That look’s why you don’t say it outside the Line.
“Six thousand, seven thousand, somewhere in there.” Precisely when you don’t take a drink of water. “Nothing beside Halt, but it’s more than Fire’s killed or Shadow has.” More of a shrug than I should. “Blossom’s killed an army, but so did Eugenia.” The larger army, by the artillery equivalent of arm’s-reach and broad-bladed knives.
“Do the troops not count?” Actual curiosity, I think.
“Not for murder. Someone’s got front, and the murder’s theirs. Most of the Hills High Road was Fire’s. The rest of Fire’s were by hand.” Strange smile again. “Fire insists those demons don’t count.”
There’s a long pause. Acraisais visibly doesn’t get up for more water, visibly can’t decide what to say. The pause lasts.
“The Line returns to the Peace,” Acraisais says. I nod, carefully. Specifics stay in the Line. “Any independent serving in the Line necessarily departs the Peace, if their service is to be effective service.”
Acraisais gets up and comes back with two mugs and a teapot. Someone from the tavern follows along with the usual salt-and-vinegar caddy, a couple spoons, and a slops bowl. Acraisais don’t notice them.
“I have had four deeply awkward romantic dissolution conversations,” Acraisais says, waiting for me to pick a mug. “This is much worse than any of them.”
Meek would laugh, and ask me to describe the vinegar cruet. That thought before the memory of Eustace’s hot breath washing over the back of my neck, there in the dark. Exhalations full of heat and ozone much better than the howdah’s chance-met eyes and knowing it’s completely sane.
Tea’s better than expected. Most taverns made it an hour ago.
“Parliament’s trying to avoid shouting.” Acraisais manages a calm voice. “Contemplation of new graul citizens has made pointed an awareness that the graul standard-captain is perhaps eccentric. Then we must recognize absolute certainty cannot be had concerning the intentions of the creator of an ilk of folk.”
“And Laurel was in the Creeks before there was a Commonweal.”
One short nod. You can’t prove which sorcerer modified your ancestors. No history from that time, nothing written. We infer Laurel’s presence from the Standard of the Seventieth, it’s traditional. Perhaps more traditional than factual.
Acraisais’ doing better with calm. “Parliament fears the eccentric standard-captain, having been provided with the means to a population of graul by a distant Laurel, wants sorcerers in the Line. Perhaps this is a tool of conquest, perhaps unwitting.” The kind of awkward pause where no one picks up their tea. “Parliament is very much afraid.” So is Acraisais.
“Parliament let Shadow live.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Laurel made graul, and maybe there’s things buried in graul we have no way to find. Perhaps the Captain is just what Laurel meant to happen in some subtle way. That’s the worry.”
Only a nod.
“Laurel did not make Shadow.”
“Granted,” Acraisais says, slowly, slowly. “We cannot propose that Laurel made Shadow and also propose any meaningful limit to Laurel’s power.”
“Shadow serves the Commonweal.” The First’s focus holds it so.
“Shadow waited for Parliament’s decision.” Acraisais sounds like someone being pulled out of themself with possibility. Given a moment, Acraisais may remember Shadow passed the Shape.
“The Captain is eccentric in their choice of overlord.” This takes delicacy. “The Line does not exist within the Peace. The Line does not act within the Peace. The Line’s service must serve the Peace.”
Acraisais does not entirely believe me.
“Five centuries; if you want uniformity, how could it be got?”
That, Acraisais believes. There are those who say the Line must never seek to serve the Peace, lest the Peace fail with the conduct of habitual murder. The Captain thinks they’re idiots. Slow won’t say ‘idiots’. Crinoline’s eyes narrow in a particular way.
Acraisais makes the hospitable teapot motion. I nudge my mug forward.
“Shadow’s got warrants of authority and commission.” One hand does for saying ‘wait’. “The Line-gesith’s never heard of them, Chert’s never attested them, but the Binding of the Standards is entirely certain. The Wapentake’s entirely certain.”
One nod in three parts. Acraisais will accept the point of argument.
“The Line-gesith’s records should not diverge from the facts of the Binding.” More than can’t be helped.
“That’s all it is?”
“For the warrants, that’s all it is. Nobody can tell you why it is.” Why don’t matter.
Two nods, both dolorous.
“The Captain’s treated Shadow as an understudy. Always informal. Shadow served thirty months with the First. Same-file latch, it’s the person, not an abstraction. Thirty months and Shadow would have noticed any mechanism of control.”
“I should like to refute you.” Acraisais salts their tea a second time. “Yet we have accepted precedent for tagmat or coercer talents and controlling influences.”
Tagmats need intelligence; coercers need nerves. Rule don’t need life. It’s creepy, watching the round stones in the river shift as Shadow bid them go.
“Parliament has expressed some concern that the Captain may have been damaged by the fate of the Eighth Brigade.” Acraisais has the manners to speak in abstract tones.
“Much more annoyed.”
Loss-of-composure startlement from Acraisais.
“No matter who dies, the focus should stay coherent. The Eighth didn’t. The Eighteenth is what should happen.” Half a slug of tea. “Their coherency in destruction. Not being destroyed, not being bound to watch the western rise of the First Range of the Folded Hills. That’s unfortunate necessity, outside obligation.” The Eighteenth volunteered, an exemplar of service. “The Eighteenth’s spectral standard-captains sometimes evaluate your written exercises. Chert goes once a season to brief their brigadier.” The other half-slug. “The Eighth collapsed into rage.”
Take a breath, smooth my face.
“The consensus of the Wapentake has the Captain coherent. Any shame about their defeat with the Eighth has to be offset by the prospect of reproducing.”
“Their defeat?”
“Senior surviving. The Eighth went inactive with the Captain listed as the Brigadier.”
“I did not know that.” The ‘I wonder what else I don’t know’ passes over Acraisais’ face as one who knows the way.
“‘War sends you mad’, yet graul learn more than they go mad.” The March was more of a victory than it feels like. The first fate of invading Sea People might be. Someone may know if that was luck or learning a century from now. “The Captain’s determined we all learn, too.”
“Learn that independents are your friends?”
“Shoulder-companions.” Signaller-voice, and Acraisais presses back on their bench. “I can get Meek and Brisket in one place with you, should you be determined that Fire is not.”
Shouldn’t take a proper deep breath in this dress. Impractical and unkind. Six or seven little ones.
“Not in any hell do you like everyone who works for the Speaker, Acraisais. Not in any hell do we like the whole of our shoulder-companions. Know how they’re going to behave, which suffices. Not got that, there ain’t a platoon.”
Turn my tea mug around. Get less vehement. Weren’t the whole way to ‘kill that first’ and I’ve got Meek laughing in my head. Not like it ain’t but formality. Not like I have to try.
“The Line passes out of the Peace and returns. It’d help if those who need not could manage less trepidation.”
Try to be fair.
“I understand they’re scary. It’s important to remember it’s an abstract scary — ” from those who can’t see the whole arriving through the focus — “and that it doesn’t benefit them. They’re taking more of a risk than most of us.”
“More?”
“They’re a distinct node in the focus, they’ve got to be. It’s subject to metaphysical detection, someone sending a summons after the ‘strongest’ targets them. Same way we lose standard-captains because you can send things after the commander.”
Somebody else from the tavern shows up with a fresh pot of tea. They’re smiling. If there’s betting, I’m not going to enquire. Fresh tea is welcome.
“Can you explain the necessity?”
“Being their own node?”
Acraisais nods.
“File’s close. File’s steady, file’s tight; can’t swap people in and out. Everybody does what they find to work. The Captain’s their own node, no file; Slow’s the file-closer for me and Meek and the part-captains.” Second’s thinking about ‘banner-captain’. Been done; Brisket reads old books. The face Chert makes ain’t favourable. “Can’t swap someone in for sometimes; can’t put together those who aren’t balanced. None of us balance with independents as can latch.”
“Yet these independents are not a risk of overwhelming your focus?” Let’s take the doubtful tone as remembers-without-understanding.
“The whole? No. A file’s eight people. Different scales. A plow or a pump or something’s flat, everybody’s the focus. Battle-standards build up from files. If we had a modest-talent militant independent latching, they’d function as a file.”
Acraisais nods, takes a swallow of their tea, and looks at the mug. “If a citizen may undertake to depart the Peace and return on Line service, we cannot restrict this. The Ur-law does not admit of grades of citizenship.”
Parliament could have noticed that itself.
“Yet we have never before had independents able to serve in the Line. It cannot be expected; if it is a greater risk than the general risk of such service, it cannot be encouraged.”
“Would you take fencing lessons from a graul?”
Acraisais’ face says NO whole and entire. Then they want polite words and fail to silence.
“Shadow started as a student. They can do it.”
“I had thought the Independent Block?”
“Block must use the Power. Shadow made choices about their flesh.”
Acraisais’ face wants to say something. It don’t know what.
“Can we suppose that someone who does that ain’t being dragged into Line service?”
“We may suppose it.” Acraisais’ face sheds a few of its burden of thoughts.
“Saying ‘watch a bout’ is pointless. Can’t see them move. You don’t know Shadow so you can’t tell ‘having fun’ from ‘it might rain’, expression-wise.”
“I have colleagues of Regular ilks.”
“Regular-regulars, the door’s ajar. Shadow, the way is shut.” Needfully. “Best I can offer you’s that the Captain’s kept teaching.” Don’t offer what they look like in the near dark, two delicate wiry lads under-lit by green-gold flames. Small flames, from the dragon’s blood they’re drinking. Best comradely traditions of the Line.
“The Captain has not come under Shadow’s sway?”
Not a ridiculous question. “The full-captain’s loyalty shifts, the focus would know.” Designed to know. “Hasn’t budged.”
“How much is there to teach?” Acraisais may have done the sums. I hope it’s insight.
“Eleven guards. Twelve cuts. Graul don’t believe in stances.” Graul believe in motion. It’s extensively philosophical.
“Nine years?” Acraisais is thinking of twenty-three things.
“Guard-cut-guard. That’s the most basic transition. The graul word for ‘cut’ is shortened from ‘journey to a fortification’, more or less.” Sword cut; cut the string, where are you cut?, cut glass, all different words.
“Fourteen hundred and fifty-two.” Acraisais don’t quite believe it.
“Graul live a long time. Transitions ain’t all basic.” Nor practical. “You could complain that the Captain wants to promote their student.”
“Would the First complain?”
“No.” ‘Fencing student’ raises the Captain’s expectations.
Acraisais recognizes this has gone off sideways, and they sort of sigh.
“I do not understand your unconcern.”
Figure it’s the general question.
“If you plunk Halt’s kin down somewhere with a few thousand graul, what can they do?”
Let’s see where this goes. Focuses aren’t a trouble; more sorcerers’d involve reproduction. I’d bet they can. Can’t get a wreaking team out of graul, but most anything else.
“Empire,” Acraisais says, altogether weary and loathing.
“What else can they do?”
Acraisais smells of mist and death. The clunk sound moves no air.
Wait through the disordered gestures.
“Rust used to chain up captives and feed them to their particular fears.” Rust’s recorded as notably cruel, back in the Bad Old Days. “Rust served on the March.”
Less disordered gestures. No words. Challenging subject for polite language.
“Pre-eminents had sorcerer-slaves. Can’t make your slaves too stupid, though. It’s never entirely reliable. Always have to be watching.”
Acraisais gets up. They walk to the bar absent grace and come back with a pair of brandy glasses.
“Mushroom?” Mushroom brandy’s odd in a tavern.
“I mourn some portion of my understanding’s certain demise.”
It’s amusing. It wouldn’t be, were more clerk-candidates like this.
“You assert that no pre-eminent may decree the Peace,” Acraisais says. “An ability to create a Shape of Peace does not create the political structures to make use of it.”
I nod. Saying “don’t do what you think I want” with authority don’t work. Anywhere it’s the sorcerer making the decisions don’t get you Peace. “As a word, ‘pre-eminent’ contains an expectation of conduct.”
“Most consistent in its examples.” Acraisais sounds mournful. A quantity of their brandy gets drunk. “You assert that the Wapentake consensus considers peaceful conduct more likely when available.”
“We kill the doubtful ones.” Our present scant statistics have the Second Shape of Peace no more merciful than the First. “Those nominated receive thorough scrutiny.”
‘That’s not relevant’ hand motions. “The Power bids its practitioners exalt themselves. How may an independent grow greater?”
“You do know it’s relative position? Distinct from obedience?”
“I do not.”
“Such was established by the end of the Turbulent Century. You need not exact submission. You must improve relative to your peers. ‘Peers’ is subject of belief.”
“Pillars of the Commonweal.” Acraisais’ tone crushes doubt and hope and sarcasm together.
“Keepers of the Shape of Peace had best be.” A gesture of necessity. “Those defending the borders needs must be.”
“How do you sleep nights, Signaller?” Acraisais drinks more of their brandy. Enough that I push mine over. I’ve no mournful feelings.
“No belief in useful empires.” The approximation of Senior School we get extirpates such belief. “It’s an easy mistake; there are so many of them, for such a long time.”
“We are small.”
I nod. “That’s contingency. Doesn’t mean an empire’s useful for much. Conquest’s not a stable organizing principle.”
“Do these very mighty persons agree?”
I shrug. “They act like it. Don’t expect me to comprehend their private reasoning.” Acraisais looks more crumpled. “Before you object, talk to a Typical about égalité and tell me you comprehend.” Then talk to three or four Typicals about égalité at the same time.
That gets me visible discontent, gestures intended to indicate that I do not cause the discontent, and an inquisitive look on picking up the second brandy glass. I wave ‘by all means’ at the glass. Acraisais just got a compressed course on independent intentio
ns. Cogitation’s inevitable.
The Line makes errors. Have to make a decision and not doubt. Learn something, new decision; don’t doubt.
“Can you suggest what substitute for empire the Commonweal provides the mighty?”
“Open publication. Free time.”
Co-operating entelechs. Sorcerous teams. Robust economic context. Security of names. Social rituals for resolving disagreements. Having the Line deal with invasions. Acraisais ought to be able to list these.
Acraisais reassembles their dignity. “Duty requires odd things. I am sorry duty required discourtesy to your dress.” Since a polite person wouldn’t start a serious conversation in a tavern.
“Has it altogether failed?” Too much drink for secure’s different from not wanting to know.
Acraisais says “Signaller, I’m not that brave.”
D-Day Minus 505
Year of Peace 545, Pluviôse, Twenty-eighth Day (Winter)
Duckling
The weather’s exceptional bad.
Pluviôse means ‘rainy’. Month’d be ‘Niveis’ if Creeks had named it. Well, ‘χειμών’. Horizontal snow ain’t usual. Snow during hard cold’s rare. The gale wind’s rarer; up from the south-east with flourishes. Colour Party’s halfway between Blue Creek and Slow Creek on Edge Road. There’s a high spot here, causeway over a mudflat. Slow’s stopped us for pointy-stick practice.
South of the causeway’s a mudflat. No water; mud filthy with Power. No lake, no stream, structure, no life large enough to see; not a creature, not a habitation. Lots of sticks’ll make most terrain worse. This mud, worse’d take lasting effort or dwelling malice.
Snow’d stick on a static bubble. Ninny’s running size flutter. Don’t want anybody throwing through a snowbank. Slow dropped a target out over the mudflat. Can’t see it; straight upwind — bubble ain’t stopping the wind — can’t see naught. White haze. Those targets move; not usual quick, but’ve got direction, not drift. Won’t always be in range with the headwind.
Flinch’s got it. One-dot target in the focus. Vector arrow, best-estimate range band for the sticks. Wibble turns Flinch to face downwind. Flinch takes no notice.
Slow, me, Meek up front; leading off the first adverse-conditions pointy-stick practice.
A Mist of Grit and Splinters Page 22