129 - A hair of a mistake

I slept through the breakfast bell, and Skorsas brought it in late for me when I finally woke, the sun well up. I felt as well as on any fight day.

I heard Mana’s voice in my inward ears. It’s the contradiction. That seemed so far away now, it couldn’t come even close to me, let alone in. So did yesterday’s sparring, as if it had happened ten years before.

Even though the seats are all designated by chip, so that you don’t get a better one if you come early, people were lined up all around the Mezem by mid-morning. Even inside, the air thrummed with their presence and their excitement. At least the sultry Arko-the-City heat had finally eased, making the day truly pleasant for one who came from mountains. That would favour me.

Mana came in again, fiercely cheery as always. “Sleep well?” I asked him.

“Yes, and you?”

I laughed. “Yes. Just between you, me, and the gong, Iska did a little trick on me last night.” My door was closed; I gave him my account, to his raised brows. “I feel much better, between what you and he and... another person, said and did. How there is so much love for me in this place I have no idea.”

His brows rose. “Love? Another person?” I regretted saying it in a moment; I saw his mind cast about, eliminating: ‘an Arkan woman, not a chance… an Arkan man… could he? Another fighter…?’ I felt the points on my cheeks come up red. He looked thunderstruck. “Cheng… it’s not Niku, is it?” They came up even more red. “Noooo! You tom-cat! But… she told me she had someone at home!”

Now it was my turn to look thunderstruck. “She did? She does? She told you? When?”

“Ohhh, All-Spirit,” he said. “Curse it… trust you to not just leave it as sex between friends. Don’t be jealous, Cheng; I wanted no more than that. But she turned me down, twice, in quite a firm but kindly way.”

Of course he’d have tried; just the same as me, there was no other woman in Arko he would touch, and he was a man for women.

“But she told me she had someone at home who means everything to her. Thinks of him every day, she said… he’s a very special person…” His face suddenly turned afraid. “Of course I might have misunderstood… maybe she was talking about you.” He doesn’t want to throw me for the fight, I thought, by getting me worried that my love is playing me false. “Might she have been? Does she feel that much for you? How long did it take you to talk her into it?”

I told him the truth. “I didn’t. Here, I didn’t want anyone. Sword-hand marriage was perfectly good for me, here. But she came after me, like hounds after a deer. She wouldn’t take no for an answer.”

He threw back his head laughing. “You scoundrel! Just sit back, and it comes to you! An extraordinary woman, you said… well, there, you’ve found one. Or she found you, it seems. Beat the bushes for you… chased you down…” He laughed some more, always good to hear.

My cheeks felt as if they should be smoking, so hot they burned. “There’s more to it, heart’s brother. I can’t tell you everything... truth-drug, need-to-know, you know. But there is more and it will touch you in a good way, I promise you that.” I wondered if he’d even believe, that she was working on some mysterious means of escape, for all three of us.

“I’m glad she bagged you, then,” he chuckled. “That man she was mooning over must have been you, and she just let me think it was some Niah… of course she wanted to keep it quiet.”

“I’m sorry my gain was your loss,” I said. “But you will gain, trust me.”

“I would trust you with my life, heart’s brother, you know that. Tonight we shall get drunk, to celebrate your making hash of Riji, yes?”

“That sounds good. All-Spirit... My fans are going to go absolutely out of their heads. I’m going to have to hide under my bed or something.”

He snorted. “No, you’ll do the usual semana kra thing, for them.”

I felt my eyebrows rise hard. “Semana kra? For Arkans? The people who are hacking up my people are my people?

“Your fans are in a way your people.”

“Fik them, they are not! I don’t have two peoples, one of whom is killing and enslaving the other.”

“We’ll see. And you and I… and maybe Niku, ha ha ha… will take a flask out to the woods once it’s safe to.” He smacked me in the shoulder.

“Laid any bets on me? You could use the money, you scruff.” I’d got into the habit of making fun of him for being less expensively-dressed than me, backwards as it was.

“Every chain I have!” he snorted. “I’ll be farting through silk loincloths tonight.” I told him what Skorsas had told me, about selling my name and likeness. “And he just doesn’t understand that, by Yeoli law, it’s all his,” he said.

“Give that boy thirty years and he’ll own all of Arko,” I laughed. “No, sorry—he’ll say I own all of Arko. When I’m not allowed to own so much as an outhouse.”

We were both slapping our thighs now. Who cared who heard? “And you’ll fire the Director!”

“More like heave him into the lion trench!”

“Or hire him to pull you along on those wheeled skates, with a bit in his teeth! Hey… I’ll be able to afford a pair myself!”

“If you can’t, I’ll buy you some, with the gold from selling my face. And race you. All the way down the Avenue of Statuary and back… I’ll leave you in my dust. Are you on for it?” He smacked his hand into mine. So it went for the rest of the morning. I felt light and easy, as I ate a lean fight-day lunch.

†

The main event, between the two highest chainers, comes last of the day’s five fights, always. My heart always went out to those who died barely noticed, the crowd having its mind and voice too much on the fight to come.

Riji’s colours were red, blue and black, so it was by the blue that I discerned his followers from mine, in the stands, with their lettered banners and ribbons and blow-horns. It was hard to say who there were more of, not that it mattered. No surprise, Kurkas was in the Imperial box, as was Minis.

The din was three times the usual, as the two sides tried to outshout each other; the hawkers had to use as close as they had to a battlefield voice. “Nuts! Candies! Flags! Wine! Herb! Mourning dye, just in case! Someone’s going to need it!”

The fight before ours ended, and the din tripled again; they barely shut up through the between-fights ceremonial. When we came out—how strange was it, that he and I came out of the same place?—I wanted to put my fingers in my ears, to keep from going deaf. As I passed the Fighter’s Box, hands slapped my shoulders, voices exhorted me. Niku seized on it, to let me feel her touch one more time.

I went to my gate, and he to his, his hair in its wild tendrils and his famous rags and tatters hanging from his body. He blew a kiss to the near seats: in the front row sat a prim Arkan woman and two brown-haired boys, perhaps ten and eight. His wife and sons; why? His eyes turned and fixed mine, piercing. It all seemed to take longer than usual; was that the effect of the blood-fire already rising in me, or were they dragging it out to sweetly torment the fans? Finally we were asked our preference. I bid clean blade and he bid sword and chain, his specialty, as each of us had known the other would.

Every fighter is trained in the Mezem chain, a weapon invented here, I think, to match the symbol. It is some three-quarters of an arm long, with a grip that clasps around the hand, and at the end five small spiked spheres. Not a weapon to kill with, easily, but in a skilled hand it moves too fast to see, can hurt, and distract, tangle up weapons or limbs and curl over the edge of a shield. If you fought sword-and-chain you held it in your shield-hand, whirling it over your head or to your side, or whatever was best for your plans.

No chance of Judge’s Clemency here. I won the die-roll, so we’d fight clean blade first. Behind me, Skorsas bounced and chattered as I’d never seen him do. The Director put his hand to the lever, and the crowd leapt roaring to its feet. Fear is the stuff of childhood, I thought, as my gate clanged open, and I ran out.

†

I had decided after sparring him that I would fight a defense without chinks. It is not my natural style, which is very aggressive, and I doubted it would faze him much—I doubted anything would—but it would draw things out, which always favours the fighter with greater endurance.

No surprise, he came out hard and fast and vicious right from the start, not wanting to let it go on long. He did indeed show me things he hadn’t last night; his skill lifted me above myself by necessity, as I had known it would. But he showed me his full spirit too, not only in his blows, but in the things that he said to me. He had not said a word when we sparred.

It is hard to stand in the face of evil blowing full on you, like a fiery wind. But Mana had showed me what I’d needed to see, that it was this that bothered me, so I had defenses against it. Riji told me all sorts of gruesome horrors he would commit on me once he got me down; he insulted me in every way a brilliant-minded philosophy professor can invent; he called me by my real name and taunted me for the war. I write that rather than quoting it exact because I cannot remember it, since I closed my ears to it. I remembered Azaila’s words instead.

The gong crashed to end the first round, its hissing roar sizzling even through the crowd-din, and then it was sword and chain. Here the advantage was his, for so much more practice; I’d seen him put a man’s eye out with it once, and in the next round, the other. We gave each other nicks and chain-welts and kick-bruises, but that was all, when the gong crashed again.

Third round, clean blade again; this time I’ll get him, I thought. But I told myself not to be so set on that as to find an opening that was not a good enough opening. He was not one to make even a hair of a mistake with, and, unlike in all the rest of my life, time was on my side. I nearly got him once by speed, coming back faster from a parry than he thought I could, but he was there in time, by a hair; he nearly got me, and would have but for a naked wrist-parry that left me with a bloody scrape. The gong crashed the third time.

This was already longer than most fights went. The rabid crowd, that I feared might shake down the building with their jumping up and down, had already got their money’s worth, however much they’d paid; I saw old Aitzas men with their faces covered in tears of joy, heard solas men yell, “I love you both!” Others screamed “Aaaaaiiiiiiggggh! This is torture!”

For the fourth round, he wisely did something I would have done, had I been him, facing me: played on his greater experience by doing something I could not. He switched hands, putting the chain on his sword-hand and the sword in his shield-hand, so we were mirrored. I’d only really learned the chain on the shield-hand. As well, it was something to change the scene, since it had not served him well, confuse me, and show off his skill; he was equally brilliant either way.

One might also take it as a desperation move. Feel yourself tiring, old man? I’d learned he was thirty-five, five years older than I’d ever be; it was pleasant to know it as my advantage. The gates clanged open again, not that I heard even mine, and this time I came on harder. As he weakened, let him feel me strengthening.

One keeps the chain spinning always, so that they both whir in the air like angry bees, invisible as the bee’s wings are. I stepped in to cut; he parried going low and then something knocked my lead foot out from under me, stinging like an arrow: his chain. I had never seen a footsweep done with a chain before.

Going down, I held his sword off, and lashed with my chain; but I was off-line to aim between his legs, and so only got his middle, gaining nothing. My head was open, and we were helmetless; I could only clench my eyes shut in the hope that would save them. Instead his fist smashed into my temple, sending a blot of stars through my mind, and all went black for me.

-

This scene from Minis's point of view.

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