234 - A lovers' quarrel

After dark, Niku came back. I neither felt like going to the campfires, or inside my tent where I’d be closer to Kallijas, so I had Iperaiga light the pair of glass-globed standing torches I’d spotted when we’d overrun the Arkan camp, and did more semanakraseyeni work. You can disappear your troubles in wine or Arkanherb or sex or company; at least if you do it in work, work gets done.

“Chevenga,” she said. “Do you really need me here? I could leave the command to Baska. She’d do well for you.”

She didn’t have my full attention—I was reading over last moon’s war-chest financial report to Assembly before I signed it off—else I’d have known she wasn’t joking. “What, now I have to persuade you to marry me? Well… if I... must... Has my mother got Vriah?”

“No. Suku.”

I looked up at her. She was looking at me, face tight as a drumhead and eyes cold as stones. “Love, what’s wro—”

“Stop calling me that when it’s not certain! If it’s just Mezem craziness that has to be tossed out with the scraps, then it should be. And quickly.”

I sat stunned, as what she meant slowly came in and settled over and filled my mind. My insides went strangely still, with a kind of cringing all through me. I could say nothing, so she went on. “If I was the only woman in the city you could stand to fall in love with, just because I wasn’t Arkan, it’s madness. And now you have someone your whole heart belongs to.” She stabbed her thumb towards the tent wall.

I couldn’t move, as if I’d been drugged, or pinned to my chair by a spear that had gone down through the top of my head through my centre. I have lost her, because of what I have done. Inside I began to tremble. I felt the two points on my cheeks and my eyes burn.

“So?” She faced me, her chest heaving, her eyes now red. “Is it just Mezem craziness? Or do you truly want me?”

All-Spirit All-Spirit All-Spirit, how do I tell you I want you—and yet part of the shock was anger. I had known she’d have this question and answered it already; was I a liar? Why was she speaking so differently than before; had she spoken with someone? Between them, I could only get out, “I... Niku... I...”

“Was it that we were apart so long that you could fall in love with another person?”

“No... I mean…” I had no more voice than a whisper. My sentries were all standing still as statues, pretending not to hear. “Niku... I’m… sorry… I can’t speak...” I staggered up, wrapping my arms around myself; someone passing glanced, then froze, staring. “Can… we go… inside…?”

“Oh,” she said, seeming to sag, as if I had answered her question with something that devastated her, or as if I had answered at all. “All right, then.” Tears sprang from her eyes. “I’m... so...upset. I’m sorry. I’m sorry it was that, then. I’m just so stupid. I should have seen.” She tried to seize her breath, as it caught with sobs.

“Sorry it was what? Niku... Niku, stop!” By a miracle, it seemed, my tongue was mine again. “Stop saying these things before I can even say a word, there is so much wrong here I don’t even know where to start, Niku please can we go inside...” I went, feeling myself stagger as if I were wounded, clenching my forelock with both hands. She followed me, wan like a ghost. “I mean... do what you will... it is always your choice... but... I already said, I love you, no different than ever, I... Niku... always and forever as long as we have… have I lost that?” I couldn’t listen to her answer with my eyes open, so clenched them shut, and groped my way to a chair.

“I thought... you were choosing. I thought...”

“Him over you? But I said I wasn’t!”

“How would you feel if I’d brought a lover along and introduced him to you when we came in?”

“Well... I... I would have wondered if you still wanted to marry me, if you still loved me... but I told you I do. In more than words!”

“Since the islands... since the Mezem... I haven’t looked at anyone else, I haven’t wanted anyone else! Everyone else was not my love! How could you just.... have him happen to you like that?”

“Niku… I…” I’ve never understood how people who are guilty can begin to claim any kind of case in court, how they can stand calm in the face of the accusations, how they can say anything. “I…” She’d asked a question, as if we were in court; I had to answer with truth. “I wasn’t planning it… I don’t even know. Except that... he was one I couldn’t help but love. Just as you are. Niku... that doesn’t make him my love in the sense you mean...”

I still couldn’t look, but felt her, standing over me, measuring my words. “It’s you I want to marry,” I said, “it’s you I have a child with, and want more with, it’s you who I want to make a life with, it’s you who I have plans with... if they are not”—a sob caught the word—“ruined.”

“Me...? You’re sure of that?”

“Niku…! Do I sound unsure?” Now I just let myself cry. It occurred to me that Kallijas was hearing; since we were speaking in Yeoli he would not understand words, but he’d hear the emotions. He wouldn’t have any trouble figuring out what it was about.

“No,” she said, taking a deep quivering breath. “All right.”

“You are afraid,” I said. I opened my eyes. She stood like a tiny girl who’d just been terrified by an animal. It was like seeing a stranger in her place. How could I have known your fear has such intense depths? And why does it? “You’re afraid... I can understand that. Love...” I opened my arms, as tentatively as I could.

“And if I should decide to have sex with someone else, I will let you know,” she said.

“I... I never thought you wouldn’t...” Why had she said that? I realized: she’d said before, she had not looked at or wanted anyone else. Now she was telling me she was done with that, that as I had made her one among many, she would do the same with me. Like many warriors, she countered fear with anger. And yet, could I blame her?

But I did not do that. Kallijas was hardly many. Why such a punishment? Perhaps she was bluffing. But you do that with enemies. I felt sick, and empty inside as if I’d been dug out with a blunt shovel. We are having a lovers’ quarrel, I thought. Nyera’s parents had sometimes had them: sometimes we’d hear them yammering huge long strings of words at each other, screaming, crying, apparently tireless; sometimes we’d mimic them for fun, though not when Nyera was in a black mood. Now I thought, how did they both not just to fall to pieces from the barrage of hate from the other, the person they looked to for love? How did they have the strength to keep going?

“It’s... because it’s more than just sex, Chevenga.” Now her tears were raining.

“You have not lost my love,” I said. “I said that from the start.” I had not lowered my arms. I stood up. In two running steps she was in them. I tightened them very gently. “If If that were so... I’d say so. I would never be any less than honest with you.”

“You couldn’t tell me. I wasn’t here.” It had the sound of persuading herself, trying to allay her own fear.

“No.” I felt, and hoped I was right, that it was safe now to say something a little light. “If I’d written, with my luck, Arkan spies would have intercepted it. What fun they would have had with that.”

She sighed, and laid her head against my shoulder. “Well. At least your loves are all good warriors and can defend themselves.”

“All?” Do you truly think it is many? I remembered something I had learned on Haiu Menshir with Alchaen; sufficient emotion can alter what is true in our minds. They had done that to me. I always knew she was fiery; I’m just seeing it played out full, I thought.

“Him”—she stabbed with her thumb towards Kallijas again—“and me.”

“That’d be ‘both’.”

“Right. Thanks for the translation.” I couldn’t tell whether she was being sarcastic or not.

I should ask her, I thought. If I ever mean to make love to him again, I should ask her permission. Else I should never make love to him again, and not even ask. The part of me that wanted him, which was all of me, and the part of me that answered to him wanting me, writhed. But what if she says no? What… I am not going to ask in case she says no?

And yet she had just informed me that she would inform me when she meant to have sex with someone. I had changed our arrangement, she’d abided by it; was it not then changed, and I free to make love to him if I wanted?

“I can take it more easily if it’s just sex,” she said. “It’s when you love someone else; that’s when I get frightened.” ‘When,’ as if I made a habit of it.

“Niku, it’s you I want to marry. I’m not going to choose anyone else that way. It’s only you I can love the way I love you.” All-Spirit, I thought; what if Assembly doesn’t approve? I tried to tell myself to face the monsters one at a time, and had a flash of memory of the shulpiteh.

And yet now it struck me that the best thing to do would be to put in the approval request immediately. What would show my faith to her more definitely? She’d been here a whole day anyway; what was keeping me? I’d leave a note to Chinisa to scribe it while I was fighting, I decided.

“You realize, omores, that even if you and I didn’t marry... Yeola-e wouldn’t lose us as family.”

“Of course I realize that. We agreed that they were separate.” What is she saying? You can’t get rid of us? Or is it a reassurance? It was as if I didn’t know her. Still, I saw a joke in it. “Ama Kalandris… I’m not marrying my sister, am I?” It got a flicker of a smile, the best I could expect now.

“Distant cousin,” she said.

“You don’t exactly touch me like a sister.”

She softened into my embrace some, and closed her arms around my back. “No. Is that a hint, Chevenga?”

Here was a way to tell her what she needed to hear, in much more than words. “It.... could be.” I kissed the top of her head.

“Good thing I gave Vriah to Uncle Suku then... she seems to have a penchant for walking, or should I say crawling, in.” She slipped one hand inside my shirt-collar. “Unless… you want to bring Kallijas in, and both of us touch you like we are not brother and sister?”

I didn’t think that she could say something that would gobsmack me silent, but this did it. There is the Niku I know again, I thought. Her fear, as far as I could tell, had melted away as quickly and completely as mist from morning on the first touch of sunlight.

“Of course he is Arkan, and might die from shock,” she said. Oh, you have no idea. I let out a bit of a snort of laughter at the thought. “You love him. Vriah loves him. I will probably learn how.”

I don’t have a way to understand this, I thought. I said the truth, though: “You probably won’t have a chance. I have to send him off into hiding somewhere… soon. I have to. And that will be the end of it—” Tears caught me before I could stop them. “I’m sorry,” I whispered.

“I’m reassured, omores,” she said, gently. “Pehali… mi penzi… meh ish manwiah.”

“As long as we have,” I said. “You have that over him.” The last of the tension left her, and we leaned together.

“You cannot tell him,” she said. “Not in a war.”

“Why would I, anyway? I only tell people I’m going to marry.” Suddenly I wanted to tell him, in every finger-width of me, just so he would know, just because there were no secrets. All-Spirit... maybe, somehow, he already knows... Even that did not frighten me.

Niku slipped her hand inside my shirt, this time from underneath. I whispered, “I give myself to you.”

No fearful gentleness this time; she wanted to feel she owned me entirely. I made no protest, even though she tested the new limits of fear that I’d gained in Arko. She made me feel her teeth, and wanted to penetrate me, and make me feel it almost like a stab, and even as I was mad with ecstasy and throwing myself wide open with submission, the fear was there, making the ecstasy somehow more sharp. Something no one had ever done to me, even Skorsas: take me hard with her tongue while she had two hands wrapped around my manhood, so there was no way to move to escape. I knew I should not be silent either, and ended up screaming with it. It reminded me of Segiddis, but wilder; with Segiddis it had been diplomacy.

A-niah love to make chocolate part of sex, in innumerable ways. I wondered, as she melted some in her mouth and then spread it over my chest with her tongue, covering the demarchic brandmark, is she trying to make me more Niah, and so more like her, and so more hers?

That night at the death-hour I was awakened by a cry, in Kall’s deep voice. I was on my feet with Chirel in my hand in an instant, but he moaned, and this time I knew it was a moan of pleasure. He must be self-indulging—how else could he have survived his celebate life?—but then he said “Sheng,” full of need.

I shouldn’t—we were fighting at dawn—but I hung up the sword and went to him. In the light of my candle I saw his eyes were closed. He was asleep, thrashing. I put one hand on his shoulder and stroked his hair back from his brow, meaning only to calm him in sleep, not wake him, but he woke, so I wrapped my arms around him. He was silent, as if waiting for dizziness to pass. “You are the real Sheng,” he whispered, finally. “Not one of the dream ones.”

“The real Sheng,” I said, drawing out the “sh” a little, for fun.

“Aras… it’s still dark, I woke you… I’m sorry. You fight in the morning.”

“I will stay just for a bit and then go back to sleep,” I said. “I wanted to make sure you were all right.”

“I’m all right. I dreamed… a dream not for civil company.” But it had me in it… more than one me. There was joy in that thought. I wondered how many.

“You want me, and I haven’t been here,” I said. “I know. I want you, too.” We leaned our faces together. So easy it was to understand, with that harmony between us.

I kissed him goodnight, and went back to my own bed. This time I noticed what I had not getting up: a paper on the desk that had not been there before. It was folded, and had my name on the outside. I opened it.

You don’t know who I am, I read, in Enchian, as I have disguised my writing. But I am one who loves you as a warrior loves his commander. If you want to be merciful to Kallijas, act now, and get him elsewhere. There is a group of people who are planning to threaten you with making it public about you and him, unless you execute him.