165 - A lesson of life

Forty-nine/forty-nine: S’fetkabras the Magician contemplates his matching

Roras Jaenenem : Watcher of the Ring, Dimae 9 57^th-to-last YPA

The tiny whipcord man wraps the sword-side half of his brown and purple moustache around one diminutive but gnarly finger, fifteen or twenty times. Attired in his trademark silver-and-black, that matches his thinning hair, he lounges in the Fighter’s Parlour, toeing a piece of the vacant chess set with a suede-booted toe. The shield-side half of his moustache trails down his satin-clad chest.

When he arrived in Arko a year and a half ago, S’fetkabras the Magician, originally of F’talezon, didn’t look a day over twenty-five. Now he does not look a day under forty-five. It’s a sore point with him. It was ever thus. If you, the unwise scribe, ask him his age, he’ll go all Lightning Loner on you.

Funny I should mention that name.

“Look it’s no surprise,” S’fetkabras says, of the appointment handed him by Fate’s Helmet, to face the dark-haired, dark-eyed and dark-souled Yeoli, who turns out to be king, in a manner, of all the dark-haired, dark-eyed and dark-souled Yeolis. “I saw the forty-nine/forty-nine coming. It was going to be either him or the Wolf, and then the Wolf went and hacked out his own throat.”

Would he have preferred Mannas?

“It wouldn’t have mattered.” As ever, the Zak accent, both guttural and lilting at once, lend his fluent Arkan an exotic darkness. “I think I could have taken him, and I think I can take Loner.”

The Living Greatest?

“Who kills becomes,” he says, grinning. “Then I will be that. But look, here is what I see with Loner. He is brilliant in the Ring. No one in his right mind would deny that. But he is not what he was. The last really hard match he had was Iliakaj for his thirty-second. I don’t think he could take Iliakaj now, and he certainly couldn’t take Kli-fas.

“He’s faded. He had an edge that he’s lost. You can see why, if you look at everything. How many times has the man tried to escape, botched it, and been shredded in one way or another for it? Or been hacked up by Mahid for offending the Imperator or trying to resist them? The body and soul can only bear so much. Look, it’s a lesson of life: try to fight against your own fate, and you hurt no one but yourself.”

Does S’fetkabras concur with the whisper going around, that Loner’s sanity is, shall we say, delicate?

He snorts. “Everyone in the Mezem knows it. Look, the man was seeing a Haian psyche-healer a year ago. Nothing’s happened to make him saner since. It got particularly bad after he fought Iliakaj. He doesn’t speak as he did, he doesn’t move as he did, his eyes are not like they were. He’s half-dead, he just needs someone to give him mercy.”

Is that a hint, that if S’fetkabras prevails, a showing of the red would be his preference?

“I make no such hint,” he says, with a graceful dip of the head. “It will be up to Arko as always, and I will do the bidding of my beloved fans. Or the Imperator.”

There is a political aspect to it now that there wasn’t before, now that it’s come out truly public that Lightning Loner is in truth the head of state of Yeola-e, and, before he was captured, the nation’s fighting commander. S’fetkabras shrugs that off. “Not my business. Look, if I favour any side in the war, it’s Arko. Besides, it’s as I say, I will do as the kerchiefs rule, follow the colour I see. If He Whose Whim is the World’s Destiny says Loner dies, he dies.”

Sometimes it is said that madness is of benefit in the Ring, because it makes a fighter fearless; what does he say to that?

“Loner was always fearless, anyway. It makes no difference that way. Look, I don’t win by fear; I never did. I’ve faced a score or more of men who had no fear of me, who thought, ‘I’ll step on this little Zak,’ until they suddenly found themselves staring up at me. Loner’s lost some of his clarity, that’s what I see. He doesn’t perceive the other and the fight as well as he used to.”

The oddsmakers don’t quite seem to concur, pegging the fight at five-to-four against the Zak. What does he make of that?

“Pff. Oddsmakers have never known how to deal with me; that’s why I have so many rich fans. You know as well as I do how many times I’ve beaten the odds.”

How S’fetkabras does win, despite fighting skills that don’t seem particularly distinguished on observation—how his opponents somehow misjudge where he or his weapon is, without fail, leaving fatal openings for him to take advantage of—remains beyond Arkan experts. Might he let us in on his secret, once he’s won fifty chains and so no longer needs to keep it?

“Fah! Silly Arkans. Haven’t you ever heard the rule of magicians, that we never give away the secrets of our illusions? Of course I won’t let you in on it, not after I win fifty, or ever.”

If S’fetkabras does win, what are his plans after his victory and liberation celebration? Might the new Living Greatest be inveigled into continuing to grace the City Itself with his presence, and residence, as a foreign freedman? Perhaps bring the beloved wife and children he left in F'talezon to live in a decent climate?

“Look, I’m sorry to make a fart noise again, but…” S’fetkabras the Magician makes a long, expert, relishing, visceral, liquid fart noise. Perhaps only a Zak, or only a magician, is capable of such a fart noise. “The new Living Greatest will inveigle himself off home to F’talezon, where men are a reasonable size and don’t all smell like rotten steak and drugs, and boys don’t smell like codgers’ smegma. I will so miss all of you Arkans.”

†

Mana-lai Chereda

Born hyerasora 32, 1527 ; died atakina 3, 1549

In service to Yeola-e in defense against Arko, going, as always, with All-Spirit.

Blood-son of Imela Chereda and Tananga Shae-Mira, shadow-son of Karisa Shae-Singa and Morae Saranyera; brother of Korai, Tyeriha and Orishai, all of Vae Arahi; heart’s brother of Fourth Chevenga Shae-Arano-e, semanakraseye of Yeola-e.

“All the world knows, I did not die in vain.”

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