150 - A heart-rending little subplot

Yeolis began being brought to the Mezem thick and fast around then. I thought at first some slaver, or group of them, had set up a connection; horror kept me from realizing fast that it was in truth because we had become fashionable, mostly by my doing.

I knew many of them, though none were close friends or kin. If any resented my being there, or blamed me for their own being there, they never said so.

The first two to get matched against each other came to me. We were five then. I called Assembly under the stands.

How to meet, with my two Mahid there, and Mana’s? I decided to just bring them with me; it wasn’t as if they understood Yeoli anyway. Having no orders to forbid us to go under the stands, since that was still on the Mezem premises, they just came with and stood there like four black stelae.

No Yeoli wanted to speak first; all sat silent, their eyes wide in the torchlight, begging for answers, all fixed on me. The semanakraseye speaks last; but some remembered me as a milakraseye in the Lakan war, and the truth of the Mezem had dashed them all down to children who look for a parent, and I was the highest-chainer. Who has killed most and lived longest is king, in the Mezem.

I said, “It’s not for me to decree what we do. But one thing I think: whatever we do, whether it’s fight or toss a die for who kills himself or whatever, both should agree on it. If they fail to agree, they fight.” They voted chalk to that; with one choice made, speaking came easier to them, as it will.

The proposal was also carried that the winner should see the loser decently buried, and submit to a branding on the face. I thought that severe and said so, as did Mana; but the new three were fresher from home, stricter in ethics, more set to keep themselves Yeoli. It made me see what I had lost.

The first pair were strangers to each other, and could not agree, so they ended up fighting. You could see in a moment they were only sparring, though; the crowd started flapping its lips, calling them cowards, throwing things. Finally after five rounds, with the crowd calling “Whip-rounds! Whip-rounds!” the Judge concurred, and I got to see what that meant.

The rounds are cut to half the time, and on the first break both fighters are struck five lashes with the Arkan whip, the break after that, seven, and so on. Sooner or later, mad with pain, they try in earnest to get each other just to escape the whip.

Finally one Yeoli took the other down with a wound that was not mortal, and, sadly, came back to his senses the moment after, letting out a scream of anguish, flinging down his weapons and dropping to his knees beside his opponent. The crowd, of course, showed the red.

I could have set fire to them all as one in their seats when, as he lifted the corpse, they broke out into laughter, and mock keening, and lip-flapping. I drove the writers off him when he went out into the corridor, though I was due in the Ring. “Lay him in the colonnade for now and wait,” I said. “And don’t turn your hand against yourself; we made our law, and you have your due yet to pay.” He saluted me like a commander, sobs racking him, while Skorsas came yelling, “Raikas, you’re on! You’re on now!”

We had not reckoned on how hard it would be, either, to bury a Yeoli in Arko. First, the Mezem doesn’t have a morgue, unless you count the lion-trench as that. I begged Iska for use of one of the cells, and he granted it to us.

Second was the Arkan fire laws; you can’t burn any wood that wasn’t cured even in an oven, let alone outdoors, and they weren’t about to let us go outside the city.

There’s the Arkan way, of burying corpses in the earth, outside the city; but the graveyards are all full, corpses already heaped six deep, unless you’ve bought one long in advance, and try to find one that will accept a heathen foreigner anyway.

In the end we had to hire a funerary house to cremate him, outside the City. They charged us our eyeteeth, of course, and then plundered and buried him in a field instead of doing what they’d sworn to, thinking an oath sworn to barbarians was not binding; we were lucky Skorsas, ever cynical, thought to send a spy. I happened to mention this to Norii, who happened to mention it in the Pages; as such businesses live by their name, that did it much harm.

The second house we went to exhumed and cremated the corpse properly and were honest thereafter, so we stayed with them. Those of our people who got kicked into the trench by non-Yeolis we bribed the trench-keepers to give us.

There was one service no Arkan would do: pull out wisdom teeth for families at home, so we had to do that ourselves. Each was placed in a tiny sack, with the name of the man, his home town and his killer; these I kept, with the pliers, in a chest on the shelf of my wardrobe, waiting for the first of us to make fifty fights and take them home. Skorsas, who could speak blithely of small girls being cut between the legs, turned green when I told him.

When the question of who would do the branding first came up, they all looked to me, and I agreed, trying to keep pain in my throat from choking me. Again the fire laws made trouble. We ended up having to bribe the Mezem kitchen staff to let us use their leftover embers. The victor and I would creep in when a scullion let us, and brighten up the coals with the bellows. Then the victor would kneel at my feet, crystal in his hand.

Some of them, I thought I might change their minds at the last, so the rest of us would have to pin or bind them. We all knew that, at home, the scar would make a man an outcast perhaps, and certainly unmarriageable, if he were honest about why it was there. But though every one of them wept on the first mark, even Mana, none flinched away. I remembered how he and I had planned to marry together; now he’d have this. I hesitated; he grabbed my hand and said, “The people wills.” I remember his tears sizzling and spitting like meat-juice on the iron, as I pressed it to his cheek.

Then what I had in some part of me pretended could never happen happened. I was matched against a Yeoli, Chinisenga Kriyo, of Selina.

He broke our law, not asking my agreement to his act. He strode out while names were still being drawn from Fate’s Helmet. I followed him, but when I came to the corridor I didn’t know which way he’d gone; he’d told his boy he’d gone out for a walk in the city, words with excuse written all over them. I got a torch, and ran under the stands, looking all across the floor with its ankle-deep dust, and up into the rafters.

Deep in, under the north end, I found him as I’d feared. Very high up; he must have been thinking to make sure the fall killed him if the belt clasping his neck broke. He was still alive, his limbs twitching, but I doubted he would be by the time the people and ropes needed to fetch him could be brought. Imagining how bitter it would be to be saved from this after choosing it, to face what he’d thought to escape, I took my time informing Iska, and by then his heart was still.

Intrigued, the Director matched me against another Yeoli, Inara Merao. He drove a dagger into his own stomach, and died on Iska’s table, despite Anhunem’s efforts.

The third one, Kyera Shae-Lemana, the Director had seized and restrained before his name was announced. No one saw him again until fight-day. Then, two guards brought him to his gate in chains. I could see even across the Ring his eyes were bloodshot and staring his chest heaving and his body pricking like a rabid dog’s. They’d fed him a drug to make him berserk; he would not know who or why or where he was fighting. As the herald readied to strike the gong and Forlanas put his hand on the lever, I looked to the fighters’ box. The Yeolis, as one, stabbed out their hands, chalk.

Kyera almost beat me. His skill was good, the drug made him both fearless and tireless, I was using a standard-issue Arkan sword that I’d bought in the market, rather than Chirel, against a Yeoli, and everything in me shrank from fighting him. Now I understood why no Yeoli balked at the brand; one could comfort oneself, as one looked for openings against another who wore a crystal, that punishment waited.

There were no rest-breaks, of course; if he beat me, he’d be brought down with stun-darts. While I circled away from his rushes, my breath coming in tearing gasps, my limbs turning to water, I heard Mana’s voice cry, “Do it, Fourth Chevenga! The people wills!” I took him down with a wound, and the crowd roared, delighted to see me have such a hard time of it.

I held up my empty hand in Iliakaj’s mercy gesture. I thought I saw six whites for every five reds, but the Director showed red. So many ways, he could make me pay for the ways I had annoyed him.

In the shower, I looked at my hands and thought, However much I scrub them clean, they will never be the same. Next I knew marble was sliding cold against my side; I’d staggered into it. The world spun, its hot sparkling rain seeming to spray from all directions; I held myself up by gripping the pipes, one freezing my sword-hand, one scalding my shield-hand, the difference hard to tell. Head sickness, I thought, not stomach, for I feel no nausea: grium.

I tried to shake it off, and felt Mana’s hand on my shoulder. “Under the stands,” he commanded. “Semana kra,” I stammered back.

I thought they’d convened to decide who was to brand me. As it was, Mana put both his hands on my shoulders, and said, “Cheng, we were talking in the box. We decided we shouldn’t do it to you.”

Memory plays tricks. I can’t recall flinging myself in the dust at all, or trying to clear a spot of floor to beat my head against; but the voices all around I remember clear as yesterday. “You were right, saying he’d take this badly.” “Let him work it off, then he’ll be ready for sense.” “Get his head out of the dust so he doesn’t choke.” “Cheng, listen! Cheng, your people are talking, shut up and kyashin listen!”

Finally Mana backhanded me, and said a fingerwidth from my face, “Semanakraseye, semana kra.” They made me get up out of the dust before they’d speak.

“When you get home, you’ve got to fight the war for us—”

“With a clean face and a clean conscience,” someone cut in.

“Shut up, shit-brains!” Mana snapped at him, knowing exactly what I’d think of that. “Whatever’s in your heart, Cheng, we know you can’t feel clean with this on you. We know. But because you are semanakraseye, you have to give your conscience up to us; remember, the semanakraseye has no honour but the people’s will. We commanded you to do it, because we need you for the war. You’re the best we’ve got. Now we command you to forgo the brand, because to our mind you can only be judged properly at home, so punishment should be held off until then. Show him the vote as it was, sibs.” Their hands all came out, chalk.

“Kyera didn’t choose,” I said.

“He would have consented,” they all started saying, “he would have, if he’d had a chance, Cheng—look what your first two did.”

“Wait,” said Mana. “He’s right; Kyera didn’t have a chance to say. We do.” He laid one hand on my shoulder formally, and took his crystal with the other.

“Fourth Chevenga Shae-Arano-e, if you and I are matched, and they use that drug, know now that I die willingly by your hand, so you may live, for the sake of Yeola-e.” He stepped back, and looked hard at the others.

Not so easy to say chalk to, your own death rather than someone else’s. They stood blinking, words catching on tongues.

Mana stood back on his heels, in his way, and his face bloomed with its wildest grin. “Shit-eaters,” he spat. “You’re only facing a roll of the die, you greenhands; he’ll most likely be out of here before you get a chance at him. Me”—he ran his hand through his chains, and said what I had never been able to bear to. “I’m looking at the certainty, unless there’s some way out. Haven’t any of you noticed, how they’re setting us up against each other for our fiftieths?” Silence fell, as if everyone’s breath had been cut off.

“Yet I’ve done this,” he said, in little more than a whisper, then left the perfect pause. “Well, all right, all right. I can’t blame you; even knowing one’s ear’s due to be pecked soon, no one wants to make an appointment. Think of it this way, then, even if you feel he went on a fool’s mission. This one”—he smacked my back—“is still the warrior and the general people would cut off their sword-arms to have back; he’s still the one who has all the friends in high places in other countries, who has the name and the nerve to make the alliances, and now the knowledge of Arko too. He’s still the one who’s capable of carrying our hopes; he’s still the only soul on All-Spirit’s sweet green Earthsphere who could pull our fat out of the fire. Even if it’s just possibly, even if you think I’m just his old friend blowing his horn, even if it’s just a slim chance—” He touched my chest, over my heart. “Would you stick a sword through that?”

Two raced each other to be first to swear; then, none wanting to be seen as the most reluctant, the rest crowded in. I took it all in silence and calm, as a semanakraseye should, though my heart was water. The tears I shed were of sheer admiration of him; it’s the best who are their best at the worst.

When they were done, Mana smacked me on the shoulder. “Cheng,” he said, his lip quirking, “now we’ve done this, don’t mess up and fail us, all right?” My heart stopped being water instantly and I said, “I won’t.” It was just what I needed, as inspired as the rest.

A heart-rending little subplot of the show we made, for Arko. That night, I killed Kyera a thousand times in my dreams.

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