109 - Who kills becomes

At the start of a fight, each fighter declares his preference of weapons; a toss of a die decides in which mode they will fight for the first round, after which it alternates. Yet the judge, who sits by the Director (and is, I should note in all fairness, a true student of the Ring) might instead command them to fight against each other with each in his preferred mode, if he thinks that might be interesting. Now and then they’ll do it when a high-chainer is matched against a low-chainer, so as to even the odds. This is called Judge’s Clemency.

I generally bid clean blade, which means sword, no shield and no armor, because it made it easiest to end fights quickly. But Skorsas had begun to say, “You should start bidding more things, because one of the days, you’re going to get clemencied.” (I hadn’t, incidentally, been the beneficiary of any Judge’s Clemencies, and both he and I doubted I ever would be.) No matter that I was not a high-chainer, yet, he felt; the judge looks at how well you fight, first.

For my eighth fight my opponent, Seliko, a half-breed from Curlionaiz with three chains, bid full armor, shield, spear, sword and two daggers. “Finally we’ll see Karas Raikas in the ring for a decent amount of time!” the judge said, and called Clemency.

You may beg mercy, that is, ask for one more item of weapon or armor; you get flapped at, but Skorsas, who’d turned ghastly pale under his face-powder, didn’t care about my honour right then, and I never cared about it, in this place. “Shield! Shield!” he yelled at me. I told the judge my wristlets, even though there was no Arkan word for them, since Arkan warriors invariably wear gauntlets instead; I got it across with gestures. Skorsas went even more pale. The crowd cheered me, taking it as gallantry.

I retreated, so as to make Seliko chase me all around the ring, making them flap me again; he’d get tired before I would. When he was spent enough for frustration to seize him, I came in and wrist-parried one of his spear-thrusts with my shield-hand, grabbing the shaft below the blade, then did a low side-cut to his shield-side. He had the habit of throwing his shield too far if he were rattled, which he did now, so I kicked him in the face. Kurkas was there that day, with Minis; the Imperator felt it would be a pleasure to see me kill, I imagine, and so showed the red.

It occurred to me only after that fight, which lets you know what state my head was in, that if he meant to ransom me to my people, I need never set foot in the Ring again; he couldn’t threaten me with death. And yet there were so many other things they could threaten me with; what was better to endure? I set my mind to turning this over.

I didn’t think that what I had done in my eighth fight was particularly brilliant, but the writers seized on it. From then on, I couldn’t walk through the streets of Arko unaccosted unless I hid my head in a hood. People seemed to think I was obliged to greet them, answer the most stupid questions, sign papers and kerchiefs and waxboards, and listen to their lengthy Mezem prognostications, as if I’d chosen this.

Many chains had been won on bets on my eighth, so a rash of gifts came, in gratitude. That is how a fighter acquires riches— that, and taking the riches of those he has beaten, which is his right. Skorsas wondered what disease I had, refusing to wear gold jewelry, or any made of metal. The chains were bad enough.

You don’t want to be in a street of houses in Arko at the hour of noon, whoever you are. Praying isn’t the only observance they make then; in the time when everyone else is silent one will often hear a child’s scream, that goes on far longer than you would think a child had the strength for. The chimes of noon, Arkans call it: a girl at first threshold, seven years old, being cut.

What Yeolis would call maiming, Arkans call purification, as if a woman’s sexual pleasure were dirt or corruption. All my time as a fighter, I never touched an Arkan woman. It was not only because I didn’t like Arkans; in truth, it was more in fear of the devastation I would find between her legs. What would I say? How could I give her pleasure, or take any, when I wanted to run out and be sick?

I began getting love letters soaked in scent, kerchiefs with lip prints on them, life-epistles of unbelievable tedium, invitations. How these people could treat me as if I were somehow their friend, as if there was any bond between them and me other than their witnessing forced barbarity on my part, I could not understand. If they were solas—and many were, since solas are naturally interested in the Mezem—they’d soon be lovingly seeing off their brothers and sons to kill my people, if they hadn’t already. It was as if these Arkans, and I, were living in a place other than the world.

The packets often came from followers of those I had killed. It is an ancient Arkan principle, too barbaric now even for some of them to stomach, but still partly encoded in their law, at the time: tzen kellin ripalin: “who kills, becomes.” Who kills your father becomes your father, taking ownership of and responsibility for his progeny; who kills the Imperator in a coup becomes Imperator; who kills your favorite fighter becomes your favorite fighter, and gets all his possessions. Nor were they feigning it; why go to such trouble? Those who had loved Seliko now truly loved me, as love goes in the teeming bowl of the Mezem.

Skorsas almost fainted when a velvet-bordered invitation came, from someone named Mil Torii Itzan. It seemed he was one of the most renowned party-givers among the Aitzas. The inspired host will often bring in a prized gladiator, to brighten up the decor, and provide sure amusement. “What?” my boy said. “You’re not going to go?” By his face you’d think I’d pissed in the offering-bowl.

“You mistake me for one who cares fly-dung whether this fellow’s offended,” I said, which made him flinch as if he’d been wounded. This is a youth, you understand, who when I decided to crochet myself a marya—could there be anything more innocent?—promised me he’d die of shame if I did it in public, because in Arko that sort of thing is women’s work. So I learned that crocheting in the Fighter’s Box while watching other men’s fights was a sure way to get rid of Skorsas, if I wanted to. He lived, though.

“Someone has to convey my regrets,” I said. “I don’t care what you tell him. Have a good time.” As he was primping himself on the dread night, I heard an agonized choking groan; worried he was sick, I ran into his room, and found him in horrified tears, moaning about fatal flaws and weeping pustules and how it would draw every eye like a beacon-fire. A pimple had come up on the side of his nose. I nearly fell over laughing, while he snifflingly called me a callous barbarian. You could forget Skorsas was fifteen, until he so reminded you.

The next morning, he described pleasure-boys in gold lace gloves who would pass you oysters from their mouths, a shower of rose petals, a waterfall of wine. I took it all as herb-imaginings. I’d never been to a Mil Torii Itzan party.

As I came off the training-ground, a writer chased me. Though by custom they had to write praisingly, they all hated me; I gave them slighting answers or none at all, and had struck one once. Though I’d given him fair warning—“I’ll hit you if you follow me”, and he’d followed me—it is a thing which, as Arkans say, is just not done. Yet the more they hated me, the more simperingly they lauded me in writing, taking joy, it seemed, in hypocrisy.

“So!” this one said, pen poised on paper. “I hear you weep after every fight, Raikas! Why, when you have won?” How he’d found that out, since I did it only in the baths or my room, I could not know; at least not until I read that day’s Pages. The Serpent’s Tale, as they call the page entirely devoted to gossip, had a detailed account of Mil Torii Itzan’s party, and how Skorsas had boasted of me. “Not only is he the bravest, the strongest, the best-looking,” and so on and on, “but he has the kindest heart… He weeps after every fight.”

I called him into my room. “Is this all you said?”

“I… I haven’t read it,” he answered, with a look like a whipped dog’s. I thrust it at him. Even more like a whipped dog, his eyes going red, he said, “Raikas… I can’t read,” though I’d thought fessas got educated. I translated for him as best I could. When I was done, he said, “Beat me, jewel of the Mezem. I’ll bear it.”

When I’d first come, Skorsas had had the habit of flinching if I raised my arm to scratch. Now he was getting over it; my promise I’d never strike him had helped. Iska would never do that either—threat of dismissal was enough to keep the boys in line, and Skorsas never needed keeping in line anyway—and one who has been beaten by those who raised him doesn’t lose the habit so easily. I had to surmise it had been Tondias, whom he had loved.

“I’m not going to beat you. Just tell me if this is all you said.” He had no idea, he admitted, nearly in tears; he didn’t even remember saying half of what was quoted. I bared my heart to him. “The Marble Palace knows enough; I don’t want the world to know.”

“To know what?” he said. “From what you said I said… well, maybe I said it grandly, but there wasn’t a word that wasn’t true.”

I thought of what Minis said, about his father wanting to bring it out public to shame me, and wondered why I was belabouring my boy. Kurkas might march me through the streets of Arko in a collar tomorrow, for all I knew. Yet I’d always been raised with the habit of modesty, so Skorsas’s boasting, as if speaking for me, bothered me to the bone.

“Raikas… are you worried they’re going to think you’re the missing king of Yeo… Yol… um, however you pronounce it, your country, or something like that?”

Had the news not got back here? That was not like the Mezem. Yet even Arkans, it seems, can respect secrets.

“No. That hardly matters, at this point.”

That was the way I told him, for which, on retrospect, I am ashamed. His mouth froze, in a stunned circle, scarlet with lip paint, the blue of his eyes showing white all around. Then he threw himself to his knees at my feet, clearly wanting to prostrate himself as with the Imperator, but wavering; by Arkan law, that is an obeisance for the Imperator alone. He spoke, and I knew it was Arkan, but it was far from equal-to-equal, and so I couldn’t make it out, except for “Celestialis, blessed of Celestialis, my little professional God” and a few other things.

“Skorsas, you know how I am; equal-to-equal, please?”

“But… but… Raikas… I mean… I shouldn’t… it’s wrong… I don’t know the proper title, I don’t know the appropriate honorifics, I’ve been slighting you with every word and motion, I’ve been doing everything wrong, I’ve been treating you like sh—uh—excrement.”

That was a new word to me, so, as always, I asked him what it meant. He threw his gloved hands over his eyes. “Um… what comes out… from behind… from the, um, rear, you know…”

“You mean shit?” His jaw dropped spectacularly again; in a blink, it seemed, I’d shape-changed into a person who would never swear. In this place, I thought, I’m a fool not to have expected this. “No, you haven’t, Skorsas. You’ve treated me perfectly from start to finish. You want to know how to treat me in the future? Exactly as you have, not a speck different. Except… just one thing.” My heart, being only a human heart, cried out for it.

“They know who I am, I’m certain, but it’s still best you call me Karas Raikas in public. In private, will you call me by my true name? Chevenga?” He hesitated, wanting a title; I refused to tell him one, leaving him no choice. The best he could do was “Shefen-kas.” Why it meant so much to me, I wasn’t sure, but hearing him say it to me was like warm sun on my skin after a year of winter.

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