207 - I cannot tell a lie

I should have been able to twist and elbow out of this in one move, but my body somehow could not do it with enough force, and he kept his grip. “Hold him until it takes full effect,” someone else said, another stunning Yeoli woman, who spoke as if she’d been born in Tinga-e or thereabouts. She looked carefully into my eyes. “I’ll tell you when it has.” All-Spirit… helpless again… how… I struggled, but could not will enough strength.

Takes full effect… I knew the feeling, as it did. Accedence. But how, when I hadn’t been darted? Everything began retreating to the familiar distance. When I’d weakened enough to go still, she stroked my brow, as if she were comforting me. “Semanakraseye, we are sorry, but we had to do this; we knew you’d never agree to what we were ordered to do, since you cannot know who we are. Good, he’s under, let’s take him.” Always you get talked about in your hearing, when you are helpless.

There was a slave’s passage leading from the anteroom. With firm grips on my wrists they led me out of the sumptuous velvet-walled ostensible palace to the dusty, rough-hewn second palace within it. “You’re safe, semanakraseye, don’t worry, we just have to clear you, that’s all, then we’ll bring you right back, we are Ikal, second Fire come if I lie,” the woman kept saying, even after the man said, “Kai, it’s not going to help. He’s not believing a word.” That wasn’t entirely true; my mind was too Acceded to believe or disbelieve anything.

They took me further and further downstairs, now and then pulling me into a dark corner or turn when some other slave was passing. The air grew cooler, and more and more damp, like inside of a cave. “Hurry,” the woman said. “It’s a short dose, and we have to have him tied good and tight before it wears off… sorry, semanakraseye, sorry. You cannot feel safe, but you are.” Would Arkan imposters be so solicitous? Perhaps, if they had some reason.

We came to what must be a forgotten store-room. There was an old statue with rolled up carpets tossed over its shoulders next to a barrel of faded banners, and a heap of ancient faded cushions with half their mirror-chips torn off and stuffing poking out. Everything wore a good finger-width of dust; I heard water dripping somewhere. They unslung Chirel from my shoulder, slave-tied my arms, bound my ankles tight together, and made me lie down on a bed out of cushions and old curtains.

“We’d just have grabbed you, not given you Accedence, except that you’re you,” the woman they called Kai said. “You’d have made little pieces out of us. But it will wear off; we have to let it before we give you the truth-drug. We’re sorry we’ve bound you, too, but it’s in case you don’t believe us. It’s only a few questions we have to ask you. It’ll only be a moment. Take a deep breath.” I did. “Keep taking deep breaths; it goes faster that way.” I found it did. No one had taught me that trick in Arko.

They kept touching me, hands on my shoulders or my hands, as if to reassure, and they touched like Yeolis. When the drug was worn off enough that I could speak, I said, “I’d believe you are Ikal, except that it seems too good to be true.”

“Aigh,” said one of the men. “You went through such kyash… you are not in Arko, Chevenga, that you can know!” Kai took my face between her hands tenderly, her own face anguished. “All-Spirit… you will know… what I would give to make you know now.” I saw one of the men open the box and lift the vein-needle, to examine it in the light of his lamp.

They seemed so Yeoli, I spoke to them as if they were. “How did you Accede me?”

“An Arkan method,” Kai said. “It was one of two substances on the paper that Vaen handed you. We have someone else with her, so she’s all right. The other is one that instantly opens up the pores of the skin, allowing whatever it touches to enter. Did you get a taste like oysters on the back of your tongue?”

“All-Spirit,” I whispered. “An Arkan method I have not heard of. I thought I knew them all. She’s all right?” Something made me ask. “What does that mean?”

“To hand you the letter herself so you wouldn’t suspect, she had to take a dose too.”

Somehow that made me believe they were Ikal more than anything else; not just that one of them would do this, but that the rest would tell me she was all right.

The vein in the crook of my arm was covered by rope, of course, as were those in my ankles and wrists, so they decided to use the one on the back of my shield-hand, taking a grip on my fingers hard enough to hurt, in case I squirmed. The needle felt like it was going into my heart. “There. Relax, Chevenga. We’ll be done fastest if you don’t fight it. Lie to us, how old are you?”

“I cannot tell a lie,” I said. “Thirty-one.” The man who’d grabbed me let out a snort of laughter, until the others shot him a look.

“Are you comfortable?”

“No. That’s the truth, though.” They did their best with the cushions.

“Lie to us, what… gender are you?”

“Three-penised hermaphrodite.” They must have dreary lives as spy-slaves; the least I could do was make them laugh. This time Kai did too, a tight thin giggle.

They waited, and I began to feel the drug. It took me right back to Arko. Triadas’s voice would be next, extracting from me a thousand Yeoli deaths. “Kyash, he’s shaking,” the other man, who had his hand on my shoulder, said. Kai put her hand on my chest, just holding. I did not want to cry in front of them, in case they were not Ikal, but the drug itself undid me as it does, and I was soon blubbering like a child. Kai took me in her arms as if I was one, and they all talked, saying, “It’s all right, it’s not what it was, it won’t be like it was, we swear, Chevenga, semanakraseye, we’re sorry, it’s all right, you’re safe, it’s all right.” In time, the drug itself took away the pain, or at least the tears.

“Lie to us, what’s your na—?”

“No, don’t ask him that, it’ll be like when he was scraped,” one of the men said. “What’s your oldest child’s name?”

I could still lie, but it was harder. “Klai... me... ra.”

They waited, and Kai took my head onto her lap, and stroked my hair, like a mother with a sick child. These things felt huge, now, like the blessings of a Goddess. “You’re safe.” Their voices reached deeper, making me unable to disbelieve it. “You are safe, Chevenga. Lie to us... what is your shadow father’s name?”

“Te...” I was going to say “Tennunga,” but my tongue tripped over the lie and flowed into the truth. “Esora-e Mangu.”

“A little longer, just to be absolutely sure.” They waited again, in a world that was all stillness and silence inside my skull, between the drops of water, dripping somewhere, each like a ping of a silver bell, and the shifts and twitchings of their hands, tense on me. “Now, he’s there, let’s untie him.” They rubbed me gently where the ropes had been. I couldn’t even say thank you.

“Chevenga, have the Arkans managed to turn you?” Kai asked.

“No.”

“So you have not changed your loyalties from Yeola-e to Arko?”

“No.”

“Even slightly?”

“No.”

“Did they try to turn you?”

“No.” Bribing or threatening me into betraying my people, Kurkas apparently hadn’t thought of; maybe he’d somehow known it would be futile.

“Have the Arkans instilled any secret ideas in your mind that could harm Yeola-e?” My mind couldn’t answer that, so my tongue stayed silent. “Why didn’t you answer that?”

“I don’t know the answer.” I’d been cured of them, but, if what Alchaen had written in the recommendations was true, not entirely, and Yeola-e could possibly come to harm because of that. I meant to explain when the drug wore off, but Kai was skilled enough at questioning to get this out of me, and also that the purpose had been to torture me.

“Is there any information you have that Ikal should know that we haven’t asked you?”

“Yes.” It should go into the record what secrets I had given up under truth-drug in Arko, so a full accounting could be made. The part of me that could feel anything felt sick, knowing that included my foreknowledge. It might all come out.

“What kind of information?”

“What I told them under truth-drug.”

“We should leave that for the full debriefing the summit-person and the generals are going to want when he gets home,” said Kai. “Chevenga, you know the spirit of what we are asking, our intent; in that spirit, is there anything else we should know?”

“No.”

“We’re done then,” said Kai. “Just rest, Chevenga. We’re sorry, again. He’s got another two beads of the effect to go, but I still say we should take him back to his guards, even if that means they see us; they’re going to be leaving town soon anyway, and if they figure out he’s not just in a long negotiation with the king, but missing, it could be quite the incident.”

“I’m just glad we have this drug now,” said the man who’d grabbed me. “I was having waking nightmares about having to beat the kyash out of my sema—”

The other two hissed him quiet, and Kai snapped, “Shut up, moron—right in front of him while he’s under, you child-raping idiot!” He made fast and contrite apologies. Try to beat the kyash out of me with my hands untied, or even one of them, I wanted to say.

They had to half-carry me, which made it harder for them to fade when other slaves were going by, but they managed it. I wondered what they’d have done, if I’d answered that the Arkans had turned me. Killed me, I doubted; kept me captive and taken me home some other way? Taken me back to Krero and questioned me again in front of him while I was still under? I will never know.

Krero and Sach had been standing with the Lakan pair of guards outside the anteroom door to wait for me, while the rest of my escort had been shown to a parlour to be served refreshments as they waited. There was a slave-door that led right into the parlour. I could not have asked for better work from my guards; Kai barely had a chance to say, “We’re friends, Ikal, he’s truth—” before the three were all pinned against walls with sword-tips at their throats, and I was in the arms of my shadow-father.

“Kyash, he’s stunned… or drugged!” He lowered me into a chair and started feeling my head over. “Love, talk to me, which is it?” Evechera ran for Krero and Sach. “Drugged,” I said. Now I was certain they were Ikal, and I had been safe all along, I was not capable of speaking for them unasked.

“We had orders from the summit-person of Ikal, clear the semanakraseye before he even gets home,” Kai said, with admirable calm for someone at swordspoint. “Because of how long he was there, and that he was tortured. We’ve had people trying to follow him all the way from Thenai, but he keeps moving too cursed fast. We knew we’d be in guise and he wouldn’t know us so he’d never agree…” I’m all right, I’m all right, it’s fine, I said over and over in my mind, as if I could get the words out of my mouth by sheer will. Stand down! “He’s truth-drugged,” she said. “He’s cleared.”

“Of course he’s kevyalin cleared!” my shadow-father roared. “If this kyash is true… Chevenga, what’s the drug, is this true, is it truth-drug?”

“Yes,” I said. What she says is true, ask me!

“Ask him if I’m speaking true,” said Kai.

Krero was back now. “If it’s even kyashin truth-drug he’s full of—what if it’s Accedence and he’s just telling us what they told him to?” No, no, it’s true, it’s truth-drug! “Cheng, did they give you Accedence?”

“Yes.” No! Aigh! That was earlier, not now, now it’s truth-drug, stand down!

“We did, so we could take him to where we could truth-drug him,” Kai said, keeping her calm like a good Ikal operative, but going a little pale in the cheeks. “Please ask him if that is true.” Yes! Ask me! Ask me!

“We may just have to wait until whatever it is wears off,” said Evechera. That’s two fikken beads, are you going to hold them at swordspoint that whole time?

“If whatever it is doesn’t kill him!” Krero said. “These people speak and act like Yeolis; that doesn’t mean they are! All-Spirit… we should get him down to Kaninjer.” Heart’s brother, can you quickly learn the trick of truth-drug questioning and talk to me?

“If they meant to kill him, they wouldn’t have brought him back and allowed themselves to get into our hands,” said Sachara, sensibly. “None of them are even armed. Cheng, the drug that’s affecting you now, is it truth-drug or Accedence?”

“Truth-drug.”

“How are you feeling?”

All-Spirit… a question whose answer can start to give them a clue. “Ripping out… my hair.”

“Why?”

“I can’t say what I… want…”

Call it a reverse, or Yeoli-style, scraping, that he did then. “What do you want to say more than anything else?”

“Stand down that’s an order.” They all straightened and relaxed, then tensed and brought up their swords again as Krero yelled, “No, don’t!”

He took a long, deep breath. “We’ll ask him… for the next orders. We’ll stand down if they make sense. Cheng… what are we doing next?”

“Back to the ship.”

“Then what? Put you in a berth to sleep it off?”

“Yes, and…” I lost strength to say the rest, as you do on the drug.

“And? What do we do then?”

“Set sail for Brahvniki.” I yearned more desperately for that berth than an Arkan for Celestialis.

“Stand down,” Krero said. “Our apologies for distrusting and threatening you, members of Ikal.”

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