3 -- First Talk

I went down the same evening but was told he’d been beaten and was sleeping it off, so I made some mess to distract them. When I came back, next day I was so confident that Karas Raikas's door would open that I bruised a knuckle when it proved to be... well, not opening. I couldn't conceive of a door locked against me. "What's wrong with this door! It’s stuck!"

His slightly hoarse voice came through the wood in Enchian, a language I’d been taught but hadn’t had much practice with, though most of the world used it as a trade tongue. “This is Ka… Karas Raikas’s room.”

I answered him in Arkan. "Raikas, I know you're in there! Let me in!"

“I hope you speak this language because I don't speak that one.” He replied in Enchian.

“Yes I do,” I’d replied in the same tongue. “But... I can't keep bellowing through this stupid door, open it for me!"

“Open it for you? Why should I?” I stared at the closed door, starting to get angry and upset.

"But... but I want to talk to you! I could have my Mahid break it down!"

“You don't have to have your Mahid break it down. Why don't you just ask?”

“It's stuck!”

“It's locked.” He said, his voice getting stern in a way I was entirely unused to.

“Well then, unlock it! There, I asked,” I said, suddenly convinced this was some barbarian misunderstanding.

“No, you didn't.”

Boras Mahid asked, “Shall we break the door down for you, Spark of the Sun’s Ray?”

I ignored him and replied through the door. “Um... I thought I did? Didn't I say it right in Enchian? My tutor says I speak it well. How do I ask it right, then?” Perhaps I had phrased things incorrectly.

“Do you not know the difference between a request and a command?”

“Um.. no?”

I could hear “A command is: "Unlock it!" A request is: "Karas Raikas, I'd like to talk to you, may I come in please?"

I knew it was all a misunderstanding. He didn’t know protocol when it was about Father or me. I’d have to teach him. I raised my hand, knocked three times and said. "Karas Raikas, I'd like to talk to you. May I come in please?

“Certainly,” he answered me, standing right behind the door and opened it, waving me in.

“Well done.”

He thought he was teaching me? That was silly for someone in his position but I wasn’t going to say so. I couldn’t remember the Enchian phrase for ‘thank you.’ Not that I ever used it in either language.

"There's supposed to be something I say, isn't there, when someone says well done? I think my nurse tried to tell me but I don't remember. Or maybe when someone does something you like?

“You can thank them.”

“Oh, that's right. Thank you.”

“You're welcome.”

The room beyond was identical to any other gladiator’s room, rough bed frame, battered night table. There was one chair with a leg mended that I could see and a table under the window. There were no ribbons and cards and tokens of affection yet, only the names of gladiators who had gone before and either the number of days they’d lived… or if they lasted, the number of fights, which they’d scratched into the stone walls. His room, like all the others looked out on closed courtyard nobody used for anything other than trash. I’d seen them before so I didn’t pay much attention. “I like that a lot better than the noise and mess if doors get broken. It makes people really run around and yell."

“Well, as I understand it this room has been given to me as mine, so only I may enter it, or other people on my invitation.”

He sat down on the bed, moving stiffly from the beating “Have a seat. If I had tea to offer you, I would.”

“That's okay. Should I send somebody for tea? I could.”

“If you like.”

I wasn’t used to asking for service but I pulled the door open again and said, “Go get us some tea. Something Yeolis like if they have any, or else just tea. I want kaf with cream and honey,” to one of my Mahid.

“Why did you do that?” He was looking at me puzzled. I could see he looked tired and I guessed he was thinner than normal. Slaves tend to come into the city like that, even if slavers try to feed them up.

“Did what? Oh, the Mahid? He's supposed to do what I tell him and think only what my Father wants him to think. Um...” I had to think a minute for the formal phrasing out of my Enchian textbook. “I am truly sorry. I did not mean to offend you, sir."

“You slammed the door in his face. How do you think that made him feel?”

That puzzled me. “Mahid aren't supposed to have any feelings, just what Father wants. Do you think I should practice being polite even to Mahid?”

He was getting that worn look people always got around me and I realized now it was tiredness from being around so rude a child. “You should be polite to everyone. Why wouldn't you be? Why wouldn't you want to be?”

I could feel my pout even before I answered and tried not to because I suddenly cared how unattractive it was. “Because even when everyone else is polite to me, they're scared and hate me. It's just all fake. If I weren't my father's son, they'd all just hate me. Of course they think I'm stupid too, that I can't see it.”

That was when my Mahid came back with the tray and knocked. I didn’t know what to do for a moment because he was hurt and if I made him serve me he wouldn’t like me… I hesitated, then went to open the door with my own hand. Second Boras had the fessas boy with him, carrying the tray. He set it down and scurried out, shutting the door behind him.

“It’s tea in this pot, kaf in that. Do you want one?” I poured my own cup and sniffed the cream and honey both. Boras would have seen that it was pure but I had gotten into the habit. Then I held the liquid in my mouth for a minute before swallowing. That way I had a chance to taste if it was poisoned. I suppose it was a good thing because it held my mouth shut for a time.

“If you are good to them they won't hate you,” Raikas said.

I could feel my face getting red. “It makes me angry when they're false like that.” I said after I swallowed.

He sighed running a hand through his hair making his curls stand up every which direction. “I know I need not introduce myself to you, since you named me anyway, but neither you nor anyone else has introduced you to me.”

“Oh, I'm sorry, sir,” I said drawing on my formal Enchian again. “I'm Minis Aan. I suppose I should add all the titles and stuff, but the Imperator is my Father.”

“I'm pleased to meet you, Minis Aan. Is that what you prefer to be called?”

Now this was more like what I wanted, sitting with my gladiator and having him talk to me like that. “Yes...” I hesitated, wanting this to continue. “…Please. Is that right? Just Minis.”

“Exactly right, well done again. Minis it is. So tell me... if they were to call you down for being impolite, what would happen?”

“I don’t know. No one calls me down. Father just laughs and says 'Let the boy alone, he is so like how I was! Let him learn how people really are! Or other things like that. He doesn't care what I do as long as I don't do anything that disturbs Him.”

“You don't know? Imagine it. You slam a door in someone's face and he says angrily, 'Hey! What'd you do that for?'”

I realized he was talking in general so I had to think of what a common Arkan would do to another common Arkan. "I guess I'd be unhappy because not only did I not do anything wrong, I was already doing what I was supposed to. It wouldn't be fair.” I’d never had to think like this before. “I'd be mad at them.”

“What would you do?”

“I could set my Mahid on them. And they'd beat them up or arrest them.”

“And you wonder why they are scared of and hate you?”

“I don’t wonder at it. I just know it." I'd never thought it out. "Um... I suppose. I guess my Mahid are kind of the rude fist I've been waving, hmm?" I put my hand over my mouth. "But if I were polite and they got to like me, I'd have to be careful Father never found out.”

His eybrows were almost a solid line scrunched together across his forehead. He looked angry all over again. I didn’t like that. But I realized that if I did start making him my friend he’d be in danger. I realized that he was perhaps starting to understand this as well. “Really? Why is that?

“Those people get vanished. I'm not supposed to love anybody but Father. I don’t know where they go. …like my tutor Jitanzas.”

“What happened to your tutor Jit... ana zas...?”

"Father told me he wasn't coming back. I went to the University after to ask after him. The President told me he'd umm 'gone on leave'."

“And he never came back?” He had a dismayed look on his face and it bothered me in a way I couldn’t explain.

"No. I don't have a tutor right now... Father is choosing who it will be next.”

“And this... has happened before?” He had a thoughtful, careful look on his face.

“Yes. I had a nurse who was too soft on me. She'd cuddle me but I was too old for baby stuff. I was little enough to cry but she never came back either.” I paused a bit and gulped struggling not to cry like a little baby. “I got Binshala after that.” He was still thinking about what I was saying. “I... guess I shouldn't get too close to you... either...”

“I guess not,” he answered me solemnly.

“Sorry.” I wasn’t sure why I was apologizing.

“You have to do what you have to do.”

I pulled up a lock of my hair and stuck it in my mouth. “Okay... I think it'll be all right for a little while if I'm rude enough in public to you...”

He smiled at me. “Well, all right then... I'll know not to take it personally.”

“I can do a really good job of being rude to you if you think it would be safer. But then, you'd have to like me for it to be dangerous.”

“Those men in black, do they understand Enchian?”

“The Mahid? No. Only the First and Seconds of the Mahid... First Meras and Second Amitzas. And maybe some on the edges of the Empire. They aren't to be exposed to the corrupting influence of a foreign language.”

“Good, else we'd have to speak of these things in whispers. I do like you, but I'm in enough trouble as it is.”

“Well, if you're here, I guess, but you're such a good fighter! I know you'll make fifty and go home again. I just know it! Umm. You like me? Even when I was rude?

“I like you better when you're polite.”

He liked me? Better if I was polite? Suddenly I had a bubble of lightness in my chest. He liked me. “All right. I'll do my best. I did learn it all in etiquette classes that my tutor said I'd need if I were to understand the lower classes and why they did things. But I can use it myself, can't I?”

“You can use whatever you have. The upper classes use no etiquette? I've never been to Arko before, I know nothing.” So I knew a bunch of stuff that I could tell him. That was wonderful. I could just say anything and it would be new to him.

“Yes, of course they do. Just not my Father. He doesn't bow to anyone, everyone bows to Him and me because I'm an extension of Him... or so He keeps telling me.”

“Is it true that everyone flings themselves on their faces in his presence? I'd heard that, but I'm not sure whether to believe it.”

He really didn’t know anything! “They'd better or the Mahid would drag them off and torture them and kill them, or the Fenjitzas says the God would strike them down if they didn't reverence Him properly.”

“It must be very strange to be him.”

“I guess. What else do you want to know? If I know it, I can tell you.”

Who's the Fen… “

“Fenjitzas?”

“Fenjitzas.”

“Um. In Enchian, the High Priest, I guess you’d say. But in Arko he’s High Priest of all ten gods though I don't think he likes to think about the Gods of the bottom two castes. Okas – that’s the ordinary workers – and the daifikas, the slaves.

" Okas" means worker, then? I'm going to have to learn the language, it seems.”

“Normally slaves are shaved bald. Okas are the lowest caste, free. They have the shortest hair. Fessas are the professional caste... they have the hair to here.” I showed him at my shoulder. “It's funny speaking to you in Enchian because it’s like talking equal-to-equal. Everyone would be appalled.” I rolled my eyes as I quote the last sentence.

“What do you mean, talking equal-to-equal? And why is it appalling?” He’s got my tutor’s look on his face, as though he’s really interested. He really doesn't understand anything about Arko, even all this ordinary stuff.

"Well everyone has to speak up to my father and to Aitzas – that’s the noble caste and.. It's different. You, being a slave, shouldn't speak unless spoken to, and then to a fessas perhaps, or ... well someone they can speak three up to. My father and I have our own dialect that talks down to everyone.”

Karas Raikas looks baffled. “When I say I don't speak Arkan, I mean not a single word -- except for " daifikas" and "okas" now, and “fessas” and “Aitzas”.”

I try to explain. “In Enchian I can say ‘I see you.’ In Arkan, okas to Aitzas I would have to say…” I dropped my voice to a whisper so my Mahid would not hear. “Something like… ‘This creature is capable of observing the Master in some ways.” I brought my voice up to normal. “That’s something like what Arkan is but there’s really no way to say the caste differences in Enchian.”

“Does everyone of lower caste have to whisper when they speak to a higher caste?”

“No,” I said tilting my head toward the door. “They just shouldn't hear that I'm soiling my mouth with it. I'm not supposed to talk up to anyone but my Father.

“So it's different words?”

“Yes...um. My tutor calls -- called them verb forms.”

“But there's five castes, so that means everyone has to learn four -- no, five -- different ways of speaking? I only want to learn one. I am above no one and I am below no one.” I looked at him and nodded.

“Yes. I can see that. If you speak equal-to-equal then you'd be offending those above your station and honouring those below you and most people would think that because you're a slave you're below everybody. But you're also a gladiator so you're special.”

“I like the idea of offending those above and honouring those below.” That got a laugh out of me. “Minis, since I first heard about the castes, I’ve always wondered this. Say a child is born into an… okas family – but he is brilliant. He could be a great general, or administrator, or artist; he has the intelligence and the heart for it. What happens to him?”

I started to laugh before I realized he was serious. "A brilliant okas? How is that even possible? If he were born okas, he dies okas unless he does something extraordinary and is elevated. Nobody's been elevated by the Imperator into a different caste since my grandfather's time.”

“Anyone can be born brilliant. You never know. If someone can be elevated, can someone else be de-elevated?”

“Oh, yes. That’s far easier. They can be stripped of everything. Father did that to Loatas Illian, for treason. They were Aitzas.” I could feel my gorge rise because I had witnessed that execution at Father’s wish, even though it was supposed to be private. “The head of the household and his heir were killed and everyone else was sold.” The old man was killed first I remembered. That and the lost look in the eyes of the son, held across the room by a clot of Mahid, forced to watch as my father defiled his, even as he tried to die well.

“Did you witness this?” The look on Kara Raikas’s face was astonishment and a beginning anger.

“Yes. It was what Father wished. One of His object lessons.”

“How old were you?”

I got up from the bed and went to the window. Then to the wall and ran my fingers over the names carved there. “Nine.” I tried for something good, something to mitigate this odd nervousness. “He did order the gentle death, because the family had been Aitzas.”

I could tell Raikas really didn’t want to know, but he asked anyway as I went to inner door, then the wardrobe door, then the window again. “Gentle death? As opposed to the not-so-gentle death?”

I could say it straight the way I would have to if my Father asked me. “The impaling stick is sharpened rather than rough and the man is impaled in a way to reach his heart quickly and not just anywhere through the gut. He made the man serve Him as he died and said it was a blessing."

I stood looking out the window at the old courtyard and wondered why I didn’t need to vomit any more. It all just went away. Perhaps I was learning what Father wanted me to know.

“What lesson was he trying to teach you?” Raikas’s voice was so soft I almost didn’t hear it.

“That even the traitorous can be tamed once they're found out. Even useful... He doesn't like to waste a man's death like that... and He told me that a man's death throes are the best.”

“What does that mean, serve him as he died?” That question was almost a whisper. I couldn’t see his face. The baking cobbles below were too fascinating.

“You know. Serve him... Suck on him? He had all the man's teeth removed first. He bled a lot all over Father's crotch when he died. I'm not supposed to have nightmares about it.” I was able to come back and sit down on the bed again, trying to compose my face. As the man died the spreading stain of it, all over my Father’s robe across his middle had had me waking at night.

Karas Raikas sat there frozen, two points of red on his cheeks. He said a Yeoli word... kahara... that I didn’t understand.

I looked away from his unseemly emotion. “I may have been here too long. Maybe you should throw me out now... I can be offended but the reason I'll give that I don't have you beaten is that you belong to my father. I can act that much. But I don't want to go.”

“How can you not have nightmares about that? How could anyone?”

I shrugged, made a throwing away gesture with my hands. Father and I were the only Arkans who didn’t have to be careful of their hands. “I'm supposed to be part of Him and since He likes it, I'm supposed to. He doesn't like it if I show signs that I'm different than Him.”

“But... you are different. You are yourself. You will like what you like. I guess you have to hide it.”

I’d never thought about that. I’d never realized before that I hated it -- hiding who I really was. “I hate that,” I whispered. Then I realized I’d said it out loud and stared up at him, suddenly afraid he’d tell my Father. “Why am I telling you all this? This is why everyone hates me, too.”

“You are telling me because I am listening with all my heart.”

I tried to stand up, sat down again. “If I'm here too long, someone will tell him. Would you please throw me out, now? That way I could be a secret friend?”

He put his arms out as I tried to get up, left them out when I settled down again. “You need arms around you, not to be thrown out.”

I stared at him, not knowing what he was offering. I wasn’t boy to be touched by just anyone. I wasn’t a boy plaything either. "I'm not... do you want me to serve you???"

“No!” Some part of me was glad that cry was as loud as it had been. My Mahid would hear and think the worst. Safer for Raikas that way. “I want to comfort you.”

I didn’t move. I was thinking a lot of things I never had before. If I touched him, I’d hurt him because of the beating even if he wished me to. “Won’t it hurt to be touched because of the bruises?”

He didn’t take his arms down, just did that head-toss. “Not if you hug my arms and shoulders and avoid my back.”

“I…I guess if I could tell you all this then I could be touched.” I let him fold his arms around me. It was so strange, I could tell he wanted to do this and wasn’t afraid of me. I found myself clutching his arms with my head buried in his shoulder. I could barely remember doing this, years ago with a nurse. “You won't tell anyone, will you?”

“My lips are sealed.”

He held me and I still felt like I should say something. “I'm too big to be touched this way."

“No you aren't. Shh, hang on.”

I didn’t know where the shaking was coming from. The shivers ran through me head to foot for a while and he just held me tight. “Are we friends, then?" I asked.

His voice over my head. “Absolutely, we are friends.”

“Good. I'm glad.” I felt safer than I could ever remember.

“So I should throw you out so you can come back?” he said when my shaking stopped. I never wanted to let go, but I had to. I sat up. “I was just going to suggest you stomp out on me. Sorry, I'm just dull, dull, dull.”

“That's a good idea. I can do that.”

He smiled at me. “Nothing more agonizingly tedious than a Yeoli.”

"Do you like the tea set? Can I give it to you? Oh, yeah, I'll throw a chain at Iskanzas to buy it, if you like.”

“It might not fit with your act if you give me a gift. I thank you for the thought, though.”

“Okay. I'll send one later, anonymously, all right?”

“Okay. Go on, easily-bored Minis.”

"Um. Thank you for liking me, Karas Raikas."

“You don't have to thank me for that. It took no effort on my part.”

I ordered my hair and clothing and put on my most petulant face, flouncing to the door and looked at him. He rose slowly and came over to open it. I took a deep breath and launched into. "You're just so boring. I thought you were going to be interesting!” I switched to Arkan then. “Boring! Boring! Boring!” He eased the door open for me. “I hate it when everything's so boring! There’s nothing new, not even new Mezem meat, it’s disgusting the men they find! Honestly.”

I complained all the way down the corridor, my jewels clashing as I moved. Behind me I could hear Raikas calling after me in Enchian.

“A thousand pardons! I guess someone so plain and ordinary as me can't entertain one so lofty as you!” And then the slam of the heavy door.

Even as I put the most annoying whine I could fake into my voice as I gathered up my Mahid escort I was grinning inside. That day was when my gut finally felt what I wanted. What I needed. A friend. A living friend who liked me, for just me not what I could do for them, even if it was dangerous.

[this scene from Chevenga's point of view] and here.

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