197 - The sweetest words I can say

I felt a pointed poke on my shoulder. It was the Haian. “That arm should not be moving,” she said angrily. “If you are going to be up, then it’s going in a sling.” She had brought it. I let her do it without argument. “The sooner you lie back down, the faster it will heal,” she snapped, and turned away, coming as close to stamping as a Haian can.

Breicia and I plotted eagerly for a while, though until Krena got here it was all in principle. Of course that’s the kind of plotting that is most fun. “Something else I want to ask of you,” Breicia said and Sijurai translated. “Your people who are here now; will you speak to them, explain?”

“That depends on what I’m explaining,” I said. I was about to say, “If it’s that they’re now slaves of the A-niah, even for a short time…” then thought better; Niku had said they don’t keep slaves, and I had seen none, so likely Breicia would be offended. “I imagine you want to leave them as much freedom as possible without divulging the secret too soon.”

“The Speakers haven’t discussed it yet, but if they are warriors, I would like to offer to teach them flying in the hope they may help in the war,” she said.

“So you would like me to talk them into accepting that they’ll live here, in the warm sun by the sparkling sea, picking fruit or catching fish when they’re hungry, eating chocolate, and flying? Ehh… I think I can do that. I’m known for my persuasive abilities. Now, you are thinking? Where are you putting them up?”

“Wait—someone just came running out of the infirmary towards us,” said Sijurai. “Sent by that Haian after you, Vaimoy, no doubt.” He said something to Breicia in Niah, at which she turned to me in angry amazement and spat something. “Oh-oh,” said Sijurai. “We’re both in trouble—she had no idea your wound went to the bone because neither of we fools told her; she just thought the Haian was being over-solicitous. Now she’s saying ‘Bed, that’s an order,’ and I haven’t the nerve to tell her that you might not follow her orders.”

“It’s fair enough,” I said. “Foa-een, Breicia.” The man hadn’t been sent by the Haian, though. “The messenger”—he pointed his thumb to the sky, as Sijurai translated—“says, ‘From Strangers’ Island: your cormarenc is here.’ ”

“Ai, All-Spirit.” Needed in three places at once, or was it four? “Tell them… how much can I tell them? Is it like a pigeon-paper?”

“As much as you want,” said Sijurai with a shrug. I learned later: on days with sun, the Niah can flash messages with mirrors to each other, in a code for the letters of their alphabet.

“Tell them there was an Arkan attack, and I was wounded lightly, but Niku worse. Tell them I will be there tonight, as soon as I can.” I would just hang onto whoever windboarded me with my sword-arm.

“I have to talk to the Yeolis now,” I had Sijurai tell Breicia for me. “Tomorrow I’m gone.” She gave me a sure-ruin-your-arm-if-you-want shrug, and led me to where they were, a stretch of beach a little away from the harbour. Those who were hale were helping about an equal number of A-niah put up crude leaf-houses; those who had light wounds sat on the beach in a close circle, some holding each other. Every now and then they gazed up in wonder at the wings looping and wheeling. Breicia told me three who were more severely wounded were in the infirmary. All of them were men, as Arkans don’t think women are strong enough to be rowers.

Those who were building dropped everything as we came close, and she yelled something to the A-niah with them. They gathered round, staring at me. I was wearing only the sling and a man’s pareo, so the semanakraseyeni brand showed.

“Semanakraseye? Not Artira?” one man said. “Now I know I’m dreaming—this cannot be real. My head... I’m dreaming Chevenga, everybody! I saw him speak on his tour, in Hirina... but... I guess... oh kyash, my head is so ruined...” He was far too thin, his ribs showing, his wrists red from bonds just cut, and his shoulders and upper arms seamed with old scars from the ten-beaded whip. By his muscles, though, I knew he was a warrior.

“Yes, Chevenga,” I said. “I have no other name, unless you count ‘Fourth’ and ‘Shae-Arano-e’.”

He stared at me, his eyes filling with tears. “Really? Really, really, truly, Chevenga?” I went right among them, holding out my good arm; they’d only believe it with touch. He seized me in his arms, bawling, and then they were all touching me, every wrist ringed with chafe-marks. “All-Spirit… It really is you… Yeola-e will be all right now… were you in that, on one of those things?... Chevenga! Kyash, this morning I woke up in Arkan Hayel and now I’m in some kind of fever dream or their idea of Celestialis!” It takes more than one washing to remove the shark-stuff, but they didn’t seem to notice.

The man who had spoken first straightened. “Setakraseye Kamaha Shae-Lesila of Hirina reporting, ’kras!” He saluted, which I returned. “Last I heard you were still in Arkan hands.”

“At ease, setakraseye,” I said. “Are you all warriors? I was in Arkan hands, yes... not any more. I’ll tell you the story, if you want.” They were about half warriors, the rest mostly merchant sailors, some of whom had learned to be warriors. But, to my amazement, one of them was Seriha Alikai, whom I knew as the mayor of Asinanai. He gestured only; his jaw had been broken and healed askew, leaving him without speech.

I told them all I remembered of how I’d got from Arko to here, including, in vivid detail, the battle of Haiu Menshir, which fired them like nothing else. I was beginning to understand its power to hearten Yeolis. I told them also about flying, how I’d first tried it in Arko and there is nothing like it and it’s easier than it looks, and got a good many of them keen on that too. “No wonder A-niah always fight no quarter, and kill themselves if they’re captured,” they said. Someone else asked, “Has she asked you to marry her yet, Chevenga? If not, I’d drop a lot more hints her way.”

“Yes, she asked me. And I agreed, subject to Assembly approval. Which could be interesting.” Being people of the sea they were more cosmopolitan than most Yeoli inlanders, being used to rubbing against shoulders of other colours.

I explained to them also that the alliance had necessitated that they make us all, through me, family. “I’d say I was brother to a blue-arse baboon to see this,” said Kamaha, getting the others both laughing and agreeing. “Fire from the kyashin sky… I was glad to go to All-Spirit if only to take the Arkans with—but Anchinga gave his life to put the rope in the flames and I got hauled up by the hair, thinking I’d drowned.” They told me their stories, bare survival among corpses. “Kind of fun to watch the Arkans drown around us,” one said. “You know how you get one to let go if he grabs you? Dive way down. He’ll let go to try to claw up, ha ha ha.”

“Chevenga, that hawk-faced Niah woman had her interpreter say we can’t go home yet,” said another. “Can you talk to her?”

“My people… they were barely persuaded not to send assassins after me, once they knew I knew. They’ve been guarding it at the cost of their own lives for two millennia. Now they are eventually going to let it out to more than me. They are sending a wing of axes—a hundred and twenty-eight flyers—to the army to scout and break sieges and haunt the Arkans from above for me, probably to let out the secret only when Yeola-e is entirely free. And they are going to join our privateers, too; tell you what, I’ll ask her to find you places on those ships. That might be very soon indeed, actually. Until then… well, can you suffer the bitter climate, barren landscape and chocolate-less diet of this place? You all need to heal and put more meat on your bones, anyway.” They weren’t entirely pleased, but resigned themselves.

I told them how I meant the war to go once I was commanding it. When does training for heartening my people become heartening my people? This was both. Then we got to talking about the eastern Miyatara. Breicia had her sky-scouts, but even oar-slaves know what’s happening on the ground.

“They never know that we understand a little Arkan, and think we’re same as the oars, have no ears,” Kamaha laughed. “Oh yes, they are absolutely stripped to the bone on Ro. Kreyen isn’t replacing their losses, they keep bitching.”

“I think Kreyen overextended itself taking Hyerne,” I said. “A costly conquest, as I understand it.”

They all stared at me, with a mix of bafflement and alarm. “Take Hyerne?” Kamaha said. “You mean… in the last few days, and we somehow didn’t hear?”

Now it was my turn to stare at him. “No—more than a year ago. I read it in the... ai, kyash.” I smacked myself in the forehead with my good hand. “The Pages. But I know cursed well not everything in the Pages is true. Still… a lie so big? How can that be? And why...?” Am I showing my naivete again? They were laughing.

“Well, if that was the only information you had, you couldn’t know,” Kamaha said, charitably. “For years, the governor didn’t spend his budget on ships or troops or maintenance as he was supposed to, but bought himself a palace and the boys to staff it, mostly in his bed, let the solas go off to live with Kreyenian women, let their gear go to rack and ruin. Then Kurkas ordered him take Hyerne. What could he do? He’s paying somebody really well for those Pages stories, I guess.”

I picked my jaw up and closed my mouth by sheer will. “Milforas Tatthen?” I said. “So Segiddis’s head was never sent to the Marble Palace? And those heroic battles never happened? Or at least not the way they were written up?” I had to hear them assert it and swear on the crystals of which they’d been plundered, second Fire come if they lied, before it truly sunk in. “All right, tell me one thing,” I asked. “Was there even a war?”

“Meh… skirmishes,” said Kamaha. “They took less than ten villages, we heard, before Segiddis started grinding their faces in the dust, which she is still working on. I heard she made the woman whose head they did send her honourary sister after death, even though she didn’t know her before.”

Another possible ally, then, I thought. Arkans and Hyerne have always loathed and feared each other for being ruled, in their minds, by the wrong sex. I had never befriended Segiddis, just sent back and forth polite letters; Hyerne keeps to itself and has never been much for embassies. But I could offer her something.

“Chevenga... are we a unit here? What are we militarily?” Kamaha needed to know where he stood, it seemed.

“What you are is in need of remembering that you are no longer slaves, but free Yeolis,” I said. All-Spirit, the sweetest words I can say; how many more times I will say them! “You are a unit if you choose to be.”

I stayed long enough see the first flask of wine opened, asked Breicia what I had promised them I would, to which she agreed, and then went back to where I itched to be the most: Niku’s side.

She was clearer again, though still missing most of yesterday and all of today until she’d awakened; at least it was coming back. She’d remembered how she’d proposed to me, which should be a cherished memory for both of us, all our lives. “And yet, in a way it’s too bad,” I said. “If you’d never remembered, you would have had to do it again.”

“Ow... it hurts to laugh, omores, but I still have a lot of convincing you to do, as I recall.”

None of that now, healer’s orders. We just clung, and both went watery-eyed, and I clung to Vriah, for knowing we’d have to part ways again so soon. They are in care as good as or better than mine, I had to keep telling myself.

The sun was setting as I crossed to Strangers’ Island. Breicia ordered that I be double-winged for the first hop and paddled in a canoe, rather than take a windboard, for the second, which was slower, but let me sit. Like a dolphin in and out of water, I dipped in and out of the Niah world.

My people and Kaninjer closed in around me, as I came to their circle of houses in the port of strangers, taking in the slung arm and the bandage first, and then how I smelled. The cormarenc crew were here too, now, with Krena. “Let me start with this,” I said, just as Krero was drawing breath. “About nine-tenths of what happened, I won’t be able to tell you. But I am happy to tell you all the rest.” Then I introduced Breicia, who’d brought a different interpreter, Sijurai wanting to stay with Niku.

“We’d prefer if, when you go off to fight, you take us with you,” Krero gritted.

“I couldn’t,” I said. “You know I know something of theirs which you don’t. Heart’s brothers, my parents, all of you—I’ve now seen the Niah secret in action. And once we have them with us... Arko is doomed.”

“We didn’t see or hear a thing, other than all those shell-horns suddenly blatting and all of them running around and gearing up. And your lover, and you are hurt. Was it a real battle or just a ship or two?”

“Krero... you think I, or she, would get hurt for anything less than a real battle?” I couldn’t help but let the smile pull my lips. Best I hold my crystal for this. “Second Fire come if I lie. It was twenty-one ships. You saw and heard nothing because it happened too far away.”

Esora-e pursed his lips in a soundless whistle. “I guess they aren’t so bad as warriors.” He fingered the shark-tooth. “What’s this? A decoration?”

“Niah wristlets,” I said.

“I can see how, if they had enough of those board things, they might swarm a ship, a bit like they did when we first came in,” said Sachara. “But twenty-one...?”

“How exactly it went is part of the nine-tenths I can’t tell you yet,” I said. “Sorry.”

“But they obviously know what they’re doing,” Denaina said.

“They certainly do. Our losses—a handful dead. Theirs: total. All the ships were sunk but one, every Arkan killed but the commander. I captured him.” They all stared, speechless, even Esora-e. Breicia’s interpreter passed it on to her, and she smiled wide.

“Pass on to her, and by her to her warriors, our deepest admiration and congratulations,” my mother said, and everyone else chalked. I did, and Breicia thanked us with a tip of her head. Our chances of an easy time with Assembly and the marriage just got better, my love, I said in my mind to Niku.

“It was the flagship we captured, so we could go through the papers,” I said. “You’ll never imagine why they were sent to take Niah-lur-ana now.”

“Oh kyash, not you again?” Krero turned away to pace. “How in the Garden Orbicular did they know?”

“We didn’t come in quietly enough. We’re going to be much more circumspect in other ports of call. Night-time only. And we’re leaving here tonight, once Breicia, Krena and I have had a talk that we must have. Make ready while we do.” The crew, who’d spent the full day sailing, grumbled, until I gave them a look. Kaninjer, who had felt my wrist while I was talking, wasn’t so easily persuaded; I had to promise him I’d go straight to a berth.

What Krena decided to do was send us off without her, so she could stay at least for a day to study what she now had, without holding us back. There was only a breath of wind, but a cormarenc’s huge sail and knife of a hull only need a breath. “Out past the cormorants’ rocks we go,” the captain said, once we’d set sail. “Then, where do I heave her, my semanakraseye?”

“Brahvniki.”

--