81 - Let me grow wings

“Even when I was rude?” he added in a small voice.

He didn’t like falseness, he’d said. “I like you better when you’re polite.”

“But…” His blue eyes flooded with sadness for a bit, but then it was gone. “All right. I’ll do my best. I did learn it all in etiquette classes that my tutor said I’d need if I were to understand the lower castes and why they did things. But I can use it myself, can’t I?”

“You can use whatever you know,” I said. I’d never felt so fatherly in my life, not even with Fifth. “The upper castes use no etiquette?

“Yes, of course they do,” he said. “Just not my father. He doesn’t bow to anyone. Everyone bows to him, and to me because I’m an extension of him... or so he keeps telling me.”

“Is it true that everyone flings themselves on the floor, on their faces, in his presence?” I’d heard that, but wasn’t sure whether to believe it.

“They’d better, or the Mahid would drag them off and torture them and kill them, or, the Fenjitzas says, the God would strike them down if they didn’t reverence him properly.”

“Truly…? How do they do it?”

“They…” He stared at me, mortified, his brows drawing down. “You aren’t asking me to show you, are you?”

“Well, yes, but not if you don’t want to,” I said quickly. Of course, he’s offended that I’d even suggest he do something that is only for people who are, in their minds, lower. They aren’t a people who do chiravesa. I tried to remind myself of Laka, the closest I knew to this. “I’m sorry to offend you, Minis. Ascribe it to my being very new here.”

“It’s true, you are. I forgive you.”

“Thank you. It must be very strange to be your father.”

“I suppose.” He took a sip of his tea. “What else do you want to learn? If I know it, I can tell you.”

“Who’s the Fen…”

“Fenjitzas?”

“Fenjitzas, yes.” Of course my Yeoli tongue tripped over the Arkan consonants, so no doubt it sounded more like Fenachitasas.

“In Enchian: the High Priest, I guess you’d call him, of all ten Gods, though I don’t think he likes to think about the Gods of the bottom two castes.”

“Aitzas, solas, fessas, okas, daifikas,” I rattled off, for practice, and perhaps to show off.

“And you are solas, though also daifikas, so it’s not as simple as if you were just one. Gladiators are special,” he said. Arkans need so much to place everyone exactly into their spot on the hierarchy, it’s almost a compulsion. “And they probably didn’t teach you this but there’s a dialect just for my father and me, since we talk down to everyone. It’s funny speaking to you in Enchian because it’s like talking equal-to-equal. Everyone would be”—he rolled his eyes upwards exaggeratedly, a mannerism I’d never seen anywhere but Arko—“appalled.”

“I’m sure. It’s Skorsas who’s teaching me Arkan, but he took me to Iska to explain about the different ways of speaking to people on different layers. He told Skorsas just to teach me equal-to-equal for now. Tell the truth, that’s all I want to learn. It’s not as if everyone doesn’t understand it. Where I come from, a language is for understanding each other, not being above or below, and I am neither above or below anyone anyway.”

He looked at me for a time, his unearthly blue eyes boring into me. He got that look when he was most intently puzzling over something, I was learning, or discovering something he never had before. “Yes,” he said finally. Across the abyss of culture, our minds touched. “If you speak equal-to-equal, then you’ll be offending those above your station and honouring those below you.”

“I like the idea of offending those above and honouring those below. As far as I can tell, neither get enough of that.” He laughed; it was half every child’s laugh of delight in seeing the rules broken, and half ironic, far too old.

Perhaps he could aid with an old curiosity of mine. “Since I first heard about the levels, I’ve always wondered this: say a child is born into an okas family, but he is brilliant. He could be a great general, or administrator, or artist; he has the intelligence and the heart for it. What happens to him?”

He laughed; then it fell off his face and he peered at me again, realizing I was serious. “A brilliant okas? How can that be? If he’s born okas, he dies okas, unless he does something extraordinary and is elevated. Into a different caste, I mean, by the Imperator. But nobody’s been elevated since my grandfather’s time.”

“Anyone from any family can be born brilliant,” I said. “You never know.” I got the idea, though; such a child would just never be allowed the chance to show or make full use of it because he’d never be educated. He’d just bang his head against the stone wall of futility his whole life, while heaving brick or whatever. It was the same with women of every caste; what, I wondered, did those who were so rich that servants did all their work do all day? “So if someone can be elevated, can someone be de-elevated?”

“Yes. They can be stripped of everything. My father did that to”—here he said a name I’ve forgotten—“Aitzas, for treason. He and his heir were killed and everyone else was sold into slavery.” He got a look on his face as if he had a terrible memory, and his hand started picking at his clothes. I felt the dark shiver that was starting to become familiar.

“Did you…” I was afraid to ask, but did anyway. “…witness some part of this?”

“Oh yes,” he said with false lightness. “It was what my father wished. One of his object lessons. He did order the gentle death, since the man was Aitzas.”

“Gentle death? As opposed to the not-so-gentle death?” I fought off the sickness I felt rising.

“The impaling-stick is sharpened rather than rough and the man is impaled in a way to reach his heart quickly and not just anywhere through the gut. He made the man serve him as he died and said it was a blessing. I don’t believe it.”

“Serve him?” Did that mean what I thought? The sickness rose stronger.

“You know. His penis in his mouth? He had all the man’s teeth broken out first so he couldn’t hurt him. He bled a lot all over my father’s crotch when he died. I’m not supposed to have nightmares about it…” Something fell with a small bang on the floor; a ruby button, set in gold, that he’d worried right off his tunic with his nails. He didn’t seem to notice, his hand setting straight to work on the next, frantically, as if it had a mind of its own.

“How… old… were you?” I asked, when I could speak.

“Nine.”

“What… lesson… was he trying to teach you?”

“That even the traitorous can be tamed once they’re found out. Even useful... He doesn’t like to waste a man’s death like that. He told me that a man’s death throes are the best.”

I put myself a little into warrior-mind, afraid I’d freeze solid if I didn’t. Let me grow wings, I thought, so I can fly out of this place, so I don’t have to kill a man for no reason tomorrow, and so I can take this child with me to a safe life—no, first ten years’ healing on Haiu Menshir, if that or anything could be enough, then a safe life…

“Maybe I’ve been here too long,” Minis said, a sudden look of worry on his face. “Maybe you should throw me out now... I can be offended but the reason I’ll give that I don’t have you beaten is that you belong to my father. I can act that much. But I don’t want to go.”

“How can you not have nightmares about that? How could anyone?” I said. I had a feeling I was going to myself.

It was a rhetorical question; I didn’t think he’d answer. “I’m supposed to be part of him and since he likes it, I’m supposed to. He doesn’t like it if I show signs that I’m different than him.”

Let me have wings to flee, and let this child flee, this madness. The world felt like it was coming unhinged around me, falling away from my feet, falling away from itself. “But... you are different. You are you. You will like what you like. I guess you have to hide it…?”

“And I hate that. Why am I telling you all this? This is why everyone hates me, too.”

“You are telling me because I am listening with all my heart.” I wanted to weep for him too, except he was Arkan and so it would probably throw him somehow.

“I don’t tell anyone these things. If I’m here too long, someone will tell him. Would you please throw me out, now? That way I could be a secret friend.”

I didn’t have wings, but I had arms. “You need this,” I said, holding them out. “Not to be thrown out.”

He stared at me, stunned. Did no one ever hug him? No, more likely it was that I was beneath him, my touch too common-run for his royal flesh. But he said, “I guess…” and bit his lip, and some other bit of his clothing or jewellery clinked on the floor. “If I can tell you all this, I can do that… I guess…” He flung himself into my arms, and clung hard, burying his face in my neck, a welter of pain and need within a crust of riches that pressed against my skin, cold through my shirt. “You won’t tell anyone, will you?” he whispered, half-muffled against my shoulder.

“My lips are sealed,” I said, putting into my arms all the tenderness I could find in myself, against the horror. As if it could be enough; but he took it in like a dying boy in a desert offered water.

“I’m too big for this,” he whispered, without loosening his grip even a trace. “Shh, shh, no, you aren’t,” I whispered, as if he were Fifth and I were soothing him. He began trembling all over, but without tears, though he should be screaming with them. I wanted to tell him “Let it out,” but remembered where we were. What had his Mahid heard already? Even in his emotion, he had to be Arkan.

So I just held him. I’d let go when he wanted me to. It wasn’t as if I had anything better to do. The irony impinged; here I was, a slave being forced to kill, comforting the son of the man who had betrayed and captured me and meant to enslave my people and destroy everything sacred to me, because the son’s life, as far as I could tell, was far more awful than mine. But it impinged on my mind only, not my heart. To it, he was only a hurt child, and I, a grown-up who could give comfort.

Over time, the trembling eased, and he finally let go, reluctantly, and I did too, and he looked up at me shyly and said, “We’re friends, then?”

“Of course we are friends.”

“Good. I’m glad.” The trace of a smile touched his anguished face.

“So I should throw you out so you can come back,” I said. “But what will they do to me for throwing you out?”

He shrugged. “I’ll just yell at you that you’re boring after all, and stomp off as if I’m having a tantrum. They’ll have to follow me, and if I wave a hand later and say ‘I will be magnanimous!’ they’ll just think I got my underclout in a twist again... I overheard the laundress say that one day and thought it was funny.”

“Dull, dull, dull, that’s me,” I said. “Nothing more agonizingly tedious than a Yeoli.”

He laughed a little, as I’d hoped. “Do you like the tea set? Can I give it to you? I’ll throw a chain at Iskansas to buy it, if you like.” If I liked? He could appropriate whatever he wanted from anyone, I gathered.

“I thank you for the thought, but giving me a gift won’t fit with your act of being bored of me.”

“That’s true. I’ll send one later, anonymously, all right?”

“All right. Go on, easily-bored Minis.” He looked as if he wanted to go out the door as much as to the execution block. “You can come back.”

“Yes… um… thank you for liking me, Karas Raikas.”

I was glad, suddenly, that I’d said little while comforting him. I had forgotten entirely I was living under an alias. Hearing it from his lips brought me back down hard into the Mezem, and I felt like a liar.

But I could still say other truth. “You don’t have to thank me for that. It took no effort on my part.”

He got up and his step turned into a flounce. He looked over his shoulder at me, and down his nose. I opened the door for him. “You’re just so boring. I thought you were going to be interesting, but you’re boring, boring, boring!”

“A thousand pardons!” I snapped. “I guess someone so plain and ordinary as me can’t entertain one so lofty as you!”

He switched to Arkan, spitting out a word several times so that I knew it must mean “boring,” and stamped down the corridor with an unbroken stream of complaint in Arkan, his Mahid following silently like shadows. I slammed shut my door.

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[This scene from Minis’s point of view.]

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