110 - What constitutes integrity

Three days are gone from my life. In truth, there are many others that are gone as well; but those three stand out, enough that I felt the need to learn and record the dates: Selinae 26-28, 58^th-last Year of the Present Age on the Arkan calendar, etesora 62-64, 1548 on the Yeoli. I will never get them back. Like anyone whose days are short, I imagine, I very much resent that, in part of myself at least.

Memory comes to an end just after I ate breakfast in the Mezem refectory, with the other fighters, on the 62nd. When it picks up again, I am lying shackled to a bed in a room that I know right away by its stark marble walls is in the Mahid section of the Marble Palace, on the evening of what I learned later was the 64th.

I lay under the eyes of a Mahid who stood differently from a statue only in that his chest moved, except when he gave me water or held the piss-bottle for me; eventually First Amitzas came in, telling me I was required to take nourishment, and convinced me to drink what he brought me despite how sick I felt, by letting me smell that it was full of lemon and ginger.

I didn’t yet know it was three days and so assumed it was but one, when I asked him what time it was and he told me it was the sixteenth bead and two fifths, evening. They’d truth-drugged me again, I had to accept.

Next, a man came in who wore his hair, that had thinned almost to nothing on top, Aitzas-long, and the off-the-field insignia of a very high-ranking general, which I knew, roughly, from engravings in books I had read. The hems of his gloves were fringed with gold rings, that jingled softly when he moved his hands; his scarlet tunic had such sword-sharp seams it looked as if no wrinkle would dare mar it; on his collar he wore three of the drop-shaped gold pins that signify hand-to-hand mastery in Arko, out of a possible five. Like wings across his chest were stripes of ribbon segments of every colour, signifying the multitude of decorations he’d won. He was unarmed.

He looked to be in his fifties, perhaps, with the intense intelligence in his blue-grey eyes that generals often have, and a sternness in the mouth and chin that spoke of being accustomed to being obeyed. He did not look down at his nose at me more than he could help for standing and then sitting over me, though, nor seem hateful. He looked familiar, as if we’d conversed several times, though I could not recall ever meeting him; . With a little thought, I understood. He’s the one who has been questioning me. I probably knew his name, from my reading.

“I don’t know why you’d want to speak to me while I’m not truth-drugged,” I said, equal-to-equal. “I have nothing for you.”

“Greetings, Durakis,” he said, in Enchian, but for the one Arkan word. “We’ve never been introduced: I’m Triadas Teleken, Aitzas, who serves He Whose Strategy is History’s Course as a general, and who has been tasked with the eastern assignment.” I had indeed heard of him; he was one of the three or four best generals in the Empire. The eastern assignment? What a delicate way of saying, “leading the destruction and enslavement of Yeola-e.”

The attempted destruction and enslavement of Yeola-e, I reminded myself, thinking of Mana. “What does that mean: Durakis?” I said. “I’ve never heard it before; my first thought was that it was an odd version of ‘Raikas.’ But at the same time, it’s familiar.”

“It’s a title... Honourable Foreign Ruler would be the closest meaning.”

“I am not a ruler.”

“I know,” he said. He had a crisp way of speaking that spoke of great intelligence as well. “You are the least of your people as opposed to the first, and do what you are told.”

Such an Arkan way of putting it. “You’ve been studying us,” I said. All-Spirit.

“Yes, but it’s not something Arkans can generally understand,” he said. “There’s no Arkan word that suits, so Durakis is polite. You could translate it as Honourable Foreign Representative, just as correctly.”

“You hardly need be polite,” I said. “But if you choose to, you can call me by name; that’s my preference.”

“Chefenkas,” he said, a better pronunciation than I’d heard any other Arkan manage. “I am not asking for anything from you. I... wish to offer you something. Knowledge first: do you remember anything at all of the last three days?”

Three days… a pang of nausea seized me. I could give up all hope that he had not been thorough. “No,” I said.

“You’ve been here, and I’ve been questioning you under the truth-drug,” he said, with a kind of measured gentleness. “I said the eastern assignment… maybe you don’t know what I meant by that.”

“I do,” I said.

“I was on my way there, but called back to Arko by He Whose Wit is the Wisdom of the World, to question you. What you are feeling now is that this is the end of everything; am I right?” I did not answer, but he read my chalk in my eyes. “It isn’t.”

“What you came to offer me is hope? How sweet,” I said.

“War is one of the ugliest things human beings do to one another. The best warriors, and the best generals, try to make it as gentle as possible.” At my laugh, he added, “That is a joke, I know. So; it is part of my... sense... to hear you out. If you wish to speak what you feel. War is not forever, the Gods be thanked.”

Was I hearing this right? “You want me to pour out my heart? The man who means to destroy and enslave my people, wants to let their semanakraseye pour out his heart to him; that’s so Arkan.”

“This is probably going to sound Arkanly brutal, Chefenkas... but it is no longer effective to kill yourself.” It would be years before I learned the full meaning of this, in a letter from someone I never met. “We have everything out of your mind that we need. Now your duty is to live.”

“An Arkan is telling me my duty? Live and cost my people; I can see why you want that.”

“Your knowledge is already ours. After we take the field it will all be obsolete... and should your people ransom you, they’ll prefer your mind over your corpse.”

I couldn’t keep from showing anything then; my arms were trembling in their bonds, and my next breath was a gasp. The worst of it was that he was right; if they had mined me out, it was my duty to stay alive. Pain huge beyond imagining; if this isn’t it, I don’t want to know what is. He laid his gloved hand, more gently than the glove made the hand appear capable of, on my forearm. “You yourself did not make a mistake, Chefenkas,” he said. “Your fate, you don’t deserve.”

“I know,” I hissed. “Just leave me alone in the fikken dark and let me face it all myself.” It occurred to me only after saying this that he might mean more than being captive in Arko; he might even mean having foreknowledge.

“I will make an oath to you, Durakis,” he said, with eyes that meant it. “I will do my duty for Arko, but I swear to you on my hope of Celestialis and second Fire come if I do not, I will do it as cleanly and with as much honour as I may.”

My wishes seized on this; my wisdom knew better. “And while you serve Kurkas, I’m sure that cleanly and with as much honour as you may is plenty.”

He let out a hissing sigh. He was one of the generals who had plotted with Kurkas to off his father, I’d read. It was in the histories because Kurkas was not in the slightest bit ashamed to have the world know.

“I saw him as a great hope,” he said. “But… I know now I was wrong to support him against Joras.”

“If you are a man of conscience, why do you still obey him? I know, I know… in this country, conscience can be so costly, to oneself.”

He just pursed his lips. Too intelligent and honest not to see Kurkas as he was, or to be offended at deprecation of Arko that was true; it made me sick to think of him commanding against Yeolis. “Should He to whom I am sworn break His oath, it is between him and the Gods. I can stay true to my word.”

I had to puzzle this out for a moment before I understood it. Some Yeolis could never understand it, no matter how many times it was explained. “Right. It’s not between you and the Gods. You can look Them in the face and say ‘I’m innocent; I was just following orders!’ You see why we Yeolis feel that Arkans have no minds?”

“Yes, I see that,” he said. “But the one thing I cannot give away to get my heart’s desire... is my own heart.”

I had to puzzle that out, too. “You’ve given your heart to Kurkas, along with your mind.”

“Yes, years ago. And I will answer to Muunas as to whether I kept my oaths, one day. If that gives you comfort, good.”

I was suddenly reminded of Skorsas saying “Beat me,” and the dog-who-begs-to-be-whipped look that Minis sometimes got. If anything, it made me sicker. “I think maybe I should pity more than envy you,” I said. “The person who gives his all for that in which he does not believe is a walking corpse. It’s no comfort to me, in truth; only horror.”

“We who are trained in war do hideous things,” he said. Had he had spies listening while Azaila gave me my wristlets? “We put our hands on the tools designed to do only one thing: hurt or kill our fellow man. There are few things that justify it.”

“And slaking Kurkas’s lust for conquest is one of them? You Arkans never draw the true distinction between attack and defense—I’ve read all those lies about Yeolis in the Pages—and pretend one is the other so as to make it into something noble in your minds.”

“Noble, indeed. Or bearable.”

“Or the enjoyment of it, excusable.”

“Anyone sane does not enjoy it.”

“No argument there; so you fight for the mad, and you imagine that your Gods are themselves mad enough to forgive you.”

“Durakis, it is not my place to comment on the Imperator, much less the Gods. There is only human hope, and the effort to do one’s best.” A line of sweat had formed on his brow, though we were low enough in the Marble Palace that it was not hot.

“It’s your place to make your choices whether you admit that to yourself or not, because you make them; that is the one thing in which we have no choice.”

“You have no parameters within which you make your own choices?”

Too intelligent and honest not to see truth when it hits you… bless you, curse you. “You choose that which it is possible to choose. The difference between Arko and Yeola-e is that we don’t pretend we have no choice about things that we do. To me it’s been baffling and horrifying and sickening to see… in all honesty.” He said something I didn’t hear, not letting him interrupt me, something about instructing him. “And now you want to make us into you, because you hate us for having what you have crushed in yourselves. I wasn’t intending to instruct you, but I guess in this I need to.”

“In my experience most people need to be forced to change—”

“That’s because you’re Arkan! Trust me on this—or stick me with that cursed drug again and ask me!”

“War is the final conflict of opinion on what constitutes integrity, is it not?” he asked. “The final conflict of which way of life is correct: ours or yours. Ultimately it will be decided; either we will win, or you will.”

“All-Spirit—do they teach you such grandiose stuff in Arkan general school? War is people bashing each other over the heads with steel either trying to steal each other’s stuff, or keep their own! I thought you knew something about war.”

He burst out with a spitting gout of bitter laughter, that I was sure he hadn’t intended to. “Chefenkas, I admit, I’m a complete fool when it comes to philosophy. I think you got more of it than I did.”

“What you don’t understand will tear you apart inside. Even more than it already has.”

“Yes, and ultimately it will kill me.” There was something Mahid in his face, as he said that.

“That’s the work of philosophy, to solve these things. Doesn’t it bother you?”

“Everyone eventually is killed by something. Warriors just see it coming more clearly.”

“I know you mean to silence me, and the calling of your own heart, by the ultimate cynicism,” I said. “But it won’t be so easy. Triadas, it bothers you by definition. Are you intentionally blind to this, or is it deeper?”

He sprang up from the chair, fast for a man his age, and took two steps across the room before turning on his heel. His face would have been impassive, but for the tightness. “You know, you might be right… you’ve given me much to think about.”

How bitter it must be, I thought, to be so intelligent and honest, in his position, in this place. How does he bear it? “Might be? As I said, truth-drug me again, and ask me!”

His hand was on the door-handle. “You are fighting for your people here, Durakis... with every word.”

“Chevenga. I wasn’t meaning to fight for my people with every word, just to say the fikken truth. I’ve never been anywhere where so many people needed it so much.” Triadas threw open the door and was gone, saying “Good night, Chefenkas,” though he closed it gently, so that it just clicked.

--