116 - The living sigil of hope

A few days later, I heard in the fighters’ parlour a choked cry in Mana’s voice, as he would make if an arrow in him were being pulled out. I could not come running, as I yearned to; though it must be known that we were friends of some sort, we’d decided to continue pretending not to be, for the eyes of the easily-distracted Director (or idiot, as Iliakaj unfailingly called him). Absent curiosity was the most I could show, so I strolled out as if I’d intended to already.

Mana sat trembling with his face buried in his hands, the Enchian Pages open lying before him. Shivers crawled out all through me from my heart. I peered over his shoulder; such closeness for news reading is not suspicious.

Hidden within the fear of news is the assumption that it will be no worse than one fears. Sieges against the strongholds at the border, I expected, or a pitched battle in the foothills, since Arkan armies had mustered there; it was an odd time to attack, with winter, which would fight for us, coming on. But that had been only a diversion; the main strike had come not by land, but by sea.

In one great ship-battle at Erealanai, our full fleet had been destroyed, and the town taken; now they were pouring upriver into the central plains, and we were already twenty-thousand dead.

As one’s flesh is struck numb at first in a severe wound, my heart felt nothing, and my mind could think. I saw it like one of my teaching-games; Azaila seemed near, a presence like a fire below me while I perched on the beam, and Hurai, saying, “Think, boy. Now—you haven’t got all day.”

We bear the burden of our customs; all through our war-history are times we’d have defended better by attacking, or foreigners have taken advantage, raising armies near our borders without fear, and so forth. While all the other nations around us have their island sea-bases, we are bound not to, for we’d have to take them. The Arkans had struck from Tuzgolu, and so taken us by surprise.

Yet Yeoli half-action was written all over it as well. The Pages wrote little news from abroad that had no bearing on Arko, but it had announced my aunt’s reinstatement to the semanakraseyesin, awaiting my sister’s coming of age, on the stated presumption I was dead; they’d have amended that to acting semanakraseye when they’d got my letter. With all that turmoil, the semanakraseyeni office could hardly run with perfect smoothness.

Whoever was acting chakrachaseye had done what was natural, when another nation sent warriors to their border adjoining us; sent warriors to our border adjoining them. Now they were in the high valleys, while Arko stormed through the plains. Scenes began running before my inward eyes: a forest of red sails on a horizon, frantic cries, “To arms, to sea!”; a ram splintering planking, the roar of fire in rigging, a deck stained red; all the people of the city out on the shore to see their fate decided, and their anguished cries, as they saw. My heart ceased being numb. Next I knew, my eyes were half-full of sparkles and black streaks, and what I did see was the parlour ceiling with its crisscross gilding, beyond the Pages, which were still in my hands. I’d thrown myself straight backwards from my chair; I heard my rage-cry still echoing.

Faces stared, curious; a voice said, “Has Yeola-e burnt down or something, to set them off?” When Iska and Skorsas came, I got up and moved; I was afraid I’d kill any Arkan my arms could reach. Flames seemed to roar through every muscle, crying “Move!”; at the same time, a blade seemed to be working back and forth in my guts; it was not only they who should die. The training-ground was worse than where I was, the city too. I went at a full run to the woods. In the streets people sidled away from me, fear on their faces.

Mana was in our first meeting place, sword in hand, gazing at it. I knew what he was thinking: what is the point of this thing’s existence?

I flung myself at his feet, my face into the dirt—I’d forgotten that gritty dark taste, since Daisas had brought me here—and said nothing. What could I: “I’m sorry?” “Forgive me?” He knelt at my head; when he laid his hand on my shoulder, I shrank away. His comfort was mercy: injustice.

His hands caught my arms, pinned me to him. “Cheng, don’t blame yourself.” You say that in kindness, I thought, as a friend would. “Fourth Chevenga, listen to me. The people wills.” Or to keep me from giving myself justice, because you imagine I might yet be some use. As semanakraseye, as if I were ever worthy while I played at wearing the signet. Better I’d never been born; but that was the stroke of the past, only the next best thing remained. I’d forgotten the dagger, just had Chirel; but there was his sword, which he’d sheathed. He saw my eyes fix on it, and the intent in them, I guess. With a cry of rage he hit me across the face so hard I saw stars.

“Kyash on you!” he yelled, as I knelt reeling. “You are my semanakraseye, I am looking to you for strength in my terror, to be the living sigil of hope as a semanakraseye is supposed to do, and you want to stick yourself and die right in front of me!?” He drew his sword and flung it down on the ground before me, hilt by my sword-hand. “If that’s what you choose and who you are in the end, Fourth Chevenga Shae-Arano-e, then go ahead, best you kevyalin do it, you are worth nothing to me or to Yeola-e or to anyone you supposedly love!”

There was nothing to say to that, of course, but, “I’m sorry. I’ll pull myself together.” I picked up his sword, cleaned the earth from it with my own sword-rag, and handed it back to him hilt-first. It occurred to me about then that the Pages might be as truthful about war news as they were about the Mezem.

Now, the discrepancies leapt out at me, and I spoke them to Mana as soon as they did. Our whole fleet could not have been destroyed, without their taking Asinanai as well, which they’d hardly forget to mention; Tinga-e would hardly be undefended; even if fifty ships with two hundred warriors each were sunk and not a single person swam away, that was only ten thousand dead.

Still, I doubted untruth would reach so far as taking a city. We should not pretend Selina had not fallen, and they were not sailing upriver. We would fight our utmost, and still Arko would outnumber us; I remembered why I’d made friends with the kings all around. I had; Tyeraha had not.

Kranaj knew my aunt as the sister of my father, who’d warred against his father; Astalaz knew her as the semanakraseye who’d warred against his, herself. My hand-clasps of friendship with them had had the distinct feeling of, ‘We shall put the past behind us.’ But in Tyeraha the past had returned. As well—and I should be old enough now not to be troubled by this, I told myself—such friendships are founded, in part, on the friends’ judgment of what the consequences of enmity might be. To put it more bluntly, Kranaj and Astalaz both were more afraid of me as semanakraseye than of Tyeraha or Artira.

It suddenly occurred to me also that I had another possible means of getting a letter home. (How having the spear-point of Arko in my face could sharpen my mind; I’d been remiss not to have thought of it right away.) Persahis, if I could persuade him to take the risk, and he was already taking the risk of healing me.

The letter would be from Mana to his mother; the paper would have a Yeoli-style border of elaborate running-patterns, which in truth were Athali letters, that I would do. I would tell Tyeraha all that had happened—the grium, the truth-drugging, the attempts at escape—and urge her to let the neighbouring kings know that I was alive in Arko, and held in very grave breach of Kurkas’s safe conduct.

So I had my plan, and he bound me to it, saying, “In Arko, I am your people, and the people wills.” It was not necessary, but it felt good. Then he hit my shoulder with his fist, and said, “We’ll get out of this, Cheng.” Now I’d shown my strength, he’d found his again, and answering his grin with one of my own made me feel stronger again. We both knelt to meditate for a time, then went back to the Mezem, apart.

But there was a thought I was guarding my mind from thinking, knowing I’d fall apart all over again, perhaps for good, if I let it have play. Sometimes, in the darkest nights at the death-hour, it is still there. The land diversion and sea attack was my idea. I will never know.

When I was back in my room, Skorsas handed me a parchment packet that flashed with gold. His face under its paint and powder was pale.

It was addressed to me by my real name and sealed with the Imperial Arkan eagle; inside, scribed ornately with golden ink, was a dinner invitation from Kurkas, for five days hence.

“An invitation from the Imperator is a summons,” said Skorsas. “The runner is waiting downstairs, so you’ve got to answer. While you were out, I got a fellow I know in town to do you up some decent stationery, monogrammed and everything. Here’s the pen. What do you want to wear?” (From him, that always meant, ‘I’ve decided what you should wear.’) “You understand you can’t say no, right?”

“I don’t want to say no,” I said, as I wrote to Kurkas in Enchian that if I survived my tenth fight, which would be four days hence, I’d be delighted to join him for dinner. “He and I had agreed to meet in the first place, remember?” He’d learned everything he needed to of me; now was my chance to learn something of him.

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