“Perhaps you’ll match Lady Zhakkarn someday after all.” She shrugged. “But if you’ll think about it, Lady Shill, you’ve grown in other ways, too. A girl’s first battle teaches her that the world is not fair.” I blinked and sobered; she nodded, seeing that I understood. “It teaches her to fight despite this, because a true enemy will not relent, and because it is a simple matter of survival. Claim what ground you can and hold it. Get back up if you’re knocked down. A woman’s strength has always lain in not giving up.”
I thought about this. I didn’t hate her anymore, but—“Everybody should learn this, though,” I said, troubled. “Why do you only teach it to women?”
The look on Mikna’s face turned—I don’t know. Pitying? She turned, putting her hands on her hips, and gazed toward the walls of the arena, though it was clear that her thoughts lay far beyond it. “You’re so young, Lady Shill. You’ve had only the barest taste of what we mortals do to each other. Look around this world for a few years, then ask me that question again.”
I frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Once we shared this knowledge with our men. Once men honed their skills against women in battle, and had at least some small chance at proving themselves worthy in the way of warriors. A few even became ennu, the figurehead for all that makes us strong as a people. Those were simpler times—the days when Yeine walked among women as a mortal.” I perked up at this. “Back then, we thought that all we had to fear were foreigners. And the gods, of course.”
A demon spoke of fearing gods. “Of course,” I said, really softly.
“But not long after Skyfall,” Mikna continued, “in the new golden age that Darr had begun to enjoy with the ending of the Bright, and the rebuilding after the war—our men turned on us. Not all, certainly, but enough to pose a real threat. They wanted to take over.” A muscle in her jaw tightened. “That’s the way of men, you see, when women don’t keep them in check. They want all, not just some. Nature made them weak: slaves to their impulses, helpless against pain, barely capable of making it out of the womb. Their weakness makes them fearful. Nothing is more dangerous than fearful people with a fresh taste of power.”
I frowned. This did not feel… I wasn’t sure. I was more sophisticated now, able to think bigger thoughts, but maybe I still wasn’t big enough to understand.
Mikna tossed some of her long hair back over her shoulder. “So we crushed the dangerous ones, and made the fateful decision to protect the rest of the men from themselves. But Eino is the proof that Darren flames cannot be smothered so easily. Gods, the fight in him!” She smiled, almost to herself. “How could I not want him? I am a true Darre.”
I looked up at Zhakkarn, who watched me impassively, then back at Mikna. “If you make him do something he doesn’t want, he’ll fight you. Real battle, not fun. Or”—it suddenly occurred to me, and this thought was terrible—“or you’ll make him so hurt and sad inside that he won’t care about fighting anymore. He… he won’t be Eino, if you do that.”
Mikna looked uncomfortable for a moment, then took a deep breath. “Darr is changing. The forests are shrinking, the seasons going strange. We have changed, as we must, but there’s almost nothing left of the warrior Darr anymore. Now we’re merchants.” She said this like it made her mouth taste bad. “A wealthy nation! And with every passing generation, we forget a little more of who we were.”
I looked at Zhakkarn again, because I wasn’t sure what to say. Of course Mikna’s people were changing; that was what life did. And of course their climate was all strange; even now I could hear this world’s moon muttering to itself, disgruntled and unhappy. It had been wandering since Sieh’s end, pulling the tides and the winds with it, changing where rain fell and rivers ran. The forests shrank and the animals learned to eat different things or died and other things ate them and thrived and everything kept on, dying and borning endlessly, in cycles and patterns and repetition. All these things were mortality.
They don’t understand, Zhakkarn said to me without words. Their lives are too short to see the wholeness of it.
I scowled. I’m not even two months old and I understand.
You are a god.
And being a god was more than just being immortal. I sighed, suddenly feeling lonely on a planet teeming with living beings. Zhakkarn got to her feet after a moment, then came over and put a big hand on my shoulder. I wasn’t mad at her anymore after that.
Mikna exhaled, oblivious to us.
“You think Fahno cruel to give Eino to me,” she said. I blinked. “You think me cruel to take him, when he doesn’t want me.”
“Well, yes,” I said. Then I sighed. “But Arolu says you can take care of him, if Fahno dies without an heir.”
She smiled in a lopsided way. “Take care of him? I want nothing of the sort. I’d be a fool not to recognize the strength in him, Shill; that’s precisely why I want him. Call me selfish for it, but I want daughters—and sons, too—with his spirit. It’s as simple as that.”
I started to get mad again; Zhakkarn squeezed my shoulder, gently. “Well, maybe you should ask him to give you some spirit and babies, then!”
She blinked, then laughed. “You have such an odd way of phrasing things.” She sighed. “I will be—careful with him. I’m no brute; I want a helpmeet, not just some stud-beast to be chained away between uses. But, Shill… I did ask him to marry me. And Lumyn asked him. He hasn’t answered either of us… which is why Fahno is forcing the issue.”
“Oh!” Why hadn’t Eino answered her? I would have to ask him. I was beginning to think that understanding this whole mess might be the key to understanding him. And myself.
I had grown, though, and I understood now how important good manners were. “Thank you,” I said. “You made me bigger. I’ll, um, I’ll go think about what you said.” Then I shifted from foot to foot, but I was too grown up now not to acknowledge when I’d been wrong. “And I, uh, I’m sorry I was mean to you.”
She smiled cheerfully. “That’s fine. I got to watch Lady Zhakkarn beat you senseless, after all. Let’s call it even.”
I was surprised into a laugh, though it was not a very good laugh. (Suddenly I understood why so many mortals laughed without really meaning it.) “Um, I’m gonna go find Eino and talk to him now. Bye.”
She nodded, as did Zhakkarn. “Until later, Lady Shill.”
I will stop here to tell you another thing you should know. That day with Mikna was when I realized that it is not their poison that makes enulai powerful. Also, I started to know that having power does not make a person—or a god—better, or right. I did not dislike Mikna anymore, and I probably would even like Lumyn if I gave her a chance… but I thought they were both wrong about a lot of things.
Yes yes OK I know you knew that already you do not have to be obnoxious about it OK.
So I went back to Fahno’s house, not bothering with a body as I moved through it. Lumyn was gone. Fahno was in her study, and the whole room felt of weary frustration; I did not invade her privacy. The servants were just going about their business as usual. Arolu was in a pretty room with a glass skylight where there were comfortable seats and flowers and books and lengths of cloth and thread on skeins. At first I thought he was working on a small embroidered blanket with a hood and little feet, which was in his lap. But he just sat there, unmoving, and after a moment I realized he had something else in his lap: a small ceramic circle which bore a portrait of a woman’s face. I could see her resemblance to Eino in the strength of her jaw and the determination in her gaze. Tehno, Eino’s mother, and Arolu’s lost wife.