The Makers of Light

by Lynna Merrill

  Maxim was mending well. However, Ellard himself had become unwell with the healing, and when the old Mentor had mended enough to not need his Healer close at hand, he had told him to take a break and go to his daughter in the Sunset Lands. There was more space there, there were fewer people and the air was cleaner, old Maxim had said; the air there would be better for Ellard than Mierber's air these days, for certain.

  Kelley wrote to Linden on Day 1 of the First Quarter, right after the Day of the Master—so on the second day of Linden being officially Rianor's apprentice—to tell her that they were leaving and would take Eileen and Grandma and Grandpa from Rockville. They would all travel around the Sunset Lands a bit, Mom said, to visit relatives and friends, to rest.

  Dad was unwell, because of Linden. Her family had run away, because of her again. One night of recklessness had changed many lives in addition to her own. She had not known then—but she would have known it if she had thought.

  She did think now—and less than forty days had passed, but she felt years older.

  The two short letters she had later received from Mom and Dad had brought her both great happiness and great fear. They were alive, the letters told her, but letters could also be traced to their senders. To Cal and Kat, Linden did not dare write at all. She was a lady, safe in her place of whiteness on top of the world, but they were not. Better that no one connected them to her.

  And she was lonely, lonelier than she had ever imagined a lady or a Scientist to be.

  * * *

  There was a knock on the door. Lady Jenne, coming to chatter about ladies' magazines, dresses, and to teach her about etiquette—as if Linden had not already learned all there was to learn. She had time to learn. She could not leave the House but she had no duties in the House at all, so she had time for anything. She had not left the House even on the Day of the Master, for it was not necessary for anyone but the High Ruler to go to the ceremonies, and only he and Desmond had to go to the Council of Sovereigns gathering on the next day.

  It would be too dangerous for Linden to leave the House, Rianor had said.

  Linden stared at the tree-shaped white lumps outside, then crumpled a not-to-be-sent letter in her hands.

  Rianor was so close to her sometimes, closer than anyone had ever been before. He understood her like no one else had. They had managed to discern some repeating Ber symbols on pipes around the House together. The Qynnsent Council last quarter had decided that they would do just that.

  Yet, no one else dared to do it—especially when no further threatening news came from Balkaene or from elsewhere, and the others' worries gradually subsided.

  It was Linden and Rianor alone who worked with symbols. The two of them alone who wondered about Audric. They had even drawn symbols together, thrice succeeding in making the water in a cup produce tiny waves upon them completing a picture of a symbol.

  Linden's own water Magic worked on and off. Sometimes she could make water move easily with naught but her mind, but sometimes nothing would happen and she would feel very, very weak. Mostly, she tried to not mix this Magic with the Ber symbols. If she did so, she became even weaker. Indeed, more often than not, her own Magic was barely there; it had faded after her initial days in Qynnsent. She sometimes wondered if the Inner Sanctum would let her in now, with her Magic like this. Rianor thought that her Magic manifested itself best when she was stressed, and he wanted her to leave it alone for now, and to focus on learning about that of the Bers.

  Rianor had first noticed something strange about the pipes in the House on the morning he had first brought Linden to Qynnsent, while watching the pipes on the ceiling in the scullery. He had not yet known what the strangeness was. He had realized the truth after Linden had discovered the changeling banners and he had discovered the symbol formed by his shower holes. The pipes themselves formed symbols. Symbols on the ceilings, symbols on the walls—symbols wherever pipes were visible and probably wherever they were not.

  What Linden and Rianor had drawn in order to make waves was a part of the shape formed by the visible parts of the waterpipes in several rooms. They thought that it meant "water," for it was an element unique to the waterpipe shape. The rest of the shape—what they thought to be the "pipes" part—was also found as an element of the shape formed by firepipes.

  Once, just once, they had made a candle glow brighter upon drawing the "fire" element of the firepipes' shape. They had been thrilled. They had embraced, laughing—and then she had almost fainted, suddenly very, very weak. It had broken the enthusiasm. He had put her in a chair and given her a glass of water, but then he had pulled away and would not touch her. A barrier had suddenly risen between them that she did not understand and did not have the strength to question.

  After that, she would still feel him close sometimes, but often she would feel distance. He was careful to never touch her, and even though they did work together, on symbols as well as some small Science projects, oftentimes she was without him. She filled her time. She was learning what she could about nobility and Science and about the House itself.

  She knew where every room was, every staircase, most of the outer buildings, most servants' names, routines, their children and little dreams; she knew many things. She knew Jenne, too, with her quiet kindness and insecurity and her own loneliness and need for a kind word; she knew about Desmond's machinations and Inni's silences. She knew her own Clare and Felice, as well as Brendan, who was a good friend of Clare's and who, since that first night in Qynnsent, seemed to respect Linden very much.

  She knew, too, that the project that she had started without Rianor—her own, bold, big project—had a chance for success.

  And she knew that she was lonely, that perhaps it would not have been so if Rianor and she had never been close, but now his distance left a hole inside her that nothing else could fill.

  "Let us get out, Jenne!" Linden could not bear to be inside this suite and to think that the world was swallowed by gray whiteness even a minute longer.

  Linden

  Day and evening 23 of the First Quarter, Year of the Master 706

  Jenne screamed. Linden herself was numb; she watched the gray-white snow turn bright red where the body had fallen as if it were not real, as if she were not seeing it at all.

  "My lady. Please—" A woman, her voice loud and yet a voice drowned in Jenne's; drowned, too, by the scream that they had heard a moment earlier, which still hung in the air as if it would never fade. "My ladies, please, give me your hands, let me take you to Nan. This is not something you should have seen. But it will be fine. The Mistress Cleanser is taking the taint away now. It will all be fine ..."

  Another woman was chanting softly over the dead animal's body. Her words were blurred, indistinguishable, her hands shaping symbols in the air. New symbols, Linden's mind seem to register, numbly.

  Jenne was crying, her voice too weak for screams now. "I never knew. I never knew!"

  "Well, now you know." Linden's own voice was soft and yet she heard the sudden steel in it, felt steel in herself as she got control of her trembling legs, nodded curtly to the Mistress Butcher and pulled her hand away from hers. "Thank you, Mistress, but we should have seen this." She dragged Jenne in the direction of the House Proper.

  We should know about the world around us. We should know, we should know, we should know. We should not be ignorant.

  Back in her suite Linden grabbed a fat Science book from her bookcase and thrust it into Jenne's hands. "Meat comes from animals. Meat is animals before it is Butchered and Cleansed—read here about Mierenthia's food chain. Humans eat plants or animals, animals eat plants or animals, and plants eat Mierenthia itself—"

  "Oh Master, oh Master, oh Master!"

  "Are you telling me that you really, truly, did not know? I thought that you just did not know the details, that you were simply too shocked to have finally seen it all with your own eyes!"

  Because this is how it was for me.

  There were only a
few places in Qynnsent that Linden had not yet been to, the slaughterhouse being one of them. She had dragged Jenne there two hours earlier, through the snow and coldness, hungry to see something new, to learn yet again about Qynnsent and about the world.

  "Hungry." It was ironic that she would use this word, of all words.

  "Yes, yes, it is true. Yes, Linde, I knew, I only did not know the details." Jenne's voice was quiet, defeated. "Food comes from animals and plants ... But the only animals I have seen are Blake and Winola's cat Zoe and the horses, and I would not imagine—" She stared at Linden, her eyes wide.

  "No, we don't eat them, at least."

  Jenne sobbed again. "I know that food comes from animals and plants, but—but—Animals are animals, and food is something Nan and the others bring from the kitchen! I never—"

  You never made the connection between what you supposedly knew and real life. Not really.

  Jenne was a fool, Linden wanted to think. Jenne did not care to know about the world. But if Jenne was a fool, most people were—for most people were made to be fools. People could not simply go into a slaughterhouse and take a peek. Linden and Jenne had been able to go only because they were ladies, and because Houses had personal slaughterhouses and personal Master Cleansers just like they had personal kitchens and Master Cooks.

  And no one, before Linden, would have taught Jenne that she should seek to learn and truly know, anything.

  "Oh Master, I won't eat meat any longer." Jenne's palms were pressing her temples now, her eyes bright and shiny. "I will simply eat bread and fruit and vegetables."

  "These all come from plants. Plants are alive, too, Jenne, just like the animals. If you eat less or nothing of one, you will have to eat more of the other, and in the end other lives will still have perished so that you can live on."

  "But plants don't—don't—move. It is not truly alive if it does not move, right? Right? Plants don't ... scream, Linde."

  "Perhaps because you are too deaf to hear them!"

  For a moment Jenne was silent, something like fear flashing in her eyes.

  Then the fear was gone. "Then I won't eat anything at all." Her eyes only held despair now. "I could never eat, after today. At least I'll become thin now."

  "If you don't eat at all, you won't just become thin. You will die, you fool!"

  It was all Linden could do to not grab the woman and shake her.

  "Don't you know at least that! Read the book! Read the wretched Science book! The book explains that a person needs food to convert to vitality for both the body and the quintessence! A living creature needs to periodically consume another living creature's vitality in order to exist—this is the wretched truth, and the book tells it to you! It does not, like the Introduction to Mierenthia book, only say that you must eat, without telling you why! The Science book tells you why Butchers and Millers and Cleansers and Cooks are so important, too—that they prepare those vitalities so that we can absorb them in our bodies without dying or going mad with Mierenthia's taint. Again, the Mierenthia book only says that these people exist and should exist. Read the Science book! Open your eyes! Stop being ignorant! Take the book now, take it and come with me to the elevator, read it while I work."

  Linden had never shouted at Jenne before, and now, for a few moments, Jenne watched her with her lips and hands trembling, her face pale, sweat glistening on her forehead.

  Then she took the book.

  * * *

  Jenne read while Linden worked, Linden's own hands trembling now. She was so wretched angry! If something died so that you could live, you should at least respect it, not close your eyes to the truth because life would be easier for you in this way! Ignorance. Always, ignorance. It was Mierenthia's greatest bane—but how did you make people relinquish something that was most of the time forced onto them, and convenient in the rare times it was not?

  Linden had no answer to that, and her hands were trembling so much that, had what she worked on been the Clerk's pulley, she would have sent tremors along the ropes and wires down the very shaft.

  But the ropes she was working with now did not feel her disquiet at all. They were thicker than anything she had ever worked with. She was lucky that she had found them and that Rianor had let her take them for her own.

  She was building an elevator for people, with Science. After the Qynnsent Council last quarter, just before she had fallen sick, she had asked her new master if he had any metal ropes and other materials like those she had seen attached to the tower elevator's cabin. The Council Room elevator was supposed to be Magic—they all were—and yet Linden though she saw a semblance of a Scientific principle. If she was allowed to examine the cabin more thoroughly, perhaps she would discern it better. She was allowed, and he even showed her a small side room right by the Council Room, where indeed there were materials.

  "They have been here since before I was born," Rianor said. "Indeed, I think they have been here for centuries. I haven't used them; I haven't gotten to them in my own research."

  The ropes were thinner than those of the Magic elevator, and there were no materials for a cabin at all. The most Linden could scrape was a metal platform with holes where the ropes could be attached. But it would all do. It was still better than anything else she had ever seen. It was almost as if centuries ago someone else had entertained the thought of building an elevator. People could, after all, be hauled without a cabin, standing or sitting on the platform and holding on to a rope that would not be used for the actual hauling.

  Linden was also making the elevator in such a way that would allow the actual people on the platform to pull a lever and control the hauling ropes, thus hauling themselves up or down. No one else would be needed to stand aside and do it for them.

  Of course, the project would have been difficult and almost impossible if the hauling had to happen on the outer side of a wall, as was the case with the Clerks' pulley. It would have been too dangerous for the people on the elevator. However, there was an empty shaft in the servants' wing, in addition to the servants' own elevator and stairs.

  Rianor had let her use that shaft and had even helped her place some ropes there. It had been one of those shared moments when they felt very close to each other. One of them had been pulling ropes on the fourth floor while the other one was attaching them on the first, both shouting at each other through the shaft, the passing servants glancing at them with apprehension.

  But mostly, she was building the elevator by herself. Rianor seemed slightly amused by it, preferring to focus on Magic and the symbols. At some moments she thought that, like Mister Podd, he did not believe that it would work, but that, unlike Mister Podd, he was not afraid of it working.

  Well, she would show him! She was almost ready—but the work was going slowly today. Perhaps hours passed with Linden working and Jenne reading beside her, the occasional servant passing them by respectfully.

  At some point Jenne, her eyes red and puffy, came to stand beside her. Linden said nothing.

  "Why are you tying the rope in this way?" Jenne asked moments later. "If you tie it like this, rather"—she pointed at what exactly she meant—"would it not be easier?" Her voice was shy, quiet now. "The book says, in the Natural Mechanics section, that—"

  "You are reading that section? Really?" Only now did Linden realize that she had given Jenne not the Introduction to Science book, but the fat, compound book that contained all three Science books. Natural Mechanics was the subject of the second and third books, where indeed the more interesting concepts such as rules of motion were listed. Linden would have expected Jenne to read the first book only, which was basically the Introduction to Mierenthia book with explanations—if she read even that. But Jenne had gone on, on her own.

  Jenne blushed and would have started defending herself, but Linden grabbed her hands and, were Jenne a little girl, Linden would have grabbed her and raised her in the air, dancing, kissing her.

  "Jenne, this is so wonderful! Do you realize that
you just gave me advice about Science? And not only that, but it has merit, even though you are reading the book for the very first time. Oh Jenne, let me teach you! You have the potential to be a very good Scientist!"

  "I don't believe you!" Jenne herself was laughing now, tears glistening in her eyes. "Oh Linde, I have never been a very good anything."

  "Well, now you are. Come here."

  They worked together for a while, and Jenne made mistakes but was a good helper when she was told what to do—especially when she read what to do. Jenne had difficulty remembering spoken information, Linden suddenly knew, but she remembered everything she read. Besides, Jenne doubted her own worth and desperately needed someone to tell her that she was capable of something—but once she had heard this and believed it, she acted capable. Linden felt very powerful, helping Jenne find her own power.

  It indeed felt strange, Linden being the teacher and not the student, the master and not the apprentice. It felt good. And it was good, she realized. It was good for her, for Jenne, for the world itself. Jenne was not depressed and forlorn any longer, so learning Science had helped her. Besides, Jenne was less ignorant than she had been earlier today, which meant that there was a little less ignorance in Mierenthia now than there had been—which was a step towards making Mierenthia a better place.

  Linden should not only learn and make Science. She should make others learn and make Science, too—for everyone's good.

  * * *

  So Linden taught a little Science to Clare, Felice, and Brendan, too, the three of whom joined her and Jenne soon. They had finished their duties for the day, except for Clare's and Felice's duties of attending to Linden herself, and they all preferred to stay with the ladies by the elevator instead of going up to their own rooms.

  Clare and Felice did so many things for Linden. They cleaned her rooms, served her food, they would have even helped her dress if she had not drawn a line at that and said that surely they could find something more useful to do. Perhaps that thing was Science.