VI
Lurching Along
an Ancient Line

Around noon, Old Dub headed home to dry his feet by the fire, eat a bit of food, and hopefully get in a kiss or two with his wife.

“Salt this down, I guess,” he said, gesturing to the half-empty basket on his way in. “Been raking all morning, got nothing to show but them oil fish and a sore back. Caught an eel — almost — near about fell in the wet, juggling him around.”

While he ate, Geminda massaged his shoulders, digging in deep the way he needed. “I’d be impressed to see any man catch an eel with a rake.”

“I tell you, though, what time’s left for anything to go right if everything’s already gone wrong? Been days, weeks, months — since around Dark Day, I reckon.”

“That far back?”

“Yep. Got a theory about that, too. Nothing holds together! By the time one thing’s fixed, another’s broke. If it ain’t a bum net, it’s a bum paddle or basket — this molar’s bothering me something awful, too. Gonna end up knocking it out if it don’t fall on its own.”

She tickled his bristly cheek with a kiss. “You go back out and struggle, dear husband, the way you have every day since before we married. Succeed or fail, the sun will go down and come back up, and you’ll be back again with a new chance for things to hold together. Either way, I’ll be impressed.”

“Aw, Geminda, I reckon you can put a good story on anything, me included. It’s my favorite thing about you.”

“Is it now?” She stole his hat, put it on. “Maybe you can show me how to juggle an eel.”

He kissed her, reached around to slip his hat off her head, kissed her again. “Well, second favorite.”

The rest of the afternoon went no better. The crossbar on his fish rake broke, then as he was fixing it, he cut his thumb and dropped his favorite knife overboard. He switched to his net but half his weights were still ashore; no matter how he threw they wouldn’t spin right. By the time he fetched the weights, it was nearly dark.

Water started pooling under his feet from a patch that came undone, which meant he was done for the day. At twilight, while he was dragging the boat ashore he scraped his leg on a rock and tore his pants.

“Bad luck on top of bad luck,” he muttered. “Why Old Dub? Ain’t there anyone else to bother?” The day was too long for comfort, too short for a proper catch. His shoes were too small and his boat was too big. “Oh, that boy! Not a word, just oop! disappears on me.”

Just before Dark Day, a trader had handed them a letter from his son that said he couldn’t “wither away on a forgotten pile of rocks” and that he’d “gone up-coast to earn some money,” and he “might stop through” with a trading expedition before the year was done.

“My little Dubbich! Should’ve married a local girl, made me grandfather by now. That’s another plan lost at sea, now ain’t it?”

The house was extra dark and quiet. “Ho, Geminda! Fire’s gone out.” He stomped off his boots, slapped his poncho dry, and hung it on a hook by the door. “None of the lamps is lit, either.”

A feeble moan came from the cot at the back corner of the room.

He rushed over, stumbled in the darkness, cursed, felt her cheeks and neck. “Oh! Your blood’s boiling hotter than an unwatched pot! I’ll fetch your sister.”

Geminda tried to speak but only made a croaking noise.

Bile rose from his liver and pushed on his chest, tightening his breath. Blood drained from his hands and feet then settled in behind his eyes. His kidneys overheated.

Bad luck? Bad omens, more like! I knew it, I told them, I told everybody, but they just laughed at me. Oh! You stupid, stupid Atnan, you dumb-stump, you rock-biter, you crab-in-the-pants, you worthless son of a centipede!

Outside, he crashed over baskets and nets, banged the shutters next door, and bellowed for Geminda’s sister. Concerned neighbors poked out of windows and doors. They could follow if they liked, but nobody was going to stop him. Not this time!

Them dark demented things never should’ve entered the village, much less the roundhouse! It’s one thing if my boats get ruined, my baskets, my soup, my teeth — why’d he curse Geminda? That’s going too far!

* * * * *

Barlas sat smoking a plum by the fire in his little hut behind Layram and Betalia’s house when the noise started outside. He threw on his cloak and boots and emerged, nearly running into Layram.

“What’s all the racket?” Barlas asked.

“Don’t know, don’t much care — but this time of evening, it’s never anything good.”

They followed the noise down the path toward Omrik’s house and as they got nearer, it turned out to be shouting.

“I thought I told you to leave my grandson alone — ”

“ — he brought a plague on my wife — ”

“ — that’s impossible — ”

“ — I told you, I told everyone — ”

“ — calm down, be reasonable — ”

“ — where is he? Answer me, coward!”

As they rounded the last corner, the situation became clear: Dub and a gang of his relatives had gathered at Omrik’s house, where he and Hennamis were defending their doorway as best they could.

     Barlas shoved his way through the Fish clan to put himself between Dub and the homeowners. He waved Omrik and Hennamis inside then squared up in the doorway facing Dub, arms crossed. Dub held his oar with both hands like a spear.

“None of your fight, big boy. Unless you want it to be,” Dub growled.

“What fight, eh?”

Layram arrived, banging his oar on the ground for order, to no avail.

“Your little stump-tongued friend, he, he, he — .”

Barlas was about to suggest they take it up in the morning over stew when Dub, bleary-eyed and panting, charged at him head down. Barlas swiped with a hand nearly as big as the old man’s head, gently enough not to bowl him over, but firmly enough to spin him around.

Undeterred, Dub charged a second time. Again Barlas swiped him aside.

“I can do this all night if — ” Barlas said, just as Dub jabbed the blade of his oar into his ribs like a lance. It surprised him more than it hurt, but it hurt plenty.

Without thinking, Barlas caught the oar blade in the crook of one arm and slammed his other palm into the handle. The wood let out a loud crack and he flinched back, then let go and gave the handle a little shove back at its owner.

Dub stumbled back, flopping the oar around like a broken elbow, a thick splintery arch joining upper and lower halves.

“You broke my oar! He broke it! You broke it!” Dub ran around nearby houses, shouting into the doorways. “Atnan put a curse on my wife and Barlas broke my oar!” The kinfolk who had come with him did the same.

Barlas moved away from the door, holding his ribs. He checked for blood but found only a tender spot that would no doubt raise a fine bruise by morning.

Stupid old goat!

     Meanwhile, Layram interrogated Omrik. “Where’s Atnan?”

Omrik and Hennamis shot each other a glance.

Layram scoffed. “Hm, at the roundhouse.”

Hennamis said, “Dub’s been spreading rumors that every woe and mischance three days’ walk of here is our Atnan’s fault because of some curse. Don’t tell me you haven’t heard.”

Barlas said, “Oh, we’ve all heard — time and again, eh?”

Layram sucked in a quick breath. “That boy of yours probably did bring home a shadow or two, but I never put much on it. I mean, we all bring shadows around — the kind that run with otters or grow out the ground when you don’t clean a shark properly. Probably five or more in here now, spinning cobwebs in the corners, unraveling the clothes, or spoiling the broth — but a plague? That’s serious, isn’t it?”

“Dub’s riling up a mob,” Hennamis said. “What do you propose to do about that?”

Layram stroked his chin. “I’ll rouse the elders and we’ll try to calm him down.” He glared at Barlas suddenly. “You! What were you thinking? I didn’t come down here with you to get in a fight!”

“That’s exactly why we come down, eh?”

“No, you smoldering heap! We were trying to avoid a fight. If I thought you were going to snap the man’s oar in half, I’d have left you behind!”

If I knew he was going to poke me with it, I’d’a been glad you did, eh?

Layram inhaled sharply and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Take Hennamis to the roundhouse. We’ll meet you there. No one sleeps until we get this settled.”

Barlas walked with Hennamis toward the roundhouse, spirit sinking with every step. He knew he shouldn’t have snapped the man’s oar — he hadn’t meant to! He probably shouldn’t have stood in the doorway in the first place.

Then again, maybe Dub had good reason to be that angry. How did he know one way or the other? He wondered what Atnan could possibly have done to get everyone so agitated.

Even so! What, do I just let an angry mob tear up someone’s house over nothing? No, whatever wrong I did, I was a fair bit right in doing it, eh?

* * * * *

Atnan overheard voices clamoring outside the roundhouse. In haste, he gathered his texts, shoved them in a basket, shook out his pen, capped his ink, and went outside.

Multiple groups converged: Barlas and his grandmother, Old Dub with some members of the Fish clan, and finally Omrik and Layram with the elders. Some carried oil lamps, some torches. Everyone seemed upset.

Voices overlapped; he was unable to decipher them. The noise continued until Layram and the elders stood next to him.

“You, inside.” Layram pointed his oar toward the nearest doorway. “Barlas, get up here, too. Everyone else, follow behind. We’re going to sort this, now.”

Dub flopped his half-broken oar. “Sort what? We all know what they did.”

More overlapping talk jangled like pottery breaking on a stone floor.

Layram clacked his staff again. “Anyone who has something to say can say it indoors and in the proper order. We’re Fyreans, not animals.”

Taláni despised the bone-house and did not refrain from saying so.

“The meridians converge there,” his mother said, “and we need strength to combat this spirit.” Eleven times she tapped his lips, charming him into silence. “Complaining saps your energy. No more.”

Over bracken, fallen trees, and boulders, they trudged along the cracks of the foothills, held in shadow all the way. Eventually, their path opened into a sheltered valley, a bowl of dark gray granite with a mossy green floor. Long beards of white lichen hung from the trees and fog clung to the ground as though the moist gray valley were holding its moist gray breath.

This is the most silent place in the world.

The leather door-flap of the bone-house hung between two mastodon tusks. Shoulder blades of giant sloths and elk antlers made its walls. The porch was whalebone. His mother never said how she obtained them and he never asked.

Inside, he kindled a fire while his mother busied herself, opening shutters, moving baskets. Clutter filled every available space: Bone talismans, shocks of dried herbs, animal skulls stuffed with straw and pinecones, long streamers painted with bone writing. A squirrel chittered as she shooed it away.

In a stone bowl, she mashed some spirit root. Then she ladled some hot water from a clay pot bubbling over the fire and gave him the bowl to drink. The bitter, gritty beverage numbed his throat and warmed his inner parts. The cabin sagged and draped itself over him like a curtain. Awareness melted, leaving only sensation — form, color, sound, smell, without meaning.

It was beautiful.

As he drank, his mother gathered two bowls, one full of red pigment and one empty, a short-bladed knife, a heavy cloth, some fragrant oil, and incense. On the floor, she spread out a circular leather pad with the sun painted on its center.

Taláni shed his clothing and stood on the sun.

“A little from your earlobe,” she said, using the knife to dribble a few drops of his blood into the bowl of pigment. She cut a lock of his hair, bound it into a little shock, stirred the blood and pigment together, and painted a continuous vine of text around the edge of the mat.

Each letter-leaf connected to the vine as she sang, encircling him fully:

The sun is a mountain of fire

Towering over darkness.

A living thing is a river of blood

Flowing until its death.

Four cones of incense bathed him in sweet smoke as she spattered him with red from the hair-brush. Next, she washed it away with the cloth and anointed him with the fragrant oil. Finally, she bound a clean skirt around him.

In the empty bowl, she collected blood from his chest over his heart, mixed in the leftover oil, and dunked the blade in the bowl, handle wrapped with the cloth. “Drink, drink your fill, quell your lust for blood.”

After a while, she touched the knife without the cloth. Declaring it safe, she handed it to him. “I will go outside to sing with the wind. The spirit is yours.”

His reflection wobbled over the irregular obsidian blade. He focused his gaze on a tiny imperfection in the knife, closer and closer, narrowing his view to a pinpoint until it pierced through the world and the world-inside-the-world oozed through.

Time stops.

No more bone-house. Scrub brush. Low hills. A red desert stretching in all directions, lifeless. Heat. Sun. Wind. Dust.

“Come out!” Taláni shouts. “Face me!”

A high plateau. A spiral channel, lined with stones, sun-shaped like the mat. Taláni, in the center, standing before a jasper throne. A figure emerges there, wobbling, twisting like a mirage.

No face, only smoke rising from its neck. Neither male nor female. Legs like roots, rising from cracks, disappearing beneath crimson robes. Long spidery fingers, stained from knuckle to tip, like death, like black jasper.

Taláni stands ready. “I will not let you kill me.”

Vines leap from the ground. A lush canopy. A dark cocoon of vegetation. Now wilting, shriveling into ash. Dust again. Wind again.

Taláni maintains a defensive posture. “Do you know my plans? Are you with me?”

Laughter, terrible laughter, like a stampede of elk, a rockslide. It speaks, its voice like buzzing flies, a crashing cymbal. “I am the caster of dying things,” it says. “I melt the blood and pour it like wax into the mold. I set the wick and bring the flame. When the candle burns down, I gather the wax to make something new.”

Laughter, terrible laughter, like the roar of a mountain cat, the sound of rushing wind. The figure continues, “Will you walk on the sun and yet have feet? Breathe flame and yet have lungs? Oh, my precious little dying ember! I am not with you. You are with me!”

Taláni scuttles back.

Laughter, like a roaring river, an avalanche. The figure stands, tall as a tree. “Your ancestors knew me and worshipped me. But you do not. You know only my blood, stolen from my dying things. The debt you owe to me is beyond recompense.”

Rumbling, like a rushing flood. No, a long throaty groan, like thousands of voices. Inside him. Taláni looks at his palms, bleeding from unknown signs. Vomiting now, a continuous flow of blood, filling the channel. All his victims, all their parts.

The voice. “You sold yourself to me. This was the price.”

The flood stops. Taláni collapses. The spirit walks toward him, roots un-planting and replanting. Steps crack like thunder.

Taláni retreats. “Who are you?” Panting. “I won’t let you kill me!”

No response. Hands at its throat. The smoke bends around, peels back. It has a face! A laughing face, like flooding rain, like crashing surf.

It’s Taláni’s face, staring back at him. Battered. Webbed deep with scars. Pale. Lifeless green, not healthy brown. One shriveled eye, one eye of black jasper.

Taláni wrenches loose one of the patio stones. Hurls it. Impact. The figure shatters like obsidian. The flakes swarm, turn on him. The shards enter Taláni’s flesh, hissing, boiling him inside out. With every jolt, he grows stronger, larger. Now he is as tall as a tree.

Implosion. Rushing wind.

Time resumes.

Breath ragged, heart racing, Taláni returned to himself, kneeling on the leather mat, still holding the knife in front of his face.

What did it mean? The spirit was stronger than expected. His thumb circled the ovoid of jasper at the hilt. Yes, the spirit was on his side and with its power, he would succeed.

Selolo scampered up the short slope toward Kilími and the other women waiting at the edge of the road.

“Oh, you’re bleeding!” Sílthi motioned to Selolo’s fingertips.

Peeling back the sleeve where the bird had perched, Selolo revealed a series of punctures and slashes. Blood welled out and the skin was already starting to bruise. The sight of it made her suddenly feel the pain.

Gwahália offered a scarf. As Selolo finished tying it on as a bandage, pulling it tight with her teeth, she noticed that Kilími had already started down a nearby path leading into the forest. Selolo signaled to the others and followed after her.

No matter what Kilími may think, we do not revolve around her. We need to find somewhere to sleep, not only for the night but long term. If not here, then where? Beyond the river?

Selolo caught up first, breathing heavily. Kilími was waiting for her, blocking the path, her arms crossed.

Selolo dropped her gear. “We should stop at the next clearing.”

“How does someone become this self-involved?”

Selolo startled back, as though pushed by the words. “Kilími, I — ”

As the other women gathered around like an audience, Kilími continued, “Not once have you shown even a tenth part of the concern you lavished on that bird for any one of us. Not once!”

“What are you talk — ”

“I’ve tried to ignore it, but — is it possible you are oblivious? Blind? No. You don’t get to pretend. Not any more. What I’m talking about is you, our little Lolo princess!”

Sílthi said, “Kilími, please. Not now.” A few of the other women agreed. They needed to set up camp. They could fight later.

Selolo hesitated.

Of course I am pretending! Pretending to be strong. To be well. Aren’t we all? Isn’t that what we do to make it through every day? I wish there were some other way.

Kilími threw her hands up. “Nothing to say for yourself?”

“I … don’t know what you want from me.”

“That’s just it! You don’t know what anyone wants from you. Thoughts, Selolo. I want you to think about me.” She gestured around the circle. “About her, or her, or anyone.”

“Is this because I was happy just now? Choke it down, because ‘that bird’ may be from my childhood — and yes, seeing it made me happy. I won’t — ”

“Not only that.”

Only. The word cut deeper than any ever had.

Sílthi tugged on Kilími’s sleeve but she shrugged her away. Their breath was the only sound for a few tense moments.

“Do you think you were the only unhappy one?” Kilími asked flatly. “Everything that happened to you also happened to us. Only more.”

Selolo searched her mind for a response and came up blank. Yes, their situations were intertwined. This much was obvious.

Kilími continued, “When you left to go with him, things got better because he didn’t call for us anymore. They also got worse — because he didn’t call for us anymore. And never, in all that time, did you use your position to help any of us. Only yourself. Whatever you did or didn’t do to anger them, whatever made them murder a dozen men and cast us into the wilderness to die — that’s when we became important, but only as handmaidens to your … your … misery. That’s when we joined the Selolo story — her triumphant return home! — but you know we existed before then, right? That we were people, all along?” Her voice fell. “And just as miserable.”

“I … never meant for that to happen.” Selolo felt her lip quivering. She took deep breaths to calm herself. Crying was exactly what Kilími wanted, and she wasn’t about to oblige.

Kilími stepped closer and dropped to a whisper. “Do you remember when they took you?”

Selolo wanted to run away, to disappear into the forest. She couldn’t say it aloud, but she thought it.

No, I don’t! I hate thinking about this and so do you. We’ll hate each other even more if you make us talk about it!

Kilími pressed on. “Can you even remember? Or just don’t want to? Would you rather keep pretending? Did they beat you? Until you blacked out? Did they give you potions? Make you have wild visions?”

You know they did.

“Did they lock you in the dark? Starve you? Keep you awake? Until you forgot who you were? Forgot you were even a person?”

For days and days. I don’t even know for how long.

“And when he came to let you out, gave you blood to drink, did you love him for it?”

If I’m honest, I still do.

“Did he make you think you were special?” Kilími whispered. “When he lied and said he would do you no wrong — never had, never would, and had punished those responsible — did you believe it? When Mirílna combed your hair, put you in a pretty dress and spoke softly to you, fed you sweets, called you a woman — did you want it to be true? Because I did. Sílthi did. Gwahália did. Melinítri did. Lepríthi, and Yóli, and Táripel, and Saragánthi, and Súmi, and Shúrimel, and  … do you understand what I want from you now?”

Selolo stared past Kilími into the distance. Alders and poplars stood in all directions, eating the sound of the words. Of all the places they had been, why was this the place she chose for this conversation? Why torture a confession from her now?

Selolo sucked in a deep breath and spoke in a clear, quiet voice. “When he called for me, I wanted to stay. Forever. That time and every time. I wanted to keep his attention and the comforts that came with it, all for myself. When I was with him, he treated me like his most treasured possession; and when I wasn’t, I knew he didn’t think about me at all. So I wanted to stay, every time … but that night especially.”

“Why that night?”

“I had a dream. He destroyed the world. I lied and told him it was a ‘vision of glory’ where we ruled the world together. I lied to get what I wanted and I kept lying to keep it.”

Leaves rustled. Insects chirped. Night was coming.

“Why didn’t you help us?”

“When I wasn’t with you, I didn’t think of you. At all.” A tear rolled down the end of Selolo’s nose. “I — I didn’t care. I just didn’t want it to end.”

“It did end, for all of us.”

Selolo touched her head, where her hair was still short. She couldn’t pretend anymore. The tears came freely now. “I wish he had killed me.”

Kilími shouldered her pack and started down the trail. The women lined up, marching deeper into the woods, Kilími in front, Selolo at the end. No one dared speak.

I was wrong. I don’t hate her — we are sisters now more than ever. This cloud has loomed over us for too long but now the storm has passed. If we can see the damage, we may be able to repair it. Someday.

Sílthi spoke first. “I’m glad he didn’t kill you.” She screwed her face into an expression approximating anger. “Or any of us.”

Mekvat paced around the chamber. Normally, he avoided the monthly administrative meetings if he could. Nothing could numb his senses better than the endless reports and discussions. This time, however, he bristled with anticipation.

Pabirak arrived with several others in his wake, tall, thin, expression trapped somewhere between solemnity and dyspepsia. Of all the elder ministers, he was by far the most parsimonious. “Oh, Minister! I’m  surprised to find you here — early, that is.” He took a seat in the front row.

Mekvat cocked an eyebrow. “Kindhir says: Life is a song but no one knows the tune.”

Everyone agreed.

Once the attendants had arrived and taken their seats, highest-ranking in the front row, the next rank behind, and the last rank around the rim, Mekvat rose from the seat in the center of the room and rang a small gong.

After a brief invocation, he called the meeting to order, settling back into his bench for the waking slumber that would be the reports from the outer ring. The tower facing Kusumnu needed new roofing, so it was being looked after. The intake of new pupils had been more than expected, so a new cohort of educators had been arranged. The garden had been expanded and the orchard would produce its first apricots. No surprises.

The junior administrators gathered their things and shuffled out, leaving Mekvat with the seven senior administrators: Pabirak plus three men and three women, all cemented in place, rigid, blank. Mekvat imagined them as the clay-faced mannequins of the heptarchy from the solstice ceremonies: cemented in place, rigid, blank.

No imagination, no awe, no sense of adventure. So learned, yet so unteachable! The failure is theirs, the disappointment mine.

“Before we get to the regular business, I have something to propose.”

Pabirak and his compatriots stood in unison. “Minister, we also have something to propose, first.”

He handed Mekvat a little scroll, signed at the top by all the senior and junior administrators. Below, there was a short note written in Pabirak’s handwriting — as tall and stiff as the man himself:

Your tenure has brought wisdom, glory, and peace from Mek for many years. It has also stretched longer than any other. How heavily must the burdens of administration so long carried weigh upon you!

Therefore, we humbly suggest that you retire and choose a successor. We beg you to continue as you always have, scattering the seeds of wisdom in the education of the youth, but to set aside the duties of leadership and thereby facilitate advancement within the order. This proposal comes after much deliberation and with the utmost respect.

May the wisdom of Mek be upon us all in this matter.

Mekvat rolled the scroll up quickly.

“Minister, we — ”

Hand raised to demand silence, Mekvat said, “I have — I have foreseen this day.” Motioning for everyone to take their seats, he said, “The wisdom of your proposal is evident. Moreover, the opinion of the leadership is unanimous — you don’t see that every day, do you?” No laughter. “Two courses lie before me: to accede to your demands and blow out the candle before the wax is gone.”

Pabirak went to speak, but Mekvat held him silent with a gesture. “Or to throw this in the fire, forget it, and go on with my day.” He tapped his lips. “Is there, do you think, a third course?”

The administrators shifted in their seats. Pabirak stood, intending to speak.

“Sit down!” Mekvat commanded in the voice he reserved for his youngest students — indeed, it was likely he had instructed all of them one time or another. He softened. “You haven’t heard my proposal yet.”

Pabirak complied.

“You think me blind? Indifferent? A dusty old pot, too stupid to know when to quit, too stubborn to die?” He put his hand over his breast then waved it dismissively. “Bah! I see what you see and more — or should have seen.”

“What should we have seen, minister?” Pabirak asked, chastened.

“Enlightenment on a topic that was available at any time, had you asked. As it happens, I came here today to propose a very similar arrangement. You are correct that the duties of administration should pass to someone younger. You are incorrect, however, in assuming these duties are a burden to me. If anything, I am under-utilized. I seek more challenge in the service of Mek, not less.”

It sickened him that they wanted the same thing he did, in essence.

Oh, but they want it for different reasons, don’t they? It’s all in the motivations. I wish to build; they wish to tear down. I wish to glorify; they wish to shame. How dare they?

His liver still shook with rage, but he maintained a calm exterior. Should an emotional performance be required of him, it would be of a different sort. Nothing good could come of charging at them headlong. Even with all the power of his office he couldn’t oppose all thirty of them at once — nor would the general opinion be limited to the administrators, either.

In measured and sensible tones he told them about how he came to the conclusion that he should erect a monument, about meeting with Luto, and details about the site and structure. He did his best to make it all seem rational, inevitable even. “Now, the point of all this is to glorify Mek, not only with our ‘tenure’ but beyond death, with a monument that will last ten thousand years, perhaps longer.” He surveyed the faces: surprise mostly, with some concern mixed in. “I do not need your permission to do this, but I would appreciate your support.” With that, he took his seat.

After a brief silence, everyone started talking at once.

“ — we are unprepared — ”

“ — his prerogative — ”

“ — is this a prudent course?”

“ — who will succeed the Sage Prime?”

At this question, he raised his hands to signal that he had an answer. “Pabirak! Of course it will be Pabirak. He is Sage Prime already, in all but name. I must retain the title and some of its privilege for a year longer — two at most — to see this project to its completion.”

They asked for a moment to confer, so he tented his fingers in a gesture of courtesy and stepped into the hallway.

They only care about the present. Who will be in charge. Who will have the honor of fixing the cracked tiles in the atrium, minding the yards, ruling the scullery. Yes, polish those turnips!

After a little while, one of the administrators fetched him to hear the announcement of their consensus. He would remain as a ceremonial figurehead, but Pabirak would exercise all of his powers on behalf of the order. They invented a new title and office for Pabirak, which Mekvat had no interest in discussing. The important thing was that he was free to pursue his project without fear of neglecting his duties.

“One additional requirement,” Pabirak said. “You must confer with the senior administrators before any substantial sums are drawn from the treasury.”

“Am I to be entrusted to hire workmen, but not to pay them?”

“Not at all! It may be mere formality in practice, but by way of prudence we must insist. Surely you are aware that endowments have decreased while students have increased.”

You never take your eyes off the purse, do you?

“Students can be turned away, culled.”

“Yes, but graduates bring — ”

“Taxes? Fees? Small money, Pabirak. Once my project is complete, endowments will increase — ten, twenty-fold.”

“May increase. Over time.”

“Hm. Better to eat the seeds than plant them? I’d say that sums up the difference between us pretty well.” Mekvat inhaled deeply. “There’s no other way?”

“I wish there were, with all possible fervor. But this is the reality of our situation.”

“Very well. Kindhir says: One must bend to reality or be bent by it.”

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