147 - A conversation with the Committee

“The Committee…! You were?” Unless it’s pressing, they generally give a person a good half-moon’s notice, and he’d said nothing about it.

“I was. I thought they might be missing a few things that they needed to know.”

I felt the beginning of a chill down my spine, even in hot water. “You mean... you went to them. What did you tell them?”

“I have to confess, I did get a touch passionate… but the gist of it is nothing but the truth: Yeolis love you but don’t value you.”

“What? You said that? To the Committee!?” The chill went full-blown and turned into tingles all down my fingers and toes. “Oh, fik!”

His lips set in resolve. “Yes. I did say that.”

“Skorsas, don’t you remember what happened the last time you ran off at the mouth about me? I almost got killed!”

“Virani-e, there’s no Riji Kli-fas wanting to carve out your tripes here. Isn’t this Yeola-e, where you can tell the truth as it is?”

“Kyash, shen, kevyala, fik, I have to find out what you said! They’re going to think I put you up to it!” I hauled myself out of the tub, threw on my robe and sprinted out.

“I was particularly careful to make that very very clear,” he said, dashing after me. “That I was there speaking for myself, in my own voice only.”

“You think they’ll believe that?”

“I told them nothing other than the truth.”

“The truth! Oh, All-Spirit, I’m fikked!!”

“You put your life on the line over and over and over again for your people and they just crap on you again and again,” he said, doing a surprisingly credible job of keeping up with me as I ran up the stairs three at a time.

“I know you think that, I don’t mind that you think that, you just didn’t have to tell the kaina marugh miniren Committee!”

“They seem reasonable people. They wanted to hear even the hard things.”

“And so you told them!”

“Virani-e—please stop shouting.” I had been too shy to tell everyone about the name, but Niku had not been, and now they were all calling me by it, when they remembered. It was possibly easier for Skorsas, who already had two names for me.

In my room I threw on the first clothes I found. “I’m going down there… to read the transcript… you can come or not… I don’t care.” Whether my breaths were coming fast from exertion or terror, I couldn’t tell. I took the stairs back down five at a time. “I’m coming,” he said, making his leaps shorter but faster. “I might… keep shouting at you… all the way down,” I warned him. “That’s fine,” he shot back. “You need to hear a little truth sometimes too.” My answer was little more than a longish Aiiiiggghhh!

On the slope down to the palace in the dark, a path he didn’t know as well as I did, he lagged behind, only catching up to me after I’d counted off the windows to the scribe’s, and was already two floors up. The rebuilt bureaucratic wing doesn’t have hand and footholds quite as good as the old, but they’re good enough.

“What in Hayel are you doing?” he yelled. “Why don’t you go through the door like a sane person?”

“It’s after hours.”

“Let me guess, you forgot the fikken key!”

“I don’t have one to the scribe’s office.”

“You can’t break in through his window like a shennen thief!”

“I’m not going to steal anything.”

“Virani-e, get down right now! You’re not allowed, by Surya’s orders!”

“He never said anything about not climbing walls, and I’m not alone—you’re with me!” Knowing I’d have to jimmy the latches first of the shutters and then of the Arkan-glass window, I’d brought an eating knife. It took a moment to get them open.

“Yes, you are alone! I’m down here and you’re up there and I’m not a fikken steel-fingered squirrel like you!”

“Then go around the front door and I’ll let you in. Don’t worry now—I’m not going to want to kill myself until after I read it.”

He ran off, his cry of anguish trailing away into the night. I went through the office, grabbed a wall-candle and went back in; I’d counted right, it was the office of Esenai Aranin, the scribe. Copying the Athali notes he’d done during the session into classic script and proper format was the first thing he’d do tomorrow morning, I saw, as they were right on his desk, CMSAC a 20 56. I tore through them, until I spotted Skorsas’ name, grabbed up the stack of paper underneath and headed to the front doors, reading as I went.

†

Skorsas: I’ve had some new insights of my own, about his mental state and what’s behind it... seeing some of the things that have happened since we came to Vae Arahi. I’d like you all to imagine this. Say you did for a nation what he did for Yeola-e: came back after being tortured, used every contact and every bit of charm and good will and leverage you had to make allies, pulled together the army and worked your heart out, right to collapsing from exhaustion at one point, to turn the war around, and succeeded.

But in the end, you get charged with hiding something, which you hid so that you’d be in the position to do what you did, convicted as a criminal and flogged right to unconsciousness... by your own people. Among such people, wouldn’t you want to die too?

†

“Aigh!” I almost smashed into a wall-sconce.

†

Miniya Shae-Sima, Servant of Tinga-e-Pekola: Skorsas, it would be improper for any of us to voice either our personal or collective answers to any question concerning Chevenga’s mental state while we are still in process; those answers will be contained in our report once it is complete. May I interpret your question as rhetorical, therefore?

Sko: I don’t know, what does ‘rhetorical’ mean?

Mi: A question posed not so much to elicit an answer as to illustrate a point.

Sko: Ah. Yes, definitely. I know how it is, how it’s harder to see something clearly from within it than from outside it. I know how Yeola-e looks from the outside. You are his own people... and you break his heart. Over and over and over. I was saying this earlier to... someone else who knows him well... and I guess here it’s going to come across as a little harsh, but I’ll say it anyway. My words are my own... not his. And I don’t care what Yeolis think of me, so I have no problem being blunt. You don’t deserve him.

†

I almost tripped over the top of the stairs, and staggered down them, trembling. “Chevenga?” Aleka, one of the bureaucrats working late, peering out of her office door. “What are you doing—are you all right?” I threw a weak “I’m fine,” over my shoulder.

†

Sko: I’m sorry, but you don’t... not in my mind. I don’t mean because you are underserving as people... I mean, because you don’t appreciate him. You don’t value him. I don’t know if it’s the same with everyone who has ever had that title, semanakraseye. I only know one. But what I see is that he loves you more than any human should be capable of, and you answer it with one whack from the backs of your hands after another. That’s what he was raised with. I know that... he exudes it with every word. Every time he suffers another whack, he says, ‘Semana kra. That’s the nature of my position. That’s what I have to bear.’ He’s lived with that his whole life. And you wonder what is killing him from the inside? You have to study it?

He thinks he ought to die because you demand it of him. He thinks he ought to die because you cut him absolutely no slack, allow him absolutely no mercy, ever. He thinks he ought to die because you think your semanakraseye should be a slave, and he doesn’t have a slave’s spirit, but a king’s. And for that he thinks he ought to die.

†

“Aiiiggghh!” I flung open the front doors. He stood still, braced, chin raised, face set in resolution. “They break my heart over and over? They don’t deserve me? A king’s spirit? I am so fikked… Skorsas, how could you say these things?”

“It’s about time someone did,” he said firmly.

Hearing Surya’s voice in my ear I took a deep breath. “I know… I know you believe these things with all your heart… and they come out of love… and if I were in my right mind I wouldn’t read another word… but I have to, Skorsas, because do you know what’s going to happen next?”

“The truth will finally dawn on them, with any luck,” he said.

“No—they’re going to call me in. And ask me about every word you said, whether I agree with it or not.”

“My loving you doesn't make these words any less true.”

“That's not how they'll see it!! In their eyes you’re biased!”

†

Etana Kensai, Servant of Tinga-e-Anika: Pardon me for interceding, but I don’t think it’s the place of an Arkan to tell Yeolis, particularly public servants in Yeola-e, how a semanakraseye ought to be treated.

Sko: You’re investigating his mental state, right, especially why he feels this death-obligation? I’m telling you my opinion on exactly that. He is so much at your mercy... I don’t think most Yeolis understand, tell the truth, how willing he is to sacrifice himself for them. He’s so much at your mercy and it’s killing him. I asked you to imagine being him, but I don’t think you want to. I don’t think you could bear even imagining.

E: It isn’t my place to bear his trials; it’s his.

Sko: So it’s not your place to do what you Yeolis call chiravesa then. I understand. You’d do it for any Yeoli... except him... and that’s my point.

E: That’s not what I said.

Sko: But it’s the truth, and my point is that you expect everything from him, up to and including his life, but when it comes down to it, pardon my language, you don’t give a flying [Arkan swear word] about him.

†

“Aiiigggh! Skorsas you do not ever ever ever SWEAR in front of a Committee of Assembly of Yeola-e! Fik fik fik fik fik fik fik kyashin fik…”

†

La: You may speak freely, Skorsas, but we do ask that you keep your language appropriate to the context.

Sko: Forgive me for my passion.

Mi: I would differ with the witness that we—I assume he was speaking of all Yeolis, not just us here on the Committee—don’t care about Chevenga, to put it more politely.

Sko: Not enough of you do, and you don’t enough. You demand, and he gives, endlessly. You take it for granted. And every time he gives, and doesn’t get any love back, a part of him dies. All his life he’s been dying a slow death, of being starved for what he should have been rewarded with. That’s his mental state.

E: If I may intercede: you speak this all with such certainty, Skorsas; is that because Chevenga says these things himself, in private?

Sko: No! Never in a thousand years, would he say these things! When he finds out I was here and said these things, I’m going to get a load of flying… excrement, trust me. He’ll be tearing his hair out.

†

“You got that right!”

“Never let anyone say I don’t know you, Jewel of the World.”

†

Sko: But I don’t care, because it needs saying, and as I understand it Yeola-e is a country in which everyone is free to say what needs saying. He just takes it as his fate, because that’s what you require of him and did from the day he was born.

Omonae Shae-Lemana, Servant of Thara-e-Tinanga-e: If I may intercede: Skorsas, you are obviously speaking from your close relationship with him, and your love for him. So hypothetically now, if Yeola-e were to take the measures that would best remedy however we have been remiss towards him in your view, what would they be? If he is starving, as you say, how do we feed him?

E: It’s not as if we haven’t already; half the town was up on the mountain lighting candles for him… or breaking their crystals, of all things, after Sharaina’s trial; you think that wasn’t appreciation enough?

Sko: That’s not appreciation! He hates that.

†

Everything went black for a moment.

-

[Author's note: Monday is Thanksgiving Day in Canada, so I will next post on Tues. Have a great weekend, and if you are Canadian, happy Thanksgiving.]

--