574 - A master at this

Next morning in the moments between the sandtimer running out and Kaninjer coming in, I had the thought I’d been too tired and flummoxed to have the night before. I asked him. “I’m curious: you knew about what Arkans call ‘purification,’ you’ve had a practice here that filled up fast for nigh on a half-year now, and half or so of your patients must be women; why all of a sudden are you saying I should have abolished it already, when you never said it before?”

His hand twitched on my wrist, as it never did, and an almost-Kallijan blush reddened his tawny face. “Em… well…” Horror flowered black in my heart, though I told myself hard, It cannot be, it must be something else. How could he have done anything to a patient for which he should be ashamed? I had to be missing something. “Ahhhmm… there is this Arkan woman… and… well… she is very beautiful, and…”

The horror dissolved, obliterated by utter and total astonishment. I’d sooner have expected the sun to fall out of the sky and land on my head. “And…” he went on, “that made me feel…” He squirmed, as if hurt between his own legs. “You know.”

“You… are in love with an Arkan woman.”

“Well…! Love… I can’t say love. I don’t know her well enough! But…” His face blossomed into that unmistakable helpless, imbecilic grin.

I sat up. “Well! You’ve got to get to know her better.”

“You don’t mind… that it’s one of them, Chivinga?”

“Kan, are you kidding? Have you noticed who I’ve got two of, gracing my bed? Didn’t you read that Pages article?”

He laughed, then remembered he was in the middle of checking me, and went all serious to continue. “The problem is… I don’t know where she lives.”

“I thought all your clientele was Marble Palace people.”

“They are. But I don’t know where in the Marble Palace... it’s like a town under one roof!”

“That’s easy, Kan—ask Skorsas! You know her name, don’t you?” I was the master of Irefas now. I could have them check, just to make sure.

“Sera Milera… Sera Klara Milera.” In the slightly singsong Haian accent, it was musical. “Aitza,” he added. “But Chivinga… even if I do know where she is and how to find her… how do I… um… you know… go up to her? She’s very, very shy… she blushes very easily and casts her eyes down like this as if she’s ashamed even though she has nothing to be ashamed of. She’s never going to come seeking me.”

“No, she isn’t,” I said. “Arkan women don’t consider it their right.” A new problem for him, I realized. She who had called herself Sirichao had done all the leading last time, since she’d had a mission.

I realized, he probably considered me a master at this, and I was not. None of my loves had become so by me taking the initiative, only my marriage-of-convenience couple and any number of sex-between-friends partners. After my early run of failures to marry, I’d become the man who misses the signs while his friends swoop in. Skorsas had healed me, Kallijas had dueled me and Niku had grabbed me by… the ears, let’s say.

“You could come up with a pretext,” I said. “Or you could be straightforward; send her a message inviting her to tea or dinner… oh wait, I’m forgetting, this is an Arkan woman. There are probably conventions I don’t know… you’d be better off asking Skorsas, he’d know them all down to the twitch of an eyebrow.” I hadn’t even known that the correct way for an Arkan woman and man to first greet is for her to touch her fan to his comb until the first court fete I’d attended. None of this wanton touching of flesh to flesh, or even glove to glove.

“Do I hear myself being recommended for something?” Skorsas said, though I had thought he was snoozing. I got them talking together about it as I went to my day’s work.

The Unexpurgated Life is Everything came out Imbas 10, to a huge fanfare that I had nothing to do with, second Fire come if I lie. It was five times as long as the original. Norii had been given huge grief for writing in support of my claims that I’d been tortured, and of course in the book he included a new long section about it, with files from Amitzas, attestations from Alchaen and others of my healers, attestations from Yeolis close to me, and so forth.

The Pages people, in their freedom, seemed to gain nerve by the issue. One of them—a young one, named Foranas, I think—asked me whether I truly had been tortured for a month, and when I said yes, asked me if I’d say the same under truth-drug. When I said yes again, he drew a vial and a vein-needle from his satchel.

“You know I have every bite or drop that passes my lips checked by a food-taster?” I said. He went a little red. “But I am not saying no. It just has to be done properly, both for my safety and so that no one can say it was faked.” What I did was have it done before all nine judges of the Ultimate Court, which is the Arkan version of the Arch-Arbitrate, the Fenjitzas and his sub-dekinae, and every writer who wanted to be there, including Intharas. The drug was a mix of three from three reputable pharmacists, and it was tested on my food-taster and one of the judges first. Once I was under, they called a Haian healer who didn’t know me as well as one of the expert questioners from the Ministry of Serenity, to confirm that I truly was.

No Imperator had ever done this before, at least not willingly or when he wasn’t being deposed. I gave them permission to ask me for confirmation of anything I had said publicly, so they ran me through everything, from wanting to set Arkans free to jumping out the Marble Palace window to the torture to Kurkas having been an atheist. It was no surprise to me I proved honest without fail; much of Arko, however, was gobsmacked, and there were some cries of fakery nonetheless. I told them while I was still under that I was willing to do this again, at a frequency that was not dangerous to my health, as many times as they liked.