55 - Shit, venom, thorns and clingfire

The Presiding Judge decreed a break, and I met Linasika going out, though he was in a hurry. “I think calling you to the chair was a mistake on her part,” I said to him. “Perhaps she imagined herself your equal, and she’s nowhere near. But I must thank you for taking my side, for a change.”

“You know cursed well I was taking my own side, fighting not to be tarred with her brush so as to save my own name after she forced me into that chair, Fourth Chevenga,” he hissed back, quietly. “My opinion of you has changed not one whit.” I couldn’t help but chuckle as he strode away.

I went out into the courtyard of the court, where the trees were just in flower, delicately perfuming the air, petals white and fresh as a baby’s innocence. Insufficient reconnaissance: three writers were there, and they cornered me.

It was all what I expected, what did I think and feel about how it had gone so far and so forth, and I answered honestly and non-dramatically. Then Sisaria Nomenas of the Pages of Arko asked me, “It’s true, that by Yeoli custom the life of a semanakraseye is held cheap, or at least cheaper than those of other Yeolis; has that ever bothered you, Chevenga?”

I was at a loss for a moment; the answer that came immediately to my lips was, of course, “No!” but it was not the truth. “It’s something that I’ve acceded to and accepted,” I said in the end.

“You were raised with it, I know,” she persisted. “Might it be in some part the cause of your, em, problem?” The other two writers, Yeolis both, looked as if they’d bitten lemons.

“There’s been a committee of Assembly struck to delve into such matters,” I said. “Rather than give my own opinion I’ll defer to them to answer that question when they do up their report. Be forewarned, I’ll do the same with all such questions.”

“Have you ever had the urge to resign the position, because of this?” she asked me.

The spot on the side of my head where Kall had fisted me on the sight of the Imperial seals lying on my desk, not a half-moon ago, ached for a moment. “I’d be lying if I said I never had the thought,” I said. “But, as you know, I have not resigned. And before you ask, I have no plans to.”

The bell called us back in. Sharaina next presented evidence in the form of quotes, saying she could not possibly call in all those whose words she would cite here. She hauled out everything you could imagine; that was the stack of papers.

Faraiko and Inatalla and the other hawks in the Pages, from the time leading up to the impeachment vote: “He is mad—the danger of brilliance,” “he is despotic,” “the closest we’ve seen to a second Notyere in modern times.”

Linasika and other detractors of mine among the Servants, quoted in the record of Assembly: “One might even say that in a sense he precipitated the war; I can barely imagine an act of greater naivete than undertaking a peace mission to an empire determined to invade us”, “Yeola-e has never seen such an aggressive and blood-thirsty chakrachaseye, let alone semanakraseye, in its entire history,” “a semanakraseye who urges invasion is a despot in disguise as a semanakraseye,” “he is possessed of a most un-Yeoli lust for power.”

Pundits and Servants of the nationalistic faction: “The man is apparently incapable of falling in love with a Yeoli, but takes up instead with citizens of the enemy empire, and would even bring the blood of a dark-skinned savage into the demarchic line,” “To fall in love with and take as a spouse the enemy’s greatest champion is an act of symbolic treason,” “Yeola-e is irredeemably changed, altered beyond recognition, and whether by his folly in inducing conquest of us, or his insistence on leading conquest by us, it is not unjust to lay it all at the feet of Chevenga.”

Myself, confessing to the Arch Arbitrate, “I killed eight fellow Yeolis as a ringfighter in the Mezem in Arko,” without the rest of the sentence, in which I’d told them I’d been forced to.

Etana-lai Kensai, Servant of Tinga-e-Anika, Linasika and other Servants during the war: “No one ever imagined a Yeoli semanakraseye would abuse a captured commander in the Arkan style, but Chevenga did it, and with a degree of relish we’d find shocking even in an Arkan,” “A Yeoli citizen and warrior was executed for stealing two pieces of firewood, by Chevenga’s own hand.” Inatalla, of course: “I protested, and for that he flew at me in a rage, flung me down and ground my face in the dirt. I relived it a thousand times in my nightmares. In truth, it was the turning point in my life.”

The Alliance of Warriors of Yeola-e in their open letter to me: my going asa kraiya would be “beyond treason, in truth: it could be the murder of your whole people, in spirit if not in body.”

Poor Linasika, again: “This revelation, to my mind, casts serious doubt on his fitness to act as semanakraseye.” A story in the Pages, after my secret had come out, whose author had counted up the times he could find that I’d attempted suicide: “Destructiveness can be seen as a necessary trait in a warrior-king; self-destructiveness, however, must raise questions of competence.”

To hear it all, you’d think that any part of Fourth Chevenga Shae-Arano-e, head to toe, that was not made of pure shit was distilled snake-venom, fortified with hefty measures of thorns and clingfire. People started glancing at me to see how I was taking it. I mostly succeeded in showing nothing; friends told me afterwards I just looked tense. It wasn’t as if any of it was new to me.

Once done with that, Sharaina called up her next witness. To everyone’s surprise, it was Mera Shae-Sera, the leader of the Disciples Chevengani, complete with the little ceramic figure of me in white he wore around his neck, and his hair cut in my style, or at least the style I’d worn before I’d got Skorsas to stop trimming it because I would go asa kraiya. It was noticeably longer than a warrior-cut now. Every time he looked at her it was as if she’d crawled from under a rock.

I cite the record again. She had asked him what form did their reverence of me take.

Mera Shae-Sera: We study his words and his works.

Sharaina: Why exactly; what do you hope to gain from such study?

Me: Enlightenment, understanding of the Divine, and peace.

Sha: Right. Now do you consider Chevenga divine?

Me: Oh yes. But he says himself that we are all divine.

Sha: Do you consider him more divine than other people?

Me: An avatar of All-Spirit at the very least; a God, yes.

Sha: All-knowing? All-powerful?

Me: He is, in mortal form, of course neither...

Sha: And yet...? I sense you have more you wish to say here; I ask that you articulate all that you feel, and take your time doing so, as you have sworn to answer the truth clear and complete.

Me: Of course, thank you. Chevenga has assumed a limited, mortal form subject to the same dangers and vagaries of that mortal existence, no doubt to share in the plight of those lesser than himself in the spirit of chiravesa. [This is one of the points when I wanted to crawl under my chair.] A divine spirit can do so to extend the hand of peace and enlightenment to those who insist on living in fear and hatred. Sister, you are deeply disturbed to fear him.

Sha: I thank you for your enlightened concern for my personal wellbeing, Mera. I would like to ask you how you—and I mean yourself personally and the Disciples collectively—came to believe in Chevenga’s divinity, what things persuaded you.

Me: His own words and his own actions. He has spoken at length of the power of the divine, and his philosophy, which is one to live by. As well his many escapes from death can be called nothing short of miraculous. Including the, ahem, one at hand. He is a man who shines in one’s sight, greater than a mere man truly can.

Sha: His own words, you say; have you some examples?

Me: Oh yes, sib, by heart. I quote: [and here his voice took on the half-musical, droning cadence you hear only from priests uttering liturgical words] “In all honesty, unless you had fought or worked with me or closely followed my training, what firm indication was there that I would be able to do what I did? My reputation was, as they say, nine-tenths potential, especially when it came to command. I was only twenty”—his humility is legendary, yet I continue—“I had won in the Mezem, won against Mahid, won my way free, won against the torture (by healing), succeeded in seeking loans, in hiring mercenaries, in building alliances—and won the battle of Haiu Menshir. Against Arko my people had known nothing but defeat, not a single victory—until this one.” [This was from the instructional work on strategy and tactics I wrote using the Arkan War for examples.] Miracle after miracle, as you can see.

Sha: I have to say that doesn’t sound exactly like humility of a legendary degree. But his words have a certain power, then, you observe.

Me: Yes, they do.

Sha: Would you say he has an extraordinary ability to sway people to his wishes?

Me: His words are full of wisdom, his philosophy is compelling, but so is anyone’s who is telling the truth. Truth is the most powerful of spiritual teachings.

Sha: Let me rephrase the question then, he has an extraordinary ability to convince others of the truth of what he is saying?

Me: Sib advocate and defendant, truth cannot be made into lies by shouting them louder, any more than one can make chalk into charcoal by insisting one is the other.

Sha: I, and the court also, I trust, will take that as a chalk. One belief he has convinced you of, or, in your view, one truth he has revealed to you, is that he is a God in human form, yes?

Me: Yes. But I object if anyone should say we were somehow swayed or coerced or fooled. Our beliefs are the result of reasoned analysis and to suggest anything less is to insult us.

Sha: Reasoned analysis, right. Now Chevenga is, of course, the semanakraseye of Yeola-e; a person whom it is customary for Yeolis to consider as dedicated to serving them, and sacrificing himself for them, if necessary. We do not traditionally hold a semanakraseye as above us in any way. So, and I ask your forgiveness for saying this, but your belief that he is divine would be considered by most Yeolis, I would think, as blasphemous, in a sense, and certainly insane. I am not saying I concur, and as I say I hope you will forgive me, but I wonder how you can account for what by any normal measure are some very bizarre beliefs, given that you are people of independent mind.

Me: What, because if I, in my independent-minded way, choose to believe something you do not? Aside from referring to another thinking Yeoli as insane, I account for myself, though how I and my beliefs have somehow come into question here... I account for myself by thinking and coming to a conclusion I feel is appropriate!

Sha: I ask the Presiding Judge to confirm for me, in the witness’s hearing, that at no time have I said the witness is insane.

PJ: No, sib advocate for the defense, you have not.

Sha: Thank you, and further, I ask the Presiding Judge also to confirm in the witness’s hearing, that at no time have I even said it is my opinion that his beliefs are insane.

PJ: You have not and indeed have been careful to make it clear you are not saying that.

Me: Are you attempting to make my beliefs sound insane and thus justify your attempted murder of the semanakraseye? How this follows I am at a loss to understand!

Akana: I am at a loss to understand how it follows also.

Sha: What interests me is how Chevenga is able to inspire such devotion, as other people are not.


It got more dull after that, essentially turning into an argument, so I’ll end the cite here. Being so used to being spat on for his beliefs, Mera made Sharaina’s questions into that, and neither she nor the Presiding Judge could convince him otherwise, even though in truth they weren’t. What she was doing, of course, was trying to show how dangerous I was by revealing Mera and his group as a living example of how I could ensorcel Yeolis into decidedly un-Yeoli beliefs and so was too dangerous to let live.

The judge ended the questioning before she managed to make the point more sharply, due to Mera’s unbending defensiveness. And yet I wonder if he did it purposely, to frustrate her.

We broke after that for noon meal. When we came back and court was called to order again, Sharaina fixed her eyes on me and said, “I call Fourth Chevenga Shae-Arano-e to the chair of testimony.”