111 - The last of yourself

I did not think Triadas would come back, but he did, the next morning. I had alternated between tortured sleep and attacks of tears all night, and I was in the latter when he came in. I just said between my sobs, “It comes and goes; give me a bit,” and he stepped back out the door, the Arkan picture of politeness.

He came back when I was calm again and so could see him. His distinguished face was peaked with sympathy—I’d learned how to read it on an Arkan face—but it disappeared when he saw I saw him, his features going Mahid-like.

My puzzlement must have showed on mine, for he said, “I would not so diminish you, Chefenkas, as to feel sorry for you.”

“How do you mean?” I said. Maybe someday, I thought, I will understand Arkans. “Who wouldn’t feel sorry for me? Look at the situation I’m in; it’s not exactly secret from you; how does your sympathy diminish me?” He was no less confused than I; we ended up agreeing it was a difference of customs.

I would come to understand it better in time; it’s well exemplified by a tale that started going around some years later, about a funeral attended by a family that was an Arkan half joined to a Yeoli half. The Arkans stood stiff-lipped and silent, with only the occasional decorous tear, as they feel is appropriate; the Yeolis threw themselves at their grief, keening, pulling on their hair, flinging themselves on the ground and so forth, as we feel appropriate.

“What is wrong with these people,” the Arkans whispered to each other, “carrying on disgracefully like this at a funeral; have they no care for the dead?” Meanwhile the Yeolis were saying to each other, “What is wrong with these people? Are their hearts made of stone? Have they no feelings? Have they no care for the dead?” It is all what you think, and what you make the expressions of others mean in your mind.

“Last night when we spoke, I didn’t say all I meant to,” he said. “There are few people who can throw me off my course when I am speaking; you’re one of them.”

“I didn’t mean to,” I said, “and I welcome the rest.” I knew him well enough now to know he would say nothing to hurt me, or at least intended to hurt me.

“Well, first there’s this,” he said. “You might take comfort from the words of your own augur.”

“My own augur?”

“Jinai,” he said. That was a name an Arkan could pronounce. “You have it committed perfectly to memory; we know, for we asked you on two different days, and the versions were identical to the word. So many men would have quailed from choosing the fork you did, preferring the heroic death. You think so far beyond yourself… but he saw you free again, as you recall, so you might find reassurance in that.”

I took a deep breath. Again, it was one thing to know they had got everything out of me; it was another to hear it in plain words, spoken back to me. I felt naked beyond naked. Triadas now knew my and Yeola-e’s destiny, insofar as Jinai had seen true, better than Artira or anyone else at home. He had to know that too.

“Well… some might see it as selfish on my part, choosing the fork of longest life,” I said, trying to hang on to the knowledge that it was real, that I was talking to the Arkan general assigned to conquer Yeola-e about the augury.

“Those who think you only live for yourself, yes.” There was that. “Chefenkas… I can’t say how much I admire you. You’re not going to talk me out of it.” I laughed then, in spite of everything.

“My first thought, when I learned we had you, was to conquer your nation without drawing any blood at all, by making an agreement with you under which you’d serve as a puppet king,” he said. “So I asked if you’d agree to that, under the truth-drug.”

“I can't imagine I said anything but no.”

He rolled his eyes, Arkan style, which by then I had come to learn was a symbolic glance towards Celestialis: in other words, an appeal to the Gods. “Yes, you said no. Did you ever say no. It didn’t matter what I either bribed or threatened you with.”

“I suppose it wouldn’t,” I said, “when I think about it.” Semana kra.

“We’ll give you every luxury you can imagine and wish, for the rest of your life, if you’ll do it… no. We’ll kill you horribly, if you won’t… no. We’ll let you out of the Ring, if you will… no. We’ll torture you to insanity if you won’t… no. We’ll find a way to free you of the curse of your foreknowledge, so you live past thirty, if you will… no. We’ll tell all the world that you have it, including Yeola-e, where it was a violation of your statutes, 21-1 and 21-5-7, not to reveal it, if you won’t… no.”

Like the tolls of a huge gong, was hearing him say each thing I knew, and yet could not at heart truly believe, he knew. “The only thing that really gave you pause was, we’ll kill everyone in your family if you won’t; but even that was a no.” The wrist-shackles pinched, and the neck-restraint hurt my throat; I’d jolted against them involuntarily before I knew it, wanting to fly at him. Tears burned behind my eyes.

“Don’t worry, Chefenkas,” he said. “We won’t do these things, as you yourself told us they’d be futile. Under the drug, you couldn’t be lying. The strength of your own conviction is protection. I knew that as a saying; I’ve never seen it so demonstrated.”

I took several deep breaths. “But Kurkas could do any of these things just for spite,” I said, when I could say it evenly. From all I knew of him, I wouldn’t put it past him. “The one whose orders you follow unquestioningly.”

“He Whose Discretion is the Propriety of the World did not ask every detail of my conversations with you,” he said. “So they were not given.” Kahara, I thought, he’s protecting me.

“When I asked you why you wouldn’t do it, no matter what, you invariably said the same thing, in Yeoli, though I’m not sure my pronunc—”

“Semana kra,” I said.

“Yes. ‘The people wills,’ you said it means. I think… I could have spent my whole life, trying to understand that… or more exactly, what it is, to you.”

“I was raised that way, that’s all,” I said. “You weren’t, so you don’t see it. What’s so complex about that?”

He laughed again. “I get the impression sometimes that absolutely nothing is complex for you, Fourth Chefenkas. Maybe some day, somehow, I’ll be granted the opportunity to learn how you do it.”

I didn’t even want to open my mouth to answer that, so I didn’t. “So the puppet-king idea is out,” I said. “What’s the plan, then… ransom?” Why not ask? For all I knew, from how this was going, he might just tell me.

“I don’t know,” he said. “My orders are just come back and truth-drug you for all that you know that might be useful to the war effort. It’s He Whose Whim is the Will of the World who will decide your fate.”

“Of course. Who else?” Triadas, I realized, would not have put the grium in me, had he meant to ransom me. It was half-action, and he didn't have half-action in him.

“Well, you might have been given to me, for all you know. You haven’t been, alas.”

I could agree with that alas. At least if I was in Triadas’ hands, whatever was done to me would be with purposefulness keen as a sword-edge, not blunderingly capricious, as with Kurkas. It would have the mercy of making sense.

“Well… what are the orders for when you’re done with me, here?” I asked. “Which I gather you are.”

“Yes. I head off for Yeola-e again, today. As far as I know, they’re taking you back to the Mezem.” Of course, what else? That was half-action, too—if I were killed, so much for any painstakingly delicate ransom negotiations—but Kurkas took pleasure in watching me fight, and his pleasure came before all else.

“So you came to say farewell.”

“I came,” he said, “because the wisest man I know once told me, ‘We should always spend time in the company of those we admire, as that improves us.’”

“If I had any power,” I said, “I’d wonder if you were flattering me. But, being so helpless, I know you cannot be.” A pang of pity for him, like I’d had so many times the night before, hit again, and with it, a flash of clarity into the future. “It’s going to cost you the last of yourself, Triadas, to conquer us.”

“I know,” he said, and set his teeth behind his lips. “I expect to die there. You understand, about that. That reminds me, I meant to ask you… well, it’s too personal, perhaps.”

“Too personal?” I laughed again. “Says the man who truth-drug-scraped me. You must have counted every single one of the pubic hairs on the inside of the loincloth of my mind.” That got a snorting, involuntary laugh from him. “Ask away.”

“You give yourself to a young death—”

“I give myself to no such thing.”

“See yourself going to a young death, then, pardon me. See it ahead of you. How certain do you think it really is?”

“Did you ask me that under truth-drug?”

“Yes.”

“What did I answer?” I was curious.

“Answer me while you’re not, first,” he said. “Say the truth, and the two answers will be the same.”

“I’ve always considered it entirely certain,” I said. “I’ve planned, and timed, my whole life, to that.”

He nodded his head yes, in the Arkan way. I found my gaze fixing on him. Well? Were the answers the same? He was showing no sign either way.

What does it mean, that he does not show me? Is it in mercy? Or is he fighting the war that he must, against me, and so is hiding something that would be merciful from me? With Triadas Teleken, I could not know.

Of course they’re the same. I know myself well enough. So I told myself, and did not ask him.

“However unlikely,” he said, “you might be able to face me on the field some day, no longer so helpless. I am not sure whether I dread it, or yearn for it, more, or even which urging is my wisdom and which my foolishness.”

“I only yearn for it,” I said. “I wonder if it will still depend on me getting fifty fights, of all things? Or ransomed first…”

“You hold onto that, Chefenkas.” He looked up, away from me, his mind reaching ahead, as a general’s does, out of Arko and into Yeola-e. “My wish is that you suffer as little as possible. And you have the oath I swore last night.”

“Thank you for both, Triadas. And for the many small kindnesses you’ve shown me.”

“You are more than welcome. Let us do what we must with a little grace, hmm?” He stood to go. “I shall not see you again, unless we do meet on the field, I should think, Chefenkas. Hold to your augur’s words and your yearning. Your Spirit of All be with you.”

“Thank you, I’ll do that. Your Steel-Armed… no, wait, sorry, that’s solas… your… well, your whichever God, I don’t know many Aitzas so I haven’t learned, be with you too.”

“Thank you,” he said, smiling, then laid his hand, gentle as it always was, to me, on my shoulder. He was wise enough not to embrace me; if he had, I’d have ripped out his windpipe with my teeth. I readied myself to do it, in case he did. “Farewell, Chefenkas.”

“Until that day, Triadas.” He clicked the door quietly shut behind him again, and not a tenth-bead later two Mahid came in to take me back to the Mezem.

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