334 - What kind of conqueror I will be

For the next half-moon, while we waited for the Yeoli count, Mirko and I sent out Roskati and alliance-mixed divisions to liberate Roskat entirely. The wing-scouts reported that the Arkans from Moghiur were taking the northern route towards Osijitz, giving up on Roskat City and hoping to keep us from entering Arko proper.

“The road is so good, we could get there first if we pushed it,” I said to him. “Flying column first to take the city stores before they get there, then double back and meet the main army, marching at the regular pace, on the road.” I asked him first out of courtesy, since we were in the nation of which he was war-leader; if he liked it, I’d take it to the full command council.

“And the main army is going where? You don’t have your chalk vote yet, Chevenga. All-Spirit, I thought I was aggressive.”

“It’s not aggressiveness, it’s strategy,” I said. “The best generals have no characteristics, only considerations, and I try for that... This is going to be a war of speed. We’ll win by getting to places before Kurkas, who’s blinkering himself to bad news, and the Arkan military bureaucracy, which is lumbering on good days, can get their armies there, together and ready. They were set to fight well in Yeola-e because they were invaders, they planned it; they aren’t prepared for this. It’s like the way the boy defeats the giant; he moves faster, so he always moves first, and the giant is always countering only.” This formed in my mind as I spoke it, self-evident and rock-certain in my intent the moment I did.

“You’re right,” he said. “They’ve been in Roskat only seventy-two years, and we’ve outwitted them many times because the sword-hand didn’t know what the shield-hand was doing, or they couldn’t find their bums with a map.” The greatest advantage of a huge empire, its size, is also its greatest disadvantage.

“They’re going to do the final count in Thara-e,” I said. “Don’t ask how, but I can receive word on the road to Osijitz in half a day… no, wait, they’ll call me back to make it formal. I have to stand in Assembly and say ‘semana kra.’ But—again, don’t ask me how—I can be back in half a day.”

“What, are you hiding a folded pair of wings under that demarchic shirt? Am I speaking with Chevenga the Archangel? Or Hayel-demon, if I ask an Arkan?”

I laughed and said, “Hayel-demon if my people vote chalk, archangel if charcoal, I suppose,” I said. “I said don’t ask me how.”

It was good to hear him quip, after all he and his people had suffered. There is nothing like the feeling in a city that has been liberated, the joy in the air and on the streets and in everyone’s face and step so much deeper than for a festival or a parade; I’d felt it most in Tinga-e and Thara-e, of course. Here it was ten times deeper again, for having been so long coming, and meaning such great change. Like every other Roskati, he looked as if a boulder’s weight had been taken off his shoulders.

Of course there was a dark streak of moral ambiguity to it that I’d had no concept of in Yeola-e. Among the Arkans being expelled from Roskat were second and third generation Roskati-Arkans who’d known no other home, had no place to go in the Empire, and were thrown onto the road with only the clothes on their backs. They could count themselves lucky compared to those who were massacred, which included entire families down to the babies, especially on Arkan homesteads out in the country.

It was hard to see several gouts of flame across the city one night, and learn it was the Arkan temples, with their priests locked inside to burn, or seized and smothered to death when they fled. The gold sun-discs were melted down, of course, and the marble images of the Gods smashed and made into paving gravel so that people could walk on them.

The greatest temple had been Roskati, but converted by the Arkans, its seven towers knocked down and its roof cut open for a sun-slit, so it was not burned but converted back. Vaneesh led me on a wordless tour through it, to the light of a thousand candles in their brass holders flickering, our whispering footsteps on the vast floor of polished granite the only sound, since silence is sacred in Roskat except on certain days of the year. Just as I was wondering what had happened to the Arkan priests here, she confessed to me that she’d smuggled one of them, who’d always been good to Roskati, out. She wasn’t at ease telling anyone else.

Out on the garden path of the temple, between great weeping willows that had escaped the fires of conquest and liberation both, I happened to look down and see, next to my toe, a flash of sky-blue on a bit of smashed white marble. Probably it had been part of Muunas’s carven and painted eye.

I urged Mirko and Fuun both to urge, if not order, clemency to the innocent, and they did, but the orders had no teeth, and they looked the other way from some vicious atrocities. “You wouldn’t be so soft,” I was told more than once, “if they’d been in Yeola-e, doing what they do, as long as they were here.” I couldn’t withdraw my alliance, and when I asked myself, “Would I still have liberated Roskat knowing they’d do these things?” the answer was yes. I would have to know, whenever I looked at my hands from now on, that they had the blood of children on them. They had the orphaning of children on them already anyway.

“So,” I said to Mirko, “a flying column to Osijitz?” He clapped my shoulder, and I called the command council. They liked it too. We decided Hurai and Mirko would command the column and Emao-e and Fuun the army, since I must go back to Thara-e for the count, and it was not politic for my feet to cross the border before that.

Just as well both the rivals should march when they should have been campaigning; neither had any idea how to do it. (For my part, even as people loudly debated the merits of my fathering their first full demarch right on the streets, sometimes in my hearing, I said not a word.) I saw the warriors off with a speech and a blessing and the clasping of wristlets with the commanders.

I busied myself with contemplating what my allied generals had taught me about invading, and letting the policies come to me. One overriding principle had struck me, from the accounts of successful conquerors: show the greatest kindness to those who surrendered most peacefully, the worst ruthlessness to those who fought most fiercely. “A conqueror conquers by his reputation as much as his rejins,” one Arkan author had written, and I happened to remember; gain a reputation for doing that, and surrender became most likely, making the war easier. I didn’t like it—it seemed wrong to reward the cowardly and punish the brave—but there is no question, when you look at history, that it works.

In the chamber we’d been loaned, there was a cabinet with a big Arkan mirror, gilded on the edges, of course. I looked into it, thinking, I must decide what kind of conqueror I will be, and so will be seen as. It was almost like in the Mezem, I could not stand to see my own face with that thought in mind, but here it was semana kra. So I forced it.

Kind to the innocent and those who surrender; ruthless to those who fight; merciless to those who betray me… In these words there seemed to be an Earthsphere-sized conceit; but that was what I must take up.

In utter control of my army and not one to threaten the larders of the land I take… Yeoli warriors would not steal or despoil or rape on Yeoli land out of national siblinghood, and allies out of courtesy to allies; not so on Arkan land. So I would stiffen the discipline on these things, I decided, forbid anyone to disturb farming or indeed other work unless commanded, while at the same time awarding spoils generously and dividing them fairly.

In discipline, I’d be even-handed by race, too: as harsh on Yeolis as anyone else. Let me be thought of as a strict but just conqueror… My eyes, seeming too soft, too emotional, too young for this, stared back at me from the Arkan mirror.

Already we were taking prisoners always, with the promise that they’d be freed when the war was over, so long as they swore allegiance (which we could do with truth-drug to the commanders). What of an entire city that surrendered? Simple: business as usual, but with a garrison if necessary and the tax office directing all gold to us rather than the City Itself. It is genuine barbarians who raze cities because they can’t be bothered, or don’t have the ability, to run them; a war of conquest requires bureaucrats as much as warriors.

My army would grow as we went, and on hostile land where people would not just give of their stores, feeding it would be three times as expensive, Arzaktaj and Misiali had told me; that had to be counted into the figures.

These and scores of other things I considered, and made notes on, until it was time to go to Thara-e, which I did by horse and cart at a fast pace with a hundred-strong escort of the darya semanakraseyeni.

Spring was in full flood now, with the streams all swollen and roaring, the banks beginning green and the early flowers blooming shyly under last year’s dead brown leaves. In the city the air was so full of blossoming-tree scent it was heady, and the sun felt strong on your face, the kind of weather that makes warriors want to oil their blades yet again, just for an excuse to get them out of the scabbard off the training ground.

The streets of Thara-e thrummed with excitement; it’s there for any national vote, of course, but this was the vote of our lives. Crowds thick enough almost to choke the streets came out at the sight of my escort and me, as if we were a parade, cheering and war-crying and making their forests of chalk signs and clenched fists. “Beloved Imperator!” they kept yelling to me.

The last of the runners came in the next day—oh, to be doing this with wings—and they began counting as soon as they had his satchel. It was finished that night, and Assembly convened in the city council chamber as before. The gallery was jammed. In the row of news-scribes I saw Sinimas Menden, hunched tensely over his noteboard.

When all were in, I called them to order and we did the starting ceremony. I would lead the war, but as duly-appointed chakrachaseye, and with just a vote count and no debate, I was not in conflict in interest presiding as semanakraseye. “Tonight we have but one item,” I said. “Is the Arch-Keeper of the Counting Chamber present?” A drop of sweat broke loose from the skin between my shoulder-blades and rolled down my back.

She stepped in, stately in the deep grey robes, with the thick packet of papers in her two hands. “I am, semanakraseye.” I recognized her, and she put the papers down on the centre-table to hold her own crystal and take the national one from me. “As I hold both my own and the crystal of Yeola-e in my hands, in the worldly witness of the people of Yeola-e as represented by the Assembly of Yeola-e and the spiritual witness of All-Spirit, this vote and count were completed entirely properly and legally, no procedure omitted and no precaution neglected, in the witness in every counting-room in Yeola-e of the Counting Senaheral, second Fire come if I am forsworn.”

The gallery had gone all but dead silent on my first tapping the bell. Now the silence thickened, like a deeper death. I hardly had to do more than whisper to be heard. I willed my tongue not to trip or lock.

“As you have so sworn, sib Arch-Keeper of the Counting Chamber,” I said, “we ask that you reveal the count of the votes of the people on the question, that we mandate the semanakraseye to undertake the conquest of the Empire of Arko, with the intention of maintaining power over it so as to turn its people toward our own way of governance and life to the benefit of them, Yeola-e and the world.” All-Spirit… did I have a part in wording that? She handed me the packet of papers; when I unwrapped it, the top page would have the totals. I willed my hands not to tremble.

When they asked me if I wanted it, I put out my hand, and my hand turned up, chalk. I wanted it. Do I want it still? Have I grown more sense now that I’ve thought it out more? Or has the taste for it on my tongue sharpened, with it being so close? I didn’t know. I told myself it didn’t matter. I read the Arch-Keeper’s fine classic writing.

“The vote of the people of Yeola-e on the question, that that we mandate the semanakraseye to undertake the conquest of the Empire of Arko, with the intention of maintaining power over it so as to turn its people toward our own way of governance and life to the benefit of them, Yeola-e and the world, we have duly totaled as…”

My throat closed, choking off my words, as my eyes fell on the first number. The counting of a vote such as this answers another question as well, a question we hadn’t been able to answer any other way: that of population. This was a vote no living, breathing Yeoli who was of age would miss. So it let us know how many of us still lived and breathed.

We were three-quarters as many as we had been. I willed my head not to go faint, and my heart not to weaken, and my ears to quit hearing the wings of Shininao. I willed my lungs to take a deep breath, and my voice to come back.

“Of two thousand thousand, six hundred and fifty-eight thousand, nine hundred and two proper and unspoiled votes: chalk, one thousand thousand, eight hundred and sixty thousand, two hundred and ninety-five; charcoal, seven hundred and ninety-eight thousand, six hundred and seven. By our calculation, a majority of approximately seven in ten, chalk.”

There was a moment of silence—perhaps of we-are-really-going-to-do-it shock—then a din that shook the building, of mixed cheers and cries of anguish. In the gallery, those who had argued chalk threw their arms around each other in tears, and those who had argued charcoal did the same. Flower petals rained down on us.

Sinimas Menden shot out of his seat like an arrow from the bow and scrambled out of the gallery as if the minions of Hayel itself were chasing him. Some hands reached out to grab him; others held them back.

Since now I had to be given the order, and acknowledge it, I recused myself from presiding in favour of my sister; we did it by gestures and reading lips. She and I both stood up, in the hope that would bring silence.

Eventually it did. “By an informed, free and fairly-counted vote of the people of Yeola-e,” she intoned, “the semanakraseye is mandated to undertake the conquest of the Empire of Arko, with the intention of maintaining power over it so as to turn its people toward our own way of governance and life to the benefit of them, Yeola-e and the world.”

No one enters the Assembly chamber, or a city council chamber for that matter, armed; there is no law against it that I know of, but it has always been counted as unthinkable. Perhaps in part because they thus expected no such thing, and in part by the gift I have for not being seen doing something if I don’t want to be, no one noticed that I had Chirel under the table.

“Semana kra,” I said, and slung it on my shoulder.

Several of the Servants who’d argued charcoal leapt to their feet, calling for the crystal; others weren’t so respectful of the procedures. “You’re profaning this chamber!” —“This is a session of Assembly, not a place of bloodshed!” — “Fourth Chevenga, don’t be so eager, and remember your place—you will never be Imperator over us, whatever you conquer!” —“Artira, you are his sister, you should cede to the adakri!”

Once she got order and the crystal being passed properly, several Servants gave long rants, some more thoughtful than others. In the silence between, a roaring din from the crowd that had been waiting outside drifted in through the long high windows; someone had run outside to bring them the news the moment it was out of my mouth. The sound was wild, like a storm.

Darosera Kinisil, All-Spirit bless her, allowed me my voice by proposing that I be asked why I had done this, which went chalk, though not unanimously.

“Assembly of Yeola-e, and through you, people of Yeola-e,” I said. “I am fully aware the Sunborn Elite Cavalry isn’t about to charge through this chamber.” That got something of a laugh, easing some of the tension. “This is the place of the business of you, the people of Yeola-e, and what you have made your business is this.” I touched the steel ring that is Chirel’s pommel. “You may say the war was started far away, not here; but the part of the war in which we are aggressors started precisely here. I’ve just equipped myself for it in your sight, that’s all.” The respectful silence they’d granted me deepened.

“If this is what we have chosen to be, this is what we are… or at least what I, and my warriors, will be. If we have chosen rightly, no need to be ashamed of it, or hide it from ourselves. Semana kra, as I said, obedient to my duty. The moment we adjourn, or I am dismissed, I will set off for the front; I need say nothing here, just to the army, so I’m saving my speeches for them.

“I will say only this: Yeola-e has taken up the sword of the aggressor; this stands for that. In the future, not too long from now, I hope, will come the day on which Yeola-e chooses to lay down the sword of the aggressor. On that day, before you, I will take it off.”