Quibble, 24. Script & 25. Song
As Quibble returns to the monastery, old bonds are shattered and a new one forms.
24. Script @Definition
I’m making a pig’s ear of this!
Laying aside the half-patched tunic, I rose from the wingback chair and paced before the hearth. At each turn, I went farther into the dark corners of the hall. In the other wingback chair facing the hearth sat Cate, holding a wine cup loosely between two fingers. Quote lay before the fire snoring, wrapped in a bearskin with the sheepdog Grammar. Somewhere outside the monastery a wolf bayed, and in the rafters overhead the silver gyrfalcon Chapter flapped his wings. Cate skanced me with annoyance.
“Be still, Nish!” he said. “You’re even giving Chap the jitters.”
I kept pacing. “Where—” I began.
The hall’s great oaken door swung open, and in strode the silence Aladfar. My breath caught in my throat. Behind Aladfar came Quibble, limping, followed by Alnasl. I ran to my adroitness, almost crying with relief.
“I’m all right,” she said.
“You—” I hovered between relief, anger, worry. “You’re hurt?”
“I twisted my ankle, that’s all. It’s not bad.”
“Sit down and let me look.”
Quibble waved a hand at me. “Gienah tended to it. I’m fine.”
“You were in the Egg?” I said, puzzled.
Now she gave me an apologetic stare. “I saw a rectification first.”
“Quill, you promised me!”
“It’s not her fault,” Alnasl put in.
I spun on him: “What did you do? Kidnap her?”
“A momentous thing has happened,” Aladfar said.
“Shut up!” I snapped at him, then said to the vision, “Don’t you Zeros have any consideration for people? I made it clear: not without me. We turned the monastery upside down looking for her. There are wolves about! I was beside myself thinking—”
“Quibble excelled,” Aladfar announced.
“I told you—” His words sank in. “What?!”
“Quibble excelled and broke the rectifier. It was Meissa’s orb, the kind red.”
Glass shattered in the fireplace, startling me. I turned to see Cate leaning on his crutches, eyeing Aladfar head to foot.
“A silence and a vision!” he said. “Nish is right. Never mind alarming us. You really don’t care who you put in harm’s way, do you?”
Aladfar was taken aback – a rare thing to see in a Zero. “My friend—”
“Stuff it, we’re not friends,” Cate shot back. “I should’ve had this out with Alnasl from the start, but I trusted you. He’s Aladfar’s adept, I thought. A silence and a vision – oh, they’ll handle Vega. They won’t let it go too far. They’ll be careful!”
“Be quiet, the lot of you,” Quote moaned as he rolled over to hug the dog.
Smarting at Cate’s rage, Aladfar said nothing. I found myself clutching Quibble’s hand. I led her away from the Zeros, made her sit in the chair at the hearth, and knelt at her feet, laying a hand on her knee and gazing up at her.
“It was a test,” she whispered, “they were testing me.” Fear and dismay mingled in the look she gave me. “Vega tested me. I didn’t do what she expected, but I passed.”
“Silence,” I said, skancing Aladfar, “why’d you bring Quibble back here? Won’t Alioth take her now? Isn’t she safer in the Egg?”
“I insisted,” Quibble said.
“No safer than here,” the silence answered, ignoring her. “We can’t hide her in a hive, either. Control is everywhere. After the orb burst, Vega parleyed with Alioth. She saw no sign he yet believes Quibble broke the orb. Yet. But it’s her opinion we only invite suspicion if we surround the excelsior with Zeros.”
“It’s only a matter of time before the lord of control does suspect,” Alnasl put in. “Utopia was sure of it.”
My anger hadn’t passed, but I put it aside. “How can we protect her?” I asked.
Seeing both Zeros at a loss, Cate lowered himself into his chair with a groan and skanced Quibble harshly. Then he said, “We can’t. She must leave.”
“This is my home,” she replied, returning the skance.
“Hardly, Quill,” said Cate. “You came Without the first speech cool. Now it’s the second touching in the heat. Two months is long enough for a natural Adroit such as you. It’s time you went down the mountain.”
“To Graph’s consensus?” I said skeptically.
“Safety in numbers. You’ll go with her, Nish.”
Now I sank all the way to the floor and let my head rest against Quibble’s thigh. I disliked leaving the monastery, where I had so much work to do, and I disliked the idea of seeing Bibliography myself even more, but both were petty concerns now, compared to keeping my eyes on my adroitness.
Quote looked over his shoulder at us. “I should go too,” he offered.
“You’re needed here,” Cate said to him, casting a furtive skance at me. “Vega is right. If we panic and huddle around Quibble, it puts her more at risk. We have to send her off, but casually. She’ll go on the third study, then. We’ll send a cart by the forest road, a supply run. That means, of course, relying on our careful silence and vision.”
“You can,” the vision said. “We’re enlisting help, and our watch will be careful.”
The two Zeros joined hands, leaving in a wellspring of light, and the thunderclap of their pop-out echoed off the walls. Startled, Chapter flew down from his perch in the rafters to alight on the bearskin just over his master’s shoulder. Quote turned back to face the fire, and I heard him mutter, “We can’t get a wink of sleep, can we, Chap?”
I slept no better than the gyrfalcon. Wolves howled through the night all around the monastery. At every chorus, I started awake as I had at any noise during my first several months newly Dazed. I tried to tell myself there was no use in being anxious.
It worried me that Cate had lost faith in even Aladfar’s caution. But the story we got from Quibble about the day’s events suggested, for all the risks the Zeros had taken with her, they weren’t being wholly reckless. They prized her too much to let serious harm come to her. Even in the misadventure with the Far, I was forced to admit, Alnasl had acted sensibly.
Quibble seemed to know why the Zeros prized her, but her disillusionment with Vega stripped her of some naiveté about their motives. That disillusionment was a blow, I knew. But how far did it go?
What happens will happen, I thought, but it didn’t comfort me. I tossed and turned. Finally, I rose, banked the fire, lit a candle, and picked a book of songs from the shelf. Passing the window on my way back to bed, I caught sight of the moon, large, full, luminous, encircled by a great halo – it looked like a wide-open eye peering through a magnifying glass. I bared an arm and looked at it. In the moonlight, my skin had a faint scarlet sheen, as if a rash were breaking out. Oh, of course that’s it! I thought.
Feeling foolish for forgetting, I shelved the book. Given Quibble’s nature, there was no telling if the fire in her room would be lit, so I picked out a few bright embers from my fire and put them in the brazier. Blowing out the candle, I left, taking quick steps through the dormitory’s corridors. Outside Quibble’s cell, I found Alnasl slumped to the floor, his amber radiating faintly in his open hand. He roused as I approached.
“What are you doing here?” I whispered.
“I said we’d watch. Aladfar is on the parapet, espying.” Noticing my indecision, Alnasl tilted his head towards the cell’s closed door. “Go ahead. I won’t tell a soul.”
The door squeaked as I pushed it ajar and shut it behind me. A low fire burned in the grate. I scraped the brazier’s contents into it and fed it a small log, then set down the brazier soundlessly. I turned to find Quibble sitting up in bed, dressed, with a book in her hands as always. She read more voraciously than any One I’d ever known. She closed the book and looked at me as if she’d expected my arrival.
“Your selenery?” she asked.
I nodded. “Reading by moonlight can’t be good for your eyes, Quill.”
“I see fine in the dark.”
“Why are you dressed?”
“I’m ready to pop out of here in a hurry. Aladfar said control is everywhere. I know they haven’t entered the monastery since—”
Quibble broke off, no doubt at the thought of what she was about to say and how I would take it.
“That’s why Alnasl is right outside?” I guessed.
“He said I have nothing to fear,” Quibble said, then snorted. “Does he really even know? Anyway, he lied to me. He said ‘questions need answering’ when he took me to see the rectification, but they weren’t his questions – they were Vega’s. Utopia hinted at that, and then Aladfar, but I only put it together when Cate spoke of him handling Vega. Aladfar, Alnasl, Vega, kindness knows who else – a neat conspiracy!”
“It was a dirty trick,” I agreed. Then, unsure why I defended them, I said, “Zeros don’t lie, as a rule. Are you sure Alnasl meant to?”
“He lied again, right in front of Utopia, when I showed him the Zero beyond the arc. He pretended not to know him.”
“How do you know?”
“His amber,” Quibble explained. “I could sense the pretense.”
“You don’t think he’s in league with that Zero?”
Quibble chuckled. “No! He’s lying and keeping secrets to protect me, but I wish he’d stop doing it. I wish everyone would!”
Her sudden fierceness stirred me. After her grimness during the confrontation in the hall, I was happy to see again the Quibble I knew, the spitfire. With a shy skance, I pulled the shawl from my shoulders and stepped towards the window, letting its glut of moonlight cascade over me. Quibble watched me but stayed where she was. She laid a hand on the quilt, smoothing it.
“Come here,” she said.
I could find no words. I gave a bare shake of my head.
“Nish, I’m not standing in a window for all Without to see.”
I let out a gasp of relief and found myself smiling at my nervousness. Hurrying away from the window and onto the bed, I lay on my belly and let Quibble draw aside my nightgown’s straps. I expected her touch on my back to bring me a shudder, as it had the last time we practiced adroitness, but it didn’t. It was a wonderful release. A low moan escaped me as my selenery shone and my irritation started to dissipate.
“Nish!”
“What?”
“I read a moon-digit.”
“That’s impossible, Quill.”
“Plain as day! It said, ‘A mere icon.’ What do you suppose that means?”
I flipped over, propped myself on an elbow, and pulled up the hem of my gown to bare a thigh. “Show me,” I instructed.
Quibble traced with a fingertip. The glistening blue script appeared, a confusion of curlicues and squiggles in which I saw no sense.
“No, it’s not—” Quibble drew a breath. “There it is again!”
“What does it say?”
“The same thing. ‘A mere icon.’ I wonder if that’s all I’ll get.”
“I can’t read it. Are you sure, Quill?”
“I’m telling you, I know when I’ve read something.”
No sooner did she take her touch away than I wanted it back. The selenery’s ache was stronger, screaming to get out of me. I fell back, clasped her hand, brought it to my thigh, pressed it flat. When I let go, she arched her palm to stand her fingers on end, then sent them walking in an uneven stagger down my leg. The glowing arabesques flew out over my skin, bringing relief wherever they went. Reaching for my knee, she stilted her fingertips atop the kneecap, bounced them, and let out a delighted squeal. Then her hand began its mad dance back up my leg.
“I hate this spider,” I told her.
“This spider loves you, adroitness.”
“It’s just infatuated. Spiders don’t know what love is.”
Before I could stop her, Quibble flattened her hand on the inside of my thigh and stroked it swiftly upwards. I caught it just as the tip of one finger grazed the lips of my sex. Her hand went limp.
“Nish, I—” She stopped as if gathering herself. “You know about Classification, the risk we took with Unity. And you know about Colophon, what our faithfulness was, what it wasn’t. I don’t have your history with love, but I do know what it is.”
And then she said no more. I looked up at her, staring at her as she stared at me. I saw embarrassment in her face. It was so out of place there, so unlike her. I’d skanced it there before and puzzled at it, but I’d never seen it as directly or plainly as this. Now I knew what it meant. I bit my lip.
I was supposed to be guiding her in adroitness, but somehow our roles were reversing, the pupil becoming the teacher. Was that some part of an excelsior’s talents?
If so, in a way I was grateful for it. In another, scared of it. I’d been led to a cliff’s edge before. Then, I thought I was putting only myself at risk. That was foolish of me, and not I but Index paid for it: he fell over the cliff instead, clear into the Vale of Teeth. As if to drive home my fears, a wolf’s bay now struck my ears.
There were two ways forward with Quibble now. One way wound down into a valley, wide, welcoming, and safe. But perhaps that way would only separate us in the end. The other way led us into the narrow space along the cliff. At this moment, a wise adroitness would know which way to go. Did I? It wasn’t even clear to me which way was really which. But now my own words to her as we began our adroitness came back to me: “Go toward more reality. Don’t substitute it with something less.”
Quibble was the realest thing in my life. “Kiss me!” I said to her. She did. Then I let her lead me wherever she would.
You know best, Numberless, where Quibble led me, what came of it. I wanted to leave my grief behind, to claim a new life free of ghosts, but you may judge me a fool. Judge me, then. I stand before the mirror at your mercy.
25. Song
One sings. To speak is human; to sing, divine. One lifts a voice in chorus.
One does not sing alone. All are One. We are a consensus. So One joins the voice with voices, resounding.
One follows where the voices lead. One leads the singing only when its theme is lost; when that is recovered, One is content to follow again.
One stands still while singing. For what else can be heard when there is singing? One cannot chart a path when sound is everywhere.
One sings before Unity, which is the sacred heart of the dream. One sings Unity’s holiness. One never sings heresy. Censoriousness is perfecting.
If Ones are faithful, they practice their faithfulness only after singing. For to do it in the spirit conducive to Passage, which is the purpose of faithfulness, One must avert the soul from the impurities of the seen, wherein lies Without.
Singing dispels the seen. Singing puts One’s soul in the place best for touching.
When the song begins, One is not silent.
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