20 - I Can Tell You haven't Showered Yet

“I can tell you haven’t showered off, lad.  Back you go.”

“What?”  Kyrus was cold and shaking and so tired it felt like every bone in his body hurt.  “I did the classes... I just couldn’t...”

“You’re Lainz and you’ve not had enough time to sweat out all the toxins you’re used to.  Your sweat has probably already eaten through those clothes under your coat.  Go back, clean off and change your clothes.  I realize that it means getting naked in front of everyone.  Tough.  If you can go naked faced, you can go naked bodied.  I’d think your training as a plain sex worker in Lainz would have inured you to that.”  Ilax crossed his arms across his chest, looking more stern than he had the whole time.  “I won’t have that kind of dirt in my house.  If you want to do this you will get yourself clean, every time.”

Kyrus pulled up his scarf and pulled on his mittens.  Ilax had met him right at the door so he still had his boots on.  “Yes, Zon.”  He turned around and trudged back out into the snow.

But the school was quiet when he got back there, his class had all showered and gone off to their next classes, and he peeked into the hall to see the next class already sitting to meditate.  He ducked back before the Zon could say anything and walked back to the shower room and stripped his clothes off.

He had sweated yellowish holes through the armpits of the shirt... and the inseam of the pants was a web of holes as well.  He folded them sweat in, and placed them on the discard pile and stepped under the shower head.  It did feel good.  There had to be a way to delay things a little so that the others... naked boys and... He gulped.  Naked girls... would be done and gone.  The water wasn’t as hot but it was enough to warm him through.

“It’s not fair.  It’s just not fair.  They’re used to all this naked face stuff and this togetherness washing stuff and communal this and community that... it’s not fair.  They wouldn’t last a minute in the Dry Basin with their open faces and their touchy-feely ooh are you all rights?  I’m tired and I can’t just let my sweat be... their clothes just fall apart anyway, it has nothing to do with my sweat, or my spit, I’m not a venomous person, I’m not a blood-drinker to just thin the poison in me, I’m not what they think, it’s just not fair...”  He leaned his head against the rock wall over the tap, let the shower pound down on his head and back.  “It’s so weird and they’re so weird and it’s always going to be snow and never spring and I can’t do this...”

“Heya Kyrus!”  The piping young voice cut through his muttered tirade into the wall and he jumped, slipped on the soap and ended up sitting on the wet floor looked into Jashi’s face.  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you, are you all right?”

Jashi was seven and he and Maylissen were the youngest in the basics class.  They came up to his waist, just about.  Kyrus climbed to his feet, tested his bruised butt.  “Yeah, warchick,” he said.  “I hope you didn’t hear me.”

“Nah.  I just got everybody’s staff oiled and put away and wanted my shower, because my ma would send me back if I came home stinky.”  He scampered up the ladder to check the cistern for the hot water.  “It’s still pretty full, even with you using it.”

It was a good idea to check.  The cistern was quickly emptied with all the showers open.  The cold water line was just cold out of the ground, while the hot water line came from deep inside the mountain, boiling hot.  Nobody had to burn anything to heat the water.  Kyrus just shook his head and looked around for the soap.  Time to quit wasting time.  “It’s a good idea not to go home stinky,” he said, scrubbing the soap through his hair.

“I’m glad you’re newest, Kyrus.”

He pulled his head out from under the rinsing water.  “Why’s that?”

“I don’t feel like I’m going to never learn anything and be newest forever.”

“War training’s not like that, chick.”

“Yeah so the Zon tell me.  Why do you call me chick?”

“You’re like a young warbird.”  He finished rinsing.  “So, chick.”

“That’s weird but I like it.”

“So I’ll keep calling you that.” He threw a towel around himself, grabbed a new suit of training clothes from the stack that he knew would fit him.  “See you.”

At least he could go to the necessary to get dressed in private.  “I’ve just got to write and tell ma all about it.”  He muttered to himself.  “She’d like the chick.”

**

Kyrus’s arms hurt, his chest burned and he thought he was going to either faint or throw up, but at least he wasn’t being forced to do the push ups outside in the snow, like yesterday.  It was his fourth straight day of training and it wasn't getting any easier. 

The palee was dimmer.  Last night alone twenty feet of snow had fallen, dimming the bottoms of the Hall’s windows. He wasn’t sure how many pushups he’d done yesterday because he’d had to start over a half dozen times.

The Surdeniliarch wasn’t around today… he’d been in the classes the first few days, working out with the other Zon, but the Unity was in session this week and of course he had to sit even if the railing arguments didn’t have much to do with his purview. Probably something about taxes again. If the Milari did anything really well it was argue about taxes. No. He shook himself mentally. They do war well, too. You have to give them that.

“You, Kyrus!” At least Elemfias followed up on her promise of no discrimination. The things the others called him… well, the mildest was bee eater. “Up!”

“Yes, Zon!” At least he was comfortable with that. How dare they actually have a term for authority he was comfortable with? 

“Shake it out, boy, walk five, sit five, walk five.”

“Yes, Zon!” It was a routine he was fast becoming used to. He picked up his ironbound staff and took it out of the way.

The way they spaced their training was very different from anything he’d caught glimpses of at home. But Ilax kept telling him it was to build up his wind at this altitude.

Kyrus moved over to the side bench, shaking his hands and arms before carefully swiveling his upper body back and forth, feeling his back muscles and his abdomen scream. He barely had the wind to respond to Zon Elemfias. He sat down, tried to not resent his own lack of wind, and failing, watching the rest of the class. That included the girls. That girl.

She made him even more uncomfortable than she had that first night. Not only war training, but also a senior student and he could see all their faces bare in the light from the upper windows. She led the next class up from his, her green staff showing the brownies the new strikes she wanted. The Milari trained most with staff, the heaviest – iron clad and over topping their heads -- given to the newest students. He watched her, trying not to flinch as her cry led the class in a lunge, ragged on their part, excellent on hers as far as he could see.

He looked away, to where Zon led the other greens in a complex dance of evasion, the white staff in her one hand as thin and light as a polished willow twig; more a short wand than anything else. It rapped out and hit the three attacking students as heavily as though it were an iron bar. Whack! An unprotected calf. Crack! A green staff clattered on the ground, the student following it down with a huff of breath. A curious choked sound as the third student suddenly found the end of the Zon’s staff resting on the bridge of her nose, her own staff caught to one side.

It seemed like magic to him. For all that the Surdeniliarch had come back that night and told him he would be taught, that he was teachable, that he had some talent for it, it seemed impossible. He felt clumsy as an ox on two legs, and as slow. He puffed after the youngsters in his black staff class – all of them five, six, seven -- determined to not show his despair in himself. He clung to the one line from Ilaxindal ‘You do have a talent for it.’, in the dark when even his youth couldn’t bring sleep fast enough and his bruises reproached him. Jashi is better than I. Maylissen is better and she’s five.

He wouldn’t quit no matter what they did, no matter how hard they rode him. He’d spent too many years focused on being a warrior to give up now, no matter how unlikely it looked to him. I feel like an idiot.  I don’t know what the Surdeniliarch was talking about. I’m awful. I won't quit.

Kyrus got up to pace around the walking circle again, with a number of others of various classes who looked at him askance or avoided him. Except for Jashi who thought he was an interesting exotic, and Werfas, a greenie who didn't seem to care that he was Lainz. Another few moments and the whole group would be called to a mass exercise then released to wash and go on to other schooling or chores. The room would be cleaned and the adult classes would begin and go on into the evening, when the great lamps hanging from brass chains from the ceiling would be lighted.