58 - I will cast my dice on my trust

We arrived in Arko past midnight. The election would be tomorrow.

There were writers waiting on the Marble Palace roof even though it was so late. My mind was still back in Yeola-e enough that I was surprised that their first questions were not about why I’d rushed back to Yeola-e, and they were little interested when I told them, wondering why I’d even bothered to go. In Arko, an attempt on the head-of-state’s life by someone of the same nationality is a shrugging matter; they’d be more surprised it if was a foreigner. It would only have been news here if it had succeeded.

What was written about it, ultimately, in Arko and indeed everywhere but in Yeola-e itself, was relegated to the inner pages, and treated the affair almost humorously. They particularly relished the aspiring assassin calling me as her key witness, and published excerpts from the transcript with great glee.

On the roof, as I coaxed my stone-stiff legs out of the harness, they mostly wanted to talk about the election. Same as in Yeola-e, they told me much more than I could tell them.

Faraiko, Kamallo and several people, both Yeoli and Arkan, who’d been working for them had been arrested and were waiting in the Marble Palace dungeon to be tried.

Mil Torii Itzan had been understandably upset, showing it a fair amount for an Arkan man. He had proved his innocence by submitting to truth-drug. While he could fire none of those who’d been charged as they were not on his payroll, he disavowed Faraiko and Kamallo both, saying he regretted ever accepting their support.

He didn’t fling the rest of the hawks off the carriage, however, sadly, and in fact Inatalla puffed out his chest and denounced his dear friend. “It is deeply shameful and most regrettable that a person of Yeoli origin got caught committing this disgraceful and un-Yeoli deed,” he scolded. Hearing them cite it to me, I had to wonder at the wording. Got caught?

Adamas seized on it, of course, denouncing Mil for accepting support from Yeolis, who’d brought the corruptions of their ways along with the ways themselves. Kin tried, but of course had tied his own hands in making any criticisms at all, since they could all be answered by a reminder of his sexual weakness.

Kall was noble about it, of course, saying he would hope that if he won, it would be due to his own merit rather than an opponent’s mistakes. Minis had made his name enough as a student of politics and an adherent of the new way when he showed his anger and his upset at the attempt to sabotage it, he was taken as sincere, which he was.

Though the worst you could fault Mil for was poor judgment in whose alliance he accepted, his chances were seen to have been severely, perhaps fatally, damaged, especially since this had happened so close to the day of voting. I thought he might withdraw—at least, unlike Kin Kazien, he’d be able to do it with some dignity—but he too stayed in.

Meanwhile, Faraiko had hired the best of advocates, Arkans and Yeolis both. Their defense was very simple, and they spouted it frequently and loudly to whoever would listen and quote, demanding that the charge be cancelled: what she had done had not been illegal at the time she had done it. They had a point.

I wasn’t sure what the prosecutors would do. Being Yeoli, she’d go before a Yeoli judge, who, I expected, would be duly shocked by what she’d attempted; but it is still a principle of Yeoli and now Arkan law, that I myself had enshrined: a person cannot be convicted, or even rightfully charged, for something that is not a crime when it is committed. The plan was foiled, and yet she might get away entirely with attempting it.

“I wish it had never happened, which you already know,” I said to the scratching of pens. “I have little else to say. Tomorrow it all becomes moot.”

As I went to the door that leads from the roof to the Imperial chambers, Rafas Izas was suddenly beside me, as if he’d been hiding. No doubt he had been—from the writers. My heart sank. “I need an Imperial dispensation,” he said quietly. Surya, Niku and the other flyers were still with me. “For a truth-drugging.”

“I need a bath,” I said. “Come with me and we’ll talk by the waterfall.” I couldn’t bring myself to make much small-talk on the way down, and neither did he, other than about Surya’s security.

“Someone wants to hurt you,” he said—‘hurt’ was always his euphemism for ‘destroy’—“they need only hurt him.”

I told him not to worry, that Krero was all over it, since someone had tried about a moon ago. “We never found out who it was,” I said. “There are so many after me, it could be anyone. I…” At some point, Rafas had become one I could bare my heart to, Arkan and stiff-spined though he was. “I can't even entirely trust my own people any more.”

So one Arkan, at least, had the decency to be dismayed; that was a mercy, however small. “But… I thought… Yeolis… You could walk naked through a crowd of them, all your life.” Though I didn’t want to talk about it, in truth, I told him all of it. His face, that had already been grim, became more so.

“And now I come back to Arko and have the joy of being reminded that others of my people were planning to steal the fikken election… I’m sorry, Rafas. It’s been a long flight. Hot water will make me more civil.” By the waterfall, as I lowered myself into the balm of the bath, he sat by my head. “Whatever horror you're about to unleash on me, I think I can bear better now.”

“Good,” he said. “I have nothing that could legally be called evidence… it’s just the feeling in my heart. When I was questioning Faraiko… my insides were whispering to me, ‘There’s more here.’”

I closed my eyes, tried to let the peace of the bath seep into my mind. “What do you want to do? Scrape her?”

“Ask specifically if there is a threat… yes, scrape her. That’s the only way you can be sure you’ve got everything.”

“You stopped yourself from saying something,” I said. “Why? You think I can’t take it?”

He let out a long slightly-whistling sigh. “No, Imperator… Shefen-kas. It was to spare you, when you’re already hurting.”

I wanted to go entirely under the water again, feel scalding heat from head to toe, and stay there, maybe even to oblivion. “It’s not my place to be spared because I am already hurting. Tell me.”

“I want to ask her if there’s a threat against you.”

Of course. What else? And yet it made no sense. “But in a few days I’m not even going to be Imperator. Why would she bother? Faraiko’s a forward-thinking type; she looks to the future, and so steals elections and the like. I’d have to break my own law, truth-drug based only on reasonable suspicion, to say yes to this, and I couldn’t honestly claim in a court of law that your feeling is reasonable suspicion.”

I could see his frustration. Why do the shit Imperators gleefully seize all the power they can get their gore-reeking paws on, but the good ones won’t eschew justice even to save their own cursed lives? A question for Surya, I thought. Or, one season after they commence work, the committee that bears my name.

“Perhaps I should go to Krero with this, too,” he said. “Your security is his calling.”

“Oh, he’d do it in an eye-blink,” I said. “But you don’t report to him, you report to me, and he reports to me too, and you came to me so I know and still have to say chalk or charcoal.” Shen—I should have gone to Krero instead, I could see him think.

“But there’s something, Shefen-kas… I know there is. I’ve truth-drugged thousands of people in my life, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that that feeling I get is right every time. There's a threat-shaped hole here, I know. It’s strong enough to make my guts clench.”

Maybe I should just leave this for Kall to deal with, I thought, then scolded myself. No—that’s cowardice and tiredness talking. I ducked my head under and took pleasure in the water soaking into my hair and running down my face instead.

“The problem is, if you do this, and there’s nothing, she’ll go extremely public with it… make it part of her defense against the election stealing-charge—”

“She’s caught dead-to-rights on that, she has no defense there.”

“Except that it wasn’t illegal at the time. And she can argue that she was pursued too assiduously in the investigation because I’ve become suspicious and afraid enough to break my own laws. You know her, she’s the world’s loudest-mouthed Yeoli hawk.”

“So blame me. Say I did it without authorization, and if I’m wrong, throw me to the buzzards. I understand why you are not willing to risk that, but I am. I know myself, better than you can.”

“Right. I’m going to throw anyone to anything for something I did authorize, and lie to all Arko and the world too.” He got that curse-good-Imperators look again. “Fik and shen… if only I didn’t know to trust you implicitly. I could just say no, then. And of course you need to know right now because the election’s tomorrow and once the results are in, an eight-day probably, I can no longer authorize it.”

“Right.”

I clenched shut my eyes and went under for a bit again. The answer came clear to me while I was immersed.

“All right. I will cast my dice on my trust for you, Rafas. But wait a bit. If you do this tomorrow and get nothing, and Faraiko’s having it shouted off the street-corners, discrediting me, before the voting is done, it’s going to lose Kallijas and Minis votes. Do it after, and that won’t happen. If I get called a despot at that point, no matter. I’m gone in a few days anyway.”

The day after the election was the first day of Jitzmitthra, but Rafas had clearly been expecting a working Jitzmitthra anyway, as had the vote-counters. So was I, to make up for the time I’d been in Yeola-e. Maybe I can take just one day off… Carnal Licentiousness… I gave the thought up with a sigh. I’d already had to have Binchera make everyone shorten their audiences.

“The timing is perfect, actually,” he said. “She can howl all she likes, and no one in all Arko will hear.” He thanked me, and I thanked him.




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