Quibble, 61. Argument

When she reunites with her son after nine years’ absence, Nish faces a painful choice.

renum

61. Argument @Definition

Now in very life all the dust scattered around me had risen and taken a form, but it wasn’t that of a statue. Index lived. And nearly as soon as I learned he lived, I learned that now, of all times, was the worst time for our reunion.

What did you see when you popped into the vale? Iklil asked me as I sat on a ledge in the cave behind my son’s rude hovel, listening to him recount Quibble’s sojourn there. Tell me honestly, Nish.

Quote. He was holding Quibble’s hand, trancing her. Alnasl grabbed her, then all three of them popped out.

And didn’t come back. Holding hands, you say? What else did you see?

I closed my eyes, resigned. Amber light, I admitted.

You know what you have to do, Iklil said, not without sympathy. He didn’t press the point further, for which I was grateful.

It took me only a few minutes to explain the game afoot to Index. He didn’t balk at what I asked of him. He closed the door of the hovel in which he and Clarity lived, and with one word to the wolf – “Glossary” – he set off, leading me out of the Vale of Teeth. Leading me away from him and everything he had waited nine years to reclaim.

But he’s alive! I thought to myself, again and again, perched in the saddle as Moth trailed my son and his seeing-eye wolf along a path curving ever more to the southwest, uphill, through the Vale of Teeth. I couldn’t really believe it. The miracle of it. Alive!

Clearly, he’d known I too was alive, and he’d been waiting for the day we would meet again. He said he had regular news of me from the silence Aladfar. Remembering how close Indication and Aladfar had been prior to Quibble’s arrival, I wondered if this was yet another secret Cate had kept. No, that’s silly, I thought, Cate wouldn’t have put up with it. He saw what grief did to me.

Now I had to reckon with what it did – with the statue’s fixity. At twelve years of age, now independent of everyone but Clarity and sometimes Glossary, the boy calling himself Nemo – I could just imagine Quibble smiling over that name – was not Index as I knew him, frozen in time, forever a boy of three. By the count of Ones, he was almost a man. He had his own ideas.

“Yes,” he sighed when I asked if he remembered how I once held him aloft and said he was dreaming. “Please don’t pick me up, mother. Clarity might bite you. Maul you, even. She doesn’t know who you are, and I’ve got no way of telling her that.”

“Look,” I said, out of sorts, “I think there’s going to be a war.”

“Oh?”

“The news I bear. I think it means—”

“The amber glass is that important?”

“In Quote’s hands? Yes.”

“Then let me guess: ‘Darling Index, please come home with me.’ My answer is no. If there’s a war, I can’t be of any use in it. I’ll only be a burden to you.”

“I didn’t say I’m going to fight!”

“Aren’t you? If it’s so important?”

“I mean I haven’t made up my mind.”

“You’d better, and quickly. The lady Vega faces no adept of utter control. Her foe is an excelsior, and now she’s lost her own. Do you know what utter control is, mother? What they want? What they’ll do?”

“They’ll enslave all the Ones and even the Zeros.”

“Worse! They’ll kill all the Dazed and Adroit.”

“Heretics?” I said, only half in question.

“Precisely. Whatever their plan is for taking control Within, they can’t risk heresy mucking it up. The only sure way—”

“But you think you’re safe in the Vale of Teeth?”

“Safer. I have Clarity, and if I need them, I have the pack. Do you know what a glass can’t make wolves do? Turn on each other.”

“These Zeros carry daggers.”

“I know.”

“You seem to know a lot,” it occurred to me.

“Quibble told me her story.”

A slyness in Index’s tone made me skance him. One hand was buried in Clarity’s fur. The other trembled slightly as it swung with his gait.

“No, you knew,” I said, though I worried it undermined a foundation of trust barely laid. “You already knew, didn’t you? All about her!”