66 - Fifth Chevenga

From Thara-e, we went up by boat to the end of the Ereala, then south through Shairao and Kolohisk to Kantila and Leyere, where everyone wanted to clash wristlets with me, remembering the war. They’d fixed the river-lock, smashed during the war; in civic pride they built a dais on a barge for me to speak from, a bit much to my mind, but the people wills. When we were done they just poled me out through the lower gate and down river to the inn, to keep the crowd from dogging me.

I was in my room speaking with a Leyereri member of the Workfast Disseminatory (“Yes, my marriage prospects seem much better, thank you, now can we talk about policy? No?”) when Mana tapped the door. I’d trained my friends not to do that unless it were important; I hadn’t, unfortunately, trained them not to say certain things in front of certain scribes. “There’s a woman, a freedwoman from Laka,” he said. “Says she has your child. I wouldn’t trouble you with this, Cheng, except she has the kid right here, and”—he clasped his crystal—“he does look like you.”

My heart began pounding. Astalaz hadn’t mentioned a child in any of his letters, which I’d taken to mean he’d found I fathered none. Now it came to me: he wouldn’t think I’d care what became of offspring out of wedlock, beyond their freedom, because to a Lakan it would be nothing.

Of course the scrivener asked, quietly like a spy creeping past guards, “You have a child, anaraseye?”

“Not that I know of,” I told her, the truth; I wouldn’t know until I saw. Then I continued answering the question she’d last asked me. When we were done, I invited the freedwoman in.

It was the third, Tanazha. In good light her face looked a little older, the wrinkles more distinct; but there was a lightness in her expression that had not been there before. The balm to the spirit that is freedom. She wore a crystal and spoke Yeoli, haltingly, Lakan-accented; but life-long slavish habits are hard to break. She went to her knees before I could stop her.

From behind her, a toddler peeked out, fixing me with bright piercing eyes, unwavering as sunlight, and green like hers. But his hair was black, and certain lines in his nose and chin were unmistakable. His face lit in a sudden smile. “Don’t call me by a title, you know me well enough,” I was just saying to her. “Call me Chevenga—yes, I lied, I’m sorry, it’s my true name.”

“Chevenga!” he repeated, his pronunciation childishly mushy but more Yeoli than hers. “S’me!” She’d named him as I’d asked. That was all I saw, blinded by tears.

What a woman bred in Laka would think of such emotion in a man, I didn’t know. But I’d waited seven years for this, my hopes dashed again and again, every year heavier on my shoulders. Wherever he goes, I thought as I blinked my eyes clear to look at him, whomever he becomes, he will carry on the thread of my life.

I held out my arms to him, and he came with a big smile. I took him up onto my hip with one arm, wiping away tears with the other hand. “Your daddy,” Tanazha was saying carefully, “your father. You remember I told you about him.” He peered in my eyes again with a look that seemed measuring beyond his age, then seized my crystal and thrust it all the way into his mouth. I giggled like an idiot, tears pouring fresh.

I played with him probably for much too long, trying to forget certain truths. He was her son, not mine, since we were not married, nor in love; I had just made other plans. Typical of my luck, I thought, joggling my son on my knee. I undertake all manner of work and get in all sorts of trouble arranging to produce an Ascendant properly, see it finally fall together, and the firstborn drops into my lap a bare moon later, already two years old and not mine to rear.

“Daddy!” he said to me in his tiny flute-voice. His mother said, “He’s yours, anaraseye, if you want him.” The world seemed to freeze. They say it sometimes takes time for a father to feel his child is truly his; for me it had taken all of a glance, and was down to my bones. Now I felt it turn to ashes, as I said what I must.

“It’s not for me to take him from you, Tanazha. Not by the way of Yeola-e. Only in Laka is the child the father’s.”

“I give him,” she said in her harsh Yeoli. “I know I can have no hold on you. But he can live better with you.”

I imagined how it had been for her. The agent of the King of Laka had bought her, freed her and sent her to Yeola-e with no explanation; she had come to Leyere not even knowing who the father of her child was, and fared as a freed slave does. She must be alone with the child, in an old house left burned or at best stripped in the war, on the sliver of land a single person would be assigned, probably gone half to weeds, and no money to start with, in a land full of strangers whom she happened to look like, speaking a language she didn’t know.

What she had gone through to make ends meet so far, while I had been a guest of the Palace of Kraj and the Hearthstone Dependent, I couldn’t know. Now she would give up the only soul she loved. Yet she said it with her head up and eyes dry; she’d steeled herself to it, long ago, for his sake. That, I thought, is love.

“Anara—J’vengka… I have more than I ever dreamed,” she said. “I and my child are free. And you have given me land.” Reared in Laka, she would see it that way. “But he’d live better with you. They say no matter that I’m slave-stock, but still I can’t teach what he should know, to be Yeoli, the Yeoli your son should be. I don’t know enough how to be Yeoli myself; I can’t even teach him reading.” She switched to Lakan; it was easier. “Even in an heir’s cage, he would live better.” I recoiled inside, seeing for a moment that tiny sweet face behind bars. Of course she’d think that.

“We don’t cage heirs,” I said. “Though being Ascendant, as he would be, is not an easy life… You can teach him all any child truly needs: love. You have plenty of that. Tanazha, I could send money to you here.” How, I had no idea, but I’d find a way. “Or you could come to Terera, let me find you a place or a share somewhere.” She signed charcoal in the unaccustomed way of a foreigner. “I know nothing but peach farming.” Peach trees won’t grow as far north as Terera; she was bound to her land.

“You can teach him love too.” She touched my cheek, still wet. It hurt like a sword-cut through my heart. “I did not come for help for me, I am not of your family. Akdan ruled you… you had no choice, as Yeolis say.” My son yanked on my ear, and yelled “Ma, ma, maaaah!” just for the joy of it. She tried to hush him, and he went on louder. It seemed he took after me in more than looks. I wanted him in my sight for the rest of my life.

“But who loves him most?” I said. “Who does he know loves him?”

“It’s not like the others.” The memory of that night, in the stinking lamplight of the stud shed, came back searing. I’d forgotten she’d had five taken away already; that made it so much worse. “I will not lose him, giving him to you, for I will know where he is, and that it’s a good place, and that he is loved, not owned. And so will he.”

I searched through my night-cabinet for a waxboard one-handed, my other hand full of someone sacred. Of course as soon as I’d managed it, he crawled off me and behind the bed. How much more of a favor Astalaz would grant me, I did not know; but I must try. “Tell me their names.” She was speechless at first, unbelieving, but told me all, and how old each must be by now. I got her to give me the names of all her other kin, too, and the man she loved, whom she almost didn’t mention because he wasn’t her blood. I’d forgotten how little slaves believe they deserve. Now it was her turn to weep, trying to hide it between her rough-brushed ringlets. It hurt not to be able to promise her anything certain, when she kissed my hand from her knees.

“I swore I would give him to you if you wanted him,” she said. “You do; you think I can’t see it?” She took a deep breath. “You Yeolis—we Yeolis—hold the mother decides what will become of the child, for the best. Then I say you must take him.” Little Chevenga, who’d climbed back up to watch me write, stamped his tiny bare feet on my knee. She wants to free me to take him, I thought, by binding me. Yet she could accept money I sent; it’s only her own pride that forbids that. She thinks he would have a better life, as anaraseye and then semanakraseye.

Perhaps, perhaps not, I thought, watching his eyes, which gazed hard at the hairs of my chest, enough to be a tuft now, his tiny silken brows that were shaped exactly like mine furrowed in grave contemplation. Not much of a baby’s character can be read on his face. Then I had a thought.

“We could let him choose,” I said. “I know how. May I take him up on the mountain?” She looked puzzled, but agreed.

I put on my cloak, then Chirel, since Krero wouldn’t let me out of his sight without it this near to the border. Little Chevenga didn’t want to come at first, until I perched him on my shoulders and twirled; then he didn’t want to let go my hair. Leaving Mana to keep Tanazha company, I slipped out the inn’s back door and through side streets, my hood hiding my face. Running the gauntlet of my friends’ questions had been bad enough.

I took him up to a meadow, from where Leyere with its circular wall was a huge cauldron, brimming with a stew of black slate roofs and green gardens. His eyes widened; Tanazha’s work left her no time or strength, it seemed, to carry him to high places. In a green cedar hollow by a stream I hunted, looking over my shoulder now and then to make sure he didn’t wander off, or put all the world into his mouth. Toads were many here, this year. I caught one, found a stick, and brought both to him.

“S’toad,” he chirped, as I gave it to him. It struck me that he was precocious; but then, I thought, every new parent thinks that. “Careful, he’ll get away,” I said, and showed him how to close his hands. “He’s yours, Chevenga.” The toad shuffled, and emptied itself, making a green-brown stain the shape of a leaf on his tiny spotless palm, as they will. He cried out in disgust.

“What a terrible thing to do!” I said, curling my lip. “Well, he deserves punishment for that, since he’s yours.” I held out the stick to him. “Go on, Chevenga, he deserves it. It’s all right. Hit him. Kill him.”

I doubted he was one to destroy with glee, knowing his mother. What I expected was that he would either do it hesitantly if I kept urging him, or sit staring at me puzzled as to why I’d ask such a thing. That would have decided me.

As it was, he cringed away, shoving the toad behind his back, and stared at me in a way that stabbed my heart; I saw myself being Toad-Murderer in his eyes for the rest of my life. His tiny frown deepened, his green eyes flashed, and with every drop of will in his body and soul, as it is with children, he cried “No!”

I threw away the stick. “All right, never mind, you forgive him.” He glanced over his shoulder, to see if the toad was safe; of course it was long gone, and I had to find another quick, and say, “See, there, he’s all right,” before he’d let me pick him up. Even on the way back down to the city, he sat stiff in my arms and kept looking distrustfully at me, as if thinking, “Mama said you were good. I’m not so sure.”

“I had reason, my child.” So strange, to hear those words on my lips. “One day you’ll understand. Forgive me, Fifth Chevenga, for all you will suffer.”

“He is not quite weaned,” Tanazha said, “but he is plenty old enough. His favourite foods are fruit, fresh or dried, and cheese, and sweets, of course. I have his clothes all clean and mended, and his toys, and a sack of diapers here, all clean too. He’s just starting to know when he’ll make kyash. He sleeps through the night, usually, now, and naps in the afternoon.”

He reached toward her, whimpering, as if he knew, and she took him, and put him to her breast one last time. “I hope…” Her eyes were suddenly full of tears. “I hope you will let me visit him… once or twice in his life.”

I stared at her with my jaw dropped. I had been thinking more along the lines of him visiting her every summer for two or three months, if Assembly approved—it was a long way away from his education, for an anaraseye, but it was to be with his blood-mother and the books could go with him—and any time she could come to Vae Arahi, I’d find her a room in the Hearthstone Dependent. “I’d die before I’d let him forget you,” I said, and told her this.

I stopped her from going to her knees again by catching her in an embrace, with him in the middle. We stayed there for a while. Then, as he called and then screamed for her, reaching frantically with his fat little arms, she turned, square-shouldered, and was gone.