Zhakkarn crouched, not that that helped much; she still loomed over us both. But now her expression was a little sad, though she was smiling. “This happened to Sieh in his last few years,” she said. “Not quite in the same way, or for similar reasons—but Sibling, we are living creatures, immortal or not. Life… grows.”
Didn’t it! I got to my feet and stood wobbling for a moment. “I’m so tall!” I grinned at Mikna, who stood, too; she was the same height.
“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.