"Why to me? And why you?"
Merley had talked about these things with two other people fourteen days ago, and this was the reason she had been cold ever since. This, and the fear for Dreadful, the nagging fear that seemed to always stay at the back of her mind. He had come to her when she had stood alone in the snow in that park where you could see the river, and he had been wounded once again, she did not know by what or whom. Then, while she had still been in shock and in fear for him, before she had decided what to do and where to take him, those two and their dog had come and helped both him and her.
A lady of Qynnsent, that woman was now. Was that truly not a joke? One House entangled in the Balkaene dirty games had lost a witch, while another House had gained one. Interesting what the Laurents themselves would lose or gain next. But what did Merley care? She should be glad that she was well rid of nobility and the pain and futility it brought. A Ber at least had the power and ability to do things that mattered to the world.
A Ber should not care that there had been a handsome, smart, and kind lord to embrace the water witch in the cold and snow, while no one but Dreadful had been beside Merley. But Dreadful—sweet, soft-coated, warm-breathed, loyal Dreadful—alive Dreadful—was enough. Every night since she had moved to Darius's tower, he would come to the courtyard and lick her face while she buried her hands in his fur. He would listen to her tell him everything about her, his yellow eyes wells of wild wisdom that she felt closer to her heart than everything else in the world.
He would come tonight, too, and every night Merley wished he would stay, but he had not wanted to, so far. He was not a dog, and perhaps the wildness in him was far too strong. She only hoped he would be fine, for the wounds were still healing—healing properly, for those two had seemed to know what to do. For that, she loved them, even if she sometimes hated them for other things.
She was cold again. The warmth inside must have faded together with the little flame, and suddenly Merley dared not try to make another flame for fear that she would fail. It was a new feeling. She had never failed since that moment she had first discovered her fire, but too many others were failing nowadays, and right now she was cold and doubt had crept into her. Was it because of Brighid and the fire that Merley had not let out? Was it because of Brighid's words about doubt? Or perhaps it was because that water witch had brought her own coldness to too deep a place inside Merley's mind and heart.
The water witch had become hot, on the other hand. It had been her place where they had met, that place of blue, gray, snow, wind, and water flowing beneath sunset-bathed ice. Her place and her man. Fire and Merley's touch had afflicted her just like the coldness of that same touch had afflicted Merley—just like the treacherously soft snow gathering along the window frame right now was pressing at Merley's mind and squeezing her heart tightly.
About mechanisms the lady Linden and the High Lord Rianor had talked, and perhaps mechanisms they loved, but it was not mechanisms they wielded. It was coldness the two of them had inside, coldness so fierce that it burned, and it repelled Merley and drew her towards them at the same time.
Strangely enough, it seemed to be mechanisms on Brighid's mind, too, but presently Brighid said nothing further, for there was a knock on the door. A soft knock, of a person used to peace, and yet, a knock in a way persistent.
"Adept Humanist Brighid must have come to you and not to someone else because she is very interested in your skills and perhaps even wants you to develop them well, Merley," Darius said as he entered, having obviously heard the latest exchange. "Is that not so, Adept Humanist?" Beneath the pince-nez, the blue eyes were sharp, even if reddened by the cold.
"Of course I want her to develop them well, Adept Darius." Brighid smiled sweetly at the old man, but he did not even seem to notice, adjusting his pince-nez to take a look at the book Merley had left on the shelf beside the table.
"Ah, A History of Metal Making, I have not read it in a long time. I should. That I should do ..." He tsk-ed. "So many things to do and so little time to do them." He gently took the book's heavy bulk in his wizened hands, his eyes clouded, his mind traveling far, as it was apt to do. Merley smiled, then stood and started brewing a cup of tea for him, and then frowned, adding a double doze of honey as she heard him cough.
"Thank you, dear child." Darius took the cup, seemingly oblivious that she had not offered a cup to Brighid.
"So, Adept Brighid, what does a Humanist want from my student?"
"The world is fading," Brighid said in a soft voice with her eyes half-closed, and were this Temple Square and were there a crowd, the crowd would perhaps have stood in stupor, gawking at her mouth for the next words this voice would utter. But this was not Temple Square and there was no crowd, only Darius, who coughed and rummaged through his pockets, murmuring something like "Now, where did I put that handkerchief."
Merley handed him hers. He started bringing it to his nose, then his eyes opened wider.
"Child, this is as thin and clean a piece of cloth as I have seen lately, and Little Sylvester lies in parts on the middle desk in the study even now, his cogwheels waiting to be cleaned very thoroughly. Do you have any more of these? Anyway, I am not going to waste this one."
Darius coughed again, the handkerchief safe in his shirt's pocket—the clean one, for Darius would never wipe Little Sylvester with anything that had been in the other pocket, the one that contained the melted dinner fork and the beeswax.
"Wait a bit, master." Merley stood and went to ransack the topmost drawer of her desk, where things were admittedly in a disarray. She found two more handkerchiefs of the same kind as well as a coarser one, made of flax. She expected Darius to wipe his nose with that as she stacked all on his lap, but instead he unfolded it, a finger tracing the strong interweaving threads, his mind obviously solely occupied with their pattern.
Silently, Merley scribbled "Little Sylvester" on a piece of paper, took one of the thin handkerchiefs and folded the note inside it before she placed the whole package in Darius's pocket. In this way, two hours from now Darius would not wonder what the things in his pocket were and why they were there. He smiled at her, stuffing the linen handkerchief in the pocket with the wax. Well, at least it would smell nice.
Before she had come to live here, Merley had thought herself disorganized. As a noble lady of Waltraud, her mother had expected her to learn things like planning menus for the Cooks to cook and the servants to serve, decorating halls with items to carefully demonstrate House Waltraud's affluence, great history, and what not to those who came to Fallon's balls, and to smile and look agreeable and beautiful. As if Slava could not very well plan the meals by herself, as if the Houses did not know each other's stupid history, together with the details they did not really like each other to know, and as if she would ever be agreeable.
Who could ever agree with Fallon's ways? Fallon always found faults, and Merley remembered her smiling, content, perhaps even proud of her daughter, only once in her life—when Merley had so easily learned to play the violin. Mother had made Father buy the violin, even though Father cared nothing for triflings of that sort. This particular violin was a perfect instrument not easy to find, and Merley had been entranced, thinking that this time her mother had truly done something for her. Fallon had even hired a Mister Saran, who was supposedly a most esteemed Master Musician and the most esteemed instructor, to teach Merley to play.
Yet, soon after Merley had learned how to use her fingers and the bow over the strings and made her mother content, she had played to Mister Saran a song of her own making. Then, when Mister Saran, tears running down his face, had run to Father to tell him that it was wonderful and that he had never heard anything like it, Mother had come to talk to her alone, and slapped her.
She had been only seven, and she cried while Mother stood above her, wind from the window rippling Mother's long, white gown. The gown was a thin, almost transparent white that Merley longed to touch but never could, for Mother feared that Mer
ley's fingers would leave dingy spots on it.
"You shall never do that again! Never, do you hear me?"
"Never do what?" little Merley had sobbed, which had earned her another slap. So it was one of those questions—like the question how babies got inside the mother and did the father help at all. When questions like this were asked, the adults either grew silent, or snapped at her without telling her why, and she always got the feeling that there were things she was supposed to somehow know by herself, and that she should be ashamed both for not acting according to what she knew not, and for asking.
This time, however, Mother stared at her after the slap, a frown cutting through her forehead as if she were thinking about an answer.
"You shall never play improper music," she finally said, and Merley only dared ask what "improper music" was after several moments had passed, and in a very small voice.
Mother looked as if she would slap her again, but at the last moment she let her hand drop, her white sleeve swishing through the air with a strange, eerie sound. Merley heard something more then, something distant that was not a song, and she turned her head to listen to it. Mother gripped her chin at that and turned her back, then sighed, stroking Merley's cheek with light, exquisite fingers.
"Improper music is any music, my dear, that does not come written on a sheet of paper from your teachers or from me. Written music—checked, safe music—is the only music you should play, made by people who know better than you. Indeed, you should only play music written by men, for women are not to be trusted. Never trust a woman, have I told you that?"
She had, many times. Merley did not want to listen. If Mother was right, Mother being a woman meant that Merley should not trust Mother, either. But if Merley did not trust Mother, why should she follow Mother's words, the ones that told her to not trust women? Thinking of that made the little girl's head hurt, and that was nothing compared to the moments when she wondered if one day she should stop trusting herself—when she, too, had become a woman. Would it matter whom or what else she trusted then if the trust itself would come from an untrustworthy source?
In the present day, in Darius's tower, the woman Merley shook her head to chase the memory away. Funny what thoughts a note inside a handkerchief could bring, and how the thoughts would bring other thoughts, all of them as if weaved together with an invisible thread in a pattern much more complex than the one Darius had been looking at.
Merley had been disorganized—perhaps because Fallon so much wanted to make her the opposite. That day, she had watched her mother wide-eyed, wondering about trust and other complex things, and instead of helping her answer all the "why" questions in her mind, her mother made her recite what gown was proper for what kind of ball, and how you should greet lords of friendly Houses.
"You shall marry one, one day," she had said, "and you should learn how to look and how to act as his lady. You should study that very carefully. You shall marry a High Lord, I should say. Won't that make you happy?"
"No," Merley had said truthfully and received a glare, even if it was not a slap this time. Fallon rarely slapped, but her glares were in a way no less painful. "Mommy," Merley sobbed, "why are you asking if you do not want me to tell?"
"I am asking for the right answer!" Fallon screamed, and that was the day Merley decided that "right answers" were something as slippery as her bathtub, and that everyone seemed to have her own. Of course, she was too young to know how to say anything but "I won't marry any stupid High Lord, and I won't ever be a proper lady!" and receive another slap, as well as a threat that Mother would tell Father about Merley's outburst. And since proper ladies never had outbursts, Merley made sure to have many in the days to come.
She could not plan a single menu, and she knew about dresses less than the servants she had once had. The Bers' plain robes had indeed come as a relief to her. And since a lady had to always know the everyday goings of her House intimately and control them with a subtle, confident, dainty hand, Merley had made sure to never learn how to keep control of even her own room.
If she ever knew what exact clothes to put on, she usually could not find them in her wardrobe at all—but she could sometimes find there books that had been lost for days, toys, or even food she had thought she had eaten long ago. Her thoughts, too, would often jump where they would and not where her teachers, Bers or others, said that they should. And like today with Brighid, Merley would sometimes talk or act on naught but an impulse.
Yet, in the last thirty days she had somehow slipped into organizing Darius's tower and even Darius's thoughts. Merley stared at the teacup. She had stood to once again fill it for Darius. Somehow, without even noticing, she had changed.
Merley handed the cup to her master and took one for herself. His eyes off the handkerchief now, Darius cast a brief look towards their uninvited guest and seemed for the first time to notice her cupless state. Merley tensed, as behind his pince-nez his eyes suddenly seemed as sharp as they had been the day Merley had first met him. However, he simply nodded, as if to himself, then sipped his tea.
"The world is fading, you say, Adept Brighid." His voice was mild, but his eyes had not lost the sharpness. "I am afraid that it is not."
The benevolent, even if slightly bored expression that had stayed fixed on Brighid's face during the whole exchange between Merley and Darius flickered for the briefest moment—the only sign that it was perhaps fake.
No one ever liked to be ignored, and perhaps a woman used to swooning attention to both herself and her words, from Bers and crowds alike, liked it even less. She had taken care to not show it. Now she awarded a motherly, almost condescending smile to even Darius, despite his status and his age. Indeed, she acted as if the most the likes of him and Merley could do was amuse her, and yet she must have some important need for the likes of them, for she was here and enduring.
"Please continue, Adept Darius," Brighid said quickly, smiling yet again.
"This is what I was going to do, had you not interrupted me." His voice was still kind, with no trace of judgement or irritation, and still the eyes were like shards of blue glass. "Adept Humanist, look out the window and tell me what you see."
To Merley's surprise, Brighid, who was nothing like the newly-made acolyte who had been asked the same thing thirty days ago, did look through the window.
"Mountains," she said in a voice that still sounded amused and yet not entirely.
"How about inside the room, right before you?"
"The table? Is that what you mean?"
Darius started adjusting his pince-nez, at the same time tracing a wizened finger along the table, itself one of his metalworks. "Does it look faded to you? Do the mountains? And is all of this not the world?"
"The world is still here," he continued before Brighid could do more than half-raise her eyebrows, his voice both kind and instructive, as if talking to a problematic and yet beloved child. Merley remembered a nurse from her childhood who had talked like this, even though Merley's own mother never had.
"The mountain is still there, and the table, made of metal from that very mountain, is still here, as are my clocks, which still work—and will, I dare say. None of these things have faded, Adept Brighid. What might have faded is the exact way of turning mountain into metal that we are used to, the method, or—do you remember this word from when you were an acolyte and studied Artificery yourself—the algorithm." He finished with his pince-nez, which was now fastened higher up his nose but would slide back in a few minutes. "But an algorithm, Brighid, is not the world."
"I remember the word. It meant 'a set of rules describing how to solve a problem' according to Adept Zanador"—Brighid shaped a quick sign of benediction with her fingers—"may the Master bless his quintessence in its final rest. I have a very good memory, Adept Darius. You would be surprised at what things I can remember."
The last might have been a threat to most humans.
"Ah, you should write all those things down while you are still young,"
Darius said, wistfully. "I regret not having done that myself, for memory becomes fickle as the years pass."
"An algorithm, you say." Brighid's eyes bore into Darius's, his like clear ice, hers like a dark abyss made of black stone from the Sunset Lands, swallowing the light. Merley wondered which ones were more dangerous. "Isn't it strange, Adept Darius, how the word seems to be associated with Artificery and other such fields claimed by their practitioners to be precise and factual, fields that often deal with non-living things—while it is Humanism and the so-called soft fields where we have to solve problems on a daily basis?"
Once again, Merley spoke before stopping to think if she should. "Why would you need the word, a word about rules? You acknowledge no rules—you ignore them all," she snapped, even as Darius said mildly, "I have not taken possession of this word, Adept Brighid—or of any other. You are free to use it."
"Unfortunately, there are rules that I do acknowledge, Merley." Brighid sighed, and it was not an exaggerated sigh such as the ones she had demonstrated to the Temple Square crowd. "Rules that I cannot ignore. If I could, I would simply snap my fingers right now and have the world—or its algorithm, call it whatever you wish—be as it should be. But I cannot do that, so there must be rules that cannot be defied. At least, I have not yet learned how to defy them. As for the word 'algorithm' itself, Adept Darius"—Brighid shook her head—"thanks, but I do not think I need it."
Brighid stared outside the window. "The algorithms are changing, you say, and not the world itself, but then what is the world? A mountain and a table? What is a mountain—grass, and stone, and metal? Trees? Animals? All of those together? What is a table? I see four metal posts and a board, but if I use the words 'four metal posts and a board' to describe what I see, the word 'table' itself will be redundant. So, is there a table? Is there a mountain? Or is it not an algorithm in our minds that makes a table out of the posts and board, and is this not truly everything that there is to the world ..."
The Makers of Light Page 30
