67 - Imperator Elect

In the divine witness of the Ten Gods, by these presents, my final signed document as Imperator of Arko, I, Fourth Chevenga Shae-Arano-e, acting both as Imperator and as semanakraseye of Yeola-e with the full voted approval of the Assembly of Yeola-e, relinquish all claim of legal power over the Empire of Arko on behalf of myself and on behalf of the nation of Yeola-e, and declare the Empire of Arko a nation sovereign and free; by these presents also, I also accept of the vote of the people of Arko, legally conducted on Anae 36, the final day of the 51^st-to-last year of the Present Age, to choose a new Imperator, and relinquish the office, signs, seals, powers, privileges and obligations of the Imperator to the legally-chosen Imperator Elect,

Under the light of a torch, I had signed and stamped it with the four Imperial Seals; I would fill the name in when I knew it.

It was coming clearer, or so I hoped. Kallijas and Minis’s flag was a full flag-width higher than Adamas’s, now, and their supporters had thoroughly seized control of the din in the square. It’s the west, I thought. Marsae had just been added in. Yes, people are only voting for two years of Kallijas; but they’re also thinking, anyone he is willing to regent for is good too.

“It looks as if you’ll be swearing to your son,” I yelled to Inensa over the racket, “rather than using that needle on yourself.” She looked at me, cocking her head slightly in a sudden motion like a bird, as if in incomprehension. I touched my own shield-hand palm with my sword-hand finger. “Or were you planning to use it on someone else?”

I was speaking to her in Arkan; her Yeoli guard remained blissfully ignorant, but her Arkan guard stared at me, then at her, pointedly, his hand suddenly on his sword-hilt. “Stand down,” I said to him. Minis stared at her, his eyes widening to white all around the blue. “Mother!” he gasped.

Inensa glanced up at the flags. “You think it is certain, Shefen-kas?”

“Well, let’s see.” I wandered over to the counting desk. She followed, bringing a son and two guards in a stiff moving tableau with me. I hadn’t paid attention to the numbers, all night, but this was good reason. “What’s the total counted so far?” I asked the confirming-clerk.

“Just shy of four million,” he said. “Looks like another half-million or so to go, so, only another half-bead, Imperator.”

I wanted to leap for joy. There are about eight million people in the empire. Only people past third threshold, age twenty-one, are permitted to vote. Four and a half million was a million and a half more than had voted in either of the impeachment votes.

Each time you taste it, Arko, I thought, you drink a little deeper, tighten your grasp on your own power that much more. Maybe already you are thinking, ‘I will never let it go.’ That thought is the death of tyrants; or their forestalling in the first place. Take it, Arko. It is the one form of power that never corrupts.

“Not quite certain, Inensa,” I said, “but Adamas would have to win an implausibly-large majority of the remaining votes to catch up. Arko knows it; listen to them.”

She turned her shield-hand palm-up and with her sword-hand glove-tips, drew the needle out of its pocket, as only an Arkan would have the skill to do. She surrendered it to the Yeoli guard. “Tell him not even to scratch himself with it,” she said to me. “It has datura juice on it.”

I interpreted for her, and the guard said “A-e kras,” wrapped it very carefully in a slip of paper and tucked it into his pouch. “She doesn’t have anything else on her, does she, Chevenga?” he asked me. I signed charcoal.

“I understand why you had that,” Minis said to her, his lips taut. “But I would prefer there be nothing more between us that is necessary to understand in that way.”

“I hear,” she said, very impassively, but did not add, “I obey.”

“Whether you meant it for yourself or for me, either way,” I said, “you’d be doing your son out of someone who means everything to him.” She stared at me impassively. “You know what he needs from you, yes?” Minis turned and scurried away, covering his face with his hands.

“I know. He needs me as a mother... a parent. I am concerned that I cannot correct… re-align… my thinking enough to provide him that.”

“He doesn’t need anything a parent gives but one, because he’s effectively grown up. He needs the one thing that parents give even to their grown children: love. Do you think he got it from Kurkas?”

Inensa showed the most emotion yet, pinching her eyes tightly shut just for an instant, as if something had come at her face.

“Mahid are not taught how to love,” she said, in a dead voice. “I do not know how.” She touched the motherstone.

“A person doesn’t need to be taught how to love. They need to be trained out of it. You see the look on a young child’s face; you think he was taught that?” She shook her head stiffly. “I don’t know how young he was when he was taken from you. But somewhere in him he remembers nine moons in your womb.”

“He was taken from me the moment he was born. I only saw a glimpse of him. I only knew him inside... never outside, as mine.” A thin strand of hair had fallen out of her coiff beside her ear; in the torchlight I saw it was trembling.

“You remember, too: inside, as you say.”

“When the count is over they sound the gong, do they not? It must be soon now,” she said. Then, as if her attempt to change the subject had failed with herself, she said, “I felt him move within me. I was not to speak to him, nor sing to him while I carried him. I admit the failure. If he had been female... no loss, but... he might become the Heir.

“All he wants, all he needs, from you is whatever it was in you that made you sing to him,” I said. She nodded. Someone walked near with a torch, and I saw her eyes, though dry, were red-rimmed under the face-paint.

Minis lurked at the edge of our conversation, wanting to return, but afraid of what he might hear. I beckoned him in. “Inensa, I think your son will be more solid on the throne this way than he would have been the other way,” I said. “It may not seem that way, but I know what people feel when they’ve chosen someone by vote.”

She nodded in her stiff way. “You really can feel it, can’t you?” Minis asked me. “The vote.”

“Yes, I can.”

“What laid you all but flat, when they held up those candles.”

“Minis—” The flags had been moved again, and the roar was so loud I waited for it to ebb before I went on, and used my battlefield voice even when it had. “There is nothing like it! You’re about to find out. Everyone who has thoughts of deposing or assassinating you knows he’s going against the will of the people. There’s a force to that, which inhibits. Not all of them, but most; look at the difference between my two terms, how many assassination attempts.”

“It’s like courting,” he bellowed back. “Will they like me? Will they want me? Do they love me? They love you; it’s obvious.”

“They love you too, that’s what you’re finding out. At least enough to give you a chance. It’s the ultimate courting, in a way.”

“Not that I know anything about courting… Chevenga, when the fear goes away… I don’t know what I’ll feel.”

“At that point, it won’t matter what you feel,” I shouted. “You just have to do your work. What is more important than them loving you is you loving them. I know you plan not to forget that, but repeating never hurts. I still repeat it to myself.”

“Even when they piss you off?” He looked at his mother, then down at the madly torch-waving crowd.

“You want to come a little aside, I’ll let you in on something!” As long as no one was within arm’s length, there wasn’t a chance of our words being heard.

“A little more than an eight-day after we announced your candidacy... I talked with Surya about what my people have asked of me, in my life.”

“Too much, if you ask me,” he said, with a bit of a spitting in his tone.

“The next day, thinking about it, I got so angry I decided, ‘I quit. Right here, right now. I’m not going to raise a finger for them, not for another moment.’ And I took off the signet and the seals.”

He stared at me, brows so high they put a middle-aged man’s crease on his young forehead.

“Kallijas knocked me senseless.” The crease gained a few more years. “Seriously; when he saw the seals, bang. He apologized when I woke up, but told me it was to give him and others close to me a chance to talk sense into me. Which they did. If you heal from madness, madness can come up sometimes.”

“I’m very glad he was there,” Minis shouted drily.

“Yes, in the end, so am I. I had to thank him with my hand on my forelock. Point being, I had a lapse in my love for them, while I was still on duty, and that is wrong. You have to be careful, you have to watch for it in yourself, and, yes, have others around who are utterly trustworthy. The position demands perfection; but we are only human. The only way to correct our own flaws is to listen with open heart to others.”

“I wish perfection were possible,” Minis bellowed.

“Feh! That’d make it too easy.” He snorted, and made a pout at me like a child.

I went back towards the edge of the roof, and a herd of writers surged toward me, somehow giving itself permission. “Imperator Kallijas and Minis have won your thoughts how much do you credit your own recommendation why do you think they did how do you feel about it is it hard to give up the Crystal Throne what will this mean to Arko…” Other herds were after Minis and Kallijas and the other candidates as well.

A hand touched my elbow. “Imperator…” I saw the Ministry of Scales insignia; a count official. They were done. I waved off the writers, thankful to have the excuse. The official took me to the confirmation desk, pulling out a chair for me. The counting chief was just finishing signing off the document which laid out the final totals. “If you will certify it, Imperator,” he said to me.

Minis Kurkas Joras Amitzas Aan upon Third Threshold with Kallijas Itrean Aitzas serving as Regent until that time: 1,898,769

Adamas Kallen Aitzas: 1,720,532

Kin Immen Kazien Aitzas: 481,023

Mil Torii Itzan Aitzas: 358,027

Total Votes: 4,458,351

“Gather all the candidates here,” I said, and three Scales people fanned out from the desk, elbowing their way through the writers. Through a momentary break in the thicket of people, I saw Minis and his mother. They had their arms around each other.

“You all witness this,” I said, once they were all here, showing them the document. Adamas looked as if he’d taken a bite from a rotten fruit. “Do you all accept these totals as true and legal and to be enacted as the will of the people of Arko? I ask you to sign to that.” Mil moved first to take the pen, then Kin; Minis and Kall hung back so as not to seem too eager. The motion of Adamas’s hand, as he signed, was full of bitterness. When all five had, I signed and sealed it myself, and said, “Sound the gong.”

As they did, the ring shaking us all to the bones, only to be drowned out by the howl of the crowd, Kall came close beside me. I felt I should look at him closely. His eyes were filled with something I had never seen in them before, something I’d never even imagined in them: abject terror. I put my arms around him and pulled him close. “M-m-muunas help me,” he stammered, his lips almost on my ear, the only way I could hear his voice. “Please d-d-don’t let go of me, Sheng… I’m f-f-fikken Imperator.”





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