Quibble, 46. Heart

Nish suffers a loss, puzzles over a mystery, and makes a resolution.

Mar 20, 2025

46. Heart @Definition

On the first labor at the hottest, I rose from bed determined the day should live up to its name. It was drizzling out, and the sky promised more rain, but there was so much work to do now. The year had been cold so far, so we would observe the annual festival between the hottest time and the time of falling, a month earlier than always hoped. During the cycle before the festival, there was always a bustle of activity – carts bearing goods and foodstuffs – on the forest road between the Dazed monastery and the Adroit consensus. This year, people would be preparing for a hard winter. A lot of trade, then. Before Hottest was done, the harvest had to be well under way.

Last night, after my difficult discussion with Cate, the faceless boy and circling wolves had revisited me in my dreams. Washing sleep from my eyes at the basin, I tried to banish all thought of them, also of the image of the sea from atop the westward cliffs.

I wondered how I’d ever get myself into the rhythm of work, feeling as if half of me was missing. In spite of Quote’s early return from hunting and my prior resolution to leave, I had stayed at the monastery. I wouldn’t stay forever. I was awaiting news of Quibble, any news. Without it, I couldn’t move, couldn’t leave, couldn’t contemplate any fate or future for myself. I was stuck.

At least Quote’s made himself scarce, I reflected.

In fact, after he sent Ellipsis to fetch me and I ignored it, I’d caught no more than a glimpse of him, which surprised me. Quote wasn’t One for sulking this long. I would need his help with the harvest. I didn’t yet know just how to deal with him. I decided to put it off until the weather changed.

Looking after matters in the kitchen, I left written orders for the day’s meals with Ell and Nell. Then I went to the byre to make sure Prosody, a towering, well-meaning young man but too distracted even for a Dazed, was doing his work properly. The oxen Puck and Oberon seemed underfed, but the cow Titania was faring well. I found Prose working in the stable and had a word with him about feeding the oxen.

I also found the beginnings of a mystery. I’d counted on the use of all three of our horses, but only Peas-blossom was there. Cobweb and Moth were gone.

“When did Quote leave?” I asked, freshly irritated. It was one thing for Quote to dodge work, but taking two horses with him was beyond the pale.

Brushing Peas-blossom, Prose said, almost offhandedly, “Wouldn’t you know? After the spat between the two Adroit at supper—”

“No, I mean since then. Since he returned.”

“Returned? He’s been gone ever since.”

“Then where’s Moth?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t seen Moth since the morning of the first song.”

“And you didn’t tell me?!”

“You were busy with the Zeros, Adroit. I told Cate.”

Without a word more to Prosody, I left, crossed the cloister to the tower, entered, and started up the spiral staircase to the garret, my mind racing all the while.

I couldn’t explain the discrepancy in Quote’s comings and goings. I remembered hearing the hoofbeats while I sang. Now I knew that had been Quibble riding Moth out, not Quote returning.

And Cate knew all along!

He surely knew, too, that Quibble fleeing on horseback changed the calculus of our search for her.

Now murder really was on my mind, not a mere private jest. This time, I would hurl Cate from his window ledge, and I wouldn’t feel the least bit bad about it. The mad Adroit woman was loose!

I was almost at the top of the stairs when I met Ellipsis coming down in a fluster. “Nish,” she exclaimed, “I was just coming to—”

I pushed past her, threw open the oak-paneled garret door. “All right, you fat old fox!” I snapped. I stopped short and stared.

No chair beneath him, Cate half lay across his book-littered desk.

I strode to him and took his hand. It was cold. I felt for the arm of a nearby chair and fell into it.

Ell reappeared in the doorway. “Is he dead?” she asked.

I looked at her, nodded. Taking a deep breath, I heaved myself up. Feeling as if I’d faint, I walked the two steps back to Cate. I took his wrist and felt for a pulse, as the adept Gienah had taught me to do. No pulse.

In fact, rigor mortis was setting in. He had been dead a while. His mouth hung slack and his eyes were closed. Resting on a book, his left hand was balled into a fist but for the index finger, which pointed at the middle of a page as if indicating a passage.

I lifted the hand and read:

... place to another. Considerable distance is elided. To transport himself, the Zero must touch his amber. To take someone with him, he must touch the amber and his subject simultaneously. Thus, he must travel with his subject.
Whatever the distance elided, for the Zero and the subject the pop happens in an instant. Now you’re here, now you’re nowhere, now you’re elsewhere ...

A generic definition of a Zero’s pop, meaningless. I laid the hand down.

Ell lifted a laden breakfast tray from the floor by the desk. Though she made no sound, I noticed she was crying.

Even after a cycle of nothing but tears, I had none now. Why not?

Mourning waits when there are things to do, I told myself. There was now another funeral to arrange, and I would have to send a message to Graph, too. For now, though, there was the problem of bearing the corpse down the tower’s staircase. It would take two strong men.

“Leave the tray,” I told Ell. “Go fetch Prose. He’s in the stable. Find Riv, too. Tell them both to hurry up here. Then get back to the kitchen. There’s a lot to do today.”

After she left, I paced. The murderous mood that brought me here hadn’t wholly vanished. I felt like breaking things.

My boots grated something on the floorboards. I knelt to look. A purple stain, bits of broken glass. I skanced. The glass made a vague trail that led under a low table.

I pulled the table away from the wall. Atop it, a chess game had been in progress, and a piece, the white queen, toppled and rolled back and forth between two pawns.

On the floor in the table’s place, I found the shards of a wine bottle. This seemed even odder than the absence of the horses. Cate had a habit of leaving books anywhere and everywhere, but he wouldn’t sweep a mess like this under a table and forget about it. A mess swept out of view, I thought, turning back to the corpse slumped over the desk.

Leaning to look Cate in the face, I opened an eye. Iris, red – crimson but for a circlet of natural blue near the edge. I closed the eye.

I resumed pacing, all fidget now.

Rectified. Apply the razor: Zeros came looking for Quibble.

But as a rule, not quite edict, control never entered the monastery. If they dared now, I thought it likely they’d come openly and in force against all of us, as when they took Index. Not skulking and assassinating.

Perhaps this was utter control. Asuja.

But why leave Cate like this? If Cate knew where Quibble was – did he? – and told his assailant under trance, why not hide this murder? It seemed the work of an amateur, not the clever Zero the vision made Asuja out to be.

Clearly, it was done in the night. The assailant counted on the corpse not being discovered for several hours. Why not take the time to clean up the mess and pop away with the corpse, so we wouldn’t notice anything amiss at all? If Indication wasn’t in the garret, well, he might be anywhere, as he liked to wander. Why not make us lose even more time, once we realized he was missing, looking for him? In short, why not make a little more effort and greatly widen the lead?

It could be a message: Don’t follow me – or else!

But what was the point of such a message? We already had a healthy fear of utter control. Even Aladfar was wary of Asuja.

My riddling was interrupted by Prosody’s arrival, then Derivation almost on his heels. The two Dazed lingered just inside the doorway, their eyes downcast, faces void of expression.

“Lift Cate and take him down, but be careful to disturb nothing here,” I enjoined them. “Take him to the chapel. Riv, you ring the bells and gather in the Dazed. Prose, I need you to load a wheelbarrow with firewood. Take it to the pyre in the meadow, where we sang. Take a tinderbox and a scythe with you. Pile the wood up and light it. Once the fire’s going well, cut green grass and throw it on for smoke. Lots of smoke, do you hear? Do it quickly! Don’t stop to talk to any One!”

As I descended the stairs and went to the dormitory, all my doubt and indecision flew the coop. Damn the waiting and the work. What Quibble and I were to each other didn’t matter, either. I wouldn’t stay here while this Zero terrorized the countryside and killed my kin. When Alnasl and Rasalased came to the signal fire, as arranged, I would insist on joining them.

Steeling my nerves, I entered the wasteland of my cell, opened drawers, stuffed clothes in my pack, and donned a fleece-lined jacket from the wardrobe.

The bells were ringing. Almost out the door again, I was irked and turned back. The bed was partly unmade. Oh, kindness, why did I do that?

I stooped to tuck the coverlet in place, rolling my eyes at myself, a creature of habit even when I was in a hurry.

Habit, Nish! Why did you leave it like that?

I yanked the coverlet off to find the volume of Swift’s collected works lying on the bedsheet. I picked it up, turned it on its edge, rifled pages.

A slip of paper fluttered out. Spotting my own handwriting – the flyleaf I’d torn – I tossed the book aside, picked up the note, and unfolded it.

N—
Fleeing. C knows where. Trust no Zero, even kindness. Wait. Then come find me.
I came Without for love – I do know what it is. I love you, and I’m so sorry.
Q

I sat on the bed, note in hand, and pondered. Quibble had not only come to the monastery but spoken with Cate and told him where she was going, so that I could find her when the time was ripe, when all the Zeros had given up the search.

But where? Cate knew where. What hiding place did Quibble know? Or did Cate—

I got to my feet, slung my pack over my shoulder, ran out the door and down the corridors. In the cloister, I broke into a sprint for the tower. In, up the stairs, to the top. My breaths were coming hard and heavy by the time I reached the garret. I hauled in a lungful of air and bent over the open books on Cate’s desk, scanning text.

Where is it? Damn it, where is it? Ah, here! Popping. “Considerable distance is elided.”

I made a fist, extended my forefinger, laid my hand on the page where Cate had. I followed the line my finger described up the page, hunting the text. Nothing of import was there. Then my eyes fell on the header: GLOSSARY.

Suddenly, it all made sense – why Cate had kept Quibble’s whereabouts a secret, why Quibble took Moth, even why Cate’s killer left his body to be discovered.

Quibble asked Cate for a good hiding place. Cate suggested the hermit’s cabin, just within the Vale of Teeth – dangerous territory. Quibble took Moth to travel quickly but without popping and alerting every Zero nearby. She was somewhere to the east of the mountain now.

Control wouldn’t care if wolves got Quibble. They only wanted her dead. They would not venture into the Vale of Teeth themselves to see it done.

As for utter control, Asuja wanted Quibble alive. “He’s trying to make her give him the amber,” the vision had said. Getting what he wanted from Cate but taking no pains to hide the murder, the adept had rushed away from here in a race with wolves for his prize.

We’d better rush, too!

I took the stairs down the tower as fast as I dared, then ran across the cloister and out the west gate. Down the meadow, smoke was rising from the signal fire. Two Zeros popped in. I shouted and ran on, zipping like an arrow towards an unsuspecting heart.