183 - Conclusions of the Committee

The day the Chevengani Mental State Assessment Committee presented its report, I was sick as a dog.

Surya had warned me, the day after I’d gone up on the mountain to kill myself and come back able to say I deserved to live: that ripping sensation and the aches along the energy-lines likely presaged bodily symptoms. Not always, but often, he said, a derangement of the mind has to go out by way of the body, which means it will derange the body on the way out. I’d already learned the same from Kaninjer. Surya told me not to plan too much of anything before the ceremony, and just ride it through if I got sick. Almost as he spoke, I started shivering, and he came with me upstairs to my bedchamber.

“Jewel of the—oh my little noble God!” Skorsas’s blue eyes went white all around. “What happened to your hair?”

Surya and I had forgotten to agree on a story, so I thought fast. “When I was down in this one’s office last night, having my doubts about the whole thing… I did something a little, em, over-dramatic.” It was true, even, except for the lying by omission.

“I’ll say! What am I going to do with it?” Then he noticed I was pale, put his hand on my forehead, told me I was so hot it hurt him, and said, “Bed. Now.”

That day and the next two I went back and forth between sweats and chills, stuffed up solid as rock during the day and running like a stream from the nose at night, throat feeling pierced by a red-hot needle every time I swallowed. I felt so bone-deep wrong in my flesh and was so weak that I couldn’t even hold a book to read. The Committee asked me to come in to explain why I’d told Linasika I would resign—of course, he’d ratted me out—and I had to beg off. Surya went instead, and told them, in effect, I’d had a fleeting bad spell.

But in my mind, most mornings, was the vista of a long life ahead of me. My loves would ask, and I would say, “It’s there,” and weep, at least the first few times. It was not solid; often through the day I’d find myself in the old place, seeing only months, but I began to learn how to will it back.

I could hardly ask the Committee to postpone the presentation of the summary of its report because I was ill; I might just have to send my regrets again, cowardly though that would look. But on the morning of the day, I felt well enough to get to Assembly Palace by double-wing.

Of course, as I went in, everyone stared at my hair; Skorsas had cut it all even, concealing my slashings perfectly, but it was still much shorter than I’d ever worn it, what would be counted a very severe warrior-cut. “I just had a spell of doubt and acted in a way that I can’t quickly undo,” I told them. “Ceremony’s still on, I am still going asa kraiya.” I was glad the Committee’s report was already final.

In my mind I calculated, as Chosaiya had, the absolute worst, plausible worst, plausible best, and absolute best cases. The plausible best was Surya’s prognosis, that they’d say that I was perfectly sane but for the one affliction, and I was well on the way to being free of it. The plausible worst, I decided, was the same but with less confidence in my healing, emphasis on the severity of that one affliction and my having lived overstrained for so many years, implying that my mental state was permanently affected. That would effectively oblige Assembly not to re-approve me. The two seemed equally likely.

As I sat in the gallery, family and friends all sitting with me and the Servants taking their chairs, my heart was in my throat. The agenda only listed the Committee’s presentation; but Assembly did have the option of taking the re-approval vote also. It was unlikely—they’d want time to study the report—but not impossible.

The others let Surya sit beside me. He put his arm around my shoulders and whispered in my ear. “When they asked me how good I thought your odds of succeeding were, I told them in confidence… I didn’t want you to find out, and get complacent. I think I should tell you now, though. Ninety-nine to one.”

“Is that true?” I rasped.

“Would I lie under oath?” he whispered back. My head spun. Complacent—! I wanted to strangle him. The angaseye dagra krisa tapped the Crystal to her bell to call Assembly to order.

As I was just ceremonial at the moment, they had no obligation to call me onto the floor, but they did, putting forward a resolution asking me to take the visitor’s chair. I dragged myself there, trying to look healthy. Lanai Kesila, who’d presided over the Committee for most of its time, stood to present. She showed the full written report, which was thick enough to make a little thump when she put it down on the table, then ran over what the Committee had done and how, thanked those who’d testified, commended my openness and courage, commended the expertise of the psyche-healers who’d been witnesses and Committee members, and so on, while my innards gnawed themselves. Finally she came to the conclusions.

She started by saying that assessing the mental state of someone in the midst of a healing journey was like aiming an arrow at a flying bird, and that they could give an estimation only, not a certain declaration, of where I would land. That said, she laid out the conclusions in summary, and then the recommendations.

†

The semanakraseye is sane, his awareness, reasoning function and ability to fulfill his duties unhindered, except insofar as he as afflicted as described below;

He has weathered the most the most severe suffering with extraordinary resilience;

He is afflicted by a two-part delusion concerning the matter of his own death: that he is deserving of it before thirty years of age; and that he ought to be punished with death for error that would not generally be considered deserving of death; and

This was, by our interpretation, caused by several factors in combination, being:

His stream-testing;

Some aspects of the traditional ascendant’s training and the customs that surround the semanakraseyesin, within the greater context of the Yeoli cultural tradition of suspicion of highly-competent people in positions of power;

The assassination of his father by blood, Seventh Tennunga Shae-Arano-e;

Excessive strictness and harshness, and overly-high expectations, on the part of his shadow-father, Esora-e Mangu, during his upbringing, and the accedence of his other living parents to this; and

A strong innate objection to warriorhood, specifically the inflicting of death and pain required of a warrior and therefore required of him.

He is well-advanced into a course of healing intended to free him of that delusion, and in the opinion of two of his healers, past and current, he is virtually certain to succeed; thus the Committee has confidence that he will.

Accordingly, the Committee recommends, in summary:

To Fourth Chevenga Shae-Arano-e:

that he continue and complete his course of healing, both with respect to the delusion and to the aftereffects of torture suffered in the city of Arko; and

that he undergo the asa kraiya ceremony as planned;

To all those involved in raising ascendants:

to avoid excessive strictness, harsh punishments and expectations other than the semanakraseyesin;

to persuade no child ascendant to enter warriorhood who himself objects;

To the Assembly of Yeola-e: that it strike a Committee to study the effects on the mental state of semanakraseyel through history of the customs related to the position; and

To the People of Yeola-e: to neither hold or express suspicion of the character or motives of a semanakraseye, or any other person in a position of responsibility, absent any evidence of actions on the part of that person that warrant suspicion.

†

It was soul-shaking, to hear my whole internal life laid out neatly in five points and five sub-points.

Still... plausible best. I kept my face stone, especially seeing my shadow-father bow his head and clench his fists in his hair, but my heart danced a victory dance.

It was all I could do to keep my jaw from dropping at the recommendation that the people of Yeola-e quit suspecting anyone in a position of power for no reason. No, this is better than the plausible best, I thought. I felt close to floating off my chair. Linasika isolated himself on the Committee, I thought, so fervent against me that other members were moved the other way. I glanced at him; he looked plenty sour. Don’t smirk, don’t smirk, don’t smirk, I told myself.

Then Lanai said, “Servants of Assembly, the Committee took one other measure which was outside our mandate, and so which we don’t include in the report as it is written, but which we did in anticipation that Assembly might request it of us. We took a vote on the resolution, ‘that the Committee advise Assembly and, if called for, the people of Yeola-e, that the mental state of Fourth Chevenga Shae-Arano-e need not be taken into consideration with respect to his re-approval for the semanakraseyesin.’ ” In other words, it was good enough that no one need worry about it. “We will provide the results on Assembly’s request.’ ”

Request! Please request! I yelled to them, jumping up and down, inwardly. I just wanted to know, and the conclusions had filled me with confidence. As if there were the faintest chance they wouldn’t; the resolution was put forward by a Servant who was not on the Committee, and went chalk unanimously.

“Three chalks, two charcoals and two abstentions, hence, carried by a minority,” Lanai said. I felt myself clench all over, stung; when I asked myself what was in that stinging, I realized I’d expected six chalks to Etana-lai Kensai’s one charcoal. But Ikrena Shae-Sansera had voted that way too. No doubt the abstainers had done so because the motion was out of mandate, and so they felt it was not their place; but three to two was still too cursed close. My triumph turned sour in my mouth.

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