Heir of Beasts

Ch. 1.5- Grey Eyes and Red Silk

"Do it, then," I say. I hate the slight quaver in my voice.

He looks at me searchingly, eyebrows raised.

"Do it, then," I repeat with more conviction, my voice solid. "Change your mind. Chain me up in the dungeons, feed me gruel, beat me, use me, scar me. If you'd do it, do it, but for the goddess's sake, stop going on about it. Torture me or not, but spare me the poetry, the long-winded speeches!"

"The poetry," he quotes with quiet disbelief. "Never once has anyone called me a poet- a murderer, a tyrant, a whoreson, a genius, but never a poet."

"Do you like poetry?" He asks suddenly, the question spilling unbidden from his lips.

I stare at him with some combination of anger and confusion.

"I only ever liked the epics," he continues in one-sided conversation. "Stories of blood and love and war. Ahren con afva sha contriova, shahan zsiri mirio va ko," he quotes. It's old Shikkan, not Alyezsani, but I know it well. The lines come from the Epic of Aramizsa.

Wrought iron woman, steel-blooded warrioress/ she came from the north in a thunderous chorus."

I've never felt so lost. I can't understand, much less predict, his jumps in logic. The conversation seems to twist around me like a desert viper, striking at odd times, then retreating. Or maybe it's more like a serpent from the Isomarashi jungle, coiling slowly around me, pulling tighter and tighter until I'm lost and breathless.

"Ava mohari, Zsavina na dijik suu/con sahevin con dresha ilt derosyasha," I quote back, grappling for some control in a conversation that seemed like a battle only a moment before and now turns to literary talk over tea.

Aramizsa came down upon them as a fire upon kindling/ With divine justice she burnt all opposition.

He laughs, a real, bold laugh that seems out of place coming from his stony face.

"I like your spirit," he mutters. "Even after all that's happened, you're still stupid with spirit."

His laughter chafes at me more than the ropes of the gallows.

"Do you suppose this will be an epic one day?" He asks, ignoring my glowering. "It has the makings of one, I think. Vast change, vast death, fluidity of life no one would have predicted."

"An epic?" I ask angrily. "It will be a tragedy- it is a tragedy! History will remember this as a mass grave and sing funerary songs!"

"History remembers Aramizsa as a hero, and she killed hundreds of thousands of Harrowin to take Shikkah. I only killed one hundred and ten. I've cleaner hands than your city's patroness! Compared to her, I might even be a good man."

"You are not a good man," I spit in disgust. The bread knife glints invitingly in the hash light of the noonday sun. "You will never be good, could never be. Are you really mad enough to think yourself a good man?!"

"No, I'm not," he answers simply, taking a bite of a roll. "I know I'm not a good man. But I'm a necessary man."

"You're a madman," I say, almost in awe of his twisted logic. "Necessary- none of this was necessary- all of this loss, this waste-"

"Was necessary to avoid greater evil," he counters. "You're still on that goddamned pedestal, looking down on all of Shikkah like the goddess herself. Come back to earth, O'otani. Look at what was happening to the country under the Dimaraste's rule."