Shadow’s Son

by Shirley Meier, S. M. Stirling

  And so, Megan thought, you don’t catch the full meaning until afterwards, perhaps lying in your tent at night, when the tale won’t leave your head, like blood-taste in your mouth, but rattles around this way and that like a dagger in a bucket, while you try to sleep. And the only thing you can do is take it out onto the field next day, and carve out some Arkan’s eyes with it. Even his own pain, he turned to advantage.

  “Megan.” His soft voice called her back to now; those dark eyes with their sad lines were fixing hers, gentle, but firm with his “I mean this” look. His tone went old-school Yeoli again, almost ceremonial. “If there’s anything you can think of that I could do to help, tell me, and I will do it.”

  Shkai’ra would have leaped at that offer. Her fingers were trembling still. And dragged you into the nearest bed or bushes. He looked puzzled; she must have shown something on her face, she knew. “And you will owe me nothing for it,” he went on. “I wouldn’t look for return.” She picked at the cushion, with its bright-woven strands of wool; a twitch of her hand poked a hole into it. He just shrugged to her apology, saying, “It’ll be fixed.”

  I’m avoiding the point. She looked up. “Thank you. Even though the merchant in me is cringing at that owe me nothing part. Thank you. Some of my ...” The word came hard ... “fears, I deal with every day. Some I’ve been trying to ignore. I would never ask you to help me with those.”

  “I said anything. I’m not known for not meaning what I say.” Now his eyes were silk, with steel underneath.

  “Koru!” She shook herself, as if out of a spell that had wrapped around her without her noticing, like a second skin. “What am I thinking? There’s only one thing you could do, and I can’t ask it. It would be too much of a risk, of clawing the semanakraseye into bloody shreds.” She held up her claws.

  It occurred to her just as the words came out that they could be taken as a challenge. But he only shrugged and said, “I risk worse out on the field every battle. But I still go. When I was on Haiu Menshir ...” Something caught in his throat, and his voice went even more quiet, hardly more than a whisper. “My healer found a woman, to help me with my trouble. She asked no return. What she gave, I would pass on. If you wish: in this I wish what you wish.”

  Even Shyll had never told her that. What I wish? I had to take what I wanted for so long. She felt uncomfortable, as if someone had handed her jewels: it would be unmannerly to examine them to see if they were paste and glass, however. Many people had given her that, glass and cheap tin. But his eyes looked genuine, black sapphires in the half-light of the office-cart.

  “I will remember that,” she said. “I will keep it in mind. I won’t say whether I will take you up on it.” He signed a plain chalk, yes. “Now I think I should stop wasting your precious time so that your scribe can ...” Keep it light; when it gets too serious, make it light again. Will I ever grow out of that?

  “You know, shemannn-Krazh ... whatever the fuck.”

  Chevenga had joined Shkai’ra, unannounced as usual, at one of the Slaughterers’ campfires.

  “You’re pretty,” she went on. “Wanna fuck?”

  His head turned to her; on his face, in the golden half-light of the fire, partly shadowed by his thick side-curls, she was sure she detected a little smile along with the raised brows. Sova turned away to Echera-e, feeling her face go red-hot, covering it with the coolness of her hands. “I don’t know her.”

  “Someone told you our custom,” Chevenga said.

  “Custom? What custom?”

  Yeoli tradition, he explained, demanded that a semanakraseye leading an army must refuse no comers at a campfire; they believed this bound the army as one. Leading an alliance, he’d extended the favor to non-Yeolis.

  “Oh, really?”

  From the distant woods: Hehehehehe.

  “Hey!” She’d hardly heard him shout before, not even giving orders on the field; that was the task of the herald, or the gong. “Wait!” About as heavy as I thought, she thought. Not overly. His waist fit nicely on her shoulder; his squirmings somehow didn’t happen to overbalance him. “I don’t know whether anyone else wants me!” The Slaughterers, howling with laughter so hard even some wine was spilled, made only encouragements, and the odd cry of “Me, later!” gesturing to the woods with a wide variety of suggestions and advice. “He-e-e-e-elp!” Chevenga rasped, thrashing and flailing dramatically. “Rape! Pillage! Wanton lust! I’m at the mercy of a ravishing barbarian! Wait, let me rephrase that ... Ravening, I mean ...” Sova just buried her head in her arms, as his mock protests faded into the trees.

  The sheer effrontery of it sank in further. She just carried off the Invincible, Sova thought, the Immortal, Imperturbable, Second Curlion ... I mean, I know she thinks she’s something, but ... I

  Echera-e’s hand touched hers. “You’ shahdow-motser, he hahs—”

  “She has.”

  “Ayo, she hahs ... rav’ye, you know, naht cowarrd—”

  “The nerve of a lake-quarter rat?”

  “‘Tai, yes. I like people like tsaht.”

  His hand feels like silk woven from threads of fire. Since that first night, the Yeoli youth had often happened to show up at whichever Slaughterer fire she was at. Like all Yeolis, he never felt he was speaking whole-heartedly to someone unless he was touching their hand or shoulder or knee (just as long as one hand was free to gesture); but that touch was unthinkingly casual, and though the first time his big palm had gently laid on the back of her hand had sent a lightning-bolt through her, she’d soon got used to it, though some part of her went on thinking it was vaguely perverse of him to do it, and her to not object. Then, somehow, their hands had stayed linked, even when he was just listening.

  Is this love? She knew that whenever she saw his face come into the ring of firelight, she’d feel a lifting in her chest, a catch of her breath and her heart beating faster. When he didn’t come, she’d feel the disappointment of denial sharper than she’d ever felt since what she counted as her childhood, the time before she’d been taken from her old home. I want him here, she thought. But she’d heard of something called infatuation too, and that it could feel no less passionate, often more, yet not be the true thing. She’d asked zhymata how she could tell: “Only time can say,” was the answer.

  He wants us to go into the bushes, she thought now, like khyd-hird and Chevenga just did. An old voice, her birth-mother’s, grated in her ear. Men only want one thing.

  If I just go into the bushes to be with him, does that make me a doxy? A slut? In her new home, she’d been taught the injustice of those terms, to be applied only to women, while men who did the same were to be admired.

  He wants to ruin me. The old Thanish phrasing came easily. Behind those friendly light brown eyes, Fehuund lurked, too subtle to see, wrapping his evil temptation as always in hope and warmth and yearning. But, she thought, I trust him. And overlaid on the old were the ethics of her new home: go with him into the bushes, tumble, take some birth-herb, and do the same tomorrow night, untouched; it’s just sex, how can it change you? Her older concerns she would never admit to khyd-hird, for fear of laughter or a sharp “Don’t you know anything?” But that was no answer to the touch of Echera-e’s big tender hands, to the thought that kept pressing into her imagination, of how they would feel touching her elsewhere, and to knowing that the pleasurable itch between her legs had something to do with it all.

  The wineskin came around; she took a long draught. I know what khyd-hird would do in this situation: what she just did. But that definitely is not my style, and besides he’s probably too heavy ...

  Maybe I’m wrong, she thought, after a while. Maybe he doesn’t want to. After all, he hasn’t tried anything, he hasn’t carried me off or kissed me or even said anything. He’d put his arm around her shoulder; but that was something friends could do. He hasn’t even looked at me that way. Yet he can’t think I’m ugly, or he wouldn’t keep holding my hand, or smiling, or saying I’m beautiful. What’s he going
to do?

  Nothing, it seemed; the night ground on, and her nervousness over what might happen in the bushes gave way for what might not. I want to. Does that make me a doxy? I don’t feel like someone bad. Francosz learned on the river, two years ago. He looked so happy after. It’s not fair that girls shouldn’t get to do what boys do. There’s nothing wrong with sex, nothing evil about it, and I won’t get pregnant as long as I take some birth-herb. I won’t be ruined, no decent Thanish family would marry me to their son anyway, and there’s no such thing as being ruined by sex. Knyd-hird isn’t a slut—she’d take off anyone’s head who called her that—and look what she does ...

  Suddenly Echera-e excused himself to go to the latrine, and one of the Slaughterers, a man of about thirty or so who had seemed to be trying to catch the youth’s eye, happened to get up at the same time. I miss him, she thought, even when he’s gone only a few steps. Is this normal? Is this what people mean when they say “lovesick”? And why, she thought, sometime later, have the two of them been gone so long? Sudden terrors filled her, of traitors in disguise and knives in the dark; the thought of him dead was suddenly horrifyingly huge and unbearable. But then he was there, as if he a never been gone.

  “Hi.” He looked embarrassed.

  “What’d he want?”

  “Oh ... eh ... to tell me a thing.”

  “Not my business?”

  “Ayo ... ayo, no. I mean, no, isn’ naht yourrh business, meaning, I mean, it is.”

  “Well, then, you’ve got to tell me.”

  “Ayo, yes. Sure. He say ... he said he think maybe you ahn’ me hahve mis ... mis-naht-unde’stahnd. Ing. Of two differ country-el.”

  “Huh? I mean, I beg your pardon? You mean misunderstanding, of two different countries?”

  “Tat.”

  “Uh huh?”

  “He say ... maybe we both wait forrh otser. I mean ...” He ran the hand that wasn’t on her shoulder through his hair. You’re so beautiful when you’re embarrassed, she thought. “See, Sova, where you frahm, it, i’s tseh mahn who, um, em, you know ... ayo, who ahsks. In Yeola-e—i’s tseh woman.”

  Sova understood.

  For a long time they gazed at each other, eyes shining, heads proud, in the joy of perfect understanding, as in a two-part song sung flawlessly. “So see,” he added. “I thahnk him, cause if he naht say tsaht, we sit hyere ahn’ hold hahnds ahn’ naht do thing else forrh a yearrrh.”

  As one they jumped up, arm in arm, and ran into the woods.

  “You little scarrhy?” he whispered, in the darkness of the thicket. On a patch of soft earth they lay wrapped in each other’s arms, and Sova wondered, What should I be doing? Do we take off our clothes now or what? What do I do with my hands? She was sure he wasn’t a virgin; he had too sophisticated a look, and besides, she’d heard about Yeolis. Or heard them, in person; right now, in the next thicket over, two people, a man and another whose gender she couldn’t tell by the voice, were moaning in rhythm and gibbering Yeoli sacred words as loudly and dramatically as grand show singers. He’ll think I’m a gauche child.

  “Ya, I’m a little scared,” she whispered, then had to say it louder, for him to hear over the “Mamaiyana, o mamawana, mahachao ayana, sekahara-a-a-ahh!” from the other thicket. “Ya, I admit I’m a little scared! I’m sorry.”

  “No need sorrhy, Sovee. We ... may we kiss away scarrhy?”

  Part of me thinks this is icky, she thought. His mouth is wet. I guess because we both had the same dinner our mouths taste the same so that’s why he doesn’t taste different. But we did it under the trees before and it’s so nice. I don’t want to stop. How can it be both at the same time? Minegott it’s the Fehuund. No it isn’t. Don’t be ridiculous. That’s just atavistic Thane-bilge. Mmmmmmm ... I should be doing something with my hands to make him feel nice. Like he’s running his hands gently over my back, I’ll do that to him, too. His back was wide and hard-ridged.

  “May I ...” His whisper was throaty and deep in the darkness. “May I touch yourrh ... now you say, you know, um, I nant cahn think—” His words were drowned out by a throaty howl from the next thicket. “—little, drink, you know, two, kyash!” Frustration stopped up his words. Why does he keep asking, she thought. It means I have to keep saying yes, like a slut, sluts don’t know how to say no ... No! Stop thinking that! I’ll just make myself miserable for no reason. I want him to touch me wherever he means. So she just whispered “Yes,” and felt his fingertips touch, with utter tenderness, one nipple, through the coarse cotton of her shirt. He wasn’t a virgin, she knew with certainty, as feeling speared through her from the breasts downward; his touch was too knowledgeable of sensitivities she’d never dreamed of in her own body.

  “Don’t ask,” she whispered, waited a moment until she could be heard again, continued. “You don’t need to, Echerry. You may touch me anywhere. Please.” She heard her own throatiness, like khyd-hird’s and zhymata’s in their darkened room, something she’d never thought to hear out of her own mouth. “I ... I ... give myself to you, Echerry. Please take me. Please.”

  Please take me away, it meant, and she suddenly knew it meant, from all the fear and pain and anger. From the bleakness. I knew boredom, in the old time, and other bleakness, but now ... The hard view she’d learned in her new life, truth, they’d call it, intruded with its usual cold thoughts: there is no escape, from the blows, the push-ups, the lung-tearing exhaustion, the aching limbs, the shame; the endless endlessness.

  But that was wrong: there was. He did take her away, at least for one soaring flight that seemed to last forever, and then another, and told her he would again as many times as she wanted. As he did, even the rising yowls from the other Yeolis were no longer brutish but magical, somehow joining with her own ecstasy to make it all the deeper. Each time was never long enough, so she made it last longer; there were ways, like fighting, using her mind.

  Then she was done, she could tell: she felt truly boneless, not just drunkenly so, but sated to the core, as if she had just eaten a full delicious meal with her soul as well as her body, if that were possible; and anything that was wrong in the world, her past or her doubts or even the war, were petty in truth, trivial flaws in the face of a vast peace.

  He’d left the pain till after; it was nothing to feeling his pleasure, quick and needful and full of strength. Afterwards, as they lay basking in sweet breeze and moonlight, her head on his shoulder and his crystal clenched in her hand, she cried with joy, learned this was possible. “Echerry, I love you” she whispered.

  He whispered back, “I love you, too.”

  Shkai’ra stretched and looked up at the stars, and an occasional spark from the fires whirling across the night. Both glittered through the limbs and leaves of apricot trees; the fruit glowed faint amber, nearly dropping-ripe. She picked one up from the silky grass, examined it critically and bit into it before offering it to Chevenga. Perfect. Some Aitzas was going to lose the rents from this plot, this year.

  He lay warm beside her, as relaxed supine as a cat sleeping in summer, his head still arched slightly back. He’d been as passionate a lover as she’d expected, but far more sensitive, marvelously so, with a fragility that reminded her of Megan. Of course he’s had that kind of wounding too ... But he’d thrown his arms wide when he came, as if to embrace something far greater than her, or himself, then lay so still that she’d nudged him, wondering whether he was all right. “Just enjoying the stillness within,” he’d whispered.

  “My food-taster,” he said now. “You know the old story, about the emperor who trusts only fruit off the tree to be safe, so his mad wife injects poison into them?”

  She laughed, then quoted in the snarling gutturals of her own tongue, translating:

  When I was a warrior, the kettle-drums they beat

  The people scattered flowers before my horse’s feet.

  Now I am a mighty king, the people dog my track

  Poison in the winecup, daggers at my back.

  H
e laughed. “You should see the precautions they take to protect Kurkas. I can’t wait to live that way ... if I live till then.” She’d noticed that about him: while he always seemed certain of victory, he made no assumptions about his own life’s length, Immortal or not.

  “No more fucking in the grass then, eh? Ia, the problem with having everything is that everyone wants to take it away from you. I’ll just settle for being rich, thank you; most of the perks a conquering king gets, and not so many competitors out for the job. Sitting alone on a mountaintop makes you a better target.”

  “I wouldn’t know about being a ruler or rich,” he said. At first she thought it was a deadpanned joke; then it came to her that, Yeoli political customs being what they were, he was sincere. “As for being a conqueror, it certainly beats losing. We did enough of that, thank you.”

  “Nia, of course you wouldn’t know about ruling Invincible-Beloved-whose-orders-are-obeyed-with-quivering-eagerness, whether he likes it or not.” That drew a laugh out of him, then a shrugging sigh. “When I was young and stupid,” she added, “I’d have waded through fire to conquer a kingdom.” She put a crone’s quaver into her voice. “Now—once we’ve got Lixand—I’ll just sit by the fire, heh, heh.”

  “Probably for the best,” he said. “You care only for those close to you, and a ruler whose love doesn’t spread to her people tends to bring suffering on them. But you’re hardly old; you don’t look any more venerable than somewhere between twenty ... oh, seven, and thirty.”

  She frowned, holding up both hands and then glancing at her feet. “Twenty-and-nine ... no. Thirty last moon. About your age, nia?”

  “Not quite,” he said, with a laugh that was actually, delightfully, shy. “I’m a cub, to you. Twenty-three.”