by Andy Havens
“That’s a good joke, Bastiaan,” Monday said. He turned his head quickly at Wallace and gave him a significant look before turning back to his conversation.
Background check on Thomas Brownfield Edgington, Wallace understood, While Monday continued to chat with the man, he called up a simple Reference Way and set it spooling. It might take a few minutes, but he’d let Monday know when it was complete.
“Why did you change your name?” Monday asked.
“I didn’t.”
“But you said it used to be Thomas…”
“Oh, that,” Bastiaan interrupted. “I thought you wanted to know why I changed my name to Greenfield. Which I didn’t. That was just a joke.”
“I understand,” said Monday. “So why did you change your name from Bastiaan to Thomas and then back again?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Can I put the monocle on again?”
Monday nodded and Bastiaan did just that, relaxing visibly with the lens in place.
“Are you sure,” the man asked, “that it will stop working tomorrow? I really, really like it.”
“It will stop working” Monday said. “But I’ll make sure you get a new one. One that won’t ever stop working. I can even make two that you could wear like glasses rather than a monocle. Would you like that?”
Bastiaan nodded happily. “That would be great. This one also told me a rhyme. Will the new one?”
Monday shook his head. “Probably not.”
“OK.”
“Sir,” Wallace interrupted.
“Tell me,” the Librarian said.
“Thomas Brownfield Edgington was, or is, I should say, a Mundane natural gas technician. He was born in 1969 in Fairfield, Pennsylvania. He attended the University of Rochester where he got both an undergraduate and master’s degree in chemical engineering and worked for several major energy corporations, most recently as a field supervisor for British Petroleum in Canada.”
Monday held up a hand to pause Wallace’s recitation. “Bastiaan?” he asked. “Does any of that sound familiar? Chemical engineering? Natural gas?”
“Moles,” said Bastiaan.
“What about moles,” the Warden asked.
“It’s not that kind of a mole,” Wallace said.
“How do you know what kind of mole he meant? Or what kind I meant?” Ezer was a little agitated, Wallace thought. Perhaps because they hadn’t hardly begun talking about why he’d come to the Library when Bastiaan showed up.
“I assumed you were thinking about spies,” Wallace replied.
“Yes.”
“Well, moles are also a measurement used in chemistry,” Wallace said. “I assume that’s the kind Bastiaan was referring to.”
Bastiaan nodded, unwrapping another cookie. “Yes. Moles. Avogadro’s Number. 6.022140857 times ten to the twenty-third.”
Monday nodded, turning to look back at McKey and Wallace. They could hear his thought almost as clearly as if he’d spoken aloud: and yet he can’t remember where he was two hours ago.
Monday came to some kind of decision. “Bastiaan, if you’d like to, you can live here in our visiting lecturer quarters until we find you someplace more permanent. You’ll have your own bedroom and bathroom and can take meals with the staff. Would you like that?”
The man seemed delighted at the prospect. “Yes, oh yes. I’d like that. Especially if I can have that new monocle. Or maybe a pair of them like glasses, like you said? This one keeps wanting to pop out and squeezing it in my face is giving me kind of a headache.”
“That won’t be a problem, son,” Monday replied.
Turning to the rest of the group he said, “I will get Bastiaan situated in his room. You all may stay up and chat if you like, but I’m going to get some sleep after our friend here is situated. We can reconvene our session in the morning over breakfast.”
He led Bastiaan out of the room with a light hand on his shoulder. But just at the doorway he turned back and said, “Warden. You may dismiss your field teams. I’m sure they are not comfortable on their various rooftops and tree branches and what-not. I give you my bond, both under the rules of hospitality and as a matter of Law, that you are safe within my walls. Inasmuch as I can guarantee such a thing.”
Ezer considered it for a moment, and then nodded. Monday caused a gap in the Library’s Ways to manifest and the Warden sent forth a short command of his own.
“They’ll be glad for the break,” he said. “Thank you.”
Monday nodded and walked out of the room with Bastiaan. As they were leaving, the others could hear the man say, “Do you think I could get some milk before bed? For some reason, I seem to remember that milk goes well with cookies.”
His voice growing fainter around the corner, they heard Monday answer, “Milk does go well with cookies. All great scholars agree on this.”
Vannia was the first to speak after their exit.
“The old man seems awfully chummy with our dopey guest,” she commented.
McKey turned a glare on the girl assassin. “He is one of ours. And he is clearly injured or ill. Mr. Monday is not always an easy master. But he is rarely unkind. And to our own? He will make sure that Bastiaan is well cared for. Even if that means putting him up here in the Library for the rest of a long, long life.”
“I get it,” Vannia replied. “Not my path, but I get it.”
“Do you need somewhere to sleep, Warden?” McKey asked.
“No, thank you. I rarely sleep. But a computer with a good, fast internet connection would be appreciated.”
“I’ll show you to a private carrel on the Library’s secure line,” she said, standing up and gesturing him toward the door. Ezer rose, straightening his jacket, and said to Kendra, “We’ll compare notes with everyone tomorrow. I don’t think there’s anything else we need to discuss right away tonight.”
Kendra nodded and asked Mrs. McKey, “Is there somewhere I could pass out for a few hours? A couch or even a nice, overstuffed chair?”
“Come with us,” McKey said. “I’ll show you a place where a lot of students catch naps. The chairs are deep and the hum of the HVAC is, apparently, an effective soporific.”
At the door she turned back to Wallace. “You good for the night?” she asked.
“Yes, ma’am,” he replied. “And her?” gesturing over his shoulder at Vannia.
“She can wander or rest as she sees fit.”
Wallace raised an eyebrow. A Chaos assassin loose in the Library? At night?
“Vannia, dear,” McKey said. “You’ll behave, won’t you.”
“Yes, ma’am,” she replied, doing a passable impersonation of Wallace.
“Good girl,” McKey said, heading out between Ezer and Kendra.
Vannia hopped up and sat cross-legged on the back of the chair, defying both gravity and the chair’s center of balance. “She trusts me!” the blonde girl crowed. “I’m a trusted friend of Mrs. Number Two Librarian!”
“Yes, I’m sure that’s it,” muttered Wallace, trying to collect his laptop and brush crumbs off the table into a wastebasket at the same time.
“Or…” pondered Vannia aloud, “She is pretty sure that I know what happens to Chaos Ways that are set rolling in the House of Sight.”
Wallace wasn’t entirely sure of that. His specialty had been Mundane history. The interplay between Domains was an entirely different branch of study at the Library.
So he asked, “What would happen, Vannia?”
She mimed opening a book and turning its pages. “When I was your age, young’un, television was called books. How many endings for most books, friend clerk?” she asked.
“Uh… one?”
“Yup. One book, one story, one ending.”
She slammed the invisible book shut, tossed it over her shoulder and strode past him into the Library proper.
“I’ll curl up with a nice mystery,” she said. “And ponder all the ways it could have ended at the Fluid Court.”
“Ah,” sai
d Wallace, understanding. A reliable, linear ending would not be pleasant for a Chaotic.
He tidied the room up a bit more, throwing out the cookie wrappers and putting the empty water and Coke bottles into the blue recycling bin in the hall.
Wallace had a room at the Library, of course. He shared it with three other clerks, none of whom were working that night. He’d only ever had to double-up a few times. They were on different schedules mostly.
After undressing and washing up, he stretched out on his bunk and thought back to his days with Herr Goerlich. He’d never been particularly close with Bastiaan. But they’d been friendly, for sure. Wallace remembered a quiet sense of humor, the ability to memorize music very well and a good few nights of drinking at a local biergarten. He fell asleep to the memory of a Mundane girl they’d asked to dance and who had left, instead, with the son of a local magistrate.
In any time, in any city, he thought, drifting off, scholars will lose lovely girls to the sons of petty bureaucrats.
* * * * *
The Blood Dance at the mountain lake had been a great success. Senbi had seen Reckoners from several other Houses, including the woman known to him as Hieretha, the Librarian’s second-in-command. For a moment he was worried that she was there to spy on him—which is what Sight does, he reminded himself—but then he saw her entwined with the artist Avar’eket. The two had been seen together once or twice before and there was clearly a mutual attraction.
A coincidence, nothing more, the Bloodlord thought. This was not a time to be barring anyone from the Dance. Traditionally, Blood Dances were open to all Domains. Unlike almost all other Blood festivals, the Dances were a chance to establish ties and relationships outside the House. The tribes were not averse to being hired out as guards and assassins. As long as the Law was upheld and the rules of kanli followed, it didn’t matter if you killed your adulterous spouse yourself or rented a Blood Hunter to do it for you.
Of course it mattered to the Blood Tribe you hired. Because you’d owe them for the service.
Rights, responsibilities, lust, favors, revenge—these were the coins Blood dealt in.
After the formal, ritualized parts of the Dance were done and couples (or groups) headed off for more private activities, Senbi wandered the valley in disguise, a Way of Seeming that made him out to be a simple Thane from Sling Tribe. The mask wouldn’t hold up to real scrutiny, but nobody was interested in taking too close a look at one lone Blood wandering the edge of various debaucheries.
He saw his people taking pleasure in the things that were best in life. The joys of movement, food, drink and smoke. The touch of others, whether sensual or in a healing embrace. He heard songs and stories and saw Reckoners playing games, laughing, hugging, sleeping in heaps.
This is why Blood must rise, he thought to himself. These people are *all* my people. Not just those of my House, but all Children of the Seven. What relief do their own Ways bring them? None. They work and plan and learn and… whatever else they do. But, in the end, they come to the Dance. They return to the Blood.
The sun was rising, steam drifting up from the surface of the cold lake. The chill air didn’t bother him. But he knew that others would be retreating to different locales to continue intimacies and conversations or simply find someplace to sleep it off. He could sense their sated lusts like coals left behind after bonfires. He could see new connections where they pulsed like veins against the frosty grass. He moved among them, a ghost, none of them really noticing him.
A great success, yes, he thought to himself, pleased that he was still able to throw such a grand party when he wanted to.
That the entire event was just a ruse only made him more proud.
It had taken a decade to convince the Weyyrd from all fourteen tribes to swear direct fealty to him. It had taken several seasons more to conceive of a place and time where they could all gather without drawing suspicion from the tribal elders, Clan Chiefs or Talismae. But by carefully placing normal-seeming obstacles in the paths of various players, it all came together. Had he simply declared that all the Waymasters from all the Tribes should attend him, there would have been a great outcry (from some), suspicion (from others) and outright refusal (from a few).
For while the Bloodlord held sway over his House, his power was diminished and less direct the further from the throne it flowed. Why? Well, the Tribes were quarrelsome and individualistic families. They might allow their Lord or Lady to provide overall leadership and guidance… but direct commands from anyone other than your nearest superior? Unheard of. Sons obeyed fathers, not distant aristocrats. That was the Way of Blood. Now, the father might obey an Elder and the Elder a Chief… but if the son went directly to the Elder? That broke the chain and dishonored the father. A Blood would only do that in an extreme case of filial disappointment.
Senbi had, for all his life, admired this balance of power. The Bloodlord might declare war, but that assertion was useless without the support of the Talismae—who represented all tribes of a specific totem. To an extent. Inasmuch as a lose conglomeration of Tribes could ever agree on anything. Their lieutenants, the Clan Chiefs, were the ones who actually worked with members of the Tribes. They relayed decrees (which functioned as “directional requests”) from above to actual, practical groups. Which were led by local tribal elders. So if the Chiefs agreed to march, the elders from the various Tribes might—or might not—decide to follow those orders. Mostly the Chiefs were interested in day-to-day survival, wealth, changes in hierarchy, etc. Even then, with all those intersecting lines of leadership and fealty, there were powerful, informal relationships within the craft guilds.
Which included the Waymasters. Along with the Erken (scouts), Thanes (hunters), Shamas (healers) and Cravtel (builders), the Waymasters of the Weyyrd made up the “working classes” of the House.
All these ties and associations were clearly visible to Reckoners of Blood. Firstly because of the etched markings they wore instead of clothing on most occasions. The shifting, intricate tattoos declared a kind of biography to anyone who could read the language. Above that, however, it was simply something that his people knew. Blood calls to Blood, it was said. Children learned to navigate the complex world of interlocking debts and boons while they were still crawling.
All these traditions had been in place long before the Great War. It had taken tens-of-thousands of years for the families and clans of Blood to settle into anything like equilibrium. There had been centuries of open war between tribes. Other centuries where one Clan ruled with cruel efficiency, heel on the neck of all the other totems. There had been revolutions and uprisings and assassinations and dynasties.
All that ended with the birth of the younger Houses. Because in the face of rivals like Sight, Chaos and Flux, a divided House could not hope to survive. Flux used the internecine enmities of the Blood Clans to fuel its own cruel Ways. Chaos enjoyed how easy it was to confuse and confound the armies of Blood. And Sight, simply by reflecting their disorganization back to them, was the cruelest opposition. Many troubled Clan Chiefs purchased knowledge from Sight, only to find that their own rashness and petty conniving was at the heart of their suffering.
Over time, the Ways of the Blood became both a defense mechanism and a method of defining the House in contrast to the others. Chaos was, by definition, individualistic: a reaction, in many ways, to the demands of tribal unity. Flux hated stability, which was a key attribute of family and clan. Sight was too aloof to make deep personal connections. These were the things that mattered to Blood. And so they morphed and matured until the current system was as well defined as any modern organizational chart.
Which made what Senbi was about to do more like fracturing the nature of his Domain than breaking the Law.
We changed before, he said to himself in justification, approaching the concealed cavern beneath the hill where he’d told the Weyyrd to meet him. We must change again.
He could sense other Reckoners nearby. Some still sleeping near
the lake. Some walking in pairs and small groups. All of them heading off to whatever joys and chores the day held. Finally, when he felt that there were none close enough to see, he ducked inside the cave.
The Waymasters had arrived at different points in the night. Some had made a great show of dancing and cavorting and then leaving alone or in pairs. Some had come directly to the cave, only slowing to engage in some drink and talk. Some had waited until the Dance was complete and the moon obscured by clouds. None of them were seen together in a group of more than three. That wasn’t unusual; members of a guild enjoyed shop-talk.
Now, though, they were all together. Weyyrd of the fourteen totems: Stone, Fire, Sea, Bone, Wind, Bear, Wolf, Snake, Iron, Song, Spear, Sling, Knife and Hawk.
Unprecedented in ten-thousand years, Senbi thought to himself proudly as he descended into the depths. The cave was nowhere deep or impressive as the Wraidd, but a good hike into the hillside nonetheless.
After the first two turns, wide-spaced torches lit the damp, cool walls and rough floor. Three more turns, a gentle descent, and he was in the main cavern. Three of his personal Bloodguard were stationed at each corner of the space, holding torches and carrying their razor-sharp ritual knives of office. They were also armed with powerful longbows made of wood, sinew and bone. The tips of their arrows were Way-enhanced obsidian.
The fourteen Weyyrd stood around a small fire at the center of the cave. They were clearly nervous. But also anxious to begin. Afraid, but hopeful.
Like me, he thought. Afraid, but hopeful.
“My sons and daughters,” he said to them, arms spread wide. “You know why we are here. You are true to the Blood, true to our oaths and to the spirit of our House. You are brave and wise. You have come because you know, as do I, that we are in a time of peril unmatched since the Flood. We must come together as one clan, one tribe, one family, under one father. Only in unity can we defend ourselves against the lesser Houses, the growing threat of their tainted Ways, and the encroachment of Mundane powers.”
