138 - A vessel for the noblest virtues

I got another dinner invitation from Kurkas, “so as to congratulate you for your brilliant victory over Riji Kli-fas,” the invitation read.

There were several dinners with Kurkas, perhaps five, or maybe ten, in total. I don’t remember them well, since several were in the second half of my time in the Mezem, from which I don’t remember anything well. They blur together. I went on my own power each time because I knew I’d be dragged there by Mahid if I didn’t.

I’d given up on learning anything of substance; the knowledge I sought lay in his work, and his work he rarely mentioned. I’d thought at first he was reticent out of civility or secrecy, but it soon came clear he didn’t really think about much, like a bothersome minor chore that occasionally interfered with the important business of living like an Imperator.

Perhaps he’d been taught that he must keep his mind on theory, and he’d taken it to mean leaving no room in it at all for practice. Or perhaps he delegated everything to leave time for drawn-out dinners with captive demarch-ringer-fighter-professors and other such luminaries. (I was almost too busy myself for such distractions, and I commanded only a class of philosophy students.)

Interesting to learn; if it were true as it seemed, someone else was really running the Empire. Yet he told me he’d taken the decisions both to betray me and invade my country against his advisors’ wishes—“I see clear and above these little things,”—and everyone seemed terrified of him, so he was apparently not in their thrall. I casually asked him why they’d been against; all he said was, “Oh, bureaucratic cowardice; you must know about that.” What I knew was, if they were good advisers, they’d based their opinion on facts, and those facts I’d have given my sword-arm for. I could at least take some hope that he was overextending his strength, or making some other strategic mistake.

This time he was all congratulatory affability, slapping my back, raising toasts, wanting to go over minutiae of the fight. He was very much like a typical Aitzas fan, who thinks that, since his caste makes him superior to most and therefore innately knowledgeable on all things, that he knows one end of a sword from the other in the Ring; but jumped up, of course.

“Well, you almost lost the ransom money there,” I said to him, in mock sympathy.

“Yes,” he said, taking it for real, “but oh, the excitement! The drama!” There was nothing to do but humour him.

This time we played chess, on a set on which the kings’ and princes’ crowns had real diamonds and rubies. He beat me—I’d never played before, until he taught me—and, with the glow of victory on his wide face, went on to discourse ad nauseum on how civilization proves its superiority over barbarism in every contest. I thought wistfully of Amanas, one of the brighter of my philosophy students.

“Arko,” declaimed Kurkas, “is like this!” He lifted his empty goblet of sparkling clear crystal into a sunbeam that slanted down from a high window to an atrium. He had a penchant for glass, I’d noticed. Because, being clear, it hid nothing? And yet he was terrified even of the air-clear water in his bath. Why am I trying so hard to understand him? He’s not that complex; a man of moderate intelligence whose instinct for chiravesa, even the slightest trace of it, is simply missing.

“The spirit, the essence, the ideal, of the Empire,” he went on, “is like this glass. Pure, unblemished, formed perfectly, shining, incapable of staining… a vessel for the noblest virtues, that we Arkans pour from ourselves unstintingly. This glass was here before our grandfathers and great-grandfathers, as was the Empire; and the Empire, like this glass, will be here when our grandchildren and great-grandchildren have long been dust—a greater and grander thing than one mere life.”

This went on for a while, one trait after another beating the poor metaphor to death, while my mind wandered out the window and to the Hall of Thought, and something another student had said that was interesting. The stream of words ended; Kurkas sat with his face frozen in a smile of wonder, struck speechless by the brilliance of his own words. Then he clicked the glass down on the table, and went on to other things.

In memory it seems like barely a moment later, though I imagine in truth it was longer: being clumsy-handed, or perhaps having drunk more than he knew, he knocked the glass off the table with his elbow, smashing it into a hundred pieces on the gold and garnet-inlaid floor.

Our eyes met. His were the same astonishing blue as his son’s, bred for for centuries, but wrapped in little bird’s nests of expressionless pink flesh. I knew he must be seeing the smirk I was not stifling well. Other Arkans I’ve told this story to have told me they’re amazed I wasn’t five days dying for that smirk. Somehow, he just laughed it off. Was it the same softness on fellow royalty that I’d seen in Astalaz? More likely he happened to be in an affable mood.

At that dinner or another, he showed me what he called his sanctum. It was a small room, for the Marble Palace, filled with what he told me were the most precious things he’d collected, all through his life. This at least was interesting. The childish things were astonishingly ordinary: a robin’s nest with three blue eggs in it, the jawbone of a cow, a stuffed bear worn all but furless, a waxboard with a child’s drawing of a bird against clouds, or behind them; one could not tell whether one could see the clouds through the bird or the bird through the clouds.

But there were also priceless works of art, many of the great ones that one read about or saw replicas of, The Delights of Celestialis by Entonnas, Mankind’s Fall by Soleitzas, Sibbas’s stunningly complex sculpture, Flying Machine. His weakness for glass showed everywhere: the tables, made of thick glass themselves, were all but heaped with glass cups, vases, candelabra, figurines, miniature replicas of famous statues, pyramids, chess sets, many-facetted balls, even crystals.

There was even a model of the central part of the city of Arko, done in incredible detail, the interior of every level of every building entirely furnished; the Mezem was certainly accurate. Bright-eyed as a child, he showed me how the tall buildings came apart so you could see everything. It looked like decades of work.

He showed it all to me eagerly, like a child showing something to a grown-up whose regard he seeks; it was eerily like Minis. Why, I had no idea, unless it was just that I was fascinated, which I was.

At various times in our conversations, and never with intent to offend but simply because he believed it at that moment, he called me simple-minded, weak-willed, unearthly stubborn, conceited, a crashing bore, and eternally fascinating for reasons beyond him. One day he would say I was clear and pure as that crystal I wore—adding it into his hypothesis, often as not, that only transparent things such as glass or a lake of perfectly pure water have true depth, and that earth would be as Celestialis and mankind risen once again when all the world was glass, like his little Arko. The next he would say a thousand brilliant philosophers in a thousand years couldn’t understand me. Once I said, “Perhaps, like many people, you see yourself in me,” but he shrugged it off.

Once, I asked him how he heard the voice of his God. By Arkan doctrine the Imperator is the Son of the Sun, ordained by the Greatest Father, Muunas, who is also God of Aitzas men. Arko does the Imperator’s will as the Imperator does the God’s will, a chain of command like an army’s; I was just curious how the God gave his marching orders.

“The voice of my God? You barbarians and your atavistic concepts, you’re as good dupes for deities as the uneduc—wait a moment! You’re a Yeoli—an atheist. Aren’t you? A sophistication I thought we had in common; don’t disillusion me, Shefen-kas.”

For a moment I couldn’t speak; then I noticed my mouth was hanging open, and snapped it shut. On retrospect, it was naivete. Why would someone like him have Gods? But how could he live, with a lie of such magnitude?

“I am,” I said, “but I don’t claim not to be. You accept the title Son of the Sun, you claim to make the laws and dispense the punishments in the name of God, you sustain the temples and the priests, accept the tithes and the prayers; your position flows entirely down from divine right, as I understand it. And you don’t believe in Them yourself? How can you live such a falsehood?”

He shrugged, not taking offense at all. “All these things are needful, Shefen-kas. As for how I can bear it—I’m Imperator. I can do anything, I can bear anything. Nothing is beyond my strength.”

Many times I have looked back on that moment and wondered, as we humans cannot help but do, what my life would have been had I done differently. For all I know, it might have not been different at all.

I stared at him. “Nothing? I doubt that! In fact, I can think of quite an easy proof that there is something you cannot do; would you like to witness it?” He stared back at me. “Or even put a wager on it?” I’d become such a Mezem creature.

“You entertaining barbarian!” he said, laughing. “This I wish to see. Wager? You don’t have anything to match what I could stake.”

“How about this for a stake?” I said. “If I prove there’s one thing you can’t do, you set me free. Immediately, no ransom, no harm, safe out of arrow range on unconquered Yeoli territory. But if I fail in that proof, I send the orders to my people to surrender, and Yeola-e is yours without any further fighting. Good terms, I think, especially considering I know full well you’ll break your end of the agreement, whatever oath I talk you into swearing, if I win—but I won’t break mine.”

He let that last insult pass by, his eyes flashing with want. “Yes! Done! Go on, tell me what I can’t do! This is too rich!”

“Very well.” I could not hide my smile now. “By your own strength, without the aid of any other person or device…” I thumped my elbow on the table. “Beat me at arm-wrestling.”

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This scene from Minis's point of view.

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[Author's note: credit where credit is due. The discourse on the Arko-as-this-glass metaphor was conceived by S.M. (Steve) Stirling, during a role-play at a friend's cottage in which he was playing Kurkas and I, Chevenga, some years ago. In the role of the OAS (Obsequious Arkan Servant), said friend kept us topped up enough that we weren't entirely sure how much we were drinking, and Steve did indeed, quite accidentally, knock the glass off the table, smashing it. 'That's going in the book,' I thought. I remain grateful, Steve!]

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