188 - The Champion of the People

I can barely stand to write it, for remembering how I felt at the time.

I did go to Surya, late enough in the morning that I could scratch the door rather than use the brass handle. “I feel I’d rather die than go up on that dais,” I said. “What is wrong with me?”

“Did the Committee give you a copy of their report? Of all people, you should get one. It’s spelled out very well, I’m sure, in there.” Not a call, really, to fling a cushion at him, but I did anyway.

“I’m seriously thinking of taking a few swigs of nakiti to get myself through it,” I confessed to him. “That’s how bad it is.”

“Don’t do that,” he said. “You have an asa kraiya ceremony today, too.”

“Maybe that’s what I’m truly afraid of, and it’s disguising itself as fear of the commendation,” I said.

He signed charcoal. “Truth is, and this won’t help at all, so I’m sorry, but you’re afraid of both. Part of you is still convinced it is a crime to take anything, even appreciation, for yourself. This will be good training in getting over it.”

“Thank you so much, you’ve been the epitome of help,” I said, and left him.

At least I didn’t have to decide what to wear. Skorsas wouldn’t let me anywhere near such a responsibility. He put me in the semanakraseye’s shirt, but with a cape of Yeoli blue and green, my wristlets and Chirel, as well as every decoration I’d ever received. “You know I still have your fifty chains—”

“No. No, no, no and no, and—absolutely not.”

Terera Square was jammed, of course, the roofs fringed with people. I can’t bring my penhand to describe it all in detail. There are accounts. Kusiya Aranin introduced, admitting, to my amazement, that it had been an Arkan who had brought it to Yeoli attention that I’d never been formally commended. Hurai, Emao-e, Artira, Kallijas, Reknarja, Klaimera and the emissaries of Haiu Menshir, Hyerne and Brahvniki all spoke. There was choral song; there was a show of wing acrobatics above us, led by Baska and Sijurai.

What made me squirm the worst was when Emao-e went through everything I had done in the war, and told the crowd what award I’d likely have won for each action if I’d been receiving decorations as I was giving them. Several of the generals had convened on this. Toward the end I felt like if I heard the words “First General First’s Diamond” or “Crystal Fox Eye” one more time, I’d scream. I wanted to run away and hide as I had after seeing my father do the Kiss of the Lake.

It’s all too much. I didn’t do it for this! I just did my duty! I don’t deserve all this! The words kept banging up against the insides of my teeth. Just when it was started to seem overwhelming, as if it would rush up inside me like the mind-flame attacks I’d had on Haiu Menshir after being tortured, it was time for them to actually give me the award. It was a ruby in a crystal circle, crossed by a crystal sword, hung on a red ribbon, and the adakri, who was presenting it, of course had to explain the meaning of each part.

All-Spirit… I’m going to keel over. I’d been determined not to cry, but as the crowd roared, so much feeling surged through me, some of it had to come out through my eyes. I don’t even understand what I feel… Surrrrr-ya! I wished I could rise out of my body and call him in the other world again. At least it’s over, I thought, and readied myself to scurry off the dais. “Chevenga!” they began bellowing at me. “Speech! Speech!”

All-Spirit… you must be kidding… what do I say? Thank you; I had to say that. Thanking every person I could think of who’d been involved with it would fill some time; I wished I could read off all the names on the petition. I am honoured, I had to say that, too, of course. An easy one came to me: “Everyone who fought along with me, down to the squires, deserves this as much as I do. My army was my power and my glory.” Of course some idiot in the crowd had to pipe up, “We were a dispirited motley bunch, without you!” and all the generals on the dais had to sign chalk.

“I don’t know what else to say,” I said finally. “I didn’t do it for this. I was only doing what I had to do, as semanakraseye and chakrachaseye. I… can’t think of anything else to say at all that doesn’t sound… gruesomely self-serving to my own ears. I can’t… I’m sorry.” Fortunately, for this crowd I could say nothing wrong.

But I must go down among them; it was expected. That was easier, taking the hugs and the handclasps and the kisses. The teary-eyed stories of the war and occupation shouted into my ear were something true and real, and, best of all, not about me.

I did that for a while, then took the dais again, for the public part of my asa kraiya ceremony. You start geared up, of course, so I put on the armour, which Skorsas had brought down.

Azaila introduced, then told them how it was customary for a friend of the person going asa kraiya to recount his career as a warrior. He called up Kallijas. All-Spirit, I thought, this is going to kill me.

I shut my ears and looked at the lake and the mountains beyond and thought of tactical paradoxes while he spoke, until my reverie was broken by the words, “…can’t be described, must be demonstrated; Sheng?” He asked me to take off the cape, draw Chirel and come at him.

“Shouldn’t this be something more rehearsed?” I asked him, quieter than the crowd could hear.

“Just come at me stepping in, or I’ll make chicken noises at you in front of them,” he said. So I did, he footswept me and I spun in the air and landed on my feet as I do. “See?” he said to the crowd, which was whooping and laughing in delight, or yelling, “That was so fast; do it again!”

“You forzak Mezem-yearning straw-hair, making a showman out of me as if I haven’t had enough of that,” I spat at him. “No I’m not going to do it again!” I yelled to the crowd in my battlefield voice. He and they just laughed.

Then he was just speaking again, and I was busying my mind with everything and anything else, when an impinging silence let me know he’d reached the end, and it was my turn to speak. I stared out at the quieting crowd, their eyes fixed on me and their attention intensely mine. My mind was blank as the void.

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