223 - I see the Divine Presence in you

I leaned out the window to look, but it faces the wrong way. I heard the sound of a Yeoli war-gong, both deep and hissing, but didn’t know what the rhythm meant, then cries of “Everyone to Vae Arahi, grab buckets!” One of the inside guards threw open the door and had a quick talk with the outside two. “Someone gets the straw-hairs, who cares? They go anywhere, someone gets them.” They all ran off.

“Honoured healer?” Kallijas said to me, his voice still polite and even. “What is happening?” I told him and he stared at me horrified, as if it were his home on fire. He and the other Arkan talked back and forth in Arkan, fast. There were running steps in the corridor; someone whooshed past, then stopped and came back, peering in. It was a Yeoli warrior. “Kalicha Ityirian!” he shrieked, and came in with his eyes fixed on Kallijas, burning with rage. That awful sound, that metallic ringing scrape, of a sword being drawn, I hate.

“No no no no, Chevenga’s orders, Chevenga’s orders, no one’s to hurt him!” I got between the Yeoli and the unwounded Arkan, who had stood up. He was unarmed and had nothing on but the tunic and leggings Arkans wear under armour. Thinking about it after, Mamin, I realize, he wasn’t a Haian. He was going to give his life. “Chevenga’s orders, no one’s to hurt either of them!” By yelling that many more times and holding the Yeoli’s sword-arm, I talked him out of it. I slammed shut the door once he was gone, and I and two Arkans stared at each other, all of us bug-eyed.

The weird thing is, Mamin, I didn’t feel scared until afterward, when I started thinking of what might have happened. At the time I wasn’t scared at all. I remembered something Chevenga had said about fighting, that you aren’t nervous while you’re doing it because you’re too busy, and your mind is too much on your intention. This, I realized, was exactly like that. Kallijas was my patient, so I wasn’t going to let him be killed by some rage-crazed, drunken idiot. That was my intention. So I wasn’t scared.

At least not that time. The other eight times I was terrified all the way through.

They kept coming, Mamin. They were just throwing open doors looking for more people to help against the fire or just to throw open doors, I don’t know, at least until the last few who said “Here he is!” so I knew they’d been looking for Kallijas. Sometimes it was two or three at once and they’d go on either side of me and I’d have to scream “Chevenga’s orders, don’t you kyashin hear me”—mainlanders always hear better when you swear, I’ve heard, and I found out then that it’s true—“you’ll be in big trouble if you do this!” or “By my Haian poppy, I beg you!” which also worked fairly well.

“This is going to keep happening,” I said to Kallijas’s friend. “We have to get him somewhere safer.” He stared blankly back at me, and I realized he couldn’t speak Enchian. “Tell him we’ve got to move you,” I said to Kallijas. Chevenga’s room, next door, had a bolt on the door. He tried to get up onto one elbow. “No no no no! Tell him I take your head and he takes your feet and the intraven—that pole with the bottle from it and the tube that’s running into the back of your hand—” A pair of Yeoli warriors, both women, came in, banging the door back against the wall, drawing swords. They were so angry at being dissuaded that one of them slashed through the intravenous tube as she turned to go. “That makes it simpler,” I said. “He just gets your feet!” When there was no one in the corridor, we ran him into Chevenga’s room and laid him on the bed, the unwounded Arkan holding the candle in his teeth. I banged shut the bolt and just stood for a bit leaning my back against the door, panting.

Then of course I had to go back into my room, to get my bag and the pole and another tube and more fluid since what was in that bottle had all leaked out, of course. Then another trip, for Kallijas’s armour, in case someone stole it, since it was by rights Chevenga’s; Kallijas insisted. Each time the unwounded Arkan bolted the door behind me and then would let me back in. I felt like throwing up.

It was easier now, though. Someone tried the door, I’d just say “Password please!” or “This is the semanakraseye’s room, password please!” Kallijas’s friend and I got him settled with the intravenous set up properly again. Kallijas stopped looking at me or him, as if to shut himself away inside himself, his face seeming grey in the candlelight. They both sunk into despondency. I offered them a remedy for it, but Kallijas said no, as if he deserves the pain, and since he wouldn’t, his friend wouldn’t either. Outside the screaming and yelling went on.

So this is where I am right now, Mamin. I looked out the window once, saw the fire reflecting orange on all the buildings, flickering hugely. I hear people sobbing loudly in the streets. I feel sick for Chevenga, who was so looking forward to being home. I feel so shaky inside, I desperately wish you were here, and, as before, writing to you is the next best thing. I guess I am done now, though. I wrote the first part of this letter earlier in the day, actually, thought it was just going to be about those first things and then Kallijas. I’ll write more later. I love you and so wish I could feel your arms around me. I am glad you are in Haiu Menshir, where there is peace.

All my love from your son,

Kaninjer

I should have seen the signs. The delay until it was darker so we would not see the first tendrils of smoke, how he’d complied suddenly after disputing, how he’d called Vae Arahi a heap of stone… That was what he would leave us. I’d been naïve to trust him, but I was always naïve in that way, thinking others would do as I would. Getting over that comes with age, I’ve been told, and I’ll never have that much age.

They did a very good job of it. They must have heaped oiled straw in all the stairwells of both buildings, and timed the lighting by bead-clocks. I was at the front of the crowd at the falls when I first smelled smoke, and broke into a run. They’d locked the gate and gone out a postern; by the time we found the one that was unlocked and got the gate open, flames were licking out windows, and blooming at the peaks of roofs. Such a common thing, smoke rising from a kitchen chimney; such a wrong thing, pouring out so thick and fast.

It had been a long day, full of feeling. Most of the army was still in Terera, probably seeing orange on the underside of the smoke. I could see anger getting the better of them, making them chase the Arkans without order or thought, half-action since some would hold back because of the safe conduct, and the Arkans, who would be prepared, of course, taking our charge like a thresher takes wheat. But I didn’t even have the gong to call them to me. I turned and ran flat out back down by the falls while my home burned down behind me, until a runner coming up met me. Blessed is the chakrachaseye with good generals. They’d held the army back from the Arkans, and were now sending them up.

By the time I got back, both Assembly Palace and the Hearthstone were full of flame, sheets of it licking around pillars, tongues breaking through roofs. We made bucket lines, but you might just as well spit into the inferno of Hayel. It became all but unbearable to stand within the walls, for the heat. I called it off. “Stand down, go back down to Terera, stay standing down and get drunk again, that’s an order,” I said. “We’ll rebuild.” I stayed, though, and many decided to stay with me. From under the Arkan eagle on the gate, I watched the roof over my old room, the black beams carven centuries ago whose running-patterns I had followed with my eyes before I understood words, break like a spine and crash down, sending up a roar of fire and a vast sea of sparks.

“This whole war has been like this,” said my mother, putting her arm around my shoulders. “Right from the start, when you weren’t here.” I didn’t answer, for tears, and felt two hands close around my wrists, each with an iron grip; Krero and Kunarda, saying “Easy, Cheng,” afraid I’d run into the flames. The day had been longest, perhaps, for me. I watched, with them holding me, until the flames began to die, then said, “I should say something, in Terera. Someone run down and have the gong sounded for ‘assemble’.” I didn’t feel like running. Thinking up the words to make this all right as I walked would be hard enough work.

On the dais in front of the town hall, I had to hold my arms up until they were tired before I got silence. It was all broken-voiced suggestions: that we chase down the Arkans right now before they built a palisade and kill every last one of them, that we capture Abatzas and torture him, that I do the Arkan thing to him. And about a hundred different torments for Kallijas, since we had him in hand.

“I hear you all,” I said, and heard relayed back, once there was enough quiet to speak. “I wanted to sit in the semanakraseye’s chair in Assembly Hall tonight, just to do it, and sleep in my old bed.” A mistake, maybe; it got them yelling in anger again and I had to raise my arms again. They were leaden. “But we are not going to conduct ourselves any differently, or alter any strategy, from what it would have been if this hadn’t happened, based on the counsel of rage or sorrow or pain. Or wine. Else their plan to throw our minds into disarray with emotion will have succeeded.”

In truth, I knew Abatzas probably didn’t even have the wit to have thought of that; it felt to me as if he’d had the idea sometime between saying “That’s no victory!” and “You can have your hillside heap of poor-quarter stone,” as no more than revenge on me for what he saw as cheating. But our disarray would still be to his advantage. My people saw this, and many signed chalk, but also raised fists or hands clawed in frustration.

“You have to think of it this way,” I said to them. “Remember that they burned down the School of the Sword, too? And the message written in the ashes? ‘You are fled; I win.’ We have still won. We have still taken Vae Arahi back. It’s ours. They aren’t there, keeping us pinned in one place; we can chase them toward the plains. And we will rebuild Assembly Palace… we will rebuild it better… in all the traditions, of course, but more beautiful, using what is new where it suits.” I was thinking of Arkan glass in the windows of my office, so that I didn’t have to work in the dark in winter, or making the ceiling of Assembly Hall glass as I’d seen in the Marble Palace, though I wondered if my people would be willing enough to hold their noses about where the material came from.

“Starting by tearing down those awful walls,” I said. They’d lightened already; now they let out a furious cheer. “We’ll start on that tomorrow morning. Because they are ours, and that land is ours—we took it back. Go back to celebrating; we’re still victorious!”

“No, you took it back, Chevenga!” someone yelled, and others joined in. “With your one hand!” They were fired up again, and I thought I’ve done what I had to do here; now I can rest. The idea of letting my head fall onto a pillow had the kind of hard-edged beauty something has when you need it very badly.

But then someone yelled, “Kyash on it, why wait until tomorrow morning?” and in a moment they were running to grab sledgehammers and pick-axes, and I had to say, “Who am I to stop you? Just quit drinking so you don’t bring them down on yourselves!” That wasn’t enough; they insisted that the person who knocked the head off the eagle of Arko on the gate could be no one but me. The idea of walking back up was daunting, but didn’t matter; they carried me back up on their shoulders as I held a sledgehammer over mine. As I stood balanced on the stonework, ready to make the first swing and thinking about how to do it without falling off and breaking my neck—that would ruin the whole evening—I was very glad I’d sobered up. It took a few blows, but when it finally broke and smashed to bits on the stones below, everyone ran to grab pieces as mementos. I scratched my name on the handle of the hammer with my dagger before I gave it back to the builder who owned it, and she ended up donating it to the University Museum in Terera.

Now my day is over, finally, I thought, as I headed back down, the chorus of chipping and banging with a joyful war-cry on each blow growing behind me. In the town hall, I wished everyone who had come down with me good night, and found the door of my room bolted from within. “Password, please!” a raspy, Haian-accented voice said. I just answered, “Kan, it’s me.”

“The Yeolis went berserk when they found out,” he said, as he let me in. Over his shoulder I saw Kallijas lying in my bed, Haian-rigged to a vein-bottle, his friend in his underclothes sitting next to him. “The only way to keep them safe was in a room with a door that bolted. The guards… I don’t know where they went.”

All-Spirit, I thought, the world is conspiring to deny me a place to sleep tonight. He shouldn’t be moved again, probably. Another part of me twisted my guts wondering how close it had been. I didn’t look at him, afraid my eyes would be caught in his again, and that would be more than my heart could bear right now. “Good thinking, Kaninjer,” I said. “I’ll join you next door, and take the floor.” Everything was well packed away, Sishana and Iperaiga having done a diligent job of readying for a move into the Hearthstone.

“No, you will not take the floor.” I had never heard Kaninjer speak in the you-will-not-brook-this healer’s tone before. “I am going to be staying awake to wake you up two-aerly anyway. Bathe and then bed, as your physician, I command you.”

“And I wouldn’t think of disobeying,” I said. “Truly.”

“Durakis.” Kallijas’s deep voice, calm and even. I had to look at him. The world froze; there was nothing in it but his eyes, their blue turned faintly green by the candlelight, and their astonishing clarity. We are one mind through them, I thought. He said something in some kind of Arkan that I didn’t understand, that made his friend, who’d frozen the moment he saw me, flinch.

“I… I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t understand that…” Of course I was speaking the Arkan that came first to me: equal-to-equal. Kallijas cast his eyes downward, with a bit of a flinch himself, as if I’d said something cutting, and said to his friend, in equal-to-equal, “Tell him I apologize that I don’t know lower than two up.”

“What do you mean, ‘tell him,’ Kallijas, I’m right here! Speak to me equal-to-equal and I understand every word!” All-Spirit… after that… we can’t talk? He spoke again, and this time I caught more of it, more of the abasement and self-contempt.

“Durakis,” his friend said, two-up, “it wishes to commend to your magnificent self the Haian healer, who prevented those who would harm these contemptible ones from doing so with uncommon courage nine times.”

I stared at Kaninjer. “What did he mean?” Of course, he couldn’t speak a word of Arkan. “He said you stopped them from getting hurt nine times, what did he mean?”

The Haian took a deep breath with a quiver in it. “It was when we were in my room, which has no bolt… warriors kept coming in, to go after…” He inclined his head toward Kallijas.

“What, with swords out? And you… stood in their way?” He signed chalk. “Blessed All-Spirit!” I wouldn’t credit most people without war-training with that kind of courage, let alone a Haian. Of course his Haianness was protection; but the heart doesn’t necessarily remember that when a blade comes hissing out of a scabbard. “Kaninjer… that’s astonishing. That’s magnificent.”

He stared at me. “I… don’t think so… I was so terrified I almost peed myself, Chivinga…” His eyes were suddenly full of tears.

“It’s when people are terrified that they’re doing the most courageous things,” I said. “If there were no fear there’d be no need for courage. You did not let terror stop you—that’s the very definition of courage.”

He stared at me more, and then said the thing that explained it entirely. “I had to. He is my patient!” There is where the healer turns into a warrior, in the commitment to preserve life. I had not known it before. I learned it from him.

He looked like he needed arms around him, so I gave him that. He grabbed onto me, buried his head in my neck like a child, and wept out his pent-up fear, without shame. When he was done, I dug through the sacks until I found the decorations box. “Usually this is done before the assembled army, so that the person can receive the acclaim he deserves,” I said, “and I’m sorry I am not doing that, but… well, the army might have something of an argument with who exactly you saved, to earn it. So best it be in privacy.” He stared at me as if he’d lost the ability to understand Yeoli.

I found the one I was looking for, faced him square-on and said the formal words. “By my rights as chakrachaseye of Yeola-e, for actions performed on etesora 38, 1550 to protect against armed threats one whose life he was committed to protect, I award Kaninjer of Berit the Silver Circle, which is awarded for courage in the face of enemy action in the second degree.” It was not quite a Gold Circle deed—I hadn’t given one out yet—but anything below silver was too stinting. I pinned it to the collar of his robe, as he stared at me in blank incomprehension. Then I said the same words in Arkan, for the only audience we had. Kallijas bowed his head and cupped his hands at his temples in the prayer-gesture, and his friend did likewise; what it means in this context is, “I see the Divine Presence in you.” I bowed myself, and kissed his hand.

Kaninjer’s gaze went from me to Kallijas to his friend and then back, as if he were a deer surrounded by three wolves. “Chivinga… you… just… I’m not… I am… Anamun… I… I… I’ll be next door. Bathe and then bed!” He fled out the door.

I would disobey him after all, I decided. There was one more thing I wanted to do today. I got all the dirt and wine and soot off me in the town hall’s Arkan baths, went back to my room, and asked the friend his name. “Minakis,” I said when he’d told me. “Go next door… no, best I take you, come. I want to speak with Kallijas alone.”