60 - Ability as great as his

It is expected that an anaraseye will finish the semanakraseyeni education before becoming semanakraseye. I was behind; war, slavery and a fosterling visit will do that. Now I was in the Circle School as well, which usually takes three or four years, and had a marriage to find. Marriage is hard to schedule before you’ve found love, of course, but the study, I saw how I could get done in time by buckling down.

If I became semanakraseye, that is. On my eighteenth birthday, as I looked in the mirror for the usual two reasons—to measure how manly my face had become and search desperately for beard-hair—it occurred to me I hadn’t thought about sections 21-1 and 21-5-7 of the Statute semanakraseyeni since before the war. In war, it had been crystal-clear what was best for Yeola-e that I do.

I have to play it out again. It’s the same as getting into the Circle School; I know so much more. Every sinew in me flinched at the thought. I did it anyway.

I tell. Something I hadn’t thought of last time: there are ways and ways of telling. (Maturity is power; no wonder I’d so yearned for it.) I could go to the Permanent Committee of Governance, whose purview this would be, beg them to let me tell them in confidence, and go on their judgment as to whether to tell all Assembly publicly or not.

But that means eight more people know my secret. And they’re politicians; what are the chances of it staying so? Then when the whispers spread enough, I’ll be called to account and will have to tell the truth. And then I have told all Assembly, in the clumsiest and most embarrassing way.

So I just tell all… it would be different now, that I had made my name so well in war. I tell and they approve me anyway, thinking I am good enough to be worth it. I’ve proven myself not just sane, but excellent, a semanakraseye Yeola-e will want for ten years...

But competence in war does not prove sanity. History furnishes plenty of examples, both within Yeola-e and without, and everyone knows them. It wasn’t as if I had to be semanakraseye to serve Yeola-e in war, whether as chakrachaseye or general or other high commander or champion. They could have good use of me against enemies for ten years without tainting the semanakraseyesin, which is sacred, with the name of one either doomed or mad, whichever you believed.

And I will still be unmarriageable. It would be one thing if someone already loved me and would stay out of loyalty. No one in her right mind wants to tie herself to a life lived waiting. The Servants of Assembly will think of that, and disapprove me.

My heart rebelled in its anguish, as ever. No! I keep it to myself, tell no one else ever again… that had not changed; I’d have to deceive whoever I fell in love with. These days I had come to dread Mana finding a steady lover—not that there seemed to be any imminent danger of that—because then he and she would be waiting for me. It had occurred to me to tell not only my prospective wife but everyone else in my four, as I’d be marrying them all, but I was leaning against.

Yes, I was already deceiving someone I would marry—Mana. I had never told him because we’d been heart’s brothers so long, years even before my father had been killed, that he had no choice not to be close to me, as prospective wives would. It would do nothing but cause him suffering. And why should his love be stuck with that, because she loved him?

So I don’t tell, except my fiancée. Maybe I’d find one who’d stay with me, before I told so many that one blabbed; and then when the whispers spread enough, I’ll be called to account and will have to tell the truth and then I’ve told all Assembly, in the clumsiest and most embarrassing way... Maybe.

But then still I break the law of Yeola-e, the Statute semanakraseye that is sacred to me, and have to go each day into Assembly and my office in the shirt and with the signet, knowing I am in truth a criminal… No! I’m worth it, I’ve proven myself against the Lakans, they’ll approve me, I’m good enough, and so it went in a circle until I was crying, and tearing at my hair, and running, for all I looked like a grown-up, to my mother.

When I had first got home, she and I had flung ourselves into each other’s arms outside the Hearthstone Dependent while Akaznakir and the driver of the carriage with all my Lakan gifts in it waited patiently. “You left with the face and the build of a youth,” she said. “You have come back with the face and the build of a man.” I think on retrospect she was being generous about my build—she was my mother—but just for the joy of it, I picked her up and swung her around as she had me in earlier years.

At least, when Esora-e crowed “The whole world knows what a warrior he is now!” I’d had the pleasure of saying, “If the world knowing it means it leaves Yeola-e alone while I’m semanakraseye, I’ll be happy never to fight again.” That’s a consideration too; no it isn’t; I can still serve Yeola-e as a warrior... Then when we were in private and I was showing her all my scars and telling her how I’d got them, she put her hands on the scars from the lime-burns, as if they’d just happened.

“Oh mama,” I said, “they don’t hurt. I never even notice them any more.”

“A parent never likes to see them on her child. Something you’ll find, my son, when you have your own.”

I tightened my arms around her. “War means so much pain… I won’t see that with my kids, though. I’ll never see them go to war... which is one mercy I guess, though not for them.” It was good to be back with someone with whom I could speak these thoughts freely.

“Yes.” She patted my shoulder. “But you haven’t stopped finding love… I understand you had a rather serious friendship with a Lakan girl.” I told her the whole story, and she suggested I do an abstinence, which later I did. “Sooner or later I’ll find someone who’ll put up with me for twelve years,” I said. “It’s not that long.”

I’d meant it as a joke, but she flinched. “Chevenga! Your sense of humour…” She pursed her lips.

“I’m sorry, mama… Blame Astyardk, for invading us and so making a dark-joking warrior out of me. I guess I’ll have to learn how to be polite Yeoli-style and as appropriate to peacetime again. Either that, or reveal my secret to Assembly, be scratched for approval, run back to Laka, marry Klaimera, and live as a cossetted and pampered foreign dignitary for the rest of my life.”

“I suppose you actually do have that choice now,” she said drily.

“Once you get used to the heat, Mama, Lakan food is actually really good. And Klaimera... in bed... All-Spirit…” She pursed her lips harder. “Of course with my luck, she’ll spurn me when I tell her and then I’m back here with my tail between my legs.”

She just tightened her arms around me.

Now, unable even to imagine laughing, I tapped on her door. She was reading. Though I had dashed away my tears before I’d come out of my own room, I knew my eyes were red. It was raining that evening, so we went to my room. “Mama... do you still think I should keep it secret?”

“You are tangled in a thicket of chalks and charcoals again, but more complex, aren’t you.” It was hardly a question. I signed chalk.

“Yes, I do,” she said, after some thought. “You are proving yourself as worthy of as many years as we will have you; you are fulfilling your promise to do two times as much.”

“But if I do this, I am a criminal every time I walk into Assembly with the signet and the shirt on.”

“Chevenga… what is the law, exactly? Recite it for me.” I did. “‘Suitability’ is the key word, then. You’ve proved yourself suitable. You’ve proved you have ability as great as your father’s, and…” She said more, something about no one wishing he hadn’t been semanakraseye for that short a time, but I didn’t really hear it, for shock.

“Ability…” I said when I could speak, “as great as…”

“Yes,” she said. “Look at your own collar.”

I wasn’t wearing my awards, but looked down as if I were. “But… he had as many… didn’t he?”

“Let me show you.” On her chest of drawers was the oak and abalone box in which she kept them. I hadn’t looked inside since before the war. I barely could now, seeing it was true. I had more than he. She had to tell me to take a deep breath, twice, and I sat down on the bed with my face in my hands anyway. “I… Mama… I can’t… as good a warrior, maybe… but I can’t be better than him...”

“Suitability, lad. We aren’t arguing who was better; we are arguing suitability.”

“Suitability,” I whispered. “I hear.”

“Look at the warrior who won these awards—yours, I mean—even as he was studying. Think of this warrior as if he weren’t you. Are you suitable? Chiravesa, my son... step out of yourself and look at what you are already accomplishing.”

“But I can still serve Yeola-e as a warrior even if I am not semanakraseye. Maybe I should just decline approval. But then I’d be asked why... if I said it’s because I knew I was not suitable, they’d ask why… it would chase me all my life. I could… I know: I’ll leave something in writing that explains it all.”

That was, if you wonder, the seed of this book you are reading.

“But do you not want to serve as semanakraseye?”

“Of course I do! But what I want doesn’t matter; what the semanakraseye wants never matters.”

“Listen to yourself, love; you hear how you already are, in spir—”

“Oh kyash…!” I spoke the thought I’d never had before, that I hadn’t understood the world well enough to have before, as I thought it. “I can’t bring it out public, whether I’m semanakraseye or just warrior, if I am going to serve to the best effect! If all Yeola-e knows, all our enemies and potential enemies know. It’s revealing weakness. Kevyalin kyash!”

Chevenga’s going to die before thirty… we just wait. Chevenga thinks he’s going to die before thirty, their champion and chakrachaseye afflicted with madness or a death-curse… perfect. Artira, and Assembly, would know our enemies would think these things. We must not allow him any position of great importance. If I could have screamed without questions being asked, I would have. I doubled over, hands over my face, while my mother held my shoulders.

“I could decline approval and say, I want to devote myself entirely to being chakrachaseye and therefore Ardi is more suitable.” A measure of calm came back. “If I did that… I wouldn’t have to worry about marrying, either.” But the weight I wanted to feel lifted off my shoulders didn’t lift, and my breaths went on coming hard.

“Chevenga, my son. The country will love you no less whichever way you decide. But you asked my opinion, and you are as suitable as your father in my opinion.”

“Except he didn’t know. And so was not breaking the law. Mama, I think I know what to do. Thank you.” My heart as hollow as the ember of an eggshell in a fire, I kissed her hands.

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