60 - Do what you have to do

That was the Yeoli, and personal, aspect of the day of the election. Now I recount the Arkan.

In the morning, while I lay with Surya’s fingers inside me touching my core—or the core of the death-in-me, whatever the difference was—Adamas’s people were spreading a tract to every corner and cul-de-sac and alleyway and gathering-place in the city of Arko, with hired readers to declaim it in the okas neighbourhoods.

It purported to be a sworn and truth-drug-vouchsafed account of an okas man, Miksas Asas, who said that on Minis’ thirteenth birthday, Miksas and his younger brother Morsas had been seized by Mahid on the streets of Arko, taken to the Marble Palace and given, in effect, by Kurkas to his eldest son as a Jitzmitthra and birthday present, to do with what he pleased.

What he had pleased to do, Miksas claimed, was make the brothers fight to the death with sword and chain, like ring-fighters, on pain of torture. “I had to thrust a sword into the heart of him who came from the same womb as me,” it read, “else bereave our parents of both of us. Then, once I was healed enough of my own wounds to speak, I had to tell my mother, and my father, what I had done.”

He’d kept this secret from anyone but family for five years. But now that Arko was free and Minis was seeking election, the pamphlet read, he felt he must come forward and speak the truth, so that Arkans would understand why they must not let this vile monster, no less a vile monster than his father, become Imperator.

So Miksas had gone to Adamas, who’d had the wit—else, more likely, one of his people had had the wit—to keep him in reserve until the very last.

As I came out of Surya’s healing room, half-reeling still, I found Minis standing at the door, looking as if he’d been kicked in the gut. He handed me the paper without a word.

“Shen,” I said; when in Arko, swear like an Arkan. “Where do they find the perverse enough minds to confabulate these things? I guess you’re going to have to get your people out speaking, right now… you don’t have time to print anything. And have yourself truth-drugged again, just on this, I suggest.”

“Kall and I… we got orators out,” he said, in a weak voice. “But… I did it, Shefen-kas. It’s true.

“Oh, great,” I sighed. “Another thing your father made you do. Better have your people saying that; are you?”

“No. It would be a lie.” He looked as if he were about to throw up. It occurred to me that Surya was not two paces away; I’d call him in if I had to, I decided. I wanted to rip out my hair.

“Right... he gave you his usual oh-so-free choice, do or be disowned.”

“No.” The word was like the executioner’s axe falling. “He just gave them to me for my birthday. That is the truth, Shefen-kas. He required nothing.”

I stared at him, unable to move. A trickle of sweat went down my spine, though it had been drying off after my visit to Surya. The day of the voting, and I’d done everything I could to put the Empire of Arko into these hands.

“Then…” I said when I could, “why?”

“I keep telling you I’m an evil man,” he said. “You keep not believing me.”

It had been more than a month now since he’d said that. I’d thought he was cured. I let the shudder that wanted to take me take me, and then shook myself out as after hard drilling. Panic driven out at least in part, sense came back in. “No. I know you better. There had to be a reason, Minis. What was it?”

He closed his eyes as if to shut out pain, opened them again, the blue bright with wetness.

“I thought I was lost... corrupt after... after...” He licked his pale lips, and I could feel nothing but the urge to throw my arms around him. “Nothing mattered... I would go to Hayel no matter what I did. So I didn’t care.”

“No matter whether they went to Hayel? On the Earthsphere or beyond?” He buried his face in his hands, and the urge to cradle him came stronger. “Minis… after what?”

“After... after...” He took a deep breath. “After Father made me…” It reminded me of myself, trying to say ‘I deserve to live.’ That thought made me understand. After his father had made us rape each other, both at once. “I still can’t say it.”

“What you wrote me the letter about.” He nodded, faintly. I laid my hand on his shoulder.

“Please don’t touch me right now!” He leapt away as if my hand had scalded him. I wondered if Surya was already listening, or seeing both our auras through the door; I couldn’t imagine he wasn’t.

“I’m sorry, lad. You were out of your head, weren’t you?” I whispered. “Remember how it was and tell me.”

“Nothing mattered,” he breathed. “I was damned. I was evil no matter what I did.”

“That’s out of your head,” I said. “Minis, here is my question, and it’s very important. When did that end? When did you stop being out of your head? When did things start mattering again? They did sometime. The youth who came to me with the book is sane; so is Minakis Akam. Else I wouldn’t be recommending you. So: when?”

He took a deep breath. “I was... It was… Solstice Fest that year… right around then... when... I started hurting again. When things started mattering.”

“Winter solstice? Same year?” He nodded. That was only half a year. “What cured you, do you know?”

He breathed deeply again. I saw Surya’s training in him. “I heard... you were alive and free. And the Temple Ritual somehow meant more... as if the words the Gods spoke to bring the Light back… meant something again. I don’t know. It was like waking up out of a nightmare.”

He had said to me before, that he’d gone through a time of darkness afterward. I had thought it was of condemning himself only; but then anger can explode out like lava, burning all who are near. I remembered myself in Sailortown after I’d been impeached.

I knew what he must do. “What do you and Kall have your people saying?”

“Admitting it… saying people have to remember I was just a child, not even second threshold, and it was expected behaviour of me… and that I will recompense the man.”

“Minis... you’ve got to tell them the truth,” I said.

“I didn’t remember this clearly...” He was speaking his thought, I saw, not with me. “I don’t remember much of that part of my life. I can’t know what else I did then.”

“No matter, you’re just accused of one thing, and they don’t have time to accuse you of another, at least not with a print run of any significance. You have to tell them the true reason you did it.” He stared at me, uncomprehending. “That it was madness, and what drove you to it.”

He stared at me. “What, that I thought I was already lost to Hayel?” Of course, it was the last thing in the universe he wanted to bring out public, so his mind was balking.

“Yes. And why.”

He gasped; he’d understood. “I can’t tell them that! I can’t shame you like that!”

“I don’t care!” I said, throwing out my arms. “They already know I was raped sideways and backwards and more times than you could count; I’ve never hidden it. You can’t shame me worse.” In truth, I felt sick at the idea of all Arko knowing; it soured the back of my throat with bile and turned my stomach hollow. But as he had to do what he had to do, so did I. Semana kra.

His voice quavered, full of tears. “I can’t even talk about it without breaking down... and they don’t want that for an Imperator… Gods!”

“You’re not talking... that’s what you’ve got orators for! And if you’re under truth-drug you won’t break down.”

He doubled over, clenching his fists in his hair, as if to do a writhing parody of the Arkan prayer-gesture. “It would be ever so much easier just to cut my own throat now. It would save ever so many steps!”

The last of my patience burned to a smouldering ember. I grabbed his shoulders.

“Minis Kurkas Joras Amitzas Aan! Think of your fikken people! Arkans right now are voting for that overstuffed brainless knot on a sheep’s ass because they’ve heard this and they and their children and grandchildren and untold generations are going to pay for it with Gods only know how much of all that is sacred to them with Kallens on the Crystal fikken Throne because you—won’t—do—what—you—have—to—do!!”

He shrank into himself, wrapping his arms around his head as if I were throwing firebrands at him, which brought me back to myself. “I’m sorry… I’m sorry for yelling, lad.”

“You’re… right…” he panted with a scrap of voice in each word. “I will… I’ll write the oration… arrange the truth-drugging.”

“And I can confirm it—I don’t remember it at all, but I know, and they’ll still believe me.”

“All right.” He flashed a look up at me, as shy as a lifelong slave. I held out my arms.

“You keep offering to hug me after you find out all these horrible things I’ve done.” He wrapped his own arms around himself, as people do who yearn for but deny themselves embrace.

“And you won’t let me, because you killed one man while you were taken with madness? While I was taken with madness, I sacked a whole city. Come here.” As haltingly slow and tremulous as the first time, he came. I tightened my arms, hard, around his wiry form. He was almost a man now, could take much more.

It was only for a moment, though. “Now move. Call in your people… do you want me to help?” He shook his head. “I’ll have my own missive, I’ll write it in the office and send it, in a tenth.” That was all I could or should do; beyond propriety, nothing should stand in the way of the constitution now. He ran.

I kept my note short and simple: “What Minis says was forced on him and on me by Kurkas, I confirm to be true. Understanding these things as I do, I credit that he did as he is accused today in the temporary derangement that comes of torture.”

In half a bead it was being bellowed all over the City Itself, along with his account, and then his truth-drugging was being relayed. Meanwhile the lines of voters slowly moved as each made his or her mark. We had done what we could; now it was in the hands of the Gods, or as Yeolis would express it, the will of All-Spirit as manifest in the choice of the people.




--