005 - The War of the Travesty

“In the old days, demarchs could do much more of what they liked than now,” he told me. You always had to do as the people voted, but you could own money, marry who you pleased without Assembly approval, even initiate legislation yourself.”

He shifted the long iron thing in the fire again, as if he was checking it for something. It was in some way familiar, I realized.

“But… there was always a dichotomy.” My father never talked down to me. “When the demarch was also the First General First… you know why it must be one person who commands in war, don’t you, Chevenga?” I must have looked unsure. “Imagine what would happen if the Enchians attacked again, and it was not me who must decide what to do, but Assembly. They’d discuss, and consider, and form committees, and ultimately make a good plan, well thought out. But what would happen?”

“It would be too late.”

“Yes. A decision from the many is most just, but from the few, or one, is…?”

“Quickest.” I saw what he meant from playing with my little brothers and sisters. If we wanted to do effective mischief, even if we all conceived it, I had to take charge in the doing.

“That’s why we relinquish our wills to our commanders in war. And so, because the people would trust only the semanakraseye with such power, it fell to us to command, or at least have a First General First reporting to us. Wills relinquished, either way. Years of this, and one can come to think enough of oneself that the semanakraseye’s constraints can feel…” He made the sign of being in chains.

He shifted the thing in the fire again, and I knew as surely as if he’d said it that he’d felt this way himself.

“War is always a strain on peaceful customs,” he said. “Go fetch me a bowl of cool water, a linen cloth, a towel and the aloe salve on Mama’s night-table, will you, love? Thank you.”

I came back with the things, and he ranged them out in front of us. “About ten generations ago, there was a semanakraseye by the name of First Notyere Shae-Arano-e. He was a great warrior and commander, and Yeola-e held off very strong enemies during his term. But in peacetime, he began to feel that constraint so much that he lost sight of All-Spirit, and what it means to be semanakraseye.

“He began to enrich himself from the treasury, wearing fine clothes and jewels, and looking as grand as any foreign king except perhaps the Imperator of Arko. He drove off his friends, except for those who’d do what he said even if it wasn’t fully right, and he rewarded those by feasts and gifts paid for with the people’s taxes. He started forgetting small duties, or slightly overstepping, and those who protested he’d persuade it had been necessary, or buy off, or distract with fear-mongering talk , or subtly threaten.

“People who objected began having things happen to them… houses burned down, false charges, lies told about them. In time people noticed this kept happening, and began a petition to impeach him. Now, he hired and set loose darkworkers. The petitioners would find their papers missing or their horses stolen or a town claiming they’d already come through. People even got beaten up. But there was a national vote, and it went strongly chalk for impeachment.

“His duty then was to say ‘The people wills’ in Assembly and relinquish the position. But he refused, saying he’d been fraudulently impeached and justice left him no choice but to retain his position by force. Knowing it was coming, he had people ready, armed.

“Do you know the notches on the doorpost of the School of the Sword, the ones that are framed? They are from when Notyere tried to take it, one of his first moves. He knew the war-teachers were against him, and very well-respected as they are still, so he wanted them out of the way fast. Merasha Kaili, the war-master then, said to him, ‘A heroic last stand you want from us, Notyere, no surrender, so you can kill us without shame—well, you shall have it, but you are our students, who held the Sword as children while we watched, so we could never harm you.’ They all left their swords on their hooks and took up staves, except one who carried the Sword of Saint Mother flat on the backs of her hands, and fought their way out without spilling a drop of blood.

“Now Notyere’s sister Denaina—yes, your shadow-mother is named after her—who should have become semanakraseye on her brother’s impeachment, knew she was in danger and so slipped out of a window of the Hearthstone; I’ll show you which one later, it’s in shadow-mama and shadow-daddy’s room. She went down to Terera and called out the people to right this travesty, which is how the war got its name. They surrounded her and linked arms, without weapons, and dared Notyere’s people to break through. None had the nerve. But the war had begun, and Yeolis killed Yeolis in these very corridors.”

I tried to imagine it, people shouting death-threats at each other in the offices where I now pestered the staff, drawing sword on each other beside these hearths and lintels whose running patterns I knew by heart, cutting each other near my grandmother’s mementos. I couldn’t. No sword-marks mar the posts of the Hearthstone Dependent; in this place where children are raised, they’d been effaced the moment there was peace.

My father looked into the fire, then with the cloth carefully washed a spot on his chest, next to the brand-scar he’d had as far back as I could remember, and toweled it dry thoroughly. Some final rite remained.

“It wasn’t much of a war, in truth. It only lasted six days. Notyere guessed wrongly that the warriors who had served under him would follow him to the extent of shedding the blood of their own. In the end Denaina took office, and Notyere was convicted of treason. He and those closest to him were sentenced to exile without safe conduct. What that means: we do not believe in execution of our fellow Yeolis, but if you are exiled, you are no longer Yeoli, and it’s no longer a crime for another Yeoli to kill you. So if you are not protected on the way to the border, and people are angry enough at you, you will die.

“Outside the court, a crowd waited, including those whose kin he’d killed. Though Denaina herself came out with her arms around him, and pleaded with them to stay true to the principle of mercy and forgiveness, they took him from her and killed him right on the courthouse steps.

“So ended the semanakraseye who tried to be king. But people were not at ease. If it could happen once, it could happen again. There was very strong feeling that the laws ruling the semanakraseye should be tightened.

“That’s why I, and you in your turn, cannot own any property, why we cannot suggest laws, why we cannot speak unbidden in Assembly, and so on. why there are acts for which we would be impeached without petition, and so on.

“But even then, the national mind was not at ease. It had been inconceivable, like being stabbed through the heart from within the heart, and it had left its mark. As well, Denaina saw, the main power that had corrupted Notyere, she still had, because she had to. She was still First General First, in command of the warriors who relinquished their will.

“So she spoke in Terera Square. ‘My people,’ she said, ‘I fear you no longer trust me, or more exactly, you no longer trust my position.’ Some signed chalk, and others charcoal. ‘Even that is too many,’ she said. ‘All-Spirit must be exactly that—all the people of Yeola-e, bound in spirit—else it is nothing, and we will be nothing. Ask me to do that which is most hard to do, and I will do it or die trying, so as to prove to you I am truly the people-wills-one.’

“An uproar of debate filled the square. The hardest thing to do is die, of course, but they didn’t want to ask that in case she succeeded, and lost them a semanakraseye proven trustworthy. ‘If there were some way of dying without dying,’ they told her, ‘we would ask that of you.’”

He paused to touch the rod again. Where it came out of the coals, it was glowing red. I began to understand what I had witnessed today.

“So she thought for a bit, then said, ‘Call me out three times, with the power that you must have over me in your voices.’ They did, and she walked into the Lake and did what I did today. It wasn’t as fancy; the fall of the torch into the fire-dish hadn’t been invented yet, and there was no Ritual Monk, so they had to press water out of her lungs to revive her. But it was the same in spirit.

“It was accepted as proof, but Denaina felt it needed renewing four years later, so she did it again. It became custom—but it has never been law. And that is perhaps the most important point, Chevenga. The secret of the Kiss of the Lake is not that we do it, hard though it is. Its power is that we do it by choice, that we are willing. It seems like law, by the way they call, but it’s nowhere on the books. If you don’t want to do it, you don’t have to; you may still be approved. It’s love—love for Yeola-e, love for our people—alone that binds us to it. As always, you choose.”

Now I understood why his motion of acquiescence had been so beautiful, how even though it seemed like a humiliation, his dignity had remained total, or if anything, had increased. It was an act of pure giving, of love. That’s what it was to be semanakraseye. I felt what I’d felt right then again, something vast inside, like the harmonic singer’s voice or a deep whispered wind as if a mountain could breathe.

“I will do it,” I said. “I want to be semanakraseye, Daddy, and nothing else. Like you.”

He smiled almost shyly, and tightened his arms around me. Just about then my mother came into the room, and sat behind him. He lifted the iron thing slightly out of the coals, and I saw its end, a symbol, glowing orange. I suddenly knew where I’d seen it before: on my grandmother’s mantelpiece, next to the comb. The symbol was the same hermaphroditic twined halves as they both had on their chests, her three times, him just once. I had never put those two things together in my mind. Perhaps I thought of the marks as something both of them had been born with; everything a child comes into seeing seems permanent.

“Excuse me, love,” he said, and lifted me gently off his lap, to the hearthstone beside him. Grasping the iron firmly in two hands, tapping it against the andirons to knock off any ash, he turning the glowing end inward, fast, and pressed it to his chest beside the scar.

I looked at his face as he did it. A sheen and then beads of sweat formed fast on his brow; but otherwise it was as if he was feeling nothing, his eyes fixed evenly on the fire, his lips keeping that same soft calm. Anyone but him who claims credit for teaching me to bear pain does so in error. I flinched much more than he did.

It seemed to last a lifetime, of hearing the fading sizzle and smelling his seared flesh. Then just as suddenly his hands drew it away and placed it carefully down, leaving the hermaphroditic pattern in charred black on his skin. He took a deep breath, and then leaned back against my mother, closing his eyes, his day’s work done.