A Mist of Grit and Splinters

by Graydon Saunders

  It was as much a hard fact that, could we possibly do so, it would better for the general prosperity if there were two battalions raised from the Folded Hills and not, by equivalent of troops, six. It would be by intent two artillery battalions and one heavy battalion so soon as the artillery and the artillerists were ready, which would not be a lesser burden but would comprise a hope of a better defence.

  A sufficient defence presented another question entirely; as a matter of sufficiency of defence, brigades where we had battalions would begin to approach a plausible degree of force. Whether such force would in fact suffice would have to wait on the future and what threats it may hold, just as our present arrangements must. It might even be a false hope, that greater force would become a greater defence; a confident brigadier might act without the caution that preserves the victory of an uncertain battalion. Yet force must answer not only force, but location; the brigade would command a greater geography, and we have more geography than force.

  We were sure then that we would have another battalion raised from the Creeks, which someone must undertake to command. The choice of who should do so was not easily made.

  Such is not a proper fashion of thought for anyone participating in a memorial service, but I always think such thoughts then. My first duty on returning to service was to conduct the memorial service for those of the First Battalion who were fallen in the Fight Below the Edge. It was not so many as it might have been, and that is all there is to say.

  The custom at the memorial is for joint and careful use of earth-moving focuses to pick up the long central garden so the ashes of the dead may be scattered under the level of the flower-bearing earth, and the garden is then set down again. The shades of the dead passed into the Standard of the Seventieth. They had passed out of it to attend the service; the standard and the banners of the First have remained Below the Edge, but to the dead the standards are a single country and a commonality of passage.

  D-Day Minus 1456

  Year of Peace 543, Messidor, Seventeenth Day (Early Summer)

  Third Year of the Third Parliament. Fifty-Sixth Resolution.

  BE IT RESOLVED:

  The Consensus of the Standard-Captains asserts the Sea People likely to return in greater force and the present strength of the Line in the operational area (’Wapentake’) congruent to the four provinces of the Creeks insufficient to repel them in that circumstance.

  Against an unknown threat, no effort is certain of success. Nor may we neglect the Peace. Yet what may be done, must be done.

  Parliament instructs the Line-gesith:

  1. Establish a larhaus of the Line-gesith in the Third Clearance of Lost Creek.

  2. Request the Line raise a second heavy battalion, to be drawn from the Wapentake operational area.

  3. Request the Line establish the artillery battalion, to be drawn from the Wapentake operational area.

  4. Request the Line raise two batteries of the artillery battalion established in (3)

  Parliament instructs the Geld-gesith:

  1. Complete any ongoing infrastructure project phases.

  2. Maintain Food-gesith and Hale-gesith budgets as established.

  3. Adjust all other budgets for necessary transfers to the Line-gesith.

  4. Publish the adjusted budget no later than 543-Brumaire-01

  FIFTY-SIXTH RESOLUTION: 99 present, Southern Slow Soft Swamp, open seat

  Line-gesith:

  1: 78 Yea, 21 Nay

  2: 99 Yea, 0 Nay

  3: 95 Yea, 4 Nay

  4: 65 Yea, 34 Nay

  Geld-gesith:

  1: 54 Yea, 45 Nay

  2: 99 Yea, 0 Nay

  3: 71 Yea, 28 Nay

  4: 99 Yea, 0 Nay

  Resolution Fifty-Six passed in full. The Line and Geld gesiths are so instructed.

  Third Year of the Third Parliament. Fifty-Seventh Resolution.

  BE IT RESOLVED:

  The security and prosperity of the populace are contained in the Peace. Stability of specific economic endeavour and economic predictability are not at any scale themselves required of the Peace.

  Parliament instructs the gesiths to conduct themselves on this basis.

  FIFTY-SEVENTH RESOLUTION: 99 present, Southern Slow Soft Swamp, open seat

  85 Yea, 14 Nay

  D-Day Minus 1455

  Year of Peace 543, Messidor, Eighteenth Day (Early Summer)

  The Shape of Peace

  The Galdor-gesith is a Creek, for the first time in the Peace. Clerk Hyacinth served the Lug- and Galdor-gesiths before their appointment to Commonweal office.

  The Peace-gesith is a Regular Five, unremarkable in most respects. Adult, they have never been anything but a Clerk of the Peace-gesith, and Judge Seleðryð was known for a certain traditional firmness in their interpretation of the law.

  Line-gesiths are by long custom selected from those unacquainted with the Line. Hélisachar led a weeding-team and then maintained an archive of weeding-team records before the creation of the Second Commonweal. An Atypical Typical, they have imperfectly adopted intermittent clerkly manners.

  The Lug-gesith is another Creek. They were never a Clerk; an Actuary, and a skilled one, but never a Clerk. Zenodorus the Actuary built weighted graphs of the canal system across the Four Provinces professionally and examined abstruse geometries from personal interest before their appointment.

  In another time, in another Commonweal, they would be in a meeting room, a wide one all of stone. This is a tent with its sides rolled up in the warmth of the middle décade of Messidor.

  “Comrades.” The Galdor-gesith sounds pleased.

  The other three are nearly certain their fellow gesith is pleased; you always sound pleased, and you always call your fellow gesiths ‘comrade’ if you mean to discuss anything contained by an oath of service. Distinguishing between ‘sounds pleased’ and ‘actually pleased’ inside your own ilk often challenges. Remembering to divide, even in speech, the office and the person comes readily to those appointed.

  The pause of dignity passes. “No one brought notes or fylstans, so I suppose this meeting to be for the purpose of resolving your several concerns.” One does not say ‘policy’ prior to achieving consensus. It makes everything much more difficult should you do so.

  “Let us,” the Peace-gesith says, “keep custom and start with the small matters.” In scope, the Peace-gesith means, and everyone understands. The Galdor-gesith’s fellows have questions about the Galdor-gesith’s decisions, as those may inform their own duty or policy.

  There had been a great deal of caution seven seasons ago when Clerk Hyacinth was newly appointed Galdor-gesith. Now everyone has experience of arguing with this Galdor-gesith and are duly cautious for specific reasons.

  No one says anything, and the Galdor-gesith’s face does nothing obvious to convey a vast amusement. “You would all like me to tell you something about social relations undertaken by a member of the Shot-team.”

  “Yes,” says the Line-gesith. “To interfere in social relations should be unthinkably much in no wise desirable. Yet pointy sticks come from but this source, and there exists a single source by necessity of skill and not by economic preference. To risk that source to passion seems most rashly unwise.”

  “We do not shut the shot-shop members up inside and insist they never see the sky,” the Galdor-gesith says. “I do not see this social risk as greater than the material risks of going outside.”

  The Peace-gesith sets their teacup down, folds their hands. It is nothing like their preference for tea, but the cool mountain slopes of the headwaters of the Main River are lost to the Second Commonweal. “Relationships between regular persons and exercised talents attend on a lengthy history of tragedy. Given the talent-flavour involved, I should not expect good judgement from the talented party. Given the willingness to become involved, I observe no good judgement from the untalented party.”

  “Everything’s to scale.” The Lug-gesith is a Creek man, one of regular siz
e for their ilk. “Tankard’s preferences run to resolute women, and there’s no record of a Creek woman taller than one-ninety-seven.”

  A few percent of Creek men run large in bone and thews. A percent of Creek men run tall. Half those running tall are also large. Tankard is two hundred and forty-seven centimetres tall, tallest living, fourth tallest in the certain historical record, quite possibly in the top ten for the Creek ilk throughout its existence, and certainly in the top twenty for height.

  Tankard looks halfway between stocky and squat, if there’s nothing beside them for scale.

  “Tankard’s bent a horseshoe straight in their off hand,” the Lug-gesith says. “It ain’t just what could fit where that’s a concern.”

  “Comrade.” The Peace-gesith stops. That sounded too much like a voice for judgement. “No part of the law permits an expectation of sexual congress to anyone, much less specific expressions of desire.”

  “The law contains no possibility of consent to lasting harm.” The Galdor-gesith’s voice emerges from them even.

  The Line-gesith experiences a small frisson. Unlike nearly everyone else, the Creek ilk were not made to obey sorcerers; it alters their perspective. The Line-gesith looks severe. “Tankard’s stature dooms them to an absence of partners; Lily’s necromantic talent dooms them to not less than a long wait.” There’s a single compressed gesture, consistent with clerkly dignity. “Comrade, how might you believe they are not presently rash?” Rash in risking that same lasting harm.

  “The question of securing or sustaining consent, the risk of a necromantic murder, and the risk of material harm all arise. Lily is of modest necromantic talent; they have no inadvertent means to override the will of a fellow Creek. Any sexual activity takes place via an illusion-construct with filters in both directions, so that no passionate lapse has the opportunity to do any fleshly harm.”

  “Such filters would be novel.” The Peace-gesith, in this more certain than correct.

  “Lily asked Halt. Lily presented the form of the illusion-construct they arrived at to each of Wake and Ongen for critique. Both attested entire sufficiency.”

  “Asked Halt.” The Peace-gesith’s voice is entirely empty of feeling.

  “I suppose anyone asking Halt detailed questions about how best to conduct a sexual practice does not possess a frivolous interest.” The Galdor-gesith has gone right on smiling.

  “We might suppose a consensus to exist on that point.” The Line-gesith’s tone finds a narrow way between dry and amused and impassive. No one dissents.

  The Galdor-gesith turns up their off hand. “I do not incline to the imposition of an unnecessary loneliness. That’s not how you get a sane Creek. Certainly not Lily.”

  “Comrades.” The Line-gesith does not make gestures certain to convey to other Typicals that this is understood to be a delicate question, that the impertinence is regretted, that necessity attends; they sway a little with not making all these gestures while their fingers flicker, but the gestures are not made. “I understand none of the events, intents, or necessities alluded.”

  “Anatomical homology,” the Lug-gesith says. “Same muscles, different zygotes.”

  The Line-gesith turns toward the Lug-gesith and makes a formal gesture of perplexity.

  “Our creator wanted superficial pregnancies; big babies, less risk. Fertilization’s high, under the ribs. Has to be effort, or there’s no fitness contest. Same embryonic structure forms a penis in males and a vagina in females. Convex or concave, it’s muscles, if it tumesced hypoxia’d kill you.”

  “Effectively a tentacle.” The Peace-gesith says this delicately, and with doubt.

  “Lass-lad sex’s wrestling.” The Lug-gesith smiles. “Only thing on the outside’s armoured flaps.”

  The Line-gesith, troubled by images of troops in titanium and steel, says “armoured?”

  “Cartilage,” the Galdor-gesith says. “Modestly stiffer than your ears.”

  “I shall in some respects surely regret my curiosity,” the Line-gesith says.

  “Legend says our creator got to talking about their plans,” the Lug-gesith says. “Someone remarked the lads would try. Enough youth and enthusiasm and they’d believe they’d live. So there’s capacity. Started as an anti-parasite blind bypass; armour inside, simple muscles, enjoyment arises from stretching sensations.” The Lug-gesith tries not to show amusement at the Line-gesith’s expressions.

  “Lily’s a necromancer.” The Galdor-gesith’s voice lacks any trace of judgement. “They hunger for life. Sex isn’t life entire but the habits are necessarily social.”

  The Line-gesith nods.

  “The common thing is isolation.” The Galdor-gesith’s serene face slides into stern, somehow; it would take a skilled artist to see the specific slight material changes. “Parliament gives us authority, and says ‘do these things’. We are responsible to hear ‘for the benefit of all’ whenever Parliament speaks. I will not make policy to insist isolation be created or increase.”

  “You hold that,” and the Peace-gesith stops, uncertain of how to speak politely.

  “We gather in large groups, and live, because sorcery has made this year’s peace-abiding, and so we do not give one another diseases. We live without dominion because sorcery has been applied to killing weeds.” The Galdor-gesith’s face has slid out of stern, but not all the way. “Sorcery has licit social application.”

  “Eleven percent of those on barge-journeys this year now past travelled to visit specific persons,” the Lug-gesith says, voice strangely clerkly. ‘With the irreducible risks of travel’ need not be said in this gathering. “Tankard’s a Line quartermaster and Lily’s making hot-red shot. If they ain’t responsible, people will die.”

  The Line-gesith laughs. Not loudly, and not long, but they laugh. Their comrades look neither startled nor at them.

  “In death, courage; in victory, logistics.” The Line-gesith only nearly does not laugh again. Irreplaceable members of the single shot-making collective and the person responsible for the Wapentake’s logistics attach directly to the general hope of survival.

  “Comrade,” the Peace-gesith says, “you are correct that we live by sorcery. That agriculture absent dominion or life absent dominion and mostly disease cannot be had save by the exercise of sorcery.” The Peace-gesith’s slow breath is recognizable as one reaching for stillness of mind. “Neither salt nor sorcery become wholesome from their necessity.”

  “Greater exertion asks more salt.” The Galdor-gesith makes a small erasing motion. “For those ilks who sweat salt.” Creeks do. So do Regulars and Typicals. None of these peoples have been cautiously general in their proverbs.

  “My granny said ‘More work, more salt.’” The Lug-gesith’s not arguing. “More industry, more sorcery, not getting away from the need or the outcome.”

  “So we let those working more salt their own dinner,” the Galdor-gesith says. “They’ve done the work, they’ll know what they need.”

  The Peace-gesith has not found a constructive remark when the Galdor-gesith turns to specifically face them. “In my former service, I had cause to ask Halt about the substance of exaltation.”

  “Substance; you mean the constraint in the workings of the Power?” The Peace-gesith’s tone is precise. Consideration of evidence is a reflex.

  “Halt attested that the Power requires greatness, not dominion, nor the exercise of rule; one must exceed in some strength or skill all those of which one knows.”

  “They shall not exceed Halt.” The Line-gesith is entirely certain.

  “I expressed much the same thought.” The Galdor-gesith looks briefly introspective, and speaks with something like Halt’s cadences. “In age or wisdom, surely not, but in joy?”

  Halt is sometimes kind; everyone here has cause to know this.

  “Halt attested this?” The Peace-gesith wishes to be certain.

  “Halt did. From a cloud of things that sparkled in the dark.” The Lug-gesith remembers the polished s
urfaces, everywhere the cloud had touched.

  “So we may hope for sorcerers who strive to be other than fearsome, yet if they are to be useful, they must be what we fear.”

  “I have met the dead,” the Line-gesith says, “yet abiding in their military duty. I found I need not fear them.”

  “By no means need we fear an exaltation of service to a Peace law and parliament define.” The Galdor-gesith goes on looking serene. “As we may have it, we should prefer it.”

  The Peace-gesith’s eyes close. They take eight slow breaths. “Comrade, I might suppose you unconcerned for the … offer of construction before us.”

  From Fire’s Team, who are a collective of independents no one calls a hive-mind. Independents no one refers to even by their use names; the mighty hear their spoken names. Fire’s team have an established habit of robust construction, quickly accomplished. If the Commonweal needs an armoury, it may have one as soon as it wishes.

  “Let them have their fun.” The Galdor-gesith’s expression stays as kind as ever. “We must consider what we are optimizing.”

  “A price of ‘free’,” the Lug-gesith says, “is inconsistent with ‘no slaves’. Depending on the offer is inconsistent with ‘no rule of sorcerers’.” There’s a word-discarding pause. “A challenge to fail both.”

  “Anyone engaged in trade sets their price. We prefer collectively, through bids and standard contracts, but do not forbid in law or regulation arbitrary prices. There should be no luthiers, else. This collective sets an arbitrary price of the Peace persisting.” The Galdor-gesith speaks in matter-of-fact tones. “We must deal with things as they are. Sorcerers who desire the Peace are not the difficulty before us.”

  “Comrade.” The Peace-gesith’s spine has straightened. Hardly at all, there was not much more it could have straightened from their habitual posture, but the muscular effort has been made.

  “We do not improve the future by reinforcing the present.” The Line-gesith might sound surprised. “I have been reading the Line’s books. Perhaps now I understand something.” Regulars do not habitually gesture when conversing; Typical conversations habitually exist between gesture and dance. The customary motion the Line-gesith makes is meant to indicate a pause to gather thoughts, generally, and not by the customs of any specific ilk. The Empress’ court had such gestures, and everyone carefully avoided them when the Commonweal was new, though those gestures were old and polished and maybe better for the purpose. “Wade through their peculiar mysticism and you get Line officers making sharp distinctions between ‘control’ and ‘compel’. Control cannot repay the effort.”