183 - The semanakraseye's healer

That was mid-afternoon; the Arkans had come in just after their sacred hour of noon. Once Alchaen was done with me, I staggered back to my leaf-house and slept as if I’d been clubbed until dinner-time. That night he joined us. He’d become somewhat inured to our flesh-eating habits, pared down as they were; on Haiu Menshir you are limited to the Sailortown fish market and occasional shipped-in chickens at a premium. We were all yearning, enough that sometimes we’d talk wistfully to each other about it at length, for mutton or pork.

The more I think about speaking smoothly in front of him, the more I’ll trip over my tongue, I thought. “I still don’t know whether I will agree with you, that you are ready to go tomorrow,” he said. “But in case you do, I have been thinking about what to recommend to you, and there is one measure that will need some time on Haiu Menshir. That is: to hire a Haian as a personal physician.”

“A very good idea,” my mother said, and several others chalked. They’d let themselves sober up once they’d learned I wouldn’t be joining them quite yet, but the plan was to celebrate properly after we’d eaten.

“Can we afford to?” I asked Krero. I had learned that, somehow, I had arrived here with a fairly massive amount of gold from somewhere, that the shipfast who’d brought me insisted I had earned. Denaina had been using it to pay my healer bills, and Krero was keeping track.

“The question is, can we afford not to,” he said. “You’re delicate, in body and soul—let’s not pretend otherwise—and so much will be asked of you, body and soul, in the war. I’d go happier onto the field knowing there was a Haian checking you often.” There were chalks all around again. “There’s lots of the money left, Cheng, if that’s what you’re wondering. Enough to get us started hiring mercenaries, at least.”

Get us started, All-Spirit… one thing at a time, I told myself firmly. “That means I have to put out the notice that I want a healer, speak to all the candidates… if I do it through the proper Yeoli tender protocol, as really I ought to, legally, everything has to be in writing… aigh. That could be days.”

Merchoser, who didn’t need to inure himself to our flesh-eating ways—the Horokens had sometimes forced him to eat meat—said, “Or you could hire my nephew.” His nephew, Kaninjer, had had a greater part in taking care of me earlier in my stay, while Merchoser had been sequestered to cure his drinking habit; what I remembered clearest about him was a very gentle pair of hands feeling my wrists or stroking my forehead.

“He’s been looking to go on his service for a while, and was always planning to go to Yeola-e; he’s studied the language,” said Merchoser. “But he’s… well, he’s one of these must-get-it-perfect types, and he keeps saying, ‘I’m not skilled enough to go yet.’ Even though he always scores as near perfect on examinations as a person can.”

“If he’s nervous about responsibility, I’m perhaps not the best client for him,” I said. “If I need him gravely, he’ll be very much in the Yeoli public eye.”

“The fact is, he’d do brilliantly. He will do brilliantly wherever he goes. It’s just a matter of him getting out there and doing it. I suspect you could talk him into it. I’ve noticed you have a gift, for talking people into things.” Let’s hope so, I thought, when I’m going to have to talk every head of state I know into allying with me to free my people.

†

4 Jin 4974 | Haiuroru

Dear Mamin:

The chapter of my life that I have been hesitating with, I’ve just turned the page into in a way I never imagined. I’m not going to be able to talk to you soon, so I’ve decided I’m going to do my journal as letters to you, and send them as often as I can.

I was doing rounds in the hospital late this morning when an apprentice touched my sleeve and said the chief of the semanakraseye of Yeola-e’s guard wanted to see me. When we were in private, Krero, who has a face like an oak plank, said, “Alchaen has recommended, and Chevenga is taking the recommendation, that he hire a personal healer. Your uncle thought you might be interested; might you be?”

“Personal healer… to him?” It is the position of a just-graduated Haian’s dreams, working directly for a head of state, as you know. Though these days, Mamin, it looks like it’s not always possible to stay in the head of state’s favour. But… me? I knew why, of course. Uncle Merchoser, who is still acting as his physical healer, suggested it to them. “I… I’m not sure I’m truly qualified, kere Krero. Would the semanakraseye not want someone more …experienced?”

“Look, Kanincha”—that’s how they pronounce my name—“unless it’s a flat no, go talk to the man. Let him judge for himself. I’m not going to. Is it a flat no?”

“No, no, of course not, kere guard captain... I will speak to him, of course.”

“Then come with me.” He turned on his heel and strode away without looking to see whether I was following him.

The first time I had seen semanakraseye Chevenga, he’d had brain surgery six days before, his head shaved entirely with two converging lines of Kaninden’s finely-done stitches across it. He had been unable to speak, but could understand, and gesture, and expressed in every motion a desperate wish to recover fast. Later, when I recommended light exercise—I was thinking a twice-daily walk along the beach—he took that to mean running, including several stretches as fast as he could, and several warrior’s exercises many times over that I think would rupture my muscles if I tried just one.

Mamin, he can stand on one hand, and jump onto the other. He can stand on both hands using just two fingers of each. He can balance on one foot and lower himself all the way to ground with the other pointed straight out, and then come back up. He can do a standing back somersault. I find myself admiring it, until I remind myself, he’s trained to all of it in the service of bloodshed.

Like everyone else in Haiuroru, I saw what happened when the Arkans came. I kept thinking, So that’s what violence looks like. It happens so fast—a severing that will take months or years to heal, or never will, in a bare instant—you almost cannot believe it is what you are seeing. It seems too significant a thing to happen so fast, so your eyes disbelieve. You hear the screams of pain, and half of you knows they are real—you can hear it—but the other of you cannot accept. I guess you know all these things from your service.

When I saw the one Yeoli who wore his sword on his shoulder jump out and cut the Arkan leader’s head off with a blow so fast you couldn’t see the sword, and then do it again to the man carrying the Arkan standard, he was as far away and unreal as a character in a story that you’d never let children read. It was unimaginable to me that he was a human being, and one I knew… one whose wrist-pulses I’d felt, and to whom I’d given medicines. I was too far back in the crowd to get to any wounded before almost too many other Haians had, but I tried, and there was the same man I’d healed, with those same intense dark eyes against that pale skin, and I had the healer’s natural thought, How are you doing now?—when I saw: he was wearing his sword on his shoulder. It was him.

And I can’t even condemn him for it, because the Arkans came with orders to take Haiu Menshir as part of the Empire, and, if they couldn’t recapture him, to arrest his healers and send them to Kurkas.

I was one of his healers. I can’t blame him, I can’t hate him, because he saved my freedom, and perhaps my life.

*

Chevenga has grown back a head of black curls, hiding the scar. He has so many other scars, Mamin, it’s appalling. They seam and knot and pucker his skin all over, stark on his virtually fatless build, marks of pain he suffered but no longer thinks about. His eyes are different from before. They are clearer and no longer go dull sometimes. You can tell just by looking at them that they miss nothing.

Krero showed me into his house, and he greeted me with a wide smile and two hands extended. Hands that I have seen kill, I thought, as I clasped. But if I was going to be his personal healer—which generally means tending those around the client when he himself has no need—I would be healing nothing but people whose hands had killed. What am I doing? It’s going to be straight into a war camp.

He made small talk, and it was good to hear his voice in ordinary speech, not screaming or howling or whimpering in the grip of yet another nightmare. He asked me if I would like to practice my Yeoli—I think he wanted to know how well I spoke it—so we switched to that. He has a very delicate accent, with a watery trace of a lisp on all the sibilants, and a softness on the other consonants, which I know from hearing it from many of the others with him is from the area around Terera and Vae Arahi, the capital. He has a quiet way of speaking, but precise and rapid at once, so that you find yourself listening very closely.

“I should tell you first,” he said, “my hiring you might become entirely moot, if the Council of Elders decides to call all healers out of Yeola-e. We are speaking in case that does not happen.”

“Understood, semanakraseye,” I said, swallowing against the dryness in my mouth.

His eyes softened, and the corners of his lips rose in a smile. “Kanincha… you’ve seen me stark naked, flat on my back and foaming at the mouth. I think I can bear you calling me by name. So you plan to come to Yeola-e for your service; I am curious as to why.”

“Chevenga,” I said. “Yes. I…” How to explain my interest in Yeola-e as a culture to one from within it, without sounding too coldly studious? “You are a people… like no other, with the way you decide your affairs, in particular.” It was oddly embarrassing to say that in front of the person who most embodied that way of decision, who knew it in his bones as I never could with my books and papers. “I guess… at the risk of sounding as if I’m flattering, Yeola-e is my favourite of nations, other than Haiu Menshir.”

He let out a little laugh. “I don’t think you’re flattering, Kanincha, not for a moment. You speak Yeoli very well, by the way; I commend you for doing the work of learning it. Will you tell me about your experience, both in healing school and out? And how well you scored in school? And anything specific you emphasized in study?”

Experience. What I lack. I recounted it to him: my apprenticeship time, my internship at the hospital, the work I had done while I had dithered instead of leaving for my service (I didn’t mince words; why?), my marks, my study of poisons and wounds inflicted by weapons.

“Interesting,” he said. “You were drawn to learning how to cure those things which are caused by the intent of one person to harm another. Why is that?”

“I…” How quickly, he’d hit on something so personal! I remembered Ilinter, one of my surgery-masters, saying, ‘Kaninjer, you are drawn to these things because you want to stop them, and, failing that, ease them.’ “Call it hopeless idealism,” I said. “I am a Haian, I can’t help it.” Spirit of Life, I thought, how stupid can I sound?

“Hopeless idealism?” He has thick black brows that stand out against his pale skin, Mamin, so it’s striking when they rise in surprise, as they did now. “Kanincha, if I am dying because I’ve been scratched by a poisoned blade, and you save me through this knowledge gained for idealistic reasons—that’s hardly hopeless!” A smile pulled at the corner of his lips again. “At least from my point of view. The Arkans might disagree.”

I didn’t know what to say but, “True.”

“Something else to consider,” he said, “akin to what your Speaking Elder wrestles with. Haians are neutral in all wars; but it could be argued that by becoming my personal healer you are allying with Yeola-e against Arko—as much as anyone who takes up arms on Yeola-e’s behalf. Actions of yours might have even greater effect to that end than any one warrior’s. Does that bother you?”

In other words, if I save your life, is the blood of everyone you kill subsequently on my hands? We Haians have wrestled with that for centuries. I’d learned the whole history of it in ethics class.

“I am still a healer, not a warrior. We are never doing evil by healing.”

“Even if you heal an evil person?”

I looked into Chevenga’s eyes, and he looked into mine. Beyond knowing I had his utmost attention, I could not read his expression.

“I don’t think… I’d be healing an evil person if I was your healer,” I said. Exactly what I’d say if he were evil and I were trying to flatter him into hiring me, I thought sickly. What if he takes it that way? “You didn’t choose war against the Arkans… either at home, or here. Right?” Oh stupid me, asking ‘Right?’ as if the whole world doesn’t know!

His gaze went off me, which was a relief. He cast his eyes downward. “No, I didn’t,” he said, bringing them back up to me. They were full of sadness. “But I must fight the war anyway, and that means being what I must be. Unless you were the only Haian in Haiuroru who wasn’t watching, you saw what that is.”

“Yes, I did,” I said. “But I also see your pain. And I am an healer.”

Mamin… when I think of those two things, the sadness in his eyes, and the eager way he leapt out and beheaded that Arkan commander, I can’t join them. I can’t see the connection between them.

But it exists, and so I have resolved that I will come to understand it.

“The position is yours, if you choose it,” he said.

More tomorrow. All my love from your son,

Kaninjer

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