67 - My parent's initiation

I was to dine at the mayor’s that night. “I hardly dare ask,” my shadow-father said drily, as we made ready. “But to whom does that child belong, and why do you have him?” My friends all swapped smirks.

“Two questions, one answer, no words needed,” I said. “Look closely at his face and mine.” For once in his life he was speechless; not, alas, for long enough. “Oh. I see. You pronged some poor Leyere girl during the war, and now you’ve charmed her out of her baby so you can be a father before you’re really finished being a child.”

Mana crept like a cat out of the room, pulling Krero and Sachara with him. But my son’s presence, more than anything else, kept me from answering angrily as I was inclined. I just told him the story. When I said the child’s name, I added quickly that Tanazha had chosen it, not me.

“It will still be seen as the height of vanity,” Esora-e said, frowning.

“There is no question of changing it,” I said. “He knows himself by it.”

“And I somehow doubt he was stream-tested.” I hadn’t even thought of that. No law requires it, fortunately, only custom. I just had to pray Assembly would still approve him. “Well, he’ll have to prove himself other ways, then,” he said gruffly, then went on to ask if the child had weapon-sense, of all things. I just said, “When he’s six, if he touches the Sword, we’ll test him.”

Because Fifth Chevenga was not in a state to be let off my arm, I had to take him to dinner. That ensured that the news would be all over Leyere in a day, and Yeola-e in a half-moon; I just had to hope my letter to Shaina and Etana got to Thara-e first. Well, I’d had to let it be known somehow. I hid nothing about his conception; to be tight-lipped would make people think even worse, as I’d learned from Esora-e. Eyebrows rose, but everyone congratulated me.

I was traveling for another month, the larches on the heights turning to gold and maples to crimson, and my son gave me my parent’s initiation.

He stopped sleeping through, and would scream “Mama!!” at night, sometimes during the death-hour, waking everyone. Before I knew to change his diapers fast enough, I had to pay one inn for a ruined feather-mattress. He threw tantrums until Esora-e said, “You either comb the brat to silence or the two of you sleep in the anteroom.”

I slept with him in the anteroom. I never gave him into anyone else’s arms except while speaking to the people, I let him cling or have my notice or have food or water whenever he wished no matter whom I was conversing with, played with him every spare moment, gave him bright toys and soft. I let him scream “Hate you! Hate you!” and batter my chest with his little fists without even a word of correction.

How many times I curled around him and said, “She loves you, she’s not dead, you’ll see her again soon, I love you,” I cannot say. I was the only constant presence for him now, at the time when a child is most delicate for need of constancy; so it seemed to me I had better be perfectly constant.

My schedule had already been full to the eyeteeth, and I didn’t get much help with him, Esora-e cold to him, my friends not knowing how; I was the lightest sleeper anyway. Soon I was feeling like the walking dead from morning to night, my arms and heart leaden; I felt nothing would change and I was a slave on a treadmill, chained to it for life, since he’d still be a child when I died; I caught momentarily myself wishing him gone, no matter how, then loathed myself for the thought, and made myself sick imagining him dying. He and I would cry ourselves to sleep together, sometimes. It was harder than war.

When I got back to Vae Arahi, I had found no one else more suitable than Shaina and Etana; after I’d taken on Fifth Chevenga, I’d given up looking, not wanting to leave him with someone else to meet with prospective spouses. I found a letter from Shaina and Etana waiting for me at home; I pleaded inwardly that it not be a cancellation of our agreement because Shaina would not be bearing my anaraseye as I opened it. It wasn’t; they acceded to the altered plan I’d proposed, so I wrote back saying I’d make their case to Assembly.

Of course there I had to face a questioning that need not be polite. In twenty different ways they asked me, why did I not trust that I would find love in good time, when I was so young? It’s not that I don’t, I said; I just wanted to be sure I had heirs in very good time, since I planned to be a fighting semanakraseye and so would risk my life if there were war, and one never knew when there could be. (Let this seem like prescience afterwards, when the Arkans came). For an exchange or two, the debate came up that has raged on and off for two centuries, whether semanakraseyel should even be allowed to fight, but no one seriously argued that I shouldn’t.

The question came up also of Fifth Chevenga. There is no law that an anaraseye must be born within wedlock, but it is preferred, as Assembly then has approved the spouse.

But they had no argument against Shaina and Etana; in fact the Servant of Thara-e-Olingae knew them, and spoke well of them. It went through with a decently-strong chalk, so I wrote to Shaina and Etana telling them to give their notices and come to Vae Arahi.

So much had happened since, they seemed almost like strangers when I gave them the two-handed welcome to the house, and then the hug of friendship. I couldn’t imagine Shaina had not become fond of the notion of bearing an anaraseye; but she said nothing, and they both began treating Fifth Chevenga as if he were their own. Now instead of two by me first, Shaina would bear one by me, one by Etana, the third by me and the rest by him.

Fifth Chevenga steadied down; the Hearthstone was an unchanging place for him to get used to and come to think of as home, and my mothers and stepfather and siblings all lent their hands. His nightmares and tantrums eased, and he learned how to use the chamber pot at least for the solids.

One day I came in after training, and he trotted to me with his fat little hands out, saying “Daddy, Daddy,” as usual. I swung him as always; then he threw his arms around my neck and said, “Daddy, I love you.” My eyes rained tears; the brush of a finger could have knocked me flat.

We made our wedding modest, inviting just family and friends. Strange, to put on the Shae-Arano-e wedding tunic, last worn by my father, and kiss the crystals of two people who were truly only acquaintances. They shone, beautiful in their finery, in the gazes of passion they exchanged, in the joy of seeing their love celebrated. I had what I had; I made my oaths with my firstborn child on my arm.

Now they lived here, I sometimes felt I had been mad to do this. I would stay in the offices till late at night, trying to complete my studies and start the transition with Tyeraha at once, well past when Shaina and Etana made love, or else I’d creep out to the balcony, watching the moonlight over Hetharin.

Once, catching me weeping, they both made love to me, though it was not her fertile time, and let me sleep cradled between them, tossing a vote-stone for who would have the honor of my head on his or her shoulder. In their happiness they were generous. That’s all I can ask, I thought. If I were a Lakan, I would have an arranged marriage; this is one, in truth, and friendship is better than many spouses have.

So, I had what I’d wanted: a marriage, a child and easy plans for more, before I’d become semanakraseye. Should I complain that it felt too easy, undeserved, that I’d got it by my position, that however we caulked them over with friendship, the cracks of lovelessness remained? I had enough to love for now, I told myself, with the semanakraseyesin and Fifth, as he was coming to be called. (If people shortened it to Chevenga, he got confused with me; as far as he was concerned, though, he was Chevenga, I was Daddy, and that was that.)

As well, if Jinai’s predictions were right, war was coming, and it can cut through love as easily as a sword through flesh. I had the jaws of Arko to walk into; just as well I had no true love, to miss and worry about me while I suffered whatever I must as much as a true love does. Should I, of all people, complain that it all felt too sudden?

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66 - Fifth Chevenga

From Thara-e, we went up by boat to the end of the Ereala, then south through Shairao and Kolohisk to Kantila and Leyere, where everyone wanted to clash wristlets with me, remembering the war. They’d fixed the river-lock, smashed during the war; in civic pride they built a dais on a barge for me to speak from, a bit much to my mind, but the people wills. When we were done they just poled me out through the lower gate and down river to the inn, to keep the crowd from dogging me.

I was in my room speaking with a Leyereri member of the Workfast Disseminatory (“Yes, my marriage prospects seem much better, thank you, now can we talk about policy? No?”) when Mana tapped the door. I’d trained my friends not to do that unless it were important; I hadn’t, unfortunately, trained them not to say certain things in front of certain scribes. “There’s a woman, a freedwoman from Laka,” he said. “Says she has your child. I wouldn’t trouble you with this, Cheng, except she has the kid right here, and”—he clasped his crystal—“he does look like you.”

My heart began pounding. Astalaz hadn’t mentioned a child in any of his letters, which I’d taken to mean he’d found I fathered none. Now it came to me: he wouldn’t think I’d care what became of offspring out of wedlock, beyond their freedom, because to a Lakan it would be nothing.

Of course the scrivener asked, quietly like a spy creeping past guards, “You have a child, anaraseye?”

“Not that I know of,” I told her, the truth; I wouldn’t know until I saw. Then I continued answering the question she’d last asked me. When we were done, I invited the freedwoman in.

It was the third, Tanazha. In good light her face looked a little older, the wrinkles more distinct; but there was a lightness in her expression that had not been there before. The balm to the spirit that is freedom. She wore a crystal and spoke Yeoli, haltingly, Lakan-accented; but life-long slavish habits are hard to break. She went to her knees before I could stop her.

From behind her, a toddler peeked out, fixing me with bright piercing eyes, unwavering as sunlight, and green like hers. But his hair was black, and certain lines in his nose and chin were unmistakable. His face lit in a sudden smile. “Don’t call me by a title, you know me well enough,” I was just saying to her. “Call me Chevenga—yes, I lied, I’m sorry, it’s my true name.”

“Chevenga!” he repeated, his pronunciation childishly mushy but more Yeoli than hers. “S’me!” She’d named him as I’d asked. That was all I saw, blinded by tears.

What a woman bred in Laka would think of such emotion in a man, I didn’t know. But I’d waited seven years for this, my hopes dashed again and again, every year heavier on my shoulders. Wherever he goes, I thought as I blinked my eyes clear to look at him, whomever he becomes, he will carry on the thread of my life.

I held out my arms to him, and he came with a big smile. I took him up onto my hip with one arm, wiping away tears with the other hand. “Your daddy,” Tanazha was saying carefully, “your father. You remember I told you about him.” He peered in my eyes again with a look that seemed measuring beyond his age, then seized my crystal and thrust it all the way into his mouth. I giggled like an idiot, tears pouring fresh.

I played with him probably for much too long, trying to forget certain truths. He was her son, not mine, since we were not married, nor in love; I had just made other plans. Typical of my luck, I thought, joggling my son on my knee. I undertake all manner of work and get in all sorts of trouble arranging to produce an Ascendant properly, see it finally fall together, and the firstborn drops into my lap a bare moon later, already two years old and not mine to rear.

“Daddy!” he said to me in his tiny flute-voice. His mother said, “He’s yours, anaraseye, if you want him.” The world seemed to freeze. They say it sometimes takes time for a father to feel his child is truly his; for me it had taken all of a glance, and was down to my bones. Now I felt it turn to ashes, as I said what I must.

“It’s not for me to take him from you, Tanazha. Not by the way of Yeola-e. Only in Laka is the child the father’s.”

“I give him,” she said in her harsh Yeoli. “I know I can have no hold on you. But he can live better with you.”

I imagined how it had been for her. The agent of the King of Laka had bought her, freed her and sent her to Yeola-e with no explanation; she had come to Leyere not even knowing who the father of her child was, and fared as a freed slave does. She must be alone with the child, in an old house left burned or at best stripped in the war, on the sliver of land a single person would be assigned, probably gone half to weeds, and no money to start with, in a land full of strangers whom she happened to look like, speaking a language she didn’t know.

What she had gone through to make ends meet so far, while I had been a guest of the Palace of Kraj and the Hearthstone Dependent, I couldn’t know. Now she would give up the only soul she loved. Yet she said it with her head up and eyes dry; she’d steeled herself to it, long ago, for his sake. That, I thought, is love.

“Anara—J’vengka… I have more than I ever dreamed,” she said. “I and my child are free. And you have given me land.” Reared in Laka, she would see it that way. “But he’d live better with you. They say no matter that I’m slave-stock, but still I can’t teach what he should know, to be Yeoli, the Yeoli your son should be. I don’t know enough how to be Yeoli myself; I can’t even teach him reading.” She switched to Lakan; it was easier. “Even in an heir’s cage, he would live better.” I recoiled inside, seeing for a moment that tiny sweet face behind bars. Of course she’d think that.

“We don’t cage heirs,” I said. “Though being Ascendant, as he would be, is not an easy life… You can teach him all any child truly needs: love. You have plenty of that. Tanazha, I could send money to you here.” How, I had no idea, but I’d find a way. “Or you could come to Terera, let me find you a place or a share somewhere.” She signed charcoal in the unaccustomed way of a foreigner. “I know nothing but peach farming.” Peach trees won’t grow as far north as Terera; she was bound to her land.

“You can teach him love too.” She touched my cheek, still wet. It hurt like a sword-cut through my heart. “I did not come for help for me, I am not of your family. Akdan ruled you… you had no choice, as Yeolis say.” My son yanked on my ear, and yelled “Ma, ma, maaaah!” just for the joy of it. She tried to hush him, and he went on louder. It seemed he took after me in more than looks. I wanted him in my sight for the rest of my life.

“But who loves him most?” I said. “Who does he know loves him?”

“It’s not like the others.” The memory of that night, in the stinking lamplight of the stud shed, came back searing. I’d forgotten she’d had five taken away already; that made it so much worse. “I will not lose him, giving him to you, for I will know where he is, and that it’s a good place, and that he is loved, not owned. And so will he.”

I searched through my night-cabinet for a waxboard one-handed, my other hand full of someone sacred. Of course as soon as I’d managed it, he crawled off me and behind the bed. How much more of a favor Astalaz would grant me, I did not know; but I must try. “Tell me their names.” She was speechless at first, unbelieving, but told me all, and how old each must be by now. I got her to give me the names of all her other kin, too, and the man she loved, whom she almost didn’t mention because he wasn’t her blood. I’d forgotten how little slaves believe they deserve. Now it was her turn to weep, trying to hide it between her rough-brushed ringlets. It hurt not to be able to promise her anything certain, when she kissed my hand from her knees.

“I swore I would give him to you if you wanted him,” she said. “You do; you think I can’t see it?” She took a deep breath. “You Yeolis—we Yeolis—hold the mother decides what will become of the child, for the best. Then I say you must take him.” Little Chevenga, who’d climbed back up to watch me write, stamped his tiny bare feet on my knee. She wants to free me to take him, I thought, by binding me. Yet she could accept money I sent; it’s only her own pride that forbids that. She thinks he would have a better life, as anaraseye and then semanakraseye.

Perhaps, perhaps not, I thought, watching his eyes, which gazed hard at the hairs of my chest, enough to be a tuft now, his tiny silken brows that were shaped exactly like mine furrowed in grave contemplation. Not much of a baby’s character can be read on his face. Then I had a thought.

“We could let him choose,” I said. “I know how. May I take him up on the mountain?” She looked puzzled, but agreed.

I put on my cloak, then Chirel, since Krero wouldn’t let me out of his sight without it this near to the border. Little Chevenga didn’t want to come at first, until I perched him on my shoulders and twirled; then he didn’t want to let go my hair. Leaving Mana to keep Tanazha company, I slipped out the inn’s back door and through side streets, my hood hiding my face. Running the gauntlet of my friends’ questions had been bad enough.

I took him up to a meadow, from where Leyere with its circular wall was a huge cauldron, brimming with a stew of black slate roofs and green gardens. His eyes widened; Tanazha’s work left her no time or strength, it seemed, to carry him to high places. In a green cedar hollow by a stream I hunted, looking over my shoulder now and then to make sure he didn’t wander off, or put all the world into his mouth. Toads were many here, this year. I caught one, found a stick, and brought both to him.

“S’toad,” he chirped, as I gave it to him. It struck me that he was precocious; but then, I thought, every new parent thinks that. “Careful, he’ll get away,” I said, and showed him how to close his hands. “He’s yours, Chevenga.” The toad shuffled, and emptied itself, making a green-brown stain the shape of a leaf on his tiny spotless palm, as they will. He cried out in disgust.

“What a terrible thing to do!” I said, curling my lip. “Well, he deserves punishment for that, since he’s yours.” I held out the stick to him. “Go on, Chevenga, he deserves it. It’s all right. Hit him. Kill him.”

I doubted he was one to destroy with glee, knowing his mother. What I expected was that he would either do it hesitantly if I kept urging him, or sit staring at me puzzled as to why I’d ask such a thing. That would have decided me.

As it was, he cringed away, shoving the toad behind his back, and stared at me in a way that stabbed my heart; I saw myself being Toad-Murderer in his eyes for the rest of my life. His tiny frown deepened, his green eyes flashed, and with every drop of will in his body and soul, as it is with children, he cried “No!”

I threw away the stick. “All right, never mind, you forgive him.” He glanced over his shoulder, to see if the toad was safe; of course it was long gone, and I had to find another quick, and say, “See, there, he’s all right,” before he’d let me pick him up. Even on the way back down to the city, he sat stiff in my arms and kept looking distrustfully at me, as if thinking, “Mama said you were good. I’m not so sure.”

“I had reason, my child.” So strange, to hear those words on my lips. “One day you’ll understand. Forgive me, Fifth Chevenga, for all you will suffer.”

“He is not quite weaned,” Tanazha said, “but he is plenty old enough. His favourite foods are fruit, fresh or dried, and cheese, and sweets, of course. I have his clothes all clean and mended, and his toys, and a sack of diapers here, all clean too. He’s just starting to know when he’ll make kyash. He sleeps through the night, usually, now, and naps in the afternoon.”

He reached toward her, whimpering, as if he knew, and she took him, and put him to her breast one last time. “I hope…” Her eyes were suddenly full of tears. “I hope you will let me visit him… once or twice in his life.”

I stared at her with my jaw dropped. I had been thinking more along the lines of him visiting her every summer for two or three months, if Assembly approved—it was a long way away from his education, for an anaraseye, but it was to be with his blood-mother and the books could go with him—and any time she could come to Vae Arahi, I’d find her a room in the Hearthstone Dependent. “I’d die before I’d let him forget you,” I said, and told her this.

I stopped her from going to her knees again by catching her in an embrace, with him in the middle. We stayed there for a while. Then, as he called and then screamed for her, reaching frantically with his fat little arms, she turned, square-shouldered, and was gone.

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65 - in which I find a couple

As I sat down to plan my actions, I saw my dilemma. The more private I kept it, putting out the notice through town halls and bureaucracies and so forth, person to person, the less embarrassing talk there’d be. But the fewer people knew about it, the harder it would be to find people who were interested. I decided to try different ways in different places; that way I would learn.

The speaking tour itself went well, except for bouts of the kind of weather one must bless, since it helps the crops, but is a curse to travelers. It was on this trip that I began to have to truly shave my chin every day.

People near the Lakan border were happy that the war was over, no one was much worried about war from anyone else, and everyone was content to see a good harvest about to come in. Jinai’s reading seemed a thousand day’s journey away; with the sun golden on the wheat and the trees all bursting green, the idea that the Arkan sword hung over us, waiting to fall, seemed impossible. Since I was concealing it anyway, it was best not to think about it.

I got the usual hard questions about what sort of person I was, lots of unrequested advice, and all the standard complaints about bad roads, skinflint workfasts, belligerent neighbours and young people these days. But I did well enough that Esora-e, who had insisted on coming along, said, “You could charm an Arkan out of his boy, boy; better not learn to depend on it.” The war signs were enough that it was Arkans he’d turned his hate to now.

In Selina I tried just to put out word to the political people, and not a single couple came forward. In Erealanai, I did that but also posted notices on the paper-walls of the town square and market-places. Three couples came, but they all said that they weren’t in truth interested but had come to call someone’s bluff, assuming that the notice had been a prank, which of course meant who knew many more had stayed away for the same reason.

In Koresanai, I made quick mention of it toward the end of my speech. Little did I know that, once I’d started taking questions, virtually every question would be about this. However, two couples wanted to meet me. This was the way, apparently, so I decided to do it for every other town, though I’d leave the marriage mention to the end of the question-time.

Thus I fell into a routine. By day I spoke and traveled; by evening I talked with prospective spouses. We would meet after sunset in some private place, like conspirators. I would set out exactly what I wanted of them—the first few times I was awkward as a teenager, but I got better with practice—and then we’d talk until I, or they, saw it wouldn’t work.

They’d say they didn’t quite see what I had been asking and weren’t interested after all; or they’d be too crassly ambitious, looking at me with ankaryel clear in their eyes; or they’d be too old, or too young, or too unintelligent, or seem too selfish to be good parents, or too unpleasant to get along with, or too timid, or unlikely to adhere to what they promised. Or else they’d say I was somehow wanting.

Asinanai is a big city, of course, no smaller than Tinga-e, and when I spoke there it was to a good twenty-thousand people in the town square. As usual I said that I was looking for a couple to make with me a marriage of agreement at the end of the time set for questioning, but so many hands went up that the mayor allowed more time. “Don’t tell me you’re tired, you young muscle-bound buck, you,” she said. “You can’t throw them something like that and not expect them to want to know more.”

I should have known I was in trouble when I noticed a woman near the front scrawling fast notes on a noteboard, and smoothly finding another way to ask why I was seeking such a marriage when I’d already non-answered the question. It turned out she was from the Workfast Disseminatory, which is tied to the Workfast Proclamatory, and conveys across Yeola-e notices of matters unofficial as well as official.

My proposal was all over Yeola-e as fast as runners could carry it. From then on, in every town, I’d mention not a word in my speech, and the first question would almost invariably be, “So is it true, Chevenga, that you are looking to marry in a three by agreement?” and the second would be either “But that’s so odd—why?” or “Will we do?”

That was when I had to start having them turn in resumes first, as if they were seeking workfast shares or government positions. (Of course many were seeking government positions, and would start singing the praises of their own skills and knowledge until I reminded them this wasn’t that kind of meeting.)

But still, there’d be something amiss each time, that would keep either them or me from feeling it would go well. A pair of women from Tinga-e, one of whom was thinking of applying to the School of the Sword, came close; it occurred to me that having two women-for-women made it far less likely a wife might fall in love with me, and having two women also made it no matter if one was infertile. But they were both only eighteen, and seemed like half-children to me. It was soon after that I realized that virtually everyone under about twenty-five seemed too immature to me (when had I gotten so old in spirit?) and so began leaving their papers off the small stack.

In Thara-e my luck turned, with a woman who worked in the town hall, the daughter of a long line of bureaucrats, and a man of the same profession. They already had their names in as associates of the Assembly Palace Workfast. Her name was Shainano-e Anataeya, and his, Etana Shae-Sai. They’d been together for four years or so, and had held off having children to save up for a place of their own.

I met her alone at the cenotaph, and in the moon-shadow of its standing-stone, I could not even see what color her hair was. She was twenty-seven, old enough to have mastered silken bureaucratic polish and to call me “lad.” After talking for a while we decided that at least two of us were leaning chalk enough to have dinner, all three of us, the next day at Tyara’s. I hadn’t got this far with anyone before.

As usual with me with meetings, I got there first. I made sure Tyara tucked the table well away, under the weeping willow in the courtyard. Finding my nerve stripped as I waited, I begged a jar of wine (I was close enough to being semanakraseye that I was getting many things free already). I had thoroughly wet my lips when they came in, brushing open the hanging branches.

In the candlelight I finally saw her face well: open and practical, pleasant to look on but not breathtaking, framed in two long clouds of frizzed brown hair. Now I regretted my maturity requirement, hoping Etana would be at least close to my age, so we could joke like two boys, but no, he was at least twenty-five, lion-jawed and serious-looking. They were both in Thara-e ponchos, but with their office kerchiefs; this was business after all.

Once the introductions were done, I poured them each a deep cup, and kept them topped up as we chose meals. That done, we must make small talk; it was too early to get to the point. I had not had enough wine to soothe my nerves, just to bring that first state of mental clarity, like a pool of still water, showing in all its sharp edges the perversity of my intentions and making me feel as conscious of my skin as if I’d suddenly put on someone else’s. This didn’t help in making talk.

Matters of government were out; we’d all spent all day at that. The war was out; neither of them was trained. I ended up pouring more wine, and saying, “This willow is so beautiful; look how the leaves shimmer in the breeze.”

“Yes, very beautiful,” Etana said earnestly. “But that breeze… I note how the weather has become a little chill in the past day or so, hasn’t it.”

“Indeed, indeed,” said Shainano-e, equally earnestly. “And you know, I find this table we’re sitting at very smooth, and isn’t it interesting that it has four legs?”

I stared at her, feeling the flush of wine sharp on my cheeks. Etana did likewise, face confounded. Silence stretched like an overtightened harp-string; then a tiny smirk tugged her lip. We all burst out laughing so hard the cups danced on the table; I buried my face in my hands, and she patted my shoulder. From then on I was in my own skin again, and we were friends.

They were agreeable in spirit, and going over the details they found them satisfactory too. I gave them a promise that if I found no one I thought more suitable, it would be them, and they were agreeable to that.

We would marry as a three, and on my ascent move together into the semanakraseye’s chambers. The wedding would be a three-quarter-moon before, the soonest it could be arranged. Our lovemaking we would time so that the first two living out of the stream were mine, the third (who would not go into the stream) Etana’s, the fourth mine, and the rest Etana’s unless one of mine died.

Negotiations need not be done, nor dinner eaten, with parched tongues; we kept the wine flowing. Another jar seemed to appear, and the contents shrink like a rain-puddle in sun, and then somehow we were out in the bushes of the river park with more wine and no light but a moon laced across with clouds. I recall some words, about trying a taste of married life now, and then feeling grass fronds tickling my bare side, by which I knew my shirt had been removed. Then it was all warm limbs and hands and tongues and ecstasy.

At one point as we lay mostly sated but still giggling, the night-guard came with his torch-hook, saying “Wastrel striplings—get home before you catch a chill!” He was one-third right that we were youngsters, at any rate. We clapped hands over mouths, sides splitting, as he cast about yelling, “I know you’re here! Answer me honestly, are you here?”

Finally I decided such a forthright question deserved a clear and civil answer: “No.” As that didn’t get rid of him, I stood up in plain sight and said to his face again, “No!” Being of the Hall Workfast, he had seen me speak in the square this morning. His jaw dropped, three times. Muttering, “No, no, there’s no one here, absolutely no one,” he scurried away.

It was hard, in truth, to leave Shaina and Etana, but I must finish the tour, which was taking much longer than it should for me meeting with prospective spouses. Though we’d agreed to be discrete about it, albeit not swearing silence, the news that I’d found someone local to marry was all over the city like fire in a gale. “Congratulations,”my friends, who were serving as my entourage, said, “but, Cheng, they’re so old!” If I heard that word once more, I promised them, there’d be teeth on the ground.

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64 - Marriage of agreement

However much it hurt, my reading by Jinai Oru had accomplished exactly what I had intended it to: set my course.

My lips are sealed, die cast, gates fast and all go home, so I become semanakraseye.

Again, I got used to living with a bitter secret. Two of them now; how many more might I amass? Now that I knew Arkan generals in hidden rooms were poring over maps of Yeola-e, I tried not to let Hetharin and Vae Arahi and the people walking in the corridors of Assembly Palace or the streets of Terera look different to me. Living with secrets that touch his whole nation, I reminded myself, is part of the life of a head of state.

Call me a coward; I gave up on love. By spring of the year I would turn twenty, I was ahead in my studies, but had no long-lasting lover. I had to think of Yeola-e. It was time to find a marriage of agreement.

I’d had a plan in the back of my mind, knowing I might need it. I would find a couple who were in love with each other but who had not yet had children, and who were both agreeable to the wife bearing my children as well as the husband’s. She must be healthy, intelligent, not necessarily a warrior but of strong physique, full-blood Yeoli (let me have no more arguments about that) and, of course, of good character.

My mother, the first person I told, said, “I wish I could tell you how soon you will find them; but I’ve never known of anyone who has done this.” At one moment it would seem that I would be flooded with offers; the next, I’d think, ‘No one will touch this.’ A man doing this; would my courage be admired, or my impudence be despised?

The second person I told, as I must, was Mana. He knew from one look at my face that it was something serious, as a friend that close will. We went up on the mountain.

“We are heart’s brothers and I hope we always will be,” I said, then seized on the last plausible hope. “You still don’t have a steady lover, do you?” He signed charcoal. “I don’t know why I’m asking... as if I wouldn’t know.”

I took a deep breath. “I’m going to give up on it… on love. And marry by agreement. It’s taking too long... I don’t mean you, I mean me.”

He stared at me, blinking. “What? Too long? Cheng…?”

“Mana... I know we’ve always planned to marry, I haven’t forgotten. But… I’m going to be semanakraseye in a year. I have to have heirs.”

“Right.” His face settled into resolve. “Who are we going to marry, Cheng? Or just you, for now?”

“What, you mean... it’s all right? You’re just agreeing?” It seemed too easy.

“You are anaraseye, Fourth Chevenga, and that means what it means, as I’ve always known. For your anaraseye, I understand, and then, if your spouses want me too... I haven’t had any serious offers, for some reason, either.”

“You haven’t had any because you haven’t wanted any,” I said. “Look me in the eyes and tell me that isn’t true.”

He shrugged and signed chalk at once. “It’s true. I’m not ready to settle down.”

“I am. I have to.” I told him my plan.

He whistled through his teeth. “People ambitious enough to just marry you for position, then? That’s hard, Cheng; would you like someone like that enough?”

“It doesn’t matter whether I like them,” I said. “Only that they are good people and good with children and agreeable to this.”

“How can you know whether someone is good with children if they don’t have them yet?

“Well, you can’t, but that’s always true. I don’t know that I’m good with children; no one does until they’re parents.”

“Ehh… I saw you with all your little brothers and sisters.” Commander in training, I thought wryly. “You’re sure you don’t want to wait for someone to wake up and offer you marriage? This is so… severe for your heart.”

“My heart is used to severity.” More than I can let you know, heart’s brother. “The deal I’ll make with this couple is that they’ll agree to the fourth of my choosing. Then love can takes its time.”

“You need heirs quicker than you need love, I understand.” He got up from where we sat in the grass and star-flowers, and paced back and forth, stamping. “I may understand it but I can still be kyashin upset,” he said, though I had not asked him to explain. I hid my face in my hands. He sat down with me again, but began hurling stones whistling hard across the meadow.

“I’m sorry, Mana,” I whispered. My eyes burned with tears.

For a moment he stared at me; then he caught me in a hard hug. “Idiot! You think I’d quit being here for you? Never.” I sobbed once and he smacked my back. “I’ve got you, Cheng. It’s not like I’ve flung myself into some luscious woman’s arms and am declaiming I’ll never be torn from her sight again like some overblown actor.”

I couldn’t help but laugh through my tears. “That would surprise me.”

“I will be here. And if things change, things change. I’ll have lots of fun in the meantime. It’s rough, but that’s life with the Shae-Arano-el, semana-kra-riven raving lunatics that you all are.”

“This one at least,” I said. “I love you, Mana. I’m sorry.”

Without letting go, he touseled my hair, hard. “Stop that. It’s just life. Nothing that’s yours to be sorry for. It’s your calling, and your line’s calling, and you are suffering more than I am, having to kyashin tell me, and worry that I’ll kevyalin walk away from you.” I don’t know what I did to deserve such a friend, I thought. He added, “Kyashin idiot.”

“You’re having to hear it,” I said. “I didn’t… really think you’d drop me as a friend… but I knew I’d be hurting you, and that’s bad enough.”

He tightened his arms. “You know, I figured on something like this when we talked about you not noticing girls wanting you.”

The finger of worry crept up my spine. What have I shown? “Something like that? How do you mean?”

“You’re so picky!” he said, grinning. I clasped my forelock, as if in admission. “So: we’ll deal with it. As always.”

“As always.” War had taught us.

“And you can have someone to complain to, if you feel lonely. I’ll get you drunk and we’ll find some fun; your wife, being in love with your husband as she will be, can hardly complain about you having numerous torrid affairs—ah, there’s a smile. Good. And when you find these paragons, I’ll shut Krero up.”

“I love you for that, Mana,” I said. “Making me smile in the midst of the worst shit... you never fail.”

“Well, someone has to do it.” He smacked me gently on the side of the head. “I love you too, Chevenga.” We sat in silence, shoulder to shoulder, for a while.

On the state visit, he’ll be in my escort, I thought. He’ll want to be nowhere else. What will become of him? All the world looks different, through eyes that have foreknowledge.

When I told my other friends, they all thought I’d got a badger bite. “But you’re such a passionate person!” they said. I don’t like it either, I wanted to say, but what do I do? Love comes when it will, taking longer with me, who has less time. I was already inuring myself to the idea it might be never.

I put out the word in Vae Arahi and Terera, just by the grapevine. (It didn’t seem the sort of thing for which you’d pin up a notice.) I got no offers, but plenty of fingers beckoning me into rooms for confidential conversations.

Esora-e said nothing; I think my mother headed him off. Veraha, like my friends, said, “Why you aren’t having to beat them off with sticks is utterly beyond me.”

Tyeraha signed me into her office. “You remember whoever you want to marry has to be approved by Assembly, yes?”

“Yes,” I said. “Am I not more likely to find someone Assembly will approve this way than by following the vagaries of my heart… or worse, my hot young loins?”

She pursed her lips and signed chalk. “You have a point. I can’t understand why you are in such a hurry, though; plenty of semanakraseyel have not married until after they took office, sometimes ten, fifteen years.”

“Oh, you know me,” I said. “Never put off until tomorrow what I can frantically scramble to get done early this morning so it’s not even put off until this afternoon.” She snorted, and signed chalk again. Let what necessity had driven me to all my life now be taken as my nature.

Time passed, and still I got no offers. Vae Arahi and Terera weren’t big enough. I’d start the speaking tour earlier, I decided, visiting even the smaller towns, and put out my wish in each one.

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63 - Fate walking

I have awful nightmares sometimes, but this had been among the worst. Please, may I wake up now?

Everything seems so peaceful... Despite the worries about Arko, I have at heart been thinking I might have ten gentle years of semanakraseyesin… that I can only save my entire people by going into the lion’s jaws and some agony beyond imagining can’t be true… it can’t be true…

I am the only person in all Yeola-e who knows… and I’m just a kid! This is too much for me, too big for me, I’m only nineteen, I know nothing, mamaaaaaah!

The thoughts of a child. I calmed, as I could not help but do, and so had to face it as an adult must. On my night-table, above me, the noteboard lay with the words I’d scrawled, news of war like a venomous snake out of a hearth, demanding to be examined and fully understood.

I tell Assembly: Red armour, horseback, with a sun on their chests—the Sunborn Elite Cavalry of Arko, that was their insignia. You are on a black horse—Akaznakir—plains somewhere, just one horse to their many and they are all after you with long spears—[war yells, he is being me fighting] Aigh aigh aigh mila—I was a milakraseye, that was the position I would have, at least at that time, if I told Assembly.

The words swam before my eyes, I am seeing you die here, on spears and under hooves, the despair far worse than the pain for Ye [he is weeping here] it’s a battle for all Ye and we’ve lost it—I put the noteboard down, gasping, sat straight as if I were meditating and seized hold of my breath.

I don’t tell Assembly: he’d seen nothing again, but this time because I had to decide something else as well. So the next was a double path, ‘I don’t tell Assembly and I don’t go on a state visit.’ Already so many of us, dead— they had a trick— you have the shape of what they did in your mind but l— words can’t shape it, I can’t say it, words are not my gift. You are cursing that I couldn’t, I’m sorry I’m sorry sem’kras—Kahara… so close, he’d seen their stratagem in his way but couldn’t explain to me… I tugged on my hair for a time.

Fighting alone against a man in red armour, taller than you, blue eyes [here he is me fighting] aigh! On the head [he strikes me] you are down, in the throat [he points]—it was exactly the same, I was dead and Yeola-e was conquered, whether I told them or not. One year, two, something like that. I wouldn’t be dead at thirty; I’d be dead at twenty-one, and my people slaves. Whether I tell or not; it doesn’t matter… deep breath, master yourself, steady down, Chevenga.

So then I’d chosen the last fork; I seized on it again now. ‘I don’t tell Assembly, I go on a state visit to Arko.’ The only way that seemed to hold any hope. I scoured the words for meaning, trying to see a whole mosaic in a scattered handful of shards.

Arko. Arko. You are there, I can tell, because there are blondies everywhere and your thoughts are thinking of it as Arko-ness—this could mean the state visit; or more. Terrible things like dreams— that don’t make sense… A blob of jam of some kind of berry I don’t know but they’re turning into worm’s heads swimming in blood and crawling off the plate— there’s the black lightning bolt with the fork above you that never goes away—these things had to be dreams, or hallucinations. Pain so much pain more pain than I can see so much more than you can bear so huge beyond imagining—but he’d seen me survive it, so that meant I could bear it. Shakora All-Spirit Shakora! I hear someone saying the whole city is dead—if it stood out so, did it mean every other city in Yeola-e had not been taken? A man with blue eyes in red and gold armour you’re fighting him though you love him—that sounded like an Arkan, though how I could love one, when they were trying to do this to us, was beyond my understanding.

I skipped over his warning I’d die young. A huge thing with metal and wood pieces that’s alive it’s moving all over in rhythm and making huge thumping clanging noises and I’m thinking I mean you’re thinking it’s a blessing to all the world—a machine? and the wing thing that too same—another machine? But what were these things, and who had them, and why were they blessings, and what did they have to do with going on a state visit to Arko?

A crowd of blondies Arkans yelling your name, acclaiming you you are speaking to them—and my age, that he’d said without hesitation and with utter authority when I’d asked, twenty-seven. Arko-ness is twined with the whole rest of your life.

Not just in the age, twenty-seven, but in the feel of the third-fork reading, was written ‘more time.’ The war was still there, in the mention of Shakora and the man with blue eyes in red and gold armour, but nothing about my dying in battle, or Yeola-e being conquered. Arkans acclaiming me, machines that were blessings, these were good things; if I was thinking of blessings to the world, I was thinking beyond Yeola-e, which meant I was not worried about Yeola-e. Arko twined with the rest of my life, did that mean I’d always be fighting them? And yet some had been acclaiming me. I’m not understanding this because it’s something I can’t conceive.

But if I looked at the whole as if from up on the mountain, it seemed to mean that keeping my secret and going to Arko would not forestall the war, but would preserve my life, and Yeola-e’s freedom… somehow. All-Spirit… can it be that simple? And the opposite of what everyone thinks, somehow; if I say war with Arko is coming, they’ll chain my ankle to a ring to keep me from going there…

I laid the notes, and sank down onto my bed, as the full horror of having received the reading sank into me. Arko was coming; that was definite. It had been in all three forks, and it fit with the last reading, which had been full of war references, as well as the one clear reference to Arko-the-City. They are going to come intending to conquer us; I can’t doubt that. But I alone in the entire nation knew for sure, and I alone knew what to do, at least for myself. And it was the thing that to everyone else would seem most foolhardy.

It was then, I think, I first truly learned the meaning of empire. My people had raised me as high as they raised anyone. I lived clothed in silk and ivory, my name spoken by two million; I need only say the word and all the warriors of Yeola-e would march; I was the embodiment of my people’s soul. Yet in the face of Kurkas’s power, I felt small.

I looked out onto Hetharin for a moment, then thought of all Yeola-e enslaved, and curled in on myself, the reality of the reading imposed on the reality of the sight of the home I loved tearing me in two. I am ashamed to admit what I did: buried myself under the covers and screamed into the sheepskins again. Then I went to my mother.

I’d waited till my eyes were dry, but she took one look at me, hauled me into their bedroom, and then wrapped me in a hug with arms like steel. "No matter how old you are, Chevenga,” she whispered, “you will always be the child I carried under my heart. Let it out." I cried yet again, for a long time. “Now tell me.”

“I… had Jinai read for me,” I whispered, when I could.

"Ah; the curse of foreknowledge again."

“Arko's coming. He saw... All-Spirit, they’re probably already kyashin planning it!” I lost words for tears again.

“Despite all you can do?” she said gently.

“I should just tell you how it went. I left my notes in my room... All-Spirit, maybe it's all wrong, maybe it's not real...” A child’s wish, the wiser voice in me told me.

My mother stroked my hair. “What could be worse than what you already know, my son?”

A cry escaped out of me before I could stop it. “What I already know is only about me!” Between deep breaths and crying-breaks and her holding me, I found the strength to tell her how the whole reading had gone.

Where my mother finds her strength, I cannot know. She listened to it all, and didn’t so much as shake, or raise her voice.

“So you are going to do something that people, including your shadow father, will think is futile and dangerous—which in one way you know is futile. And it will hurt you a great deal.” I signed chalk. “You, of all people, my son, would not choose anything easy. Losing a war is easier than enduring the third fork, by what it sounds.”

I stared at her. “I can't let Yeola-e lose a war.”

“No, my child. Of course not.”

“You know what I wish, Mama?” I got up from the bed, and went to the window. It was past Bring-Down moon, the flocks in the valley lower than Vae Arahi now. I found the one standing dark figure among the white backs of the nearest, and pointed him out. “I wish I were him.” She came up beside me, and put her arm around my back.

“I wish I were nobody. A shepherd, just tending my sheep. Nowhere near any great responsibility. Now and then I've wondered what that would be like; now I can't tell you how much I envy them.”

She smoothed my forelock back from my brow. “But if you were a shepherd, when Arko came you'd have your own hard choices to make.”

“I know, but it would just be for myself and my family. I wouldn't have to worry that the whole kyashin people might end up enslaved because of something I'd do or not do!!” I buried my head in her shoulder.

“I understand, Chevenga... but if you were a shepherd's son you'd still feel for your country as strongly, but you'd be more helpless to do anything about it. It is harsh, either way.”

I took a deep breath and lifted my head off her shoulder. “I know, I know, it's stupid, it's a child's wish, a child's envy. I don't feel big enough for this, but I am, right?”

“It’s not stupid. It’s the longing we all have, by our true nature, that no one had ever picked up the sword. Yes, you are big enough. Someone is coming who has no ears for your words of justice and sense. That was why you picked up Saint Mother's sword to begin with.”

“Yes.” She wiped tears from my cheek with the back of her hand, and there was a hardness in it.

“And you, semanakraseye, will not be alone. You will never be alone in it. All Yeola-e will be there with you. Together, we will be big enough.”

“I hope so.” I took in a breath quiveringly, let it out smoothly. “I'll keep my secret. And I'll go to Arko. Though I might get Jinai to do another reading for me before I finalize the arrangements...”

She kissed my hair. “And I will know then, when the harsh news begins, to have hope for all of us. Chevenga—leave me a copy of the notes, a legible one, when you go. Without the part you want no one to know.”

“To show to people… once they start saying I was a reckless fool.” She signed chalk. “You really think I'm big enough for this, I'm up to this, Mama? My confidence is shredded right now.”

“Of course I do, Chevenga. You know that.”

“All-Spirit… I've got to look at the notes again when I'm not so in the grip of emotion. I could be reading it all wrong.”

“I don’t think so.” I looked at her. In her eyes was that certainty I knew. “You will do this in the hope and the knowledge that it is the only way Jinai has seen for us to survive as a people.”

“I am thinking…” Tears came fresh, for what I was about to say. “That to expect no, or even a little, more pain and struggle in my life... I must be out of my mind. It's me.”

“Oh, love.” She wrapped her arms around me again, and started patting my back as she had when I’d been a baby. “From what you said there was good there, too.”

I leaned my face into her again, shutting out the world with closed eyes. “Mama, can I just cry on your shoulder for a while, like nineteen years ago?”

Her voice was sonorous through her body, as I pressed my ear to her, again like when I’d been a baby. “Of course, Chevenga. Of course.”

“I know I can't go on feeling overwhelmed. I'll have to have the strength, find it in myself... whether it seems like it's there or not.”

“Yes. It’s there. We all will. One step in front of the other, as if we don't know what we're walking into. My son, this way you are able to have the emotions now, rather than when they could stop your actions.” I signed chalk.

“Another thing… what do I say to people, Mama? I did a reading with Jinai and it was clear, Arko is coming; but I don't want to tell anyone just how badly they're going to hurt us, insofar as I can tell. I don't want to demoralize everyone; but they also have a right to know. But if I say they’re coming, everyone and his sister will argue that I'd be nuts to go. Assembly might even move to forbid me.… Aigh! I want to herd sheep.”

“Chevenga…” She took my face between her hands. “You have to trust yourself. You have a better sense for what to tell people than I do. You need only think about it, and feel it out in your heart, and you will know.”

“I'm going to have to argue for what I know is true even if everyone else thinks I'm out of my mind, and I wonder myself.”

“Yes. You also have to remember all of what Jinai saw, not forget part.”

“Right. If I believe the bad in the augury, I must believe in the good, too.”

“Yes. You cannot only look at the pain you will suffer—”

“I don't care about the pain I will suffer.”

“Or the pain we will—”

“That's what I care about! I'd take a thousand lifetimes of pain to save Yeola-e from one.”

She stroked my hair again. “Yes. You would. My Chevenga… I love you, my son.”

“I love you, too, Mama.” We held each other silently, for a time. “Thank you. You always have wisdom when I think none is possible.”

“If you need to talk or cry again, I am here.”

“I know. Thank you. All-Spirit… I’ve got a paper to finish tonight… how I'm going to concentrate on common property law with this in my mind, I have no idea. If I fail my exams, you'll know why.”

“I am here, Chevenga.”

“I'm dreading waking up tonight at the death-hour.”

“If you do, come here.”

I closed my eyes, let out a long sigh. At least now the quivers were only slight. “I need to go to the Shrine.” She signed chalk. “I have to master myself; I have to be a grown-up. I have to stop saying to myself, 'Anyone would be flattened facing this,’ and not be anyone.”

“You aren't just anyone. You are not a shepherd boy on the mountain. We would not ask it of that boy.”

“Semana kra.”

“You have to trust us, as well as yourself, to be strong. You aren't alone. Anyone who faces you faces all of us.”

I let out a longer and smoother sigh. “Yeola-e isn’t a nation of cowards. I'm forgetting that.”

“No we aren't, and I dare you to say we are to Azaila.”

I felt myself smile, in spite of everything. “Mama, I'm too much of a coward, or too smart, to do that. But… I know what you are saying. I'm alone with the foreknowledge, not with the war. I can't get the two mixed up.”

She smiled at me. “Yes. Exactly."

“Anyone who faces Yeola-e,” I said, “faces me.”

I said it strongly, and drew strength from the words, but the last were fading distant from me as they left my mouth. It was like a moment of light-headedness, as if the ground had moved under my feet; but I was seeing all as from the highest mountain, and feeling the walk of history, the vast course of the world, as if it were inside me.

“Kyash… Mama, I have a feeling. I don't know if you know what I mean... maybe you've felt it, I don't know... As if you are feeling fate walking. The world is being changed, invisibly, inside and under everything you can see; and you feel it. And only you feel it.”

“Yes. I have felt that. I've always thought it was a form of All-Spirit.”

“When did you feel it—when you married Dad?”

“A little, then. When he was killed, no; the change of the world was very visible. I felt it strongest when you were born.”

“Really? Mama—” The feeling grew stronger, and words came to me that were too certain not to say. “Mama… when I have gone to Arko and you hear I'm dead, or I've been captured, or whatever... don't mourn me, or worry for my life. I'm not going to die there.”

She smoothed my collar with two hands, in an unthinkingly motherly way. “All right. I won’t.” I looked down at my hand. It was trembling, as it had not been a moment ago.

“I sometimes wish I lived in total blissful ignorance of the future,” I said. “But I'll be a better semanakraseye for seeing it.”

“Yes. I have always said it is more curse than gift, but you will be.”

“Thank you, Mama. I'm all right now.” I was; I felt a kind of lightness and cleanness inside. “At least for now… I’ll get the vapours a few more times, I’m sure. Thank you. I love you.”

“Then you will be back, and I will be here. I love you, too.”

In my room, I looked in my mirror. Never mind whether there’s a beard hair there or not, I told myself. And never mind whether you’re up to this. If the time comes that you are all that Yeola-e has, you will be up to it, because you must be. I opened the common property law books to write the paper.

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