516 - Firm enough proof

It occurred to me, as I was waiting for Kall to arrive at my office, that I was about to ask him to do, first, something I’d gained the surrender of thousands of Arkan warriors in part by promising them I wouldn’t order them to do; and, second, something he had never done before and would be not at all comfortable doing because of natural shyness.

I heard his footsteps coming at a run. “Sheng,” he said, as he closed the door behind him. “I love you.” By law all Arkans must prostrate themselves to the Imperator anytime they enter his presence except for Marble Palace servants who deal daily with him after one prostration in the morning, but I had insisted on exempting Kall and Skorsas, though neither of them thought there was the slightest thing wrong with a lover being so obsequious to another. So Kall did just the quick bow of the head he’d now do to assuage his Arkan conscience, and said, “Something urgent?”

I laid out the situation for him. “Oh shen,” he said, quietly. After a moment’s pause, he asked, “Have you come up with a plan yet?”

“That’s why I called you in here, love. I—”

“I’ll do whatever you command me to.” Kurkas was not an Imperator worthy of solas such as you, I thought. Gods help me be.

“Let me tell you what I’m asking before you say yes,” I said. “I know you don’t care how hard or dangerous it is, but there could be other considerations.”

“Because you always want me to have my choice, my love, yes, yes, I know,” he said, smiling. “As if I have choice as to whether to love you. I’d do anything for you. If you don’t know it… know it.”

Anything? Kall, you’d be my Mahid? I felt a little sick.

Don’t be stupid, I reassured myself. He doesn’t mean anything; he means anything I, who love him, am likely to ask. Besides—this point, I saw, I should make to him, so I said it aloud. “The Imperator’s benefit is not to be conflated with the Empire’s, nor with the mandate of the people of Yeola-e. If I start doing that, I need only put on my weight again in fat and I’m Kurkas.”

“You couldn’t become him if your life depended on it,” he said. “So what do you want me to do? Duel someone? Toras? His champion? You’re thinking of saving Arkan lives that way.”

No wonder we hardly need words, I thought. You think my thoughts. “Exactly. It wouldn’t have to be to the death... he’s not a friend of yours, is he?”

“Never heard of him. Even if he had been, what he has done would have been the end of it... He has how many people believing falsehood? I’m more likely to know his champions. I’m not current on who’s out west any more, though last I heard there were some I knew.” He listed off several names that I have forgotten, though I think one was Idiesas Firnean.

“You think you could take whomever’s the best among those men? Especially if his morale were a little thrown, by finding out he and millions of other Arkans had been fed falsehood?” I explained the plan to drop the Pages.

“Unless one of them has improved much more than I have in the last four years or so, yes,” he answered. “Or Toras might have some prodigy I don’t know. I might be rusty; I kept training even at Sukala’s, but I haven’t fought since you and I. I guess there isn’t a way you can arrange that beforehand… never mind. But my morale would be perfect, because it is for you.”

We sat in silence for a moment, then he laughed. “I have to say it, don’t I, Sheng? Always, ‘Let me hear your choice.’ Yes, my love. I will do it.” His shield-hand flashed out with the two fingers pointed, I caught it with the two fingers of my sword-hand, and we both sat basking from the instant of feeling our own and the other’s ecstasy, as one.

“There’s something else… Kall, if those sixty thousand solas asked you why you were fighting for me… what would you tell them?”

“You are rightful Imperator. Yeoli or not… the Ten Tens is the final proof in many people’s minds, but I saw it long before that.” I waited for him to say more. “I saw it when you and I first spoke after the duel… I didn’t admit it to myself quite yet, but it was plain as the sun in the sky, you cared more for Arko than Kurkas did even though we were the enemy, even after everything we did to your people. Kurkas and all his ilk, such as Abatzas… I saw it all clearly after we spoke, the rot they’ve filled the whole Empire with. It wasn’t just going to cure itself—”

“If we make it a condition of the duel that if you win you may address them, will you tell them that?”

“Sheng! I’m no orator… sixty thousand?” Hurai’s words from nine years ago came back to me as if from yesterday, altered: Just think of them as sixty thousand of your most intimate friends.

“Kall, they are solas, same as you. You don’t have to be an orator. You just have to speak from the heart, solas to solas. As if just to one of them.”

He sat considering, pinching his lip. “I… I just said I’d do anything for you, didn’t I?”

“I told you to let me ask before you said yes,” I said, feeling my lips quirk.

“Shen on you. From the heart… solas to solas…”

“From the heart, the truth they need to know. They’ve been robbed of it.”

He took a deep breath and gripped my hand. His thumb fell on the Seal on my thumb, and he looked down, then caressed it wonderingly. The silk of his glove was warm on my skin, next to the gold. “Yes. I’ll do it.”

I leaned down, to kiss his hand. “In advance,” I said.

He was barely gone, and I was waiting for Intharas, when Renaina and Hurai tapped on my door. I can’t remember who said what, but the gist was, “Cheng, have you already asked Kalicha? It occurred to us… how do we know we can trust him? He never swore under truth-drug. Are you going to have that done? If you don’t want to because he is a lover and you don’t want to offend him, maybe we should do something different… we wanted to raise the point, at least.”

I sent a runner after Kall. “I don’t need to be convinced I can trust him,” I said. “But I can understand that you do… who else in the command council is worried? Renaina, go and bring them up to… well, the Aessanine Balcony would be good. Less stuffy; we’ve all been inside all day.”

Kamecha, Dainena-e and Krero joined us. Kall glanced from face to face, nervous, his senses too keen not to pick up the suspicion. I had them all take chairs, but sat on the rail myself, about three paces from Kall’s chair. The balcony overlooks a three-storey drop, and these are three Marble Palace storeys, of course, meaning the ground storey was twice as high as a normal storey, and the next two, one and a half times.

“I’ve called you all here on the matter of whether Kallijas Itrean can be trusted in the assignment we have planned,” I said, rocking back a touch, just on the edge of overbalancing backwards. “My preference would be to make a very firm proof of that but ai yai yaiiii AIIIIGGGHH!!”

They all leapt up to try to save me, but Renaina said afterwards that Kall moved so fast his whole body was a blur; Kamecha said that it seemed as if he was in one place one moment and the other in the next as if he’d been magically transported, as by the machine from before the Fire. He grabbed my legs and yanked me back up, his face turning white, then seized me to him. Then he drew back sharply to look me in the eyes, saw me grinning. “You whoreson,” he said. “You did that on purpose! Fik you, fik you, fik you…” His hug was so hard I thought my ribs might crack, and his one hand in my hair gripped it so hard it hurt. I felt him blush by his cheek going red-hot against my brow, and begin trembling. “I’ll make it up to you tonight, my love,” I whispered in his ear. “I will make it feel like life and death.”

The generals all stared stunned, but with revelation in their eyes. “Firm enough proof?” I asked them.

“All-Spirit, kyash, yes, the rest of you all say yes that’s an order!” Hurai snapped. “If we say no, who knows what in kyash he’ll think up for an even firmer one!” Those hands that weren’t already signing chalk stabbed out palm-up. “Why did we ever let you out of the House of Integrity?” Krero growled under his breath.