by Matt Wallace
When she awoke, large sheets of parchment covered the blanket over her legs. She sat up and reached for them. One of them was colored from corner to corner with a beautiful drawing of a building much like the Capitol Spectrum, surrounded by city streets and foliage, none of which Dyeawan recognized. It must’ve been a scene from another Crachian city, or perhaps even something new for a city yet to be built.
The other sheet of parchment was blank, and resting on top of it was a leather case containing coal sticks of many colors.
That’s when she understood there was a test being administered to her, and it had begun the morning before. Dyeawan picked up the pouch and sorted through the sticks of colored coal, her eyes flitting between them and the colors used to create the rendering of the building on the first sheet of parchment. She’d never drawn much before, let alone painted. She would often trace shapes in the dirt or the dust on alley walls, but that was the extent of Dyeawan’s artistic endeavors to date.
Still, she’d observed the finest architects and artists in the Planning Cadre at work dozens upon dozens of times by then. More than that, as with the wooden pieces, she could look at the drawing and simply see how it was supposed to be done.
Dyeawan removed a red stick of coal from the pouch and touched it to the blank sheet of paper.
Less than an hour later all the sticks were nubs and she’d not only perfectly replicated the drawing, she’d made several improvements to both its composition and the design of the building. Her use of shadows and the illusion of light made the scene look far more vivid and more real than the original. The windows of the building appeared to be less cluttered together, and Dyeawan moved the main entrance to what seemed to her to be a more logical place to avoid bottling up the people seeking audience inside with those simply moving through the streets.
Dyeawan left the drawing behind as she’d left the star model and went about her day. At breakfast and lunch she was aching to tell Tahei and Riko about the tests, but something held her back. She couldn’t be certain what it was, perhaps her long learned instincts to make herself as small and unobserved as possible. It might’ve been as simple as the fact she hadn’t had friends in a very long time, and she was afraid they might become suspicious or, even worse, jealous.
She continued to wake up to tests for the next four days. The morning after the drawing she found a miniature maze constructed out of sandstone walls set in a box the size of her room’s sea-facing window. The top of the box was covered by glass. A smoothed, rounded pebble had been placed beneath the glass on the outside of the maze. She couldn’t touch it, but she found she could maneuver the pebble by holding and moving the box.
It took Dyeawan precisely eight movements to guide the pebble to the center of the maze.
The morning after that she found a small table that was new to her room, upon which an array of potions and elixirs had been arranged in mostly small vials. A large, bulbous beaker stood at the center of it all. Its viscous contents were a barrage of colors, red stacked upon orange stacked upon green stacked upon lavender. Dyeawan marveled at how, despite being liquid, none of the colored layers ran together.
She’d been provided with an empty beaker the size and shape of the rainbow one, and it wasn’t difficult, even for a mind not belonging to Dyeawan, to discern what she was supposed to do. Never studying or working with potions before, it was the first task to take up an hour of her everyday rounds. She also accidentally dyed half her room a patchwork of colors from the various vials in the process.
Her attempts to mimic the rainbow beaker resulted in a mess of every color bleeding into every other color, no matter how carefully she poured each one, until Dyeawan noticed the weight and thickness of each elixir varied from vial to vial. The heaviest of them was the lavender.
Instead of pouring the lavender first, she tried reversing the process. She poured the red, the top color from the rainbow beaker, into the bottom of her empty beaker. Dyeawan could scarcely believe it as she poured the orange and watched it not only soak completely through the red, but also force every drop of it to the top, the two elixirs remaining completely separate.
The fifth task was a stack of ancient volumes accompanied by a scroll and quill. Questions about the contents of the tomes and their subject matter, largely concerning the laws and doctrine of Crachian society, were penned on the scroll parchment awaiting her answers. Though Dyeawan had only just read her first real book days after arriving at the Planning Cadre, she found she could now absorb every word of a three-hundred-page volume in a matter of an hour or less. She needed only to glance at an entire page to commit its contents to memory, and the meaning of most words she’d never heard before she could intuit from their relationship to the words she did know.
It took her all of a morning and an afternoon to become an expert on Crachian law. The only aspect of it which confused her were why it was written in such an unnecessarily convoluted way with so much excess verbiage, and why every process seemed to include a dozen more steps than were necessary to arrive at the same conclusion.
Most of the questions in the scroll simply required her to remember facts and quotations, but the final one asked her to interpret the overall purpose of the Crachian doctrine.
After a few minutes of thought, Dyeawan wrote down: To confuse people like me.
The sixth task was a small, jade-feathered duck in a straw bottom cage. It was the first one to truly baffle Dyeawan until she saw that the creature was in distress. It was lying on its side, its breathing labored and belly distended. She opened the cage to examine it, out of concern more than anything else. She could feel a small, hard object pressing against the duck’s belly from inside. She could only guess whatever it was would not pass on its own.
Dyeawan had watched more than one person die in that way on the streets.
She rowed herself to the Cadre commissary to see Makai. Despite Tahei’s wonderfully constructed, silent running wheels, the blind cook heard her coming and was smiling before she even entered the kitchen. She asked to see a duck that was being dressed for cooking. As before, Makai asked her no questions, simply gave her what she needed. She scrutinized a freshly slaughtered duck, inside and out, for the better part of a half hour.
When she was done, Dyeawan requested a finger of Makai’s strongest spirit, one of his sharpest boning knives, twine, needle, and a handful of clothespins. She was relieved to find the duck still breathing when she returned to him with the kit she’d assembled. Dyeawan fed him wine from a thimble until the lids of his tiny eyes began to droop heavily. She cut low and shallow just below his belly, careful to avoid the area where she’d seen so many small organs.
Prying what turned out to be a bound stack of coins loose of the duck’s gizzard was a simpler process than she’d thought. There was less blood than she expected, and he barely moved during the impromptu surgery. Stitching the incision closed proved to be the difficult part. Dyeawan realized the twine from the commissary was far too thick; she had to carefully strip single threads from it one at a time. Fortunately she had the clothespins to use as makeshift tourniquets.
She returned to her room after lunch to check on the duck, who Dyeawan had secretly and unbeknownst to him named Greenfire. Not only was he still breathing, he actually quacked as she rolled into the room.
It was after that test that Dyeawan finally opened up to Tahei and Riko. They were all eating dinner, Tahei loudly slurping his noodles as she’d become accustomed to both watching and hearing him do, when she told them both she’d been waking up to find a new task in her room every day for the past week.
“Building the wooden star and the pebble in the maze were two of the tests they gave me when I first came to the Cadre!” Riko informed her brightly.
Though Dyeawan had formed her suspicions, much of her still refused to believe them. “Really?”
Riko nodded excitedly.
“You too, Tahei?”
The eldest of the trio shook his head. “N
o. I’m a builder, remember? All my tests were smithing metals.”
That gave Dyeawan pause. “So… neither of you had to save the duck?”
Riko laughed. “No! My hands stayed one color too.”
She reached across the table and pinched Dyeawan’s forefinger, shaking it. There were still faint traces of the colored potions seeped into her skin.
Dyeawan smiled, but she couldn’t help puzzling over what appeared to be an oddity among Planning Cadre recruits. “Then… why me? Why so many different tests?”
Tahei shrugged. “Maybe they don’t really know what you’re good at and they’re trying to find out. They did bring you to clean and make deliveries, after all.”
“Anybody can see you’re capable of more than that, Slider,” Riko assured her with a reprimanding look at Tahei.
His eyes widened. “That isn’t what I meant! I know how smart you are, Slider.”
“It’s okay,” she said. “I don’t… I didn’t expect any of this. I’m happy just to be here. I’m more than happy. I’m… lucky. Fortunate.”
She annunciated the word carefully. It was obviously the first time she’d said it aloud.
“Well, all that reading is certainly showing,” Riko said, sounding genuinely proud of her.
On the seventh morning the tasks stop appearing at her bedside. Dyeawan wakes to an otherwise empty bed and an equally empty room. By her reckoning she has been tested in almost every basic skill used by members of the Planning Cadre, and on virtually every floor, save the builders. She expected a building test today, something they would’ve given Tahei. Dyeawan wonders briefly and with a sinking in her chest if she hasn’t done as well on the previous tasks as she thought.
Then she remembers the lamp she built, the one she presented to Edger that made him act so oddly with her.
THIRTY TONGUES AND NOT A WORD SPOKEN
LEXI AND TARU DISEMBARK THE sky carriage three blocks from the Capitol’s Aegin Kodo. The only even slightly satisfying aspect of the events of the past week, at least for Taru, is that they’ve provided proof of an existing imminent threat to Lexi; as such, she’s finally agreed to use the ascendancy reserved for Gen members rather than the public staircase.
“Accepting that it’s not my place to question Te-Gen’s stratagems or decisions—”
“I really do wish you’d stop that,” Lexi urges them, exasperated, as the two take to the narrow streets together. “Gen Stalbraid currently consists of just the two of us. I can scarcely afford to feed or shelter you. It’s almost laughable to keep referring to you as my ‘retainer’ when I’m offering nothing in retention.”
“Then what are you saying, Te-Gen?”
“At this point you’re either my partner or my former employee. Choose.”
“I serve Gen Stalbraid,” Taru says without hesitation and with the firmest of resolve. “I always will.”
“Good, then that’s settled. If you feel seeking this man out and taking him into our confidence is a mistake, tell me and I won’t do it.”
“I am… uncertain, Te-Gen.”
“Well, when you are certain, let me know so I can either stop walking or hasten my speed.”
Taru frowns. “I do not understand why you are so quick to trust him. I… find it highly convenient he was the Aegin to respond to our request after you were attacked. That we should meet the one honest man to wear that tunic.”
“You are right to be suspicious, Taru. Of course you are. Perhaps I want to trust him. Perhaps it is because he reminds me very much of Brio.”
“He is not Brio, Te-Gen,” Taru insists with a resentful edge.
“Of course he isn’t. No one else is. However, Brio was the one honest man in a sea of predators and cheap opportunists. He chose scarcity and the scorn of lesser pleaders over playing their game and using the people of the Bottoms as pawns for his own personal gain. Such men do exist, though they be few and far between. If you had met Brio now, not known him for so much of your life, you might think him too good to be true, as well.”
Taru seems to unwillingly consider that scenario. “It is… possible I would think that, yes.”
“I want to believe this Daian is a man like my husband. Yes, we met at an opportune time. Yet so much has gone so disastrously wrong as of late I choose to believe we were owed a small victory, if even by accident or pure chance.”
Taru almost laughs at that. “I suppose we were due.”
Lexi’s expression, however, turns very serious. “I may be wrong, Taru. I may be fatally mistaken, in fact. But here and now I choose to hope. Am I mad?”
“No, Te-Gen.”
“Then you are with me still?”
Taru can’t help but grin. “I follow your lead, Te-Gen. You’ve seemed to know precisely what you’re doing thus far.”
Lexi laughs hollowly. “I only wish.”
The Kodo is where the Capitol’s guardians of day and night go to receive training in the application of Crachian law and learn Aegin methods and procedures. The building itself is a three-tiered structure of bamboo and ceramic filling a corner only a few blocks from the Spectrum itself. A bright red awning falls over each tier, and upon each of those roofing layers is painted the Aegin symbol of the owl’s claw.
“Perhaps you should wait out here while I inquire,” Lexi suggests to Taru.
Taru frowns. “I have no fear of Aegins in any number, Te-Gen.”
“I’m aware of that, and though they no doubt should, they don’t seem to have a fear of you, either. Combined with the irrational animosity so many of them seem to feel toward you I’d rather not needlessly provoke any altercation, especially now. I need you too much, Taru.”
It’s that last admission that seems to quell Taru more than anything.
“Very well. I will remain right outside the doors.”
“Thank you, my friend.”
Lexi briefly clasps a hand around Taru’s gauntleted wrist before drawing up the hem of her wrap to ascend the front steps of the Kodo.
She returns a few minutes later, much to Taru’s relief.
“Thankfully,” she says, “our man is training in the dojo today.”
She is thankful for the sole reason they won’t be required to spend any length of time inside the Kodo. Its dojo is housed on a patio detached from the corner of the building at the end of the block. Slender columns and a sturdy roof are all that obscure the dojo from the outside; Crache likes the citizens of its cities to watch their Aegins in training, feeling it inspires potential recruits and instills reverence in everyone else.
Lexi and Taru walk the length of the building’s exterior until they reach the edge of the open-air dojo. A small crowd, mostly children, has gathered on the sidewalk, looking in on the class with interest. The duo can hear the collective kiai of dozens of young voices before they look upon its source.
A group of thirty acolytes are spaced an arm’s length apart in rows of six atop a straw practice mat. The edges of their daggers are all blunted for training purposes. Over their keikogi they wear a series of straps connected to strategically placed leather pads protecting their most sensitive and commonly struck areas: the heart, collar, crotch, thighs, and the middle of the abdomen.
Beyond the mat, at the head of the class, Daian leads the trainees with a practice dagger of his own.
“One, five, three!” he calls out, then performs a series of slashes and thrusts with his dagger at different angles and different levels.
The acolytes filling the mat mimic Daian’s expert movements to the best of their abilities. Two other Aegin instructors, meanwhile, pace up and down their ranks, barking corrections at anyone failing to match the form to their satisfaction.
Daian calls out a different series of numbers in no order Lexi can follow and performs another sequence of strikes with the training blade.
“Are you familiar with this form of knife play?” Lexi asks her retainer, quietly.
“The dagger was the first weapon Brio’s father taught
me, because I was so small.”
Lexi grins. “When were you ever small?”
Taru stiffens self-consciously. “Comparatively, I mean.”
“What do the numbers mean, then?” Lexi asks.
In answer, Taru points inside the dojo, high above the heads of the instructor and his trainees. There’s a large canvas hanging from the ceiling. The outline of a human body is sketched upon it, and over that a series of straight lines has been drawn, four of them, all intersecting in the center of the illustration. Large numbers are painted beside and correspond to each line. The same is true of the fields created between the lines. The former obviously relates to slashing, while the open areas relate to thrusting.
“I see,” Lexi says, watching Daian intently.
He guides the class through several more sequences before a downward slash pulls his body in Lexi’s direction. He spots her and Taru standing at the edge of the crowd gathered beyond the dojo floor. There’s surprise, then an undeniable pleasure in his eyes as he looks upon them.
“Class, return!” he calls out, lowering his dagger to his side and standing straight.
All thirty acolytes adopt a neutral stance reflecting his.
“Form for sparring!”
The mat empties, each trainee sprinting and kneeling along its edge until they surround the entire square of straw and canvas.
Daian takes the opportunity to walk to the dojo floor’s edge in front of Lexi and Taru. He kneels there, bowing his head with a smile.
“Te-Gen,” he greets her. “Or Lexi. I remember your instructions.”
Lexi bows. “Daian. It is not our intention to interrupt your class.”
He waves his training blade in dismissal. “That’s all right. It’s rare we receive such esteemed patronage. What can I do for you?”
“A word in private,” Lexi says, her tone turning more serious.
Daian hears the urgency barely contained there, and his expression darkens for it.
“Of course,” he says, motioning them both to a staircase leading up onto the platform.