625 - *Chiravesa* is always just, and thus a two-edged sword

Waiting for Krero to bring the Pages, I got up and paced. “You will not listen to me until I show you what I am having fetched,” I said to Lasatro when he looked at me with a mix of contempt and perplexity. Maybe not even then. I couldn’t stand not to be moving. Give me something simple, I thought. A battle against a clear enemy, a siege against wrongdoers, a clear opening for a death-blow on someone whose death would improve the world… can we go back to the Arkan war?

“You are literate in Arkan, I hope?” He wasn’t, but had people who were, one of whom he called forward. “This isn’t the first time this has happened,” I said, and began telling him the story of Anoseth. Blessing of blessings, he knew it. Then why did you believe… Of course a slave can’t easily run a spy network. From what I had heard, neither he nor anyone else had even planned the uprising, just directed it.

That Pages had its date, of course, a small story on the latest minor reform to the slave laws, and a letter to the editor complaining about the release of Srians I had arranged with the Mefweos. The reader read them to Lasatro, and I spoke further to each, filling in what he could not know. As I did, he grew more silent and sombre, wrapping his ebony-under-clunky-plate arms around his chest. Finally he looked at me.

“I am planning to have it done in half a year,” I said. “All slaves freed and slavery illegal throughout the Empire. The town conspired to keep it from its slaves; is that plausible for Temono? He just gave a quick jutting nod. He seemed not to want to speak, thinking, so I honoured that.

“I have said disrespectful words to you,” he said, finally. “I take them back. I had heard…” He gave a slight sigh. “Never mind.”

“If you heard only one thing, I can understand why you believed it,” I said.

“No, I didn’t mean that… I meant, I had heard you had a name for honesty. So I didn’t understand, when… no matter, now.”

“Indeed, no matter,” I said. “You and those who followed you have done what you have done, and I am Imperator. If you were in my place, what would you do?”

He was no fool. He must know that if they did not surrender, it was my duty to fight them. Days had passed since; the joyful frenzy had worn off, the limbs had stiffened, the bodies had begun to smell, and the eyes to clear. They had to get along in the world, which is to say, find a way to get fresh food into the city.

“Is the surrender you ask unconditional?” he said.

“Not if the conditions are reasonable.”

“Be harsh as you must with me, since I led,” he said, fast. “But with those who followed, will you be gentle? And let them keep the freedom they now have?”

My heart went out to him, seeing him willing to take the worst punishment so as to spare the others. I wanted to throw my arms around him. But I had to say, “Then they will all have done exactly what I cannot let you do, if this is not to happen again all over the Empire: gained by violence. Those you speak for don’t want to suffer, I understand; no one does, including all those Arkans you killed, too, fighting you or not, and nor do the ten or hundred-fold more who will die if slaves all across Arko decide half a year is too long to wait, or don’t trust me to free them, or want to take vengeance on their owners and overseers, and so think their best course is killing.”

“But isn’t it?” he said suddenly, standing up beside me to pace himself, so I suddenly felt child-sized. “How can it not seem so to us? How do we know we can trust you?”

I laid out for him the reforms so far, the bitter protests of the major slave-owners, the sellings-off and manumissions. “You had reason to distrust me before, knowing only falsehoods,” I said. “You have none now.”

“But you would punish all of us. I remember you saying in the Pages somewhere that you knew how it was for us as slaves since you’d been one, but now you sound like any other Imperator, saying you have to think of the Empire, Arkans and nothing but Arkans, and coming here to keep us in chains… how do I know it’s not all lies, that you didn’t fake this somehow”—he shook the Pages in his hand—“just to get us out from the walls unarmed so you can massacre us?”

“You said you heard I had a name for honesty,” I said. “Besides, I bet I’ve got more marks on my body by the hands of Arkans than you have.” Skorsas had chosen a gold satin shirt embroidered with birds and orchids for me today. I opened the clasps, pulled it off from under Chirel’s strap. “Look!”

His deep voice turned quieter, but lost none of its hardness. “You killed your owners for it, though. And to free your people. You killed quite a few innocents, too. How many times more than we did?”

Chiravesa is always just, and thus a two-edged sword. I stood frozen, half-naked, at a loss for words. He was right. In his place, I would have done, had done, exactly the same; the only difference was that I’d had a bigger army and so could win. In fact I’d be continuing exactly the same; I saw him take a nervous glance at my eyes, trying to read me, trying to know whether I was the kind who could bear unmerciful truth, or would turn harsher in anger, worrying that he’d just sealed all their fates. Just as I would worry. Don’t worry, Lasatro, I thought. You were judging me right when you spoke.

I was going to put my shirt back on, but decided to swear first; it’s more powerful when more of you shows, as the Yeoli saying goes. “I have lied to you about nothing, and never will,” I said, holding my crystal. “Second Fire come if I am forsworn.” Then I took off Chirel and leaned it against my chair to don the shirt. I could feel Krero tense, for all he was ten paces back now. But it was a way of showing trust, which earns trust.

I’d been handed this mess by the fault of other people; there lay answers, too. Where violence was engendered by deception and mistreatment, there was grounds for lenience; to see them let off lightly would make other slave owners think twice before disobeying or delaying with the new laws. “Consider this,” I said. “You surrender and stand trial. Two trials—one for those who gave orders, one for those who purely followed them, jointly—it must have come down to chance, who killed who and how many anyway.”

“But we count as Arkans, so it’ll be an Arkan judge,” he said. “There is not one in this entire Empire who wouldn’t sentence us all, down to the boys who took up stones, to death, most likely a horrible one.”

“I’ll judge it,” I said. The law set out that the Imperator could do that. He looked down at me, pupils and eyelids the same brown-black, whites the colour of ivory but still bright by contrast, searching into my soul.