79 - in which I have the first joys of Mezem training

In respect of their seniority, the fighters who have at least one chain train in the afternoon, so they may sleep in after debaucheries the night before, which they are also permitted. The greenhands train in the morning. By Skorsas’s fluent Arkan and halting gestures, I gathered I was expected to bathe and shave before the morning meal, so I did, then asked, by my fluent gestures and halting Arkan, where my clothes were; as usual I’d slept naked.

He had a different set for me, it seemed, a plain black kilt and a shirt as bright a white as snow which was floppy on me, tailored for a man who was much more massive in the chest. I’d come in wearing a pair of cheap sandals that Daisas had got for me for the journey, which would have to do for now, as I had nothing else.

Once we’d eaten, it was time to train. Tomorrow was a fight day, I understood, on which the captives who’d been brought in since the last one, four days ago, would be paired off. On the fresco-ringed training ground there were about twenty of us, all eyeing each other wondering which one we’d have to kill.

Koree drilled us to tear out your heart if you weren’t already fit; one man keeled over halfway through and was a while getting up. I was still stiff and sore from what the guards had done to me and out of practice from the journey with Daisas, but my body warmed up soon enough. Disorienting as it was to be training here, and for this purpose, moving and straining and feeling the sweat flow was like home, and linked me back to myself.

We practiced sword-work with wooden swords, sparring a little—greenhands don’t spar each other with steel—and then he ordered those of us who had swords to put them on, and supplied standard-issue Arkan ones to those who didn’t. I turned towards the Weapons Trust but Skorsas wagged his head sideways for no, said “Stay!” as if I were a dog and ran off that way himself. The proper procedure, it seemed, was for him to fetch and carry for me.

He came back with Chirel, and undid the clasp; the proper procedure is also for the boy to sling the sword on the fighter, but he’d apparently never seen a shoulder-scabbard before, at least of this kind, and so was at a loss. I took it and slung it on myself, for the first time since the tribe, or more exactly the meat-eating water-plant, had captured me. That linked me to myself even more, as if I were whole for the first time in all those days. With Chirel on my shoulder it was hard to feel like a slave.

Another boy came running with a sword for Koree himself. “Line up!” he barked, in Enchian, Arkan, and another language I didn’t know; he always spoke in at least three languages while he trained us, out of necessity. Once we had, he drew with a flourish. Does it become second nature, I wondered, for a fifty-chainer to become as much a performer as a warrior? It occurred to me that my time as All-Seeing Rao would stand me in as good stead here, or even better, than all my fighting against Laka. The thought was nauseating.

“So, you scurvy would-be sword-bucks!” Koree said, pacing down the line brandishing his blade. “Any of you think you can take me? Or even prove yourself worthy to lick my boots? Step forward if so.” He looked straight at me.

I thought perhaps I could, but kept my place. I had less than no desire, to stand out here. His eyes moved on. Another man, of a race I didn’t know, with olive skin, curly black hair and almondine eyes, stepped forward, strutting, nose in the air.

No surprise—you didn’t have to be brilliant to see how this story would play out—Koree would have made short work of him if he’d wanted to; instead he played with him for a while like a cat with a mouse. Every move was showy, but perfect. Yes, I thought, second nature. I cast a glance over my shoulder. In the colonnade, a line of oddsmakers a single rank thick peered at us from between the columns, notebooks in their hands.

The end was showy; Koree foot-swept him down hard, so he went sprawling, and put his sword tip to his throat as if he’d done it a thousand times. “They show white, you live, red, you’re dead. Go on; at least you are not a coward like every other one of these miserable vermin. You hear me, you dogs?” Goaded, two of the others, an Enchian and a Lakan, both stepped forward.

They turned to each other and glared, looking ready to duel already, as if they had an argument; it’s natural, of course, for people who know they’ll be pitted against each other to the death to quickly start seeing each other as enemies. But Koree said, “It doesn’t matter a flea’s shit to me which, boys,” and then did the child’s game. “Eeny, meeny, miney… you.”

It was much the same with the Enchian, though with a different showy finish; he ended up on his knees with Koree behind him, holding his hair in one hand and the sword to his throat with the other. “Go on, get lost,” he said, smacking his shoulder. “You, Lakan,” he said, in Lakan; how many languages did he know? “Still think you can take me?”

The Lakan shifted from one foot to the other. “Ahhhh,” he said finally, “no. Akdan.”

Koree let out a long chuckle. “Well, you’re not a fool. Want to spar anyway, just for fun and maybe to learn a thing or two?”

“Yes,” the Lakan said.

“Ha! You are neither a fool or a coward, bless you! Come on then.” There was no formality, no saluting or bowing or the like to mean each was on his honour not to harm the other, incidentally; it was just draw swords and go at it, on Koree’s command.

The Lakan made a better account of himself than the other two—he was very good—and I thought I perhaps even saw a faint sheen of sweat on Koree’s brow; but it ended with a spectacular feint and gut-stab, pulled, of course, and the Lakan conceded with a slight bow that he had lost. “Good, good, you are worthy to at least lick one of my boots, go on.

“Now who?” We stood still as a line of statues. “What? No one? What a bunch of miserable, effete, pasty-fleshed, cowering, cringing, thumb-sucking, bed-wetting, kilt-brown-staining scum.” I wondered if he said the same verbatim in Arkan and that third language, or went further in his creativity.

He walked the line, haranguing us one at a time. “No coward lives in the Ring! The lions will love the taste of this flesh”—he poked a man’s arm—“and the crunch of these bones”—he snapped another’s cheek. There was a trench around the Ring proper, I’d come to understand, into which several lions, which knew no food but the bodies of fallen fighters, were released during fights. “Or perhaps you’ll be defeated but they’ll show the white and spare you, to be sold off… fine for chipping off salt in the mines, these well-muscled arms, nice for sucking some Aitzas’s wrinkled old dick for the rest of his life, and then his son’s for the rest of yours, these rosebud lips. That’s what cowardice earns, in the Ring.”

Before me, he stopped, and stared me in the eyes. I had not seen before, since I’d been on the floor when he’d spoken to me, that he was a good hand-width taller than me, like most of them. “Well, well, what have we here?” he said. “I know why no one else is stepping forward; they’re all ready to piss themselves with dread of being shamed before each other, as if that’s a hundredth as bad as what they’ll face tomorrow. Not this one, though, at least not that I can see. Or are you just good at hiding it? If you aren’t scared, you girly-faced little slip of a Yeoli, why aren’t you stepping forward? Answer me, come on; speak up.”

“You spar us to win our respect, so we will listen to you when you teach, do you not?” I said. His stare didn’t change, but he didn’t answer, not wanting to say “Yes” as it would be leaving me an opening I was clearly ready to seize on, but too honest to deny it. So I just went on. “You already have mine. I will of course listen. Why wouldn’t I?”

Koree glared at me for a long moment; everyone else was dead silent too, eager to hear what he’d say. He finally jabbed one finger at me, without touching. “You… you… you… you make words fail me.” He spun away on his heel. “Well, guess what, all you lily-livered, diarrhea-spewing poltroons! You’ve earned nothing by your cravenness but my contempt—because you all have to spar me anyway. Suck on that.”

He worked his way down the line except those who’d already done it. I unclipped Chirel and loosened it in the scabbard as he sparred the man next to me; so long since I’d last done that, it felt vividly sweet in my hand. But he passed over me, calling out the one on the other side. Was he afraid of me? Don’t flatter yourself, I told myself. It turned out he was saving me for last, whether for the oddsmakers, who were two and three ranks thick on the colonnade now, or for his own pleasure, I could not know. “Come, You-who-already-respect-me,” he said. “Maybe you’ll teach me a shred of respect for you.”

Koree could not have been less than forty-five, but he’d done the full drill with us even as he led it, without even breathing particularly hard, and had skill like an old teacher’s. I knew that since he’d been here not only for his fifty but longer, he’d have moves I couldn’t conceive of; he’d already done a few. As we started, I felt, as I had expected, that I had over him only the blessings of the young, strength and speed, as well as the advantage I can almost always count mine, weapon-sense. All of these, greater skill can defeat, as Azaila showed me every day at home.

But something made me hold back; looking into myself I saw it was that I didn’t want to best him in front of the others, and become the one they most feared. Of course it was half-action, that no war-teacher worth his salt wouldn’t notice. He called a halt, stepping back, his face angry.

“You said you would fight,” he said. “Were you lying? And so would make me a liar if I beat you?” His own thought seemed to make him more angry; his face darkening, he raised his sword and came in, in stance. “You are worth nothing, boy, not a scrap of chain or of shen to anyone, if you won’t—so from here on, if my sword goes in, it goes in, and you’re buzzard-meat, right here and now. Damn your miserable bones.”

No one had told me he was not permitted to kill me. The logic was sound; I was indeed worthless, here, if I wouldn’t fight. It was no bluff, I found as we closed again; he struck in a way that let me know he wouldn’t pull if I missed a parry. If I tried nothing, it was only a matter of time.

So I went all out, the blood-fire raised in me by life-danger making it easy, and looked for openings. In time I found one. We froze with his sword far off-line, and mine at his throat; whatever he could do to me, I knew I’d be in much worse trouble if I killed him. The thought passed through my mind that if I did, it was the end of his blackmailing me, until it occurred to me he’d probably told Iska, and who knows who else, how he’d persuaded me.

He smiled wide, that big skull’s rictus on his skin-and-bone face again. “Excellent! Beautiful! See, you fools? I’m not impossible to solve, if you’re sharp enough.” I sheathed Chirel and turned to take my place in the line. Everyone else stood as silent and downcast as at a funeral. I met none of their eyes, sickness in my heart.

“Hey!” I found myself whirling like a common-ranker at a setakraseye’s bark; Koree certainly had the gift of command. I wondered whose armies he’d served in before he’d come here. “Did I dismiss you?” His sword was still out, and his eyes were alight as I’d never seen them. He wanted more, I saw, sheerly for his own pleasure. “Get back here! Or do I have to come and get you?” The fighters around me stepped away out of his reach as he approached. I drew Chirel again; it was that or run.

He’d seen Yeoli Unsword before, no doubt; but he could not know it as well as I. A hilt wouldn’t tear easily out of those rawhide fingers; I used everything I knew, waiting for the perfect angle, listening for the dead moment between his breaths. It worked; his sword landed in the dust with a pleasing thump.

He swore in three or four languages and cackled wickedly. I turned away to the line again, wishing for all the world to flee to the baths and then my room, hiding. By weapon-sense, I knew when he snatched his blade up and charged me from behind, but he couldn’t know that, so he let out a war-cry to stop the blood in the veins, to give me warning. I turned and did the wrist-parry, turning his crosscut high with my shield-arm wristlet, and pricked him over the heart.

He stepped back, with a look that made me feel like a boy again, thrilling to see it on my Teacher’s face. Then he gave a whoop, and tossed his sword straight up into the air, laughing like a child. Before I knew he had grabbed two handfuls of my hair on either side of my face and was knocking his forehead against mine, half roaring, half laughing, while his sword came back down fairly close behind us, point-first, and stuck in the sand. I didn’t think to resist.

“You idiot! You killer-mountain-boy moron! How could you even think of refusing, you shen? Most everyone else here would sell their mothers for half your talent, and you, you little wool-haired son of a bitch, you could fikken make it out of here! You could fikken make it, you jackass, you could fikken make it, you piece of shit, you could fikken make it, you mouse-brained, snot-nosed, dog-raping…”

Over his shoulder I saw the faces of the greenhands. All down the line were eyes from which the veil of naïve hope had been torn away, to show their true fate: Shininao, waiting only a few steps more down the path. But it was me they looked at.

I tore out of Koree’s grip, and away, sheathing Chirel. In the colonnade, a clutch of men pushed in around me, yelling questions in a jabber of Enchian and Arkan. I broke through, uncaring whether I bruised anyone, with Skorsas trailing, chattering. “The sword! The sword!”, I realized he was yelling; I unslung Chirel and handed it to him to take to the Weapons Trust. I ran to the baths and one of the one-person stalls—Arkans like to wash in a rain of water flowing from a high cistern, in total private, of course—and didn’t even strip before I banged shut the door and shot the bolt.

Of course Skorsas came, and the moment I was out and dry and had on the black satin robe he gave me, he tried to pull me out through the Legion Mirrors again, exhorting in Arkan. “He’s trying to say the writers want to speak to you,’ Iska said, as we came to his desk. “Do you understand, we have a machine here in Arko, that writes? Every week, all the news is written on paper, many times over, for the citizens of Arko to read. They want to write about you. For all the people to read, lad, do you follow me? If you want them to write anything slightly resembling the truth, it’s best to speak to them.”

I spun on my heel, Skorsas shrilling all the way. In the fighters’ parlour, everyone measured me more closely, the high-chainers no less than the low.

“I’m none of their business, and I don’t give a shit what they write,” I said. “Arkans are not my people, for all they think I should take their leers as honour. They can all go fik themselves.” I was learning the language.

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78 - Five levels of humanity

Koree went. I roused myself to squirm up onto the bed—someone else’s concern if I bloodied it—and lay reflecting on how slavery tears us down to nothing, whatever we were before we were enslaved. I reminded myself how in nothing lies total freedom. Whatever constraints were laid on me here, those of a semanakraseye were not. In a short time Iska came back, with someone else. I had turned so I was facing the wall, wanting to be free of the glare of one of the two guards through my barred window.

“Stay facing that way, Raikas, so I can unchain you,” Iska said, and did, then rubbed my shoulders with his big strong hands, easing the spikes of pain, while I moved them to ease the stiffness. It was strange, and a little dizzying, to go from anybody’s meat to cherished guest to the contemptible lump on the floor, good only for kicking, and now back to cherished guest, in such a short time. “Now turn over, strip and let me salve you.” He didn’t go so far as to ask who had given me the scrapes and bruises, though, nor look surprised I had them.

The other person with him was a youth of fifteen years or so, with the fine acquiline features and perfect smooth skin that is the ideal of beauty in Arko; I’d seen it on statues and mosaics all the way through the City and had thought it wasn’t possible in real life, until now when I saw it. His lips were darkened with paint, his eyelids shaded faint purple-blue; the edges of the two sweeping wings of his white-blond forelocks were black as my own, dyed. He was dressed far more finely than Iska, in a black satin tunic and leggings with gold earrings and bracelets, and black gloves with backs of very fine lace. When his bright blue eyes met mine, they froze, and he gasped, then snapped shut his mouth and turned his face impassive by will.

“Raikas, this is your boy, Skorsas Trinisas,” Iska told me. “Every fighter has one. He will be your bodyservant, companion, guide in the city, healer’s assistant and the only person in the Mezem who is devoted to you and you alone. Oh, and teacher of Arkan; he knows no Enchian or other language. Skorsas…” Iska switched to Arkan then and I gathered he was introducing me when I caught “Karas Raikas” among the other words. His eyes stayed fixed on me, as I took off the shirt; I saw the ends of his hair tremble. For some reason he hates the very sight of me, I thought. Had he felt something for Sakilro, or was he a relative of Daisas? Did I remind him of someone who had done him wrong? Iska didn’t seem to notice, though I couldn’t see how he could miss it; perhaps he was pretending not to.

Iska apologized again for their pulling off one glove each, as if I cared, and the two anointed me everywhere I was hurt with whack-weed and marigold cream, though I’d heard Arkans didn’t believe in Haian remedies, and stitched me here and there. Skorsas’s touch was almost unearthly gentle, but his fingers trembled, as if they wanted to shrink from the feel of me. I wanted to ask him in private what the problem was, but of course unless I could figure out a way to do it with gestures, it was futile.

“Now try getting up,” Iska said, and watched me carefully all the way, ready to steady me if he had to, not knowing how hard a blow I might have taken on the head. He was so conscientious that I felt obliged to tell him, as if he were a Haian and I his patient, “I’m all right.”

Once I was dressed again, they took me from the cell into a room without bars. “The greenhands’ quarters,” Iska said. “When you’ve won one fight you’ll be assigned a proper room upstairs. Oh, by the way; that nice sword of yours is with all the other fighters’ in the Weapons Trust. You may have it whenever you wish, except inside the Mezem quarters, and if you go out into the city, again, you must wear it.”

We passed through what I would come to know as the fighters’ parlour, and I saw them close for the first time, as they were done training. They were of every race on earth, it seemed, except Haian; I even saw, to my amazement, a man who by every sign was Arkan. They wore all manner of circus style: hair dyed green or blue or purple and cut or trained into the strangest shapes, painted eyes, sleeveless satin robes in every brilliant color and pattern and coat of arms, metal piercing parts of them I’d never dreamed a living, rational person would put up with, tattoos of birds and dragons and spiders across faces, purposefully-raised scars on arms and shoulders and brows. All showed the muscles of their limbs and their golden victory-chains; those with the thickest swatches of them, I noticed, also had more other jewelry and wore finer fabric, just as Iska had said. They were mostly taller than me and built more massive; clearly the Mezem usually picked for that. I felt myself stripped naked again, as the lower-chainers measured me, but understood why they did. The high-chainers didn’t even glance, above looking at a greenhand.

Suddenly Jinai Oru’s voice came to me, from a blank-walled chamber in Tenningao, five years ago. “There’s a strong one: a death-duel against a man with black skin and blue hair, with a yelling crowd all around you, whose edge goes up to the sky.” In the light of foreknowledge, I thought, all considerations, plans, worries, choices, are dust-specks in a sunbeam. This had already been my destiny, then.

The room was plain, but had no bars and a bolt only on the inside. Iska left me there with Skorsas, saying, “No training today, you need rest more. Be good and learn the language now.”
He told Skorsas to teach me, I gathered.

The—my—boy’s face went from hidden rage to grudging acquiescence, the expression I had seen more than any other on the faces of Arkans, even free ones. Of course it’s a harder matter to teach someone a language when you don’t already both have one in common, since translation and explanation is not possible. Shy about their hands, Arkans don’t like to gesture, so every single sign he made, all of them absolutely necessary, he made gingerly and resentfully. I already had a few words from overhearing Ethras and my escort, and a few more from Daisas (mostly obscenities); now I did my best to acquire more as fast as I could. If Arko-ness was entwined with the rest of my life, I realized, there were more reasons to know it than Iska’s order.

What confused me the most was that Skorsas absolutely insisted that the word for “you” was different when I spoke to him than when he spoke to me, as was the word for “I” or “me.” I kept trying to ask why by putting on a baffled expression or shrugging exaggeratedly; he kept shrilling at me that it must be, and explaining why, I presume, at length in Arkan, making gestures that looked like stairs and levels but also the numbers one, two and three. Finally in exasperation he beckoned me to follow him, and led me to Iska.

When the healer was done with whoever had got there before us, Skorsas let out a long string of Arkan in which I caught at least one fikken and shennen each. “Ah,” said Iska, turning to me. “Look, Raikas, he’s one-upping you because fighters are, in effect, solas.” At my look of blank incomprehension, he said, “I guess you don’t know that Arkan is spoken differently depending on which rank of person is speaking to which?” At my look of deepening blank incomprehension, he said, “I see, you definitely don’t.”

In Laka, it had always struck me just how much of the speech and mannerism and dress and all other aspects of how people treated each other were about who was better than who, as if they were obsessed with the question. In that, Arko makes Laka look like Yeola-e. I already knew there were five levels of humanity in Arko: Aitzas, nobles; solas, warriors; fessas, skilled people such as administrators, artisans, healers and so forth; okas, free labourers, and daifikas, slaves. The length the men were allowed to wear their hair was governed by strictly-enforced laws; only Aitzas could wear it as long as it would grow, and slaves had to keep themselves all but bald. I’d also heard that only the top three castes were permitted literacy, and no women at all.

I didn’t know that whom you are speaking to determines what pronouns, verbs and even adjectives you use, and it changes not only if you are of different rank but how many steps different, so that learning Arkan is, in fact, like learning five or six languages in one. I had hoped that I’d only learn one, like a normal language. The different castes even had different accents.

“You are solas, in effect, which means you one-down Skorsas and the other boys, and two-down the servants, but to me you speak equal-to-equal, by special exception, since I am in command here,” Iska explained. “But, even though the Director is Aitzas and thus one up from solas, you must two-up him since you are still daifikas…” He trailed off, looking at me with the thought clear on his face, maybe you aren’t as intelligent as I thought. “Never mind… for now I’ll tell him to teach you equal-to-equal only, since it’s simple, and you’ll pick up the rest later.” He told the same to Skorsas, I gathered, and the language lessons became easier and much less frustrating for both of us from then on.

We broke for dinner. Mezem fighters, I learned, eat very well and as much as they like, which I did perhaps to excess for the first meal or two, it being so much better than the scraps of potato and gristle, cut off his own and his apprentice's portions of meat, that Daisas had fed me. Arkan food is not spicy like Lakan, and their favourite meat is beef, but it has a bewildering variety of dishes, drawn from all over the Empire, and a meal isn’t considered a proper meal unless there are a good ten different items on the plate.

I think Skorsas meant to teach me Arkan late into the night, but I gathered that somehow he was as tired as I was for some reason. In the street on the way here, I recalled seeing an elderly man with his white hair dyed black the same way; it had some significance. It occurred to me I could ask him; he’d taught me the colours, and (again, with Iska’s help) the questioning words, including “why.”

I knew better to touch his hair; the few times I’d come even close to him with my hand, until I’d learned not to, he’d shrunk back as if it were a firebrand. Arkans are extremely shy about touch as a rule; you’ll never see two people hug in the street, for instance, and even lovers won’t kiss except in the bedroom. So I touched what was left of my own forelock, then pointed at his, and said, “Why black?”

I expected an explanation that would naturally become a further language lesson; instead he looked at me mortified, and let out a frantic string of Arkan words in which about one in three, as far as I could tell, was the one that meant “sorry,” over and over. How it rankled, not to be able to say, “It’s all right, I’m just curious!” I managed “I” (equal-to-equal) and “not angry,” at least, since he’d taught me the emotion-words, though not “curious.”

It hardly made a difference. “Tomorrow,” he was saying. “Raikas, I swear”—here he made the Arkan sacred sign of two cupped palms next to the temples, then gripped the dyed lock on one side. “Gone.” He mimed cutting it with scissors. “Tomorrow, I swear.” In the inner corner of one perfect-lined eye, I caught the faintest glistening of a tear. He turned away from me fast—Arkan males also never show tears if they can help it—and was out the door, snapping over his shoulder, “Sleep!”

It was near the summer solstice—at home they’d be getting a start on preparing the festival foods, I realized, bringing tears to my own eyes—and the sun wasn’t far down behind Arko’s Rim, which always makes its sunsets earlier and sunrises later. So I doubted I could obey him for a while yet. And yet this bed was soft and this pillow was lavendered too, and it had been a hard day. I’d been roughed up, and killed two men, the first since the Lakan war, and agreed, at least in principle, to kill fifty more who were not in any way my enemies. I thought I might just nap for a bit, but when I woke up the daylight coming through my window was brighter, as it was morning.

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77 - An extraordinary person

“So, Raikas,” said Iska. “You told the testers you would not fight for a crowd. Are you still resolved not to?”

I sat thinking; foremost in my mind was that if I said no outright, they’d keep me in a cell, so I would not be able to look for the cracks in the wall I might find in the city. But my heart bristled even at saying I would draw Chirel on those who had neither done nor intended any wrong to me or mine, so I said yes. “You have the night, at least, to think about it,” he said. “Sleep on it. Pray… never mind, I forgot, you Yeolis are unbelievers.”

“May I speak to the one who refused before me… the Srian?” I wasn’t even sure why I asked, except that some sort of answer might be there. “If he speaks Enchian, that is.”

Iska looked at me a touch suspiciously. “He does. But whatever your reasons are for not wanting to fight, lad, don’t expect him to bolster them in you. His reasons are religious.” Then his face changed, and he said, “Still, no reason why not.” I knew what he was thinking: if he gets to know the man, he’ll do more to save him from torture. He called two guards to take me.

The Srian’s cell was at the end of the corridor. The guards stood back a few paces; Iska had apparently told them to allow us to speak in confidence. I peeked through the bars.

The cell smelled of mold and bedding that was not washed often enough, but also, faintly, of incense. There was no lamp or candle; I could only see that there was a man lying on the bed by the darkness of his ebon skin against the paleness of the sheets. His feet hung over the end, naturally, since he was Srian. Seeing the window of his cell-door darken, he looked up, the whites of his eyes bright against his dark face.

“I am the next one to refuse,” I said. “Right now I am going by the name Karas Raikas. May we speak?”

“I ask only one thing of you, Yeoli,” he said, his Enchian gracefully and thickly accented with the Srian lilt. “Give me the mercy of freedom from this place: don’t change your mind.”

“Will you tell me why you have chosen as you have?” I wasn’t even sure why I wanted to know; he had every right to say it was none of my business.

“I gave up the sword, and renounced all bloodshed before my Goddess, before the Arkans captured me,” he said in a quiet and resolved voice. “Better to suffer any torment of this world, than face Her in the next, having forsworn that.”

He wasn’t going to change his mind, then. It was comforting somehow; with a little thought I saw why. It is always uplifting, when you are a slave, to see someone claim his freedom absolutely. “I would give myself the one and only thing I wish: a quick death,” he added. “But my oath forbids that too.”

“By your own hand, you mean,” I said. “What about someone else’s?”

“No. But who will kill me quickly, except in the Ring? I tried that… I told them once I would fight, planning to let myself be killed in the first, but they truth-drugged me and so found out my true choice.”

I glanced at the guards. They looked as if they wished they had any post other than guarding the most inconsequential scum of the Mezem, those who refused; only one was watching me, looking bored to tears, while the other rolled a pair of dice in his gloved hand. “I will,” I said quietly.

The Srian lay silent for a moment; it was shock, I think, that suddenly his only wish might be so close. “You?” he said, disbelieving, but with his voice dropped to match mine. “They must not be letting you touch weapons, and watching you every moment, and there is a door between us.”

“It is possible,” I said, lifting my hand casually as if to lean on the bars on the window of his door, so as to measure them. I found myself wanting badly to address him properly. “May I ask your name?”

“Sakilro. Of Tebrias. I am pleased to meet you… Karas Raikas. But if you do this, they’ll punish you.”

“I am pleased to meet you too, Sakilro, though I wish it were in a better situation. You said it is the one and only thing you wish; don’t talk me out of it.”

He got up, sliding his long legs off the bed, and rising to his full height, a head taller than me. He stooped down so that we were almost eye-to-eye in a practiced way, as if he’d long been taught it was polite when dealing with diminutive foreigners. I guessed his age at early twenties, though he had no beard, Srians being mostly hairless on the face anyway. His hair was black and in pin-curls so tight they formed a solid thatch on his head. He had the flat nose typical of his race, and his black eyes were large, round and riven with fatigue and pain.

“You are absolutely certain?” I asked him. He’d made it clear, but not asking again would be less than due diligence. He looked me in the eyes as he answered, understanding. “Yes.”

I said, “Hold the outer two bars and put your face as close as you can to the inner two, between them. Close your eyes and tell me when you’re ready.”

He got a flash of surprise that I meant now, but it was gone in a moment, and he intoned something in his own language, with gestures. Then he wrapped his hands around the outer bars, and pressed his face close. I leaned casually against the sill of the window again, so as to look as if we were just talking right up until the instant I did it.

I considered telling him my name, thinking it was wrong for him to die without knowing by whose act, until it occurred to me that it was in truth by Arko’s. That name he knew. I was nothing to him but the agent of mercy; just as well that I grant him it anonymously.

“You are absolutely sure?” I said, one last time, though I knew I risked drawing an angry ‘yes’ out of him which could give us away.

If he hadn’t been absolutely sure in his heart, he might have prevented it that way. So easy it was, it seemed, for him and me to have unspoken understandings, as if we shared one mind. I was closer to him, I suspected, than I would ever be to anyone else here.

“Yes,” he said, quietly. “Thank you.” Making sure the guard didn’t see, I gripped his fingers for a moment. He closed his eyes. His face stayed impassive; it was good to see no fear in it. “I am ready,” he whispered.

My hand wouldn’t fit flat through the bars, so I couldn’t use the palm-heel; it had to be with the fourth knuckle of a vertical fist, which I had never done before. The nose-bone went true, though, up into his brain, as I knew when his hands went instantly lax and his huge body fell so bonelessly it thumped softly.

The guards both cried out startled, and turned to me, levelling their spears. I put up my hands. “Fik you, you miserable shen of a barbarian,” one of them yelled in rough half-Enchian. “What in fikken Hayel did you do?”

“I killed him,” I said. “I will come peacefully, though.”

“The fik you will! You live for nothing but to get Arkans in trouble, you shen-eating foreign bastard, you know that? Get honest Arkans in trouble, that’s all you’re good for, you dirt-haired fikker!” Of course they’d catch it, for letting me frustrate the Mezem’s plans for Sakilro on their watch. He railed on in the same vein, and the other yelled probably much the same in Arkan, while they came in with their spears leveled. I pressed myself face-first to the wall on my knees and with my arms spread, in the hope that would get it through their fear-thickened skulls that I was surrendering. They chained and collared me, flung me down and dragged me by the feet into my cell, kicking and spear-butting me all the way, leaving me on the floor as they slammed the door shut.

In a short time, Iska unbolted it and came in. “So you are a liar, saying you are averse to killing someone you have nothing against,” he said, as I lay at his feet.

“It was his wish,” I said. “Perhaps he did not share that with you.”

His silence let me know that Sakilro had. I looked up at him, and saw in his pursed lips the war in his heart, for having to punish me for doing a thing he admired. Without another word, not to mention unchaining me or helping me onto the bed or doing anything for my pain, he left, the door banging shut behind him.

It opened again shortly. This was someone I had not met, a middle-aged Ungilian made all of whipcord and war-scars on his leathern skin, wearing only a kilt and a shining swath of fine gold chains around his neck. His eyes looked as if he’d fought in every war in the world, and enjoyed them all. “I am Koree,” he said in a blunt hoarse voice and Ungilian-clipped Enchian. “The Mezem war-trainer.” So that was fifty prize-chains; they wouldn’t have someone in that post who hadn’t done it. “I promised Iska I’d change your mind in a twentieth-bead, Karas Raikas.” He sat down cross-legged beside me. “Let’s see how I do.

“You have golden hands; but you know that. I will tell you what I tell perhaps one in two or three thousand: you can make fifty, if you want. I am certain. It’s one thing to do the”—and here he said an Arkan word which I gathered meant the killing nose-blow—“in anger to someone you hate; it’s another to do it to someone you pity, in mercy. Then it’s another thing again, to have the guts to do that, when you don’t know how you’ll be punished. You are an extraordinary person.”

“It was the right thing to do,” I said. “That’s all.”

He leaned closer, and dropped his voice. “So extraordinary that you have showed it so fast here, means so extraordinary you show it wherever you go. Which means it is well-known at home. Maybe even well enough to be known to Arko, hmm? The signs of war are stronger; the tales of Yeoli barbarities are more often. And you’ve never said your real name.”

Sickness cut through the pain of the guards’ kicks, so hard I stopped feeling it. I could think of nothing to say that was safe, so I said nothing.

Koree dropped his voice almost to a whisper. “You know what a truth-drug scraping is? They put you under the drug, then they ask you, ‘What is the thing you’d least like us to know?’ and make you tell them. Then, ‘What is the next thing you’d least like us to know?’ And so on, until they’ve reamed you out of all your secrets. It’s usually Mahid that do it.

“I say one word into the right ear, that I have an inkling you’re someone important, and they will do that to you. But I will not, and none of these words of mine, or yours, will go beyond the walls of this room—if you will do just one thing. I think you know what it is.” He patted my shoulder, and chuckled, smiling a skull’s-rictus smile. “I’ve got you, haven’t I?”

I closed my eyes, and relaxed. “Yes,” I whispered. “I will fight.”

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76 - [June 30] I, Karas Raikas

He plunked himself down with his little gold-clasped feet dangling over the edge of the gallery, his eyes fixed on me, intrigued, I think, that I didn’t kneel; if one goes through life with everyone bowing and scraping, I guess, someone who doesn’t is novel. His face looked spoiled, but with a hint of vast sadness underneath, pinching his faint white-gold brows. His eyes were an extraordinary blue, like two chips of the apex of the sky on a cloudless day.

As I stood trying to think how long my parents would have combed me for behavior a tenth as rude, he said in Enchian, “What is your name, barbarian?”

“My name I shall not tell one who calls me barbarian,” I answered. I’d thought of this on the way here: to be a little difficult, then apparently give in and tell them an alias, probably Rao Kyavinara; it had worked with the Lakans. Everyone else in the hall seemed to cringe without moving. Maybe I was acting recklessly; yet if I seemed to have nothing to lose, they’d think I had.

“Well!” he huffed, but without real anger, then pronounced, “it doesn’t matter if you don’t have one. I want to see you fight.”

“As I have told these gentlemen,” I said, “I will not, for you or anyone else to watch.” The handlers were already moving when the boy said something in Arkan that I didn’t have to be brilliant to know meant, “Make him!”

They tried harder this time, even hitting me between the legs once, just hard enough to bring agony without dropping me. I did nothing but keep the blows off my head with my hands. Finally Daisas, fuming, came stamping up and thrust the wooden sword at me, shouting in his typical Arkan-obscenity-laced Enchian, “Fight, you fikken dirt-hair, you’re a shennen warrior, anyone can see it, fikken fight!” I had fought him, as much as I could, while he’d made me eat dust and his seed all the way here. He had apparently forgotten I had something against him, and my hands were free.

It was pointless, really. Whatever suffering I saved others in the future at his hands, someone else—his sulky-faced apprentice perhaps—would step into his place to inflict. Vengeance is not counted a virtue or an obligation in Yeola-e, especially for a semanakraseye, but as soon as the chance came, every sinew in me wanted it, instantly, overwhelmingly, too much to resist. I would be lying if I wrote that it was not a pleasure, to grab him by the collar, see him freeze like a rabbit, his gaze trapped in mine, watch the truth work its slow but inevitable way into his excuse for a mind, that he was dead, then hand-heel him, the strike that drives the nasal bone up into the brain, and watch his grey eyes, staring up at me in disbelief, glaze over. I had never felt the like in my life.

The handlers yelled back and forth, wondering what to do, not admitting to themselves the corpse on the floor was a corpse, and thinking to rescue him. I stood back to let them see his dead stare and feel for a heartbeat they wouldn’t find. Meanwhile Kurkas’s son was cheering, his coating of jewels flashing with his motion. “Bravo! Well done! Beautiful! Silence!” It came immediately.

“I hereby decree that this ring-fighter shall have a name,” he declaimed, in both Arkan and Enchian; like me at that age, he had clearly heard too much formal bureaucratic speech. “And therefore by these presents since he came alone and is so fast, his name shall be Karas Raikas; and furthermore I declare my glorious self to be his first fan.” With that, he threw me something that flashed gold; catching it I saw it was a ring, that might barely fit on the tip of my fourth finger if I pushed hard. Then he skipped out.

So it was, the Mezem got me at a bargain. I found out later that Daisas had an heir, but he was underage and could do nothing, though by that one blow I had shown myself to be worth a small fortune. The testers stood well out of my reach, and one said in bad Enchian, “Look, Yeoli, we’re going to have to get the blow-darts with the stun stuff in them, and it can leave an awful headache when you wake up, so don’t you think it would better if you just came peacefully?” They wouldn’t come close until I lay face down on the floor and clasped my hands behind my back.

Once they had me chained again, two of them took me further along the colonnade to an anteroom. They paused to talk enthusiastically to the nearest of the notebook-bearing men—I’d soon learn they were oddsmakers—so I got slightly ahead of them. Something half-visible seemed to come rushing up against me, like my own ghost, and then the air before me was a solid wall, that cracked and then shattered around my knee and head. I had never seen or conceived a door of such pure glass before.

Someone laughed; someone else said “fikket.” I felt a warm trickle on my head and back, then pain. Gloved hands held cloths to me. Then what I saw to my sides seemed to throw me into a dream, being impossible: I was one of a spear-straight line, fading off into a dark green haze, of Fourth Chevengas, hair hacked, faces stunned and streaked with blood. The anteroom of the Gladiators’ Quarters has on its walls what are known as the Legion Mirrors, reflecting each other and whatever is caught between them, infinitely. It is a constant amusement of the guards posted there, to see the mirrors’ effect on hapless foreign primitives brought through.

I didn’t disappoint them. Suddenly the weight of the place fell on me as heavy as stone, along with what I had just done, by which I knew I was already corrupted; perhaps it was the head-cuts too, and the aftereffects of Daisas’ collar. The air went half-dark and the room with its smoky gold-leaf moulding and pillars and ranks of my staggering selves began to spin.

Hands steadied me, drew me into a room with a bed and shelves of healers’ things. Someone said gently in Enchian, “Lie down, Yeoli,” and I saw no reason not to. When I put my head back, my eyes cleared. The man who had spoken was a middle-aged Arkan with fessas length hair, the blond shot with grey and thin on top, the blue-grey eyes round and careworn. His hands were thick, but so tender, and his apology for taking off his gloves so caring, that I suddenly found myself near tears. I had all but forgotten touch that was not cruel.

He had me unchained, despite what had to be protests from the testers, and stitched closed the worst of my cuts, no less gently than a Haian would. At the same time he had two of his apprentices wash me thoroughly from head to foot, though Daisas had dunked me in a stream this morning, and the road hadn’t been that dusty. Was it to wash Daisas himself off me? Could another Arkan be that understanding? As if he read my mind, he said, “I know how it is with slavers, lad.” The tears came then, and he and the other two all pretended not to see them, not looking me in the face. I learned later, Arkans consider that the most polite thing to do when someone cries.

At the same time, it was odd to be worked over with such concern by a boy with his hair cropped and waxed to stand up like cat ears. That sort of thing is the style of the Mezem.

Once the healer was done with the wounds he’d easily seen, he examined me all over, being as careful not to hurt me as if I were someone of import. He peered at the semanakraseyeni brand, but it seemed to mean nothing to him, non-existent Gods of Arko be thanked. He did know how it is with Arkan slavers, including what injuries they invariably leave. He was even civil enough to tell me his name, speaking in soft Enchian: “It’s Iskanzas Muras, fessas, but everyone calls me Iska.”

He asked me to rise carefully, making sure my head stayed clear at each step, then led me to a room with bars on its windows. “You’re counted a troublemaker, lad, because you killed your slaver,” he told me. “But you’ll be out of here once we’ve talked, and the bed’s good. You can put your feet up now.” The bed was indeed good, with a soft pillow scented with lavender, better amenities than most prisons. “What’s your name?”

“Karas Raikas.” A look flashed across his face as if he’d bit into a sour apple, but he stifled it and raised his brows in questioning. Denied their hands, Arkans are very expressive with their faces, unless they are Mahid. “But you are Yeoli.”

“When I was tested,” I said, “a child who I think must be Kurkas’s son gave it to me.” I described him.

“Ah.” he said. “Minis. Or Spark of the Sun’s Ray, which is the Enchian version of his correct title. Yes, you’re right, he’s the son of the Imperator, He Whose Arm is the Strength of the World. You never call him by name, just the title. Abase yourself, or don’t let him notice you, and you’ll generally come out all right.” I told him what had passed, showing him the ring, which seemed to add to, more than ease, his worry. “Yes, you are right, you had better go by that name,” he said.

Next he explained the rules. First and foremost: fight or die, by torture. He didn’t detail what sort of torture, only that nine times out of ten, the objector changes his mind and agrees to fight after the first tenth-bead or so, sometimes from nothing more than the torturer telling him what’s in store if he doesn’t.

But it isn’t even that simple; I would not be tortured as soon as I refused; I’d be held until the next one came along who refused, and he would be made to watch. “You mean,” I asked Iska, “there’s someone now being held to be tortured in front of me?” He wagged his head up and down, the Arkan version of signing chalk. “A Srian. He’s a few doors down. The torture stops if either of you changes his mind.” A devious form of compulsion, playing on what someone who refused was likely to have: compassion for others.

I could not speak, so he went on explaining. “But if you fight, and win fifty victories, you are set free, with your winnings; fighters who last that long generally end up rich, even though they are slaves, through gifts they receive from wealthy aficionados.” He couldn’t know that that meant nothing to me.

“It’s one on one, duels; fight days are every four days, five fights a day, though you won’t fight every time. The matches are made by lot. You can kill with one wound; if you just wound, you may choose whether to kill or spare, and the crowd will have its say—they wave white kerchiefs if they want him spared, red if they want him killed.” Semana kra, I thought sickly. “The Imperator has the final say, though, if he’s there that day; the Director, if he does not; either of them, of course, you’d better obey.”

“What happens to a fighter who loses, but is spared?” I asked. “Or does it depend on whether he’s crippled?”

“Yes; if he isn’t, the Mezem might choose to keep him, and he can keep fighting, but he loses his prize-chains and must start from nothing again. Or the Mezem might sell him, especially if someone makes a good offer. If he’s crippled, the Mezem will certainly sell him.” To some place where he’ll do whatever drudgery he is able to for the rest of his life, or a brothel, I thought.

Fighters, he told me, have the run of the city, and in fact are not only allowed but required to wear arms outside the Mezem, but there was no way out, the walls too smooth to scale, the lefaeti and Great Gate—it is tunneled through the rock—too well-guarded. Arkans don’t call them cliffs, but walls, as if they built them. They have a habit of thinking they made the world. Always, I reminded myself, there are cracks in the walls.

(For this scene from Minis' point of view, click here.)

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75 - [June 29] The bloodsport arena

So I came into the City Itself of Arko, still wearing the peace-sigil as I should, but also chains and collar, and with slavers instead of an honour guard. Daisas made me dress plainly in Arkan style, shirt and trousers, to hide my nakedness out of courtesy to the city, I think; a blessing, because it hid the semanakraseyeni brand-mark, which I could not throw away. Though I thought he would want to have me most in hand now, he loosened the collar completely, so that I remember well my first sight of the city.

It was spectacular beyond spectacular. Arko is set in a great depression in the earth, bounded all around by granite cliffs fifty man-lengths high, and big enough that the opposite wall is tiny and blue-grey in the heat-haze. The whole pit but the blue lake and a ring of green woods was filled with a carpet of white buildings, bulging high in the center like tall trees in the heart of a forest, reaching higher than I had thought buildings could, and so many that it was as if I saw all the cities I had ever seen all joined together and turned white.

Much traffic goes in and out of Arko not by the gate but by the lefaeti, the lifts, of which there are twenty. Each of the ten old ones is simply two fenced platforms hung from great cables, by which one is raised while the other lowered between cliff-edge—the Rim, as Arkans call it—to the pit-floor, the motion powered by a team of oxen. The modern ones use the weight of water flowing into a container affixed beneath the platform when it is in the upper position so as to outweigh the lower. The inventor of this was raised from fessas, the third of the five Arkan castes, to Aitzas, the highest.

As we were lowered, it was all I could do not to gape at the cliff-face. The living stone, the bone of the Earthsphere itself, was dressed to as shining a finish as a temple keystone, from not far shy of the top to the bottom; I saw my chained and collared reflection, and as we went lower, that of the sky and clouds, as in a mirror wide as a mountain, against the sea of white buildings behind. Daisas laughed as he saw me gazing, and said, “Your first look at civilization.”

Through streets that were like giant trenches for the height of the buildings lining them, and endlessly long, Daisas led me, stopping only for noon observance; the entire city of Arko stands still and silent in the time after the ringing of the main bell at high noon, an astonishing thing to see and hear. He threatened me with pain beyond my imagining if I so much as twitched. Though I did not know it at the time, we were in the fessas quarter. As the Aitzas in my escort had worn their hair waist-long and the solas heart-long, every man here had his cropped just above his shoulder. Everyone, everywhere, even beggar children in the street, wore gloves, even if they were ragged; it was not just the custom of my escort, or of soldiers, I learned then, but all Arkans, as if their hands were obscene, or they were ashamed of things their hands had done.

I would be lying to say the City was not even more beautiful to me closer. Arko’s climate being hot and still, the houses are built airy, yet a good half of the windows had flawless glass. Arkans love art, and though in the poorer districts it was often in disrepair, at every corner was a mosaic or marble statue of some scene or person, full of luxuriant curves in the Arkan style. Street artists and musicians were everywhere, dashing out charcoal-on-paper portraits or crooning to the strains of a lute for copper chains—Arkan currency is all chains—nimbly thrown around their necks between strokes or chords. One artist tried to persuade Daisas to let him sketch me.

Arkans are also in love, so much as to dazzle away one’s usual standard of excess, with gold. Everywhere I saw their elegant and simple script, even on house-signs, it was engraved and gilded; I began to think there must be a law. Temples were easy to tell; even the small ones, besides being built with all their angles pointing skyward, bore a great disc of gold over the door. I saw sun flash from a tower on the distant white parapet that stood like teeth beneath the far cliff; the roof was gold-leafed. The Marble Palace, I guessed. I had heard they’d carved the eagle in big on the cliff over it, and gold-leafed it entirely; seeing it was something else again. Each gleaming wing was wider than three houses on top of each other, and long as an archery range.

As in Laka, women were few to be seen in the streets, Arkans considering the house their place. But pairs of men walking close together were common. I remembered the Arkan custom. If a man and a youth, or even a boy of ten, walk holding hands in Arko, they are as likely lovers as father and son; if the boy is better dressed, the man is his chaperon. One should not take “lovers” as meaning “equals,” though. To the Arkan mind, every bond has, and should have, one superior and one inferior.

I drew more attention than I wanted. Being in the capital of an empire that had conquered so many nations, I was surprised to see nothing but blond hair and blue eyes; perhaps there was a law about that too, which excepted me for some reason. Everywhere we went, men both rich and poor measured me with their eyes, fingered Chirel with their gloved hands, felt my arms or chest or legs—sometimes the touch was a grope, which Daisas would slap off possessively—and spoke with Daisas enthusiastically, obviously about me. It was as if all Arko could buy me.

He led me to a huge round building five stories high and wide as a palace. It went far beyond what I now knew as the Arkan standard for garishness, even; I would have thought it could only exist in a story. The outer walls were ringed with niches, each of which held a statue of a warrior in stance or a grave, sitting king or some dramatic scene; everything else was covered, every finger-width, with low-reliefs: animals, hunters, warriors, winged creatures frozen in furious motion, swirling plants and stars and running patterns, all painted with merciless flamboyance, their brilliant colors only slightly muted by the patina of age.

I suddenly knew where I had seen such extravagant whimsy before: the carts and props and tent of the Sinere Circus. But that had been just paint and dye; here it was gold-leaf, jewels, towering marble columns that proclaimed grandeur, as if to say, “Here in Arko, we need not spare expense even on our frivolity.” It made me feel drunk.

Daisas took me in through a gate, inlaid with ruby-eyed dragons, that had a lintel emblazoned with a sword and chain entwined as well as Arkan words, in gold of course, which I would have given my hair to read. Inside, same as the circus, was less ornate, but still quality. He led me a little way along a colonnade; beyond the red and gold-painted columns was a training ground, where some thirty warriors of all races were training. The walls made their number seem greater, being carven and painted all around with men just like them, as if to celebrate the tradition of the school. Yet they were watched, by grizzled men scribbling with Arkan pens on paper—they have paper to burn, in Arko—as no students are watched. One of them glanced at me, and though he looked seedy, his once-over, measuring me as a warrior, was so expert I felt stripped.

Finally it came to me what this place was, why I’d been such a fascination on the street, and why I had been bought together with Chirel.

As a boy in the School of the Sword I had heard mention of how warriors fought to the death just for crowds to watch, and bet on like horse-races, in Arko. Of course we’d spat on the idea as further proof of the Empire’s depravity, while being secretly darkly intrigued. In truth the Mezem, as the bloodsport arena is called, went too far beyond anything natural for us to truly believe it was real, so we treated it the same as fairy stories or high-seas tales, just as its decor goes so far beyond excess as to overwhelm your sense of proportion, so you cannot judge it by your own measure. That was why it had taken me so long to realize my fate; it was inconceivable.

Daisas barked, and yanked my neck-chain. I’d stopped short, as if hit by a thrown spear. I had trained in the School of the Sword for one purpose only, to defend my people, not fight like the dogs and roosters foreigners pit against each other for sport. My skill was not for killing others, against whom I had nothing, to slake an Arkan crowd’s thirst for blood. But that was what I was headed to.

Then I thought, a person can be made to work, with the stick or the lash; but who will put Chirel in my hand, and try any way of compelling me? No one can force another to fight.

Daisas led me through a door into a tall bare room with a gallery, from which three ancient Arkan men peered at me. On each of all three of their noses perched two discs of glass attached to each other by golden wire, to magnify the world for their failing eyes. I had never seen spectacles before. Daisas addressed them with a marketplace smile and tone, recognizable in any language, boasting my virtues.

His apprentice, meanwhile, attached one of my ankle-irons to the chain—iron, no less—fixed to a ring in the floor, and unslung Chirel from my shoulder. Two men with the manner of horse-grooms unbound my arms, leaping back as from an unbroken stallion; then one of them took up two wooden swords, threw me one and came toward me in stance with the other.

This was the slave-block for Mezem fighters, I saw. The goods must be properly tested, to settle a price. That was why Daisas had loosened the collar; the more clear-headed I was, the better account I’d give of myself, and so the more I’d be worth.

My arms were stiff as bones, which the man seemed to expect. I shook them out and flexed them, then threw the wooden sword into the dust, and said to the elders in Enchian, “I will not fight, for a crowd.”

The tester didn’t seem too fazed by this, letting me know I was far from the first who had refused. He mimed a thrust through my heart, which I let him do; then gave me a few blows on the ribs, hard enough to hurt, in the hope of angering me. I’d had worse in training. The old men exchanged owlish glances. They looked like noble fools, awarded this sinecure for favor and/or incompetence in useful work.

The tester tossed me the wood again; as he came in poking, I threw it down again. Daisas caught up his hawker’s patter, too smoothly; over the smile pasted onto his mouth, his eyes scowled. At every refusal my price dropped. Then suddenly he went silent, as if some danger had come into the room. I heard a jingling and a giggle, the kind a child makes pulling legs off spiders.

A plump boy of ten or so stood in the gallery, behind and above the old men. Not that one should slight him, with such a plain word as “boy.” One could barely see his clothes for jewelry. Chains, pearls, tiny figurines, gemstones of all hues and gold mail shimmering at every fidget, coated him from head to foot. Astalaz in audience would wear perhaps a quarter as much. I couldn’t help but stare.

There was a strained silence, as he went from elder to elder, patting their heads, tweaking their shoulders with, to my surprise, bare hands, while they bowed and prattled obsequiously to him with an obsequiousness that seemed desperate.

Everyone else had gone to their knees, hissing something at me, which I suspected was orders to get on mine. It was a certain pleasure, to find myself standing over all these Arkans, so I pretended not to understand. I’d heard Kurkas had a young son, the heir in fact; it appeared we were now graced with his presence.

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