162 - It is ratified

It’s not inevitable, Skorsas said to me. You are forty-eight chains, and the Living Greatest. For you there is some consideration. Go speak to the Director. Remind him of all you’ve suffered.

I scratched on his office door. Ah, my boy, he smarmed, my much-improved Karas Raikas of the smouldering gaze, how kind of you to visit your master! The marble desk, the whole room, was pristine and shining as ant-picked bones, not a scrap of paper or a pen in sight, all of it pure decor. Only one thing lay before him: a palm-sized brass disk with a spinning pointer on it, and segments graven Yes, No, Maybe, Dismiss Someone and so forth, which he twirled absently with his silk-gloved finger, in wait for a decision that needed making.

I said I will not fight Mana the Wolf, die cast gates fast all go home. He said, what? I’d spoken in Yeoli. I said it again in Arkan. But if you refuse, you die, he said. I know, I said. After all you’ve suffered, he said, forty-eight fights, Riji Kli-fas, all the Mahid trouble and anything, you’d throw it all away now? I said, you heard me. Or are you deaf? I will not fight Mana the Wolf. I was afraid he’d throw my duty to my people at me, but he said I don’t understand what it was with you and Yeolis and the Marble Palace and my most brilliant fighter is my most inscrutable enigma, aigh, aigh, aigh.

I said, are you serious? Everyone above and below you knows my real name, who I was—and you don’t…? He said, you act as if you have some significance that I, and the Mezem, didn’t give you, you conceited chit; tell me your real name, then, as if it means anything. I almost fell off my chair, laughing. I’m not telling, no, master, you keep your eye on this space for the Serpent’s Tale, the Pen that Knows All: as they say, you always hear it there first! He said it must be the madness of genius, as with Riji; then turned to wheedling. Raikas, please understand, Mana is the highest chainer aside from you and think of the chip receipts!

Then the door opened, and Meras Mahid came in.

Fancy meeting you here, I said. His ancient, lizard-like eyes slid off mine to fix the Director’s, which widened like a rabbit’s. You perhaps recall the Imperator’s intentions regarding this very person, Director, Meras said. I have been sent to remind you.

Whatever the Imperator intends between sucklings, Forlanas, I said, I will not fight Mana the Wolf. So I will it, so will it be. He looked from me to Meras and back several times, the rabbit caught between two wolves.

The Mahid and I traded a look, though he showed nothing. It seemed we shared one thing, a measure of the man. I signed at the brass thing. Give that a flick; maybe you’ll find your answers there. Was that the faintest twitch of a smile, on that reptile face?

I strung them all along, for a few days more. My forty-ninth was coming up, as was Mana’s, and the match-making for our fiftieths. He would be put on suicide watch the moment we were matched; perhaps I would, too. Barely a moment before the Pages deadline, I told half the writers I would not fight my best friend no matter what it meant, and sensed by their questions what a beautiful tragedy they’d craft of it; the other half I told, actually I might, since Mana and I have had something of a falling out. You did this just to fik us up, you overrated little shit, they yelled at me the next day when they’d sorted it out. The Director summoned me to his office, to ask me precisely what my intentions were, since the Pages still had it as a mystery. I did that just to fik them up, I answered. You know my intentions; I only told you about five times, but since the sixth seems necessary: I will not fight Mana the Wolf. And yet… well, life isn’t so bad, and there was that girl we were both after when we were twelve… No. I can’t. But… he made a pass at Niku, did you know that? But, no, what am I saying, he is Yeoli, I mustn’t. But… O dear master, do you mind if I borrow that brass thing on fight-day?

He slammed his white-gloved fists on the marble, which is something for an Arkan, and yelled, How in Hayel is anyone supposed to know how much chips for this are worth, whether it’s going to be a non-fight, a drugged fight, or what? Don’t you know the price goes up and down with every wind from your noisome mouth, you young savage, and fortunes are won and lost unjustly every moment?

My heart goes out to them, I said. But, the excitement! The drama!

†

Cheng. Chevenga. Fourth Chevenga. Where are you? Come out of it, back to earth.” We were in the bath, after training. He didn’t take baths, usually, preferring just the fall of water over his body. He was thinking this was the only place we could talk. Our four Mahid stood like black pilasters in the steam, one of them holding the end of the chain attached to the collar around my neck.

“Two great Yeoli fighters, friends from childhood, tragically matched against each other! The heart weeps.... crack out the mourning dye, that washes out.”

“Fourth Chevenga Shae-Arano-e, don’t speak to me in that shit-spitting spew of a language.”

“But these things are untranslatable, heart’s brother! You just can’t say in Yeoli or Enchian, the excitement! The drama!”

“Fourth Chevenga Shae-Arano-e semanakraseye d’Yeola’e!” He backhanded me across the face. The sting made me notice him, fix my eyes on his. “Will you get back here and listen to me? Semana kra, your people are talking!”

“It’s all right, I have a plan,” I said, in Yeoli. I had told Skorsas, find me the best couple of assassins in Arko, price no object; in fact I’ll throw in a chip for the seats right beside my gate for my fiftieth fight. Turning green, he’d asked me who I meant to kill, afraid it was Kurkas. No, no, don’t worry, I’d said, it’s someone much easier, shouldn’t be trouble at all if they’re any kind of professionals. The Director? he guessed. What good will that do? Not Mana, can’t be. I said, do I have to handle this through someone else? Take this letter, that sets it all out.

“I do, too,” Mana said. “Difference is, you’ve told no one yours, and mine has been ratified. We went under the stands yesterday and it was unanimous chalk. I’m telling you only so it won’t be a surprise.”

“I’ve taken out a contract on myself,” I said.

“Cancel it. Semana kra, heart’s brother. Your people need you. You have to win fifty and be ransomed.”

“The grium’s killing my mind, haven’t you noticed?”

“You’re going to go to Haiu Menshir and have that cured.”

“I’ll just politely ask the Mahid transporting me to Yeola-e, ‘Mind letting me go so I can stop off on Haiu Menshir?’ And they’ll say, ‘Oh sure, Raikas! Off you go! Safe surgery!’?”

“I meant after you’re free. Besides, you’ll have a better chance of escaping from guards transporting you than out of this pit.”

“If I have any mind left. I see things like worms crawling in my porridge, now, Mana; I have nightmares when I’m not asleep; I can’t read any more, I can’t follow the arguments. My thoughts jump around to all sorts of weird places.”

“You told me Jinai saw these things, but also saw you living after. You’ve been standing by that; why stop now?”

“You know, sometimes I see tiny little Kurkas-heads. Isn’t that delicious? Yeola-e might do better with you than with me. I bet you could take Kallijas Itrean.” The man whose father had kept him out of the Mezem was assigned to Yeola-e now, and by all reports was making as much hash of us as a single champion imaginably can.

“Maybe, but I’m no chakrachaseye. You alone can do that. Heart’s brother...” He laid his hand on my shoulder. “It’s time for me to lay down my life in Yeola-e’s defense. Too many Yeolis have died to save your life already for me not to. You remember when I swore that oath, under the stands?”

I could not argue with that. I could not speak. “Semana kra,” he said, more gently. “It’s as I said; it’s ratified.”

Inevitability fell across my heart like a great gate closing. I couldn’t think of what to say, except, “If I knew exactly where my emotion is in me, I’d have hacked it out with a knife by now.”

He lifted his arms out of the churning water in which we sat to put them around my neck. “Cheng, my heart’s brother. I love you.”

“I love you, too.” He pulled my head onto his shoulder. The sobs started slight, like shivers, then turned into earthquakes all through me. I wanted to scream, so I went underwater and let them out there, coming up for air now and then, so Skorsas and Iska and boys wouldn’t come running, and guess what he’d told me, knowing us as the Mahid did not. He held me so hard it hurt.

I should not seek comfort from him, who now faced the hardest thing to face, but I spoke my heart anyway. “This is going to kyashin kill me.”

“You can’t let it.”

“So many times, I felt like I couldn’t go on, and found the strength somehow, but one of these times it’s just going to give out for good, and maybe this will be what does it. I am dying inside. I have been, the whole time.”

“You can weather it. I know you. Besides, you have to. A thousand times, semana kra. Think of the voice of every single person in Yeola-e, calling your name.”

I buried my head in his shoulder with a gasp, as if I could hide from their millions of voices there. “You will go home, to fight, Chevenga,” he said, his voice sonorous through his body. “I won’t; but I’ll have given my life to win the war as sure as if I’d fallen in a battle.”

He would never again see everyone at home, all those he loved. He had but one: me. And here I was, blubbering like a baby on his shoulder. I lifted my head, and took a deep breath, and then ducked under to cleanse my face of tears.

“What are you going to do?” I said.

“You aren’t going to be there. That’s all you need to know.” I felt sick, as many ways he might do it flashed through my mind. He’d act before we were matched and they restrained him, I saw. That was why he was telling me now. I wondered whether he just didn’t want me to see, or was afraid that at the last I wouldn’t be able to help trying to stop him.

“I will love you from All-Spirit,” he said.

Tears burned in my eyes again, but I resisted them. “I will remember that. I’ll look for you in my dreams. And, of course, when I get home, I’ll explain it all.”

He had an ebony arm-ring that he wore all the time, given to him by his mother. Under the water, he touched his finger to it, and said quietly, “Chevenga, I give this to you. Not while the four spooks are watching, too obvious; but know, that’s my intent. I’ll leave a note for Jamaias as well, but in case something goes amiss: you know.”

“All right. I know.” I took another deep breath, and lifted my head. It was time to tell him what he must hear. “Mana…” I took his hands, and fixed his eyes with mine. “Don’t worry. I will get out, I will have myself healed, I will go home, I will turn the war around. I will do it. I will do no less for you, and for the other Yeoli ring-fighters, and for all Yeola-e. My pain for what you will do, I will use to infuse myself with strength against Arko. I know your spirit will fight with me; I will feel it.”

My own words infused me with strength. I suddenly felt it, singing all through my limbs, and heard the wind and the voice of the harmonic singer, as I had not for a long time, and knew it was shining out through my eyes, that were locked with his. I saw the last thing I expected; his face lighting up into his jaunty smile. It didn’t even look forced. Tears burned again. All-Spirit, how I loved him; how could I not? I didn’t know what I’d do without him. But I must not think that now.

“Of course you’ll do it,” he said. “I never doubted, for an instant. My spirit will indeed be with you. That arm-ring will be warm with it.”

“Yes.”

He put his arms around me again. “We must not make this look too much like farewell for good,” he said. He was going to do it tonight, I saw. We would get out of the bath, towel off and go to our rooms, and I would never see him living again. I put my arms around him. “Just as if we’re doing it to give each other strength.” I didn’t know that I could feign that well. “Farewell, Chevenga,” he whispered. “Go with All-Spirit.”

“Farewell, Mana,” I whispered back, suddenly numb, so that I could make it smooth. “Go with All-Spirit, too, my heart’s brother.” I was outside myself again. It happened so easily, now, just a sliding sideways and a little dizziness, and all was well since nothing mattered. He knuckled my shoulder with his fist casually, and got out.

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