212 - I feel much more confident

Offered the choice of waiting until I came off the drug or the meeting he and I were to have that night anyway, Mikhail chose the former, but left to do some business of his in some other part of the Benai. Ivahn lifted the blanket off me, a blessed relief. I was still wearing two shirts, having planned to whip off the outer one in the alley, and was sweating like a pig. He asked me if I was comfortable where I lay, which my drug-palsied mind interpreted as meaning comfortable bodily, making my mouth answer “Yes.” Aside from wishing I were dead.

“Good,” he said. “I had Stevahn tell your people that you’re with me, in conference. Are you thirsty?” I was, desperately, having had not a drop from when I’d headed out to kill Edremmas. He lifted my head on his arm and gave me two cups full, then headed back to his desk to do paperwork, and say his afternoon prayer on the chiming of the bell. Though I found myself almost hoping the drug would never wear off, since then I’d have to speak on my own initiative, it did.

When I could, I turned away from him on the couch and put my arm over my head. I kept my tears silent. He would find them contemptible too, I was sure. When my eyes dried and enough time had gone by that they might not be too red, I sat up, and pulled off the second shirt. I decided to let him speak first, though. Of course he thought my silence was still from the drug, until he asked, and I told him it was gone enough that I could speak of my own will.

I thought he would tear into me, even if in a calm, monkish sort of way, but he settled just for asking me why I had erred, a hard question to answer. Why do we make mistakes? Inexperience? Carelessness? Overconfidence? Was I still a touch out of my head as Mikhail had suggested? I didn’t feel a clear answer in myself, so I said, “Rank stupidity.” After all that, he wouldn’t let me castigate myself. “My anger is only fear,” he said.

I got up, carefully, stretching out the stiffnesses, and trying to will away the last of the truth-drug feeling in my limbs. I went onto my knees and held my forelock to apologize, the strongest way we Yeolis do it, for causing him that fear. “Same as Mikhail,” I said as well, “whatever I can do to help with the Arkans, I will.” The wig, whiskers and hat might be useful in that, I was thinking.

“Accepted,” he said, then took my chin to turn my face up and look into my eyes, which must have been redder than I hoped. “Ah, Vik.” He pulled me up into his arms.

Curse you for making me lose it, I thought, as my eyes filled with tears again. “Truth be told, Brahvniki needs you too, lad. You’ll be all right, and do well.” I couldn’t keep from sobbing then, and burying my head in his shoulder. My Yeoli heart, I guess, has no use for zight. He held me hard, patting my shoulder, the old fox gone, the compassionate priest entirely with me.

Chirel was still lying on his desk. When I was done, he unwound the broken bits of peace-bonding wire from the hilt, and handed it to me. Then he sent a Vra to invite in Mikhail.

“You are up and about again, semanakraseye,” the clawprince said, when he and I were alone. “I am assuming salt is thoroughly shared between us.”

“Yes, very,” I said. More than you know. Unless Ivahn had told him I’d been under the blanket; I had no way of knowing. His face was stern, but closed, so that it was hard to know what he thought of me. As if I don’t, I thought.

“Teik Mikhail...” It was a loss of zight, which is everything to a Zak, but I’d lost it already. I got on my knees to him, too, which put my face at about his shoulder. “I apologize, with all my heart.”

By his face, he had not expected this, but the surprise soon disappeared into the sternness. “For what, precisely?” he said. He was testing me.

“For giving you cause to lose trust in me, when you have entrusted me with so much.”

“Hmmm.” He ran one small finger over his lips. He didn’t accept, so I stayed where I was. “So... semanakraseye... are you all right? Should I worry? Ivahn reassures me I needn’t.” So he doesn’t know I was under the blanket. I wasn’t sure who I would embarrass worse by revealing it, him or me.

No reason to beat around the bush. “You mean, am I sane enough to do what is asked of me?” And where is my confidence, I thought. He’s asking that, too. I took a deep breath, willing it not to be ragged. “Mikhail... I will do with this the same as one should do with any mistake. Learn from it, and never repeat it. I didn’t think I had a tendency to insufficient reconnaissance; maybe I do. I plan to keep that in mind. If I’m still insane, the healers would be the first to tell you that my claim to sanity is not to be believed. For what it’s worth, I think I’m sane.” I drove away the thought, which poked like the black paw of a monster out of its cage, that was a lie. I was sane if I could keep the cage locked.

“I see. I accept your apology, semanakraseye. Your zight is safe with me.” I got up. “And though I am tempted to make my worry manifest by demanding monetary recompense... a deal is a deal. Call it my mistake for not getting that in our agreement.”

Here it was. I must do what I must do, I intoned to myself, and said, “If you wish to change the terms—raise the interest, or make the portion we designated a fee into a loan—I will accept that.”

He stood considering for a while, whether truly considering, or making me sweat, I naturally couldn’t tell. “I am going to heed that which is in part the source of my success though the mind cannot follow it and it is no manrauq that I know,” he said finally. “I’m going to obey my guts. Edremmas is dead by your hand, and a deal is a deal.” He handed me a paper. It was the scrip for the full amount.

Curse my tear-up-at-a-dustspeck eyes, I thought, as they filled yet again. “Yeolis,” he said, but with enough of a smile that I knew it was not contemptuous, and offered a linen handkerchief, so elaborately embroidered I felt embarrassed to let my tears land on it.

Outside Ivahn’s door, Sachara and Krero were waiting in ambush. They seized me in their arms, one from each side. Krero said, “Oh my kyashin left hemorrhoid, are you all right?” and Sach said, “Cheng, what happened? Stevahn came and told us to stop acting like our tails were on fire, the Benaiat Ivahn was handing it,” both at once.

“It’ll be all right, I’m fine, they’re going to fake the assassin’s death,” I said quietly but fast, throwing an arm around each of their necks. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, a thousand times over. Does everyone know I’m here?”

“Yes, we told them,” said Krero. “Everyone’s shitting bricks but your shadow-father, who’s spitting nails. Let’s get you downstairs so Kaninjer can check you over.”

In our cellar-once-tannery, everyone else fell on me in a thick knot of hugs as well, except for Esora-e. His face was white with rage, making me wonder if it had been so the whole time. The silence grew deeper, and those who held me let go and backed away, as he spoke. I braced myself.

“Fourth Chevenga Shae-Arano-e.” His voice was deadly quiet, at least at the start. “What in the garden orbicular is wrong with you? How irresponsible, how reckless, could you be, trying to pull something like that? Have you forgotten everything Azaila or I or anyone taught you? Sachara said you bowed for the crowd, like the kevyalin circus clown you once were—it’s the kevyalin Mezem, you were in it too long! Or your kyashin mind is still soft and we should truss you up and haul you back to the kevyalin healers—how is Yeola-e going to win with you doing kyash like—”

“Esora-e Mangu.” The voice that cut in was even more deadly. My mother stepped between him and me, so I didn’t see her look, but I saw him freeze. I hope I am never in the path of it. He opened his mouth, closed it again.

I couldn’t move, as if my feet had grown roots, or speak, as if I were gagged again. The world was spinning; the crowded faces that stared at me, smiles gone, swam in my sight. All I could think was, I am not who I think I am, or claim to be.

My mother turned, and caught me in her arms as if I were falling. “Kaninjer... he needs you.” Not unless he has the secret elixir of competence in his bag, I thought. I wanted to die again. She and the Haian sat me on a bed, and he felt my wrists.

I said what was in my heart. “If you no longer trust me, say so, and I will do what is right.” Leap off a cliff, I meant, though I did not say it.

They closed in around me again, their voices jumbling together. “Of course we trust you, you just made one lousy mistake, if we didn’t we’d be counting votes, we trust you and we love you, Chevenga, our lives are in your hands and we want it no other way!” Of course I lost it again.

In the end, Esora-e embraced me too, and apologized. I learned later that Denaina and Sachara had pulled him aside and said, “You saw how pale he went. Kill his faith in himself and you kill all Yeola-e, too. Just keep right on if you want that on your shoulders.”

†

3 Jil 4975 : Brahvniki

Dear Mamin:

I did something I did not think was possible last night.

After he asked if they still trusted him, and they were all in tears and all over him, it turned more into a celebration when he told them how much he had earned by doing it, and they went over the numbers of mercenary warriors who’ve signed on.

But there was no alcohol-drinking, fortunately, and they all went to bed at a reasonable time. But I had a feeling I should stay up for a while to make sure he got to sleep.

Chevenga and sleep are not friends. He’ll be dog-tired and not want to go to bed anyway, as if sleep somehow steals time away from him that he needs for all the things he has to do. Then it doesn’t take him enough; he sleeps lightly so that a little noise can wake him. When I asked him about sleep in the patient intake, he told me he sometimes can’t get to sleep for worrying about something until he’s come up with a plan for it, and that he also often wakes up too early and lies thinking. I know I am going to have to watch him for the signs of insufficient sleep.

So I crept into his room, perhaps half an aer after he retired. He used to sleep in darkness, he told me, but wants a candle by the bed since he was in Arko, for reasons he’s never told me but which are, no doubt, in Alchaen’s file. His eyes were open, staring at the ceiling.

“Do you want something to help you sleep?” I asked him. “If you stay awake long enough, I will prescribe it.”

“If it gets to that,” he said. We stayed in silence for a bit, and then he said, “High stakes, no mistakes. That’s how it goes. I can’t stop thinking it.”

He’s never shared something like that with me before, Mamin, something of his concerns. I wasn’t sure how to deal with it, because, what do I know of war or assassination or planning that sort of thing? But just listening to patients can make them feel better, so I said, “If you want to talk, I am here.”

“So terrible, the consequences could have been, but so easily avoidable,” he said. “All I had to do was stroll along my getaway route beforehand, and then I’d have set a different one. How can I call myself competent if I didn’t think of that?”

It was so odd, Mamin. He is usually so confident, it defies belief. Now he sounded… well, Spirit of Life, he sounded like me. Maybe I could talk to him the way you, and other people, talk to me, when I get filled with self-doubt after I’ve erred. “One mistake is not a terrible thing,” I said. “And anyone can make one.”

“No!” Or maybe I couldn’t. Was that the wrong thing to say. He sat up fast in the bed. “Maybe anyone else can. I can’t! Not one, not one more, or else everyone and everything I love and live for is—” He drew his finger across his throat, meaning, you know. “I’ve sworn that I won’t make another; but how many people in history have said that, have sworn ‘never again, after this one,’ each time? I can make sure all my reconnaissance is three times what it needs to be from now on, and I will, but what if some other kind of mind-lapse creeps up on me? And I don’t know whether it’s because I’m out of practice or complacent from victories or just young and stupid or that maybe… my mind hasn’t healed as much as I’m pretending it has… All-Spirit…” He buried his face in his hands. “I’ve cried so many tears of shame today, I would have thought I’d run dry.”

You try to make a patient like that lie back and then you’re fighting him, of course, so I just put my hands on his head, frontal-occipital. He closed his eyes and let out a long quivering sigh. “I know. I should lie back.” He didn’t, though. “I… want so much to sleep with a pair of arms around me. I miss Niku… I wonder how she is… I’ve been here long enough, I should have sent a letter, maybe I’ll write it right now… no, no, I know, I know, Kanincha, I should lie back and sleep.” He sighed again, still quivering.

“Lie back and I’ll keep holding your head like this,” I said. He did, and wept a little, but his eyes stayed open and anguished and full of thoughts, that he stopped sharing with me. I told myself, just be patient and keep holding. After a while he wrapped one hand around his Yeoli crystal, and closed his eyes, but in an intentional way that showed it was to pray, not to sleep. He stayed like that for a while, and then he was in tears again, but by the way his face smoothed out, the crease between his brows disappearing, I knew they were tears of relief, that he’d found spiritually, somehow. “Thanks Kanincha,” he whispered. “I’m all right, thank you. I know what to do.” He fell asleep barely a moment later.

So, yes, I did something I didn’t think I could do, ease his distress on a matter of his calling, which is so diametrically opposed to mine. I feel much more confident about being a good healer to him.

All my love from your self-assured son,

Kaninjer.

†

On retrospect, the shaking I got in Brahvniki was a good thing, to steady me down for undertaking the war.

We were in Bravhniki for five more days, for a total of thirty-one-thousand and five-hundred gold at various rates, none of them bad, as well as four thousand mercenaries and a feeling they were far from tapped out by the time I was leaving. Esora-e would stay behind until he either had seven thousand or made a good hire of a mercenary recruiter to run it all herself, which he eventually did.

We set sail out of Brahvniki harbour as soon as the sky was fully dark that night. “Steer by Vara-imayen,” I told the cormarenc captain, meaning the star whose Yeoli name means Exile’s Hope. “Take me home.”

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