by Matt Wallace
Stone plaques identify each city, but not by their Crachian designations, which are all numerical except for the Capitol. Each city modeled here has a name, and though Dyeawan isn’t far along enough in her studies of language to read them all, she can make out the words on the plaque in front of the Capitol.
It reads: GOD STONE.
“Do you know what mythology is, Slider?” Edger asks her.
“I… think so. It’s stories, like you said, only… stories that were supposed to have happened a long time ago. They’re about us, or about a people, only they’re not really true. They were made up by grandfathers and grandmothers to tell about the world around them.”
“That’s very good, yes. Myth can be very powerful. It can inspire people, and mislead them. Next to religion, mythology is the most dangerous kind of story. Once people mythologize a place or a person or an event, they become attached to it in a way that can be impossible to break them of. The ones who came before me, who built the first Planning Cadre, they knew this.”
“This is Crache, isn’t it?” she asks him, eyes frantically moving from model to model. “These are all the cities of Crache, but… different.”
“This is before Crache,” he explains. “This is the land as it was. Every city as we know it now was its own kingdom, its own realm in that time. They were disjointed, fragmented, constantly warring with one another. And do you know why?”
“Mythology?”
“Yes. Its people mythologized everything. Their cities, their rivers and lakes, even this little island on which we chose to build our Planning Cadre. They gave them fantastical names and legends. And people? Oh, they mythologized people to near-god heights. Their rulers were eight-feet-tall magicians who could split rocks with a hard stare, if you believed their stories. They mythologized entire families and called it ‘nobility.’ And it made the mythologized drunk with power and imagined legacy. They unleashed their false superiority on one another and the so-called lower class at every turn, and the people who believed in the myth of them followed and fought and submitted and suffered the worst.”
“That sounds… awful,” Dyeawan admits.
“It was a backward and bloody time, and it lasted far longer than it should’ve. And it’s the duty of the Planning Cadre to ensure that those days and that way of thinking and living never return. That is why Crache has no rulers, at least not in name. That is why, as far as the people know, all decisions are made by faceless councils and committees. No one has ever gathered torches and pitchforks and set themselves upon a committee.”
“But I thought… you said you solve everyday problems.”
“We do. Some are more… pressing than others, that’s all.”
Dyeawan feels a deep sense of dread encroaching upon her guts, worming its way up through her body.
“People… people now… they’re not supposed to know these things, are they? Any of this that you’re showing me and telling me?”
“Oh no. The knowledge in this room would unravel the very fabric of Crache. That’s why our friend from the Protectorate Ministry was so up in arms before. They believe this should all be burned to ash.”
“Why am I allowed to know it, then, Edger?”
“Because you belong here. And because the only people you’d tell are our people.”
That’s the truth, Dyeawan knows, but it’s not the whole truth.
She decides to simply say the rest for him: “I’m never allowed to leave here, am I, Edger?”
“My dear, where would you go if you could?” he asks, which is just another way of saying ‘yes’ to her.
Dyeawan is surprised to find in that moment her reaction is mixed. The dread is still there, heavy in the pit of her stomach. There was panic, too, but that’s fading. In its place she recognizes an eerie calmness, an acceptance. She knows she should be angry, even furious, at the suggestion of such captivity.
The emotions simply aren’t there.
It’s because he’s right and she knows it. Dyeawan has long understood a fundamental and gnawing fact of her existence: She shouldn’t be alive. Cast out alone and small and frail, and then losing the use of her legs, she never should’ve survived in the streets of the Capitol. She should’ve been scooped up by Aegins or murdered by other dregs like her.
She was smart enough. That’s all. When those times came, the ones that would’ve and should’ve ended her, she always thought of a way out. And every time, she knew the chances of her succeeding the next time grew slimmer and slimmer.
Her life is an accident with a date of expiration, and it wouldn’t be long before she woke up to find that day had come, at least out in the streets.
“Thank you for telling me the truth” is all she says to him in the end.
Edger is silent. It only lasts a few moments, but it feels much longer to Dyeawan in her excited state.
Eventually, he holds up a new mask to his dead face. It’s a smile, but not the cordial one with which he first greeted her. This smile is deeper, more joyous and profound.
“You… are a very fine pupil, Slider. Thank you for listening.”
“You’ll teach me more, then?”
Edger nods. “It would be my pleasure.”
Dyeawan smiles, doing everything she can to make it match the one painted on silk in front of his face.
She’s made a decision there in what she now understands is a tomb: Beginning today, her life is no longer an accident.
And whether or not it expires will be up to her.
HOME STUDIES
ENTERING THE GEN CIRCUS BY sky carriage is one of the most magnificent sights in Crache, second only to surveying the Spectrum itself from the air. The Circus is an awesome circle whose structures are unlike anywhere else in the city. It is also the grandest collection of architecture to be found this far from the center of the Capitol.
The members of every Gen reside in colossal cooperatives within the Circus. Each cooperative is like a castle-size tree carved from stone, utilized as a communal keep, with each branch serving a different Gen as their home. Some branches rise high above the others with various steps, columns, holdfasts, and towers added onto them by the more successful Gens. Most consist of more than a dozen kith-kins, families dedicated to a single purpose, function, or enterprise that furthers the interests of Crache.
Gen Stalbraid keeps the most modest home in the Circus, but to Lexi it’s the whole world. Their two families have shared the two spindly towers connected by several catwalks for four generations. Brio and Lexi first chased each other across those catwalks when they were children, and it was there she first realized she wanted to marry Brio and dedicate herself to furthering Gen Stalbraid. At that time and for long after, Lexi’s devotion was based on her love for Brio, her kith-kin, and their Gen. She was proud of the work Brio did, work she helped enable in her role, but that pride was always focused around Brio, his efforts and his passion.
In truth, as shameful as it felt now, Lexi had rarely considered the people in the Bottoms. She had thought of them as a cause, something abstract and singular to be saved, like a crumbling ruin or a poisoned forest. She had never conjured their faces to mind, or considered their lives or their feelings.
Now, Lexi can think of nothing else except the few faces she’s seen. Rather than being repulsed or disturbed by them, she only wants to see more, to know them and their stories and bring them hope if she can.
The sky carriage is drawn into the berth of its final destination. By now the only passengers left are those wearing Gen broaches or attending to individuals who do, most of them dressed like Lexi. The carriage tower is only a brief walk from the cooperative that hosts Gen Stalbraid. Outside the cooperatives, the Circus resembles a serene park, pockmarked by the odd shop or supper stand. Lush green grass surrounds paths laid with glassy pebbles, a subtle memorial to the Circus beginning its life as a pre-Renewal stone quarry. At night, stone sconces planted close to the ground light the surface of each path.
&
nbsp; Lexi doesn’t bother acknowledging the men and women of the Gen they pass in the Circus. Stalbraid was too small for most of them to pay attention to before Brio’s disappearance, and with this new revelation (the news of which Lexi would be thoroughly unsurprised to learn beat her and Taru back to the Circus) she and her Gen might as well not even exist to them. Besides, her mind is still with Shaheen and Char back in the Bottoms.
They pass the Aegins stationed outside Gen Stalbraid’s keep and enter the cooperative itself. The fragrance of the hanging garden greets them. Constructed as a reception area for visitors to the Circus, it is without question Lexi’s favorite place that is not part of her own home. Each Gen adds a plant to the garden when taking up residence, and is responsible for maintaining and refreshing it. Lexi still tends to the lilies floating atop bowls of water that were her kith-kin’s contribution. Beyond that, the cooperative market is bustling before the onset of evening, the cooks of a dozen Gens picking up ingredients for dinner, all of it provided by the state the Gens serve and paid for by the citizens who purchase the goods and use the services the Gens oversee.
Lexi and Taru skirt the market altogether. A collection of ascendancies awaits them on the far side of the keep, each one tethered to a golden cable rising through the height of the cooperative itself. Taru pulls open the gate and follows Lexi inside the cage. Lexi reaches up and rings the hanging bell four times, its reverberations signifying to the pullers high above the number of levels Lexi and Taru wish to ascend. Several moments later the cage shifts and begins to rise through the air.
When they reach the fourth level, attendants stabilize the cage in its berth and open the gate. The sun is beginning to set as Lexi and Taru exit the keep through a tall arch leading to a parapet walk. The Stalbraid towers await them on the other side.
No other attendants or servants greet Lexi as she enters her kith-kin’s familial tower. She regretfully dismissed the last of the full-time staff two weeks ago, and a week after that hiring temporary help became unfeasible. Gen Stalbraid’s allotment from the state has been reduced several times as pleading for the Bottoms seemed to become less and less a priority in their eyes. Since Brio’s disappearance, Lexi has become increasingly convinced that the reduction in their access to resources was less about their importance and more about intentionally harming their ability to represent the residents of the Bottoms.
Lexi, hands filled with the material of her wrap, ascends the winding stairs of the tower, passing doors opening into well-appointed rooms: the salon in which her mother instructed Lexi in the ways of state functions and formal events, the balcony kitchen where most of the meals she’s eaten in her life were prepared in the open air to save the cooks from the ovenlike heat within.
The Gen’s library resides halfway up the tower, a small horseshoe-shaped space with two stories into which hundreds of volumes have somehow been crammed.
Lexi stands at the threshold, staring at the large wooden lectern and adjoining table in the center of the library.
“You know, I don’t think I’ve ever stepped foot in this room before. No. I never made it past the threshold. I’d stand outside and tell Brio to come to bed, or to dinner, or to pelt him with pillows or bread or whatever I could find when I was bored or lonely or—”
Taru doesn’t speak, seeming at a loss as to how to provide their mistress comfort.
Lexi breathes deeply, tamping down her emotions.
“Brio knew these stacks like he knew his own mind. He was raised to be a pleader. I was raised to be a pleader’s wife. I know how to host formal events. I know all the rules of Gen etiquette. I can greet you in every recognized language in the nation. But none of that ever involved a law library. I suppose I should consider myself grateful they deemed it fit to teach me to read at all.”
She looks up at Taru. “Meaning no offense, but you can read, yes?”
“Yes, Te-Gen. Brio’s father insisted.”
“Good. Because if we’ve any chance at all, I can’t possibly read through enough of these volumes in time to make a difference.”
Even Taru can’t suppress their shock. “Te-Gen, surely retaining the temporary services of a pleader would be the most effective—”
Lexi actually laughs, the outburst enough to silence Taru.
“At this moment we can’t afford an hour’s time of the lowliest apprentice pleader, Taru. Besides, Brio always said Crachian law is far less a code of conduct and far more the most variable language in the nation. It’s designed to be manipulated to create an argument for anything, and to drown novices in words and subsections and sub-subsections. But the answer is there, like a magic spell. You just have to find the right phrase.”
“What phrase are we seeking in the pages of these books?”
Lexi’s expression hardens.
We are not flowers. We do not wilt.
“I’m not letting those crusted, condescending cock-splats revoke the Gen that my family and Brio’s family raised from dust on their bare backs. There’s something in here that will at the very least buy us time. We’re going to find it. And I’m going to thrust it down their throats like one of your blades.”
She looks up, and is shocked at what she sees.
Taru is smiling.
In that moment, Lexi truly believes anything is possible.
REQUITAL IS THE REVENGE OF THE WELL-READ
“IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE THREE hundred and twenty-first subset of the Articles of Addendum of the Adjunct Gen Franchise Protectorate Decree, I, Lexi Xia, acting on behalf of Gen Stalbraid as de facto kith-kin elder, formally protest the ruling of this Council.”
It’s like watching three people who are already awake somehow wake up. The spines of the three Councilmembers separate from their stone seatbacks like withered membranes pulling apart under protest, each of them pitching forward, drawn by the words of the petitioner they all thought they’d dealt with definitively and to whom this final session in the Council chambers was to be but a simple courtesy.
Taru by her side, Lexi stands precisely where she stood one week before, steeling herself under the silent thunder and civilized brutality of the Gen Franchise Council’s proclamations. This time, however, she’s come armed with her own bureaucratic barbs, and enough to shred the cloth from the stale robes of her enemies.
Senior Councilman Stru’s expression pulls twenty year’s worth of sag from his perpetually slumping facial features. He’s known Lexi since she was a young woman, but in that moment he looks down on her as a stranger, his eyes shocked and almost distrustful.
Councilman Jochi, the imp of the trio, comes alight at the unexpected authority in Lexi’s voice and the knowledge in her words. He looks positively delighted by the showing, in fact.
Councilwoman Burr’s suspicion is as thick in her eyes as her contempt. Nevertheless, she remains silent, watchful, waiting for Lexi’s next words.
She continues, drawing in as much breath as her lungs will hold. “Citing the eight hundred and ninety-seventh subset of the Gen Imperative Decree, no Gen’s franchise may be revoked by the state amid unsubstantiated charges of crimes against Crache, or unsubstantiated charges of treason made against one or more of its members. Further citing the two thousand, four hundred and seventy-second subset of the Crachian Articles of Citizenry, no member of a Gen operating under sanctioned franchise of Crache may be convicted of a charge of treason in absentia.”
Lexi watches their faces at the end of her address, and she is certain she couldn’t have produced more stunned expressions if she had ascended those fabled steps separating petitioners from the Councilmembers, squatted, and proceeded to urinate at their feet.
“Stated simply, Councilmen, and Councilwoman, you cannot convict my husband of treason without him present to first face those charges, and you cannot revoke my Gen’s franchise without first convicting my husband of treason.”
There is silence in the Council chambers for what threatens to drag on into agony.
Stru, the
oldest of them by a quarter century, is the first to stir.
“I… I can find no fault in your argument, or your citations—” Senior Councilman Stru begins, only to have Councilwoman Burr trample his next words as if a herd of water buffalo collapsed a fence in her mouth.
“There remains the singular core issue at hand in this case,” she insists. “That issue is the most important criteria for revoking a Gen’s franchise: obsolescence. You are the last kith-kin member of your Gen, Lexi. Gen Stalbraid’s function is to provide the Crachian political arena with its statesmen and leaders. You are not a politician. You’ll bear no children to become politicians. Does Gen Stalbraid plan to absorb a new kith-kin?”
Lexi is unshaken. “We have no immediate plans to do so, no, Councilwoman.”
“Then the issue of obsolescence remains, and must be answered.”
Lexi ascends a single step, breaching Council session protocol just enough to throw even Burr off-guard.
“A crime has been committed against my Gen,” Lexi says, a dark fire staining the edge of her voice. “My husband has been abducted, possibly… murdered. I cannot know. Neither can you. And until definitive evidence is offered in open council, Brio is still kith-kin elder of an active Gen franchise, and both he and it will be afforded all protections, courtesies, and resources promised in your own franchise codes.”
Councilwoman Burr’s gaze may be composed of daggers, but none of them are lethal, nor can she seem to locate the words to weaponize her stare.
Senior Councilman Stru takes advantage of her abnormal silence. “Respectfully, can any member of this Council cite a legal precedent or subset in which a set amount of time to declare a Gen elder dead in absentia is outlined?”
