Speaking Bones, page 106
To defeat the Lyucu while keeping Dara free from the tyranny of militarism, she had turned into a tyrant. To save the people while preventing Dara from being corrupted by total war, she had corrupted herself. The paradox had to be resolved.
The actions of those who found an empire are constitutive acts for subsequent generations, and weighty as precedent. She could not let her own example become a guide for future tyrants, for a would-be Hegemon, Gin, Phyro, or even—especially—another Jia.
So she embarked upon a second, parallel plan: cultivating, pruning, shaping, training the living machinery of the state. Gathering able advisers and pitting them against one another in teams of rivals, she implemented the Incentivist insight that people were motivated by desire for gain and aversion to loss without disregarding the Moralist hope that individuals could be inspired to strive for ideals grander than their immediate needs. Stepping back and giving up power as the bureaucracy grew and refined itself, she fulfilled the Patternist belief that out of many disparate components, each molded for a different purpose, a grand, coherent machine could be assembled to carry out a single goal, thereby also enacting the Fluxist archetype that harmonious Flow emerged from random chaos.
While she veiled away the Dandelion Throne to separate it from its rightful heir, she also placed the fingers of the many upon the handle of the Grace of Kings. The people have always had the right to rise up in violent rebellion against a tyrant, but she wanted there to be another way, a way for the garden to thwart the straying gardener without the death of millions. She plotted for her own downfall by planting the seeds of an institutional rebellion, a systematic coup, a bloodless, loyal act of treason.
The moment arrived. The field on Mount Rapa was burned to the ground; Tiphan Huto tore out his own throat; the Lyucu were plunged into tolyusa-thirst, and practically overnight, an invincible empire built upon cruelty and the worship of death crumbled.
And almost simultaneously, the seed that Jia had planted, Lady Soto’s conscience, had sprouted and bloomed. Soto proclaimed the truth—or at least the part of the truth Jia wanted to be known—of the empress’s betrayals and murders to the world.
Jia had succeeded, but she was also exhausted. The weight of years of plotting against an implacable foe strained her heart; the guilt of cruel acts against innocent victims stained her conscience. She was glad that the self-regulating, self-correcting machinery of state that she had worked so hard to build was finally strong enough to constrain the power of the sovereign, ready to challenge herself.
Like a silkworm spinning out the last loop of thread to seal herself into the cocoon that would be her shroud in the boiling vat, she killed off her most faithful defenders, the women she loved as her own daughters, and unleashed a revolution with herself as its target. She wanted to take the secret of her long plots to the grave. She would become the last, lone sacrifice necessary to initiate a new reign, a reign in which the empire no longer relied on a wise ruler, but could be wise in itself.
A well-crafted plan is indistinguishable from a miracle, especially if the plotter can be as cruel to herself as she is to her enemies.
* * *
Cogo stopped.
Jia’s face was streaked with tears.
She had been understood; she had been seen. Though she had tried to encase her heart in ice, to submit to misunderstanding, the craving to have one’s heart vibrate in sympathy with that of a kindred soul never died.
“You spin a wondrous tale,” she said, wiping her face clean and putting up a last, desperate fight. “But it is only a tale.”
“I cannot claim full credit as the author,” said Cogo. “Zomi shared my suspicions, and we pooled our evidence and poked holes in each other’s conclusions until we were satisfied that the fish had been properly weighed. True tales are always the most wondrous.”
“Extraordinary claims require ironclad proof,” Jia protested, her voice barely a croak.
Cogo’s eyes were full of compassion. Her face provided all the proof he needed.
“You were the playwright and lead actress in that last performance in the Grand Audience Hall,” Cogo said. “It was the culmination of a lifetime of deception engaged in to benefit the people of Dara, to reify mutagé. It was a grand work worthy of an Empress of Dara.” Cogo knelt up in mipa rari, straightening his back with difficulty. The weight of age, of the vicissitudes of history, was unforgiving.
His voice took on a severe tone. “But it was also, in the end, a staged performance. The bloodless revolution is a lie.”
“Every act from the sovereign and the Lords of Dara is a performance,” said Jia. “That is the nature of politics. But even staged acts, when validated by the belief of the audience, reify into records of history and become patterns to constrain and guide future behavior. These constitutive acts are not ‘lies,’ but the very foundation of a better life for the people of Dara.”
“I’ve already tendered my resignation as Prime Minister,” said Cogo Yelu.
“Why?” Jia demanded, absolutely shocked.
“Because I knew that your case against Gin was fabricated but backed you anyway; because I suspected that you had murdered Risana but did not act on my suspicion; because I turned a blind eye to your schemes, until Phyro died. I was your accomplice, even if I didn’t know.”
“Phyro killed himself!” Jia’s hands balled into fists. “I wanted to stop him; I tried. He was too strong-willed, too black-and-white, too—” She stopped. It was long past the time for explanations. “I deceived you precisely because I hoped—”
“I understand,” said Cogo. “I know that you wanted to keep me and the other members of the Inner Council from the price of such a victory over the Lyucu: the murders, betrayals, the suffering of the people under Lyucu misrule while you cultivated the hard-liners. You wanted to pay for all of it yourself, playing the role of the villain and hoping to insulate the rest of us from responsibility. But we were all complicit. None of us was clean.”
“O Cogo, Cogo! You once understood the value of performances and roles and necessary deceptions. What has happened to you?”
“I’ve grown old and less cynical,” said Cogo. “A more just future cannot be built upon a foundation of lies.”
“You want the truth?” Jia’s voice cracked, and she stood up, a trembling finger pointed at Cogo. “How do you think my granddaughter and her thanes will react when they receive confirmation that their suspicions were true, that I poisoned their bodies to sap them of the will and ability to fight? How do you think the people of Unredeemed Dara will react when they discover that I was in part responsible for their suffering by encouraging the excesses of the Lyucu? The atrocities committed by the Lyucu hard-liners exceeded even my dark imagination—O gods! O gods… How do you think the common people will react when they hear that Soto’s accusations against me only scratched the surface, that I committed far more heinous crimes in their name?”
Compulsively, she rubbed her hands to rid them of the invisible stain.
“You did what you did to avert a worse fate for millions,” said Cogo. “Your actions cannot be judged by a court of law, only by the hearts of the people and the long shadow of experience. You’ve always said that you submit to the judgment of history; history begins in the present.”
“You have too much trust in the common people,” said Jia. “The truth will make them lose faith in the Dandelion Throne, in the Inner Council. They are shortsighted, selfish, governed by their hot passions—”
“And you trust them too little,” said Cogo. “You want to construct a system of interlocking institutions that will serve the people of Dara long beyond your lifetime, but a system is nothing unless it is reconstituted, act after act, generation after generation, by a free people who choose what they do based on full knowledge of the facts. You think you see far, but no individual, no matter how wise, can see as far as the compounded eyes of their children and their children; you have no power to foretell the future. The people of Dara must be allowed to see for themselves and chart their own course, to tell their own story.”
All right, she thought. I’ve done all I could; at least I kept the most important secret.
“Let the people have their truth,” she said, with infinite weariness, “for all the good it will do them.” Though she was no longer the Empress of Dara, she couldn’t help asking one more question of policy: “What about the Lyucu? What has Fara decided to do with them?”
“Ah,” said Cogo, “there is one more thing. Empress Shizona is negotiating the terms of the Lyucu surrender directly with Pékyu Dyana. The Lyucu have one demand before they’ll discuss anything else: the cure for tolyusa-thirst.”
“They have no right to ask for any terms at all!” Blood rushed into Jia’s face. “Besides, they cannot have any more of the enhanced zomi berries. I made sure they were eradicated.”
Cogo shook his head. “They’re asking for a cure, not more poison.”
“There is no cure.”
Cogo looked at her in the eye, saying everything and nothing.
Impossible, Jia screamed silently in her head. Not even the Dyran Fins knew. How could he know?
“The tolyusa-thirst plagues the worst of the worst,” she said. “The hard-liner thanes, the high-ranking collaborators, those who believed in the annihilation of our people. Let them die.”
“The tolyusa-thirst also struck thanes who obeyed Cutanrovo Aga out of convenience rather than zeal, collaborators who tried to curry favor with the Lyucu to save the people, and those like Todyu, your grandson, too young to understand what they did.”
“Excuses,” said Jia, her voice cold. “What of their victims? Why aren’t you pleading for them? Why aren’t you speaking for justice?”
“The surrendered Lyucu will also be the people of Dara,” said Cogo. “A cure is an act of good faith, and weighty as precedent.”
“Fool! The Lyucu can never become the people of Dara!” This was exactly what she had feared Phyro would do. “I beg of you, do not undo all that I’ve done. The Lyucu cannot be reasoned with, accommodated. If you allow them and their descendants to live among us as equals, then you’re choosing generations of hatred, the endless poison of the desire for vengeance, the undying dream of the revival of Lyucu domination. Only their utter and complete submission, only by driving them into the sea—”
“You speak like Cutanrovo, like Tenryo,” said Cogo.
Jia felt as though she had been slapped in the face. Her mouth moved, but no words emerged.
“How can we dismiss an entire people in one judgment?” said Cogo. “Dara has produced individuals like Gin and Luan, Timu and Théra, heroes who left their teeth on the board, heedless of sacrifices for the people. Dara has also produced individuals like Wira Pin and Noda Mi, butchers and cowards who lived on the blood of their victims. That same variety is true among the Lyucu. For every cruel Cutanrovo Aga, there is an Ofluro, who trained the garinafins to defend the Dandelion Throne; for every merciless Tenryo, there is a Vocu Firna, who gave his life to save a few native scholars.
“Fara has chosen mercy over justice. It is the will of Empress Shizona and her new Inner Council that you yield up the cure for the tolyusa-thirst. She wishes that her nephew, Todyu, will be the last to die of the sickness instead of one of the first.”
Jia closed her eyes. In her mind she pictured the thirst-ravaged body of Todyu. Because she had never seen her grandson, she naturally substituted the face of his father as a boy. The son of her son, flesh of her flesh, lay dead by her own hand, and she had refused to even see him once before he passed beyond the River-on-Which-Nothing-Floats.
Her face crumpled. No matter how much she tried to close herself to human feelings, she was only mortal.
“I had to climb high enough until I could see the whole picture, to enlarge my heart to contain the fates of millions, to harden my soul for the unforgiving edged grip of the Grace of Kings,” she said, as tears spilled from her eyes. “But as I climbed, I also watched myself changing from a dandelion into a towering pine, a shrimp into a cruben, a sparrow into a Mingén falcon. I could no longer discern the lives of individuals, Dara or Lyucu. They became entries in tax ledgers, figures in assessments of relative military strength, anonymous stones on a cüpa board whose fate depended on which side they were on, black or white. O Timu, my son, I’ve failed you. My son!”
Cogo sat with her in empathetic silence. Tears flowed from his eyes as well.
At length, as her sobs subsided, he spoke again. “With only an herb as your weapon, you’ve achieved a victory over the Lyucu that will rank with the greatest campaigns by Gin Mazoti; with only experience as your guide, you’ve constructed a self-instructing, self-reflecting, self-correcting engine of state for collective decision-making that is the equal of any invention by Luan Zyaji. In a world of terrible choices, you chose a path that minimized suffering. You preserved the soul of Dara against the horrors of total war.”
“I cannot sleep, old friend.” Jia shrank into herself, inconsolable. “I cannot close my eyes without seeing the faces of all those I harmed.”
“I know, old friend,” said Cogo. “You and I are both old and our consciences stained. It’s time for us to step aside for a new generation.
“It’s the lot of mortal beings to see but a short way into the future, no matter how much we strive, and it is both a curse and a manifestation of grace that children must make their own path, independent of their forbearers.
“Those who plant saplings will not live to enjoy the shade of the full-grown tree; those who build the city-ship will not get to steer it into the unknown storm. I’m asking you to let go of the Grace of Kings, and trust that the Wisdom of the People will be wielded well by the people you saw as your duty to defend. The living machine of the state is endowed with its own intelligence, its own foresight.
“Free yourself from the arrogance that you can see the end of history, design a perfect system, plot for the best ending. Embrace the humility of doubt. You’re one pair of hands among multitudes, one pair of eyes among myriads. You’re no longer the empress, but one of the people of Dara. Only then can the revolution you desire truly succeed. Only then can you, by your own act, reify mutagé.”
He, like the rest of the room, had become blurred in Jia’s eyes, but she made no effort to wipe away her tears.
A long line of figures, larger than life, seemed to parade before her. She was about to shout defiantly at them again, but then she realized that they were not the gods of Dara at all.
Friends, foes, lovers who had passed beyond the River-on-Which-Nothing-Floats: Kuni and Risana, Otho Krin, Gin Mazoti, Timu and Phyro, Wi and Shido, Laughing Skeleton, Nazu Tei, Todyu, Tiphan Huto….
She couldn’t tell if their expressions were of forgiveness or hatred, compassion or enmity. No matter how much she strained, their faces refused to resolve into clarity. They simply beckoned at her, asking her to see herself as flawed, merely mortal, but one of the people of Dara.
One by one, the figures faded into a tapestry of the Islands of Dara, a teeming mass of humanity, a grand, living machine that no longer needed her hand, and perhaps had never needed her hand.
“Just one more question,” she said. “How did you know that I would have a cure?”
“You’re an herbalist, Jia, a healer. It is in your nature never to design a poison without an antidote.”
The gods endow each of us with different gifts, and it is the lot of mortals to make the most of them.
She nodded and composed herself. “Let the empress know that I’m at her service. I submit to the judgment of the present.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE SURRENDER
PAN: THE FIRST MONTH OF THE TWELFTH YEAR OF THE REIGN OF SEASON OF STORMS.
By tradition, the first decree from a new sovereign should announce a reign name, one that would be auspicious and set the tone of the administration. But Empress Shizona declined to do so. Instead, her first official act was the production of a book.
A nameless mysterious young engineer trusted by the empress, and his teacher, Master Rati Yera, supervised the construction of multiple book-mirrors. The machines, connected to the silkmotic mills of the Imperial Academy, ran day and night. Thousands of copies of the new book were produced and distributed by airship to every corner of the Islands.
The book, simply titled Confessions, was divided into two parts. The first part was carved by Jia Matiza, detailing her decade-long plot to bypass the legitimate institutions and laws of the Imperial bureaucracy to carry out a secret war against the Lyucu. The second part was dictated by Goztan Ryoto and translated into Classical Ano, laying out the sequence of bloody policies carried out against the native population by the rulers of Ukyu-taasa.
In the grand avenues of Pan, drivers of hired carriages argued with their passengers; in the suspended teahouses of Müning, patrons debated heatedly over snacks and floral infusions; in the wide expanse of Temple Square in Ginpen, orators stood on makeshift cargo-box platforms to deliver passionate speeches, both pro and con; even in the bustling markets of pragmatic Toaza, shoppers and vendors couldn’t help but mix in a few observations about politics as they haggled over the price of the daily catch….
Everyone seemed to have an opinion on Jia Matiza, once the Regent of Dara, and the peace with the Lyucu.
* * *
While Pékyu Dyana and Empress Shizona were locked in heated negotiations concerning the final terms of the Lyucu surrender, as a preliminary step, a temporary armistice was reached to bring aid to the long-suffering inhabitants of Rui and Dasu. Dara’s Imperial army would assume control of Ukyu-taasa, but with a guarantee that the Lyucu would be unharmed until a permanent treaty had been ratified.
