135 - Walking right into the eagle's claws

Done with strategy, we went on to tactics. “Now I know it’s the law of your trade and so you know it,” Chosaiya said, “but just to remind you: in the absolute worst case you could be exiled without safe conduct. But no one would ever do that. The plausible worst case is you could be impeached and barred for life from reinstatement or any other public office, and have some humiliation added such as a flogging and an order to apologize to the people. The absolute best case is acquittal for reason of justification; the plausible best case, in my opinion, is an order to apologize to the people, but no judicial impeachment.”

“I’m already half-impeached,” I said. “At the end of my half-year leave Assembly will take a re-approval vote; that was the compromise. I’m only semanakraseye ceremonially now.”

“You are? I didn’t follow it exactly… I’ll tell you what is likely to happen then. The Arch-Arbitrate trial will be over in a few days; but Assembly will move to defer its vote until they were going to do it anyway. Not good; it gives Linasika and his ilk more time to drag your name through the mud. But it was a half-year starting back in summer, so there’s what, two moons left?”

“A half-year less seven days,” I said. “When they half-unimpeached me, we renewed it.”

A look as if she’d found the milk was sour by taking a sip flashed across her face. “That’s not necessarily etched in stone, though; you could request it be ended any time, could you not?”

“If I could argue I no longer needed it. But I couldn’t credibly do that before the Committee presents its report.”

“How long do you think that might be?”

“I have no idea. They’ve asked for one extension already.” It would help, I thought, if I’d quit giving them new things to investigate.

“All right. Nothing we can do about that, let’s just concern ourselves with what we can. The central argument: as a youth, you essentially knew what you were capable of, and that it would be needed. How do we prove that? I think we should remind them that Yeola-e was beset with enemies as you were growing up. Your father was assassinated by an Enchian in revenge for something that he did in a war against them which happened when you were hardly more than a baby; then you were fighting Lakans yourself as a youth. No reason to think that wouldn’t continue, and the gifts unique to you wouldn’t be needed.”

“That’s true enough. I grew up steeped in war.”

She asked me to remember this for her. “You know,” she said after I’d done so for a while, and she’d taken a thick sheaf of notes, “it was a different time then. We hardly even get sheep-raids now. If that’s not to your credit more than anyone else’s, I’d like to know whose.”

“But if we were to argue that, they could turn it on me because I’m going asa kraiya. I’ve heard it enough from people trying to talk me out of it.” All-Spirit help me, she was teaching me to think like an advocate.

“Yeola-e has still benefited, and no one can deny it,” she said. “You might say, you yourself set the stage for you to go asa kraiya, though that would be a bit much to say in court. All right… steeped in war, good…” Her Arkan pen, made of polished ebony, flashed over the paper. “Now, let’s get your mother’s part out of the way.”

“I’d rather, and I’m sure she’d rather, she didn’t even have to testify.”

“I know, but if someone calls her to the chair, she’s testifying, and there’s nothing you can do about it. But I need not call her, and I doubt the prosecutor will, since he wants to show you as entirely responsible.”

“Her part was mostly to tell me to wait; that I didn’t need to decide yet.”

“Until when?”

I cast my mind back. “Until I was nineteen. But even then, all she did was tell me I knew best myself, and agree with me when I decided.”

“On the night before you became semanakraseye, you mean.” Advocates always like to have these things absolutely straight, like generals, or good press-writers.

“Well… what I meant under truth-drug was that the night before I became semanakraseye was the last time I revisited the question. I had already in truth decided, about a moon earlier.”

Chosaiya steepled her hands, the pen held in one curled finger. “Chevenga, I want you to recount to me the whole course of it… all your thoughts, all your wrestlings of conscience, all through. With emphasis on whatever the reason was you decided, earlier in the year you were nineteen.”

It stood me in good stead, of course, that I’d wrestled. It had been so long ago, and so much had happened since, it was hard to remember my thoughts, and it occurred to both of us that the court might have me testify under truth-drug. Right there in her office, to bring it back better, I put myself in a trance deep enough that I had no idea how I answered her questions until she read it all back to me from her notes, and I was indeed reminded of things I’d long forgotten. It was interesting to see again the different thoughts I’d had at different degrees of maturity, from when I’d first learned the laws at thirteen or so, to the night before my twentieth birthday, when I’d thought, ‘Last chance to change my mind.’

But she had not asked me in detail my thoughts after Jinai’s reading, which was what had made me decide. She wanted to see my transcript.

When I had gone to Arko on the peace mission, I’d left it with my other papers, in my office. Everything there had been carefully boxed up and spirited out of Vae Arahi well before the Arkans took it, then returned to me in Ossotyeya when I got back. I’d picked out only the most important papers, which included that, carried it with me all the way to Arko during the war, kept it in the Marble Palace, then the Independent, then the Marble Palace again. Now I knew exactly where it was: in the back sword-side corner of the central draw of my desk, folded into a leathern folio. “No, sit down, I have a runner,” she said. I wrote the note that would get him past Krero and Skorsas.

I felt outside of myself, as if I’d taken a drug, as I drew out the transcript from the other papers that were there, the most precious and private, and handed it to her. I had never let any other pair of living eyes read this. She pushed my tea-cup towards me and patted my hand, sensing my unease without even looking up. Ridiculous, I told myself. I made the choice that determined the fate of Yeola-e based on this, and I’m embarrassed to show it to an advocate?

I watched her eyes as she read, the grey irises aiming like arrows at each word for an instant, as if that determined my fate. They stayed impassive as she asked me, here and there, to clarify. Then when she reached the end, she stared at me. All-Spirit… is that a ‘you’re doomed’ stare? What’s this going to mean, how’s it going to be read? Then she got up, confidently, and flung her arms around me.

Somehow I could not imagine her, with those clothes that no wrinkle dare mar and that strict bun of hair, as a mother, though for all I knew she had children. But the hug was a mother’s, full of the feeling of solace. Then she took my face between her hands, still staring at me, and shook her head, her face amazed.

“You were walking right into the eagle’s claws, and you knew it,” she said.

I signed chalk. “Because it was best… it had the best reading. I’m just worried…” I’d been pacing as she read, but now sat down again, as if I were suddenly tired, while she stayed standing. “I’m worried that people will take it as selfish… that I chose what would allow me to… live… longest.”

“No, Chevenga.” She looked shocked that I’d even think it. “What this reading showed you was that your fate was Yeola-e’s. If you were done, we were. History went on to prove the veracity of this. Your fate was Yeola-e’s; no one but Jinai could know it back then, but everyone does now.”

“But… but I can’t say that!” I wanted to slink out her door, or dive out her window, or hide under her desk; anything, but stand in the fire of this.

“What? Why not? What do you say in the chair of testimony, semanakraseye Chevenga, other than the truth, clear and complete? You’re going to; do you understand that? The argument is right here.” She smacked the papers with the back of her hand. “This takes away their arrogance argument; the prosecution has been planning, I’m sure, to contend that it was the height of arrogance to think you would be so crucial when you were so young. But you weren’t just speculating; you had evidence, in the form of an augur’s foreknowledge. All-Spirit… you being charged is even more of a travesty than I thought.”

I sat stupid, my mind too much of a whirl to make sense of any of it. The only thread that came out of it enough to form into words was the other possibility I dreaded. “Chosaiya… you don’t think I’m going to catch it for not revealing the reading, to give a more definite warning about the war?”

“Well, why didn’t you?”

“Because I didn’t think they’d let me go. They’d think, ‘Oh, somehow we’ll get around it,’ and it would be some kind of half-action, and the first or second fork would play out. As well, the warning would have made no difference; remember the part where he said that he foresaw me cursing him for not having words to describe the trick? Poor Jinai, he has no idea how many times I’ve cursed him. Because I am sure he meant Triadas’ strategy of using the border troops as a diversion and attacking from the sea. Had he been able to word that, I’d have revealed that part of it, at least. And everything would have been very different.”

How the momentary abilities or inabilities, the fleeting mind-blocks that prevent words, of an augur making a reading that flashes past in a tenth, can set the course of history in stone, to be remembered a thousand years. How many lives had turned, on that stumble of tongue? Jinai was better off not knowing. I wondered if he was able to keep his gift only because he could not know such things.

“So if you are asked, why did you keep it yourself and not give warning, you know what to tell the court: what you just told me. Chevenga, not only is honesty required there; it stands you in the best stead. It does, which is not the case for everyone I defend. The more I find out about you, the more stark the truth of this is for me.”

All-Spirit, I thought; after Sharaina’s trial, I thought I was done justifying my very worth in a Yeoli court of law. This time it’s before the whole kyashin people, as embodied in Assembly.

Everything is going as it should. I could just see it. Surya would say this was part of my healing. After Niku and I had both gone to see him and I had learned I didn’t count myself worth of love if I lived long, I’d asked him, “You saw this coming a long time ago, didn’t you? And now are going to say it was a necessary part of my healing.” He just smiled and said, “From the start, and, yes.” All-Spirit only knew what he was seeing now.

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