179 - You know who you really are

I wanted Chirel. I wanted to see it, weapon-sense it, touch it, wear it, hold it in my hand. I had never been defeated with Chirel; that feeling of victory must still be on it, and that might help return me to myself. I was not alone in needing the feel of victory. All Yeola-e did.

It was an easy matter, when the precedent of twenty shortswords was already set, and I could tell Alchaen honestly what I felt; he could attach a note saying it was needful for my healing. When they brought it, I knelt as I had before Azaila in the School of the Sword, and laid it across my knees, still in the scabbard, just to be with it. Then I drew it, just to see the shine of the steel and that delicate killing curve.

Feh, I thought. I’m fooling no one. The piece of steel is as it has been for centuries; it’s the living hand that’s the weak point. The sword unchanged doesn’t prove I am. “You want to spar us with that, Cheng?” Krero, with Sachara and Esora-e and a few others. “You need to.”

We went to a clearing in the woods away from any other eyes, like thieves. They were at a disadvantage with short blades, which we evened up by my giving up my shield, or by going clean blade versus two blades. “What you need more than anything else is to be pushed to your limit,” my shadow-father said. “So we’re going to do that. No arguments.”

They sparred me all afternoon, allowing me only enough time between each bout for a few breaths and a swallow of water. Sometimes they came at me two or three on one, or I had allies—Esora-e said I’d known nothing but duels for too long—but everyone else got to rest. By the time the shadows were growing slanted and he called a halt, I felt as if my whole body had turned to water, and the world was swimming in a haze around me. Sweat soaked the sand of the clearing like dew, and I would ache for three days.

“Too much lying on the beach,” my shadow-father said. “We have to get you back into real shape. But… I was afraid to find you’d gotten worse, and you’ve gotten better. All-Spirit, have you gotten better.” Duels only, perhaps, but I’d learned tricks in the Mezem that neither classic Yeoli or classic Arkan warriors would dream of.

They were right; it was exactly what I needed. I was one with Chirel again, as if it were part of me, joined to my hand.

But the fall of Vae Arahi haunted me, more than I wanted to let it. In the Mezem, I’d been able to keep part of my heart safe at home, by looking up into the sky and seeing the same stars, by seeing the shrine in my mind as I meditated, by reminding myself that my family and friends were all there, living their lives as ever. That had kept me as sane as it had. Now it was gone. With Arko in my home, walling it off from the people, making them suffer who knew what—I knew my parents and guards were keeping scores of terrible stories from me—and polluting it with the presence of Mahid or who knew what else, it was as if I didn’t have a home, my feet cut out from under me.

That night, I dreamed I was alone in the sea, clinging to a bit of smashed ship, with no land in sight, only an empty horizon every direction, the wind and waves blowing me where they willed. I woke up at the death-hour, in crushing despair. Go home and save Yeola-e, not talking or thinking straight, with an army of seven thousand? I must be mad… well, no argument there. I am not that brilliant a commander; no one is. I am a grain of sand, against a mountain. There is not enough of me; there is not enough of Yeola-e. I gave myself to tears, then long full-throated sobs; why not? Everyone here was inured to that sort of thing from me; some wore ear-plugs, I’d learned, to sleep.

I was lying on the leaf-floor, my face in the sand I’d tracked in. I felt a hand on my back, my mother’s. I choked off my own cry. “Chevenga,” she said. “Tell me when you can hear me.”

I gave it time, waiting until the tears stopped flowing of their own accord rather than trying to master them, thinking of Alchaen saying “Let it out.” She waited patiently, her hand lying softly on me. I pulled myself up and wiped my face and got up onto the bed, and she sat beside me. She handed me the cup of water on the night-table; I drank and handed it back.

“Everything depends on you,” she said softly.

“I know,” I said.

“Not only that you are alive, but that you believe in yourself.”

My eyes flinched shut of their own accord. “I know.”

Silence hung between us for a moment. She took my hand and caressed it almost absently while she thought, just like when I’d been a child. “I knew those weren’t just the tears from some evil Kurkas did to you,” she said finally. “They sounded different.”

“Mama… he broke me. He destroyed me! I don’t know whether I can think as well as I did before—I can’t even tell! I can’t talk… I don’t even know if I can fight. That was just sparring, yesterday; I don’t know what will happen to me, on the field, against Arkans.” Fresh tears came. I jumped up to pace. She stood up with me.

“He didn’t break you, else you wouldn’t be here. You got out of chains, and that transport-carriage, somehow. And fought on an island on the way here, we were told.”

“That doesn’t mean I can be a competent chakrachaseye! Or a miracle-worker! That’s what it’s going to take!”

“Chevenga, answer me. What is the difference between the brave and the cowardly?”

The thoughts they choose to think, is the answer, of course. “Mama, my thoughts are shredded! You know what they did to me, how they ruined my mind; I can’t control my thoughts any more!”

“Chevenga. That—‘I can’t control my thoughts any more’—is a thought you are choosing to think.” I took a deep breath. “We are the people of choice, my child. You know now, perhaps better than any of the rest of us, what that means, having lived all that time among people who are not. How do we remain so? By remembering that we do choose—always. Including our thoughts.

“Your morale is low—understandably. You have been through things more terrible than most people can imagine, and it left you badly hurt. But it’s only the pain and the fear left over from that, Chevenga, leaving you with low morale. It’s not you.”

She took my face between her hands. “It’s chaff, love. More delusions, from those who filled you with delusions. In your heart you know who you really are, and what you are really capable of. Stop thinking anything else. The child I bore can save Yeola-e.”

I looked into her eyes as she looked into mine, unwavering. Her eyes had been the source of mine, identical in line and colour. I had come out of her. I looked for myself in her, and she had me to give back to me. I stood taking it in for a while, breathing deeply, then closed my eyes and took sustenance just from her hands on my face, her thumbs slightly caressing the tops of my cheekbones.

“Feh,” she said softly. “Tell the truth, all it would take to bring your confidence back entire is one battle. Even a skirmish. You’d just start giving orders; you wouldn’t worry about whether you could do it because you wouldn’t have time between giving orders, we’d thrash them handily, and then you’d look up blinking and say, ‘I guess I can do it.’ Alas, we can’t arrange such a thing on Haiu Menshir.”

“And the trouble I’d be in with Dinerer would not be worth it anyway,” I said. The residues of despair were still in me, like ache from an injury—so much ache from soul-injuries I had these days—but they were just the residues, distant and bearable. The full-bore feeling was gone. I took her hands and turned them around to kiss the backs of them. “Thank you, mama. You are my strength.”

“Only when you forget your own, Chevenga. Remember it, now.” She stroked my hair, which had grown long enough to do this now, though not quite into a proper forelock, back from my brow. “Something else you forget… you weren’t ready to see this until now; wait while I get it.” She went, and came back with a leather folder, which she opened carefully under the light of my lamp. In it, among papers of hers, was a page with my writing on it. It was my notes from Jinai’s reading, when I’d been nineteen. I read, stunned.

A huge thing with metal and wood pieces that’s alive, it’s moving all over in rhythm and making huge thumping clanging noises—

The Great Press.

…and I’m thinking I mean you’re thinking it’s a blessing to all the world—and the wing thing, that too, same—

The moyawa. I had remembered the words while I’d been in the Mezem, but it was something else again to see them, written in 1547, before I’d even decided to go to Arko.

…a crowd of blondies, Arkans yelling your name, acclaiming you, you are speaking to them. [How old am l?] Twenty-seven—Arko-ness is twined with the whole rest of your life.

“Maybe I will be fighting them the rest of my life,” I said. “A life well-spent, if so. So long as they’re out of Yeola-e by the end of it.”

“Better than the other two forks, in which you were killed, nearly two years ago. You would have been too young. You needed seasoning, and you needed to learn about Arkans, about how to fight them, to win.”

“I learned more than you know, probably,” I said. “I did nothing in my spare time in the Mezem but read everything about how they fight that I could get my hands on.”

“So how well do you know it?” I saw the beginning of a smile at the corner of her lips.

“In the book sense, which was all I could learn, of course—inside-out, upside-down and backwards.”

The smile grew a touch. “Of course you do. May I ask, how’s your morale, Chevenga?”

I breathed and let it out in a long sigh, that had only a bit of shuddering in it. “Better. Thanks, mama.”

Her smile grew to its full size, shining. She took my face again and pulled me down to plant a kiss between my eyebrows.

“That’s who you really are.”

--

Read More......

178 - He has his own madness about me

I tell it all out of order. I am making a mess of this, as my mind was a mess back then. Perhaps that gives the story greater verisimilitude. I went on working with Rona, if what we did could be called work, my assignment there to make it become less grim and serious and more purely joy, and with Lakrisi, my assignment there to just to succeed, at least for now. With him also I had the assignment I’d secretly given myself, to learn to give myself entirely into his hands. (Such lovemaking was entirely foreign to Rona’s nature—she would have thought it perverse—so I could not ask her.)

I understood a line of Jinai Oru’s reading, when I had been nineteen: “the black lightning bolt that never goes away.” It was a crack in the ceiling of the oubliette, that I looked at all too much when I was shackled to the table. I wrote the sentence you just read, but I could not speak it unbroken, even today.

I had thought I knew what “pain, huge beyond imagining” meant while I was in the Mezem. I had not. Now I did. Arko lay like a huge weight across my spirit, having stolen two of my few grown-up years. I was twenty-two and a half.

The faculties return. The questions you must ask come up as they come up. I realized that my knowledge of the war had never been better than piecemeal, gleaned from the Pages, which could not be trusted, and what new Yeoli ring-fighters told the rest of us as they came in. Now it was all almost half a year out of date.

Of course what my people here knew would be out of date too—except that they must be writing home. Where had my mind been, that I didn’t even know that? I called in Krero. “If you are the best person, give me the… fullest report you can, or if not, tell me… who is.”

“Emm… Chevenga…” How in the Garden Orbicular can you be surprised I’m asking for this? “We, em… I think I should speak to your healer, first.”

It was like a sword through the guts. “It’s that bad.”

“No, no, Cheng, that’s not what I mean at all! I just mean… we should check with your healer… the incompetence thing, you know what I mean?” His face had a cornered look. “I’ll send someone for him.”

“Fine, but… first, will you please alleviate my worst worry… for me, just so it will quit haunting me? Tell me we… have not made a… final surrender.”

It was only an instant before he said, “No! All-Spirit, no, we have not done that.” But that instant stretched long as centuries, enough for sweat to break out cold all over me.

“All right, good. Thanks.” By will I slowed down my breathing. He patted me on the shoulder and said “Wait here, Cheng,” as if I had somewhere to go.

Alchaen went into my parents’ leaf-house with Krero, so they’d be out of my hearing. They discussed it for long enough that I had to get up and pace. What is it? ‘Can he take this, can he bear that?’ It doesn’t kyashin matter what I can bear to hear, when my people have had to bear suffering it. I was sick of being a mental invalid.

But someone made my case, for when Krero, Sachara, my mother and my shadow-father all came in, they had a map. “Alchaen said we should get the worst out of the way first,” Krero said. “Sit down, love,” my mother told me. I did. “Take a deep breath.” I did. “They’ve taken Vae Arahi.”

I choked off the cry, but not until it was half out of me, so they all heard. It was like a sword through the guts again, except this time it wasn’t pulled out. The faces of hundreds of people I knew, the sight of Assembly Palace and the Hearthstone and the School of the Sword all flashed through my mind.

“They didn’t sack,” Sach said, quickly. “And we packed up the entire government, lock, stock and barrel—people, papers, the talismans, everything—and got it out before they got there. The whole town and half of Terera, all those who aren’t warriors, helped… that’s why no surrender. Artira is still acting semanakraseye, make no mistake.”

“Cheng, look.” Krero laid out the map on my bed, making me quit clenching my forelock and open my eyes. The rest of it wasn’t that far off what I had expected. They occupied the central plains more or less entire, as well as the port towns. Leyere was the only sizable city still free.

“Renaina Chaer has warriors, maybe three or four thousand, in the southern mountains, that she’s split up to do raids, but that’s less helpful now than when the Arkans had big enough armies in the towns there to need supply lines; they just have garrisons and are eating locally while the main army winters in Tinga-e. Emao-e and Hurai have an army of about seven thousand in Ossotyeya, where they wintered. The Arkan general, Triadas, has fifteen-thousand penning them in.

“But that’s all they’ve done, since last fall, and we’re well into fighting season now. Everyone’s been waiting to see when they’d besiege Leyere, or go after the Ossotyeya army. But they’ve been throwing less into fighting on the edges than building in the middle. Roads, bridges, dams, walls around cities, all sorts of things, with ankaryel they’ve stolen from us, and enslaving Yeolis to do the work, of course.”

Because fighting what is left of us doesn’t really matter, any more. It was textbook Arkan strategy. Of course Triadas would do it well. “I forgot to say,” he added, “they’re putting up a wall around Vae Arahi.” I clenched my eyes shut again for a bit, and he stroked my shoulder.

When I could, I said, “Triadas probably planned… to ask for Leyere and that army in return for me.” I saw Krero and Esora-e swap a glance that clearly said, ‘So much for sparing him the thought.’ “Now they know I’m here… kyash, I’m an idiot… I’ve never even asked Alchaen how much longer… I’m going to be here.” He’d said he’d wait a little way away outside; I called him in. I can talk, if not perfectly, I’m thinking more clearly, we’ve hunted down all the lies, I’ve trained myself back to decent form…

“Were it up to me,” Alchaen said, “I’d say another half-year—”

“Another half-year!?” My voice went up to a bit of a shriek on ‘year.’ “Alchaen, you must be kidding—that takes us out of fighting season completely! I thought you said I was healing faster than you expected!” I sprang up and paced, having to move.

“Chivinga… that was before I knew all I do now. You know how severe it was. To heal completely takes time; there’s no way around it.”

“Heal completely? I don’t need to heal completely—not every last little quirk or twinge or shiver. I just need to heal enough to run a war! Look at it that way, Alchaen, and estimate again.”

“Chivinga, running a war, you will be under the most severe strain, fighting, planning, carrying so much responsibility, you have to—”

“I’ll be under far worse strain being stuck here while the Arkans slaughter the last of my warriors and chain the last of my people!” My parents and my two heart’s brothers, bless them, all looked knowingly at Alchaen and signed chalk. “Not to mention the danger I am in, and I am, here… kyash… I have to speak to Dinerer.” Unless I were recaptured, Triadas would decide to finish us by force, despite the textbook; I saw it clear as day.

“You can’t, Chivinga, you’re—”

“In-kevyalin-competent, kyash on it, kyash on it… Sach!” I switched to Yeoli. “Go send someone to Denaina, get her here, right now.” Another nuance I had learned, as my mind had risen out of the muck, was that while Krero was my guard captain, Denaina, as the highest-ranking official here, was my guardian, as far as the Haians were concerned. If I couldn’t do it one way, I’d do it another. “A-e kras’,” he said, unthinking, and went at a dash.

“Alchaen,” I said, “what can I do to speed it up? Two times working with you per day instead of one would cut it in half, right? Leave off the sexual healing, for all I love Lakrisi and Rona, and just work on the mental? Just try harder, be stronger, will myself calm better…?”

“That was pretty smoothly spoken,” Esora-e said, the way he’d once praised me for a well-done sword-stroke. “Best I’ve heard so far.”

“Chivinga, it doesn’t work that way… there’s a certain pace these things take, just by the nature of the mind and the vital force.”

I said no more, resorting just to pacing and breathing, until Denaina arrived. Alchaen’s calm face betrayed a flash of worry, to see her. “No one’s told me what the Council of Elders’ final decree was,” I said to her in Yeoli. “I think it would have been part of Krero’s report, if they were calling all healers out of Yeola-e; but what about Arko?”

“You’re right, semanakraseye,” she said. I didn’t tell her to call me Chevenga; the formality I wanted right now. While an Arkan wall was going up around Vae Arahi, and perhaps there were Mahid there—the thought was like the touch of a brand on my heart—I wanted to hear myself called semanakraseye. “All they did to us was a formal censure and warning. Arko… it wasn’t so simple. What she didn’t tell you is that they were already thinking of calling healers out of Arko, for something else, something to do with Kurkas’s personal physician; they haven’t heard from him in far too long. But the Elders are calling healers out of the City alone, not the whole Empire… because if they do that, then they have no more hold over Kurkas, if you see what I mean.”

Of course I see what you mean, I’m crazy, not stupid... I told myself she was probably thinking of my age. “Kyash… that’s the sort of thing that will set Kurkas off, not restrain him… I have some knowledge of the man; you know he used to invite me for dinner?” I switched to Enchian. “They’re going to be back with more, since six weren’t enough. A shipload for all we know—Alchaen, you know this, but Dinerer does not: Kurkas is…” Of course my tongue locked up. “He… has his own… madness… about me. He’d stop… at nothing. I’ve got to get off… Haiu Menshir before… they have time… to arrange it.”

Would it not have been worse for my case, I’d have banged my head against the wall-post, when Denaina said, soothingly, “They’d never attack Haiu Menshir full-on, semanakraseye… All-Spirit, you’ve been through a lot.” Still I managed, using every grain of persuasion in me, enough that I worked up a sweat, to talk Alchaen down to two moons.

--

Read More......

177 - One way down this path

It would be much harder with a man, I knew the moment I saw him, though there was nothing frightening about him. He was older than me, in his late twenties, I guessed, his dark hair in a warrior-cut, his light brown eyes like cabochon-cut ambers. He was angular and yet sweet of face, both at once, with feathery dark brows. Alchaen is picking beauties, too, I thought. It wouldn’t hurt. The Haian tripped over the name, Lakrisi Shae-Tiringa, so he gave it to me himself. “Hello, semanakraseye.” His smile showed a missing tooth, making me wonder how he lost it.

“Call me Chevenga, please,” I said. “We’re going to get... intimate enough.”

“Chevenga. Of course.” Take your time, Alchaen had told me again, and him too, no doubt. And don’t try to go beyond what is safe. If it takes more than once, so be it. Best you come to know him, some. My courage suddenly deserted me, parching my throat. I wanted to be anywhere but here. “Lakrisi... shall we... walk?”

“That sounds good.” He held out his hand, and I took it, hoping mine didn’t feel too icy. Same as Rona, he wore only the lightest sleeveless shirt, as a Yeoli must on Haiu Menshir, or roast. His arms were beautifully ridged with muscle, his hips graceful and narrow. Do I want to touch him? The idea of making love with both of them at once flashed—they must know each other—and then was gone. Two urges warred in me.

He lifted my hand, and pressed it between his, then chafed it as if I’d just come inside on a Yeoli winter day. Winter... I’ve forgotten. What does it feel like? In Arko it only gets slightly less scorching. “You haven’t stolen the honey out of the jar, Chevenga, and I’m not going to yell at you.”

I let out a brittle laugh, all nerves. “Y... yell at me? I...” I took a deep breath. “I know, everyone has always told me... whatever I feel shows. I’ll be able to face... Arkans, with a fearless face… only by not being afraid.”

“Chevenga... is there a place on this beach where we can start a nice fire without drawing anyone else to the flames? Sit and talk? Maybe roast some tubers or a fish or two in the coals?”

That sounded pleasant enough to seem impossible, like a dream. “Yes. This part of the beach is marked off... just for the House.” My kin, my guard and I usually ate out of a communal pot, but I could probably scare up something fresh from someone. “I know where there is wood.”

We built the fire just out from the edge of the trees. The wind off the sea, strong and steady, helped it light, better than bellows. Was I imagining it, or did he keep placing himself where I would see down through the crack in his shirt to the thatch of hair on his well-sculpted chest? When he took the shirt off, as if he’d just become hot after fetching a few sticks, I knew for sure. I was already bare-chested, having decided before he arrived to give myself one less step to be afraid of.

“I always liked looking into the flames,” he said.

“I, too. Are you from Asinanai, same as Ronatora-e?” I was seized with the sudden idea he hadn’t known about her and me and might be jealous, and told myself not to be silly. People sharing a ship share most everything else. She’s probably told him exactly how it went with me, down to the stroke, I thought.

“Yes. Rona and I... we’ve gotten to know each other a lot better since we ended up on one ship. My ship—Shininao’s Kiss—was too badly damaged in an engagement so while it’s in dry-dock—there’s an illicit shipyard near Erealanai…” Illicit, meaning not allowed by Arko, I thought. My people, don’t take this in. “I and some others were transferred onto Rona’s ship, the Winged Victory. So she and I didn’t know each other till the past year.”

So were you and she... I swallowed the question. None of my business! Fear always creates absurdities in the mind. “I’ve been thinking of getting closer to her, she seems nice. And her volunteering impressed me.”

“She’s...” I felt a smile grow on my face in spite of everything. “Very nice.” Now we were two man-friends sharing knowledge of a woman. Obviously he was inclined both ways, too.

He sighed. “Still, I’m babbling, aren’t I? I’m not used to talking to politicians.”

“No, you’re not babbling... I can hardly call anyone down for... how they speak, right now, anyway. And...” I touched the green ribbon. “I hardly qualify as a politician right... now.” He gently laid a finger next to mine on the ribbon. There was sweetness in his touch, too.

“I’m glad they’re helping you.” With one delicate finger he stroked the back of my wrist where it joined my hand.

“Lakrisi...” Panic seemed to distance him, as if through glass. “I should tell you... I know... you want me, I know you do. I don’t know that I can.” As if Alchaen didn’t warn him of that, I thought, feeling like a fool.

“It’s all right, Chevenga. If you like, we can just sit here. I keep wanting to cuddle you like my little brother. Just cuddle. Can you take that?”

“Did you lose him? I never asked... who you lost. And it’s rude now... with Yeolis... since we’ve all lost. I’m sorry.” I willed myself not to pull away from his touch.

“He’s fighting now on a little ship called Shark Tooth.” His hand stayed on my wrist, gentle and warm. “We’ve all lost. It’s all right, they’re in All-Spirit now.”

“Yes.” I wanted to bury myself in him as I’d buried myself in Rona. I wanted to feel the wind in my hair, fleeing down the beach. “Cuddle... that worked with her. Let’s try it.”

He put his arms around me, as if I would break if he was a hair too rough. Everyone handles me like that, I thought. I shouldn’t get too used to it; the Arkans won’t. His neck smelled sweetly of man’s musk, and I found my hands wanting to run over his skin, exploring the hillocks and valleys of muscle underneath. I clung, my guts gone to water.

“Whatever you need to do... you’re free, Chevenga.”

“Not all of me knows that.” Am I vying for the championship of Saying Stupid Things? Of course not all of me knows that or I wouldn’t be here.

“Yes. You know... I’ll bet the Haians have a fancy term for someone who likes to be on the bottom. The men I’ve shared campfires with who have preference that way seemed evenly split... Seems to me you need to feel in control of things.” I heard a smile in his voice.

I jolted in startlement, clenching my arms. Wait wait wait hold on hold on slow down... “I... I don’t know that fancy term... I always... I mean I never... I mean, not usually... I mean... aiigh.” Perhaps he did not know it, but the Yeoli custom, with a semanakraseye, is semana kra. I had always found myself inclined that way, when it came up. But now... All-Spirit... I have to test myself with that. I have to. Once I am back with the army, it will be required. The gale of terror in me rose.

“Just my advice, Chevenga.” And his inclination is to control. It came clear to me now, and I felt it in every shift of his body. No wonder his touch felt so good. Had Alchaen not discerned that? Or had he decided it was what I truly needed? Or... was I imagining it? It suddenly occurred to me that none of my instincts for these things might be intact and telling me true.

“When you feel ready... whether today or tomorrow... when you choose to try... I’m here.” As always, you choose. His voice was sonorous through him, as I leaned my temple into his collarbone.

“I... we have to try, today,” I said. “Every day I am still here is another day of fighting season, gone.”

“Well... then... how would you approach this? Tactically?”

“Tactically? This? Kyash on it, Lakrisi... I’ve never had to plan these things out before, like a battle. I’m fikked in the head, remember?” Terror poked up a tendril; by will I beat it down.

“Hmm. Well, if it were me... I’d say you have to seize the wind.. a landsman would have to seize the ground, right?” I heard the grin in his voice again.

“Lakrisi...” I took a deep breath. “Try seizing me. Gently.”

I unset my teeth, not having noticed myself setting them. I can take this. His hug very gradually tightened, firm and smooth. So far, so good... but I had to unset my teeth again. How I had taken for granted, before I was tortured, the ability to just do everything unthinking, without being on constant watch over every muscle, in case it did something I did not will.

Lakrisi cautiously lifted one arm from around me, and closed his hand around my wrist. I tumbled into a fall I had not known I could fall, from an edge I had not known was there, flung from Haiu Menshir back into Arko.

I was vaguely aware of him whipping away his hand as if my skin were red hot, but that didn’t stop it. My wrists bore the imprint of steely Mahid fingers a hundred times over, and from that I knew with absolute certainty that next I would feel the cold of the wrist-cuffs, and my own footsteps taking me somewhere against my will, or the slaver’s stick being rammed into me, or the leathern shackles of the flogging-frame and the fire of the ten-beaded whip across my back. There is one way down this path, and only one. The darkness like smoke billowed up in my soul, and the flames that were screams, or screams that were flames, started up again, in a sickening rhythm.

I heard his voice, distantly. “Chevenga! Chevenga! Oh, kyash, no... It’s all right... I’m sorry... Chevenga!” As if I were out of myself, I saw him lay me across his lap and cradle me in his arms. “Chevenga... you’re free, you’re free! Breathe deep, Chevenga. You’re on Haiu Menshir. Semanakraseye!”

Semana kra. Listen. Cling to his voice. I did, seizing a thread of sanity with it. Breathe deep... I was panting like a dog. “Chevenga, you can move, you can breathe... I’d fight for you if I could... I didn’t mean to hurt you! Chevenga, please hear me! I know you can.” He kissed my brow like a father his child’s.

I hear you. I just can’t say it. I know you didn’t mean to hurt me. It was usually Alchaen who talked me down—not that this had happened for better than two months—but Lakrisi was saying the same sort of words, either because he knew to, or Alchaen had taught him.

“Chevenga, I’ve got you safe. You’re in my arms, a Yeoli’s arms. You’ll be all right... Breathe deep, relax, you’re safe.” He went on, and calm came slowly, the darkness seeping away. I closed my eyes and then the tears of shame came, for having done this before one of my people. Distantly, something snapped in the fire.

“I want to take those kyash-eaters apart for doing this to you, Chevenga,” he whispered, stroking tears from my eyes. “It’s all right.”

I’m sorry. I dared myself to try my tongue. “I’m... s... sorry... La... kris... si. I’m... sorry.”

“You’re sorry! No! It’s nothing for you to be sorry about!” He stroked my hair, with tender anger. “You’re my semanakraseye and they’ve hurt you so badly I want to slaughter every one of them... sorry.” I closed my eyes, his rage somehow exhausting me worse. “Sorry. I shouldn’t tell you things like that now, Alchaen says it might be too much… sorry.”

“It’s... all... right.” I kept my eyes closed, willing calm.

“You don’t need to care for me... I’ve got you... and we can just sit and have... hey.” His voice lost alarm and gained a bit of a grin again. “I sneaked this in, in case you needed it.” I opened my eyes. He had a little clear-glass bottle full of yellow-green liquid, bearing the sigil of the Benai Saekrberk, a wax seal in the shape of a bear on the neck. “I didn’t bring it out before in case of booze-limpness. But you need it.”

The last time drink had passed my lips had been the night of my fiftieth fight, more than five moons ago, now. What would it do to me? I didn’t care. I grabbed his hand with the bottle in it, yanked it to my lips almost before he’d pulled the cork out, and took a long swig. Solace in the guise of fire flowed down my throat.

“Easy... don’t hurt yourself with it, Chevenga, easy.”

“This... is... not... pain.” I took another, just as long. “Trust me.”

“All right. Whatever works...”

“If you... think this is pain...” Warmth rose tingling behind my cheeks, and my heart suddenly fell into blessed peace. “You don’t know... what pain is.”

--

Read More......

176 - Losing control

Now and then, Yeoli privateers would touch into the port of Haiuroru, for supplies or healing. It must have been intriguing for the crew of one such ship to be commanded to assemble at the request of Krero and Alchaen on the dock, and told sternly by Krero, “We need two volunteers for a crucial mission of national importance. They must be one man and one woman, healthy, of good character, open-minded and free of commitment to remain chaste.”

Part of what Kurkas had done was have me taught to fear pain out of all pleasure. Once awareness of that returned, my last memory of sex—with Skorsas, the night of my fiftieth fight—seemed too beautiful to be real, like a dream from which I’d been awakened by the touch of a branding iron. When I tested myself on it on Alchaen’s order, that brand burned all the deeper, for fear that that night had been my last.

But Haians have methods of healing even such things, with remedies and exercises and other means, and we’d been working on it for three months when Alchaen made the final prescription: I must practice, with another person. Or two, he corrected himself, after he asked me which way I was inclined, and I told him, “Both.”

He felt they should be Yeoli, but not greatly attached to me, and everyone in the guard either had been a friend already or had become one during our stay here. Krero did not want Yeolis who made Haiu Menshir their residence, in case that let word get out in the town that I was here. That left only the sailors and the warriors of the privateers.

Speaking to the prospects, Krero was looking for level heads and tight lips, Alchaen for level heads and warm hearts. Expert fly on a wall that I now was, I wished I could be there as they told the pair they finally chose what the mission was.

Careful not to overwhelm me, Alchaen decided that it best be one at a time, not both at once. I was terrified, to tell the truth, much more even than when I’d been a boy first seeking to impress. At the very least, I told myself, I can’t have forgotten how to give pleasure, so I still have that.

“It may be that there are some limits you will have to accept, at least for now,” Alchaen told me gently, beforehand. I resolved that very moment that I would regain my ability to do and feel everything I had before. Regaining the ability to come by my own hand had given me confidence, though it had taken a long time, and I’d had to learn many mind tricks to do it. The main mind trick I should remember when making love with others, Alchaen told me, was to hark back to the time before.

Since everything I had suffered had been at the hands of men, and I should try what was easiest first, Ronatora-e Ekaina’s turn came first. I name her in gratitude.

She was about twenty-five, with long hair so tight-curling it was like a cloud around her face, kindly green eyes and an easy smile. She was wider in the hips and thighs than Niku and narrower in the shoulders, but there was nothing not to warm to in those well-muscled curves. “Semanakraseye,” she said, with a smile that was a touch shy, as Alchaen brought her into my house, which was indistinguishable from the one that had been burned, and introduced us. “I am pleased to meet you.”

“And I you,” I said, willing my tongue not to lock up. “Call me Chevenga, please… we’re going to be intimate enough.” She let out a laugh of half-hidden nerves.

“You are both young,” Alchaen said. “Let what happens naturally happen. But do not rush it. Take your time.” He gave her a look full of remember everything I told you. Of course, he’d instructed her carefully.

We went for a walk along the beach, making getting-to-know-you chat as we went. Like all the privateers, she had been a marine originally, but her captain had taken the ship its own way in flight from the sea-battle there at Asinanai, which was her hometown, limping into Brahvniki for repairs. In the heat of Haiu Menshir, her hand was cool in mine at first, but grew warm.

By the sea’s edge, we both stripped to swim. Alchaen had warned her about my scars, I knew by her utterly impassive look when she saw them. But then she was looking at me, not them, and her eyes traced here and there, turning soft, a smile playing around her lips. I hope I can please the rest of you as much as I can your eyes, I thought.

As she pulled off her shirt, I realized I had not seen a pale pair of breasts for two years, and felt a pang for imagining honey-brown ones, with chocolate nipples. Niku… how goes the fight? I saw Rona see the look on my face. “Forgive me,” I said. “Seeing you… puts me in mind of someone else… who I miss.”

“Chevenga…” She laid her hands on my shoulders. “You are going to hesitate, and tremble, and be clumsy, and trip over parts of yourself, with me… so that you won’t with her.” She held my gaze in hers, then a smile quirked, and one finger reached up, and flicked me across the ear, feather soft. “Bet you can’t catch me.” She dashed into the boiling flat whiteness of the wave that had just come in, her buttocks flashing pink and beautiful. I chased after.

Fine to frolic like two children; we had a mission. We went back carrying our clothes over our shoulders, since there was no point in putting them back on, and I showed her the fresh-water stream in which bathers would wash off the salt. Then we were inside, and the fear came up in earnest.

“It’s hard, I know,” she said. “You’re pale. Let me just hold you, at first.” I could bury myself in her, pretending she was my mother, the softness of her breasts shelter and solace, not places to be pleasured. She stroked my hair nurturingly at first, but gradually it changed. That I could bear.

“One thing I ask,” I said. “I can’t know when I might freeze or panic or… otherwise somehow fail… because I am reminded of, you know.” She just signed chalk; Alchaen had taught her well. “But I am as certain as I can be of one thing: purely pleasuring a woman has fewer hidden dangers than anything else. So may we do that first?”

“Well…” She let a helpless smile grow over her face. “If you insist.”

I found myself shy nonetheless, so it was her who moved to bring our lips together. I closed my eyes, then opened them again, trying not to dishonour her by thinking of Niku. As our tongues met, and tenderly twined, I could tell myself that the pounding in my chest and neck were from pleasure, not fear. Heat between my legs burned away the shyness, and I found my hands and mouth had lost none of their knowledge, of the most delicate spots to stroke and flick and let out a hot whisper of breath onto, but it was all more sharply beautiful for how long I’d gone without. All through I had flickerings of memories, not only of Niku, but of Klaimera, Komona, Nyera, even Kagratora-e, ten years ago now. Hark back to before; my mind was doing that of its own accord.

Lying back on my bed, Rona went gorgeously red from her face all the way down to her hips, as I lowered my head between her legs. The terror of anything over my mouth poked, but slightly enough that I could beat it back. She was a feast of writhing, first, then a deliciously spurting draught, her ecstasy-cry ringing out and setting the four guards around and the two on the roof to chuckling and whooping.

There—can we leave it at that? Knowing in the back of my mind what should happen next, I found myself wanting just to lie snuggled beside her, and perhaps doze off. It was fear talking, I knew. “You want me, but fear chills it,” she said, trying for the healer’s evenness, but husky, sitting up. “Any chance the mouth of a woman took you in when they were torturing you?”

“Less chance than the sun rising in the w—aaaaiiiiigggh!”

She’d curled in quickly to do it, giggling, but then she went very gentle and delicate, as if I had a wound there that might open if she were too rough. “Take the healing,” she pulled away for a moment to say. I lay back and closed my eyes and willed myself to relax entirely. She tongued me carefully, as if knitting me back together, and taking that tenderness into myself put me in tears of relief before it turned into pure pleasure, and so became more frightening.

Here, where what I had to do was hard, was where the healing lay, here in the practice of walking the knife-edge between allowing the pleasure to take me, and succumbing to the fear. It was the same struggle, so hard it hurt, that I’d had with my own hand until I’d mastered it, but ten times as hard, just as being made love to is ten times as intense. Rona could not speak to me, but she could grip my hands, and in her fingers I felt the meaning, ‘It’s all right, you’re with me, you’re safe, everything is good.’

I clung to that, bringing my mind back to her hands every now and then, as pleasure and terror as one rose in me like flames in a gust of wind, a feeling too horribly close to being dragged to the pit I’d last been dragged to, not so long ago. It’s losing control that terrifies me, I thought. And that I must do.

“Rona.” Saying her name was a reminder to myself that I was not in Arko, that I was safe, that I need fear nothing. “Rona… Rona, Rona, Rona…” A beautiful name, to make me smile in the midst of this. “Rona… Rona… Rona…” I said it with each thrust, willing myself to allow that inward letting-go that fully frees pleasure, to let myself fall into it so it would not be tight and ugly and edged, as it had been the first times by myself, orgasms hardly worth having for the bitter miserliness of them.

It had been a trial even learning to cry out in ecstasy again, with Alchaen reminding me, “Yell! Set your voice free, Chivinga—yell!” I had my teeth set in silence now, I realized; by will I opened my mouth and threw my head further back and forced out one scraping cry, then another.

Rona had the one thing that I could never have for myself, though; the advantage of surprise. Just as I was at the peak of the struggle, driving it with waves of will for as long as I could stand against the urge to numbness, considering giving up and asking her to stop in despair, she slid her hands up my chest, with my hands still gripped in the outer three fingers of hers, and pinched my nipples between her thumbs and forefingers. I came before I knew it, a come like leaping off a cliff, with an scream as involuntary as a falling-to-your-death scream must be, that lasted a long, long time. The guards stayed silent.

Afterwards I lay with the image of a stone cliff etched in my mind—it was far too much like the Rim of Arko—with Rona cradling my head. “Let it out,” she said; Alchaen had taught her so well. “The next time will be better.” So I wept, and found they were the tears that wash clean. I could not say it had been purely pleasurable. But I had done it.

--

Read More......

175 - Dupes for tears

People brought lit torches. To our amazement, we’d lost no one, taking only one broken arm and an eye pierced by a dart, not too badly to heal. They’d used nothing but stun-darts; Krero and the others were unconscious but unharmed.

They had orders to take me alive, I thought. So they were taking no chances that they’d inadvertently kill me trying to kill my guards. Hold me hostage, if they got surrounded... A choice from a guard’s worst nightmares; All-Spirit be thanked mine hadn’t had to make it.

We found all six Mahid dead, even the ones I hadn’t been sure I killed; they’d all had poison teeth, and used them. I knew some of their faces. “Kyash, this one’s head is cut off cleanly,” Sachara said. “With a shortsword—how did you do that, Cheng?”

“I didn’t know I could,” I said, shrugging. “I’m crazy.” I flicked the blood off it onto the earth, then wiped it off thoroughly on a dry bit of black shirt.

Merchoser had indeed hidden under the bed; he was still there, curled, face buried in his hands, saying mindlessly, “Anamun anamun anamun…” After nineteen years in the midst of blood and barbarity, he had returned to the home of peace, only to see that follow him here. But our need for his services brought him back to himself.

Full awareness of what ought to be comes back gradually. It slowly dawned on me that we—no, I, alone, the semanakraseye of Yeola-e—had killed six, who had killed none, on Haiu Menshir. It was about then that Alchaen came running, with four House of Integrity strong-arms; they patrol the House woods at night. All five froze as if to stone at the sight of me, then shrank backwards, their usually-calm flat Haian faces twisted in horror. I looked, I realized, as if I’d just got out of a bath of blood, otherwise naked, while my guards laughed in victory and slapped me on the back. I opened my mouth to speak, and nothing came out. Trust my tongue to fail me now.

Alchaen stared at the corpses—those Yeolis who’d been darted had been taken care of, carried off to their quarters and beds—then at me. His look was one I could never have imagined on that face, that had always been understanding, no matter what I told him: as if a monster stood in my place. It cut the heart out of me. I stood feeling all my strength drain away; the sword slipped out of my fingers and landed with a thump on the sandy ground. “You thought he should just let them take him?” Sachara asked Alchaen, in the deadly-calm way he did in the rare times he was very angry. Shut up, he’s Haian! I couldn’t command him. “After all that he went through, that you know better than anyone, you can blame him?”

“Chevenga.” That voice I turned to: my mother. She took my shoulders. “Go to the sea and wash, love.” I obeyed mindlessly. She came with me. Out in the waves, the ghostly water-light glowed green, eddying around my fingers as the blood came off. Water brought calm.

As we went back, I heard talk in the trees. The head House strong-arm was there now. Alchaen said to me, gently, his face gone back to its usual impassive-but-understanding look, “They’re all saying none of them had a hand in any of this, that you did it all yourself. Is that true?” I signed chalk. So much for my playing innocent.

The leaf-houses of the House of Integrity are raised and taken down and moved easily. Once he looked inside mine, the head strong-arm decided that it should be burned entire, except for the posts. I got my things out, and they had it ripped apart and in a flaming heap on the beach in what seemed like moments. I set up a spare bedroll on the floor of my mother’s, but did not sleep.

In Haian heat, the corpses could not be left untended long. At dawn, a messenger came from the Speaking Elder’s office, with six boxes, and a note from Dinerer. She was requesting a visit from Krero, who had barely woken up, was in the grip of the headache, and needed hard convincing that this was neither a dream or a prank, Denaina, who had no idea anything had happened, and me. No mention of my incompetence now. My mother and shadow-father came, for moral support.

The Speaking Elder called Krero in first. No walls or doors are built thick on Haiu Menshir, so I easily heard the young deep voice and the old high one as they rose, then words, at least his. “If we hadn’t, he’d be on his way back to Arko in chains now, and all your fine healing undone! … You can die for your pacifism, but why should he?” Finally it seemed to end without resolution, and he came stamping out, livid and trembling. “Got her in… just the mood… to see me,” I said. “Thanks.” He just growled wordlessly.

She called Denaina in next, fortunately, and that was quieter; she, of course, was a diplomat. When she came out, she said formally, “Semanakraseye, the Speaking Elder invites you in,” but grabbed my arm for a moment and whispered in my ear. “She wants to pull all Haians out of Yeola-e for this. Only one who can talk her out of it is you.”

Dinerer looked over sixty, which meant she was likely over eighty, knowing Haians. Her hair flowed bright white around a slender tawny face, the web-work of wrinkles carven in a kindly mien, but the black eyes all hardness now. She wordlessly gestured towards a chair. Her office was harmoniously stark, in the Haian style. I went down onto my knees before her desk instead of sitting. That gave her a moment’s pause, but she said what she had clearly meant to say anyway.

“You came here seeking necessary healing. In good will, we took you in and gave you what you needed. Your guards, however, spirited some twenty weapons of death past the Gate, though they had already been denied a dispensation. Six Arkans attempted to capture you; to prevent them, you took one of those weapons of death in hand and used it, resulting in the deaths by violence of six human beings on the soil of Haiu Menshir.

“Arko and Yeola-e are equally guilty of bringing your war onto our island, in violation of our trust and of the World’s Compact. You need not make the argument that they were the aggressors, since your guard captain already did. What I will take to the Council of Elders for consideration is the resolution that we call all healers out of both nations.”

What to say, into that yawning silence? Sorry? Excuses? The most necessary thing kept coming back to mind, so I opened my mouth to say it, hoping my voice would be there. “My presence here…” I swallowed, my throat gone too dry, and took a deep breath. “…is a danger to you… we will go.”

“No,” she said, to my surprise. “Your healing is not complete yet, your healer told me, and we will not forsake a patient. Whom we heal, need will dictate, not Arko.”

“But…” I should meet her eyes; I could not bring myself to. “The Mahid… always have one man at the rear… in reserve… in case. His pigeon… will be half-way to… the city, by now. They’ll come b…” Kyash, I almost finished the sentence. “Back.”

“Your difficulty speaking, I take it, is a symptom of your condition?” Small mercies; her voice was a little more gentle. I signed chalk, then, on her look of incomprehension—Alchaen had learned the gesture from seeing me use it, I realized—I croaked, “Yes.”

“You are not ready to leave the House of Integrity.”

The deep breath I took in quivered audibly, not helping my argument. “But… if I cannot… preserve my life… for the sake of my people…”

“It’s been a noted trait of Yeoli rulers, to care for nothing but their people,” she said drily.

“Speaking… Elder…” I couldn’t say that much in more than a whisper now, and then my throat locked up entirely. I’d betrayed Haiu Menshir, betrayed its spirit, violated all it stood for, so the scraps of my nation that remained free, which needed their Haians more than ever, would lose them. I saw the look on Alchaen’s face again, and heard Merchoser chanting anamun—“spirit of life,” it means—in terror again. I wanted to die and rot through the cracks between the wood slats of her office floor. She sat still and silent for a while, watching me half-curl and clench my forelock and fight tears and lose, the one who stood for all Yeola-e representing them this way before the one who stood for all Haiu Menshir.

Then she came around the desk, and wrapped my hands in hers, which were warm and smooth. Haians are healers, without fail. “Let it out, until you reach calm,” she said. She’d been a psyche-healer before becoming Speaking Elder, I was suddenly sure.

So I wept freely, and in time felt more like a child solaced by a grandmother than an official shaming my people, and calm did come. She pulled up on my hands, meaning I should get up, and steered me to the chair, then handed me a kerchief. “Tell me,” she said finally. “What would have happened, if you and the other Yeolis had had no weapons?”

“The Arkans… most likely would have taken me, again.”

“And then?”

“Taken me back to…” My tongue locked solid as rock. I signed as best I could, my mouth, nothing, no.

“Arko?” I signed chalk, then did the up-and-down head-wag Arkans do, thinking maybe she’d know that. “Meaning yes.” I signed chalk again. “And…?” Now even my hands locked up. Alchaen! Alchaen! My soul screamed for him like a baby its mother, I remembered that look and knew I was alone, and then my mind was in smoke and flames, as had not happened for two or three months now, as I began tumbling into the abyss. From a distance, I heard her say, “Arko… you were tortured there, weren’t you? Put your head back.” When I came to myself, I was in the chair, sweat-soaked in the most formal clothes my guards had been able to cobble together, with Dinerer’s hands cradling my head and her voice gentling me.

“And if you had not acted as you had, the same would have ensued,” she said. It wasn’t a question, in truth, so I didn’t answer. The cold formality of her words was odd, against the utter tenderness of her hands. “What you did to the Arkans was far in excess of what was necessary to prevent your capture; am I correct?” I signed chalk, not yet daring to try my tongue. I could have struck to wound or to stun, and not finished those I’d finished; probably it would have made no difference, since they’d had poison teeth, too, but she was still correct. “Why did you?”

All-Spirit… how can I begin to explain? How could I, even if I had full use of words? How could you begin to understand, ancient woman, when you have lived in this perfect place all your life, in the eternal cradle of peace? I thought back, remembered what I’d said when Sach had marveled that I’d beheaded one of them with a shortsword. It’s the most honest answer. I touched the green ribbon.

Dinerer’s spider-wrinkled face faintly softened. All-Spirit... it was the correct answer. “You make the case that what they did was an act of war, while what you did was an act of madness.” Yes, of course; Gods of Arko know that Mahid are bastions of sanity. I just signed chalk, while Krero’s avowal of “You’re not responsible!” echoed in my mind. If that keeps Yeola-e’s healers, I’ll take it.

“I will explain this to the Council... and recommend lenience. And…” She pulled out paper, and rattled off something on it with a cormorant-quill pen, in both Haian and Enchian writing. “Here, give this to... that guard commander.” It was a dispensation for us to carry weapons, provisional until ratified by the Council. “Did your healer accompany you here?” No, but my mama did. I stammered out my formal farewell to Dinerer, and staggered out into my mother’s arms.

“Cheng, you could charm the bark off a tree,” Krero said, reading the paper.

Esora-e burst out laughing. “I know how he did it! Speak to people in the tongue they understand, you always say, lad, don’t you? All Haians are dupes for tears, ha ha ha! Well done, my son.”

--

Read More......