140 - Half a leap across an abyss

17^th of the Terera Pages – e92 56

Chevenga ~ eagle’s claws ~ open eyes, Shae-Shaila, continued

We would not fault anyone, given such an augury, for curling up or keeling over in the middle of it, for becoming too overwhelmed with emotion to ask further questions, for running panicked for help to anyone and everyone afterwards, for throwing the whole thing to Assembly for a decision. We would particularly not fault a nineteen-year-old man less than a month away from taking on the most responsible position in the land.

But Chevenga did none of these things. In the face of the most awful prognostications imaginable both for himself personally and everyone he holds dear, he conducted the augury all through with care and skill, then followed its prescription for the best result with steely nerve, not letting slip what he’d learned, and heading to Arko despite knowing full well that terrible suffering awaited him there.

Yes, it seemed the only alternative to a death even more premature than the one he was already expecting; but we would not entirely fault anyone in his position, either, for losing his nerve on the way there and fleeing home in the unreasoning hope of finding some mythical fourth fork that escaped the bitterest of choices—or even elsewhere, so as to keep his own skin intact. Even accepting one of the first two forks might have been easier, allowing him death—the ultimate evasion of responsibility—of a kind that would have left him remembered as a hero. A person of lesser spirit would have welcomed that.

During the rest-breaks at the trial after Chevenga revealed the reading, and again after it was over, he was enveloped by Servants and watchers from the gallery, gathering to embrace him and otherwise express gratitude and admiration. It was a while before he could speak to the assembled writers, and a while again before I could draw him out alone.

†

“Semana kra. It would be best for Yeola-e and so it was what I had to do, whatever it led to.” Chevenga says this, or similar, in answer to any and every suggestion that he acted extraordinarily.

Did he ever consider fleeing entirely, to seek out a new life as a mercenary in Brahvniki or the like, or wish he had once he was in Arko? “No,” he answers. “I could never do that. The thought never came into my head. I will tell you this much, though: what Jinai meant by ‘pain huge beyond imagining,’ I didn’t really understand. It was indeed beyond what I could have imagined, then. And I’m glad I didn’t understand, because if I had, I’m not sure I wouldn’t have chickened out in one way or another. Life is merciful that way; it spares us foreknowledge.” Catching his own error, he adds with a rueful grin, “At least most of the time.”

Once he was on the road, was he afraid? “A little. But not for long, things happened so fast. We didn’t even get out of Roskat. Then… well, for the next two years, I kept thinking, ‘So this is how it plays out,’ at least in the times I was capable of thinking.”

Being betrayed by his Arkan escort, captured, raped, forced to fight in the Mezem, forced to kill his own people, drugged to betray Yeola-e’s military secrets, afflicted with the grium sefalian, bereaved of siblings and close friends both on the road and in Arko, and finally tortured so severely his mind was destroyed, albeit temporarily, all fell under that fleeting section of the reading, expressed by an augur’s few desperate words.

Chevenga did detail the reading to one person: his mother, whose own questionings by the Committee have revealed that she knew his personal secret from when he was eight. “She alone knew, so I always went to her when I was troubled with it, and I can’t say how much it helped, and how grateful I will always be. I really should not have gone to her with this. Call it a moment of weakness.

“She did not counsel me one way or another. She said that the one who knew best was me, and that I should trust myself, as she trusted me, entirely.”

Karani Aicheresa’s awareness of her son’s secret made her, in effect, an accessory to his violation of the Statute semanakraseyeni. He was worried she would be charged, but so far she has not. While many Yeolis argue vociferously that it was a travesty that he was charged, she is not likely to be.

The personal sacrifice he made included the possibility of being charged, which he also took on open-eyed, being well-versed in law. But did he think he would be?

“In truth, no,” he says. “Those who I told were very good about keeping it secret, and so it hadn’t come out. At twenty-eight-and-a-half, I didn’t think it would. So often life has plans for us that are different from our own. Once it was out, of course, I knew it might well happen.” Generous as ever, he once again has undertaken a personal sacrifice, with the intention of ending the trial at peace with even those who fear him most.

Chevenga’s decision to take things so much into his own hands that he didn’t even tell Assembly how imminent the Arkan invasion was is perhaps a precursor to the ruthless hard-mindedness he would show, when it was needed, while leading the army. “It’s as I said in the trial,” he says. “I—do you know what half-action is, what it means?

“It’s the course you take based on unclear thinking, based perhaps on a hope or a fear or perhaps a desperate wish. You think, ‘This must lead to things coming out right’ because you want it to, and you choose that way without playing out fully in your mind how things actually will come out if you do it. Because you aren’t sure, you don’t act with full conviction. And, like making half a leap across an abyss, it tends to lead to defeats.

“Revealing the reading to Assembly would have been half-action on my part. There were already good indications that the Arkans were coming, and we were already preparing, so warning would have made no difference in that way; nor did the reading give me the fact that they were planning the great diversion they did, else I’d have given warning for sure, stayed home, and set a trap of some kind so as to defeat them.

“If I’d have told Assembly, they’d have resolved to forbid me to go, because they would have considered it unconscionable to allow me to. Neither I nor you nor anyone could fault them for that. They would never have had the nerve, or, one might say, the cruelty, to send me into the eagle’s claws, or away from Yeola-e at all, when there was such a threat. It would have been understandable, but it would still have been half-action. And then the first or second forks would have played out. I couldn’t let that happen.”

Not even yet at his majority, Chevenga took all our fates into his own hands, without us knowing. To the Yeoli sensibility, it seems almost hubristic in a semanakraseye. In his questioning, Linasika pointed out that his judgment on one other major matter has been enormously in error. But one cannot argue with the ultimate results, the proof that our fates were in good hands. Jinai Oru’s augury played out mercilessly true, and Yeola-e is still free.

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