T H E • P H I L O S O P H E R • I N • A R M S

291 Teaser : Up on one of those things!?

2010-06-04T17:42:00.005-04:00

I couldn’t help but let out a long laugh. “Shadow-father... are you... all right?”

“I... shadow-son...” He pulled himself straight, and petted the horse, whose ears pricked nervously. “I believe you’d best lead me back to the barracks. I’ve just gone mad. I could have sworn...that I just saw a person... flying...”

“Truly?” I said. It was one of those times in which the corners of your lips are pulled up even if you will them not to be. “Did it... look like... you’d like... doing it?” He was staring upward now, his head snapping here and there, now that he knew they were not birds.

“I’m serious, Chevenga,” with a bit of a growl in his voice. “I’m having visions here, hallucinations. It makes me very uncomfortable. Do you see them?”

I looked up, remembering which wing-colours belonged to who. “That... would be Kamaha... head woolly bird,” I said. “There is... Sala... Sawas, his true name… One of... the best of... the A-niah. There’s... Sijurai... oh, and there’s Krero.”

“Krero?”

“Yes, the one… like a hawk… with the blue stripes...”

“Saranyera?”

“Captain of the… darya semanakraseye… the very same.”

“Up on one of those things!?”

“Cheng, who’s that you’ve got there?” Sachara bellowed from somewhere else on high. “Not… Esora-e! Oh my All-Spirit!”

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[AN: Back here again. Please hold comments for when www.chevenga.com stabilizes, thanks!]

[AN: NOW POSTING ON THE NEW SITE]

2010-02-08T13:27:00.007-05:00

The Philosopher in Arms is now being posted on my new site at www.chevenga.com . Click on "latest" or go down the Table of Contents of The Philosopher in Arms for the current post.

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214 - The fox chasing for his dinner

2010-02-05T22:41:00.007-05:00

That night as we celebrated I would gaze now and then at each person, and they would each gaze now and then at me, assessing the changes. “They hurt you so,” they kept saying. I am alive, I kept thinking, remembering Jinai’s reading. At least some of the changes were good, such as Shaina’s breasts now having the shape of a mother’s. She was nursing not only Kima Imaye, but Etana’s new baby, Kilalere.

Kima’s face was more Shaina’s, but her hair was mine, as were her tiny hands and feet. She was very shy at first, turning away from me; my face had become a more harsh sight for a child, with the old scar, and the new ones I’d taken today, still fiery red. But I fed her and changed her diaper and played faces with her and carried her around on my arm the whole evening, when she let me, and she began saying “Daddy” with meaning. So soon, I would be gone again, for who knew how long.

The next morning I kissed them all goodbye and set off the courier’s way back to Ossotyeya.

To speak to the army, I wore just my wristlets and Chirel over my formal political clothes, in part because the good set of armour I should have I didn’t yet, having just been measured before I’d gone to Kefara. As the sun was setting, I found a place in the river that was deep enough. The firedish would have to be makeshift, but spears and torches were, of course, in good supply. I called the army to assembly around that spot.

It was a beautiful evening, the purpling sky shot through with long clouds like flame in the setting sun, everything clearer and brighter than usual, as if All-Spirit were more visible than usual in everything.

As with the command council, I recounted all I had done on the way home. From the battle of Haiu Menshir, they were in my hands; it was a crescendo as I told them how many warriors were coming from each place. “It is your names that will be graven in history,” I told them, “since all the world remembers those who refused to give ground, who were present at the turning-point of defeat into victory.” The singing wind was in my ears throughout, and my tongue didn’t come even near to locking up. At the end, as they let out a steady deafening roar, I tapped Esora-e to be my ritual monk, and did the Kiss of the Lake. Here, it was relatively easy. It was a year and some before I was actually due to do it, but now was a good time to show them I could still die for them if I must, whatever Kurkas had done to me, and Renewal was a good thought to have in their minds, too. We feasted and celebrated that night. Next morning, I started work, calling together the command council. There was an Ikal person waiting with a sickeningly-familiar-looking box under her arm; of course, they wanted to do the full debriefing. I told her to wait.

“First priority,” I said to the council. “Triadas Teleken, personally. It’s the best single thing we can do to raise our morale, and lay waste to theirs. Here, he stands for Arkan victory in both their minds and ours; if I’m going to stand for Yeoli victory, I have to kill him. Not only that, but he’s almost certain to be replaced by someone inferior, by the way they promote in Arko.”

I had not forgotten his kindness to me, but nor had I forgotten his loyalty to Kurkas, despite having enough sense to see the futility of it, and that remaining loyal would destroy him. I expect to die there, he’d said, meaning Yeola-e. Yes, you will, I thought. I wondered if he’d been expecting to die by my hand but hadn’t wanted to reassure me quite that much. With Triadas, you couldn’t know.

They smacked hands to foreheads. I was hardly the first to think of this, and all sorts of attempts had been made, so that Triadas had himself extremely well-guarded at night, and no one had been able to solve it. “You’re not going to do another lone assassination of an enemy general, are you, Chevenga?” Hurai asked me, worriedly. “You’ve become more important since then, and their spies will know from last night that you’re back, and he must know you have weapon-sense.”

“No,” I said. “That was by night. I want to do this in broad daylight, and in such a way that his whole army is watching. That would have the best effect.” Of course they all looked at me as if I should be shipped back to the House of Integrity. “I will try to think of a way, and I ask all of you to as well.” In the meantime I asked them to brief me on everything, and took the best look I could at the Arkan camp. What leapt out at me, when they gave me accounts of the times the Arkans had tried to take the pass, was that Triadas had placed his command post in the same place each time, well back from the pass, where the valley lies between two cliffs.

“I can tell you why!” I said, laughing. “He thinks the cliffs are unclimbable. He is a city Arkan; it’s in their bones to think of cliffs as unclimbable, because they are there. But this is Yeola-e! You just know the hotheads among the local kids make a game of climbing them, and know them like the backs of their hands.”

“They do,” said Emao-e. “We don’t. You can hardly take enough local kids on such a raid; he leaves a good thirty or forty guards in their camp.” But it was too late; the whole plan had flashed into my mind.

I sent out word in Ossotyeya and the other villages around, asking for twenty hotheads, and picked out the fifteen of my elite and fifty regulars who were the best on cliffs. I stood on rank to go myself. Jinai was unable to foresee the result, but my own feeling was very good. I first held council with the raid unit and the hotheads that night, a good cure to spending half the day on truth-drug being debriefed, and told them we’d be back together the next night, to start the mission. The Arkan camp had a clear view of the cliff, during the day. With our armour well soot-darkened, we climbed down about the time they’d be bedding down, and slept ourselves in the trees at the cliff’s foot, a long arrow’s flight from where Triadas’s command-post had been last time.

At dawn, Emao-e did as I commanded, began a charge down from the pass, seven thousand on fifteen. Triadas must know how my speech had fired up my people; let him think I, and they, were being rash. I’d said enough times how the wasp can sting the bear to death if it has enough spirit, and how every battle would be all or nothing.

The Arkans set ranks and charged in themselves, letting me see something that gave me a turn: he had stiffened the camp guard to what looked like eighty or ninety for some reason. Sachara, who I had here as my second, hissed through his teeth. “Cheng, what do you think?”

They were in the insignia of regulars, but I thought, he’s caught wind of my plan somehow, and they are elite disguised as regulars. Getting away safe depended entirely on running back to the edge of the valley far enough in advance of any chase to stay ahead despite the talus at the foot of the cliff, and the cliff itself, slowing us down. But with more they might be able to hold us long enough for enough of the main force to join them, we were done for, myself included.

My warriors all saw what I saw. Keeping fear hidden behind an impassive face as they waited for my decision, I considered calling it off, or sending them without me and perhaps sacrificing them, a worthwhile exchange for Triadas if it did not include me; but, even as one or two of them suggested it, my heart rebelled. I should follow my mind, not my heart, but knowing I could never be entirely detached about myself, I felt the doubt eat at me. I’m counting my own importance too great, to hide from myself my own cowardice, I thought. It’s a hazard of fighting command.

Meanwhile, up in the pass, the army was doing perfectly what I had ordered, and Triadas doing perfectly what I’d planned. When Emao-e called a fall-back, as if I had lost my nerve—we had a pretend Chevenga, built like me and with a cobbled-together shoulder scabbard, fighting under the national banner—Triadas saw it as a chance to crush us entirely and ordered up his full army after, trying to flank. Even the greatest general will sometimes forget the things he learned first; habit or complacency or stiff-minded or over-confidence creep in unseen like ghosts. He was doing what he had not planned, at a time chosen not by him but by us, and he’d set his command-post in the same place.

My body tingled all over with the imperative, Now! I drove away my doubts and called back logic by will. If Triadas had learned my strike force number, he would have more than seventy here, for, elite or not, you never want to be outnumbered. Nor could he be concealing strength, because in that case he’d keep their apparent number the same as before, fifty, hiding the others. If he really knew my plan, this was half-action, and Triadas wasn’t prone to that. So he must not be. “We do as planned,” I ordered. “Wedge-form, to me, charge!”

All-Spirit, I thought as I ran out like the tip of an arrow aimed at the canopy under which he sat, at a desk with a number of red-tunic-wearing aides, this is the moment I have been waiting for for two years, the time I could take the fight to them on my own soil with a good chance of a devastating victory. Drawing Chirel, feeling my footfalls, bellowing out the war-cry, feeling the wind in my face; I can’t begin to describe how good it felt; if I hadn’t been too busy I might have wept.

Of course the guards rallied to form a line to hold us, yelling and leveling spears. I picked a man, faked him one way and cut back the other with a half-leap to get past his spear, and took him down without much slowing down. The rest of the wedge followed until the ten of us who would go after Triadas were all through; I’d assigned the rest to finish the guards so as to cover our retreat.

No fool to pride, he didn’t try to play hero, but ran for the nearest safety, his army’s rear, in the hopeless hope that his guard could hold us off long enough. His mantle, which was the brilliant red of the most expensive Arkan dye, flowed out behind him; two aides ran flanking him and the rest scattered, arms full of rolled-up maps. “Triadas, my old friend!” I hailed him in Arkan as I dashed after him. “Bit different circumstances, we meet this time, eh?”

So, as in the old story, he was the rabbit fleeing for his life while I was the fox chasing merely for my dinner, but he was middle-aged, out of training, breathing thin mountain air, and running uphill. As well the fox knew he could become dinner if he were too slow; already some in the Arkan host ahead were seeing, and peeling away to come to their general’s rescue. Clever to the end, he pulled his mantle in around him so I couldn’t grab it as I drew close. I caught him by his long streaming Aitzas hair.

Give him credit: he turned and drew a dagger, and almost gave me a wound; I twisted to make my breastplate deflect it. There was that square stern face again, but now flushed with exertion, and angry: with himself, I realized. I would love to have taken him alive, and have another conversation with him in bonds and me free, this time, but it was impossible. I struck off his head.

Such sweetness, to taunt the Arkans running towards me, far too late, by holding up his head to them, and smacking his cheek with the flat of Chirel. I hoped Kallijas Itrean was getting a good look. “You are having too much kyashin fun!” Sach hissed at me, as they came closer, and yanked me half off my feet to make me flee as appropriate. The hotheads performed their assignment perfectly, just climbing the cliff fast so we could follow, placing our hands and feet exactly as they placed theirs, and from the top we heaved rocks and dead trees and whatever else we could find down on the Arkans until they gave up and turned back, dispirited. They soon fell back from the pass as well.

This incident from the point of Kalalao Shae-Fara, one of the hotheads, at Gabriel Gadfly's site here.

213 - The pain that eases conscience

2010-02-04T20:11:00.005-05:00

You can be away from home, and hear that it has all been changed, and brace yourself to see it, but still the idea remains inside that it is somehow just as it was, since that is the memory you have of it. I knew I would be shocked, but I still was.

Of course my first sight of Yeola-e wasn’t much, a deserted rocky beach south of Selina, in the dead of night. We would not risk going through the harbour; it seemed too likely that the Arkans knew I was on a cormarenc, and so they might well be turning every one that came into every Yeoli port town inside out. It wasn’t as if we needed an inn when the door of virtually any house we found would be thrown open to us ecstatically; there is the advantage in sneaking overland in your own country.

We were cautious though, travelling by night always, staying out of big cities, scouting local people who could steer us away from those who might be compromised; I had to accept that even among Yeolis there were those whom terror could make into traitors. Even by starlight I could see the road-signs with Arkan lettering, the walls where there should be none, the gibbets with hanging corpses in village squares. What was perhaps most awful was that my own who were with me didn’t seem even to notice these things.

The army was camped high on the pass near Ossotyeya, as I’d heard, pinned there by a greater Arkan one, which forced us to go around the back way to it, taking several climbs through passes almost too high for trees, so that the forest was up to our waists. Here we could travel by day, but on the last night we were close enough that I ordered push through, and we came in in the death-hour. Feeling we were cause enough to wake up Emao-e, I talked her guards into letting me in, knelt beside her bedroll and barked, as I had once before, “Fourth Chevenga reporting for duty, General First!” Just as before, she bounced about a foot up off the ground, roaring “Shit-britches, boy, I never know when you’re going to oh my All-Spirit, Chevenga!” and seized me in a furious hug.

The command council was only seven people, and I saw some missing who should be here, which told me the worst. In those who were left, I saw a deeper fatigue than from having been awakened too early, and new scars here and there. We’d all aged ten years in two, losing despite giving our utmost.

The smiles at me were desperate, the eyes naked with the thought, You are our last hope. I saw in Hurai’s the thought, I hope I taught him well enough. Jinai Oru, who looked the same—nothing could age or tire him—gave me a rib-cracking hug and said, “I told them you’d be back.”

So I sat them all down and said, “Let me tell you what I’ve been doing, between Haiu Menshir and here.” They hadn’t even heard of the battle of Haiu Menshir, I saw by the first shock, and the subsequent delight. As I listed everything off, totaling the numbers we would have, weight seemed to lift off their shoulders. We were so far gone that I don’t think shame for needing allies even occurred to them.

The rest of my family was in Kefara, about two days north; Assembly stayed and met where it could, in tents and on pastures. Renaina Chaer was still keeping the New Mountains to the south free, with her usual ghost and lightning tactics. This army was, as Krero had told me, seven thousand. It made me feel weak and sick to think of it: of all the warriors of Yeola-e who’d faced Arko on land, each the fruit of ten years of toil and sweat in training, only about ten thousand remained.

“Well, yes and no,” Emao-e pointed out to me, when I said this. “It’s been close to two years; everyone who was fourteen at the start is sixteen now, and there’s been a lot of secret training. Besides, there are those who lay low after they scattered, or recovered from wounds; if we start winning back, we’ll gather joiners.”

“If?” I said. “I know it’s been hard for you, all of you. But there’s no if here.”

I’d wondered if Emao-e might question my taking over the high generalship, either because of my age or that I’d been in the House of Integrity. That had been part of why I’d made my entrance for her the way I had. Now she just said, “A-e kras.”

It was close to dawn. “Tell them only that I am close,” I said. “I have a little business in Kefara, first, then I’ll be back to speak to them. Pick me out ten people who are good runners.” Going as couriers do, we could make two days one. I didn’t say what business; they needed nothing even slightly demoralizing now.

It was hard; I found out how unused to high air I’d got, breathing the thick heavy stuff of Arko and Haiu Menshir, except for when Niku had taken me up high. The secretary of the Arch-Arbitrate was sitting in the temple of Kefara. I knelt before her, took off my Brahvnikian-made signet and said “I have done what warrants impeachment without vote, as well as charges, but I plead extenuating circumstances. I submit myself to the Arch-Arbitrate’s judgment.” He was surprised enough just to see my face; now his jaw dropped open, the look of joy vanishing.

“I have Yeoli blood on my hands,” I told the head judge. “This is a story you should only have to tell once,” she said, and moved to assemble the court. I waited in a monk’s cell, with the bailiff keeping me company. Even chatting with him, I felt fears settle on my heart like mosquitoes on skin. I should have kept quiet, let them stay missing in action forever, as they themselves intended, I thought, sweating. If I were impeached, I could still serve as chakrachaseye if Artira appointed me, but how much would this touch morale? And what if they decided to charge me with murder?

But, in truth, I didn’t have it in me to do differently. Keeping it secret would have haunted me, ruining my own morale, weakening my spirit, hindering my fighting, muddling my plans. The God-in-Me would not send me the flash of inspiration, and without that, we were lost.

A voice came faint through the heavy door of the cell. “Chevenga?” It was Artira. We threw ourselves into each other’s arms, laughing like fifteen years ago, before we’d known what pain was, and crying too. I told her why I was here. She knew I had done it, of course.

We caught up. She’d sent a last letter to me in Arko, that I hadn’t received. I told her I’d accept whatever position was given me. And I said, “I’m sorry I left you with all this mess on your shoulders, Ardi.”

She knew I was the only one she could let show the strain. “Everyone’s been saying, ‘Will Chevenga come back, we’ll be all right with Chevenga back,’ and so on and on,” she said. Everyone loves you and no one loves me. “You can save us, and I can’t, and everyone knows it; how can I not feel I’ve failed?”

“Ardi… you were flung into the avalanche, you didn’t invite it, or even fail to prepare for it. Take two steps back and ask, did I do any more to prevent it than you did, really? We’re all equal in the face of Arkan power.” That helped a little; what helped more was taking her in my arms and letting her cry on my shoulder.

The case required Assembly as well as the Arch-Arbitrate. They set up on a field under the mountain Merahin, and I stood on grass while the charges were read. I was the only witness, but there were Enchian issues of the Pages and the Watcher of the Ring, too. I told the whole story as impassively as I could, which was not very.

Legally, it was all shaky. I should have been charged with eight counts of murder, but was not; the signet I had taken off today was not the official one, as Artira was wearing the one that had been ratified as official, and I had done something that warranted impeachment the moment I did it, so from the Yeoli standpoint, none of my alliances or loans were precisely legal; to reinstate me after this should require a national vote, not just one of Assembly, as those who argued for me asked. In times like these, even the most stiff-mindedly proper look the other way. It could be argued that there was no chance my trial would be fair, when everyone felt so dependent on me. We were so far gone no one argued that. Perhaps it would come back to bite me, some day; now was not the time to worry about it.

When the judges went off to a copse of trees to confer, I heard my name called over the buzz of the crowd. I hadn’t noticed: at its edge were Veraha, my sibs too young to fight, my grandmother, my aunts and uncles, my spouses and assorted other kin, all waving and blowing me kisses. Shaina lifted over her head a toddler with a thick thatch of black hair: Kima Imaye. I went blind with tears. Fifth wasn’t there, though, and I saw why when I thought about it. He was old enough to understand what I had done, but not why.

I didn’t expect no punishment at all. We might as well be slaves of the Arkans, if we are ever that far gone. They required me to inform the families of the eight myself, and get their wisdom teeth to them when I could; they sentenced me to take eight brand-marks on the face, since that was the Yeoli Mezem custom. But they also recommended Assembly reinstate me as semanakraseye, which they did, almost unanimously. The branding was much lighter than I’d inflicted on other Yeolis in the Mezem, done with wire rather than a rod; the eight lines fit in a space on my left cheek two finger-widths side, as anyone who has met me since knows. Being the pain that eases conscience, it hurt pleasantly.

I slept there the night, spending the evening with family. Now I saw Fifth, so big and with his face so lengthened at the age of six that he looked, to my eyes, like a little man. His dark ringlets hung past his shoulders. He’d proven himself very bright, learning to read and write not long after I’d left, and speaking like a ten-year-old. He’d gripped the sword of Saint Mother, which was held in hiding now, but not lifted it. Still, he told me, “Daddy, I’m going to be as good a warrior as you.”

Azaila had spoken to me about this shortly after I’d brought Fifth home. “You know the odds,” he said. “It’s almost certain your child won’t be as good as you. To expect it of him is to do him wrong.” I already knew that, of course. I’d just said I’d expect his best, no more and no less, and always said the same to Fifth himself. But now here he had this ambition, formed in my absence. I couldn’t single out Esora-e; people always look for missing parents in children.

“Will you train with me tomorrow, Daddy, pleeeeease?” he was saying.

“I have to run back to the army, so I won’t have time, love,” I said. “I have a little time now, though.” There was still a little orange and blue daylight, as we went out on the mountain. I challenged him to a little blind-man’s-bluff, to warm up, I told him. When he was fully blindfolded, I drew Chirel and did a down-cut at his head, a stroke that would have made me leap a pace sideways at his age. There wasn’t even a break in his chatter.

My child, I thought, as he stumbled over the meadow giggling, “I’ll get you, Daddy!”, I took you from your mother, then abandoned you, will abandon you again tomorrow, and then again the final time, before you’re even in your teens. Why did I take you? How could I do you such wrong? I looked ahead in his life, saw him chase the futile goal he’d set his heart on, all or nothing as children do, defeated from the start, with even his name begging comparison. His highest lesson of warcraft would be to abandon it. He was intelligent, too, and therefore sensitive, and when he felt it worst, at sixteen, I wouldn’t even be there. If anything, I would become a curse to him, the summit he failed to reach.

When we were done playing and practicing, I sat down with him under my arm on a rock. “I want to tell you a story, Chevenga—I know, people tell you that can’t be your name, but from me it can, because I alone am not mixing you up with some other Chevenga—about why you are anaraseye. Has anyone told you about that?”

He signed chalk with his smooth little hand, and said “It’s because I’m your eldest child, and you chose for me to.”

“Why do you think I thought you’d make a good semanakraseye? Why do you think that might be?”

“Because you thought I’d be a great warrior, and defeat the savage foreigners?” Definitely, Esora-e had been speaking with him. Already, in that little face so like mine, was tension and doubt I cannot recall feeling, that young. It had been peacetime.

“No,” I said. “That wasn’t it at all. I didn’t choose you for anything I thought you might be someday. I wouldn’t do that. It was for what you were. You think you were too young to prove yourself in anyway, don’t you, love?” He signed chalk, mystified. “But you did. Very well.” And I told him about the toad, on Leyere mountain.

An amazed dawning came into his eyes. He remembered it. Sounding not five years older than he was, but ten, he said, “That’s why you did that.”

“Yes. I’m sorry I frightened you. But if ever in your life anyone says you aren’t good enough, or as good as me, or strong enough, remember this always. You won my approval for being kind-hearted and just-minded. Nothing else, because you need nothing else to be a good semanakraseye. And if, when I’m not here, anyone says I wouldn’t think you are good enough in one thing or another, tell them this: from the day I met you, you were good enough for me, and you always will be.”

He sat gazing at me for a bit, then said, in an eerily-adult manner, “Thank you,” and gave me a neck-crushing hug. All the way back down the mountain, he who was usually so chatter-filled—I don’t know where he got it—was silent in thought.

212 - I feel much more confident

2010-02-03T20:20:00.006-05:00

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.”

211 - Further Brahvnikian justice in action

2010-02-02T18:11:00.008-05:00

I was genuinely hoping, and even thought it was plausible, that the last time would be the last time in my life, I thought.

I made the sounds I could, as well as a frantic double-charcoal with my shackled hands. I’m sure the look in my eyes was very sincere. “Oh?” the watch-official said. “Don’t want to be truth-drugged? Imagine.” I did it again, for all I was worth. I’d had some notion of keeping not only my silence, but my disguise, while I was here; I gave that up now. But how to tell her I’m the semanakraseye of Yeola-e, I’m an ally, it’s political, without words? “It amuses me how every single one I arrest seems to think he is somehow a special case, or has circumstances that are particularly extenuating,” she said.

The man assisting her pressed a few drops of the drug out of the needle to clear it of air. “Maybe we should scrape you,” she said, almost absently. “You aren’t what you seem. You look like a Arkan crossbreed of some sort, with all your hair blond except your eyebrows, but you gesture, and move, like a Yeoli.” I signed double-chalk, with as much of a look of “Let me explain!” in my eyes as I could manage. “Ah,” she said. “Bringing your war here.” I guess you prefer the Arkans? “Our city isn’t your battlefield, you know. There are laws here.”

The needle felt as if it was going into my heart again. It took everything in me to master tears; I could tell by her hardwood face that she’d see that with nothing but contempt. “Tell you what,” she said, once it was done. “Sometimes people say interesting things before, or as, it’s taking effect.” She unfastened the gag.

I’ll try not to say anything boring, I thought acidly, as I licked my lips and worked my tongue as you do to reclaim ownership of your mouth after having been gagged. “Emm... Teik of the Watch, you’ve heard the semanakraseye of Yeola-e is in town, yes? Hiring mercenaries?”

“Dah, I have. I think you’ve probably kissed off your chance of employment with him.”

“I… I am him. The semanakraseye of Yeola-e. Fourth Chevenga Shae-Arano-e. I’m in disguise. My eyebrows are real; the blond is all false. Open my shirt and you can see the brandmark. Or, of course, you can just ask me again in a tenth.”

She looked at me half-stunned, and half as though she’d found me clinging to the bottom of a dock pylon at low tide, with the slime and barnacles. “The semana...” She lifted the edge of the wig up just a hair, pulled the moustache off a touch, and yanked gently on the hairs of the end of my eyebrow, which, of course, clung.

After standing over me for a time, deliberating inwardly, she said, “No. This is something I do not wish to know.” I didn’t want to wear the gag again, but if you’ve read this far you’ve gathered that I can be relied upon to open my mouth, and she was well-practiced at quickly seizing the opportunity. She got me at about “No, no, wai—” and re-sealed it with a deft twist of her wrist. “Vyasiv, this goes over to the highest Vra. This man was never here. Understood?” He acknowledged with what must be her title in Zak, very sincerely.

But you just truth-drugged me, I wanted to scream. The highest Vra... Ivahn. If they took me to him now, I’d be under the full effect while we spoke, assuming he was kind enough to ungag me.

She patted my shoulder, proprietarily. “If what you’re claiming is true—and it’s a very wild story to not be true when you’re about to be truth-drugged—the Benaiat can ask you what he needs to know while you’re still on it. If you’re lying, we’ll bring you back here, and I’ll teach you to regret it, self-styled Fourth Shchevenga.” She erased her waxboard with firm swipes. That’s ‘self-styled semanakraseye’ to you, I hissed inwardly.

I’d never had truth-drug take effect while I was walking. It took a little longer, and was discernable to them by my staggering into things rather than turning truthful on testing questions, so they took a firm grip on my arms and then under my elbows. We crossed the harbour to Benai island on a rowboat that belonged to the watch.

I didn’t know it then, but my back-up, who’d followed me to the Kreml but not into it, of course, had split up: Sach and Alaecha had taken the public ferry to the Benai to tell my parents, and Krero and Kunarda had waited for me, then surreptitiously followed me and the guards taking me to the docks. Deciding against trying to spring me by force when I was held by friends and in such a state, they’d been unable to get onto the official boat with me, of course, and so had had to wait, cursing and spitting, for the next public ferry.

The sparkle of sun on water, the rocking of the boat, the onion-domed corridors with their scented mortar, was all like a vivid yet distant dream. The watch official went into Ivahn’s office first to report, taking Chirel, while passing red-robed monks stared at the glassy-eyed slouching lump that was me. Then they half-carried me in and sat me in a chair, and I lay my head back, without willing to. She ungagged me again.

“Unshackle him too, and everyone go,” Ivahn commanded. “He can do me no harm.” They did, and he looked me in the eyes, then gently unpinned the wig and unstuck the whiskers. It was a relief; they were starting to itch.

“Are you injured, Schchevenga?”

“No.” Only my pride, maybe mortally.

“And you did kill Edremmas?”

“Yes.” I hope it pleases you.

“Why?”

He’d never learned how to truth-drug someone, then; that was too big a question. It was somehow reassuring that he hadn’t, as if that somehow made the world back to the innocent place it had been when I’d visited here as a youth, before I knew anything of Arko. “I was hired,” I said. He’d have it all out of me, it seemed, but in one or two-word dribbles, not the eloquent flow I could have delivered undrugged.

He heaved out a long sigh. Of course he knew Annike was a friend of Mikhail; probably he’d guessed who’d hired me. “If I helped you, could you get up and over to my couch?”

“Yes.” I wasn’t sure he had the strength to catch me if I fell, but the drug took away my will to say that. Just as he was doing it, steadily enough, there was a tap on the door, and someone said something in Zak that sounded urgent. He said what sounded like ‘wait,’ and in what the person outside said, I caught the word ‘Mikhail.’ Was he here? Ivahn laid me straight on the couch, and then threw a blanket over me, covering me entire, including my face. Why did you do that? I was already too hot, and this made it worse, but there was nothing I could do about it.

“Teik Farsight, please come in.” The voices were muffled through the wool, but not enough to be unclear. I had thought Ivahn would switch to Zak, but he said this in Enchian.

“Thank you, thank you, Vra Ivahn.” Mikhail didn’t sound panicked, but then he wasn’t the kind to show it if he were.

“Have a seat. May I offer you some refreshment?”

“Why, certainly, Vra Ivahn. That would be delightful.”

“Oh, Vra Fassily, please fetch some tea for us, would you?” I heard the monk’s feet on the stones of the floor, and the brushing of his robe. “Amazing weather we’ve been having, Teik? So much rain. I am certain I would not wish to be out in it.”

They went on with these pleasantries for what seemed like a century. Was this just the usual Zak formal informality, or meant to torture me? Not by Mikhail, obviously, as he couldn’t know I was here.

I decided, though at heart I knew it was futile, to put every cell of my will into attempting to move, even just a twitch, so that one or both of them would notice. But I couldn’t find even one cell of my will, and so stayed still as the dead.

“Vra Ivahn, I did come with a matter urgent in terms of time,” Mikhail said. “Forgive me, but, I share the salt. It concerns a certain person who has been apprehended by the city watch.”

“Yes, Teik? Not that I should know about such things, but if I should happen to?”

“You have received no special notification, then? In the last very short while?”

“I may have,” Ivahn said evenly. “But I am certain that everyone within these sacred walls is no criminal.”

“Of course, but… you may have? You are not certain whether you received a specific notification or not?” Mikhail’s voice took on an edge. I could imagine those piercing black eyes.

“Mikhail, forgive my reticence and my familiarity. It may be a matter of some, em… deniability.”

“Well... I am not the person you need deny it to. Is Shchevenga here?”

I gave it all I had to move again, and again failed. Was he here to stand by me, or throw me to the wolves by somehow disavowing me? I reminded myself that truth-drugging was now the usual way here, and he must know that, and so realize he couldn’t deny any aspect of the deal.

“He is,” said Ivahn.

“And so, safe?”

“He is as safe as you and I are, as safe as in the Great Bear’s protecting arms.”

“But not safe from your wrath, I imagine. I come to tell you that at least half of that wrath should be directed toward me.” Stand by me. I remembered, he was strong on the merchant’s honour, that holds agreements as sacred. Had I been able, I’d have heaved out a huge breath.

“I am less wrathful, Mik, than you think. I will feel better without Edremmas and his ideas on the Praetanu. And yet, he was a citizen, and a crime was committed. Shchevenga’s been truth-drugged—luckily it was one of our good watch troops that nabbed him, rather than those who’d have sold him to the Arkans—and I am now in the enviable position of facing an Arkan embassy who do not recognize any citizenry other than Arkan. Thank you very much.”

“My Benaiat,” said Mikhail, with Zak-style formality, “I apologize most abjectly, for letting the big wool-haired oaf seduce me with such golden words into thinking he was above getting caught. Curse him... there’s nothing in the agreement letting me out of part of the payment if that happened.”

A third time I tried to wriggle even a toe, and a third time I failed. I should discount it anyway, I thought, in apology and to show him goodwill. How much money would that require? Those ankaryel were probably already all spoken for, in mercenary contracts. I felt sick.

“Mikhail... have a taste of this Saekrberk, it is the latest distillate—just yesterday.” I heard the gentle trickling of the liquor being poured, and both of them say the ritual word, “Korukai.”

“Ahhhh, indeed.” The clawprince smacked his lips. “That has… a streak of bitter fire that contrasts with the sweetness quite beautifully; and yet the suspicions of pine and cloudberry complement, and complicate, that fire-and-sweetness melange in a profound way.”

“Well, the secret is in the proportions…” They went on for a while about Saekrberk-making methods, while I lay drugged frozen and wanting to rip out my hair. Ivahn, you are most definitely tormenting me, I thought.

“You may have a cask, as a guest-gift,” he said. “Did you see him do it?”

“My Bear-Beloved Benaiat, I cannot begin to thank you for your munificence. I did. As did the girls.”

“How did he do it?”

“A two-hand sword-stroke so fast you could not see the blade until it was buried in Arkan fat. Then he fought down six Arkan guards easily as falling out of bed. It’s the fleeing part he didn’t do so well. Honey-Giving One... he is so impressive to speak to, seems to know so well what he’s doing... but he was out of his head so recently, I wonder if he’s entirely back in it.”

I have been sentenced, I thought, to lie here still and hear this. I didn’t try to move again.

“But that’s a good thing for his war, that he does not know how to flee well, don’t you think?”

“Ahh, Ivahn, I was speaking rhetorically when I said the fleeing part. What I truly meant was the planning part. He’s going to take over as their supreme general, Honey-Giving One help us, and yet made such a stupid mistake. I just bet a very great deal of money on his not making stupid mistakes, as did you on behalf of this whole city.”

I no longer wanted to move; just die so that my liquefied corpse flowed off the couch and oozed through cracks in the floor. “Oh, everyone makes mistakes, Mik,” Ivahn said, lightly. “He did succeed in the deed, and now he has me and the whole weight of the Benai to cover for him.”

“What, you think that was his plan?” Mikhail spat. “ ‘I won’t worry about getting caught since my old friend Ivahn and my dear backer Mikhail can figure out how to pull my fat out of the fire somehow and clean it all up with the Arkans?’ You have him lying truth-drugged somewhere? Maybe we should ask the oversized tyke.”

“Well, you witnessed; what was his mistake?” Ivahn had stepped closer to me; was that purposeful, to get Mikhail facing me so his voice would be clearest?

“He wasn’t properly prepared for effective pursuit from the watch. The route he took to escape, he must not have walked beforehand. There was sewer-work. Is that the quality of reconnaissance he’s going to do in his war, which is now ours?”

No! No no no no no no! Second Fire come, I’ll do it better! I’ll never do insufficient reconnaissance again! I would be in tears, I knew, if not for the drug.

“Our city does have a reputation for a very lax watch and very loose laws, Mik; perhaps that threw him.”

“Pfah,” Mikhail spat. I flinched all over, inwardly, as if he’d spat lava and it had landed on me. “A good strategist counts on no such thing. I should remember: he’s been a friend of yours from his youth. Charmed you blind, by the looks of it. Well... what are we going to do? The Arkans must know the miscreant was arrested; they’ll want his head, and maybe a few other parts of him taken off first, and slowly.”

“Mikhail, don’t worry, it will be nothing at all. We’ll have him kill himself.”

Truth-drug makes all words you hear much more huge than they truly are, and those who uttered them God-like; I went very still inside, too much so even to think, and the next words were almost too distant to understand. “We are so lax, and he so slippery, he will get away from us. I’m sure we have an unclaimed body in the hospital morgue, or someone awaiting execution, whose looks are close enough to his get-up. I will order prayers for the soul of the man who will save our firebrand. Let the Arkans sneer at me; you know I live for that.” They both laughed a dry laugh.

“Any help I can provide in making this convincing, you may rely on,” said Mikhail. “All I ask is—well, I was going to have one more meeting with said firebrand, to complete everything, so I will have my chance. I owe him a thorough tongue-lashing.”

“Agreed, agreed, dear friend. You will most certainly have your chance.”

210 - Brahvnikian justice in action

2010-02-01T22:28:00.004-05:00

“So I heard this right, Cheng? You want to kill this Arkan mucky-muck right in their council chamber, while they’re in session, because that would be most fitting, even though it’s probably the best-guarded place in this whole city, other than the treasury.” I signed chalk. “Hmm… you know... I don’t think we should back you up so much as haul you back to the House of Integrity.”

“Krero, it’s three thousand gold ankaryel. Think of how many mercenaries you can sign on with that.”

“Maybe the client wants to get you killed too; he’s no less a foreigner; did you think of that?”

“He didn’t specify the place, except somewhere where he can watch. Doing it in the Praetanu is my idea.”

“Right, so you just want to kill yourself before you can get home to save Yeola-e. I understand.” I had not yet entirely learned that, with some stratagems, the best way to get them past your advisors is not to mention them until you’re in the midst, or just before. It had been inadvertent with the battle of Niah-lur-ana and my mrik game with Astalaz, but, on retrospect, worked well. Remember this, I told myself.

One should especially not mention them before one has done the needed reconnaissance, I realized, as I now had to tell him, “Krero, don’t worry; I will learn all I must know—how the place is laid out, where the guards are, and so on—before I decide for certain whether I’ll do it.” Alas, that opened the way for him to have much more influence on my decision.

One person whose influence I did seek was Mikhail; he’d know the ins and outs of the building as well as whether, for instance, the guards might be less than vigilant in catching me because my victim was an Arkan, and what the political implications would be if it came to light that the assassin was me. Knowing him, he’d have another dossier. I had a feeling he’d love the idea, but I trusted him in his careful shrewdness not to childishly shade his view of my odds because of that.

“Right in the Praetanu?” he said, when I visited him again that night. His salt-and-pepper brows disappeared under his thin fore-curls, the most expression I’d seen from him. But though he said “The thought delights me,” he didn’t smile, and went right on to say, “but it would be so much less dangerous almost anywhere else, except perhaps his house. Are you thinking just to please me by this, young Shchevenga, or to prove your own gallantry?”

“I am thinking to please you, and all Brahvniki,” I said. “And the challenge of it tempts me… maybe there’s some wish to prove my own gallantry in that. But I must know much more before I decide for certain, and I ask for your help in learning that.”

We went over what he knew right there in his office. I knew the room a little from when I’d watched them in session on my month away, but he could tell me where the guards were placed, how they were armed and so forth.

I didn’t think it would hurt to admit this in writing, but it does more than I expected: what he told me made me decide against, even though I saw a way that might work. I’d fallen in love with the idea, so I had to tell myself firmly, I am being prudent, not a coward.

The thing that persuaded me more than anything else, in truth, was that those guards were of a friendly people, not enemies, so I would be constrained against harming them; they, however, would not know who I was and so would feel no such constraint, putting me at a disadvantage against them. And if we did end up in a full fight, the ending would be disastrous either way.

At least it meant Krero would be relieved that I would do it on the street instead, instead of being horrified and worried as he would have been if I’d presented it to him that way from the start.

To this day I wonder how it would have gone differently if I had chosen the other way.

Mikhail wouldn’t let his Edremmas dossier out of his house, so he loaned me a little office in which to sit to read it. Next day I got false whiskers and a wig, straight blond solas-cut, as well as a low-brimmed hat that I showed to Mikhail so he’d know me.

Out of respect for my position and consideration for my self-defense, Ivahn had personally exempted me and my guards from the usual Brahvnikian peace-bond requirement, but I went to the peace-bonding office and had it done anyway, so as not to draw suspicion carrying Chirel. Out of sight, I weakened the wires so it would slightly slow my draw at the most.

The slave-market is a subject of debate in Brahvniki, as many people oppose slavery on principle while others make money at it; there is a slave-market whose size goes up and down depending on which side is prevailing in the debate. It was a pastime of Edremmas to go there every day, since, as there are dog and horse-fanciers, he was a person-fancier, and dreaded missing choice items. He travelled in a hammock-chair borne by four, with a guard of eight, all Arkans. He took the same route back to his house each day, and there were plenty of alleyways near into which one could go in a hat-wearing Arkan and come out a hooded Yeoli. I learned the routes from the place I picked on a city map, and assigned Krero, Sachara, Kunarda and Alaecha to wander near me, pretending not to know each other, in case the guards proved more than was likely.

The day was hot and dusty, sun-swirls rising from the buildings, the people in a mood to push and curse. I ambled to the designated fountain; there was Mikhail, paused as if to enjoy the water, his entourage all liveried in silver and black. Four dark-haired young women, including the one who’d led me into the place by the hand, stood close around him. It seemed they all wanted to watch, too.

I had a sudden bitter thought: I was killing for his enjoyment, just like in the Mezem. It was overwhelming for a moment; it was almost as if I could hear the oddsmakers and the hawkers yelling. I seized myself, and drove the feeling away. I was killing for his enjoyment, yes, but in this my people would benefit, and greatly. The semanakraseye of a country all but conquered must do what he must do.

The crowd ahead parted; Brahvnikians liked to steer well clear of Edremmas, it seemed, as if he stank. As I’d hoped, two of his guards had their hands full, leading a spectacular slave: she was a full head taller than me, coloured and muscled like a bronze statue but with flame-red hair, and still fighting despite their whipping her. He meant to enjoy breaking her, it seemed. I forgot that I had nothing against him other than where his loyalty lay, and the contract.

The slave was pulling the pair back and apart from his fluttering retinue of servants and hangers-on, those flea-like people who surround anyone who is both powerful and of bad character. Edremmas, who was as soft under his jewels as Mikhail had said, swung slightly in his hammock, his flank wide open. He saw Mikhail, and gave a smug smile. Mikhail gave an even more smug one back, as did all the daughters.

I took two running steps and a long leap in between two of the fleas, letting out a war-cry to freeze everyone. I drew as I leapt, into a two-hand down-stroke that went half-through him.

He couldn’t scream—I’d cut just below his ribs—but everyone else did. Six of the guards drew on me, but they were standard stock, and three backed off after seeing what happened to the first three when they came after me. The two with the slave stood still, torn between coming too late to defend their master, and holding the slave, who saw this as an opportunity and struggled with new strength. The servants and fleas all shrank away from the fight screaming and wailing in mourning, real or pretend; the bearers just stood with the hammock chair still slightly swinging, not knowing what else to do.

All around, Brahvnikians looked from Edremmas’s corpse to me, smiling, and then began snapping their fingers, which is how Brahvnikians applaud. Mikhail and his daughters did it loudest.

So I took a bow, like a dancer—Mikhail threw back his head and guffawed, which was most unlike him—and then ran like a rabbit, as I heard the shrilling whistles of the city watch.

The gathering crowd let me through out of sympathy, and them out of duty. I dashed around the first corner of my route, sheathing Chirel; two more twisting alleys and I’d throw off the hat, cloak, whiskers and wig and casually walk back out, curious as to what all the commotion was about. But across my path I found—and it would have gone perfectly if not for this—a caution-fence, beyond which the alleyway was dug out too wide to leap over and too deep for me to see the bottom. Brahvniki has sewers, at least in the rich quarters; where they were being repaired today had not been on my map.

Kyash on me for not walking it first, I cursed myself, and almost fell coming to a stop, my boot-heels scraping on the cobbles. Despair-inducingly fast and well-trained, the watch were at the corner. I dashed down a side alley, leaping over a heap of garbage and two five-year-olds playing with stone knives. More watch ahead of me; I couldn’t shed the disguise; I heard whistles all around, the tweets rhythmic, a code. Soon I was in an alley with them at both ends. I sprang for the rougher wall, but it was too smooth to climb fast enough, and as my fingers were finding an edge two man-heights up, something hooked around my foot and yanked it off the wall. I fell sliding, clawing for holds, and a dozen hands pinned me against the wall. A bill-hook half-circled my throat and a voice barked in Enchian, “We have you, assassin.” There was nothing to do but say, “I surrender,” and stop trying to move.

They shackled my wrists and ankles with ironwood rings and unslung Chirel from my shoulder, but it felt very different from being in the hands of Arkans, or Lakans for that matter. They were friends, and were doing no wrong; I’d murdered and they’d arrested me; it was justice in action, with which I couldn’t disagree.

Justice in Bravhniki is understaffed for the size of the city, but it has strict rules to incur fair trials, including a very simple and effective measure to keep the suspect from uttering words that can be used against him in court. Just as I was wondering whether it was a Praetanu or Benai jurisdiction, and what words, said without a Yeoli accent, might persuade the watch people to take me to the Benai, their commander unfastened some device from his belt and seized me by the ear. All I could get out was “No, wait, you don’t have to—” before he jammed the gag in, fastened it and sealed its clasp with something like a peace-bond, the court’s assurance that no false confession would be forced out of me.

It was the Praetanu, it turned out, for they led me to the Kreml, the building I’d decided not to kill Edremmas in. I took the less risky choice and got caught anyway, I thought, cursing myself again. I looked for Mikhail in the crowd, thinking maybe he might talk or bribe my way out, but did not see him. I was supposed to meet him tonight to take the second half of payment; his first news I’d been caught would be if I didn’t show, unless I could somehow get out before that. I couldn’t see Krero and my others as well; my orders, if I could have given any, would have been for them to stand down anyway.

They took me downstairs to a stone-lined cell, and left me bound to a bed. I tried not to be reminded of the Ministry of Internal Serenity. Two people came in, in a very short while; a woman who, by her insignia, was important, and a man assisting her.

“You’ll be pleased to know that our torturing, or torture-threatening, days are over, assassin,” she said to me in Brahvniki-accented Enchian. “There are some benefits to Arkan ways, at least when it comes to dealing with your kind.” The man laid the box that had been under his arm on the table beside the bed, and opened it, revealing the vein-needle.

[AN: Rose and Bay voting is now open!]

2010-02-01T19:27:00.003-05:00

This book was nominated for a Rose and Bay Award in the fiction category, and voting is now open. Go here to cast your vote. Unlike topwebfiction, you only get one. If you are torn between me and someone else -- say, Shirley, for instance -- you can assuage your conscience by voting like crazy for the other at topwebfiction ;-)

I unfortunately doubt that I have a hope, due to the presence of other authors who have more readers because they've been around longer and advertised more, and/or are using voting incentives, which I do not, but it would be nice to make at least a good account of myself. I will leave the voting link up through the voting period, which is the month of February.

--

209 - The favour agreed on in conversation

2010-01-29T19:25:00.004-05:00

Annike and I exchanged stories of what the Arkans had done to us, though mine was more about Yeola-e. She didn’t look like the sort of person you play for pity to. Still, she patted my hand like a mother when I was done, and said, “Your whole heart is in this war. It truly will be all or nothing for you.” Then, her eyes turning back into the clawprince’s: “Which makes you a good bet.”

She would speak with her son Vyasiv, who had more means, she said. She warned me away from three people who could not be trusted, and spoke of others whose hate for Arko was incorruptibly pure. “If you wish,” she said, “I shall write on your behalf to Mikhail called Farsight.” The name I recalled clearly. He was as close as the Praetanu had to a leader, one of the wealthiest people in the city. The door was open.

“What does Mikhail have against Arkans?” I asked her.

“The same thing all Brahvnikians down to the house-mice do, which you know, and a personal matter, more recently. Zingas Mikhail has four beautiful daughters, of whom he is immensely proud and dearly fond, in the strict way of old-house Zak, you understand. Are you familiar with the Thanish goatherd song?”

I had to say no. “Well… it is an insult-song,” she said. “There is a verse… well, you aren’t faint of heart, so I need not paraphrase, just translate. ‘Your daughter’s run away to Yeola-e; was her father’s love too close?’”

I understood; one who rapes not only a child, but his own. “Nothing to an Arkan, of course, but to a Zak, those are words that can only be overstruck in red,” Annike said. “Edremmas Forin, one of our Arkan members, sang it to Mikhail… in council.”

Having watched them in session, I could imagine it: the stunned silence falling over the ancient oaken chamber, the Zak lord, who’d had courtly manners bred into his family for a millennium, freezing as if run through. How do Arkans expect to stay powerful in the world, I thought, doing such things?

“Knowing what I know of Brahvnikian customs,” I said, “I would have thought that would bring a challenge.”

“It did. Edremmas, who is soft and fat, designated a champion. Mikhail would accept only Edremmas himself. He called him a coward to his face, but the Arkan just shrugged it off. Stalemate.” The Zak must be seething, I saw, frustrated of revenge that way. No doubt he was looking for another.

My appointment with him was made for the next morning; people seemed to understand that I was in a hurry, as the precious days of summer passed. I could feel every one turn, in the pit of my stomach. But while I was meeting with prominent Brahvnikians to shake them down, Esora-e, Krero and the others were recruiting, and this was going well already, as they put out the word quietly in the Knotted Worm and places of that ilk.

It was risky, with Arkan spies abounding, but our prospective hirelings were our best protection. Brahvniki was a port, so the battle of Haiu Menshir was common knowledge, showing me to be the thing that sell-swords like the most, aside from reliable payments: a commander likely to lead them to victory rather than death. They began signing on in scores, then hundreds.

Mikhail’s house was next to the Kreml, the citadel and palace where the Praetanu sits. His house was a small palace in itself, with walls and sentries and stonework carved F’talezonian style, like lace. At the main gate, which had brass hinges with spars a forearm long and polished to a fire-gleam, I spoke the password I’d been given, and we were let in, and had to speak the password three more times at various torch-lit gates and portals, the last one of which I went through alone.

Past that door, I was met by a dark-eyed girl with long dark hair who I would have thought was eight or nine by her height, but had the shape and manners of a fourteen or fifteen-year-old. One of the beloved daughters, I saw. She led me in by the hand, which I saw was a formal gesture of hospitality, through a maze of ornate wood-carved passages and stairways, the touch of her tiny fingers elegantly tender on mine. “We’ve never had a king visit before,” she said, in a way that showed that it was nothing untoward nonetheless.

Deeper in—the innermost rooms seemed to be underground—everything became subtly smaller, built for the short race that Zak are, so I had to duck first under lintels and then under ceilings.

Finally we came to a door made of tiny glass panes, sparkling like crystals, in the pattern of a phoenix rising from flames. I had to duck my head and bend my knees to get through it. Beyond in a room full of books and curios lit by a bright fire, waited Mikhail.

I remembered his face, a little. He was sitting in a velvet chair, but I guessed his head would come up to my collar-bone, if that. Edremmas, being Aitzas, was probably tall; such a challenge takes a certain courage. There was that in the Zak’s wide jaw and piercing black eyes that you would not want to cross.

“Welcome, young semanakraseye; let me look at you,” he said, making me feeling like a child in front of a visiting great-uncle, being measured, only I was too big and gawky instead of too small.

He was not one for long pleasantries; he shared the salt almost as soon as I’d sat down. “So,” he said. “Your nation’s in ruins, your people nine out of ten in chains, you have nothing but loans and need more; I have money, want more, hate Arkans and feel they have too much power in this corner of the world. I am clear one where we both stand, yes?”

I had to smile. I always liked bluntness. “I wouldn’t even have loans if I had nothing else, Teik Mikhail,” I said. The Zak style for addressing an equal seemed right here. “Not things you can count in your ledger-book, but they win wars. The funds I acquired while escaping from Arko, the allies I have united, the mercenaries I am already hiring, the victories I’ve either had a hand in or led, my ability, and the faith people have in me because of it.”

“But weren’t you in the House of Integrity in Haiuroru for half a year, rather recently?” he said, his bright black eyes unwavering.

“I was,” I said, fixing them with mine. “Now, as you can see, I am not.”

That was only the beginning. He got my full story out of me by grilling me like a tutor examining a student, and I saw it was best to let him. He had done his homework too, knowing the names of my war-teachers and friends and even the slaver Daisas. He showed nothing, not smile nor frown, to let me know what impression I was making.

When he knew all he wanted to, he said, “The Benaiat has loaned you twelve thousand at five per cent, and Vyasiv Gar’s Child fifteen hundred at seven. I generally do joint ventures, not loans, and once swore I’d never loan for under ten, but this is a special matter. I’ll give you five thousand at seven. But that is predicated on getting the alliances on paper which aren’t already. I am a businessman, not a politician like the Benaiat, or impulsive like Vyasiv. I haven’t got where I am by taking foolish risks.

“Further, I want a favour. I know you are not above arranging an assassination, semanakraseye, if the ultimate benefit accrues to Yeola-e.”

I didn’t need to ask who. “The daughter of yours I met seems thriving,” I said, running one finger along the arm of my chair to show him my hands weren’t shaking. “That is too precious a bond for anyone to blaspheme.”

I saw the first trace of feeling yet in his eyes. Part of it was resentment that I even knew; that had been the worst of it, that it was so public. “Five at seven contingent on alliances is certainly a fair loan,” I said. “But assassinations are generally done for flat fees, not loans.”

“Take it or leave it,” he said, just like that.

I sat back to think, and inwardly smooth my own ruffled feathers. “I know nothing of Edremmas,” I said, “except his name and that he is no noble and that he is likely to guard himself well. How would I found out about his habits, his house, where he goes, what sort of an escort he takes?”

No great surprise, he had a dossier, much of which, fortunately, was in Enchian. As I sat poring over it, wondering whether the Worm was the best place to hire assassins as well as mercenaries, he suddenly said, “Shchevenga, you killed Inkrajen with your own hand, didn’t you, when you were only fifteen? That would prove something… I’ll make it eight thousand at seven if you do it yourself.”

I drew myself up, looking at him hard, and realizing I’d been hoping for a chance to. The Zak have a word, zight, meaning face or pride, and it is an integral part of all dealings. “I don’t think so, Teik Mikhail.”

“You doubt you are able?” He leaned forward, a grin playing on his lips. Dealing was his life, I saw, as fighting is a warrior’s.

The opening I’d left purposely, as a warrior does. “No,” I said. “Of course I could. But when I killed Inkrajen, I was not yet semanakraseye. You are thinking I cannot afford to have zight; but in truth I can’t afford not to have it.” His eyes showed agreement to that. “It’s a matter of personal risk, too; I carry all my people’s hopes now, though of course that cannot preclude risk entirely. But, if you don’t mind me saying so, I’m worth more than three thousand ankaryel at seven per cent annually.” I let him chew on that for a bit, which he did impassively, then added, “For three as a flat fee, as well as the five at seven, I’ll do it.”

A smile flashed across his face, the kind of smile that you can tell means the person likes you. “It would be done where I could witness it myself,” he said. “Not that I don’t trust you, semanakraseye…”

We had a deal, it seemed, so I smiled and said, “Not to worry, I understand. You want to see him die.” It needed only the hand-clasp, the papers that said only “the favour agreed on in conversation,” and the Saekrberk. Krero was going to love me for this.

[AN: character chat reminder]

2010-01-29T17:07:00.003-05:00

Chevenga is going to haunt the chatbox at the new site starting tomorrow at 2 p.m. EST... at age 29, at the end of asa kraiya, older and wiser than he is in PA right now. If you have not yet read ak, or all of it, warning -- there might be spoilers. Chatbox and full instructions here. Hope to see you there!

208 - Pleasant conversation

2010-01-28T18:33:00.006-05:00

“Kyash on my face,” said Krero, when I came up on deck next morning as we sailed downriver. “Can everybody on this Earthsphere just walk under my nose and get hold of you whenever they want?”

“Give them credit, and be happy that they’re ours. It was very well-thought-out and executed,” I said.

“I’m not ten-tenths convinced they’re ours. What if they had a slow poison on that letter that causes a death that looks like some illness so that we’d never suspect?”

“When I talk to the summit person at home, I’ll ask if she—he?—has received their report; that’ll make it for sure.”

“You could be dead then! Kyashin child-raping three-dicked five-cunted horse that I rode sideways in on, I pity the poor slob you choose to protect you all the time.”

“You don’t want the position, then? I was thinking of appointing you.”

He stared at me with such a mixed look of horror and temptation on his face, I had to laugh, even though my head was thick with being drugged the day before, and the ship-heaving, slight though it was, wasn’t helping. “You’re joking, right?” he said. “I’d do my best, rip my heart out of my chest with an Arkan eating-spoon to save your life, but there has got to be someone else better at it than I am...”

“I’ll take that under advisement.”

“What I am most curious about,” said Sach, thoughtfully, “is whether we’re allied with the Lakans.” My parents and several others chalked that.

“Of course we are,” I said. “You doubted we would be?” I told them how, and several doubled over with hands over their faces, or made little aigh noises.

We came into Brahvniki in the dead of night. The Yeoli embassy there had never been large, since Selina is so close anyway, but it was no more; they’d left town after one of their staff had been killed, and his head left on the doorstep, with “slaves of Arko” written in Arkan in his blood on the threshold. The murderer had never been caught. I learned this from Krena. But she knew a way into the back of the Benai Island, for dealing with Ivahn. It was raining, a dead-straight hard fall like dark curtains hiding us, and soaking us all to the bones.

At the door I told the sleepy-eyed Vra in his red robe, “Tell the Benaiat his long-lost grandson Vik, who had him forward a letter or two for him from Arko, is visiting. I know he will get up for that.” It was good not to be called precious darling. In a short time we were shown in. I wondered why we were being housed in a cellar, which had once been used for tanning hides; but, as I said to one or two who grumbled, if we wanted to complain to the innkeeper, we’d better move to paid lodgings.

Ivahn embraced me as if I really were his long-lost grandson. With Arko controlling Selina, things were worse in Brahvniki, he told me; there were never less than five red-sailed ships in the harbour, fully-manned, and the marines walked the streets freely with unbounded weapons. Two Arkans had worked their way onto the Praetanu, acting with typical arrogance, and it was not even secret that they had Imperial backing and were taking Kurkas’s orders.

Ivahn looked older, wearier, with limbs thinned, and motions slower and more careful. He kept coughing wetly, which I didn’t like to hear. When I asked after his health, he said, “It’s well enough,” and wouldn’t say more.

“I know you are not just here to pass through,” he said, once we’d shared the salt, which means getting down to business in the Brahvnikian and Zak world. “How much do you need?”

“One of my alliances is conditional on my hiring seven thousand mercenaries,” I said. “Tell the truth, I’d rather have ten.” I told him who my allies were, to let him know I had the makings of a goodly-sized army, and gave him my well-practiced recounting of the battles.

“I can give you a start to those sell-swords,” he said. “I can also direct you to some other citizens of note.” Luckily, he’d just had a large sum deposited by some adventurers who’d crossed the great western ocean. Twelve thousand gold ankaryel and five thousand sword blanks, for five per cent yearly, we agreed to. I kissed his hands and we drank Saekrberk on it, his toast being, “May the taste be slightly steely.” His practice was to hide sword-blanks in Saekrberk casks.

The next day, I sent my mothers and several of the guards into the city to have a demarchic shirt tailored, and a signet carved, using the imprint from a letter I’d sent Ivahn from Vae Arahi. “Best you look the part, speaking to whom you’re going to speaking to,” Ivahn said. Just as we were starting to sign off the loan papers, his assistant, Stevahn, rushed into the office. “Benaiat, the inspector’s on the ferry.”

His hands moved faster than I thought they could, seizing up papers, locking them away in walnut chests. “Honey-Giving One,” he swore under his breath. “Why now? You must be hidden, Shchevenga, go with her.”

My stomach was suddenly creeping. I didn’t move. “The inspector?”

He made a brush-off gesture, saying, “It’s no trouble, lad, but you must go.” There was more annoyance in his brown eyes than fear, but perhaps he was hiding it. “If I and my people are in some kind of danger, my friend,” I said as Stevahn pulled on my arm, “I think I should know.”

Ivahn let out a rushing sigh, his mouth pursed as if he had something sour in it. “Yes, yes, of course you should, I’m sorry. Stevahn, tell him as you’re going.”

She hurried me through the onion-arched corridors with their sweet air, from scent permeated into the stone. “The Arkan embassy reserves the right to come into the precinct, to see, as they say, that nothing is, em, amiss.” I set my teeth as we walked. In my heart, I had known. “You know how it is, semanakraseye; we have our hireling guard, but they could have twenty ships here in three days, from Selina. Don’t worry, they suspect nothing. They haven’t a hope of not being outwitted by the Benaiat, as you can imagine.”

No wonder we were sleeping the cellar. But why had he tried to hide it from me? Not to get the better of me in bargaining; we’d hardly bargained. Not to weaken my own hope? He couldn’t think so little of me and still lend me all that. I thought of his deep-wrinkled face, the joy dimmed in those peaked bird-eyes. No; it was his hope that needed strengthening.

I asked Stevahn where in the Benai the inspector would go. “Oh, it’s fairly random,” she said. “Always through the barrels, though; he finds our distillate growing on him.” She chuckled. Even to Arkans, the monks of the Bear are generous. The liqueur is a sacrament, to be proselytized and do its good work whatever way.

I don’t think Stevahn wondered about the favour I asked—to lend us a store of red robes as disguises—being in too much of a hurry. Such an Arkan would never descend to visit our cellar, if Ivahn even let him know it existed. I put one on. From my month away here, I still knew the corridors well enough to find the main barrel-store. I set to sweeping its floor with monkish devotion.

I knew when they were coming by weapon-sense; the Arkan wore a sword, two daggers and, as I saw when they came into view, full armour, as if someone was going to attack him in the Benaiat, and none of the blades were peace-bonded, sure enough. Ivahn and Stevahn were conducting him personally, in a way that suggested they always did.

I saw the nature of the deception right away. In a reedy, obsequious drone, Ivahn prattled on endlessly, about every trivial Benai detail as if it were all-important, forgetting things and losing his train of thought now and then (with Stevahn reminding and prompting him in a long-suffering tone), and laying on flattery with a trowel whenever the Arkan seemed annoyed.

The blue eyes glazed over, the mouth yawned; I could see him thinking, “How did I ever land this post? If he says ‘Excuse me for being tedious’ one more time…” His fill of Saekrberk he clearly considered fair payment for wasting his time with this dotard who couldn’t find his behind with two hands and a map, let alone pose any sort of threat to Arko. Stevahn was right; the Arkan didn’t stand a chance.

But it wasn’t without price. Ivahn had to bear the remarks, the contemptuous angle of the nose, the boorish spitting on the floor. Here is some of the weight, I thought, that’s bent those shoulders.

While the Arkan was upending his cup yet again, his back to me, Ivahn took a quick glance, to see who this Vra was who wasn’t staying clear as he ought to be. I lifted my head just enough to show him my face, and winked. The string of unctuous words broke for a moment, adroitly changing into a clearing of the throat. The inspector must have a boot-leather throat, for he drank still more, and I did the Arkan prayer-gesture of two hands to the temples, and turned it into wiggling ass-ears. Ivahn sputtered, changing it into a coughing fit.

“You peach-chinned pup!” he said, when the inspector had staggered back onto the ferry and I was back in Ivahn’s office to finish signing. “No wonder the things that befall you befall you. And I just quartered my bank to you…”

“Did I get caught?” I said. “I know how not to. What were the chances, really, that he’d imagine it was me under that robe?”

He gave me a dark look, but said, “Well, it’s good to see the boy still in you, after all you’ve been through, nonetheless. Just be careful.” The smile in his voice brought back old days, just what I’d hoped for.

He’d been thinking of a particular Brahvnikian who might help me. Annike, called Lady Gar, had been on the Praetanu, but was no longer, it seemed, having been ruined by pirates burning her ships. “Pirates under red sails, flying the eagle,” said Ivahn. “It was one of our dear Arkans who replaced her. She has little to lend, but she is better connected to those antipathetic to Arko than I. I mean to invite her to tea tonight.” He fingered the elbow of my shirt, which had become a little worn. “Dealing with these people, you’d better look like a king, not a reformed gladiator, with nothing shining but your teeth.” I told him I had someone on it already.

No one will do as well shopping for you as your mothers, at least if you no longer have a Skorsas in your life. They’d ordered me a demarchic shirt that would be ready by dinner, and taken the letter to a Zak stone-carver who didn’t know a word of Enchian, let alone what a demarchic signet might mean; that would take three days, though, so I’d have to finish signing whatever I signed then. Some part of me felt like an actor, rushed onstage with quickly-done face-paint and hardly knowing my lines, to play the lead on which the whole production depends. Still, I’d done well so far.

Annike had been a self-made clawprince. Even with sparse jewelry and satin Brahvnikians pantaloons that looked old-style, she had a feeling of consequence about her. Her eyes were hard and measuring, the kind that miss nothing, being too honest with herself; her handclasp was firm and cool. Her manners were polished as an ancient sword, of course. But she was refreshingly blunt, once we were alone and had shared the salt. “So, here you are, young Shchevenga, a king without a country.”

“Who means to take it back,” I answered, not too quickly, drawing myself up just slightly. “As I hardly need say.”

She smiled. “And here am I, a clawprince without a fortune. Whatever were we introduced for, except pleasant conversation?”

I laughed. If bitter humour has any purpose other than to ease bitterness, it is to draw the aggrieved together. “Ivahn was struck, I think, by what we have in common,” I said, “having lost by the same agency.”

“Indeed,” she said, her eyes, which were a steely-grey that reminded me of Emao-e’s, hardening.

[AN: fan art]

2010-01-28T10:14:00.002-05:00

PA and EC reader Blue did a colour drawing of Minis -- on faib skates and with the ubiquitous katzerik -- which can be seen here. (Click on the pic for full size.)

If you happen to create any fan art relating to my or Shirley's Fifth Millennium works, I'd be delighted to post it in the gallery section of the new site (with permission and, of course, credit), once it's all up and running. Artistically-talented readers should know, we writers are tickled pink by such works. We know how our characters, settings, scenes, etc. look in our own minds but it's always fascinating to see how they look in someone else's.

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207 - I cannot tell a lie

2010-01-27T16:21:00.003-05:00

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.”

206 - A game of mrik

2010-01-26T18:23:00.003-05:00

“Before you start, have you eaten?” he asked me. That was a better sign.

I wasn’t hungry, but if I had to force it down to fake calm, I would. “That would be welcome, thank you.” I remembered, it would be kri; maybe the fire on my tongue would take my mind off my anger and my fear.

“I knew about the one on Haiu Menshir,” he said, when I was done recounting the two battles. “Though to be absolutely honest, I thought it must be an… exaggeration. Sailors… you know. But there you are holding that bit of clear rock all the way through, which is a Yeoli’s most solemn oath, I know. It’s… very impressive. And you did a good thing for all the world, even if the Haians don’t like to admit it.” I thanked him. “Then the Niahs took twenty one ships… I never knew to take them into account.”

“Second Fire come if I lie,” I said, just for assurance. “They had help, but just from one person, me.”

A servant came with a platter of little dishes of various kri’s, fruit and yoghurt and so forth. “These have been tasted... I’ll have a dog or piglet fetched to taste in front of you if you like, J’vengka.”

As if you couldn’t have had me seized and shredded by any number of guards by this point, I thought. “It’s all right,” I said. “I trust you.”

In between tongue-melting bites, I gave him my estimation of Arko’s true strength as I had Kranaj, and laid out their traditional practice of taking one nation at a time. “It’s a treaty that he signed intending to break it whenever the time was right for his ends,” I said. “He might invent some pretext to tell his own people; you’ll find out by reading in the Pages about Laka’s barbaric violation of the treaty by some border raid or attack on a ship that you didn’t order, if it happened at all. And there will be lengthy pontifications about how a Lakan, even a king, isn’t to be trusted, being savage Hayel-spawn and so on. I read enough of this sort of thing about Yeola-e.”

“Yes.” He was silent for a while, eating. “You have the Niahs in an alliance with Yeola-e, then?”

“I do. They are already fighting together with my navy. But I have other allies too, now; Hyerne and Tor Ench. And I will hire mercenaries in Brahvniki.”

Start feeling left out, Az. “Truly…” I wrapped my hand around my crystal again, though, same as with Kranaj, I was lying by omission, not saying the alliances were conditional. Semana kra.

He heaved a long breath, then jumped up suddenly from his chair. “Curse you, J’vengka; the moment I read that letter, I knew how it would be. I put my name to an agreement! When a king signs an oath, in particular, the Gods keep record. I have other plans, of course; but they involve no forswearing. I shouldn’t have let you in here to try to persuade me; I know how cursed persuasive you can be!”

I tried not to let my knuckles go white on my chair arm, then let go in case I did it without noticing, and said, “What do the Gods make of an oath of a king who laughs them off as the comforting fancies of fools?”

He whirled and stared at me frozen, not knowing whether to take mortal offense in the high Lakan style or not, since I hadn’t been clear who I referred to. That was purposeful. I had his undivided attention, now.

“I am athye,” I said, “but you know my way of praying. Kurkas is an atheist in the starkest sense of the word: one who believes in the sacredness of nothing whatsoever.” I gripped my crystal yet again. “Second Fire come if I lie. He and I had a number of philosophical discussions.”

He heaved another huge I-wish-this-load-was-off-me breath. “So you’d have me be the same? You have more Lakan blood on your hands that he does, by far!” More than he knew; I was very glad now I’d never confessed to him about my part in the deaths of the ten thousand. “J’vengka, my Arkan ambassador, who is an honest man for a diplomat, begged to speak with me just before you got here. Of course they have spies, right in this Palace; no doubt you do, too. The sum he offered me for you would feed my cavalry for a year.”

The kri turned cold in my stomach and prickles went all down my arms and legs. With Ivahn or Kranaj or Segiddis, you’d know this was a test, to see how afraid it made you; Astalaz, though, often thought aloud. It was a test anyway; if I showed fear, he’d never trust me.

“Why are you telling me that, Az?” I said. “Do you want my opinion on whether you should sell me to them? Well, speaking utterly free of bias or prejudice and only with consideration to your own interests, I say, no. Don’t. It’s an awful idea. Terrible. Unthinkably bad.”

All-Spirit’s blessing, he broke into laughter. “Feed your cavalry for a year?” I added. “You know what that amount is? It is the truest measure of his fear of me.”

He paced back and forth. No fair, I thought, that you can and I can’t. He froze, and turned to me suddenly. “J’vengka... how are you?”

I stared back, baffled. “Fine, thanks, how are you?”

“I mean… how are you?” Understanding came even as he was saying, “I’d heard you were on Haiu Menshir for a long time, months. In the House of Integrity.”

If he decided I was mad, it would be the handiest and most unassailable excuse. He need not even credit anything I’d said, since the oath of a lunatic is the oath of a lunatic. I had this sudden feeling like the dream in which you throw all your strength into running but can’t move a finger-width, your feet somehow bound to one place on the ground.

“Do you still have time for mrik these days?” I said. “It’s been a long time; what do you say to a game?”

He looked surprised, but relieved at the chance of a bit of escape from this unpleasant business. I could see him think, ‘I’ll ask him again later.’ “Come upstairs,” he said.

Blessing of blessings, he brought me to his true office. The mess had gotten heaped higher and mustier in two years. Apologizing for it as usual, he dug out the mrik board and in another long while all the stones, and called for incense and a musician.

“You got good enough to be down to a two-stone advantage, as I recall,” he said, as we sorted them. “I give you two more, for being out of practice, and all that you went through in Arko.”

“One only for that,” I said. “It hasn’t been that long, and it wasn’t that bad.”

“I will take your word for it,” he said, and let me hand him the one back.

“What say we put a stake on it?” I said, as I placed the stones on the board, in three of the key spots. “If I win, you join me in an alliance. If you win, I leave without another word or grudge.”

He stared at me, blinking, wanting to burst out laughing, but held back by his knowing me well enough to see I might be serious. “I’m serious,” I said. “The question is my mental competence, isn’t it? This is a good test of that. If I can beat you, you’ll know I’m all here and you can trust what I’ve said; if not, I haven’t a hope against Arko.”

His cheeks went ruddy under the brown. There was no arguing with the logic; but I might beat him. He didn’t want to face it, that was all; I’d come out of nowhere, like a meteorite out of the night-sky that crushes a house. Sometimes, Az, I wanted to say, life does that.

He looked down at the board, with my three stones on it. I wanted to urge him, but it might make him think I had some ruse. Silence was stronger.

Finally, suddenly, he sat down at the board. His eyes were lighter now; he might beat me, but I might beat him, he was thinking. “Very well, J’vengka. Without another word or grudge—or I ally with you. Parshahask strike me if I am forsworn.” He made the signs of slashing himself almost absently, his eyes fixed on the board. I swore on my crystal. He sent out an order, no disturbances, and placed his first stone.

So it was, in sweating darkness full of the Lakan smells of sandalwood, spice and bougainvillaea, to the soft weaving strains of the zinarh, I played mrik, for my people’s lives and freedom. I so much would have preferred clean blade, my first skill, in which I had utter confidence, but life hands us what it hands us.

Of course I started out prevailing, since my stones outnumbered his, but he came back strongly, with his greater experience. Had I been a fool, to turn down that fourth handicap-stone? It was too late to undo that. Even if I just made a good account of myself, had I still not proved my point? But that was not the bet I’d proposed, and he’d accepted. All-Spirit… what if I have to go back to the ship, and then home, with our alliance plans ruined, because I lost a game?

Not the thoughts to think, while I was playing; I should think about nothing but where to place my pieces. The ideal state of mind, I knew, was the same as one should have fighting: calm as a pond with a surface like glass. But that was so much harder to do, while sitting still. Even as I thought that, I saw how the last stone I’d placed had been bad, by what he did to counter it.

I can’t make one more mistake, I thought. How do I manage that? What do I do when I am fighting—aside from know how good I am at it—that keeps these snake-thoughts away? In my first three fights in the Mezem, I failed at it, and so got wounded; what was the difference between them, and how I usually am? I was not seeing clearly then, as I am not now, whereas usually when I fight everything is absolutely clear; why?

Something that Azaila had said long ago made it come to me. “You must be rya to yourself when you fight.” Nothing. In those first three fights I had been thinking, what am I doing, why am I doing this, I should not be here, all thoughts about myself, not the fight. Usually I had only the fight in mind. This cannot be about me at all. It must be entirely about the game. The beauty of its nuances; the subtlety and elegance of the gambits possible; the cleverness by which it allows pure strategy; the cut and thrust of the logic of his moves and mine. Relish that, I told myself. Enjoy it. A tightness in me let go.

I played without error from then on, at least while I maintained that state; when the snake-thoughts came, I’d repeat these words to myself. I stopped sweating so much. He began sweating more.

It was a long game, at least two beads. We both thought very carefully, about where to place every stone; sometimes he would get up to pace while deciding his next placement; sometimes I would. Fatigue entered into it, which should be to his advantage, since we were in his waking hours, and my sleeping; but I had a feeling his fight against fear was harder work than mine, even though he had so much less to lose. We said barely anything, the only sounds the notes of the zinarh like long-ringing brass bells, the tap on the table of the bottom of his cup or mine as we placed it down after sipping, the stone-on-stone click of another piece placed.

It went very evenly. In the end, when the board was full, we couldn’t tell the winner just by looking, but had to count up.

I had two more stones on it than he did.

He sprang up out of his chair, almost throwing it, over like a Lakan lord making duel challenge at the dinner table, and paced, his heels ringing on the floor. “Well, you have it, J’vengka,” he said bitterly. “May it benefit you. Only the Gods can see how it will turn out; may it be to Their taste.”

“Astalaz, I release you of it,” I said. He spun around, stunned, and stared at me frozen. “You are thinking the fate of nations should not rest on a game. I cannot dispute that. It should be your choice alone, to reconcile with your Gods, and your people, as you see fit. I just wanted to show you that my mind is clear enough to do well even as I was certain my nation’s fate did rest on it.”

He let out a long deep breath, half between his teeth, then came near to me, looking down at me. I stood up. Having grown as much as I ever would, I’d always be shorter than him. He took my face between his hands, gazing into my eyes.

“Kazh rule your soul,” he said, finally. “You are capable of so much. At such a young age; so much life you have left, the Gods only know how you will change the world. Name the terms you propose.” He called the servant for wine.

He pledged me seven thousand foot under Arzaktaj now, and then, when we reached the plains, five thousand horse and fifteen mamokal. It was conditional on my sending thirty ships to aid him in taking back the Diradic Tongue from Arko, brokering an end to Enchian raids across the Lakan border, and contracting seven thousand mercenaries. “I’d have made it conditional on alliances with Kranaj and Segiddis, except you already have them,” he said. Now I do, I thought. And he would, of course, re-open the embassy.

As he was pacing tensely in the mess, kicking things out of his way, he told me, “One of my old titles was Spider-King… I have ten thousand men in the hills of central Laka, recruited and trained over the past six years, with horse and mamoka both, in addition to my known armies.” Six years? I counted back. He’d started that a little before he’d overthrown Astyardk, then, no doubt without his knowledge. Despite being in a cage; you had to admire that. “I thought Kurkas would come after us before you, tell the truth, and meant to surprise him with them...” He smiled. “Looks like I still will.”

When I told him I had meant only to stay in Tardengk two days if I had to wait to see him, and would prefer to leave tonight—for one thing, the Arkan ambassador knew I was here—he had the papers done up right then, and we signed them all off. Having no demarchic signet, I had to replicate the mark by drawing it as best I could, with the promise that I would seal them properly once I had another one carven. Brahvniki was a good place for that.

Done here except to set sail and snatch a bit of sleep out of what was left of the night, I cast my mind ahead to Brahvniki. When I went out from the office into its ante-room and got Chirel, there was a Yeoli slave there, a woman, stunningly beautiful as usual with Palace of Kranaj slaves. Just as I was thinking that if the alliance went well enough, I might be able to talk Astalaz into freeing more Yeolis, she gave me the tongue-twister you have to have grown up in Yeola-e to say, adding quietly, “Ikal. I have a letter from the summit person.” She handed it to me.

She’d picked her place well, as there were no Lakan guards here, nor my own. “Thanks, best we stay here for me to read it,” I said. I opened the paper, which was just folded, and seemed a little damp, oddly. Even more oddly, I tasted oysters on the back of my tongue, which was still recovering from the kri, strongly, out of nowhere. Most oddly, there was no writing on the paper. I stared at her; she stared back at me, her face horribly blank. From behind an arm wrapped around me, pinning my arms, and a hand clamped across my mouth.

205 - Royalty in exile

2010-01-25T17:39:00.004-05:00

Tardengk is well inland, two days trip up the river and two days back. If Astalaz did decide to sell me back to Kurkas and I got away and fled down river on the ship, he could get a pigeon to Kochisk, at the mouth, with orders to intercept us, long before I got there.

Don’t be silly, I told myself. He is a friend, and a treaty with Kurkas does not make him a friend of Kurkas. They had not met before I’d known Astalaz, he’d said, nor after, else I’d know about it. Even if they had met, charm was not Kurkas’s strong point. And the pact probably includes nothing about extradition, since at that point Kurkas thought he was going to recapture me on Haiu Menshir. It was a risk, but one I felt worth taking.

With no embassy, though, I saw I was going to have to write my way in. It would be too easy for Astalaz to turn me away, or make me wait, if I just had someone convey my name and that I wanted to speak on an important matter. I needed to get my words into his mind.

I wrote and rewrote the letter all the way up the river. It should be coded, I saw, in case Arkan spies in the Palace intercepted it, and should speak of my victories and prospects obliquely. Because he was one who dithered sometimes, I wanted to set a limit on the time, which was effrontery, really; he considered me royalty, like himself, but royalty in exile with barely a nation to speak of. Did I have that much nerve?

If I don’t have nerve, I told myself, I might as well go to the Arkan embassy and hold out my wrists for the chains, for all the good I can do Yeola-e. I had the letter signed and sealed by the time we came into the port of Tardengk. It read thus:

To: Astalaz son of Astyardk, Blessed Hand of Parshahask, Soul of Gold in the Eternal Gaze, etc.

Dear Az:

I hope you recall with fondness your old mrik opponent and fosterling with as much fondness as I remember you. A piece once captive of the adversary—despite a certain signed and sealed promise, which is in your possession—I am now free on the board again to score victories, one of which you know about, one of which you don’t.

As I return to resume the game, I have renewed old acquaintances with other friends no less capable than yourself, and made mutually-beneficial agreements that land us on the same side of the board, and with much greater strength than the adversary suspects.

I would like to speak with you, but my time is short; I can be in Tardengk just for two days. Please let the bearer of this letter know whether I may. If so, I will see you soon, to which I look forward.

Sincerely,

Your one-time son.

On the outside I marked it with his name and as many titles as I could remember, and sent Sachara with it, with Evechera and Kunarda as back-up, to the Palace, as soon as it was full dark. I told him to say the letter was from the King’s former son; my thought was that this would make the person at each level unsure what to do with it, so he must bring it to his superior, all the way up to Astalaz. At least nighttime is the working day in the Palace of Kraj. They’d all be just up and fresh. The cormarenc crew I ordered to bed down now, in case I had it all done before daybreak, allowing us to sail.

It was a sweaty wait, even in the coolness of night and without the hood I’d been wearing to hide my face. I paced, I sparred whoever was willing, I swam in the sea, I tried to do too much to let my mind imagine some error I’d unknowingly made that would make my words give some false impression, or him finding some excuse to be offended, or him just slamming the door on me in plain fear.

As time stretched I reminded myself that the pace of the Palace of Kraj is slow. The letter must be passed from guard to petty guard commander to greater guard commander to secretary’s assistant’s assistant, or whatever the titles were. As well, the further up the chain of command it went, the more inclined they would be to take their time, either because they had other genuinely urgent things, or to make themselves feel important.

So I told myself, as I paced on the deck, stripped down to my undercloth so I wouldn’t sweat my formal shirt and kilt, my guts eating themselves. Finally I saw the three coming back along the dock, moonlight shining off their armour, and they were not running or bleeding. “Cheng, you’re in,” said Sach. I got dressed, putting my wristlets and Chirel on with my peacetimes, Lakan-style, and went.

So different from last time, no zinarh or dancers or cymbals, no forty-course mouth-scalding dinner, no servants sweating blood to satisfy my every wish. I told myself it was not because he no longer considered me a dignitary, but for the sake of secrecy.

They showed me to a small, relatively-plain door in the royal chambers—not his personal office, with the mess, a bad sign—telling me I must hang up my sword on a hook by the door, which was also different. Astalaz had let me wear Chirel in his presence before. Maybe he’s afraid of what I might do if he says no, I thought. Or—more likely—worries I might still be crazy. Or perhaps it was just policy for royalty in exile.

Pretend we are still just as we were, I told myself firmly, as I unslung Chirel. The office was tiny and curtain-lined. He sat behind a polished desk. It was me who’d had all the changes; he looked exactly the same. “I’ve just been reading, waiting for you,” he said, putting down the book and blinking at me, a little owlishly. I hoped the informality was a good sign.

“Well, here I am.” I reached out both hands, praying he’d take them. He did, warmly enough, and I sat across from him.

“J’vengka... if you wish to check behind my curtains... there is no troop of guards to seize you,” he said. Kyash; do I seem afraid?

“I know,” I said. “How have you been?”

“Oh… worried. You know. Politics. Foreign affairs.” Perhaps we’re going to come to the point faster than Lakans usually do, I thought.

“Things a king cannot avoid, since they are his trade.”

He tugged a lock of his pitch black hair. “Enough to give one the white head of an old man, sometimes. I’m... astonished, actually. You’ve had enough to turn you silver already.”

“I defy you to find one,” I said, realizing I had not smiled at him at all yet, and doing so now.

“May I?” He leaned across, reaching to take my chin so he could turn my face to see the scar more clearly in the lamplight. I let him. “Did that happen in a fight?”

“No. It was a Mahid, with a knife full of azan akanaja, while I knelt before him bound hand and foot and with two others holding me. You want to see the marks of Kurkas’s broken oath that are truly spectacular?” I started unclasping my shirt.

“No, keep it on, you perverse Yeoli!” But he said it good-heartedly, a throwback to how we had spoken before. “Dourgish and Parshahask, the one is awful enough. I never thought I’d see a son of mine marked up like that. That’s the way... if the Arkan Ambassador asks... I will truthfully say I’ve seen only my family and my court.”

That bothered me. How much sway did they have here? “He tells you who you’re allowed to see?”

“No... but I prefer to tell as few lies as possible, for a king. It makes things easier all around.”

“And you can’t tell him, truthfully, that who you see is none of his business? I thought you signed a peace treaty, not a tribute agreement.”

He looked me in the eyes, his black brows drawing down. “I could. I am no tribute-paying lackey, J’vengka.” Oh kyash… have I blown it all, just with that one line?

“I’m sorry,” I said. “My annoyance is on your behalf, but perhaps I made it seem otherwise.” Not entirely true; I felt he was being weak in the face of them. But making him feel insulted would be national suicide. The one who goes begging is not free.

His face eased again. “I will take it so, rather than make it seem a rebuke, J’vengka.” He poured two cups of juice, and offered them for me to pick one. In Laka, wine goes with deal-making, at least the first cup. “You are here to try and talk me into breaking my word,” he said.

Just as with Kranaj, I wanted to get up and pace, and didn’t, to appear more calm than I was. “Not something I would ordinarily do,” I said. “But… I wonder if you store your copy of the treaty paper, with the signature of the golden pen and the marks of the seals on it, in the same place as your copy of my safe-conduct, which also has the signature of the golden pen and the marks of the seals on it, no less official.”

He sat in silence for a bit, which made me want even harder to pace. “You make reference to mrik,” he said finally. “If you look at the board, J’vengka, there is a sea of opposing colour. The treaty certainly was a move to gain time. Forgive me, but Kurkas’s attention was only partly on my country. Mamoka, troops and horse all need time to build up; warriors take time to train. Laka needed this time if we are to stand against Arko. Perhaps if you bite them hard enough it will give me more time yet.”

And if we bleed enough to do it. All-Spirit—did he have the slightest notion of the callousness of those words? I bit down hard on what I felt. His people were Lakans, not Yeolis. He had no obligation to care a dust-speck about me. “It’s true the other way too,” I said. “Arko needs this time to stand against Laka. You think the treaty is meant to benefit you?”

“Of course not, J’vengka. But it seemed a good trade off, at least until Kurkas reneges on it.”

Let me get this right: you expect him to renege on it… and you still signed it? Of course—I must let myself be filled with cynicism, to understand monarchy—perhaps Az had signed it with plans to renege first. If so, perfect; that’s what I was here for. “And then? What if he doesn’t have the decency to wait until your mamokal and horse and warriors are at full strength?”

“I should not divulge that to you, J’vengka. It is Lakan business.”

“I am not asking you to divulge anything. I am asking only that you ask yourself.”

All-Spirit, I sound like a man talking to a boy; what am I doing? If he feels condescended to, by someone so much younger and less powerful, I’m done. But what else could I say?

“I am, J’vengka. I’ll tell you this much... I share your concerns, about Arko.”

Ah. You have something else up your sleeve, and you don’t want to tell me, understandably. Perhaps he didn’t mind me knowing; but I could get captured again by the Arkans, and scraped. I didn’t press it. “I would like to tell you about a thing or two I made reference to in the letter,” I said. “May I do that?”Why haven’t you asked; do you not want to know? Feh, I thought. He wishes I’d never arrived.

[AN: asa kraiya character chat]

2010-01-23T13:40:00.003-05:00

Next character chat is scheduled for Jan. 30 at 2 p.m. EST. Featured will be Chevenga, and we're setting in the winter of Y. 1556 which is to say, where he is at the end of asa kraiya... because asa kraiya ends Tuesday. Might someone else show up? You never know. URL same as before: chat page on the new site. Full instructions there.

204 - The feel of sweat trickling down my back

2010-01-22T21:20:00.003-05:00

I fell asleep on her lap, though I was vaguely aware of being carried to a guest couch later by large hands that weren’t entirely friendly. It was some number of her husbands, I gathered. “I will be gone in the morning and she’ll forget me,” I wanted to tell them. I made my goodbyes to Segiddis and went stiff-legged down to Pirai, veilless but with my woman guards all around me.

As we sailed away, I tried to talk myself out of the vague feeling of having been reamed. It’s just the way they treat men making it seem that way, I told myself firmly. I came here to make an alliance, and I made one. But it was conditional, and one of the conditions was that I talk an honest man out of a sworn agreement.

Don’t let it prey on you, I told myself. Worry would tighten my mind, and tightness of mind is weakness. I had been considering visiting Astalaz before Kranaj after all, since I knew him better, even though by sea it was longer, since we’d have to double back. Now I changed my mind again. Astalaz was going to be the hardest to convince. Maybe I should even go to Brahvniki before Curlionaiz.

In the end I stuck to my plan to go to Curlionaiz. Despite tapping on the door late at night, I was treated with perfect respect, first by the staff, next by the ambassador, Sanga-e Minora-e. He was the sort of elegant, dapper person you imagine a diplomat to be, a good choice of my aunt’s for Tor Ench.

Once I’d asked, and he’d agreed, to ask Kranaj to meet with me the next day, I raised a worry that had come into my mind with him. “You are in touch with the embassy in Laka, usually, aren’t you? In consideration of the treaty between Arko and Laka, is our embassy in Tardengk even open, still?”

“Why, semanakraseye? Are you planning to visit there, too? I imagine you are travelling so as to gain alliances; I’d say Laka is a lost cause, considering that treaty.”

My heart sank. I tried to talk myself out of the feeling of sickness. “Are you not answering my question because you think the answer will upset me? I need to know, Sanga-e, whether it upsets me or not.” As if you didn’t just tell me anyway.

“I...” He heaved a sigh. “I was buying myself time while I considered how to word the answer. For which I apologize. No, it is not open. Kurkas sent Astalaz a letter saying that a province of Arko need not have an embassy in Laka, since the Arkan embassy would suffice. So Astalaz asked them to leave.”

Even knowing already, hearing it was like a sword in the guts. I let out a hissing breath. I have to remember, Astalaz gave me up for irretrievably captive or ransomed for an amount that ensures utter defeat or dead long ago, I told myself. All would be different if he knew the truth. And yet, the battle of Haiu Menshir was hardly secret, so he must know I was free... “When did this happen?”

“About half a moon ago, semanakraseye.” About the same time, so I couldn’t know whether Astalaz had known about Haiu Menshir or not.

“Is... Kranaj aware of this?” Best I go in open-eyed.

“I don’t know, semanakraseye. I know I have not told him, but of course that doesn’t mean he does not know through other ways.” All-Spirit—was Segiddis aware of it, and didn’t mention it to me because she thought I knew? I wanted to rip out my hair.

Still, Sanga-e got me the audience with Kranaj for about noon the next day. It was in his old Iyesian-style sitting room that I remembered from my visit as new semanakraseye, with the velvet curtains and embossed table-maps. How much had changed since then.

“Let’s not stand on ceremony, lad,” he said. I bit back the words, It’s not lad, it’s semanakraseye, telling myself that with him, it was just my age. And yet I couldn’t recall him calling me that last time I’d been here, when my nation had been free and strong. He took one look at my face and said, “God of my ancients, they’ve put you through the mill.”

“No argument there,” I said. “How have you been?”

“Well enough. Sievenka...” The Enchian pronunciation brought Iliakaj to mind with odd sharpness, as if I’d been with him yesterday. I am in a different world now. The third. “Do you need asylum here? Just between you, me and the gatepost, I’d do it for you. For our friendship.”

I bit back my anger. He is offering me kindness. “I thank you very much for that, Kranaj. But it is not necessary. When I am done making a number of visits, some of which I have already made, I am going home, to take the only asylum I want, at the head of an army.”

“Hmm.” Something about that, though it had little emotion in it, put my heart in my throat. “I see.” He waved at a chair opposite. “Have a seat. Can I offer you something to drink? The sun is old enough today to honour it with a drop.”

Sitting down was the last thing I wanted to do. My legs itched to pace, my arms, to grab him by the collar so I could scream my argument in his face. But to sit would seem coolest-headed. I did. “Yes, thank you, Kranaj. Just one.”

He poured the two cups of nakiti himself and let me pick, like a good host. “So. You’re thinking of doing more of what you did on Haiu Menshir? I wouldn’t have thought you could still take the field against Kurkas. I thought you would be fighting more... clandestinely, since—knowing you—you’d never give up. Ever.”

“More of what I did at Haiu Menshir, and at Niah-lur-ana... a battle not so well-known. But we aren’t so conquered that we have no armies left. Not only that, but… who do you think is stronger in the eastern Mid-world now, Kurkas or me?”

He raised one brown eyebrow at me, then got up and went over to one of the map-tables. I joined him.

“Niah-lur-ana...” His finger traced a line from there to Ro, to Haiu Menshir to Kreyen, then curled up to tap thoughtfully on Hyerne. “Tell me about this battle, if you would.”

“Niah-lur-ana, or Haiu Menshir?” It was sweet, to have two. “Or both? I’m sure you have good eyes on Haiu Menshir, but they won’t have been where I was.”

“I’d be pleased to hear both.” I saw his eyes fall on the shark’s tooth, and stay there for a little, curiously.

I told him the full version of the one, the flightless version of the other.

“So at the moment, and perhaps even as we speak, you are stronger in the eastern Mid-world than Kurkas is, I see. Hmm. Kurkas’s information has been very... out of date for a while.”

“I haven’t told you everything,” I said. “I have an alliance with the A-niah, who are, let’s say”—I took up my crystal—“much stronger than is known to the world at large. They are already fighting together with my navy. I also have, just between you, me and the gatepost, an alliance with the Hyerne.”

That made his eyes widen a little. “With Segiddis? And you walked out of her palace a whole man, with all your… em… parts? I’m astonished, Sievenka. The woman’s a crazy man-hater and the mildest stories... It’s never been open war between us but a lot of bloodshed in the islands.”

“Ehh... she’s not so bad. She’s very good...” I let a little smile pull my lips. “In bed.” Let him make what a man in a man-ruled land would make of that; that it was my conquest. “I help her by sea, she helps me by land.”

Kranaj’s brows rose again, and he gave up stifling the smile. “Ah, I see. You swayed her with your young man’s charms. Well done!”

“No,” I said. “I did not sway her with my young man’s charms. That was afterwards, to seal it. I swayed her with fact and logic, same as I mean to sway you.”

“Oh ho! Not asylum, but an alliance you came for!” He laughed again. “Don’t expect to seal it with me in bed afterward, though! I’m not Arkan.”

I amazed myself, saying what I said next. I’d come here meaning to show nerve, but didn’t expect myself to do this. I looked him in the eyes and said, “I was always taught, never judge what you have not tried.”

We stared at each other for a frozen moment, and then I said, “Ehh, what am I saying. You’re too old for me.”

He let out a burst of laughter, smacking the map-table hard enough to make our cups spill a little nakiti. “You…! I can’t believe you, sometimes, Sievenka! Perverse wool-hair.”

Now I laughed. “We don’t have a deal to seal yet anyway.”

“But you want one. Why in the name of the Great God of my Ancients should I agree?”

“Kranaj, ring-fighters have a lot of leisure-time, in Arko. I used it to do reconnaissance, in the way I could: find every book I could on how they fight. It’s Arko, so there are a lot of books. And it is very standard practice of theirs”—I drew the map-table a little closer to me, and pointed as I spoke—“to do just what they are doing. First it was Roskat... then Yeola-e. One at a time... sign peace-treaties with others, though you intend eventually to make them into provinces also. Just as he’s done with Astalaz.

“What is the mistake we are all making? Not working together. Out of fear; out of suspicion of each other; out of old grudges. As if those grudges will matter when they are all uniformly-enslaved provinces of the Empire.

“Imagine instead, five nations allied against them. That looks more formidable, doesn’t it? And I’m three-fifths there.”

“Hmm. So if I am to join with you... I am in effect joining with Hyerne, Niah-lur-ana and Yeola-e.”

“And Laka, if I can talk Astalaz into it. I think I have a good chance, despite the treaty. Remember you received Kurkas’s safe-conduct for me, when I went to see him? I sent one to Astalaz, too.”

“I did. The man’s a liar.” He ran his finger down his sword-side cheek, meaning the scar I had on mine. “I know that’s the least of the scars he put on you... and still you’re here, champing at the bit to fight him.”

“You want to see all of them?” I said. “I’ll show you if you want.” Maybe I wouldn’t show him those Piatsri had healed—I’d gone too far that way already—but the rest were enough to paint a picture. “His falsehood is written all over me. Of course, I’m champing at the bit to fight him; now I can. I am going to go to Brahvniki, too, for mercenaries.”

“I’ll take your word for it on the scars, Sievenka. Thank you. Hmm... Yeola-e has enough money to hire mercenaries? Something you have traditionally never done.”

“Oh, sure we have. Not often, true, but we did when we had to; there are three instances in the last six hundred years of Yeoli history I can think of just by memory where we did; against Laka twice, and against... well... you. I have enough money now to make a good start, and I’m going to approach those people in Brahvniki who can read the writing on the wall for much more.”

His face had gone a little stony, now, as a person’s does when he’s purposely showing you nothing. I took that as encouraging.

“Still, your odds aren’t good, for talking Astalaz into breaking his word with Kurkas, even if Kurkas is a liar. Astalaz is not. Naive perhaps when it comes to the Arkans, but as honest as a Lakan king can be. He also took the coward’s way out of aggression, I believe.”

“That may be. But I have a way of letting people near me not be cowards.” He didn’t dispute that. “As well, imagine me going to him with backing from Brahvniki plus alliances with the A-niah, Hyerne and you. I think he’d find himself feeling a bit left out, don’t you? A little alone in the world?”

Kranaj’s finger, I noticed, lay on Haiu Menshir. It had been there for a while. I wondered if my victory there, or his own outrage at Arko, or both, was in the back of his mind without him truly knowing it.

“I suppose it’s not impossible.” The finger came up and rubbed his lip, while his other hand spread over the eastern Miyatara. “You must have promised Segiddis something in return; what was it?”

“Aside from aid in gaining back her villages from Arko, what I did was give her my word that there would be territorial considerations in return. But I didn’t specify. What we will have to do is meet, or have all our envoys meet, as one, and thrash it all out there. I will say to you what I said to her; without the approval of my Assembly, I am not permitted to fight beyond the borders of Yeola-e except as Assembly specifies in compensation for our losses at their hands. But... in the matter of allies, those laws have been loosened in the past.”

“You have to understand, Sievenka, I cannot make alliance with someone who will be fighting me elsewhere. If she will not break off her aggressive stance in my islands, it would be madness. In that sense you are asking she and me to ally with each other.”

“Yes, I know, and so does she. We spoke of it. I think you might find her more amenable to peace than you think. Kranaj… this is how it is. While we all turn our blades and our energies against each other, we cannot stand against Arko. It’s no coincidence that Kurkas came after Yeola-e shortly after we weakened ourselves fighting the Lakans. If we quit against each other and throw it all against them instead, then we can take them. Drive them out of Yeola-e, for my part, make gains against them for everyone else’s.

“The allies I already have are perhaps the ones who know best, because Arko has been after them the worst, the A-niah and the Hyerne. Now we Yeolis have had our bitter lesson, too. The rest of you sit back, and your time will come. The Arkans... it’s not even just that they want to seize more land; in a sense they have to. The whole way their finances work depends on it. So you can never trust them to want to let things stand pat. They haven’t for a thousand years.”

“Yes.” He held up a hand. “Yes, let me think, Sievenka.” He got up to pace, away from the table, then back, then away again, and back. He’d gotten more portly in the time since I’d last seen him. He stopped, fixed his eyes on me again for a bit, quaffed some more of his nakiti. I had forgotten mine, so I took a draught just to politely match him. He paced some more.

“May I say more about what I know of how strong they truly are?” I asked. He agreed, and I clasped my crystal. “One of the times Kurkas invited me for dinner, he let slip that some of his people were against his invading us, or at least counseled caution. When I asked him why, he said ‘Bureaucratic cowardice.’ But bureaucrats aren’t generally the ones out risking their necks, so they tend to base their advice more on fact.

“When I put that together with the whole heroic fairy-tale Milforas Tatthen got Kurkas believing about taking Hyerne, how deeply they had to strip Ro to muster the ships that we sank, the population of Arko, particularly solas, and the number of places Arko is fighting... it all spells ‘spread too thin.’ I cannot prove it, but all the signs are there.”

Kranaj moved over to another table, whose map showed the full Empire, and enumerated the wars he knew Arko was in with his fingers. “Are you going to go as far as the Srians for allies? Or only Yeola-e’s neighbours?”

“Well, I don’t know the Srians, or more exactly, they don’t know me, so wouldn’t necessarily trust me, either to be honest or capable. Why... do you want me to?”

“Not necessarily, but you worked well with their archers on Haiu Menshir...” Kranaj smacked his hand flat on the table, in the final way of someone who’s made up his mind. It came down right on the middle of the empire, covering the City Itself.

“I will ally with you, my friend. With the same promise of territorial considerations, commensurate with the force we lend to you. Under several conditions.”

“Name them.” At least I knew he wouldn’t want to spar or have sex with me.

“First, we have to straighten out that Segiddis isn’t going to be a madwoman and keep fighting me. Second, you have to get Astalaz to ally as well. Historically, he’s been as much an enemy to us as Hyerne. Third, you have to raise in Brahvniki gold to the tune of... let’s say, twenty thousand, in your money, ankaryel. That should hire you enough mercenaries.” The feel of sweat trickling down my back despite my sitting still was almost familiar now. “And one final thing.”

Kranaj looked out the curlicue-framed window into the distance, as if at a particular place. “You take Reknarja as your general’s apprentice... teach him some of that Yeoli equanimity of yours.”

My brows rose before I could will them not to. “My general’s apprentice?”

My last memory of his heir was from when I’d been twelve and he fourteen, and he’d sneered at my size and been kicked by his father for it. When I’d visited as semanakraseye, he’d been out of town on some business. But it was also that I was so young a general myself, I hadn’t expected an apprentice quite yet. Act as if you’ve been doing it for twenty years! I ordered myself. “Well... certainly. But do you think he’ll be agreeable to this himself?”

He snorted. “No matter. He’s going. If you can fulfill all the other conditions. The boy needs... something. He’ll either find it in your war... or get himself killed trying. I hope the former. I’m telling you more of my heart than I should, Sievenka. Excuse me.”

I wasn’t sure what to say, which was perhaps good, as it was a moment in which it is best to say nothing. But I didn’t like the idea taking on an unwilling apprentice. Finding out he had to accept teaching from someone two years younger than him wasn’t going to endear him to me any more. But I wasn’t in a position to refuse. “I will take him, then, and do my best not to get him killed.”

“Meet those conditions and I’ll send my marines and five thousand of my horse under Misiali.”

“Under Misiali... Kranaj, you bless me more than I even expected,” I said. He was one of Tor Ench’s best three generals, if not the best. “I don’t need horse, now, not yet, not until we’re in the plains. I need foot; can you spare, say, ten thousand total? And elite?”

“Five thousand foot to start. And fifty of my elite knights, with Reknarja. You make the plains and I will send my horse with Jakanarja.”

“How many horse? Against the Arkans, it is going to take numbers.”

“I’ll send five thousand horse.”

“Done.” We clasped hands on it, and I knocked back the rest of my nakiti.

203 - The most intense pleasure

2010-01-21T21:59:00.005-05:00

Segiddis drew back from me enough to whisper, “You’ve told me you’re a fecund man. Come to bed with me and we’ll seal the deal.”

“Em...” There was no doubt between my legs that I wanted her—call me hopeless for strong women—but I had to think of Niku. I realized I didn’t know whether she’d mind or not. In Arko, where I’d have gelded myself with an eating spoon before I bedded any woman but her, it hadn’t mattered. I had told her about Shaina and Etana, but I had also told her that was purely convenience, and they loved each other. “I’m betrothed. And when did I say I was fecund?”

“When you mentioned that Niku carried your child. If you can manage in that cesspit, you’re fecund. But you’re betrothed, you already belong to her?” She looked sour for a bit, then brightened. “I make it a condition of our alliance, then. That sets it above mere sex, makes it diplomacy. She’ll understand. I want to get the feel of you this way as well.”

She let go of me but grabbed my wrist in her iron-gripped hand and set off for a door other than the one I had come in. She didn’t seem to doubt for a moment that I’d follow, and I found myself following. “It’s not as if I’m trying to steal you away from her; I don’t do that,” she said. “I should hope she doesn’t mind sharing her bounty. If she’s jealous later, we can settle it sensibly between us, like women.”

What does that mean... a duel? An alliance disaster loomed in my mind. I told myself not to be silly. Niku had never seemed to want to own me, and Segiddis had just stated she didn’t mean to steal me. Through the door was a bed-chamber, with a huge circular bed at its centre, covered with a silken quilt of interlocking triangles in every brilliant colour. If you can’t talk Niku into understanding that it’s diplomacy, I can. I hope.

“Love was sanity, in that cesspit,” I said. Then something made me add, like a youth unable to resist boasting further when he’s received a compliment, “I have two other children.” We stood by the bed, and she put her arms around me again, inside mine.

“By Niku as well? But I thought you met her in the Mezem.”

“No...” I suddenly regretted mentioning it. “One by my wife in Yeola-e, and the other... my oldest, my heir...” How exactly to explain this? “Well, I’d been captured by the Lakans, and they, em, wanted to make some use of me while they negotiated my ransom. But he, and his mother, were set free as a favour to me by As—”

Her brows darkened with puzzlement, and a touch of anger. “Chevaga, did you say... wife? But you’re betrothed to Niku.”

“Yes. Ehh… what do you know about Yeoli marriage customs?” She hadn’t let go of me, but the touch was less intimate and more firm.

“I heard you commonly married in fours. One woman and three men, a good ratio, since she can wear out that many in an evening. Is it… not that?”

“Well,” I said, “it’s sometimes that... sometimes one man and three women... sometimes two of each, and the women may be in love with each other, and likewise the men, but they make a four to have children... or sometimes four men or four women. Or sometimes six. There is even the odd eight. Generally it’s iterations of pairs.”

She looked at me as if I’d fallen from another Earthsphere.

“But, my wife… well, we are unusual in being a three, and, in love, they are the pair. I married them to start getting heirs early, and our agreement is that our fourth will be of my choosing. So that will be Niku.”

“I suppose I shouldn’t speak of other nations’ customs if I don’t understand them,” she said. “But tell me true: should I not be wanting you because you’re tangled with all these other women?” She held me face to face with her by both shoulders, serious. “I don’t want to have enraged warriors coming to challenge me for you.” At the same time, she was impatient; one hand dropped to finger the top edge of my kilt almost absently.

I tried to imagine an enraged Shaina issuing Segiddis challenge, and stifled a smile. “With my wife in Yeola-e, it doesn’t matter. As I say, it’s Etana—my husband—she loves. Niku, we’ve already—”

Her hands dropped off me. “Your... husband? I thought you must mean they were both women… You’re not one of those, you don’t... do the Arkan thing, do you?”

All-Spirit, I thought. Just as two women being in love is loathsome, if not inconceivable, to Arkans, here it’s the same with two men.

“Make love? No. Well, yes. I mean, a little, once or twice... as friends, when all three of us did together.” I so wished I had not mentioned my other two children.

“Ah. Your wife was there. That’s all right then.” Relieved and so resolved again, she took a firm grip on the top edge of my kilt. Like the women on the street, she dipped her other hand between her legs, then, with a wide smile, wiped it fast across my cheek and lips, leaving them wet with her musky juice. “You feel how much I want you.” While I stood in that frozen and yet half-lax state you get from utter shock, she shoved me hard backwards. The edge of the great bed was just behind my knees, tripping me so I landed flat across it. “Ha! I see how much you want me!” My kilt was a little tent now, with a very rigid pole. “Such beauty! Chevaga, I’m done with holding back.”

She knelt on me, pinning my thighs under hers, and had the kilt off in a moment. “Ahh, look at that sweet dew-drop, quivering there… you are so beautiful, even without the face-paint; so natural in your own skin, so un-self-conscious, so… untamed. You are like no other.” She crawled up me, her hands all over, feeling, measuring, relishing. “I gave you just a taste; have it all, now.” I could barely say, “I give myself to you, Segiddis,” before she lowered herself onto my face, clenching my hair in two fists.

She didn’t lock her thighs around my head so I could not hear. I noticed the plucking of the harp again; her husband was back in his corner, delicately playing, as if he always did it while she made love with someone else. Did he feel anything? I tried not to, myself. I am here, I live by their rules, I told myself, and left behind all thoughts except of what I was doing. “Tirothuli, here!” she ordered, huskily, cutting off the music. “My nipples.” I could not speak, but I could raise my hands in a gesture, then take them between my thumbs and forefingers myself, making her throw her head back and gasp out a laugh. “Oh, Chevaga, what nerve you have, wanting me all to yourself! I’ve never met the like of you. You want to satisfy me alone, then; let’s see if you can!” The music started up again.

It takes nothing more than entire devotion, that’s all, and it occurred to me that this was a test in the greater sense; winning the war would take entire devotion, too. So I dedicated my being and life, in this moment, to her ecstasy, and to mine when she wished me to have it.

All through, there was never any thought in her mind or feeling in her heart other than that I was there purely for her pleasure, and mine would be only when it enhanced hers. She did what she willed without asking, moved me where she willed without regard to my choice or comfort, except to be careful of the arrow-wound. Of course I’d known it would be that way from the start, and thought I’d have to swallow anger. Instead, it brought the most intense pleasure, like what Klaimera had taught me with her silk scarves, but much more so.

She kept me there until past midnight, though we broke for a meal. “There is no finger-width of you I want to miss,” she breathed, “touching, smelling, tasting, entering; I want never to forget you. Give me yourself more, Chevaga.” She meant it; afterwards I felt covered all over and penetrated everywhere by her, every cell and nerve marked Segiddis. She was a woman capable of spurting—I suspect all Hyerne women are—so I drank as deeply of her as if she’d been a man. “By Theen,” she said, when we were truly spent, “I am so tempted to say, these other women you belong to, a storm take them! Will you be my fifth husband?”

“Of course,” I whispered, my voice broken from ecstasy-cries. “If you will be my third wife.”

†

We settled the details while we basked afterwards, my head in her lap. “You said your daughter will command the elite, and another commander the regulars,” I said, my eyes closed and Segiddis stroking my eyelashes. “So there will be no one overall commander for Hyerne? I’d prefer there was; it’s a stronger chain of command. But let me guess... you don’t want to put one above the other.” I was not in a position to bargain hard on this. “The one who isn’t your daughter, Pae something, who is she?”

“Peyepallo is an excellent warrior and commander, very intelligent. She’s the one likeliest to be able to raise a throne challenge to me. She certainly wants to be Queen.”

Ah, I thought. The hated rival. She’ll send her off to where she might get killed. A common strategy in monarchies. Of course Segiddis’s risk was that Peyepallo would distinguish herself without getting killed and come back triumphant, winning further favour among the people. Or, should I say, women, since in Hyerne politics, men didn’t matter. Everyone in my army would distinguish himself, or herself, if things went as I planned.

“They are separate units, normally under me,” she said, tracing my cheekbone delicately with one finger. It was still soon enough after that it felt like a line of sweet fire. “I would put Kelaepo in command but she is younger than Peyepallo... How good are you at knocking sense into a woman’s head, hmmm? Peyepallo might be harder for you to command because of what she feels toward male warriors and male commanders... she thinks they’re too much ruled by their penises to think straight.” More than other Hyerne women? I thought.

“A not-always-unjust accusation,” I said. “I think I am equally capable of knocking sense into the heads of both sexes. Perhaps I should meet her before I leave. She might otherwise refuse to go.”

“If I order her, she goes.” And you hand me your problem, I thought. I understand. “No point in meeting her yet, Chevaga; our deal is conditional, remember.” She ran her hand through my hair, catching her fingers slightly in the curls. It might be better to meet Peyepallo in Yeola-e anyway, I thought, on my ground.

“I hadn’t forgotten. Your daughter… does she particularly have it in for Arkans, perchance?”

“Yes, she does. She’s a fire-breather, that one, not like her staid and thoughtful old mother.” I let out a chuckle, and she laughed herself. We’d found harmony between us, somehow. “She’s also a daddy’s girl… listens to my second husband, her father, more than a lot of girls her age. A wise thing to do, actually, because he’s very level-headed for a man.”

So long as he doesn’t pollute her with his loathsome masculinity. I wanted to say it as a dig, but decided not to; she might just take it seriously, and say, “You understand.”

Segiddis’s finger brushed over my nipple, as if by accident, sending a jolt all through me. “The alliance is off if you kill me,” I said.

She laughed softly. “And I’d be denying myself the perfect joy that you are forever into the future, too,” she said. “Theen forfend.” She pressed her lips tenderly to a part that could take it, my forehead.

202 - Entrusting you with a great deal

2010-01-20T20:38:00.004-05:00

“No offense taken,” I said. “At least I’m not impinging on their sovereignty now.” If the Haians had ship protection without even knowing it, that was hardly interfering. I had told Breicia and Krena both my worry that Kurkas would try again, so they might even have arranged it already. Keep twenty ships, even scattered, within a half-day’s run of Haiu Menshir, have Niah scouting a full day’s run all around it... why hadn’t I thought of it when I’d been there? But if I could think of it, so could they.

“If I were to consider this mad stunt,” said Segiddis, “how many troops would you be asking of me?” She got up from the chair to pace. She’s considering it, I thought.

“Well... I will confess something. I was in Arko and had no intelligence except from the Pages, so I thought you were conquered. I have to redo all my calculations, now. Could you spare... two thousand? And a disproportionate number of elite?” It wasn’t many, but I knew that Hyerne can be very effective against Arkans, just for the fact of being women warriors; it scares them. Their famous habit of dangling the testicles of slain enemies from their spears as trophies would help.

“That isn’t so many… but Kranaj, that old bitch, is always breathing down our necks on our islands. If you get the Enchians into alliance...”

“My dear friend, that old bitch, is my next stop,” I said.

“That would take their attention from us, and even ally us with them through you… what other friends of yours are you going to visit with this insane scheme?”

“After Kranaj, Astalaz, and then Ivahn in Brahvniki,” I said.

“Astalaz, you are going to talk into this? But he is a man of his word, from all I have heard.”

“I have heard no different,” I said. “Why should that prevent him allying with us?” It was not us yet, but saying the words brings it closer.

She peered at me, her eyes hardening a little. “Of course, you thought we were conquered, too—Chevaga, I know you can’t run spies from the Mezem, but you should at least brush up once you’re out of chains. He and Kurkas signed a peace treaty.”

I froze inside, willing myself not to let it show. I felt as if I’d had my feet cut out from under me. “When was that?” I said, keeping my voice steady.

“About three moons ago.” When I was in the House of Integrity, too mind-riven to be told, I thought. And no one thought to tell me since… of course those with me had been sequestered themselves; they might not know. Breicia and Niku had probably thought I knew. “A ten-year pact. I think it was out of fear on the Lakans’ part more than anything else.”

My skin crawled. Astalaz didn’t know Kurkas, had never met Kurkas; I could see his big dark honest eyes, a little frightened, thinking, ‘I will trust this; I have no choice, really, but I should give the man a chance at any rate.’ I had an awful thought: did that treaty include extraditions? I might not even be safe setting foot in Tardengk.

“You read the Pages,” I said. “Was that treaty mentioned in it? I’ve had no way to get back issues.”

“No, as a matter of fact,” she said. “That’s interesting, isn’t it?”

“It means Kurkas’s intent is to break it,” I said. “You see that over and over again in Arkan history. Why else conceal such an agreement? Here is another thing; I asked Kurkas for five copies of my safe conduct into Arko, which he provided me, and I sent three of them to… well, the same friends I’ve mentioned, Kranaj, Ivahn and Astalaz. Undeniable proof that Kurkas’s highest and most officially-sworn oath is no good.”

“It’s hard to talk a man out of his fear, Chevaga,” she said.

“I’ve done it over and over again in war,” I said, and couldn’t resist but add, “women, too. It’s a pact made to be broken; it keeps Astalaz off the Diradic tongue so that the Arkans can throw all their strength against us. Then the Lakans’ turn will be next. That’s how they do it. I studied how they do it.”

“If I agree to this lunacy, how am I and my people repaid? Your ships... would you have enough to support my sea-slashers to re-take the villages still held by Arko?” The sea-slasher, I knew, was a small fast Hyerne ship.

“I would think so,” I said. “How many villages and how many ships are we talking?”

“Five villages in a close cluster of islands nearest Kreyen. I would think a dozen ships would do, until they are free. I would release them, then.”

“That’s fair,” I said. It was actually more than would be necessary with ships and wings working as one, it seemed to me, but I remembered they wouldn’t be able to fly openly.

“Still, that shouldn’t take long, and you are asking me to send mine to a war that will protracted,” she said. “There should be some other consideration in it for us. You mentioned territories before.”

“I give you my word it will be something,” I said. “Let me see what I work out with the others, and then we’ll make equitable divisions.” I could sell none of them any of Yeola-e, of course; that meant fighting on land outside our borders, though those laws have been blurred in the past when alliances came into play. I already had the privateers contemplating doing it, on Ro with the A-niah.

“All right,” she said, sitting down again, and taking up the stick of office, so that I knew she was about to speak her decision. “I will send one thousand, and seventy-five elite, with my daughter Kelaepo commanding them, and Peyepallo commanding the regulars. And if you win back Vae Arahi, I will send another thousand. But I have several conditions. First: that you make alliances with Kranaj of Tor Ench and Astalaz of Laka as well.”

“That’s fair enough,” I said into the pause she left, and took a silent deep breath. A drop of sweat came loose from between my shoulder-blades and rolled down my back.

“Second…” She put down the stick and stood up again, frowning. Something told me to stand up also, so I did. “I have heard stories from you, and about you. You’ve proved to me that you reason like a woman. But... I guess when it comes down to it, we Hyerne can be very set in our ways, as much as other people. If we do this... I am entrusting you with a great deal. So many of my sisters’ lives, as well as our name as a fighting nation. And... I don’t mean to offend, but it goes against the grain to so trust a man with such responsibility.”

“So you want to test me somehow,” I said. “Name the test.”

“Show me your womanly strength, and spar me.”

No wonder I’d somehow known to get up. Reason like a woman... womanly strength... I swallowed my retort. I am here: I speak in their language. “Where, and how?” I said. “Name the weapons, if any.” As challenged, I could say it was my right to choose the weapons; but I wanted to show her I could use any. Kaninjer, I hope you’ll forgive me.

“Just straight sword... true steel… and right here will do. Tirothuli, move the chairs and then go.” The music cut off as if the harp-strings were suddenly red-hot, and he scurried forward to do it. As he was going, he gave me a look that seemed a mix of jealousy and pity.

I was getting another dispensation, I saw, to wield a weapon despite my gender defect. “My sword’s on my ship,” I said. “Are we having it fetched, or would you lend me one?”

She barked some orders, and a guard brought a pair of straight Hyerne longswords and a shorter draped tunic in the same teal, staring from me to her Queen and back again, but saying nothing. Segiddis changed without even a thought. That deep-bronzed muscular beauty reminded me of Niku, with a pang. Segiddis seemed almost impatient to do this; I wondered if it was the way she always did things, or whether she was more eager because it was me. Though it had long sleeves, I kept my shirt on, to hide the bandage. She invited me to choose one sword. It was no Chirel, but it was good enough, straight and balanced closer to the hilt than I was used to.

I had never fought, or sparred, a Hyerne in my life, and so had no idea of their style, but then I’d faced any number of warriors from all over the world in the Mezem. This would be easier than the negotiation.

We’d barely crossed swords when she stepped back and said “Wait. You’re favouring your shield-arm... why?”

I allowed a laugh. “I hoped I’d be able not to show it. You’re too sharp-eyed for me. In that battle against the twenty-one Arkan ships, I took a wound.”

“Ah. Well then…” She tucked her left arm behind herself, the hand in her belt so she could not use it. “Fair’s fair.” Since it did not matter now, I took off my shirt. Just like the women on the street, she didn’t hide her appreciative once-over in the slightest. From her, somehow, it didn’t grate. We closed again.

She was very good, anyone’s elite of elite, but not my match. I could get in three kill-strokes for her every one. I knew very well, though, not to do anything that could be taken as humiliation, but only excellence.

Would it bother her to be bested by a man anyway, and that translate into anger? I knew how it was with Arkans: show them an inferior who is somehow superior, and what they want to do most is kill them. I mean only to reassure you that you are deciding rightly to ally with me, I told her in my mind, so only that spirit would come off me, as I stopped the sword with the point a hair from her guts again. She moved as if she was enjoying it, but I saw no trace of a smile.

We were soon both pouring sweat; of course I’d got the head start in that. How long would we go? I decided not to stop until she called a halt, to prove my endurance even wounded. “Enough!” she finally said, stepping back. Then a smile spread across her face. “I haven’t been tested like that since my last Throne Games.” I knew, though only generally, what that meant: a Hyerne Queen can be challenged by any other Hyerne (by which is meant Hyerne woman) for the throne, through a set of contests both physical and of wits; a vote of the people, by which I mean the women, of Thenai settles it. “Chevaga, I can see why you won fifty fights in the Mezem, and have the name you do.”

“And you are more inclined to trust me as an ally, I hope,” I said.

“Yes,” she said, with both pleasure and a touch of concession, as much as I could ever imagine from her. She called for the guard, who came to take the swords. “I can see also…” She was suddenly closer to me. “How beautiful you are.” Her arms were around my waist and her tongue between my lips almost before I knew.

That utterly casual and unquestioned assumption, that she could, even with a man who had just proved he could take her, caught me so off-guard I did nothing to stop her. By the time I thought of the words, “I come from a place where all people are equal, and we ask,” it was too late to say them, my mouth hotly full.

201 - Prospective allies

2010-01-19T18:49:00.006-05:00

I got another dispensation to go up on the rock again to meet with Segiddis in the formal palace. (The informal one is below.) It’s surprisingly plain, built in the same style as the ancient buildings. I was shown into a simple, even sparse room, with one wall that was an open row of fluted columns, overlooking a cliff that faced the sea. There was no desk, only a pair of chairs. A sea breeze that had picked up the scents of woodsmoke and stone and cooking from the city blew in, cooling. In one corner, a man in a elegantly-draped scarlet satin tunic, with a row of gold rings along the edge of one ear, sat plucking quiet and delicate music on a harp.

Segiddis was tall even for a Hyerne woman, a good three finger-widths taller than me. Her color reminded me a little of Niku, but she was built more tiger-massive than panther-sleek, with thighs that were astonishingly thick with muscle, when I saw them flash through the side-slits of her long tunic, which was a brilliant turquoise. Her face had a kind of banked fierceness underlying its surface calm, black eyes that did not hesitate to gaze unwavering into mine, and a ruby stud in the narrow nose. Her black hair was braided in perfect rows that turned into long ringlets. She had plenty of war-scars. Her bearing was as unassailable in its pride as a Goddess’s.

“I thank you for—”

“Semanakrase—”

It was inevitable, I guess, that we’d both try to speak first. Stifling a grin, I held my tongue to let her. She looked down her nose as if to say, ‘that’s better.’

“Semanakraseye, you are welcome. I understand you wished to speak to me. I listen.”

“I thank you for welcoming and hearing me, Your Fecundity,” I said, having been taught that was the best Enchian translation for the proper style of address to the Queen. “Unless we may use names...? That is my preference, if it is yours.”

“As long as I may pronounce yours correctly...Chevaga?”

“Close enough,” I said. “I hope I do as well... Segiddis?” She didn’t grimace too badly, but perhaps that was for diplomacy’s sake, same as me. “I’d like to commend you,” I said. “I’ve never seen a person looking so well after having had her head chopped off and sent to Arko.”

She laughed at that, with a tone of thanking me for the compliment. “She whose head impersonated mine is my sister now,” she said.

“My condolences,” I said. “Nor a province of Arko looking so... free and sovereign. With its women holding their heads so high.”

“We would be defeating them anyway,” she said. “But it makes it easier that the governor is a self-indulgent fool,” she said. “Kurkas actually had the breasts—or perhaps the effrontery, you would say”—she put a hand under her sword-side breast and lifted it for emphasis—“to say he’d like to see me, and all my people, purified. I sent a letter to the Pages saying I’d like to see him and all Arkan men gelded, but of course they never printed that.”

“I read the story where he said that,” I said, truthfully. Of course I’d thought it was being done, because I’d thought them conquered, my mind shrinking away from the thought. He had said no such thing, fortunately, about Yeola-e. “Well… you know he is stretched thin, but he is stretched thinner than he knows, yet, or than you know, right now, I would think. He’s got twenty-one fewer ships on the Miyatara—Mid-world Sea, I mean—than he did five days ago.”

By now she had motioned me to one of the chairs and sat on the other herself. Against it leaned an ancient, gnarled, worm-eaten stick, which was her sign of office. She leaned forward, intrigued. Her hands were thick and squarish, and she wore a heavy golden ring on each thumb. “Truly? How do you know? Did you manage to see this battle yourself, somehow, Chevaga?”

“See? I fought. I was the first boarder. It was near Niah-lur-ana. I have”—I took up my crystal—“the A-niah as allies, now. Second Fire come if I lie.” Of course the shark-tooth was next to it.

She looked at me amazed, her raised eyebrows lightening the skin between them and her eyes. “Allies? Not just hired scouts? How on the Earthsphere did you manage that?” I got the first sense that it had slipped her mind I was of an inferior sex.

“I can’t tell you everything,” I said. “But I will say one thing; love led to it. They are going to send a full one-hundred and twenty-eight, to scout and do the rest of what they do, once their commander recovers from the wound she took. How well do you know them? Have you heard of Niku Wahunai? If you read the Pages, you might know her better as the one woman who was in the Mezem.”

“Where you were… ah, I begin to understand. I also heard she escaped somehow, from a song sung by a Niah bard. So you must have been the man she loved who she tried to take out with her, and couldn’t, to her sorrow.”

I wondered how maudlin the song was. “One of two men; with the other, she succeeded, though he was recaptured later,” I said. “Though she carried out yet another person who was never recaptured... in her womb.”

“Truly!” Her eyes grew more appreciative. “Your child, or his?”

“Mine. They were just friends.”

“So I wonder just how stretched thin the Arkans are,” she said thoughtfully. “It would be nice if they turned away from their war on us.”

“My privateers and the A-niah, who are fighting together now, will know it better,” I said, turning the topic more to where I wanted it. “The war I will fight personally is the land-war.”

Segiddis leaned back in her chair, her face sobering. “You are doing well at the sea war, now,” she said. “But—let me be gentle with you, Chevaga—the land war...”

“You needn’t be gentle stating the truth, when the truth is not gentle,” I said. “It’s not as if I don’t know it.” But now we were talking about more sensitive things, and I would soon make my bid, I flicked my eyes to the musician in the corner and back to her. We should be speaking alone.

“Oh.” She made a brush-off motion. “Tirothuli is the most level-headed of my husbands.” She didn’t drop her voice at all. “He never chatters or gossips about my business.” The man gave her a obsequious white-toothed smile without missing a note. I would just have to trust. “They have at least two good—no, I correct myself—excellent generals, and I’ve heard that there is possibly a third. And the heart of your country is lost to them.”

“It is,” I said. “Triadas, Larianas and Perisalas, you refer to, I assume. But what is lost can be won back. I have several prospective allies, and I will contract mercenaries as well.”

Her eyebrows rose, lightening the skin, again, and she laughed. “Chevaga! You have come to seek my alliance, haven’t you! What an exceptional man you are!” Man, I thought. Bad sign that she called me that. “We’ve never allied with Yeola-e, and only a handful of times in all our history with anyone, and you come thinking you’ll persuade us! You amaze me. Why do you try?”

Because I need all the allies I can get. I heartened myself by telling me that this might be a bargaining ploy on her part. “Because no one nation can stand against Arko. The mistake we have all made is trying to. You’ve done well because Kurkas sent his weakness against you, while against us he sent his strength.” Probably she thinks it’s that we have too many men among our warriors, I thought. “Things might go differently when he finds out the truth, decides Triadas is done with us and sends him against you. If you study Arkan history, you see the pattern clear: one nation at a time. This is exactly the argument I’m going to make to everyone else I talk to.

“Besides, alliance has benefits besides risks. I am very strong on the sea now. That can translate into territories. I’m not asking you to do this for nothing.”

“Of course not.” Her face turned more thoughtful. “If you control the sea, you can cut off the grain shipments to the City Itself through Fispur... and to other supply ports.” Hah, I thought. It was a bargaining ploy. But she is thinking like a conqueror, and I am not that.

“I wouldn’t go so far as to say I control it,” I said. Not a moon ago I was a lunatic on Haiu Menshir who wasn’t even deemed competent to meet the Speaking Elder, I thought. I’m not doing too badly. “They defend Fispur very well indeed, navally, as a warrior defends his—or her—throat.” And yet I am not thinking large enough, I thought. The A-niah could scout the entire Miyatara, could they not? And do a complete count of all ships? I wondered if Breicia had thought of that. Niku had given me the name of the Niah in Pirai by whom I could write Niah-lur-ana. I’d write her suggesting this tonight, I decided.

Segiddis tapped her fingers against her lips, thinking. “If I look at the whole of it, Chevaga: you have no other allies, but the A-niah, yet. You need funds for sufficient mercenaries. Even as enraged as I am against the Empire, I would be unwise to send my warriors to fight Arkans with things as they are. We are not so many that we can stand against the rejins Kurkas can muster.” She shook her head, frowning. “It is a matter of numbers.”

“Well, yes and no,” I said. I was sweating under my shirt. I hoped she’d blame the heat. “First, you’re assuming—naturally enough—I’m without funds, which isn’t so. I’ve got enough to hire a good contingent of mercenaries already, and good prospects for more funds. Everyone, rich and poor, knows what it would do to the whole eastern Midworld, if we went down entirely.” Brahvniki, I was saying, between the lines. Of course there was no truth to this but the likelihood in my head, but she didn’t know that.

“Second: the other alliances I seek, as well as funds, are with friends of mine.” She kept her ear to the ground, so she’d know I’d visited Ivahn and Kranaj, and fostered with Astalaz. “Third: numbers aren’t everything. Good general-craft can overcome them.”

“You think you’re as good a general as Triadas, Chevaga?” Her eyes flashed down my body, and I knew she was thinking, at all of twenty-two? At least my disadvantage of maleness would be offset, in her mind, by his disadvantage of maleness.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I have not tested myself against him yet. But I’ve had more victories generalling than most my age. You know about the one and only, and may it forever be the one and only, battle on Haiu Menshir?”

“I do,” she said. “Again, not from the Pages, but a Niah bard.” I wondered how accurate that could be. “You traded a bit of protection for your sanity, I understand.” She was teasing, though, by her quirk of a grin. It was odd, how she could go from serious to that in a breath. It’s because I am a man, I thought.

I laughed. “Actually I paid for that in gold. My protection, I rammed down their throats. Would you like to hear the whole story?” Not half as much as I want to tell it, no matter how much you do, I thought. I took up my crystal again. “Second Fire come, not a word even shading it.”

“I would. Would you like something to eat while talking?” She didn’t wait for my answer, but sent her husband to fetch.

I left only one thing out of my account: the green ribbon. “Wonderful fight,” she said appreciatively. “Very well done.” For a man… I told myself firmly, she didn’t say that; it’s just me thinking it. “And Haians… imagine them being so fussy over sovereignty, when you defended them from those ball-worshippers!” Ball-worshippers? Was that was referring to the sun, Arko’s most sacred symbol being round? It’s said that it is a sphere, like the Earthsphere. But she pursed her lips and said, “Pardon my words. Present bodily parts exempted from any slight, of course. I wouldn’t insult your equipment.” I sat baffled for a moment, until it occurred to me that sometimes in older Arkan, testicles are referred to as balls. She’d probably try to take my head off with her teeth if I said it, I thought, but in some ways Hyerne and Arko are identical.

200 - Never so invisible

2010-01-18T17:09:00.004-05:00

I should have known what would happen: no pre-dawn appointment, of course. Cherao, I am certain, didn’t even try, deferring to my mother to help her coddle her wounded baby. I woke to dawn, from a strange dream in which a woman with brilliant blue hair was flirting with me, in the Pikeras Fokas, of all places.

So we had all day to wait, and I figured I’d cool my heels in the embassy, where my shoulder wouldn’t feel so irritatingly naked. Sightseeing was the obvious thing to do—it never hurts to learn what you can about a prospective ally—and Cherao assigned one of her staff to take us on a tour, but I didn’t want to go out onto the streets. I had a feeling it would be like being led through Arko by Daisas.

“Well, we’re all going,” Salao, who was the informal leader of the young ones, said. “They’re going to take us up to that spectacular temple to their Goddess, and their Assembly Palace where the headwomen hold council, and the Women’s House—that’s the athletic complex, no men allowed—then the Great Market, where a woman can buy anything and everything she wants… You should at least go up to the Temple, Chevenga. No men allowed, again, but for you I bet we could get a dispensation. So long as you wear a veil—that’s what Pipsimimi, the boy who was serving us last night, said.”

“You mean the one whose arms are thicker than mine?” I said. “You call him a boy?”

“But he said it’s best if a young, attractive man like you wears a veil whenever he’s outdoors,” Theralao said. “So as not to get into, or cause, trouble. Not strictly necessary if you’re with a wife or mother, but most prudent, he was saying.”

“This all sounds so enticing,” I said. “I’m sure you’ll all have a wonderful time. I think I’ll just stay here and nurse my wound and try to convince Cherao that I’m capable of intelligent conversation, if that’s possible.”

“Oh, don’t be a coward, Fourth Chevenga,” my shadow-mother clucked. “If you can’t face—”

I cut her off by leaping to my feet. “Bring on the kevyalin fikken veil then!” I’d never wanted to wear Chirel so badly in my life.

What Piss-whatever meant by a veil wasn’t what I thought at all. I expected something that would conceal my face, probably with some sort of hat, and was stunned when they brought out a garment as voluminous as a gown, made of translucent gold-threaded fabric. It was more like a tent, with me as the pole. Suspecting they might be pulling my leg, I peeked out a window onto the street. There were indeed tents shaped like broad-shouldered people, walking; the others were all either boys under twelve, old men, or women.

I was borrowing it from Piss-kilt, it seemed, and since he was taller than me and I must not ruin the hem, we had to raise it a little and tie off the top bit, which then hung flopped over on my head. I guess it doesn’t matter how silly I look, I thought, if no one can see my face. That also meant I could wear the arm-sling, in my mother’s opinion, so I did. Thus girded, I went out into Thenai.

We did get a dispensation for me in the form of a note from Cherao, and the temple is indeed spectacular, especially if you are mindful of its age, as much as I could see it through this misty fabric. As well as rebuilding it, the Hyerne are working on another huge statue of Theen, which they are making out of marble from a hill near the city from which Thenaians have always taken their marble, though it will also have plenty of gold leaf. We sat in the gallery of their Assembly, the most interesting thing for me, and it was strange to hear none but high voices speaking, but everyone else soon got bored and dragged me out to the Women’s House.

They took shifts for who’d be stuck outside with me, and settled on who got the first turn by a finger-game, since I couldn’t just be hitched to a post like a horse or dog. They exercised there for most of the morning, coming out bathed and flushed and happy, while I waited, wandering the streets with one guard as the day grew hotter, in this uncomfortable, itchy, restraining, half-blinding, sweat-inducing thing, with everyone managing not to see that I, let alone my face, was there at all, without apparent effort. That was perhaps the strangest thing. I’d never been so invisible in my life except when I was sneaking somewhere; never in broad daylight. Even in Arko, suffering the most brutal slavery, I’d been anything but invisible—not invisible enough, in fact. Here, towards the end of the day, I found myself having to fight off an awful, lonely, heart-shrivelling feeling of doubt in my own existence.

That, in part, was what made decide to see what would happen if I took the veil off. “Pips… squeak said it wasn’t strictly necessary, yes?” I argued, when they said perhaps I shouldn’t. “So there obviously isn’t a law and I won’t be arrested.” I whipped it off, and unslung my arm, before they could say more. The free air was sweet on my skin, and the world crisp and sharp and clear to my eyes. The Hyerne who worked for Cherao and was guiding us gave me a distinct look of, “You were warned.”

If you have not lived this, you cannot imagine it. Not every woman we passed, but at least half of them, stripped me naked from head to foot with their eyes, not hiding their judgment or appreciation in the slightest. I want you right here and right now, whether you want me or not, those looks said.

Those were the restrained ones. If I met their eyes, as often as not they’d make a licking motion with their tongues at me, or blow a kiss, or say something in Hyerne which I was glad not to understand. They would even reach through the side-slit near the hip in their long tunics, reach between their legs and then bring out the hand and hold it out to me, or sensuously lick their fingers. More than once someone held out some Hyerne currency, which are gilded shells, to one of my mothers or our guide, pointing at me, and had to be politely rebuffed by the guide, who spoke to them, to my amazement, apologetically. The most blatant were the husky women working on buildings, who kept whistling a certain way at me whose meaning I soon learned.

I was standing by a stall which sold porcelain triangle-pendants—the shape of a woman’s pubic hair is a sacred symbol in Hyerne, symbolizing fertility, and every single one of my guards, as well as my two mothers, wanted to buy one—when I felt a hand slip tenderly between my legs from behind, fingers reaching upward. I was about to do what anyone would do, back-fist its owner in the face, when I thought better—we were on a diplomatic mission—and settled for smacking the arm away, and turning to give the woman a try-anything-else-and-you’re-dead look.

Her expression changed from shock to outrage, and she moved to slap me across the face, the same way you smack down a dog that jumps up. I parried it and went into stance, and felt a pair of hands, then two more pairs, grab each of my arms. “No, no, Chevenga, what are you doing, don’t get into a fight here and now for the love of All-Spirit!” my mothers and my guards all hissed. As if they were all sisters in taming me, the Hyerne who’d slapped me took hold of my chin and let out an unbroken tirade in Hyerne at me, until the guide drew her away, remonstrating, explaining, apologizing, and they had something of an argument. I looked away from them, slowed my breathing, counted. I was shaking with anger.

“Love, you’ve either got to put the tent back on, or walk in the middle of us,” my mother said, in the gentlest tone she could manage. She was right, of course. “Walk in the middle of you,” I gritted between my teeth. I was safe from being touched that way; the best way to deal with the leers and the licks, I found, was not to let my eyes meet anyone’s, or look when someone tried to get me to; in other words, to doubly pretend that neither they were there, nor I. By the time we got back to the embassy, I felt exhausted from doing it.

I wanted to wash every scrap of memory of it all off my skin, but going down to the sea was out, as were the public baths. I felt like a prisoner. I settled for begging Cherao for a basin of water to pour over myself, and she had Pips-whatever fetch it. Sitting alone and wet in the privy, I suddenly found myself shaking again, and wanting to cry, and hating myself on top of that for being contemptuous of him. He’d lived with this every day of his life, never knowing anything else, and I had added to it. I wished I knew his real name, until it occurred to me with horror that what sounded like a pet-name might actually be his real name.

I noticed the way I was sitting, as if I’d been defeated, and realized I now knew why Arkan women were always like this, closed in on themselves, heads bowed, tense and tight as if not wanting to take up more than the tiniest share of the world’s space. If my confidence, which is not exactly slight, was shaken just from one day of it, what must it do to their very souls?

For myself today, and the men of Hyerne, and the women of Arko and all other places where they are held in contempt, I leaned my head back against the wall and let tears of wretchedness, that I could not share even with my mothers, take me. Distantly, it occurred to me that in less than a bead, I had an appointment with the Queen of Hyerne to try to persuade her to join me and my all-but-conquered people in an alliance against Arko. Crawling into the bilge of the cormarenc seemed a more plausible, and preferable, choice.

Pipsimimi came in. It’s not as if there is true privacy for men in Hyerne—or maybe it’s that, as nobody, he didn’t count. He froze for a moment, seeing my tears, then sat down beside me, saying something in Hyerne. Then he looked me in the eyes, reached to gently wipe my tears with the backs of his fingers, and clasped my wrist, in the way that is half the double-wrist-clasp, meaningfully. He said one word in Enchian, though I hadn’t thought he spoke any. “Strength.”

I understood. This was a Hyerne man’s thing; a secret man’s thing. I wondered how much trouble he’d be in if he were caught. I clasped back, we held for a while, and then he stroked my shoulder, and went his way.

“I know what I need, and want, to do before I see Segiddis,” I said, once I was dried off and back in the parlour. “Beat the kyash out of someone, or several someones, sparring. Especially someone female—well, hey, you all are! Who’s game? Shadow-mama, you’re not feeling cowardly, are you? Blood-mama, may I borrow your sword?” Doing that finished bringing me back to myself well enough, or so I hoped.

[AN: Ergofiction on how to be a weblit fan]

2010-01-18T16:28:00.008-05:00

The idea of doing a big ask for donations kind of makes me itch, but, really, they are necessary to keep us weblit writers writing.

In my own case, for instance, as soon as I'm finished asa kraiya, which is going to be within days, I will drop to writing just one post per weekday, so that I have a schedule that, between weblit and journalism, isn't killing me. But if I was making enough money at weblit so that I could stop, or even just cut back on, journalism, I could go back up to that output.

Jan Oda, founder of the e-fanzine ergofiction, has written a very good piece explaining things like maybe the biggest mistake weblit fans make: thinking that if they can spare an amount of money, it's not enough. I quote:

If you think a book is worth $5 for the author (which is more than an author gets on a normal paperback sold through Amazon!), don’t worry whether it’ll be enough and give it to the author. If 200 people think like you, the author makes $1,000. If 2000 people think like you, he makes $10,000. Which isn’t bad for a book.

(Possibly Jan doesn't even know how much more $5 is than an author gets on a normal paperback. At least ten times as much.)

Read the whole piece here.

She also has another one up with six ways to contribute to a writer's success without spending a dime (though we writers would love to see you do both!), here. I added a seventh in a comment, and I would also add, specific to Shirley and me: come out and participate in our character chats!

UPDATE: Gabriel Gadfly has even more ideas on how to support your favourite weblit writer, here. Form a local group... disseminate flyers or bizcards... costume your favourite character... translate their work into your language... (Gabriel would host a translation of his work, and so would I.)

--

[AN: coolest move poll]

2010-01-17T10:19:00.004-05:00

Well, heck, I actually meant to cancel putting up that poll because I wanted to do some more research to see if I could scare up more cool Chevenga moves (I forget what I've written all the time), and now I find that not only is it up, but three people have voted on it already so I can't even edit it. (His comeback against Riji? Is is that cool? Going back to read it.) Oh well. Carry on.

(When PA is a major motion picture, can James Cameron direct it, pretty please??)

--

[Author's note: character chat after-thoughts and plans]

2010-01-16T22:08:00.004-05:00

The character chat really started before two, since capriox the keener, was there earlier, and chatty Minis just couldn't hold back from chatting.

We had a bit of a sparse crowd -- capriox, Blue and an uncertain number of other people who lurked -- but the chat continued for almost three hours, which was way longer than we expected. Thanks to all who were present in whatever form.

The affable Ienas Aratin, proprietor of the Puckered Fig, welcomed all and his diligent staff waited upon characters and guests alike. Minis was down on himself, as he is. Sometime around 2:30, Chevenga happened to show up, planning to dine and imbibe at the Fig incognito, and was drawn into the conversation.

Topics ranged from the sack to camping to whether what was recounted in the last post of Eclipse Court actually happened to whether Kyriala likes Minis--cap, Blue and especially Chevenga conversed at length with Minis about this, with Chevenga abjuring Minis to take the Yeoli approach of chiravesa -- imagining himself in her position. Minis's conclusion: she does like him. Is this true? It might take yet another character chat, with Kyriala herself, to find that out. If she deems it sufficiently proper to reveal the truth of her heart, that is -- always the risk, with a respectable Aitzas girl.

There was even some flirting, hard to believe though that is on the Internet. Is Blue in love with Chevenga? She says she may be. The ultimate long-distance romance. By all indications, a good time was had by all. If you want to read it, you can go onto the chat page, sign up onto chatroll through there, click on "The Puckered Fig" and then "Archive."

We welcome any and all thoughts, comments, ideas, wisecracks, beefs, etc., from those who were and were not there -- please comment below. Let us know if you had problems getting on or didn't like something about the chat system (especially if you know of a better one). Certainly more people voted on the poll than attended, and one thought we have is setting character chats at different times so as to serve different time-zones. We chose early/mid-afternoon so as to accommodate readers both in Europe, where it would be evening, and out west, where it would be morning, but that doesn't work for fans in the far east. So we are cogitating upon that. Perhaps the next character chat will be a more long, drawn out and intermittent thing.

Our next plan is to do a solo Chevenga chat (though again, you never know who else might show up) or actually two of them -- one where he's at the point in his life where he is in PA, the other where he is in ak, since capriox pointed out that one would want to ask him two very different sets of questions... and in fact, he is a very different person in those two places. We'll let you know dates and times.

--

199 - It's not lad, it's semanakraseye

2010-01-15T21:03:00.010-05:00

We threaded the Hyerne islands to come into Pirai, the port, and then Thenai, the capital city of Hyerne. It sits on a not-quite-flat plain with sharp hills all around, and huddles close around the base of a great rock, on which the Hyerne have their citadel and capital. It has been a sacred place not only since the Fire, but twice again as far back in time, they claim, saying their land is not so much earth but the dust of layer upon layer of ancient buildings.

There is a great temple built of massive yellow stones, which the Hyerne have worked for centuries to rebuild correctly, and which won’t be done for centuries, they say. They can show you where the stone is five thousand years old and where it is from just before the Fire, joined seamlessly through some lost art. It is dedicated to their greatest Goddess, Theen, and they say it always was, and the city was named after her on its founding, and there was once a huge golden statue of her by the temple, back when it was an empire, ruled by women.

We came in around midnight. Neither I nor anyone else had any idea where in the city the Yeoli embassy was. The one thing I knew was that men aren’t allowed to carry weapons in Thenai, so I made my escort up of the eight women in the elite that Krero had brought plus my mothers, and left Chirel on the cormarenc. As we walked up the hill to the city, my shoulder itched.

There were a few people awake, looking furtive as people always seem to in a city late at night. The first thing I had to do was find someone who spoke Enchian. But those who I spoke to, all women, all stared at me, every one, as if my skin was green, and then waved me away rudely, saying things in Hyerne.

“Maybe we’ll do better if a woman asks,” my mother said. I acceded to that. They were much more polite to her, and we finally found one who spoke Enchian who told us the way.

The Yeoli embassy was a modest building in the Hyerne style, walls sloping slightly outward to a roof with a complex pattern of crossing wood pieces. Hyerne is very prone to earthquakes, so they’ve learned to build so as to withstand them, and this type of roof does this somehow. I tapped on the door, the way Yeolis do.

Someone inside said something in Hyerne which I imagined was probably “Just a moment!” and I heard bolts being unshot. The door opened to a geared-up Hyerne woman, large even for one of them (I think as a race they are kin to Srians, though they are only about half as dark, about the same as A-niah). Her eyes fixed on me, and just as I was starting to say in Enchian, “I must speak to the ambassador on urgent business,” she said, “Oh! Precious sweetheart. We’re closed; don’t you see how dark it is?”

“I do, beloved darling,” I said, “but I’d like to ask you to wake the ambassador up nonetheless, please. It’s a matter of sufficient importance.”

“Precious, I shouldn’t wake her for anything less than a war breaking out, you know.” She flashed her eyes at me, as if we were in a bedroom.

“The war I am coming about broke out more than a year ago,” I said, between my teeth. “Tell her... do you speak Yeoli at all?”

“Some.” Her face had turned piqued. “What’s it to you, rooster?”

I took a deep breath before I answered. It’s Hyerne, I reminded myself. Men are nothing here. I need only get a message to the ambassador; she was Yeoli, and Segiddis was more worldly than her citizens, as most royalty are.

I had intended, if she spoke no Yeoli, to teach her the word “semanakraseye,” to pass on to Cherao. But knowing some, she might understand it, and I didn’t want to give myself away to staff. “If you would be so civil,” I said, “tell her... the person for whom all Yeola-e is waiting is at her door and needs to speak to her right now.”

“The person for whom all Yeola-e is waiting?” Her brows rose high on her brow, and her eyes passed me, searching my guards. “Why isn’t she speaking for herself then?”

Of course they wouldn’t think it was me. “She is,” I said. “I mean, he is. I am. Can you please just pass that message on to the ambassador?”

“You?” Her arch look took on a touch of a smile. “You are delicious in a pale-skinned way, I must admit… but all Yeola-e, hmm?” She did as close to stroking my body from head to toes as can be done with only a pair of eyes. “Ahh, I get it. She didn’t tell me she ordered a pleasure-boy tonight, but maybe she forgot. You must be a high-priced one, with all those guards.” Her eyes turned to the oldest woman nearest, my blood-mother. “You should put a leash on this one, milaera, or maybe even a bit, until he learns to hold his tongue.”

I opened my mouth, but couldn’t speak, every word going clean out of my mind. I pride myself on the fact that there are few times in my life when I didn’t know what to say. This was one of them.

My blood-mother strode out in front of me. “Look, Hyerne,” she said in the soft icy voice that I had heard only perhaps four or five times in my life, and dreaded more even than Esora-e’s rage. “Don’t you dare speak to my son that way. You work for an embassy, yes? You have some slight notion that foreign ways are different from Hyerne, yes? You have some tiny clue that a man can actually hold a position of importance? And that failing to recognize that he does can turn into a diplomatic incident?”

The guard shrank back, her eyes growing a little wider, with each sentence. “Milaera!” she said. “Milaeruipa! My sincere, abject apologies! I… I will notify the ambassador right away. Please, come in, sit, milaerani all, make yourselves at home and comfortable. I’ll have a boy bring refreshments right away!”

“Thank you,” my mother said haughtily. I turned to exchange looks of amazement with my guards. They were all wearing smirks, which fell off their faces as they saw my eyes.

The Hyerne guard led us into the embassy parlour with alacrity, then scurried away. From somewhere inside she snapped a command at someone. A Hyerne man wearing only the short version of the sleeveless, draping garment Hyerne people usually wear, dyed bright purple, big hoop-earrings of gold and paint to accentuate his eyes and lips like an Arkan whore, came out hastily and obsequiously with a tray of porcelain cups and a jug of juice. He was built more massively than most warriors, but kept bowing his head, and moved in a way that reminded me of the servants in the Marble Palace.

“I’m awake. I’m up. I’m here. What is it, so urgent?” A short round woman came in, blinking, still pulling on a light linen marya in the diplomat’s grey, blue and green. Her eyes found my blood-mother and my shadow-mother, the two oldest women, and couldn’t settle on which she should speak to.

I had never met her, only sent my letter of introduction just after I took office, and a few others on this or that business. “Cherao Shae-Moriha?” I said, standing to greet her. “Ambassador to Hyerne. I am pleased to meet you face to face.”

She blinked at me, confused. “Shh, lad, let whoever’s in charge talk. I can ask later where I know you from, because I know it’s somewhere.” Her eyes decided on my blood mother. “The urgent matter, kere?”

Now anger got the better of me. I could forgive a Hyerne, but Cherao was one of my own. “It’s not lad,” I snapped. “It’s semanakraseye. Look!” I tore open the top clasps of my shirt and bared the brand.

Her mouth dropped open. “Kahara! Semanakraseye… Chevenga? Oh… dear. Well… welcome! I, em, am sorry for the disrespect. I can’t say how good it is to see you. How are you?”

“Very well, thank you,” I said. “I need you to arrange an appointment for this pleasure-boy with Queen Segiddis as early as possible tomorrow—any chance of that?” One “ha” of a giggle burst out from behind me, but when I looked around all their faces were impassive.

At least Cherao had the decency to flush. “If it is urgent enough... well, just by it being you, it is. I might be able to get her for you before dawn. She hasn’t been sleeping well lately and will be up.”

“Not sleeping well? Why is that, do you know?” No information, as the saying goes, is bad. The obsequious muscleman was offering another round of juice to my guards, cocking his head, flashing his eyes, giving meaningful smiles. They all gave meaningful smiles back, even my mothers. I wanted to order them all back onto the ship double-time.

“She’s concerned about one of her wilder daughters who wants to take the fight to the Arkans, and a rival for her throne getting pushy,” said Cherao. “Internal politics.”

“I might want a meeting with that daughter, too. Pre-dawn is good, certainly.”

“Chevenga, you are still healing from that wound and you need your sleep,” my mother said. “Can it not be later? I’m Karani Aicheresa, by the way, Ambassador, his blood-mother.”

“I’ll be fi—”

“Oh, yes, of course,” Cherao said to her, right over me. “I know the Queen has some free time tomorrow evening. I’m pleased to meet you, Karani.” She shot me an affectionate glance. “Ah, males: always in a hurry.”

I remembered reading over the Hyerne dossier, back in my office in Assembly Palace. She’d been working in Hyerne for more than twenty years. Maybe too long.

“Pre-dawn is good,” I said, flashing a glance at my mother. “Yes, this male is absolutely in a hurry, while Arkans are killing his people on their own soil.” She shot me back a look that said, ‘you’re wounded!’ I’d unslung the arm and hidden the bandage under my shirt once we were away from Kaninjer; I didn’t want to show weakness when seeking allies. Mother, I thought, why must you be such a kyashin mother?

“Look, Karani, Chevenga: I’ll see what I can do.” A diplomat will generally find a diplomatic solution when she says that. I just had to hope it got me in early. “We have places enough to sleep as long as some of you don’t mind couches. If things need carrying I’ll lend you some staff. You should all certainly get well-rested while I do the diplomatic dance. If I happen not to be able to get a pre-dawn appointment, because the Queen is managing to sleep, I’ll tell my people not to wake you; how’s that?”

“Fine,” I said between my teeth, noting the pretext prepared and ready to use. “Excellent,” my mother said. Cherao acknowledged with a Hyerne-style dip of her head. We chose to sleep together in the parlour, some of us on bedrolls. The beefy man-harlot helped us with everything, doting on all of them, and seeming not to see, or plain turning his back, on me.

“All-Spirit,” I said to any of my guards who deigned to listen, once we were by ourselves in the room and bedding down. “I begin to understand how it is for Arkan women.”

“I’m sorry, love,” my mother said. “But we weren’t going to get anywhere, I could see, unless someone with breasts spoke up. And you do need your sleep, to heal as fast as possible. You could be in a fight anytime, now.”

“Chevenga, if you were a pleasure-boy,” said Theralao, “I’d pay a moon’s wages for you.” I pegged her full in the face with a cushion.

“And no slipping out and playing with that over-muscled, simpering... thing you have been offered,” I said. “Not when we might be awakened pre-dawn. That’s an order.” An order, I have to admit, it was a pleasure to give. The young ones all pouted at me.

198 - Dealing with difficult patients

2010-01-14T16:32:00.004-05:00

16 Jin 4974 | En route to Thenai

Dear Mamin:

I am writing as we sail. Not much else to do. Do you, or anyone else there, have advice for dealing with difficult patients? I mean, ones who won’t do what you tell them to, or seem not to have normal physical responses?

The man is not normal. At least he doesn’t feel pain or fatigue as a normal person does. When he came back to us last night he had a wound in his left upper arm that had been treated by one of the Niah-lur-ana Haians, and a letter of report to me from her saying that the point of the arrowhead penetrated about three minim into the humerus, albeit without chipping. So she ordered him to bed for the rest of the day, but he didn’t comply, so she slung the arm to immobilize it.

But most amazing to me, he’d refused any painkiller, other than self-administered arnika. (Yeoli soldiers are required to carry it by law so they all know it and swear by it.) You just assume, when you see a patient with a wound that severe who is up and around and talking and laughing, that the pain is being numbed with opian or the like. I could barely believe it when I read that line, which I did while he was having an animated discussion with his parents and underlings about how he couldn’t tell them how the battle he’d just been in had gone, except he and the A-niah had won overwhelmingly.

So I thought, fine, he’ll be in bed from the moment I can get a word in edgewise to order him, and he’ll realize he needs more than arnika to sleep, and take it. But, no—we’re setting sail tonight, he ordered, as soon as we can get all our things onto the ship. So, I thought, I’ll make him lie down while the rest of us pack, but no—he had to meet with a Yeoli and a Niah general to plan something, extremely important, he said, and even though they had the sense to sit on the sand, I saw him get up and pace back and forth while they talked.

So finally we were on the ship and heading out, and he agreed to lie down. He looked utterly exhausted by this point. And he’d been a little pale the whole time since he’d come back. But then Krero, who’s sort of his second-in-command right now, asked him about what their plan is, and instead of doing the sensible thing and putting that off till tomorrow he said, “Kanincha, let me just do this and then I’m yours,” and stayed up on deck.

So they talked, and it got animated too, and of course they’re Yeolis so they gesture incessantly, and even if one arm is tied down the muscles still twitch, and he got angry enough to get up and pace again, when his shadow-father Esora-e asked him if he was out of his mind for wanting to ally with Lakans. They amputated Esora-e’s thumb in that war. They did the same to Denaina—that’s Chevenga’s shadow-mother—but she has no objection to such an alliance, wanting to see Lakan mamokal oppose the deadly Arkan heavy horse.

“Shadow-father, if the difference between being enslaved by Arko and being free is alliance with the Lakans, are you going to charcoal it?” Chevenga half-yelled, his right arm gesticulating, and his left arm twitching, furiously. “I am going to hire mercenaries too. Who or what they might be, I’m not going to ask. Maybe they’ll have blue skin. Or hands red with Yeoli blood. At this point, we don’t have any choice!”

“Just don’t marry them, all right?” Krero said.

“My marriage slate is now full,” Chevenga spat back. “Thanks.” Then he went on to say he wanted to ally with the Hyerne, and his blood-mother said if that was so, we should go there first, not Brahvniki, since it’s so much closer, and then they got into another arm-waving discussion-cum-argument over who to approach first and why. This went on hammer and tongs for a good aer, with him pacing back and forth on deck, almost on his toes, looking as if he wanted nothing so much as to grab a sword and go after an Arkan right now, with both hands.

The outcome was that he was persuaded to go to Thenai first, so the captain turned the ship and I finally got him into bed. I was examining him, giving him his remedies and creaming the stitches when it occurred to me that I had not seen him eat dinner. I asked him when his last meal had been, and he said, “Before we fought. I haven’t been hungry.”

“Well of course you haven’t been hungry,” I said. “You are in pain. I’m giving you the juice, no arguments, and then you’re going to force down at least a little something before you sleep.” At least it’s easy to get quick protein into a wounded meat-eater. There were left-over lobsters from dinner, but considering how the Yeolis had gone on and on about how they look like giant bugs, I didn’t think I could ply him with that. But probably the ship had some salt pork or beef.

“I am going to force down nothing, besides this,” he said, as he drank the opian. “Don’t you think I’m suffering enough?” Then he put his head back and closed his eyes and sagged all over, all of it seeming to hit him at once. He was gone as fast as if I’d anaesthetized him.

Mamin… I guess ripping out my hair is not what you’d advise for difficult patients?

I hope this was just an anomaly and my whole service with him isn’t like this.

Jin 17. He woke up around dawn as he usually does, complaining that the arm was stiff, as much from the sling as from the wound. I gave him a points massage and a muscle-massage on the arm, more opian along with the morning remedies and the order that he sleep in to noon. “If I go back to sleep, then fine,” he said, and blessedly did.

There is nothing to do while you sail but worry if you see red sails and talk, so I asked him about it once he was up. “You should have been in enough pain to want to lie down and take something that would relieve it,” I said. “How is it that you weren’t?”

He seemed puzzled that I’d even ask. “It’s just wound pain,” he said. “It’s nothing… you know what else I’ve been through.”

“So you don’t feel it?”

“No. It’s not that I don’t feel it… it’s that I don’t think about it.” He’d gathered I was studying this, I saw, and decided to help me.

“But how can you not think about pain?” I said. “It hurts. That… has a way of intruding on the thoughts.”

I remember when I stepped on the fire-coral, when I was six, Mamin. I will never forget. I can’t begin to imagine how it can be to not think about severe pain.

He thought for a while before he answered, his thick brows knitting. We were on deck, near the prow; in fact he was sitting with his back leaned up against the figurehead, not bothered by the spray. I think he was doing this because being there rather than, say, at the stern, put him one cormarenc-length closer to his destination.

I like him, though, for how he thinks about questions like this at length before he answers them, wanting to make sure he doesn’t mislead me through a careless answer. I think most others in his position wouldn’t have so much patience for a know-nothing healer.

“It’s something all warriors learn,” he said finally. “Because so often you are still in the middle of it when you’re in pain. When that arrow hit me—well, I can’t tell you how it went, but let’s just say, if I hadn’t kept going it would have been death for me and Niku both, and perhaps others. If you are fighting, it’s natural to have your attention on that and nothing else, not even pain. But sometimes you have to ignore pain by will.”

Then he told me something that happened in his war-training, when he’d been practicing fighting and battle-command at the same time, sparring on a narrow beam and doing pretend commanding while his teacher gave him the mock reports and so on. He fell off and broke his arm—but the teacher didn’t stop, just kept going with the pretend battle. Because a real battle doesn’t stop if a general is hurt! So he got back up and started sparring again, and had to figure out what to do when he started to feel faint and knew he might pass out, which was call for his second-in-command to take over. He was fourteen.

“You live in a different world than I do,” I said, after letting this sink in.

“Warriors have to,” he said. “And it is as it should be, the difference. May your world never become mine.”

I will not live in that world, but I will live so close to it. I am trying not to let it scare me.

Love from your son who already misses you,

Kaninjer.

197 - The sweetest words I can say

2010-01-13T21:05:00.007-05:00

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.”

[Author's note: #webficwed]

2010-01-13T15:34:00.002-05:00

If you're on Twitter, please help me scare up more readers by talking up PA today using the #webficwed hashtag. #weblitwed also gained some traction last week. This is one of these places where I can't blow my own horn and so must turn to my loyal readers! THANKS for your support.

T H E • P H I L O S O P H E R • I N • A R M S

291 Teaser : Up on one of those things!?

[AN: NOW POSTING ON THE NEW SITE]

214 - The fox chasing for his dinner

213 - The pain that eases conscience

212 - I feel much more confident

211 - Further Brahvnikian justice in action

210 - Brahvnikian justice in action

[AN: Rose and Bay voting is now open!]

209 - The favour agreed on in conversation

[AN: character chat reminder]

208 - Pleasant conversation

[AN: fan art]

207 - I cannot tell a lie

206 - A game of mrik

205 - Royalty in exile

[AN: asa kraiya character chat]

204 - The feel of sweat trickling down my back

203 - The most intense pleasure

202 - Entrusting you with a great deal

201 - Prospective allies

200 - Never so invisible

[AN: Ergofiction on how to be a weblit fan]

[AN: coolest move poll]

[Author's note: character chat after-thoughts and plans]

199 - It's not *lad*, it's *semanakraseye*

198 - Dealing with difficult patients

197 - The sweetest words I can say

[Author's note: #webficwed]

199 - It's not lad, it's semanakraseye