by R. Lee Smith
“I saw your mother once,” Tsazr was saying now. “Pretty eyes. They don’t do much for your brother, but you can’t blame Yecedi for that. The finest windows in the world can’t improve the view and Salkith’s brains are no stronger than his bones. I know what you want to ask me,” Tsazr said without pausing or changing his mild, musing tone.
“Sir?”
“And it ought to be something along the cut of, ‘Where the hell did you see my mother?’ but it isn’t.” Tsazr glanced back again, but his eyes stayed far away. “So cough it up. You’ve got me in a rare mood, boy, but I don’t mean to make it easy for you to take advantage of me.”
Meoraq’s breath caught in his throat, so that he very nearly did cough. His feet took him forward, however unwisely, until he was not merely intruding upon his master’s private room, he was actually in reach of him and the slap he probably deserved for this outrageous impropriety. Even knowing that, he couldn’t stop himself. “Did you reach the temple, sir? Did you stand at Xi’Matezh?”
Tsazr’s head tipped past humor to sarcasm, but his eyes stayed sharp. “If I choose to answer only one question tonight, is that really the one you want to ask? If I reached it? If I stood?”
“Did the doors open?” Meoraq asked. Demanded, almost. A part of him remained lucid enough to be appalled at the tone he took, but all the rest of him was lost to fever. A Sheulek must be the master of his impulses, but Meoraq was not Sheulek yet. “Did you enter?”
Tsazr gazed at him a long time without moving, without even blinking. “Yes,” he said at last and looked back out the window.
Meoraq’s hand twitched, but he kept them both at his sides. “Did you hear Him?” he asked hoarsely. “Did Sheul speak to you?”
Tsazr was quiet, but his eyes moved constantly, shifting from cloud to cloud as the skies rolled endlessly onward. When he finally spoke, it was not in answer. Or at least, not in any answer that made sense.
“There used to be lights in the sky at night.”
Meoraq drew back, slapped somewhat from the curiosity that had gripped him, although not so much that he made his proper apologies and left. “Sir?”
Tsazr gestured upwards. “Long before my time, of course, but it is truth. You can read it in books. You can even see pictures if you know where to look. They had a name, but I don’t remember what it is. You can’t see them anymore, but I suppose they’re still there. The only lights we have left…Here, what would you call that?” he asked suddenly, pointing out at the sky.
Meoraq looked, hesitated, and ventured, “The sun, sir.”
“Would you indeed?” Tsazr snorted, then laughed boldly. “Lies.”
The thought of retreat finally raised itself in Meoraq’s baffled mind. One foot even eased backwards, but that was all. Tsazr had never been a talkative man before this night and might never be again. “What is it then?” he asked uncertainly.
“It is the light,” said Tsazr, with startling force and venom, “of the sun. And you might think they are one and the same, but you’d be wrong, Uyane. It may be proof that the sun stands behind it, but it is not the sun and it is neither honest nor right to let others say that it is, and even less so to let them believe it when you know better. Having said that…” Tsazr paused and rubbed at his snout again, rubbed hard enough that Meoraq could actually hear the tendons in his master’s hands creaking. It had to hurt, but if anything, Tsazr only rubbed harder. “Having said that,” he said again, quietly but with the same force. “I must also tell you that the doors of Xi’Matezh did open and I did go inside and yes, Uyane, Sheul spoke to me. Why not? The light is not the sun, but it is proof undeniable that the sun stands behind it and so I say I heard the voice of Sheul. His words were not a comfort to me. Do you say truth or lie?”
Meoraq’s mouth dropped open for possibly the first time in his life, aghast at the notion of daring to pass judgment on his master at all.
Tsazr took his hand away from his face. “I said, what say you?” he hissed. “Don’t you stand there and gape at me like your idiot brother or I’ll knock the teeth right out of your head! Answer!”
“Truth!” he blurted.
Tsazr snorted again, but it was an angry sound and not a laughing one at all. “And why is that, brunt? Because I am Master Tsazr, once Tsazr Dyuun in the sight of Sheul, or because you suddenly realize you are in the easy striking reach of a madman?”
Meoraq answered without thinking, which was never a clever way to answer a training master, but all his training seemed to have left him. “You are not a madman, sir.”
“Ha! You sound pretty damned sure of yourself.”
“Yes, sir.”
Tsazr continued to glare at him for a time, but it ended with another snort of humor. He looked back at the sun. “I used to be pretty damned sure of myself once, too.”
That was all Tsazr seemed inclined to say and it would have been a good time to leave, but Meoraq stayed and eventually Tsazr heaved a sigh and looked at him again.
He wanted to ask. He even opened his mouth a few times, but he couldn’t quite dare to speak, not with the man looking at him this way. He wasn’t a madman, Meoraq was sure of that (however unreasonably), but he was still a dangerous one and Meoraq had done enough this night to earn six sound beatings. At last, in defeat, Meoraq bent his neck and made a salute.
“Fuck it,” Tsazr said, under his breath but quite distinctly. “Do you want to know what I heard in Xi’Matezh, boy?”
Meoraq shut his eyes. “Yes, sir.”
“Why? What could it possibly mean to you?”
“I don’t know,” Meoraq admitted.
“You want to come up with a better answer than that, Uyane. My patience is right at the last grains.”
“I have never heard His voice,” said Meoraq, again without thinking. A very bad way to answer, but so too would be any hesitation to think up something good. “I know only what I have read in the Word.”
“Isn’t that enough for you?” Tsazr asked, with surprising acid.
Meoraq resigned himself to the sure knowledge that he was not getting out of this room without a slap and there was no point in prolonging it. “Was it enough for you?”
Tsazr snapped himself to his feet so fast that Meoraq flinched, even though it had been better than three years since the last time he’d shied away from a punishing hand. But although Tsazr loomed over him with the yellow coming out strong on his throat—and he’d never seen that, not on Master Tsazr—the slap never came. Ultimately, Tsazr’s scales faded back to black and several minutes after, he uttered a low, sour grunt.
“You had the juice to ask,” Tsazr said, reseating himself in the window. “I suppose I should have the juice to answer. It was enough…until about eighteen years ago. My last circuit as Sheulek, in fact. Something happened that made me think I could actually open the doors at Xi’Matezh if I ever went. It’s been itching at me ever since, the idea that there could be something more than the Word…something just for me. And there was. And it was terrible to hear. Do you still want to know what He said, boy?”
Meoraq opened his mouth and made himself close it. He thought long enough that Tsazr turned away from the clouds and the light of the sun that shone through them to look at him.
“Yes,” said Meoraq slowly.
“Why?”
“Because…Because they were His words.”
Tsazr’s expression shifted somehow, but in a way difficult to define. “So?”
“In school, they taught us—”
“If you give me a schoolroom answer, I’ll crack your bones for you, sprat,” Tsazr said. “I don’t care who your father is and in this moment, I don’t even care what it will do to your mother. I will snap something fresh for every word you are about to utter and make you count them off when I do.”
Meoraq hesitated, then plunged on ahead with a kind of despairing courage. “In school, they taught us that truth is only truth when everything is heard. Every word of the Word changes all the rest of
them. So whatever He told you…it changes the truth in the Word.” He paused, but Tsazr only watched him, frowning. “And I want to know how,” he finished lamely.
Tsazr just looked at him as Meoraq’s heart hammered against his as-yet-unbroken ribs.
“Not so much a schoolroom answer,” Tsazr murmured at last. “You did all right by this one, Razi. At least you gave him all the brains you scooped out of Salkith.”
Meoraq waited, not entirely confident that he had escaped.
“Truth,” said Tsazr after another minute or two.
“Sir?”
“You want to know the truth.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Of course you do. That’s your blood-right talking to you, boy. Your history. Your destiny. Because that is what we do, Uyane.”
“We, sir?”
“You’ll be Sheulek at the end of all this,” Tsazr said with a cross, dismissive wave. “We all know it, so shut your mouth and mark me, because this is important. The other boys here, they think being Sheulek is about glorious battles and walking freely through any gate they please. To them, the call to carry the honor-blades is nothing but a writ of privilege over any man they meet. Or any woman.” Tsazr snorted and looked out the window. “Is that about what you think, Uyane?”
Meoraq stifled a premonitory cringe and said, “All these things are the right of a Sheulek, sir.”
“Not your best answer tonight,” Tsazr said wryly. “I’ll let you try again out of respect for your father before I knock you down. Is that what you think being a Sheulek is? What it means?”
“What something is and what it means aren’t always the same.”
Tsazr looked at him sharply, his spines flat. “Example?” he inquired in a low, dangerous voice.
“Being a brunt,” said Meoraq.
His master stared, his expression growing slowly more thoughtful as his spines came forward. “Truth,” he said after a very long time. “You really are doing very well tonight. So let me tell you about women, brunt. I have had more of them than I can count. I mean just what I say. More than I can count. But I remember only three…and one of them is your mother and I never laid a hand on her. What does that tell you?”
It told him that sex probably wasn’t very memorable and if that was the truth, Meoraq wasn’t sure he wanted to hear it. He wasn’t a child; the last of his scales had turned black before he’d received his brunt’s tabard and the incident that had led to the metal loin-plate he was now wearing (and would wear for the rest of his life) had been dimming in the back of his mind for two years now. No, there were no women in Tilev and none at home, excepting servants glimpsed as they went swiftly and silently about their business, but there would be women someday and after two years wrestling with Gann’s temptations, he’d hoped the wait would be worth it. Now his master was staring him down, so Meoraq groped for an honest answer and finally managed, “I know nothing about women, sir.”
Tsazr heaved a short, impatient sigh and cut his hand through the air. “Fine. We’ll have to talk again someday, but for right now, we’ll stick to truth. That is the true work of a Sheulek. Never mind what they tell you in school about law and government or even about the Word itself. When we step into that arena, it is not for glory, not for women, not even for God, but for only truth. We accept that we may die and we embrace that death if it means the truth is exposed. Do you hear me, Uyane?”
“Yes, sir.”
Tsazr grunted and eyed him for a moment before looking back out the window. “And do you understand me?”
Meoraq braced himself once more for that slap. “No, sir.”
But Tsazr pointed two fingers at him and said, “Truth. I don’t know if you mean it, but that doesn’t matter. You spoke and I judge your words to be true ones, regardless of your motives. That’s my whole point, boy. Why does not matter to us. Only truth.” He fell quiet for a time, then said, “And truth does not care if it comforts you.”
Out in the greater hall, the bells rang for the mid-day meal. Tsazr stirred himself, glanced at Meoraq and then swept a hand over his snout.
“So here it is,” he said. “The truth that changes everything. Prepare yourself.”
Meoraq bent his neck and took several deep breaths, forcing his muscles to unlock and his heart to beat slow. Nothing he was about to hear could be a good thing, but he meant to meet it fairly. At last he looked up, calm. “I mark you, Master.”
“The truth,” said Tsazr, “is that if you want to know what I heard in Xi’Matezh, go there.”
Meoraq’s breath fell out of him in a disorienting rush that was part relief and part disappointment, and for the life of him, he couldn’t have said which was the larger part. “Sir?”
“I can read the Word to you, Uyane. I can’t read it for you. Go on.” He rubbed at his snout some more. “Get out of my room. I’ll put my boots in the hall for you when I’m damned good and ready.”
Meoraq turned around at once, but paused after only a few steps. He told himself he was not defying a direct order as he had every intention of obeying it…right after he asked one thing. “Sir?”
“I ordered you out, brunt.”
“Yes, sir.” But his feet wouldn’t move.
“I give you a choice, Uyane, because I’m in that sort of mood, although not for much longer. Here it is. You can walk out of here right now without getting hurt, or you can stay and say what you want to say. I’ll let you and I may even answer, but I absolutely will beat you down for it.”
“What happened that made you think the doors at Xi’Matezh would open?”
Silence. It grew at his back until he was forced to turn around and face the slap.
This time, Tsazr gave it to him. Hard. But as Meoraq unsteadily straightened himself, Tsazr said, with singular bitterness, “Nuu Sukaga.”
And after everything he’d heard, that was still bizarre enough to make Meoraq forget the immediate pain throbbing through his snout. “Sir?”
“Nuu Sukaga. I waited eighteen years to say it and you are exactly right, Uyane. Those two words changed all the others. Now get out,” Tsazr said, sitting back down in the window. “Or you’ll be cleaning my boots from the infirmary.”
Meoraq went and since nothing more happened that day (it remained the longest and strangest conversation he was ever to have with Master Tsazr, who never mentioned it, or the name, if it was a name, of Nuu Sukaga, again), he let the memory go and brought himself gradually back to the present to think about what it meant.
Because each word did change the truth in all the others, and this memory did present an entirely new alternative to his present situation. Surely that was why Sheul had brought it to his attention so vividly.
“Honored one?”
Meoraq stirred and opened his eyes. He gazed into the light of the holy forge (which had been renewed at some point during his meditations, he saw), before turning an expectant eye upon the nervous usher who bowed beside him. “What is it?” he asked.
“The abbot sends his apologies for this intrusion on your prayers, honored one, but requests that you send your demands to the provisioner as soon as possible.”
“A reasonable request,” said Meoraq after a moment. “Have you the means to make a list?”
“Yes, sir.” The usher produced a wax tablet and stylus from the inner fold of his robe.
“Very good. Write small,” he advised. “And see to it my demands are sent specifically to Exarch Ylsathoc, for I know it was he and not the abbot who sent you to me, although I believe it is only the abbot who apologizes for it.”
The boy’s first mark in the soft wax was a meaningless gash of guilt. “Sir?”
“Foremost, I require a tea box,” Meoraq began in a musing way. “A nice one…”
5
Meoraq woke at the sound of voices while they were still in the hall. He raised his head without opening his eyes, listened until he had identified one in particular, and settled back into his bedding.
His door
crashed open. “I don’t care if I wake him up!” Exarch Ylsathoc Hirut shrieked to someone in the hall. “I want to wake him up! I want him to explain himself and this…this insult!”
Meoraq smiled sleepily into his cushion.
Expensive-sounding slippers slapped rapidly across the room. A soft fist struck the mantle above his cupboard in the fearless manner of a man who has never challenged a Sheulek. “Insult, I call it! Do you hear me, you…you…”
“Honored Sword of Sheul?” Meoraq suggested, still smiling.
“You get out here this instant!” the exarch screamed. “I demand to know the meaning of this…this…extortion! A new samr and kzung! I can see your old ones right there! There is nothing wrong with them! What is this? Boots! Buckles! A new tent! A quilted mat! Blankets, cushions, a new pack…and a full mending kit! What could you possibly need to mend when everything is new?”
“I like to be prepared for every eventuality.”
“Is that a joke? Are you joking at me? No, no, this must be the joke! An inlaid tea box?!”
“I trust you also received my list of favorite teas.”
“This is an outrageous abuse of power and I will not honor it! I refuse! You will have a brick of cuuvash and a change of clothes and nothing more from me! I am a son of Ylsathoc!”
Meoraq slapped his palm flat against the cupboard door and shoved it open. He leaned out, no longer smiling, and yanked the exarch down by the neck of his fine white robes until their eyes were on level. “And I am a son of Sheul,” he said quietly.
The exarch glared, breathing hard and fast, the color strong at his scrawny throat, but he said nothing.
“Honored one…” Unnoticed in the doorway, the abbot of Xi’Tothax now came into the room and bowed again, both arms open. “Please, the temple is proud to make provision for you.”
“But I do not ask the temple.” Meoraq released Ylsathoc with a shove and swung himself out of the cupboard to stand in the exarch’s place, naked and damned glad he was naked, just to see Ylsathoc flinch. “I ask the man who gave my name at the gate—what did I hear, six times?—and who ordered the sentries of my conquered city to carry me in to him as if I were his errant cattle! Do not speak to me of insult, priest. You will meet my demands and you will thank Sheul at every one that I ask only your material goods and not your fucking hand!”