“The Parastes… the Parastes… parasite Parastes, little hopping fleas, they wanted to make me their dog, their wild dog eating the meat of the land and they eating off me.”
He charged along the rampart, breasting the wind like some great bull, bare feet splatting on the stone, voice booming out over the city, lyric basso singing in registers so low Todichi had to strain to hear the words.
“They wanted to go on living till the end of time as entitled do-nothings. Bastards of the legion of the Born. Lordlings of the earth. Charter members in the club of eugennistos. Owners of lands, lives and good red gold.”
Todichi Yahzi hoomed and cooed and was understood to say, “For the honesty of my records, sar Sassa’ma’sa, were there no patrikkos among them, no good men who cared for their folk? Among my own…
Settsimaksimin swung round, yellow eyes burning with feral good humor. “My mother was a whore and I’m a half-breed, don’t ask me for their virtues. Not me.” He threw back his head and let laughter rumble up from his toes. “I never saw any. HAH! Go talk to them and see how sweet they are.” He swept an arm around in a mighty half-circle. “Look out there, Todich. Black and bountiful, that old mother, she lays there giving it away to any may who knows how to tickle her right. Who does the tickling, who makes her breed and bear? Not our Parastes. Dirt suits the dirty, not them, not our elegant educated fleas. Pimping fleas, lending her to busy little serfs who fuck her over and get nothing for their labors, it’s the flea pimps who carry off the bounty she provides. They sit down there close enough to smell, Todich; they sit down there in their fancy houses behind their fancy walls with their fancy guards and fancy dogs keeping out the folk they fancy want to get at them; they sit down there and curse me. Let them curse. They go to sleep down there and dream me dead. Let them dream. Hah, who’s dying? Not me. NOT ME,” he shouted and the walls shook with the power of his voice. He wiped at his neck, started walking again, more slowly as if some of the energy had gone out of him with the shout. When he spoke, his voice was softer, more sedate. “I made laws, Todich, you’ve writ them down, good laws, fair to the poor, maybe not so fair to the rich, but they’ve had a thousand years going their way.” He chuckled. “Let them suffer a little, it’s good for the character. Good for the CHARACTER, HA HA,” he twisted his head around, “hear that, old mole? Ah the scorn I got, the righteous indignation. What am I doing? Clodhoppers and bumpkins? School? Land of their own? Whose land? WHOSE LAND! NEVER! Thief! Tyrant! Ignorant idiotic imbecile! You’ll ruin the country. You’ll destroy everything we’ve built. A voice in how they live? Perpetual servitude is the natural state of some men. Free them and you destroy them. Who is going to tell them what to do? They’re lazy and improvident. Haven’t you seen how they shirk their work? Look at how they live, how dirty they are. They drink and fornicate and beat their wives and starve their children. We hammer virtue into them, otherwise nothing would get done. They aren’t men, they’re beasts; if you treat them like men, you are a fool and you are harming them rather than helping. Ah ah ah, Todich, there you have your sweethearts. For those fleas, those bloodsucking fleas, for those swaggering club-wielders, the serfs were just one more tool for working the earth. Plowing procreating digging sticks. Animated hoes. Grubbing the fields of the fiefs, generation unto generation without a day of rest, without a home and fireside, without anything to save their worn-out nothingness until I took them into my hands.
“Two sorts of beings out there on the Plain, Todich. Nay-saying non-doing Parastes and everyone else. Field hands, farmers, ferrymen, watermen and woodmen, rowers and growers of greens, chandlers, craftsmen, drovers and sellsouls who were armed and charged with defending the fiefs of the Parastes against the claims of the slaves.” Laughter rolled out like thunder. He turned the corner and went charging along the west wall. “They didn’t expect their people to love them, no they did not. Just serve them, Hmm. I tried-and succeeded, Todich, you’ve writ how I succeeded-to bring more equality between the rich and the beggars. And spread confusion with both hands.” He held up huge shapely hands. “Bountiful confusion and I enjoyed it, every moment of it. Why bother my head with such chimeras? they asked me. You can’t do it. The poor don’t want it, they hate change, they want things to go on being the same. They won’t help you. We won’t help you, we’re not inclined to suicide. Your army won’t help you, they despise dirt grubbers more than we do. Be sensible. Power is power. The rule is yours. Enjoy it, don’t wear yourself down.” The massive shoulders went round, he clasped his hands once more behind him and slowed his pace and lowered his voice to a mutter. “There are times when I’m tempted to agree.” He stopped, put his hand on a merlon and stood squinting at the city below. “Then… then I remember begging in the streets. Look, Todich, down there, where the two lanes meet by the end of the market. A Parast had his harmosts beat me because I startled his horses. I left my blood on those paving stones, but you couldn’t find it now, there’s too much other blood over and under it. And there,” he flung his arm up, jabbing his hand at the city wall where it curved to meet the bay, “I can see a hut there still, on that hill just beyond the wall, my mother starved in one like it after she was too old to whore any longer. Do you know why the Citadel is here and nowhere else? When I was six, Todich, a merchant caught me stealing and brought me to the slave market, it was right here, under where we’re standing, and the pleasurehouses were just a step away, when we get round to the north side we’ll be over the House I was sold into. No one should be rich enough to buy another, Todich, and no one poor enough that he’s obliged to let himself be sold. Moderation, Todich, wealth in moderation, poverty in moderation. Pah!” He slapped the stone and stumped on.
“I took into my hands a country where the poor counted for nothing, where scoundrels were everything, so I had to be a greater scoundrel than them all, Todich. They were right, these fleas; no one wanted me to do what I did. I made my laws and sent out my judges with orders to be just and what happened? The poor ran to their masters for justice (ah, the silly men they were) and shunned mine. I had to do it all myself. I sold my soul, Todich. I sold it to the Stone and to Amortis. And I sold Cheonea to Amortis, when you take away one center you have to provide another, Todich; she’s no prize, our Amortis, but she’s less bloody than some; her sacrifices are those all men make without much prodding… hah! no, with a good lot of prodding, if you’ll forgive the pun. I’ve done worse things, Todich, for reasons not half so worthy. I shrank from no evil to ensure my laws were enforced, especially the land laws. Write this, be sure you write this. I distributed the land to the people who worked it, with this condition, they were to pay the former Parastes a small sum quarterly for thirty years, then the land would be paid off and they would have in their hands the deed for it. I did that because I wanted them to value it. I knew them far better than the fleas did, I was one of them, I knew they wouldn’t believe in anything that came to them too easily; I knew once they’d sweated and bled to earn the deed, they would own that land in their minds and in their blood and in their bone and they’d fight to keep it. The title papers have been going out for the past ten years. Lazy clodhoppers, eh Todich? Not anything like. Thrifty frugal suspicious lot, more than half of them paid out early, I think they weren’t all that sure I’d last, they wanted that paper and they got it. And the same day they got it, those deeds were registered at the village Yrons and the Citadel. Ah, how I love them, these bigoted, stubborn, enduring men. They know what I’ve done for them, they’re mine, they’d bleed for me or spy for me; they pray for me, did you know that? I’ve seen them do it when they didn’t know I was watching. It wasn’t for show, Todich, not for show.” A rumbling chuckle filled with humor and affection. “Though they get annoyed with me sometimes. They don’t like me interfering in their lives. They didn’t like it when I put Amortis in their villages; I didn’t like it either, but you have to break the old before you can bring the new, besides, I needed Amortis’ priestcorps to run the country for me until I could get the dicasts and village headmen trained, there’s only so much you can do with soldiers. They didn’t want the schools either, I had to scourge half a village sometimes before they’d let their children come to them those first years. What a change since. Now they’re proud of sons who can read, now they scold their grandsons when the lads want to skip school and forget learning to read, write and cipher, now they go to the passage ceremonies with wonderful pride in their own. Ah ah ah, and I am proud of them. They took the reins from me and built a strong new life on the changes I made. It’d be a foolish tyrant who tried to wrest land and learning from them now.