64 - The night of the count

When I woke up, Kallijas was already awake. “Sheng,” he whispered when I opened my eyes. “Minis is worried that he’ll be killed if Adamas Kallen wins. Do you think… I should be?”

“No, because you’d be coming with me to Yeola-e; at least I assume that’s still the plan.”

“Of course, love; but he could send assassins after me there.”

“Adamas would only want to kill you if he thought you were a threat, that you’d challenge him for the Crystal Throne somehow. If it were obvious that you meant to make your life in Yeola-e, he’d know you were no threat.”

“Right, of course. Gods... what am I doing, seeking the most powerful office in the world, when I understand politics so little?”

“Planning to do what you are planning to do,” I said, with a caress of his hair and a kiss on his beautiful aquiline nose. “To have advisors you trust who do. Kall… it’s easier than you think. People imagine all sorts of mystique and magic and that only Gods-touched people can do it, as if it isn’t all about people just being people. The same things that go on in a corner drinking-club or an office or an army unit go on in the Marble Palace, or Assembly Palace—just writ bigger. That’s all it is.”

“Feh,” Skorsas breathed sleepily from the other side of me. “Jewel of the World, how can someone as beautiful as you so take all the romance out of your own calling?”

It was a little past dawn, not yet rim-dawn. Through the open windows, Arko smelled the best it did all year; on the last day of Jitzmitthra, the whole city is scrubbed and the sluices opened fully to let the river run through the streets, so as to clean away not only the excesses of Jitzmitthra, but the whole year’s sins.

I got dressed, in the usual white-and-gold and skates; I’d put on the Imperial Robe later, just to take it off again and hand it to the Imperator Elect. Heading to the office, I ran into Minis in the corridor. He’d dressed as he had for the campaign, but raising it a little, as Kall would do.

“I think maybe I dozed a few moments,” he said when I asked how he’d slept. I wouldn’t have believed it—people often have slept when they think they haven’t—except for the redness of his eyes. “I feel as if I’ve leapt off the Rim without checking to see if I have a wing attached to me.” The only thing for it was a hug.

He buried himself in me. “I’m going to miss you… I don’t know what I’m going to do without you, in truth, Chevenga. You know you have my loyalty, always, a thousand times greater than any oath could preserve…”

I tightened my arms. “What you’re going to do without me is what you have to, and you will do fine. Besides, I’m only as far as a letter…” I trailed off, puzzled. He was looking at me with all the blood draining out of his face in shock. “What is it?”

“Gods… Muu… nas… all this time, I’ve been here… Shefen-kas… I’ve never sworn to you. The loyalty oath…”

It was true, I saw, when I thought back. It had never occurred to him to swear it, since never in his life had he had to think much about offering a loyalty oath. It had never occurred to me to ask, because I trusted him. “A little late,” I said laughing. “I hope you didn’t coat your sleeves with skin-poison so that I am now dead without knowing it.”

He didn’t laugh, but fell to his knees and put his hands in the prayer position as Arkans do to swear oaths. “I, Minis Kurkas Joras Amitzas Aan, am loyal entirely to the rightful Imperator of Arko, Ivaen Shefen—I mean, Chevenga Shae-Arano-e, in thought, word and deed, and I so swear in the witness of Muunas the God of my station, on my hope of Celestialis, may the second Fire come if I am forsworn.” He went down in the prostration, stretching his fingers almost to the front wheels of my skates. “There. Done. Even if but for a few beads.”

“For the love of all the Ten, gehit.” Even after all this time, I just never knew what I’d see from Arkans. I thought of saying that to be proper it should be done under the truth-drug, for a joke, but was afraid he’d take me up on it.

He went to watch the last of the wings come in. Kallijas came down the corridor and into the office with me, on the pretext of working; in truth he wanted to be with me in his nervousness, I think. “What was that all about, him going down?” he asked me.

“We realized, he’s never actually sworn loyalty to me,” I said, chuckling. “Less than a day left, and he had to do it anyway, complete with the face-flop. Can you imagine? I’ll miss Arkans.”

Kall froze, all the blood draining out of his face. “Aras,” he whispered. “I… mean… Muunas… Sheng… I haven’t either.” I stared at him, puzzled. “After you released me of it… the night of the Sack… and I gave you water… I never did swear the loyalty oath again!”

I probably don’t need to write what happened. He fell to his knees, hands snapping up to the prayer position, barked out the oath and thumped down in the hard soldier’s version of the prostration, stretching flat.

Last day of this. Last day of this. “Sen kaina marugh miniren, ge-fikken-HIT, kyashin Arkani!” As he got up, his face took on colour again, and he breathed a little hard, in genuine relief. “All-Spirit... get me out of this place,” I breathed. There was refuge in the constitution.

While the Ministry of Scales would administer the actual count, I’d handed all the ceremonial over to the Ministry of Celebratory Bounty. It turned out that the Assembly elections had been just a taste of what they could do.

In Yeola-e, we make no fuss at all over voting, not treating it as if it were something extraordinary and not part of the warp and woof of everyday life. Arko is very different. Of course it’s new to them.

The Presentation Platform wasn’t enough, they decided. The weather was good, so that they’d have the last wingers come in, the count totaled, the ceremonies conducted and the speeches made, all on the Marble Palace roof. The roof facing city-ward has slender turrets all along the front, with the golden sunbursts on them and gold-leafed roofs; now four of them had been appropriated as flagpoles and marked with increments representing numbers of votes. As the count was made, the red/silver, green, orange and blue silken flags would be gradually raised accordingly.

The entire square had been festooned with banners and ribbons of gold mixed with the candidates’ colours, as had the Presentation Platform; on it, the orchestra with its drums and gongs would sit. The most enormous gong, two man-heights high, I knew: I’d last seen it in the Mezem. No results would be accepted from wingers who came in after rim-sunset, and the count proper would begin then.

For all they should be exhausted and recovering from Jitzmitthra, the square was a quarter full of Arkans even before dawn. Some had camped overnight or even longer to ensure themselves places, as for the Ten Tens.

As the day drew on, the crowd-noise coming through my window gradually increased, quieting only for the noon observance. I’d purposely left my office door open; Binchera peeked in. “The writers are begging and pleading with you, since no one else in all Arko is working, to come out onto the roof and talk with them.”

Eventually, late afternoon, I did. The square and all the other roofs around it were now jammed with Arkans. Only election officials, candidates with their aides and writers who’d booked places could get up here, but the writers were thick already with their sun-hats and lap-desks, their folding-chairs set up in an orderly block.

The packets from the flyers and runners that had already arrived were neatly stacked in a canopied and fenced-off section of roof, guarded by twenty full-geared men with Ilesias Mahid as their commander; next to that were two gold-cornered desks on which the count would be done, then re-done to confirm.

The whole section of roof was dotted thickly with torches so it would be bright into the night; to light the flags they had a glow-globe bound to each one, and fire-beacons backed by huge silver mirror-bowls to point light at them. No surprise in Arko, behind everything was a long and thick line of fireworks, set to go.

The ritual of passing the Robe from one living Imperator who is not a regent to another Imperator (or regent) had needed writing. I had given that task to the Fenjitzas; the Ministry of Celebratory Bounty would conduct the rest of the ceremonial. In the past, the usual utterances given by an Imperator passing out of power in the presence of one coming in had been death-moans and gurgles.

Down in the square, it was a party, as if Jitzmitthra were seven days this year; they sang, drank, smoked Arkanherb, waved banners, and raised fast chants of the names of their candidates, trying to drown each other out. When they caught sight of me there was a roar, that wouldn’t settle down until I went to the edge and stood waving for a while. Each time a winger came in they’d raise an enormous din, too. Some twenty-five or so should come in today, from the furthest ends of the empire, the last of the several hundred the task had required altogether.

As the sun sank towards the western Rim, the candidates began arriving. Naturally I measured the roars the crowd loosed for Kall and Minis against Adamas’s. Which was greater, I couldn’t tell. The noise increased as the edge of the sun touched the Rim, and Celebratory Bounty people began lighting torches. It was a quarter gone, then half, then three-quarters. A last winger came diving down whistling-fast, planting her feet with a thump just in time.

The last edge of sun’s flame clung to the haze-purpled Rim for a moment, and was gone, against a deep blue and orange sky. The crowd noise rose so loud I had to yell in my battlefield voice for a writer right next to me to hear. Then the host was quieted; the booming upwards of two pure-white rockets and the crash and long deep ring of the Mezem gong, both at once, were the signal asking Arko’s attention so the ceremony and count could begin.





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