The day following the Trial of Paths, Lady Saah turned up in Vivian’s room to deliver a large bag of purple coins, an old pelerine, and the worst piece of news imaginable.
‘Matijas, he... he passed away.’
Vivian opened her mouth in shock. She had never known how to express grief. It felt as though an important part of herself had just taken flight, never to return again. Not even Kaap’s sudden presence in her room could cheer Vivian up. The Hole-in-the-Wall had unfolded himself from Lady Saah’s old pelerine and was standing about like an overgrown toddler on his hairy, seven-toed feet, his chameleonic eyes jumping between Vivian and the Artisan.
A million thoughts pierced Vivian’s head, and still words seemed to fail her, for in the end, what could mere words do against the crushing emptiness of a mother who had to bury her only child? She knew from experience that some wounds no Artisan could heal, some voids no Weaver could close, and no amount of condolences on her part could bring Matijas back…
Matijas, who died in agony because she failed to return with the Whispering Rose...
Matijas, who died of Black Flu... a disease of her world... a disease she undoubtedly brought upon him herself... because her coming here had disrupted the cosmic balance... because there was Chaos in her she could not control...
‘I’m… so sorry…’ said Vivian, her empty words echoing somewhat pointlessly across the room. The Artisan stood only a foot way from her, and still Vivian’s condolences seemed too feeble to gap that tiny distance.
A buttery silence gripped the room, a silence so dense one could have baked bricks from it. For a while, Lady Saah stared at nothing through hollow, bloodshot eyes, while Kaap ate his way through a large orange. The spell of silence broke with Kaap accidentally knocking Vivian’s fruit bowl onto the floor, which brought the Artisan back to reality. She cleared her throat.
‘Your earnings from the Goltgos Haijk...’ said Lady Saah, giving the money pouch a visible push. ‘You left without collecting your pay.’
Vivian opened her mouth in protest, her mind struggling to shape some kind of excuse not to accept the money, but the Artisan had already turned on her heel and left the chamber, leaving Vivian alone with Kaap. She collapsed on her bed, her heart ridden with guilt, her head an ugly mess of dark thoughts.
The death of her parents... Matijas... the hole in the Pattern... could it be that Irra Lazuli had been right about her? Was she really a Weaver of Terrible Odds? Was there evil in her nature? Did Chaos inhabit her Thread?
‘Vivian is being silly. Vivian not evil. Vivian best person Kaap knows!’ said a voice that had nothing to do with her thoughts.
Vivian, who had grown accustomed to having the inside of her mind prodded at will by outside intrusion, turned to Kaap, who returned an ear-to-ear smile lined with large and rather twisted teeth.
‘Vivian will survive Trials. Vivian will find her purpose, for Vivian has come a long way since her and Kaap first met,’ said Kaap, his fur turning a pink coral colour. ‘Kaap always said: it is often journey that teaches us purpose, more than destination self. ’
Vivian wiped a tear off her cheek and returned him a weak smile. With Kaap thinking such thoughts her way, she found it difficult to stay sad.
‘This Kaap sounds like one heck of a wise fellow,’ said Vivian. ‘What you did back there in the arena was... was brave and—‘, she slowly exhaled, ‘thank you Kaap. I wouldn’t’ve made it without you.’
‘Vivian would have found a way,’ said Kaap earnestly, his fur flashing an even brighter pink. ‘Life is tough, but so is Vivian.’
Later that day, something happened that temporarily got Vivian’s mind off the Artisan’s son: a day off in Lantana.
‘You mean I can finally leave this tower?’ Vivian asked for a tenth time in a row, when Kate and Lucian had burst into her room to deliver the good news.
‘You can!’ said Kate, who was already wearing her best clothes. ‘Daimey herself has given you permission. Asked her myself – took some convincing – but she finally said yes. Lucian and I can show you around town!’
Vivian stood up so quickly from her armchair, one might have thought she had springs for legs.
‘So I can go wherever I please without—‘, she indicated the guards at the door, ‘—supervision?’
Kate shook her head from side to side. ‘Well, not everywhere-everywhere and not without your usual escort but you can see Lantana with us!’
‘Did our dear Queen say to what do I owe this generous treat?’
’Oh, just some princeling from the north is to arrive today to ask for Daimey’s hand, so she’s probably just trying to impress—’
But Kate’s explanation was suddenly interrupted by Lucian’s piercing scream. His baby-blue eyes stared in horror at whatever monstrous, yellow-eyed demon had just emerged from underneath Vivian Amberville’s queen-sized bed.
‘W-what is— that ?’ he pointed a trembling hand at it.
‘Oh that’s just— cor, completely forgot to introduce you!’ Vivian brought her hand to her forehead. ‘Everyone, this is Kaap, a Hole-in-the-Wall I met back in Kranija—oh, honestly, you three!’ she added, when both Kaap and her friends stepped away from each other, one face more scared than the next. ‘Kaap saved my life multiple times. He’s not going to hurt you. And you, Kaap, don’t be afraid. Kate and Lucian are my friends. My very, very good friends.’
Kaap took a step forward, his fur a vibrant shade of orange.
Kate let out a small cry, which caused Kaap to first turn yellow and then melt into a pitch-black puddle.
‘Incredible...’ Lucian whispered, wiping his glasses on his shirt and approaching. ‘A shape-shifter who can alter his body at subatomic level!’
Lucian approached the puddle and was amazed to see the room below reflected in its depths.
‘A living, breathing hole! Not only does he alter his physical body, but the reality around him. As if Kaalà itself had come to life!’
‘He’s really something, isn’t he?’ said Vivian heartily, whilst Kaap slowly changed back into his seven-toed hairy-dwarf usual self, and was watching Kate with mild interest.
‘Ah!’ Kate jumped. ‘He spoke! Inside my head, he spoke!’
‘Oh yeah, he does that too. You get used to it after a while.’
Vivian warmly turned to Kaap and tried to channel her every thought straight into the creature’s mind. She immediately knew her message had landed, because Kaap climbed on her shoulder, and fastening his stubby fingers around her neckline, he turned himself into an old travelling cloak.
If Kate’s jaw had been mechanical, it would have unbolted from her face and dropped onto the floor with a loud clatter.
‘H-How in sod’s name—?’
‘C’mon, let’s not waste this day,’ said Vivian excitedly, pocketing her earnings from the Haijk. ‘I’ll explain everything on the way.’
Vivian, Kate and Lucian descended the five hundred and twenty nine steps of the Tower of Lords, filed out of the exquisite bas-relief entrance to Palas Lumina and took the flagstone-paved road to Lantana. Careful not to be overheard by the guards on their tail, Vivian told Kate and Lucian everything that had happened before and during the Trial of Paths.
Vivian narrated to Kate and Lucian how she had managed to brew the Featherweight Philtre (“A potion that can make you lose all your weight? Back in Existence, people would pay good money for it”) and proceeded with relating the events of the First Trial and how Kaap had helped her onto the highest platform.
‘Kaap is everything this world is, in a nutshell,’ said Lucian. ‘Honestly, he is a walking metaphor for Weaving, if I ever saw one.’
Vivian also recounted the conversation she overheard between her siblings in the Forests of Arc Luteus, during which Kate could barely hold back her distaste of the double-eyeleashed queen regent.
‘Daimey only care
s about her own image. One can tell from the number of mirrors she put in that throne-room.’
When she finally told them about Lady Saah’s dreadful loss and how responsible she felt for Matijas’s death, Vivian was met with a tumult of opinions.
‘Here you are, doing that blame-thing again,’ said Kate, her silver hair catching the amber light of two midday suns. ‘You can’t give someone else Filth unless you’re suffering from it yourself. Besides, that’s not how Black Flu works – or to put it more honestly, no one knows how the accursed thing works. I, for once, have been attending to Lara’s bedside for weeks before she died, and her sickness never jumped skins, whereas I know others who lived in constant fear of Filth – people who isolated themselves from the outside world – and who got sick all the same.’
‘Kate’s right. Black Flu is pure chaos. It does not follow any pattern of logic,’ said Lucian, whose words made Vivian feel even worse than before.
Vivian’s thoughts jumped to Mira Amberville, whose life of complete isolation had done nothing to prevent the disease, and immediately felt worse. How on earth did Matijas get sick?
‘I’m sure Lady Saah doesn’t blame you for it either,’ said Lucian.
Vivian thought back on her morning and how the Artisan had behaved unnaturally cold and distant.
‘What did you expect? She’s mourning her son!’
‘Yeah, I suppose she does...’ said Vivian, feeling yet another stab of guilt.
There was more to the story than what Vivian dared to admit, but she had certain misgivings about sharing it all with Kate and Lucian. That night Lady Saah had consulted the fates on Vivian’s behalf, the symbol of the Burning Water – which stood for Chaos and the opposite of cosmic creation – had turned up in all her outcome leaks. Vivian remembered the Artisan had acted strangely after the incident, as though she was in two minds about offering Vivian survival or killing her off. Ever since then, people had been telling Vivian her mere existence had caused irreparable damage to the substance of reality, which got Vivian wondering whether the Guild had a valid point in wanting her dead.
’Well the odds of me surviving have just doubled, haven’t they?’ said Vivian after a long period of silence. ‘With Bastijaan showing up after the First Trial to congratulate me on my performance and say he’ll send along someone to help me prepare.’
‘What about Brother Haral?’
‘Brother Haral got spooked when he saw me walk through empty space and reckons I’m—’ Vivian cleared her throat. ‘He can no longer provide the training.’
‘So who are you getting instead?’
‘Dunno,’ Vivian shrugged. ‘But Bastijaan said it’s the best Weaver there is.’
‘That’s great, isn’t it?’ said Lucian. ‘An expert would surely know what in blazing hell are Seer Tears used for. I couldn’t find a single reference about it in the Record Room.’
‘Oh, I doubt you’d find anything in their literature,’ said Vivian. ‘If I learned anything during my apprenticeship at the Haijk was that Alarians avoid writing about sensitive subjects, so everything Weaving-Seeing related is not very likely to make the shelf.’
‘They’re probably trying to keep such subjects under a veil of mystery,’ Lucian scratched his chin. ‘If one could learn how to Weave from a book, there wouldn’t be much point in having a School of Thought now, would there? Still... if Æbe’trax is like thought made flesh, summoning the most dominant thought in one’s awareness, I wonder if Seer Tears makes one see the future.’
‘Whatever they do, their use is illegal during the Trials,’ said Vivian. ‘Ærinna confiscated the phial, and took the knife along for good measure. She said she will return them after the Trials.’
‘Am I the only one surprised that the Artisan’s son was a secret Seer?’ asked Kate, her sea-green eyes watching Vivian with interest. ‘I mean, don’t all Seers know their exact moment of death?’
Vivian said nothing, although Kate’s question brought something to her attention she had not noticed before now. Everything Matijas had told her on his deathbed – which she initially dismissed as Black Flu Delirium – was pointing towards a boy who not only knew he was going to die, but also what would happen weeks and months after his death.
Vivian absentmindedly ran her fingers over the woven texture of Mama Vadda’s bracelet, the buzzing in her mind louder by the second. Had Matijas really been a Seer? A secret Seer who Lady Saah had done her best to hide from the world? It certainly explained why the Artisan knew a lot about subjects beyond her expertise, such as Seeing or even Weaving, while at the same time kept a suspiciously low profile about it.
‘Ground control to Vivian?’ Kate waved a hand in front of her face eyes. Vivian’s empty eyes snapped back into focus.
‘Let me... let me buy you guys a drink,’ said Vivian, changing the subject.
Her nostrils had just picked up the unmistakable scent of the deliciously sweet and addicting kyrsaap, trailing away from a local vendor. Served in bottle-shaped wooden gourds and costing nine ruvi each, she bought one for each of them – Kaap refused his by thinking a very strong “blegh!” back into Vivian’s mind – and they continued wandering aimlessly through the urb of Lantana.
‘Ooh, look at these!’ Kate pointed at a nearby stand with hundreds of colourful clothing. She picked up a heavily-laced orange breastplate, whose metal-enforced rims made it look like a combination of functional armour and elegant corset. ‘See how they combine various fabrics with exquisite metalwork? How the Alarians manage this without any technology, I could not say.’
Lucian, who was checking out a pair of leather trousers whose pockets allowed one to carry up to forty-seven pounds worth of objects, turned to face Kate.
‘According to their lore, the Alarians path to civilization never included technological development,’ said Lucian, inspecting a side pocket and accidentally sinking his arm all the way to the shoulder. ‘Their evolutionary curve was radically different than our own. While humans generally tried to adapt ourselves to the environment by use of technology, the Alarians evolved cognitive skills that allowed them to adapt the environment to themselves.’
‘So what you’re saying is they can think things true,’ said Kate, without taking her eyes off the corset.
‘In a manner of speaking, yes. Their imagination – Kaalà – is the life and substance of everything, so part of reality is born inside their mind. That whole “Weaving” business is nothing more than mind over matter. And what they call “Kaalà” is what would have happened to the human imagination over a billion years and in complete absence of technology. In the end, the Alarian people are the most ancient and advanced civilization of the cosmos – even if their definition of “advanced” is very different from ours.’
Kate was now inspecting a metal bracelet that supposedly turned the wearer into a large, silver-haired beast.
‘They’re not that advanced, these folk,’ she said, putting the bracelet back with a scorn and taking another swing of juice from her gourd. ‘Like, who’d ever want to turn into a long-fanged yeti?’
‘I wouldn’t mind, if it gets me through the Second Trial,’ said Vivian, while checking out a magnificent black velvet dress.
‘That Ace still didn’t tell you what to expect?’ Kate asked, and Vivian shook her head. ‘Well I supposed it can’t be worse than jumping onto high platforms while four murderous copies of yourself are trying to do-ya-in.’
‘Three copies,’ Vivian corrected her, her hands now caressing the silky folds of another dress. ‘Remember that one Alter with the knife? She repeatedly tried to save my life.’
‘Brother Haral was also stumped,’ said Lucian. ‘He said in all his years of chairing the Trials, never had he witnessed interdimensional Alters acting the way they did. Haral said they are called to existence to challenge the participant, not offer help. Said the Guild must’ve made a mistake or something.’
‘That Alter, though,’ said Vivian through a small frown. ‘Did you all see the knife she was wielding?’
‘Yeah. It looked just like yours, Viv,’ said Kate, ‘except—’
‘—except its blade was all smooth and polished, like that of a real knife,’ Vivian completed her sentence. ‘A bit odd, don’t you think? Everyone knows Æbe’trax can’t be smelted.’
‘In an alternate reality, it well could,’ said Lucian. ‘Anyway, whatever the next Trial is, those Anti-gravity boots are bound to be of some use.’
‘And risk having those confiscated? Lose my only way in and out of that tower? Not a chance!’ said Vivian, who was already going through her third dress. ‘No one must know about the boots – about Kaap either – so you two better keep those quiet.’
‘Of course we’re not going to breathe a word!’ said Kate, looking offended.
Vivian returned her a thankful smile, placed her chosen garments on the counter and paid the clothes vendor fifty-five ruvi.
‘Are you out of your mind?’ burst Kate when Vivian returned with three dissimilar dresses, one blacker than the next. ‘Don’t you know black makes you look all sickly pale?’
‘Better than wearing a colourful mask of “good health” while underneath you’re half-dead,’ Vivian snapped, giving the orange corset in Kate’s hand a criticizing look. ‘Wearing colourful clothes is Ala Spuria’s philosophy of pretence all over again. Forcing us into bright garments to make us look all healthy and whole to outsiders, but black... black never lies. Black tells the truth about my health and makes me drop all pretence— alright, alright, just give that here,’ said Vivian, snatching the orange corset from Kate’s hands, and dropping an additional fifteen ruvi on top of the counter.
‘You needn’t buy that for me,’ said Kate weakly, her cheeks flushing pink.
‘It’s okay. You can pay me back the day you get an income.’
‘Hold this,’ Kate pushed her orange corset in Lucian’s arms. ‘I can pay you back tomorrow. I get fifty Alarian crests from the Artisan.’
Vivian Amberville - The Weaver of Odds Page 30
