63 - The way that favours life is the better way

The night before the election would be counted, in the hot tub of the Greater Baths, I looked down at the Imperial Seals on my hands, the two bracelets joined to the two signet-rings by chains, all in gold and generously jeweled, of course, and bearing the symbols of Arko, the most sacred of which is the houseboat on water. They are the insignia and tools, in one, of an Imperator: a missive or decree from him has legal standing only if it is stamped with all four seals as well as signed in the golden ink.

This was the last night they’d adorn my hands, at least officially. If the world were an entirely correct place, they’d adorn Kallijas’s the day after tomorrow (the ceremony of transferring the seals from one pair of hands to another is done in the Great Temple at noon, and so would have to be the day after), for all he whispered in my ear in bed, “I can’t imagine it,” and in two years, Minis’s.

I would be lying if I claimed no part of me wanted to keep them. I had molded the world so much to my will, with those little bands and knobs of gold that clasped my fingers.

In the cool pool, Minis swam desperately, his slim pale body cutting through the blue water, arms flashing, as he tried to work off his nerves. With his mother, nothing had changed; she would swear to him if he and Kall won, go to her death if they did not.

Imperial statutes, Compartment Verbal 14, Segment 8, the law that required an Imperator to publicly execute an obvious rival, would be in force when the new Imperator took over, its deletion still in debate in the Arkan Assembly before it adjourned for Jitzmitthra. The only measures I could expedite nowadays were those on which everyone agreed.

In more than one of his speeches, Adamas Kallen had said that Minis was less suited to be Imperator than to be “a person subject to Imperial 14.8.” I’d insisted we do up a plan to get him out of the City if Adamas won, but he seemed to have no spirit for it, and I wondered if he’d enact it.

In such an important vote, people try to prognosticate every way they can, whether it’s by the way the news-scribes are leaning, the talk on the street, the flight of birds, the scrying-stone, or the number of banners of which colour could be seen on the roofs of houses. Kall and Minis had taken red and silver, Mil Torii Itzan’s were blue, Adamas Kallen’s green, and Kin Kazien’s orange.

At this point, Kin’s chances looked to be less than miniscule; Arko could never tolerate a man who made himself boy to horses as Imperator, it seemed. Mil Torii had tossed Faraiko and Kamallo off his carriage as hard as he could, but not distanced himself from the other hawks, something which both Adamas and Minis had made the most of, and his chances seemed as bad as Kin’s. That left Adamas Kallen and Kallijas-Minis standing.

The Pages and other presses not only wrote in support of one candidate or another, but would cast their stories to show their chosen Imperator in his best light and his opponents in their worst. Few had supported Adamas Kallen at the start, but many that had backed Mil or Kin now turned to him, making it clear they wanted anyone but Minis. (Some even abjured Kall to maintain power if he won.) By my count, it was roughly even between Adamas and Kallijas-Minis.

By the banners in the city, I’d have guessed that Kall-Minis were ahead, maybe fifty-five to forty-five in a hundred. The Pages had supported them, albeit with some great reservations.

But the election-day tract about Miksas might make hash of all expectations. One could not tell how it, and Minis’s counter-revelation, had influenced voters by any of these signs. It was too late for presses to change their recommendations, and some people, but not all, had taken down their banners, to replace them with Jitzmitthra decorations; as well many might have changed their votes without changing their banners, for lack of time. By the talk on the street, it was up in the air.

I closed my eyes and leaned my head back on the smooth marble edge. I might fall asleep; usually when I did that, Skorsas would let me be until I next stirred, then wake me gently and help me into a carrying chair. I heard Minis splash up out of the pool, then his feet padding quietly on the marble toward me, water dripping. He got in next to me. “How are you feeling?” I asked.

“Sick. Too edgy to sleep. Like my head is going to burst apart. Just pressure.”

“Ah, Minis.” I put my arm around his shoulders. “We’ll know by this time tomorrow.”

“I feel like my heart is going to break in half.”

“It’s not. I will tell you... taking things with equanimity gets easier with age. It gets better; you get tougher.” The venerable elder speaks, I thought, laughing at myself. Yet to him, I was.

“I hope I’ll get the chance to find that out.”

Here it was, that cursed thing I’d sensed in him, that was just far too inclined to accede to death. “You need not just hope but plan,” I said.

Though my eyes were closed, I’d sensed his were too; now I felt him look at me. “I have to win.”

“The voters of Arko can choose you, or not, as Imperator; they cannot decree your death. They don’t have that right.”

“Imperial 14.8,” he said, with a finality like the thump of an axe.

“That’s why I pushed to get rid of it. But it’s not as if you can’t take measures against.”

“I know what Adamas Imperator would do… what do you mean?”

“He’s said what he will do, in not so few words. What do I mean, take measures against? Do things that will prevent it from happening if you do them before, or that will counter it during... you know, take measures against.”

“Are you encouraging me to plan something illegal, Chevenga?”

As if any reasonable law in the world would not uphold your life, as if your own culture is somehow out to condemn you; what’s wrong with you? “Of course not. There’s no law says anyone has to stick around Arko so as to have 14.8 enacted upon him. Also, you could mount a good legal defense, arguing that you are no threat because you ran in the election, which in and of itself is an expression of adherence to its validity and your loyalty to the will of the Arkan people. You have accepted their choice and so are not a plausible rival. Wouldn’t that hold up under truth-drug?”

“I could swear never to have children so no royalists could use them.”

As if your descendants should be condemned too, one bloodline being some sort of curse and so needing legal chains slapped on it. “Yes, you could do that. If that doesn’t go against what you want.” Of course he was thinking he’d never have children anyway, because his father had wreaked such havoc on his sexuality.

“The problem is that there are royalists who would hatch such plots… I’d be willing to do that.”

“You could declare that you and your descendants accept forever to be barred from the Imperatorship,” I suggested, thinking fast. Why don’t you see that the way that favours life is the better way, every time?

“That would work, too.”

“And hire a lot of security.”

“I’d be willing to do that. No more running, though. I’m sick of hiding.”

“I can understand that,” I said. “And yet if it’s that or death…” Why is it not just natural to him to do what will save him? “Maybe I should ask this: what else were you thinking? You’d just let Adamas behead you?”

“If Assembly wanted that, I’d argue it, and if they still wanted that... I’d have to. That’s almost my higher duty.”

I wanted to shake him. Who has any right to demand you give your life, as your duty? I saw, he wasn’t ready to hear that yet. “Look, 14.8 specifies Imperator, not Assembly,” I said. “Now the Assembly might decide to amend the law to make it their purview. But there are many arguing to repeal it entirely, saying it is against the constitution as we are writing it, since it sets out that a person should not be arrested or charged for anything but a crime suspected, and punished in any way for anything but a crime proven in trial, and no one has argued with that. If they leave 14.8 in force, you’d be able to argue same in court, and if the judges did right the law would then be struck down.”

“If I had to live the rest of my life in a tower with heavy security... so be it. Better that…”

“Than dead, yes. That’s the way to think. And yet, I’ve had very thick security on me as Imperator, and was still fairly free.”

“I don’t want to go running up and putting my own head on the block... but some part of me is wondering if anything less is enough.”

I tightened my arm around his shoulders and shook him a little. “Yes, Minis. It’s enough. You know, you’ve got far too much of a tendency to think of death as your higher duty. You deserve to live… don’t you know that?”

“Oh?” He looked at me, his eyebrows, made all but invisible by wetness, arching over vault-of-the-sky-blue eyes. “Does it seem like madness, Chevenga?”

“Madness is a strong word,” I said. “But… let’s just say, it doesn’t seem… like a streak of health in you.”

He tightened his arm around me. “I am deeply honoured to find myself being taught this,” he said, “by the expert.” I took a deep breath, and knew my face had turned sheepish.

“Well,” I said finally, “if you don’t believe me, go to Surya. Maybe when Surya’s finished with me, I can send him back to you. That might well be before you’re Imperator, if you win… not that he can’t work with a person who’s Imperator at the same time.”

“It’s up to him too.”

“Of course. But I wager I could twist his arm by telling him the world depends on it. As it will, if you are Imperator. Of course you might find another healer just as good in the meantime.”

He went back into the cool pool and his fast slicing back and forth, churning the water to boiling around him. The flash went right across my mind. “Minis!” He stopped short, staring up at me. “You should go to the Imperial Chapel, if you can’t sleep.”

Fear creased his fine features. “I’m not Imperator yet.”

“That didn’t stop you last time.”

“I wouldn’t presume...”

“All right then: I’m ordering you.” Of course I had absolutely no legal standing on which to do so, not being his war-commander, or his work superior, or even his healer. I mentally scrabbled to invent grounds, but he just said “Yes, ser,” anyway. It made me think he’d received an inward injunction as well.

“It’s in Their hands whether I win,” he said, his eyes more thoughtful than fearful now, and we wished each other goodnight.





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