“What would happen if I updated his board once he’s gone?” Ring stroked his chin.
“You are not authorized to update the board.” The Recorder paused, no doubt pondering why Ring would even consider such a thing. No doubt, there were an obvious host of overly idealistic reasons that came to mind.
“It would be unhelpful to attempt to cheat the Judge of his commission…” Another pause.
“…or to artificially raise prices to benefit the vendors.” After waiting a moment, watching the official, the Recorder glanced again to Ring to gauge his intentions.
“Or to artificially lower the prices to benefit the people. What is it you are intending?” Ring only nodded absently then changed the subject.
“Are you running an errand? Aren’t you supposed to be consulting for generals and judges and whatnot? What’s that about?”
“This Recorder is property; and the gentleman to whom he has been entrusted requires…upkeep. Please continue along your way.”
The market official perched on a stepladder, erased the frosted glass with a worn cloth, and wrote a series of prices and rates in the boxes using a charcoal pencil hanging from a leather string. He stepped down commandingly and briefly appraised the condition of the marketplace now that he had established the market’s parameters. The sun-worn faces watching him looked bitter and angry at the figures he had set. Murmuring continued even as he raised both arms to signal the market’s opening. This triggered an almost reluctant hurricane of bustle and motion as burly vendors and grocers, restaurateurs and tourists haggled heatedly over produce and meat, long sticks of fresh bread, and lime green bottles of shimmering algae wine.
The Recorder loosened the twine from his box and cracked it open for a cursory inspection of the contents before advancing into the noisy bidyard. There were tourists along the courtyard’s perimeter, leaned against wrought iron fencing and crumbling stone arches to watch. Ring started laughing, and doing so almost losing his breath. The Recorder’s face showed only indignation.
“There is no self, only the Record”, Ring barely said as he tried to catch his breath from laughing, quoting a Recorder creed and looking at this one as if for the first time again. The Recorder’s voracious attention locked again with surprise.
“That’s bakas jerky, Misling…Salt Flat contraband. You can’t sell that stuff in the mountains.”
The Recorder shushed Ring and readied himself for a task he very clearly did not relish, targeting a set of opposing tables where two earthy rustics were haggling over crates shrouded in thick canvas fabrics. Ring caught his breath, likely with admiration for such disregard of propriety from someone charged with its maintenance. Although a young Recorder might have held as many as five lives in his Pool even at this age, the memories often had not yet unwound or become fully real. It was once an adage of such Recorders to ‘trust them with diplomats, but not with your daughter’.
Ring touched his brow in a loose salute, wishing the Recorder luck, and started into the busy courtyard, disappearing in the market swarm seeming to ask for alms. The Recorder’s eyes lingered for a moment on the place where Ring had been before inhaling sharply to enter the market.
In only a short while, as the Recorder was stuffing the price he’d garnered for the jerky inside a russet leather satchel, he was one of the first to notice a subtle change in the mood of the crowd, a mean spirit betrayed by angry stares and dying murmurs. Following the stares to the frosted glass board about which Ring had asked, he saw Ring himself wrapped in a linen overshirt with a golden coin attached to the collar and looking from the distance much like a market official with the proper insignia busily updating the prices and rates.
“That’s ridiculous”, someone shouted, for the commissions Ring had falsified for the Judge were exorbitant, more than quintuple what was set before. His price ranges were less than a fourth of the figures he was erasing as he made his way down the board. Not quite to the bottom row, he turned to hold his hands out to the sides and looks at the throng as if asking, ‘what?’. He wasn’t smiling, but rather was feigning formality as he turned to whistle and scribe more night-black figures. When a thrown yellow root smashed against his back, Ring turned to the crowd again and pointed in the direction from which the missile had likely come, looking fierce.
“Idiot”, someone from the crowd screamed. “We can’t make money at those prices. What’s the Judge doing?”
Ring waved his hand dismissively, scratching the erasing cloth against the figures he’d just written and made a dramatic show that the new lower prices he was writing just then were as a result of the crowd’s questioning him.
“You can’t do that!”
Once he had raised the Judge’s commission for aged sana sales twice over in retaliation for the market’s rising furor, two miscreants banded together and rushed the frosted glass board to get him. Ring’s eyes widened quickly; and he disappeared again such that the Recorder lost sight of him. As can happen in tense triggered crowds, those looking for a fight started one; and the marketplace bubbled over in chaos with tourists scattering from overturned stalls and madly rolling produce.
“Hi”, Ring surprised the Recorder as he stepped alongside to survey the mess, out of breath and having discarded the linen overshirt and collar. The Recorder’s eyes were somewhat wide; and his deliberate and methodical glances betrayed the highest level of awareness of which a Recorder made use, noting every scent and word, spatial relationships, and faces. As always in such a heightened state, he did so to the extent that even fifty years hence he could recount every detail of this single moment. He was still a young man though; and mischief can be exhilarating.
“Did anyone in there ever see anything like that?” Ring tapped the Recorder’s left temple in reference to the lives in his Pool.
“You are an activist, likely a runaway from the Recorder academy.”
“Not a runaway, no. I’ve never even seen the academy. Is it pretty?”
“Your show here was a hope to force a challenge to the prevailing system which you view as unjust or corrupt, yes?”
Ring creased his forehead in evaluation, “Wow, you’re bad at this. That would have been iconic, though.”
“Did you harm the real market official? Why did he not intervene?”
“I just asked some guys to keep him busy.”
“And they did this just because you asked?”
Ring nodded as if that sort of thing happened to him often. The Recorder pressed further.
“Where did you learn the Mast word you used earlier, its proper nuance, and the Recorder’s creed?”
“Misling, you ask an awful lot of questions for a Recorder. I think that’s great; and we should chat it up; but shouldn’t we kind of…poof?” Ring looked again to the mad courtyard.
“This Recorder is expected at the tent city by midday. He would not object to your joining the walk over while you explain yourself. He has cheese.”
The two young men made their way beyond the market courtyard, passing the green copper domes of old observatories and theaters and the misty fountains of Vangeline park where white furred wanoa still pastured looking like cloud-white shaggy silverbacks. Ring scratched a female wanoa’s head as he looked ponderingly into its violet eyes following the Recorder’s comment that the serene beasts at one time long ago could speak.
“Misling, why do you suppose the people in the market so easily believed I was an official?” Ring stopped in place as he asked the question, planting his feet firmly on the broad avenue so as not to fall backward while running his eyes up the tall tower called Balcister. Although it officed those engaged in commerce and shadowed artists and street actors in the plaza at its base, the tower’s skyblue masonry hummed softly with information and code. It was the best known building in a cityscape of minarets, slate roofs and walkways, with the exception of Judge Talgo’s cliffside palace, and was the only remaining computronium structure in Alson.
“The confidence with which
you approached the task, perhaps...”
“Umm hmm. Guys in this town keep staring me down like I’m supposed to be doing something they’re stuck doing. What am I missing?”
Misling didn’t answer as he watched and listened. Ring waited only a moment.
“You know, you’re miserly with your local color knowledge. You should have been telling me about that waterfall thing this morning; and you could be chatting me up right now about Judge Talgo’s beef with Cassian in the Flats….but I get nothing that I don’t drag from you.”
Misling’s brow creased, “This Recorder is not in your service nor in public service and is required to lecture on nothing. In fact, you did not ask about Marshal Cassian nor the Judge.”
Ring nodded in agreement, “That’s right. That’s right. You could offer though, sort of in the general friendly spirit of our conversation. You knew where I was going with that. Is Alson at war?”
“Alson and the Salt Flat nation are in a cold war, marked by skirmishes and harassment. The mountain military forces are deployed for most of the year, either in forward tank battlegroups in the Salt Flats or in mog or submersible patrols locally and act to defend mountain interests against aggressors.” Misling had answered in dictionary style in an automatic fashion, a prepared statement for Recorders. If asked again, he would repeat himself verbatim.
“Mm hmmm….” Ring had been idly watching four teenagers chatting in the sidestreet wearing military railgun thigh holsters. Misling stepped towards him impatiently.
“From where have you come?”
“How do you mean?” Ring stepped towards Balcister’s deep blue masonry walls, touching his cheek against the computronium blocks and tapping to discharge the tingling static electricity.
“Do you know what Misling means? Do you know the Mast language?”
“Sure, sure. Not hard. Mostly a lot of fables.”
“How did you come to study the language? Where were you born?”
Ring looked back to Misling with a mischievous smile, still tapping against the tower. “You know, that’s not strictly true.”
Misling’s left eyebrow lifted questioningly.
“Whether in public service or not, you’re still expected to respond to questions. ‘The day is kept whole for it is laden with treasures.’ You’ve got to share; and all you do is ask me stuff. Who do you have in your Pool?”
Misling thinly hid his irritation at this question, one he was indeed required to answer, “This Recorder maintains the Record of four lives.”
“Interesting; and who are they?” Ring scratched his cheek thoughtfully as if very intrigued by the pending answer. A chalk artist speaking with a businesswoman walked by, casting odd glances at Ring in wonderment at his ongoing conversation with a Recorder. Misling averted his eyes as they passed.
“Duke Exeter of Sarling in the days of the Brewing, Court Poet Phianna in the early days of Naraia, and Under Governors Faring of the Southern Red Witch Annex and Delton of the Fountain City.”
“I have no idea who those people are. Faring sounds familiar. What color were Phianna’s eyes?”
“Gray, and quite bloodshot later in life.”
“Why?”
“Her only son was rebellious.”
“What was the last thing she said?”
“I’d hoped they would stop by today.” His tone was soft and tired, utterly different from how he normally spoke.
“Who was with her when she died?”
“Only a nurse named Tazia, a large woman apparently in a hurry to clean the room afterwards. It was winter; and frosty mud had been tracked about the tile floors.”
“And what did the room smell like? What color were the sheets?”
“The room was cold and smelled of ammonia and iodine. The sheets were thin green linen; and the wool blanket was thin as well. An attendant had brought a bar of compressed lavender which was propped against Phianna’s elbow because she enjoyed the smell. She coughed three times, looked out the window at the snow, then quietly shut her eyes.”
Ring watched Misling’s face for a moment, fascinated. “You didn’t mention the Recorder standing right there in the corner who couldn’t be bothered to put another blanket on the poor woman.”
“There was no meaningful purpose to your questions apart from diversion from that which this Recorder asked you.”
“That’s not exactly true; but I’ll let it go. Misling, I want you to do me a favor.”
“That would only encourage you.”
“I want you to introduce me to your employer. You freak me out a little, running illegal errands and getting all feathered up like you do.”
“This Recorder was not ‘feathered up’. You will not be continuing with him because you are irrational and nosey. It simply is not the way things are done; and you are neither invited nor welcome to attend.”
Ring chuckled, sidestepping along the wall to the cross-street where he’d earlier seen the idle guards, sliding his fingers over Balcister’s masonry as if he could feel the data of transactions, correspondence, and images.
“So you’re getting picked up at the tent city, that’s actually perfect. I’ll meet you down there.”
“You will not.” Misling clarified in case there had been some unfortunate confusion.
Ring stood at last at brown, yellow and red graffiti scrawled roughly on Balcister’s very wall, a stylized cartoon of an angry character in a jacket with flaming shoulderboards, a ball lightning carbine strapped to his extended right arm gripped with densely colored hands, and firing madly. It was evidently a boogeyman of some sort and had been the topic of the guards’ chatter.
“Now we’re getting to it…” Ring spoke to himself casually with a grin on his young face, leaning closely in and edging towards the youths whose curious notice he’d drawn.
Birds scattered from the cobbles as Misling stepped away. Years hence to desperate scholars and journalists, Misling would manufacture the backdrop of this moment to disguise the misfortune that he’d simply stopped paying attention as he glanced dismissively and walked past the fog-gray monuments surrounding Balcister.
2 LET THEM RAGE
Judge Wentic Talgo’s cliffside palace, with its slowly revolving stone turrets and sienna palisade, was repurposed from a very old imperial resort and had a commanding view of Alson’s spires and rooftops. Impossibly, there were entire granite sections of the palace, pyramids and a massive statue of a winged figure, over which a thin film of water was trickled making odd dreamscape fountains.
In order to enter the palace in those days one had to walk through a broad plaza forested with shining colorful flags to a colossal arch over the keystone of which hung the ancient enigmatic image of a sad, translucent man seemingly imprisoned. Unearthly long in limbs and broad in its jaw, the image was traditionally explained as a fanciful illusion whose basis was preserved neither by folklore nor Recorder. It was always a controversial and at times superstitious event when the image would, in occasional years, move. As was typical, an immense crowd of protesters carpeted the plaza, shouting.
Following the morning reports and discussion of the unpleasant disturbance in one of the markets; and after Judge Wentic had dismissed the accountants and political analysts, he slid over the brass lever of a camera obscura pipework. The limewashed white bowl at the table’s center flashed in miniature the image of the old library at the end of the grand hall. Only the pickthank, Revin, a guttersnipe and failed actor who merely listened well and found himself a counselor and head of armaments was left to hear the Judge as he frowned at the image.
“In the alleys, men warming themselves by barrel fires tell breathless stories about my brother Cassian’s fearsome son….” Wentic was muttering at the bowl’s image of Stendahl, his own bizarre son, laying on the top dusty stone shelf beside a stack of leather bound books with his shirt half-hanging out and unkempt. There were two Recorders sitting patiently on an oak bench, apparently answering questions when Stendahl thought to
ask them.
“What’s he reading there?”
“Those books are battle journals, torture manuals…first hand accounts of…you know….suffering. My father wrote most of them in his lunatic midnight rages. Stendahl wouldn’t raise his fist to an insect! What is he thinking in there?”
“I’ve heard from some of the watchmen that Stendahl has the death touch of the Malthus.”
“And that I buried his mother in a wall and sold his soul to the ghost of the old man, right. I feel like a fish bowl for ridiculous gossips to tap on! What do you hear about Cassian’s son?”
“Outlandish stories about that one…hard to tell what’s true. He’s fast with a carbine. They say he fights close, almost like a fistfight with lightning. There’s a bit of show to him…tattooed hands and burning shoulderboards.”
Tearing Down The Statues Page 2
