012 - The greatest warrior, redux


“Tell me,” he said, looking at my aura. He never squinted or strained or looked as if it took much effort when he did, incidentally, nor did his eyes take on any strange gaze; he’d look at it as you or I would scan the sky for weather. I only knew when he was doing it by where he looked. “Tell me about when you knew you didn’t want to be a warrior.”

“Knew I didn’t want to be a warrior? I never knew such a thing.”

011 - The armour of your name


25 Merjin 4980 | City of Arko

Dear Mamin:

This afternoon Kilalulana and I went to see the Marsae Circus at the Mezem. Oh, Mamin, so amazing what these people and animals can do! The magic tricks, the acrobatics, the juggling… it was wonderful. Something like that reminds you of how wondrous a thing the human body and the human mind is, how limitless our possibilities really are. You go away with an expanded feeling in your heart—well, I know, I know. You don’t want to hear about all this. You want to hear that I told Kilalulana that she is pregnant.

010 - As if I had lied to them


I stayed in the office late that night to finish the letters—the one to Esora-e probably the most awkward, tentative thing I’ve ever written in my life, the one to my mother much easier but still very hard—and directed them to be sent them off with the early-morning semanakraseyeni wing-courier. Personal business, yes, but, when I thought about it, did the Yeoli and Arkan taxpayer not own me anyway?

Then I took Kallijas and Niku into one of the very private rooms in the Imperial chambers.

009 - A thousand things you think about yourself


“We need to look into how you learned this,” said Surya. “Your shadow-father—he is key. Is he alive? Is he here?”

007 - There is steel in you


“Have you talked to anyone else about it? Family, friends?”

“No one. I couldn’t bring myself.”

“You need others as well as me. Your family, your spouses, your friends, do they know about your foreknowledge?”

“My mother, one of my wives and one of my husbands do.”

“What would they feel and think, if they knew what you now do, about it?”

005 - Fly on the wings of it


“What!?” That wrenched me out of the place he had sent me like a splash of cold water. I noticed my hands had suddenly taken a death-grip on the edges of the table. “Lay down the sword? I can’t do that.”

“Oh? You just swore you’d do anything. Second Fire come.”

My thoughts chased themselves in circles. “Lay down the sword. Are you sure I have to? And why?

“When you first understood what being a warrior meant, did you want to be one?”

I opened my mouth not sure what would come out. It was a whispered, “No.”

004 - Give yourself to life


Somehow, this made me want to breathe deep and hard. “The first thing to do—you are doing it already, good. Breathe. Keep it flowing, like water. When did you last drink?” He went away and came back with a large cup of water and made me drain it dry, though I had not thought I was thirsty. He touched the top of my head and the spot between my legs again. “See that river of light between my fingers. Feel it. As well you must open yourself.”

“More than I already have? You have my great secret, and how long have I been here—a twentieth?”

006 - Oh *kyash,* talk healing


[Kaninjer:]

Mamin… it was cowardly not to just say something, wasn’t it? I guess her touchiness made me more afraid. Ethically, of course, I can’t go on not telling her. I will tell her tomorrow night. This is her first, so she can’t distinguish the signs of it in herself yet.

002 - These cursedly-interesting times


[Niku:]

Another letter to Piatsri I can’t send.

Last night, we had to pick Chevenga up off his desk again, past midnight. I wanted him badly, I still do, and now I have to wait another day.

I hate this. I knew it would be this way the moment he talked about going back to Arko about that fahkad statue. Why do you think I broke that shkavi sideboard when he came back ah-kah from the Bring Back Chevenga people boozing him up to get him to sign?

My children, his children, had a father. They fikken don’t, any more. Again.

001 - It was meant to be


asa kraiya [beyond the sword]

Being the separate memoirs of Fourth Chevenga Shae-Arano-e that recount the events of his life in the year of Yeola 1556, and associated documents both complete and excerpted, compiled by the Workfast Literary of Yeola-e; Aletheya Athal, editor, Y. 1558

[A.D. 4982]



I wrote “This paragraph, it seems, is farewell.”

It wasn’t farewell, after all. Yet. My farewell would not come as I’d thought it would. Perhaps.

You think of me, I know, as having everything. My life is spun out of other people’s dreams.

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