272 - Tediously safe and boring

“So you’re done with the scribbling fool, I need to—Cheng!” Krero, just coming in, put his hand on my forehead. “You’re sweating; are you fevered?” Sishana and I both burst out laughing.

“No, no, I’m just terrified, since Perisalas is so close, that we’re in imminent danger of a siege within a siege,” I said, and explained all.

“You missed your calling,” Krero said, laughing. “You should be on the stage. Both of you. Maybe the Shae-Arano-el are truly actors. Or circus-players.”

“I’ve drawn huge audiences,” I said.

“I was going to say, though, if Perisalas has forerunners far enough ahead to see what we’re doing, they run back and Perisalas sends the citadel a pigeon, the game’s up.”

“True, good thought.” I had Achanga and Niku double our scout force and expand its boundary, to make sure it didn’t happen. Sometimes fighting in plains is a blessing. Having A-niah always is. What would it be like when every general had them, as they would soon after the secret came out? I might be the last ever to have them when the enemy didn’t. I counted my blessings.

I had started to wonder, incidentally, when we’d start training Yeoli flyers. We had never set a date on it, meaning to see how the war went, but I was beginning to itch now, if for no other reason than wanting to fly again myself. Perhaps in winter, when we’d be fighting and marching less. But it was for Niku to say, not me.

Now with the preparations for the fake battle and the real ambush well in hand, I had free time, as I had never been before I’d driven myself to collapse; another measure I’d taken to ease my work-burden was to appoint Artira acting semanakraseye in Vae Arahi. It is more proper to have an acting semanakraseye rather than the angaseye dagra krisa—holder of the arch-crystal—presiding in Assembly, and having her rather than me doing everything else put all the work in one place. In effect, now, I was chakrachaseye and chakrachaseye alone; not what I wanted, but all I could do, as I had bitterly learned. So I decided to visit Reknarja again.

I tell out of order. I had visited him the first time the day before, as soon as I’d been done threatening the river-ship holdouts, Makaina having traced him to the Hospital of Tinga-e Centre. By the time I got there, the Haians were saying he was no longer in danger of death so long as nothing festered. Amintris and Jakanarja, who’d gone straight to the surgery the moment his unit’s assignment had been completed, gave me the summary.

He’d taken a flail chest at the hands of an Arkan lancer—there’d been a few Arkan horse in the city—who’d unhorsed him. The lung, fortunately, had just been bruised, not parted anywhere, and they’d splinted the ribs internally with bone-crabs. Jakanarja had managed to see the last bit of the operation. “I know now for sure he has guts,” he said to me. “I’ve seen them. But thank the Gods of my Ancients that he’s all right… last thing Tor Ench needs is me as king.”

I stared at him. I’d thought, from everything Reknarja had said, that Jakanarja had always been snapping at his elbows, after the throne. Realizing there was more to this than I knew, I looked away and schooled my face.

Now Reknarja was still dozy, with the remnants of the anaesthetic and painkillers both, and pale. He was fairly severely Haian-rigged, with tubes here and there, and the pure-air mask. “He said he was fine then bit his lip without knowing it,” said Jakanarja. “So I got them to give him more pain-juice.”

“Sievenka,” Reknarja rasped. “I feel... like... Glory.... is sitting... on... my chest.”

“Well, we finally persuaded him to get off, then got you to the Haians.” I sat beside him and put one hand on his shoulder, the other on his head. There is nothing like a warm touch when you are flattened and hurt by a wound; I should know. He closed his eyes, seeming to drink in comfort. Where were his friends? I remembered what he’d said.

“Really? Stupid horse.”

“No, I’m kidding,” I said. “Do you remember how it happened?”

“I think he slipped his lance. My shield... it glanced off and hit me solid I think... Or did I get trampled? I know I got unhorsed. Shit. I haven’t been unhorsed in years...” He weakly lifted a hand to scratch his nose, and his finger hit the mask. “Ehh… pure air… did I dream my brother here?”

“No,” Jakanarja said, with a touch of resentment.

“Oh. Jak...” He was not entirely with us. He closed eyes, and tried to take a deep breath, but checked himself. “You’re all right? Father will be happy both of us didn’t get hurt.”

I looked at Jak; I hadn’t heard he’d been wounded, and he didn’t show any sign of it. “You came close?”

“No. It’s just more of Rek being obscure.” The epitome of sensitivity to each other, this family was.

“He’s drugged to the eye-teeth; he’s allowed to be obscure,” I said.

Reknarja looked at me, his eyes gaining more life from the import of his question. “Will I…”

“Live? Yes.” I’d asked Amintris all this. I couldn’t imagine no one had told him, but it takes telling someone several times when they’re in the state he was. “Ride again? Yes, in a while. Apprentice generalling, seven days. Lose wind, no. Your lung just got jarred, so it will heal entire. Don’t worry, about anything.” I stroked his hair. Such volumes it spoke, that he looked to me for these things rather than his own flesh and blood.

“Then we’ve taken the citadel?”

“Ehh, not yet,” I said. “But it’s not yours to worry about, since you’re laid up.”

“Apprentice still,” he said, looking at me, with a thin, tight grin. “Not quite enough to knock me out… yet…”

“How do you mean?” If he couldn’t explain, I’d put it down to the drugs and let it go.

“Still Successor to the... Tor... Not yet, Jak.” He smiled the same ugly way at his brother.

“What? You think I’m vulturing? Son of a b… Gods!”

“Hey, stand down, stand down, both of you,” I said. “No family arguments when one of you has taken a flail chest on the same day. Jak... you should tell him what you told me.”

He looked at me, his blue-grey eyes under perfectly-shaped brows puzzled. “Which… when?”

“Thank the Gods of your Ancients he will be all right?”

“Oh. Right.” They all need a psyche-healer, I thought. “Reknarja.... The Tor needs you. I’d make a shit-lousy Successor to the Tor, and a worse King! Don’t you dare try and stick me with it!”

Reknarja stared back at him, druggedly bewildered. “Wha..a..a..aat?”

“Rek, don’t disappoint Father. He wants you to be King, not me! I’m too much of an idiot!” Reknarja’s eyes widened, enough that I decided this was too much for him right now.

“Maybe the two of you should discuss such weighty things when the one of you is stronger.” I couldn’t help but think about it myself, though. Had Kranaj convinced both his sons that he’d be a bad King, and his brother a better one?

“Yes, you’re right, Sievenka, sorry,” said Jakanarja. “Rek… I’ll write father and let him know you’re all right.”

“Did someone catch Glory?”

“Yes,” said Jakanarja. “He’s fine, your squires are taking care of him.” They spoke more, about private Enchian things, including one underling Rek had thought was a friend who he now said was a weasel. I wasn’t sure I trusted his judgment; he’d been raised to think badly of people. I remembered how he’d hated me, until I’d provoked him into hanging me over a cliff. Then Reknarja yawned, and looked as if he could sleep, so I took my leave.

How would Reknarja be to deal with, once he was king? And Jakanarja, if Rek somehow came to grief? Not easy, for those who’d never had a reckoning with him as I had, I suspected. Kranaj was only middle-aged and still healthy, so I probably wouldn’t be around to see for sure. In the letter to Artira I did that night, I wrote about it, in a tone as if I were just making bemused observations, not giving her knowledge she would need some day, that I would not be here to give her in seven years. I was getting good at that.

All was reported to me to be in readiness, so I bedded down early. My last decision, as it was often, was where to place myself, though the national banner, obviously, would go on the wall. Something I had learned in this war; if a plan is good enough to bring a decisive victory, it almost doesn’t matter where a fighting chakrachaseye puts himself, even if he is an exceptional warrior.

My command council had been pressing me more to be cautious and not expose myself to the worst danger since my month of rest, I’d noticed, making exactly that point. They kept saying I was too indispensible to risk losing. “But it matters if I start looking like I’m holding back enough that I cease inspiring the warriors,” I said. “I understand your point; but there’s a balance.” I suspected that would always be somewhat more exposed than they wanted, and somewhat less than I did.

It was something of a let-down to my pride, in truth—I’d once been the one who’d defeated Arko’s greatest champion in a duel, for Vae Arahi—but not worth giving up plans that brought decisive victories for, of course. It spoke of how great our overall victory had been that I no longer had to do such things, and I should count it as nothing but a blessing; yet to some part of me, it was tediously safe and boring. Maybe the Mezem had left me changed.

As I bedded down, I saw Kaninjer was not around. Of course I was doing it earlier than usual, and hadn’t told him; I wasn’t sure where he was, though the hospital he’d attached himself to seemed likeliest. I peeked in the office he’d taken as his quarters, and found his things all there—the flat box of papers, the pen, the books neatly lined up on the desk, his clothes-satchel, the chimes hung from a rafter—except, of course, his bag. Good signs he was not quitting my service. I bathed and went to bed, cuddling in with Niku.

She was snoring in her light way in a moment, but I could not sleep. I kept listening for Kaninjer’s step. All-Spirit, have I learned to lean on him so much, like a child? I finally heard him come up the steps—Haians have a light way of walking, as a rule, reflecting their whole ethic of moving gently through the world—and click open the door. As he came to the bed, tip-toeing even more silently, I pulled the covers over my head, and stuck out my two wrists. “This way you can forget it’s me,” I said.

“No, I can’t,” he said, as he took one of them and did the expert pressing at different strengths that he did, for whatever reason. “Your life-energy is as distinctive as your face.” I had no answer to that, so I said nothing. “Under the tongue,” he said, so I had to come out. I took the medicines without saying anything, and he said nothing else before he left but, “Sleep well.” It will be a while before he gets over it, I told myself, mostly, in truth, to fend off the idea that he might not get over it at all, more than anything else. The next morning, he was the same, saying only what was strictly necessary, as did I.

For the ambush, I positioned myself on the back of Bukangt, behind the public library, at the faintest paling in the east. The pretend defensive force around the gate had orders to do a fighting retreat as if they were being helplessly driven back, but in such a way as the Arkans would be directed down the street towards the nearest gate. We waited, hidden in the cross-streets and alleyways on both sides; we’d fall on them once they’d strung themselves out in a column.

“Chen! Chen!” Soon the cry was being relayed all over the wall, carrying nicely across the city in the still almost-dawn air; then the gong-beat calling warriors into position began. Then came the sounds; ladders banging against walls, arrows and spearheads clattering or thumping (we were using blunted points), piteous death-cries. I award every one of you a Meadowflop, I thought.

“There are a lot of them on the citadel wall, watching,” my spy on the library roof reported to me, then a little later, “Plenty of goings-on inside, looks orderly and purposeful… I think they’re pulling away the weight that’s shoring up the gate, though they are trying to do it very quietly.” If it took too long, our next step to tempt them out was to have half the pretend defensive force be called away to the walls; I’d given that order last night. But perhaps we wouldn’t need to. I unclipped Chirel.

“Heh,” he said, a short time after that, which had seemed to part of me like a century. “Gate’s opening!” I heard the Arkans’ massed war-cry, “Aaaaaa-raaaaas!” and the clang of steel on steel.