12

  Ko Nima Noei

  Nidair felt petty and foolish. She was objective enough to understand that she was still ashamed about the charade she had put on in the cell, and not only that, but that he had rejected her so adamantly. Of all things, he had gone so far as to run from the cell. The sheer ridiculousness of it all made her burn with both rage and shame for the sake of her mutilated pride.

  I have been shamed twice over, she seethed, some small semblance of contentment returning to her as she watched him squirm after her command to bathe. I know I am beautiful. Tsukio-tsichi often told me as much. Her bitterness faltered for a moment at the thought of her betrothed, wondering what he would think of the things she had put herself through to come this far. Of course, she realised with relief, he must have done the same things in order to pass his Trials, and Aoshinama assured me that both he and Kivaan passed their Trials. We will be equal in having held nothing back in our service of Raashim.

  She looked with growing discomfort at the man who had been given to her. His jaw worked at nothing, clearly ill at ease, and everything about him was tense. If Nidair was honest with herself, she knew he had been on edge every time she had been assigned to take him somewhere.

  “Am I ugly?” she asked, instantly despising how petulant she sounded in her own ears.

  The man looked surprised, but his guard did not drop.

  “I don’t understand what you’re …”

  “It is a simple question!” Nidair hissed, shame compounding with every second she was forced to endure his indifference. “Why do you look at me as if I am dirty?”

  “I’m sorry,” he said immediately, but she could still hear the wariness in his tone. “That wasn’t my intention.”

  Again. Merely saying what he must. What must I do to prod a genuine response from him? Why do I want a genuine response? As long as he serves faithfully, that should be enough. Why am I so upset?

  Her narrow frame could barely contain the pent-up frustration welling within her and threatening to blow its top off like the volcanoes of her homeland. She jabbed her finger at the heated pool.

  “Bathe! You may use the clothe to cover yourself. I will not watch. Will that suffice?” She spun around on her heel and stared venomously out into the night. What is wrong with me? My insides are a knot that I cannot undo. I am unreasonably upset with this man … but … Her shoulders sagged as the ongoing silence forced her to a point in her inner monologue that presented her with undeniable truth. I’m angry with him because he saw me … he saw me being someone I never want my family to know about. And now he will accompany me to them. He may meet Tsukio-tsichi. He may meet Kivaan-tsichi. Her heart faltered.

  The sound of rippling water caught her ears, and Nidair turned slowly, ears burning with her shame and general discomfort. She felt sick to her stomach, and stared at her slave without really seeing him for a long while, unsure where this feeling like poison spreading in her gut was coming from.

  “I’m not really sure what to do in a place like this,” the man said cautiously.

  “Do you not know how to scrub your skin clean?” Nidair asked caustically. “Take the sand!” She jabbed an open hand at the ornate basins ground out of the stone along the edges of the pool, all supplied with white sand.

  The man hesitantly took a handful and began to scrub himself with it, and Nidair felt even worse than before. Pathetic, she thought miserably. He is just a human. I am so ashamed of myself that I am treating him as if he is on the same level as I am. He is little more than a highly intelligent animal, and yet I am berating him for things he could not possibly know.

  She sighed bitterly.

  “Turn around,” she muttered, relieved when he immediately obeyed and did not make her repeat the order.

  Nidair slipped out of the simple dress and underthings that she wore and eased herself into the pleasantly hot water with barely a sound. It was dark enough, and the torchlight playing off the surface of the pool distracting enough, that she did not have much fear of the man seeing much.

  “You may turn around,” she said tersely. She watched as he continued to cleanse himself from the evenings rough treatment, and noted that a fraction of the tension left the muscles in his shoulders and jaw. It is the behaviour of someone resigned to their fate, she thought glumly to herself. “I must know,” she murmured after a time. “Why did you reject me and … run away?”

  The tension promptly returned to the man’s jaw with reinforcements. He looked her in the eyes, then away, then at the water in front of him, all as if he were trying to figure out the most respectful place to centre his gaze.

  The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  “I knew it was a trick of some sort,” he finally said through gritted teeth. His eyes slowly returned to hers, as if weary of dodging about. Nidair thought she detected the conviction of a cornered animal in his adamant stare. He chuckled then, as if his decision to speak his mind had freed him of a great burden. “That’s not even it,” he confessed flatly. “There is no world in which I would have said yes to that. Yes, I was sure it was a trick. But it’s also wrong, and I wouldn’t go along with it even if you ordered me to. What you asked of me is only for my wife.”

  Nidair found herself speechless under the barrage of tersely delivered statements from her slave. Mostly, she could not believe he truly had the nerve to say what he was saying, but there was also the battering her conscience was taking from someone saying the very things she was terrified of hearing from her very traditional family in her own nation. She felt her breath catch in her throat and wanted desperately to snap back at him and hiss at him to know his place, but her mind reeled from the events of the evening.

  “My wife,” the man repeated slowly, shaking his head and pursing his lips. “My wife, who was murdered by your people,” he said, his voice shaking. “That is who I was grieving when you wandered into my cell with your …” With an immense effort, he closed his mouth and kept it that way.

  The slave’s shoulders convulsed and he turned away abruptly, suddenly applying himself very vigorously to scrubbing himself clean. Nidair said nothing, feeling only shame upon shame piled upon her shoulders. Of course, she thought. I should have known. I know the circumstances under which humans are taken. Her heart quailed within her at the revealed monstrosity of her actions. I wasn’t thinking of that … I … does that make what I did better or worse? And I cannot say he is merely human … even if I view him as somewhere between an animal and myself, I could never stomach such cruelty to an animal. What have I done? And how could I have done it? Why was it asked of me? How could Aoshinama make me do this? She froze at the treasonous thought, her mind fracturing under the mental tug of war going on between opposing ideologies.

  She felt the sting in her nose and the tremor in her shoulders and realised with a new horror that she might cry in front of the man. After setting up a scenario to make him feel uneasy and vulnerable, she felt as if her move had not only been parried successfully, but turned back upon her. Her throat lurched under the force of a sob driven by a soul-deep anguish at what she had done. It was too loud in the night’s stillness for the man not to have heard it.

  “Are you okay ...”

  “Nane!” she snapped through another sob, slipping back into the language of her people in her anguish. She had done her best to sound authoritative, but only managed pleading. “Quiet,” she begged, hunched over and turned away from him. “Get out and put on your clothes. I am … tired.”

  “Okay,” the man said softly.

  With some surprise, Nidair thought she detected a slightly apologetic tone to his voice, but she was in far too much despair to dwell on it. She only wanted to be out of this foolish scenario of her own making. Reaching for the edge of the pool to pull herself up, Nidair’s eyes widened as she looked up to a pair of bare feet in front of her. Her gaze snapped up to see who it was, and a cry of alarm died in her throat as the stranger held a finger to her lips. Somehow, that was all that seemed necessary to take Nidair’s free will from her.

  Who … is this another test? What am I to do? I have no strength! I cannot move!

  The stranger was a woman, her hair like midnight above the Dark Storm and flowing unbound. The shape of her features and her pale skin showed Nidair immediately that this woman was from the far northern islands that her mother’s family hailed from. What could she possibly be doing here?

  "Choose life."

  AI-rendering of original characters and narrative by T. Sharp

  “Priestess!” barked the man, and she heard his footsteps running on the stone floor. The realisation that this time he was running towards her was not lost on Nidair, even in that moment. I cannot even tell him to forget his pitiful notion of aiding me, she thought with a dazed regret. Will she cut him down?

  “Stop,” commanded the woman, her other hand plunging towards the floor firmly.

  The man fell heavily to the stone floor in mid-stride, wheezing from the force of the blow, but otherwise unhurt. Out of the corner of her eye, Nidair could see him staring hard at the newcomer, hurt and questions swimming in his eyes.

  Is this the one who brought him? wondered Nidair uneasily. Why is she doing this? I have never seen a discipline able to silence or restrain on command like this. But I have heard of it. This discipline comes from Chuho kind! Her eyes widened with the realisation.

  “Oh, Nidair,” murmured the woman softly, her voice breaking as if on the verge of tears. “Ever you seek to break the hearts of those who love you. Come home.” A tear trickled from the eye of the woman who had knelt now to come close to Nidair. “I cannot give you the loving home you should have, to my eternal torment. But I can give you this last chance to choose life.”

  The woman reached out towards Nidair, and Nidair heard the man grunting something as if shouting through a gag. As the woman’s hand reached closer, Nidair finally realised that her eyes were the target. She belatedly tried to struggle, but there was no change to the strength of the stranger’s charm. All she could do was stand there staring like a fool as the woman placed her hand over her eyes. And then she knew no more.

  Ko Nima Noei: translates to ‘I/It am/is so sick’.

  Tsichi: this is an honourific specific to those of your own generation who are either older than you – in the context of academics or other learning – or more advanced than you – in the case of military service or artisanal apprenticeships. It is a common fallback term of respect and courtesy when addressing someone older than yourself.

  Nane: literally means ‘no quiet/peace’, which is the term used to mean ‘noisy’ or ‘be quiet’.