62 - Diem of Carnal Licentiousness

The mind wants to shy away from evil, and yet sometimes is pulled helplessly to it. I woke too early, next morning, imagining myself in a lockstep fight with my brother Iperaiga, in which we both knew one of us must die, or both would, watched gleefully by the one who forced us. Forbidden to speak to each other, we shared our horror only through our eyes, tried to tell each other in looks, it should be me—you’re semanakraseye. No, it should be me, because I’m going to die soon anyway...

I came to full wakefulness nauseated and breathing hard. Kallijas tightened his arm around me and whispered, “It’s all right, Sheng,” in his sleep; Skorsas stroked my hair in his sleep. They are both skilled at this, I thought. It’s from all the practice they get, sharing a bed with a madman.

That was Minis’s insanity. No chance he couldn’t have come away from what Kurkas did to him untouched. All over the city, those who were lucky enough to survive still have nightmares from what I did, and I don’t even have the excuse of being a child. He’s grown up, he’s over it, he’d never dream of doing such a thing now.

It occurred to me, though, he’d only done a handful of sessions with a psyche-healer on Haiu Menshir, and another handful with Surya. Was that enough, after the childhood he’d had? I had not recommended him on the condition that he seek complete healing, and of course Surya was going to come to Yeola-e with me. I’d had the election too much in my head yesterday to tell him he must. Today, I thought.

Well, perhaps tomorrow; today was Diem Wards Back, the second day of Jitzmitthra, on which all is backwards; for a short time at least I’d put on rags and beg on the street. And it was his birthday. He would turn nineteen. He wanted to commemorate it quietly; “I had my fill of obscenely-extravagant birthdays when I was growing up,” he said.

Did that mean his full coronation, if he and Kall won, would be done on Diem Wards Back too? I hardly dared imagine it.

On the day of the election, when Minis had offered to make it up to him, Miksas had flatly spurned it, saying, “People are still voting. You just want to look good so they’ll vote for you.” When Minis came to me, close to tears, I said, “Just wait until the election is over and announced, and then, whether you’ve won or lost, offer again.”

“But… that’s too late,” he said.

“Then you are doing it just to look good?”

His eyes froze in horror; whether in horror of his own callousness, or of having been caught out in it, one could not read in their crystal blue.

“You are nervous for your own prospects, and for Arko’s,” I said. “Everyone worries about his reputation; I know. And you don’t remember it well, you have tried to erase it from your mind. I know you hate the evil in yourself. But the first correct thing to do with another’s pain that you’ve caused is understand it.

“I’ve told you about chiravesa…” As if a question about a Yeoli custom must be answered in a Yeoli way, he signed chalk. “You know… you never told me what became of your little brother… Ilesias, right?” He nodded, but didn’t say what had, and I felt I should not ask. “I remember how you set out to learn to love him. Imagine him older, and each of you given a sword and told—”

He grabbed his hair with two fists, the almost-Arkan prayer gesture again, and started sobbing. For all he’d never been to war, with his upbringing and his quick mind, he could imagine it all too well. I held him, and after a while it subsided. “I will go to Miksas again,” he had whispered, in the end. “After I have won, or lost.”

Yet it was laughable to think of the worst darkness as Arkan, I thought. Fourteen Yeolis plotted to kill me. I clenched my eyes shut, buried my head in Kall’s arm-pit. He turned over and wrapped both arms around me without waking. I tried to remind myself of Rafas’s words. They are not really Yeolis any more.

I got up, though the sky was only purpling; if I filled my mind with the constitution, it would drive these things out. Through my office window, the city lay predawn-grey and silent as a passed-out drunk, sleeping off the first night of Jitzmitthra. A short line of flame in the fuchsia sky caught my eye: a wing-courier was diving down, election results in his satchel, the edge of his wing catching the brilliant orange dawn sun.

The Diem of Carnal Licentiousness comes only on the six-day Jitzmitthra of a leap year, which it was this year. There is but one ceremonial required of the Imperator; an act of public copulation, usually with his wife, at noon; they aim to reach ecstasy the moment the Marble Palace clock strikes. This was one Jitz ritual that Kurkas had liked to do, generally with the boy he fancied that day.

The last two or three times, I heard on good authority, he’d done it with the Imperial bedchamber harness equipment, setting it right up on the Presentation Platform. One of them had been during that first Jitzmitthra when I was freshly arrived at the Mezem.

The year after I’d taken the Crystal Throne had been a leap year too, so Niku and I took the Presentation Platform this year as old hands. Fortunately her morning sickness tends to end about a bead before noon. As before, she arrived by wing, wearing the gold-thread and gossamer dress that is barely visible, showing every curve of her body, and is only for flying, too long to walk in. It trailed behind her like the half-imagined sparkling tail of some giant bird too exotic to be anything but a dream.

Being young, we didn’t find it hard to both strike at once, at noon, with the clock, to the roar of the crowd.

Then it was back to the constitution.

†

Late in the afternoon, Rafas Izan, my Minister of Internal Serenity, whom Binchera will always let in if I’m not meeting with someone, comes to my office. No costume, still; does he never let his hair down, even now? As ever, his face is stony serious. “Are we entirely in private?” he says. I sign chalk.

He prostrates himself, again from his heart. What is this about? He goes down close enough to me to clasp my ankles with his pristinely-gloved hands. While I stand stunned, and frozen so as to keep my balance as you must if you are on skates and something constrains your feet, he comes up to kneeling, running his hands tenderly up the sides of my legs.

He looks up at me, his eyes calm as a still pool and burning, both at once. “It is Diem of Carnal Licentiousness,” he says softly. “Next one, you will be gone. You’ve been bathed in too much darkness, and not enough blessing. I am going to give you the sexual homage that is your due.” He wraps his arms around my hips. I begin to speak, and he tightens his arms. “I am not asking, Shefen-kas.”

He lets go one arm to slide his hand up under the edge of my tunic, finds my belt-buckle and undoes it with skillful fingers. Brushing one as if by accident against my standing manhood, making me gasp, he gently lets the white-and-gold-of-Imperium trousers down, to my ankles. Around them he tightens the belt, fairly firmly, so I must depend on his hands not to fall.

He lets go of me for a bit, so I must absolutely freeze, then grasps my wrists in his hands, and turns my hands backs-inward in the beginning of the submission hold. He brings them together behind my back, and grips them both with one, his own fingers long and strong enough that I doubt I could twist loose if I tried. He wraps his other arm around my thighs.

It suddenly occurs to me that the trap-booth people are watching it all. But I have the same thought that he obviously has had: if it’s Yeolis, they think nothing of it, and if it’s Arkans, they think nothing of it today. I am panting, my breath rushing with a hiss between my teeth; my heart is hammer-banging in my ears.

“I know it is in your blood and in your heart,” he whispers, “to be controlled by those who are beneath you, and to give yourself to those who serve you. So it should always be. Let me show you that one Arkan, at least, understands.” He does not wait for me to answer, but takes my manhood deep into his mouth, so I cannot answer, at least in words.

Rafas makes love as he lives: with a firm hand, striving to do his best, single-minded and with a love in him far bigger than for any one person. The Gods are in him; I can feel them. I cannot help but give myself to him so entirely I feel as if my spine will melt. I come shatteringly, almost passing out, and find myself sitting in my office chair with my head on his arm when I can next think.

He stays with me until I am recovered enough that I have my will back. I reach to lay my hands on both sides of his face. He draws up straight. “You want to pleasure me in turn,” he says. “I heard, you always do. No… pass it on to someone else, Shefen-kas. To you, I want only to have given. I know you know how that is.” And he is gone, leaving me to the constitution.

It was but paper before; now as everything is more brilliant and sharp-edged in my sight, the gold of my pen like a miracle and the curlicues on the edge of my blotter making my heart dance, the constitution shines white as a dream of hope, and the ink of the writing is the clarity that brings the certainty between people that ensures peace.

On fire with inspiration, I start again. Internally, I feel the deepest serenity.

†

It wasn’t a dream, actually. It really happened. It was my true goodbye to Rafas. I realized afterwards, this was something he’d only do one day in every four years, his whole life.





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61 - From unthinkable to fourteen

The day after the election was the first day of Jitzmitthra. The wing-couriers flying back results from all over the Empire were working, but of course they were mostly A-niah and Yeolis.

I hadn’t had time to plan anything, of course, but Skorsas had. I’d told him to cut the expense of my costumes, since I wouldn’t have time to wear more than one anyway. Just as well to tell the sun not to rise in the east.

Jitzmitthra begins, of course, when the Imperator throws off his robe to reveal the costume underneath. This year, the last year I’d do it, Skorsas had decided, I would be wearing nothing but grease-paint, in the patterns of a fang-lion, and a pretend tail; he’d also had a headpiece made with the teeth long as tusks and a mane broader than my shoulders. And jewels, of course.

“You have the body to pull it off,” he said. “Can you imagine Kurkas… I’m sorry. I’m sorry, love.”

Kallijas was the Mad Imperatrix, complete with her priceless self-torn rags, Niku the Mezem Director, well-padded all over her body and with her face lightened with grease-paint under a blond wig. Vriah was Kvas the parrot, and so perfectly mimicked him mimicking Niku yelling, “Quiiiiiiiet, you stupid bird!” that she had us all in stitches.

Younger Kallijas dusted off Minis’s old puppy costume, which he’d worn when I famously walked him. Minis and Gannara were express-chair bearers, as Minis loved costumes that let him wear his skates. Skorsas was a high-priced dominatrix, but then he was a high-priced dominatrix every year.

Krero was too Yeoli to dress up, as were all my parents except my mother. A Haian who was oddly massive and the shoulders and a little fake-looking in the hair came into the room with the rest of us, and said in the thickest Haian accent, “Everything is going as it should.” I had thought Surya was too Yeoli, too, until I remembered how long he’d been in Arko.

But it was Tawaen whose costume struck me the most. It was his idea; Skorsas had only helped with the execution. He wore a bald and curly white wig and his face was made up with wrinkles, and he came hobbling, bent, leaning on a cane; but he was wearing a semanakraseyeni shirt and the double-white-striped collar of an asakraiyaseye (in Arko he could get away with it).

“What do you mean, who am I?” he growled in as good an elderly voice as a ten-year-old could ever put on, when I asked. “I’m who I’ve always been: Chevenga! Fourth Chevenga Shae-Arano-e! Never in my ninety-nine years have I seen such an ignoramus… young people these days!”

I laughed so hard I cried. I realized afterward, thinking about it, that only he could have thought of it, had the nerve to do it, and, with his resemblance to me, pulled it off. How our children astonish us.

I went out onto the Presentation Platform at dawn, with Ilesias in Mahid Jitzmitthra white, and First Amitzas in black. The crowd was ready, seething with excitement, wrapped in its own grey and tan and beige robes. The priests intoned the liturgical words that no one ever listens to, I was handed the wine flask and the sacred cup.

I turned it upside-down, splashed wine all over the base of it and the perfect white damask table-cloth, put on my fang-lion headpiece and threw off my robe. The crowd burst into a roar, and drabness was flung off all across it, flowering into a thousand brilliant colours and flashes of shine in the rim-edging sun, as they did the same. It was Jitzmitthra.

After what I thought was a decently-long time of moving cat-like through the crowd, hissing at madly-celebrating Arkans and pretending not to see either the flashed glances or the open stares at my tiger-striped manhood, I went inside. The constitution, so close to complete, waited.

“After all the trouble I went to putting that paint on you, a whole bead of delicate, frantically-fast, brilliant work—you’re not washing it off already,” the high-priced dominatrix following me into the bath commanded.

“Fine, I’ll work wearing it all morning then, how’s that?” I growled. I meant that as a joke, but he tightened his blood-red lips and said, “Satisfactory, so long as you put a towel on your chair so as not to grease-stripe the silken upholstery.” He wears what he is in his heart, I thought. So many Arkans do, during Jitzmitthra.

I decided that for the festival, which should be the six last days of my Imperatorship, I’d work in an outside office, with my window wide open. Let the joyful all-Arko Jitz madness be my inspiration. Though he’d even done my feet, and beautifully, I put on my skates. Rafas caught up to me in the corridor by running.

He wore his usual officious, sword-edge-tailored work suit, same as every day, and his face was grim as a surgeon’s when he’s about to make an incision that will save or kill you. Of course Arkans are used to outrageous costumes on Jitzmitthra, so he didn’t really see mine. “I have a report,” he said. “I’ll wait until you’re sitting down before I start.” I laid the towel on the chair, took a deep breath, shifted my tail aside and sat.

“I’ve made twelve arrests. But Inatalla Shae-Krisa got wind somehow, and fled the city last night, leaving most of his papers burnt. I have people after him.”

I made the charcoal-sign to the people in the trap-booth, and let out a whistling breath at the same time. “What came out?” He let out a long sigh, and his eyes on me were so full of sympathy I felt sick. “Spit it out, Rafas,” I said. “You were right, and I was right to trust you. I knew in my soul I was.”

“They were plotting to kill you… at one point.”

I must be getting used to this, I thought. From unthinkable to one Yeoli who’d kill a semanakraseye to fourteen, in an eyeblink… maybe I wasn’t getting used to it. I deep-breathed away the spinning.

“By the trail I followed, which started with scraping Faraiko last night, the whole of it is this,” Rafas said. “When your sister Artira was Imperator, they felt they had her fairly well controlled. But of course she was still going to enact your plan to separate Yeola-e and Arko. They were trying privately to talk her into selecting one of them as Imperator then, but she wasn’t keen on that because it had been your intention that Arko should be ruled by an Arkan.

“So they were thinking of just taking over and having her escorted by a polite force of their strong-arms to the border… expediting the separation, as it were. That required one of them to be in control of the military, so they were going to send Emao-e with Artira.

“Then you were in Arko again, letting it be known you disagreed with what your sister was doing and that you wanted the Imperatorship back. They went into something of a panic; it had been the last thing they expected. And I guess they know you well enough, that if you want something like that, you will get it. Next thing they knew, Inatalla and everyone he’d brought along with him onto her staff, had all been fired because he’d intercepted your pigeons to her, as you know.

“Before you were even voted back, they’d decided the ideal action would be to kill you, making it look like an accident or an illness, so that one of them could take over as emergency Imperator, so as to stem the chaos your death would inevitably cause. They were thinking Inatalla, so long as he swore always to rule in truth by council, all fourteen of them as equals. Which he did.”

My people, I thought. Always able to choose by consensus.

“So then he’d just stay Imperator, and negotiate Arkan independence with Artira… do it while everyone was grieving and in shock and not thinking clearly, that was their explicit plan. In a pinch, they wouldn’t negotiate it, but just declare it. Yeola-e was hardly going to go to war to conquer Arko again… especially without you.

“But then they couldn’t figure out how to kill you. Of course you have better security than any other man on the Earthsphere, and weapon-sense plus your own deadly hands on top of that.

“Of course they consulted with professionals. None of the three top assassins in Arko was willing to do it, for any price, nor the three top in Brahvniki. Too difficult, too dangerous, they said. Tell the truth, I think it’s that they like you, over the hawks. Even these heartless, shriveled-souled killers. Well, who wouldn’t?

“So the hawks changed plans. You were going to hand Arko back to Arkans, including an Arkan Imperator, to be elected. All they needed to do, to maintain their place, was buy one of the candidates. None of them would get to be Imperator, but they’d make sure they retained thorough and deep control of what was important to them. It might be better anyway; power is safest where it is invisible. Mil Torii Itzan, they found, was for sale. He is just too affable to see their venality, I think.

“That plan’s been foiled now, of course, and they’ve all been fighting panic, knowing we had Faraiko. Only reason they didn’t all flee the city was that they trusted you—while at the same time siding firmly with the death-in-you, mind you, since you are such a despotic, unprincipled lunatic—to not break your own truth-drugging laws. And they were right; you wouldn’t have, bless you, except that I talked you into it.

“So now they sit in the dungeon—separate, I’d never let them talk—each contemplating, I imagine, how enormously his or her circumstances have changed. I don’t know if you might have been trying to enumerate how many laws they’ve broken—multiplying each by fourteen, of course—but I imagine you’ve probably lost count.”

I could think of nothing to say. I didn’t even want to think. To follow all the paths, trace all the implications, as I should easily and naturally and immediately do, suddenly seemed so hard that it would be easier to die. What did I feel? It seemed like nothing but a bone-deep tiredness, much deeper than from a day’s work, or even months of too much work and not enough sleep. I felt weary of life.

“Pardon me,” I said to him, and laid my head in my hands. It was only when I felt the faint slipperiness between my palms and my forehead that I remembered that Skorsas had left only my fingertips and my face unpainted, and realized I’d just imprinted my forehead with black and white leopard spots. It was so like my life.

“Shefen-kas…” I looked up at him. His face showed not a twitch. “They are not really Yeolis any more. Do you understand that? They ceased being Yeolis the moment they seized so much spoil for themselves alone, rather than for their nation. Yeola-e, by my lights, means… the whole first. Like family.”

I found my eyes searching his, wondering how it could be that an Arkan understood, so easily. You are more Yeoli than they.

“So: they spurned that, their true ways, out of greed. They aren’t Yeoli, and haven’t been for a long time. In spirit, I suspect, they never were.”

I signed a weak chalk. “What else, if anything, did you find out?”

“They owned even more than they let on, Inatalla especially. All their papers are confiscate pending the full investigation. It’s going to take months for my men, I mean my people, to go through all of it, and I imagine they’ll find enough illegalities for an army of regular thieves. Out of your hands, Shefen-kas… you’ll be able to go home and forget about it. No one ever deserved it more, by my book.”

“I don’t need to tell you a thing, then,” I said. “If you need anything, more dispensations or permissions or knowledge that I have, you need but let me know.”

“I obey… but I don’t think I will. They are condemned out of their own mouths. You finish the work of saving us, Imperator Shefen-kas. Did I ever tell you…” Rafas’s cliff-face visage suddenly got a look I’d never seen on it, a kind of shyness. “Did I ever tell you… thank you?” I guess my eyes said, for what?

“Starting from the day after you took up the reins,” he said, “I’ve seen some real justice in Arko. Some true honesty. You cleaned out the whole cesspit. So—thank you.”

“You're a thousand times welcome, Rafas. And you know—this matter is a very good example—that I could have done none of it without you, and all who work for you.”

“I’ve been able to do the right thing for the first time in my life,” he said, with the first smile of today. I remembered Intharas’s letter, saying the same thing.

“All it is,” I said, “is freedom. You are more welcome than I know how to express.”

He stared at me for a moment; then got up suddenly from his chair and prostrated himself. When an Arkan does it from the heart, it strikes to the bone. “Gehit, gehit, Rafas, please. I thank you, for all the right things you have done… especially this one, finally correcting the biggest wrong I did here, aside from the sack: letting the hawks get a hold. They’re destroyed now.” I reached out my hand, and he took it, paint and all.

“You scared me shitless, that first day, Shefen-kas, when you took it up and put out the call for all of us.”

“What, the first day I was Imperator? Why? I didn’t exactly look impressive, in bed with both arms in casts and scratches and bruises all over. Much more so now, I think.” I spread my striped and spotted arms, and he chuckled.

“You were burning with the need to fix things—”

“That was scary?”

“If you were going to start cleaning house completely, I figured I was head of the list.”

“You mean you thought I’d chop your head off. I can understand why you’d think that.” Like all good Arkans, he’d tried to take some of Kurkas’s fault onto himself.

“We didn’t know you then.”

“How could you? I was just the barbarian conqueror and former Mezem sword-buck. Only Arkans who knew me well were Skorsas and Iska and Norii Maziel, and no one would listen to them.”

“I had to lock up a dozen of my own who would have run away that day with their records and cash-boxes,” he said. “They came around when I came downstairs again, with my head still attached to my shoulders.”

“Another thing to thank you for.”

“I look forward to working with your security people when you come back on state visits, Shefen-kas.”

“I look forward to that too. I’ll miss Arko. I know some would never believe it, but I will. You can’t work that hard for a people, I guess, without falling in love with them in some way.”

He looked at me in silence for a moment, and I suddenly got the sense his grey eyes were near to tears. “It’s Jitzmitthra,” he said. “Do you have a bead to spare, to go out for a drink, like everyone else in all Arko is doing, with one of your humble ministers?”

It hurt to say no. “Drink an extra cup for me. Or better still, now you’ve thrown everyone implicated in the clank, set Ikal people to find Inatalla, and put up your feet.”

“I will. Once I’ve done all I must do.” Of course there was more, same as me.

I held out my arms. He accepted my embrace, telling himself, perhaps, that the tinted grease would wash out of his clothes. I felt in his touch that he wanted me, but he was far too proper an Arkan, feeling himself vastly too far beneath me, to ever say it, so that I could not either.




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60 - Do what you have to do

That was the Yeoli, and personal, aspect of the day of the election. Now I recount the Arkan.

In the morning, while I lay with Surya’s fingers inside me touching my core—or the core of the death-in-me, whatever the difference was—Adamas’s people were spreading a tract to every corner and cul-de-sac and alleyway and gathering-place in the city of Arko, with hired readers to declaim it in the okas neighbourhoods.

It purported to be a sworn and truth-drug-vouchsafed account of an okas man, Miksas Asas, who said that on Minis’ thirteenth birthday, Miksas and his younger brother Morsas had been seized by Mahid on the streets of Arko, taken to the Marble Palace and given, in effect, by Kurkas to his eldest son as a Jitzmitthra and birthday present, to do with what he pleased.

What he had pleased to do, Miksas claimed, was make the brothers fight to the death with sword and chain, like ring-fighters, on pain of torture. “I had to thrust a sword into the heart of him who came from the same womb as me,” it read, “else bereave our parents of both of us. Then, once I was healed enough of my own wounds to speak, I had to tell my mother, and my father, what I had done.”

He’d kept this secret from anyone but family for five years. But now that Arko was free and Minis was seeking election, the pamphlet read, he felt he must come forward and speak the truth, so that Arkans would understand why they must not let this vile monster, no less a vile monster than his father, become Imperator.

So Miksas had gone to Adamas, who’d had the wit—else, more likely, one of his people had had the wit—to keep him in reserve until the very last.

As I came out of Surya’s healing room, half-reeling still, I found Minis standing at the door, looking as if he’d been kicked in the gut. He handed me the paper without a word.

“Shen,” I said; when in Arko, swear like an Arkan. “Where do they find the perverse enough minds to confabulate these things? I guess you’re going to have to get your people out speaking, right now… you don’t have time to print anything. And have yourself truth-drugged again, just on this, I suggest.”

“Kall and I… we got orators out,” he said, in a weak voice. “But… I did it, Shefen-kas. It’s true.

“Oh, great,” I sighed. “Another thing your father made you do. Better have your people saying that; are you?”

“No. It would be a lie.” He looked as if he were about to throw up. It occurred to me that Surya was not two paces away; I’d call him in if I had to, I decided. I wanted to rip out my hair.

“Right... he gave you his usual oh-so-free choice, do or be disowned.”

“No.” The word was like the executioner’s axe falling. “He just gave them to me for my birthday. That is the truth, Shefen-kas. He required nothing.”

I stared at him, unable to move. A trickle of sweat went down my spine, though it had been drying off after my visit to Surya. The day of the voting, and I’d done everything I could to put the Empire of Arko into these hands.

“Then…” I said when I could, “why?”

“I keep telling you I’m an evil man,” he said. “You keep not believing me.”

It had been more than a month now since he’d said that. I’d thought he was cured. I let the shudder that wanted to take me take me, and then shook myself out as after hard drilling. Panic driven out at least in part, sense came back in. “No. I know you better. There had to be a reason, Minis. What was it?”

He closed his eyes as if to shut out pain, opened them again, the blue bright with wetness.

“I thought I was lost... corrupt after... after...” He licked his pale lips, and I could feel nothing but the urge to throw my arms around him. “Nothing mattered... I would go to Hayel no matter what I did. So I didn’t care.”

“No matter whether they went to Hayel? On the Earthsphere or beyond?” He buried his face in his hands, and the urge to cradle him came stronger. “Minis… after what?”

“After... after...” He took a deep breath. “After Father made me…” It reminded me of myself, trying to say ‘I deserve to live.’ That thought made me understand. After his father had made us rape each other, both at once. “I still can’t say it.”

“What you wrote me the letter about.” He nodded, faintly. I laid my hand on his shoulder.

“Please don’t touch me right now!” He leapt away as if my hand had scalded him. I wondered if Surya was already listening, or seeing both our auras through the door; I couldn’t imagine he wasn’t.

“I’m sorry, lad. You were out of your head, weren’t you?” I whispered. “Remember how it was and tell me.”

“Nothing mattered,” he breathed. “I was damned. I was evil no matter what I did.”

“That’s out of your head,” I said. “Minis, here is my question, and it’s very important. When did that end? When did you stop being out of your head? When did things start mattering again? They did sometime. The youth who came to me with the book is sane; so is Minakis Akam. Else I wouldn’t be recommending you. So: when?”

He took a deep breath. “I was... It was… Solstice Fest that year… right around then... when... I started hurting again. When things started mattering.”

“Winter solstice? Same year?” He nodded. That was only half a year. “What cured you, do you know?”

He breathed deeply again. I saw Surya’s training in him. “I heard... you were alive and free. And the Temple Ritual somehow meant more... as if the words the Gods spoke to bring the Light back… meant something again. I don’t know. It was like waking up out of a nightmare.”

He had said to me before, that he’d gone through a time of darkness afterward. I had thought it was of condemning himself only; but then anger can explode out like lava, burning all who are near. I remembered myself in Sailortown after I’d been impeached.

I knew what he must do. “What do you and Kall have your people saying?”

“Admitting it… saying people have to remember I was just a child, not even second threshold, and it was expected behaviour of me… and that I will recompense the man.”

“Minis... you’ve got to tell them the truth,” I said.

“I didn’t remember this clearly...” He was speaking his thought, I saw, not with me. “I don’t remember much of that part of my life. I can’t know what else I did then.”

“No matter, you’re just accused of one thing, and they don’t have time to accuse you of another, at least not with a print run of any significance. You have to tell them the true reason you did it.” He stared at me, uncomprehending. “That it was madness, and what drove you to it.”

He stared at me. “What, that I thought I was already lost to Hayel?” Of course, it was the last thing in the universe he wanted to bring out public, so his mind was balking.

“Yes. And why.”

He gasped; he’d understood. “I can’t tell them that! I can’t shame you like that!”

“I don’t care!” I said, throwing out my arms. “They already know I was raped sideways and backwards and more times than you could count; I’ve never hidden it. You can’t shame me worse.” In truth, I felt sick at the idea of all Arko knowing; it soured the back of my throat with bile and turned my stomach hollow. But as he had to do what he had to do, so did I. Semana kra.

His voice quavered, full of tears. “I can’t even talk about it without breaking down... and they don’t want that for an Imperator… Gods!”

“You’re not talking... that’s what you’ve got orators for! And if you’re under truth-drug you won’t break down.”

He doubled over, clenching his fists in his hair, as if to do a writhing parody of the Arkan prayer-gesture. “It would be ever so much easier just to cut my own throat now. It would save ever so many steps!”

The last of my patience burned to a smouldering ember. I grabbed his shoulders.

“Minis Kurkas Joras Amitzas Aan! Think of your fikken people! Arkans right now are voting for that overstuffed brainless knot on a sheep’s ass because they’ve heard this and they and their children and grandchildren and untold generations are going to pay for it with Gods only know how much of all that is sacred to them with Kallens on the Crystal fikken Throne because you—won’t—do—what—you—have—to—do!!”

He shrank into himself, wrapping his arms around his head as if I were throwing firebrands at him, which brought me back to myself. “I’m sorry… I’m sorry for yelling, lad.”

“You’re… right…” he panted with a scrap of voice in each word. “I will… I’ll write the oration… arrange the truth-drugging.”

“And I can confirm it—I don’t remember it at all, but I know, and they’ll still believe me.”

“All right.” He flashed a look up at me, as shy as a lifelong slave. I held out my arms.

“You keep offering to hug me after you find out all these horrible things I’ve done.” He wrapped his own arms around himself, as people do who yearn for but deny themselves embrace.

“And you won’t let me, because you killed one man while you were taken with madness? While I was taken with madness, I sacked a whole city. Come here.” As haltingly slow and tremulous as the first time, he came. I tightened my arms, hard, around his wiry form. He was almost a man now, could take much more.

It was only for a moment, though. “Now move. Call in your people… do you want me to help?” He shook his head. “I’ll have my own missive, I’ll write it in the office and send it, in a tenth.” That was all I could or should do; beyond propriety, nothing should stand in the way of the constitution now. He ran.

I kept my note short and simple: “What Minis says was forced on him and on me by Kurkas, I confirm to be true. Understanding these things as I do, I credit that he did as he is accused today in the temporary derangement that comes of torture.”

In half a bead it was being bellowed all over the City Itself, along with his account, and then his truth-drugging was being relayed. Meanwhile the lines of voters slowly moved as each made his or her mark. We had done what we could; now it was in the hands of the Gods, or as Yeolis would express it, the will of All-Spirit as manifest in the choice of the people.




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59 - Change unimaginable

Surya had said I must come to him as soon as I could after Sharaina’s trial; if he could have done it yelling across the air between two double-wings, I sensed, he would have. Then after we’d landed, except that the writers and Rafas had accosted me first. I begged off for tiredness. “Tomorrow morning, as soon as you’re awake, then,” he said. “I’m going to assign Skorsas to send for me.”

I woke at cock-light as usual and went to Surya’s healing room. I realized, as I was going, that underneath the layer of black dismay over what Sharaina had done and the worry about what Rafas might unearth, I felt light; when I asked myself what was in it, I was suddenly walking on air. It’s as he said; I saved myself. Utterly unwittingly, when I put off the Kiss of the Lake; with more awareness hearing her name in the dream.

I’ve saved myself.

I wasn’t alone in thinking this, I realized; Niku, Skorsas and Kallijas had said something last night about having to celebrate. My mind was suddenly drawn back to Vae Arahi, also, where people had congratulated me in the street for outrunning Shininao. They didn’t just mean Sharaina’s plan.

“That was the death I should have died… no. I won’t say it that way. Would have died,” I said, when Surya asked me my thoughts. “I’ve dodged it… I must be done, except for the ceremony. Does it take long to set up? All-Spirit, this has not been easy.”

When Surya put his hands on my back and my chest at once, it always felt like they were joined through me, and wrapping around something within. “Say ‘I deserve to live.’”

“I deserve to… I de… kyash.” I’d almost got it out fast enough, before my tongue locked. Almost. “Kyashin kevyalin marugh miniren, I said it in court! Under oath! I argued furiously that I deserve to live—you saw me!”

“It is a death you would have died,” he said. “How is it impossible that there could be others? Think of the battlefield; you have to save yourself more than once. When you walk with ‘I deserve to die’ in your heart of hearts, you find deaths.”

I said nothing, no words being sufficient. I felt sick. How could I not be done, after this? How cursed long would this take? How much more did I have to endure? I buried my face in my crossed arms, and he put his arm across my shoulders. He must see in my aura that I really need sympathy and encouragement, rather than my heart’s merely screaming for it, I thought.

“Strength, Chevenga. I know it’s hard, to not be finished, after this. It was a great step. You’re getting there. Everything’s going as it should. Right now you don’t feel stronger, but you are. In fact… lie on the table, you don’t need to strip. Face down.”

I started with the deep breaths as I did. “Make the white line, too,” he said. “Very strong, very solid; get yourself into a deep calm.” He waited patiently for my fear of what he was going to do to ease.

“Second visit, I spoke of the sword in you,” he said in the quiet voice he used when I was half in trance. “You asked where in you it was, and I said I could make you feel it, but you weren’t yet ready. You are now. All I am going to do is touch it, and only one touch, on the hilt. Don’t close your eyes, stay in the present.”

Now that I knew what to fear, he waited again for it to steady down, one hand lying gently on my head. In true fear, there is infinite comfort in such a hand. I accepted it. He laid three fingers of his other hand delicately on the nape of my neck.

I had come to know, even when I wasn’t looking, when he put himself into a trance, which he could do instantly and without effort. It was as if the very air around us was stilled. Then, I would swear, one of his fingers slid into the nape of my neck, pressing into the vertebra as if it could pass effortlessly through solids.

I’m feeling it aurically somehow— The thought cut off; I could not think, or move, even to breathe. From head to toe I was stone, but silvery; the essence of what was deepest in me, my very core, seemed a soul-deep hard straight line down through me. Then his finger was gone, and I was clenching the table’s corners, gasping for breath, dripping sweat. The room spun end over end. His hand on my shoulder was my only refuge.

“What you need to understand,” he said, “is that the only thing that disorients you is habit that doesn’t want to be changed.” At the same time I tried to make the spinning stop with deep breaths, I tried to grasp this. “I touched it… just for a moment. Remember at the start I said you could not have borne it; was that true?” I let go with one hand to sign chalk; I was absolutely certain, though I wasn’t sure how I knew at all.

He waited for me to calm myself again, with just that one hand on my shoulder. When I was mostly there he said, “What I’ll do is keep doing this, keep making you feel it, and feel more of it, and feel it shift, as you go, as you get closer to letting it go. It’s to prepare. On the day you go asa kraiya, it will be out of you.”

I couldn’t even begin to imagine that; but then, when I thought, much of how my life had gone since I’d started with him, I wouldn’t have imagined beforehand.

Outside, all Arko did what they could not have imagined a few years before: voted.

†

Krero arrived that night, about the same time the voting-houses in the City Itself were closing. (The law is that anyone in line at the time of closing can still vote, since they did arrive on time, so the houses will stay open until then; tonight there were so many people, the poll clerks stretched even that, some not closing until midnight. I can’t say how much joy filled my heart.)

He came to me in my office. Without a word, he handed me what I thought at first was a piece of glass, bloodstained. Then I saw his crystal; the end with the point was broken off. When I looked at him in horror, his eyes filled with tears. “My semanakraseye,” he said. “The bond is broken.”

I thrust it back at him, my own eyes filling. “You committed no crime, Krero; none but Sharaina did!” But he would not take it, saying, “If such a thing has become possible, we are all at fault.”

I couldn’t talk him out of wearing it like that, not even with the blood washed off, everywhere, so everyone saw. When they asked why, he explained. People began coming to me, sometimes silently putting their own broken-off piece into my hand, sometimes embracing me weeping, sometimes saying things.

I began receiving bits of crystal in letters, from all over Yeola-e. I have never counted them, but I know there are thousands. Some are bloodstained, some not. Krero’s became that way by accident, when he cut his finger doing it; others did it on purpose. There was nothing I could do to stop it.

I still keep them all in a large glass jar in a cupboard in the Hearthstone Independent’s sacred room—what else can I do, throw them out? I don’t often look at them, since it invariably brings tears to my eyes. At the time there was more shame; it seemed too terrible a thing, just for my sake, even though I knew it was as much if not more for the greater principle. As well, I felt in some way I had caused it.

Linasika and all others Sharaina quoted who were still alive were chased down unmercifully by writers. They all had to say emphatically they’d never meant their words to be taken in such a way, and condemn her thoroughly, and all got spat on a fair amount anyway. While few of them have much of my sympathy, this was unjust, and I went out of my way to say so more than once. That did little to abate it.

This was all the terrible national paroxysm that I had hoped could be averted by Sharaina not having spoken to anyone yet. You asked about my changing Yeola-e, I thought. Now I am praying that you have not changed it more than I.




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58 - I will cast my dice on my trust

We arrived in Arko past midnight. The election would be tomorrow.

There were writers waiting on the Marble Palace roof even though it was so late. My mind was still back in Yeola-e enough that I was surprised that their first questions were not about why I’d rushed back to Yeola-e, and they were little interested when I told them, wondering why I’d even bothered to go. In Arko, an attempt on the head-of-state’s life by someone of the same nationality is a shrugging matter; they’d be more surprised it if was a foreigner. It would only have been news here if it had succeeded.

What was written about it, ultimately, in Arko and indeed everywhere but in Yeola-e itself, was relegated to the inner pages, and treated the affair almost humorously. They particularly relished the aspiring assassin calling me as her key witness, and published excerpts from the transcript with great glee.

On the roof, as I coaxed my stone-stiff legs out of the harness, they mostly wanted to talk about the election. Same as in Yeola-e, they told me much more than I could tell them.

Faraiko, Kamallo and several people, both Yeoli and Arkan, who’d been working for them had been arrested and were waiting in the Marble Palace dungeon to be tried.

Mil Torii Itzan had been understandably upset, showing it a fair amount for an Arkan man. He had proved his innocence by submitting to truth-drug. While he could fire none of those who’d been charged as they were not on his payroll, he disavowed Faraiko and Kamallo both, saying he regretted ever accepting their support.

He didn’t fling the rest of the hawks off the carriage, however, sadly, and in fact Inatalla puffed out his chest and denounced his dear friend. “It is deeply shameful and most regrettable that a person of Yeoli origin got caught committing this disgraceful and un-Yeoli deed,” he scolded. Hearing them cite it to me, I had to wonder at the wording. Got caught?

Adamas seized on it, of course, denouncing Mil for accepting support from Yeolis, who’d brought the corruptions of their ways along with the ways themselves. Kin tried, but of course had tied his own hands in making any criticisms at all, since they could all be answered by a reminder of his sexual weakness.

Kall was noble about it, of course, saying he would hope that if he won, it would be due to his own merit rather than an opponent’s mistakes. Minis had made his name enough as a student of politics and an adherent of the new way when he showed his anger and his upset at the attempt to sabotage it, he was taken as sincere, which he was.

Though the worst you could fault Mil for was poor judgment in whose alliance he accepted, his chances were seen to have been severely, perhaps fatally, damaged, especially since this had happened so close to the day of voting. I thought he might withdraw—at least, unlike Kin Kazien, he’d be able to do it with some dignity—but he too stayed in.

Meanwhile, Faraiko had hired the best of advocates, Arkans and Yeolis both. Their defense was very simple, and they spouted it frequently and loudly to whoever would listen and quote, demanding that the charge be cancelled: what she had done had not been illegal at the time she had done it. They had a point.

I wasn’t sure what the prosecutors would do. Being Yeoli, she’d go before a Yeoli judge, who, I expected, would be duly shocked by what she’d attempted; but it is still a principle of Yeoli and now Arkan law, that I myself had enshrined: a person cannot be convicted, or even rightfully charged, for something that is not a crime when it is committed. The plan was foiled, and yet she might get away entirely with attempting it.

“I wish it had never happened, which you already know,” I said to the scratching of pens. “I have little else to say. Tomorrow it all becomes moot.”

As I went to the door that leads from the roof to the Imperial chambers, Rafas Izas was suddenly beside me, as if he’d been hiding. No doubt he had been—from the writers. My heart sank. “I need an Imperial dispensation,” he said quietly. Surya, Niku and the other flyers were still with me. “For a truth-drugging.”

“I need a bath,” I said. “Come with me and we’ll talk by the waterfall.” I couldn’t bring myself to make much small-talk on the way down, and neither did he, other than about Surya’s security.

“Someone wants to hurt you,” he said—‘hurt’ was always his euphemism for ‘destroy’—“they need only hurt him.”

I told him not to worry, that Krero was all over it, since someone had tried about a moon ago. “We never found out who it was,” I said. “There are so many after me, it could be anyone. I…” At some point, Rafas had become one I could bare my heart to, Arkan and stiff-spined though he was. “I can't even entirely trust my own people any more.”

So one Arkan, at least, had the decency to be dismayed; that was a mercy, however small. “But… I thought… Yeolis… You could walk naked through a crowd of them, all your life.” Though I didn’t want to talk about it, in truth, I told him all of it. His face, that had already been grim, became more so.

“And now I come back to Arko and have the joy of being reminded that others of my people were planning to steal the fikken election… I’m sorry, Rafas. It’s been a long flight. Hot water will make me more civil.” By the waterfall, as I lowered myself into the balm of the bath, he sat by my head. “Whatever horror you're about to unleash on me, I think I can bear better now.”

“Good,” he said. “I have nothing that could legally be called evidence… it’s just the feeling in my heart. When I was questioning Faraiko… my insides were whispering to me, ‘There’s more here.’”

I closed my eyes, tried to let the peace of the bath seep into my mind. “What do you want to do? Scrape her?”

“Ask specifically if there is a threat… yes, scrape her. That’s the only way you can be sure you’ve got everything.”

“You stopped yourself from saying something,” I said. “Why? You think I can’t take it?”

He let out a long slightly-whistling sigh. “No, Imperator… Shefen-kas. It was to spare you, when you’re already hurting.”

I wanted to go entirely under the water again, feel scalding heat from head to toe, and stay there, maybe even to oblivion. “It’s not my place to be spared because I am already hurting. Tell me.”

“I want to ask her if there’s a threat against you.”

Of course. What else? And yet it made no sense. “But in a few days I’m not even going to be Imperator. Why would she bother? Faraiko’s a forward-thinking type; she looks to the future, and so steals elections and the like. I’d have to break my own law, truth-drug based only on reasonable suspicion, to say yes to this, and I couldn’t honestly claim in a court of law that your feeling is reasonable suspicion.”

I could see his frustration. Why do the shit Imperators gleefully seize all the power they can get their gore-reeking paws on, but the good ones won’t eschew justice even to save their own cursed lives? A question for Surya, I thought. Or, one season after they commence work, the committee that bears my name.

“Perhaps I should go to Krero with this, too,” he said. “Your security is his calling.”

“Oh, he’d do it in an eye-blink,” I said. “But you don’t report to him, you report to me, and he reports to me too, and you came to me so I know and still have to say chalk or charcoal.” Shen—I should have gone to Krero instead, I could see him think.

“But there’s something, Shefen-kas… I know there is. I’ve truth-drugged thousands of people in my life, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that that feeling I get is right every time. There's a threat-shaped hole here, I know. It’s strong enough to make my guts clench.”

Maybe I should just leave this for Kall to deal with, I thought, then scolded myself. No—that’s cowardice and tiredness talking. I ducked my head under and took pleasure in the water soaking into my hair and running down my face instead.

“The problem is, if you do this, and there’s nothing, she’ll go extremely public with it… make it part of her defense against the election stealing-charge—”

“She’s caught dead-to-rights on that, she has no defense there.”

“Except that it wasn’t illegal at the time. And she can argue that she was pursued too assiduously in the investigation because I’ve become suspicious and afraid enough to break my own laws. You know her, she’s the world’s loudest-mouthed Yeoli hawk.”

“So blame me. Say I did it without authorization, and if I’m wrong, throw me to the buzzards. I understand why you are not willing to risk that, but I am. I know myself, better than you can.”

“Right. I’m going to throw anyone to anything for something I did authorize, and lie to all Arko and the world too.” He got that curse-good-Imperators look again. “Fik and shen… if only I didn’t know to trust you implicitly. I could just say no, then. And of course you need to know right now because the election’s tomorrow and once the results are in, an eight-day probably, I can no longer authorize it.”

“Right.”

I clenched shut my eyes and went under for a bit again. The answer came clear to me while I was immersed.

“All right. I will cast my dice on my trust for you, Rafas. But wait a bit. If you do this tomorrow and get nothing, and Faraiko’s having it shouted off the street-corners, discrediting me, before the voting is done, it’s going to lose Kallijas and Minis votes. Do it after, and that won’t happen. If I get called a despot at that point, no matter. I’m gone in a few days anyway.”

The day after the election was the first day of Jitzmitthra, but Rafas had clearly been expecting a working Jitzmitthra anyway, as had the vote-counters. So was I, to make up for the time I’d been in Yeola-e. Maybe I can take just one day off… Carnal Licentiousness… I gave the thought up with a sigh. I’d already had to have Binchera make everyone shorten their audiences.

“The timing is perfect, actually,” he said. “She can howl all she likes, and no one in all Arko will hear.” He thanked me, and I thanked him.




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