Work Text:
Once a person was accustomed to lying, Csevet thought, it was nearly impossible to stop.
When he had signed up for the courier fleet six months before his twelfth birthday, he had thought nothing of fudging both the month and year of his birthday to make him just thirteen, and therefore old enough to enter the service. Somewhere between then and now, he had come to believe his own lie, and thus he now reckoned his current age not as the twenty-three odd years he had lived, but as twenty-five, the current year subtract the year on his file.
If he had to say where he had gained the extra year and a half, it was not that day in the Courier General’s office, but a little over two years later, when he had climbed a mountain path as a not quite fourteen-year-old liar, and stumbled his way back down fifteen in truth, in mind if not technically in body.
Some lies were less influential: when he had lost his virginity, he had told the other boy (two months his junior by the legal reckoning) he was experienced; later, to seduce an older man, he had played the innocent maiden. To half his friends he was from Thu-Athamar, to the other half Thu-Istandaär, and to men at bars he had grown up a few scant leagues from wherever their hometown might happen to be. The courier fleet heard stories of his three sisters, while the Alcethmeret staff knew him as an only child.
Before he knew it, he was wrapped up in the tangle of stories like a needle in yarn, as he weaved more and more complexity. He was never confused; the details of what each person knew—and what they were likely to think, what they could be allowed to know—coalesced in his mind into neat rows like the lines in a ledger, and keeping it straight was just a matter of balancing the budget, arithmetic done not with pen and paper but quickly and silently in his head in the tiny spaces between tasks.
It was this practice, in part, which allowed him to slot into the world of court politics with an ease that shocked even him. Certainly, it also helped that he had closely observed and even read the private correspondence of most of the key members of the court for years, but he found the business of balancing the interests of various parties, of finding just the right words to plant an idea in a man's head that he thought was his own, to be by far the easiest part of his new job.
Of course, he would never do such a thing to the emperor. He was acutely aware how much the young man—seven years younger than him, lacking in education and experience both, although certainly not in wits—trusted him, relied on him to keep things running smoothly. He would not and could not take advantage of that trust, even beyond the obvious illegality of doing so.
He tried not to think about the little deceptions that crept in. The emperor did not care how old Csevet was, and if he did, a year and a half was barely relevant at all at his age; it was none of his business what Csevet’s family life was like, or how much of his salary he may or may not have been sending back home to a location the emperor would certainly never have cause to visit. He did not have any reason to wonder how Csevet was able to get so much done, nor would it likely ever occur to him to ask why his secretary was so diligent. If he did, a multitude of obvious possible answers—that it was the best job he could ever hope for, that he was grateful for the kindness he had been shown, that it was simply what a secretary did, or even that he relished the small amount of power, the finger on the pulse of the court, that it allowed him—would certainly keep any such questions at bay.
The true answer lay in what he now thought of as the Big Lie. In truth, the Big Lie was not actually all that big—it was not complicated like the matter of his age, nor was it difficult to keep track of like the varying configurations of origin and family, nor was it something that he was ever likely to be directly asked about like any number of the former—but it was something that permeated every aspect of his daily life, a pretense that every movement of his had to keep up, a pressure that could never be relaxed. And thus, the Big Lie.
He did not name it, even in his own head, as though by avoiding thinking of it directly, he could prevent it from existing. He could not: it twisted around his throat, gnawed at his insides, pounded in his chest like a second heart; it ate at him during the days and kept him up at night scribbling notes until the dawn came in; and, worst of all, it was all of it as exhilarating and intoxicating as the strongest liquor. It might kill him eventually, if the stress and lack of sleep did not do that first, and he knew he would be glad to die for it.
The first rule of the Big Lie was that he did not write of it, not even in the most oblique code, not even in his personal diary. He knew too well that anything written could be read, any cipher decoded, any hiding place found. If it was known to anyone that there was such a lie, it could be unraveled, and his entire life would go with it, a tug to that single thread pulling every piece of him undone.
The second rule was that he would use any deceptive trick he knew, legal or otherwise, to keep it hidden. There were rumors, he knew, which got close to the truth; with his perfect public behavior, a well-practiced surprised-and-hurt expression, and a small amount of documents burned and signatures forged, he made sure no one who thought to spread them would ever be considered credible. No hint of it would ever reach the ears of anyone who mattered.
It was dangerous, he knew. Sometimes he wondered if, had the Big Lie never been a lie to begin with, had he been honest from the start, it might have been better for him. Oh, he would have lost his job certainly, been expelled from court most likely, but this long deception—the often less than legal means of concealment, the provable falseness of his everyday manner—this would seal the matter of his fate, were any of it to come to light.
Treason, a small voice in the back of his mind whispered, and he could not find the evidence to contradict it.
It was cruel to keep it hidden, he knew, but crueler yet to confess. He had imagined it, several times: soft gray eyes full of betrayal and hatred, questions he could not answer. It was not generally done for secretaries to offer revethvoran, but sometimes in his thoughts he did so anyway. Of course he would never be granted it, would be forced to accept the shameful mercy of living with what he had done.
He would earn the right to forgiveness. He would make himself so helpful, so loyal, so indispensable, that the traitorous unnamable thing inside him would not matter. He would take his secrets to his grave and be remembered as competent, considerate, and respected. Nothing more, nothing less.
He was overthinking. He had an early day tomorrow—as he always had—and he could not afford to spend the limited amount of rest time available to him on navel-gazing. Perhaps what he needed, he thought dryly, was a night with a lover: someone who would take him apart and drive the whirlwind of his thoughts out of his head.
It was impossible. He had not had any such encounters since coming into the emperor’s service. He could no more invite someone into the Alcethmeret unseen than he could leave its walls without being watched, and then there would be more gossip to deal with, more rumors to quench. And, he thought bitterly, he could not trust a lover to keep his secrets.
He could not be satisfied thus, either; a small part of him knew, as well as he knew his own name, that he would never be truly happy with any real lover, always comparing to sharp features and sweet hesitant smiles and clear gray—and other qualities that only existed in his most fantastical dreams.
He sighed. He would not be getting any sleep tonight, it seemed. Well, there was always plenty of work to be done.
It was nearing the end of the month, and the household budgets had to be reviewed and finalized, and Merrem Esaran had had some concerns regarding the salaries of certain staff members that she had insisted required his attention, the latest missive about which was currently lying, as of yet unread, on top of a pile of many other minor matters he had yet to attend to.
He pulled on a dressing robe, lit the lamp above his desk, and settled in for another sleepless night.