76 - [June 30] I, Karas Raikas

He plunked himself down with his little gold-clasped feet dangling over the edge of the gallery, his eyes fixed on me, intrigued, I think, that I didn’t kneel; if one goes through life with everyone bowing and scraping, I guess, someone who doesn’t is novel. His face looked spoiled, but with a hint of vast sadness underneath, pinching his faint white-gold brows. His eyes were an extraordinary blue, like two chips of the apex of the sky on a cloudless day.

As I stood trying to think how long my parents would have combed me for behavior a tenth as rude, he said in Enchian, “What is your name, barbarian?”

“My name I shall not tell one who calls me barbarian,” I answered. I’d thought of this on the way here: to be a little difficult, then apparently give in and tell them an alias, probably Rao Kyavinara; it had worked with the Lakans. Everyone else in the hall seemed to cringe without moving. Maybe I was acting recklessly; yet if I seemed to have nothing to lose, they’d think I had.

“Well!” he huffed, but without real anger, then pronounced, “it doesn’t matter if you don’t have one. I want to see you fight.”

“As I have told these gentlemen,” I said, “I will not, for you or anyone else to watch.” The handlers were already moving when the boy said something in Arkan that I didn’t have to be brilliant to know meant, “Make him!”

They tried harder this time, even hitting me between the legs once, just hard enough to bring agony without dropping me. I did nothing but keep the blows off my head with my hands. Finally Daisas, fuming, came stamping up and thrust the wooden sword at me, shouting in his typical Arkan-obscenity-laced Enchian, “Fight, you fikken dirt-hair, you’re a shennen warrior, anyone can see it, fikken fight!” I had fought him, as much as I could, while he’d made me eat dust and his seed all the way here. He had apparently forgotten I had something against him, and my hands were free.

It was pointless, really. Whatever suffering I saved others in the future at his hands, someone else—his sulky-faced apprentice perhaps—would step into his place to inflict. Vengeance is not counted a virtue or an obligation in Yeola-e, especially for a semanakraseye, but as soon as the chance came, every sinew in me wanted it, instantly, overwhelmingly, too much to resist. I would be lying if I wrote that it was not a pleasure, to grab him by the collar, see him freeze like a rabbit, his gaze trapped in mine, watch the truth work its slow but inevitable way into his excuse for a mind, that he was dead, then hand-heel him, the strike that drives the nasal bone up into the brain, and watch his grey eyes, staring up at me in disbelief, glaze over. I had never felt the like in my life.

The handlers yelled back and forth, wondering what to do, not admitting to themselves the corpse on the floor was a corpse, and thinking to rescue him. I stood back to let them see his dead stare and feel for a heartbeat they wouldn’t find. Meanwhile Kurkas’s son was cheering, his coating of jewels flashing with his motion. “Bravo! Well done! Beautiful! Silence!” It came immediately.

“I hereby decree that this ring-fighter shall have a name,” he declaimed, in both Arkan and Enchian; like me at that age, he had clearly heard too much formal bureaucratic speech. “And therefore by these presents since he came alone and is so fast, his name shall be Karas Raikas; and furthermore I declare my glorious self to be his first fan.” With that, he threw me something that flashed gold; catching it I saw it was a ring, that might barely fit on the tip of my fourth finger if I pushed hard. Then he skipped out.

So it was, the Mezem got me at a bargain. I found out later that Daisas had an heir, but he was underage and could do nothing, though by that one blow I had shown myself to be worth a small fortune. The testers stood well out of my reach, and one said in bad Enchian, “Look, Yeoli, we’re going to have to get the blow-darts with the stun stuff in them, and it can leave an awful headache when you wake up, so don’t you think it would better if you just came peacefully?” They wouldn’t come close until I lay face down on the floor and clasped my hands behind my back.

Once they had me chained again, two of them took me further along the colonnade to an anteroom. They paused to talk enthusiastically to the nearest of the notebook-bearing men—I’d soon learn they were oddsmakers—so I got slightly ahead of them. Something half-visible seemed to come rushing up against me, like my own ghost, and then the air before me was a solid wall, that cracked and then shattered around my knee and head. I had never seen or conceived a door of such pure glass before.

Someone laughed; someone else said “fikket.” I felt a warm trickle on my head and back, then pain. Gloved hands held cloths to me. Then what I saw to my sides seemed to throw me into a dream, being impossible: I was one of a spear-straight line, fading off into a dark green haze, of Fourth Chevengas, hair hacked, faces stunned and streaked with blood. The anteroom of the Gladiators’ Quarters has on its walls what are known as the Legion Mirrors, reflecting each other and whatever is caught between them, infinitely. It is a constant amusement of the guards posted there, to see the mirrors’ effect on hapless foreign primitives brought through.

I didn’t disappoint them. Suddenly the weight of the place fell on me as heavy as stone, along with what I had just done, by which I knew I was already corrupted; perhaps it was the head-cuts too, and the aftereffects of Daisas’ collar. The air went half-dark and the room with its smoky gold-leaf moulding and pillars and ranks of my staggering selves began to spin.

Hands steadied me, drew me into a room with a bed and shelves of healers’ things. Someone said gently in Enchian, “Lie down, Yeoli,” and I saw no reason not to. When I put my head back, my eyes cleared. The man who had spoken was a middle-aged Arkan with fessas length hair, the blond shot with grey and thin on top, the blue-grey eyes round and careworn. His hands were thick, but so tender, and his apology for taking off his gloves so caring, that I suddenly found myself near tears. I had all but forgotten touch that was not cruel.

He had me unchained, despite what had to be protests from the testers, and stitched closed the worst of my cuts, no less gently than a Haian would. At the same time he had two of his apprentices wash me thoroughly from head to foot, though Daisas had dunked me in a stream this morning, and the road hadn’t been that dusty. Was it to wash Daisas himself off me? Could another Arkan be that understanding? As if he read my mind, he said, “I know how it is with slavers, lad.” The tears came then, and he and the other two all pretended not to see them, not looking me in the face. I learned later, Arkans consider that the most polite thing to do when someone cries.

At the same time, it was odd to be worked over with such concern by a boy with his hair cropped and waxed to stand up like cat ears. That sort of thing is the style of the Mezem.

Once the healer was done with the wounds he’d easily seen, he examined me all over, being as careful not to hurt me as if I were someone of import. He peered at the semanakraseyeni brand, but it seemed to mean nothing to him, non-existent Gods of Arko be thanked. He did know how it is with Arkan slavers, including what injuries they invariably leave. He was even civil enough to tell me his name, speaking in soft Enchian: “It’s Iskanzas Muras, fessas, but everyone calls me Iska.”

He asked me to rise carefully, making sure my head stayed clear at each step, then led me to a room with bars on its windows. “You’re counted a troublemaker, lad, because you killed your slaver,” he told me. “But you’ll be out of here once we’ve talked, and the bed’s good. You can put your feet up now.” The bed was indeed good, with a soft pillow scented with lavender, better amenities than most prisons. “What’s your name?”

“Karas Raikas.” A look flashed across his face as if he’d bit into a sour apple, but he stifled it and raised his brows in questioning. Denied their hands, Arkans are very expressive with their faces, unless they are Mahid. “But you are Yeoli.”

“When I was tested,” I said, “a child who I think must be Kurkas’s son gave it to me.” I described him.

“Ah.” he said. “Minis. Or Spark of the Sun’s Ray, which is the Enchian version of his correct title. Yes, you’re right, he’s the son of the Imperator, He Whose Arm is the Strength of the World. You never call him by name, just the title. Abase yourself, or don’t let him notice you, and you’ll generally come out all right.” I told him what had passed, showing him the ring, which seemed to add to, more than ease, his worry. “Yes, you are right, you had better go by that name,” he said.

Next he explained the rules. First and foremost: fight or die, by torture. He didn’t detail what sort of torture, only that nine times out of ten, the objector changes his mind and agrees to fight after the first tenth-bead or so, sometimes from nothing more than the torturer telling him what’s in store if he doesn’t.

But it isn’t even that simple; I would not be tortured as soon as I refused; I’d be held until the next one came along who refused, and he would be made to watch. “You mean,” I asked Iska, “there’s someone now being held to be tortured in front of me?” He wagged his head up and down, the Arkan version of signing chalk. “A Srian. He’s a few doors down. The torture stops if either of you changes his mind.” A devious form of compulsion, playing on what someone who refused was likely to have: compassion for others.

I could not speak, so he went on explaining. “But if you fight, and win fifty victories, you are set free, with your winnings; fighters who last that long generally end up rich, even though they are slaves, through gifts they receive from wealthy aficionados.” He couldn’t know that that meant nothing to me.

“It’s one on one, duels; fight days are every four days, five fights a day, though you won’t fight every time. The matches are made by lot. You can kill with one wound; if you just wound, you may choose whether to kill or spare, and the crowd will have its say—they wave white kerchiefs if they want him spared, red if they want him killed.” Semana kra, I thought sickly. “The Imperator has the final say, though, if he’s there that day; the Director, if he does not; either of them, of course, you’d better obey.”

“What happens to a fighter who loses, but is spared?” I asked. “Or does it depend on whether he’s crippled?”

“Yes; if he isn’t, the Mezem might choose to keep him, and he can keep fighting, but he loses his prize-chains and must start from nothing again. Or the Mezem might sell him, especially if someone makes a good offer. If he’s crippled, the Mezem will certainly sell him.” To some place where he’ll do whatever drudgery he is able to for the rest of his life, or a brothel, I thought.

Fighters, he told me, have the run of the city, and in fact are not only allowed but required to wear arms outside the Mezem, but there was no way out, the walls too smooth to scale, the lefaeti and Great Gate—it is tunneled through the rock—too well-guarded. Arkans don’t call them cliffs, but walls, as if they built them. They have a habit of thinking they made the world. Always, I reminded myself, there are cracks in the walls.

(For this scene from Minis' point of view, click here.)