134 - What if my flaw is fatal?

“So that’s what you’re up against,” said Chosaiya. “We’re doing weaknesses, and that’s your greatest weakness. Those who slandered you during the impeachment campaign were discredited, so you needn’t worry about them much. Linasika has made a gain, though, in that he can say he ferreted out the truth and his distrust of you is proven justified.

“He also has an advantage for as long as the trial takes, in that I am going to advise you to keep your mouth shut with the writers until it’s over, in case you unthinkingly say something that can be used to show you’ve somehow contradicted yourself in court—everyone does it—whereas he and his ilk can say whatever they like. They won’t be in the fray so they can be the archers on the mountainside.”

“I’ve already spoken to the writers about it,” I said. “Twice.” They’d camped so resolutely around the Independent that I’d invited them into the dining hall, once after Linasika had given them my confession and again after I’d signed off the charge papers. Of course, other than reading them the papers, I’d mostly stone-walled them, since they were asking me for impossible answers such as how the trial would turn out.

“I know,” she said. The Terera Pages, All-Spirit bless them, had done a special edition, and it lay open on her desk. “You’re no fool, you were quite careful, and I’m not overly concerned. It’s best to say even less, though. I know, you are used to relying on your own open-heartedness, and the eloquence with which you convey it, because so far it’s always seen you through. But remember: the more genuine a person is when someone thinks he’s a liar and a lunatic, the more fiendishly dishonest and insane he seems.”

“I hope we’ll be getting to strengths soon,” I said. “And I hope you can think of some.”

Chosaiya chuckled, and patted me on the shoulder in an impersonal but confident way. “Yes, yes, don’t worry, we’re almost there—no, we are there, I’m fresh out of weaknesses. Don’t be downhearted; in a sense, never being downhearted is the greatest strength of everyone in your situation.” Easy for her to say.

“Strengths: first of all, as soon as the trial’s over—and as I say, they’ll be trying to make it quick, and we’ll help them all we can—you will be able to bring your open-heartedness and your eloquence to bear. When you lay out your truth in your own words, there is no one more compelling.

“Second, and this is the one that should overwhelm everything else: your record. The unfailing brilliance, the credulity-defying courage, the staggering competence, at such a young age… everything that you are that brought this nation out of its direst time ever.”

She saw me cringing. “I know that right now you feel like a turd from the lead horse after all the rest of the cavalry has galloped over it, Chevenga, but you haven’t somehow ceased to be these things, and everyone knows it. Now is not the time for false modesty, or modesty at all. You have to remember that you are these things, and we have to play on them in court, and you have to be them, without shouting them, whenever the people are looking.”

“The pristine honesty?” I said.

“Yes.” Chosaiya had deep grey eyes that could pin you to your chair. She did it to me now. “The pristine honesty, for which you’ve always had a name. There were overriding considerations, remember? Your honesty is otherwise pristine.” I took a deep breath. “Chevenga, you tell me: when you were in your teens, did you not know what was in you, how good a war-time semanakraseye you were capable of becoming?”

“Yes, I did,” I admitted. “My mother did, too… I spoke to her about it. Though I don’t want to bring her into this, if I can help it.”

“Well, if you are asked why you took the decision, a clear and complete answer requires mention of her counsel, you have to mention it.”

“Could she be… charged?”

“She could, as an accomplice.” Now I wanted not so much to cry into my tea as to throw up into it. “But she won’t. Remember, you’ve only been charged because Linasika wants to take you down. He’s not after her; no one is.” I took another, deeper, breath.

“So, was it not a worse crime, to risk Yeola-e losing you as semanakraseye, than to breach 21-1 and 21-5-7? You knew what was in you, and you also understood that Assembly could not know what was in you. You’re going to say that in court.”

I felt a ripple inside, like you see on the water in a jar when it’s jolted. I was remembering my father speaking of the law unwritten, and Benaiat Ivahn saying that no one would ever own me, not even my people, when I’d been fifteen.

“But I’m not going to be a good war-time semanakraseye after I go asa kraiya.”

“Two answers to that: first, it’s irrelevant to what you decided before you became semanakraseye, which is what you’re charged for, because you had no idea you’d go asa kraiya then. Second, you have it in you to be a very good peace-time semanakraseye too. People know you’re not just brilliant as a warrior. Asa kraiya is an honourable choice, and nothing to apologize for. I want you to apologize for nothing publicly, Chevenga. Absolutely nothing. No matter how apologetic you feel. Got it?”

“Got it,” I said, numbly.

“One more strength—maybe the greatest, as I said before. You are perfectly aware of all the weaknesses, and yet you stay confident. No obstacle is too great for you; no danger fazes you.”

“Is there someone else in this office I’m not seeing, who you’re talking to?” I asked her. “Hiding behind the file cabinet, maybe?”

Chosaiya transfixed me with her grey gaze again. “Chevenga, do you remember the speech you made at Ossotyeya, when you came back from Arko? I wasn’t there myself, but I had it recounted to me many times. We would repeat it to each other over and over; we could never get enough.

“Virtually all of Yeola-e was under the boot of Arko, the treasury was bare, and there were only four thousand warriors left, as far as anyone here knew, with worn or broken or no gear, trapped in a tiny valley. People were thinking, maybe more than they ever admitted to you, ‘We should just accept that this is the end of our road as a free people, and surrender.’

“But you came. And you spoke. And when you were done speaking, every person who’d been even close to earshot believed with all their soul not only that we could win back, but that we would. Then—and we could only have done it following you, no one else—we did. Then turned around and conquered them.

“If you have the spirit in you for that, you have it in you for this.”

“This is different,” I said.

“How is it different, except for being about a thousand times less dire?”

“I did that for Yeola-e,” I said. “This is just for myself.”

“You give me another argument for why you should keep the position,” she said, then thought for a bit, lips pursed. Finally she said, “Well, Fourth Chevenga Shae-Arano-e, semanakraseye of Yeola-e, I guess it’s a matter of how much you want to stay semanakraseye of Yeola-e. If you do, you’re going to have to find it in your heart to have that spirit, for yourself. Because that’s what it’s going to take.”

“Chosaiya… what if they are right? What if my flaw is fatal?”

I thought she might be fazed by the idea. I was. Had I not always had a fatal flaw? But she stuck me with those grey spear-points again, and said, without hesitation, “Do you think it is?”

I should have known she’d do that. I studied the grain of her desk, feeling air whistle cold through my nose as I took a deep breath. Then my mind filled with a flash, and I said words I hadn’t known I would until I did.

“All Yeola-e needs to go asa kraiya, and give up the death in us.”

While I sat amazed, in a kind of after-glow of the flash, with my thoughts sluggishly catching up—one of them was ‘I didn’t mean asa kraiya literally’ and another was ‘what in the all-encompassing gaze of All-Spirit did I mean?’—she said, “Fourth Chevenga, your flaw is not fatal. And you’re not doing this just for yourself.”

--