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.