057 - Justice is done


I headed straight from the chair out to the courtyard. My family and friends who were here closed in around me in such a way that I knew they’d planned it, tender hands on my shoulders and my back. Still, there were smiles. “I knew you’d spit fire, and you did some,” Krero said. “The last thing I expected was that you’d make us laugh.”

“You even got some of the jurors,” Artira whispered, “and they’re supposed to show absolutely nothing.”

056 - I deserve to live


Sha: Fourth Chevenga, you have heard everything I have presented, all the evidence against you. You’ve heard it cited from the writings and the speeches of so many, all right-minded and observant. You know the evidence of your flaws—the madness, the foreign corruption, the aggressiveness, the uncontrollable rage, the power-lust, the disdain and deadly hatred for your own people, the callous disregard of all that is sacred in Yeola-e, the delusions of grandeur to the degree of divinity, the tendency to treason, the nihilism—and you know them in yourself.

055 - Shit, venom, thorns and clingfire


The Presiding Judge decreed a break, and I met Linasika going out, though he was in a hurry. “I think calling you to the chair was a mistake on her part,” I said to him. “Perhaps she imagined herself your equal in verbal cut and thrust, and she’s nowhere near. But I must thank you for taking my side, for a change.”

054 - A *semanakraseye* in good standing


I went back up to the Independent for breakfast, but found I had no appetite. I was suddenly nervous as if I were facing the execution block. Neither hot water nor icy water nor calming essence eased it. Surya wasn’t up yet and I didn’t want to disturb him. Of course I knew what to do: ask myself, what is in it?

053 - The main witness for the defense


The world now knows the rest.

Krero sent two of his people around to the back door of Sharaina’s house in Aratai, and knocked on the front. She lived alone there, and so answered his knock. When he said his name and that it was a security matter concerning the semanakraseye, there was a silence, and then she slammed the door in his face and ran out the back door, straight into the arms of the two.

052 - The vine of tomorrow’s circumstance


I wouldn’t even be able to choose, I realized. If I saw them coming, anywhere—I knew Sharaina’s face well from Assembly, and the youths from the dream—my body would move of its own will before they were even near bow-range.

But it shouldn’t even get to that, I saw, when Surya made me haul myself up, sit and think. Reluctantly, sluggishly, my mind followed forward the implications.

051 - Like a deaf dancer moving to a song I could not hear


Kaninjer. Kaninjer, no, please. Kaninjer, this is the end of my consciousness, let me keep it. Kaninjer, you can’t, this is the one you’ve dreaded, the one you can’t save me from, I’m sorry, I can tell, I can feel it. Kaninjer, please trust me, I’m refusing healing, I have to, I’m sorry, Kaninjer, please...

050 - The click of the door of fate closing


Excerpt from the Pages of Arko, Imbas 32, 51st-to-last Y.P.A.

During the announcement of Minis Aan’s candidacy and Chevenga’s recommendation of him, Minis was asked by a Yeoli scribe why his political philosophy seems so Yeoli, and whether that was due to Chevenga’s influence. In his answer, Minis said yes, in part, but also made extensive reference to ancient Arkan traditions which held the Imperator accountable to the citizenry.

When he was finished answering, however, Chevenga interceded to add his own answer.

We quote it in full.

049 - The kind of people who’d steal an election


I sat in the room Kall had taken me to for a bit to recover, making the pain fade with doses of whack-weed. He’d struck me on the side of the head, luckily, so I’d have no obvious mark during the day’s meetings. I knew Kaninjer would want to put me on the concussion regimen tonight, but he wouldn’t if I didn’t tell him I’d been hit; if he could tell from examining me, so be it.

048 - You were right to hit me


Approaching the door of Surya’s office had become gradually less frightening over time. But now the fear came roaring back, as bad as ever except the second visit, when it had frozen me entirely on his walkway. I had to breathe deeply for about a twentieth outside in the corridor before I could bring myself to tap.

“Before you ask me, I’m scared shitless again,” I told him as I closed the door behind me. “I don’t know why.”

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