42 - A battle over my soul

I could announce an endorsement; I could answer every question about it; but to my mind it was improper to do any more than that to explicitly urge Arkans to vote for Kall and Minis. I had too much work to do anyway.

I watched the news like a hawk, though, that being part of my work. I’d been right that the announcement would set every tongue in the empire to wagging, so it didn’t take at long at all to see where the lines were being drawn.

The Arkan traditionalists and nationalists fell quickly and firmly into step behind Minis. I could see in their words that their plan, once he was back in power, was to persuade him to come to his senses and return Arko to its old ways, albeit with less excess and corruption; only the vanishing few, these days, still argued that Kurkas had been a good Imperator. For all Minis was absolutely clear about his intentions, I think they simply couldn’t believe it possible that the son of Kurkas could think as differently from his father as he did. Of course these were people whose own ability in nuance or flexibility of thought was not shiningly extraordinary. They had a surprise coming, if he won.

Those who favoured reform, and so had been backing Kallijas, were split at first, and many pushed Kallijas to declare himself candidate for permanent Imperium as well as regent for Minis, and so run against him, in effect. But we’d considered and spurned that idea already. Arkans didn’t have enough experience in elections yet to fully understand the notion of splitting the vote, but I did.

They were worried about the same thing the traditionalists hoped for, that once Minis was on the Crystal Throne without my influence near, the traits of the Aan blood would come out and he’d reverse everything. A public truth-drugging might reassure them that he was not presenting a false face, but they feared that his good intentions in youth might fade in age, over years in the corrupting temptation of power.

The answer here, of course, was to remind them loudly and often that the Imperator no longer had power as Kurkas had had and so would not be corrupted as such power corrupts. Arko had laws set above the Imperator now, and an Assembly to enforce them. It was for Minis and Kall to argue that, and they did it well.

Most of the Arkan military leadership (who could not command the solas rank and file how to vote but nonetheless had great influence) had thrown itself, naturally enough, behind Kallijas; now they weren’t sure what to do, distrusting Minis’s blood. “Meet with the generals,” I advised them. “Each one could turn ten thousand votes, not just the soldiers but their wives and lovers and old-enough children too.” They did, to good effect.

Freedpeople, of course, Minis could count on to a person from the moment he swore to keep slavery illegal, since none of the other candidates would; Mil Torii Itzan and Kin Immen Kazien both said they’d study the matter or some such muddiness, while Adamas came right out and said he’d re-institute slavery, which won him the support of most of the big farm and mine owners.

The Yeoli hawks had few votes but very deep pockets, and money is, of course, useful in many ways for persuasion. (If all else failed, they could simply buy votes; it was illegal, of course—only in Arko must such a thing be made illegal—but there are always ways around that.) I knew they’d oppose Minis and Kall as they’d opposed Kall, because I’d have their ear, and wondered whom they’d throw themselves behind, guessing Adamas Kallen, as he was dense enough to be easy to rule. I was wrong; after much parlour wine-sipping and backroom haggling, they all declared for Mil Torii Itzan. Perhaps Adamas had let slip some contempt for Yeolis; Mil Torii had always been cosmopolitan-minded for an Arkan.

One group of people who had become a force to be reckoned with were reform-minded women. From the start they’d been bitterly despised by those who felt that the change in position of women from chattel to literate, voting citizens was an injustice in and of itself.

As they’d found their voices over four years—it tended to be a brave few, of whom Fenjitza Narilla was de facto leader, supported in demure Arkan female fashion by a vastly greater number—the dire predictions that they’d bring Arko to ruin and the accusations of being whores, lesbians, heretics, lunatics, witches, unpurified savages and eaters of testicles increased.

What was most striking was that now they were working across caste, even Aitza, having formed one society for all, the Voters Feminine of Arko. “The oka, the fessa and the sola are my sisters,” its chief, Ara Min Kian would explain, “as we all labour the same to bring forth’s Arko’s future, and have all lived the same sufferings under the old laws.” There was none of that among the men; however many factions they formed, they were within strict caste bounds. Minis’s former betrothed, Kyriala, made a sensation by joining the society; Kin Kazien’s wife quickly followed suit. “Let anyone presume to call me an eater of testicles,” Kyriala once said; of course no one dared. She was, of course, accused of pandering to women on Minis’ behalf.

The barbs will fly in any election, worse perhaps in Arko, the home of the barbed javelin. Of course Kallijas had already been blamed for causing Arko’s defeat single-handed, and called a traitor and my bum-boy; now they had to think up things to say about Minis. ‘Kurkas’s spawn’ was now an insult, so it was said a lot; likewise spoiled, decadent, evil, lying, corrupt and my bum-boy. No reason I shouldn’t speak on that; “I met him when I was a child, and I am not a child-raper,” I said to the person who’d written it, with a fight-stare. It wasn’t said so much after that.

His best asset was himself; his worst liability was his younger self. Suddenly, scores of people were bravely breaking their silence on horrors he’d inflicted on them as a child. Most of them were made up, but some, alas, were real; he couldn’t say much, unfortunately, when tracts began being posted all over the city with a picture of himself as a dog being walked on a leash by me.

Again, I could not speak unless I were asked, but I was, by more than one writer who wanted me to talk in detail about him as a child, so I could elaborate on having seen the good in him.

It also helped his cause when other people came forward to tell how he’d benefited them, including two young firemen whose futures he’d assured by giving them apprenticeship money and letters of recommendation when he’d been ten or so.

It helped Minis’ cause generally that he’d thoroughly won Intharas’ admiration by his writing. The truth-drug questioning went off well. I sat with Minis and Kall while it was taking effect, knowing it was the first time for both of them, but left them in the protection of Krero, who schooled the writers in how to question, for the questioning, so as not to be seen as overseeing it. The other three candidates all balked at the idea, pronouncing it beneath them, which opened them up to suspicions, fuelled generously by Minis, of having who-could-know-what to hide. Intharas was true to his word, giving Minis and Kall his etched-in-ink nod.

†

So the lead-up to the election began, but I had troubles of my own. I had not known it, but at the same time I was leaving Arko to tell my truth in Yeola-e, Esora-e had been leaving Vae Arahi to come to Arko after he’d learned I’d been wounded.

Now he’d decided to stay in Arko, despite its Arkanness, until I went home for good. “Someone has to keep a parental eye on you,” he told me, “and it looks like the task needs all four of us.” I wondered whether it might be at least in part because Denaina was still here, as well; was I imagining a greater warmth between them?

So he was there when the delegation of generals came, led by Hurai and as firmly resolved, they said, to persuade me to give up this mad notion of going asa kraiya as they’d been to fight the Arkan War, since Yeola-e’s fate hung no less in the balance.

It was easy for me to officially avoid them—an audience list booked solid to the official end of one’s term is convenient that way—and Surya did nothing but listen to their arguments patiently and then absolutely stonewall them for the sake of confidentiality. But they worked on my shadow-father. He stayed firm, but I could see it bringing him down, putting him off his food.

Finally, talking their way through the Yeoli guards by standing on rank, Hurai, Emao-e, Salao Kasari, Kamecha Shingao and Dainena-e Nokari caught me in a corridor between my office and the baths at the end of one day. “It’s too urgent to wait for the kyashin audience list, to come after whichever perfumed Arkan boy-bum-fondler wants to suck your dick for whatever Imperial favour, Fourth Chevenga.”

“Fine, you may speak to me,” I said, “but it has to be while I’m in the bath. You may or may not join me in it, as you all please.”

“You make me forget the magnificent youth you once were,” Hurai said as we walked, “ready to save Yeola-e single-handedly with Chirel if he had to, and yet staying humble.”

“I’m sorry to prove such a disappointment in my adulthood.”

“Oh, curse it, Chevenga—I don’t mean that—you know what I mean! I’m just too brusque with words, you always said so. I hope you’ll take that into account as I speak to you.”

“Always, Hurai.” With Skorsas’s help—I felt him giving them looks—I stripped out of the Imperial white-and-gold and climbed naked into the steaming water. None of the generals joined me. “Is asa kraiya not a choice for every warrior?” I asked them.

“Every warrior except you! I know, you say there are plenty of warriors, you said that in Assembly. You were being too humble there. There’s only one you.”

I held back the urge to tell him to go talk to Azaila, or Esora-e. I needed to be my own man here. “Hurai… one day I’m going to die. That’s certain. Maybe sooner, maybe later, in which case I might get too old to fight first. Yeola-e’s fate cannot be tied to any one person.”

“But we can kyashin well use the advantage that you are while we have you by having you as long as we can—unless you do this crazy thing!”

“You don’t get it, do you? Yeola-e is going to lose me as a warrior either way.”

He was pacing as he spoke; now his sandals slapped the marble floor and his hands knotted into fists. “What is this kevyala, Fourth Chevenga? You’ve found out it’s not foreknowledge, just some mad kyash in your head—so just throw it off! You can’t convince yourself that you can be a warrior and live past thirty? Plenty of people do! You know I’m fifty-four, don’t you?”

“I’m pushing sixty,” Emao-e added in.

“It’s like everything else, Chevenga—a matter of will!” Hurai hissed. “And your will is steely, when wasn’t it? You’ve been able to bend people to your will that no one else ever could—you can bend mountains to your will. So why not this whatever-in-kyash it is? Where’s your morale? This isn’t like you!

“Where is your soul, you who are named Lion’s Heart, who your people came to call Invincible, and Beloved? It always looked to me like it was with the people in Yeola-e. Isn’t it? Must we fight over it, for it? If it’s a battle over your soul that I must fight for the sake of Yeola-e, yes I’ll enter it, with fire and confidence! What sort of mad Haian kyash is this healer filling your head with—like every kyash-eating Haian, the only solution to everything is hang up the sword—that there is no such thing as those who have no ears for our words of justice and sense?”

I said something that surprised me, though when I thought about it afterwards, I knew that Surya would say it was the truth and nothing more. “Hurai, I choose that I will not be a warrior.”

“But that is wrong! It’s a crime!”

Surprising myself again, I didn’t answer him.

“Do you dispute it?”

“I don’t dispute that you have that opinion.”

“Damn you, you little kyash-eater—I can’t even threaten to see you impeached, we’d lose you that way too! Curse it curse it curse it, what do we do?”

He stormed away, and Salao went with him. “You might as well go also,” I said to the other three, climbing out. “I’m going to bed now.” They wished me good night and went, tight-lipped, sandals smacking on the marble.

Next time I saw Surya, my ninth or tenth visit in all, we talked about it. “I have not warned you, so I should,” he said. “Whenever someone undertakes to alter his whole life and his whole way of being—everyone around him will try to stop him.”

“Really? But… if he needs to… why?”

“Because it is human nature to fear change. Well, more exactly, to fear loss, and change always means loss, the loss of what previously was. It’s as I said at the start, something in you will die, as it must to change, and not everyone wants to lose that.”

“I don’t think Niku, Kall or Skorsas are trying to stop me. Or my parents, now you have brought around Esora-e. I think people want me to live longer; I hope so.”

“Of course they do; but they’re also torn two ways. They love the hope and fear the change. Try it this way: everyone is used to you being a certain way, and that’s the you they know, and so it’s the you they want to keep, by habit. They’d choose that mode of you, and don’t like having their choices taken away.”

“But who I am should be my choice, no one else’s.”

I was shocked. Whose voice had said that?

“Of course, but you know how it is with people, it isn’t always reason that rules them. There are those who take it personally, who see your repudiation of the life they have chosen as a repudiation of them, though it isn’t. The warriors—they love you as a warrior, know you as nothing but a warrior, don’t want to lose you as a warrior. They feel you are betraying them, abandoning them, abandoning Yeola-e, abandoning your post in effect, failing them, failing Yeola-e.”

How well he could rattle off that litany. “I’m afraid I am doing all these things myself.”

“Of course: you’ve carried a great deal of responsibility, so it’s ground into you. But here’s the question you have to settle in your own mind, as the Servants were asking you. Yeola-e is safe now; Arko is no threat, Laka and Tor Ench are allies, no one else is big enough. But these things could change. If there were another threat, as serious as what Arko posed, and you were asa kraiya, would you take up the sword again?”

I took a deep breath. “I… I don’t know how to look that far ahead, Surya. I should… I don’t know how I’d say no, actually. But wouldn’t that kill me?”

“I don’t know how to look that far ahead either.” All-Spirit, I thought, the one time I could use a clear and certain answer.

“It’s not in my aura?”

“Your aura manifests your state as it is now. It can only be predictive when the present state it manifests makes a certain future probable. Yours is in too much flux to tell.” I should have known he’d say that. It wasn’t as if I couldn’t feel the turmoil that he was politely calling flux.

“I don’t suggest you come up with a final answer now,” he said, to my blessed relief. “But it’s something to keep in mind, to turn over in your head as you go. And perhaps to come up with a pat answer for, for the writers.” He was getting a feel for the nature of my life.

“And yet…” I set my teeth, and drew a deep breath to let go that tension again. “If I tell myself, as Esora-e told me, that I have done my share… it seems so cursed selfish. Done my share… what if I am needed? Surya, if taking up the sword again means the certainty of death… it may be best. I’d sacrifice my life to save Yeola-e; I’ve always said so.”

“Well,” he said, “that’s your choice.”

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