139 - My heart on the sand with her

Kurkas stared for a long while, almost seeming to lose sight of me, his round sapphire eyes slowly freezing into an expression I had never seen. It was so out of place it defied belief, like a dirt-caked beggar appearing from behind a bronze in the Marble Palace. He let out a shriek that was so fast and hoarse and venomous in the Palace’s immaculate silence that it too defied belief. “You fikken dirt-brained barbarian backstabber!”

“Here’s Yeola-e,’ I said, tapping my arm, “right here. You said you could do anything. That means you could win fifty chains in the Mezem, if you wanted. Next to that, this would be nothing.”

He sprang to standing, faster than I thought he could at his weight, making his chair-legs screech and all his jewels tinkle. For a moment he stood with his breath held, his face blossoming red all over, then shouted, “Guards!”

The room was filled with them instantly, as if they’d burst out of the walls. They froze, unsure of what to do, since I was sitting with my elbow on a table, no threat, and he was giving no orders, but knowing they must do something; one could imagine what fate they’d suffer for failing him. “Out!” he snapped, finally. “Throw him out!”

I gave myself up peacefully, but tossed back over my shoulder, “We have our proof, it seems.” He had no answer but that strange transfixed blue stare. I had often seen the gaze of someone planning how to tear my flesh off my bones—every fight day, almost—but this was far beyond that, blank and mad and ravaged, as if in my face he saw the deepest pits of Hayel.

I am certain that Kurkas, had he been asked, would have said the animosity between him and me started then.

He certainly he invited me back in two days, and when I declined due to prior commitments—a philosophy class—again two days after that. (Skorsas was aghast, but somehow I got away with it. Who could understand Kurkas?)

This time he tried to seduce me. “You belong with me,” he said. “Forever.” All-Spirit help me, had he fallen in love with me? At least in the Arkan way, which had more to do with possessing and entirely controlling another person, so that love and slavery weren’t entirely distinct? I hardly dared imagine the implications.

I was always sensitive to the state of my body; I knew suddenly that I was feeling something that was not natural to me. He’d had an aphrodisiac slipped into my food, and his own; he didn’t deny it. Just as if I were his guest, not his prisoner, I drew myself up when he asked, said “No!” and strode out. I got to the main Aestine stairs before the Mahid stopped me.

What he did to me, once they’d dragged me back, I won’t put my poor reader or myself through, except to say he had a cart rather like a server’s, but with wrist and ankle shackles, to hold a prisoner bent over. It was a fine article, made all of silver engraved and polished to a mirror gleam; I remember the pattern of the one shackle, and the distorted image of my own face in it, flashing gold when I bared my teeth. I remember the scent of heliotrope, of which he always wore far too much; and what he said, over and over again, with indignation as pure as that of a baby’s scream: “You can’t say no! You can’t say no to me!!”

†

Riji was my nineteenth fight. I made twenty, two-fifths of the way. I followed the war in the Pages; of course it bent its accounts to favor Arko, but like Arkans I learned to read between the lines. All winter the war stood more or less still; Tinga-e was under siege, but held.

Why had there been no captive Yeolis sold to the Mezem? Were they taking no prisoners? Had every Yeoli they might think was good enough fought to the death, or at least incapacitation? The idea that all of my elite warriors were dead sickened me to the bone; but a good many of them must be. I had to accept that.

I made twenty-three, and my mother sent another border-letter through Persahis and Mana. Kima was a medium-slight baby, as I had been, but well-coloured and lively, and she had my eyes and hair. Though I shouldn’t, I could not help but see her in my inward eyes, hold her in my inward arms.

I thought of trying to write to Astalaz, Kranaj and Ivahn. But even if I could find a way to get those letters through, I saw, I could hardly bargain, only beg; what power had I, here, to promise them anything in return? I was a ring-fighter, not a semanakraseye.

Meanwhile, Niku went on working on the thing in the woods, asking me for money every now and then, and letting cryptic things slip like, “That thief, selling me a turn-buckle that falls apart when you blink at it,” or “Can you believe, I can’t get Niah wire in this whole city?” Was it some sort of cliff-climbing contraption? Of course I didn’t ask.

I made twenty-three. She made twelve, and people began saying she’d had too many easy matches, and it was about time she got a real testing. I think it actually was true they’d under-matched her; being a curiosity she was always a draw, so they wanted her to last. Not that I was complaining; it made watching her fights easy.

It was in answer to the talk, I presume, that the Director declared Judge’s Clemency on her in her thirteenth, against a seven-chainer from Nellas, who was not much less of a fighter than she was. As she took the Ring no less bravely than usual, with just her two axes and a breastplate, and he came out with spear, sword and shield, in full armour, I thought, ‘Why am I cursing myself for having done nothing to prevent this? What could I have done?’

Now I knew how it had been for her, watching me fight Riji, having to act as casual and uncaring as the other fighters while my heart circled and struck in the Ring with her. Behind a stone face I sent my thoughts to her: you are still better than him, you can do this, I believe in you as wholly as I love you.

Arko got what it wanted; facing a true test, she fought as she never had before, that strange on-the-toes, high-leaping style wildly spectacular when pushed to its full extent. “Other people see the ground as something to tie themselves to, as if they were buildings,” she’d once told me, when I’d asked her to explain the way Aniah fought. “But buildings don’t fight! We see it as something to take off from… to give us force as something can only give you force by your pushing away from it.” I could not understand it without trying it, so I got her to be my teacher when we were in the woods once, and I got a slight taste of the beginning of the feel.

Now she whirled and slashed and parried with those two flashing axes, which she’d hold wide apart like the wings of a bird, apparently leaving herself open, but ready to parry blurring fast with one and strike with the other, giving no warning as to which. If she was unnerved by being out-armed, she showed no sign, not so much as a trace of tightness in motion.

Then they came together and struck each other; he snagged her upper arm on his spear, she caught his head above the shield. Both staggered back and fell, making the crowd leap to its feet, roaring. He was stunned, it seemed; she was spurting blood, an artery opened. I caught myself gripping the rail in front of me, and willed my fingers and my face to relax, while every cell in me shrieked to leap over the rail and the lion-trench, to her. She was not dead; to give away our secret would be to fail both her and myself.

Now I knew what it had been to her when I’d gone down fighting Riji. At least the Nellan was also down; it was a matter of who could gather strength and will enough to get to the other with a weapon first. Since she was bleeding fast and so would get weaker, while his consciousness would likely return, time favoured him. I saw her knowledge of that on her face, as she drove the fist that still gripped an axe into the wound, and heaved herself to her knees and one elbow. Then she looked at me.

Of course I wanted to leap up and scream, “Go, go, go! You can do it!” as all her fans were doing. But better I make it clear I still felt it necessary to conceal our love; if I showed emotion, she might take it as my losing faith in her, and her strength would drain out of her. So I did nothing but raise one eyebrow, and drum my fingers on the rail casually, while my heart’s blood poured out on the sand with hers and my soul screamed ‘Niku, mooooove!’ She turned to him with the rage that is ultimate resolve on her face.

He’d gone from stillness to twitching and now was stilling again, his eyes open; in a moment he’d have his mind back. She lifted herself to her knees and crawled on them to him. Seeing she was already inside spear-range, he let go the spear and grabbed his sword-hilt to draw. Aiming the gout of blood that spurted out when she let go the wound right into his eyes, she drove the axe into his throat while he was blinking.

The crowd shook the stands with their roar. She grabbed the wound again and lay back; that was purposeful, love, wasn’t it? You lay back, didn’t fall, true? Eosenas and two spare boys with a litter ran fast to her. Now that they have her, she hasn’t lost that much blood, I thought, measuring the amount of it I saw on the sand, as best I could distinguish it from the Nellan’s, which was spreading fast through the sand. I drummed the rail as if I were bored, and tried to slow the pounding of my heart. Give me twenty hard fights of my own, against watching my love fight one.

We indulged in the foolishness that was inevitable that night, making hard and fast ring-fighter love, which is always about knowing that both are alive for another four days at least. If exertion had burst open Anhunem’s careful stitching, she would have had an interesting time explaining.

She was out of training for two eight-days, though, out of fighting for a moon; that also slowed down the work of her escape scheme.

In the third eight-day we were lying together at midnight, I kissing her arm to heal it faster, when she said, “Ugh… I hardly want to go to sleep, so much I dread mornings these days. I wake up sick every time now; I can’t even think about food. Do you get that when you’re wounded?”

My heart seemed to freeze for a moment, and the room lurch off its moorings into spinning. All-Spirit… All-Spirit… All-Spirit… can we have been such fools? All-Spirit, how can we have been such fools!

Perhaps the women in her family didn’t get it; my mother had, and Shaina did, terribly, all but incapacitated in the morning at the time I’d left for Arko, and she was two moons along. “Niku,” I said, dryness changing my voice to a croaking whisper, “did you bleed last moon?”

“No, why? I often miss when I’m in hard training. You think I should ask Iska?”

“No, whatever you do!” I whisper-yelled. “Niku, haven’t you heard when women get sick in the morning?”

The whites of her eyes widened, bright against her skin, which night made pure black. “Ama Kalandris… Sea Mother… Aba Tyriah… Sky Father… help us…!”

In a place of death, surrounded by death, fighting off death every moment, one thinks little of new life, and forgets one’s capacity to make it has not died. We had done nothing whatsoever to prevent it, not even so much as counting days, or taking the herb that forestalls, or even me pulling out just before.
I took a deep breath, and summoned calm. “So. You’re with child. What of it? The whatever-it-is will be ready in less than two moons, now, you say, and we’ll go; you won’t even be showing by then.”

She sighed away fear; from under it came a white flashing smile. “Child within…” she whispered, then stroked my cheek. “And yours, my love, mi penzi.” Then we threw ourselves together in celebration. For a long time it was the typical gushing talk. “What will the baby look like? Like you, so beautiful… your first? My third… They’re a lot of work, you know… Girl or boy, I wonder? You know there are twins in my family?”

After a while of this, emotion ebbed enough to allow reason. We had barely touched on plans, before; all that had been set was that we would go to Haiu Menshir together, then I must go home. Now we had to face the rest.

She was the wife of my heart, without question. But was I the husband of hers? She would have to leave her home, for I could not leave mine. And certainly she was not the wife of my people’s heart. (I could hear Esora-e: “What’s wrong with Yeoli women, that you so spurn them?”) Yet since I had two pure-blood Yeoli children older than this one, now people who objected to foreign blood in the line would have less to say than they had before.

Though the A-niah were not warring Arko openly (she’d been captured fighting against them with the Srians near Tebrias), they had Arkan troubles, harassment that had grown to be all but war in name, last she’d heard. Though she knew her family would think her dead because of the Niah custom, she had not written home, because it had not still come clear to her yet why she had been meant to live and so she didn’t feel she had a sufficient explanation for why she had not adhered to it.

“Once I’ve seen you to Haiu Menshir, love, I’ll just go home, see how things are and say what I must. I am going to trust it comes clear to me.” Though she was not a leader in name, one sensed she would be some day, since she was in spirit, and her mother was one of their council of elders, chosen by vote. “But after that, I want to come to Yeola-e and marry you. I don’t care if it means dispute, so long as that doesn’t hurt you.”

“When I get home,” I said, “the colour of the skin of my fiancée will be the smallest of the concerns they bring to me. Don’t worry… I’ll talk them into it.”

So we were planned. Sure enough, she didn’t bleed the next moon either. I ceased even thinking of being matched against her, the thought unbearable. It would be two lives to my one now, my life’s love and my flesh and blood. So naturally, when she was a moon shy of finishing the escape-work, we were matched.

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