Kei's Gift (95 page)

Bikel frowned. “This is very bad. That boy would be a great loss for us. He has a fine mind, if a stubborn one, and a great gift and talent.”

Arman shrugged helplessly. “I’m open to suggestions. I particularly would love some answer to the question of how to keep him alive if something happens to me. Is there no one with your gift who can help? It would be worth trying almost anything to save him, but I don’t want him to survive just by locking himself away. I would truly rather he died than suffered that, and I think, in his heart, so would he.”

Bikel nodded. “I agree,” he said. “I’ve been discussing this very thing with Diza today—what happened to Kei is naturally something that upset him greatly, given our situation. He said if he and I were unfortunately linked at my death, which I truly hope we’re not, but it could easily happen, he would just take an overdose of pijn. I can’t find it in my heart to argue against that. We’re not meant to endure such pain for years.”

“I’m sorry,” Arman said quietly. “I hadn’t thought how this would resonate for you.”

Bikel gave him a sad look. “It’s one of the few disadvantages of loving a soul-toucher. The other main one is never being able to deceive the bastards,” he said, his thin mouth quirking into a brief, wry smile, before he became serious again. “There is one other option, one that Diza being in his late middle age would never contemplate, nor I suggest it. But since Kei is so young, it’s possible he might consent, if the only other options were suicide or a lifetime of agony. It’s a last resort, you understand.”

Arman could tell from the man’s voice he found what he was talking about repugnant, but if it offered any hope at all for Kei in the event of his own death, he wanted to know. “Tell me more,” he said quietly.

~~~~~~~~

“This is what I’ve been trying to tell you,” Meda said. “Honestly, Reis, you’re no murderer,” she added affectionately, putting her arm through her lover’s.

Reis struggled against his own sadness to understand Kei’s argument. Kei hadn’t intended to speak to the man this evening, since Arman hadn’t even thought he would be here. But Neka, the mind-speaker, had spotted Kei and recognised him, as she’d shyly told him, as the person occupying so much of Arman’s thoughts. She had brought him over to meet Meda, who’d then insisted he talk to Reis. And so there he found himself telling them about how he’d come to know Arman, about their relationship (because if you were someone the Gifted wanted to talk to, then they wanted to know all about you with nothing held back). That had led on, somehow, to Reis saying he couldn’t convince himself he should go on the rescue and that he was no better than the Prij himself. At this point, Meda had looked at Kei with pleading eyes, and Kei knew, whether Reis came on the mission or not, he couldn’t let this young man carry this burden of misery.

The problem was Reis had only ever thought of his gift as something to amuse himself, rather than as anything dangerous. That didn’t mean he hadn’t been careful when he’d brought the ships into the harbour. It only meant he’d never really believed he could in fact cause a death, or many deaths, even by accident. Not being a stupid person, he’d understood that fact intellectually, but it was quite another thing to actually have caused someone’s life to end—and it didn’t help that many of the Gifted had point blank refused to be involved in the mission. Reis and the others who had so agreed already faced disapproval for involving themselves with a military operation. Kei didn’t think he could live with the guilt of causing a death himself, so he had every sympathy with Reis’ reluctance to put himself in the way of doing it again.

But at the same time, Reis was so crucial to the plans that the entire mission might have to be scrapped if he didn’t come with them, and Kei was desperate to stop the Prij killing his friends. He refused to lay even more guilt on Reis, by claiming he would be responsible for more deaths if he refused—it sounded like enough people had already tried that with Reis and it had just made him even more upset and unhappy. It was as if no one cared at all how Reis himself was feeling.

“When I was in Fort Trejk, after the Prij force was overrun,” he said hesitantly, and the two Gifted turned to him. “We had dozens of people coming in—blood everywhere, arrows sticking out of bodies, even spears, broken bones breaking the skin....” Meda shuddered. “The first time I’d seen anything like that was when I was ten. Our village mines pujum ore, and there was a kiln explosion. Ma was our healer and I went with her—everyone did, as you can imagine. We just ran to where the smoke was.”

He had their full attention. “When we got there, it was a bit like the fort. All I could see was blood, broken bodies, fire.... I was scared to death. Ma made me stand outside while she worked. We had...oh, there were six or seven people, injured, and as many more I think, lying on the ground. I thought they were all dead, there was so much blood and damage, but Ma knew they were alive. I watched her as she decided who she had to treat and in what order and then she started making order of the chaos. She made a decision to work on the most desperate ones first, as is our training. While she was operating on the second victim, two of those waiting died. There was nothing she could do—she was the only one who could do the surgery, and there were too many. She told me later she might have saved the men, if there had been time and someone else to help, but that was the decision she made. That was the day I really decided I wanted to be a healer like her.”

Meda looked about to cry—he put a hand on her arm to soothe her. “It was a long time ago,” he said gently. “Such things happen when you refine pujum, or where you carry out any such dangerous work.” She nodded. “But my point is that it was a stark lesson to me in many ways. You need to always be prepared for disasters, and you do what you can when they happen. But you can’t save everyone, and if you try, you might lose all your patients.”

“Fort Trejk?” Reis clung to his lover’s arm, his eyes burning into Kei’s.

“Yes. Well, as I said, it was chaos—I was the only trained healer on hand, although we had medics as well. We just had to sift and assess and make those who were safe, even if they were in pain, wait until we knew who needed treatment first. Several died as we were assessing them—they were too badly hurt. Finally, it came down to two men who were the most seriously injured. One had a spear through his lung, the other had been crushed by an urs beast. The first would die in minutes if I didn’t work on him, get the spear removed, stop him bleeding. It took a long time to make him stable. I knew the other man was waiting, but there was only one of me, and if I stopped on the first to attend to the second, both would have died. By the time I’d judged the first safe to leave, the second was probably only minutes from death, perhaps no more than five to ten until it would have been too late to save him whatever I did. If I hadn’t had my gift to help me, it’s certain the second would have died—it would have taken too long.” Kei pointed at where Arman was sitting with Bikel, talking seriously about something or other. “The second man was Arman.”

Meda gasped a little. “Your point is?” Reis said angrily, pale and looking about to collapse. Kei tugged him over to a chair and made him sit, Meda hovering behind him. Kei pulled a chair up and sat down also.

“My point...my point is that if Arman had died, I wouldn’t have forgiven myself, even though it would have been unavoidable. His death would have been the direct result of my decision, but it was a decision I made to save another person. That the one who would have died was the man who would become my lover, and who even then I was probably already in love with, had to be set aside. But afterwards, I would have tortured myself, even though my presence there was pure chance—if I’d not been there, both men would have died, and others besides. But should I have let the other man die to save him?”

“Was the other one a good man?” Meda asked quietly.

“I didn’t know him at all. Does it matter?” Kei said, just as quietly. She shook her head. “No. We who have skills and gifts can do so much good, save people’s lives. But we can’t save everyone, and sometimes our decision to save someone means someone else dies. Reis, you saved hundreds and hundreds of people that day, Prij and Darshianese alike. You should be proud of that. It was a humane and skilful thing to do.”

But the mind-mover was still upset. “I was trying to be amusing, a show off.”

“Maybe. But you still saved them. If there had been a fight at the docks, it would have been carnage.” Kei took the man’s hand, and bore the pain because it was important. “I know you’re sad, and I know you’re afraid. I know what that feels like too. I was terrified every moment I was in Utuk, even with Arman being so kind. I thought we’d been forgotten. The ones still there won’t have any idea help is on the way, so they probably think they’re forgotten too.” Reis looked at him with tears in his eyes, and Kei squeezed his hand to comfort him. “Our people just want to come home. Please—you and Jera can bring them back safely and you can do that in a way which means no one needs to die. The hostages have paid such a price for peace—won’t you help them come back home?”

Reis closed his eyes and rocked back and forth a little. He really was suffering—it wasn’t him being indulgent. This was an awful dilemma for him.

“No one else can do it, can they? Jera can’t do it on his own,” he whispered.

“Arman says not—not and be so sure to avoid bloodshed. I’m not saying there isn’t another way at all, but the other thing is that you and Jera working together can be fast. We don’t have time—it may already be too late, and every day we wait makes the chance of the hostages being killed that much greater. It’s not at all your fault that this is the case. I just know however sad you feel, it doesn’t mean you can’t still do so much good here.”

Kei held his hand, doing what he had not done since before the executions, extending his gift and absorbing Reis’s pain, accepting it as his own, so the burden was more bearable for the man. He wanted to cry from the sadness he felt from him, but at the same time, he found he could do this, and was glad he still had that power.

“Reis,” Meda said gently, stroking his hair as she spoke. “Don’t let this failure make you mean and selfish, because I know you’re not. It would hurt you as much as this man’s death, if it meant you had to close off that part of yourself.”

Reis looked up at her with tear-filled eyes, and then turned his head against her stomach. “All right,” he said in a muffled voice. “I’ll do it. For them.”

“Thank you,” Kei said, his own eyes damp as relief filled him. “Thank you, Reis.” He put his hand on Reis’ head. “You have a good heart.”

Meda nodded and mouthed “Thank you” at Kei as he got up, feeling a little dizzy. He turned to walk away, needing to find a little peace and quiet—and almost ran straight into Lord Meki. “I beg your pardon, my lord,” he said, flushing from embarrassment.

“Come with me, young man,” Lord Meki said in a tone that brooked no argument. He must have overheard or at least seen some of Kei’s conversation with Reis.

He looked around to see where Arman was—he was still talking to Bikel. Kei couldn’t interrupt him just to hold his hand while he spoke to Lord Meki. Still feeling the effects of Reis’s misery, he followed the Ruler out of the room, and down a corridor lit only by a few candles here and there. The Ruler collected a candle from one of the lower sconces, and opened a door. He used the candle to light the wall lamps, then indicated a chair in front of the desk. “Please, sit, Kei,” he said, taking a seat himself.

The Ruler emitted barely any emotion—Kei detected only some irritation. He didn’t seem to have noticed Kei was suffering, which was good because he didn’t want to appear weak and unreliable in front of this man. He took some deep, albeit discreet, breaths, and thought of Arman, letting the memory of their lovemaking earlier balance the distress he’d absorbed from Reis. After a few moments, he said, “How can I be of assistance, my lord?”

Lord Meki drew out a sheaf of papers from his shirt breast. “Your report on the hostages. It’s very thorough.”

“Thank you, my lord.” Such a busy man would hardly have interrupted his meeting with the others just to compliment him. Kei wondered what in hells was going on.

Lord Meki stood up and tucked his hands behind him as he faced the darkened window. “General Arman says you two are returning to your village when this is over.”

“Yes, my lord.”

“You realise what a dreadful waste that is, don’t you?”

“My lord?” This was about the last thing Kei expected to hear. “A waste?”

“A waste, a dreadful waste of talent,” Lord Meki said impatiently, turning back to Kei. “Are you seriously proposing to let the general bury himself in your backward little home when Darshian needs him?”

Kei was so startled he could hardly speak. “I...he offered—”

“Yes, of course he did, because the alternative was harm to you, as I understand it. I looked up your academy records, young man. Looked up your parents, and then the reports from that captain, Tiko. You’re not a stupid person, and apparently you’re dedicated to service. But you would deprive Darshian of potentially one of the most useful servants ever to become available to it, for the sake of indulgence. Why? Why would you hurt your own people this way?”

Kei rubbed his chest to try and help himself breathe, so sharp was the pain the man’s words caused him. “M...my lord...I—” He gripped the edge of the desk. “I didn’t mean to cause harm...I don’t want anyone to suffer....” He felt as if he might faint as he struggled with the sudden rush of emotions in his own heart.