Chương 31: Chapter-31

Aemalia felt her breast again. It had grown. She couldn't actually feel inside the lump itself. It was strange, like a little piece that was not her inside of her. But it was there, and it was growing. And her mother had died shortly after finding the same thing. She closed her eyes and put her dress back on. Then she went to the desk, and she began to write her will. She had surrendered many assets to Tal when he'd taken her duchy from her. He had given most of them back. And many more.

She was one of the wealthiest women in all of Tal-sha-shenk, and she wished she'd been born a peasant. Then she wouldn't have to spend so much paper on her will. She laughed at her private joke. The door opened.

"What is funny?" the cold, affectless voice she knew so well asked. She stiffened.

"I was thinking that I am using too much paper."

"Why is that funny?"

"It's…it's a complicated matter to explain, My Lord."

"I wish to know."

"Very well." She turned to him and smiled.

"I am dying."

"I know."

"Of course you do. Do you know how?"

"The growth is reaching your liver soon. If nothing is done, you will die shortly after." She swallowed.

"I did not know that you could tell that. I knew where the growth started, not that it had spread." He was silent.

"Explain the humor in the situation."

"Well, in preparation for my death, I am preparing the disposition of my assets. I am writing my last will and testament. It is a common practice, as I know you are aware, for men and women in my situation."

"I still do not see the humor."

"I am getting to that. It is also common for us to reflect on our life before the end of it. And I thought to myself 'if only I had been born a peasant, I wouldn't be wasting so much paper on my will.' That is the private joke that made me laugh."

"Now I see the humor," Tal said calmly.

"Do you?" she asked, surprised.

"It does not please me, but I recognize what it is."

"That is, that is progress, My Lord. I hope that one day you can see the joy in laughter."

"I may be able to heal you. To prolong your life," Tal said calmly.

"If you ask me to do this, I will. Your counsel is useful, and you will be less useful as a corpse." She closed her eyes.

"How would you do this?"

"Magic," he answered offhandedly.

"It is not very difficult. I have cured five others in a similar manner to see whether I could. One of them died. The others had their growths vanish. Those are acceptable odds for me, when you will die if I do not take action."

"Then why have you not done it?" Stolen novel; please report.

"Because. I have the choice of nonexistence. And I think about that every moment. I am perpetually aware of it. I think, someday, I shall embrace it utterly. But not yet. I did not know whether you had embraced your mortal end yet or not. If you had, I did not wish to take that choice from you." She looked at him. Her mind began racing as she tried to interpret his words.

"My Lord. Forgive me. This time, I do not understand. That, that is almost kind. A consideration for my wishes that I would not expect from you."

"You would have me heal you without your consent?"

"I would not have you heal me without my consent. I did not know it was an option until just now, and I would beg time to consider it," she said quickly.

"You said there is a twenty percent chance I will die anyway?"

"There is a twenty percent chance that it will kill you more quickly," he corrected.

"It would reduce your time to hours, not months. But the longer you wait, the higher the chance that it will fail."

"I have months then?"

"It is hard to predict exactly." She closed her eyes.

"Thank you. Truly, Tal. This visit has given me hope."

"Then you accept the healing?"

"I have not decided yet," she said.

"But I finally have hope that you will learn to feel empathy."

"What does hope feel like?" he asked. She paused to consider.

"There is a tale. A girl—""The pot with the monsters. What does it feel like."

"Why was hope in the pot with the monsters, Tal?" she asked gently. He considered the question for ten minutes. When she realize he would not answer promptly, she resumed writing her will. She was used to him considering questions for long periods of time, and he did not mind when she did other things while he was occupied with her questions.

"I do not know," he said at last. She put the pen down and turned back to him.

"Hope is both a wonderful, and a terrible thing," she said.

"Because it was terrible, the gods put it in the pot with the monsters. However, that meant that humans had no hope. The did not believe that things could be better than they were. They lived their lives in a null state. They could not have moments of happiness, for they lacked moments of sadness to know what happiness felt like. They could not have moments of love, for they could not know grief.

"When the girl opened the pot, she let out all of the terrible things. But the gods gave us good things to balance those terrible things out. However, hope remained behind. Because it is both good, and terrible, it has nothing to balance it. So humans can always have hope. Whether we are happy or sad, angry or afraid, lost, confused, anything. We can always have hope."

"That is false." She looked at him.

"What makes you say that."

"I have taken the hope away from millions of people."

"No. You have given hope to them. Hope that things will be better someday. They capitulate to your rule because they believe that it is better than death. You do not rule because you bring death, Tal. You rule because the people hope the death you bring will not touch them." He was silent. She went back to writing her will. They did not speak again. He got up and walked out of the room. She looked at the skull on her dresser, and she wondered why he had not used it to speak with her.

* I do not know why the final months of Aemalia du Pashenas bothered me. Frustrating. I spent much of the final days of her life thinking about her instead of doing the tasks which I needed to do. I was stuck on this one question. Why do I care? I was so stuck on the question itself that it took me a very long time to understand the implication. I cared. I cared for Aemalia du Pashenas. That was… strange. I did not feel love.

I was anticipating her death because I believed that, once she was gone, it would be much simpler to perform governance. She challenged me frequently in my decisions, using logic against me in clever ways which were technically correct. Her death would make my duties much simpler. Why did I care. I had cared far before I recognized that I cared. I had noticed the lump in her breast before I consolidated my existence into a single soul once more. It had not bothered me then.

But, then, not all versions of me had been aware of the lump, and not all versions had given time to think about how her death would impact the future. And then I had my answer. I began to care when I consolidated myself. Curious. I wondered why that was. I considered the question, but I would have time to consider that question after Aemalia had died, so I did not give it too much thought. Instead, I reflected on the memories I had of Aemalia, trying to figure out which of them made me care about her.

I could not find one. Not one single memory of her made me care. However, when I compared how many memories I had of her to my other advisers, I was surprised to realize that she appeared almost fifty times more frequently than the runner up. I resolved to ensure that man remain in good health, for it would annoy me if he died prematurely. I was surprised to realize something. I cared about two people. I began going through my memories.

Not the individual memories, but comparing the sum of the memories against each other. I had purged vast amounts of my memory when I had consolidated myself. It had been necessary. Those memories had been destroyed, irrevocably. However, hundreds of versions of myself had evaluated them each before purging them. We had collectively discarded them as useless. But we had collectively decided that we required thousands of memories of Aemalia du Pashenas.

I hoped that she would elect to ask for my assistance in shrinking the lumps that would end her life. I hoped. Hope. What a terrible, terrible, terrible thing. I could see, now, why it was in the pot with the monsters. It made perfect sense why hope would be one of the first emotions I felt.