548 - This courage was the family honour

The antidote tasted even worse coming back up than it had going down. Kaninjer said something I’d never have believed he’d say: “Kyash.” Haian has no swear-words, so it had to be Yeoli. “I have to get it straight into his blood.” I was on my hands and knees beside the bed puking so hard it was like death-throes. “Pin him, hold him still.” In an instant I was locked in bonds of muscle, even around my head. Skorsas wiped vomit off and out of my nose with a cloth, jammed a dropper up and squirted in drops that seemed to burst like fire in my head, adding sneezing to the puking. Then they were all saying, “It’s all right, Cheng, easy, it’s all right,” the way they would just before I would feel the steel of the needle by weapon-sense first and then sliding in. A moment later, sure enough, there it was.

It was a poison that attacks the muscles that work without thought since they must through sleep or we die: the heart and lungs and gut. So Kaninjer told me, once my strength to expel the last drop or scrap of anything in my digestive tract was gone, and they had me back on the bed. That meant it could be countered by will. “Chivinga, are you hearing me?” he asked. I signed chalk, feeling my hand tremble against the covers. “You must exercise your will. You must fight for your life again, just like on the battlefield.” Right here, right now, no one having been polite enough to warn me; isn’t it always the way?

The world fell into nothing but pain and confusion and fighting, with the odd scrap of word or sense. My ribs became walls of stone, immovable, so I couldn’t draw in more than the slightest wisp of air; all around me people yelled, “Breathe! Keep breathing, Chevenga!” Skorsas took me back almost into my Mezem gate, exhorting, “Fight, Jewel of the Mezem, fight, treasure of Arko, you can defeat it, you are stronger, you will win as you always do!” I felt Kall’s double fingers, tried to extend mine, hoped I did. I want to know how the food-taster is! Were they not answering, or was I not asking?

The candles got too bright, so Kaninjer blindfolded me; then I felt I was dying, reality around me distancing and fragmenting and fading. I heard Kaninjer say “Pin him!” again, felt gentle hands holding me down all over, and a longer needle by weapon-sense. In shreds of feeling, I felt it press into my heart; then bloodfire like when I’d attacked my Arkan escort near Roskat seized me, making me want to leap up and run and fight and tear up mountains. It was all I could do to walk leaning on arms on either side. “All-Spirit…” Was that rasping voice mine? “Let me rest.” “Rest, you lazy good-for-nothing brat!?” Esora-e’s voice stabbed. “If your blood-father could see this!” Anger strengthened me. A little later, Azaila was there, which took me back to the training ground, where I’d learned to go beyond fatigue that felt utter. The food-taster, how is the food-taster, is he all right? I wouldn’t have a person in that position without knowing his name. It was Barabbas Kallon. Why is no one telling me?

I fought all the rest of the night and into the morning. I nearly died three times, brought back each time by something Kaninjer did. It began truly easing up, and I came to myself, shortly after Rim-dawn. I was half-sitting in bed, thoroughly Haian-rigged. It felt as if the expression “like a turd from the first horse after the last horse has galloped over” had been invented for how I felt.

When Kaninjer cleared me to speak with Krero, he said, “It was in the oysters you ate just before bed. We caught the man. He was acting on someone else’s behest but didn’t know who. You’ll love how we got him. They were still cleaning the kitchen when we went down and surrounded it. I went in with Amitzas and his little box, and Vriah on my arm. She fingered the one who was most afraid, and he ran straight into the arms of Kunarda and Herenna.” My daughter, my avenger.

“It’s not enough to have truth-drug-checked them all at the start,” Skorsas says. “We have to do it now and then, and let them know it could be any time.” That was instituted, starting with a clearing of the remaining kitchen staff entire immediately, which they all passed.

“We should execute him by torture,” Krero said. “Publicly, Arkan-style; it’s what they understand, is it not?”

“The laws of Arko will decide on the sentence, not I,” I said. That shows you what I knew of Arkan murder laws. I didn’t know how fast Arkan justice could work, either; Kaninjer was called away from my side to testify, there was the truth-drug transcript of the poisoner, and that was that. He was guilty, and in Arko it is the victim or victim’s family who decides on the sentence, so his fate was tossed back into my lap before the sun was even down. It was debated around my bed.

No one argued that his life should be spared, only about how he should die. Skorsas, Kallijas and Niku all felt it should be by the same amount of the same poison so he would feel exactly what I had; Hurai and Esora-e felt that was too light; Amanas and Veresinga said that a merciful death might serve my political aims best; Krero felt that would be as good as declaring open season on me; Kaninjer said not a word. They were going around in circles when I said, “Wait, wait. Has everyone forgotten, I was not the only victim here? What does Barabbas want?”

Everyone went silent, looking at me, then glancing at each other. “The food-taster is a separate matter,” Skorsas said. “By tradition, the family accept their fate without involving themselves in legal things. I know; I was surprised by that, too.” He said it very smoothly, but too stiffly, and everyone else’s silence was too awkward. After I’d come to myself, I’d assumed he’d done same, and that no one had thought I needed to be told he’d survived.

“His son stepped forward, to take his place,” Skorsas added.

Against my will, I let my head sink back into the pillow and closed my eyes. It had been an extremely long day. Kaninjer put his hand on my brow. “He was much older than you, and his constitution not nearly as strong,” he said. “Rest he in Selestialis,” Kallijas intoned, Skorsas joining in.

“He must have had another healer trying to save him,” I said. “Since you were here the whole time... at least I thought you were.”

“There was another,” Kaninjer said. “But... the food-taster died a half-aer after he woke up feeling ill. I judged it best we not tell you.” The one case in which it is ethical for a Haian to lie by omission.

I had already kissed his hand. I did it again for good measure. “Bring Barabbas’s son here.” I had never met him before. He was in his twenties, and his name was Amas. I saw the resemblance to his father in his face. His head was fully mourning-dyed.

“This one is willing to take his father’s station with no fear, only honour, You Whose Safekeeping is the World’s Stability,” he said, properly one-up. The words had a formality to them, as if they were traditional. I had been thinking of trying to talk him into letting someone else do it; the Imperial food-taster and his family live a life as luxurious as any Aitzas clan, but without doing a speck of work or having any responsibility except one—which entails ultimate sacrifice, without warning, all too frequently. Perhaps he’d like another family to take over. But the words died on my tongue, in the face of his courage.

I love courage always, but as well, this courage was the family honour. It would be wrong to impugn it by suggesting it might be possible to tempt him out of it, when I was one to whom he could not express offense, or even show his pain. Instead I took his hand and did the Arkan version of kissing it, tears springing to my eyes. “I never had a chance to give him my thanks for saving my life, at the cost of his own. Take them on his behalf. His station is yours.”