50 - The click of the door of fate closing

Excerpt from the Pages of Arko, Imbas 32, 51^st to last Year of the Present Age –

During the announcement of Minis Aan’s candidacy and Chevenga’s recommendation of him, Minis was asked by a Yeoli scribe why his political philosophy seems so Yeoli, and was that due to Chevenga’s influence. In his answer, Minis said yes, in part, but also made extensive reference to ancient Arkan traditions which held the Imperator accountable to the citizenry. When he was finished answering, Chevenga interceded to add his own answer.

We quote it in full.

“I know the question wasn't addressed to me but I'd very much like to speak to this. The political traditions of Yeola-e are intended to embody and further an adherence to certain key principles: truth, choice, the fact that responsibility and power are one and the same, love, and harmony, by which I mean, the fact that people can accomplish much more working in concert with than against each other. With every refinement we make to our laws, we always have one or more of these principles in mind.

“But these things aren't Yeoli things—we are hardly the only people who love, who are honest, who would like to choose for ourselves, who can act together. They are what we all are, at our best. Different nations have had different degrees of success sustaining them in the running of their affairs; it depends on how much they've allowed their laws to be corrupted by fear, anger, greed, self-aggrandizement and so forth. Yeola-e was lucky; we started out with the guidance of a very wise person, who set us on a good course. Arko, less so, for what reason I don't know enough Arkan history to understand.

“So it might seem that voting, for instance, is politics in the Yeoli style. But it isn't. Any nation can change its laws to enable all its citizens to vote, tomorrow, if it wants to. It might take getting used to, as it has here in Arko, but in time everyone does, because we all know at heart how to do it. It’s as I’ve always said, anyone who has an opinion can vote, and everyone has an opinion.

“But to explain that even more exactly, the vote is nothing more than the exercise of a principle inherent in human nature. If you watch any group of people who are and few enough to speak together, and all free, they always want to make a decision the same way: by consensus. They’ll all talk, trying to come to a choice with which all agree, and they’ll yield and compromise on their own positions out of respect for each other’s.

“The vote is but an extension of that. It is a mode of choosing to which all agree out of respect for each other’s choice.

“If you doubt it’s more natural than any other form of governance, you need only look at the difference in security needed for Assembly Palace in Yeola-e and the palace of any king. Haians, philosophers and builders alike know, anything that goes against that which is natural poses more difficulty: to use the most common analogy, it’s natural for a rock to roll down a mountain, and therefore much easier to get one down the mountain than up.

“The difficulty and worry and expense a despot must endure to stay in power is great because he is not there by the consent of his people, and it’s natural for them to want him there by their consent. But Assembly Palace is there by the consent of the people of Yeola-e, and so—people who aren’t Yeoli often find this hard to believe, so I’ll swear to it, second Fire come—anyone can come in and watch Assembly do its work, whenever it’s seated, and say anything, so long as they don’t disrupt. The chamber in which Assembly sits doesn’t have a lock on the door; there is nothing to steal there that every Yeoli doesn’t already own. A semanakraseye can walk alone anywhere in Yeola-e without fear of assassination, unless by a foreigner; if Yeolis want to get rid of a bad one, there’s a method, with which Arkans are already familiar, of doing it peacefully, so no one need to resort to assassination, and no one does.

“It could be this way in any nation. I emphasize this point very strongly, because I am a Yeoli and so what I say could so easily could be taken as self-serving. We Yeolis aren’t any more peaceful or just or gentle or wise or self-mastered than any other people. We have what we have because the way we have chosen to rule ourselves is more closely aligned with what is natural to all people.

“I say it again: it can be this way with any nation on the Earthsphere.”

†

I never know I am dreaming when I dream. It is always as if every event in a dream is real.

I dreamed I had done the Kiss of the Lake, and climbed up out of the crowd—more people had come for this one than my grandmother had ever seen—to the meditation place on the mountain.

I sat, and was just beginning to bring on the stillness within when four people turned off the path from Chegra to Vae Arahi and walked toward me. That threw me out of it, even though I guessed they were taking a short-cut hunting, nothing out of the ordinary; they were one woman and three youths, and the youths all had hunting-bows.

Did they not know what day this was, that this place was mine alone for now? That couldn’t be, I saw, when they climbed close enough and I knew the woman: Sharaina Anina, once Servant for Aratai. I had not seen her for years, since her constituents had voted her out, and I had heard little of her other than that she had been expelled even from the Children of Yeola, the most nationalistic group I know of, for being, of all things, too extreme. I guessed she had gone mad, and looked for it now in her face, which had certainly aged. She was impassive. Her three friends all looked nervous. None looked at me, as if I were not there.

When they were fifteen paces or so off, the young friends all nocked arrows at once as if they’d been commanded, and one of them went as white in the face as bleached bone.

On retrospect, the sky, the stones, the ground beneath my knees and the air in my lungs, the meditative chant that had died in my mind, the blood in my very veins, all screamed warning. If they had been Arkan, or Lakan, or Enchian, I would have been gone in a lightning-flash without their seeing a trace of me. But they were my own people, so I turned the feeling out of my mind, as I never had before in my life, and never would again. I wondered vaguely if they were here because they feared for me being alone here, and took my own reassurance, as always, from sensing no weapons but theirs. The youths had skinning-knives too. They came within five paces, still with not a glance at me, and I was about to remind them I was here, and perhaps ask if I could help with whatever troubled them, when Sharaina said, “Now.”

I remember the one whose eyes I caught, as they aimed; he looked as terrified as if he were about to die. It all crashed together in my head, what perfect sense it made, how it fit with everything I had learned all my life, how this all had been set in stone from the moment I had been conceived. Semana kra. I had always lived by that. My people had ruled my life; who else would end it?

I did not move, though I could have, perhaps successfully; a great deal of time, as a warrior in motion measures it, passes between the moment someone decides or is commanded to act, and the moment he does, especially if the act is an enormous one. And even if these young men were war-trained, I knew from their expressions they’d never seen war, which would make that time longer. If I had flung myself to the side and leapt up and rushed their flank, dodging, and perhaps seized Sharaina, I might have saved myself.

Instead I stayed still. To watch, one would have thought it was in shock, in disbelief, but it was not. It was revelation, and astonishment in the face of a great truth until then hidden, and the click of the door of fate closing. Surya would say my own hand pushed it closed; one could argue this. At any rate, I heard it, as I saw the small triangle made by two aiming eyes and a steel arrow-head when it is aimed at your heart, three times over, framed in curly hair. One whispered “Kahara,” and another clenched his eyes shut, as they loosed.

I knew as soon as I took the arrows, as I was falling back from my knees from the force of them, that together they were mortal, that I would never rise by my own strength again. There was no pain yet, and I didn’t know exactly where I’d been hit; I felt it in my soul, that I had begun dying, that my soul was taking leave. I also knew, before the back of my head hit the ground, that I could not have been hit in the heart, for I had some time, the rest of the day, perhaps, if I clung to life with all my strength.

Sharaina had let out a yell of triumph, throwing her arms skyward, and a long shattering laugh; she came close, leaned over me, and now let me see the madness that was the light behind her grin, like a candle in a skull. “He can’t fight you now,” she said, and as I saw the brilliant sky between her ringlets, I realized she was speaking to the three. “He’s dead in spirit, it just needs the finish, his throat cut.”

They hesitated, and I threw up one arm, and said with a scrap of voice, “No, please. It’s done, kerel, I’m dead, just let me say farewell to my family.” That froze them.

“He’s lying!” Sharaina screamed, “his healer will save him, remember we knew we had to watch for tricks, finish him, finish him!” But at least two of them were themselves finished, emotionally. They had looked away from their own intent beforehand; now with the results before them they could look away no longer. I took my crystal in my sword-hand and clasped my shield-hand over the semanakraseyeni signet, and said, “Second Fire come if I lie.”

“Give me a knife I’ll do it myself!” By weapon-sense I felt a sudden move, a stab, turned inwards; one of them was trying to kill himself, maybe succeeding. I tasted blood at the back of my throat, and wondered if it had come up from lung or stomach or both. Sharaina was back soon, the flattened skin around her pursed-in mouth yellow, the knuckles of her knife-hand white. To fight would cut off some of my time, but less than not to. I didn’t have the strength or the angle to palm-heel her, so I grabbed the fist holding the knife so she could neither strike nor drop it, and the other wrist, and just hung on, hoping she wouldn’t think to knee or lean on one of the arrow-shafts standing in me. As I had a daughter who was an empath—this was pure thought, no feeling at all, yet—help would come soon.

“Bartelao you childraper help me!” Two of them were down, now, and the third was shrieking, “We have to get away from here please Sharaina it’s done look at him we did it please let’s go!” as she and I wrestled, my own blood wet under my back, her rabid face two handspans from mine and her arms one moment trying to tear away, the next trying to overbear me, the half-action letting me prevail. Then the other screamed, “Sharaina they’re coming!” She saw, and when she tried wholly to tear away I let go and they dashed away.

Now I was alone. I let my head and my arms sink to the ground, tried as best I could to relax, and saw what lay ahead. My loves, my children, my friends, would have to watch me die. In both Hearthstones and in Terera right now, they’d be pinning up the black and white ribbons and banners, setting out the flowers, hauling up the wine-jugs, everyone grinning in happy expectation of a night of revelry. The first handful knew already, the first signs of something gone amiss would have been seen; soon the Hearthstone would have the full news, and then Vae Arahi, and Terera, and from there it would spread as fast as a yell through the crisp night, “Chevenga’s assassinated.” I knew how it would be, I could see their frozen hands, glazed eyes, bloodless cheeks; I knew it all from my father’s assassination. I heard my own moan of anguish, felt tears spring from my eyes, and when darkness came roaring up into my head I let it take me.

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49 - The kind of people who'd steal an election

I sat in the room Kall had taken me to for a bit to recover, making the pain fade with doses of whack-weed. He’d struck me on the side of the head, luckily, so I’d have no obvious mark during the day’s meetings. I knew Kaninjer would want to put me on the concussion regimen tonight, but he wouldn’t if I didn’t tell him I’d been hit; if he could tell from examining me, so be it.

My next audience was a half-bead off still. I’d started on the next letter when Binchera peeked in and said that the Pages writer Roras Jaenenem was here to ask me whether, during an Imperial election, paying a poll clerk to look away from the voting-chip box for a bit was illegal.

The answer, of course, was no. Arko had only had votes of any kind for three years and the procedures were still being refined. And those of us who were the teachers were all from a land where the vote had been held sacred for centuries, so that such things were so unthinkable we couldn’t think to enact laws against them.

I didn’t want to tell Roras that; he’d quote me and people who’d never dreamed of the idea would read all about how it was perfectly lawful, in the Pages. I really wanted to know, however, why he was asking. I had Binchera send him in.

“There was a fellow who’s going to be a poll-clerk down at the Ministry of Scales I overheard talking to the staff just now,” Roras told me when I asked. “He was thinking that doing something with the boxes while the clerks weren’t looking might be illegal and wanted to make sure it wasn’t before he took money for it.”

Only in Arko, I thought. “This clerk, did you get his name?” He couldn’t be arrested, but he could be talked to sternly, and I knew two people at least who’d be perfect for that.

“No, Imperator; I was just overhearing.” So much for that idea.

“What did they tell him?”

“They weren’t sure, so they told him they’d look it up and if he came back tomorrow, they’d tell him.”

“And he left?”

“Yes, Imperator.” Probably never to return, I thought. “But I came to you curious, more than anything, I guess,” Roras went on, musingly, “because sometime in the conversation he mentioned ten or so other poll clerks he knows who are also wondering.”

Signing “no” to the trap-booth people had become a reflex, almost as much as the freezing stock still with the spear-through-the-chest look on my face. I had to hope that, one of these days, I wouldn’t do it when the other person should be spring-darted. Roras lifted his notebook and poised his pen. “Imperator, this raises the possibility of a widespread effort by one or more of the Imperial candidates to seize power by stealing the election—what are your thoughts on such a prospect?”

“Roras… Roras, wait,” I said, when I found my voice. “You don’t understand—no, quit writing, don’t quote a word of this! If this is true, providing comments to a Pages writer should be nowhere near the top of my list of priorities!” I jumped up out of my chair. “Out of my office—I’m going myself—I’ll be back with you later.”

“Then there is no such law!?” he said, the pen beginning to fly across the page.

“Do not quote a single word of what I’ve said!” I barked, doing the almost-running toes-out strides that are the beginning of sprinting on skates out the door.

I’d just been cleared for exertion; this would be a good test. On the route I took there are some nice long straight corridors and a spiral ramp with the outer half canted, which gets you going faster than you possibly can on your own power on a level floor. Setting my restrictions, my loves and my healer had thought of flying and riding but not skating, fortunately, making this the only way to feel the wind in my hair by myself. I used my warning-whistle for all I was worth.

The Arkan Assembly meets in the audience chamber, where the Crystal Throne is; once the constitution was ratified the Imperator would be required to be there whenever they were in session. They were in session now. Screeching to a stop next to one of the runners, I gave him a note saying “Call a recess; I have something more important than anything you’re doing,” to slip to Sanas Kurian, who was the Arkan version of the angaseye dagra krisa, except that he always presided.

He called a recess, and came out with a look of alarm on his middle-aged acquiline Aitzas face. I rushed him into his own office. “I’m sorry to disrupt,” I said, “but I have it on good authority that a poll clerk went to Scales asking whether it was illegal for him, and ten-odd other poll-clerks he knows, to accept payment to look away from the vote-chip box for a short time. Which it isn’t, so we’ve got to make it so, oh, in the next bead or so.”

Sanas was as a strong an adherent to the vote as you can imagine an Arkan could be, and no fool when it came to seeing implications. His eyes went white all around. “Oh my noble God, yes, we must, Imperator.”

“How fast can it go through? I can’t imagine it wouldn’t be unanimous… Kahara, I hope so.”

“I think so, Imperator, but it’s the wording that takes the time… and this is a law about voting, so we Arkans—”

“Need help, yes” I said. “It needs two laws, one for those who’d attempt to bribe a clerk, one for the clerks themselves”—I hadn’t thought to bring pen and paper, so I grabbed up a pen from his desk and snatched a sheet from his blank pile. “No one shall bribe—no, it could be threaten also—bribe or threaten—no, influence by any means, a vote official—”

“Imperator, em… may I scribe it?” he asked contritely. “That way we don’t have to attempt to read your, em, writing.” I never did learn to write Arkan both legibly and fast enough to take notes. I gave the pen and paper into his hands and got up; at least this way I could glide back and forth while I composed, the faibalitz form of pacing.

“No one,” I said, “shall attempt to influence by any means a vote official with the intent of altering the results of an election and thus violating the will of the Arkan people, read it back—no, wait, not an election, it could be a referendum—a vote and thus violating, and so on, no one shall attempt to influence by any means a vote official with the intent of altering the results of a vote and thus violating the will of the Arkan people, punishment… fine in the amount of the bribe times five, up to fifty lashes of the ten-beaded whip publicly and exile without safe conduct, read it back”—he did—“good, second law, no vote official shall accept any attempts, no, scratch that out, no vote official shall alter the result of a vote in any way and thus violate the will of the Arkan people as the result of, no, scratch ‘as the result of,’ it has to be three laws, that was the second one complete, no vote official shall commit any act with the intent of altering the result of a vote and thus violating the will of the Arkan people, punishment… immediate dismissal from the position as vote official and ineligibility for any position of trust with respect to votes in Arko for life, fine in the amount of the bribe times five, up to fifty lashes and exile without safe conduct, read it back”—he did—“good, third law, no vote official shall fail to report any attempt made by any person to influence him by any means with the intent of altering the results same as the others, punishment immediate dismissal, possibly ineligibility for life same as the other by judge’s discretion, up to thirty lashes, read it back”—he did—“good, and it’s even in writing you can read, so when it’s gone through—oh wait! Fourth law. Enshrining all the current election procedures as set out by the Ministry of Posterity as law, use the standard wording for laws enshrining Ministry procedures, punishments… by discretion of the judge commensurate with the first three laws, I’ve got to get back upstairs, I’m already late but I’ll be there for signing when it’s passed, again I’m sorry to throw this at you at the middle of something else, I should have thought of it a long time ago… thank you Sanas.”

“Certainly, Imperator,” said Sanas, shaking the cramps out of his pen-hand. “I’ll get these passed as close to immediately as is possible.” I skated back up to the office, whooshing past Roras waiting outside and ignoring his question, “Did you just put the law in the works?” to greet the delegation from Tor Ench who were my next appointment. My chest heaved; either the wound or being out of training a month and a quarter, or both, had wreaked havoc on my endurance.

There should be yet another law, I realized, setting out that in case of any cheating coming to light a vote could be subject to recounting or even revoting, if necessary… but I could initiate it tomorrow. That I was writing laws at all, of course, was only possible because the new constitution had not yet been ratified; when it was, the Imperator would lose such power, similar to a Yeoli semanakraseye.

“Chevenga,” Binchera said urgently, once I was done with the Enchians and the next people were waiting, “can you do four signatures between? It’s a matter of priority from Sanas Kurian, he says.” I signed and banged the four seals onto the papers without even reading them. “Have them copied and the first copies sent down to Scales right now,” I told Binchera, then leaned my head out the door.

“Roras, you asked me whether the action of which you heard is illegal; the answer, and on this you may quote me, is yes.”

†

I should have known I’d never get away with not being put on the concussion night-regimen. Not a chance when someone as impeccably honourable as Kallijas Itrean knocks you out; he will tell your healer.

In case you’ve never been under the care of a Haian after having your chimes rung and so don’t know what the regimen is, it is this. They run a one-aer sandtimer, and every two turns they wake you up, give you drops and grill you, what’s your name, what’s mine, where are we, what day is it, how many fingers, does your head hurt and so forth. They also examine the pupils of your eyes, which in my case, because my eyes are so dark a brown, means a flame at what seems like a fingerwidth away.

It’s all to make sure your mind doesn’t drift away for good in sleep, as can happen, so you are best to accede to it, but after the second or third waking you just want to scream, “My name’s the same as it was two aer ago and so’s yours and we’re in the same place and of course my kyashin head still hurts, let me sleep!” If you do scream this, they make a note of another concussion symptom, “irritability,” and give you drops for that. On the second waking I usually can’t get back to sleep for one or two turnings of the sand-timer, and when I do they wake me up after two, of course, and then I can’t get back to sleep at all.

So the next day, as we waited in the hope the poll clerk would come back to Scales, I was not in the most cheerful mood.

He did indeed come back, to find two Sereniteers and Roras Jaenenem waiting for him. He was not arrested, as he had committed no crime, but he was asked to undergo truth-drugging on pain of being arrested for obstructing an investigation. When asked under the drug whether he intended to take the bribe he’d been offered, he said no, of course, and they were kind enough not to ask him if he’d been planning to before he’d been truth-drugged.

His friends were in fact nine in number, but between them they knew thirty-eight others who’d been offered similar bribes, as their questionings under the drug revealed. Between those thirty-eight, it grew to a hundred and nine, mostly within the City Itself but a few beyond. By the end of the day they knew it was an effort that spanned the Empire, in all the sizable cities. They’d also managed to trace it back to those who’d offered the bribes, arrest them, and find out which candidate they were working for. Truth-drug makes for lightning-fast investigations.

I’d been distracting myself, running over in my sleep-deprived mind who it might be. Mil Torii Itzan? He seemed far too affable and, when it came down to it, honest, for that sort of thing. Adamas Kallen I doubted was devious enough, but then he might have people who were. The main suspect in my mind, in the end, was Kin Kazien, trying to salvage his horse-sullied hopes in the final stretch.

Rafas Iteras Izas, my Minister of Internal Serenity, was the one who reported to me, none of his underlings being willing. “Everyone arrested for offering bribes was working under one person,” he told me grimly, “named Kamalas Iren.”

Why did that name sound familiar? “Who is Kamalas Iren? Aitzas? Fessas? And which candidate is he serving?” Rafas had said it slowly, as if with reluctance, which was not like him.

“Em… pardon me, Imperator… I don’t speak Yeoli, as you know, and so don’t pronounce the names well. No ‘s’ at the end, it’s Kamallo, actually, Iren.”

The world went very still, then started fading in and out. I didn’t know it then, but I was told later, I froze so badly I didn’t even make the charcoal sign. Luckily the trap-booth people knew Rafas was too trustworthy to spring-dart. I heard his voice distantly, “Imperator, I think you need to put your head down,” and felt his hands on my shoulders.

Kamallo had been a long-time aide of Faraiko Terero, one of the worst, and definitely the most outspoken, of the Yeoli hawks. They had announced their support for Mil Torii Itzan, but backed off somewhat when they’d been attacked for interfering in Arkan politics as foreigners should never do. (Here Minis had very effectively cited Notyere’s part in the massacre that had abolished the Ordeal, while I bit my tongue hard.)

It was commonly known, though they denied it, that they were throwing their money-chains into Mil’s campaign too; it had been noticed he was outspending everyone else, including us, and there’d even been a story in the Pages about Inatalla Shae-Krisa, who was as close as the hawks got to a leader, calling Mil down for spending too much of it on parties and not enough on pamphlets.

My cheek on my blotter, I clenched my eyes shut, while Rafas rubbed my shoulders and said to someone else I couldn’t see, “Best get his healer, I think; it’s not all that long since he took the wound.” It all fell together in my mind. Of course the hawks would do this; Arko had always been their spoils to reap and nothing more, in their minds, not a people whose votes were sacred. It wasn’t as if they were Yeolis.

I knew the hawks had been worried, understandably, that an Arkan Imperator might find legal, or at least publicly-accepted, ways to confiscate back the fortunes and properties they’d seized during the sack and send them packing back to Yeola-e, chainless—or worse. It was natural that they’d try to buy one by putting him on the Crystal Throne.

Still, my heart felt ripped asunder. After all we had done to give Arko our customs of freedom, after all the sacrifices we’d made—after all the sacrifices we’d forced on them for it—all Arkans would now know Yeolis had tried to steal the most important vote they’d take in their lifetimes. I lifted my head back up, saying, “I’m all right, no need to get Kaninjer,” but inside I was screaming, and wishing I could scream out loud. “Sorry, Rafas… go on.”

Through Kamallo they’d traced it back to Faraiko, and found that the plan was to replace the true ballots with false ones that would give it to Mil Torii Itzan. The agreement they had made with Mil was that they would ensure he became Imperator, and he would, sure enough, allow them to retain their Arkan citizenships and property.

But they had not specified every way they’d work to make him Imperator, Faraiko said under truth-drug, and kept Mil innocent of this particular tactic. So not only was the plot carried out by Yeolis, but the one Arkan who might have been part of conceiving it, and would benefit by it, had been kept in ignorance out of concern he was too honest to trust with it. Why, oh why, I asked myself, did I let Kall put the seals back on my hands this morning? Why didn’t I just say “Fik you all, Yeoli and Arkan, every one of you,” and run away to live what days I have left alone on a man-height-long island in the Miyatara?

Right on Rafas’s heels was Roras, who’d been following it all like a dog a trail of meat. “Imperator, you look upset,” he said, poising his pen.

I said what was in my heart. He quoted it thus:

“I've been steeped in Yeoli politics since I learned to speak,” Shefenkas said. “And part of my education was the history of it, right back to our founding. If anything like this ever happened, history does not know it. I was always taught, and I hold as a sacred truth still, that the will of the people is the will of All-Spirit, the closest we Yeolis have to what Arkans would call a God. So I never dreamed...” Here the Imperator was momentarily unable to speak, for tears.

“When I heard about this, I thought—I hope Arko will forgive me for saying this, but I thought what you might expect a Yeoli to think—that, sharing our customs with Arkans, we have to expect them to be corrupted.

“But it was Yeolis who did this.

“I must seem to Arkans like the most naive and innocent creature, but… what was inconceivable to me before has not only become conceivable, but has happened. I have to wonder what kind of mind can conceive, and then decide to execute, this. I ask myself... have we as a people been permanently changed by what happened to us? Have we been corrupted beyond healing?”

--

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48 - in which I quit

Approaching the door of Surya’s office had become gradually less frightening over time. But now the fear came roaring back, as bad as ever except the second visit, when it had frozen me entirely on his walkway. I had to breathe deeply for about a twentieth outside in the corridor before I could bring myself to tap.

“Before you ask me, I’m scared shitless again,” I told him as I closed the door behind me. “I don’t know why.”

“Yes, you do.” Surya contradicting me like that was a bit like Jinai Oru doing it, said with such lack of bad intent that I couldn’t even think of being so much as piqued. I took a deep breath. The wound hurt a touch. “You just need to think for a bit to see it. What’s been on your mind?”

Visiting him in the Marble Palace, my habit was to get out of the Imperial suit and into a bathrobe—not the black silk one I’d had before, as he’d forbidden me it the first time he saw it, but a bright emerald one that met with both his and Skorsas’ approval. At least the robe was easier to take off than an arsenal of blades. He didn’t have me strip this time, though, except the faib skates, but motioned me to the talk-healing chair.

“What do you think’s been on my mind? The Constitution of Arko and the Imperial election.”

“Mm-hmm… you know I mean in your spare time.”

“Surya… it’s as I said before. If my healing is going to ruin me for the semanakraseyesin then I should quit it and die.”

“It’s as I said before, healing ruins nothing for anyone; it only reveals truth. Is there some truth you are afraid will be revealed?” He scanned my aura as he said this. Knowing from the surge of fear that my aura was saying yes, I thought my tongue might as well say the same, for appearances’ sake, if nothing else. “Yes.”

“Chevenga”—my aura must have flashed all through with the red stab of unworthiness that hit me when he said it—“here’s the thing you need to understand. Always, you choose. What you do with what you learn in the course of healing is entirely your choice. In that sense, you cannot be ruined for the semanakraseyesin, except by your own choice, because healing only enhances one’s power to choose.

“I think you are afraid that you will be ruined for the semanakraseyesin through losing some kind of innocence, some kind of purity of mind that enables you to remain in the choice of that commitment,” he said. “Does that ring true?” Though I wasn’t entirely sure I knew precisely what he meant, it rang true enough that I signed chalk. “Or more exactly—the state of being unquestioning. You were born into the position, and you accepted it from childhood as children do—unquestioningly. You are afraid of what will happen if you allow yourself to question, aren’t you?”

I couldn’t speak. I stabbed my hands out, double chalk.

“And you are going to make me question everything,” I said, when I could, my voice more gravelly than I intended. “No stone left unturned, no aspect of my life left untouched. That’s how you work, I can see that.”

“There’s no aspect of your life the death-in-you does not touch, because death is the end of every aspect of life. You said the Committee set its mandate broad, to look at every aspect that might touch on your mental state, yes? It’s not going to leave any stone unturned either. You might as well come to an understanding here so you can answer them clear and complete as is required.”

“Yes but if I do that, how will I be able to hide anything from them?” I said, with more of a whine in my voice than I’d intended. He just chuckled and patted my shoulder.

“Here’s the thing, Chevenga. Healing takes us out of being unquestioning, yes. But it also brings us to the place of being able to choose, in full knowing, the same thing we chose unquestioning, that we thought we could only choose unquestioning. In other words, for your own case: you did not originally choose freely to be semanakraseye. It was required of you. But you will come to the point of being able to choose freely to be semanakraseye, if it’s what you wish—or if you feel the requirement is just and accept it.”

“I see,” I said. “I have to admit, I’d feel better about this if I was certain that this were entirely legal in Yeola-e.”

“What do you mean? It’s legal for a semanakraseye to resign. Even acceptable, if he’s performed extraordinary service for the people.”

I jumped up out of my chair and started pacing, twitching all over. “Surya, is this what you want, to ruin me for the semanakraseyesin?”

“Deep breaths, kraiyaseye. Bring back enough calm to see that’s not what I’m saying, that’s an order.” I whispered “A-e kras,” and obeyed. It was very hard. “There’s a lot of feeling there, you see that?” I signed chalk and counted out the next breath. He waited in his patient way, and when I could I sat down again.

“Surya…” I was still shaking, but I could speak. “I do feel the requirement is just, and accept it. I always have.”

“Do you?” He peered at my aura here and there. “When you were in the bath the other day, what happened?” Kahara, I can hide nothing from you, curse your guts.

“I… I had a realization about the Kiss of the Lake. I… it’s a shaming… I should have put it on the list.” He waited, mercilessly. “I… I saw…” I curled in the chair, burying my face in my hands. “It’s as I said last time, they ask a lot of us.”

“What exactly? Say it—it’s very important that you do.”

“A-e… k-k-k-kras…” I was sobbing now, in the dry-eyed way that comes with terror. “They ask… our lives…” Shivering was making my elbows bang against the chair. He put his arm around my shoulder. “Th-th-they ask… they require… I… d-do not deserve… t-t-to live… unless… they ag-g-gree.” But for his arm, I felt, I’d be flung into blackness in pieces.

He tightened it. “Just be with that for a bit. Be with it, Chevenga.”

Chevenga! The sound of it went crazing through my bones, as if the name itself was an accusation. A semanakraseye’s name, a warrior’s name… I have no other! “You don’t deserve to live unless they agree, stay with it.” His voice was close to my ear and very firm. “Stay with it and let the feeling come up and out. Don’t question it or word it or name it or try to understand it, just allow it.” It feels like full-blown madness, I thought. “It’s not,” he said. “It is also not without limit. And I have you.”

What wanted to come was a scream, so I threw back my head and let it. More screams came crowding after. I did as he said, let it remain nameless and not understood, just freed it in pure voice. It reminded me of screaming I want to live! in the first session, full of the same desperation, as if my life hung in the balance, and the balance was my voice. When I ran out of screams and thrashings—he gently pinned me to the chair all through—I still had what seemed like a sea of tears. “We’ll deal with it with words later,” he said. “Go to exhaustion.” I did, and slept on the chair for the nine tenths of the bead we’d scheduled that were left.

†

I am not working hard enough, else I wouldn’t wake up at the death-hour, I thought, staring up into the pure darkness of the far-too-high Imperial bedchamber. My mind and body rang with the echoes of some restless, oppressive dream I’d just had. It had a feeling of Elera Shae-Tyeba, the man who to me was envy embodied, as if he’d been after me again.

Kallijas, feeling my wakefulness even in his sleep, I guess, turned over and put his arm around me, making me know I couldn’t slip out of bed without waking him. Lovingly protective though that arm was, I felt the prickling desperation inside my chest, of being trapped.

My death, I thought, will come at the hands of someone like Elera. The usual shame I felt for anger at a Yeoli came up, and I ignored it. It will be the small-minded, the envious, the vicious, the cowardly, who will do it, I just know it—because who else would it be? Who else is it, ever? And I have no defense against them. In the face of that, I am so destroyed, I just want to throw down my weapons and say “Fine, if that’s how you feel, take me.”

I was speaking to Surya in my mind; it happened more and more often these days. I can’t stand it, I can’t bear it, I thought I understood when I had the run-in with Elera, we made peace and became friends, but now it’s killing me again and I’ve lost the understanding. They need but speak and I am destroyed; why? Why is that, Surya? Why is it that the people who would cut me down for the most bitterly petty reasons, I feel I can’t fight? Why do I feel so helpless, as if I’m Lakan-bound, as if I can do nothing against it?

When I spoke to Surya in my mind, he sometimes answered. He did now. “Chevenga, is this the same with Arkans and Yeolis?”

Of course not—I clenched shut my eyes, and took deep breaths to keep my tension and my trembling from waking my loves. Yeolis. Semana kra. Surya, I have always lived, always live, and always will live, by semana kra. Elera is semana, so, Elera wills. Those people don’t want me taken down for things I’ve done, or might do, that would be wrong in their minds, but for who I am; so, by semana kra, to accede to their will, I must cease to be. As semanakraseye I had no right to disagree. I clenched my eyes shut and buried my head in Kall’s neck. He tightened both arms around me. In that refuge, I could sleep again.

The next day—it was Anae 20 by the Arkan calendar, I will always remember—I had a lull for paperwork when someone cancelled mid-morning, and I couldn’t keep my mind on it, for a nameless anger. I gave up fighting it after a while, asked myself ‘What is in it?’ It came to me like a splash of icy water. ‘They ask my death; how have they the right?’

I sat stunned, shaken, as you are after feeling the instant purification of perfect truth, like a cleansing with fire. Everything was surreal, as if only what was in me was true, all the rest of the world a sham. This problem was hardly a problem at all, when the solution was so clear and simple.

I took off the golden bracelet-rings of the Imperator, and the nephrite seal-ring of the semanakraseye, and laid them before me on my desk. That was it. I was free. “I quit,” I said, to no one in particular, though Kallijas was there. I should tell the writers, though, and Binchera wasn’t within calling distance, so I got up to skate to him. My head exploded with stars and lightning, fading to night’s black.

†

I am crushed under a great weight, but it’s more on my arms, pinning them, than on my chest. Something pulls at my hand, pushes at my finger, something sliding onto it, clasping my wrist it’s Kall, curse you, what the fik, my head, “Kall, get off me!” The nearest part of him to my face was his silk-kilted butt. He was sliding one of the gold-chained thumb-rings of the Imperial seals onto my thumb.

“Are you out of your mind!?” he hissed over his shoulder. “You can’t quit!” We were in one of the tiny private rooms, where he’d carried or dragged me.

“You know, Kall,” I said, “Surya said that as I change, people will try to stop me. I didn’t quite believe him. But, Gods, he wasn’t joking.” I tried to raise my head, felt a swirl of dizziness and sickness, and let it fall back again. “Of course he also says ‘always you choose’ is the truth of life. The fool. My father, too.”

“Sheng, I’m sorry I hit you. But you were going to be out of the chambers fast as lightning on those forzak wheels, where everyone would see you, and the writers would be there just as fast. Whereas if you think reasonably for an eye-blink, you’ll realize the wrong. Don’t you fikken see how many people would die?”

“‘Always you choose’ isn’t the truth of their lives, either? Really—why should every life or death be in my hands?”

“Sheng, what’s come over you? Maybe they shouldn’t be, but they are, curse you… fik, fik, fik, do I have to shennen tie you up? Yes, fik, I’d better, you’ll pretend to give up and then be out of here calling the guards on me the moment I loosen my grip, you’re the most devious whoreson in the fikken world…” By the oneness we had, he knew me. I’d been planning more or less exactly that. He’d trussed my wrists together with a curtain-rope, and ankles immovably together with his belt, well before my head cleared enough for fighting, then hauled me up onto a chair. “Skorrr-saaaaassss!”

My chamberlain stood frozen staring once he’d come in the door, his perfect blue eyes white all around. I think he was going to call the guards when Kall said, “He’s gone out of his head again. Go get Surya!”

Neither he nor I was sure what to say while we waited—I'd never been taught the etiquette for quite this situation, nor had he—so we waited in silence. The purity was beginning to fade, and I was starting to see his point, when my healer came in. Kallijas told him all that had happened, unapologetic for his part. Surya didn’t seem to condemn him for it.

He ran his eyes over my aura. “You can untie him.” Kall did it with relieved eagerness. I took a very deep breath.

“Chevenga… not that it isn’t understandable, but I think you are the worst person in the world for not biding your time,” Surya said. “It’s what, a little over a half moon until the election, and about the same time you plan to stay to help switch over—so a moon and a few days before you are home in Yeola-e for good. Where you can thrash these things out freely because everything does not depend on you, or possibly nothing depends on you if you take that half-year leave… and you’ll even have a Committee of Assembly to help you do it.”

“Well it’s you who got me letting out emotion,” I said, taking off the seals again, to Kallijas’s gasp, and then putting them back on on the correct hands.

Surya pulled a bit of a face. “I’m still getting used to working with you,” he said, something so uncertain it was a delight to hear. “All right, Chevenga: I don’t usually say this to clients, but you, as I’ve always said, are unusual. Or perhaps more exactly, your position is. We’re going to hold off, at least this aspect of the work, for now—hold it still in you, like when you are practicing a move and your teacher asks you to freeze.”

“Probably a good idea,” I said. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Kallijas sign a very emphatic chalk to Surya, thinking his hand was out of my sight; I got the sense he was doing a double-chalk. When had the quintessential Arkan started doing that?

“I’m not sure we shouldn’t make him play out what would happen if he did quit,” said Kall, laying his hands on my shoulders. Definitely, he’d been fraternizing with too many Yeolis, corrupting that quintessential Arkanness.

“It could bring everything we’ve worked so hard to build come crashing down,” I said. “I know. I know. Kall… I’m sorry to have even thought it. You were right to hit me.” I took another deep breath. “On behalf of the people of Arko and Yeola-e… thank you.”

Inside, a part of me smashed itself, as against the inside of a thick stone wall.

--

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47 - I get more letters

Chevenga, called Beloved:

It is with deepest concern and love for you that we write this. Please reconsider everything you are thinking and doing, for your own sake; it is the greatest danger to which you expose yourself. The sayings of All-Spirit as conveyed to human ears by the sage Amiya, by which we The Joyous live our lives, state that all events are destined and (as Amiya wrote): “We can no more escape our destiny than escape the clutches of earth as if we were birds, or see that which is beyond the reach of our eyes.”

Unlike most of us, you were gifted by All-Spirit with a glimpse of the unalterable future. What you foresaw was unfortunate, yes; but (as Amiya wrote) “Nothing is less real for being unfortunate, else there would be no suffering.” How can you now doubt the validity of the future your own eyes witnessed? How can you presume that escaping the course of history is possible, when, (as Amiya wrote) “As the past is set in stone, so is the future, for future is but past yet unrolled”?

We love and wish nothing but good for you, dear Chevenga; your death will break our hearts as it will all Yeola-e’s, and if there were any way we could free you of it, no one would move faster to do so than us. But neither we nor you nor anyone can. Not even All-Spirit itself, as Amiya wrote, can revise what has been written. Please understand this, and abandon this futile course, and live out the time you have remaining to you in realism, sanity and love, and with our most heart-felt blessings.

Love and blessings,
Tyeritha Amiyana
[and the thirty-six other members of The Joyous, all of whom, needless to say, signed]

†

Dear semanakraseye:

From my heart, I am astonished and concerned that you’ve been afflicted with this death-wish madness from such a young age. But there is an answer! I learned the recipe from a mountain sage, and with my own eyes I have seen it cure bereavement, falling sickness, kidney-pains, heart-pains, diarrhea, warts, old wound aches, colds, distemper in dogs and a host of other ills. I enclose a bottle with my compliments; take 10 drops under the tongue, morning and evening, with my blessing. Once you’ve felt the wondrous effects, I’m sure you’ll be eager to assist in bringing this miraculous remedy the public attention it deserves!

Sincerely,
Lurao Lehereni,
Cure-All-Ills Juice, proprietor.

†

Dear Chevenga:

I’ve heard and read all about your problem and your healing and your decision, and here’s the thing I don’t understand. You thought you would die before thirty—so what? People die young all the time. There are plagues, there are earthquakes, there are fires, there are young mothers who die in childbirth and babies who are stillborn or die in the stream. And there is war; with war especially, as you ought to know, everyone who goes into it knows there’s a good chance of never seeing thirty years. By All-Spirit, you must have killed with your own sword more Lakans and Arkans than could be counted, who were younger than you are now. Did they not foresee their own deaths in your eyes?

Other people I’ve talked to about this say, ‘The difference is, he knows!’ I say, so what? You’ve been lucky! Most people who die early don’t get to see it coming, don’t get to plan for it, don’t know to try to fit in everything they’d like to do before it happens, or prepare their loved ones, or set their affairs in order. I don’t see how this is a great misfortune.

Please don’t take me wrong, I wish you long life, as I do everyone; I just don’t see why you’re making such a big thing of it, as if suffering only ever happened to you. We all have our grief and our aches and our things that haunt late at night. You’re hardly alone in that. You’re not the only person in the world who deserves to live; and yet death comes too soon and unexpected all the time. That’s just part of life. Maybe it would help your angst to forget yourself for a time.

Sincerely,
Nimao Althela

†

Dear semanakraseye Chevenga:

Are you out of your mind? You’re lucky enough to know you’re going to die young and you’re giving it up?
Listen, my boy – I am so old I hardly remember your age. You have no idea what it’s like!
You’re weak and you’re wrinkled and you’re ugly.
Your hair is all white, and it doesn’t grow any more in places it should, and grows in places it shouldn’t, like it lost its way while it was inside your skin or something.
Food doesn’t taste good any more, you just eat it because you have to, which is fine because the Haian won’t let you eat anything that tastes good anyway.
You have no get-up-and-go, you just want to sleep all the time like you’re already dead, or sit around drinking ezethra with other oldsters talking about how much better things were in the old days and how stupid people are now, instead of drinking wine and being stupid yourself like you’d much rather do.
Everyone you know is dying all the time.
Your voice cracks so you’re too embarrassed to sing.
You can’t have sex all night any more, you can hardly have sex at all, and even if you could, no one wants to have sex with you anyway except other people who are old and wrinkled and ugly, so you don’t want to have sex with them.
You forget everything that didn’t happen before most everyone else in your family can remember, but people who are barely out of diapers, in their twenties and thirties, say, “His mind is still so sharp!” as if that’s some big surprise.
You have to wear diapers yourself so you don’t piss your kilt, and shove Haian stuff up your butt to make sure you shit, and if you break your leg the Haian will say she can do nothing and so your kids will quietly slip something in your drink and then stick a knife through your heart while you’re out—BUT!
IF DEATH IS WHAT YOU WANT, DAMNED IF YOU’LL FIND IT.
I tell you, my boy, I’ve lived ninety years, and the last thirty or forty were crap. You’re best off to go while you still have that thick head of curls and you’re strong and beautiful and everyone still loves you. Trust me!

Kind regards,
Serakana Shae-Lethae

†

Dear Shefenkas, You Whose Life Is The World’s Eternity:

I am drunk as I write this, so forgive me for any incoherence. I am in the book-lined parlour, smelling nobly of leather and polish and scents from faraway lands, of Norii Maziel, partaking of plonk now that he has done the decent thing of opening one bottle of 50-year Kassabrian, which we have finished, and we both realized we want to get stinking, so time to get out the plonk.

All night we have been speaking of you, and I can’t tell you how impressed I am with Norii’s memory, how he fits it all together, remembering the tiniest of signs, even expressions and mannerisms, how he can see, and show, how what you revealed explains everything about you, so there can be no doubting it. We spoke of how it must be, to know your life will be two-thirds training, for the last third; how it must make you count years differently (at thirty, I was still a little buck writer doing obituaries and petty court hearings, knowing I had lots of time to rise to something better); what it must have been to know that Kurkas knew, as he must have since he had you truth-drug-scraped. We laughed our bitter, nail-scraping laugh over the irony that we now see, in the title of the book Norii wrote about you, Life Is Everything. Now I find I want to write, Shefenkas, and I want to write to you. When I asked, and you confirmed, I didn’t know what to say; it wasn’t the right time anyway; perhaps there is no right time. I still don’t know what to say, in fact. Only that there’s something I must.

I knew nothing of you as a gladiator, Shefenkas. I left that all to Roras Jaenenem and tonight’s good host. Next, I knew you as the evil barbarian whose dark-maned armies encroached deeper and deeper into the empire, who came commanding savages on silken wings, flying demons, warrior-women who carried testicles as trophies on their spears, you yourself escaped from Kurkas by some black magic. I knew you as the conqueror who drowned our Imperator in blood and laid waste to the city, made the streets run with our gore and the skies burn with the fire of our houses, so that all that seemed left to us here in our cliff-hole of news was to go like heroes, sending out a final issue that would earn us all our execution at your hands.

But then it was not an arrest, Shefenkas, but an invitation I got… you weren’t going to leave Arko a smouldering pit and the Empire warred over by petty barons for who knows how many centuries, but set yourself up as Imperator, a black-haired, naked-hand-waving, ex-gladiator Imperator. If knowing how to command an army was a qualification, you had that all over Kurkas, we had to admit. You’d put together a bureaucratic corps before you even got here, kept all the existing ones who were left in their jobs, if they swore, didn’t even disband or kill what was left of our army. And you didn’t do what we feared the most: smash the Press.

So I came into your presence, my heart in my throat. The presence of the Hayel-spawn, the Living Greatest demon, the prince of savage night. “He’ll cut off my arm and eat it raw in front of me,” I was thinking—damn you, Shefenkas, I cannot send this to you. I write because I feel like writing, then. What did I see? Two ears, two eyes, one nose, one mouth, all in the usual configuration—a mere man, not a monster. And two arms, both in casts, though I’d thought there were no casualties at all on your side, that night. You offered me Saekrberk. How did your spies find out that was the way to my heart?

And then you… you bitched. About the Pages! Our sacred trust is truth, so the masthead declaims, and yet how much we lie by omission. Why was there never anything about Kurkas’s plans, not military, of course, but for Arko? Why were his ministers never called to account? You have this incredible machine, you railed at me—do you have any idea how much we could use such a thing in Yeola-e, how much we would cherish it? Oh, I know why you never tread on the Imperator’s toes, you told me, Shefenkas. I know. You’d like to keep your heads. Well, you said, those days are over. You are free to write what you wish, so long as it is true. Whatever you hesitate to write for fear, write. Whatever you’ve had folded away in filing cabinets for decades which the people ought to know, write. If I make an idiot decision, write that I made an idiot decision, because it’s the truth. I’m used to it. I come from a people who are free, so I don’t feel right if I’m not being called to account. We have no Presses, though we will.

I could not believe what I was hearing. You saw that in my eyes, Shefenkas, that I did not believe you. Perhaps you knew beforehand I would not. How could I? This was outside of what I could hold in my mind. So you said you would prove it. I could ask you any question, short of Yeoli military secrets, and you would answer it, and I could quote you.

Shefenkas… precious Shefenkas… I wonder what you thought I would ask? You must have considered the possibilities. “Why did you sack Arko when you said you weren’t going to?” “What laws are you going to change, to ensure your wool-haired minions rape us for all we’re worth?” “Those who committed outrages against us in the sack, will you bring them to trial? Starting with yourself?” Probably you were prepared for those. But I was drunk enough to come up with one you weren’t. The Gods work through wine, sometimes, Shefenkas. You Whose Arms Are The World’s Stronghold, how did you break them?

I thought you’d have mine broken, then. But no. You told me… you told me true… I quoted it true. I told all the world you leaped out of a Marble Palace window trying to kill yourself, in remorse for sacking Arko. And you did not have me gruesomely killed. Or even fired. Just keep on writing, keep on telling the world, you asked me to do. You gave us your time, you told us the truth, you kept your word. You treated us as if we did indeed have a sacred trust. Ahhh, scions of Hayel take you, Shefenkas… I am getting drunk faster, now, I cannot write this without swigging, this is what you do to me.

So we wrote the truth, and the world read it. We wrote, and the world read, the truth of Shefenkas being an asshole and a fool when you were, and you didn’t stop us. We wrote the truth of the duel in Karoseth, the truth of you setting out to abolish slavery, the truth of you putting down the slave rebellion in Temono, the truth of you permitting women to become literate, the truth of you abolishing purification, the truth of you inviting Arkans to vote, the truth of you giving yourself up to be dethroned if it was the only way you could make us take up that power. And suddenly there were engineers—probably the same people who built the siege-engines with which you vanquished us—poking about the Press, seeing how it worked, building small ones. The word “spawn-press” had to be coined, for suddenly everyone and his brother had one; but then there were ones as big as ours being built, in Brahvniki, in Terera, in Curlionaiz, too.

We wrote the truth of our spurning you in the first vote Arko ever really took. We wrote the truth of losing you. Truth suffered then, Shefenkas, from the Yeoli hawks—perhaps vultures is a better word—and your sister who listened to them. Suddenly we were looking over our shoulders again. Do you wonder why, when we found that you might come back, we got behind you? Do you think we are not in fear now, when we’re about to lose you again?

And… damn you, Shefenkas, the tears are falling into my cup. Damn you for making me water it down. We felt it like a call. Give someone permission to be more than he has been… and he will be that. He will grow bigger, rise above himself. But it is not only that we were suddenly allowed to be more than we had been; we were allowed to be what we had always claimed to be… what we always should have been. You let us do what we were capable of, Shefenkas. You let us tell truth, you let us be truth. Finally, for the first time in my life, our masthead did not lie, and we were doing what we were meant to do, what was sacred. I’ve never told you what we all felt. Some couldn’t bear it and had to leave. But the rest of us… I can’t write for weeping, Shefenkas. Pardon the dissolved words where my tears hit the ink.

When you are set free… you find parts of yourself that you forgot were missing, vistas within cut off that are suddenly open again, views that you lost sight of without noticing you were going blind. You suddenly stop feeling pain that has hurt for so long that you’ve forgotten it hurts. It’s like your soul crept away without you knowing, and suddenly it’s back. You are bewildered at how it feels, at first. But then… you are suddenly so big inside you feel you’re going to burst. You fall in love with yourself all over again, like you didn’t since you were a tiny child, and you fall in love with your work, and in love with life. You realize that you have forgotten what it is to be close to your God, because suddenly, you are, again. Curse you, Shefenkas… I get so maudlin when I’m really drunk.

You gave us this. You gave us this, more precious than a palace full of gold, more satisfying than a hundred grand feasts, more joyful than a thousand nights of the sweetest drunkenness. You gave us ourselves, Shefenkas. You gave us our true selves, our whole selves.

And now you have told me, and let me write for the world, truth again… even though telling it ripped you apart from the heart outward, and you showed even that to me. Shefenkas… this is the part of the picture of you that has always been missing. We couldn’t see that it was missing before we knew it was, but once the piece was back in place, it was clear as day that the lacuna had been there. Every question about you is answered, for everyone, now. I write to you just as I would talk to a man as I stood beside his new-dug grave, his casket waiting to be lowered into it. Too freely, using your given name all over it, so I will never send this.

Shefenkas, who gave me back my soul, where is yours? What have you done to yourself? Why do you, how can you, think such a thing? Must I, miserable little Intharas Terren, the wretchedest and scrawlingest of the wretched scrawlers, convince you, who gave me my life, that you should give yourself your own? Shefenkas, when you look in the mirror do you see a man who should not be? Shefenkas, you stupid piece of shit, what in Hayel is wrong with you, will you snap the fuck out of it for the love of every single Gods-damned God?

Shefenkas… I make an act of drinking like a fish, but it’s an act. Let’s just say, there’s a tradition up here. But I don’t. Except tonight I do. I’m jelly-mouthed now, can hardly feel my face. And I am thinking of the future. I trust Kallijas to let us stay free. I trust even Minis, if you do. But I trust them more with you still alive. I trust any of them more, I trust the world more, with you still alive. I don’t want to go back to how it was before, Shefenkas. When I think of it, I’d die before I went back to how it was before. That’s not life anyway, it’s a living death. We were all shadows, shells, people-shaped wisps of fog, stinking of booze. Maybe, if I had to go back to that, I’d die a slow death of the wine-flask, making my stupid act a reality, like so many men who cannot bear their lives do. But I don’t want to die, Shefenkas.

In your heart of hearts, I think, neither do you.

Shefenkas… I don’t know what will make you listen. I don’t know what else is being said to you, by whom, whose opinions you value far more than mine. But Shefenkas… it’s this fucking simple. You deserve to live. That’s all. You deserve to fucking live. This letter is my lit candle. If I ever meant shit to you, which I doubt, fucking listen. You gave me my life, my soul, and you have touched so many other people the same way. The world doesn’t fucking deserve to lose you, and you deserve to live.

Sincerely,
Intharas Terren fessas,
High Editor, The Pages

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46 - Constrained in a delicate position

It is traditional for the Imperator to have a spy at the Pages. He is generally a writer in good standing, working and being paid accordingly, and drawing further pay to bring information to the Imperator on matters the Pages doesn’t consider worth publishing but the Imperator might want to know, not to mention information on the actions of the Pages.

I wanted such a person, but not secretly; Kurkas’s Pages spy had died in the sack, so I asked openly, and one of the writers, Soras Efannas, had agreed. I’m not sure how they decided who; drew straws perhaps.

Now he came to me with something of such urgency that he managed to talk Binchera into fitting him between two audiences.

“A servant who works for Kin Immen Kazien came to us saying not only could he prove Kin’s sexual vice, but if any number of us would come with him, we could witness him indulging it,” he said to me breathlessly. “A passle of us including people from Brahvniki News, Tinga-e, from Curlionaiz, and a host of other news places all went. Ser Kazien was in a very, very private, albeit large, room in the cellar of his house, bound hand and foot to a great iron cage with a stallion in it, himself wearing a strap-on horse-tail and horse-head mask and covered with the piss of a mare in heat. I don’t need to tell you what part of him was held so that the horse could, em, reach it, do I?”

I sat so frozen that I realized I should signal charcoal to the trap-booth people. I keep thinking I have heard the weirdest thing that Arkans are capable of, I thought, and then I hear the next.

“This servant, see, was the only other person in the world who knew. His task, with which he has been entrusted for decades, was not only to, em, do the bindings, but undo them afterward. He decided this time to choose differently. I suspect Ser Kazien was perhaps not the kindest master… and perhaps also that said servant was given reason to no longer need employment with him.” By one of the other candidates, no doubt; the man was probably now rich enough to live in ease for the rest of his life. “You should have heard Ser Kazien scream, as we came in.”

“So… the writers just sat and watched the horse… do what he would do, and took notes… instead of setting the poor man free?”

“Tell the truth, Imperator Shefen-kas, I don’t know. I decided I should run straight up here to let you know. I know you appreciate the great sacrifices I make to keep you informed.”

“You mean this is going on right now?” I couldn’t tell which I felt more like doing, laughing my guts out or throwing up. “But then a stallion is… quick…”

“Oh yes, ser, but be assured, Ser Kazien has that solved. There’s a stable of them, trained to spell each other.”

I couldn’t help it. I threw my hands over my face. “Imperator… ser… I was going to accompany you there, but… maybe not?”

I jumped up out of my chair. “Krero!” He came running. “Go double-time with this man with as many people as you need and the thing that’s happening that he leads you to, stop from continuing. I’m sorry I foist this on you but I have to foist it on someone, go!” With a quizzical glance at me, Krero leapt to it, hauling Soras out with him.

All through my next appointment, I tried to efface the images that kept insinuating themselves into my mind, in vain. By the time it was done, Krero was back to report. His face was tight, as it got when he was swallowing an overwhelming urge and trying to hide it. “Cheng, you know—I had to be the impassive guard captain the whole time. Now…” He took a deep quivering breath. “I can let out what I really feel.” He doubled over and sank to the floor, laughing so hard that at first I was afraid he’d choke, and staying there so long that it started to get tedious. I went back to work to the sounds of gasping mirth from below.

More came out in the written accounts. The first thing Kin shrieked to the gathering writers was that the servant had cold-cocked him and put him there. To that the servant calmly replied that he was willing to undergo a truth-drugging right then and there; when the writers asked Kin if he would do the same, he just railed, his voice a little muffled by the horse-head, every word but “yes.”

The story was also belied by the familiarity and affection the stallions seemed to have for him, sniffing him appreciatively before they otherwise acted. To that, he claimed it was normally the servant here, and they normally smelled mare’s piss on him; but that was belied in its turn by the old horse-bite scars Kin had on his shoulders, acquired before he’d perfected the equipment. The writers did indeed truth-drug the servant, and he confirmed that his master had been in the habit for more than thirty years. As well, a close look at the fiendishly-expensive apparatus showed that it had been added to and refined over years by a passionate and dedicated owner.

Thus the nature of Kin Immen Kazien’s mysterious sexual predilection was revealed. You can imagine what Arkan news-sheets made of it, but what they did make of it is probably beyond your imagination, to your credit. It wasn’t the expressions of disgust that would destroy him, I saw; it was the plays on words. As anyone could see who was not wearing blinders, they wrote, having failed to rein in his urges, Kin was saddled with a mounting problem that might hobble his hopes in the electoral race, especially with his opponents making such hay. At the very least he was constrained in a delicate position. I could go on much longer to cite even a small fraction of them, but I’ll spare you. Arkans love this sort of thing.

Though I wouldn’t have gone as far as Adamas did—“If I were caught in that position,” he said down his narrow Kallen nose, “I’d commit suicide,”—I expected Kin to withdraw from the running. To my amazement, he did not. There is no law on the Arkan books prohibiting his habit, no doubt for the same reason there isn’t in the Yeoli: laws generally aren’t made prohibiting something no one imagines anyone will ever do in a thousand years. He argued, fairly, that he’d harmed no one. Of course his remaining in the race ensured that the unremitting, merciless tide of puns would continue.

Kallijas, Minis and I were all asked, naturally, what we thought. I mostly demurred, steeling my face and saying only, “I won’t judge a candidate on personal matters; Arkans may judge for themselves when they vote.” Kall demurred entirely, saying “I have no comment at all on that,” and blushing beautifully all the way to his wrists. Minis said, without a twitch of a smile, “Should Arko decide that my honourable opponent is worthy to be Imperator, I am reasonably sure they won’t have to worry about the verbal influence of his lovers.” I’m glad I wasn’t there; I would never have been able to keep my face steeled.

Kin would never live it down, I saw, not before the election, or after; not if he survived to five hundred. The quips would enter history and so last far beyond his death, his best claim to immortality. It’s as the old saying goes; you may build bridges all your life and never be known as Rao the Bridge-Builder, or farm corn fifty years and never be known as Iri-lai the Corn-Farmer. But you fik one horse… and of course he’d been the fikked, not the fikker—Arko being Arko, that was almost more the scandal than what creature he was doing it with. Never let it be said that Arkan politics is boring.

†

Yet when I lay awake in the death-hour, thinking when I should be sleeping, the laughter grated. Why? It’s not as if I got caught giving myself to a horse. My mind wasn’t going to stop and rest anyway; I chased down the feeling, asking myself as Surya had taught me, ‘What is in it?’ Why does the laughter still feel blasphemous, and a slight to me somehow?

In time it came to me: this election would determine how Arko would be for a generation at the very least, maybe more. It would touch the lives of millions of people. But these child-rapers couldn’t take it seriously. They were making a mockery of something they should hold sacred, if they loved their own people as they all claimed to. It’s slighting me also because they’re making a mockery of what I do.

‘Oh come on, cockerel,’ another part of me snorted. ‘Don’t be so full of yourself.’ I felt dashed down to ten, then filled with anger so intense and sudden I got out of bed to keep my loves from feeling it. The corridors of the Marble Palace were too opulent, too ornate, too oppressive, even in darkness, but I had nowhere else to pace. What is in it? What is in it? What is in it?

My mind was wrenched back to the last time with Surya. What would have happened had you decided not to do the Kiss of the Lake? I wanted to shrink away from these words, these thoughts. Go into it, what is in it? I demanded of myself. If I look at all you’ve done for Yeola-e, and at what cost, I can’t even begin to imagine how anyone in their right mind could distrust you even slightly. Why had he said that? Why did he have to? Why when it raked my soul like the ten studded beads of the Arkan whip rake the skin? Curse you, Surya Chaelaecha. I felt as if he’d somehow started an earthquake.

They distrust me because I am semanakraseye, nothing more. It’s nothing personal. Down the gold and marble corridors, suddenly it was Kusiya’s old cracked voice again, chasing me. Do we ask so much of our semanakraseyel that they should get these feelings? Now the wound started hurting, too. By the time I got to the Greater Baths, I was shaking and prickling all over with rage, and couldn’t see what was in it for the life of me.

You know what to do. I threw off my bathrobe and stepped into the great pool. In the one-in-ten torchlight that was usual for night, the water was dark, like the night of the sack, when I’d drowned Kurkas here. I couldn’t see the bottom, where I stepped. It was a technique of Surya’s to tease out truth by trying things; he’d approve.

Let a pillar double for the spear, and a mid-pool planter for the fire-dish. I knelt. Don’t take a deep breath… imagine you’ve been called out… The rage-trembling had eased; now it came back harder again. I suddenly wanted to fight, berserk, as I had against my Arkan escort after they’d stabbed my Yeoli escort in the back as one.

I looked down into the black depths, and I understood. In them I would destroy myself. Doing up the shame-list for Surya, I had not put the Kiss of the Lake on it; but it was the ultimate shaming. In those depths I would admit I might be false; in those depths I admitted, I don’t deserve to live.

I leapt up and tore out of the water. One of the lesser pools I’d changed over to ice-water, for when my head needed clearing or my body hardening. I flung myself into it and went right under, opening my eyes so they would burn with cold. I stayed in, coming up only to breathe now and then, until the shivering was severe enough to make the wound-pain into agony, and drive out of my mind with tendrils of chill the implications of these thoughts.

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