168 - So ends Shefenkas's story (the Arkan chapter)

I, Fourth Chevenga Shae-Arano-e of Vae Arahi in Yeola-e, better known around here as Lightning Loner, being sound of mind, or at least faking it well enough to scribe and sign a legal document, and body, as much as anyone can be with the grium sefalian, seven cups of wine and three pipes of Arkanherb in him, do by these presents bequeath my assets entire, in liquid, illiquid and half-liquid forms, whatever amount it may total, as well as my personal effects including the sword I brought to Arko and customarily carry, known by the name of Chirel, and the items contained within the satchel marked “For the Families” in the Yeoli language, to Skorsas Trinisas, fessas, as his own property to do with as he sees fit subsequent to my death.

Signed in the City of Arko on the 15^th day of the month sacred to Dimae, 57^th-to-last Year of the Present Age,

Fourth Chevenga Shae-Arano-e ; Lightning Loner

Witnessed in the City of Arko on the 15^th day of the month sacred to Dimae, 57^th-to-last Year of the Present Age,

Fifth Boras Mahid, Aitzas

†

The toasts of Shefenkas

Norii Maziel : The Pages, Dimae 20, 57^th-to-last Year of the Present Age

It was with some prescience that Fourth Shefenkas Sharanoias, better known in Arko as Lightning Loner, raised arms and clasped hands with his fans in celebration in the Ring. The celebration that invariably seizes the City on the night a fighter wins his fiftieth usually involves him being paraded around the City, but the thick security that now surrounds Shefenkas made that impossible.

Confined to the Mezem, the newest fifty-chainer partied there, in the company of his former fellow fighters, the Mezem staff and—once he’d secured the agreement of all those already present—his closest fans, enough of them to cram the place tight.

It was a bacchanal to match that held on the eve of Suryar Yademkin’s fiftieth fight, albeit more well-populated. Wine flowed and herb burned freely. The invited Maskers were barely able to enter, but were much appreciated once they did, the rule being that their ministrations were available to fighters only. Even mere scribes such as myself were welcomed. The rumour is that it was financed by Iliakaj the Immortal.

The most moving moment of the evening came when Shefenkas stood up and called for silence so he could speak. Much has been made of the notion that he is insane. If so, he did not show it for a moment, any more than he did in the Ring against Svetkabras.

He reiterated his expectation, that the manumission ceremony he would normally undergo will not happen, that instead he will be taken into custody in the Marble Palace, either to be ransomed to Yeola-e, held indefinitely, or executed. “I wish the people of the city of Arko got to vote on my fate,” he added. “But that’s tomorrow. Not now. Now, I have toasts to make.” He raised his cup, and everyone else followed suit.

“To all of you, my... hah! I was going to say fellow ring-fighters... former fellow ring-fighters. And to the fact that each of you will be alive when I walk away from you. I would set you free from this place, if I could, but at least you are free of me.” He went around the room then to embrace every single one of them, shedding tears in his unashamed way, and was answered with no fewer.

Done that, he raised his cup again. “To the souls of all those I killed in the Ring. Yes, even Riji Kli-fas; had it been my choice I would not have killed him.” He then effortlessly rattled off the full list. Even his most dedicated followers have to refer to a written list to name all fifty he fought, and the twenty-eight he killed, including eight of his countrymen; Shefenkas can do it by memory.

His next toast was to those Yeolis who killed themselves, with a lengthy tribute to Mannas the Wolf that put virtually everyone present, except his two ubiquitous Mahid, in tears of their own.

Then it was the Mezem staff, most notably Skorsas, who blushed furiously under his face-paint to hear himself praised so fulsomely, and at such length. “Yes, even you,” Shefenkas said, pointing with his cup towards the Director. “You shen-stuffed gold pillow.” The Director just laughed; what else could he do?

“To those of my fans who have somehow become enlightened enough to see me as a human being, enough to have wished my freedom, even though that would take me away from you,” Shefenkas toasted next, “and to those who feel the same about other fighters. You know who you are; those who claim to be but are not, when you drink to this, remember, you drink the poison of a lie.”

“Finally, I will toast those who have kept closest to me, those who have been steadfastly at my side, through thick and thin, remaining utterly unflappable: my faithful Mahid. But on one condition…” He looked at one, then the other. “You must drink yourselves!”

The more senior of the Mahid answered coldly, “The Imperator forbids a Mahid who is on duty to imbibe.”

“Ah, such a shame!” Shefenkas said, still pitching his voice to be heard by all. “And it’s such a fine vintage… well, it was worth a tr—whoops!” He stumbled in such a way that his full cupful of wine flew full in the senior Mahid’s face, the bulk of it aimed for his mouth. “Pardon me, I am so terribly sorry!” Shefenkas said, both grandly and obsequiously at once, an apology that would have seemed more sincere had precisely the same accident not happened to the other Mahid almost as soon as the Yeoli’s cup was refilled. Much laughter ensued. The man who did what should be impossible—induce fifty-thousand Arkans to chant “No!” at an Imperator—managed it again, inspiring a room full of Arkans to laugh at Mahid.

One wonders how he will be punished.

The party raged on for several more beads beyond midnight, which was when I left. I returned the next morning, after the fighters’ customary time of breakfast, to find almost everyone still in their beds, the floor strewn with the debris of revelry, and a red-eyed Skorsas in Iska’s office.

“He was right,” Skorsas told me, sobbing. “He’s gone. They came for him early this morning, just before breakfast. Of course he didn’t want even to come out from under the covers, told them to go fik themselves. They darted him with Accedence and put him in a covered express chair.”

And so ends Shefenkas’s story, or at least its public, Arkan chapter. Will Arko ever see him again?

Probably it is most prudent to hope, and pray, not.

†

Excerpt from The Unexpurgated Life Is Everything, by Norii Maziel, Imeras Books and Keresin Etyairin 55^th-to-last Year of the Present Age

What I did not write, in either the original edition of this book (since it had already come out) or in the Pages piece, was the substance of a lengthy conversation with Skorsas I had that morning.

“He wrote his will last night,” the boy told me. “I said, ‘You can’t die, and they can’t kill you.’ He is Celestialin—your illustrious self is looking at this lowly one funny, Ser Maziel, but this earthy one would say something. He scoffed too, and he said, ‘You must be kidding, Skorsas. I’m the last person in the world who’d be Celestialin.’ This one is literate now, and so hit the Book, and quotes:

“ ‘And it shall come to pass that when the first to know Celestialin shall say so to Him, He will answer, laughing, ‘Surely you speak in jest. Verily, were the least likely man in all the world to be Celestialin named, it would be me.’ That’s what it says and that’s what he said, on this worthless one’s hope of Celestialis.

“He wrote his will anyway, talking one of the Mahid—Gods know how—into signing as witness. He also wrote a letter of recommendation… this one is leaving the Mezem, to pursue an apprenticeship as a healer. There’s no other fighter, after him. So he did the letter, for this modest one to show to prospective healing masters. By then he’d sobered up some.” In storytelling mode, he switches to equal-to-equal.

“When I read it, I had to cry so badly I went off to my room. I’d made an oath to myself, that I wouldn’t let him see tears. He came and found me a little while later, and of course I was still crying, and of course he said, ‘Let it out, lad. I’d never fault you.’ And held me in his arms. It was one of those times when you feel so much you feel you’re going to die of it, and he just held me.

“And then he said to me, ‘You loved me right from the start, but you never had me. I’m sorry.’ Everyone thinks we’re lovers, but we’ve never been, carnally. He wanted to give that impression, so no one would suspect he was lovers with Niku. ‘If I could have redirected your love, like a sword-cut, I’d have sent it to someone less wrapped in death and bad luck. Someone you wouldn’t have had to shit bricks over every fight day. Someone who didn’t play with fire all the time.’

“I said, ‘I could never have found a better man to love. I knew you could make fifty. But you are a man for women. I’ve always known that, and I’ve come to accept it. You needn’t apologize.’

“ ‘No, no,’ he says. ‘I’ve made love with men.’ I thought my heart would fall down between my feet. ‘I’m sorry… I was never honest with you… it was your age.’

“ ‘I know,’ I said. ‘I’m over the hill. I am not fresh any more. I understand that, too.’

“He looks at me as if I’ve grown a third eye out of my forehead. ‘Aigh, Kahara, you Arkans!’ he says. ‘No, no, no no NO, that’s not what I mean! What I mean is that you’re a child, and that’s not our way! It would have been different if I’d been your age, or closer, sixteen or even seventeen, but I’m twenty-two.’ He just had a birthday… Dimae 3. ‘Over the hill… Kahara. I feel sick.’ Then something in Yeoli, which I’m sure was, ‘I can’t wait until I’m out of this cursed pit.’

“I sat there stunned, thinking, ‘That’s why?’ He was sitting next to me on the bed. I stood up, and asked him to, as well, and faced him nose-to-nose.

“I was looking down at him. Yes, I’m taller than he is, now. Just by a bit, but still taller. He hadn’t noticed. Now he had to. He laughed, and I thought, ‘I think I heard a little shyness in that laugh,’ and my heart suddenly swelled so much I felt it might burst.

“But then he said, ‘It’s not just that… it’s also… when I came here, Iska told me that your duty was to take care of all my needs. Including that one. So I knew, it wouldn’t be your choice, if I asked. It would be required. So of course I could not touch you, or let you touch me. It’s wrong to do it with anyone except by their choice.’

“It’s that Yeoli thing, choice, choice, choice. They think it so much, it’s madness. What did he care, while he was here? ‘I say it over and over, free choice, and Arkans stare at me baffled,’ he’s saying, meanwhile. ‘I never imagined a people could exist, like Arko. It’s been… an education.’

“So I said, ‘You’ve made fifty. You’re not my fighter any more, Shefenkas, and I’m not responsible for your needs.’ And nothing else. That was close enough, to out-and-out asking. You could say, I’d already overstepped.

“He sat still for a while, fidgeting with his fingers in his lap. You get used to that sort of thing in the Mezem. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘for not being a fighter you can quit worrying about after fifty.’ Did he not want me, or was it shyness? This is the man who could take anyone in the world, who knows no fear. But shyness doesn’t necessarily make sense. ‘Thank you for everything, Skorsas. I could never repay you.’

“ ‘Yes, you could!’ I was thinking. But must not say. ‘You have nothing to either thank me or apologize for,’ I said.

“ ‘This I swear,’ he said. ‘The moment I am able, if I ever am, I will let you know where I am and what happened.’ I just nodded; I couldn’t speak for crying. He put his arms around me again. It was like being ripped in half. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘After everything you’ve done to get me through it, to be left not knowing… but you have the benefit you have, from my being in your life. And that will continue.’

“The fikken money, he meant. ‘All dust,’ I spat. ‘I should care about it, I know, but I don’t.’ I couldn’t help it. I might burn in Hayel, for what I said then. ‘The one thing in the world I want, I can never have.’

“He went very still, and I was shaking all over, and my eyes were streaming. I had as much control over them as I do over the City water. He looked at me. I just had one candle, and it was half behind him, so I couldn’t see his eyes in the shadow, just the line of the side of his face, so perfect, but I knew he was looking at me. I could feel it.

“Then he lifted his hand, and stroked one finger down my cheek, so gently it was like the touch of a feather, or a kitten’s tail. It was as if all the blood froze in my veins. And he said, ‘Skorsas, I give myself to you.’ ”

It’s common knowledge in the Mezem that Skorsas is among the toughest of the boys, perhaps the toughest. He will not tell publicly the nature of his life before it was here, except that it was very hard. But, in front of me, a grown man and an Aitzas, his painter’s-boy blue eyes fill with tears.

“Ser Maziel… this wretched one does not care if all Arko knows. It is not possible, under the gaze of the Ten Gods who love us, for there to be any shame, for anyone, from something so beautiful. He… Ser Maziel, only Celestialin can have that much beauty, in his soul. I can’t begin to describe it. I would say, ‘I love you,’ and he would always answer, ‘I love you in my way,’ which meant, not in that way.

“But now, it was as if we’d been in love for a thousand years. As if there was nothing in the world for either of us, but the other. A fighter, a warrior, you expect to grab you, to shift you around as pleases him… he never did that. It was as if he couldn’t even think of it, even right while he was in the most extreme passion, the time when most men can’t help but seize your hair or your wrists and stab you that way, uncaring whether they cause you pain… he just stayed utterly joyful, utterly open. And when he touched me—and he would not let himself take more pleasure than he gave—it was if my pleasure was all the world to him; as if there was nothing else in it.”

Skorsas and I sit in silence for a while, his eyes pouring tears, while I look away. I have taken no notes. There are some quotes that I know I will remember every word of, when I hear them.

“I don’t even know how many times it was. By the time we were both exhausted, you could see the faintest daylight through the bars. I said, ‘I’ve never known the like, in my life.’ He said, ‘Me neither. I am still seeing colours, even just from your fingers running over my shoulder now. If my life is over, it will still be complete. You have made it so.’ He said that. To me.

“I said, ‘I could never imagine loving anyone as much as I love you, you who are and always will be Shefenkas.’” Skorsas pronounces it in the Yeoli fashion, correctly, with the harder consonants.

“He looks up and his eye gets a bit of a twinkle. ‘As opposed to Celestialin,’ he says.

“ ‘No,’ I snap back. ‘The Book says he has his father-given name too. So there.’

“ ‘My name isn’t just father-given, though,’ he says. ‘They took a vote on it.’ Why am I not surprised? ‘I bet they took a vote on which way to wipe your nose,’ say I, twining my fingers in his hair. I always wished I could, when I was combing it, or putting in the gold leaves. Those little curls, they’re warm, and they feel as if they each want to clasp my fingers. We laughed together.

“He fell asleep before I did. I wanted to just look at him. Iska peeked in, and saw us lying in each other’s arms. ‘That’s the best thing in the world you could have done for him, lad,’ he whispered. I had to set him straight. ‘I didn’t do it for him. He did it for me.’

“I wanted to look after him forever.” Tears come fresh to the boy’s perfect eyes. “I knew it could not be; I would lose him either way. But the heart still wants.”

Skorsas Trinisas closes his eyes, and raises his hands to his temples, and mouths the word of a prayer. He is certain of the divinity of the man he loves. But he is not entirely convinced—how can he be?—of his immortality.

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