191 – The Mother-by-Marriage/Daughter-by-Marriage Talk

Dear Merao:

Chevenga will have left by the time I send this, so I am not betraying his position if it gets intercepted. So I’m a bit slow on the news.

You agree to marry a man when his mother is around and you have to have the Mother-by-Marriage/Daughter-by-Marriage Talk. That was today.

He has three parents here: his blood-mother Karani, his shadow-mother Denaina and his shadow-father, Esora-e, who is a prize. Hates anything non-Yeoli. Chevenga was so ah-kah last night he slept in while I did training. I found them all sitting together on the beach afterwards, so I went and joined them.

“I thought I should... talk to you more privately,” I say, trying not to sound nervous. “I mean... I’m sure Chevenga hasn’t had much to say about me to you... He’s been busy. And he told me some about you to me... so... here I am.”

“Well, he’s hardly been here,” says Esora-e, as if that’s my fault. He’s looking at me as if crawled up out of the sea-mud.

“He speaks very well of you, of course,” says Denaina, who seemed nice from the start.

“What is it you’d like to say to us, Niku?” That’s Karani. She looks so much like him, it is spooky. She is where he got his beautiful piercing dark eyes, and the black hair. He says she didn’t look so much like him before, when she wore her hair long, but now she’s got it in a Yeoli warrior-cut, she’s closer. I’ve never seen her any other way. She looks right at me as she asks and it’s just like him.

“Well, I could go on about why I think he’s so wonderful, but then you know. He’s your son. Still... he is unique in all the world,” I say. Fahkad, did that sound like pandering? “I... would hope you would want to know me better.”

“It’s true, you are telling me nothing I don’t know about him,” says Esora-e, looking a bit as if he’d bitten a lemon. I look at Karani and say, “I’m so happy to finally meet his parents.”

“Um... Niku…” he says. Oh-oh. But I’m going to be polite, so I close my eyes to attend to his words. He kind of sputters. Oops… Yeolis don’t do that, don’t know about that. “I’m sorry,” I say quickly. “We close our eyes to give complete attention to the words spoken. I’ll keep them open but my intent is the same.”

“Ah. Em… you know it’s... not at all traditional for a semanakraseye to marry a foreigner?”

“That doesn’t mean it’s impossible, love,” Karani says to him.

Show them you understand a little of their culture, I tell myself. “As I understand, it would have to be approved by your Assembly, which I thought was like our Council, and waxil’d upon... um... voted upon I suppose is the correct translation. Am I right?”

“Yes, it does,” Esora-e says. “And... with all due respect... the chances they’d approve it are vanishingly small, I think.”

“We don’t know that, love,” said Denaina, reprovingly. I kept my gaze on him. He kept his gaze on me. “You know how good Chevenga is at talking people into things.”

“We’ve played against slim-to-none chances before and both of us are good at fighting the odds, I think,” I say. “Of course neither of us would dispute a vote. Better the argument than a King.”

“I am just saying how it is!” Esora-e said. “Semana kra. It’s not as if I get a vote.” He looks as if he bitterly resents that. I bite my tongue. “So how was it... being lovers in the bloodsport arena of Arko?” Karani says quickly.

I tell her about how we kept it secret, were each other’s freedom and sanity, and about Mana. They all listen, in horror and silence.

“I thought the Mezem never took women as fighters,” Denaina says then. “How did they get convinced to make an exception for you?”

I tell them the whole story, minus, well, minus the same part I don’t tell you. Esora-e can’t believe I’m a better warrior than sneaker when I’m a scout. Then when I tell them about how my people bite through their tongues to drown on the blood when they’re captured, he says, “Does anyone actually do that?” I want to kick him from here to fikken Sria. I look at the sparkle on the water instead of fight-staring him.

They ask me, and I tell them, all about my war-training, our tradition of scouting and so on. They try to get everything out of me but know I must keep a secret, and respect that. Then Denaina asks me, “You figure being the semanakraseye’s wife is a life you’ll enjoy?” Nothing like an innocuous little question.

“I don’t know,” I say, being honest. “I want to be with Chevenga. The fact that he is the semanakraseye just means I’ll have more to learn about what that entails. And how to do it well along with supporting him in his position.”

“Well, it’s going to be all war, war, war for him, for as long as it takes to drive the Arkans out of Yeola-e,” says Karani. “After that... what I did... well, it depends on how much you want people to see you. I am not partial to it so I kept out of the light.”

I’m actually going to be very visible, in a certain way, Merao. I just can’t tell you yet.

I start to say something but Esora-e cuts me off. “How dependent on you and he marrying is the alliance treaty?” Ohhh, another innocuous question, thank you so much, shadow-father-by-marriage-to-be!

Of course he wants to know, I tell myself. “At this point they are two separate matters. The alliance is solid with Chevenga speaking to my people as he did.” And doing the shulpiteh and being adopted but I don’t think I’ll go into that quite yet, not in front of him. “My marrying him will have to be brought before Assembly, at another time.”

“What?” he says. “There will be, or was, some point where they’re not two separate matters?”

Keep your calm, he’s not accusing, I tell myself, and apologize for my Yeoli being more colloquial than precise. “It’s fine, it’s very good, don’t worry,” says Karani, making the brush-off sign. “Your Yeoli is a lot better than any of our Niah.” Denaina laughs at that, Esora-e not so much.

“I meant to say, more precisely, that we should ally with you whether Chevenga and I marry or not,” I say. “It’s more important than individuals.”

Esora-e shrugs. “I’m not sure what your great importance is to us.”

“Esa!” Denaina snaps at him, scoldingly. “None of us do. But unless your shadow-son and Yeola-e’s semanakraseye is a liar, it is great.”

He cannot know and it doesn’t matter, I tell myself. I’m still pissed. Unpinch your lips and unclench your jaw, girl. He cannot know, and I cannot hint. Nobody knows how good we are at what we do, Merao, until they try us.

“Of course you can’t know that, Esora-e. As good a warrior as I am, I would still be wasted fighting in a regular unit,” I say, telling myself, try to bite your tongue and not show it. He didn’t mean to insult my people. Well, maybe he did. I have to pretend he didn’t. “I think I understand your position, Esora-e. Thank you for being so honest.” I take a deep breath and looked out over the lagoon. Be calm. He is afraid. I hope I managed to smooth my features without too obvious an effort. Do I have to wear the stinking chains to remind him that I’m decent as a warrior?

“You have quite the opinion of yourself,” he says.

“Esa!” Denaina and Karani both snap, at once.

“I’m not saying it’s a bad thing!” he says, blinking innocently.

You have quite the opinion of yourself, I think. But don’t say. I do say, “Well, there are a lot of Arkan fans who still believe they were too easy on me in the Mezem.”

“If you still feel the need to prove yourself”—he glances at his two wives, who are both glaring the ‘shut-up’ glare at him—“I suppose that could be to our benefit.”

Denaina looks at me apologetically. “I probably don’t need to tell you: he’s just testing you.”

“Of course. So, Esora-e, how many Yeolis do you think I will need to prove myself to as a warrior for them to think me good enough for Chevenga?” I ask, thinking, not counting yourself. Let us be blunt.

“Ooh,” he answered. “Hard question. Before the war, our population was—”

“Esora-e Mangu!” they both snap at him, at once, again.

He stares at me. “You are asking seriously?”

“You don’t have to prove such a thing to anyone,” Karani says to me before I can answer. Her eyes have exactly the same I-mean-this look that Chevenga’s get when he’s saying something he really wants you to hear. “As a warrior and an ally, all that is asked of you is to complete your assignments and honour your agreements. Whether you are good enough for Chevenga as a wife is up to him, and him alone. Even Assembly does not approve or disapprove for that reason.”

Thank you for that, I think, hoping my smile shows it.

“Sometime soon, Niku,” says Karani, “I’d like to speak with you alone, if I may.” There’s deeper meaning in her eyes. Again, Merao, I’m sorry I can’t tell you his secret. Some day. But I can tell from her eyes that he’s told her he told me. “Perhaps now is a good time.”

Ohhhhhh kak. “I’d like that, Karani.”

“Such a talk is very important,” Denaina says. “You two go on, and I will work on taming a certain someone here.” Esora-e sputters as we get up.

“I’m not good enough for Chevenga in his eyes, I think,” I say, once we are far enough down the beach we’re out of earshot. “My apologies for not keeping my temper under control, exactly. My mother tells me I have a very bad temper.”

“It’s not you yourself,” she says. “It’s your non-Yeoliness. He’d say the same if your skin were the colour of ivory or your eyes were blue... well, especially if your eyes were blue, these days. Don’t take it personally. Your mother tells you you have a very bad temper?”

“I find it hard to laugh things off, sometimes, if they are at my expense. A family thing, I suppose. I’ve learned to be a lot calmer about things, having gone through the Mezem and through the political arguments afterward, here. My brother was always better at that kind of thing.”

She looks puzzled. Her eyes are exactly the same as Chevenga’s when he’s puzzled. Her eyebrows are thinner but the insides of them do exactly the same shape when they knit. “That... seems like an odd thing for a mother to say... not that I mean to call her down. Living among us, and married to Chevenga, you might be in the way of a certain amount of... words that are at your expense. Perhaps a great deal... it’s unprecedented. One or two semanakraseyel have married foreigners, but usually someone closer, such as an Enchian or Brahvnikian.”

“Ah. They do say the world hands you the challenges you need most. My mother’s tongue got a lot rougher after she lost the use of her legs. I try to take that into account.” I want to look up the history on those marriages, Merao. I wonder if Chevenga knows? Hey, maybe you do. Whatever you can tell me, I’m interested to read.

She’s puzzled again. Well, who isn’t baffled by my family? “I hope someday she finds peace about it,” she says, with the I-don’t-know-what-else-to-say tone.

“I hope so, too.”

“How rough is your own tongue?” —Oh, have to leave off; I’m writing this sitting right next to him on the bed—how sweetly he snores—but he’s waking up… no, actually, he just rolled over. It’s not like him at all to sleep this late, but we fed him so much pehahkah last night that he’ll be pissing brown all day.

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