24 - in which I broach the idea to Minis

“How do you like these qualities for a candidate for Imperator, Minis? Intelligent, war-trained, broadened by hardship, intellectually curious, knowledgeable in Arkan law and politics, open-minded, dedicated to the good of Arko, a pedigree that would make even the most traditionalist of traditionalists consider him legitimate on the throne, yet a willingness to embrace the new way, so that he combines the best of old and new in one?”

He and Gannara and I sat together in the Scarlet Rosary Chamber, one of the most elaborately private of the Marble Palace rooms. It was only just after dinner, when I should be in the office; but this was work, possibly the most important I’d do for the rest of my term, let alone the day.

“I’d say you must have commanded open the gates of Celestialis so that this person could walk through on golden-winged feet and descend to the Earthsphere on a stairway of sunlight,” Minis said. “Which is beyond even your abilities, I suspect.” Gannara giggled.

“Not at all.” I let them stare at me at a loss what to say for a bit before adding, “well, except for the Celestialis part. But he does exist and he’s in Arko, so I could ask him any time.”

“Perhaps I know him.”

“You do, actually… perhaps better than most would at your age.” Minis hadn’t seen me do this same trick to Kallijas; it made me laugh inwardly to see how his first response was exactly the same, thinking the person with his own qualities was too good to be true. “You,” I said.

He froze as if I’d speared him. It seemed to go even deeper than that, in fact; someone you’ve speared will move again shortly, even if just to fall dead, whereas he was like a marble statue. The words came out one by one, as if dropping out of his mouth. “You… aren’t… serious.”

“I am absolutely serious. Do you dispute any of the qualities I named?”

He threw his hands over his eyes, as if he’d been starting to pray Arkan-style and been interrupted. “Not as you stated them… but the character behind them cannot be trusted.”

“What, you’ve turned dishonest since the last time I spoke with you?”

“Raik—Shevenka!” Emotion could make him both revert to my old Mezem name, and lose his expertise in pronouncing my true name properly. “Please don’t joke, I’m serious. You of all people should know I would never survive the Ten Tens, even if all Arko should want me as Imperator!”

“What are you talking about? You actually know how to do it; I didn’t. I already told you I’m serious. The only problem is that you’re two years or so too young; so what I propose is that Kallijas act as regent until you get to third threshold. If you agree, he’ll be the next person I speak to.”

He buried his head deeper in his hands, like someone trying to hide from himself that he faced a bitter and certain doom. “Aigh aigh aigh no! It would be blasphemous for me to even try!”

“Why? Because you are Kurkas’s son? You are you, not him. Just because he called you his addendum all the time doesn’t mean it’s actually true. Don’t you remember, he lied about a thousand things?”

“You think the Gods, having set you in the Crystal Throne, would accept the Aan bloodline back? Are you out of your mind?”

I didn’t answer that question, but instead pulled my chair up so I was square in front of him. If he’d been Yeoli, I would have taken both his hands in mine. “Minis. Look me right in the eyes.” He slowly dropped his hands away from his face, forced his red-rimmed eyes open and lifted them to meet mine, as out of a nightmare.

“Forget everything else. The Gods’ opinions, as if you can know them, the people’s opinions, as if you can know them any better, the Ten Tens, all of it—”

“Gannara!” Minis turned desperately to the Yeoli youth. “Can’t you tell your semanakraseye to stop this insanity…?” Gannara just innocently smiled.

“Forget all that, put it out of your mind,” I said. “Look at me, Minis, and tell me, everything else aside and if there were no obstacles at all, on your hope of Celestialis: do you want this?”

His eyes, that were like a rabbit’s in the snake’s gaze, suddenly filled with tears and clenched shut, and he threw his hands up over them again. In the faintest of whispers, he answered, “Yes.”

“Why do you want it? Tell the truth.”

“That I want it, alone, is enough to make me a bad candidate.”

I took him by the shoulders. “Look at me, Minis. Why?”

His vault-of-the-sky-blue eyes, the picture of Kurkas’s except that they held human expression, fixed on me, the almost-droplets of tears trembling. “I… this will sound insane.”

“Something I’ve learned recently: if a person tells the truth that is deepest in him and therefore scares him the most, it sounds insane to his own ears. So say it anyway.”

He swallowed, and with one hand futilely pulled his hair towards his mouth. “I… I love Arko,” he whispered. “I love… every one of them. I turned myself in to die if that was best for them… but if I could live for them…” He clenched his eyes shut again.

“You used to hate everyone.”

“When I hated them... they hated me. When I found out that I could choose to hate or love, when I learned to look at a person and see him as someone who wished as much and fought as hard as I did, for life and happiness... when I could see them… I could feel for them, I could like them, I could love them. All of a sudden everything made sense… out in the country, once we’d got away from the Mahid, and I was just a fessas boy… I could just talk to people, like every day was Jitzmitthra. And so many people were so kind, they’d do me kindnesses even though I was nothing but fessas, just because… just because I was there. It was as though I was freed from a prison. If I could do something for all of them… that they can’t do themselves, singly, as you said… I know, it’s insanity, it’s all insanity.”

“Let me ask you this,” I said. “Why did your father like being Imperator?”

No hesitation there. “He loved having the power! There was no one to restrain him, least of all himself!”

I misunderstood, purposely; it would bring out the most important point. “Being Imperator is power. You should love having it if you want to do it. You think I don’t love it?”

He stared at me as if I’d turned into a monster for an instant. “No! No no—that’s backwards! It’s the responsibility that should be loved.”

“Ah,” I said. “You’re separating the two in your mind. I say power, I mean responsibility too, because they are one and the same. It’s a misnomer, in truth, that they’re even two different words; in Yeoli, they aren’t.”

“Loving power with no responsibility makes my father,” he said.

“What did he get out of it?”

“Anything he wanted! He had and loved power and threw away all responsibility and in that sense made himself a God, or rather a demon, for he did it for no one but himself.”

“Right. Now, just to reiterate, for whom would you be Imperator, again?”

Now one hand went over his eyes and the other over his mouth. “Sheep-brain, will you listen to him?” said Gannara, with an exasperation full of the echoes of a thousand similar conversations between the two of them. “Quit trying to tell him you’re evil!”

“Don’t worry, I won’t let him,” I said to Gannara. “Or listen. I asked for the truth.”

Sometimes Minis could only speak by making his voice Mahid-flat. He did it again now. “I would be Imperator for my people and the Gods.”

“So you see the difference, between you and him? It’s definitive.”

He made a kind of ‘urk’ sound in his throat. “If Arko would ever want me in a thousand years!”

“That’s up to Arko. I can’t hand you the seals; only they have the power to do that, now.”

“If the Gods, or Arko, want me… then it’s my duty no matter what I want or fear.”

“You don’t know what the Gods want. Or the people, until the election. The important thing is whether you want it, for the right reason. Which you do.”

“It’s my duty to try?”

“All too often, Arkans hide what they want behind duty,” I said. “You want it even more than you’re letting on; I hope it’s only me, whom you can’t fool, who you’re trying to, and not yourself, whom you can. Your life is your own, ultimately, and the law recognizes that. Even in Yeola-e; if I wanted to resign, I could. As always, you choose.”

He dissolved again, curling in on himself, fists over his eyes. “I want it too much!” he sobbed. “I don’t trust that in myself!”

“How much is too much? Minis, I wanted it enough to fight all the way here for it, and talk an army and a nation into doing so with me—some at the cost of their lives.”

Now he jumped up and paced, and Gannara caught my eye with a gesture and whispered, ‘Wanting it at all is too much, he thinks.’ “For Arko’s sake!” Minis yelled.

“As it turned out, yes,” I said. “Once I knew what it was in my heart I wanted, I set out to make it real. It’s not bad in and of itself to want power; it’s good or bad depending strictly on what you want to do with it. Now—your and my purpose in being Imperator would be different, how?”

He grabbed two hanks of hair in his fists, as if he was going to rip it out. “Aigh! Shevenka—I… I can’t be Imperator because…” He took a deep breath, closed his eyes. It looked as much relief as anguish. “Arko requires an Imperator to have Heirs. I’m incapable.”

“How do you know?” I asked him. “You’ve tried?” Gannara’s grin turned to a look of alarm, though. “Kyash, that’s true,” he said. “You are.”

“I don’t… I can’t…” Minis cheeks went scarlet. “…perform.”

“You mean you can’t get it up?”

His cheeks went an even deeper scarlet. Arkans can never stand bluntness about anything to do with sex. “Only asleep and then only rarely,” he said, in a faint whisper. I remembered what his sexual initiation had been. No wonder.

He’d been to a Haian; I couldn’t imagine they hadn’t at least started to heal that. I managed to worm out of him that they had, but not finished; he and Gannara had left Haiu Menshir in a hurry after spotting someone they were fairly certain was after them. One of the Mahid, one of my people or one of someone else’s people he didn’t say, and I didn’t ask.

“Your Haian is not the only healer in the world,” I said. “I know a very good one, right here in Arko. He’s leaving Arko when I do, I think; but he can do a great deal in a very short time.” Did Surya treat impotence caused by pleasure-torture? I didn’t doubt he could heal anything he set his mind to heal. It was good to be able to have such confidence; Minis couldn’t turn away from it.

“But if I decide against, it won’t matter,” he said. I got out of him that he was thinking he’d be offed the moment someone else became Imperator, which made me realize I should set into motion the deletion of 14.8 no matter what he decided. While he was up for election he escaped the law by being as legitimate a claimant as anyone else who was running; once it was done, that wouldn’t be so easy to argue. I thanked him for reminding me to do it.

He was also thinking that sex was nothing but a curse anyway, no surprise; what in his life had ever shown him different? I had to remind him how what Kurkas had done had destroyed his self-respect; I asked him to remember what he’d thought of himself before and after, and to see the difference. Perhaps my healer was teaching me something. “Surya can reverse that,” I said. “I think that undoing self-condemning delusions is kind of a specialty of his.”

Minis was afraid both to undergo whatever he’d have to, which I could understand, and afraid to hope for cure, which I could also understand, but in the end he said, “Fessas quarter…”

“37 Bright St. He’s not strictly by appointment yet, though I think he will be soon, and able to afford someone to book them. You just tap, and if he doesn’t answer but the door is unlocked, go in anyway, and he’ll have a note on the anteroom table telling you when he’ll be done with the client he has.” That had been a suggestion of mine. Minis nodded weakly.

“You don’t have to decide right now,” I said. At the very least he should sleep on it. “At the same time, you shouldn’t take too long; each day that goes by is a day of campaigning you lose.”

“Chevenga, there isn’t time now.”

“Says the expert on elections?” He closed his eyes and heaved a long-suffering sigh. “I know it’s short; but that’s allayed by the fact that everyone will be so shocked that I’m endorsing you that I’ll have their undivided attention. The whole empire will be talking about it.”

“And then they’ll think you’re crazy,” he countered.

“After what Kurkas did to me, there is no one in the world who carries more credibility, praising you, than me. And no one thinks I’m crazy now.” Except Surya, but the sponges on his walls let slip no sound. I was thankful again, for my own diligence in secrecy.

“Maybe I think you are! This is all madness—I’m forzak, condemned to Hayel, I’m sure of it, at least in the times that I believe in the Gods.”

“The times that you believe in the Gods? Other times, then, you must know you are safe from it.”

“She-ven-kaaaahh!!” He smacked his open hands on his head, hard enough that I grabbed his hands to stop him, and Gannara moved to do the same. Then tears overcame him again. I pulled him into my arms, as I had those times when he’d been an over-jeweled pudgeling visiting the Mezem. He leaned into it as he had then. “I can’t pray to Them,” he sobbed. “I can’t speak to Them. Not any more. Not since that night.”

“You mean you haven’t tried,” I whispered into his ear. “Well, it’s about time. I have the perfect place.” Once he’d calmed, I took him, and Gannara, as he might well need both of us, to the Imperial Chapel, that I’d had unbricked near the beginning of my first term as Imperator. “This was just a wall before,” he said wonderingly, so Kurkas must have had it sealed before his son has been born.

By his face, as I opened the door, it was hard to believe there were times he did not believe in the Gods. It was plain as day he could feel the presence. What a life you have lived, I thought, for a child who is sensitive to the divine.

Skorsas had needed my touch to be in this place, but Minis I sent in by himself, while Gannara and I waited on the other side of the door. This was the Imperial chapel and he’d been the Imperial heir, and besides, he had the question, not me. What Muunas answered was between the two of them. I closed the door, with its iridescent pattern in gold, silver, titanium and copper seeming to ripple like flame, behind him, and heard Gannara swallow.

I have never asked, and Minis has never told me precisely, what happened inside. But in barely a twentieth, the door burst open and he came out scrabbling backwards on hands, rear and feet, panting in terror, his face flushed wild red and his hair looking windswept.

“Fine, Chevenga,” he gasped when he found words. “I’ll do it.”





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