485 - There's nothing wrong here

“I’ve never really talked to his mother,” Skorsas says. “No more than you’ve seen, just met her at dinners. What’s she like?”

I say “She is a scary person” and Kall says “She is a wonderful person” both at once.

We look at each other, and I say “I mean, she’s scary at first—a little” and Kall says “She’s not scary, she’s impressive” both at once.

“Well I knew she couldn’t be ordinary, to have produced him,” says Skorsas. “This is going to be interesting.”

Chevenga’s three parents who were in the army went home for a while after he was back on his feet, but are back now, and they are planning to be here enough that they have a modest room (for the Marble Palace) in the Imperial section. Skorsas scouted for us, because he’s chamberlain and so can be anywhere in the palace without raising questions. I was thinking I should have myself carried there. “No no, don’t be silly, she knows you are laid up,” Kallijas said. “She’ll come here.”

Oh, something you should know about the Marble Palace, Merao. There are two parts of it… well, there are many parts of it. There are Marble Palaces within Marble Palaces, levels of it like sharks have teeth. You know I never even saw a building that wasn’t made out of paila fronds until I was thirteen… never mind.

But you can divide the Marble Palace into two aspects: places which are public and places which are private… no, it’s more complicated than that. There are places which are entirely public—anyone can walk in, so long as they don’t steal anything—places that are apparently private, but not really—only people who live and work there are allowed to be there—and places that are truly private, which is to say, even the servants cannot overhear what is said there.

Those truly private places are much fewer than you think. Chevenga’s meeting office is, of course, plus many of the other offices. Most of the atria have little ring-fountains in the middle of them, with a sitting place inside the round curtain of water; I didn’t know what they were for until Skorsas told me they were for conversations that no one could hear over the splashing. And there are other rooms. But you have to know where they are. Skorsas made it one of his first tasks to find them, and he made good and sure by having about forty of the servants truth-drugged. He found three places that previous Imperators had thought were truly private that actually weren’t, that way.

The Imperial bedchamber is not. Imagine my delight when Skorsas let me know that. Everything we say in bed—not that we can ever do anything worth doing in bed other than sleep—the servants can hear! Do they listen? Do they care? Is it interesting enough to stop their chores to spy? I’m being ridiculous—of course they do. Or did at first, to find out what the former Ring-fighter wool-hair Imperator and his former Ring-fighter flying chocolate woman and his turncoat champion alesinas and… ah well, perhaps not their chamberlain. I know that Skorsas immediately taught them to feeeearrrr him. I don’t think he had anyone executed, because Chevenga would have objected to that, but at least one was fired and thrown out onto the street, and I mentioned the truth-druggings, and others he gave merciless dressings-down… two up. (The servants are all Aitzas.) Probably when he’s saying his pillow endearments to Chevenga in the moments of consciousness he has after he lies down, they flee from their listening-holes like cockroaches from light.

“I want to do this in a truly private place, even if you have to wheel me,” I say to Skorsas. “I mean… all right, she’s not really scary. But when I first met her, I was the prospective daughter-in-law, and I knew she was inspecting me… you know what I mean?”

“In that case, we should all find her scary,” Skorsas says. “If it’s a four, I mean six, way marriage we’re heading into, Kall and this humble one are prospective, em …sons-in-law, aren’t we?”

“Don’t be silly,” Kall says. At least he thinks I am no more silly than Skorsas. “She has as good a heart as he does; that’s at least half of where he got it. She and I are dear friends; I think Niku could fairly say so, too.” He looks down at me and adds, “You passed the inspection.”

I feel like I couldn’t now, Merao. I feel like a broken wing, useless for anything ever again except to be ripped up for its parts. You don’t feel it right after—just the pain—because you were whole and free a moment before. But as you lie there in your stone cocoon and you can’t do anything and the beads stretch into days and then eight-days, it sinks into you that you are broken. You know your body is weakening, the muscles used to moving turning to coral like the rest of you, but aching—it hurts to not move when you’re used to moving a lot, did you know that, Merao? You start to feel like you’ll always be broken.

I want to run, I want to stretch, I want to strain, I want to spar, I want to fly by myself! At least Chevenga gets to walk. He can be on his feet, get himself from one place to another. I don’t just feel broken and trapped; I feel people despise me, or at least look down on me. They are looking down at me, all the time… anyway. Karani comes in around then.

I turn my head away from them all... it seems too much to deal with. I fling my arm over my face. “Niku—is something wrong?” she says, in Enchian.

“Em... Marimperatrix,” says Skorsas, whose Enchian isn’t so good. That’s the Arkan title for mother of the Imperator. “It’s… I said, like that, em, to talk of the, em, relationship, we asked you here.”

“No, there’s nothing wrong here,” I say. “Just more things to fix. I'm just tired and cranky. Sorry.”

She sits down on the edge of the big bed, beside me, in the centre of us. She renewed her asa kraiya oath right after the Sack and quit trimming her hair, which is the black he got shot through with strands of grey. Already it’s a bit longer than a warrior-cut, making her look softer, and the forelocks fall in her eyes so she’s always brushing them out. “More things to fix?” she says. “What is broken?”

“Nothing, Honoured Marimperatrix,” Skorsas says, though she was asking me. “We want…”

“Skorsas, it’s Karani,” she says. With exactly the same pained look that Chevenga gets when someone calls him by a title who he thinks is too close to. The fruit... the tree...

“Karani.” Skorsas is too nervous to laugh, but makes the change with flawless smoothness. “We, em, want speak...” In Arkan, he says quickly to Kall, “Help this Enchian-less one here, say we just want her wise counsel!” and to me, “Can you find it in you to stop being cranky for a tenth?”