231 - Easily and well

Niku and I did the same thing as one: reached for the baby saying “Shh shh, Vriah-ria, it’s all right!” Since she was closer, she got there to seize her up first. If anything, the next cry was louder. All-Spirit, I thought, how must life be for this child, when her sources of sustenance themselves are sources of distress? “I am probably feeling less than you,” I said. “Let me try.” She passed her to me wordlessly, and I said, “Can we go outside? Maybe fresh air will help.” Let her take that as meaning Vriah, though I meant her; she was always happier in the open.

Outside, it was sweetly cool, and bright from a fat summer full moon. The air was full of the scents of grass and cedar. I had not noticed these things, running to meet her. “Vriah, it’s all right,” I said. “We feel things, that is all; they are not the whole world, though they must seem so to you, tiny as you are. It’s just emotion; it doesn’t touch our love for you any more than a drop of water wears down a mountain. You feel it as no one else does; you are going to have to make the best of that. And the best… could be something incredible.” Even if they don’t understand the words, children understand the meaning in their hearts, I was always taught; and they can understand the words earlier than you’d think. She arched her back and screamed unremittingly. I kept talking.

Niku reached as if to take her, then dropped her hands and backed off. I could see how much it went against the grain. “Vriah... Vriah-os... birdling. I love you and Aba loves you too. I’m just frightened, pehali! Mi pehali-os!” It didn’t help in the slightest.

“We have to forget entirely anything bad we feel,” I said. “Either that, or wake up my mother. Let’s do that if she doesn’t calm soon. Vriah-riah, I love you, love you, love you...” I made it into a song. Niku closed her eyes and took a deep breath, then another. “It’s all right,” she intoned to herself. “T’zalo msah. T’zalo msah.” A short version; she said it in a practiced way, as if she had said it many times to herself before, though I’d never heard her say it in the Mezem. In the moonlight I could see her face just well enough to see the strain ease. She was thinking of flying, I knew.

Vriah settled from crying to moaning and then to silence. Somewhere a horse whickered. In the moonlight I could see her eyes looking up at me, studying, as if I were looking into a mirror that reversed age and size. She had got better at babbling since last time I’d seen her; sometimes it seemed like Niah words, though Niku said it had yet to make sense. Now she looked from me to Niku, and said, very clearly meaning for us to hear it, “ma’wiah. Ma’wiah!!”

“Manwiah,” Niku said. Forever. The second part of meh ish manwiah, ‘Always and forever.’ “Manwiah,” I said, to let her know I had heard her, too. My eyes filled with tears.

“You’re right!” In Niku’s voice now, there was a smile. “You are so right, little one, pehali-os!” She put her arms around me, and we cradled our daughter between us. “Her first words,” she said. “So wise.”

“Ma’wiah ma’wiah ma’wiah!” It was less insistent and more happy, now.

“Meh ish manwiah,” I said. “Always and forever, tiny sweetness. Are you telling us not to be idiots?” Niku sniffed, but her grin broke through, white in the moonlight. “And remember what is important...?” I added. “I suspect she is, love. We’re not calling off getting married, are we?”

I meant it seriously, but she took it as the joke. “Given how reluctant you are...” We both laughed, and she dashed away tears. “No.”

“I love him... for different things,” I said. “I love you for all the same ones I ever did. And it’s not as if I could marry him if I tried.” She jerked her chin up in the Niah yes-nod.

I think that was the first time in our lives that I looked at my daughter to measure how her mother felt. On my arm she was tense, still, but not crying. I saw Niku take another purposeful deep breath. “It would be a little hard for you to have children with him,” she said, straining for lightness.

“That’s not all I love you for, Niku. You and he are both beautiful... but in utterly different ways...” I wondered if I should shut up, whether I was just going to get myself into more trouble with every word.

“I know that. Aba Tyriah... I’m going to have to chase you all over the fahkad Earthsphere to marry you.”

“No! No! You’ve caught me! Always and forever! I’m right here!” I reached out to offer her my wrist. I thought she would take it hard and yank me in, but the grip was airy-light, as if my wrist were a bird whose feathers she didn’t want to ruffle, and the pull-in was very gentle. She is afraid I will choose him over her if she makes to deny me my choices, I thought. I felt sick. Love should never have fear in it. How to tell her in a kiss that she need fear nothing? I tried as best I could. Hers seemed grateful, for the reassurance. I stayed there until the gratitude turned to pure passion, and she pulled back saying “Not again!” Vriah laughed, “Ma’wiah, ma’wiah, ma’wiah.”

“Do you want to meet Kalllijas?” I said as we went back to the tent. “I asked him if it’s true he once wanted to be a Ring-fighter, and it is.”

“He’s Arkan and might pass out from shock at the idea of a woman ring-fighter anywhere near him.”

I laughed, imagining Kall going faint because all his blood was running out of his head and into his skin. The jokester in me relished the idea. “Only one way to find out,” I said. “But I promise you, he will be civil. He’s the epitome of it.”

“Hmm. Omores...” She glanced sideways. Vriah had my crystal in my mouth now. “We can talk about this sometime later?”

“You want to ask me something that might be difficult?” I said. “Try it. I will master my feelings as best I can. We have to practice this. Vriah-riah, you are almost too old to suckle on everything, you know that? Little birdling, I love you.” A yawn forced itself up out of her and she got slightly heavier on my arm.

“Omores, how... this has got to be hurting you.”

“Loving him does not hurt,” I said. “What my people, or at least some of them, feel about me loving him, hurts.” I still had something of a headache.

“I... hope we can make it all fly away, eventually. You need your attention on the war... not this.”

“Yes, that point’s been made by others. I will make it fly away by sending him away... I just... ache for that. I’m sorry, love. That would be easiest for you, I know. It was the way the duel went; I couldn’t help but love him.”

“Love,” said Vriah, clearly enough, in Yeoli.

“Her second word,” I said. “What a beautiful one. Wisdom and beauty you have, precious Vriah.”

“You have a big heart,” Niku said. “You love easily and well. It’s one reason it was so easy to love you. So I should be angry at you for loving when it is offered you? No. You are going to cram all your love into your life... so I refuse to try and limit you that way or in any way, omores. Te amo.” It had a feel of persuading herself as much as reassuring me.

We were outside the tent door. I wrapped my arm around her, and leaned my head on her shoulder. “You know what my mother said?” I whispered, so my two sentries wouldn’t hear. “I fall in love with exceptional people. It’s true. I am truly blessed when they fall in love with me. Niku… I give myself to you, every moment, in every cell.” Her hand twined in the back of my hair, and tightened into a hard grip. “Don’t worry.”

We slept with Vriah cradled between us. I woke up at dawn, and heard her say another word, “Ama,” as she searched for the breast. Niku was still deeply asleep, having come in so late, and she pulled her onto the breast by feel. I don’t think either of them woke up entirely.

Outside a Niah was waiting. “Scout report,” she said to me. “Six hundred on foot, just now passing through Chegra and heading south, appear to be Schvait.” It was the unit I’d hired, and they were two days away. My first taste of Niah scouting. I took a deep breath. There was a sort of freedom about it, an ease, as if I had wings myself.

“Chivinga. I’ve checked Kallijas; your turn.” I went back in, submitted myself, took my medicines, and, once Kaninjer had headed off to the infirmary, crept in to Kall’s part of my tent. If I am not cheating, why am I sneaking here while my wife-to-be sleeps?

“God Morning to you, Sheng,” he said.

“Good morning, Kall,” I whispered. “My fiancée arrived very late last night and is still asleep, so we have to be very quiet. Did you sleep well?”

“Yes. Your... fiancée? You are betrothed? I thought you were married already.”

“Well, I am. But... what do you know about Yeoli marriages?” We who deal with foreigners have to learn to explain this.

“That you marry in multiples... I was told an unkind metaphor, so will not repeat it.”

“Oh, you have to, now. You’ve got me curious.” We were doing as we always did, touching the backs of our hands together. The lustful part of what I felt was less sharp for having been slaked, but the swelling of the heart and rising in the soul were no different. It was different parts of me, I saw, that loved him and her.

“Like your own sheep. Herds... you know. You are the most virile curly-haired ram and so have the most ewes?”

I snorted with laughter, in part because it was such an un-Kallijan thing to say, then of course worried whether that laughter sounded too coarse. “I am already married to a husband and a wife,” I said. “Then I fell in love with another woman... have I never mentioned Niku? We met in the Mezem.”

“I... see. I think. You have... She… was in the… Mezem?”

“I know you don’t follow it, but you must have heard of that? Supposedly she was the only woman who ever fought there. I find that hard to believe, tell the truth. You’ve fought Yeolis now, see how our women do.” I suddenly thought of Rina, whom it had to have been hard for him to kill, and felt a pang of the torn-two-ways anguish that was becoming miserably familiar.

“You mean the woman... the one they called Wild? Savage? Who fought n... naked?”

“The very same,” I said grinning. “Though she only fought naked once. We fell in love there, maybe the worst place in the world to fall in love, but we both ended up alive. Our baby daughter is here, too.”

“She wasn’t a Yeoli, as I recall. Wouldn’t your people…” He trailed off, blinking. “Baby… daughter?”

“Vriah. We were fools, clinging to our lives by our teeth, forgetting we could create new life.”

“You mean… you were… having… you were… making… you were… copul—I mean… you were having intimate… you were—”

“Fikken.”

“…in the Mezem!?”

What do you think it is, a monastery? How old-fashioned Arkan was that, to think of the Mezem as a sacred place and therefore full of that exalted and fine thing, death, but free of that loathsome and base thing, sex?

“Fortunately she escaped before she was showing,” I said. “She and I had been matched.”

“Shefen-kas, you are making this up! It’s impossible to escape from the Mezem, and everything else you’re saying is even more preposterous.”

“Shh!” I hissed. Niku didn’t sleep lightly; Vriah, I wasn’t so sure. I grabbed my crystal. “Second Fire come if I lie. The Pages doesn’t have that she escaped, of course, but she did, as did Mannas the Wolf, though he got recaptured later. I almost escaped myself. The Pages has that she was there, though, and I was there, and what dates, and when you see Vriah you’ll see how old she is and that she looks like both Niku and me. I won’t tell you what colour her hair is; you won’t believe that until you see for yourself.”

“And they’re both… on the other side of that… canvas?” He blushed in his way, made even redder by the red light of morning coming through the tent wall. He looked intently at the weave of the blanket on his bed, the edge of his fingernail, the window-flap ties. I signed chalk, and he knew what it meant. “I… should not be here, Sheng.”

“Tell me something that’s news to either of us.”

“I mean… so close to her, to them. Everything… is so upside-down, is so wild…”

“Welcome to the true Yeola-e. Though I admit I push even that. She is Niah. The people who make the best chocolate.”

“You mean,” he said, his face curling in disgust, “a dark woman?” I laughed inside. You and Esora-e, I thought. I wish I could tell him you agree. “Aras… We’re in the middle of an undeclared war with them, I’ve heard. The Imperator has never bothered to formally declare it.”

I wanted so much to tell him about the battle, to recount what I had done in it, to impress him. But twenty-one lost Arkan ships with every single man killed would hardly cheer him. “Kall… there’s nowhere else you can be, yet. And it’s all right. If you knew Niku, you’d like her well enough. Don’t think of her as a dark woman but as a high-chainer. She had eighteen when she escaped. She might have won fifty.”

He threw his hands over his face—he had gloves now, though I didn’t tell him where I’d got them and he didn’t ask—and said, “The world has gone mad.” If only you knew they fly, too, I thought. “Sheng… I’ll just be very quiet back here. You and she won’t even know I’m here.” His blue gaze shifted to my temple. “Do you mind my asking what happened?”

“Oh... that was an accident in training.” Only after I’d said it did I remember that I hadn’t trained between the last time he’d seen me and now. My heart wrenched, and prickles went all down my arms and legs. I’d never felt so bad being caught lying to someone in my life, even in childhood.

He looked at me puzzled, then angry; then his brows relaxed, as he thought something that made him absolve or forgive me. “You don’t have to tell me, Sheng. It’s obviously none of my business.”

I grabbed my forelock, feeling tears burning. “Kallijas… I’m sorry. I should know better than to lie to you. I’m sorry. It’s… between someone in my family and me. Nothing severe. I’m sorry.”

“You needn’t be so sorry. I know how it is. My father knocked me down a time or two when I was just turned second threshold and full of myself, and I didn’t like to tell people.” I wanted to knock his father down. He reached past my hand to cup his hand tenderly over the mark, as if to protect it without touching it. As always, his touch went all through me with a sweet hot shock, as if I were internally naked to his hand. “You took it for me, Shefen-kas. Else you wouldn’t be trying to pass it off as something else,” he said. “But… you’re not forbidden exertion, are you? I…” His cheeks went deeply red. “I’ve been cleared for it.”