Quibble, 26. Road
Quibble learns the fate of Citation, an excelsior Vega fostered, and gets a stern warning from Rasalased.
26. Road @Quibble
The next two days, Think and Sing, passed without incident. Alnasl spent nights on guard outside my cell’s door, but otherwise I never saw him, nor another Zero, even Aladfar. I went about the hardest work I could find – I milked cows, laundered clothes and hung them to dry, groomed horses, scoured in the scullery – and tried not to think about things. That was of course contrary to the very idea of Think, a day reserved for thinking. But I was Adroit – I admit I thought myself a bit above the Dazed’s habits.
You, who are Numberless and pass your days in blank reverie with a glass, may find the cycle of days for a Dazed Without even stranger than Ones’ customs of naming. The cycle went Sing, Study, Work, Speak, Touch, Think. On each day at the monastery, Dazed made time to do as the day directed. Sing was my favorite day, for even as One, nothing gave me greater pleasure than singing. The Dazed began Sing with lauds, with the glory of singing with others as dawn broke through the chapel windows. On the next day, Study, Dazed visited the monastery’s library, but they didn’t stay – they chose a book and took it to their cells. Cate and I often read to each other on Study; when we didn’t read, we talked. Cate was adroit at both, if at nothing else. When Work arrived, Dazed spent no time lazing. They returned books to the library on Speak and stayed to talk about them. I had wonderful conversations then. In the evening, adroitnesses spoke to each other, sharing the fruits of the day’s speech and clearing the air of whatever hung there. The next day, they touched in adroitness. Then, on Think, the Dazed remained solitary and thought about their touching.
Each day disposed a Dazed to the next day’s doings. Singing lifted spirits to a realm suitable for study. Reading was best followed by working, to remind Dazed that work, not the fantasyland of texts, gave them the means of life Without. People liked to speak after working, and they’d had a day to contemplate what they read before talking about it. Adroitnesses couldn’t touch with conflicts unresolved. Touch led to thought, in which Dazed sought out the mystery’s meaning. Think’s solitude prepared them for the togetherness of Sing, which dispelled a thought’s shadow. I understood from Cate that this cycle was by design. According to the scrivener Calculation, Ankaa designed it.
At the consensus down the mountain, the Adroit kept the names of the days but abandoned the Dazed’s logical system. It thrilled me at first but gradually disappointed me. In that bustling place, every day was really a labor – that is, Work.
At lauds on the song, Nish and I rose and went to the chapel together. Filled to our brims with the night’s long lovemaking, we found it hard to part ways and take our posts – me among the altos, Nish an ululating coloratura among the sopranos. Cate saw us holding hands, told us to break it up, and said he wanted to talk to us both.
We held our discussion in the library after lauds. It was a cramped place, only thrice the size of my cell and packed with books. A poor carpenter must have built the bookshelves lining the walls. They were bowed from the weight of heavy tomes. In the room’s midst were sturdier shelves Bibliography had built. He’d also built three reading chairs, upholstered in wool, with backs that ingeniously adjusted by the relocation of a single slat. The chairs were lined up beneath the windows in one wall, facing the center of the room, so readers got good light.
Nish and I sat with hearts aglow from chorusing. Cate was a great deal more serious, brooding at times, and fidgety.
“The two of you are being rash,” he said to us. “Don’t you think you can fool me. I know what’s happened.”
“Cate—” Nish began.
“I’m not saying I disapprove. But it’s plain you spent last night together. Did you once consider it was Think? That you should spend the thought alone?”
“Why?” I said, smarting. This reminded me too much of Unity. “We’re Adroit.”
“You aren’t thinking! Either of you!” Cate drummed his fingers on the arm of his chair. “Quibble, Utopia warned you of following Vega. Do you intend to follow her into kindness? If you don’t, you’ll be at control’s mercy. If you do...”
Trailing off, he skanced me. I read fear in it.
“I don’t know,” I told him. “What does Vega want of me? I’m not about to stumble off blindly into the blue to raid a dragon’s hoard like the fellow in that book—” I pointed to a volume on a nearby shelf. “—because a passing wizard put me up to it.”
Nish laughed, and Cate shot her a dour skance.
“I’m glad to hear it,” he went on. “What Vega wants or expects – that’s the question.” He went on drumming absently a while. “I’ll tell you a story. Some years before Nish came Without, we had an amazingly gifted Adroit here, Citation. Brave lad, very kind. Cite had keen eyes. Gloss trained him into a fine huntsman.”
Cate seemed lost in recollection, so I prompted, “Was he an excelsior?”
“I think he excelled an orb to come Without. He never did again, as far as I know. Nevertheless, with Alnasl’s help – the vision was her adept then – Vega took Cite under her wing. And she insisted he had excellence.”
“Hold up a sec,” Nish interjected. “We’re tossing around a term, and I haven’t a clue what it really means. What is excellence?”
“From what I’ve read, various things,” Cate told us. “I’m not sure all excelsiors have the same powers. Some escape orb-dream, some a Zero’s glass-dream – as Utopia said, they’re not the same. I think excellence is preternatural adroitness. When Zeros fight, they need their glasses, especially ambers, to fight off dreams. But the excelsior in full power doesn’t. He fights off dreams innately, with mere force of will.”
“I couldn’t fight off the kindness I held,” I acknowledged, not wanting this fact pointed out to me. “The dream took me, and I forgot I was supposed to end it. I see why getting the idea you can excel is dangerous if you really can’t.”
“Do you? Do you think Cite’s story ends with a Zero killing him? No, it wasn’t that straightforward. If Alnasl hadn’t been there, I think Utopia would have showed you. The lady of kindness talked Cite into a mad plan. She believed he could turn orbs kind, as One does in The Eyes of the Excelsior. If you recall, in the Large Spiral, Without – usually moonlight – enters the Depth of Night during Fear and strikes an orb which gives no dream. Unity speaks through the light, and that’s the birth of One’s faith. But what if there were a dream? What if that orb shone blue?”
“Then,” Nish posited, “One could begin faith with kindness.”
“Vega’s notion exactly,” continued Cate. “Let’s review the facts. Zeros have no part in what the orb in the Depth of Night does. It has no color. One has a direct, dreamless communion with Unity. So, how do you interfere with that? The only way is changing the nature of the light entering the Depth of Night, the nature of Without itself. Vega convinced Cite he could do that. He entered 17-Utopia’s hub during the young Ones’ Fear, and Utopia interposed the hub between the sun and the Depth of Night, using Its prism to communicate with Unity.”
I held my breath, anticipating what came next. Cate’s story reminded me of the tale Unity told Ones about the ghosts at tarry-nots. It wouldn’t end well.
“Cite burned alive. He disintegrated into dust.”
I sat in stunned silence. Nish laid a hand on mine. “Without is annihilation,” she said, almost breathlessly.
“Indeed it is,” Cate remarked. “You see, Quill, there’s a grain of truth in all Unity says, though It may seem to lie. I think that confession – ‘Without is annihilation’ – was originally an edict meant for both Zeros and Ones. It forbade them to attempt what Cite did. Perhaps Vega was aware of this, perhaps not. She should have been aware.”
Cate punctuated his last words with a raised index finger. I took it to amplify the skepticism Utopia urged about the lady of kindness.
“As to what she wants now, what she has in mind for you—”
“Point taken,” I said. “Kindness is an ideology, like control. It has traps. Vega walked into one. I won’t blindly follow. But in all of this – a burst orb, excellence, kindness and control – you’ve forgotten what I want, Cate. I’ll barter with the lady of kindness if I must, but I’m going to get it.”
Nish skanced me vaguely, and I sighed.
“I haven’t forgotten,” Cate told me. “I want the same thing. Where’s Quiddity?”
We loaded the cart with wool that evening and set out on the forest road the next morning at dawn. The Zeros didn’t appear. For an hour or more, all was peaceful. Then we began hearing the Zeros’ pop! now and again as they shadowed us. The snaps of the teleporting Zeros sounded at first ahead, then behind us.
At the first echo behind, Nish startled and pulled up on the draft horse’s reins. The echo died. She clicked her tongue. Moth walked on. Then pops started to sound ahead and behind at once. Frazzled, Nish reined Moth in again, stopping the cart for good. A minute passed. Then a Zero I didn’t recognize popped onto the road just before us. Tall and ginger in complexion, she wore a black cloak, the token of high rank.
Nish furtively skanced side to side. “Lady, will you give us the road?”
“Why do you stop here?” the Zero said.
At once I knew she was Rasalased, the head of the lion, the lady of the Large Spiral who once kept a secret with me. When Nish didn’t answer her, she withdrew her right hand from her cloak. That hand should have held her amber – the Zeros’ prescription, Alnasl had told me – but instead it held a lit red glass. No dream image appeared. I only heard the Zero’s voice and felt the force of her will channeling through it.
Answer me: why do you stop here?
We hear Zeros popping, I answered. They’re spooking my adroitness.
But not you? You’re not frightened?
No. I’ve done some popping of my own lately.
Rasalased asked no more, but her glass-dream grew suddenly stronger, brighter. Without being told, I knew she wanted me to take Moth’s reins. I almost did: I laid a hand on Nish’s hand. Feeling her touch, a thought came to me, unbidden but clearly my own thought, not part of Rasalased’s control: Pain, touch, a thing.
Involuntarily I kicked against the cart’s footrest with my left foot. The throbbing pain of the sprained ankle returned. As it climbed my calf, bringing me back to myself, in an instant I realized the Zero’s glass itself was a thing, merely a thing, and I fell out of Rasalased’s dream.
I shook a bit. Sweat had broken out on my forehead. I let go of Nish and skanced her. Her eyes were still locked on the glass, engrossed in dream.
I climbed down from the cart and approached Rasalased, staring her in the eyes. She took a step back. Her glass stayed lit. I fought my still-strong instinct to look at it, to give myself to dream. Pain, touch, a thing. I stomped my foot to revive the ankle’s throb, dug my fingernails into my palms. I looked Rasalased dead in the eyes and told myself they were things, just things. Accidentally collected stardust, refinements of living tissue bred by natural selection – mere matter. I stood before the Zero.
“Release her.”
The control faded, died, went back into Rasalased’s cloak pocket. She stared at me, then smiled a bit. “Good,” she said. “An interesting technique, Quibble.”
Nish’s voice came from behind me: “Quill, get away from her!”
“I’m all right!” I called back, then said to Rasalased, “What are you doing here?”
“Aladfar and Alnasl needed help escorting you. They’re circling us, farther out. My adept and I are keeping you in espying range. Those were our pops you heard.”
“Well, you’re doing it wrong,” I sighed, amazed I had to teach Zeros such a thing as tactical maneuvering. “Call in your adept.”
Rasalased closed her eyes, intoning. In a spurt of light, the other Zero appeared at her side. The pop sounded faintly, somewhere ahead of us, just as the light spread into the adept’s extremities and she fully took her form. She was shorter than her lady, and her cloak was maroon. She pulled back the hood to reveal sharp eyes set in a bland face. For a moment, I was so struck by the oddness of the contrast that I failed to notice the oddest thing: the large irises of the Zero’s eyes were not wholly black but flecked with gray, distinguishing the pupils, and this was what made them seem sharp. “Hello again,” the adept said.
“Hello, Alsephina. Look, the two of you have got to stop popping. You’re telling our progress to everyone for miles, and you’re scaring the hell out of my adroitness too. We’re going slow – just walk. Take diagonal positions, there—” With a hand held flat I pointed ahead to the left, with the other behind to the right. “—and there, and trade off as we go.” Still pointing, I spun forty-five degrees and stopped, then another forty-five to complete a right angle. I dropped my arms. “It should look like pawns walking up a chess board together, supporting each other. Got it?”
The Zeros nodded, giving assent, a slow blink of their eyes. I gave it back. Then both turned the same way, began walking. They halted for a few seconds. Alsephina turned around, and then they tromped off into the forest undergrowth in opposite directions. I stood a moment flabbergasted before climbing back up on the cart.
“They don’t walk quietly,” Nish observed.
“Quieter than popping, and better scaring the deer than us.”
There were no more halts. The road down the mountain was washed out by rain, deeply rutted, and the going was tedious. We wouldn’t make the consensus by nightfall and there was no traveling this road at night, so as the sun sank we began looking for a likely place to camp. The Zeros drew closer, now in sight of us, and Rasalased waved us towards a bend ahead. On its downhill side lay a flat hollow of deep leaves in an aspen grove. Nish said the cart would go down into the hollow but might not come out again. We left it on the road, unharnessed Moth, and began to pitch camp. I was brushing Moth down when the Zeros arrived, flushed and panting.
“How in kindness—”
Alsephina got no more words out. She fell to her knees, coughed hard, and spat. Rasalased rocked on her feet. Seeing me glance at her, she squared her shoulders as if to say she walked a way to and from the Depth of Night and collapsing here was beneath her dignity. She waited for Alsephina to recover, helped her up. They exchanged looks.
“We’d be useless going up the mountain,” the adept said, and her lady chuckled.
“Are you two faithful?” I asked.
Both Zeros realized they were holding hands, let go, and quickly stepped away from each other. “Of course not!” said Rasalased, her voice edged. “She’s my adept.”
“I don’t care. I didn’t make the edict.”
Edict decreed Dazed and Adroit ought to be homosexual, but it gave Zeros other strictures. A lord or lady should not take their adept, and an adept should not take their protégé – of whichever sex – as a faithfulness. It struck me as authoritarian and illogical. Shouldn’t Zeros be free to love and to have their own children? Wouldn’t it make them better caretakers of the Ones, not worse?
In the aspens’ gloom, we settled to a supper of gruel. It was altogether cheerless. Nish, smarting at having been controlled, shot Rasalased poisonous skances. Alsephina looked at me with seeming suspicion, perhaps worried I now had a power over her and the lady at her side. I decided to remind everyone that we had to work together.
“Do you think we’ll be attacked tonight?” I asked Rasalased.
“Too much moonlight,” she noted, gazing through the trees at the gibbous moon just rising over the shoulder of the mountain. “Zeros dislike fighting in the light, control most of all.”
“That’s what I don’t get,” Nish said. “Why you two? What’s a lady of control and her faithfulness – pardon me, her adept – doing on our side?”
Alsephina gave her lady a sidelong look, a skance – the first I’d ever seen a Zero give another. In response, Rasalased held out a hand. Alsephina took it. The two stayed silent, staring at us across the low fire.
“It’s because they’re faithful,” I guessed.
“We don’t agree with edict,” Alsephina admitted. “We’d like to see it changed.”
Nish scoffed. “Why do you think an excelsior can change it?”
“Kindness wants Ones to come Without,” the adept explained. “If they do, edicts could be relaxed, maybe abolished. We could stop hiding.”
“Quibble isn’t taking the Ones Without!” Nish objected.
“I don’t really imagine so,” said Rasalased. “It’s clear you excel, Quibble. I knew it when you saw shadows at Fear. Your gift is remarkable. Vega believes you’re kind, but I believe she’s playing with fire. I told her so before Epigraph’s rectification.”
I set down my bowl. “What do you mean?”
“Vega fails to consider other possible outcomes. A mirror has two faces – yang and yin, if you like. I don’t know whether an excelsior of kindness would be a blessing. Perhaps so. But what of an excelsior of utter control? What would she be?”
As Rasalased spoke, her stare grew hard, probing. Feeling affronted, I began to protest: “I would never—”
“You’re briefly Without, an errant One little more than a child,” said the lady of control. “You don’t know what you will and won’t do.”
Nish stood up, wrath flashing in her face. Knowing how she could spit thorns, I dreaded the dressing-down the Zero was about to get. But Nish said only, “I’m glad we had this talk,” and hurling her bowl away, she walked off. Moth whinnied in the dark beyond the firelight as Nish murmured to him. She loved animals and always went to them with her grievances.
“You got off light,” I said to Rasalased, then rose myself and ducked into the pup tent. Nish joined me a little later. We stripped and lay against each other. Nish flung an arm over my belly, pressed her cheek to my breast. It felt hot and wet – she was crying. As I ran my fingers through her hair, I tried to think of our good fortune in having each other and making no secret of it, unlike the two Zeros, lady and adept.
Yet other thoughts nagged me: Whence Vega’s belief in my kindness, if she has such a belief? What if Rasalased is right? And though Nish wouldn’t say it, she thought the same. That was why she cried.