Cho arrived uninvited and unexpected in Var-segan and found Sarat in the library surrounded by open books, books with bookmarks peeping out of them, books piled on the floor next to his chair.
“Return to study? That is what you want?”
“Sort of,” said Sarat.
Cho examined the nearest hefty tome.
“Principles of Geology?”
“Tectonic plates! The earth moves. The most rationalist geologist will admit to that one. It’s why the Isles sing, you know. One day, Fidub will sink without trace into the Straits. That’s one theory. It does just occur to me the field effect is intermittent.”
“Why?”
“Because suddenly they needed an emperor!”
Cho laughed.
“There are – there may be – many reasons for that.”
“Indeed there may,” said Sarat.
“All this – “ Cho gestured. “ – is the Matter of Kadun?”
“Am I not known to be thorough?”
“Also it stops you thinking?”
“I am not brooding. I am thinking.”
“I may ask your thoughts?”
“No, frankly,” said Sarat.
“Why not?” challenged Cho.
“Partly because there are too many of them that are incoherent even to me. Partly because they are none of your business.”
“A lot has happened to you.”
“You could say that,” said Sarat.
“Maya,” said Cho.
“You could try saying ‘Dill’ and look to the future.”
“This is looking to the future?”
“This is looking for where to start.”
“You have perhaps moved too fast.” Sarat was looking at him with frank hostility. “That was not my meaning. The pace of events left little time for reflection.”
“Now I have time and I’m reflecting,” said Sarat in a voice that said, so what is your problem? He collected himself, got up, stood behind Cho’s chair and put his arms around his neck. “You are my dear grey-haired etc, wishing only my happiness, etc. I understand that.”
Cho laughed.
“That happiness is at present best attained by my absence?”
“You want me to talk about Maya. I don’t want to talk about Maya. That is something of an impasse.”
“Would you say you were happy?” tried Cho.
“Yes. It’s natural I feel certain things, experience certain emotions. That doesn’t mean they’re not complete bollocks.”
“I understand that, of course.”
“But do you?” asked Sarat affectionately.
“You think – I am fixed on the transitory?”
“I did not say Maya was transitory.”
“What did you say?”
“I love Maya, present tense. Maya is dead. I love Dill. Dill and I are alive and here and now. Cho, I love you. May this conversation now end?”
“I should not have come,” admitted Cho.
“Feel free to examine the mosaic! Regale me with tales of Fidub! Visit the new sports centre and tell them about teaching me to swim.” Sarat grinned. “Just don’t move the furniture.” Cho looked puzzled. “I am watched like a hawk for any sign of proprietorialness. Is there such a word? Any sign this is now my home. Do you know about Sheheela?”
Cho, who was just about to stand, froze.
“What about Sheheela?”
“The Anile heir being Mistress of Var-segan.” Cho’s face showed he knew. “I think that’s why this is freaking you.”
“You will do well in politics,” said Cho. “An illustrious career ahead of you.”
Sarat mailed Shav.
They’re driving me mad! Me, me, me, I want to drive me mad. Can I share some stuff with you?
Cho mailed Mel.
I may visit? I am both worried and curious. That may lead me to ask questions you may not wish to answer. I understand that.
“Oh dear,” said Mel.
“Hang onto your hat,” said Cantilip.
Cantilip waddled in.
“I ought to be resting. Shouldn’t miss this for the world.”
“Very soon now, I think,” said Cho.
“Late,” growled Cantilip. “Taking her time.”
“But all is well.”
“Oh yes.”
Mel was smirking. Mel’s daughter, thought Cho. Something stirred in his mind, but he dismissed it. They cannot live apart for 18 years, she and their child safe in Zur!
“Maya,” said Cho. “He will not talk about her.”
“What,” asked Mel, “would you expect him to say, a replay of the final moments?”
“Does he replay them?”
“Sorry.”
Cantilip said: “You think Sarat is behaving like a lunatic?”
Cho laughed.
“It would hardly be the first time.”
“He is no longer preoccupied every waking minute. A hiatus is inevitable.”
“I can think of two circumstances in which he would kill me.”
Mel pouted.
“I don’t count? I am terribly good at keeping confidences. Since, however, I have none to reveal. He isn’t talking to Hass, either.”
“Maya,” hazarded Cho, “was profoundly esoteric?”
“Ah,” said Mel. A small smile appeared. He looked down at his feet and twiddled his toes, then looked up laughing. “My intimate knowledge of Sarat. It – would not be wholly removed from the truth to say – what would it not be wholly removed from the truth to say? I don’t know all of it. My feeling would be – a greater stimulus than the present – hiatus would be required to ask. I’m hedging! To say Maya put him up to it would be quite wrong. To say it followed from his relationship with Maya would – possibly – be quite right. Our little child of the surf and the sun found his esoteric side in his relationship with Maya, perhaps in Maya. Thus they locked like two halves of an amulet. It is perhaps – or perhaps not – an exaggeration to say that even at 16, when of course relationships are usually fluid, who is your boyfriend this week, neither of them looked at another boy or girl. And then…”
“He was terrified of losing her,” said Cho.
“Should one not say,” said Cantilip, “that in the circumstances he is behaving remarkably sanely?”
“Maya,” said Cho, “was not a plotter. We all observed it and wondered what it meant.”
“It meant,” said Mel, “taking into account that to some extent and notwithstanding we are where words fail, it meant Maya was and Sarat did. Maya had as many ideas as the rest of us but – laid-back is a remarkably trivial phrase. When she became Anile empress, she would be Anile empress, without – preparation is a bad word, hiatus perhaps a good one. She got on with being a student in Zur. People talked, as they do. Either that was a feint or Sarat was bluffing or any variation you care to think of. It was just Maya.”
“Hass. Maya. Dill?”
“Profoundly,” admitted Mel.
“His analysis then is exact. He says when they have union all will be well. Only he needs to go slowly and they need to be together.”
“That is her analysis,” said Mel.
“Naked,” repeated Cho. “Flayed. I don’t know how to be without her.”
“One thinks, perhaps,” said Mel, “such things are raw emotion rather than simple truth.”
“Busy, busy, busy,” said Cantilip. “Fortunately, he didn’t have to.”
“There is a question there,” said Mel.
“The relationship?”
“The relationship is absolute. He fell into her, as he fell into Maya. It should – perhaps – be happening in two years’ time, but it isn’t.”
“You think that would make a difference?”
“I don’t know. It forces him to resolve whatever he has to resolve.”
“Then he would prefer not to resolve it? There is the element of betrayal.”
“What Sarat is doing to himself by loving Dill? I don’t think so.”
“And Dill herself?”
Mel sighed.
“What I think - she understands. She couldn’t say how or what she understands.”
“That he is screaming in pain over another woman, even a dead one?. That is perhaps rather a lot for anyone, let alone a 19-year-old.”
Mel frowned.
“But he’s not. Sarat isn’t hurting. At least not like that.”
“What, then?”
“How much of his past does he want to take into his future,” suggested Cantilip. “It operates on all levels.”
Mel grinned.
“Not forgetting all times are now. It’s a question – a question of what Sarat is, what he wants to be. Maya will always be a part of him.”
“Perhaps the problem is literally,” said Cho.
Mel took a deep breath.
“Is that possible?”
“That is,” said Cho, “not my view, but the direction of my thought – this is locked so deep inside him, he wishes to share with no-one. What is?”
“I don’t think so.”
“I shall say it,” said Cantilip. “Then their union would exorcise Maya?”
“What a clear mind you have,” said Mel. “I do repeat, I think this is nonsense.”
“There is also the chair,” said Cho.
“Oh yes,” said Mel. “What happened there, as I understand it, is that Maya worked as an anchor.”
“Did she?”
Mel got up and began to walk towards the window.
“Sssh, I’m thinking…I am reminded, long ago and far away. Before. Sarat did not like Saski enquiring into their relationship! What he would have said had her two loving and obedient sons – it was always like that. Out of bounds. It is possibly perfectly straightforward. Sarat’s problem is working out how to be wholly, passionately, depthlessly and intimately in love with two people at the same time, one live one dead.”
“He said as much,” agreed Cho, then, “He has told me categorically, possibly even gratuitously, she is nothing like Maya.”
“She is nothing like Maya. Except.”
“I may assume the meaning of her existence is not bound up in being Anile empress?”
“No more or less than Maya’s. I could have put that better. Everyone told him,” said Mel after a moment. “If he got on the chair it would be very hard to get off.”
“He is adamant he likes it.”
Mel laughed.
“I am quite sure he likes it! I am also quite sure, as you must be, that it is war to the death. Whether being the constitutional sovereign of Kadun is the best position from which to prosecute that war – it has of course one limitation, the necessity of residing at least most of the time in Kadun.”
“The City?” Pause. “There is of course no conflict?”
“Baria. Dill herself. None.”
“He becomes a scholar!” Cho told about the books. “One does not doubt Sarat has a brain. He insists I look forward while he looks back!”
“He did not – “ I was about to say none of us did, thought Mel, avoiding casting a sidelong glance at Cantilip. “ – bargain for the very real presence of ancient history in our daily lives!”
Cantilip said: “Suppose you go to fix the plumbing and find the plumbing dates from pre-history.”
“You didn’t even know,” sighed Mel, “that they had plumbing then.”
“You two are good for me – your pardon, you three!”
“You know there’s a theory,” said Cantilip, “even before they’re born, they in some sense absorb what they hear.”
“Leave the room instantly!” teased Cho.
“Instantly is not a word in my current vocabulary.”
“I’ve just had a thought,” said Mel. “I shall try to be delicate about it. A cot in the bedroom?”
“I think, darling, we shall not pursue that line of thinking. He goes to the Schools, he kills two birds with one stone.”
“That had occurred to me. He will not dump it on Shav.”
“There is also me,” said Cho.
“Eeoow,” said Mel, then, “You really are worried!” He tried to sound cheerful about it.
Cantilip was giggling.
“It would be just a bit hard to refuse.”
“I don’t think he wants to leave Kadun. He fell into her,” said Mel again. “He could of course have refrained from saying anything but equally she rather clearly fell into him. Bit like an unplanned pregnancy, really. It wasn’t, it wasn’t! Neither of them, I am quite sure, expected it. Like bringing yourself up short stepping on your shoe-lace. Sarat follows his heart. None of us would have him any other way. It’s a rather sticky shoe-lace.”
“Shall we keep this simple?” asked Cantilip. “Behold His Imperial Majesty! Who hath done to Kadun the unthinkable, the net reaction of the world being cool, Sarat. Now the rest of his life stretches before him. He can do anything he wants, except the things he most wants to do. Isn’t that a downer?”
“Two things?”
“The relationship,” said Mel, “between Crown and People exports neat. The relationship between Crown and State does not, cannot. Vanya is not looking over his shoulder to see if I – I and our valiant army – disapprove sufficiently to reseize the reins..”
“Thus the election of Mitch,” said Cantilip.
Cho frowned, then nodded.
Mel looked sceptical.
“That’s an awful lot of people voting with – subconscious prescience.”
“Call it something less florid,” suggested Cantilip.
“Feudalism?”
“The word I was thinking of is trust. There has to be an arch-plotter with democratically elected power.”
“Most people,” murmured Cho, “assume Mitch is the counter-weight to CLIK.”
“Most people,” said Cantilip, “didn’t hear Mitch at 17.”
“Mel,” said Cho, “exactly what do you do?”
“Ramble on. I’m good at that. Throw my weight behind anyone being unfairly treated. It’s my job. Everyone knows it’s my job. The checks and balances should suffice, but human nature being what it is sometimes fail.”
“The difference, therefore?”
“It’s a learning-curve. Kadun has to get into the swing of the checks and balances before they can be said to have failed.”
“Say it,” said Cho.
“There can’t be two governments. It’s like watching children grow up. They have to make their own mistakes.”
“For the moment, therefore, Sarat is keeping right out of politics? One would have thought that was quite a relief!”
“Time to attend to his personal life. It does not of course impede his personal war, which is interesting because he does not appear to be pursuing it.”
“Surely,” said Cho, “his personal war is for the moment the one inside him.”
“This is going to sound ridiculous,” said Cantilip, then stopped.
“Well? Don’t keep us on tenterhooks.”
“Did he believe in it? He got the rest of the world believing in the restoration of the Anile throne, but did he – really believe he would – spend the rest of his life as Anile emperor?”
“That is of course bound up with believing he has a rest of his life.”
“Suppose we – posit – he would give it up for Dill if that changed anything, but it doesn’t.”
“I don’t really think that’s the point,” said Cantilip. “The whole thing comes from what he said at the funeral. They’ll tear him apart.”
“I know this sounds absolutely feeble and pointless,” said Mel. “He didn’t say he could only love Maya.”
“I may stay to dinner? I do not think it unreasonable I enjoy general conversation with Sarat’s partner!”
“You’ve barely spoken to her, have you.”
“It can’t help,” said Cantilip.
“Lengthy conversation,” recalled Cho, “some ten years ago! I am not boring. If I were boring, she’d have gone to bed ages ago. I dined with Mitch and Karula in Zur. The fight began to get the kids off to bed, in order, as Karula frankly put it, that the grown-ups were not forced to hold their conversations at three in the morning.”
Mel and Cantilip looked at each other.
“Has she changed!”
“’You are a moron.’ It is delicious but it is not eso.”
“Oh but she is. An eso Mitch.”
“That sounds fairly devastating.”
“Isn’t that the point?”
Shav told Sarat what Cho thought.
Aaaaargh! typed Sarat.
Zani Marula Talal squeezed her eyes tight shut, wrinkled her nose and smiled up at her doting papa. Mel insisted it could be a girl’s name. This I have to see! thought Sarat. After a while he slipped away with Dill.
“Come back to Var-segan with me?”
“I need asking?”
“I’m getting my head straight. I want to take you through all of it and see what you think we should do next.”
“Cool,” said Dill. She kissed his cheek then warmed to her task. “I want to show you something,” she said eventually. She got up and opened her wardrobe. “I had it made!” she said in mock-shame. “I saw the material and I just had to have it.”
“What do you think,” asked Sarat, “about changing and going back to the party?”
Her little black dress transfixed the throng. It shimmered. It sparkled. It was not exactly black, depending on when the light hit it. The colour it was when not black is usually known as imperial silver.
What I am thinking, thought Mel, can never ever be shared with Sarat. But of course he must know.
“What I thought,” confessed Mel, “made even me feel uncomfortable.”
Zani continued gurgling quietly at Cantilip’s breast.
“Embodiment,” agreed Cantilip. “It made you feel Maya - ?”
“Prototype,” suggested Mel. “This is the completed design.”
“And of course,” said Cantilip.
“And of course anyone who thinks either of them don’t want to do it is talking out of the back of his head.”
“Considering all the possibilities,” said Cantilip. “I believe he’s quite well known for it.”
Sarat and Dill returned to Var-segan,. Changri took his time looking them up and down. When eventually they were out of earshot, he said, “Look lively, lads. My lord my lady Var-sega’ back ‘ome! ‘Ad some shocks,” he added later, “don’t think I’ll ever get over this one!”
To the considerable consternation of the world press corps Sarat spent ten days pottering around Var-segan with his arm round Dill. Well, he spent one day pottering around Var-segan with his arm round Dill before Qine in the bar of the Senate said of the impending vote on working-hours, “Cake-walk it! And if we lose by one vote, I shall say imperial business called me away and we’ll have to have a new vote. Man’s place is with his constituents at a time like this.” “Nosy bugger, aren’t you!” said his pal. Fal was caught by the press-fiends on the steps of the Senate. Like a gazelle, thought Kyse dreamily. A carnivorous gazelle? That doesn’t quite work. “Of course it’s what Maya would have wanted,” said Fal. “Anyone who thinks Maya would have wanted Sarat to spend the rest of his life on his own needs his head examined.” There Has Been No Announcement. “Reckon it’s our business,” said Varulin, aware he was on egg-shells, but not much caring. “Kadun’s business, Sarat’s business. Is there someone has a problem with my lady Var-segan on the Anile throne? Of course there’ll always be them that stirs it, tries to make life hard for our Sarat.”
Mel only winced a little bit.
“Now it is – organic,” suggested Cantilip.
Or of course life hard for our Mitch. The country is being run by Var-segan! Surely this provokes a constitutional crisis!
“That’s right,” drawled Mitch. “I engineered the whole thing. Doubtless I murdered Maya also. I did not, however, coerce the whole of Kadun to vote for me. I am not aware of anything in the Constitution that conflicts with the President’s daughter being Anile empress. My daughter is a free, autonomous individual, which I do recall is one of the binding principles that got us all here. I do not see how her choice of partner is logically connected with the votes of millions of people. You are I think aware a common set of principles binds us all. Naturally there would be a dilemma had I the misfortune to be widowed, Shavli sat on the Anile throne and we two...”
Karula shut her front door behind her with a resounding bang. She flopped.
“You know I have never wholly seen why in the years of the interregnum – “ She grinned. “ – one of the Houses did not become top banana. I do now!”
Hey, Dill! Imperial Majesty! Dill? Anile empress, Dill?
“You guys are really something,” said Dill. “What century are you in? A man and a woman can’t be working together? Of course we’re close, we’re like that.”
Would that be upright or horizontal, Dill?
“You know which end is up?” asked Dill.
Honey, the question is if you do!
“What,” demanded Dill, “affects more people, the deliberations of the Senate or one bed or two?”
You admit! Come on, Dill, that’s a confession!
“Nonsense,” said Dill. “It’s your obsession. Why don’t you prurient little beasts admit that?”
In fairness, though fairness to press-fiends was not latterly a feature of the Anile empire, some press-fiends were not wholly attuned to the direction the dialogue was taking and asked bright interested questions about stewardship in the modern age.
Sarat tightened his arm around her.
“Of course I’m protective. Faced with you lot! Who knows what direction our relationship may take in the future?”
Zulagan’s face also tightened.
There must be a vote in the Senate!
“Time I put my oar in,” said Zulagan. “My government is running this country, in accordance with the votes of millions of people.” He paused. “It can be an habit of people to live in the past, in this case of course the very recent past. I, however, live in the present. It would seem news to some people that Kadun is no longer an absolute monarchy! I shall trouble you neither with the position of the emperor within the Constitution nor with the right of people, all people, to live their lives as they see fit, for all that has been aired many, many times, but if you ask me if my government has the right to dictate, whether to Sarat, to myself, to any citizen of Kadun, who he or she may have as a partner, I say that is nonsense. That is not to say, of course, there are not better and worse choices. It is not to say, for instance, that were I to pair with a lady whose politics were hostile to all we have achieved here, all we intend to achieve, folks would not rightly question my full commitment to my job. That does not apply in the present circumstance! I for one can think of no better choice.
“There is something else I would say in this context, speaking as what you might call a consumer of a free press, and that is that, apart from the tragedy when as we all know feelings ran high and I for one would have landed one in the face of vultures, it would seem to me that Sarat and his friends were fair game, right up to the moment the last vote was counted. I personally trusted them absolutely to transfer power, and there were many others of like mind, but equally there were many comrades and others who had their doubts and I do not think the less of them for that. Now, we may not be young and pretty, we may not have the glamour of 1500 years of history, but it seems to me that the ladies and gentlemen of the press are to try to harass anyone, it should be me and my government. That is what a free press is for, not asking young ladies their sleeping-arrangements.”
“You heard the man,” said Sarat grinning evilly. “I am not news.”
Aw, Sarat, come on, Sarat, you gotta say something, Sarat, hearts and flowers, Sarat, when’s the wedding, Sarat?
“Of course we’re bonded!” went on Sarat. “Bonded by this matter of Kadun.”
To whom it may concern, thought Baz.
Love her like a sister, right, Sarat?
“I have sisters,” said Sarat. “I really don’t think it’s the same!”
“I had a sister,” said Dill. “If you had any brains, you might actually be able to work out.”
Still miss Maya, do you, Sarat.
“Not as much as when she died in my arms to the delight of you people, no. Time does help heal that particular wound.”
Sarat! Aw, Sarat! Come on, Sarat, you can’t say – you can’t believe, Sarat.
“Vultures,” said Sarat, “just at one remove.”
That is not fair!
“You really want me to say something?” asked Sarat. “You’re sure about that?”
People who knew him started to back-track,, but there were many who didn’t.
“Butt out,” said Sarat.
A moment’s silence.
“It’s like this,” said Sarat, “as I see it. I, none of us, would deny for a moment we owed you guys for your help, for spreading the word. Equally none of us would deny that debt has long ago been paid. You have had our lives. You have had our deaths. You have sold papers by the million, you have made reputations, you have won awards out of our pain, our anguish. That debt is paid a thousand times over. So butt out. If you really want family news, Zik is pregnant. The thing is, there’s malice, of course, pure malevolence, but there isn’t really any point in bumping me off, too many of us. The general consensus among the security services of this great continent is – is and was – attempting to wear me down by hurting those I love most.”
“You are on our side, aren’t you,” said Dill. “I mean, where is the news? It’s as Zulagan said, Sarat and Searc’s daughter, that’d be news.”
“Uggh,” said Sarat.
Cho caught up with the news. He looked upset.
“He set up maximum coverage for that?”
“If I were he,” said Vax, “I’d wind them up so tight, party, party, party, wine and dine every woman in Kadun. It’s just not Sarat.”
“A serious little boy,” said Cho. “I suppose he always was a serious little boy.”
“Us, prurient?” asked Seani. “Never!”
“As ever they give as good as they get.”
“It can’t go on. The war between Sarat and the press.”
“It is, I suppose, possible he’s – courting her. Separate beds.”
“I think everyone is clear he wouldn’t sleep with her if it wasn’t permanent.”
“What,” demanded Seani, “do you suppose ‘permanent’ means to Sarat? Perhaps to either of them.”
“Enjoy your life while you have a life. Mitch, Zulagan, they’ve as good as.”
Seani laughed.
“Mitch and Zulagan have very thoroughly explored such issues as might arise if there were occasion to cause them to arise.”
“As ever we’re being wound up?”
“Sarat,” said Seani, almost to himself, “don’t you understand you goad? Red rag to a bull! We are always searching for the story behind the story.”
“That is part-true,” decided Num. “Vultures.”
“It is very human,” said Seani, “when people are totally in the wrong to pretend nothing has happened and continue the same behaviours.”
“I don’t think we see it like that. We see it as good news.”
“What can possibly be wrong with trying to obtain good news! I think the deliberations of the Kadun Senate.” Pause. “I don’t think we home in on Fal.”
Dill returned to Zur. Sarat commuted at a leisurely pace between Var-segan and Azt, taking in large swathes of Kadun in between.
Extract from The Anile Heir ©2006.
I, Ysabel Jehan Howard, hereby assert and give notice of my right under s.77 of the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this book.
