Friday, May 29, 2009

57 - Justice is done


I headed straight from the chair out to the courtyard. My family and friends who were here closed in around me in such a way that I knew they’d planned it, tender hands on my shoulders and my back. Still, there were smiles. “I knew you’d spit fire, and you did some,” Krero said. “The last thing I expected was that you’d make us laugh.”

“You even got some of the jurors,” Artira whispered, “and they’re supposed to show absolutely nothing.”

Yet the courtyard seemed like the Earthsphere, as if the courtroom had been distant from it. “Did that really happen?” I asked myself inwardly. “Was I really standing there, facing a Yeoli who wanted, who still wants me dead, enough to do it by her own hand? Was that real?” I remembered the feel of the wood of the arms of the chair of testimony under my hands, the perfect edges of the crystal as I swore, a stray lock of Sharaina’s hair that she pushed back brusquely, unthinking, as was her habit. The words all seemed gone, though.

She was done, as was Akana; her trial was essentially over and the jury must make their decision. When we came back it was Bartelao’s turn. I didn’t have to be there as neither Akana nor Bartelao’s advocate, Kalosera Chisa, had questions for me; I could have started flying back to Arko. But I felt I should stay, for some reason, to see it through to the end.

Bartelao’s defense was in effect feeble-mindedness, in that he had been swayed into it by Sharaina’s. I won’t detail his trial. He wept all the way through, and it became very clear he was so easily swayed by anyone he considered an authority that he would do and say whatever he was told to by one. He broke down in tears almost with every question, so Kalosora interrupted to request breaks and the judge granted them, very frequently. What struck me was that the only person who would follow when Bartelao fled sobbing into the corridor was his advocate. His kin would only look at him icily impassive, or with contempt. Of course they were embarrassed that he was here; but he was still kin.

The fifth or sixth time it happened, I got up as he was about to scurry past me, and touched his arm. He froze, his green eyes white all around, when he saw who’d touched him. I brought my lips close to his ear; this was no one’s business but his. Everyone else would see enough in a moment. “I cannot know whether the jurors or the judges will believe you,” I said. “But I can say this, whatever it may mean to you: I do. It’s very plain and clear to me; if they see it too, you have nothing to worry about.”

He stood rooted and stock-still for a moment, then flung himself into my arms, and bawled on my shoulder like a baby, except for the deep voice; he was taller than me and had to bend. We were in recess but I’d done it fast enough that the judges and the jurors were still mostly in the room, and couldn’t help but turn to look. When I’d held him for a time I peered past his shoulder at his parents, and raised my brows; a flash of shame crossed his mother’s face, and she got up, and put an arm around his back. I passed him to her.

Next I went to Kalosora and whispered into his ear, “Call as a witness Surya Chaelaecha. You’re arguing he’s crazy, but you’ve got no psych-healer; I’m going to guess it’s because you’re thinking you don’t have time. What most psyche healers need beads or days to understand, he can see in a moment, right here.”

“What are you doing, Chevenga?” he whispered back. “The kid was going to kill you. I’d have thought you’d be trying to make sure he’d become a red smear on the courthouse steps, or at least a beggar in Bravhniki… what are you asking in return?”

“If you think that’s what he deserves, you should recuse yourself as his advocate,” I said. I guess cynicism makes me snappish. “I don’t. That’s all.”

He pursed his lips and said, “Surya Chaelaecha… Hearthstone Independent?”

“He’s here.” I introduced them.

Of course bringing in an unscheduled witness requires the other advocate’s agreement, but Akana, who by my reading pitied Bartelao as I did, agreed, and for his own part Bartelao agreed to have his aura seen. It was strange, seeing Surya do it before the Arch-Arbitrate of Yeola-e, but, as I expected, he wasn
t even slightly fazed. He judged that Bartelao had indeed been swayed and had been too blinded by fear of Sharaina to fully understand what he’d agreed to. His recommendation was a long course of psyche-healing, and he felt it would be best done away from home, preferably on Haiu Menshir.

The jury went off to their room to decide. I had a feeling it wouldn’t take long, so I held off dinner, though it was close to that time. I had not noticed before, but everywhere except in the court, Sharaina, respectable as she looked, had two guards sticking close as spit on either side of her. No doubt Krero, when he’d truth-drugged her, had asked her if she would try to escape during the trial, and she was in no bonds because she’d said no. But he knew well that someone in her place could easily, and suddenly, change her mind.

If she was afraid—and I can’t imagine how she could not be—she did not show it at all. Of course I did not look at her when I knew she was looking at me. Nor had I anything to say to her. What could it be?

Weapons are not allowed in Assembly Palace, of course, except for those of guards, but when I went out to the courtyard I felt a crowd of blades on the steps outside the front doors. Mostly knives and daggers, small and hidden, but the odd short and even longsword, and even one spear, in readiness for a sentence of exile without safe conduct. I felt sick. They do this at least in part in love for me, I thought. It made me feel even sicker.

The jury did not take long. We all assembled again, the spectators too crowded even to sit now, jammed in among the chairs. After a glance around the room, the Presiding Judge, ever wise, said, “Bartelao Shae-Ima first.”

I whispered to Surya and Krero, “The moment the crystal hits the bell to adjourn, I go like an arrow off the string out the back and around to the Independent, eat dinner as fast as I can cram it down and then harness up on the relay-wing, so Surya, if we’re flying together, you’ve got to keep up with me. Unless…” I swallowed. “…you think that I need to see her killed as part of my healing.”

He glanced at my aura, and signed charcoal. “It’s all right, you will not deny to yourself, overly, that she’s dead.” Overly? So I would some, then. I heaved a sigh.

Bartelao was acquitted by reason of his stated defense, but the jurors asked if they could, along with that, require healing. In the end the Arbitrate ruled him free and in good legal standing again, but on the condition that he go to Haiu Menshir for psyche-healing, if he and his family could pay for it; if not, the ruling would be reviewed. The threat was clear there; scrape up the ankaryel or your child might end up dead or thrown out of the country. The family acceded.

Then it was Sharaina, and there was a silence like in a crypt, except for the involuntary click of a crystal against another pendant or a faint rustle. As the one the jury
chosen to speak for them began, many eyes turned to me. I made my face stone.

She asked whether they were permitted to declare Sharaina insane and commend her to healing, to a spitting scoff from her. “No,” the Presiding Judge answered patiently. “By her plea the defendant allows you only two choices: guilty or guiltless by reason of justification.”

“Guilty, then,” the chosen juror said; they’d clearly had a first and second plan. In Yeoli law, a jury may not rule a sentence, as that’s the place of the judge or judges, but they can certainly state what they feel is fitting. “We urge exile without safe conduct.”

I kept my face stone. Sharaina might have done likewise; she was facing away from me. All over the room people let out their breath, enough with cries and comments that the Presiding Judge had to call order. The two guards suddenly ghosted in very close beside her. The seven judges of the Arbitrate deliberated just with gestures to each other behind their bench, all but momentarily. They ruled the sentence the jury had recommended, and the bell was struck.

What seemed like a hundred writers all yelled my name at once as I leapt up from my chair. “Justice is done, I have nothing else to say, that’s all!” I battle-bellowed over the din as I dashed for the same door the judges were using to exit, Surya shadowing me. “I’m sorry, Honoured Judges, I beg forgiveness, it’s the only way I’m going to get out of here in a timely way...” Behind me more people shouted, “Chevenga! Chevenga, come, you’ve got to see this! You need to see this!” and added some detail about what they meant to do to Sharaina, which I will spare the reader. “No matter, semanakraseye,” said the Presiding Judge. “Go on.”

Surya, fortunately, is not a bad runner, and most of the writers wanted to see the end, so they did not catch us. I didn’t look back. I read later, though, that as they took Sharaina out onto the steps, she called for silence so she could speak. Out of a contemptuous curiosity more than mercy, the crowd allowed it, and she began grandly declaiming the names of those who gave their lives so as to safeguard Yeola-e throughout our history, implying that she would now take her place among them. She’d barely got out two or three before her voice was lost in a din of rage, and a hundred hands seized her.

The dining hall of the Independent is deep enough inside it, fortunately, that yelling at the Palace can’t be heard. My dinner still tasted like ashes; I couldn’t get it down fast enough. I considered downing a few cups of wine so I’d be drunk beyond caring when we flew, but decided against. Flying itself, I hoped, would be enough of a balm.

The late summer sun was westering orange over purple ridges as I harnessed up and ran through the relay mnemonic, first for Surya then for myself. The thermal updrafts would be mostly dead, but there was still enough of a wind sent upwards by Haranin, a breeze that touched my cheeks tenderly with valley warmth and my nose with the cooking scents of Terera. It was a slow and smooth ascent. I cast my eyes toward Arko, trying not to see or hear or know that my people were still killing Sharaina Anina, former Servant of the Assembly of Yeola-e, on the courthouse steps.




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Thursday, May 28, 2009

56 - I deserve to live


Sha: Fourth Chevenga, you have heard everything I have presented, all the evidence against you. You’ve heard it cited from the writings and the speeches of so many, all right-minded and observant. You know the evidence of your flaws—the madness, the foreign corruption, the aggressiveness, the uncontrollable rage, the power-lust, the disdain and deadly hatred for your own people, the callous disregard of all that is sacred in Yeola-e, the delusions of grandeur to the degree of divinity, the tendency to treason, the nihilism—and you know them in yourself. My question is, in the light of the truth of all this, how is it that you do not resign from the semanakraseyesin as in conscience you should?

4Che: Your question has a faulty premise. I dispute the truth of every supposed flaw of mine you list. The question at hand is not whether or why I don’t resign, but whether you would be justified in killing me, and as you’ve cited the words of many people in support of this argument, I would contend that there is not a person among them who wouldn’t disavow and deplore your aim, and be appalled that their words are being used to make such an argument, just as Linasika, who you’ve probably quoted more than anyone else, did so clearly and strongly right here. I challenge you to name even one you think would agree you would be justified.

Sha: It’s not for me to be challenged but to question—

4Che: You can’t, not one.

Sha: I request of the Presiding Judge that the witness be forbidden from interrupting me.

PJ: The rules of the court forbid interruptions.

Sha: Thank you, Presiding Judge. Let us look first at the matter of your actions precipitating the Arkan War; what do you have to say for yourself in regard to that?


4Che: The responsibility for the war lies with the person who had the power to launch it: Kurkas Aan.

Sha: But the citations I read were speaking of you.

4Che: I’ll say it more plainly: I didn’t precipitate the war. Kurkas did.

Sha: On retrospect do you think of the action of undertaking a state visit to an empire known to be contemplating war against us, and so effectively putting yourself into the hands of an enemy, as wise?

4Che: I could say no, but all manner of decisions seem unwise once we have learned what we did not know at the time they were made; at the time, this one seemed the wisest course to me. But what does this have to do with your case, that I deserve death? Even if I erred, as far as I know there is no clause in the treason or murder laws allowing an exemption if the victim erred.

Akana: I wonder the same, Presiding Judge.

Sha: I am leading to it. You recall that it was cited in the Pages of Arko that Kurkas based his decision to invade in part on your absence?

4Che: Yes, but I don’t trust him to have been honest in that quote, as it might have been to cause me pain, as he had something of an obsession with causing me pain. Besides, even if this were true, it does not make the war my fault, and insofar as empire-seeking kings consider my absence an opportunity, my permanent absence by your hand would provide them a permanent opportunity.

Sha: I raise then the issue of your penchant for killing your own, for killing Yeolis—

4Che: I categorically deny any such penchant and note again the premise of your question is faulty.

Sha: Eight in the blood-sport theatre of Arko—

4Che: I was tried and acquitted for that, because I was compelled, everyone knows this.

Sha: I request of the Presiding Judge that the witness be chastised and required to adhere to the rule of the court forbidding interruption.

PJ: I remind the witness of that specific rule.

Sha: Thank you, Presiding Judge. During the war you executed a Yeoli for the crime of stealing two pieces of firewood as well; do these things combined not prove a penchant, and is it not an abuse of your power as chakrachaseye as well?

4Che: No and no. I did not do it because I wanted to; I did not want to. I did it because it was necessary. He had relinquished his will as a warrior and so was living under military discipline. I had given a very clear standing order to the entire army, more than once to make sure every person knew, that there was to be no stealing property on conquered land, on pain of death. He knew exactly what he was risking.

Sha: But for two sticks, as he himself said?

4Che: In war, military law is law, just as peacetime law is law. I had executed two Lakans previously for exactly the same thing, and if I failed to enforce the law equally with all nationalities, the alliance would have been weakened and perhaps rendered incapable of victory. I’m not sure how you are making your case here, when it’s known that such discipline helped bring us victory, which is generally considered to my credit, not my discredit.

Sha: If you will, then, by victory you mean conquering the Arkan empire—since that execution happened in Arkan territory—do you deny that Yeola-e has been done harm by becoming a conquering nation?

4Che: I am not certain, because it has certainly been done harm by being a virtually-conquered nation, and it’s hard to separate out what harm might have been caused by one from what by the other, but I note for the court that it’s in part due to concern that we might be so harmed that I attempted by every means I could think of, legal and not so legal, to refuse to answer the question of whether it was my preference to invade, and currently am in the midst of ending our occupation.

Sha: But you did want to invade, you argued for it eloquently, and it’s that that brought us to this miserable pass we are at now!

4Che: I don’t hear a question but I will answer the implied one: I will maintain to my dying breath, even though it won
t come as soon as youd like, that it was improper for me to be compelled to reveal my preference. I did not argue for the invasion, as that would be improper also, but did what was proper and required: answered the questions that were asked of me, as anyone can see from the record. But I also remind you that a proper and legal vote was taken, and Yeolis, not I, voted their will and their conscience. We invaded not because I wished or chose to, but because semana did. I know you’ve argued this many times, but it was false every time. The fact is that if a majority of Yeolis had been against it, my favouring it would have been overruled and mattered nothing.

Sha: Do you deny that you appealed to the basest part of a people’s nature, its pain and fear and anger, in your persuasion?

4Che: I deny that I undertook any persuasion at all, for as is clear in the record I did not. This is all fact, Sharaina, and you can’t in a court of law fly in the face of it, and it’s all irrelevant to whether you would be justified in assassinating me anyway.

Sha: You admit that the conquest caused us harm as a people.

4Che: No, I don’t admit that, with certainty, because I think it was the invasion by Arko that did the great harm, that created the pain and fear and anger you speak of. I do think a people that engages in conquest is corrupted over the long run; but may I remind you that within a moon and a half I and Yeola-e will be relinquishing power in Arko to the Arkans, and returning to within our borders. And that this was my idea and my doing, in part with the intention of avoiding that corruption.

Sha: Yes, something you effectively imposed on the Assembly of Yeola-e.

4Che: No, it was a fair chalk vote; if they or enough of the people had disagreed with me they could have impeached me and sent Artira to be Imperator again. If we want to speak of impositions, the assassination of a semanakraseye is the ultimate political imposition.

Sha: Then I return to your time in the blood-ring of Arko, when you were willing to kill, in cold blood, eight Yeolis who were strangers to you, but then told the one who was a friend that you would not kill him, in full knowledge that by so doing you were making pointless the deaths of the eight, and forcing him to suicide?

4Che: And so I suppose if I’d killed him instead, Sharaina, you’d have thought, ‘Ah well, he killed his best friend, so I think he deserves to live after all and I shall not assassinate him’? (laughter) Honoured Presiding Judge, I beg permission to stand before the chair of witness instead of sitting in it, because I can’t bear to not be on my feet in the face of this questioning. And I beg forgiveness also if I should happen to faint from shock, from the sense that the world around me has gone entirely mad, when I—a semanakraseye in good standing who was voted for by a tripling majority of Yeolis in two impeachment votes, a chakrachaseye who is widely credited with leading us back from the brink of conquest, a Yeoli citizen—a human being—must argue that I am worthy of life in a Yeoli court of law, against a Yeoli who’d murder a Yeoli and openly admits it.

PJ: You may stand if you wish.

Sha: I would like to request of the Presiding Judge that he enforce the requirement that a witness speak only in answer to the questions asked.

PJ: I make note of the advocate and defendant’s request.

Sha: Chevenga, do you… do you deny Yeola-e has been irreversibly altered through what you have done in your life?

4Che: I think it’s been altered more by what Kurkas Aan did in his life; the most significant alteration I had a hand in was the transformation of occupied Yeoli territory into free.

Sha: But we are not the same; you know it; we are filled to the gills with foreign ideas, foreign methods, foreign corruption! We are ceasing to be Yeolis, ceasing to be athye, ceasing to be free of everything whose absence has defined us, and you are behind it more than any other Yeoli or any other thousand Yeolis.

4Che: I don’t hear a question here.

Sha: What do you have to say for yourself?

4Che: I’ve done nothing to justify your assassinating me. I shouldn’t have to stand here and answer point for point whether I was right or wrong in any decisions I have made, or how much responsibility I bore for which event or what change—I’ve done it too much already—because it’s all irrelevant; it’s absurd and insane and—up until now—inconceivable that anyone should have to defend his life in principle by arguing these things with his would-be murderer in a Yeoli court of law. It wouldn’t matter if I was the most idiotic semanakraseye in the history of Yeola-e; that wouldn’t justify assassinating me. There are lawful ways to remove idiotic semanakraseyel. Now you say the legal means were exhausted, which was because a majority of Yeolis voted in my favour; it doesn’t matter whether they were a nation of idiots when they so voted, that still wouldn’t justify assassinating me, because the law against murder still stands. It doesn’t matter whether the very law against murder is idiotic, that still would not justify assassinating me—it is still the law, and it’s the law by which we live, and under which you and I stand in this court.

Sha: You don’t frighten me!

4Che: What’s the question? Whether I ever intended to? No. Nonetheless, you fear me enough to plot to kill me.

Sha: Presiding Judge, please rule that he answer my questions only!

PJ: I think that the witness’s point that he should not have to answer questions that are irrelevant to the matter at hand is well-taken. I shall rule that he keep his answers narrowed to addressing your questions when you refrain from questions which do not speak to the issue of whether you would have been justified in assassinating him.

Sha: Chevenga, do you not admit that you intimidate people, and bend them to your will?

4Che: I have done that, but only when it was militarily necessary, either to frighten enemies or in commanding soldiers.

Sha: But you have that tendency, do you deny it?

4Che: Yes, in that I only did these things when I chose to.

Sha: But you’ve chosen to rather a lot, don’t you think? In Arko you hold absolute power—

4Che: No, I don’t; there is an Assembly now with which power is split, and has been since I instituted it, and, again, I will have absolutely no power there at all within a moon and a half.

Sha: But the sway you have over people, the way in which you are able to spellbind and rule… of course you will not admit it on the stand, I wonder what the procedure is for requesting that a witness be truth-drugged… I ask the Presiding Judge.

PJ: An advocate, or one acting as an advocate in her own right, may request this of the witness himself, and if he should decline, then the advocate may request of the court that he be compelled, and give grounds, and the court will rule whether the grounds are reasonable and sufficient, and if so, the witness is compelled.

Sha: I request that the witness submit himself to a dose of Arkan truth-drug, since it will be generally seen and known that he is attempting to conceal something if he refuses.

4Che: I refuse on the grounds that it is not necessary. You’ve called me up, Sharaina, to try to prove that I ought to be dead, and I’m sorry if I’m not going along with your plans, (laughter) but it is nothing more than an honest difference of opinion on my part, and truth-drug does not alter opinions.

Sha: I request that the witness be compelled on the grounds that he will not otherwise tell the truth.

PJ: Denied, as the witness has spoken of publicly-known events all through this questioning, and recognizably truthfully throughout.

Sha: Do you deny that even you yourself have doubted your own worthiness to live, as we have learned recently?

4Che: I don’t deny that, but I have never disagreed with the Yeoli laws against treason and murder.

Sha: Why have you doubted your own worthiness to live?

4Che: Certainly not for any of the reasons you offered for my unworthiness to live in your summary, nor that you’ve listed since. Look, Sharaina, if you thought notions in my own mind justified my death, so that I might have been persuaded myself, then you should have undertaken to persuade me. You should have come to me, offered me Bartelao’s hunting knife and asked me if I’d be so good as to thrust it into my own heart for your list of reasons (laughter), and I would have been compelled by the force of your logic to do so. Then you’d have broken no law.

Sha: Do you deny your own insanity?

4Che: To properly answer that, I’d have to ask you to define exactly what you mean by insanity, but I won’t bother, because it’s neither here nor there. If you argue I should die because I am insane, then you must also be arguing that every patient in the House of Integrity on Haiu Menshir, and all the patients of all the psyche-healers in Yeola-e and indeed the world, whether they be victims of torture or sufferers of some bitter loss or simply born mad, should all die too.

Sha: I argue no such thing!

4Che: Then you can’t argue that I should for that reason. This is the crux of it, Sharaina, and I keep having to return you to it: your defense is justification, that you were right in assassinating me, that if I were dead it would be the best thing for the world, or at least Yeola-e, and that therefore I don’t deserve to live. Since you are making the defense the onus is on you to prove that I don’t, and so if I see fallacies in the arguments by which you attempt to prove this, pardon me, but I will raise them.

Sha: You are just trying to save your own life!

4Che: Imagine! (laughter)

Sha: A condemned man will say anything to try to escape his fate.

4Che: Sharaina, are you on the Earthsphere with the rest of us? I’m not condemned by this court; I’m not even accused in this court. It’s you who are; do you even understand that?

Sha: You should be dead, you are a curse, it was a bitter day for Yeola-e the moment you were born!

4Che: I don’t hear a question, except the implied one of whether I agree or not. For the record, I do not.

Sha: You have no cursed right to disagree!

4Che: I don’t deserve to be assassinated. Sharaina, you’re just wrong.

Sha: Yes you do!

4Che: I deserve to live.

Sha: No you don’t! (dissent)

4Che: Yes I do! (laughter)

Sha: No you don’t! (dissent)

4Che: No no no no no! (spectator unrest)

PJ: Order. Order! Order, sib gentlefolk, please! I ask order and silence. As Presiding Judge I suspend this course of questioning on the grounds that it is doing nothing to further any understanding of the court in relation to the matter. I declare a break also.



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Wednesday, May 27, 2009

55 - Shit, venom, thorns and clingfire


The Presiding Judge decreed a break, and I met Linasika going out, though he was in a hurry. “I think calling you to the chair was a mistake on her part,” I said to him. “Perhaps she imagined herself your equal, and she’s nowhere near. But I must thank you for taking my side, for a change.”

“You know cursed well I was taking my own side, fighting not to be tarred with her brush so as to save my own name after she forced me into that chair, Fourth Chevenga,” he hissed back, quietly. “My opinion of you has changed not one whit.” I couldn’t help but chuckle as he strode away.

I went out into the courtyard of the court, where the trees were just in flower, delicately perfuming the air, petals white and fresh as a baby’s innocence. Insufficient reconnaissance: three writers were there, and they cornered me.

It was all what I expected, what did I think and feel about how it had gone so far and so forth, and I answered honestly and non-dramatically. Then Sisaria Nomenas of the Pages of Arko asked me, “It’s true, that by Yeoli custom the life of a semanakraseye is held cheap, or at least cheaper than those of other Yeolis; has that ever bothered you, Chevenga?”

I was at a loss for a moment; the answer that came immediately to my lips was, of course, “No!” but it was not the truth. “It’s something that I’ve acceded to and accepted,” I said in the end.

“You were raised with it, I know,” she persisted. “Might it be in some part the cause of your, em, problem?” The other two writers, Yeolis both, looked as if they’d bitten lemons.

“There’s been a committee of Assembly struck to delve into such matters,” I said. “Rather than give my own opinion I’ll defer to them to answer that question when they do up their report. Be forewarned, I’ll do the same with all such questions.”

“Have you ever had the urge to resign the position, because of this?” she asked me.

The spot on the side of my head where Kall had fisted me on the sight of the Imperial seals lying on my desk, not a half-moon ago, ached for a moment. “I’d be lying if I said I never had the thought,” I said. “But, as you know, I have not resigned. And before you ask, I have no plans to.”

The bell called us back in. Sharaina next presented evidence in the form of quotes, saying she could not possibly call in all those whose words she would cite here. She hauled out everything you could imagine; that was the stack of papers.

Faraiko and Inatalla and the other hawks in the Pages, from the time leading up to the impeachment vote: “He is mad—the danger of brilliance,” “he is despotic,” “the closest we’ve seen to a second Notyere in modern times.”

Linasika and other detractors of mine among the Servants, quoted in the record of Assembly: “One might even say that in a sense he precipitated the war; I can barely imagine an act of greater naivete than undertaking a peace mission to an empire determined to invade us”, “Yeola-e has never seen such an aggressive and blood-thirsty chakrachaseye, let alone semanakraseye, in its entire history,” “a semanakraseye who urges invasion is a despot in disguise as a semanakraseye,” “he is possessed of a most un-Yeoli lust for power.”

Pundits and Servants of the nationalistic faction: “The man is apparently incapable of falling in love with a Yeoli, but takes up instead with citizens of the enemy empire, and would even bring the blood of a dark-skinned savage into the demarchic line,” “To fall in love with and take as a spouse the enemy’s greatest champion is an act of symbolic treason,” “Yeola-e is irredeemably changed, altered beyond recognition, and whether by his folly in inducing conquest of us, or his insistence on leading conquest by us, it is not unjust to lay it all at the feet of Chevenga.”

Myself, confessing to the Arch Arbitrate, “I killed eight fellow Yeolis as a ringfighter in the Mezem in Arko,” without the rest of the sentence, in which I’d told them I’d been forced to.

Etana-lai Kensai, Servant of Tinga-e-Anika, Linasika and other Servants during the war: “No one ever imagined a Yeoli semanakraseye would abuse a captured commander in the Arkan style, but Chevenga did it, and with a degree of relish we’d find shocking even in an Arkan,” “A Yeoli citizen and warrior was executed for stealing two pieces of firewood, by Chevenga’s own hand.” Inatalla, of course: “I protested, and for that he flew at me in a rage, flung me down and ground my face in the dirt. I relived it a thousand times in my nightmares. In truth, it was the turning point in my life.”

The Alliance of Warriors of Yeola-e in their open letter to me: my going asa kraiya would be “beyond treason, in truth: it could be the murder of your whole people, in spirit if not in body.”

Poor Linasika, again: “This revelation, to my mind, casts serious doubt on his fitness to act as semanakraseye.” A story in the Pages, after my secret had come out, whose author had counted up the times he could find that I’d attempted suicide: “Destructiveness can be seen as a necessary trait in a warrior-king; self-destructiveness, however, must raise questions of competence.”

To hear it all, you’d think that any part of Fourth Chevenga Shae-Arano-e, head to toe, that was not made of pure shit was distilled snake-venom, fortified with hefty measures of thorns and clingfire. People started glancing at me to see how I was taking it. I mostly succeeded in showing nothing; friends told me afterwards I just looked tense. It wasn’t as if any of it was new to me.

Once done with that, Sharaina called up her next witness. To everyone’s surprise, it was Mera Shae-Sera, the leader of the Disciples Chevengani, complete with the little ceramic figure of me in white he wore around his neck, and his hair cut in my style, or at least the style I’d worn before I’d got Skorsas to stop trimming it because I would go asa kraiya. It was noticeably longer than a warrior-cut now. Every time he looked at her it was as if she’d crawled from under a rock.

I cite the record again. She had asked him what form did their reverence of me take.

Mera Shae-Sera: We study his words and his works.

Sharaina: Why exactly; what do you hope to gain from such study?

Me: Enlightenment, understanding of the Divine, and peace.

Sha: Right. Now do you consider Chevenga divine?

Me: Oh yes.
But he says himself that we are all divine.

Sha: Do you consider him more divine than other people?

Me: An avatar of All-Spirit at the very least; a God, yes.

Sha: All-knowing? All-powerful?

Me: He is, in mortal form, of course neither...

Sha: And yet...? I sense you have more you wish to say here; I ask that you articulate all that you feel, and take your time doing so, as you have sworn to answer the truth clear and complete.

Me: Of course, thank you. Chevenga has assumed a limited, mortal form subject to the same dangers and vagaries of that mortal existence, no doubt to share in the plight of those lesser than himself in the spirit of chiravesa. [This is one of the points when I wanted to crawl under my chair.] A divine spirit can do so to extend the hand of peace and enlightenment to those who insist on living in fear and hatred. Sister, you are deeply disturbed to fear him.

Sha: I thank you for your enlightened concern for my personal wellbeing, Mera. I would like to ask you how you—and I mean yourself personally and the Disciples collectively—came to believe in Chevenga’s divinity, what things persuaded you.

Me: His own words and his own actions. He has spoken at length of the power of the divine, and his philosophy, which is one to live by. As well his many escapes from death can be called nothing short of miraculous. Including the, ahem, one at hand. He is a man who shines in one’s sight, greater than a mere man truly can.

Sha: His own words, you say; have you some examples?

Me: Oh yes, sib, by heart. I quote: [and here his voice took on the half-musical, droning cadence you hear only from priests uttering liturgical words] “In all honesty, unless you had fought or worked with me or closely followed my training, what firm indication was there that I would be able to do what I did? My reputation was, as they say, nine-tenths potential, especially when it came to command. I was only twenty”—his humility is legendary, yet I continue—
I had won in the Mezem, won against Mahid, won my way free, won against the torture (by healing), succeeded in seeking loans, in hiring mercenaries, in building alliances—and won the battle of Haiu Menshir. Against Arko my people had known nothing but defeat, not a single victory—until this one.” [This was from the instructional work on strategy and tactics I wrote using the Arkan War for examples.] Miracle after miracle, as you can see.

Sha: I have to say that doesn’t sound exactly like humility of a legendary degree. But his words have a certain power, then, you observe.

Me: Yes, they do.

Sha: Would you say he has an extraordinary ability to sway people to his wishes?

Me: His words are full of wisdom, his philosophy is compelling, but so is anyone’s who is telling the truth. Truth is the most powerful of spiritual teachings.

Sha: Let me rephrase the question then, he has an extraordinary ability to convince others of the truth of what he is saying?

Me: Sib advocate and defendant, truth cannot be made into lies by shouting them louder, any more than one can make chalk into charcoal by insisting one is the other.

Sha: I, and the court also, I trust, will take that as a chalk. One belief he has convinced you of, or, in your view, one truth he has revealed to you, is that he is a God in human form, yes?

Me: Yes. But I object if anyone should say we were somehow swayed or coerced or fooled. Our beliefs are the result of reasoned analysis and to suggest anything less is to insult us.

Sha: Reasoned analysis, right. Now Chevenga is, of course, the semanakraseye of Yeola-e; a person whom it is customary for Yeolis to consider as dedicated to serving them, and sacrificing himself for them, if necessary. We do not traditionally hold a semanakraseye as above us in any way. So, and I ask your forgiveness for saying this, but your belief that he is divine would be considered by most Yeolis, I would think, as blasphemous, in a sense, and certainly insane. I am not saying I concur, and as I say I hope you will forgive me, but I wonder how you can account for what by any normal measure are some very bizarre beliefs, given that you are people of independent mind.

Me: What, because if I, in my independent-minded way, choose to believe something you do not? Aside from referring to another thinking Yeoli as insane, I account for myself, though how I and my beliefs have somehow come into question here... I account for myself by thinking and coming to a conclusion I feel is appropriate!

Sha: I ask the Presiding Judge to confirm for me, in the witness’s hearing, that at no time have I said the witness is insane.

PJ: No, sib advocate for the defense, you have not.

Sha: Thank you, and further, I ask the Presiding Judge also to confirm in the witness’s hearing, that at no time have I even said it is my opinion that his beliefs are insane.

PJ: You have not and indeed have been careful to make it clear you are not saying that.

Me: Are you attempting to make my beliefs sound insane and thus justify your attempted murder of the semanakraseye? How this follows I am at a loss to understand!

Akana: I am at a loss to understand how it follows also.

Sha: What interests me is how Chevenga is able to inspire such devotion, as other people are not.


It got more dull after that, essentially turning into an argument, so I’ll end the cite here. Being so used to being spat on for his beliefs, Mera made Sharaina’s questions into that, and neither she nor the Presiding Judge could convince him otherwise, even though in truth they weren’t. What she was doing, of course, was trying to show how dangerous I was by revealing Mera and his group as a living example of how I could ensorcel Yeolis into decidedly un-Yeoli beliefs and so was too dangerous to let live.

The judge ended the questioning before she managed to make the point more sharply, due to Mera
’s unbending defensiveness. And yet I wonder if he did it purposely, to frustrate her.

We broke after that for noon meal. When we came back and court was called to order again, Sharaina fixed her eyes on me and said, “I call Fourth Chevenga Shae-Arano-e to the chair of testimony.”



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Tuesday, May 26, 2009

54 - I had no answer for it


I went back up to the Independent for breakfast, but found I had no appetite. I was suddenly nervous as if I were facing the execution block. Neither hot water nor icy water nor calming essence eased it. Surya wasn’t up yet and I didn’t want to disturb him. Of course I knew what to do: what is in it?

Flashes of the dream came back to me, and I understood. The Yeoli who had killed me in it, who would have killed me in reality if she could, I would have to see in the flesh, look in the face, answer questions from. At some level, it seemed, I had denied to myself that she existed, or planned what she had, so that her presence, proving both, was horrifying.

I took a deep breath, tried to seize myself, reminded myself of the thousand far-worse dangers I had faced and prevailed against in my life. I thought of the mamokal, of Sakrent, of Riji, of the Mahid, of the oubliette, of the enormous armies of Kurkas, of Kallijas. Since I started with Surya, I’ve had attacks of nerves like none in my life, I thought. Why do I think that’s not a coincidence?

None of those memories touched it, any more than they’d enabled me to walk up his flag-stoned path for my second visit to his office. I couldn’t escape what undid me: my would-be killer was Yeoli. I had no answer for it. I knew what Surya would say—there was something I did not understand—but I couldn’t begin to know what it was. I walked down to the court on legs that felt like glass and a heart like water, even with Surya beside me.

It’s just Sharaina, I told myself, when I saw her. Just a woman, an ex-Servant, a person I knew. I am a warrior, a champion, a conqueror. Her red-brown hair was longer than it had been last time I’d seen her in life, about two years ago, and she had more grey at the temples. She looked precisely the same as she had in the dream.

I don’t want to meet her eyes. She was sitting at the desk of the advocate of defense, dressed neatly, utterly respectable, very much like a Servant still, except that the kerchief was dark red rather than the official black and white. The room was crammed, and of course there was a buzz when I came in, causing her to look. Her eyes did not change from their impassiveness, when they met mine. I showed nothing as well, I hoped, but looked away before she did. She absently straightened a stack of papers before her, with hands that I had last seen trying to tear loose from my own so as to stab me, as I lay already dead in effect from three arrows. I looked away again, trying not to feel sick.

The crystal was tapped to the bell to begin. She would be tried first.

Akana kept it very simple to start, calling up Krero to recount the arrest, having the truth-drug confession read into the court record, and having Bartelao testify that she had indeed asked him to aid her in assassinating me, and accepted his agreement.

The first witness Sharaina called up to make her defense was my worst detractor in Assembly, the Servant of Michalere, Linasika Aramichiya. I cite the record.



Sha: Servant Linasika, I’d like to ask you first your opinion of Fourth Chevenga Shae-Arano-e as semanakraseye.

Li: In my opinion, Yeola-e would be better off if someone other than Chevenga held the position, but not if he were dead; I do not see him as deserving of death, nothing I have ever said or done, or ever will say or do, is to be interpreted that way, and I absolutely deplore the act you are charged with plotting.

Sha: And yet I recall several conversations between you and me, Linasika, which would belie what you say now, and of which I would like to remind you.

Li: Remind me all you like, I still deplore—

PJ: The witness has not yet been asked a question.

Li: My apologies, Presiding Judge.

Sha: Thank you, Presiding Judge. I direct your mind, Servant Linasika, to a conversation you and I had, which I recall was in my office in Assembly Palace at the time, shortly after Chevenga seized the imperial throne of Arko. You said words to this effect, as I recall, and under oath you must confirm it, “It would have been best if there had been no tree under that window,” a reference to Chevenga’s well-known attempt to commit suicide by leaping out of a window of the Marble Palace, which was foiled only by the tree, which broke his fall, on the night of the sack. Do you deny you said this?

Li: I do not deny it, but I would inform the court that it was meant only as a quip, and should absolutely not be interpreted as my condoning an assassination attempt.

Sha: A quip perhaps, but did you not truly feel that it would have been best had Chevenga died then?

Li: I request of the court that I decline to answer as my answer cannot be part of a substantive argument for justification. The defendant never consulted with me on this assassination plot nor asked me if I was in agreement with it, and if she had, I would have said no in the strongest terms.

PJ: Denied, as the defendant wishes to demonstrate that others agreed with her end, and such opinions are entirely relevant to whether her action was justified.

Li: In answer, then, subsequent events reassured me that my concern was unfounded.

Sha: I get the impression that was a chalk, that you did feel it would have been best if Chevenga had died then, but I ask a more clear answer.

Li: Yes, but I still deplore the act with which you are charged with plotting.

Sha: And yet was it not a clear expression of a wish on your part that Chevenga was dead?

Li: No, I… I said nothing with regard to any wish of mine at all. To quote you quoting me, “It would have been best,” I spoke not my own wish but my opinion as to what would have been best for Yeola-e.

Sha: So then you concur that it would be best for Yeola-e if Chevenga were dead.

Li: No, it’s as I just said, subsequent events reassured me. I don’t think it would be best for Yeola-e if Chevenga were dead.

Sha: Well then let me remind you, Servant Linasika, of another conversation, this time shortly before the vote to impeach him. If I recall rightly it was in your Assembly Palace office, and you predicted—accurately, as it turned out—that Arkans would vote overwhelmingly to impeach him, and Yeolis to keep him. And you said, “What Arkans would truly like to vote for, I know, would be his death; that would be semana kra true.” Do you deny you said words to this effect?

Li: Sharaina, it seems as if you would have me side with the Arkans in the war they fought to enslave us, and that I will not do.

Sha: I don’t hear an answer to my question.

Li: You mean to suggest that I agreed with Arkan voters who would want Chevenga dead in revenge for leading the conquest of them; that’s suggesting I side with them. Considering how I’ve been called down a number of times for excessive Yeoli nationalism, I can’t imagine how you would think this.

Sha: I still don’t hear an answer to my question, which I’m sure will raise the court’s suspicion that you are evading it. Did you say those words, or other that meant the same?

Li: I recall saying I knew Arkans would vote him dead if they could; I don’t recall agreeing with the desire.

Sha: You said “That would be semana kra true,” and semana kra is a principle you have always adhered to as sacred.

Li: As I recall I was making a comment on the irony of it, that if Chevenga were to truly and entirely allow semana kra in Arko he’d be signing his own death-order.

Sha: You may deny it, but I recall the wistfulness in your expression.

Li: I deny it categorically.

Sha: Let’s discuss, then, this letter I have before me, from your hand dated hyeresora 11, 1555, from which I will quote, though before I get to that I will direct the court’s attention to a series of letters you wrote me in our correspondence subsequent to my being impeached from Assembly in 1554, the main gist of which was that you regretted that this had happened as you felt I was undeserving of it, a quote or two: “You are accused of extremism but, as you know, I feel this is unfounded and your fervent devotion to Yeola-e is something to be admired, not abhorred,” another, “Your incisive mind and reliable insight into the deeper truth of matters is missed very much in Assembly, at least by the right-minded.” You recall writing these lines?

Li: I do and I meant them at the time, before I learned you were taken up with sufficient madness to plot to assassinate a semanakraseye.

Sha: Now I quote from the hyeresora 11 letter: “We were rid of him,” meaning Chevenga, “but now he is back, like the weed in the garden you pull every year but will never stop sprouting again the next spring. The man’s charisma is beyond reason and beyond control; if impeachment does not suffice to stop him, what remains?” You recall writing this, Servant Linasika?

Li: I don’t recall the precise words, but if you have them there penned by my hand, I cannot deny it. However—

Sha: In your mind, what means did remain?

Li: If I may request of the Presiding Judge that I be allowed to finish my answer?

PJ: You did finish, sib witness, as it was a chalk or charcoal question and your answer was clearly chalk.

Sha: Thank you, Presiding Judge. I reiterate, in your mind, what means did remain to stop Chevenga?

Li: None. The question was rhetorical.

Sha: You did not see there was only one means remaining?

Li: No, because—I should say, if by this you refer to the act which you plotted, doubly no, because to my mind assassinating a semanakraseye was and is and always will be utterly out of the question, an act for which there is no valid justification.

Sha: Servant Linasika, do you think that the killing of Notyere was justifiable?

Li: Yes, but the moment he attempted to seize powers beyond that of semanakraseye, he ceased to be a semanakraseye in good standing.

Sha: So it is only a semanakraseye in good standing—for the record I emphasize those words—whom it is unjustified to assassinate. Now you said earlier that you felt Yeola-e would be better off with someone other than Chevenga in the position; does that not mean in your mind he is not a semanakraseye in good standing?

Li: No, it means only that he is a semanakraseye with whose policies I disagree. Notyere ceased to be a semanakraseye in good standing by committing illegal acts, in attempting to seize power; Chevenga has not done that.

Sha: Yet many times in Assembly—I think the court is well enough aware that I need not cite from the record—you stood to object to his taking power in Arko, saying that it was wrong, it was the mark of a despot, and it was dangerous. In fact you repeatedly referred to Chevenga as a second Notyere, do you deny that?

Li: I cannot deny it, since it is on the record, and my purpose was to express my sense of the danger in his actions; but his seizing power in Arko was not at all contrary to Yeoli law, and in fact had been essentially approved by Assembly prior to our invasion.

Sha: I note with great amusement the approving tone you now put on, to something you so vociferously objected to back then.

Li: The point I am making is in regard to a semanakraseye in good standing, by which I mean one who has not acted contrary to Yeoli law. By taking the role of Imperator in Arko, Chevenga did not do that.

Sha: So you can define a semanakraseye in good standing as one who has acted to the detriment of Yeola-e, in your opinion, so long as the acts are not technically illegal?

Li: In reference to whether assassinating one is justifiable, absolutely. You started with a comparison between Notyere and Chevenga, and I don’t agree with you that both deserved death. Look, Sharaina Anina, I know you have called me onto the chair to imply to the court that I support your defense of justification, so let me say clearly and unequivocally that it is my opinion that there is absolutely no valid justification whatsoever for the assassination of a semanakraseye, I have always thought so and I will always think so.

Sha: I cede.

Akana Tenasinga: Servant Linasika, you have made your position on whether the defendant’s defense of justification is valid quite clear, so I have little to ask you, but I wonder if I might have you explain why, in your opinion, assassinating a semanakraseye was and is and always will be utterly out of the question, as you say, and why there can be no valid justification whatsoever for it.

Li: Well, to answer that question most cogently for the court’s purposes, it is first of all abhorrent and thus against the law of Yeola-e for a Yeoli to murder another Yeoli, and it is second of all abhorrent—beyond abhorrent—for a Yeoli to act so enormously contrary to the express will of the people and cause severe detriment to the people as to assassinate a semanakraseye, which is why we have a law against treason.

A: Thank you, I cede and release the witness if the defense agrees.

Sha: The defense agrees.


[Note on the abbreviations: where a Yeoli name is abbreviated the first syllable is used as formal Yeoli script is a syllabic script, e.g. Sha for Sharaina; where a title is rendered in English, the initial English letters are used, e.g. PJ for Presiding Judge.]




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Monday, May 25, 2009

53 - The main witness for the defense


The world knows the rest.

Having learned which house in the town of Aratai was Sharaina’s, Krero sent two of his people around to the back door, and knocked on the front. She lived alone there, and so was the one who answered his knock. When he said his name, and that it was a security matter concerning the semanakraseye, there was a silence, and then she slammed the door in his face and ran out the back door, straight into the arms of the two. Of course she protested the unconsenting truth-drugging of a free Yeoli citizen, but by his position Krero was authorized to do so on sufficient suspicion, of course, and her attempting to run out the back after he’d said what he’d said constituted that.

Her plan was just as I had dreamed and Jinai had seen. She named five names. Bartelao Shae-Ima had agreed to his part, so Krero arrested him too. Two others whom I shall not name had been asked but were leaning against; if they had been older he might have arrested them for aiding a conspiracy by not reporting it, but they were both only seventeen, so them he just gave a thorough talking-to. After he had spelled out for them what would likely happen to them, and their families, if it became publicly known that they had had any thought of it, he was satisfied that they had come to a full enough appreciation of the gravity. In trying to persuade them, Sharaina had never used words such as kill or assassinate, she had only spoken of eliminating the danger and solving the problem and so forth. No wonder they’d been so shocked in my dream.

The last two youths were for contingency only; she only planned only to mention the idea to them if the former two decided against. Because they didn
t even know, Krero let them be.

Because neither I nor Jinai ever met any of them in person, nor learned their names in dream or vision, no one will ever know which two of the four would have been my killers. So it is, in county Aratai, two young men live and work and go about their daily business, who otherwise, perhaps, would have taken my life, and their own lives with it, and ruined their families’ names as well—and they have no idea. Fate is a strange thing.

Krero did all this, brought Sharaina and Bartelao to Vae Arahi and locked them up in the cellar of Assembly Palace, all without a soul but himself and his two people knowing, until he told Artira, and the prosecutor Akana Tenasinga, who was assigned the case.

Now the Imperial election was seven days away. I would have to leave the vote-stealing investigation and prosecution entirely in the hands of Rafas until I got back. I got down on my knees before Surya. “There’s only one way I can be back in time,” I said. “You know I am obliged to be at that trial, you know what the election means to me, you know I don’t want to die now…” I clasped his feet. Please let me relay.” He stepped back from my hands distastefully, gazed at my aura and assented. “But,” he snapped, “I’m coming with you.” There were enough relay-trained flyers these days that it was possible. He trained in the procedure for half a bead. I, who could do it myself almost without waking up, found I couldn’t bear to watch him do it.

By the time we got to Vae Arahi, the news was out, so people were all over me right from when the catchers helped me out of my wing-harness on the Independent roof, even though it was near midnight. There were about twenty writers. I invited them into the hot-tub room to grill me while I soaked.

Since I’d been in the sky for two days, they had more news for me than I for them. Mostly they wanted answers to the hardest and most horrible questions: how I felt, and how I thought my people must feel. In answering honestly, I found myself repeating some of what I had said in the dream, and fighting tears.

Sharaina and Bartelao had both been charged with conspiracy to murder and conspiracy to commit treason, which in Yeola-e is defined as an act that will either cause severe detriment to, or which is contrary to the express will of, the people. The evidence was their own confessions under truth-drug. Bartelao was pleading that he’d been under the sway of Sharaina. Sharaina had no advocate, as none would take her, so she planned to defend herself, pleading justification.

The two sides had, as usual, entered summaries of the arguments that they’d make, and one of the writers had a copy of Sharaina’s, which he read to me. I should be killed for the good of Yeola-e, she wrote, because I was a power-monger and a latent tyrant—all the same arguments she’d made pounding her chair-arm when she’d been in Assembly, but with some new ones added. I was insane, for example, and had lied to the Yeoli people in my madness, by hiding my foreknowledge, a breach of the statute semanakraseyeni (which was true). She even wrote that the death-in-me was in truth the God-in-me, wishing what was ultimately best for me as well as for the people. When he was finished reading, I ducked right under in the tub. “Sorry, I just needed to be completely immersed for a moment, after that,” I told them when I came back up. “What do I think of it? I disagree.”

Now that I was here, the trial would start tomorrow. I told the writers I wasn’t sure exactly why I was needed, since I had no evidence for the prosecution, and it had sufficient evidence anyway in confessions both under truth-drug and not; I’d come trusting Krero’s request. A few of them glanced at each other, before Lurai Athal of Proclamatory told me. “Em… you’re named as the main witness for the defense.”

I was shocked speechless for a bit, and several made note of that. “You mean,” I said when I could, “Sharaina’s hoping to get me to admit on the stand, ‘Yes, you’d have been right to kill me’?” Some laughed; others glanced at each other a touch nervously again.

“Well, there’s been some suggestion,” Lurai said, “that, em, with what’s come out about your own feelings in regard to your own life, semanakraseye, that it might not be as ludicrous a strategy as it seems on first glance.” They all poised her notebooks. “Any comments on that?”

I was dumbfounded again for a moment. “As a witness,” I finally said, “all I will do is what a witness must do: answer the questions I am asked with only the truth, clear and complete to the best of my understanding. Then the jury will decide as they will. That’s all I will say.” My head was spinning; I needed to make sense of this within myself. Suddenly I was glad Surya was here.

“It’s interesting how life can manifest outwardly the questions we wrestle with inside ourselves,” he said, when the writers were gone and he’d got into the tub with me. Interesting, I thought; that’s one way of putting it. “We spoke of an Assembly within you, but one might see it also as a court of law, in which the prosecution is the death-in-you and the defense your will to live. Until you began with me, the verdict and the sentence were both certain; then you entered an appeal. Now, before a judge and jury in life, Sharaina, the Servant of the constituency of the death-in-you, is planning to play the role she always wanted, prosecutor; on the chair of testimony, you will have to speak in your own defense.”

I closed my eyes. I’d slept most of the way here, even during the day, catching up for sleep I’d stinted on in Arko, but I was still bone-tired. “Somehow I don’t find this heartening,” I said.

“Well, the part you need to understand is this: in the court in life, it is actually those who would kill you who stand accused, as is appropriate, rather than you, for all Sharaina will argue as if she were a prosecutor, citing your errors and flaws. So it should be with the death-in-you also. And when you argue, as I can’t imagine you won’t, that no error or flaw of yours could ever justify her murdering you, so that your errors and flaws are irrelevant, the death-in-you will have no choice but to listen.”

I went under the water again, not wanting to hear more. Some part of me, aided profoundly by fatigue, rebelled against understanding this. He just patted my shoulder gently when I came back up. “In short, everything is going as it should.”

Though Shaina and Etana welcomed me into their bed in sympathy for my otherwise being alone, I slept only about two beads. They gave me a note that had been sent up by Akana, asking if he could visit me at sixth bead in the morning, for some reason; I wasn’t sure why, when he wasn’t going to call me up. He was past sixty, so at cock-light I dressed for court and went down to catch him at Assembly Palace to save him the climb up to the Independent. He took me into his office in the legal wing.

“You’re right to think I need no testimony from you for my part, semanakraseye,” he said. “The jurors all already know who you are, what you’ve done and whether they think assassinating you is justifiable. But I imagine by now you know Sharaina is going to call you onto the chair of testimony?” I signed chalk. “It’s that I want to talk about. You’ve read her summary?” I signed chalk again.

“So you know: she’ll throw at you all the same accusations that she did in Assembly, as well as some new ones. You know it inside-out. The difference is that since you’re not in the semanakraseye’s chair and therefore required to keep your silence, you’ll be able to argue to your heart’s content, so long as you do it in the context of answering her questions… or pretend to, you know how it goes. The only thing is…” Akana peered at me under his copious gray brows. “It’s all an assertion that you deserve to live. It’s necessary that there be no… hesitation, or withholding, or conceding, on that matter, on your part.” So that was why we were meeting.

I took a deep breath, closed my eyes and did what I knew he wanted me to do: imagined how it would be, arguing in theory for my life, against a woman who was arguing in reality for hers. He sat patiently waiting, while I played it through in my mind.

Done, I opened my eyes and told him the gist. “Akana, there is a part of me that has an argument with the worth of my own life, yes. At this point I can’t deny it. But there is no part of me that has any argument with the Yeoli laws that, together, forbid murdering a semanakraseye in good standing. It’s madness that I should even have to say that my record doesn’t justify assassination. I could be the worst people’s-will-enactor in the history of Yeola-e, and murdering me would still be murdering the people’s will. We have effective legal means of getting rid of bad semanakraseyel, and I have never, for a single moment, claimed that I was not subject to them; I have been impeached, for the love of All-Spirit, and I did absolutely nothing to fight it, even when many Yeolis said I ought to because an overwhelming majority charcoaled it here. And then I was reinstated. Akana, I remember when my father was assassinated, the shock and grief everyone in Vae Arahi felt, that must have been the same all over the country… it would be ten times, a hundred times, worse if the assassin were Yeoli. We’d never be the same people again.” My eyes were suddenly stinging with tears; in the dream, living what in real life had been averted, I had not been willing to admit this. “I won’t hesitate or withhold or concede a hundredth of a finger-width on that, on the chair. Trust me.”

“All right, good. You take Yeola-e’s part rather than your own, that’s an even stronger case.” Had I? I thought I’d taken my own. “I recommend saying that all from your heart, as you just did.”

“Should I also say the whole thing makes me feel unreal, as if I’m in a dream world? That would be from my heart, too.”

He patted my shoulder. “If I have my way, semanakraseye, lad, you’ll wake up into sane reality before the close of the day.”





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Friday, May 22, 2009

52 - The vine of tomorrow's circumstance


I wouldn’t even be able to choose, I realized. If I saw them coming, anywhere—I knew Sharaina’s face well from Assembly, and the youths from the dream—my body would move of its own will before they were even near bow-range.

But it shouldn’t even get to that, I saw, when Surya made me haul myself up, sit and think. Reluctantly, sluggishly, my mind followed forward the implications.

I had two names. If Sharaina had only considered it herself, she had committed no crime; a warning that her secret intention had been foreseen would be all that was possible and, probably, all that was necessary. Thus it could be kept quiet, and Yeola-e spared the knowledge that it had been considered.

But if she had spoken to Bartelao or the others, agreed upon or planned anything, then it was conspiracy, and they must be charged, and tried, and it would all come out. It was about now I’d been meaning to do the Kiss of the Lake, until I’d decided to wait until I was done in Arko; she’d probably been planning it for this one. What were the chances that she had spoken to no one?

Then I thought, I am going to send out the Demarchic Guard on the basis of a dream? I could imagine the look Krero would give me. I remembered how it had been one of my orders from Surya to have Jinai look for my death, when the time was right. Terrify me though it did, that was now. I’d trusted his work for decisions far larger than a Demarchic Guard assignment. I found a bit of time to go to his office that morning.

As well as being on retainer to me, Jinai had built up a thriving private augury practice in Arko. We’d found him a manager, since running a business requires a memory. His reputation was unmatched, of course, and she, unlike him, was willing to up the rates to what the traffic would bear. Thus he had become fairly wealthy.

He still usually wore a loin-cloth only, though, as he did now, taking me into the room with the blank white wall. Augurs are allowed.

I stood before him as always, facing the empty wall, pen and noteboard in hand. “So!” he said jovially as usual, “what am I looking—” That was the moment his hands touched on my upper arms; now he whipped them away. Semanakraseye! You are scared, so scared, it’s like the first time.”

Sometimes he did remember something; it was always startling.

“It’s all right, Jinai, look anyway. You are looking for...” I took a deep breath. “My death.”

“Oooh, no wonder you’re scared.” His hands settled on my arms again, tightened, shifted me. At least he wasn’t scared. “As things are?”

“No, wait...” I wasn’t sure how things were. What was the alternative: to tell Krero or not? It came to me then, and fear and habit made it easy to say to myself. I will not, I cannot, lay down the sword. I of all people, must not go asa kraiya. “Look now.”

“From the seed of today’s choice grows the vine of tomorrow’s circumstance. All-Spirit, show me, for Fourth Chevenga, show me which way the vine of his life will grow... show me how the vine of Fourth Chevenga’s life will... be cut. I see... I see... you are climbing up a mountain, Haranin. You are in an exalted state, wearing a robe, it is white. You are sitting on the flat place... meditating, yes, that’s how it feels.”

I could have left then, my question answered. I listened in a daze, taking no notes. It was all the same, the place of meditation, four people, three with bows. His voice cut off, his hands jerked on me as if he’d taken an impact. He stood frozen, blue eyes staring huge and glassy at the wall. They... shot... you. I willed to him what calm I could, hard when I felt sick to my toes. “Go on,” I whispered.

Yeolis. Yeolis. My own people have killed me. Why? Why? You are on the ground, you don’t feel pain but you feel death, you are asking them why...” His voice broke with sobs. “She is yelling at you, something about power, about how this is the only way... oh, semanakraseye, semanakraseye, please...” He flung his arms around my neck, pressed a cheek wet with tears to mine. “Decide something different! Please choose something different, you who are so good at saving yourself by choosing something different, please, please, semanakraseye...”

I will lay down the sword. I heard it in me more than chose it, like the toll of a huge gong in my soul. I will go asa kraiya.

He was instantly calm, apparently not even noticing the wetness on his face, leaving me alone in distress. “I see... what am I looking for?”

“My death.”

“The vine of your life cut… I see... I see…” I will lay down the sword. I will go asa kraiya. “Oh, weird things. Always so weird, with you, better get the noteboard...” It was in my shield-hand, the pen in my sword-hand, I remembered. “A building I don’t know,” he said and I scrawled. “You are there, with people of all nations. I see... Fifth Chevenga, his wedding. He is going to marry this red-haired girl, lovely, the sweetest face. I see... strange people, tall people, not Srians, they are only a little dark. You are flying, but it is in a machine, I can hear the noise. You are so high the sunset on the curve of the Earthsphere looks like the jewel on a huge ring.”

Don’t question, I told myself, just write. No matter how strange, I had learned, most of what he saw played out essentially, if not literally, true.

“I see... you, but you made of light with no skin, parts of your insides flashing. A box floating in air. A war... you are there but not fighting, of course, because you are asa kraiya.”

Just write.

“I see... a girl calling you ‘Great-grandpa.’ But you don’t... feel old. Creaky, stiff, tired, you aren’t. Your death... I can’t find your death. I am so far ahead and I can’t find it. I’m so tired. I can’t go on.”

He sat down hard on the floor in his way, panting. “In my professional opinion,” he breathed, the formal wording obviously trained into him by his manager, “I strongly recommend... you take... the second choice.”



“Cheng, you’re white,” Krero said, once we were private in his office. “I think maybe we should get you to Kaninjer. Right now. Or Surya... is it your mind or body this time?”

“It’s my security, which is why I have got myself to you.”

He stared at me baffled. The worst possibility he could think of, obviously, was that I had somehow caught wind of an assassination plan, and those didn’t usually faze me. “Whatever this is,” he said finally, “tell me in my arms.”

I clung to him, thinking of the last embrace of his I remembered, him clinging to me, crying no, no, no. That dream, I realized, I would always remember as clearly as waking life, as long as I lived.

Just like in the dream, it was all I could do to form the words, to tell him who. We wept together, and he agreed readily not to tell anyone yet, in case Sharaina had spoken to no one, in which case we could keep it between her, him, Surya and me forever. He went to Aratai, where Sharaina lived, on his own authority as kengakraseye darya semanakraseyeni, taking four of his best and most discrete people.

The next days I waited for his pigeon in dread, a shadow of myself except when I was working and so could keep my mind off it. Please, All-Spirit, Gods, Universe, Chance, whatever rules – let this come to nothing. The Imperial election was barely a half-moon away. The pigeon message came on the fifth day, and read, Che: Two arrests, Ar knows, go to Vae-A. now. KreSa.





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Thursday, May 21, 2009

51 - A deaf dancer moving to a song I could not hear


Kaninjer. Kaninjer, no, please. Kaninjer, this is the end of my consciousness, let me keep it. Kaninjer, you can’t, this is the wound you’ve dreaded, the one you can’t save me from, I’m sorry, I can tell, I can feel it. Kaninjer, please trust me, I’m refusing healing, I have to, I’m sorry, Kaninjer, please...
I was in and out of consciousness as they laid me on the litter and carried me down the mountain, the jolts sending me off, the drops of medicine my healer gave me bringing me back. I understood what I had been doing when I saw the ceiling of the clinic: rehearsing in my mind what I would say when he set the needle to put me under for operating, how I would say the worst thing he could ever hear from me, that he would have to suffer the worst thing possible for a Haian: stand aside and watch my life drain away when he might, he thought, save me if he acted.

He argued with tears pouring down his cheeks, but ultimately it is the patient’s choice. I let them do some things, that would help me last longer and ease the pain and keep my head clear: break off the arrow-shafts, stanch the bleeding, vein-link me, put me on pure air, assist my breathing with the bellows when I was not talking to allow me greater rest, fill me with painkillers. Just being still, half-sitting and bundled in blankets in the solarium helped; I felt the leave-taking of my soul slow its pace. I kept finding myself desperately wanting to sit up all the way, though, trying to deny my own helplessness, I suppose. The one time I tried it, I fainted.

I called for Binchera, had him make the list of what I had to do yet: give my account, brief Artira on the matters that were in my mind only, direct her to certain papers, speak to the writers. I remember Niku stroking my hair and saying, a sob catching her off-guard, “Even your death has to have a schedule.” Skorsas clung to my feet the whole time, begging me not to die, pulling his white-blond hair. Kallijas I would never see again; I remembered the quick embrace and the casual words we’d given each other as I left, not knowing they would be the last. I would be cold before he knew.

Krero lost it with his head in my arms, saying over and over, “Boru, boru, boru.” Tawaen was all hardness, though I was sure he would crack later, and let me see his tears before I was gone. Vriah was glassy-eyed with making the wall. Kima and the others, I think, couldn’t believe I was going to die, and so would save tears for later. My parents and sibs, I could see, had made a pact to show no emotion while I lived, perhaps because, as usual, I had too much to do in too short a time.

I kept from weeping myself until I recounted to my closest what had happened, with Binchera scribing it so I’d only have to do it once; I could not hold my tears as I gave everyone the most terrible shock. I had to swear second Fire come it had been Yeolis. It was as if every Yeoli in the room had been struck his or her own death, the only sound my own sobbing breaths and the faint hiss of the pure air in the mask.

I was two beads with just Artira and semanakraseyeni business, then another two with the writers. They were tongue-tied at first, so I couldn’t resist saying, “Just think, I had to go through this to find out what can shut up a roomful of writers,” which got a tense laugh in spite of themselves.

Binchera read my account, and then I took questions as best I could, telling them not to hold back. The worst was being asked how I thought this would affect Yeola-e. I had meant to do this dry-eyed, but fell short again at that. How could I begin to know? I put the best face on it I could, saying that while we’d never had to bear such a thing, we are greater than any one person, and so on. When they asked about efforts to capture the assassins, I learned what I had forgotten: I had told Krero at the meditation place who had done it, so he could send people after them right then.

I felt time pass as I’d never felt time pass before. The sun was starting to sink behind Haranin when I finished my farewells to the writers. It had become much harder to speak, to breathe, to move my hands; I was lying completely still with my eyes closed for longer and longer. Shininao’s beak was toying with my ear.

Who, when watching a brilliant sunset, does not stand on his toes to cheat one extra glimpse of the last edge of the sun’s fire? Children do it openly, of course, and adults sneak it; at least I always did. Now it was a terrible thing not to be able to, when I knew I would never see it again.

Then I felt a familiar firm hand on my shoulder. Surya. He seemed out of place here, as if he were a ghost, or else I and all else was ghost, and only he real.

I opened my eyes, and touched his hand. “You did all you could,” I whispered. “Count it as my failing, not yours. And I will return to All-Spirit and another life.”

He reached under my blankets to touch between my testicles and my anus, and touched the apex of my head, again. “Eh, I am not done with you yet,” he said, and I felt the line catch fire, silvery-white, through me. “You are going so gracefully, just as you were taught. No resistance, no futile struggle, all serenity and acceptance. You are going to your death without really feeling it.”

It was hard to fight off my astonishment enough to find words. “I... I’m feeling it plenty, Surya, believe me. I don’t think I want to feel it more.”

Since his hands were busy, he shook his head Arkan-style for no, impatiently. I had a feeling I knew what he meant; that if I really felt it, I could still by some magic survive. I felt a surge through my arms, but did not have the strength to say, Let me be, let me go, damn you, you’ve interfered enough. Last time I was angry was the last time in my life, I thought.

“Chevenga,” he said. He was looking at my aura, and I wondered vaguely what a dying person’s aura looked like. Did it show interesting colours? Did his life flash through it? Did it slowly fade, or fold in on itself like a collapsed tent, or whirl away like a dust-devil in a windstorm?

“Fourth Chevenga, you’re dying by the hand of Sharaina Anina. Doesn’t that bother you?” I must have looked completely confused, for he added, “That it was her?”

“Well, kyash, Surya,” I said, finally. “It’s killing me.”

He did not laugh as I’d hoped. “You are you. Fourth Chevenga Shae-Arano-e, semanakraseye, chakrachaseye, Invincible, Beloved. You know your own brilliance, the magnificent things you have accomplished. Who is Sharaina Anina? An envious and power-riven and pinched-minded woman who has let herself get wound tighter and tighter into her obsession until it drove her to the ultimate treachery. But she’s defeating you.”

I stared up at him, wordless for confusion with a tinge of embarrassment. I had never heard him speak so disrespectfully of another person before, had thought it was against his Haian ethos.

“You are dying, Fourth Chevenga. You are leaving the world and all who love you without you, accepting and serene, because this worm of a person who is hatred and jealousy and small-mindedness, the most despicable traits a person can have, embodied, wanted it so. This woman, who is all the worst aspects of Yeola-e rolled into one”—he touched my cheek—“...is grinding your face in the dust, Chevenga, and you are just gently acceding to it.

“Tonight when you let your heart cease beating, so nobly, so without rancor, the battle over the soul of Yeola-e that has raged all your adult life will be over. And fear will have won out over courage, rigidity over flexibility, hatred over love, envy over appreciation, small-mindedness over large, prejudice over openness, madness over integrity... all that is evil in this nation will have scored a crucial victory over all that is good—a victory that will be recorded and remembered forever.”

I wanted to say, I am hearing, but your words are not really registering to my understanding. They were clear and Yeoli, but somehow split apart, so that I could not hear them joined and thus grasp their meaning.

“Whenever some Yeoli of the future is faced with a choice, should he do the great thing or the small, should he take up the challenge or shrink from it, should he extend the hand of friendship or turn away, he will have in the back of his mind, ‘Chevenga did such things... and look what happened to him in the end. It is the bad in the world that is stronger, for Sharaina beat him though he was so great, how can I think I can oppose it?’”

The words did not register; yet I felt something in me stir in answer to them, like a deaf dancer, moving to a song I could not hear, but only feel.

“You are dying. They will catch Sharaina, and probably give her a legal Yeoli death on the courthouse steps, but she will go to it laughing in triumph, for she will still have won over you. And all over Yeola-e, as people learn you are destroyed, the evil will laugh in triumph over the good, as she laughed over you on the mountain.”

“So I put the question to you, Fourth Chevenga Shae-Arano-e. How can you do this? Just let Shininao take you, without a word of protest, of injustice, of anger, without a single expression of the wrongness of it, when all this hangs in—”

A cry tore up out of me with only that faint vibration as warning, like lava from a volcano, cutting him off. It was in a voice that was deeper and purer than my pain, than my death, that cut through all and extended backward and forward in time, a scream across the millennia.

No-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o!!”



Then I was in darkness and a sweat, sitting up with hands outstretched in a double-charcoal hard as two knives, my head spinning, my own voice echoing in the Imperial bedchamber still, and others gasping. “Raikas! Sheng—are you all right?” No I won’t let her kill me, I won’t let that kill me, I can’t let that kill me—I was still yelling, I realized. I should stop.

Hands groped, found me, gripped me. I seized myself, felt all over my chest, my stomach, found only my unbroken skin with all my old scars. It was a dream. My lungs were heaving, but without pain; I could move. I sprang out of the bed, just to know I could do it, to feel my health, my strength, my vitality. “It was a dream,” I said, more to myself than them, “I’m alive. I’m not dying. I’m all right. It was a dream.”

“I should get Surya, shouldn’t I?” said Skorsas.

“No, don’t wake him up,” I said, by reflex. My voice was hoarse, and my throat hurt, but the taste of blood was only in memory; the pain was from yelling, I realized. “Bad enough that I’ve awakened the two of you; I’m sorry.” Guards came running in with spears leveled, followed by Kaninjer and Surya. Had I awakened the whole Imperial quarter, with one “No”?

Of course they had to examine me, Kaninjer my body, Surya my aura. They talked about me in front of me in the way of healers: “He’s had nightmares as long as I’ve known him,” said Kan, petting my shoulder. “Is there any possibility that what you are doing might give him relief from them?”

“This one was part of his healing,” said Surya. Everyone seemed to accept this easily; he was still educating them all behind my back.

When the guards were back at their posts and everyone else settled down, he touched my arm and said, “Come.” We both knew I didn’t stand a chance of sleeping a wink more tonight, and would be happy not to.

In his healing-room, I could tell him it all freely. It was not a dream that would fade out of memory at all, as they usually do; the minutest details—the feel of the quilts under my arms, the pop of the fire, the twinge of an arrowhead when I shifted—were staying with me. When I was done, he had me lie still and just breathe for a time, holding my head between his hands. Then he said, “Well, in your dream I was right, wasn’t I, that you could yet save yourself?”

“Only you, Surya, could be so invariably right you are right even in a dream.”

“Answer my question.”

“Save myself…? Well, I woke myself up—along with everyone else—which I guess you could say was saving myself subjectively; my dreams always seem utterly real when I am in them. So, yes, I saved myself that way.” In the symbol-code of dreams, Sharaina was the perfect person to represent my people’s fear and envy of me, I saw, being the epitome of it. Call her the Servant of that constituency. “You are right, as always, certainly.”

He took a deep breath. “You know, Chevenga… I wish I could say that I never have despairing thoughts, on this… One would think you’d never had real prescience before.”

In truth, it was only an instant between the second-last sentence above, and the last, but time seemed to slow almost to stopping, as if I were in battle, in the moment between sword-strokes. I heard his voice as if from a distance, through syrup, hazy. I had to make myself hear it again, slowly, painstakingly, examining every word.

One would think you’d never had real prescience before.

My heart seemed to cease beating in the pause between each word of my next thought. Sharaina truly is the Servant of that constituency.

When I came to myself I was on the floor, my cheek pressing into the marble tiles with the grout of gold. “I am at my enemy’s feet,” I whispered. “I am so wounded and so tired I can no longer move. My sword and my armour are gone, I am helpless and he has his sword-tip on my throat. It is over, all that remains is to accept.”

Surya knelt beside me, and picked up my sword-hand, that lay as if dead in his, and I felt on my skin his eyes looking at my aura. Or perhaps I felt it on my aura. “But now you have this knowledge, you can act to prevent it.”

“Why? It fits, it fulfills all, it would be the most perfect end.”

“Of the course you have so far followed. But you’re changing it. I suppose the Second Fire coming would fit too?”

I lay silent, confused.

“I am so glad,” he said, “I got you to swear that oath.”




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