The Veiled Throne, page 52
But the evidence in Cutanrovo’s hands was ironclad and left little room for argument.
“Who wishes to speak for the accused?” asked Tanvanaki. No one in the Great Hall moved and every pair of eyes was on Goztan.
But the thane remained as still as before, her eyes slightly downcast, as though what was happening in the Great Hall didn’t concern her at all.
This was part of the plan. Tanvanaki took a breath and prepared to speak. She would redirect interest to the native scholar—
“I do.”
Tanvanaki hadn’t spoken.
Every pair of eyes now swung to the source of the voice—
—behind the dangling veil next to the pékyu.
Thanes and officials looked at one another in amazement.
It was extremely rare for the emperor to speak at court. Most of the time, he was mute as a statue. Since the native scholars justified their own service to the Lyucu regime by arguing that they were in fact serving the true heir to the Dandelion Throne, all decrees and proclamations from Kriphi bore his seal. But everyone understood this was merely a cover as flimsy as Timu’s veil. Timu never spoke because Tanvanaki spoke for him.
Only one thought ran through everyone’s mind at that moment: The emperor is intervening directly! Does this mean he has the support of the pékyu herself?
In fact, no one was more surprised than Tanvanaki. Timu had pleaded with her in private on behalf of Savo Ryoto and Nazu Tei. She had, after much argument, persuaded him to see that it was impossible to save them both. The fall of Goztan would have meant the complete rout of the accommodationists. Therefore, everything had to be blamed on Nazu Tei. Sacrificing a scholar-pawn to save the commander was a universal principle that applied in politics as well as in zamaki.
Goztan had also come to the same conclusion, and she and Tanvanaki had agreed that no one would speak up to defend the accused. Cutanrovo’s goal was clearly to manufacture as much controversy as possible over this matter in order to weaken the accommodationists. The best way to thwart that plan was to meet her accusations with silence, and allow Tanvanaki to defuse the tension by scapegoating Nazu Tei as a rogue scholar. She thought Timu had agreed to this plan—until now.
She kept her feelings off her face, however, as she intoned dispassionately, “Then present your case.”
His face still concealed behind the veil, Timu said, “While what the thane-taasa did was against the rules, I think that shouldn’t be the focus of the inquiry today.”
“Oh? What could be more important than the crime of treason by a future thane willingly prostrating himself before a native rebel-sympathizer?” asked Cutanrovo, her eyebrows lifted in mock surprise. As always, she refused to use the native honorific of Rénga when addressing Timu.
“Savo’s error—if error it was—pales in comparison to the atrocity perpetrated by your troops at Kigo Yezu.”
Tanvanaki looked at Timu and sighed inwardly. So this is why you decided to jump in. You can’t bear to see your people die. But don’t you see that this is exactly what Cutanrovo wants? You’ve now given her a chance to air hard-liner views in open court, and I have no idea if the passions of the thanes could be cooled once she has riled them.
She thought of stopping him before he could do more damage, but she saw how the strands in his veil shook, revealing the depth of his feelings. Maybe it will do him some good to see just how much support the hard-liners have, so that he can appreciate my dilemma. She held back.
“I did no more than give traitors and rebels exactly what they deserved.” While she tried to look confident, Cutanrovo’s eyes darted to the pékyu’s face warily.
She had to assume that the emperor’s unexpected intercession had the full backing of the pékyu, even though she didn’t understand Tanvanaki’s intentions. The best course, Cutanrovo decided, was to remain on the attack. “Mass punishment of villages in which rebels are found has always been our policy, dating back to the time of the liberation of Ukyu-taasa under the pékyu-votan.”
“Policies based on history must change when times change.” Timu swept aside the dangling strands before his face and looked Cutanrovo in the eyes. His cheeks flushed and his eyes burned like two pools of fire. “During the early days of the occupation, when native rebels ambushed isolated Lyucu warriors, it was perhaps justifiable to engage in mass punishment lest Ukyu-taasa degenerate into a land of terror and lawlessness. But unprovoked attacks against the Lyucu have not occurred in years—”
“That is not true.” Cutanrovo shook her head and took several steps toward the thrones, waving her arms for emphasis. “My cousin, a brave and trusting naro, was attacked and killed earlier this summer by cowardly rebels in a most treacherous manner—”
“I said unprovoked!” shouted Timu. Such defiance from the timid Timu was so unexpected that all the assembled officials and warlords, native and Lyucu alike, gaped in wonder. Even Cutanrovo took a step back.
Timu took a breath and continued in a more conciliatory manner. “In any event, there was no killing of Lyucu warriors at Kigo Yezu. Punishment must be proportional to the crime.”
Cutanrovo, who had recovered from the earlier shock, argued back. “There was a vast conspiracy to rebel led by the crafty native scholar Nazu Tei. Treason is a capital crime by your own decree.”
“What treason? Hiding a few old figurines to remember a couple who had treated her kindly?” Timu swept his hand to point to Tanvanaki. “Under the direction of our wise pékyu, the natives now live in harmony with the Lyucu. The people go on with their lives as before, and taxes and corvées due the pékyu are rendered without protest. Scholars continue their studies, with the revived Imperial examinations offering everyone a path to serve the pékyu. To massacre ordinary villagers for a harmless scholar stuck in the past does not serve the pékyu’s goals.”
All the native officials and—to Tanvanaki’s surprise—more than a few Lyucu thanes nodded at this speech. Tanvanaki decided to let her consort continue down this unanticipated path. Perhaps the hard-liners had less support than she had imagined.
“You’re minimizing the crime committed by Savo Ryoto and Nazu Tei,” objected Cutanrovo.
She wanted to slap the faces of the thanes nodding along to the emperor’s words. Have you forgotten the reality of our condition? We are surrounded by barbarians who hate us and wish us dead! The core islands may invade us at any moment—who can trust Dara-raaki’s promises of peace?—and yet here you are, pleased with how far we’ve fallen from the ways of our ancestors.
She had to remind them of the gravity of the offense. “The thane-taasa was in an illicit master-pupil relationship with the rebel scholar, one facilitated by his own mother!”
“But why is it a crime for the thane-taasa to seek out a master to impart knowledge to him?” asked Timu.
Stunned expressions all around the Great Hall.
Is the pékyu thinking of rescinding the Edict Against Unauthorized Teachers? That would be a momentous shift in policy.
“You… you would bypass the court-appointed tutors? You would expose Lyucu children to the lies of crafty rebels without protection?” Spittle sprayed from Cutanrovo’s lips as she shouted at Timu. “An unauthorized master-pupil relationship is a most dangerous assault upon an impressionable young Lyucu mind, even worse than a physical attack against a Lyucu warrior. The pékyu, who in her youth had to fight off a sly-tongued Dara-raaki teacher, knows this well.” Cutanrovo looked to Tanvanaki, hoping to see a hint of why the pékyu was allowing her consort to spout such nonsense.
Tanvanaki did not react.
She had been caught completely off guard. Timu had gone too far, and she knew she should stop him. But she couldn’t understand where he had suddenly acquired this boldness, as though he had smoked some herbs that gave him a burst of courage. As though stuck in a bad dream, she watched helplessly as he plunged recklessly ahead.
“How can practicing calligraphy and learning about the culture of Dara and the wisdom of the Ano sages be an assault?” demanded Timu. “Many thanes and naros and even culeks enjoy native arts—just go into the streets of Kriphi to see for yourself. Lessons on calligraphy, painting, and abbreviated versions of the Classics are so popular that so-called native informers can command salaries ten times what they used to earn under the… old regime. Some of you, in this very hall, have spent vast fortunes to acquire native antiques to decorate your homes. Indeed, so many Lyucu now can at least read and write some logograms that Kriphi today likely has a bigger literate population than before the conquest—”
Timu’s voice cracked and he had to pause for a moment. Talk of time before the conquest brought to mind his father, who had never understood his willingness to surrender to the Lyucu in order to protect the lives of the people of Rui and Dasu. Father, he wanted to shout, do you see? I’ve done good here.
But it wasn’t enough, he knew, not anywhere near enough. Teeth on the board. It was time for him to be the good king the people deserved, to speak the truth.
He took a deep breath and went on. “If so much of native culture has already become part of the lives of the Lyucu, why be afraid of the master-pupil relationship?”
The instruction of children, Lyucu and native, was a sensitive topic in Ukyu-taasa.
When Tanvanaki first pursued the policy of relying on native administrators to secure the fruits of the Lyucu conquest, many of the thanes expressed doubt. Pékyu Tenryo’s original vision had been to kill off a large portion of the native population so that their farmlands could be converted to pasture use. Tanvanaki reversed her father’s policy by leaving much of the native way of life intact, with the Lyucu as only a thin veneer sitting on top. The goal, as she had explained, was to secure the loyalty of the natives against a counterattack from unconquered Dara.
The elevation of the status of scholars—from which most of the native administrators were drawn—suited both Timu’s devotion to learning and Tanvanaki’s political goals. Tanvanaki shrewdly realized that it was most effective to share some of the spoils squeezed from the peasantry with the scholar class, thereby coopting their loyalty to serve the Lyucu as well as dividing them from the trust and support of the peasantry.
But Tanvanaki was also keenly aware of the reverence in which teachers were held in Dara. To prevent the re-remembering of unpleasant facts about the Lyucu conquest and to appease thanes concerned about native influence on the next generation, traditional master-pupil relationships, for both native and Lyucu children, were strictly forbidden. Only court-appointed instructors could take on students, and they had to adhere to a curriculum drafted by Wira Pin, in which the history of Dara, Lyucu, and Ukyu-taasa had been carefully re-remembered.
Timu was going to challenge this long-standing compromise.
“You know very well that it’s not the teaching of calligraphy and painting that’s at issue here,” said Cutanrovo, staring at the emperor.
“Then maybe it’s time to rethink what is at issue here,” said Timu. “The truth. We’ve become terrified of the truth. Everyone here, you, me, the pékyu, the gathered Lords of Ukyu-taasa—all of us are guilty of it.”
He paused. The Great Hall was so quiet that it was possible to hear a pin drop.
Despite a rising sense of impending doom, Tanvanaki didn’t interrupt. She wanted the hard-liners to see that learning from Dara was the only way to defeat Dara. Maybe Timu’s sudden boldness would create an opening for that discussion.
“What is this truth you speak of?” asked Cutanrovo, her voice a mixture of fear and contempt.
“You’re terrified that your own children, once they’ve come to love this land and know its people, will be ashamed of the truth of the atrocities committed to obtain it and still being committed to hold it—”
“How dare you?! How dare—”
Timu shouted over her. “But that is why you’re afraid to allow your children to learn history from native masters, isn’t it? And you”—he pointed to the native ministers in the hall—“you are afraid of how your own children will view you when they find out that you’ve been teaching them lies, that you’ve bought your life of leisure and wealth at the cost of the lives of those who died and are still dying at Naza Pass, in Kigo Yezu, in hundreds of other hamlets and villages. Our reign is named Audacious Freedom, but both parts are lies! You have all been living as Cowardly Slaves!”
The ministers could not meet his eyes.
“And I’ve been afraid of the truth myself. Though I’ve tried to save the lives of the people, to tolerate horrors in the name of the greater good, I’ve been kept safe from the consequences of this regime that I’ve made legitimate. I’ve allowed the good names of my father and mother to be sullied in the service of a fantasy. Oh, how wrong I’ve been, how foolish! The people massacred at Kigo Yezu died believing I would protect them, and I can’t even give them a decent burial. Their ghosts wander over the ashes of their homes, unable to cross the River-on-Which-Nothing-Floats.”
His shoulders heaved in a body-racking sob.
“No more. If the Edict Against Unauthorized Teachers isn’t rescinded, then sentence me as a prime violator. I have been teaching my children the same way—”
Finally, Tanvanaki shook herself out of her stunned stupor. Timu had botched everything. This was not the way to advance their agenda. She had to stop him now.
“Timu, you’ve been overexerting yourself,” she said. “You know not of what you speak.” She beckoned at several of the naros standing guard below the throne. “Take the emperor away and put him to bed—”
But Timu, who had always obeyed her when she demanded it, now looked at her with a brazen defiance. “But the truth cannot be wiped away. Rather than suppressing the teaching of the truth, we should embrace it. I know what you’re afraid of, my breath. You’re afraid of the truth that it’s impossible for the Lyucu to win, that you can never fulfill your father’s dream. How can you win when there are so many more natives than Lyucu? When you refuse to treat this land as your home to be cared for rather than a conquest to be exploited? When the core islands grow stronger daily under my mother—”
“Silence!” cried Tanvanaki. The naros were climbing up the dais.
“—Your only path forward is to embrace Dara, to teach our children the truth, to help both peoples find a way to live together as equals. There is no other way out. You’re isolated and without reinforcements—”
The naros finally managed to climb onto the dais. They tried to subdue the emperor, but he struggled mightily against them with a strength impossible for his slender frame, his limbs flailing, his face flushed, his veiled crown askew. In the end, as they finally managed to wrestle him to the ground, the side of his face slammed against the stone dais, and his speech abruptly ceased. As the naros tied his limbs, he spat out a mouthful of blood and a few teeth on the ground. The naros gagged him.
The Great Hall was filled with astonished and confused murmurs.
Tanvanaki gestured for the naros to take the immobilized Timu away and tried to think of what to do next. At least Timu’s absurd performance had completely distracted the court from the cases of Savo Ryoto and Nazu Tei. Maybe she could declare an end to court today and push the cases to the next session—
Cutanrovo’s laughter reverberated through the Great Hall, stunning everyone into silence.
The sense of impending doom grew even heavier in Tanvanaki’s heart.
Cutanrovo was pleased, very pleased. The emperor’s outburst had given her the perfect opening, and, based on the pékyu’s reaction, she was not behind her consort’s strange behavior, after all.
“Votan-ru-taasa, votan-sa-taasa”—she shifted to Lyucu as she called out to the assembled warlords and ministers—“I think we should indeed speak of the truth, as the emperor urges. And let’s do it in a language devoid of lies.”
Every pair of eyes in the hall locked on her.
“Speak no more”—Tanvanaki had to stop and shift into Lyucu, so strong was the habit of speaking Dara in the Great Hall—“Cutanrovo, we’ve all said too much already today.”
She regretted having sent the naros away with Timu. They should have subdued Cutanrovo instead.
“The emperor speaks of our fear of the natives, of the impossibility of our victory over all Dara, of our lack of reinforcements,” said Cutanrovo, her voice deliberately low. The Lyucu language, seldom heard in the Great Hall, only made her words even more weighty. “But you’ve been lied to.”
Tanvanaki closed her eyes. This was a nightmare coming true. She had been struggling to find a way to disclose the truth of Luan Zya’s code in a controlled manner, not have it broadcast to all the thanes in a way calculated to make her appear a liar.
“Let me tell you the truth that has been kept from you: A reinforcement fleet is coming through the Wall of Storms from Ukyu—”
“Stop!” Tanvanaki shouted, knowing it was futile.
“—in less than three years!”
The Great Hall exploded into cacophony.
“Let her speak, votan!”
“Is this true?”
“Why haven’t we been told?”
“How many city-ships are coming?”
“Is Pékyu-taasa Cudyu leading the reinforcements?”
Cutanrovo gestured for the shouting thanes to quiet. She stared at the pékyu, a smirk on her face.
Tanvanaki knew that she had lost control of the court. Wearily, she nodded. “Yes, what Thane Cutanrovo said is true. There will be an opening in the Wall of Storms. I was waiting for”—her voice weakened—“an auspicious occasion to announce it.”
Cutanrovo strode around the Great Hall, waving her arms as she continued to speak in Lyucu.
“The moment is here! It’s now! The truth, votan-ru-taasa and votan-sa-taasa, is that it is the natives who should be afraid, not us! For too long we have lived in fear, seeking to accommodate the barbarians and their ways. We have become soft. But Pékyu-taasa Cudyu is bringing us reinforcements to finish what the pékyu-votan started. All of us must rethink our position in light of this fact.
