Kei's Gift (35 page)

~~~~~~~~

“How is he today?” Karus asked as Arman joined him in the library. He found it easier to take his suppers with Karus once more, and could only order Kei to make sure he ate in his absence—he suspected more often than not, he wasn’t doing so.

It had been nearly three weeks since the executions and there was no improvement in any of it. Not in the political climate, still worryingly antipathetical to the hostages, not in Jena’s hostility, and worst of all, not in Kei’s mental state. “The same, Karus-pei. I regret to say, possibly worse. I really don’t know what to do. I would do anything that would help, but I’ve tried everything I know of.” Arman touched the little statue of Lord Niko on Karus’s desk, wondering if the gods would help him if he asked. He doubted it. “I truly think he’ll go mad.”

Karus nodded. “It’s a risk, certainly.” He looked seriously at Arman. “You know you should talk to Jena—she knows him best.”

Karus had urged this before, but Arman had pointed out the obvious problem, and he did so again. “She won’t talk to me. She hates me, and with good cause.”

“Yes, she does,” Karus said simply, yet again without any judgment in his voice, the same tone he’d used to offer every comment since Arman had admitted to him what had happened and what the effect had been. Karus had simply accepted Arman’s belief that he’d had no choice, without any criticism at all. He had also accepted Jena’s hatred and avoidance of the general with equal tolerance. “But she loves Kei and will do anything to help him, even talk to you. So I suggest once more you try that.” Karus touched Arman’s hand. “If only for my sake, because I miss the boy myself, and don’t like to know he’s in pain.”

“Do you think I do, Pei? Do you think I did this just to make him suffer?”

“No, I don’t. But Jena does in some way. It is up to you to convince her otherwise. She’s in the kitchen. Take her out on to the verandah and talk to her.”

There was no arguing with that gentle, authoritative tone—there never had been. Arman bowed. “Yes, Pei,” he said, as he had when he had been Karus’s student.

With no small apprehension, but a sense this needed to be done, he headed for the kitchen, and found the entire staff involved in preparing the evening meal. Cook was making dough, Siza basted the fowl on the spit, Matez washed dishes, and Jena beat eggs in a bowl, her face flushed with the heat of the room. Everyone but her merely nodded politely to Arman, long used to him and knowing there was no need for formality. But Jena put the bowl down and made an elaborate curtsy. “My lord Sei General Arman,” she said in perfect Prijian.

Arman ignored the obvious sarcasm of her greeting. “I need to speak to you, alone.”

“I’m busy, my lord.” She picked up the bowl and started to beat the eggs again, dismissing him from her attention.

“I know you are, but it concerns Kei.”

Oh, that caught her notice. “Something’s happened?” Her eyes went wide in fright. “Is he hurt?”

“Calm yourself, woman, he’s much the same as he was—but I need your help with him.”

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 him 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.