Running Close to the Wind

by Alexandra Rowland

“How are they supposed to ‘go and find out’ if they are starving, Witness Amita? How are they to devote themselves to what the church tells them they should be devoted to if all their time and attention and energy is devoted to basic survival? Are the poor excluded from holiness, Witness Amita? Will a mother of twelve children be turned away from the gates of Felicity because she learned nothing but how to love her family until she died of overwork?”

I would imagine that it certainly wouldn’t be allowed for me—not because I have a soiled past consorting with the people on the losing side—not the wrong people, mind you, simply the people who did not win—but because, Witness Amita, I am troublesome. And troublesome people, as we all know, are not something that institutional power wants to have to deal with. Institutional power wants to crush troublesome people and break their spirits—and may the Emperor bless my old Abbot Symon who gave me sanctuary, because until my dying day I will believe that he truly thought that he was doing me a kindness—and perhaps in some ways he was! At the end of the day, the vow I made then brought me here to this place, to the cave where the founding prophet of my religion was murdered, probably for being troublesome herself! And here we sit, sipping tea and eating curry! It’s funny how things work out, isn’t it! But while I do not hold a crumb of resentment in my heart for Abbot Symon as a man, he nevertheless was allowing himself to be used as a tool of institutional power, and the vow I made—speaking institutionally—was intended to break me.”

I beg you, please do not injure yourself for the sake of protecting the monetary profit of what is arguably the world’s greatest institutional power.”

I want you to feel absolutely confident that your insights are accurate—if there is any shred of doubt as to whether you did your job properly, the institutional powers above you will not extend compassion to you the way a person would.”

“I feel like this is the fundamental difference between the Ministries of Diplomacy and Intelligence,” Avra said pensively. “You eggheads in Diplomacy always think you know what people are like and that you can predict how they’ll behave. On the other hand, Intelligence has seen some shit and knows that it only takes one absolute madman to fuck up your whole day.”