442 - A Madhouse and Getting Wilder

Excerpt from Pages of Arko, Anae 24, 51^st to last Year of the Present Age –

“Election plot foiled: Yeolis working for Itzan charged!”

By Roras Jaenenem  

--“I've been steeped in Yeoli politics since I learned to speak,” Shefenkas said. “And part of my education was the history of it, right back to our founding. If anything like this ever happened, history does not know it. I was always taught, and I hold as a sacred truth still, that the will of the people is the will of All-Spirit, the closest we Yeolis have to what Arkans would call a God. So I never dreamed...” Here the Imperator was momentarily unable to speak, for tears.

“When I heard about this, I thought—I hope Arko will forgive me for saying this, but I thought what you might expect a Yeoli to think—that, sharing our customs with Arkans, we have to expect them to be corrupted.

“But it was Yeolis who did this.

“I must seem to Arkans like the most naive and innocent creature, but… what was inconceivable to me before has not only become conceivable, but has happened. I have to wonder what kind of mind can conceive, and then decide to execute, this. I ask myself... have we as a people been permanently changed by what happened to us? Have we been corrupted beyond healing?” --

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I was happy to see there was as big a media storm about this situation as Kin’s scandal since, to my mind, it was far more serious.

“Whoever commits such acts, is guilty not just of the particular injury inflicted but is guilty of the diminishment of the confidence that is not just the ease of, but the very existence of a civil society!”

“Vote theft is the ready Minister of Injustice!”

“When people believe that law and persuasion are insufficient to govern the Empire, they will attempt either force, or fraud.  I believe that the people of the Empire of Arko are smarter and more savvy than that!  This kind of attempted vote fraud reflects a contempt of the voter that is ugly, mean, and contemptuous.  The Empire of Arko does not deserve to have its voice and its will stolen, subverted, perverted.”

Kall spoke more simply than I did.  “This kind of action is dishonourable.  I find it disturbing and I am very glad it was brought out into the open.”

“Those who tried to steal the vote are imprisoned and in the hands of the courts.  Justice will be served, whatever I feel.”

“It’s dismaying that people even thought of this, that people required a law against it!  But Arko has such protective laws and we will go on as if we never needed to fear this in the first place.”

**

I had to stay calm.  No matter what happened.  No matter how tired I was of the endless rounds of speaking.  I came to cherish the moments when I could sit down and speak to the various children, not so much younger than I, and explain to them – in their parents’ hearing of course – about the vote and what it meant for them and their lives.

I didn’t like that everything I did had to suddenly have a dual or triple purpose.  I felt very cynical when I did that.

The prayers... my prayers to the Gods... I tried very hard to keep them from getting frantic.  I didn’t think pounding upon the ears of the Ten with my fears was a very good idea.  I tried to focus on my gratitude that I was even in the position of being able to pray.

Where I prayed more daringly, was for my family.  For Ili and for my mother and grandfather, for my friends.  I prayed mindfully as I could during my Ten Ten’s practice... always carefully hidden from anyone seeing.  They would think I was assuming I would win.  It always helped me calm down.

I never thought for a moment that I would be grateful to Abatzas Kallen.  Adamas could not keep him from speaking to the writers, at least until someone found a way to get him out of the city, to a distant family estate, where he would occasionally still fling little nuggets of rampant stupidity into the campaign whenever a writer made the trek out there.

The intensity of the campaign was growing with orators on almost every corner of the city, posters going up and being ripped down almost as quickly.  A dozen chalk artists were following Banaksias’s lead and the city washing crews were mostly leaving them alone.

The madness was rising as though Jitzmitthra had crept out of its normal space in the year and infected the eight-days before.  People had coloured banners upon their houses or hanging from balconies and window sills of apartments, displaying support for their favourite candidate.

**

Candidate’s Parade Aborted!
- by Pages staff writer

Mil Torii Itzan threw a promotional parade with marching musicians and dancers before and behind his carriage.  The crowds that gathered were heard to shout a number of things, not all of them entirely civil and his parade musicians played louder as the crowd became more numerous and louder as well.

Ser Itzan decided that the better part of valour would be to cut his procession short.  Said one of the crowd, who asked to remain nameless... “I was considering risking some lock-up time but I didn’t buy the box of bad fruit fast enough...”

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Rioting in the Street over Candidate’s Banners

- by Sinimas Menden

A minor street riot was quelled three days ago on Concord Avenue by Sereniteers of the Fourteenth Apportionment.

Trumaras Robinas, fessas, was arrested for multiple counts of theft of his neighbours' candidate colours.

Fokalas Bledas was also remanded into custody under charges of assault and battery when he caught Ser Robinas, assisted by Serin Robinas, removing the blue banners from the front of his house.

Serin Robinas defended his father and, drawn by the uproar, a number of other neighbours entered into the altercation. Other charges are pending says the spokesperson for Apportionment 14.

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Woman caught Red Handed!

- by Pages staff writer

Sera Ililian Atzumas, fessas, was arrested and charged with mischief yesterday when a neighbour summoned Sereniteers, complaining that someone had ruined her laundry, costing the household considerable outlay to replace.

Sereniteers discovered that the laundry in question had been dyed red, apparently by having the colour flung upon it from some distance.  They investigated all adjoining houses and discovered Sera Atzumas with a newly cleaned bucket but traces of red dye upon her hands and around the window where she had apparently flung the dye wash from...

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White-Wash turns Bilious

- by Iliren Forenas, fessas
 
‘A Fresh Coat’, house painting company, unknowingly had their white-washing paints tampered with and found themselves painting a whole house green rather than the white their contract called for.

Numineas Mil Pasen, Aitzas, was appalled to find, upon returning from a morning ride along the fashionable ‘Shady Path’ through the Arkan woods, that the painters he had hired were busily covering the front of his manor a lurid shade of green rather than the white he was expecting.

The owner of the company was summoned forthwith and buckets were exchanged.  Sereniteers were called to examine the contaminated stocks and to clear the owner of wrong-doing before the matter could deteriorate further.

One of the okas workers was overheard to say they thought the shade went well with the orange banners they had taken down to do their work.

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Cliff Defacer Still At Large

- by Pages staff writer

Sereniteers are still searching for any kind of information on the person, or persons responsible for the disfiguring smear of bloody paint poured upon the cliff wall of Arko, apparently between Rim patrols.

Candidates Kallijas Itrean, Aitzas, and Minis Aan, Aitzas, both submitted to truth drug and neither had anything to do with this violation of the city’s visage, with one of their campaign colours.  “This is possibly a smear tactic designed to sully my adult reputation.” Serin Aan said, after the session.

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Bar Fight Ends in Charges

- by Pages staff writer

At ‘Hot Metal’, Horinas Murinas, fessas, apparently referred to another patron, Matziren Durinias, fessas, as kallenish, implying his stupidity.  Both men and eleven others are remanded in custody for various legal violations, including destruction of property, assault, assault with a non-deadly weapon and slander.

An unknown patron apparently set his liquor glass on fire, and set it up like a small torch on a speaker’s step outside the well known public house, possibly in protest against the violence incurred by political disagreement. 

Since then a number of flaming liquor glasses have been seen burning on the speaker’s steps and other places of political discourse.

[note: to Inth.  Yes, I was there and just did the interviews and no I don't want my byline on this one.  I want to drink at that bar again.]

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Carelessly Placed Banner Causes Fire

- Pages staff writer

A fire was started in an okas tenement, on Meticulous Alley, when a political banner flapped over a Chevenga candle placed in the window of an apartment below.

Fortunately the fire was quickly doused, though the rooms immediately above are somewhat smoke damaged.

The Fire-Fighter’s guild would like to remind people that while the white candles, placed to remind He Whose Whim is the Will of Arko that He deserves to live, are a just and admirable gesture, please be careful of the placement of flammable materials around them.

**

Dyers were skating in groups now, to out-shout the orators.  Sereniteers were breaking up spontaneous drumming gatherings, though mostly non-violently.  People were stopping in Presentation Square to argue with each other, almost going so far as to wave their gloved hands in each other’s faces. It was a madhouse and getting wilder.

I was taking time after my training with Kallijas, to visit Akminchaer, because I’d started throwing up again from nervousness and was able to stomach only the mildest of mush.  It was coming back up streaked with blood, though less than it could have been.  And I was having nightmares that woke me up regularly enough that I was sleeping by myself to quit disturbing Gannara and Farasha though they argued with me over that. 

My forzak vile organ kept bothering me, rising up when I least wanted it, and I kept getting pinched now that I wasn’t tying myself down snugly. Akminchaer advised me to continue Surya’s regimen of stress reduction and said that would ease some of that organ's recalcitrance, and might also ease the nightmares as well.

It was on the 29^th of Anae that Kall told me Chevenga was going to Vae Arahi.  There had been an assassination plot foiled and he was needed in Yeola-e.  Timing was, of course, everything.  He would be gone right up to voting day.


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My thanks to Karen for the Roras Jaenenem piece which you will find in asa kraiya post 049 http://chevenga.com/node/79