very important. You don’t want to think of yourself as having been raped, which is natural; no one wants to admit helplessness, especially warriors. But to heal from it you have to see it for what it was, because that is how you lived it, in your entire being. Tell me, how did it feel? Not just in your loins but all over?”

I told her, which of course took me back, and in a moment I was in tears, and her arms were around me, in a very practiced way. It was when I cried, “I couldn’t help it, I couldn’t control myself!” that we got closer to the heart. Now I understood why I’d felt as if some part of my soul had been stolen, with my semen.

“Don’t take shame on yourself,” she said. “It would have been the same for anyone in your place. That’s the most important thing for healing of something like this: not to immerse yourself in shame, to absolve yourself, in effect. That is why it’s so important to understand you were forced, and make no bones about it. You must never forget that.

“When you pretend to your friends that it was nothing and that you were not helpless, you are taking shame on yourself,” she said. “Because you are keeping a secret, and the moment we keep a secret, we wrap ourselves in shame. That goes for anything and everything we hold secret, except military secrets.

“You should tell those to whom you are close all that happened, and exactly how it was. You are imagining they will look down on you, yes?” I signed chalk. “That’s the shame you took on with the helplessness talking, not truth. They won’t, Chevenga. They love you and know your true strength.”

“So you’re saying I have to—”

“Yes, that’s an order.” In matters of psyche-healing, a psyche-healer outranks everyone.

“It won’t dishearten people? Make us weaker in battle… make me weaker in battle?”

“When it was happening you felt a measure of anger, yes? That you had to stifle in yourself?”

“Oh yes… a great measure.” I remembered the sizzling of it down my arms and legs, the silently screaming rage mixed with the pleasure.

“When you are in battle, you won’t have to stifle it. Nor will your friends their anger for what you suffered.”

A roaring tingle went all through me, imagining it. Lakans before me, with Chirel—well, with some other sword—in my hand… I was suddenly aching for it furiously, wanting to run to the command council and come up with a crushing plan and attack them the moment I left Mirasae’s tent.

“A-e kras,” I said. “I will tell people close to me.”

But there was still something left. “What haunts me most…” Tears came hard, and she put her arms around me again. “…is that somewhere in Laka, in a slave-woman’s womb, my anaraseye might be growing… there could be three of them. They’ll grow up not even learning their language… And I don’t even know the name of one of the women, let alone who owns her. And what can I do anyway? We’re at war with them.”

“It may be that once peace is made, you can make inquiries,” she said, but it didn’t seem convincing to me. Once born, they’d have value in Lakan gold to whoever owned them, for all it made me sick even to think of it. What would we do—threaten Laka with war again, for the sake of an unborn child or three? How much would Astyardk care, when he’d been willing to throw away ten thousand lives?

Even if we offered to buy them out, he’d probably want more than Assembly would be willing to pay for a child or children I’d fathered out of wedlock; it would be handing him hostages, in effect. So I laid my head on the arm of the overly-soft chair and poured out my heart in tears, telling Mirasae how I wished none would take, or if they did they’d miscarry, or if they were born they’d be stillborn, and how that would be a blessing for each mother anyway, as it would be one less child to be torn out of her arms and sold far away, once weaned. Like a mother, she held me.

Of the forced pleasure—the rape—I could heal, but I think she and I both knew I could not be at peace until at the very least I knew whether there were children and where they were, and had got them free or done my utmost. “All you can do now is wait,” she advised me. “Things can change, and avenues can open where there were none before, even for people whose power will not increase; but yours will. Don’t forget that, when you are thinking about this, though remembering helplessness always tempts us to forget power; you have to overcome that.” We more or less left it at that.

It was also a stain on my spirit to have come back without Chirel. The sword of the semanakraseyel for four hundred years in the hands of Lakans, taken from mine; the thought sickened me. The temptation is always there to second-guess; leaving me in Kantila was fine but Tyeraha and Hurai should have taken my sword.

Knowing how money-minded Klajen was, I guessed he’d sold it, probably to some fellow noble who collected swords, or so I could hope; it all depended on whether they could see through plainness to discern true quality. Too horrible to imagine was that they might melt it down to make Lakan-style arms, but I couldn’t turn away from the fact that it was possible.

My shadow-mother comforted me: “Sooner or later, especially after we’ve thrashed them a few more times, they’ll be peace-talks, lad, and we’ll ask for it back as part of the deal. In the meantime, remember what Yeola said: this is only a piece of steel.” I tried to remember that when I lay awake thinking about it at night.

So slavery ended for me, after only a taste of it. Walking free and armed again, I kept remembering Krasiya, and the slaves on the farm, tongueless and nationless, into which Laka planned to change him and his children, or kill him trying.

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