23 - Punishment Continued

I managed to swallow what my father wished me to eat, successfully told him which additives were in which dish.

My father was in a very expansive mood. He mistook my horrified fixation on the punishment going on before us for his own enthrallment. “More wine,” I said. There was a sheen of spattered sweat and the first spots of blood on the Presentation Platform. Then 2nd Amitzas clapped his hands together as if to clear them of dust, and held up his right hand to the crowd.

They gradually quieted, watching, Raikas and Manas silent, the long, heaving sobs from the okas who would have hung on the table but was strapped to it too firmly. Amitzas turned toward my father, hand still raised, waiting for permission.

Father steepled his hands in front of his face, the Imperial seals winking and gleaming on his pudgy hands. He waited for every eye in the crowd to be fixed on him before nodding.

2nd Amitzas turned and gently lowered his raised hand onto the okas’s face, pinching nostrils shut, holding the mouth closed. The man’s chest still heaved, though he could not get any air through that iron grip. The crowd held its breath for a long moment as though with the dying man on the table, until the sigh across the square showed the limit of a held breath.

There was no such relief for the okas. Even as his body began to buck and writhe on the table, fighting to breathe, it was quiet enough I could hear Amitzas when he turned his head to Manas and said “He dies because of you.”

Then he turned to Raikas. “You brought him to this Hayel. If you had obeyed he would not be here.”

Raikas ignored the Mahid and spoke to the okas. “It will be over soon. It will stop hurting soon.” How did he know? Sinim struck him across the mouth to silence him.

The okas’s convulsions were wild enough to rock the table before he went limp. Amitzas removed his hand and hit him in the chest and with a convulsive thrash all through him, and he came back, shrieking in air. The crowd noise was not a cheer, more a half-satisfied groan.

“YOU DANCED HIM UP TO THE GATE OF HAYEL THAT TIME, MAHID!” Someone bawled from near the platform. Laughter erupted all around and spread.

2nd Amitzas ignored them, or seemed to. As he took up a syringe in his hand, glass glinting in the sun my mind went completely strange as though everything around me shrank to miniature. It wasn’t that particular syringe, full of some Mahid toxin. It was anything… the continuity of torture… Sounds became tiny, doll-like and thin. My father and Amitzas were two ends of a strand of pain being played like a couple of musicians.

They were clowns or circus masters waving bloody painted hands for the crowd, lips red, faces pale, the screaming man somehow completely unreal as though he were a paper-cut out, with red stripes painted on. I could not feel my own hands or feet, my vision locked narrowly on the whitewashed Platform. Everything else was shut out in a black hum that reduced my sight as though I looked up through a blackened chimney to see an unreachable brightness.

It was as though a hand wrapped around my understanding and I could only see through the circle of thumb and forefinger. I turned what I could see away from the suffering okas first to Manas’s face. It was closed like Raikas. He refused everything that any Mahid said to him, any instruction, even backed up by whip or backhand. He refused responsibility for this. I could see it. Could no one else?

Then my circle of sight tracked over to Raikas’s face. He… was with the suffering man on the table. I could see his lips move as he said something to him, but with my reduced hearing I could not make it out. Raikas was taking as much of the man’s pain as he could, as if he could help him bear it somehow. There was a mosquito buzz in my ears.

“MINIS!” I started hard enough that I almost fell from my chair. I blinked and the world came back with a roar. My father actually grinned at me. “You’ve finally found it, haven’t you?”

“Ser?” I was glad to hear my own voice was something approaching normal. I could feel my throat and even though my chest was tight it was still working… I was not smothered.

“The intensity! The realization of mortality! It is fascinating is it not, when a creature is brought to the realization that there is no escape from those who hold power over him?”

“Ah. Yes, father. I see. I was… just watching.”

“Good. Excellent! I am pleased to see you maturing. Try some of the bitter chocolate fondant with the gold dust. Oh, dip it in the white and red chocolate sauces. An excellent complement to overseeing our justice done.”

“Thank you, Illustrious father.” I couldn’t look at him; it wasn’t safe to show him honest emotion, so kept my eyes on the Platform. A servant handed me a plate with the fondant pieces on it, and knelt to hold the bowls of sweet dipping sauces.

The okas was making noises now that I had not known a human could make. 2nd Amitzas spread the man’s buttocks apart to display his clenched-tight anus clearly. Sinim displayed a rod to the crowd. It was made to go in smoothly enough, but he twisted it and the downward pointing spikes sprang out of it and the crowd jeered. HEY, MAHID WHY DON’T YOU TEST HIM YOURSELF BEFORE YOU BUGGER HIM WITH THAT?”

My father cupped a hand to block out some of the noise from the square, still focused on me. “Now, my petite adjunct, you may not indulge yourself in this too long. I understood you were not finished your daily lessons. Are you not pleased with your new tutor? Did I not choose someone completely erudite?”

“Oh, he is tremendously educated, father.” I could feel the food, the heat, my bile roiling around in my guts as though my stomach had burst.

“Then finish up, my issue, and don’t let yourself get caught up in mere enjoyment.” He waved a hand to the Platform where the man squalled as he was opened with the metal rod. Amitzas wiggled it lovingly into place but did not open the spines. The okas would not bleed out until he was allowed.

“I was watching, father.” I had to pretend I did not want to leave. Rather than being full of nausea and bile my voice was a sulky, petulant whine at being denied a treat. Some part of me was pleased at my ability to dissemble. I didn’t want to leave Raikas… or his countryman alone with this, but I wasn’t sure how long I could hold the weight of this pressed in much longer. “I was…” what could I say? “…admiring the Mahid’s skill, ser.”

“Now, now. Fruit of my loins you will obey me.” He stood up and everything went quiet again as people noticed his motion, the Mahid on the Platform stopping to turn to Him. “Continue,” He called, waving at 2nd Amitzas. “You have my permission.” The crowd went down in a spreading ripple of prostration. “Gehit,” He said, along with the gesture. “Miniature Mine… you are finished?… good. Go back to your lessons. I insist on being a most excellent father. Go.”

“Of course, Ilustrious father.” He swept out and left me to follow at my own speed. I stood, casting one glance back at Raikas, still trying to give the doomed okas some comfort, still trying to give him some dignity, his voice cutting through the crowd noise, his own fresh stripes livid on his skin. I had a direct command from my father to go back to my schoolroom.

I walked calmly to my chambers first, to the most private garderobe off my bedchamber, and vomited hard enough that my throat bled, hurling the vileness in my gut down to be washed away, aware that it was still happening outside under the eye of the sun. Aware that it would continue until the noon observance tomorrow, when the okas would finally be allowed to die.

*

It was the bead past the middle of the night, the second bead of morning actually and I stared up at my ceiling. Raikas was outside, bound to the flogging rack. I sat up and Binshala stirred from her chaise where she normally slept. “Go back to sleep, nurse,” I said. “I don’t need you.”

“As you command, Spark of the Sun’s Ray.” Her voice was a sleepy murmur. If I couldn’t sleep, and didn’t want servants chasing me around with towels or other things, the only time I could command it was the middle of the night. I padded out of my chambers, the stone under my feet cool and smooth and somehow soothing as I made my way down past the corridor to my father’s chambers and to the Presence balcony.

It had been tidied since, and the Imperial chair tucked into its niche with a curtain drawn over it. I walked up to the balustrade and put my hands on top of it, suddenly fascinated by the dark veins in the white marble slab, neatly beveled so there would never be any rain puddles lingering. There was no sound from the square.

The wind cut through my nightclothes as I finally raised my eyes to look over the railing, to the Presentation Platform. There was enough moon and lantern light that I could see the tableau.

Raikas on my left, the table in the middle with the okas a dark mass upon it, Manas to my right. In front of them a Mahid guard stood, feet slightly apart, hands locked behind his back in the stance they could hold for hours.

Raikas’s head was bowed, as was Manas’s. I was surprised they were still on their feet rather than sagging against their bonds. I sank to my knees, my legs suddenly like water, gazing between the marble balusters, my overheated cheek pressed against it. Between the stone uprights I could only see Raikas as he shifted slightly, raised his head as though he could sense me watching him, or perhaps he was only easing wracked muscles. I pinched my tongue between my teeth to keep from calling out to him.

“Be still, slave.” The Mahid… I didn’t recognize him as one of the usual guards around the Marble Palace. His voice was low.

It was enough to trigger the okas. I couldn’t understand him. His mouth was broken enough to make his words unclear. “Mmm shh eeeyyy.”

“Okas. Be silent.” And then there was nothing but the wind again, cool, then warm depending on where the wind had come from, the lake or last dregs of sun-warmth from the city. I swallowed the taste of bile, and a bit of sweet saltiness where I’d bitten my tongue so I would not call out to Raikas.

I could do nothing but see, nothing but watch. I could see the lights gleaming from the Temple doors glinting off dark spots on the white platform. The Mahid would have kept the platform clean, at least after the sun went down… and the truly bloody, shitty work would not begin until the sun rose.

“Raikas,” I said softly. “You didn’t deserve this. You shouldn’t have to bear this. This isn’t right. This is all wrong. I’ve prayed and I think my father is right. If there are Gods at all they don’t hear us.” I took a deep breath and could taste my tears in my mouth even if they didn’t show running down my cheeks. It would only be a few more beads. “Hold on, Raikas. Hold on. Oh… and Manas. Hold on.”

I let the stone pull the heat out of my body until I was shivering. I couldn’t let myself fall asleep here to be found by servants, as if I cared for anyone on that platform. As if I might actually be able to love.

And that was when I realized I loved Raikas, in the lonely night, leached cold by the stone all around me, unable to touch him, unable to help him. I would have screamed at the sky if I could but I couldn’t. I let my air out in a faint puff that hung in a little plume of mist as the air cooled further.

Raikas raised his head then and looked up at the Marble Palace. I was sure he couldn’t see me, in the shadow behind the thick balusters but he still looked and he managed to catch my eye… I think. The shadows under his brows were thick and I could imagine the pain and rage in them. “Hold on, Raikas. My father wants to break you, because you’re too good. Hold on.”