62 - Choose something different

I was not a servant of the people yet. I could both pay Jinai Oru for a reading, (begging the money from my mother) and keep what he told me to myself if I chose.

There were two questions haunting me, in truth, though I wasn’t sure why, when the first rendered the second moot. The second was whether to do a state visit to Arko or not the summer after I became semanakraseye. I was planning already to visit Kranaj in Tor Ench, Ivahn in Bravhniki, Bitha Szten of the Shvait, and Astalaz in Laka again, every other neighbour of Yeola-e. Following my aunt, my father and my grandmother, I would go on quietly aiding Mirko of Roskat and his people’s resistance against the Arkan occupation there, of course; but officially, we and Arko were on cordial terms, and Kurkas might be insulted if I didn’t visit him.

But every Arkan Imperator, who isn’t beset with too much in the way of other troubles to consider it, always has half his mind on expanding the empire, and there were whispers that Kurkas was looking eastwards.

The feeling among Yeoli generals had long been that Arko would go after Laka, Hyerne and Tor Ench before us, since that would extend its coast; but when I imagined myself Kurkas, taking Yeola-e would surround Laka, Hyerne and Tor Ench on the land side and give us a land-bridge straight to Bravhniki and the Brezhan River.

Others were beginning to see sense in this, enough to say that with my reputation, putting myself into Kurkas’s hands might tempt him, more than he’d be able to resist, to decide that way.

I begged money from my mother and made my appointment with Jinai, who now lived and worked in the Hearthstone Dependent. Before I did, I read over my notes from when he’d read for me before. They were not the ones I’d made as he was reading, as I’d lost them in the fall of Kantila, but what I’d written from memory when I’d got home, so likely they were missing things he’d said; but we do with what we have.

I see a dark-skinned woman. Not Lakan: short hair. He’d got the not-Lakan-short-hair part right. Many lovers. I’ve seen seven, just now. That’s what I was getting, instead of a wife. A child with bright blond hair, like Tennunga’s, and eyes the spitting image of yours. So I’d have one, at any rate—or at least the way things had been when he’d done that reading would lead to that. Terrible trouble you will have, I can’t see what, but you… now you have come through it. You’ll get through it, and things get better, remember that. I could not know whether that was about being captured and enslaved, or something yet to come. I see a war-map, your hands spreading it. You must be semanakraseye, yes, there’s the ring. As things were when he read: I’d been decided at that time to keep the secret. But I couldn’t know whether the two sentences referred to the same sight in his prescient eyes; was it a map from the Lakan war he’d seen, then my hand with the ring, or from a future war?

Oh-oh, another fight, better keep up your training. You didn’t need to be an augur to know that, about my life. So many weird things. What does a green ribbon around your wrist mean? Or a huge orange jewel? I’m seeing your dreams—I skipped over them, over everything I couldn’t understand. A death-duel against a man with black skin and blue hair, with a yelling crowd all around you, whose edge goes up to the sky. Since he foresaw my dreams, I realized, anything he’d said could be a dream.

A whole city of straight-haired blond people, though he’d thought it was a dream, was a clear reference to Arko-the-City—or at least a city full of Arkans. Might this be the state visit? Lots of war things. But peace too… A lot of wounds… a Haian will take care of you. He’s close to you. Then it faded into obvious generalities, and ended.

It was all so vague, and had so many more questions than answers. People who think that working with augurs makes every choice easy should try it.

“Do I know you?” he said, yet was jovial as always, when I greeted him. He was wearing loincloth only, as usual, and seemed smaller, because I had grown.

“I know, I’ve changed in the last two years,” I said. “It’s Chevenga.”

“Chevenga… Fourth Chevenga! Anaraseye! I am pleased to meet you!” I forget; I’m a scatterbrain. I reminded myself that I had come for his gift in seeing the future, not the past.

He ushered me into the room with the blank wall. I faced it with noteboard and pen poised. With his meaty hands he adjusted my shoulders like a spyglass.

I had never done a forked reading by myself. I remembered how my aunt had directed him. I must declare the choice made, and set it in my mind while he read; then the other choice, while he read again.

“I will tell Assembly that which I am hiding,” I said. It was sickening to say even that much, aloud. He forgets, he’s a scatterbrain, I told myself firmly. And it was not as if he hadn’t seen it last time anyway. Even so, keeping the intent to tell in my mind made the sickness sustain.

“Intentions, estimations, vagaries, theories,” Jinai murmured in his way. “Where is augury? The die has six faces but only one can come up. Fourth Chevenga Shae-Arano-e can walk a thousand paths, but will only walk one. Follow the branch of his life… urk!” Without warning he gave me a quick shake, as one would to quickly wake someone sleeping. “Kyash.” I heard a slap, his palm on his own head. “Wooden block, you! The die has six faces… kevyalae. Maybe I’m having a bad day. No, that doesn’t make any sense, I never have that bad a day. It can’t just be a wall, kyash, I’m sorry, semanakraseye, I’m so sorry, forgive me, I can’t see a cursed thing.”

You could not tell Jinai to try harder. He could not conceive of trying any less than his absolute hardest, always. Cursing and chattering, he strained, his cool hands turning sweaty. Finally I said, a little quietly as my aunt had taught me, “What does it mean, when you see nothing?”

“That you can’t bear to see it,” he sad, in the unhesitating, almost off-hand way he had when speaking true.

Prickles swept all up my spine and down my arms and legs. I stared at him and his flat blue eyes blinked back, as if he’d forgotten the words already; there could be no more answer from then than from a voice in the sky, for it was the God-In-Him hearing the voice of the future only that knew anything, not him.

I took a deep slow breath and said, “Whether I can bear it or not, Jinai, I have to see. I’ve been raised to be semanakraseye; what I feel doesn’t matter.”

He clasped me again, and took a deep slow breath himself, then started speaking as I scrawled. “Red armour, horseback, with a sun on their chests… you are on a black horse, plains somewhere, just one horse to their many and they are all after you with long spears, oh, kyai, a-e, kyai!” He just war-yelled and grunted then, twitching like a sleeper dreaming he’s fighting; he was foreseeing me fighting, I realized, as if through my eyes.

Then it was “Aigh, aigh, aiiiggghh!! Milakraseye, no, you cannot let this happen, I am seeing you die here, on spears and under hooves, the despair far worse than the pain, for Yeola-e…” Weeping broke his voice.

Prickles swept over me again, and my heart rose to pounding in my temples. I seized myself, breathing down to my gut and slowly, trying to put myself into warrior-mind and freeze all feeling, so I could keep writing. This is harder than fighting; at least there you can do something. “It’s a battle for all Yeola-e and we’ve lost it, Chevenga, you can’t let this happen, you can’t let this happen!”

“I will not tell Assembly what I am hiding.” It was as if someone other than me had said it, the voice firm and final, while all over I trembled like water in a jolted dish.

His hands on my shoulders relaxed, with instant calm; the tears were still wet on his cheeks but he’d forgotten them. “The die has six faces… the die has six faces…” He shifted me brusquely, his breath hot in my ear. “Fourth Chevenga Shae-Arano-e can take a thousand paths but will only take one…” Cool at the start, his hands had become burning hot. “Nothing, nothing, I’m getting nothing, semanakraseye.”

“It doesn’t matter whether I can’t bear to see it,” I said, keeping myself in warrior mind to speak perfectly calmly again, as a commander does. “See it and tell me anyway.”

“It’s not that. It’s… unclear… another fork… there’s something else you have to decide.”

The second question—that’s why they’re tied together in my mind—I have to ask him. “No state visit to Arko, when I’m semanakraseye. I’m not going,” I said.

It was if my words set his gift free, like the starting signal releasing the runners. “Too many, too many,” he said, fingers clenching again. “Already so many of us, dead… they had a trick… you have the shape of what they did in your mind but I… words can’t shape it, I can’t say it, words are not my gift. You are cursing that I couldn’t, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, semanakraseye… Red armour with the sun on white horses…”

Kahara… it’s the same… the same either way… I kept myself ruthlessly in warrior-mind. “You are pulled away, semanakraseye you can’t die here, they’re saying...” That is different... “Now on your feet fighting alone against a man in red armour, taller than you, blue eyes...” Again he fought wordlessly as me, through my eyes, shifting and twitching. “Aigh! On the head!” From behind he hand-chopped me lightly above my brow to the right. “You are down, in the throat”—he poked me with a finger right in the artery, tears choking him. Death-blow. I can’t doubt it. “No, no, no, you can’t let this happen! So angry at yourself, knowing you are going to die, knowing we are going to be conquered, part of you wants death, you are thinking so many thoughts that pierce you, worse than the spears, Chevenga, you can’t let this happen! You mustn’t let this happen! Choose different! Choose different!”

I only have one fork left! “Jinai, when… how far ahead are you seeing this?”

“One year, two, about that long,” he sobbed. “Choose something different!” I was trembling all over as if with a fever-chill, now, the feeling more set in. Staying in warrior-mind took everything I had. My choice, I was thinking, may make no difference at all. Everywhere, all the time, that is the case.

I cleared my throat and set myself to let no quavering into my voice. “I will go to Arko on a state visit,” I said. His calmness, so immediate, like magic, somehow brought a measure of it to me.

“The die has—Arko. Arko. You are there, I can tell, because there are blondies everywhere and your thoughts are thinking of it as Arko-ness. Terrible things like dreams… that don’t make sense… you don’t want to know.

“Yes, I do.” Warrior-mind… keep warrior-mind. It was only fear making me angry. “Jinai, don’t think for me, don’t clog up the stream of your seeing, just let it all flow out to me and let me do the thinking.”

“But you don’t like foreknowledge,” he said, almost casually. “A blob of jam of some kind of berry I don’t know, but they’re turning into worm’s heads swimming in blood and crawling off the plate… there’s the black lightning bolt with the fork above you that never goes away. Pain, so much pain, more pain than I can see, so much more than you can bear, so huge, beyond imagining—you’ll do the thinking, understand what it all means… Fighting… Shakora, All-Spirit! Shakora! I hear someone saying the whole city is dead! A man with blue eyes in red and gold armour, you’re fighting him though you love him.”

Warrior-mind. Warrior-mind. Warrior-mind. Just let the words go from my ears through my hand and pen and onto the paper. I put everything into it, like a discipline. He froze in horror. “Semanakraseye… something you don’t want to know but touches everything… should I tell you?” You couldn’t shout What did I just tell you!? at him; he might genuinely not know. “Yes.”

“You are… there never is anything… in all your life… past a certain point, like you’re going to… I should warn you…”

All my breath heaved out of me. “I’m going to get my ear pecked young, I know that. Shit on me, Jinai, just tell me what you see from my going to Arko!”

“Sorry, semanakraseye, sorry… I see a… I don’t know, a huge thing with metal and wood pieces that’s alive, it’s moving all over in rhythm and making huge thumping clanging noises and I’m thinking, I mean you’re thinking, it’s a blessing to all the world. And the wing thing, that too, same… a crowd of blondies, Arkans, yelling your name, acclaiming you, you are speaking to them.”

Just write. Think later. Don’t try to understand. Only ask what is necessary… The trick was to slip in the questions too fast for him to notice before he answered them. “How old am I?”

“Twenty-seven. Arko-ness is twined with the whole rest of your life…” His hands went lax, fell off my shoulders. “That’s it, I’m spent, I’m sorry, I’m done!” He sat down hard, burying his face in his hands.

I hugged him with nerveless hands, told him he’d done brilliantly with a voice that sounded lifeless to myself at least, paid him and ran flat out back to my room, where I could let the emotion take me without anyone knowing by screaming into piled sheepskins.