Roth nearly dropped his tankard. There was no ambiguity in his mind who the old man meant. Leona. The dockside prostitute his father had given mash soup to. The first—the only—girl Roth had ever loved.
He didn’t believe in fate. Those were outmoded ways of thinking. But he had always believed he and Leona would be married. Even now he could imagine the feel of her, the sweet lilac scent of her hair.
The former regent had obviously secreted Leona and her family away to start their lives afresh. Another beginning for her. Now here stood a man with several days of road stink on him, fresh from debtor’s prison, telling him she’d returned to the city of her birth. Where her whoring had begun.
Perhaps I’ve been too hasty in my opinion of fate.
“Yes,” his father continued. “She and I had a very nice chat not long ago over a half-bad lamb pie. Told me some of your mischief, she did.” The man’s smile fell off, then. He fixed Roth in the firm stare of the man he’d once been. A man Roth respected. A man who’d swabbed decks for honest pay, left the gambling tables alone, and honored the memory of Roth’s mother. A man who’d fed broth to a door-to-door child-whore named Leona, rather than take her to bed.
“What did she say?” Roth asked, holding his father’s hard stare.
“I hear about the poisoning of children. The murder of dissenters. The burning of churches. The execution of men and women who only want to serve.…” The old man’s cheeks sunk with sorrow. “Tell me these are lies, Roth. Tell me she’s a silly woman and not to be believed.”
Roth’s silence proved answer enough.
“You’re a coward, boy. A shame. You stand with the ability to extend a hand, and you ball that hand up and knock the rest down. If I were a younger man…”
Roth endured the tongue-lashing. “I don’t think it’s fair for you to say these things without knowing the whole story.” He gestured to a table for them to sit. A placard table. Like the one where his father had gambled away his mother’s nice things.
“We used to play,” his father said, shuffling the plaques.
“Let’s have us a game,” Roth invited. “Coin a hand.”
Malen Staned gave him a long look, his mouth finally showing a tired smile. “How about we play for pride, son. For the skill of it. Like when you were a boy.”
Before Roth could argue, the old man had dealt out three plaques to each of them. It was as he watched the man deal that the hard years of his father’s life became most apparent—in his hands. Those hands hadn’t begun to tremble yet, as happens to the aged. But they looked used, tired—knobby joints filled with the ache of latter years—moving more slowly, not bending quite so easily.
“Turn,” his father said.
It was the first game his father had ever taught him. Simple-minded. High plaque wins. No strategy. Pure better’s chance. Extremely hard to calculate odds on it, too. But the simplicity and luck carried a meaning he imagined his father meant to bludgeon him with. He’d go along. Because they both knew how the game would end. How it always ended. They each laid their first plaque face up. Malen’s crow beat Roth’s sparrow.
“Again,” the old man said.
This time, Roth’s hawk beat his father’s arbor jay.
“Again,” his father said, a strange light now in his eyes. “And this for all.”
They turned their plaques, each showing a black mountain shrike. They began to laugh together. They’d both cheated, each turning the highest plaque in a deck. It was their way of getting comfortable again.
When the laughter subsided, they studied each other.
“I’m not going anywhere,” his father said. “I promised I’d come back to you. And so I have.”
“Tell me what else Leona said,” Roth replied. “And I’ll tell you of all the good that’s come of your quick thinking to get me placed in a League home.”
CHAPTER EIGHTY-NINE
Considerations
A good leader considers the most objectionable response when no one else will.
—The second entry in the private journal of the Randeur office—a thin volume added to by every Randeur and handed down to each successor—this from Randeur Sorbena Gernelle
In the westernmost room of the ninth floor of the Vault of Story, Thaelon sat by a corner window in the failing light of day. Word had come from the Maesteri, who’d delivered a few letters by Telling. He stared into the wood grain of the table beneath his hands and mourned the loss of Sheason assassinated a world away in the streets of Recityv. He’d sent them there. Some to live among the people and help where they could. And recently, an envoy to Ascendant Staned. An attempt at diplomacy, to reverse the crippling Civilization Order.
Dear silent gods. Thaelon had killed them. Killed his little girl. Not by his own design, but the blood of their deaths was on his hands just the same. Hands he now turned over and over in the warm sunlight slanting through the window, as though he might discover a way to use them to change this black news.
That was how Haley found him. She took the seat across from where he sat, and reached out, grasping his fingers to try and quiet the inner storm he suffered. Of course she’d known where to find him. It was here that he’d spent years of his life studying and pondering exemplar teachings on his own path to joining the order. It was here they’d sat together countless times, sharing each other’s company, keeping the counsel only a man and woman in love can keep.
“You’re not to blame,” she said, her voice on the edge of emotion.
“I was their Randeur. Of course I’m to blame.”
“How many?” she asked, placing an emphasis on the many lives, as opposed to the one she would want most to know about.
“Does it matter?” His reply sounded harsher than he’d intended. He squeezed her fingers. “You want to know who they were.” He nodded toward the window, where a list of names sat near the glass.
She took up the parchment with trembling fingers, and read it in silence. When she’d finished, her face showed a hint of relief. Their daughter’s name had been left off the long list.
Haley looked up at him with deep sympathy, “Artixan, too.”
He nodded. Every name written on the parchment was an indictment. Artixan’s death … he’d been a dear friend, and maybe the best teacher Thaelon had ever had. It deepened his anger and grief to think of someone murdering him.
“We’ll organize a celebration of their service,” Haley said with solemn strength, honoring those who’d fallen before asking about the daughter she assumed had survived.
“Will you help share the news with these families?”
“I would have it no other way,” she replied.
Thaelon shook his head, and spoke through clenched teeth. “Must our strength in this be to look past the slaughter of servants and sue for peace with the League?”
Haley turned the parchment around and set it before him so that the names were unavoidable. “No,” she said simply. “Service does not mean servitude.”
Thaelon looked up in surprise. His companion for twenty years now showed him calm, resolute eyes.
“What are you suggesting?” he asked.
“For now, only that we not trivialize their deaths by ignoring their sacrifice.” Her eyes lowered to the names scrawled on the parchment. “Later, maybe more.”
“Another envoy, then,” he surmised. “We have discussed as much. The League is misguided in its understanding of who we are.”
His helpmate showed him a sad smile. “You’re a good man to expect understanding of those who ill-use you.”
“You think it is a fool’s errand.” Thaelon looked through the window toward the western rim of Estem Salo. “That the League can’t be made to think differently of us.”
She reached up and drew his face gently back around toward her. “I think you need to consider the mind of a man who would herd men and women into a public square and slaughter them like animals. Let that guide your response.”
It wasn’t a good tim
e to share the rest with her. But for such things, there never was. He took the second parchment resting in his lap and set it before her.
His beloved didn’t look at it. She began silently to weep.
“I would give anything to undo this.” He did his best to remain strong. Not as Randeur, but as Haley’s husband, and the father of their only daughter.
But he wept. He wept with her. They held each other’s hands and grieved for their lost daughter. A long time they sat like that, in silence, feeling the depth of that loss.
His wife didn’t look away once, holding his gaze as firmly as she did his hands. “What will you do?” she finally asked.
Of all the moments in his time as Randeur, never had a decision weighed so heavily on him. If this mantle weren’t his, he would already have set out for the capital of Vohnce, bloodlust in his heart. But his wasn’t the only child lost, nor the only friend taken in this vile business. Families and friends would suffer the loss a hundred ways. Fear and doubt would grow. He had to consider the order. Its responsibility. How even this might bring about greater compassion and understanding between Sheason and men.
The warring needs and desires made him sick inside, especially as he stared into the grieving eyes of his beloved, who needed him—more than anything—to be her husband and Ketrine’s father.
As he hesitated to answer her, she took both parchments and stood, the scuttle of her chair legs sounding like a gavel in the silence. “I love you, Thaelon. No matter what you decide, I love you.” She opened her mouth to say more, but must have thought better of it. She turned and left him alone near their corner window in the upper level of the Story Vault.
Her departure felt like a judgment, and he looked back again at his hands, thinking now how useless they were against the volition of men. But he allowed that despair only a moment’s purchase on his thoughts, before calling softly for Raalena, who was ever within earshot.
His most trusted advisor came into the room and sat where Haley had been just moments before. “She’ll heal,” Raalena offered in consolation.
“With time, and with the right resolution to all of this … perhaps.” He folded his hands together on the table.
“You underestimate her. But that’s not particular to you. It’s a common failing of men where women are concerned.” Raalena meant it as further consolation, he knew.
“No,” he said. “I don’t underestimate her. Any more than I underestimate you.”
They fell into silence. After a time, Raalena asked in a somewhat softer voice, “How are you?”
The simple question nearly sent him into tears again. Gods, did he miss his little girl.
In the end, he wouldn’t have the time he might want to truly grieve for Ketrine. That made him angry, too. And it was an anger he could use.
He steadied his gaze on Raalena, having found his certainty in a cauldron of grief and doubt and a day filled with contrariness.
“Issue a declaration that Hanry died from age and overexertion of his talents, even as he strove to train the next generation in the way of the Sheason.”
“A lie. But a good lie. What else?”
“I want another envoy leaving tomorrow for Recityv to speak with Ascendant Staned and his Jurshah leaders. Let them know that I want diplomacy first. Their job is to begin the work of repealing the Civilization Order.”
“What makes you think he won’t cut down a second envoy as he did the first?”
He looked evenly at her. “The envoy has my permission and command to render the Will in any way it sees fit to broker this peace. Make it clear that they are not to seek retribution, but to quietly secure an audience with the Ascendant and begin negotiating that peace.”
“And if they refuse the overture? Or manage to kill—”
“Then our response will be severe, but defensible.” He gave her a steady look. “Diplomacy one more time. To repeal the Civilization Order. If that fails, our renderings are at least justified. Unlike Vendanj and those like him.”
“I’ll go with that envoy.” Raalena began to stand.
“No, you won’t. And we’re not done,” Thaelon said.
His friend sat back down, her brow drawn into a quizzical expression. “You’ve something special for me to do?”
He studied her for an uncomfortably long time, trying to decide how to explain his idea. It was the dangerous thought born when he’d called his friends together in the shadow of the Tabernacle of the Sky. It was the thought of trying to bridge a schism older even than the one that divided Sheason and League. It was a heresy of the first order. Truly unthinkable. And yet …
Something in him had changed. Through all this business with the League and Vendanj and the Quiet. Certainly it had all taken its toll. But his little girl …
In the place where he had first learned the difference between quiet contemplation and Quiet contemplation, where he’d studied argument and implementation, battle and the beautiful, discernment and the ineffable; where he’d fallen in love, and today mourned the loss of the only child to come of that union, Thaelon rendered a thin line of Will and turned the parchment notice of his little girl’s death into a paper warrior, like in the games they used to play.
He made it walk a bit, swing its arms, raise its head in an attitude of prayer. It was a simple memorial to his child, but a fitting one, he thought. And as the paper man danced, Thaelon began to relate an idea so absurd that even Raalena looked at him as though he’d gone mad. It wasn’t an immediate plan. They needed to conclude the Trials of Intention first. But the groundwork could be set. Groundwork for reconciliation … with the Quiet.
CHAPTER NINETY
A Case for Resonance
I woke up in the middle of the night and looked at my mandola. I knew. I knew my beloved Jaane was dead. She was a thousand leagues away, but I needed no messenger or letter to tell me.
—Excerpt from the journal of Jon Petruc, captured in the Dimnian instructional text On the Nature of Instruments, Chapter Two, “The Vibration of Being”
The physics speaker showed Tahn a wary eye, but nodded and started toward him, ready to help with the demonstration.
Tahn held up his hand to stop her before she’d taken two steps. “I’m sorry, I don’t know your name.”
“Janel,” she said.
“Janel,” he smiled, “let’s use your table.” He joined her beside her colleagues at the physicists’ bench. He wanted them all to see this up close. And doing it on their own table was bold. Almost bad form. Almost.
Rithy hadn’t needed a cue this time. In a moment, she was there with all the materials they’d prepared, setting them out on the workbench now serving as the arguers’ table: a lodestone ring, a smaller lodestone hemisphere, a small stick, a gob of pine tar, and a stiff piece of parchment.
One by one Tahn held them aloft for all to see. “Using these lodestones, this stick of wood, and this bit of paper, we’ll show the unseen effects of Resonance.”
He then handed the parchment to Janel, directing her to take firm grasp of it, and hold it just above and perpendicular to the bench top.
“Listen,” he said, again gathering the attention of all in the discourse theater. “Listen to the rate at which the lodestone turns this bit of wood to strike the paper. Note how long it takes the stone to reach its maximum spin rate.”
Tahn could see Janel trying to deduce where the demonstration would logically lead, trying to prepare her counterargument. He gave her a smile. “Ask your questions, but remain open to what we show you.”
She frowned, but gave him a single nod.
He placed the lodestone hemisphere on its rounded side in the center of the workbench. It looked like half of an iron ball. He then pushed the wad of pine tar to the center of its flat top, and stuck the short stick lengthwise in the tar so that it extended a finger’s length beyond the top of the hemisphere.
“Hold the parchment close enough that the tip of the wood hits its edge,” he said to Janel.
<
br /> Then he lowered the lodestone ring above the hemisphere until he’d positioned it just right. Slowly, the lodestone hemisphere started to spin. The stick began striking the parchment, producing an audible tick each time.
Tick. Tick. Tick tick. Tick tick tick. Tick tick tick tick.
Tahn counted to himself, just as he’d asked everyone else to do. Nine seconds. Nine seconds and the rate at which the wood struck paper had reached a steady rhythmic hum. He let it continue for a full minute.
Then he pulled the ring away, and the disk quickly ceased to spin.
Janel looked up at him, keeping the parchment in place. “It’s a valid demonstration of the force of magnetism, one with applications we’re investigating ourselves. But,” she said, her own confident grin spreading subtly on her thin lips, “I’m afraid this does not show a causal medium. Let alone your notion of Resonance—”
“You’re right,” Tahn agreed, then turned to address the hall, “but someone tell me how long it took for the disk to reach its steady rate of rotation?”
“Nine seconds,” an old physicist in the first row blurted. The elderly-looking researcher was leaning forward in his seat, eyes intent.
Tahn looked about the hall. “Anyone else get a different count?”
A few voices called ten seconds. A few eight.
“Close enough,” he said. “These are just simple observations, of course, but they’ll serve—”
“Are you now going to try to attach time theory to Continuity?” Janel called out. “This wasn’t part of your erymol or Resonance statement, and frankly will require more than some tabletop lodestones.”
Tahn held up the stone ring and playfully eyed her through its hollow center. He said nothing as he returned to the workbench, pointed for her to resume her pose with the parchment, and positioned his lodestone a second time. “Count again,” he invited in a resolute voice.
Then he lowered the ring, and the disk began again to spin.
Tick. Tick tick. Tick tick tick.
The stone disk reached its steady state at just over four seconds. He held the lodestone ring in place a while more, then stepped back, allowing the disk again to stop spinning. Puzzlement shone clearly on Janel’s face. The entire panel of physicists seated at the workbench showed the same baffled expression. Tahn let the discourse theater hang in stunned silence, knowing that they were now trying to apply their understanding of physics to the variance in time.
Trial of Intentions Page 75