Chapter 569 - 568: What Comes Back Struck

Chapter 569: Chapter 568: What Comes Back Struck

Location:Seven Peaks — The Guest Rooms, East Side; The Hall

Date/Time:TC1857.07.09

The strapping under his coat was wrong on the sixth morning, and Kael Xuán spent some time looking at himself in a glass that Seven Peaks had put in the room for a guest of his rank, and had clearly borrowed from somebody.

It was a small thing. The strapping had been done by an Imperial surgeon on the wall three days ago, competently, in poor light, and it had shifted in the night, and the shoulder of his coat now sat about a finger’s width higher on the left than the right.

He could have had it redone. There were six people in the east wing who would have been pleased to be asked.

He thought about a wall for a moment, and about a Millford man calling head twice in four minutes, and then he put the coat on as it was and went down to the Hall crooked.

***

The rider came in at the first hour, and Kael Xuán knew what it was from the yard, because Imperial dispatch riders carry a case on the left hip when they are carrying an answer and on the right when they are carrying a question, and his father had never once in his life sent a question.

He took it in the corridor and read it standing, which was a mistake and which he would have advised anybody else against.

Two pages. The border clause, ratified, with the six-month term and the publication requirement and the without-standing sentence intact and unamended, and a marginal note in the Imperial hand that said the term is correct and nothing else, which from his father was extravagant.

And the duty clause, on the second page, in draft, as he had sent it up.

With the last line struck through.

There is no penalty for not going. There is a penalty for not saying so.

A single ruled line, drawn with a straight edge, so there was no question of it being a slip of the pen. And underneath, in the same hand: The Empire does not agree to be embarrassed by a schedule. Remove this and the rest may go forward.

Kael Xuán stood in the corridor at Seven Peaks for rather a long time.

He had told three governments, out loud, in a room, that this would happen. He had been right. He had spent most of his life being right about his father in private and had discovered three days ago, on a wall, with an animal’s head coming around at a man he did not know, that being right was not a currency he wanted any more of.

***

He asked Thorne for a quarter of an hour before the sitting, and Thorne gave him half.

"I am going to ask you a procedural question," Kael Xuán said, "and I want you to answer it as a clerk and not as her commander, and I will know the difference."

"Ask it."

"When a sheet goes out from Seven Peaks, and something in it has been corrected — not added to. Corrected. Taken back." He had the two pages in his hand and had not put them down since the corridor. "What happens to the old wording?"

Thorne did not have to think about it, which was the answer in itself.

"It stays on the sheet," Thorne answered. "Struck, with a line through it, and the date it was struck, and who struck it. Same size as the rest of it."

"Why."

"Because a settlement that only ever publishes what it currently believes has published nothing. Anybody can be right if they’re allowed to quietly stop having been wrong." Thorne folded his hands. "That’s her rule. It’s been in force since the second month, and it’s cost her twice in public that I know of."

"Has anybody ever asked her to take a struck line off?"

"Twice. She said no both times, and both people are still here."

Kael Xuán looked at the second page for a moment.

"Thank you," he said. "That is exactly what I needed, and I would like it recorded that I asked."

***

The Hall sat at the second hour, and there were four sides, and one of them was a sheet of paper under two stones.

He let them do the clause work first. He sat through an hour of it with the two pages face down in front of him and his coat sitting crooked, and he answered three points correctly and one of them well, and nobody in that room knew, which he found afterward to have been the longest hour of his professional life.

Then Raven said, "Lord Kael. You’ve had a rider."

"I have."

"Do you want the room or do you want an hour?"

"I want the room," he said, "and I want it now, before I have had time to improve it."

He put the first page up.

"The border clause is ratified. Six months, publication in advance and monthly, without standing on failure to publish. Unamended." He heard the Confederacy end of the table make a noise and did not stop for it. "My father’s marginal note reads the term is correct. I am told by people who have worked for him longer than I have been alive that this constitutes enthusiasm."

Then he put the second page up, and turned it round so the strike faced the room, and pushed it into the middle of the table where everybody could see the ruled line without having to lean.

"The duty clause has come back struck," he said. "One line. The last one."

He read it out, the struck line, in full, because a thing read out is harder to forget than a thing described.

"And the note underneath, in his hand: The Empire does not agree to be embarrassed by a schedule. Remove this and the rest may go forward."

Nobody said anything.

Speaker Kael-Ren, who had been leaning back, came forward and looked at the sheet without touching it.

"Well." Speaker Kael-Ren did not look up from it. "You told us."

"I did. I would rather not have been right, and I want that said before anybody congratulates me on it, because somebody in this room is about to, and I would find it unbearable."

***

The first of the Federation delegates said the reasonable thing, which was that the rest of the clause was still substantial, and that an obligation to go was worth more than an obligation to report on not going, and that three of the four lines surviving was a better outcome than anybody had expected on the first morning.

He was not wrong, and Kael Xuán let him finish.

"He is right about the arithmetic," he said. "He is wrong about which line the clause is. I will explain why, and then I will tell the room what I am going to do, and the two are separate, and I would like them kept separate.

"A duty with no penalty is a wish. Everybody at this table knows that and everybody at this table was going to sign it anyway, because the one thing that made it not a wish was that a government which stayed home had to write down that it stayed home and hand that page to three others." He put one finger on the struck line and left it there. "Take that away and you have four governments agreeing to be good. My father is entirely correct that it would embarrass us. It would embarrass us on a schedule, in writing, to our rivals, at nine-day intervals, for as long as the compact lasted. That is the function."

"Then it can’t be signed," the Federation delegate answered.

"It can be signed. That’s the difficulty."

***

He stood up, which hurt, and did it anyway because he had worked out in the corridor that he was going to have to be on his feet for the next part.

"Here is what I will do, and I have not cleared it, and I will be explaining it in the Imperial City in about three weeks, and I would like the minute to show that I said that in advance rather than being caught at it.

"I will sign the Compact for the Empire as amended, with the line struck, because my father has ratified everything else and because three quarters of a thing that exists is worth more than a whole thing that does not.

"And the copy I sign will carry the struck line."

Thorne’s pen stopped.

"Not in an annex. Not in a covering letter. On the page, in the body, where it was, with a rule through it, and the date it was struck, and the words struck by the Emperor of the Eastern Empire beside it in the same size as everything else." He kept his hand where it was. "That is not my invention. It is the publication practice of this settlement, and it has been in force here since the second month, and I asked a clerk this morning exactly how it is done, and he told me, and I have written down that I asked."

"Your father will see that," Speaker Kael-Ren observed.

"My father will see that inside a month, and I will be in a room with him about it, and I do not expect to enjoy any part of it." Kael Xuán found that his voice was doing something and let it. "I have spent three years drafting a document about telling people inconvenient things. I have a choice this morning between a clean page and a document that means what it says, and I have been on a wall, and I find that I have stopped being able to want the clean page."

***

They signed at the fourth hour.

The order was argued about for a quarter of an hour and then settled by Speaker Kael-Ren saying that the Confederacy would go first because they had the least to lose and it would look absurd for anybody else to.

He signed, and then the first of the Federation signed, and then Kael Xuán signed for the Empire and watched Thorne rule the line through the struck sentence and write the date and the four words beside it, in the same size, at the speed of a man who had done it a great many times.

Nobody signed in front of the fourth chair, and nobody sat in it, and the sheet under the two stones was not moved to make room for anything.

Kael Xuán had watched it for six days and had got used to it on the third, exactly as she had predicted anybody would, and had then made himself un-get-used-to-it by the simple method of reading the last line of the Northern answer every time he sat down, which he had done at every sitting and which had worked about two thirds of the time.

The chair is not empty. There is nobody in it.

He had drafted, over four nights, three separate ways of getting a Northern mark onto the page, and had burned all three, and on the fifth night had finally understood that the sentence was not a complaint. It was an instruction about how to hold the thing in your head.

***

Then there was Seven Peaks.

Raven did not stand up immediately, and it took Kael Xuán a moment to understand that this was not ceremony.

"I’ve a difficulty," Raven told them. "It’s not a delay. I’d have raised it on the first morning if I’d had an answer, and I haven’t got one, so I’m raising it now."

"Raise it," Speaker Kael-Ren allowed.

"Seven Peaks is not a government. I’ve no legislature, no succession, and no boundary anybody could draw. What I have is a settlement that does what I say, which is a description of a person and not of a state." She said it to the table rather than to any of them. "Three of you are signing on behalf of something that outlives you. I’d be signing on behalf of a habit. And when somebody at this table wants to know whether Seven Peaks is bound, the honest answer is that it depends entirely on whether I’m still alive, and I don’t think a document should have that in it and not say so."

"What are you proposing?" the Federation asked, through the first of them.

"That I sign it with my name and not with the settlement’s, and that the signature line under mine says what it actually is, which is for herself, and for those at Seven Peaks who choose to be bound by her hand, so long as they choose it. And that the clause is reviewed the first time the Compact is renewed and every time after that."

Kael Xuán looked up from the copy in front of him.

"That is worse for you in every particular."

"Yes."

"You are giving three governments written permission to doubt your continuity."

"I’m giving them the true one before they have to go and find it out, which is cheaper for everybody and is exactly what I have spent six months asking all of you to do." She picked up the pen. "And if somebody in this room uses it against me later, then they’ll be using something accurate, and I’d rather be hurt with an accurate thing than protected by a vague one."

She signed it that way.

Thorne made four fair copies that afternoon, and each one carried the strike, and each one carried Raven’s signature line as she had dictated it, and the Confederacy copy went into a saddle bag with somebody’s shirt wrapped round it because the Confederacy had not brought a case for a document and had not thought to.

Kael Xuán watched that happen and decided not to offer one.

***

Afterward, in the yard, with the delegations packing and the Confederacy carts already at the lower gate, Kael Xuán found himself standing about six paces from her looking at the same nothing.

There was a thing he had intended to say for three years and had drafted a dozen times and had never sent, and he discovered, standing there, that he still could not say it and that this was probably correct.

So he said the other thing.

"The struck line. When my father asks who taught me to publish a correction rather than bury it, I am going to tell him the truth."

"That’ll cost you."

"It will cost me a very great deal, and it will cost me less than lying to him would, and I have only recently worked out that those are different amounts." He watched a Confederacy cart get itself stuck and get itself unstuck. "I am not asking you for anything. I am telling you what I will say in a room you will not be in, because you told me on the first morning that you had noticed I was carrying something, and I would rather you knew the shape of what I do with it."

Raven did not look at him.

"All right."

That was all of it, and he had expected nothing and had got a syllable, and he went and found his people.