Kei's Gift

by Ann Somerville

  She put the bowl down and dusted her hands on her apron. “Very well.”

  He led her out onto the verandah and got to the point. “I believe Kei is close to going quite mad and I need to know what I can do to help him.”

  “You mean, other than send him home, or not to have killed ten of his friends in front of him?”

  “Yes, other than that,” Arman said, ignoring her insolent tone. “I need to know why he’s like this. You all were there, but he’s the only one who is suffering this way. It’s not an act, I know. No one acts this well.”

  “No, it’s not an act,” she said in a low voice. “But equally, there’s nothing you can do to help. You’ve probably made it inevitable he’ll go insane, and most likely he will die of it.”

  Arman gripped her shoulders. “You’re a healer, you must be able to help him!”

  “I can’t, my lord. What he’s suffering from is beyond medical help.”

  “But what is he suffering from? Gods, woman, stop being so damn cryptic and tell me the truth for once!”

  She pulled away from him. “If I tell you the truth, you’ll use it against him, against us all. Kei would not want that, however ill he is now. I will not, my lord.”

  “You would rather he died?”

  “I would rather you did, you murdering bastard.”

  Arman pushed her against the wall and put his hand over her mouth. “They could have you gutted and your corpse put on display in the civic square for such a remark. Curb your tongue, if not your anger, I beg you.” Her eyes told him she thought such a death would be worth his own, but he set her free anyway. “I will swear any oath you want that whatever you tell me, I won’t use to harm you or Kei or any Darshianese. I only want to help him.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he’s my...friend...and I don’t want to lose another in this war. Please. I promise to use the knowledge only to help him.”

  She glared again. “Will you promise also not to treat me as if what I’m about to tell you is superstition and myth?”

  “If that’s your wish, yes. Let’s sit.” He urged her over to one of the long stone benches that lined the wall of the verandah. “Now tell me.”

  “Swear on your god and your honour, my lord.”

  “I so swear it. I swear it also by my love for Karus, which means much more to me.”

  That seemed to surprise her, but also convince her. “All right. Kei is a soul-toucher. He can feel people’s emotions.”

  Despite his oath, Arman couldn’t hold back his disbelief. “That’s ridiculous.”

  “You promised, and yet already you’re an oath-breaker,” she said, sighing wearily. She gripped his wrist. “And is this ridiculous, my lord murderer?”

  He yelped and jerked away. “What in hells? What kind of trick is this?”

  She grabbed his hand again. “No trick, no myth. I am a mind-speaker, of limited powers. Kei is a soul-toucher, perhaps more powerful, but also of limited scope. When you feel an emotion, and you are near him, especially if you’re touching him, he feels it as his own.”

  Arman stared at her in amazement. “But—” Then he realised that if she was telling the truth.... “He felt...all of it...everyone in that room?”

  “Yes, and not just that. He told you, my lord. He said ‘I felt them die’. And so it was. He was joined to them, their emotions, and at the moment of their death, he felt as if he died too. They are dead, and he’s alive, but dead also. That’s why I can’t help him. Part of him is crippled—there’s an empty place in his soul which medicine can’t help.”

  “As I felt when Loke died,” Arman said softly.

  “Only much worse, my lord.” She dusted some flour from her gown thoughtfully. “How did you start to recover from the death of your friend?”

  “Kei...he helped me.”

  “How? Why him, why no one else?”

  “He...gave me trust, and I trusted him. He saw my pain, and accepted it as his own. Gods. What he must have felt.” He took her hand in a painful grip. “But then I can help him, surely.”

  “No, my lord, because he can’t trust you any more. He can’t accept you, or what you did, and dares not let you in because you’re everything he abhors. He was close to friendship, before, I think...but no more. You make things worse for him, not better.”

  Arman groaned. “I had no choice. It wasn’t my decision to kill those people, or to have you watch. I only provided the tools.”

  “How hard did you fight the decision, my lord? Did you take it to Her Serenity?”

  “The order came from her, you damn woman. My sovereign commands, her generals obey or they die and are replaced. It’s not a battle I could ever have won, and Kei would be just as damaged, only in the household of someone like Mekus. Is that a better fate, do you think?”

  She tugged at his grip but he wouldn’t free her. “Better him than the betrayal of a friend. He’s lost his family, his lover and his role in life, and the person he had begun to open his heart to, has stabbed him through it. He probably wishes he could die. He’s a healer—he’ll find a way.”

  “No! Please, just tell me how to fix it.” Arman felt tears pricking his eyes. “I won’t let him die—I’ll take him into custody, prevent any weapons coming into his hands—”

  “And that’s better than death, my lord Arman? For Kei, truly?”

  Her angry brown eyes bored into his. “No. But I can’t bear him to die.”

  “Perhaps you need to think what he wants, and stop telling me what you can or cannot bear, my noble lord. You can’t help him because he can’t trust you. You can’t force that any more than you can force love, and you can’t win his love or friendship by guile or tricks. He can feel your emotions, he knows the truth of your feelings.” “As do I, Arman.”

  He forced her to look him in the eyes. “Then tell me my feelings, madam, read my heart, and read the truth. Please.”

  She stared at him intently. He wondered if she could really see as deeply as she claimed. “Actually, more deeply than even you’re aware of, my lord...Arman,” she said quietly in response to his unspoken thought. Something had been settled. Her hostility diminished a little after that. “I have no more doubts on your score, but it still doesn’t help him. He can’t just see your need to help him and accept it. I don’t know the answer—you need to find that. But you need to know this—every contact with a person, every touch to the skin right now, is agony for him. A prison cell would be kinder in some ways. Don’t force him to interact with you for pity’s sake. If you can’t make him better, please don’t make him worse.”

  “I won’t. Is there nothing you can do even temporarily? Give him some rest? No drug, no....” He waved his hand at her head. “Anything?”

  “There are drugs which would numb his pain, certainly. But he would need more and more of them, for less and less effect, until they stopped working and he would be left both with a craving and the pain. So I won’t even suggest such an option, and nor would he. As for...my gift...I can make him sleep when he cannot, take some physical pain away—nothing else. It’s his soul, Arman. My powers don’t extend so far. No one’s do.”

  “So even if he trusted me, accepted me as a friend, I still couldn’t help?” Arman felt his heart sinking again, having briefly begun to hope there might be a way out for Kei.

  “I didn’t say that, my lord. I just don’t know if it’s enough.” She searched his eyes again. “Kei has an enormous heart. His injury is proportionate.”

  “I understand. I thank you too, and I won’t betray this confidence. Would sending him here make it easier for him, do you think? I could lie and say I needed him to work with Karus.... I think Her Serenity would believe it.”

  “Right now, he just needs to be left alone. If you could send him home, where those who love him are, it might help.”

  Arman shook his head with genuine regret. “I can’t, I honestly can’t, although I wish I could. I may not be a soul-toucher, but I feel that need in hi
m as strongly as if it was my own. There’s no way I can do it without risking every one of you, and I know, you know, Kei would never accept that as the price.”

  “No, he wouldn’t.” She looked at her hands. “It was an evil act.”

  “I regret it, I do, but such things happen in a war, and even worse.”

  She lifted her head and glared. “A war begun by the Prij, for the Prij. You are still my enemy, Sei Arman. You hurt and killed my people, you seek to crush my home. Don’t imagine I don’t hate you.”

  “I don’t. But I don’t hate you or your people any more.” He smiled, although it was painful. “Kei is indeed ‘gidu’, learned healer, if he can cure that sickness in me.”

  “Kei’s mother was one of the most skilled of our profession, my lord, but I think he matches her already even though he’s only twenty. If you really want to make reparations for your crimes, then make sure he goes home and is allowed to be a healer once more. He was born to it. It’s his true love.”

  “I promise, I swear I will. Thank you.” He stood. “I better let you go back to your cooking.”

  “Yes, so I can spit in your omelette.”

  He only raised an eyebrow at her insolence. “If you so wish, lady Jena. I’ve eaten worse, I assure you.”

  That won a reluctant grin from his sworn enemy. Now, if only making Kei smile were so easy....

  ~~~~~~~~

  Making Kei smile was utterly beyond Arman’s abilities, so he went against his instincts, listened to Jena’s advice, and continued to leave the man alone as much as he dared. He had to be there for some meals, or Kei wouldn’t eat—careful and frankly sneaky enquiries had confirmed what he’d suspected. Kei simply didn’t leave Arman’s room if Arman was out, and the other servants could hardly be ordered to wait on him. It was a juggling act between giving him the solitude which was the only salve for his soul they had, and making sure he didn’t starve again. He was losing weight already but there didn’t seem to be anything Arman could do about it.

  He had no answer to the dilemma, however much he searched his heart. He’d had no choice that day, even if Kei wouldn’t ever believe him. He had begun investigations into what exactly had happened at Vinri, but any response would take many weeks to arrive, and it wouldn’t bring the dead back to life. It wouldn’t change the fact the executions had been at best pointless and at worst, purely vindictive and cruel, carried out in the most vicious way. He couldn’t fix that either, but it meant the images in Kei’s mind, his memories, were as painful as could have been designed. Arman even wondered if killing Mekus the same way would help at all—and it was a measure of his desperation that he could seriously consider murdering a senator—but he knew it wouldn’t. The answer was not more death and cruelty, any more than another death had eased Arman’s heart when Loke had died.

  Loke...now, he would have known how to fix this. He would know instinctively how to gain Kei’s trust again, and how to heal that damaged heart. But Arman was not Loke, and didn’t have a solution.

  The military situation refused to change at all. If anything, the siege was draining Kuprij more than Darshek, and there had been discreetly angry exchanges in the senate over the policy. No direct criticism of Kita, of course, but the senators were beginning to lose faith in the project. What they would decide to do if they dropped the siege, Arman didn’t know—he wasn’t privy to that level of discussion, at least, not yet. No, they would tell him when they wanted some more innocent Darshianese murdered and not before.

  The Solstice came and went. Karus stayed in good health, but Arman felt guilty for wishing Kei and Jena would still be here for the festival. His wish had been granted in a way he’d never wanted, the gods perhaps punishing him for his loss of faith, which was nearly as effective as punishing a woman for losing her virginity outside marriage. Once lost, never recovered, no matter what the retribution. The gods had no more claim on Arman’s heart. They had broken their covenant with him too many times.

  He had insisted to Senator Mekus he wanted an opportunity to question the replacement hostages from Vinri when they arrived, which they did two days after the Solstice. He had them taken to the blue reception hall and then extracted their unofficial leader for a private audience in his office. The man was sullen, with none of the air of pleasant cooperation Arman had come to associate with the first group of hostages, but Arman wouldn’t hold that against him. The man had good cause.

  “I want you to tell me how the soldier died last month—why he was killed by your people.”

  “He wasn’t killed, my lord,” the man said, making no attempt to hide his anger. “He was surprised by the husband of the woman he was raping, and he was injured in the fight that followed. He killed the husband first, slashed the woman with his sword, and died from his injuries which he inflicted himself—he slipped in the blood and cracked his skull. Our man wasn’t even armed.”

  “Do you have any proof of this?”

  “Ask anyone, my lord. He attacked the woman in her own home, and any number of us saw the end of the fight. If you believe our kind, that is,” he added with a sneer.

  This would explain the lack of detail, if true. He questioned the man further, and then carefully interrogated each of the other nine hostages separately and without allowing them a chance to confer. The story was the same in each case, with only the slight differences that came from different vantage points. This fact, the impression of honest anger, and his previous suspicions, were enough to make him believe this new version of events.

  He felt utterly sick with fury and shame at the deception, and the unjustness and pointlessness of the hostage deaths. If the men responsible had been in Utuk, he’d have taken great pleasure in venting his rage and punishing them for their betrayal of their duty. Frustrated by the distance and slow communication, he had few options, but he exercised them all. He asked for a meeting with Her Serenity that very day to bring the matter to her attention—she granted the audience, with Mekus in attendance. That suited Arman perfectly. He laid out the information he received and carefully detailed why he believed the story to be true, but he was surprised at the lack of reaction on both the part of his sovereign and the senator at the gruesome story.

  “We really don’t know what you want us to do, Arman,” Kita said, sounding less than enthralled. “The people are dead, we can’t bring them back to life.”

  “Your highness, you can send the new arrivals home, or offer to compensate them. It’s a simple matter of justice. Even an apology—”

  Mekus snorted. “General, don’t be ridiculous. We’re waging a war against these people. We don’t offer apologies or compensation to the enemy.”

  “Senator, with respect, the hostages and the villages are not the enemy, they’re now Her Serenity’s subjects, to which the law of the Prij applies.”

  “Then they shouldn’t have killed one of our soldiers, should they?”

  “They—”

  Kita held up her hand. “Enough. We don’t wish to engage in this unseemly discussion any further. Arman, the senator is correct—we’re at war, and in wars, people die. When the peace is restored, then perhaps.... We shall do something as a gesture, perhaps erect a statue to improve their town square. The sovereign of the Prij does not explain her actions to anyone, or apologise.” She rose, and they stood too. “That is all. Good day, senator, general.”

  Arman bowed, seething with anger. There was warfare and there was simple murder. He knew which had occurred a month earlier.

  Outside the private chambers, Mekus regarded him with undisguised scorn. “Was there something else, general?”

  “Yes, senator, there was another matter. I’ve been hearing reports of attacks against hostages, and mistreatment in the houses in which they’re being kept. I believe one woman may even be pregnant.”

  “I don’t believe I’m responsible for that, general.”

  “I don’t mean to imply you are, senator. But it concerns me such mistreatment may bear bitter fruit
in the future when Darshian is entirely under our control.”

  Mekus gave him a scornful look. “You sound as if a handful of disgruntled farmers are your only concern these days. Are you not occupied with enough affairs?”

  “Yes, senator, I am. But I have a care to the military implications.”

  Mekus snorted, flicking his hand dismissively. “There are none. Don’t be a fool. As for mistreatment, I heard your own servant might have a complaint in that direction, so I suggest you don’t put your hand in that thurl’s nest for your own peace of mind. Now, if there’s nothing else?”

  Arman bowed. “No, senator. That’s quite enough.”

  Mekus looked if he was going to say something about the ambiguous meaning of his response, but then he gathered his robes about him and stalked off. Arman clenched his fist and punched the wall, right in the middle of a mosaic depicting a victory of Lord Quek over the demon Squiluk. This was wrong. This was such rank injustice, it made his blood boil. But at the same time, there was nothing more he could do—the sovereign and Mekus were right, in that as the ruling nation, they had no obligation to do a damn thing. There had to be an answer....

  ~~~~~~~~

  Kei dozed restlessly on his pallet, the same way he spent most of the days now in Arman’s absence. Arman didn’t expect him to do anything or go anywhere, which meant Kei at least got a little relief from the effect of other people. He was wasting his life in dreams and in his thoughts, but in his present condition, he had no future to plan for anyway.

  A knock on the door startled him, and for a moment, he thought about ignoring it and hiding until the visitor had gone, but then word might get back to Arman’s wife he was being rude if he did that, and the idea of an interview with her to explain himself make him shiver. So, hesitantly, he opened the door, and found Peri there with a soldier. Instinctively, he took a step back—had they come to arrest him? The soldier didn’t notice his fear.

  “Sei General Arman requests you to come to the palace,” he said, as Peri watched bug-eyed in the background. “I’m to take you by calash.” He took a piece of paper from his sleeve. “He’s given me a note for you.”