122 - Children in the Ring

So my double life was doubled again; in time, I imagined, it would become like the Legion Mirrors. By day, I lived in the Mezem world, in which I politely disdained all other fighters, including this aberration of a female; by night, we lived in a two-person world of our own creation, bathing in passion, free but for the hands over mouths to keep silent.

Sometimes, being young, full of the fire of training and desperate to throw off our chains at least for a soaring moment, we were wild as beasts; sometimes we were each other’s infinitely-tender healers, for as my slaver had hurt me, hers had hurt her, and she hadn’t had the relief of killing him.

Niku began her work, whatever it was, telling her boy that she must be alone in the woods to meditate as much of each day as she could. She wasn’t sure how long it would take her, but guessed somewhere between four and six moons. “You are sure I cannot help in some way, to make it faster?” I asked her. Eventually, in the Ring, she’d carve it through the Director’s skull that she was to be taken seriously, and once she did, I’d have to taste even more of the little death that I already did at each dip of his hand into Fate’s Helmet; now his stupidity was a boon.

She, of course, worried about the grium; I could forget the horror of it, in her arms that pulled me in so hard and so gently at once, in her hands brushing back my hair and her lips as they kissed the spot under my eyebrow. At least I was eating by the Haian’s prescription now—the Mezem chefs were willing to cook apart for me, since I’d always been civil to them—and smoking like a house on fire. No more red meat, and only a little white, I must eat; as well certain vegetables and spices were forbidden, and others required. I didn’t like it; but then no one sensible truly likes inhaling the poisonous fumes of burning tobacco-leaves either.

“You don’t have the skill anyway, omores,” Niku said. “You must just give me money.” So the expensive baubles that had come with locks of hair and notes saying “A favour for my favourite,” or “Wear this, Raikas, and think of me” got pawned by Skorsas, and Niku would buy whatever it was she was buying.

“Not to worry, you have plenty,” said Skorsas. I’d given authority over the money coming to me to him, since I didn’t not consider myself owning any of it, and he’d started informing me with lusty pride how much it was increasing, since he’d begun sending it here and there in clever investments. Then he’d admit, with eyes downcast in shame, that of course it would never match the hoard I must have at home.

It had been been a little bit before Niku had arrived that I’d come into his room unexpectedly, looking for something, and he’d started so badly the ledger jumped off his lap. Before I even asked any questions, he was on his knees begging forgiveness and admitting he deserved dismissal, his eyes full of tears. “I’ve been… filching…” he whispered. “I’m sorry…”

“Why? What do you need it for?”

“My mother… we were fessas. She never wanted to live in the okas quarter… she doesn’t belong there… It’s all over now, I know, Shefen-kas. You should beat me, too.”

“Skorsas… first, I swore I’d never beat you. Second… why didn’t you just ask? How much do you need? Take all of it.” I had to argue him into it, taking a good half-bead. There was no telling him that much of the money he deserved anyway, for increasing it as he had, no telling him I wouldn’t notice anyway, no telling him it was illegal for me to own money anyway or had no use for it; the only way I could make him take it was to say it was a gift. He cried so much I was worried he’d lost his mind.

For Niku’s second fight and first Ring-fight, they did not draw from Fate’s Helmet, but instead announced that there would be a special surprise.

“What does that mean?” she asked me, that night, when we lay bonelessly tangled and basking, afterwards.

“I have no idea,” I said. “I’ve never seen it before, and neither has Skorsas; I asked. But, and I hope you’ll forgive me for saying this, love, but I can’t imagine it’s good.”

I wasn’t on that day, so I was in the Fighters’ Box. She was first up, and went to her gate after the ceremonials, with the weapons she had bid, which she’d told me were Niah axes; they didn’t look so much like axes as arm-long sticks with widened and curving ends with sharp edges. They were made of ironwood, she told me, fire-hardened and sharp as steel.

The laughter and the catcalls started right away. “Ooh, a brown whore who fancies herself a warrior!” “Ah, my dick’s hungry for some darky-meat!” “You svelte swarthy savage, I’ll ream you up to your eye-teeth!” She pretended to hear none of it, standing as proud as an Imperial in any Marble Palace painting.

But I saw no one in the other gate. They clanged open, and she ran into the ring; I couldn’t believe my eyes at first, at what I saw come out from behind the other: five tiny Arkans, all with okas-length hair, came out, each with a dagger long enough to be a sword to his height. Two, by their mature faces and wizened limbs, were dwarves; the other three were boys, none over ten.

Even here, there are some things that are not done, I thought, and was on my feet as fast as the thought and yelling in my battlefield voice. “What the fik is this!? Forlanas, what in shen is in your mind!? They are children!! CHILDREN! CHILDREN in the Ring! What in the dog-mother-of-the-Ten-Celestialis-dump-its-commodes-fikken-shen ARE YOU DOING?”

I am not sure what I expected: that he’d look at me with horror, say “Oh my great noble God, you are right, Karas Raikas—halt! Halt the fight right now!”? Some of the crowd began catcalling or mimicking me, too, laughing; others—my fans, I guessed—took up the cry in agreement. I didn’t stop, though, the words coming unbroken even though they were Arkan. I didn’t care a rat’s fart if I was flogged, or my grammar was bad. “This is wrong! This is evil! You send children to their deaths here!? What is this, is everyone in this whole heartless, soulless, All-Spiritless city insane?” Niku was yelling, too, though she had her hands full; small or not, they were spreading out around her, and of course knew what they must do.

What were they? Street-brats, I couldn’t doubt, of which Arko is full, and the stunted men hard-pressed to make a living by the strength of their backs, the only choice for okas; they had probably all been lured out of the slums with promises of money. The second travesty came clear to me, from how the men held their blades; they weren’t war-trained. One of them took command, saying “Spread out! Come in behind her!” Of course even the boys would have learned something from scraps on the streets, but it was very obvious that none of the five had held true steel before. If she could bring herself to, she’d shred them all at her leisure.

I just went on yelling, feeling I had no choice; I got nothing for it but a glance from the Director, who had a steady snide grin. Niku wasn’t sure what to do, except keep moving so that they could not get behind her. The crowd began flapping their lips; the boys and dwarves came in harder, and she took one of the dwarves down with the flat of one axe to his head. Just the way all the others froze for a moment, staring at his prone form, should tell all the world they had no war-training.

“This is a travesty!” I yelled to the other fighters in the box, in Arkan and Enchian when I didn’t know the Arkan word. “This is a mockery of our training! This is making us barbarians, frauds, a sham, why the fik am I the only one saying anything?” Mana had been, in truth, but had not stood up; of course he did not want to appear to be in concert with me. Iliakaj looked displeased; Riji just looked bored. “You the only one saying anything, you the only one flogged,” Suryar Yademkin said drily. “What are we going to do?” said another man, a medium-chainer, whose name I’ve forgotten. “Rush the Director, and all of us end up stun-darted and tortured?”

“Get your fikken fans yelling!” Mine were a minority; if we got the whole arena objecting, maybe the Director would call it. No one was in the Imperial Box. Right then one of the boys, trying to sidle far around to get behind Niku, stepped too close to the edge of the Ring. Finger-long claws flashed up and hooked into his foot, tripping him; a second set sank into his thigh and yanked him off the edge into the trench. His piercing-high screams went on horribly long, audible over everything else. I had to stop yelling for a moment to swallow vomit. Mana and one or two others did call their fans, but few listened. Mostly, the stands were full of laughter.

Niku fought, if it could be called that, with her typical floating grace; her style, and so I assumed the Niah style, was so soft and high off the ground it was amazing to me that it could work, and yet I had seen her do it in her first fight. Of course she was aiming just to disable, and not long; but if she didn’t make it severe enough, of course, the one who’d fallen would recover as she fought the rest, and come after her again. The sun caught a glistening on her cheek; tears.

Oh, love… I was weeping myself, then, and my voice breaking, even as I went on shouting my protest with not an eye looking at me; I didn’t have it in me to stop. She made a decision, then, and in three invisibly-fast strokes three of them were down and the fourth, a child, running screaming for his gate. The crowd roared, suddenly with her; more of its massed voice than usual seemed high. Of course the women of Arko, living their slavish life, would relish this.

The boy tried to climb over the gate; two guards stopped him, laughing, smacking him with the flats of their swords. The crowd flapped its lips; at a child facing a warrior, it flapped its lips. These are not people, I thought. Niku marched stamping to the Director’s gate, screaming, “It is over! That is it! I done!”, then, when it didn’t open, back to her own; another pair of guards moved in to do the same to her. Now the crowd waved its kerchiefs; red and white looked about even. “You have to kill, if they show red!” her boy, Eosenas, was shrilling at her.

Quivering with sobs, now, she went to them one at a time, and did what Arko forced her to do, in the most merciful way. They condemned both the dwarves, one of whom went to his knees weeping to beg mercy, spared the boy who was wounded, and, of course, condemned the boy who clung to the bars of the gate like a limpet, screaming for his mama like a baby. It took her enough time to steel herself to do it that the crowd began flapping her.

“No,” Eosenas yelled as she came staggering to the gate. “Your chain! You’ve got to get your chain!”

“I take no chain for this!” He flinched back, but of course the gate did not open, and in time she climbed the stairs, like one wounded. Don’t do anything to get flogged, I advised her, in my mind; your pain is bad enough. I called on the God-in-Me, to strengthen my spirit to be enough of a healer to her tonight.

When I could, near midnight, I crept into her room. She was rocking mindlessly on the bed, silent tears pouring. “Shh, just let me carry you, love,” I said. She sank into my arms.

“It burns, Chevenga,” she whispered, remembering our rule of quiet even now. “The chain… it burns on my skin. I killed a child. I’ve never killed a child before. I never meant to. It’s making a mark.” I lifted it and kissed the nape of her neck underneath. “No! That is too good for me!” She lost words in pain then. It took a long time of gentling and many soft words of sense to get her to let me pleasure away her agony.

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