69 - My people whom I love

Excerpt from the transcript of Chevenga’s farewell speech to Arko, published by the Pages of Arko, Muunas 20, 50^th P.A.

Every time I start a speech in Yeola-e I always say, “My people, whom I love.” And while I know it is strange for someone whose hair is this colour and curly and whose eyes are dark like mine to say “my people” to Arkans, love comes from the heart, and even if only in my heart, you are my people.

So: my people, whom I love:

When I first came to Arko, I wasn’t in a position to get the kindest impression of Arkans, on a slaver’s chain, and then in the Mezem. Then came the start of the war, and some other actions of the former Imperator that didn’t leave me warm towards him. Then my position was by necessity locked in enmity against Arko, until I carved my way onto the Crystal Throne.

I have been asked by many Yeolis, how can you stand Arkans? After what they did to us, after what they did to you, why don’t you hate them? Now you have them under your thumb, why don’t you make them suffer worse?

My answer is this: I don’t hate because there’s no point in hating. Hate solves no problems, hate rights no wrongs, hate does not feed a people, or shelter them, or even, in truth, defend them. Hate does not prevent wars, but engenders them. Hate makes only more hate; vengeance leads only to more vengeance.

If we have an argument with another nation because it, or its leaders, are blinded by greed or corruption, both of which always have underneath them, fear, do we do better hating, and putting further fear into its people, or do we do better encouraging them to open their eyes, by freeing them from what it is they fear?

If we gain power over them, do we do better etching fear and pain into their souls, which will grow into anger and desperation, or do we do better giving of what we have, sharing the ways of freedom that we know, so as to ease the fear and pain they live with?

Do we do better becoming worse enemies, or making peace and making friends?

When I first became Imperator, the nature of the economy of Arko was that prosperity was dependent on conquest. Arko could not sustain without growing; that’s how it worked. That meant an endless cost in lives, in maimings, in bereavement, and in fear, because a nation at war lives always with these things. I set out early on to change that, so that the people of Arko would have the choice to live and let live, so that they could know life in peacetime, life without the endless gnawing of fear.

I also set out to make Arko into a nation ruled by laws to which all Arkans are equally subject, and ruled by the will of its people through the vote, rather than the whim of a single person. One soul may be inclined to excess, or cruelty, or enmity against some portion of his own people, or even madness, as generations of Arkans know all too well; the greater the number sharing power, the more consistently moderate the decisions will be. And when even the Imperator is subject to the law, he can be kept honest by it.

I know it was difficult for Arkans to change their ways. I commend you all for your courage, your trust in me and your belief in yourselves, as you’ve taken up practices that are unfamiliar. These changes came to their full fruition with the election of Assembly in the spring, and then the regent and Imperator a little more than a half-month ago, and I think you already feel the sweetness of freedom and the lightening of your load.

How well I and all those who helped me did our work to make the new government resilient against corruption and despotism, only time will tell. It depends also on your vigilance as citizens and willingness to dismiss by vote those who succumb. I hope for the sake of Arko and for the sake of all the world, that Arko’s freedom from these things will last forever. There is no gift I would more gladly have given, and nothing I would rather be remembered for by the people of Arko.

In Yeola-e we have a definition for those who make war against us, first expressed by the sage for whom our nation is named: it is, “those who have no ears for our words of justice and sense,” in other words, those with whom it is impossible to settle differences by talk and agreement. What we faced in Arko was but one person who would not listen, and a nation of others who had no choice but to go along.

We leave an Arko in which the people have that choice.

I was asked by a writer on the day the Imperial vote was counted, will I be glad to leave? And despite the part of me that always desperately misses home and everyone there, I realized that Arko has become my second home, and I will miss everyone here when I am gone. I will miss the work, and though I never thought I’d say this—at one time in my life I was giving everything I had in me to get out of here—I’ll miss the place. The sun coming over the rim in the morning, the air, so quiet and warm at night so you hear talk all over the city, the green of the forest and the blue of the lake, the matchless beauty of the Avenue of Statuary, the shining of gold turrets; of course I’ll miss the Marble Palace and all the beauty in it.

And I will miss all of you, who have been so kind to me. I will miss living among those who gave me the ultimate mercy of forgiveness, for the act I regret most in my life.

I have my people, but I will always, in my heart, have my second people.

For myself, I go on to the next campaign in my life, one which has already been somewhat more dangerous than I expected, but which I go to with a great deal of eagerness and anticipation. I can’t yet really imagine what life will be when I go what my people call asa kraiya, beyond the sword. I’ve been so wed to it that hanging it up for good will be very strange to me. But I know it is what I must do; I know it’s the next course my life must take, and I look forward to it. I humbly ask for your best wishes and your blessings.

Where my life will go politically I am not entirely certain. I will remain semanakraseye of Yeola-e if my people continue to deem me acceptable. What else I will do I am not sure except that I will always keep my highest dream in mind: everlasting peace, the world over. When I was a child, and couldn’t know where life would take me when I grew up, I hoped that I would be known, at the end of my life, as one who had made peace. My ambition was to be called Chevenga the Peacemaker. I know that is hard to imagine, and I know that, if you don’t know Yeoli you don’t hear it, but Chevenga is very much a warrior’s name, it sounds incongruous with “Peacemaker.” But I wanted that nonetheless, and my intention for the rest of my life is to fulfill that ambition. If before I die, I make more peace than I have made war, if I preserve more lives than I have taken, I will go to my pyre satisfied with what I have done in life.

I have a lengthy list of Arkans to whom I owe thanks for all manner of things, so I hope this doesn’t go on too long…

†

Improper though it was as I had not formally relinquished the Seals yet, the night of the count, I had let Kallijas try them on while we were both naked and in private in the Imperial bedchamber. They were magnificent, winking gold on his long graceful fingers, even as he clenched his eyes shut and said, “I want to hide my head under the pillows.”

The day after, of course, I did relinquish them to him, in a ceremony in the Great Temple, with the Fenjitzas and Fenjitza presiding. Then I took him into the office where I kept the Imperial Book. It sang to him when he touched it as it had to me, and then showed the moving pictures and sounds on the first twelve pages just as it had for me. My touch did nothing now; only his. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel a wrenching in my heart.

On the twelfth page now was a portrait of him, looking bewildered just as he did now. “It captures an Imperator’s image somehow,” I said. He just closed his eyes again, saying, “I am trying to keep this all from being too much.”

There is little more to tell, of the Arkan part of my life. I felt two eight-days would do it for the transition. By getting up and dawn and staying up until the death-hour I managed both to finish writing the constitution, and stay at Kallijas’s elbow most of the time while he worked, teaching him the procedures, introducing him to the underlings and so forth. So he got to sign it, not I, once Assembly had ratified it, unanimously; but, bless his heart, he added a line for me to sign as author.

Moving his own and the family things, Skorsas took charge of, taking the entire two eight-days. Tawaen had already left to spend the summer in Leyere with his mother; the other children would fly with us.

The Yeoli garrison in Arko was closed up and the warriors sent home, along with all the guards but a handful for me and mine. Some of the Yeoli staff at the Marble Palace stayed on, but most left, necessitating much hiring. Most Yeolis in Arko were leaving, including what was left of the Yeoli hawks.

Rafas cancelled the charges against Faraiko and Kamallo for election-stealing, as the law had not been in place when they had done it, and Kamallo fled back to Yeola-e; with Faraiko it didn’t matter, since she was one of the fourteen who’d been charged with plotting to assassinate me.

They were tried during the transition. Because I had relinquished the Seals and the new constitution was now in force, there was no longer a law requiring that Yeolis be tried before a Yeoli judge, so it was an Arkan, for all their advocates argued. I was called as a witness to give my opinion of what the effect would have been, had they succeeded; it was like reliving Sharaina’s trial. At least I didn’t have to have a screaming-match with one or more of them while I was in the chair of testimony, as no one was arguing justification. Their arguments were pretty much entirely comprised of blaming each other and Inatalla.

For all their diligence, Rafas’ people were not able to catch Inatalla before he got away to Brahvniki, made it very public that he was there fleeing political persecution, so that he couldn’t just be spirited back secretly. Since Brahvniki offers refuge to such people as a matter of course, he was safe there so long as he didn’t break their laws. I’ll have to have a talk with Stevahn about drafting an extradition treaty, I thought, until I realized I could no longer speak for Arko, my second people, whom I loved. Kall would have to do it.




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