589 - There is never forever

The same day I told Kaninjer about the other suitor, Niku and I went for a double-wing fly, early in the morning. The summer solstice was coming, and the heat any later in the day than just after dawn was becoming unbearable outdoors, at least for cold-blooded mountain creatures such as me. We made clouds and rain, then flew basking.

“Omores... I think I can guess what you’re thinking,” Niku said, after a while. She’d long told me that the way a person flies reveals their innermost thoughts and feelings, and it was me who had the chamir right then.

“Of course you can. I’m thinking about flying… well, all right, my mind did wander somewhere more grim.”

“You’re thinking about telling your alesinae about your foreknowledge.”

Actually I’d been thinking about whether it was time to put through another law that made slavery more difficult. I’d had the Officiate create a plethora of regulations about the day-to-day treatment of slaves, with all sorts of burdensome paperwork, plus stiffened penalties for mistreatment and forbidden separation of slave families by selling. All to desperate, deeply-oppressed howls of protest from the slavery community, of course. Mostly lately, they’d told me all this would force them to acquire more slaves to make up their costs, which of course weighed on my heart. Doing things incrementally causes pain, no lie.

My heart flinched in my chest, with a pain as from a claw, on her words. “I forbade myself to think about that when they are around, so they wouldn’t notice,” I said. My mouth, I noticed, had gone a little dry. I didn’t want to think or talk about it, in truth; I just wanted to fly. But sooner or later, I’d have to land. Like a coward, I am avoiding it, I thought.

“You can think about it up here, with me.” There is no better place, for certainty that you won’t be overheard.

“Fine… I don’t know whether I should or not. It’s so close... would they be happier not knowing? Or want to plan for it? It’s not really as if they have the choice whether to love me or not, like my teenage lovers did... they both got in all the way before I had the chance to tell them. Maybe it would just tear their hearts in two... or maybe they would resent afterwards, if I don’t... maybe one’s one way and one’s the other… I don’t know, love. I suspect I’m not thinking straight, for feeling. What do you think?”

She thought for a while, absently playing with the hair on the back of my neck with one hand. I wondered if she was doing chiravesa. “For what it’s worth,” she said, finally, “I think that Kall would want to know. Skorsas... I’m not so sure, I don’t understand him so well.”

“I wish there were a way to tell before I bring it—oh!” The flash came. “I could ask, hypothetically… if I learned somehow that something was going to happen to me, would you want to know in advance? But neither are fools and they know me so well, how to do it in such a way that they’d stay convinced I was asking only hypothetically…? I’d have to be very devious about it… pretend it’s just idle conversation and not let any fear show at all…”

The idea of doing it while under the influence of something occurred to me. It couldn’t be a sharing of Arkanherb, since neither of them touched it and Skorsas was averse even to a whiff; wine, he liked, but Kall was less keen on. Of course that needn’t stop me from being under the influence of… something. “Calming essence won’t do it,” I said to Kan when I asked him, “because you have to keep taking it… and I have to hide that I need it. In fact… it needs to be something that makes me… giggly.”

“Giggly,” he said. “What works best on you for that is alcohol, as I remember well from Niah-lur-ana—” Nervous though I felt, I couldn’t help a burst of giggles at the memory. “But I’ve forbidden you that,” he said. Oh, right, he had.

That night, after Kaninjer had staggered off in terror to speak with Ea, who’d be his intermediary, I said, “I’ve forgotten something I have to do in the office, I’ll be back when I can,” snatched and palmed a flask out of the Imperial bedchamber rack as I went, banged down two cups at my desk, waited until I felt them, then went back.

Daylight had faded, even through the many cunningly-crafted glass and mirror channels by which it is drawn into the Marble Palace, so with any luck they wouldn’t notice the redness of my cheeks.

“Bath-time, who’s joining me?” I said. Skorsas and Kall both turned to me, grinning. “Not me, the water’s too hot for a woman with child.” Niku and I had planned that in advance. The three of us went.

Now to get them giggling, too… Skorsas was relatively easy; Kallijas is more of a sombre type. I resorted to the tried and true method of water-fight. We went until we had to sit back tired, giggling and panting at once; then the looks became sexual. Not yet… How to bring it up as if it was triggered by something one of them said? Skorsas made it easy. “Oh, to live this life forever… alas”—he laid his head on my chest—“there is never forever.”

“Reason to draw every drop of joy out of now,” Kall said.

“You never know what can happen,” I said. “I could die tomorrow.”

“Shh, don’t say that!” Skorsas put his hand over my mouth. “Yes, the Gods love you and you will live until all that They have chosen you to do on this Earthsphere you have done… but the notion can ricochet from you onto someone else who is close.”

“Sorry,” I said. “I’d… never heard that idea before. I assume nothing, though, whatever you believe.”

He lifted his head, to kiss my nose. “Selestialin.”

“Enlightened Follower,” I said. “Sending them tithes, yet?” He made the closest sound to a fart-noise that a respectable Arkan will make, a soft hissing out of breath through pursed lips.

“In peacetime, every warrior can expect a longer life than in war,” said Kall. “Of course war can erupt any time.”

“Have you ever thought of that?” I said. “If you somehow found out you were going to die soon—say you had a dream showing you—whether you’d want to tell people around you?” I hadn’t quite planned to broach it this way. The wine was truly helping.

“I wouldn’t want to,” said Kall. “I’d feel duty bound… at least with some.”

So how would you decide who? No, that was a bad move; when I went on to ask them from my standpoint, staying with the topic, it would seem too intentional. “I’d never tell anyone,” said Skorsas. “Why put them in an agony of waiting?”

Is that my answer, right there? No, it was not sure enough. But if I asked, again… a snippet of memory from the briefing I’d been given the first time I’d been to dinner with Kurkas, on proper protocol for speaking to the Imperator—all of which I’d ignored completely when I was actually with him—came to mind. “It may never ask He Whose Word is The Catechism of the Earthsphere a direct question, obliging him to answer. It may only declare that it thinks such-and-such, which He may then contradict if it is wrong, if He is so inclined; thus it has laid no obligation upon He Who Is Never Obliged.” Right.

“If it were me,” I said, “hypothetically… hah, that rhymes. I think I’d tell”—I looked at Skorsas—“you… but not”—I looked at Kall—“you.”

“No! No no no no no no!” Skorsas launched a gout of water into my face. “I’d never want to know anything like that. What depressing shen—how could I live with any joy?”

One down.

Kall’s eyes narrowed, puzzled and a touch angry, the smile erased. “What? You think… I couldn’t bear that, Sheng?”

Done. “Fikken depressing shen, why are we even talking about this?” Skorsas smacked one expertly-aimed splash into Kall’s face and a second into mine, both at once, and we were all giggling again. That was easy.

Once out, we rubbed each other with the towels, hands happening to brush nipples, fingers running through wet hair. “Off to scent the bed!” Skorsas said, and ran out. Kallijas wrapped my towel and his arms around me and pulled me back against him, so his lips were near my ear. “Sheng…” His arms, which were pinning mine, tightened. His whisper was so soft I could barely hear it for the bubbling of the roiling-bath. “I know it’s probably crazy of me to ask, and I’m sorry, but just for my peace of mind... that was truly hypothetical, wasn’t it?”