295 - A nice day

To: Intharas Terren, High Editor, Pages, City of Arko
From: Filias Metras, in Tinikia, Yeola-e
Risae 27, 56 YPA

Dear Intharas:

Inth… this letter is going to be… unusual. It’s going to say something that really stretches your imagination. Can I please ask that you read it with the most open, aware-that-the-world-is-full-of-wonders, accepting and above all sober state of mind?

Assuming that you are doing so, I thank you. I spoke to Shefen-kas yesterday, and I asked him the following. “These A-niah, you seem to treat them with as great honour as any other allies, with their quarters near yours, their leader attending in command councils, and so on. But, first of all, they are barely a handful, by military standards, and second, they never fight—well, with that one exception, inside the gate of Hirina, and that didn’t go so well for them. We hear they scout; but how are mere scouts worthy of such status? The obvious conclusion to draw is that they have gained favoured status because you and their leader are madly in love. Have you any other explanation?”

“What, you are suggesting I’d favour one nation over another due to my personal feelings?” He looked at me all offended with those black brows storm-cloudy over those spear-point-coming-at-you eyes. My professional God, you have no idea how I’ve come to hate the sight of that face. “Of course there’s another reason!” He leaned forward, his expression changing to conspiratorial, and whispered, “The A-niah have flying machines.” Then he took hold of his crystal and said, “Second Fire come if I lie.”

“You fikken wool-hair sheep-penetrator,” I said. “If you think you can fik with our minds that much, that we are that stupid, if you think I’m even going to take that mamokas-shen one finger-width out this fikken door, you belong back in the House of Integrity.”

“I thought it was unlikely you’d believe me,” he said, with this disappointed look. “But you did ask.” I stomped out. It was one thing for him to tell me that he had flying mamokas, that was almost more like a joke between us, but this one he didn’t accompany with any witticisms. And he swore on it. If he was going to do that kind of shen I wasn’t going to talk to him. At least not for a while. It’s not as if there’s anything going on anyway—well, aside from the Haian doing war-training, but that’s a whole other story. Separate letter. It’s a story if he makes it through the full training and they assign him to a unit, I figure. Just as a heads-up, I’ve already been told I’m not allowed to interview him.

But Intharas… this morning, I woke up too early, well before light, and I got to thinking and… well, here’s the part where you really have to open your mind, and swallow your skepticism, and make this logic-journey with me. I realized, if it were true, it would explain a lot of things. (The A-niah having flying machines, I mean. I know the Haian war-student really exists, I’ve seen him training.)

Okay, stop laughing, and let’s list them off. First: remember I told you about how Abatzas was laughing about how Shefen-kas threatened that we’d be visited by Hayel from above if he didn’t march back to the border—and then that night, there were bits of Arkans dropping all over camp and this Gods-awful, bone-shaking screeching from the sky? That’s one.

Then, it’s opening gates. First the palisade at that town that starts with an ‘S’ near Vae Arahi. Then here in this city—the A-niah got in somehow. Then at Hirina, there they were again with Shefen-kas himself, though they got trapped inside the gates and barely got away. Each time the A-niah did it but there was no way they could have got in.

Next, it’s what they’re said to be doing—scouting. Now and then our scouts spot enemy scouts, and in the report it’s always a Yeoli or an Enchian or a Lakan… never a Niah. If they’re scouting, where are they? If they are up in the air, that would explain it, wouldn’t it? And it would also explain how Shefen-kas always seems to know where other armies are and when they’re going to show up, even when they are way out of scout range. Deny it?

But then, as I lay there in the dark shaking, I thought even further back. The story we put out was that Niku the Wild One along with Mannas the Wolf did not do the impossible, escape from Arko, but everyone in this business knows damn well they did. Same night, Shefen-kas almost did—he just didn’t get to the lefaetas he was supposed to get lifted up on in time. Mannas got caught again, but Niku never did. This would explain it, wouldn’t it? Both how they got out, and why he got caught and she didn’t.

I will tell you another thing, something you don’t know, something a person has to see A-niah up close to know. They have an obsession with birds. They wear bird jewelry and bird tattoos and shawls knitted to look like bird wings. Their insignia is birds everywhere. Another connection… you see it?

I know this is preposterous. I know they are a race of primitive, uneducated savages capable of making nothing more refined than chocolate. But… it would explain all these things like no other single explanation would. And—Shefen-kas truly never has said anything untrue to me that he swore that oath to. He fooled me even while swearing it, last time, but what he said still turned out to be true.

So… I think there’s something to this. At least enough to be worth investigating. Since I don’t have much else to do, I’m going to. For one thing, I’ve heard that the A-niah have some kind of school, a little ways out of town, where no one can see it. Why’s it hidden away like that? What are they teaching that can’t be open, unlike the fast war-training they’re doing with beginners that is in broad daylight in the town square? Shefen-kas himself goes, as does his mother and some of his closer friends… what’s so interesting there? I’m going to see if I can get out there somehow. You’ll be the first to know what I find out.

Second Fire come if I lie about any of this!

Sincerely,
Fil

To: Filias Metras, in Tinikia, Yeola-e
From: Intharas Terren, High Editor, Pages, City of Arko
Risae 36, 56 YPA

Fil, you fikken asshole, you are fired.

And yes, I do really mean it, you piece of shen. I already put through the paperwork and I’ll probably have your replacement before you even read this, you stinking bastard. Get your disgusting excuse for a carcass back to fikken Arko, that’s an order, where you’ll be covering the most trivial, boring, stupid crap that the Pages has the dishonour of polluting our pages with.

I figure you sent that reeking pile of shen for one of four reasons. 1) It was a joke—but it can’t be, because it’s not Jitzmitthra and you put a second-Fire-come oath on it. 2) It was an attempt to make me and the Pages and every single fikken person who works here look like total and complete minigh miniren fools and lose every miserable fikken scrap of credibility we have for fikken ever unto all shennen eternity—but we never did any shennen thing to you to deserve that, but instead were the hand that fikken fed you. 3) Living with the shen-eating, swamp-stinking woolhairs, especially the head shen-sucking, sheep-fikken armpit-licking woolhair who shoveled this pile into your ears and thus out your penis-pulling pen-hand onto me, has finally driven your sorry weak fikken mind to complete insanity—except it came up too suddenly, there were no signs. 4) You are sick of living with the shen eating, etc. etc. woolhairs, especially the head shen-sucking etc. etc. etc. woolhair and so you are trying to force me to fikken FIRE your sorry, low-as-snake-shen cowardly ass but don’t have the fikken guts to just politely ask like a civilized excuse for a fikken human being and take the risk of me saying kaina marugh miniren NO.

Well, obviously it’s fikken #4. You haven’t exactly kept it a shennen secret that you’re not happy there. So fine, you fikken piece of encrusted old whore’s smegma, you’re getting what you want. You saw the order, get the fikken shennen minigh miniren stinking-to-knock-a-buzzard-off-a-shen-wagon dung-heap inside the bug-ugly, pus-ridden bag of milatzi-rotted skin that is your shennen self back to fikken Arko. I’ve assigned you to my chief shennen bootlicker of an editor of ladies doily-circles and bun-fights, so report straight the fik to him so I don’t have to see the disease-ridden leprous puddle of puke with retch-inducing chunks of shen bobbing in it that is your face.

Oh and don’t embarrass the Pages by breathing a fikken word of this okas-alley-trash-heap of a story out of your filthy shennen three-tramp’s-dicks-at-a-time-sucking excrescence of a mouth either, or I’ll fire your diarrhea-with-hard-pieces-spewing ass right onto the fikken street. For REAL.

Have a nice day,
Intharas.

As Reknarja and I and our escort went downtown to suit him out, I tried to remember everything I’d learned from Skorsas in Arko. It didn’t help that he had never tried to teach me, or that I hadn’t known much Arkan at the start when he’d bought most of my clothes. It didn’t help either that I’d never dressed to catch the eyes of women myself, staying fairly plain except in the Mezem or while I was in parade gear or wearing the demarchic shirt, if you can count that.

It was Yeoli-style clothes for sale here; would that suit him? How bright could he go before he looked garish? What colours would look good on him? I remembered vaguely something Skorsas had said about the shades of my face and hair and eyes and how only certain colours suited them, but I had no idea how he’d known which they were. I admitted my ignorance to Reknarja as we approached the market. I should have known it would unleash an avalanche of suggestions from my escort.

“A vivid blue… he’s royalty, he has to look fancy, so make it satin with lots of pleats… no, no, not blue, purple, purple, to set off his ruddiness… you are so wrong there, he should contrast the black with white and just a stripe here and there of a vivid colour…” I’d worried over nothing. His escort stood typically stiff and silent, until I said, “You’re all Enchians, so you’ll have a better idea of what fits with Enchian fashions.” Once they’d glanced nervously at him and seen him not countermand this, even though to me it looked as if he was speechless from mortification, they unleashed an avalanche no less copious.

He leaned over me to hiss in my ear, “I’m going to look like a fool in motley! Or—worse—a bad copy of Jak.” This was just as one grizzled and scarred bodyguard with a face like barn-board was saying, “You know what works really well when you like black a lot? Black with just a flash somewhere—a shirt inside a tunic with the collar showing, or a scarf around the neck, or a forecloth, or even a bright belt.” Someone else added, “Black always looks fantastic with just a little gold trim—jewelry, piping on the cuffs and collar, a pair of big collar pins, the belt-buckle—for those who can afford it.”

“You’ll look like a fool over my dead body,” I hissed back to him. “Don’t worry!” In half a day of cajoling, advising, getting him to try things on, reminding him he’d agreed to do what I said and an amount of money that I do not know, we got him to the point where he looked into one of the stores’ mirrors and said, “Fine, fine, Sievenka. Yes, I look good. I do.”

It was in a gold satin shirt, a wine-red forecloth (that’s that little cloth that Enchian men hang from the front of their belts) and everything else black but with gold collar-pins and fine neck-chains. It did indeed look very sharp, in a mostly Enchian way with a dashing touch of Yeoli. It was an easy matter to order him several more outfits and pieces in the same vein. The tailors of Tinga-e were learning to serve the allies.

I walked him back to his room, which was in the adjunct office building where the Enchian officers were bunked. As we got closer, he began to look as if he was nerving himself up for something. He invited me in for a touch of nakiti, which I refused—my rationale that I was not fighting was enough to spare me the worst of the chewing-out from Kaninjer for one night of drinking, but wouldn’t serve for more so soon after—and I got the impression of indecision, as if Reknarja wanted to tell me something, but was afraid.

“Reknarja, remember,” I said. “Not so long ago you held my life in your hands, dangling me over the edge of a cliff. Everything else pales to that, really.”

“You’re right,” he heaved out, and went to his wardrobe, which he had not opened yet to put away what he had bought. Everything on the hooks and hangers was solid black, but he dug into what seemed like the very end of the bar to pull something out.

It was a shirt, covered all over with tiny pearls, arranged in a subtly rippling wave pattern. They faded gradually from creamy white on the hem that would hang on his sword-side hip to a vivid vein-blood red on the shield-side shoulder, the same red as the satin of the shirt itself. My mouth dropped open of its own accord. “I haven’t seen a piece of clothing that beautiful since I was in Arko!” I said. “You’ve been holding back on me, curse you! Well, don’t just stand there—put it on!” He did. It was stunning. Now I understood what Skorsas had said, about matching clothes to face and hair and eyes. It was as if he’d been born to wear it.

“I… got it from a tailor in Curlionaiz,” he said shyly, hunching a little as if he wanted to hide himself. “There was another one similar, and I liked it, and he made this one for me. I’ve never dared wear it… this is the first time since I did the final fitting with him.”

“What are these?” I said, touching one of two unpearled loops on the shoulders that looked distinctly purposeful. He looked at me a little as if I’d stabbed him, but dug into the deepest depth of the wardrobe again. What he brought out this time was a short cape with pearls in the same pattern on the outside, and lined with white fur soft as clouds. I had to help him fasten it to the shoulders, since he’d never done it, only the tailor. In the whole set, he was beautiful. There was no other word for it.

“Saint Mother,” I said. “Looking at you in that, if I didn’t know better, I’d want you myself.”

“Aiigh! Get your eyes off me, you perverted Yeoli!” He scurried behind the open door of the wardrobe and stared daggers at me over the top of it, making me laugh so hard I doubled over slapping my thighs.

“Not to worry, I know better,” I said, when I could. “And if I offend you, you can always dangle me out the window.”

“I’m getting changed now,” he said. Just from his brow I could see his face had turned a crimson so brilliant it reminded me of Kallijas. “Go away.” I did.

As I went back to my office, I heard an unearthly whoop and words of exultation in Arkan. Filias had an office near mine. Peeking in, I saw him dancing around the desk in joy with a paper in his hand. I couldn’t resist asking.

“Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you, Shefen-kas, you lying fik!”, he almost sang more than said. “Thank you, fik you, bless you, Hayel claim you, Gods judge you, good-fikken-BYE!!”

[AN: To hear Michael S.S. Thedford's audio version of Intharas's letter, click here. You will not be disappointed.]