343 - A trauma-related mental lapse

I knew five days in advance that there’d be an Arkan army of some fifty-thousand converging somewhere on the road between us and Setzetra. Also that they’d be tired from force-marching. A day of rest, once we met them, would give them a day of rest; best we engage them in the morning after they’d marched for a day and we half a day, so I asked Niku to direct our timing in such a way as that would happen. The commander who has flying scouts can do the impossible.

The country was strange now, gone entirely from Roskati to Arkan, with spring-wheat fields that rolled golden like a gentle sea, the wind blowing their heads in moving waves as well. There were lines of oak, vinyards, orchards, even the odd olive-grove, something that seemed more Lakan to me. Cedarwood fences zigzagged in the Arkan style around the cow-pastures, and here and there were the farm-houses with the inevitable white walls, red roofs and sun-slits, aligned strictly north-south. I had not noticed it all as well last time I’d been here, brain-addled by the slave-collar.

I made it a policy to give any farmer whose fields we camped on a quarter gold chain, so they stopped abandoning their houses so much and began beckoning my ground-scouts over more.

I’d see a mansion on a hillside burning, with people running out its doors carrying paintings and small statues; when I angrily sent out a detachment to arrest them for disobeying the no-stealing order, they’d turn out to be locals, taking advantage of the fact that, now that we were here, Imperial authority no longer protected the neighbourhood Aitzas. The worse he’d oppressed them, the more likely they’d gruesomely kill him and his family rather than just humbling them; some had been decent enough that they were left alone. I will set them free, I thought. I hadn’t expected to do that at all until I was Imperator.

I had a few advisers, generally Lakan or Enchian, tell me I should put out the word that peasants would be punished for this, and start beheading them publicly to prove I meant it. “It is the nobility who are the heart of your power over the rabble,” Arzaktaj, himself a hundredth-generation noble, at least, “so you should cultivate them.”

Perhaps he hadn’t read the Enchian version of the conquest proposal. What I saw was forced inequality being changed into natural equality, freeing natural justice to be meted out; those Aitzas who were being spared were the ones I’d want to deal with anyway. After-the-fact enforcement is difficult and would be a distraction anyway. What I did do was put out the word that the rule of law would return once we’d set garrisons, and any road Sereniteers who wished to stay in my territory, swear allegiance and continue to draw pay were welcome to apply.

By the rule of law, I meant existing Arkan law, much to the dismay of my Yeoli generals. I wanted to make one exception—all Yeoli slaves were instantly free—but saw that all my allies would ask the same of their people, so that soon there’d be no slaves in the country we were passing through other than Arkans, however many that was. I explained how it would cause starvation, but of course there are always those with heads too thick for logic. The younger ones especially would crab, “You, with your whip and shackle-scars, are saying this?” We will abolish slavery, I said over and over, once we have the whole Empire.

They thought the slaves might rise up heroically, like in the old stories, but they were much more inclined to sneak away. Why fight when we’d do that for them? Or, more exactly, why fight without training, gear and good command? Rule of law or not, I put out the word not to turn them away if they wanted to join us; they were strong, tough, used to toil and following orders, and eager to prove themselves worthy of dignity. The ranks of the Three-Moon School grew, as did the ranks of support staff.

The further into Arko we got, the more often I was approached by bowing and scraping Arkans; mayors and Aitzas surrendering villages or towns or manses, envoys of same coming to cut deals with me, priests or their envoys cautioning me that temples were sacred and I’d draw the wrath of the Gods if I took even so much as a copper link, heads of orphanages or monasteries or artists’ colonies or schools begging for my protection and funding, since Kurkas’s was now cut off.

Doing this became so much of my work that for part of each day we marched, I had to bring my office down from the back of Bukangt, as too many of them found him frightening, and set up an audience carriage, complete with waiting room and staff. “It must be done in style,” my conquest-experienced generals insisted, “or it won’t awe them enough. They’re Arkans: lots of gold, lots of marble, lots of curliques!” I allowed some of that, but absolutely drew the line at the gold-leafed throne. I don’t feel I am working if I am not behind a desk, even if it’s just the lap-desk.

Two days away from our appointment with the rejins, I summoned Megan. Tiny though she was—she came up to a little above my elbow—she didn’t mind a mamoka, taking the ladder like an inordinately nimble child, and asking me about them at some length, fascinated, before we got to business.

“Knowing Arkans as I do, I am thinking it stands us in better stead that they be convinced I’m winning by the will of Celestialis, not Hayel,” I said. Hayel is created in men’s nightmares; Celestialis in Gods’ dreams. Thus it is the harder to keep alive… Triadas, I thought, am I doing that? “So I’ve retired the demons. Yet terror in an Arkan camp at night still has its uses…”

She studied my eyes before she answered, clearly puzzled. Because I am athye, probably, I thought. “Portents of divine favour for you, then?” she asked; her accent was very thick, and made me have to put thoughts of Svetkabras and my fiftieth fight forcefully out of my mind.

“Perhaps…” There was a part of me that shrank from impersonating the Gods of Arko, somehow, even though I didn’t believe in them.

“They’re afraid of you, aren’t they?” I signed chalk. “You sauntering around in their camp, invincible and impermeable, would cause something of a stir, wouldn’t it?”

I laughed, understanding; an illusion of me was indeed invincible. “I would think so.”

“I can do that, with proper preparation.”

“Once the Arkans set camp, I can get a good map of it; how they traditionally do it I can tell you already. We can go over passwords and such that night. Tell me what else you need.”

“Well…” She looked up at me shyly, her tiny heart-shaped face partly hidden behind her hair, which was obsidian-black but for one snow-white streak. I saw her swallow. “I, em… need to put my hands on your face and arms, kras.” A retreat to formality; she’d been calling me by name since our first talk. “To get… a strong idea of you… to make the image real.”

“Go ahead,” I said. I’d never known Zak to be shy about touch, like Arkans; she actually seemed more than shy, but afraid, as if I might suddenly turn on her. Never without weapons, even when naked… A man had done something to her; it was clear as day, once I thought of it. I closed my eyes, as she took my face between her hands; it doesn’t make me more vulnerable, in truth, but it seems to.

Her tiny hands were cold at first but warmed as they worked. Her touch was careful and thorough and impersonal, like the eyes of an artist on you, painting your portrait; to her, I was not there, only the shape and feel of me, from which she would mind-build the image with her manrauq. Because of that, and perhaps her child-like size, I felt nothing in my manhood. For a moment, by her face, I suspected she was feeling something in her womanhood, but she stifled it. When she was done, I told her it had felt like sitting for a painting, and she thanked me curtly. She left quite quickly, as if something had disturbed her.

13 Me 4975 | West of Osijitz

Dear Mamin:

It is a hard time to be a Haian with this army right now. We are beset with moral dilemma and we are all haunted by the actions of Boralaer. We should not travel with and serve an aggressing army. That has never been the way of Haiu Menshir. But, the saying goes, healing is never wrong. If you heal an evil person deeply enough, he will cease to be evil.

Some healers have left, but most have stayed, and those who left have been more than replaced by others arriving. It is easy to tell where they came from, by how well they speak Arkan and how even when they stop wearing gloves they hide their hands instinctively. There are even some, those who had practices for twenty or thirty or forty years in the Empire, who speak Enchian with an accent that is as Arkan as it is Haian.

None of them goes by his real name (they’re all men because Arkans don’t trust female healers) in case Arkan spies overhear someone talking to him. They will tell you how it hurts to be on the other side, to oppose those they helped and healed for so long, but they are here. “Healing is never wrong,” they say, over and over. It’s like a mantra. They never say they’re here for Haiu Menshir’s freedom, but everyone knows they are.

As am I. What else can it be? I can’t say I was duped because I could quit any time.

Amintris held a meeting about it, actually, after the Yeoli vote went chalk. She stood up to say she would not judge anyone harshly, or at all, for their decision, whatever it was. We came to a consensus, that none of us would judge each other. “Well, with the exception of one!” someone shouted out. Boralaer just laughed. He’d be so much easier to hate if he weren’t so good-natured.

Anyway, Amintris met with me alone today, when we were done infirmary-rounds. “Kaninjer, I am worried about the Haians in Arko, Chevenga’s healers whom Kurkas took captive, being harmed worse in retaliation for his actions. Or in threat. Have you and he ever spoken about that?”

I felt the sickness rise that I always feel when this comes into my mind. I haven’t mentioned it in writing here… out of the habit of thinking that you will read it, I guess. Merchoser is your brother. Maybe it will all be over, one way or the other, when you read this, if you ever do.

“No,” I said.

“Has he ever… implied any thought or anticipation of it?” she asked me.

“No, not that I can remember,” I said. “He… well, Chevenga thinks of everything. It’s his calling. But, if you ask me, by what I know of him and how he speaks… I think he possibly hasn’t thought of this. Without breaking confidentiality by revealing anything I know that you don’t, I can suspect it is a trauma-related mental lapse. That it is too unbearable a possibility for his mind to allow it. Do you think I should broach it with him, with extreme care?”

Amintris stood thinking for a bit, her lips thinning as is her habit. “I am not sure,” she said. “I don’t know what his choice would be, if he had the choice. He is a strategist, and they want to know all possibilities; but if he thought of it, what could he do about it? It might be pointless to know.”

Mamin, I feel so sick to write this. Chevenga has a mandate from his people. He lives by semana kra. He would never violate it. So if Kurkas told him, “I will torture all seven healers to death unless you cease invading,” he would not cease. By Yeoli law, he could not.

The lives of seven Haians are nothing to the will of the people of Yeola-e.

I told Amintris that. She knows enough about Yeola-e to know in her heart I am right. “Don’t broach it with him,” she said. “He needs to make no decision on it, since his decision has already been made for him, and, if we are somehow very lucky, it might not come up. It would only cause him unnecessary emotional pain.”