The many images of the Placing reminded them all of the precarious balance between the Eastlands and the world beyond the Pall. And if races herded there had hated man then, what must their bloodlust be like today?
Vendanj shivered again, knowing that behind that bloodlust lurked an equal measure of reason. They would be fierce, but also calculating.
The smell of soil after a rain shower rose on a wind that blew out of the vision above the plaza. We smell the very winds that blew over the Placing. It coursed over the throng that pressed in around Solath Mahnus. “Remember,” Braethen called again, his voice clear above the sibilant rush.
It had carried them to the edge of this history, threatening to leave them stranded in that past when the promise of the world would soon be abandoned. The Blade of Seasons had bridged the ages, giving them all a firsthand account of those sealed behind the Veil.
A moment later, Braethen collapsed. His sword arm fell first, his body following as he tumbled amidst the dead Sheason. The images dissipated in an instant, leaving the air cut through with shafts of light out of an eastern sun. The throng now had clear doubt in their eyes—doubt about Roth’s claims of safety. Braethen had given them the reason to doubt.
“Don’t be deceived,” Roth called out, dispelling what had happened. “These are more tricks. If I wanted to deceive you, I could create visions that refute these myths. But I won’t. I will just tell you that it’s time to look ahead. The realities of this day represent the change I offer you, that a new High Council offers you. It’s the only right way forward.”
The crowd became restless with its own struggle to make sense of it all. Vendanj could see citizens beginning to argue with each other. Some stared into the sky, confused. Others pointed at either Roth or Vendanj or Helaina.
Regardless of what came next, Sheason in Recityv had been hewn down, almost entirely destroyed. How soon before the Civilization Order, with its expanded power, reached other realms?
He forced the thought back as Losol started toward him. Other leaguemen followed. Still standing were Vendanj, Artixan, and the Sheason who had come with Braethen.
A dark smile spread on his lips. After all that had happened this terrible day, he would take pleasure in confrontation. The time for talking was over.
But before the first blow or act of Will could fall, Helaina cried out to her people. “Friends of Recityv! Decide for yourselves. If you honor what I have offered you all my life, if you believe that the murder you’ve seen today has no place in our city, then stand with me now and fight this menace!”
The drawing of steel from sheaths and hidden pockets surprised even Vendanj. More men and women than he could have imagined carried weapons. And when one of the leaguemen tried to seize a woman’s handknife, the struggle broke out in earnest.
Van Steward’s men rushed into the crowds, fighting alongside citizens who battled the League. An unbelievable number of leaguemen came, too, bolstering citizens who stood with them around the broad plaza.
“Civil war,” Helaina whispered.
Vendanj barely heard, as he strode toward the Ascendant and his man of war.
CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX
Just an Evening Stroll
So, Jon Petruc wrought two mandolas from one, giving the second to his beloved Jaane when she was asked by the Randeur to visit the Sellarians. Each night, he’d play his music. And Jaane, half a world away, would listen to her mandola ring with song.
—Drawn from the Dimnian instructional text On the Nature of Instruments, Chapter One, “The Mandola or the Man”
A windless evening settled in with the onset of dusk. Tahn, Rithy, and Polaema strolled westward from Aubade Grove. In the sky ahead, the constellation Anolees, the crippled king of Masson Dimn, slowly rose into view. Tahn smiled. He could name them all. Every last glimmering light in the night sky.
They enjoyed a companionable silence, taking in the stars with the kind of awe once reserved only for childhood. The fresh scent of sage lingered on the air, coupled with the pleasant smells of green grass and cooling stone.
“Why are we headed away from the Grove at suppertime?” Tahn asked with playful challenge.
Polaema gave him a motherly look. “Because I’ve something I want to show you.”
“All right, Gnomon,” Rithy said, breaking in. “I’ve been waiting to ask…”
Polaema gave a wry smile that held its own kind of glimmer in the gathering darkness.
Tahn likewise grinned. “Why Resonance?”
“That’ll do for a start,” she replied.
He focused a thoughtful look at Polaema. “You say the College of Philosophy has a new view on the entire subject of the Bourne. Easy for them to sit around and theorize. But I’ve seen the Quiet. Seen what they can do. What they are doing.”
“And what are they doing, Gnomon?” his astronomy mother asked matter-of-factly.
“Killing, mostly,” Tahn answered without humor. “I think you know the regent at Recityv called a Convocation to try and stop it, raise an army…” He paused a long moment. “Prepare for war.”
“How does proving Continuity with Resonance help us win a war?” Rithy asked with enough distraction that Tahn knew she was already theorizing about it at a math level he’d never understand.
“Not win a war,” he reminded them, “prevent a war.” He smiled, feeling excitement begin to prickle his skin. “How would our philosophers feel about that idea?”
“Don’t lump all philosophers into the same ideological camp,” Polaema suggested. “But go on.”
“Fair enough,” Tahn said, eager to share his idea. “If we can prove Continuity through Resonance, I believe we’ll find a way to strengthen the Veil. Make it impenetrable by the Quiet. No Quiet. No war.” He dusted his hands as if finished with a dirty chore.
“Elegant in its simplicity,” Polaema admitted. “But the philosophers will argue about the very existence of a Veil.”
Rithy laughed at the truth of it.
“Won’t matter,” Tahn said. “It’s conceivable that if we prove Continuity, we could erect a barrier of our own, right? The Veil’s a consequence of Resonance, not the other way around.”
“Why Succession, though, Gnomon?” Polaema skirted a low, broad sage bush.
Tahn was nodding. “Succession will force rapid preparation and focus. All the resources of Aubade Grove will concentrate on one question. Otherwise, I could spend a year trying to do this with willing contributors, and still not get so far.”
“Makes sense,” Rithy agreed. “But the topic has been through Succession before and put down. And not just by my ma.…” Her words got lost on the soft evening air, her thoughts turned inward.
Tahn said nothing, and they walked a while in silence.
Rithy got them started again. “Just how do you plan to go about proving Continuity through Resonance?”
“We’ll build on—”
“You don’t have time to build an argument,” Rithy argued. “And what we did before won’t be much help. Plus, you’ve just dropped out of the air, returning to an area of research you suffered for maybe four years.”
Polaema’s eyebrows rose. “Suffered?”
“My apologies, Savant Polaema. I just mean that it’s not easy here. It’ll look to many like Tahn walked away rather selfishly. Now he’s back, and asking for help. Many will resent him for it. They’ll be less than accommodating.”
Polaema gave Tahn a questioning look. “I hate to agree with a mathematician, but she’s right.”
Tahn shook his head absently. “They’ll have to get over it. I’ll appeal to them to focus on the science, not their own feelings.”
“I’ll sponsor the Succession,” Polaema offered, “since it appears your diplomacy hasn’t improved much. But I’ll need you to answer Rithy’s question about how you plan to prove Continuity through Resonance, since that’s what we’ll be taking to the discourse theaters.”
As they continued to walk through the sage, he
looked at them each in turn, and started talking it through. “Bear with me, it’s been a while.” He took a long breath to gather himself. “In the past, Continuity supposed the existence of an omnipresent element. This element was first called omnilesch erymol. Erymol is said to exist as much in you or me or this sage or the Grove towers, as it does in the air and deep sky. It’s the most subtle, most attenuated, most … volatile substance. Continuity then assumes that even air is matter, that erymol binds all things, and that this connection is what ultimately gives gravity and magnetism their power.”
They bolstered his confidence with silent nods.
Tahn went on. “Erymol’s natural condition is restful, still. But because it’s everywhere, in everything, and so … fine, it’s easily disturbed, easily … manipulated.”
Tahn became flush with his own excitement. Not over erymol, but just rational thought on complex ideas.
“It would mean that the flying bird is connected with the earth below it, that we are connected with the stars above. If prior arguments on Continuity hold true, then light, heat, sound, color, magnetism, gravity, would all have a means of transference. And so it would suggest that there exists an understandable and demonstrable mechanism for this invisible barrier along the Pall that we call the Veil.”
Neither Rithy or Polaema said a word, but he could see them reserving judgment.
“Any movement, any vibration would cause resonation along this erymol—”
“That’s the essence of prior Successions on Continuity,” Polaema affirmed. “The trick will be evidence to support and prove your new hypothesis on Resonance. You’re a gifted astronomer, Gnomon, but the best minds failed to prove Continuity after long years of study. What’s your fallback plan?”
Tahn remembered that the mother of astronomy had often preached such preparedness.
Rithy appeared to be doing calculations in her head, her lips moving as she silently mouthed numbers and signifiers to some equation. Her eyes wide with a thoughtful glaze, when she spoke as though to herself: “I think you might be on to something with Resonance.…”
“I don’t have time for a fallback plan,” Tahn said, answering his old mentor, but still watching Rithy.
Polaema made a soft, disapproving sound in her throat. “You’ll first argue the physicists, Gnomon. In some ways, they’re going to be the most difficult. If memory serves, that’s where Continuity died in Succession last time.”
Rithy rejoined the conversation. “The physicists would like to have a unifying principle to support the laws of force that keep them in chalk and slate.” She frowned up at him. “Proving air is matter isn’t the principle they’re hoping for.”
“Right,” Tahn said. “We won’t come at it from that angle. With Resonance, we’ll show that the whole world is connected without the need of a medium. One leaven, not one loaf.”
“And then,” Polaema said, making them look ahead, “if you’re successful in all this, you’ll need to use this new understanding to determine how it can be manipulated. Don’t forget your ultimate goal. To strengthen this Veil no one’s seen or felt.” She smiled.
Tahn allowed himself a small smile in return. “But that’s the purpose of science, isn’t it, Mother Polaema? First we seek to understand. Then we can apply that understanding.”
She raised her eyebrows; part, he thought, in reproof of his slight conceit, and part, he decided, in esteem. “Are we really going to do this again?” she said softly into the twilight.
They fell silent once more, returning their attention to the sky briefly before Polaema held up a hand to halt them. Her mouth and brow were pinched, lines forming around each. He recognized the look: It spoke of inexplicable phenomena. Tonight, though, the look had a dark cast to it. When he followed her gaze—like an invitation, like the reason they’d come away from the Grove—he saw her expression’s cause.
A field of dead birds …
CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN
The Bourne: Toccata
The problem for a messiah is that not everyone who suffers wants to be rescued. Nor can they be.
—The Second Inference reached by Sedgel leadership in Dissent and the Introduction of Humans to the Bourne
Their faces haunted him.
Since the death of his friend Reelan, Kett had walked the empty roads of the Bourne with six Bar’dyn—Lliothan, his old friend, among them. They’d ranged far and wide to the regions of the other Inveterae houses that had pledged themselves to him at the shores of their mourning lake. And one by one, he’d executed them in the company of their friends and families.
The irony, he thought, was that he couldn’t have suffered the memory of the friends he’d killed if not for being given. It had gotten inside him. Made his heart stonier.
Or perhaps his resolve flowed from the look of understanding and acceptance each of his fellows had shown him. They’d realized why he’d come to them, realized what their sacrifice could mean to generations of Inveterae if Kett could lead them from the Bourne.
Even for his love of his children, he didn’t think he could have continued his march across the endless, lonely sweeps of the Bourne to kill.
So, perhaps it was the misery of the Bourne itself that gave him strength—the strength of an unfriendly reach of land that knew no conscience or concern.
Just before dawn, he crested a low rise in the long road. All around, rocky terrain stretched, dotted here and there by ailanthus trees and sagebrush. A bitter wind blew at his back, as down the far side of the hill he saw the sprawl of another Inveterae town, Waeland. The last name on the list would be found here. Sool, who’d forged the union of the central houses at Saleema’s burial. Like the others, she would see the wisdom in her death, and go to her earth gladly. She was the most important Inveterae on the list. Perhaps as important to their movement as Kett. Perhaps more so. Her influence came from unimpeachable wisdom. Killing her would be a crime on more levels than he could count.
With the wind goading him forward, he descended the hill with his Quietgiven in tow.
The clouds raced low and dark over nearby bluffs, but the wind broke in the little valley. He inquired of an elder Raolyn and her son for directions to Sool’s house. They hesitated a moment before grudgingly pointing and muttering a few instructions. Without incident he came to a well-worn path that took him to her modest door.
He knocked. Waited. He’d ceased to pray to the gods at these moments. His prayers in these circumstances hadn’t produced anything more than the prayers he’d offered in all the years prior.
It pained him when she pulled back the door of her small clay-brick home and smiled at his arrival. Her expression faltered as she caught sight of the Bar’dyn a few strides behind him.
He watched as she pieced it all together: the branding across his chest and shoulders, the fact that her home lay the farthest east—he’d killed many before arriving here.
“Is our hope dead?” she asked softly.
With this last of his fellows—and especially with Sool—he wanted to share what he’d learned. He needed word to spread. Those close to Sool would be best to do it.
As he stood, trying to figure out a plan, she asked, “May I say good-bye to my family?” Sool’s words stung him—they were the plea an executioner hears.
He nodded, and found a believable enough excuse to go in with her. He turned to his Bar’dyn companions, addressing Lliothan. “I believe she hides other separatists. I’ll go in and force them out. Be ready.”
Before an objection could be raised, he turned and followed Sool inside. There he found her lighting lamps and candles and opening windows. Odd, as daybreak had just lit the sky. His attention shifted to the many paintings hanging on the walls—images rendered in browns and greys on thin, flat rocks or the inner side of tree bark stretched flat. Some were faces. Most were portraits of Inveterae races it was unlikely she’d ever seen. A few were of places she could never have visited, places south of the Pall.
“They’re
my reminders,” she said. “All my life, I’ve dreamed of people with sun on their faces, of cities that fly colorful banners that rise high against a clear sky.” She looked from one painting to another. “And I paint the Inveterae who might one day lead us there.”
His eyes lit on one painting in particular. He picked up a lamp and approached the wall, where he held up the light. “Me,” he said.
“I painted that the day before your tribunal. To remember you once you were gone.” She crossed to stand beside him in front of the simple painting, which held a crimson-rust tint. He could think of only one source for the color.
“When I heard you’d survived, I decided my painting was more than a portrait of another Gotun. It’s why I gathered the others and followed you to the Mourning Vale.” She placed one hand on the painting, and the other on his shoulder.
The Bar’dyn would get restless soon. And Kett had to guard what he said and thought, still unsure what it might give away to the Quiet because of his oath. “There isn’t much time, Sool. You must tell your family good-bye.”
“My family’s dead,” she replied. “Killed by Quietgiven three moon cycles ago.”
The sound of her voice was the sound of the Bourne. There was some sadness in it, but mostly resignation. Her heart, like his, had become stony.
She went on. “I just wanted a moment to show you these.” She looked around at her modest portraits. “Most of them are dead. And the cities? I hope they’re real places. I hope our people see them with their own eyes someday. And this one”—she tapped the image of Kett lightly—“you, Kett Valan, are the one to lead them there. Whatever happens, whatever your plan, promise me you’ll take the Raolyn with you.”
Kett had no firm plan yet. But he’d gotten closer. He still needed to gain the absolute confidence of the Jinaal. To do that, he’d had to hunt down the Inveterae leaders who had pledged to support and follow him. Like Sool. He hoped when he returned that he’d have earned enough trust to ask about the Quiet plan to bring a labraetates to the Bourne, sing their way across the Pall.
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