238 - Purify my heart, let me be as gold

I switched to Arkan. The infirmary had the usual number of people in it, lying in bed or helping those who were lying in bed, every word carried like in any tent, and this, more than anything, was no one else’s business. Or perhaps I just wanted to conceal my shame.

I should hold him, but I could no more do that here than he could have Minakis while his hands were bound. Perhaps he’d hate my touch now anyway; I could hardly blame him. The Haians had covered where they’d been working on Minakis, but his face was bare and looked as if he were asleep, except for its pallor, and the other beginnings of the marks of death. Kallijas took him into his arms gently, but soon let go. You feel instantly the pointlessness of embracing a corpse.

“His blood is on my hands,” I said. “If I weren’t so selfish, keeping you here, if I’d sent you away yesterday, whether he went with you or stayed here a prisoner or went back to the Arkan camp, he’d still be alive.” Krero’s words kept ringing in my ear. Someone’s going to get hurt. Had he been behind this? My heart did not want to believe it. It would all come out. That should be Krero’s task. Could I trust him?

“I don’t blame you, Sheng,” Kallijas said. “It’s my fault, if anyone’s.”

“You aren’t giving the orders. It’s the fault of the one who is. I should have seen it coming, there were all kinds of signs… things I have not told you.”

“It was natural for you to trust your guards,” he said. “Their story will be that Minakis and I were trying to escape.”

All-Spirit… does he really feel he has to argue his innocence, to me? Of course he did; they were my people. “I know.” Iri-tai Serani, the only one of my four guards who’d been left standing, had only screamed it about a hundred times before I’d told him to shut his reeking trap, get back to his quarters and count himself as confined there until further notice. “I also knew it was horseshit the moment I heard it. Don’t worry about that.”

He stood up. He wanted to be in private, as I did. But his hand stayed on the corpse’s shoulder. “Best would be back to Arko, to the family’s plot. But we solas fighting abroad know that cannot be, except for Aitzas. Good enough that we be buried…” He looked at me bleakly. “…on what is now Arkan soil.”

“And you count a corpse burned as a corpse desecrated,” I said. I remembered the corpses in the carriage Mana and I had tried to escape in, lovingly wrapped in their boxes but rotting nonetheless. Yeolis, of course, count a cemetery as soil polluted, not to mention wasted. Because of both nations’ customs, in every place we’d liberated, the people had wasted no time tearing down the headstones and walls of Arkan cemeteries, and burning the remains. “There might be no other way. I’m sorry.”

He stood silent for a moment. “Well… it will be as you command. And I will accept that. Though I should…” Gently, as people do with the corpses of those dear to them, as if they could still feel, he unclasped a pendant that Minakis had been wearing, and pulled a ring from his sword-hand fourth finger that looked like his own ring, that Adamas had given him. “I should take a lock of his hair for them, too.” Minakis’ family, he must mean. “But I have nothing to cut it with.” I did it with my dagger, he tucked the things tenderly in his shirt, and I told the Yeoli healers’ apprentices, in Yeoli, “the usual.” The usual for enemy dead, I meant: cremation and ashes scattered.

He still had dried blood on his hands, as did Kaninjer, so they shared a washbasin and the towels, and I said, “Let’s go back to my tent… my room.” Then Krero was at my elbow. Before he could say a word, I said, “They’re all under arrest—those who aren’t incapacitated give parole second Fire come or you restrain them—but no questioning, by anyone, until I give the order, because I’m going to be there for all of it. I hope you aren’t pretending this isn’t a stain on the name of the darya semanakraseyeni.” He just stared at me, his eyes a little wide and his mouth open to argue, then acknowledged.

“I am sorry I broke your lampstand,” Kallijas said, when we were in private. “And my parole.”

“My lampstand?” I said. “That’s how you did it?” I had sparred all of them, and dueled him, so I could imagine it all too vividly. “You were defending yourself; that’s not breaking parole. You need apologize for nothing. They just came at you… never mind. We’ll talk about that later. You’ve lost your heart’s brother.” I put my arms around him.

“I can’t remember first meeting him,” he said, into my shoulder. “He was always just there.”

“I know what you mean.” On my arm, Mana’s arm-ring suddenly burned. I made him lose the same. I was suddenly too throat-clenched and sick to speak. I was learning fast what it is to love people on both sides of a war: whoever wins, you grieve.

“He was just telling me, he thought you were good for me. I… didn’t mean to tell him. He saw it. He said, ‘You are always happier when you’ve been with him. You have a glow on you that looks like Aras put it there.’ I guess you can’t hide from those who know you well.”

“No, you can’t,” I choked out. He should be crying, and I comforting, not the other way around. “Kall, he was your heart’s brother. Just let it out.”

Arkans never like to. Even in a war-camp full of enemies where no one would think less of him than they already did, and with someone far more given to tears than he was, he wanted to keep the Arkan stone face. But then he said, “I should sing first,” and stood up.

I had read about it, the hymn to Aras they sing for the fallen. I had never heard it. Singing, his deep voice was unearthly beautiful; he put no frills on it, just made it straightforward and without pretense, and it was as if I could sense the Arkan warrior-god between the notes.

Aras, Thou, Refiner’s Fire
Cleanse me, this my heart’s desire.
Holy, clean, set for you Master
Make me ready

Purify my heart,
Let me be as gold
And precious silver
Purify my heart, let me be as gold
As precious gold

Steel-Armed One
Oh Heart of Fire
Purify me, cleanse me
Let me serve you, my desire

Make me holy,
Burn me clean of sin
As gold, pure gold
My soul will win.

Was I imagining it, or did the guards outside stand more still at their posts while he sang, and my squires stop bustling? Kaninjer was in his room, writing something; did his pen-scratching cease? None but me understood the words; but the feeling, anyone could hear.

The last note faded, and Kallijas took a deep breath and sat down, letting tension out of himself, and looking a little stronger.

It was late, but I didn’t want to leave the questioning until morning. I also didn’t want to let him out of my sight. Krero was outside waiting. “Where are Sach and Kunarda? I don’t care if they’re off and in bed—roust them up, they’re guarding my tent, inside.”

“Yes, of course they’re off and in bed. You mean guarding that Arkan.”

“I think the odds of a further black mark on the name of the darya semanakraseyeni are less with them there,” I said. “Unless it’s suddenly become legal to kill a paroled prisoner? Sish, go.”

“Kyash,” he said. “You’re not going to court-martial the three of them, are you?”

“We are going to question everyone before we make any such decision. Three? All four were involved, from what I understood.”

“Yes, but one of the four is now dead, her skull cracked by your beloved Arkan. The Haians just sent me word. It was Cherao. She never woke up. I asked them to send me word, by the way. I notice you didn’t.”

I suddenly felt tired to the bone, a tiredness so intense it was like a solid substance inside me, black and heavy and vicious. I wanted to lie down. I leaned for a moment against my tent-pole. Is my mind too clouded with emotion and exhaustion to see fully all the implications here, I thought, so that I’ll miss something? Especially when I so don’t want to see them?

“Maybe you should go to bed and let me deal with it,” he said. So you can hide something? “Or,” he said, as if reading my mind, “if you have to have your nose in, we deal with it in the morning. I know the Haians would prefer that with Machenga, whose skull was merely almost cracked. Your darling likes to go for the head, doesn’t he?”

“Tonight,” I hissed. “With me. If you’re attacked, you defend yourself. Wouldn’t you?”

“Is that what he said? It’s not what they’re saying. Why are you believing the enemy over your own?”

“What, you think it was Kallijas’s plan to pick up my lampstand, call all four of my guards way inside my tent where he and his recently-wounded and totally-unarmed friend were, right in the middle of our camp, so as to fight his way out?”

“Well, I’d trust a Yeoli’s word over an Arkan’s any day.”

“You know what, Krero? We don’t have to trust anyone’s word. Ikal is handy enough with truth-drug now to have nicely debriefed me.” He signed chalk at that. “But notice this,” I added. “You heard Kallijas asking to be truth-drugged, and you saw how Iri-tai turned a little green when I mentioned it. You know there’s a saying in Arko, ‘truth-drug without truth-drug’? Sometimes they spare the Ministry of Serenity’s budget there just by saying they’ll do it, and seeing the whole story right on the suspects’ faces.” He stared at me, and I saw in his dark eyes the first worry that perhaps the Yeolis had been the aggressors. Or was it the first worry that I’d find out they’d been?

I sent to the Ikal summit-person and summoned the two Yeolis who were able; if we could get enough truth out of them we need not disturb the one in the infirmary. While we were waiting, we took Kallijas’s account. He and Minakis had just been sitting together talking when the guards had burst in from both entrances with swords drawn and a clear plan, two of them going for each Arkan. Kall had grabbed the lampstand, and Minakis had done his best with a night-table. All the Yeoli casualties had come by Kall’s hands, and Iri had fled on seeing everyone else go down.

Of course we questioned Iri-tai and Jiniya separately. “What I’m going to do,” I told them, “is see if your stories match. If they do, one of you will be truth-drugged to confirm; if they don’t, both of you will be truth-drugged, so as to determine who was more truthful. Whether we truth-drug more people who were part or saw will depend on the answers. I suggest you be truthful by choice.”

“Semanakraseye,” Jiniya said, wide-eyed—he was only eighteen—“they’re the enemy, right?”

“They are Arkans and Arko is the enemy, but that doesn’t matter to the law here. You are still up to your ears in trouble unless they broke their parole.” I had a feeling the best way to truth with him was fear.

“But semanakraseye, we were trying to—”

“Shut up, kyash-head!” Iri-tai hissed. I thought about all four of them; good warriors, good enough to be in the regular darya if not the elite, but none of them standing out much in intelligence. I sent him off, and asked Jiniya what they had been trying to do.

It wasn’t hard getting out of them, without truth-drug, that they’d done exactly as Kall had described. “Court-martial me then, semanakraseye,” Iri-tai said, his eyes turning cold. Like everyone else, he’d always called me Chevenga. “I’ll plead justification. He is Kalicha Ityirian. He should be pulled apart sinew by sinew, not treated like a guest by our semanakraseye!” Treated like a guest; does he not know? Of course if I asked, then he would.

What was more frustrating was trying to find out if anyone had put them up to it. Iri and Jiniya disagreed on who was the leader, Jiniya saying Iri, and Iri saying there hadn’t really been one, more a consensus. That didn’t mean either was lying, though; they just might see it differently. Both said no one had put them up to it, but of course they’d easily both see they should protect whoever had, if there was someone. Both said the idea had been Cherao’s, and she had never said anyone else suggested it, but they could not know no one had, and when we truth-drugged Iri-tai he confirmed this. Of course we would get no truth from her. I did not ask them what they knew of my feelings for Kallijas, and so did not learn.

I sent them back to quarters without telling them what I would do. I didn’t know. “Cheng, we’ve got to think of how each choice you have would play out with the Yeolis, with the allies, with Assembly, with the people of Yeola-e, with everyone,” Krero said. “So if we go through them one at a time—”

“Krero, I’m going to sleep on it, if I can sleep,” I said. “I’m too tired to choose wisely enough now. But I want to show you something.” I opened my lapdesk and handed him the warning note. He read it, and looked up at me with an expression in his eyes that I almost couldn’t read, except that it seemed to have half-hidden fear and half-hidden hope in it, both.

“I am not going to ask you if you know about this, or anything else like it,” I said. “Either with truth-drug or without. But, if you happen to, I’d like you to pass something on to whoever it is, from me. Tell them—”

“But Cheng, I can’t—”

“I told you, I’m not asking you. I will give you the message. If you can pass it on, you will; if you can’t, no harm done. Memorize it even if only for appearances’ sake, that’s an order. ‘I will not kill Kallijas, and I will prosecute to the fullest extent anyone who does, because he is living under a paroled prisoner’s protection. Think about what you would do to Yeola-e, by undertaking to convince my army I am treasonous or corrupt or whatever disparagement you are thinking. Think of how it would weaken us in the face of the enemy. Yeola-e’s hopes lie with me and me alone, and you all know that. Whatever you do to me, you do to the people.’”

“Cheng…” Now it was pure fear in his eyes. “I… I never imagined in a thousand years I’d ever hear a semanakraseye of Yeola-e say something like that.”

“And I never imagined in a thousand years that my own people would communicate with me in such dark ways. But they have, so I give them the same back. You pass that on word-for-word, that’s a conditional order, conditional on you knowing who to pass it on to, if there is anyone. Do you want me to repeat it?”

“No, Cheng,” he said. “It’s all right, I have it.” He repeated it back, and said “A-e kras.”