Quibble, 28. Burden
Faced with the Adroit's hostility, Quibble makes an unlikely friend — an outcast Far.
while wend
28. Burden @Quibble
Stepping out the cottage door the next morning – the third speech in the heat – at once I felt a different pulse in the life of the consensus. Adroit worked and went on their ways as busily as the day before, but now they seemed sullen and aggrieved, as if their work lacked rhyme and reason. I soon learned why. Faces which yesterday greeted me with smiles now frowned on seeing me. Eyes which had met mine turned away. With a sinking heart I realized that everyone in the consensus knew who I was, and in less than a day I had transformed in their minds from a bearer of good tidings into a bad omen. I had been a heroine of some sort, but now I was only a burden.
Nish didn’t seem to notice, or at least she didn’t remark on it. The constant noise bothered her. We were both used to the monastery’s tranquility, and Nish more or less needed it. Though she was adroit and hardworking, her diligence was quiet, studious. She took less pleasure in getting a job done than in doing it. The Adroit consensus, so clamorous and bent on finishing things, jarred her nerves. Ting, ting, ting rang out the hammer in the smithy. Clop, clop, clop went horseshoes on the cobbles, with loaded carts bouncing behind them. “Some mud is a small price to pay for peace,” Nish said.
“I’ll bet the stable’s quiet,” I told her. “You should see if they need help there.”
“Graph said they’re doing fine. I’ll try the kitchens. Where are you going?”
“I’m looking into Cord’s workshop for resurrections.”
Graph had visited us for breakfast, and then it was agreed Nish and I would find work in the consensus at once. No one loafed here, and if we wanted to fit in, we would get ourselves jobs. Graph, though the leader, only assigned jobs for special projects such as the planned factory. He thought it best to let people gravitate to the work they liked. Happiness in work was the Adroit’s harmony, he said, though at times it also collided with their egos. Getting good at a job meant growing attached, taking pride. Reshuffling people when Graph had need of them elsewhere usually proved a hassle.
“What about time off?” I’d asked him. “Do the Adroit have a sabbath?”
“Sing,” Graph said. “Everyone gets a day off each cycle. Now, you don’t have to take it – you can save it. If you like to save your time, you do quiet work on the song. Adroit don’t sing, though. We run ourselves ragged all cycle, then sleep the song away. The consensus becomes a ghost town.”
“But if you’re hardy,” Nish posited, “you can save up and take a long vacation.”
Graph snorted. “And do what?”
“Travel,” I suggested. “Hitch a ride with a rogue Zero, pop around Without.”
“We’re too busy for that, Quill. You can’t save your time off longer than a month. The first song is a bit of a festival, so that doesn’t count. If you save all month, you have four days. You take them after the song and return to work on the first thought.”
“But what if an Adroit wants a long vacation?” I insisted.
“We can’t spare him. What would we do for a blacksmith around here if I saved all year and then took all my time off at once?”
“You could train someone to smith.”
“And take him from his work? Adroit knocking off for eight cycles straight any time they please, making someone else do their jobs? That’s chaos.”
Nish turned an ear to the bustle arising outside the cottage. “I can’t imagine what Adroit do here if they’ve saved their time off,” she said.
“Oh, they clear out of the consensus!” Graph said. “Some keep a garden up on a hill. Some go hunting. The scriveners wander down to the river and just sit and listen to birdsong and write. It’s a good system, really. The Adroit worked it out so that nobody is tied to a schedule they hate.”
I granted that was wise. Privately, I preferred the Dazed’s monastic order, which might be strict but had a steady, purposeful drumbeat conducive to contemplation.
Now, standing in the street watching Nish head off in search of the stable, I gave thought to what work here I was suited for. Cord had said her workshop employed the clever and mechanically inclined. I was nimble with my hands – but was I clever, could I find my way around the workings of a machine? I’d never had the chance to find out. No machine at the monastery was more complex than the water pump.
I stopped a passing Adroit and asked him the way to the resurrection workshop. He pointed towards the outskirts of the consensus. “Fourth ring, next to the hay barn.”
Though the whole consensus appeared to know me on sight, I thought it polite to introduce myself: “I’m Quill, by the way.”
“Sure,” the Adroit said, and he strode away without giving his name.
The rudeness astonished me. Surely I didn’t stand that poorly with the Adroit? If so, what friends would I have here? Cate had said there was safety in numbers, but how much safety could there be in scores of people who wouldn’t even tell me their names?
When I appeared in the workshop’s doorway, Cord at least greeted me warmly: “Quill! I hoped you’d give us a try!” She led me past tables and benches where Adroit worked, some picking at bits of machinery, others carving blocks of wood with delicate knives. No Adroit gave me so much as a skance. Towards the back of the workshop was a high table for standing to work, and across it were arranged, in careful order as if they belonged together, several weather-eaten wooden scraps of various size. Alongside the scraps lay four long, thick wires and metal parts, wonderfully filigreed despite rust.
“That’s the artifact,” Cord said, sweeping her hands wide to indicate the table’s contents. She turned to the corner and gingerly took up by its neck a bulky instrument, four-stringed. “This is the resurrection.”
She sat in a chair with the instrument cradled between her knees, flexed her left hand’s fingers, and with her right retrieved a long, slightly bent wooden rod from the table. At either end the rod curved acutely, and from one end to the other was strung a loose bundle of hair. She twisted a screw at the fat end of the rod, and the hair tightened into a straight line. In quick motion, she ran her left fingers away from herself along the instrument’s neck, pressing its strings against the neck while she pulled the rod’s hair across them. Sound leapt from the resurrection. Cord frowned and twisted a peg in its head, then repeated the process. Then she began to play music from memory.
I stood watching and listening in rapture. The resurrection’s singing quavered at first but gained depth as Cord got her bearings. She wasn’t perfect: occasional screeches marred the music, and once she stopped because she’d forgotten how it went. But to me the performance was breathtaking. When she finished, all the Adroit turned from their worktables and slapped their hands together in the air as a sign of approval. Guessing this was their custom, I joined in.
“It’s marvelous!” I said once the noise died down.
“It’s a cello,” Cord told me proudly. She nodded at a much smaller version of the same instrument hanging from a hook on the wall. “Big brother to the violin.”
“Are all your resurrections musical?”
“Quite few. We need useful resurrections.” The way Cord said useful told me it was a point on which she disagreed with Graph. “Musical resurrection is just a hobby,” she said. “I’ll build a guitar next, if only kindness can find me the artifact.”
Looking at the remains of a long-dead cello on the table, I couldn’t see the least resemblance to the cello Cord held, and I told her so.
“I get schematics from Utopia. Examining the artifacts helps a lot, though.”
“So, if I work here, do you want my help figuring the guitar out?”
Cord laughed. “Kindness, no! That’s advanced stuff, Quill. I start protégés with simple tasks. For you – hmm, let’s see.” She looked across the workshop. “I know!”
Returning the resurrection to its place, she led me now to a very low table tucked into an alcove on the far side of the workshop. There, standing rather than sitting, was a man of such short stature that at first glance I thought he must be a young child. He had intense black eyes, curly auburn hair, stubble rather than beard, and to my amazement somewhat dark skin, like a Zero’s. Not only his table but many of his tools were sized to match him. He glanced at us but kept tapping at a wooden box with a small hammer.
“Good speech, Imay,” said Cord, bending down as if he was indeed a child.
“Good speech, nah,” said the dwarf. His accent was strange, lingering, whispery, breathy. Nonetheless, I detected a tone of exasperation. I touched Cord’s shoulder and jerked my head up a smidgen when she looked at me. She stood erect.
“Quill, for now you’ll help Imay. This cycle, he’s building bird feeders.”
“You feed birds?” I said with an amused grin.
“Either we feed them or they raid the granaries,” Cord said, grinning too. “Better to give up some food than have it all spoiled with bird shit.”
An Adroit at a nearby worktable elbowed another and skanced his eyes towards me. All the Adroit there turned, looked, and laughed. “That’s right,” one of them said in a self-important tone, “put the troublemaker with the imp. They’ll suit each other fine!”
Cord wheeled on them, and their faces froze.
“Mark I mean it well, the lot of you better hold your tongues,” she said. “I know a blacksmith who has just the irons for burning them out of your mouths.”
She gave me no direction, leaving me to follow Imay’s lead. Indeed the work was simple. The table was piled with neat stacks of inch-thick wood, already sawed to the wanted dimensions. I had only to figure out how to operate the vise on my side, how to hammer, and which planks to nail together in what order. I couldn’t stand and work, so I asked to borrow Imay’s chair. He nodded curtly. It was uncomfortable to sit in.
Once I had a start, I skanced Imay, curious, and said, “Your name is...?”
“Selah-isleh-imay, Isleh-nahli-imay, Isleh-nahli-sah-imay, Uhn-say-ayzhed-nahli-imay,” he said. “Just call me Imay.”
“That’s a Far name?”
“Yes, I am Far.”
“Isleh is a tribe, I know that. What’s ‘nahli’?”
Imay sighed. “Burden.”
“You’re the tribe’s burden?” I said skeptically.
“I was.” For a long moment he was quiet, and I thought I’d get no more about it out of him. Then he continued, “Nahli depend on the nah. My family, the Selah, did not want me. They disregarded my im.” He spat. “The nah took me above his shield.”
“And what’s ‘im’?”
“We are the same.”
I shook my head, and Imay laid down his hammer. He turned to me and pressed both hands together at his chest, the fingers of the left atop the right. Then he extended his hands open towards me, symmetrical with each other, cupping the air. He nodded as if encouraging me to do likewise, so I reciprocated the gesture.
“Yes, like that. We give to each other freely. We share because we are the same. That is im.”
I puzzled over it a moment. “Oh! Equality! We’re equals.”
Imay smiled, picked up his hammer again, and began tapping in a nail. As he worked, he explained the story behind the long name he had given, but in one part – when he forsook the name Isleh-nahli-sah-imay and began to call himself Uhn-say-ayzhed-nahli-imay – I sensed he was leaving something out, skipping over a detail. I let it pass without remark. “And what is your name?” he finally asked.
“Quibble, but folks call me Quill.”
His hammer glanced off the head of a nail, and he gave me a disbelieving stare. “You are the Qeht-uhn-far-jah-im-li-djer? No! Surely you joke with me?”
“I’m Quibble, that’s all,” I said with a shrug. “If all those words mean ‘excelsior,’ yes, I am. I’m not joking.”
Oddly, Imay seemed pleased. He now took it as a compliment that I was put to work alongside him. “The nah regards my hel,” he said. I pointed out that Graph, not Cord, was the nah, or chief, of the consensus. Imay smirked. “Ayzhed-nah-cord decides for all of us.” He gestured broadly to indicate the entire workshop.
As he went on working, he asked about what an excelsior was, what I did. I told him what Cate told me, adding ideas of my own gleaned from experience and inference about Meissa’s story. Now that I said it aloud to someone with no stake in the matter, it sounded quite silly, the stuff of a fanciful imagination. The Far took it seriously, though. He believed in the fanciful. He explained at length that his name for me, Qeht-uhn-far-jah-im-li-djer, meant I was a spiritual familiar to Ones and disputed with Zeros on equal footing. He said, from what he heard of me, he’d expected me to be a ghost or a demon. From all this, I began to get some notion of what the Adroit were saying of me.
About noon, someone came to the workshop’s door and blew a whistle. Adroit put down their tools at once, whatever they were doing, and began filing out the door. Imay and I were last in line. We followed the crowd into the heart of the consensus. It turned out to be the signal for the midday meal: the Adroit all ate together on benches set up on one side of the Axle, near the kitchens. I found Nish talking with a cook, who leaned on a doorpost puffing a pipe. She was giving him an earful, critiquing a recipe, and he saluted me with the stem of his pipe as I dragged her away.
“Come on, Nish! I want you to meet someone.”
When she caught sight of Imay and saw I meant to introduce him, Nish stopped and took my arm, turning me away.
“That’s the Far imp!” she scolded. “Quill, what sort of friends are you making?”
“What sort of talk are you listening to?” I shot back, keeping my voice low. “He’s a dwarf, and he’s the most polite person I’ve met today. Call him Imay, not ‘imp.’ If you can’t be nice to him, go eat by yourself.”
Nish frowned but turned back wordlessly towards Imay. I said, “Imay, this is my adroitness, Nish.” Then, with a nod towards the Far: “This is Uhn-say-ayzhed-nahli-imay.”
To my joy, Imay rose and repeated for Nish the gesture of equality he’d given me in the workshop. Nish skanced me, baffled. “Give it back,” I whispered. Once she had, we sat down together with the Far in the middle.
Over lunch, I urged Imay to tell Nish what song the Adroit were passing around about me now. He was candid, seeming to think he owed them no discretion, and as he spoke, moment by moment I could see Nish’s opinion of him rise. Whatever ugly things she’d heard about him – the taunt of the Adroit in the workshop gave me a clue – she had the sense to recognize an ally and a good source of news when she met one. By the time dessert arrived, the two of them were getting along well.
Another whistle blew across the Axle. I started to rise, but Imay waved for me to sit down. “Not yet,” he informed me. “We have suhl-nay, time to spare for walking.”
Adroit left the Axle a few at a time, many talking vociferously, in no hurry to get back to their work. When the Axle was mostly clear, Imay hopped off the bench and bid us goodbye, ef-suhl in his tongue, mentioning first that we could stroll at our leisure for a while before reporting for our duties. He ambled off alone, talking to himself in Far.
“You were right, and I’m sorry,” Nish said as we joined the stragglers. “It seems these Adroit sing a lot of nonsense.”
“Graph said a hint’s all it takes. They talk before they know which way’s up.”
“What did Imay call you?”
“Qeht-uhn-far-jah-im-li-djer. Literally, I think, ‘companion of the without people, disputer equal to Zeros.’ How are folks getting that idea?”
Nish was a bit more interested in Far linguistics. “The without people?”
“Imay says the Far believe Ones are walking, breathing ghosts. They think we’re uhn-qah, ‘without blood,’ because we’re naturally albino.”
“Well, they look like Zeros, though I guess they wouldn’t care to admit it.”
“First the Adroit thought I was leading an exodus, now they think I’m stirring up trouble for the Ones,” I said, trying to steer Nish back to the problem at hand. “Should I talk to Graph again? See if maybe he can drop the right hint?”
Nish was about to answer when we heard a faint but familiar cry somewhere in the sky above us. We looked up. Floating high over the hill on the northeast side of the consensus, buoyed on an updraft, was a bird of prey. It circled the hill twice, then broke away and sped east towards the mountain.
“Quill, your eyes overreach mine. Is that—”
“Chap! Yes, it’s Chapter. What’s he doing all the way down here?”
Nish laughed. “Quote sent him! He’s keeping an eye on us!”
I wouldn’t put it past the little sneak, I thought, though I didn’t care to voice such a damning opinion to Nish. Loose talk had already upset our day.
“We’ve rocked the boat enough already,” she observed, returning to our problem with the Adroit. “With how folks blab here, more hints are likely to confuse them. They seem to be tolerating you, so let’s just let it be.”
My adroitness’s expression was at odds with her words. Really, she was worried. She had expected to be embraced by people like herself. Now, I suspected, she found she was more akin in temper and spirit to Dazed than Adroit. Nearer the point, the Adroit saw me, and by extension her, as a burden. Even nearer, I was now her burden. We hadn’t talked at all today of the night’s alarm and quarrel, and I realized we were avoiding the subject. She probably thought I was contemplating her question – “What’s happening to you?” – and would give her an answer when I reached one.
Indeed I was contemplating it, but no answer came yet, and I believed no answer would. And even if it did, I was unsure whether it would then be wise to tell her. An answer, the right answer, and the answer she could accept were three different things, weren’t they?
“Quill,” she said now, “we’ve got to talk, and I mean really talk.”
Sometimes, I mused, walking beside her, I read you like a book.