388 - No such thing as a perfectly safe place

We ran to her. “Inichao, talk to us, can you hear?” —“The healer! Get the healer!” —“Don’t touch her, don’t move her!” —“Is she breathing?” —“Don’t even touch the wing!” —“We have to, to know if she’s breathing!” I threw myself down on the ground to crawl under it. She lay half-through what was left of the chamir, her head bent too far forward, into the ground. She didn’t so much as twitch when I yelled her name in my battlefield voice.

I took her wrist, found the pulse, fast and weak, felt her centre and found weak breathing. “Don’t touch or move anything!” I yelled to everyone else, as did the others who’d crawled under other ways. While we were waiting for the Haians, she woke; I knew only by her speaking. “I can’t move… I can’t move… All-Spirit, I can’t move… I can’t feel anything…” No need for me to order her not to, as I’d been planning. I just reassured, not knowing whether she suspected me of lying, as experienced warriors in her situation do; perhaps she was panicking enough to seize hope from my words.

When they’d bound her to a board and run her off on a litter, I got up and brushed the dirt off my harness, reminding myself over and over of Niku’s mother, who still flew though she had no use of her legs. Likely Ini would never fight again, though. It always hits you all over your body, however much you try to drive it out; I took deep breaths, and shook out my muscles. “Ah!” said one of the A-niah, who were examining the remains of her wing; they’d found whatever part had failed. They grabbed it all up and out of the way, as I went back to where I’d been about to hook myself onto my wing. “Tsee pross venga!” Surzu barked, which is Niah for “Next launch!”

“After that!?” It was Sorala, who’d been set to launch after Ini. “Are you out of your kevyalin miniscule dirt-skinned mind!?”

It is part of the Niah ethic. You do not stop a series of launches for a mere near-fatal accident, any more than a warrior stops fighting on seeing a friend killed. But my people were not A-niah. “No, no!” Surzu, whose Yeoli was not good, shouted angrily. “Have to! No coward! Have to fly! Sixteenth, go!”

“Eat shit, you child-raping darky, you want to cursed well kill us!” Not only Sorala, but other Yeolis were taking it up now, all civility between races forgotten. In a moment the A-niah were yelling back, and I began to hear the word “Coward!” This could not go on.

“Chen!” I yelled, for all I was worth. “Sorala—you’re cancelled. Metyirya, you’re re-ordered; after me. I’m next. Enshachik!” One of the A-niah came to pull down the nose of my wing for me, but all the Yeolis went deathly silent.

I could use the metaphor I’d thought of. “Last time you were on the battlefield,” I said to them, “did you go running off when you saw someone get killed? Or how about last time you were thrown from a horse? What do you do?”

There was a moment’s silence, I did my enshachik, and then they burst out arguing. “But this is different, Chevenga! We all have to be there, this is just training, you don’t, we’re dog-meat if we lose you, those grub-eaters just don’t have this kevyalin thing safe enough, the other accident that smashed up one of them was just a half-moon ago!” They closed around me, grabbing my arms, as if they’d hold me back from going if they could.

“Eeeee-tat!” That was from the air but swooping down; Niku, who not a moment before had been high enough to be barely a speck, I’d thought. It’s Niah for “Chen!” She landed mid-tseecha-ground, her feet stamping down. “You Yeolis who are flyers, you stay, and launch! You who are not, unharness. We’ll teach someone else.”

Ehh… it was more a heartening approach I wanted to take, love, than spurning, I thought. “Love, they’re just thrown because they aren’t used to this,” I said. “I go up, they’ll be fine.”

“No no no!” The Yeolis were divided on whether to go up themselves; they were unanimous that I shouldn’t, though. “It’s too dangerous! This is the second terrible accident in days, he shouldn’t, not just to train!”

“And I’m going to learn this without training, how!?” I snapped.

“You go, omores,” she said. “Clear the launch path!”

“No! Nooo! Someone go get Hurai, get Karani, maybe they can talk some sense into him!” Well, at least it wasn’t arguing between races, now. “I can just see,” Sorala said, “this is the first kyashin time it happens twice in a row.”

“All of you shut the kyash up and get out of the launch path, that’s an order!” They went slowly until I bellowed “Double-time!” Then it was a more respectably fast scattering.

At least a third of them had their hands either over their eyes, or half-over their eyes, or were peeking between fingers like five-year-olds, as I launched; there was a massed “Aiiigggh!” as the tseecha released, as if it were an executioner’s axe falling on my neck. The launch went perfectly; I slowed feeling the warm upward caress of the branmoy on my neck, and began rising.

I looked back, when I could in my spiralling; Niku was staying with them, reminding them what to do if this happened, by the gestures. Sorala changed her mind, agreeing to do it, then the rest did as well, except for two who’d run off, futilely, for someone who might talk me out of it.

As soon as I was done my lesson and down, I went to the infirmary-cart where Inichao was. The healer who’d worked on her said she’d most likely lost the use of her legs forever, but she might get her arms back. Her head was in a harness-brace like the one the Imperial Pharmacist had used on me when he’d given me the grium sefalian, and she was thoroughly Haian-rigged otherwise too.

She had family there, a husband and two brothers. I comforted her for a while, stroking her hair and telling her there was no shame in her tears even if she was a woman, and so forth, and gave her the Saint Mother’s amethyst. In case you are not Yeoli, that’s the decoration that all wounded get; those who’ve been wounded out of fighting for good get the Saint Mother’s bloodstone. But that was not certain yet, with her.

Then I went back up onto Bukangt’s back, to be met by Krero, Hurai, Azaila, Niku and even Emao-e, who’d got up the ladder mostly by arm strength. If you, my reader, don’t know what they were there about, I suggest you seek out a reading tutor.

“This zeecha thing, it’s too dangerous,” Krero said. “I was already saying to Niku, I think you should ground everyone until the A-niah can figure out how to make it safer.”

“Everyone?” I said. “I thought this was just going to be another raking of me over the coals for risking myself personally… Niku, I hope you set him straight. We ground everyone, we put out our own eyes. With no A-niah scouts, we’re blind.” She signed chalk, with a look of as if they’re going to listen to me. “For your information, Krero, I already do have Niku and Diyadesai working on making it safer; I asked them the night of Daku’s accident.”

“Fine then… the A-niah are more skilled,” said Krero. That had been his initial, extreme position; now he’d retreat to his real one. “Until someone figures out a safer way to launch on plains… please hold off the lessons.”

“I think I should leave it to the choice of the individual,” I said. “We are Yeolis, the people of choice.” I knew vanishingly few would chicken out; he knew it too, and knew I knew it, and knew I knew he knew it.

“We are,” said Hurai, and fixed me with his eyes. “Except you.”

“Last time we went through this you agreed that you were taking too many personal risks, and also agreed to cease,” said Emao-e. “Now we hear you did this thing when you were in absolutely no position to deny it is dangerous, having seen two disasters within a half moon.” How to argue that in the whole war before this, there’d been not one? You say something is a run of bad luck, and they’ll come back with, it’s perfectly possible that it could continue.

I looked at Niku, trying to tell her with my eyes, you know how often this happens in general, love. Back me up here. “We cannot risk you, omores,” she said. “And because of that, the new Yeoli flyers.”

“It is incumbent on teachers to provide a safe place for people to learn,” said Azaila, into the silence allowed by my shock at what Niku had said.

I smacked myself in the knee. “Kyash, Azaila, I broke my wrist falling off your bar once! There’s no such thing as a perfectly safe place, to learn anything worthwhile.”

“But it is not absolutely necessary for you to increase your flying skill, in that short time before Diyadesai and Niku come up with something,” said Emao-e. “Do we have to swell your head even more, telling you you’re still crucial for winning this war?”

“No, though it does make me want to say, in that case, good thing I’m immortal. Wrap me in wool and hide me away and I’m as good to Yeola-e as I would be dead.”

“My child,” said my mother, “we are asking you only to stop the lessons for the few days it will take Niku and Diyadesai to come up with something.”

“A few days? I didn’t hear that part. I don’t want their thinking rushed, though. And it’s going to be individual discretion; you can make your argument to each student.” Breaths were let out all around the back of the beast. I could see them thinking, Fine… fall back to the absolute final position.

“And until then you risk yourself,” said Hurai, “and you think this will not rush their thinking? Especially Niku?”

“If it really is just a few days, I think we’ll survive.”

“So you’re willing to stay on the ground yourself until then,” Krero said.

“No,” I said. “It’d throw everyone off.”

He smacked his knee, and hawked a gob over the rail, at the same time. It was such a big one I heard it splat on the road. I was glad he hadn’t hit anyone. “Kyashin kevyala, Cheng!”

“Language, Krero.”

“You have to do this every kyashin time, don’t you? Make my kyashin job impossible!”

“If your job is to make my life free of all danger, then it is impossible.”

“So all you need me for is to yell at me that I’m being too careful of you?” he yelled at me. “Then go and do some crack-brained idiocy?”

“Flying isn’t crack-brained. It’s the way of the future, Krero.”

I was surprised Esora-e hadn’t spoken up so far. But now he did. “You know how your blood-father dealt with his captain of the darya semanakraseye, Fourth Chevenga?”

“Drove him just as insane, I imagine,” I said. “I hope I came by it honestly, anyway.”

“He actually took his advice a bit more than you take Krero’s, love, as I recall,” my mother said.

“We’ll never know what his stance would have been on this one,” I said. “I’m never going to get ‘You young cockerel, why, when I was your age, we all flew safely!” At least that got a bit of a laugh from most of them.

Not Krero, alas. “I think this is important enough to write Assembly about, Cheng,” he gritted.

“Assembly? They’re going to leave military decisions in my hands. If they have a lick of sense.”

“Kyash on it.” The tone was worrisome; resolution, not anger. “This is something I’m willing to put my appointment on... If you want me to resign if I do this, I will. I’m willing to give up my post and my rank to get through to you, Cheng.”

“Tell the truth, I’d be interested to hear Assembly’s opinion,” Hurai said mildly. “We have a semanakraseye who still wants to do something that’s crippled two other people in fourteen days, that’s not strictly necessary for him to do, when he’s absolutely crucial to Yeola-e’s war… I’d be interested in their take on his sense of responsibility.”

“Are you calling me irresponsible?” I’d meant not to get angry; I failed.

“Well... yes. I guess I am,” said Hurai. I was looking at everyone else as well. Shyly at first, then more firmly, the hands came out, chalk. I felt as if I’d been nailed through the spine to Bukangt’s back. I felt red come up on my cheeks.

“I know you are indeed learning more flying, Cheng,” said Krero. “But tell the truth, I think you’re up there much of the time for fun. Deny it?”

I just stood there wordless, like the ultimate fool. How could I?

“Chevenga, Beloved,” said Hurai. “It comes down to this. You know how ruined we are if we lose you. If we lose you, it had better be for some reason that’s big enough. If you sacrifice your life it had better be so as to save the whole kyashin country. Nothing less.”

The rest put out their hands, chalk, again. No one added anything. In our silence I heard the thumping cadence of thousands of boots on the stone paving of the road, and the song, from thousands of throats. It was one of the ones about me. For the record, I did not assign anyone to compose them, or compose them myself, second Fire come if I lie. Bukangt rocked with massive gentleness under us.

“All right,” I said finally. “I’m grounding no one else. But I’ll ground myself. Until it is safer to take off in plains, or we get to hills.” There were heaved breaths of relief all around, and chalks in agreement. “Thank you,” several said. “You’re doing the right thing.”

That night in bed, I wept. Niku took my head onto her shoulder. “I know,” she whispered. “You feel like your wings are clipped. I remember from when I got thumped in the head. We’ll set you free soon. Ama Kalandris, you poor thing… no sex or flying…”

“Not for long,” I said. Three days three days three days… “Who gets me, when that’s over? I haven’t kept track.”

She stroked my arm with a smile, then half-hissed, “Vaneesh. Curse her bones. I’ll have been deprived longer than you!”

“It won’t be that long, love,” I said. At least you can still fikken fly.