T H E • P H I L O S O P H E R • I N • A R M S: 85 - In which Minis wags his tail, and I my manhood

“You didn’t capture me,” I said. “It’s hardly your fault.”

“But…” One ear was getting soaked, as he chewed on it. “My father’s keeping you. Making you do this. It’s hurting you. And because he is, by extension... I am... I guess.”

“You make his choices? I don’t think so. Do you have any influence on his choices?” He wagged his head no in that Arkan way, making his ears jiggle. “Then it’s not your responsibility.”

“But, if the Imperator said... ‘no more slaves’... who would do the work?” I heard the rudiments of Arkan ideas about work here; of course he’d be getting it as part of his Imperial education.

Perhaps he could benefit from the rudiments of Yeoli ideas. “I can tell you who does it where I come from,” I said. “Everyone. And everyone gets their share of the fruits. In every country, people have to work to eat and keep roofs over their heads. The only difference is how it’s all arranged.”

“I heard people don’t get whipped there,” he said. “But what if they’re being lazy and letting other people do the work? Do they starve, like they do here?”

“You’d get kicked out of your”—there is no Enchian word for ‘workfast’ so I just used the Yeoli —“keresin. Or your enterprise would fail. And if you didn’t do something you’d starve… unless it’s some sort of incapacitation that’s not your choice, in which case your family or your village will take care of you.” Of course he asked me what a keresin was. “A group of people, all together in some sort of work.”

“Like a korrashun?”

“It means literally brothers and sisters, but it really means brothers and sisters in work. What’s a korashin?”

“There’s an owner and he pays people to work for him.”

My gaze must have turned perplexed; I had thought that if there was an owner all the other people were slaves, so why was he paying them? “So no one can buy…” I couldn’t think of an Enchian word for ‘fast-shares’ either. “…parts of it? And the workers aren’t slaves? Or aren’t all slaves? Some must be if he’s an owner.”

“Not necessarily. He doesn’t have to own the people to still own the korrashun.”

“Then what does he…” It occurred to me then it must be the same as what members of a workfast owned, but he owned all of it, and just paid them for what they did… an arrangement that was odd beyond odd, but a logical-enough extension from arrangements I’d seen even at home. The true difference lay elsewhere. “In Yeola-e, it’s not legal for anyone to own anyone else, or for people to be considered property at all,” I said. “No one can so rule another’s life. Earlier in our history it wasn’t in the statutes, because to us it was absolutely unthinkable. But when we started rubbing shoulders with slave-holding countries, and being influenced by them…” I admit, I left out those details that embarrassed me. “So we had to make laws that set out every Yeoli’s rights.”

He just listened, wide-eyed, obviously fascinated; the expression wasn’t unlike that of a dog sitting next to you while you are eating, his entire being devoted to expressing hunger through his eyes, except these were blue instead of brown, and he wanted food for thought.

“The thing that always baffled me—I’ve spent a long time wrestling with this—was, how can anyone really presume that he’s taking someone else’s choices away entirely, anyway, when we are always making choices, when everything we think and say and do is by choice?” I inwardly slapped down the voice inside that laughed at me. Look at what you’ve done, because you are a slave. “If there are a thousand thousand slaves in Arko, for instance, why don’t they just all get up and walk away? Who’s going to stop so many people?”

Those blue eyes took on the look of a fear so deep it was primeval. The fear that is in your blood, I thought. If there were a successful slave revolt, the Aans would lose everything they were, let alone what they had.

“Once I’d been a slave myself, and then lived for a while in a place where they held slaves, I understood it better. It all has to do with who people think they are. When a person becomes convinced that he is worthy of slavery only, that a slave is all he really is, then he’ll stay. It horrifies me, but I understand it. At least somewhat.”

“So no one just comes and slaps a chain on your child and says stop fighting or he gets killed? Or you get chained up and someone will beat you or kill you if you don’t obey?”

“If you’re a Yeoli and you get captured by Lakans, you suffer that. But in Yeola-e? Not possible. Not conceivable. At least if I win fifty, I’m free. Or so they claim.”

“You will be,” he said, with the absolute confidence of childhood, again. “And of course they do. It’s a big ceremony; he gets to break a wooden sword and then he gets to ride the length of the Avenue of Statuary, loaded with his stuff behind in procession, and out the Main Gate, with everybody cheering him. I asked my father if could set someone free for my birthday and he told me not to be greedy; I already had my present.”

“That’s too bad. I think you would have enjoyed that.”

“It was going to be you.”

I froze, the world turning silent, even with the city making so much noise. Free… he’s Kurkas’s son. Of course he could set me free. He may be a child, but he has power. I was suddenly dizzy.

“I’m sorry,” he said. That was why he’d said it before.

“Not your fault,” I said, from a suddenly dry throat. “Minis… thank you.” I remembered how desperately he’d sought my arms, though he hadn’t known it at first, how he’d buried himself in me; to be willing to give me up for my own sake was a great sacrifice, for an eleven-year-old child so afflicted by unthinkable horrors, and bereft of love from where he should be getting it. I realized he’d never mentioned his mother; here, it was not implausible to think the worst, or even worse than I could think of. I was afraid to ask him.

“You’re welcome, but it didn’t work.” His eyes were suddenly wet all around again. Part of that, I knew, was the fight in his own heart, between wanting me close and wanting me free.

“That doesn’t mean I can’t be grateful for the thought, for the wish, when I know you like me being here.”

“You aren’t happy here and if I’m your fan, I should be doing stuff to make you happy. I’d miss you… but I’m used to being... being... by myself.” His voice began to break.

“But you’d still set me free; that’s what strikes me.”

He pounded the bed with his fist, made up to look like a forepaw. “But it didn’t work!”

“Then I’ll have to fight my way out. Koree said he thinks I can do it, too, and he ought to know.” The Mahid were on the other side of the door; I opened my arms. “Come here. Pup.”

He launched himself into them, though he glanced to make sure he wasn’t landing on the wound. “Why do I always end up here?”

“Because you want and need to be.”

“Yes. Oh... I’m a pup today, I can whine…” It changed into a canine whimper that was strikingly realistic. I couldn’t help but laugh.

I had one other point to make, though. Maybe he’d remember it, when he was Imperator. “I will tell you something: slavery makes people less human.” His whining cut off. “To each other, to those who own them, and to themselves.”

“I think I understand that now.”

“What you had to understand was that slaves are human are in the first place,” I said. “There’s a reason it’s unlawful at home.”

“Yes,” he said. “Well… I guess I should tell you what I came here wanting you to do… if… it’s okay, if it’s your choice… you want to put a leash on me and we can go for a walk?”

†

Many people would doubt this, but I actually did ask myself whether it would be wise. The first who’d object, of course, was Iska, as it would be hard to avoid putting weight on the leg. It also occurred to me that it might draw Kurkas’s notice, and perhaps even objection, which could get me, and thus Yeola-e, in worse trouble than both were already in. In that sense, it was truly irresponsible.

And yet there is a part of me that cannot say no to a needful child, especially one so needful; and another part of me that did want to get into the spirit of Jitzmitthra, having my own desperate needs. Perhaps it was my age, too, still only in the first year of my majority, or my situation, taking me away from the semanakraseyesin and the sense of responsibility that permeates it.

Or perhaps it was just that walking Kurkas’s son, dressed as a dog, through Arko on a leash was just something that in my mischievous heart, I could not resist doing. Those who know me best tell me, when I ponder it myself, “You did it, Fourth Chevenga Shae-Arano-e, because you are you.”

I’ll have it known that I took one precaution: asked Minis, as Imperial Heir speaking to a slave, to order me to do it, so that I’d be able to say, truth-drugged or not, he had and so I’d had no choice. He did t eagerly.

The idea turned Skorsas white, which was stark under purple hair, but with Minis and me agreeing, he could not stop us, and so he resorted to prayer. When I limped over to the closet (putting weight on it didn’t seem that bad), Minis said, “No, no—naked is perfect!” The more outrageous the better, is the rule during Jitzmitthra; Arkans are all trying to outdo each other in it.

That made it even better—I could wag my manhood at all Arko—except that the demarchic brand scar would show, but I could hide that under a handkerchief tucked under the strap of Chirel, which I was of course required to wear. Iska tried to talk us out of it, too, losing his falsetto in shock, but it was just as futile.

†

“Don’t forget, you have to sniff the butt of every other dog you meet,” I told the future Imperator of Arko, as I limped naked, he crawled on all fours, and his two white Mahid followed, out of step, slouching and making faces, but still deadly smooth, out of the Mezem and onto the street, a widening circle of stunned, gaping silence following us as we went, except among the fighters in the parlour, who just laughed really hard. “And piss on trees… lifting your leg, of course.” He agreed lustily, giggling, and pulled on the leash. “Heel, boy! Heel!” I snapped. Of course boys don’t piss as dogs do, and he ran out after the first two trees.

On the street, it was one grand party, with everyone in wild costumes; we didn’t stand out until people saw who he was. Naked hands and other body parts were everywhere; men were women and women men; people of indeterminate sex were fanciful creatures. Everyone laughed, sang, danced, poured streams of wine into their own or each other’s mouths.

Of course the hound knew the way, so he was in truth leading the human. He was merciful on my leg, taking me to a little eating-place fairly near. Its name, Pikeras Fokas, sounded like it was chosen so as to cause one to utter a swearword if one drunkenly reversed the beginning sounds of the two words, a cleverness that I would come to know as typically Arkan. By the time we got there, we were being followed by a sizable crowd.

In between my apologizing to everyone for his behaviour as he was just a young pup so I hadn’t got him entirely trained yet, he whispered to me what to order, and I just mimicked it to the server, being as impeccably polite and courtly as I could.

We had the famous Arkan dish of potatoes fried to crispness, which I’d never had before, and wine, I sipping out of a flawless Arkan glass cup, he lapping it up from a bowl on the floor; I only found out after I downed a whole glassful in one draught that it was a century old, as he would drink nothing younger. No matter; one of the white shadows was carrying Minis’ money bag, and there was enough there to get me drunk beyond feeling pain in my leg, even though by the time I got back to the Mezem it was bleeding again.