by C Z Edwards
“So... how do we know the Comitae are the Ten Thousand?” I asked.
“We thought it was a myth, or an exaggeration, but no, their history matches ours, just from the other side. Galene refused to follow the Imperial order about separating them and gelding. She took them in, treated them like any of the other Daruvai. She protected them, and convinced her people to do the same. That failure to obey was one of her crimes against the Imperium. There are only two other possible references to the Ten Thousand in the Galeniad. The first is just before the order of exile was invoked. It says simply, And she sent the sea people away past the west, in ships of their own design. And then after the cataclysm, there’s a note that once the seas were calm enough, Galene sent a very small expedition to the meeting place, but the ships weren’t there. These Comitae call themselves the Marrim Comitae.”
“Mara, mare, maris,” I declined the word. “Older than Imperial Porsirian, but those are all words for the sea and water. Maritime, marina. Where were they, then? Why have they shown up now? It’s not like we’ve been hiding for the past thousand years.”
“They’ve spent most of the last two hundred years as Western Federation slaves, first in Veasna, and they’ve been in Spagna for about three generations. Before that, they mostly wandered the Southern Kingdoms, sometimes doing well, sometimes being devastated again. When their host kingdoms treated them well, they didn’t want to leave. When imperiled, they usually didn’t have options beyond survive and find refuge.”
I sighed. “And Galantier wouldn’t have offered much safe harbor for them, even two hundred years ago.” Back then, we’d just finished almost a century of little arguments getting worse until mad Razin Gadrick, and were just a few years into a restored peace. “They would have had to come to us under Eliseth to really find refuge.”
“And five hundred years ago was, I think, during their longest peace and prosperity,” she said. “There’s hardly any of them left, only about four thousand. But they’ve honed their ingeniae even far beyond Wisdomians. They do things I can barely describe, much less replicate. Their Incendiaries can separate a fire’s light from its heat. They make every Healer I know except Cel look like an idiot. And of course, they don’t like me, because they only know of Archilians as the monsters.” Her voice cracked. “Which we earned, and for which I, as a Wisdomian, am an everlasting penance. That’s why we exist, Ced. To protect Wisdom and those who seek it. The evil done in our past is why we alone are never allowed to quit.”
I squeezed her hand. I did understand. There were days I barely contained the black shame of what the Lethians did, and what they forced me to do. I never killed anyone, but they made us witness, and I never stopped it. Because I wanted to live more than I wanted someone else to not die. “Absolution without penance is naught but a priest’s breath. Penance without reconciliation of sin is merely a show of pride,” I quoted. “On that, Lethians are not wrong. The Archilians must attempt a reconciliation.”
She eyed me sidelong. “That is what’s going to get me in trouble with my Council. It’s absolutely correct, according to our ethics, too. But I can’t cite it, and someone will cross-reference to my prior monograph, and then they’ll spend a few tendays poking at you, too.”
“I promise,” I said dryly, “I will withstand it. I enjoy arguments, and it’s entirely voluntary for me. I can walk away any time I like. I’m not subject to their discipline, and since they believe we are equals, they can’t use me against you.”
“Well, they can,” she said, “but then I get to play the hypocrisy card, so it’ll be more how could you? and what were you thinking?”
“We could set up our own syncretic cult,” I suggested.
“Then they’d absolutely come after me, and that would be cause for death in battle, or an accident in my cell.”
I kissed the back of her hand. “We’ll weather it.” And we would. I could see she found the prospect of her community’s disapproval at least irritating and deeply painful, but if they truly respected her mind and decisions, they would figure out a way to understand even if they didn’t approve, or come around to her way of thinking, or to disagree without rancor. And if they didn’t, that wasn’t Kya’s fault, and it wasn’t something she could control.
“How did Laarens recruit the Comitae?” That seemed the master accomplishment, and an impressive diplomatic feat for a man who once yelled goat-fucking, child-raping son of a whore in the Prava.
“They found us, apparently. Turned up in the border zone, essentially volunteering, and Laarens was both clever enough to accept and canny enough to not tell Savrin anything except they wanted asylum. Which Savrin wouldn’t grant, but allowed them to immigrate and pay their fee in installments. We have four thousand people who have reason to follow Laarens, and Savrin just... seems to have forgotten about them. They’re not under his nose so he doesn’t even think about them. Their Ingeniae are what’s truly impressive about them. They have a long-range Evocata that I can’t detect, and it seems... perfect. It works over thousands of milliae. Except every one of the people who seem to have it, also have the markers for a soul-bond.”
“Oi, that’s interesting,” I said. “Fast communication, no flash towers. That alone is worth whatever Laarens promised them.”
“Citizenship,” she said. “Equality. He’s given them the two ports on lands that were his before he appeared to die, and his will is going to be all tangled in about two hundred layers of fraud and criminal mischief, but the people holding the specific leases just above all of the Comitae are allies. For about four layers, I think, so we should have a few years to set it all right. The Judicatura will be busy for years trying to understand what he did, because it’s all deeply dishonest and half the records are actually forgeries. But Laarens also managed to scam several million teanders, so we have some money, too.” She smiled sunnily. “War is nothing but crime.”
I nodded. “How’d it take you so long to figure that out?” But the idea of scams caught my attention. Those papers I borrowed from Tiwendar were, I thought, a record of the Optimus’ scams. “What kind of sagas do you like?” I asked.
“Mysteries,” she said. “High adventure. Heists. You need to ask that question? I’m a girl who grew up to be a spy.”
That’s what I thought. “Want to play with a real crime?” I offered. “I’ll let you see what I’ve been working on for the last half-year.”
“Yes, please,” she agreed, but stopped and made me stop with her. She pulled off her spectacles so there was not even smoked glass between us. “If there’s anything I should have done differently, tell me so I learn not to do it again.”
I looked into her restless, mercurial eyes, a bit bloodshot from fatigue, but intent on me. I took mine off, too, and leaned back for focus. “You sent Rien a book — you and Celadane. Why didn’t you tell us then who you were to me?”
“We weren’t sure,” she said. “Once we were convinced, we had to protect all of you, and that channel. It’s what spies do.”
“And if she wasn’t Rien? Or if she didn’t come find Bran after she set the fire, or if she was still in Celestan? Would you be here?”
She looked down and then back up, meeting my gaze with perfect trust. “I would be here eventually. But I don’t think it would be now.”
That stung, because there’s a fantasy of marriage, that you become the other person’s first and last priority. But it was not always true. A spouse became a partner, and the first priority becomes agreement on the priorities you set together. Sometimes it’s each other, or the children, or the work. The priority is consulting and considering each other, not that sacrificing your minds and principles for the other person. You shouldn’t be together if you don’t share the important parts. Our priorities would mostly coincide, but she was a Wisdomian before we met. She’ll be one for the rest of her life. I wouldn’t want her if she wasn’t who it had made her.
&n
bsp; She kissed me almost formally. “But we would have crossed paths soon. The last year? We’ve been missing each other by hours. I think our ingeniae may be a bit independent of us, or perhaps some influence over what we do. We would have stumbled into each other by some circumstance. Look, if Rien had stayed, she’d be working for you, and she’d still be working with Darav, and we would have met. Perhaps this is a bit sooner. I don’t believe in fate.”
That was also true.
Our camp was, for the first time in tendays, actually deserted. When I whistled to check in, I got Quin and Rien out east, near the beach, and Bran near the western hedges. Daval and Marli noted they were incoming, but a ways out, from the south. I didn’t hear Fanik or Nekane check in, but I eventually got a broken response from Reya. She told me that either she and Sashi and Cotter and Karse were up at the brambles, or she and I had caught fourteen martens. We’d have to practice more.
“That code is not nearly as difficult as you think it is,” Kya said mildly. “Quin’s one short, you’re two, Bran is three. Daval is long-short, so Fanik is either one long, or short-long. Rien is long-long. And it’s getting overly complicated now.”
“I know,” I said. “But you didn’t know that last night. And we don’t have to kill you anyway, dove.”
“Is this how you flirt?” she asked. “I like it. Where are we?”
I tilted her head up, to look into the heights of the pair of giant larches we turned into two treehouses. The lower branches were now thickly leaved enough to conceal the floors of Quin’s creation. We kept the underside painted in streaky greens and browns for extra camouflage, but the bridge was fairly obvious if you know to look for it, and then the two octagons would resolve.
“Treehouse,” she said. “Tree palace. I was thinking a little box wedged across two branches. You’re really not visual.” She looked back at me. “I love it. You’re mad men, building that. Harnesses and pulleys, like woodmen?”
I nodded. Building the treehouses had been enormous fun, but the fun was in the danger. I wouldn’t do it again, because I wasn’t twenty, and I no longer thought I was immortal, and none of us were a little too close to suicidal anymore.
She climbed well, far better than most of our recent recruits. But I’d known that; I’d been with her in rigging. Of course a priest of Archilia worked for her passage instead of paying for it. They were not made of money.
The tricky bit was climbing through the hatch in the floor. There was a net of secondary branches Bran wove into both concealment and safety, but it felt like you had to stand on a branch and sit on the edge of the hole in the floor. It was in fact much harder to fall than it looked, but it felt perilous. If Quin was designing this now? It would be much safer. We learned a lot.
The first thing I saw was both sliding hide doors stood open, and the bedding that I usually shared with Fanik was stowed away in our corner. Also three wax tablets. One on our bedding, one on the table, one atop one of two lidded clay pots on our brazier.
I grabbed the closest, the one on the brazier. Daval may never have a calligrapher’s hand. He didn’t enjoy writing, and knows his sigils just well enough to be readable. Barley resting in 1/2 strength that gods fucked shit. Don’t open before 4th hour afternoon. Don’t stir. Don’t help. Don’t let Rien touch it. Leave the roots alone, too. That was part of our supper in progress.
The table had Rien’s. We’re all out. Bran has Laarens. You’ll hear from the rest of us when you check in. Don’t worry about the work. See you at midday.
And on the bedding, I found Fanik’s handwriting, which is eccentric. He didn’t really know how to read or write well until he was healing, when he was stuck up here for days on end, because Trensen Silvalt destroyed one of his knees and broke both arms. Healers got the bones and tissue solid enough they were willing to let us leave, if we walked slowly and didn’t put much stress on the repaired tissues, but bone mending mostly ensures the bones heal right, not fast. It took half a year to regrow marrow. He learned to read by force of will and boredom that winter, and set up the logic that still governs the Foreti Fur Company, for as long as it will last.
Neek and me are here now. I moved yours into what was her room. Gratulations.
That put us... across the bridge. There were five rooms over there instead of three, though one was a storeroom and passage around the tree at the center. For a decade, I shared a bed with Quin or Bran or Fanik, and very rarely Daval, because we irritate each other. I was almost never beyond the sound of their breath at night.
But... Fanik made the right choice. He and Nekane became fast friends once she came to us. She was the sister he never had, and he became her brother in all the ways that mattered. They could share a bed in the common room, and not require anything like privacy. He knew what finding The Lady of the Dreams had to mean for me.
This meant... I’d grown up. My vine was starting to twine around another arm of the trellis ofour lives, together and apart.
I showed Kya across the bridge. Inside the first door on the left, on top of the folded bedding, were my spectacles. I tucked them into my pocket, and then we took all of our research material and the Tiwendar papers downstairs. It was time to begin our life together, scholars in the service of the Razia of Galantier.
* * *
1 Archilia, Archilians: goddess of wisdom, knowledge, education, healing. Also called Sophism. One of the Four Sisters faiths brought from Porsiria. Most politically active and culturally progressive. Has been influential in Galanteran government. The Galanteran version is a heretical sect. Festival is midsummer.
2 Pantheists: An official, ecumenical faith that acknowledges all eleven deities and may participate in some, but not all, rites. Mostly practiced by the upper nobility and Royal House as a means of withholding official privilege from any sect to maintain a level of religious neutrality.
3 Iolantha, Iolanthans: goddess of grain, land, harvests and farming. One of the Four Sisters faiths brought from Porsiria. Festival is in early summer.
4 Lunaga, Lunagans: goddess of the moon, love, midwifery, childbirth, and in certain aspects, war. One of the Twin Goddess faiths, brought with the Founders, but originated in what is now Farenze. In Farenze, it is heresy and has been exterminated. Usually aligns with the Four Sisters politically. Culturally liberal. Festival is the last full moon of winter, the second tenday of Glacilis.
5 Lethis, Lethian: god of cold, winter, decay, death. Originated in Galantier. In midst of schism. Old Order grew slowly, coexisted with others. New Order has grown rapidly, denies all other deities exist.
6Pronemor (m), Pronemia (f): The subsequent nobility, the grandchildren of a Teregenitor and the children of a Pronator and his spouse.
7 Cubilata: a sacred dying space, used exclusively by Lethians. Old Order Lethians used a small room where the dying were placed for final care. New Order Lethians have altered the practice to include penitants and prisoners. They close the room with bricks to prevent the dying person from leaving.
8 Ingenia, ingeniae: paranormal and intuitive abilities. Not well understood. Also, the people with these abilities. In Galantier, about one-third of the population show some ingenia; most of these are small and have limited uses.
9 Patrona, Patronae (pl): The gentry, and the managerial class on the langreves. Patrona is not gendered. Most langreves have many, at least two per settlement. Dense settlements often have several. This is an old system evolving into something like a local government.
10 Advocate’s Memory: A paranormal, near perfect eidetic memory of very large amounts of data, memory and thought. A requirement for Advocates.
11 Ministry of Women and Children: The newest ministry. Primarily an advocacy for those members of Galantieran society with the least access to formal power.
12 Teregenitor (m), Teregenia (f): senior
nobility, with seats on the Prava. Usually only Teregenitors have Prava seats. Usually a Teregenia is the spouse of a Teregenitor, but if the Teregenitor is unmarried, his unmarried sister may hold the title until one of them marries.
13 High Judicatura: The highest court in Galantier, consisting of thirteen Justiciars.
14 Impathia, Impath: emotional telepathy; the ability to read, comprehend and sometimes manipulate emotional states over a distance.
15 Sator: denotes a priest of any sect.
16 Wisdomians: One of several orders of priests within Archilian Sophism, dedicated to preserving human knowledge at all costs. They are trained as solo and small group warriors and medics as well as priests. Wisdomians are unique to the Galanteran heretical sect of Sophism.
17 Conversatory: a large religious intentional community. All Pantheon faiths and most syncretic faiths have established at least one conversatory; most of the foundation faiths have several. The term is directly related to conversation, as a place of dialogue with a deity. Most conversatories have multiple educational or service functions as well as religious. Rules governing conversatory life are dependent on the specific faith and practices; thus, Archilian, Sardani and Lunagan conversatories are not segregated by gender and chastity is not required, while Teandrian, Hermachian and Cleatarni are rigidly segregated and regimented. Old Order Lethians established only one conversatory; New Order Lethians do not use the term, but call their religious communities Chapters and their establishments Chapterhouses.
18 Sancta: A smaller Archilian religious community based on a single focus.