446 - Be it known to all by these presents

That will of steel… always served us so well, now it’s destroying us… maybe he really is so set on dying we can never give him back his position, and we have to accept that and go on… are you kyashin mad, without him in Arko, we are sunk!

Words from a distance wandered into my mind as I dozed, my hearing somehow becoming unnaturally acute, at least in waves.

You are debating here whether harshness or gentleness is best… instead of listening to us, the healers, who know… gentleness is always best… you have tried harshness so far, has it worked? True, he just digs in his kyashin heels… it is two days now, long enough for dehydration to be exacerbating the insanity, he must be vein-tubed, then given the lightest sedative, which dulls the worst extremes of mood, and then he will listen to reason… but, Kaninjer, it’s not as simple as mood in this case. You are not believing what he says, that his death is just and necessary in his judgment, and assuming that his entire true motivation is to escape pain. What he needs is to understand himself, and even then, I am sorry to say to all of you, he might not forgive himself. Aaaiiigghh! A gout of tears.

“Son of a ravening, poxy bitch! Boy… Man… Raikas… Sievenka… Imperator! You do know you’re fikken up, don’t you?”

I popped my eyes open. He really was there, standing over me, bristle-haired and scar-seamed, dressed as he always was, in a satin shirt, an Arkankilt and his chains. He’d had a few of the scars enhanced artistically with tattooing, since I’d last seen him. A thick swath of chains… close to fifty again? How had he talked his way in here?

“Iliakaj the fikken Immortal!” I’d learned to spit out the stone and start speaking in one move. “Good to see you, how are you?”

“Wonderful! I’m still alive!”

“This does not surprise me.”

“You, not so good. Asshole.”

“Better than I should be.”

“Right. You know I told the idiot he was an idiot, finally? Now I get to tell you.” He grabbed the pitcher of water, began pouring it on my head.

“Hey, hey, hey, aiiiiggggh, don’t fikken do that, you fik, or I’ll shennen kill you!” I spat away water that my body and soul lunged toward inwardly, shook it out of my hair like a dog.

He poured on more, laughing. “Shennen kill me, I’d like to see that! So many gnat’s farts in the wind, your words; only deeds count.”

“Maybe you haven’t noticed, you fikken bonehead: I’m tied to this bed.”

“So you are, as if you were dangerous, haha!” He found the knots in the bandaging that held my arms, loosed them. “Ahhh, killer lunatic, I am so terrified!”

I had to free my feet of the covers, so I tried to distract him while I did it. “Sad excuse for a swordbuck, couldn’t fight your way out of the Mezem, leaving me to rescue you.” Every muscle creaked, and shot streaks of pain through me. He didn’t seem to notice what I was doing, but then he was good at hiding everything behind an impassive face. He made a long series of wet fart noises.

I threw up my feet to catch his neck in a scissors, but I was miserably slow, and he neatly ducked, then came in, grabbed me around the waist and lifted, throwing me over his shoulder as he stood up. “You fikker!” I yelled. “You can’t take me anywhere! Guards!”

They didn’t come running. Mostly they were laughing. “What, Cheng?” said Perha. “You want us to protect your life?”

Iliakaj had a destination in mind; it was clear from the purposefulness of his step. In fact Skorsas was leading him. Fik… something they planned… I tried to wrench myself off Ilia’s shoulder; he just tightened his wiry arm around my thighs, and smacked my butt with the other hand. “Shennen kill me, hahahahahah!”

In the corridors it was cooler; then Skorsas pushed open a door and I smelled steam. It was one of the baths.

I swung backhanded to whack Ilia on the head with one cast, then the other, sending sparks of pain through the broken bones, then kept going. It didn’t even check his step, so thick his skull was, even as it dizzied me; it might as well have been the pattering of raindrops on his hair. I didn’t stop. “You fikken do this to me and claim to be a friend, you kaina marugh miniren horse-fikken shen-sucker...”

“Sorry, I don’t understand Yeoli,” he chuckled. Kunarda, Emao-e, Hurai and Perha had all come with us. I could tell by their voices they weren’t stifling their grins. He went to the edge where the water was deep enough, poised himself.

“No, no, no, it’ll ruin the casts!” I yelled.

“No, no, no, it’ll ruin the casts!” he said, mimicking my accent, but making it more effete. “And then my arms won’t heal straight so I won’t look so good when they put me on the pyre!” I was flying, then, back-first, and just before I hit the water I had the flash of a thought. Disadvantage can be made instantly into advantage.

Water enveloped me, the sensation of it delicious beyond description on every finger-width of my skin. I opened my eyes, saw the blurring blue image of marble and depth and rippling light. I was not over my head—he’d had the sense to know the casts might make swimming hard—but I could sink satisfyingly down, in sweet weightlessness.

I wouldn’t have much time before the Yeolis knew what I was doing. I mustn’t open my mouth, I knew, since I’d never be able to resist drinking if I let water into it; I had to draw it in through my nose. I readied myself, to make the motion of the deepest of breaths, right down to the pits of my lungs. For you, people of Arko… I brought the smoke and the screaming and the rivers of blood back to mind, felt my eyes burn. Destruction to destruction… I closed my eyes and felt a hand grab my hair and yank upwards fast, and the impact through the water of someone jumping in beside me, and another hand clawing for my mouth and nose.

Too cursed slow… I wrenched my head to the side and pulled in through my nose as hard as I could. The bath-water felt instantly like red-hot spear-heads stabbing through my head and down my throat. I was thrown into blackness, then into the age of eleven again, without a Ritual Monk, every speck of inner surface of my lungs scalding, as I came back to myself. I lay on the cool marble, thrashing, still spewing water, with hands pinning me down, hard, all over.

“Dog Mother of the Ten of the shit of my Ancients,” Iliakaj said, when I stopped coughing and lay panting. “You are serious.”

“You... fikken... thought... I was not?” I gasped. “Donkey-fikker.”

They kept me pinned until the litter came, then bound me to it hand and foot to take me to my room, though I didn’t feel as if I had strength in me to stand, let alone fight. I did have enough, as it turned out, that four darya semanakraseyeni elite including Kunarda could not keep my ankle still enough for Kaninjer to set the vein-needle, since I did not want him to. So they stunned me with vague air to do it, then kept me half-gone with same while he cut what was left of the casts off, felt the breaks to make sure nothing had gone awry, and re-cast them.

One thought stayed in my mind somehow, as I underwent this: that there was something I should do for Iliakaj. It came to me as Kaninjer finished and they trussed me to the bed and let me come off the vague air. Ilia was still here, my people appreciating what he had tried enough to let him stay. I called his name, and Binchera as well.

“A letter, to be scribed in Arkan, not just Enchian,” I ordered the secretary. “Someone who’s in the shadow government who’s still here will do it. Be it known to all by these presents that as of, today’s date, whatever it is, by order of the Imperator, Iliakaj—Ilia, what’s your surname?”

He stared at me, as if he wasn’t sure whether to be stunned or not. “Misanj.”

“Iliakaj Misanj, called the Immortal, is hereby manumitted from slavery in the possession of Forlanas Limmen Aitzas in the Mezem of Arko, and raised to a full citizen of the City of Arko and the Empire of Arko, in the caste of Aitzas, with all the rights and privileges such citizenship confers, and all the duties and obligations such citizenship requires, then the signature.”

Binchera scribed it formally with the golden pen, then held the paper for me to sign, and did the sealing with the Imperial seals and the demarchic signet, which were now dry enough. All through, Iliakaj stood at attention like a warrior awaiting orders, staring straight ahead. “There,” I said. “Now you can marry Irela and make her and your three little errors—or it is four, now?—honest.”

He looked at me frozen for a moment, with an expression I couldn’t read, then went down as fast as if he’d been brained, into the prostration. He was an Arkan now.

“Oh fikken kaina,” I said. “Gehit, you asshole.” When his head came over the edge of the bed, he was laughing, which got me laughing. He grabbed me around the neck, hard. “Thank you, Sievenka,” he whispered. I felt his tears on my cheek.