148 - The black crushing in every cell

I was already stripped; they chained me into the whipping-frame, and a Mahid read something ceremonial, probably similar to what the herald had to the crowd on Erilas’s execution; some of the words sounded familiar.

“One Fourth Shefen-kas Sharanoias, also known as Karas Raikas, is convicted of the attempt to escape from the City Itself, stealing his person and worth from the Illustrious Mezem, and Imperium in general with respect to his ransom-worth; and further, aiding and abetting in the escape of Mannas the Wolf and Niku the Wild, thus stealing their persons and worth from the Illustrious Mezem, and from Imperium with respect to their ransom-worth. Thus he owes the Imperator not only his own life, but theirs, and so he shall not only be flogged thirty-lashes, but die three times for Imperium.”

Die three times? That’s what they said with Erilas—but if they’re killing me, why the decree to bar my window? Then the first blow of the whip slashed through my thoughts, scattering them.

Though it sent shreds of me all over the Hall floor, the flogging was nothing. Of course I knew what it was to smother to unconsciousness; but when you do it by your own will as a sacred rite before the people of Yeola-e, you are above yourself, carried by the God-in-You.

Suffering it shackled, at the gloved hands of a Mahid, so your last sight is the void blue chips of his eyes studying the dying of consciousness in yours, reduces you to less than nothing, and life to less than blackness. At the point where I was falling over the edge of the abyss, my body in its death-throes, I could not keep in my mind that the decree meant they would not kill me; so I was sure each time my thoughts were my last, and gave myself up to the ways that death was best: the Niah secret is safe, my people won’t have to pay my ransom. I didn’t separate from myself as I had other times when I’d been tortured, as much as I would have liked to. When I woke up the third time, I felt I had been driven mad.

My muscles were not my own. One of the Mahid carried me over his shoulder again, with an air of having expected it, letting me know this was not an unusual result. He dumped me on the floor in front of Iska’s desk, lax as a corpse too fresh to have stiffened.

The boys carried me tenderly to the bed in the cell. I couldn’t speak any more than I could move, but Skorsas could tell him what they’d done to me because he’d pressed his ear up against the Hall door. They gave me Haian remedies and poppy-juice strong enough that I was gone before Iska even finished marigold-creaming my back. But the feeling of having been driven mad was still there in the morning when I woke.

Pain huge beyond imagining, I remembered again. Have I fulfilled that prophecy enough, I wondered, come to the end of what he foresaw? Right now, at least, I didn’t feel inclined to make any more tries at escape. There was reason to it, not just fear; the moyawa had been a better means than any other that was likely to come along.

And yet Ikal might try again; they won’t have received orders to give up. They’d have a much harder time of it now; probably they’d have to scratch months of planning and start over.

Skorsas stayed, his arms firm around me. I learned later he paid one of the spare boys some extra chains to fetch and carry. I had no argument with it; I no longer ruled my thoughts, it seemed, for I kept feeling again the Mahid’s hand on my face no matter how much I tried to drive it out of mind. Then I’d break into a sweat and my heart would pound and my hands shake so hard I couldn’t stop them except by laying them on something, and I was pale as porcelain, he told me later. Fits of tears came out of nowhere; then, dry-eyed, I’d feel the black crushing in every cell that was the moment of succumbing. The only relief was in imagining myself killing him as I’d killed Daisas, the more brutally, the better.

Iska came, sat beside me and laid a gentle hand on my head. “You need to talk about it,” he said. I hadn’t said a word to Skorsas.

“I died three times,” I said. “What is there to talk about?” He urged me, and I put him off, a few more times before he said, “You need your Haian. You can’t go to him; I’ll bring him here.”

“Iska, no…” My voice broke; I felt as if it would never again be steady. “When I go to his office, I make sure no one sees me, so as not to jeopardize him. If he comes here, the Marble Palace knows.” He ignored that.

“Let’s start with this, Chivinga,” Persahis said, his delicate Haian-accented voice strange to hear here, in a cell in the Mezem, with two Mahid outside. “You cannot rest at all, the way you are lying.” I was partly up on my elbows, and rock-tense; I didn’t notice until he pressed my shoulder a bit and I moved like a statue more than a person.

He had me lie half on my shield-side, since the whip had not curled around it so much as the other, with my sword-side knee raised so I leaned on it. Then he gave me some drops, told me to breathe long and deep and keep my mind on it, and talked me through thinking of and relaxing every part of my body, head to toe.

Just that settled me some; but then he began that touching without touching that Haians do, starting with what felt like a drawing from the back of my head that made me feel a breath of cool air across my face, and as he worked, I slowly fell deeper into peace. Skorsas was still holding my head in his hands; I heard him sigh in relief.

“Where is your strength?” Persahis asked me.

Strength? I have no strength; I’ve been stripped of it. “Answer from the centre of yourself,” he said. “Perhaps you’ve forgotten it’s there.”

I had; the reminder brought it back. “My strength is here,” I whispered.

“Good. Put your mind on it; go into it. Remember all that it is; remember all that you have been able to do, because you have it.”

It was hard; to find that in myself I had to fight something in me that had not been there before. “Better now than later,” he says. “Time lets it take a deeper hold.” He made me keep my mind on it while he worked over my head and neck and back with his hands, touching without touching. It felt as if he was linking me back to myself, somehow.

I was blooded at thirteen. I assassinated Inkrajen. I opened the gate of Kantila. I was the commander against the mamokal. I entered the Circle School at eighteen. I remembered how my collar glistened with decorations, ran over what I had done to earn each one. I should not count my Ring victories in the same tally as my victories as a warrior, and yet… I defeated Riji Kli-fas.

Remembering all this, I realized that, sword to sword, or bare-handed, or any way, I could take to bits at my leisure the Mahid who’d done it. I would likely never have a chance to, but it was surprisingly healing to know.

“You will need to talk about it, so that it doesn’t become a silence, a forbiddance, in you,” Persahis said. “But you’re not quite ready for that yet.” When I imagined myself trying, I saw what he meant. “I will be back tomorrow, and each day for another two, and we will see how you are then. There was no way not to feel as if you were driven mad by that, Chivinga; what we are doing is ensuring it lasts only for a few days and not longer.” He said the rest half to Skorsas, too: “No wine or Arkanherb, plenty of water, don’t miss any meals even if you’re not hungry, and make sure you get a good night’s sleep each night even if you have to take something.”

After he’d been gone for a time, I probed my own mind as we delicately tongue a sore tooth. The sense of madness was still there, but much less. Even though Skorsas stayed with me, I did need a sleeping drink that night, as I knew after lying awake in the dark for a half-bead.

“Bad news, lad,” Iska said to me the next morning, after breakfast. “That Haian isn’t allowed into the Mezem again. Director’s orders, but not really, if you know what I mean.”

I felt a weight fall on my heart like a stone and a chill settle over me, both at once. I was glad he’d let me eat before telling me. Two Mahid had been right outside the door; even if they hadn’t heard our words, they’d seen my state before and after. He was subverting the punishment, weakening the lesson they wanted me to take from it, never to try to escape again.

“I’ll go to his office and find out what he was planning to do,” said Skorsas. “Not the same, but better than nothing.”

“No,” Iska and I said, both at once. “It’s too dangerous, you’re tainted with me,” I said. The idea of him being in their hands was more sickening than myself, in a way; it was his age, I realized.

As well as the rules he’d laid out, I knew one thing Persahis was planning: that I should talk about what they had done to me. “You can do that with me, lad,” Iska said, patting my shoulder. “I’ve done the like a few times before. I even know a Haian trick or two. You’d have to ask a Haian how they work, but they do.”

I felt an even worse weight like a stone on my heart as the truth sank in: I would never see Persahis again, while I was in the Mezem. I guess now I will find out how great a part he had in keeping me sane, I thought.

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