“As hosts, it is our duty to serve,” Arsibalt demurred.
“Then you can serve, but I want Dath to do the cutting,” I insisted. I wrenched the spatula from Arsibalt’s grip and handed it across to Dath, who took it a little uncertainly.
I then talked him through cutting the cake; but I had him go about it in a very specific way, working through the steps of an old geometry proof* that Orolo had taught me when I had been a brand-new fid, up all night crying because I missed my old life. This took a little while, but when all was said and done, it was clear from the look on Dath’s face that he understood it, and I was able to tell him: “Congratulations. You have just worked out a geometric proof that is thousands of years old.”
“They had sheet cakes back then?”
“No, but they had land and other things they needed to measure, and the same trick works for those things too.”
“Uh huh,” Dath said, gobbling a vertex from his serving.
“You say uh huh like it is not a big deal, but it is a big deal to us,” I said. “Why should a proof that works for sheet cake work as well for a plot of land? Cake and land are different things.”
We had gone a little over the head of Dath, who just wanted to eat his cake, but Cord saw it. “I guess I have an unfair advantage here since I spend so much time thinking about geometry in my work. But the answer is that geometry is…well…geometry. It’s pure. It doesn’t matter what you’re applying it to.”
“And it turns out that the same is true for other kinds of theorics besides geometry,” I said. “You can prove something. Later the same thing might be proved in a totally different way; but you always end up with the same answer. No matter who is discussing these proofs, in what age, whether they are speaking of sheet cake or pasture-land, they always arrive at the same answer. These truths seem to come out of another world or plane of existence. It’s hard not to believe that this other world really exists in some sense—not just in our imaginations! And we would like to go there.”
“Preferably without having to die first,” Arsibalt put in.
“When I’m cutting a part, sometimes I get obsessed with it,” Cord said. “I lie awake in my bed thinking about its shape. Is that—perhaps—related to how you all feel about what you study?”
“Why not? You’re carrying this geometry around in your head that fascinates you. Some would say it’s only a pattern of neurons firing in your brain. But it has an independent reality. And for you, thinking about that reality is an interesting and rewarding way to spend your life.”
Rosk was a manual therapist—he put his hands on people to fix them. “I’ve been working on someone who has a pinched nerve because he has lousy posture,” he said. “I was discussing it with my teacher, over the jeejah—no pictures, just our voices. We had this long talk about this nerve and the muscles and ligaments around it and how I should manipulate them to help alleviate the problem, and suddenly I just flashed on how weird the whole thing was—two of us both relating to this image—this model—of another person’s body that was in his mind and in my mind, but—”
“Also seemingly in a third place,” I suggested, “a shared place.”
“That’s what it felt like. It freaked me out for a little while, but then I put it out of my mind because I thought I was just being weird.”
“Well, it’s been freaking people out since Cnoüs and this is like an asylum for people who can’t stop thinking about it,” I said. “It’s not for everyone, but it’s harmless.”
“Since the Third Sack anyway,” Rosk said.
That he said it so innocently made it ten times as rude as it was to begin with. I saw Cord’s face flush, and guessed she’d probably have words with him after dinner. It was anyone’s guess whether he’d ever really understand why it was such an abhorrent thing to say.
People were shushing us because we had reached that part of the aut where the newcomers were presented at the high table.
Eight foundlings had been Collected. One was sickly and would stay in the Unarian math where it would be easier for the physicians to keep an eye on her. Two of them still had the stumps of their umbilical cords attached, which meant that they were destined for the Millenarian math, by way of a brief sojourn among the Hundreders. We would pass them along via our upper labyrinth. The remaining five were a little bit older, and so would be passed to the Hundreders.
Thirty-six youngsters were to be Collected. Seventeen of these, including Barb, would come directly to our math. The others would stay with the One-offs, at least at first. With any luck, some of them might graduate to our math later.
Twelve of the One-offs had decided to graduate to our math. Nine more had arrived from another, smaller concent in the mountains that acted as a feeder to ours.
All of these were brought up before the high table, welcomed, and applauded. Tomorrow, after the gate closed, we would celebrate their arrival in a much more tedious ceremony. Tonight was the time for the extramuros authorities to supply their own special brand of tedium. By ancient tradition, the highest-ranking Panjandrum present at this dinner was supposed to stand up and formally hand the newcomers over to us. At that moment, they passed out of Saecular, and into mathic jurisdiction. We became responsible for housing them and feeding them, caring for them when they ailed, burying them when they died, and punishing them when they misbehaved. It was as if they ceased in this moment to be citizens of one country and became citizens of another. It was, in other words, a big deal from a legal standpoint, and it had to be solemnized by the speaking of certain oaths and the ringing of a bell. And there was an almost as ancient tradition that the official in question would use it as an excuse to “deliver some remarks.”
This turned out to be the rope-draped oddity who had appeared at the Decade Gate with his contingent on the first morning of Apert. He was, as it turned out, the mayor.
After thanking everyone from God on down and then back up to God again, and then, as a precaution, tacking on a blanket thank-you for any persons or supernatural beings he had left out, he began: “Even those of you who live at Saunt Edhar must be aware by now that the extraordinary re-configuration of prefectural boundaries mandated by the Eleventh Circle of Arch-Magistrates has literally transformed the political landscape. The Plenary Council of the Recovered Satrapies has passed through a tipping point of no return, placing five of the eight Tetrarchies within the grasp of a new generation of leaders who I can promise you will be far more sensitive than their predecessors to the values and priorities of New Counterbazian constituencies and our many friends who may belong to other Arks, or even to no Ark at all, but who share our concerns…”
“If there are eight of them, why are they called Tetrarchs?” Orolo demanded, drawing an exasperated look from Jesry’s father, who had been listening intently—he was taking notes.
“There were four of them originally and the name stuck,” Arsibalt said.
Jesry’s father seemed to relax a bit, thinking that the interruption was over. But we were just beginning.
“What’s a New Counterbazian?” Lio wanted to know. Jesry’s brother shushed him. To my surprise Jesry rose to Lio’s defense. “We didn’t tell you to shut up when you were bellowing about your infestation.”
“Yes you did.”
“I’ll bet it’s a euphemism for one of those Warden of Heaven nut jobs,” I said to Lio. This brought a cataract of shushing down on me. Jesry’s father sighed as if he could thereby rise above all of this, and cupped a hand to his ear, but it was too late; we’d planted a branching tree of arguments and recriminations. The mayor was going on and on about the beauty of our clock, the majesty of our Mynster, and the magnificent singing of the fraas and suurs. At no point did he say anything that was not as sugary as words could be, and yet the feeling I got was one of foreboding, as if he were urging all of his constituents to mass before our gates with bottles of gasoline. The argument between Jesry and his brother decayed into sporadic sniper fire across the tabl
e, suppressed by glares and arm-squeezings from exasperated females who had wordlessly squared up into a peacekeeping force. Jesry’s brother had decided that with our hair-splitting debates about how many Tetrarchs there were, we’d shown ourselves to be a lot of insignificant pedants. Jesry informed him that this was an iconography that dated back to before the founding of the city-state of Ethras.
In some eerily quiet way that he must have learned from a book of Vale-lore, Lio had vanished. Strangely for one who studied fighting so much, he hated conflict.
I waited until the bell had rung to induct the newcomers, then excused myself and walked out during the standing ovation. I felt like getting some fresh air. By tradition, the revelry would wind down and the cleanup gather momentum until the gates closed at dawn, so it was unlikely I’d miss much.
The meadow was lit partly by the harvest moon and partly by light diffusing through the skirts of the great canopy, which, when I turned around to look back on it, looked like an enormous straw-colored moon half sunk into a dark sea. Lio was silhouetted against it. He was moving in an odd, dance-like fashion, which for him was hardly unusual. One end of his bolt was modesty-wrapped, but the other was all over the place—flinging out like a bucket of suds, then wafting down for a few moments only to be snapped back and regathered: the same thing he’d been practicing on the statue of Saunt Froga. It was strangely fascinating to watch. I was not his only spectator: a few visitors had gathered around him. Bulky men. Four of them. All wearing the same color. Numbers on their backs.
Lio’s bolt slapped down on top of Number 86 and draped him, making him look like a ghost. The lower part was all in a thrash as he flailed his arms to throw it off. His head was a stationary knob at the top—hence a fine target for the ball of Lio’s foot, which was delivered in a perfectly executed flying kick.
I started running toward them.
86 went down backwards. Lio’s momentum carried him to the same place. He used 86’s torso to cushion his landing, and rolled off smartly, staying low like a spider and snapping his bolt free. 79 was coming in high. Lio spun clear of the line of attack and in so doing got his bolt around 79’s knees. Then he stood up, bringing 79’s knees with him; 79’s face dove at the ground and he didn’t get his arms up—excuse me, down—fast enough to avoid getting a mouthful of turf. For just a moment after Lio spiraled his bolt loose, 79 remained poised upside-down with his legs splayed. Lio absent-mindedly rammed his elbow down into the vee as he turned to see who was next.
Answer: Number 23, running right at him. Lio turned and ran away. But not very fast. 23 gained on him. It was his fate to step on Lio’s bolt, which was dragging behind Lio on the grass. This demolished his gait, which had been clumsy to begin with. Lio sensed it—as how could he not, since the other end of that bolt was lashed around his crotch. He whirled and yanked. 23 somehow remained on his feet, but the price he paid for doing so was that he ended up staggering, bent forward at the waist, leading with his head. Lio planted a foot in his path, got a hand on the back of 23’s head, and used the other’s momentum to flip him over his knee. 23 didn’t know how to fall. He came down hard on his shoulder and pivoted around that to a hard landing on his back. I knew what was coming next: Lio would follow with a “death blow” to the exposed throat. And that is just what he did; but he pulled it, as he always had with me, and refrained from staving in the man’s windpipe.
One remained. And I do mean one, for he had a large numeral 1 on his back. This was the man with his arm in a sling. With his good arm, he had been been rummaging through the pockets of the fallen 86. He found what he had been looking for and stood up, holding something that I was pretty sure was a gun.
His spine-clamp exploded in light, flashing alternately red and blue. He uttered a common profanity. He dropped the gun and collapsed. Every muscle in his body had lost tone in the same instant, jammed by signals from the clamp. All four of the attackers were down now, and the meadow was quiet except for the plaintive warbling of their jeejahs.
A solitary person, somewhere nearby, began clapping. I assumed it was a sline who’d had too much to drink. But looking toward the sound, I was surprised to see a hooded figure in a bolt. He kept shouting an ancient Orth word that meant “hail, huzzah, well done.”
Stalking toward this fraa, I shouted, “I hope you’re stinking drunk, because if not, you’re an idiot. He could have gotten killed. And even if you really are that big of a jerk—don’t you know there’s a couple of Inquisitors skulking around?”
“It’s okay, one of them skulked out to get away from that idiotic speech,” the fraa said.
He pulled back his hood to reveal that he was Varax of the Inquisition.
I can’t guess what my face looked like, but I can tell you that the sight of it was the most entertaining thing Varax had seen in a long time. He tried not to show it too much. “It never ceases to amaze me, what people think of us and why we’re here,” he said. “Will you please forget about this. It is nothing.” He looked up at the top of the Praesidium. “Larger matters are at stake than whether a young fraa at the remote hermitage of Saunt Edhar practices his vlor on some local runagates. For God’s sake,” he continued (which sounded funny to me since few of us believed in God, and he didn’t seem like one of them; but maybe it was just an oath used by cosmopolitan people in the sorts of places where our concent was thought of as a “remote hermitage”). “For God’s sake, raise your sights. Think bigger—the way you were doing this morning. The way your friend, there, does when he decides to tackle four larger men.” And with that Varax drew his hood back over his head and walked back toward the canopy.
He passed the Warden Fendant and the Warden Regulant hurrying the other way. The two of them parted and stood aside to let him pass. Each nodded and uttered some term of respect that no one had ever bothered to teach me.
Both of the Wardens were looking rather tightly wound. In ordinal time, the boundary between their jurisdictions was clear: it was the top of the wall. During Apert, things became complicated as the wall ceased to exist for ten days.
Suur Trestanas was for throwing the Book at Lio. Fraa Delrakhones was satisfied with how things had come out, with a few quibbles: when Lio had noticed the four slines sneaking out the back, he ought to have alerted someone instead of going out to confront them himself.
“Well, is that an offense or isn’t it?” demanded Suur Trestanas.
“It is an overlookable offense, as far as I am concerned,” said Delrakhones, “but I’m not the Warden Regulant.”
“Well, I am,” said Suur Trestanas unnecessarily, “and for one of our fraas to be brawling, during Apert, when he’s supposed to be welcoming newcomers and busing tables, strikes me as something that could even lead to being Thrown Back.”
This was such an outrageous thing to say that I spoke immediately—as if Lio’s impulsiveness had jumped like a spark into my head. “If I were you, I’d run that by Inquisitor Varax before taking it any further,” I said.
Trestanas turned and looked at me, head to toe, as if she’d never seen me before. And perhaps she hadn’t. “The amount of private time you are spending with our honored guests is remarkable. Extraordinary.”
“And accidental, I promise you.” But Suur Trestanas was—I realized too late—jealous of me for this. Almost as if she pined to be in a liaison with Varax and Onali, but they had a crush on me. And she’d never believe that my encounters with them had been mere accidents. You didn’t get to be Warden Regulant by believing such things.
“It is obvious that you have no conception of the power that the Inquisition may wield over us.”
“Uh, not true. They may put the concent on probation for up to one hundred years, during which time our diet will be restricted to the basics—nutritional but not so interesting. If we haven’t mended our ways after a century they can come in and clean the place out top to bottom. And they have the power to fire any hierarch and replace him or…her…with…a new one of their choosing…”
I was faltering because my brain—too late—was working through the implications. I had only been spewing back what Arsibalt had told me earlier in the day. But to Trestanas it would, of course, sound like a taunt.
“Maybe you think that Saunt Edhar’s current hierarchs are not handling their responsibilities well,” Suur Trestanas proposed, too calmly. “Perhaps Delrakhones—or Statho—or I—ought to be replaced?”
“I have never thought anything of the sort!” I said, and bit my tongue before I could add until now.
“Then why all of these secret assignations with the Inquisitors? You are the only non-hierarch who has spoken to them at all—and now you have done so twice, both times under circumstances that were extraordinarily private.”
“This is crazy,” I said, “this is crazy.”
“More is at stake than a boy of your age can comprehend. Your naïvete—combined with your refusal to admit just how naïve you are—imposes risks on us all. I am throwing the Book at you.”
“No!” I couldn’t believe it.
“Chapters One through…er…oh…Five.”
“You have got to be kidding!”
“I believe you know what to do,” she said, and looked across the meadow to the Mynster.
“Fine. Fine. Chapters One through Five,” I repeated, and turned toward the canopy.
“Halt,” Suur Trestanas said.
I halted.
“The Mynster is that way,” she said, sounding amused. “You seem to be going the wrong direction.”
“My sib and my cousin are in there. I just need to go and explain to them that I have to leave.”
“The Mynster,” she repeated, “is in that direction.”
“I can’t do five chapters before sunrise,” I pointed out. “The gates are going to be closed when I come out of that cell. I have to say goodbye to my family.”
“Have to? Curious choice of words. Let me bring you up to date on semantics, since you who worship at Hylaea’s feet are so keen on such things. You have to go to the Mynster. You want to say goodbye to your family. The whole point of being a fraa is to be free of those wants that enslave people who live extramuros. I am doing you the favor of forcing you to make a choice now, in this instant. If you want to see your family so badly, go see them—and keep on walking, right out the gate, and don’t ever come back. If you will remain here, you have to walk straight to the Mynster now.”