18 - Love-making killed and come back rotten

Parochial though it must sound, it first seemed to me, seeing the Lakan envoy’s party in Assembly Hall, that they had painted their skin brown, pulled their hair straight and dipped it in ink. Even after I had seen their hands stay brown though many dippings in finger-bowls, it still defied credence to my eyes. Of course in the village where the Shae-Tyucheral lived I saw people who had hair in waves instead of true curls, and dark skin, being part Lakan.

Likely you do not know the name Shae-Tyuchera. I have found that few know it, though many students of the sword can recount the story stroke by stroke, sometimes even accurately.

So I shall give all their names to you. The eldest was Binchera, who was in her sixties; with her lived her daughter Rigratora-e and her husband Osilaha Shae-Chini, and their four children, Bukini, who was nineteen and Nainano-e, who was fifteen, both of them blooded, Kicharesa, who was eleven, and Ini-lai, who was ten. They are the family on whose farm I stayed for a month away the summer I was thirteen, near the village of Krisae, and so close to the border they were almost in the shadow of the circle-stone.

As always, I was one of the children, no more, no less, except that my accent was inland and Nainano-e took it upon herself, on my urging, to further my education in things sexual, even doing that which would make children in the time of the month that we would not. I was a head smaller than her, but my face was lengthening and my arms had a little more meat on them than before.

The first time, I wanted to go up on the mountain, but she took me to the vegetable patch instead. “We shouldn’t go too far from the house, in case the Lakans come,” she said, and we lay down together between the grapes and the tomatoes. It was something to hear for me, from deep inland, the lack of fear in her voice, only a caution that was a matter of course, as against drinking suspect water or eating meat that had been uncooked too long. I decided to take it as calmly as it was given; the thought of a raid was as distant as a dream to me.

There'd been talk at home that it was too risky to send me to live unguarded in such a place, but those who favoured it, led by my shadow-father, had won the debate, barely. My orders were to get as far away from any danger as fast as I could.

Once I asked her about her blooding; I expected a grand telling, but she just said, “They raided the Raseyels’, but we knew they were coming, so a gang of us hid behind the barn and took them from behind. I stuck the one I killed beside the codpiece—he’d turned around—then put him out of his pain. Then we got in trouble for not fetching enough grown-ups. Oh, stop asking questions; you unblooded people never want to talk about anything else; don’t you think we have better things to do?”

In the third quarter of the month, in the dead of night, the dog started barking as if he’d gone mad. Though most people didn’t sleep as lightly as I did even then, everyone was suddenly up. Then through the stone walls came the second sound, one such as men might have made in the pits of time before thought: a long furious deep howl, like a wolf-pack baying all together, but full of rage and intent as wolves never sound. It froze me entirely, the Shae-Tyucheral only for a moment. It seemed like the echo in my mind of some terrible dream, except that they were all moving. I hadn’t yet learned how to wake fighting.

Osilaha, Bukini and Naina had all leapt to throw on armour; they knew where it was even in the dark. But now my month-father said, “No… it’s too many. Let’s run.”

“The anaraseye goes first!” Binchera cried in her cracked voice. Rigra drew me in her two strong hands to the window of the children’s room, furthest from the door. But we saw the shutter with its carven wheat-sheaf struck so hard it shook, and a man’s voice outside shouted chopped harsh words I couldn’t understand. Lakan, I thought dully. He had a spear; I sensed its point, aimed at me as no true steel ever had been, with killing intent, in my life. They had ringed the house. Through the chamber door, I saw Osilaha looking at us, his strong face full of despair.

Then his eyes took on resolve. “Buk, Naina,” he said, quietly. “All-Spirit asks. Follow me.” I saw Naina’s pale fierce eyes, a flash of anger turning to resolution, sharpening the resemblance to her father’s; she tightened her hand on the long shaft of the spear she held, and took a long deep fighting-breath, just as I would do in training. Osilaha shot the thick worn wooden bar with a bang and threw open the door, and the three sprang out together with a long war-cry.

No! I thought. Stand in the door and then they’ll only be able to come at you one or two at a time! For the first time in my life I felt the stab in the heart of seeing a move ill-made that will cost more dearly than I could bear, and could not believe what it would mean even as I knew. But as the clanging of fighting started—just the same as training, but so different—the spear at the window was gone, the Lakans all running to the front door. I saw why Osilaha had ordered as he had.

Naina must have understood. I know now what that anger was, so fleeting; that she would never finish the sweater she was knitting, never lie with a boy in the vegetable patch again, never grow up.

Rigra threw the shutters open. “Chevenga, run to the village and get the warriors, go!” She held back her two youngest, and Binchera waited for me, too. I threw my leg over the sill. Outside, the stars danced above the mountain, and in the embrace of its shadow was a thousand man-lengths of safety, and rescue, that I'd been ordered to, and my legs itched, to run to. My heart couldn’t.

“Go, boy! What’s taking you?” Rigra’s voice was hoarse; she pushed, and I clung. Kicharesa shrieked, “I’ll get them, mama!” squeezed by me and was gone, her small legs flashing away. A scream came from the door, with more outpouring of life in its length than I had ever heard before, because, I saw slowly, it was a life’s last expression, its farewell to itself. The voice was Osilaha’s. A moment later, Bukini screamed likewise, from closer, inside. Naina I heard nothing of, though the clutch of swords no longer seemed to be striking. The Lakans were in the hearth-room. I swung my leg back over and said, “I’ll go last.” That was some measure of respect, at least.

Something struck my ear so hard my eyes went a little black, and my ear stung like fire: Binchera’s hard-tendoned hand. “You little ingrate, they’ve given their lives, all three, to make you this chance—go!!” Little Ini slipped past me into the night, and ran whimpering; then I was flying. My month-mother had picked me up by the hair and leg and flung me headlong out the window. I rolled out of it and stood up.

Through the black sky, hails of yellow sparks flowed in the air, coming wreathed in thatch-smoke; they’d set the barn on fire, but the terror-stricken bleating of the sheep was from closer; Kicharesa, I imagine, had unlatched the gate; the spirit to save what one can is well-ingrained in people who live near borders. I looked back; Rigra’s leg had swung over the sill. I would have expected Binchera, but I learned later that it’s customary among border people for the elderly to wait till last, since they have only a short time left to them anyway. My month-mother fixed her eyes on me, readying herself to kick me all the way to the village if she had to, as she began to swing her other leg over. Then torchlight filled the room, her eyes widened and she was jerked backwards, gone.

What I remember, I remember as in a dream. There was the feel of the night air on my face, and the dog still barking frantically; he was the kind to make noise from out of reach rather than fight, and so lived. There was the smell of thatch-smoke, the sound of the sheep’s hooves tamping the packed earth, more distant, my ear still stinging. It seemed I perceived all these things from a distance, like daylight from the bottom of a well.

I knew it all by the sounds. Her first yells, war-yells, pure and tearless, the rustling and grunt of struggle, the Lakans’ laughter; then blows, some sharp and cracking, some thumping bone-deep, and her brave cries breaking into sobs. Teeth-set silence and more laughter and words in Lakan; the tearing of cloth, the creaking of the bed, hoarse deep breaths, quickening, mingled with higher strangled panting, a choking cough.

What would they want of me now, and what was required of me? To be safe, I thought; but I am. I felt so, crouching here free, while this happened to her. To see and learn their lives, as an anaraseye on a month away is supposed to do… I raised my head so that my eyes were just higher than the sill.

They had hung their lights on the wall-hooks and laid down their weapons to free their hands. They were splattered with blood, reminding me of my father’s assassination. Like the Lakan envoys, they were earth-brown, their straight black hair never cut, oiled slick and tied back with long leather thongs; but they were lean rather than soft, the smaller one’s muscles like rope on the outside of his arms, their wide breeches stained and leathern cuirasses worn: two brigands with bad teeth who carried the eternal shame in themselves Laka requires its poor to feel in their very souls, and who, therefore, as rich Lakans would holds themselves above law, held themselves beneath honour. I would understand all this later; I only saw its signs now, something previously unimaginable to me.

But they were men, with faces that wore expressions, where I had thought to see, and thought I should see, monsters; one could read them as one read Yeoli faces. There was the fire of exertion, ruddy on brown cheeks, hidden fear, rage unleashed, joy at what they’d found here. For the smaller, hunger sated; he was gnawing on a goose-bone from our pot. They were young men, sons of pioneers whose crops looked to be weak this year perhaps.

But their humanity made what they did now all the more terrible. I wonder if it would have been easier if I’d been raised on the border. For all the veracity of training, for all the dares and boasting and vying that had been my childhood, I had never in my life seen true violence done.

I watched, and thought sluggishly, “So this is what it looks like.” Rigratora-e lay half-stunned; it takes a fair amount of beating of a strong woman, it seems, to force her legs apart. One had taken his turn; now the other pulled down his breeches. What my eyes least believed was his member, brown as the rest of him, standing high and hard. I had never thought much about this, and had childishly imagined that men who did it had to force themselves to feel pleasure before, perhaps with their hand, to enable themselves to do it.

But the Lakan took pleasure in Rigra’s very pain, throwing himself on her with the force of an attack, thrusting as hard as he could, making of that part of himself a weapon as a warrior does with his hands when fighting unarmed, but against someone helpless, as a true warrior never does. When she closed her eyes and set her teeth to will herself away in mind, he struck her or clamped his fingers around her throat until her mind was drawn back and she suffered enough for his pleasure once more. In the way of a child naming the things of the world, I thought, “This is love-making killed and come back rotten.”

My shock turned to rage. I’d never wanted to kill before; now I wanted to do worse, make him suffer as terribly as she was suffering, but ending with him in shreds, starting with the part he stabbed her so joyously with.

But it is for children to rely on adults to act. I was three years away from my wristlets. My helplessness twisted like a blade in my heart; as before a mirror I screamed to myself again, “Grow! Grow!” Why were the warriors of Krisae taking so long, where were they, who were sworn to save us, to fight those who have no ears for our words of justice and sense so that we may sow peaceful fields? I am three years away! I remembered feeling my hands move a wooden blade with their first skill, flexing my forearm and finding a new ridge there, my arrow striking the eye dead centre, the crowd roaring as I play-fought as All-Seeing Rao. Through my tears as through crystal I saw the sword of Saint Mother rising in my tiny hand, Esora-e, the finger-wrestling, the darkness of the cellar, all the things that had tempered me. Where were the warriors? Would they ever come? Three years! Rigra couldn’t wait that long.

The world changed, becoming weightless. Then rising through me sang the wind, and the harmonic singer. I ceased feeling my smallness, or anything of myself at all. The large Lakan’s sword was propped naked against the bed; I felt it before I saw it, amber with his groundless hate. The other had his back to me. Neither were looking. I crept over the sill, sprang across and snatched the sword up.

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17 - Digression: the sword of Saint Mother

Before I recount what happened at the Shae-Tyucheral's, I'll tell the story with which every Yeoli’s story truly begins, and which explains where that sword that hangs from chains in the anteroom of the School of the Sword came from.

Once upon a time in the nation of Iyesi, there was a sect called the Athyel, who believed in no god but the God-in-Ourselves, and that humanity by nature is free. When the King 14^th Jopal had risen to power, he sent his warriors to kill all who would not abandon their own creed and pledge themselves to his. Nine days the streets of the city Iyesinya ran with blood and the sky shone with flame, and all who were not killed fled into exile or hiding.

One teacher in an Athyi school gathered together those students whose parents had been killed, and fled away with them into the mountains. Although they soon were tired and hungry, and some of the children were lost or eaten by wild animals, she barely let them rest as much as they needed, and at each choice of ways chose one without pausing, though she didn’t know which way to go.

One day, near the end of their strength, they came to a deep, wide valley. On the shore of a lake they found a woman fishing. The teacher fell on her knees and begged her aid.

The woman embraced the teacher, and all the children, and said, “Many years ago, the knowledge came to me that Athyi children would flee to this place, driven from Iyesi. So I prepared for you as best I could: my house is large, you see, the garden wide and the herd-animals many. My name is Yeola. Come in! All this is yours.”

So they went in and ate their fill from the great pot of stew which hung waiting, then lay down on the many mats and under the many blankets, while she tended their hurts with Haian medicines she had in plenty.

“Yeola, our saviour,” the teacher said, “we could never thank you enough. But I had no idea which way to go, and every time our way forked, I chose without pausing, so it’s entirely by chance we came here. How could you have known many years ago that we would?”

“Foreknowledge works outside of time,” Yeola answered. “Had chance taken you to the next valley instead, I would have known to wait there. That is hard to understand, I know, for those who don’t have a touch of it themselves; perhaps the best explanation is that the God-in-Me told me.”

The teacher was overjoyed. “You are one of us!”

“Not exactly,” said Yeola. “But I can speak the language of your thought. I believe in none of the Gods as Their priests would have me do, and believe in all of Them as They are. I serve no God, for none has asked it of me; I serve all, because their presence asks, every moment of life. I proselytize for no God, since each is part of the truth as nations are part of the world; but I speak the language of each, so that I may understand all people. To Enchians I would have said my prescience came from the God of their Ancients, to nature-cultists, from the Hermaphrodite, to animists, from the mountain-spirits, to Fire-cultists, from the Twin Hawks. But you happen to be Athyel, so I said it came from the God-in-Myself.

“Well… I thank you for being so considerate as to speak the language of our thought,” the teacher said finally. “But I am curious to know where you believe your foreknowledge of us came from.”

“I believe—I firmly believe—it came from all of Them. Or none. Or me. Or out of the sky. I firmly believe I do not know. Also that I do not care. It came from the world of the unknown, which is wondrous because it is unknown. All the Gods’ names are names for it. Once given, such a name becomes Truth, the name of the Truth a people feel from the unknown. Yours is the God-in-Ourselves, so I said that. Not that it matters a bit anyway; I hope this never ends up in some storybook.” The teacher laughed, and Yeola laughed with her. “You’re here, there’s food and bed, and you may all stay as long as you like, even if that’s permanently.”

So they did. When they were strong enough they began the work of life, on the land, and continued their education from the many ancient books that Yeola-e had. Seek wisdom, she taught them; find the God-in-Yourselves; live by the ultimate law that there is no ultimate law, only our choices. For meanings their native tongue had no words for, they invented new words; for settling their disputes and making their common choices they created new customs.

Years passed, and the children grew up, cleared more land, built houses and had children of their own. Yeola grew old. In their thirtieth year in the valley, as their children were just beginning to have children, Yeola took ill, and it became clear she would soon die.

Around her bed, the people gathered. “My children,” she said, “you think I have shared everything I have with you, but in all honesty I have not. I realize I must, now.

“I could never choose your ways any more than I could think your thoughts. You will choose whether to stay in this valley or go somewhere else, remain Athyel or take up some religion, go on with the customs you’ve invented or return to Iyesian ones. Yet there is one choice I did dearly wish to deny you forever, pretending to myself in my foolishness that this peaceful garden in which we live was the whole world. There was one thing I hid from you. You must choose what has always been the hardest choice. It’s in the chest where I keep my most precious things, at the very bottom.”

At the bottom of the chest, they found a sword.

The sight brought back the most painful memories to those who had fled Iyesi. They saw again in their minds the iron-armoured soldiers of Jopal, the spears and swords blood-drenched, the houses in flames; they heard again the cries of the dying, and smelled again the smoke and the blood.

“Never did I want you to carry, and learn to use, the tools of killing,” Yeola whispered. “But someday those may come here who want to kill you, who have no ears for your words of justice or sense. Someday having it may save your lives, and that choice I cannot deny you. You must choose whether to take it up or not.

“I ask only this: in that same chest is a smaller box. Open it and see what’s inside.” They found a book, of an age beyond thinking. The pages were darkened but the writing still visible, and it made them start and shiver in their hearts. A human hand is unsteady and will leave flaws; this writing was perfect, as could only have been done by a machine.

“I knew Jopal would burn your libraries. So I took this, which the first Athyel collected from the ruins of the Fire. They knew people would start doubting it was human-crafted fire that burned the whole world, for by using such great power that way humanity threw it away, and can no longer imagine having it. So the proof must be preserved. This was written when such weapons existed, and speaks of them.

“The knowledge to make them is lost—but only for now. Do you know what the commonest weapon of war was, five hundred years before the Fire?” She pointed at the sword.

“We won’t have this thing!” one of the people cried. “We’ll throw it in the very deepest part of the lake!” But another clenched his fists and said, “Are you mad? She’s right, someone will come, just as Jopal did. If our parents had all had swords, everything would have been different!” They fell to quarrelling, each side calling the other mad. When they finally made peace, they turned to her sadly and said, “Yeola, we truly see this thing’s two edges.”

“You are forgetting something,” she said. “This is not a good or evil thing, for it does not live. It’s only a piece of steel. Never can it kill, without a living hand wielding it, and bare hands can kill too. What brought the First Fire, and will bring the Second, if there is one, is not weapons or knowledge, but choices made in error. Remember that.”

Yeola died that night. Once again they wept and clung together, and found their strength in each other.

They buried her ashes beside the lake, and all bathed naked in the pure water, to cleanse themselves. In her honour they named the valley in which they lived Yeola-e.

Later we, for we are all Yeolis, came to call her Saint, for having been divine in her humanity, and Mother, for having been mother in spirit to all of us. Her sword, serving as a sign to all and belonging to no one, now hangs in the anteroom of the School of the Sword, for we did choose to take it up.

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16 - Time always takes care of that

Yet if this is power, I thought, it’s not absolute. Had I not felt such injustice at Esora-e’s words, I would not have called on it at all; it would have had no base in truth.

Anger came creeping back, goaded by the pain of my bandaged hand. I thought, and still think, my blood-father would have combed me lightly, if at all. A few days later I dallied with a girl who shall remain nameless on the mountain, thought I knew it was training-time. I’ll miss a day, I thought; so what? I’m so far ahead of the others anyway. Provoking Esora-e, I have to admit, was at the back of my mind.

What I didn’t think of was that he might worry I was lying in a gorge somewhere, helpless with a broken leg. The girl and I looked up absently from what we were doing, to see a search-fan of people threaded across the valley below, small as ants. We watched bemused for a time, wondering which child had gone missing, until I heard a snatch of their calling with the name in it on the wind. “Che-ven-gaaaaaaaaaaah!”

For a while I considered lying down, pulling a rock or two on top of me and faking it. I could say I’d thought it was broken and dared not move. I considered fleeing over the pass and joining the Sinere Circus for good; Aguro would be delighted. I considered leaping off a cliff. In the end, I kissed my lover goodbye, squared my shoulders and walked down to face them, with only the truth. My mother would see through any story anyway, if I disappeared everyone would think I was dead, and if I jumped off a cliff I would be.

Esora-e gave the class to one of the senior students, and took me into the inner chamber of the School. I had never been here before. The walls were bare white but for the circle, the symbol of the Void.

“It was a girl, wasn’t it?” he asked. I signed chalk. “I thought so.” He knelt for a time wordless, his gray eyes under the thick dark brows turned to the floor, that strand of hair was trembling. Finally his hand reached, and played with my necklace, rolling the stones over his fingers. “Do you know how you look in this?” he asked, deadly quiet.

“Good enough, I’m told,” I said, the truth.

“By children, who are easily amused. To us, you look ridiculous.” He touched the grip of my father’s ivory comb. “And this… can you name me one other person, lad, who wears his comb showing like that?” I could think of no one, so I said nothing. “You’re all over the mountain with every girl you catch a glimpse of, tempting them with talk of marriage. And now you take it on yourself to decide whether you need to war-train or not. All these things say one thing: you are reaching beyond your grasp, seeking to be something you cannot be, trying to be greater than you are.”

“That’s strange, shadow-father,” I said, deadly quiet, just the same as him. “I seem to recall it was someone other than me who chose that I should be the world’s greatest warrior.”

“But you agreed to it. And so you will be, if you are a warrior at all, which you also chose, else you will have done less than your best. But that’s when you’re grown, not now. That’s it, Fourth Chevenga, that’s the whole of it: you are trying to be older than you are. That is why it’s laughable; a child trying to pass himself off as an adult always is.”

Esora-e, my shadow father. I know you will read this, and I hope you will take it to heart. I know I never gave you the truth that would allow you to understand. That was my choice. I considered telling you, but decided to err on the side of caution. You thought good had to be beaten into me, so I didn’t think, if I told, you would leave my choices to me. If I was wrong, I am sorry and I beg your forgiveness.

The room went dark for a moment, except for his grey eyes staring into mine. I felt my nails pressing into my palms hard enough to hurt, and my muscles twitching and bristling all over.

“Am I wrong?” he said softly? “Are you a grown-up? Prove it—no, not here.” I followed him, trembling, to the anteroom. Before the sword of Saint Mother, he held out his hands, fingers spread.

So it was my shadow-father took the part of the stone wall set before me in my mind, though he didn’t know it. I would smash it down; I would crush him, throw him to his knees, grind his face on the floor; I, who by his own doing would be the greatest warrior in the world, who I chose to do something always did it, here in sight of the talisman that told the people my destiny, would crumble his hands to dust in mine. I would make my fingers steel, like the claws of Shininao, that nothing can ultimately withstand; I would be tireless as the waterfall, for all hands might seem like stone; I would break them if they would not bend, for all they seemed bronze-cast, for all it hurt, for all my fingers became fire, for all my tendons felt like they were tearing and my wrists strained to near-breaking, for all I might weep with the pain of it…

I took stock. He was holding, our hands locked between us, unmoved from when we started. Though his knuckles were white and forearms hard-ridged, his eyes showed no effort.

That was all he did, while I kindled my anger again for another such surge, and another, giving all my strength. When I began to feel truly spent, his chin rose, almost too slightly to see, his eyes narrowed a touch, and he started truly using his strength.

Esora-e knew a thousand finger-wrestling tricks. He used none of them, to show he didn’t need to, save one: lifting the hands, which you use if you are the taller. Otherwise, it was plain strength. I fought him so hard the pain did make me weep, aloud, but it made no difference to his bearing me down, as if my strength were nothing at all. When he said, without even strain in his voice, “Concede, lad; I don’t want to hurt you,” I shouted, “Never! Not even if you break both my wrists!” He finally took me to my knees with a down and forwards jerk. I was so tired that when he let go I fell on my face.

I’d once seen one of Artira’s dolls, broken and cast aside, on a floor somewhere, and wondered how that would feel, if it could feel. Now I knew. I heard the faint creaking of the chains of the sword of Saint Mother. Someone, I couldn’t see who, happened in; lying at Esora-e’s feet, I saw him wave them away. He knelt beside me, taking my head on his knee, and took out his vial of whack-weed. “Under the tongue, lad.” I let him give me the drops, and he took my shield-arm and began massaging it, with surprising gentleness, in his great callused hands.

When I had the strength, I tore the necklace from around my neck and hurled it across the room, and did likewise with my father’s comb.

Esora-e stroked my hair. “One day you’ll be able to beat me,” he said. “Time always takes care of that, for those who are patient.”

Time will take care of me! Eighteen years: that’s all, shadow-father, that’s all the time I have to trouble you, if I take time away everything else I do. Eighteen years, that’s why I’m in a kyashin hurry, that’s why I want to get the training part of my scrap of a life done with! Eighteen years—I call you out to do chiravesa, try being me! Try being me with eighteen kyashin years!

The words stayed locked behind my teeth.

“Up,” he said, after he’d kneaded all the muscles I’d strained. “Onto the ground.” There he trained with me alone, for as long as usual, so that I was doing my other work until late into the night.

My mother waited up. I meant to kiss her goodnight without saying anything, but she noticed the necklace missing.

“My precious child,” she said, when I explained. “My little Warm-arms… it’s just a few bright stones and a shining chain.” She took my face between her hands. “You are you. Do you really think you are not handsome enough without it? Do really think no one notices or admires you?” No one else had put it that way.

When Esora-e gave me back the necklace the next day, I found it had changed overnight, looking overblown. I gave it away shortly after.

When he gave me the comb, it was as if a sword went through my heart. It lay in two pieces in his hand, one of the end tines broken off.

In my place of comfort in my room, I held it to my forehead and swore a hundred times I would never again throw anything precious in anger, an oath I have kept, except once. I asked at the market and found it could be repaired strongly enough with glue to be displayed, but not used; the knots in my hair would take that tine off again in a moment. So my father’s ivory comb remained that way, as long as I carried it.

†

In the winter of 1539, Enjaliansi’s heart seized up, killing him right on his throne. His son Kranaj replaced him without the succession troubles one often sees in a monarchy, whose contenders often consider themselves above law.

King Kranaj and Tyeraha met at Nefra ostensibly for trade talks, but in truth to make friends, which they did. Finished meeting, they hunted deer together in the great forest, with their respective heirs as squires.

This was the first time I’d ever been entrusted with something so important. I was doing well enough in my aunt’s eyes, apparently, because as we rode to the forest she said to Kranaj, “My friend, why don’t we exchange squires for the chase? That’ll keep the boys’ eyes sharp, and it’s this one you’ll be dealing with, instead of me, in eight years.” I kept my face impassively pleasant, though I wanted to caper through the trees. Alone with a foreign king; it would be so grown up.

Kranaj’s son Reknarja was fourteen, two years my elder. His freckled cheeks darkened between his two brown sheets of straight hair, and he blurted, “What, that slip of a boy? Father, his head hardly comes to my shoulder!” upon which Kranaj kicked him. Maybe Reknarja thought I knew as little Enchian as he knew Yeoli.

He swallowed a yelp and his jewels tinkled; then a silence fell in which everyone looked at everyone else. Reknarja’s eyes flashed angrily from me to his father and back, full of words he dared not say. My aunt, knowing it was my policy to challenge older children who insulted me to sparring-duels, gave me a look that commanded, “Don’t even think of it.” Kranaj’s eyes, wide-set and blue-grey under his fringe of straight forelocks, flicked between mine and hers, trying to judge how we had taken it, and his, furious. All the fragile goodwill that had been built up so painstakingly over these past years could be destroyed in a word.

I saw what I should do, and did it: smiled eagerly at Kranaj and said, “I’d be honoured to be your squire, amaesti,” as if I’d heard nothing. There was no one in the School of the Sword even a year older than Reknarja who I couldn’t take, so I knew I could carve him up at my leisure if it came to it; that always helps. “And I’d be honoured to have you as my squire, daifena,” my aunt said to him smoothly, easing the anger from his face. The smile came back to Kranaj’s face. “Yes, let’s swap them. It will be good training in manners.”

Everything fell smoothly back into the course it should follow, and Reknarja and I changed places. When the king and I were alone, I said, “I hope my smallness does not displease you, amaesti,” to let him know I had heard after all. “Of course not, anaraseye,” he said. “A boy with wits is as good as one with size. Or better; size will come to you. You forgive Reknarja, I hope.”

“Yes, amaesti. I know how it is, yearning to be older.” Make use of what you know, I was always taught.

A foreign monarch doesn’t necessarily reflect his people as a semanakraseye reflects Yeola-e, but I still began to learn tolerance of Enchians from Kranaj. They had invaded us, and an Enchian had backstabbed my father, but here was another Enchian who would explain to me the old stag’s trick of running over his own trail to mislead his trackers instead of just commanding me to follow, which was all that was required of him, or let me correct his pronunciation when he called me “Sievenka” as Enchians generally do, and even try a few times to get it right.

Even if he resembled only himself, it still proved that they varied, same as us, for all my shadow-father would argue that they’re all the same, and evil. It sowed in me the seed of the thought that is necessary for peace: that it is injustice to hate a whole people for what one of them has done.

At any rate, after this and some other efforts, our worst enemy became Astyardk, the king of Laka, who seemed to be trying to provoke something, perhaps. The raids came more often, the gifts and diplomatic visits ceased, and in training it became a Lakan instead of an Enchian whose imagined heart we thrust into.

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15 - The Boy with Eyes in the Back of his Head

Our custom of the month away, in case you do not know, sends a child, anaraseye or senahera apprentice, to live with a family or workfast other than their own, away from their hometown, to learn how other people live.

All told, I was sent twenty times over five years, starting when I was ten, to serve as the apprentices’ apprentice in one form or another. The joys and the drudgery are to be shared by all, as the saying goes, and Ascendants, since their adulthood is spent in office, have all their drudgery in childhood. No one knew that most of my life would be childhood. But I loved my months away, in truth.

Esora-e wanted my first to be on a border, preferably a border where there might be raids. My aunt and other parents felt otherwise, and sent me to a blacksmith’s in Thara-e. The apprentice’s lot is having to do all the work too simple for his parents; I, being his apprentice, had to do all the work too simple for him.

People at the Hearthstone who, having never done such work in their lives, glorify it, had scared me into worrying that I might not be strong enough. But the bellows-pole moved when I pushed it, like the sword of Saint Mother. On the first day, I carried wood and water and the occasional piece of metal until I felt I would drop, and on the second did the same amount of work and didn’t feel I would drop. I began to learn pride in this sort of endurance, which feels different from that of a warrior. The dark shop with its tools and scraps and half-formed objects hung on the walls or piled on the floor was full of the secrets of how things were made.

I stayed a month at a money-bank in Tinga-e, where my arithmetic was tested all day and forever found too slow. I herded sheep in the foothills of the New Mountains, running barefoot over the limestone-flagged ground until my feet were hard as horn. I served in a shrine once a year, mostly sweeping, sometimes copying books that needed less skill, or standing all afternoon in meditation, watching the carving of a stele.

I was a month on a warship patrolling the coast near the Enchian border, doing all the same drills as the warriors, and rowing with them too. My father had taken a month run on a merchanter as well, all over the Miyatara, but it was decided between my parents, my aunt and my grandmother that that was too dangerous now. There have always been, and will always be, pirates; but these days the ships of Arko, which had long kept the seas mostly clear of such, now and then seized ships themselves, for no reason but to steal everything and everyone on them.

“They’re old for an empire now, and declining, for all they are young for a people,” my grandmother explained. “They always believed right lay with the sword, so now they think it’s their due to be as rich as they can get, no matter how. They can only do that sort of thing so long; it rots a people from the inside, even if they appear outwardly strong, and weakens them, like a tree that you find is hollow when the wind pushes it over.”

Best of all, I was given what every child must yearn for one time or another: a month traveling with the Sinere Circus.

What I did at first, and thought I’d be doing all month, was shoveling up what the horses and lions and monkeys let drop. At least I got to see the show every time. Then I and several of the circus kids, seizing a moment of idleness by hiding from the adults, were playing knife-games, with me teaching them sword-moves, when I told them about my weapon-sense.

“You mean you can tell where a sword or spear is without seeing it?” said the most skeptical of all, the illusionist’s daughter, of course. Proof was in order, so I had them blindfold me and come at me with knives.

“All-Spirit bless us all!” the animal master’s son, the oldest among us, exclaimed, when I’d proved it. I thought he was thinking what most people thought when they saw it: it boded well for Yeola-e’s future. That was one reason I liked to show people. “Chevenga!” he said. “You could do such a great act!” The others all chimed in, signing chalk.

There is an old rumour in parts of southern Yeola-e that All-Seeing Rao, the Boy With Eyes in the Back of His Head, was actually me. I conceal the truth no longer. I would rather have gone by my real name, and without the disguise, but the circus elders would not let me, worried that it would be said that the gravity of my position had been compromised if it came out.

I wore a fire-red wig with ringlets down to my waist—they’d paint my eyebrows red to match—a kilt painted with dragons and flames, and false wristlets, may Esora-e someday forgive me, with gold sequins.

In the act, one of the circus hands would blindfold me, and lead me to the edge of the ring, for people in the first row of the audience to test that I was truly blindfolded. While the ringmaster pattered on about my ability and how it showed up in my family only once every twenty generations and it had been discovered when I caught an arrow in my teeth as a baby, the circus hand would produce a knife, and have me point where it was, follow it with my arm and so forth.

Then, just as the ringmaster was predicting how great a warrior All-seeing Rao would be when he grew up, to all Yeola-e’s benefit, a savage war-cry would come from under the stands. One of the acrobats who was war-trained, costumed in full gear either as an Enchian, Lakan or Arkan, whomever was hated most where we were playing, would come charging out roaring that I must be slain before I could become the scourge of Tor Ench, Laka or Arko.

First he’d throw his spear and I’d dodge it by a hair’s width. Then he’d draw his sword and chase me around the ring until I tripped and sprawled in the dust (usually this would draw screams from the crowd). Ducking, dodging, twisting, staggering up and leaping, I’d avoid all his blows, all the while yelling for someone to throw me a sword, which of course they’d loudly debate, feigning worry that it would kill me if it came point-first, while I loudly reassured them I’d catch it just fine whatever way it came, and I would soon be skewered anyway if they didn’t, so could they please hurry up?

Finally they would, I’d catch it, and then the acrobat and I would go at it stage-style, wide-open and furious and with all sorts of spectacular dives and leaps and somersaults, clashing our swords together hard to make the crowd know they were real steel (though all the edges were blunt). Finally I’d unsword him, which neither he or I really had to fake, and I’d hold my sword to his throat and he’d surrender. Then, with a flourish, I would take off the blindfold, to an invariably deafening roar from the crowd.

The people ate it up. They’d throw me flowers and scarves and ankaryel, so that when I went home I’d be disgracefully rich, and would have to spread it far and wide fast among my friends before my parents found out. The day I had to leave, the chief elder, Aguro Sinere, said, cursing and flinging out his arms as circus people tend to, “Why, oh why, must you be Fourth Chevenga Shae-Arano-e? With the amount of money we’d pay you to stay, we could keep you, if you were anyone else in all Yeola-e!”

When my parents asked me how it had gone and what I had learned, I just said it had gone well and I heard learned much. But I had made one mistake: let the ringmaster tell the crowd the truth of where I was being trained, the School of the Sword. In one town, a general had come to the show, and she sent Azaila a letter commending him for the excellent training of “the boy some eleven or twelve years of age with long flame-red hair, who as a performer with the Sinere Circus demonstrated extraordinary weapon-sense.”

Azaila just thought it was funny, I found out later. My shadow-father called me into his room. “Tell me the person who wrote this letter has her schools mixed up and writes of some other boy,” he said, “and I’ll believe you and never say another word.”

He truly wanted me to do that, I saw. I could not. It didn’t even take any debate within myself. I drew straight and took a deep breath and said, “She doesn’t have her schools mixed up, shadow-father.”

For a little while he sat frozen, the one strand of his peaked forelock that shook when he was angry beginning to. Then he sprang up and seized me by the hair on either side of my face.

“Is this Fourth Chevenga Shae-Arano-e? Is this the child we chose to give such a name, our first, our anaraseye, my heart’s brother’s oldest child who he loved with all his heart until the day he died—did this come from him, and us? This creature of wood, who appreciates nothing given to him, to whom the feelings of others are nothing, whose deviousness for new ways to spit on everything and everyone that made him knows no bounds?”

After a lot of thought in my youth, I eventually came to understand Esora-e. He believed the path to something great was long and therefore must necessarily be narrow. That was how he had been raised, and he was trying to form me into something greater than himself, so my path should be even narrower than his had been, he felt. I also know that he felt any lightheartedness about warriorhood was mockery and therefore contempt for it.

Part of me wanted to weep; another part wanted to passionately argue my case as if in front of a judge, “Who have I harmed?” But most of me, I found, was angry.

From somewhere in me came a courage that I had grown into without knowing it. Perhaps it was from being Rao, who had no duties, no lessons, no foreknowledge. I fixed my glare on Esora-e like a warrior and said, “Let go.” He did, and stepped back, drawing breath to speak. I drew my father’s ivory comb out of my belt to tidy my hair where he’d mussed it, looking at him pointedly; let that remind him whose child I was. Then it was as if he and I both realized at once what I’d done, and stood together absolutely still, even our breaths frozen in our lungs.

Then his face went inhuman with rage, my whole world was for a moment nothing but fast movement and pain and his strength, and next thing I knew the stone of the hearth was pressing into my cheekbone and eyebrow, his one hand like steel clamped on the back of my neck and the other pinning my wrist behind my back. I tried to move, and he gave the wrist a slight twist, sending pain in streaks through my shoulder. “Lie still and make no sound, Fourth Chevenga,” he said, in a quivering whisper. “I’m afraid what I might do if you make me angrier.” I obeyed.

The anger and fear were all gone, snuffed like a candle, in the knowledge of what I had done. He was my shadow-father and had been my war-teacher, and I was all of twelve, but when I’d commanded, he’d obeyed. For one unthinking moment I’d had him in my hand as a commander has a warrior who has relinquished his will.

No wonder he’s so angry, I thought. There was silence, but for his ragged breathing and a hiss out of the fire. He took a long slow breath, and shifted his hands without loosening them. For a time there were only the fire-sounds again, and I watched the flames dance over the coals sideways, and even found my mind wandering, to a point of law I was studying, a shirt I’d seen in the market, where Mana and Krero might be right now. It was one of those times when the person who can do something doesn’t quite know what to do, and the person who can’t just has to wait. Finally, suddenly, he let go. On the floor lay the comb; I slipped it into my belt again.

“I hope I didn’t hurt you,” he said briskly.

“No, you didn’t, shadow-father.” I wouldn’t have admitted it if he had.

“Good.” Then began the harangue.

I won’t detail it. My anger came roaring back, drawing me into the debate I hadn’t intended to have with him. I called him a tyrant; he said my father would have been angry, I said he’d have laughed, and then we were arguing over who had known him better. I haven’t the stomach to write it out. There’s yet another disadvantage of being dead; anyone can say what they like about what you would have thought, and you aren’t there to set it straight. I hate to imagine what words will be put in my mouth when I’m gone.

Finally he said, “Enough,” seized my wrist and drew his own comb. “You don’t need to hold me,” I said. He let go, testing my word. I found it easier than I’d thought I would, not to whip my hand out of the way, even though the edges of some of the tines, on the fifth or sixth stroke, drew blood, at which he stopped. He held out his hand for me to kiss in gratitude, which I did, and sent me out.

There was a niche between my bed and the corner of my room, which I liked to curl up into when I needed to comfort myself. I drew the shutters this time.

It’s like when we voted on Veraha, I thought: it’s the power of the law unwritten in me. More words of my father’s came back. “Never seek it,” he’d said, “for that is the way of Notyere. Yet don’t fear it in yourself either, for there’s no good in that. Don’t think how to use it before it comes, however good your cause, for that is seeking it. Only see it, and use it for the good of Yeola-e.” At the time, I’d understood perhaps one word in ten. Now I understood it all.

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14 - Parents need not teach their children life is not fair

I’d broken three other friendships when my mother called me into her room.

It always smelled of the beeswax of the candles, sheepskins and in winter the wisps of smoke that came out of the stone-stove when someone threw on another log, all mixed together. I will always have that scent graven in my mind as the scent of sanctuary. By the stone-stove were two low-to-the-floor cushioned seats that you could lean back in, with sheepskins thrown over them; once she’d had me close the door, she gestured me to one of them.

“Your hands are cold, my child.” I hadn’t noticed. She wrapped one of the blankets she’d crocheted around my shoulders, put a hot cup of tea in my hands, sat beside me and said nothing for a while. I sipped, and warmed, and felt peace seep into me in spite of myself.

“Chevenga, what is going on?” she said gently.

“Going on?” Blinking innocently had become more habitual to me lately. “Nothing. What do you mean?”

“Even while Krero’s still in a cast, you aren’t speaking to Mana, or Echana, or Rao Sanganai, or Kamina,” she said. “You gave Grandma the cold shoulder for a while, and you’ve even been called down for not pulling your blows enough in sparring.”

“Mama… do you have a spy service? Or did you get Aunt Tyeraha to set Ikal on me?”

She just laughed, and patted my shoulder. “I have no more spies than any other parent, love. But these things… they are not my Chevenga, as I know him.” She stroked my hair in that utterly tender, half-absent way that mothers do. I said nothing, looking into my tea.

“What is it…how did it start, with your friends?”

“Well with Echana it was that he and I were tossing a ball and he missed a catch and it went down the hill and he was too slow getting it and—”

She cut me off. “No, no, no, love. Spare me the little things that these quarrels seem to be about… tell me the big one, that they are really about. You can’t be having all this going on without there being a big one.”

I sipped my tea, and set my teeth, and stared at the door of the stone-stove, feeling my limbs starting to bristle, as they had so much lately.

“It seems,” she said, so softly as to be hardly more than a whisper, “as if you are angry at everyone.”

I didn’t answer. That, of course, was not denying it.

“You either know why you are, or you don’t,” she said. “Do you?” I signed chalk.

She smoothed the hair back from my forehead. To part of me, that touch, full of love, was painful. “What are you seeing that angers you, when you look at them?”

I stared down at my tea. I was weakening; I felt the start of trembling. Setting my teeth again, I tried to steel my heart. “Mama… I’ve got a paper on the Statute of Referenda due for Sichera-e tomorrow and it’s only about a quarter done…”

“I’ve also heard the kids have been joking about you wanting to take every girl in sight up the mountain with you, by hinting at marriage,” she said. She’d seen me go off with Kagratora-e and her friends at the love-feast, guessed by my look when I came back that I’d been initiated, and congratulated me when I confirmed it, with the usual parental caution to always be honest in love and not become a father before I planned to. “After the love-feast for a while, then you stopped… there must be reasons.”

“That’s not true, that I was trying to get them to make love with me by hinting at marriage,” I said. “I really did want to marry everyone I did that with. I’m not a liar.”

“I know.” She smoothed the blanket in around one of my shoulders where it had partly fallen off from my gesturing. “Why? Chevenga… love. All these things have happened at once. There’s a story here. I want you to tell it to me, because you need me to know it.”

I took a deep breath, and felt it quiver with held-in tears, to my horror. No use pretending she hadn’t noticed.

“It started with Artira,” I said, in barely more than a whisper. I told her the whole thing, how my sister’s envy had kindled my own, how I’d started counting other people’s years, how it was subtracting years that had driven me to seek marriage until I’d had to give up, and so on, all of it.

“But some of them will also die young, even younger than you,” she said.

“They don’t know it! They can have their dreams, of wives and kids and grandkids and all sorts of plans; they don’t have this black wall they’re coming up to on their life-paths, that they have to think of every moment!”

She put her arm around my shoulders. “My Chevenga.”

“There was Artira saying everyone loves me and no one loves her and it’s Chevenga this Chevenga that but everything I am and do and am loved for will be gone when she’s still tossing her kids in the air because they’re still little enough!”

“No wonder you are in pain.” She tightened her arm.

“Grandma… she’s lived more than twice as long as I ever will, and had all that time to do all the things she’s done, so much for the people of Yeola-e and for all of us. My life is going to be two-thirds training for the last third! All my teachers are wasting their time without knowing it!”

“No, they aren't. Their effort is worth it, for the last third.”

“My children, if I ever have any…” Now I started losing it thoroughly, tears making my voice break. “It will be for them… like it was for me. For everyone… when Daddy got killed. Most of their lives… I’ll be a memory. Every time they do… something I’d have been proud of… the thought of my face… will be a knife twisting in their hearts. It’s better I never have kids… If I weren’t going to be semanakraseye I wouldn’t, it’d be too cruel to them. But I’m going to be semanakraseye! I have to have kids! I have to! So they’ll have to suffer this!”

As much to the world as to her, I screamed, “It's not fair!!”

I couldn’t say more for a moment, my throat in too much pain, the sobs too strong. Both her arms were around me now, so tight it almost hurt. I found out later she’d told everyone else in the family that she had to speak with me alone, and asked them all to go elsewhere. She’d known I’d say what no one else should hear.

“I know,” I whispered through the sobs. “I know, mama. ‘It’s not fair’ is something only children say.”

“Parents need not teach their children life is not fair,” she whispered, her lips being close to my ear. “Life itself does a fine job of it. But Chevenga… for all you don’t want to be, you still are a child. No one would fault you for this emotion, if they knew. Let it out, love.”

I was already most of the way to losing control entirely anyway. Given leave by her, I did, and cried as full-throated as when I’d been a baby, and she just rocked me, same as then. It came in waves; there’d be a lull and I’d think of another aspect and it would come roaring back. Sometimes it was wordless; sometimes I railed, saying it’s not fair! many more times.

Like throwing up when you have to, it felt good, and brought peace in its wake, but much more slowly, and through every muscle instead of just the stomach. Lying with my eyes closed against her breast, that somewhere deep in me I remembered owning, I finally felt deeply that all was well, something I hadn’t felt for a long time. That brought back correct thought, quite naturally.

“It’s not their fault,” I whispered. “I shouldn’t hate them for it. The world burned for wrongful anger. I’ll apologize to everyone and make peace with all of them. I’ll set it all right, mama.”

“Five years ago, you swore an oath,” she said tenderly.

“To love two times as much, and I haven’t. I’m forsworn.” Right there, with her as witness, and holding my father’s wisdom tooth as well as my crystal, I renewed it.

I didn’t want to leave her arms, and she didn’t ask me to. She stroked the hair back from my temple over and over just as when I’d been much younger and needed to be soothed to sleep. The paper I could finish in the morning, when I woke up at dawn as I usually did. It crept over me, a sweet heaviness all through my body. My eyes closed of themselves.

I was all but asleep, and must have seemed so, when a warm drop landed on my arm. She wiped it off, quickly but almost too delicately to feel. In the way of women, she didn’t want her tears to be seen, and so had decided to wait until I was sleeping before she let them fall. So I didn’t let on that I wasn’t.

With a feather-touch she twined her fingers in my forelock, so the curls clung around them. She spoke in the faintest quivering whisper. “It’s not fair.”

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