# 10 - I Will Try

The healer wiped his hands and began packing up his brushes as Ahrimaz stared at him.  The fallen Emperor sat on the floor, open hands on his knees.  “But… no that… well…” He lapsed into silence.

The paint box closed with a click.  “I think I shall leave this for today,” Limyé said as he turned and sat down on the floor as well, eye to eye with Ahrimaz.  “Something I have understood, finally,” he said.  “You see being a patient to anyone-- especially an Imaryan—as being in thrall to them, being vulnerable and open.  You have been taught that to be vulnerable is to open yourself up to abuse and harm.  It is quite insidious that you were taught to hate the very process that might have saved you.”

“Saved me?  What on earth do you mean?”

“Bear with me, please, since I must present Imaryan thinking.  As an adult, you made yourself safe, in control, in power, with the life and death of everyone around you in the palm of your hand. No one could  hurt you.  But inside it seems to me that you are in pain, and lonely, disconnected from all these people you control.  When I say ‘saved’ I mean that all beings are safest when they are not in pain, either internal or external.”

“So you would save me from myself?”

“If I could, yes.  I am dismayed by seeing anyone in that state.  Most Imaryans would be.  I suspect that those you killed you despised because they had the temerity to pity you for the pain you were in.”

Ahrimaz opened his mouth.  Then closed it.  That was hardly cowardice.  The images of Imaryans dying -- even as he killed them they had been blessing him.  He shuddered and lunged to his feet, turned his back on Limyé.  “I… must not regret.” He managed to scrape the words out of his dry throat.

“I understand that.  May I ask that you try to eat tonight?”

“I’ll eat,” Ahrimaz said.  “Whether I want to or not.”

**

The bastard sent me soup. He’s treating me like his patient. But I’ve pushed him to his limits.  I have left myself no wiggle room.  If I am his patient I may revile him.  If not then I am constrained to absolute politeness.

The soup was chicken and some other fowl.  Possibly the enormous eggs are laid by that unknown creature.  Thumb-sized dumplings and greens.  It is soup that would make a dead man sit up and demand a bowl.

Why?  Why on earth is he so good to me?  Is it because they love ‘him’ so much that they perforce love me too?  Not likely.  Some part of me wants to damage myself just to make us more physically different.  Cut holes in my cheeks perhaps.  I have nothing to cut with, but perhaps just the beard will be enough to make us different in their eyes.  The beloved is a smooth-shaven, cultured man, not a bearded, ragged maniac.  There are no rain-closets here, I am not allowed a bath.  I don’t think I can bear to cease washing.

So… why am I fighting being his patient?  What harm would it do, other than to my self-defence?  Am I not already captured?  The silence alone will break me.  I have been broken before, and re-made in my paternal monster’s image.  Why should I not let this Imaryan break me and re-make me in the shadow of the beloved?

Would it kill me, to be liked?  I hold out no hope for love.  That is his prize, his great reward.  Mine was Empire.  It was power. But I was and am empty.

If I become his patient will I be able to weep for my mother?  Will I be allowed to rage that the old man made me watch when—no.  I won’t think of that.  Will I be able to scream with the pain that he inflicted on me and then made me inflict on my brothers to escape that same torture?

**

It was late, and the guard had replaced the candle when Ahrimaz had waved his pen at him, put his hands together and begged, rather than putting it out.  Pleta shook his head at him, but fetched a short, night candle.

The door clicked and Ahrimaz was on his feet.  It was no guard.  It wasn’t Limyé.  It was Yolend.

He retreated to the absolute back of the cell.  “Leave me alone,” he snapped at her, even as he stared longingly at her face, her creamy chocolate skin smooth in the candle-light can standing out against the white wall and her white robe. “Truth-teller, get out of my head.”

“I’m not,” she said, and sat down on Limyé’s chair.  “A truth-teller, I mean.  I couldn’t sleep and realized that I’m sensing when you cannot sleep either.”

“That’s invading my privacy, woman!” His hands shook.  He swallowed hard, once, twice, turned his back on her because he couldn’t help loving her, even though she was his wife, the wife of that Hand, not his own wife.  And because his love was rotten.  He could feel it decaying inside of himself and knew that one day he’d become the old monster to his bones and likely kill her in front of his children… this… this incarceration was a blessing then.  It would save her, in the world of Empire, because that Hand was there… and he was here unable to affect this world in any way.  He was free of that gnawing knowledge.  He didn’t have to fight to keep his hands off her neck, the ugly fascination of her death no longer riding his every feeling.

“I wished to see how you were doing,” she said.  “I’m missing my husband and the man I see in his place… well, his soul isn’t the same.  It burns.”

“I burn.  But, Yolend, you wouldn’t be here if you were a truth teller.  You MUST hate me. You couldn’t bear being near me.”

“It comes and goes with me.” She made no distinction between statements that she was replying to.  Perhaps she meant all of them.

“I see.”  He studied the cracks in the wall where a window had once been.  His nails had made no marks on the mortar at all.  He wanted her to keep talking.  He missed her voice.

“In this world, how are the children?”

“Ahrimiar is recovered from his cold.” He half turned to see her put her hands on her belly.  “The baby sits well.”  He turned away again. “Shashe will be coming back from Imarya soon, since her latest round of lessons will be done.  She will not be coming to see you, for she could not bear it.”

He sat down, facing away from her, forehead against the wall.  “She’s a full Teller then.”

“Yes.”  I destroyed that in my Shashe.  I beat it out of her, made her child-like and forever innocent. I damaged her. A tear forced its way out of his eyes and he held his breath until the urge to weep went away.  Inside he could feel the raging fire tiger that clawed him up and clung with gnawing jaws on his heart.  He dared not love.  He dared not grieve.  He dared not be sorry.  He had to drive her away.

“You leave me alone, you bitch queen of a mewling coward. You are not my wife.  I am not your beloved. Go away and forget this shadow of him in your basement.  Go sleep with that Cylak bastard who was my greatest enemy—“

“And, along with me, one of Ahrimaz’s great loves,” she broke in.

He ground his teeth and began to beat his head upon the stone.  “Go. Away. Go. Away.” He broke the skin on his forehead and felt the warm trickle that took the place of tears.  “Please.”

He could hear her rise, the rustle of cloth and could track the three steps to the door. He imagined her slender, strong hand waving through the bars.  Heard the click of keys.  “Yolend!”, he called.  She stopped.  “Tell Limyé I will be his patient.  I will never be him, but I will try to… to…”

“I will tell him.  I’m glad you ate tonight.  I made the soup.”

The keys rattled again and Ahrimaz began to laugh.  A tearing, screaming laugh, howling like an animal released from torture.