40 – in which we announce Minis’ candidacy

Binchera received enough requests for places that we did the announcement in the Chamber of Internal Presentation, which can hold about two hundred. Even so, it was crammed.

Minis, of course, was chewing out his guts with nerves as we were about to go out; Kallijas too, though he showed it less. Some people will eat too much when they’re nervous, and some, such as Esora-e, not enough; Minis is very much the latter. The fact that for most of his life his meals had usually been laced, albeit lightly, with poisons, so as to make him impervious to them, hadn’t helped him grow up enamoured with food.

Fortunately, he’d quit taking “the Imperial additives,” as they were called, shortly after he’d left the city, as the Mahid had had no way of procuring them in the wilderness; impervious or not, I couldn’t imagine this regimen was good for his health, and he himself had made a good argument that it drove more than one Imperator insane in one of his Minakis Akam articles.

Incidentally, while I’d been gone, Minis had gone to the Pages offices, ostensibly to turn in a piece, in truth to introduce himself by his alias. Struck by how young he was, they’d offered him a position as a news apprentice. In his broad fessas accent he’d said, “I thenk yeh, sor, but ’t looks like I might be ent’rin’ th’ family bus’ness.”

One very good thing I’d noticed as we’d worked on, or should I say conversed about, planning the announcement: in the six days I’d been gone, planning without me, Kallijas and Minis had very much jelled. I was throwing them together; for two and some years they’d be hand in glove, so to speak, with Kall as regent leaning very much on Minis’s knowledge, and Minis working up to taking over. In such cases, you always wonder how well the two will get along.

They’d continued training together, Kallijas ironing the Mahid stiffness out of Minis, for all it baffled the other Arkans on the roof that Kall was spending so much time with this average smallish youth who was fessas and so shouldn’t even be holding a sword. With political knowledge, of course, Minis was the wise teacher and Kall the eager student. I was struck by the smoothness with which they’d learned to speak to each other, and to me.

I was not nervous myself, much, as we took our places at the table and the writers fell quiet. Laying out my secret before Assembly made this seem like an afternoon picking flowers with a massage after. What I feared the most was being asked, “There are many people who would say it is insane on your part to tout the son of Kurkas… and, as it turns out, you’ve been caught out as being deluded in one very significant way, and there’s even been an official body established in Yeola-e to examine the question, so…” I remembered, with a touch of bitterness, how thankful I’d been for my own diligence in keeping my secret when I’d first conceived the idea of Minis on the throne. I had an answer ready but worried that it wouldn’t suffice, as it was complex; I hoped more they wouldn’t have the nerve to ask.

As usual, the Fenjitzas made the invocation, calling the Gods of Arko as well as All-Spirit, and I stood to swear my truth-oath, on my crystal, the semanakraseyeni signet and the Imperial Seals. (I’d never even thought of doing this any other way until Intharas had once nerved himself up to confess his bafflement; Imperators had always treated writers like scoundrels, he told me. Of course I’d grown up watching the Workfast Proclamatory do the standard truth-rituals over their deliveries; knowledge given to as many people as the world’s presses could give, I always felt, was vastly more sacred than that. “That’s so… Yeoli,” he’d said. But then it turned out that Arko had had a similar rite that had fallen into disuse a few generations before.)

I set out how it would go, with each of the three of us speaking and then taking questions, and told them that this gathering was for only one purpose, my announcement, and that questions on any other matter I would take on another day. Then I began. “I would never change my endorsement for any reason but one: the emergence of another willing candidate whom I felt would serve Arko better than Kallijas as Imperator—not an easy thing to convince me of—whose willingness I did not know of before.”

Every eye fixed burning on Minis. I saw no sign of recognition in any of them. You’d never know he had a fessas-cut, Skorsas having skillfully woven lengths of false hair of the same bright blond in with his so it seemed to be waist-long, but no one in Arko had ever seen Minis with a slender and wiry man’s build and wearing only a tasteful jewel here and there. Perhaps the sheer implausibility of him being Minis also helped hide that he was.

“Let me tell you the qualities he brings, which I know well, having known him for eight years, since he was a child,” I said. “Intelligent, war-trained, broadened by hardship, intellectually curious, far more knowledgeable of Arkan law and politics than his years should allow, open-minded, dedicated to the good of Arko, carrying a pedigree that would make even the most traditionalist of traditionalists consider him legitimate on the throne, but also a willingness to embrace the new way, so that he combines the best of old and new in one.” The burning of curiosity in those eyes increased tenfold. Beside me, even though I’d warned him well that I’d say this, Minis was fighting the urge to cringe.

Something made me look at Intharas Terren as I said, “Minis Aan.” His eyes went so wide they looked close to popping out; his mouth silently and floppily mouthed the words ‘get… me… some… booze.’

“You wonder how I can recommend the son of Kurkas,” I said. “Perhaps you question my sanity”—sometimes the best way to evade a question is to forestall it—“though no one has ever much doubted my judgment of character.” I told them the story of my friendship with Minis when I’d been a ring-fighter, how it had been closer than it had been safe to let on, because he’d cleaved to me as a child will to the only grown-up who sees the good in him, how I had taught him manners. “When I told him that he need only ask politely to be allowed into my room, he could choose; either ask politely, or have my door kicked down by his Mahid. If he’d had my door kicked down, I wouldn't be recommending him for Imperator.” Then how I’d read his work under the pen-name Minakis Akam, how he’d revealed himself to me and given me the Imperial Book, renouncing any claim, and finally helped capture the last of the rogue Mahid.

Minis spoke next, swearing a truth-oath himself. He swallowed what I knew was the strongest urge to despise Kurkas, since he’d been biting his lips on it since he’d been old enough to understand; I’d advised him not to, as loyalty to a father is so sacred in Arko, especially a dead one.

But that didn’t mean he couldn’t expound at length on how he thought Arko should diverge entirely in its course from Kurkas’s day. Here he made good use of his historical research, speaking of the ancient less-oppressive customs of Arko. They’d never had the vote as Yeola-e does, but they’d had the Ordeal, which Minis swore he would bring back. As I’d known from the start, he was his own best asset; nervous though he was, his knowledge came easily from his lips as always, impressively full and detailed. Whatever else they might fear from him, he proved they needn’t worry about putting an ignoramus on the Crystal Throne.

Kallijas kept it short and straightforward, saying that he had agreed with me that he was best until Minis had come along, but, trusting his character from what he’d learned on the training-ground, would defer to Minis’s greater knowledge and to his Imperial ancestry. People should remember, Kall said, that Minis had not only Kurkas’s blood in his veins, but Ilesias the Great’s, and all others of the Aan line who had served well as Imperators.

When he finished, the writers began shouting and waving so loudly to be called on for questions that I wanted to yell “Chen!” as if they were an unruly unit of warriors.

All of the questions we had expected they’d ask, they did. They asked, if Kall and Minis were elected, would they continue my reforms, and to what degree, which Minis answered that his intent was to return Arko to a more civilized and truthful time, and part of that was to take measure of what the people of Arko wanted.

They asked Minis where he had been the four years after the sack, and he told the whole story, which had them enthralled. Of course they asked him why he’d renounced his father’s plan for him and turned himself in, when for all he knew he’d be executed, and he told them it was to prevent civil war now and in the future. “If you had asked me,” he added, “what the most utterly unlikely result of that choice was—the most absurd, ridiculous, you’d-have-to-be-out-of-your-mind possibility—I would have answered, ‘That I might become Imperator.’” Which should have got a laugh, except, I think, they were all still too gob-smacked.

They asked Minis if he meant to keep slavery illegal, which he answered affirmatively with an impressive quote from Ilesias the Great, then whether he meant to leave the Press free, and he answered, “It will only be because of how busy I shall be, should I be elected, that I will not continue the writing career freedom of the Press allowed me; I could never have written anything about, say, Imperators being rendered insane by what they ate.”

They asked me how extensively I meant to be involved in ruling Arko if Kall and then Minis became Imperator; I patiently explained, as I had a number of times already, that there’d be no legal tie at all and that I was willing to help whomever won with the transition. I added, “It is only possible for there to be a power behind the throne if the person on it is either dull or cowardly or both, and neither of these things are true of either Kallijas or Minis.”

Of course they asked Kall whether he was disappointed to lose my recommendation as permanent Imperator to Minis, and he answered no, he had never desired power in its own right, and he was happy to step aside for a permanent Imperator of Minis’s merit.

A question we did not expect, for Kallijas, from Kamias Sonas of the Pages: “There have been a number of cases in Arkan history in which a regent Imperator who became that on the understanding that he would cede Imperium to an heir, em… didn’t do so. What guarantee do we have that you will cede power to Minis on his crossing of the third threshold?” In my defense, I hadn’t thought anyone would suspect Kallijas of being capable of such a thing. Kall answered well enough, that his oath was his oath, and regents who had done so in the past were despicable to him.

Vyasily Stevan-sson of Brahvniki News asked Kallijas and Minis whether, if they were elected, it could be safely assumed that Arko would continue part of the Assembly of All Nations I was trying to forge; Minis answered deftly by saying that they would carefully consider the boons against the costs and decide accordingly. (Which was just as well, since I’d had absolutely no time to work on it since I’d come back to Arko.)

Roras Jaenenem offered temptation to Minis to lambaste his father, asking what he thought of his foreign policies, but Minis just answered sensibly that Kurkas had spread Arko’s rejins too thin by engaging in more wars than he should, and made unnecessary enemies for little gain.

It was Lurai Athal of the Yeoli Workfast Proclamatory who asked Minis, “Your political philosophy seems so… Yeoli. Why? Is that Chevenga’s influence?” That gave him a chance to talk about the old Arkan traditions again, and when he was done I interceded to say what I had long been saying to Arkans, that the vote is not a Yeoli thing, but a reflection of true human nature, which sees all people as equal and is inclined to seek consensus, so that when a people are too many for consensus, the vote is the next best thing.

Then Shemeya Shae-Asila, one of the Yeoli writers for the Pages, looked me right in the eye, bless him, and asked, “Imperator… are you out of your mind?” A question best to handle by not answering for a moment to let the tension in the room build for a time, and then allow a half-stifled grin, which got a fairly big laugh. “Since I noted at the outset that our sole purpose here was the announcement, I assume you’re asking whether I’m out of my mind to be recommending Kurkas’s son,” I said. “So let me add to everything that I, and everyone else, have said so far, by noting that if the son were always the perfect reflection of the father, yes, I’d be out of my mind. But sons almost never are, and often turn out entirely opposite, and knowing Minis as well as I do, I’m satisfied that’s he’s sufficiently different.” Shemeya looked as if he was considering a second question, but thought better, to my relief.

Towards the end Intharas stood up from his chair. “This question is to Minis,” he said gruffly. “So many times, you have come in to the Pages offices, disrupted everything, disturbed everyone, slowed everyone down, caused rampant destruction, made an absolute nuisance of yourself, and generally made my life Hayel. Why should I write anything favourable about you becoming Imperator?”

No question had struck Minis speechless, until this one. He took a sip from his water-cup. “Everything I did back then… I regret, and apologize for,” he said finally, quietly. “My only defense… is that I was a child, who was not being raised well.”

“How do I know you’re not just seeking my favour by saying this, so as to become Imperator?” said Intharas. Old frightened instincts made many of the Arkans in the room go very quiet; everyone else fixed their eyes like nocked arrows on Minis, pens poised to note his answer.

Again, after some thought and a deep breath, he said, “The Press always had fascination for me; back then, I was not only bedeviling you, but also pursuing something I loved... words. I had no teaching in how to behave properly in a place of business. If you think I am apologizing to curry your favour, I offer myself to be truth-drugged so you may ask me that question when I cannot lie to you.”

There was a buzz through the room. I had, of course, undergone it for the sake of news-scribes myself a few times, so the precedent was there, and they could know he was serious. “Publicly?” Intharas said heavily.

“Yes, if Arko wants that,” Minis said, gaining confidence.

“Well, I tell you what, Minis Aan, son of Kurkas, once Spark of the Sun’s Ray,” the high editor said. “If you let us question you under truth-drug—in such a way that we can be absolutely certain you are truly under truth-drug and there’s no chicanery—and the other candidates refuse to do likewise, else accede but don’t give answers as good as yours… the Pages will recommend you.”

“I’ll undergo it too, if that is your wish, High Editor,” Kallijas said, in his calm, impeccably-formal way.

Intharas glanced back and forth between the two of them, an abundance of good fortune seeming to fluster him. The buzz rose in the room; they all wanted to be there. “You could garner more than one press recommendation this way,” I whispered to Minis and Kall both. They both nodded agreement.

“We’ll do it in this very room,” I said, “and all will be welcome.”

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