Because I was writing so fast I don’t even remember some of these scenes, and re-reading them is as much a shock to me as it will be to some of you.
And yes, contains spoilers, sort of. Though most of you know by now about the Stone Moon, and Roika… and yes, Keshul.
I turned from him, pacing. “Het Narel’s records. Is that where you found the inspiration for all your innovations?”
“Some of them,” Roika said. He pulled the chair out from behind my desk and sat in it, resting his feet on the desk’s surface. “The roads… I found actual instructions on how to pave roads after digging long enough. But while there are sufficient records of what the age before our clannish periods might have been like, they were more suggestions and stories, not factual accounts. Some of it was useful. Much of it appalling.”
“Like the notion of empire?” I said, stopping to stare at him.
“I found the notion of empire quite sensible,” he said, unperturbed by my tone. “If not the way the ancients apparently practiced it.”
“Which was how?” I said. “With compassion?”
“Rather the opposite,” he said. “If you will believe the stories, Ke Bakil was run by eperu in the Mystery Age.”
“That’s… strange,” I said, tasting the words in my mouth. No matter my feelings for them as Jokka, eperu did not run Houses… it was considered against nature. Why was that, I wondered? Wouldn’t they be better qualified to administrate a House, given their sturdiness and the likelihood that they would outlive either of the breeding sexes?
“You’re thinking about it now, aren’t you,” Roika said, watching my face. “Questioning your own prejudices. I like that about you, Keshul. You can think outside what you’ve been taught.”
“So why is an eperu emperor appalling?” I asked.
“Because they are free not to be involved,” he said. And left it at that, because he knew I’d work at it. Which I did, resuming my pacing, angry and restless. He folded his arms over his chest, relaxed, and was entertained by me, or so it seemed.
“You think,” I said suddenly, “that if they can’t be involved, that they begin to think of the rest of us as something-other.”
“And what happens to something-other, once one has successfully labeled someone else so?” Roika asked.
“They become something to be controlled and used and disposed of,” I said. “Not unlike what you’ve done with the eperu and anadi.”
“Yes,” he agreed.
I stopped pacing to stare at him. “You admit it?”
“Do you think I’m stupid?” he said. “Yes, I separated the sexes so that they could be turned into abstractions by each other. How else was I to get them to agree to the conditions that will save us? Do you think the emodo and anadi would have permitted the eperu to be worked to the point of dying in the fields? Do you think the eperu would have allowed the anadi to be turned into breeding stock? Do you think the emodo would have stood for either of those things happening?” He flicked his ears outward. “I learned the lessons of the Mystery Age emperors, Seer. And I’m using them to save us.”
“And destroy our sense of compassion and our ability to sympathize with the rest of the species in the process,” I said.
“Compassion and sympathy won’t save us,” Roika said. “They haven’t. In fact, they’ve been destroying us.”
“So tell me, Roika,” I said, voice a growl. “When you’re done ‘saving us’, how will you bring us back from a culture that has taught us to consider each other disposable?”
“I’m not planning to,” he said. At my stare, he said, “If we get to the point where we can worry about niceties like whether our culture is just and temperate, then someone else can handle it.” He smiled thinly. “I’ll appoint a minister of fairness. Maybe it will be you.”
“You’ll be dead by then,” I said.
“Then you’ll be free to change things as you see fit,” he said, linking his hands behind his head. “And hopefully your changes won’t undo everything I’ve worked so hard to create.”
