93 [July 28] - No more mirrors

“I have to stay away from you,” Minis said. “For a good long while.” Had Kurkas said something? Or had Minis discerned some other sign of danger? I had begun to learn that Arkans have almost a preternatural sense for signs of displeasure from those above them on the enormous hierarchy that rules their lives. For Minis, that was but one, but he’d learned.

“I can’t stay much longer today. I have a competition I have to witness or they’ll be disappointed. My new tutor has a lot of work for me. He’s an old stinker that my father likes.”

“A lot of work is good for you, Minis. You will end up with a better mind for it. But I’ll miss you.”

He stared at me as if I’d given him treasure—or rather, as if he were any other child I’d given treasure; he had so much treasure already, more would hardly touch him. “You will?” he said, amazed. I’d thought we were both clear that we were friends already—even just our headlong journey through Arko on wheels should have been enough to forge anyone on it into friends for life—but he was so unused to friendship, I saw, it hadn’t yet stuck. I resolved to keep telling him.

“Yes, of course,” I said.

He looked away from me, as if unable to bear something so good, this stripling in enough jewels to clothe ten kings anywhere else on the Earthsphere. “I already read half of my tutor’s stupid reading list so when he tells me to read something I’ll have it done already.” So unable to bear it, he had to swerve away from the topic for a bit.

“That much less work for you, then.”

“I don’t want to stay away!” he shouted, then clapped a hand over his mouth, his brilliant blue eyes white all around. “Sorry,” he whispered.

“I know, Minis.” I tightened my arms around him.

“If you need something… just send a note to my chamberlain.” He didn’t tell me how; it sounded too risky anyway. “People are always asking me for things. I already tried—really quietly, don’t worry—to buy you while you’re still a low-chainer. I told my chamberlain I wanted another racehorse and a brace of hounds and a gladiator.”

I froze, my heart coming to my throat. He tried a second way to free me; maybe the next one will work. “You did?”

“Yes. My father told me not to meddle with a money-making scheme. There’s a law; no one is allowed to buy gladiators who aren’t too crippled to fight, or fans would be buying out popular gladiators all the time and then no one else would get to see them fight. But I should be above laws like that, when it comes to you! Well, I am, but he’s above me. I threw a tantrum, but he didn’t care. I have to go. Should I slam your door for you?”

“Minis…” I felt my eyes tear up, as usual. When I looked back at how many times I’d shed them since crossing the border, it boggled the mind. “Thanks for trying. And be careful.” Him throwing a tantrum in front of Kurkas on my behalf was much more of Kurkas’s notice than I wanted. “Definitely slam the door.”

“Is there something you don’t mind me breaking?” he said, calculatingly.

It wasn’t as if I owned anything here, or at all. I quaffed the water out of the Arkan-glass cup Skorsas usually kept filled for me, and handed it to him.

“Thanks,” Minis said.

“You’re welcome.”

His face darkened, taking on the role as he stood up. “Don’t you do that again!” he roared in his piping voice. “You’re my fighter and you are better than that! You fight or I’ll have you flogged to encourage you!” He flung the door open with a bang and hurled the glass through to smash on the corridor wall. “You obey! Or else!!” He slammed the door again behind him.

“Don’t throw things! It’s rude!!” I bellowed through the door, playing my own part.

“YOU SHUT UP!” I heard his stamping foot-falls down the corridor, like thumps on a drum. “You tell Raikas to quit slamming his door, IT’S RUDE!”

†

Wounded on an arm, I could go walking in the City. Though I wanted to go alone—I was reconnoitering ways of escape, of course—Skorsas insisted on coming with me at first. With some effort he made it clear to me it was that I might get lost. As in Tinga-e or Thara-e, knowing where to go in Arko is a matter of memorization, except much more so, since Arko is as big as four Tinga-e’s. At least there is the golden eagle on the cliff to navigate by.

The cliffs of Arko are polished smooth as a dead-still pool, and their bases, all around, are patrolled by guards, lest vandals mar the polish. To climb them was conceivable with pitons, as I had thought out at night, even if one had to drive every one of them into mirror-clean rockface with a hammer. Still, I had no way of getting any—a Yeoli captive entering a shop selling such things could hardly avoid suspicion—and, more fatal to the plan, it would be impossible to do silently.

The lefaeti were well-guarded, as Iska had said. They are worked from the top, and the guards there have a clear view of the bottom, so that if one were to commandeer one, it would not be raised. At night, they are kept raised at a position mid-way up the cliff, even the double ones, and no ropes left hanging.

The other egress is the great corridor bored through the cliff, commanded by the Gate, which is some seven man-lengths high and four wide. At night it is bolted well, from the cliff-side; there are actually two gates, between which is a tunnel and a barracks carved out of rock, where the guards sleep.

Every load that goes out by either way is inspected through and through, sometimes with spear-points; every person must show his bare face and papers. Little trouble, to forge or steal papers; but unless I found a way to turn my eyes blue, they would betray me.

All this I learned in the few days after my second fight. Meanwhile, I lived the Mezem life.

It is a life that etches itself into the mind like a sight seen while in agony, yet seems unreal, both at once; being always near death one’s eyes see everything hard and clear, yet one’s mind is in constant disbelief.

Since one never thinks ahead more than eight days, time slows, sometimes passing like syrup, and indeed loses its meaning, replaced by the number of one’s victory chains.

Other than those of the boys, who are as present and unobtrusive as air, the faces in the quarters are ghostlike for all they appear solid and alive. Most are soon gone, while those that stay are to be feared; the more chains hang around their necks, the deeper death seems worn into their features. I remember thinking, ‘I must not let that happen to me.’

I notice that, writing about the Mezem, I fall into the present tense, as if that time of my life were graven into stone, unchanging, and I were sealed into it forever, as into a crypt. Anyone else who has been through it will understand.

Whatever else your life is, even the demarchy, the Mezem etches itself into the soul, and stays forever. To write of it carries you back, making the present tense seem proper, so I hope my lapses may be forgiven.

Minis, I learned, had granted leave for Skorsas to buy everything he wished in which to dress me, money no object, so he kept taking me into the tailors’ street, an unending look of glee on his face. ‘Why do I resist this?’ I asked myself, gazing at my image in the perfect mirror of yet another tony shop, in a scarlet puff-blouse with sheer lace in front down to the navel, showing my skin just enough to be enticing, as if that person could be me. ‘I am this.’ Right then and there I shouted, as best I could in Arkan, “Dress me however you want, but no more mirrors!” He never pulled me in front of one again, and took the one in my room away when I took it off its hooks. So I became invisible, to myself.

I will write very little of my fights; I’ve described the first two much too much already, considering they were fights that never should have happened, and lives that never should have ended. They have been made too much into public shows already; I won’t lower my reader to the level of the slavering Mezem crowd.

If, on the other hand, you are on that level, there is one collection of scribblings, regularly printed by the hundred on the great Arkan machine, called The Watcher of the Ring. It concerns itself entirely with the Mezem, its doings, and the fights, recounting in relishing detail every one. In old issues, lingering on the shelves of libraries like stains on an artwork, may be found detailed accounts of all my matches.

My third was against a Srian three-chainer named Dinosti. The matches are made supposedly by lot, but everyone knows this is not true, and so I was being honoured, matched against someone with more chains than I. Only one more, though; they were honouring me cautiously.

It was the same as the first and second fights, except this time I got it in the sword-arm shoulder, the sword-tip going in to the bone, giving me a flash of shock bad enough that I didn’t catch Chirel with my shield-hand when I dropped it. I’d played with doing the wrist-parry with no wristlets before, but never in a real fight; now I did, and won at the expense of a scrape.

But he was only stunned; the crowd held up their kerchiefs. Whites and reds were about even, it seemed to me; Minis was in the Imperial Box, but not Kurkas, so it was up to the Director. Our eyes met, and he smiled; here was a way to get even with me. He held up red, and I did what I must. Minis had spoken true; Forlanas could hurt me, and cared not a dust-speck whether he threw away another life to do it.

This time I wept unrestrained, Skorsas wrapping his arms around my head, as Iska stitched me, put my arm in a sling and bandage pinning it to my chest, and said, “Three days in the sling, eight days no training, twelve days no fighting.” Then he gave an order to Skorsas, and I could be proud I understood it: “Once he’s in bed, tell me; I’m going to talk to him.”

He didn’t come up until I was calm, though, the pain-juice dulling the heart-pain as well as the shoulder-pain, and he sat for a while on the edge of the bed, just looking at me, at first. Then he smoothed my forelock, which had grown back a little, back from my face, as my mother had, except with a gloved hand.

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