148 - Further conversation with the Committee

When I came to myself I was on my knees with Skorsas’ shoulder under my armpit, the candle in his other hand and the transcript papers spread all over the flagstones. “All-Spirit All-Spirit All-Spirit…” I could barely speak. “Skor…sas… how could you say that about the crystals? How could you? Don’t you know what a deadly insult it’s going to be to every single one of thousands of people who’ve done it? All-Spirit… All-Spirit…” I kept losing my voice; I wanted to lose consciousness. He didn’t want to let me, but I slipped his grip, and lay flat on the flagstones, pressing my cheek into them, tears pouring.

He knelt next to me, stroking my back. “Why is that so embarrassing? I’ve said nothing but what I believe.”

“If you don’t know why, if you don’t understand Yeola-e enough to see that, then shut the fik up here! That wasn’t just your opinion, you were citing me! I won’t be able to say I didn’t say that!”

“But you do hate it.”

“I have never told a soul in Yeola-e!” I tore at my hair with my hands, and he grabbed them to stop me.

“Should I lie, then, and say everything’s fine, Chevenga’s just crazy?”

“They did it in love, same as you! You don’t sling that back in the teeth of so many people!”

“I told them you felt it was too much, too awful a thing to do just for you… didn’t he record that?”

If the dew on the stones, or my tears for that matter, got onto the notes and blurred the ink, I’d be in worse trouble still, if that were imaginable. I hauled myself up to sitting and put them back in order, trying to breathe myself calm enough to read.

†

E: He does?

Sko: He’s far too civil ever to say it, and he’ll probably be mad as Hayel at me for saying this… but he thinks it’s awful... it’s too much, he doesn’t want people to do it. He sees it as far too horrible a thing for people to do, for his sake or for anything to do with him.

La: Skorsas, will you answer Omonae’s question?

Sko: How to remedy not appreciating him enough? Well, you could start... I don’t mean the Committee, but the country... by reinstating him once he’s done with the medical leave.

†

“Skorsas! What arrogance, what breathtaking arrogance…”

“If you said it, yes. But you didn’t say it, I said it.”

†

Mi: Reinstatement as semanakraseye is not something done for the purpose of showing appreciation for a person.

†

“Ever. That’s not what it’s for. Have that graven on the insides of your eyelids!”

†

Sko: True, fair enough. Then let me ask you this, because it’s something I’ve always found unbelievable, so I’ve wondered whether I simply missed it. Was he ever formally rewarded, in some way—I don’t know how it would traditionally be done in Yeola-e—for winning the war for you? In any way? Ever? I don’t mean this as a rhe… as a question that makes a point. I honestly don’t know.

E: He received enough money from individual Yeolis to build a house larger than any Yeoli has ever individually owned in Yeoli history.

Sko: That was informal. From people who felt sorry for him because he’d done so much and ended up being flung in the dirt. I asked, formal. By anyone official.

Ku: When I think about it, he never was, that I know of.

†

“Formally… rewarded…?”

“You never were. They admitted that.”

“I didn’t fight the war to win a fikken medal!”

“Everyone knows that. But if you won’t commend yourself then... how can anyone else hope to get commendation?

“What the fik are you talking about, I gave a thousand commendations! That was my task: to give them, not get them. You think when I heard Arko had invaded Yeola-e, I thought, ‘Hey, if I do a good job fighting them, I’ll get an award!’? All-Spirit, there isn’t much more of this, is there? Tell me there isn’t much more.”

“What do you have to do to get even a ‘Thank you’? Even a single fikken official ‘Thank you’?”

“Nothing—everything—it doesn’t matter! Semana kra—that’s enough in and of itself!”

“Well, that was exactly my point to them. You’ll give your people every drop of sweat and blood and love in you, for absolutely nothing, and they don’t give a mouse’s fart.”

I suddenly remembered staring up at the ceiling of the Imperial chamber, Kallijas’s strong fingers on my wrists, after he’d seen I’d taken off the signet and seals and accordingly cold-cocked me. I’d thought at the time, no way Surya won’t make me face the question again, and finish with it before we’re done. Now the Committee were going to make me face it. Maybe he’d just been waiting.

†

E: Hold on; with respect to him being “flung in the dirt,” as you say, he was impeached by Arkans, not Yeolis, and it was effectively on his own initiative, for the purpose of inducing Arkans to vote. You cannot blame that on us. He sacrificed himself there for your people.

Sko: Sure, true enough, that wasn’t your fault. But the only formal, governmental sort of action I’ve heard about toward him related to the war was being charged with a crime and flogged. For doing what he had to to become semanakraseye, so he could command if he had to. Which he anticipated, correctly.

Ku: I think the witness has a point here. As far as I know, Chevenga was never formally commended.

Sko: Well, maybe, six years late, it’s about time.

E: If he didn’t do illegal things for our own good, we wouldn’t have to charge him.

Sko: You make it sound as if it’s a habit. I guess you’re holding Linasika’s line, Chevenga the criminal. And you wonder why the [Arkan swear word] he wants to die?

†

Aside from the swear-word, I had to admit to myself, in the most abject shame, I was glad he’d said this.

†

La: Skorsas, again—language. I think it’s perhaps best I call a short rest break at this point. I ask that everyone return with cool heads and firmly in the grip of their reason.

(Rest break)

La: We reconvene and it continues Miniya’s time, though I note he hasn’t had a chance to ask much.

Mi: But I did invite the witness to speak his mind, and we have been told much, and it’s been very educational. Skorsas, do you have further comments?

Sko: I think I’ve said enough, I think I’ve made my point. I just want, again, to be very clear on one thing though. I am speaking on my own behalf only. I know that maybe some of you, suspicious of him as you always are, think he sent me here, he put me up to this. But as I am sworn, Second Fire come, he did not. I am here on my own urging only. I am here because I think this all needed saying. As I said, when he finds out what I’ve said, he’ll probably be aghast, and jump all over me for it. In case you haven’t figured it out, he doesn’t always think in his own best interest.

†

“No argument there. I got myself into this shit.”

“The fik you did. It all comes from how they raised you. Don’t you ever listen to Surya?”

†

Sko: So it falls to others, to those who love him. You have the most unselfish person on the Earthsphere working for you.

You know how it is with you Yeolis? This isn’t your fault, you can’t help it, but when you look at him, you see his position. You see all the rules and the obligations and the traditions, you see semana kra and semanakraseye, you see everything you think he was born owing you. You don’t see him. It’s only we foreigners, who don’t have that… who don’t have those things in the way, who see him clear, who see him for who he really is—well, except for his mother; she’s the only Yeoli who really knows him.

That’s why I feel the way I do about him, and why Kallijas Itrean does, too. And Niku. When I met him, I didn’t know he was semanakraseye. I just saw him for himself. Kallijas came to know him in the way that is most man-to-man, that lets you know someone as no other way can. Niku didn’t know who he was at first, either; he was just another Mezem fighter. So we all know him, as you never can. He would never say this in a thousand years, but I’ll say it: why do you think the closest people to him are all foreigners?

†

“Fourth Chevenga Shae-Arano-e, you’re curled up in a ball screaming on the floor of the most sacred government building in your whole country. What if someone comes down the stairs?”

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