132 - He should have won

“I understood from the start,” Skorsas said the next afternoon, when I had slept out. “You are a foreigner, you love women. I always knew that.” His voice was hard and closed, with resignation.

I didn’t disabuse him, nor did I speak my thought, No, it’s that I don’t have sex with children. For one thing, Arkans don’t understand why that is wrong; for another, being so mature for his fifteen years, he didn’t consider himself a child, and so would likely be insulted, in that strange, extreme way that Arkans feel themselves insulted by things which aren’t really insults, so that you always feel you have to tiptoe around them with your words. If I’d been fifteen or even sixteen myself, that would be different; but then of course he would not love me.

Most of what I felt toward him was the sort of bone-deep gratitude you cannot help but have for someone who is utterly steadfast in providing aid and comfort when you are going through a dark time. In the light of that, I could forgive any amount of fussiness, money-mindedness or Arkan weirdness, or even braggadocio, though he hadn’t said a proud word about me to a soul since Riji had returned.

Anhunem came in to check my eyes. I still could see virtually nothing, and light hurt so much it went straight to my stomach again, but he told me not to worry and just keep taking my remedies, as he saw no sign of infection, the worst danger now.

“The writers are on the verge of disemboweling each other with their pens to see you,” said Skorsas, when the Haian was gone. “What shall I tell them?”

Some say I saw a chance. It’s more true that I wanted to throw the rat-pack a fish instead of a fish-head, just to see it stick in their throats. “I’ll speak to the first one who swears on his hope of Celestialis he’ll write, and publish, all I say, and the truth of it,” I said. That would get rid of them.

Sure enough, when he came back, he had no one with him. “They’re going to try to find one,” he said bravely.

I wanted to be up and around at least for a little, so I got Skorsas to lead me out of my room by the arm. He wouldn’t let me put on the faib skates, though. I heard a whisper in Mana’s voice, from his door. “Skorsas… let me take him out into the woods; Cheng, you want to? I’m hiring covered chairs.” Being away from the Mezem would be a balm.

It was tricky; Skorsas insisted on coming at least to the edge of the forest, where Mana and I could be together unseen, so that I would not be alone among strangers, and of course if anyone spotted a hair of me, I’d be enveloped in a slavering crowd in an eye-blink. Soon enough though, my hand was on his bicep and the soft humus of the forest path beneath my feet. Birdsong and the trilling of insects, and once the thumping of the wings of a partridge, were vivid to my ears, as were the smells of pine needles and fungus and long-fallen leaves to my nose.

When we were in what I gathered was our glade, we flung ourselves into each other’s arms. We hadn’t had a chance to, since the fight. “I’m sorry for coming so close,” I said, making him threaten to slap me if I apologized again. “What you said about his evil being what bothered me, I took into the ring,” I said. “I don’t know that I could have won without it.”

By hugging him, I learned he was carrying something, which turned out to be a large jug of wine. “Yes, you celebrated your victory last night,” he said. “But you weren’t with the people you truly want to be with.” Barely a moment later, I weapon-sensed Niku’s two wooden axes. They’d conspired; she had a jug too, sent by some fan who wanted to get inside her pareo, that silk cloth she liked to wear around her hips, of which she had several now, all of brilliant blues or reds or greens or oranges. Everyone in Niah-lur-ana dressed like that, apparently. She had six fights by then; the Director had started treating her like any other fighter, matching her against true opposition.

“I am sorry I misled you, Mana,” Niku said, as he handed out cups and knifed open the jug. “Saying it was a man at home.”

“You were trying to protect him,” he said, and I could tell by his voice he’d turned his face to me when he said him. “I blame no one for anything they do, if it’s for that.”

I heard the trickle of pouring, and the cup grew heavier in my hand. I raised it. “Here’s to Riji Kli-fas. May his soul rest peaceful in All-Spirit.” I could tell they were looking at me oddly, but they both said, “To Riji Kli-fas.” Then they added, respectively, “May he smother forever in Arkan Hayel,” and “May sharks eat his entrails.” I pursed my lips at them, but drank.

“It’s as I said, you needed to kill evil,” said Mana. “I’m glad you raised the sword, and Kurkas honoured it.”

“He was dead anyway,” I said. “I gave it everything I had in that kick, and I felt it was a death-blow.”

“Was it really that close?” Mana said, almost wonderingly. “It looked like a hair plus a whisker.”

“What are you talking about?” I said. “You were watching. Who’d ever think of a kyashin foot-sweep with a chain? I’ve never seen anyone else do that… maybe because no one else could, you have to be so fast and get the timing so perfect… I know, I know. I should have.”

“It was a wind kind of move,” said Niku. She was speaking of Niah fighting styles, of which there are six: Wind, Water, Giant Cormorant, Shark, Dolphin and Boar. I remembered how Riji had made me think of Iyinisa’s use-name, Windsword.

“It was a fight-winning move,” I said. “He had me. He should have won.” I remembered what Iska had said about me not deceiving myself, and was determined not to, about this, however much it grated in the pit of my stomach.

“But there it was—the bad spirit,” said Mana. “If he’d finished you while you were out, he’d have won. He wanted to torment you, so he lost.”

“It was an astonishing move,” Niku said. “Maybe he’d never done it before himself; maybe you lifted it out of him. Here, let me top you up.” The cup got heavier again. I found out later that was true, by asking Koree; he had seen all of Riji’s fights as well as training him, and had never seen the like.

I lay back on the earth, crossed my legs, and turned my face to the sun. Very faintly, it seemed, I saw red. Then I got up again and reached, yearning for touch. Mana and Niku came in on either side, and cradled me between them. I laid my head on her shoulder. “We love you, in our different ways,” Mana said.

“I love you both, in my different ways, too.” I swigged again. “I think I was a wild drunk last night, and am a maudlin one today.”

“He chose, omores,” Niku said, and Mana made a sound of assent.

“Maybe it’s just as well he blinded me, so I didn’t see his wife and kids after he was dead,” I said. “I’d have looked. Yes, yes, I know… he chose. Stupid fikker. They saw me do it… it’s as if he used me against them. He chose the whole kyashin thing, but it’s me who is the villain in their eyes. And now his sons have no father.”

It was partly the wine, this was coming from, I knew. I could feel the heat of it on my cheeks. “Part of how evil he was,” Mana said.

“He was probably a crappy father anyway,” I said. “Maybe they never had him, really, so they lost nothing. He was willing to throw away his life, which is to say, abandon them, for pride.” They both mostly listened. “I know, I know… I’m just trying to assuage my conscience. Maybe he really thought it was best for his sons that their dad stay Living Greatest.”

“You had no choice about any of it,” said Mana.

“Listen to your heart’s brother,” Niku said firmly. “And let it out.”

“What, tears?” I spat. “I have no tears. My eyes hurt too much to cry.”

“You just need to talk.”

“And say what?” Now I found myself angry. “I won. That’s all that should matter. That and my thanks to those who aided me, you two in particular.”

They tightened their arms on me. Perhaps they didn’t think I knew their eyes met over my head, but I felt it. I wondered what conversations they’d had, in between Mana’s propositions. “We’re here, love,” Niku said.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’ll get my strength back and quit with the maudlin. Being able to see again will help a lot.”

“Yes, you will, heart’s brother.” Niku added, as if I were the badly-wounded warrior again, “Everything will be all right.”

“It was an amazing fight,” I said, after a little. I seemed to be seeing new facets of it; perhaps that was the wine, too. “I’ve never fought so well in my life.”

“And in your soul, you wish you could have touched his, and elevated it,” said Mana. He knew me too well.

“But I couldn’t, and I could feel that.”

“You did the best thing. As I said before: like a mad dog.”

“He did not realize that he must reach above himself, and not below,” said Niku.

“Or just leave well enough alone,” I said. “I didn’t give a shit about whether I was Living Greatest. And I told him that perfectly clearly, right on the training ground: what the boy claimed, I never did. On retrospect, I didn’t kowtow enough.”

That made Mana bristle; I felt it. “You needn’t kowtow to anyone. Certainly not evil.”

“If I’d kowtowed, he’d still be alive and his sons would still have a father. Look, it’s a fikken tragedy, and there’s no way around it.” Well, except one; my cup was light again, so I reached it out vaguely towards Mana, and he filled it.

“You are too good for this place, omores,” said Niku.

“What are you talking about? We are all too kyashin good for this fikken place. I don’t just mean the three of us; look at kevyalin Iliakaj, with three hundred shennen chains…” Since I learned Arkan, wine tends to draw bilingual swearing out of me, if I am angry about something underneath.

We were going around in circles anyway; why were we bothering? Drunkenness was somehow failing to bring its usual cheer, or even numbness. “I think I’m talking like this,” I said finally, “because I’m still tired. I’m sorry.”

“I think it’s how close it was that’s bothering you,” said Mana. “That and the eyes. Chevenga, you’re taking the weight of it too heavily on your heart. There was a hair’s-width between you and death many times in the Lakan war, and each one you shrugged off; remember?”

“I wasn’t semanakraseye then,” I said. “Just a mila, tops. That is the difference. If I get killed here, I never go home and turn things around. That weight is all Yeola-e.”

He couldn’t argue with that. But saying it, and so seeing it clear, somehow relaxed me. I got the yawns all of a sudden, and my head went leaden. The wine was reminding my body, it seemed, that sleep was healing.

“Cheng, sack out,” said Mana. “We’ll keep the bugs, and the fans, not sure which is worse, off you. You’re going to be disturbed less here with us than in the Mezem. And forest air is so much sweeter than city air.”

I lay right down on the earth, the gentlest thing in Arko, with my head on Niku’s lap. She covered me with her cloak. I was gone in a moment, drifting away to the peaceful half-glow of sun between the shadows of leaves on my face and the sounds of their quiet voices.

I slept deep first and then light, and when it was light I heard their words wreathed in around my dreams. “He has foreknowledge sometimes,” Mana said once. “When he predicts what the enemy will do, he always gets it right.” Then she was talking about the Aniah have chocolate mothers, since the time it takes to grow and make is a moon, same as a woman’s blood-cycle. And I was suddenly in Assembly, mediating between two Servants who were debating too hotly, and then looked up to my amazement, to see the gallery full of Mezem fans, some showing red and some showing white. “Omores,” two voices larger than Assembly Hall were saying, “you need to wake up, heart’s brother, you had your chimes rung, remember? Tell me your name.”

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