Under One Banner, page 1
part #4 of Commonweal Series
Copyright 2018 Graydon Saunders
All rights reserved.
ISBN 978-0-9937126-4-7
For Claire Dalmyn, for pointing out where the first bit was off and good advice generally.
Great thanks to the late Jordan Kare and to Rob Ellwood for physics advice. They are in no way to be held responsible for what I have done with it.
Copy-editing courtesy of the splendid Marna Nightingale, who picked up the job late and on short notice. Any surviving errors are entirely my own.
Much thanks to the thoughtful James Burbidge; this time it might be best described as not being surprised in a reassuring way.
Cover design by Tiger Bright Studios.
Any incomprehension, doubt, or bewilderment you suffer is and remains my fault.
Authorial mood adjustment chiefly circumstantial. Something of Sabaton’s Night Witches leaked in anyway.
Guide
Table of Contents
Start of Content
Contents
Copyright
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 1
Year of the Peace Established Five Hundred Forty-Four, Month of Vendémiaire, Seventh Day
The barge comes out of the dim west.
Not the setting sun, or the sunset; the sun went down below the Folded Hills well to the northwest an hour ago, and as much height as the ridge has is not enough to make the sunset seen. It looks like the barge is climbing, for all that the last six kilometres of the canal are as slack and still as all the rest of it.
Slack and still, but conducted away from the ridge top, without falling, toward a higher rise of land.
The water is black and dim and chuckling before the water-gates open, spilling light. White and yellow and bright, the docking markers splash colour down the water and across the barge-crew’s chanting. Too slow now for dancing; the last curve in the pool and the soft thump into the sheer-bank mark the close of a long day.
Most of the cargo is somewhere between wood and grass, shaft-plant stems like node-less bamboo culms two-and-a-half metres long and bundled by the hundred. The Creek tradition of delicate tapered javelin shafts done in slow-dried springy hardwoods does not answer the needs of a Line battalion.
Even critter teams get their javelins back, nearly all the time.
Those who sent the barge’s single passenger similarly do not expect them to return. They would be pleased, quite entirely pleased, were that to happen but they are practical people and do not expect it.
Eugenia was a student of sorcery until almost a year ago.
‘Student’, strictly; Eugenia’s teacher does not hold with describing student sorcerers as apprentices. They can scarcely bring themself to utter the old word leornere in its inescapable legal contexts. Eugenia’s teacher chose to be called Order, and insists on the sense of opposing chaos, strictly and solely.
In such a context, Eugenia is yet a student of sorcery. Success or death are the two ways to finish the long ritual of becoming an independent, and Eugenia will not achieve success: some of Eugenia’s brain burned, and took all Eugenia’s talent into ash.
That those portions become ash were extracted without killing Eugenia is an advance of medical art, little tested for sake of little need. Actual history out of the Bad Old Days arrives by fragments bearing freights of doubt, yet deliberately burning out the talent of a defeated minor sorcerer remains entirely well-attested. There are few causes of the happening in the Commonweal.
In the Bad Old Days, it would take the former sorcerer perhaps as much as a month to die. Ash sloshing in among live brain tissue comes not to healthful ends, though those ends come not altogether swiftly.
Eugenia might not die this year. Eugenia might have a fatal stroke in the narrow time between the barge’s mooring lines thumping to the long section of rough-textured sheer-bank top and needing to get up and walk. Eugenia almost certainly shall, eventually, hit their head and shatter their damaged skull.
Goodwill and care could not make Eugenia’s lifespan certain; all there was barely sufficed to remove the certainty of immediate ugly death. The extraction scars are scarcely visible among what else happened to Eugenia’s scalp as the Power passed from control.
Eugenia is as well as they expect to become, and wants to do something useful.
Eugenia is eighteen months — seventeen months and twenty-nine days, twenty-eight days tomorrow — from their own requirement to return to the Shape of Peace and be examined for the status of independent sorcerer. Their own-work project, on controlling the diffusion rates of additives to tool steels, was accepted six months ago in Eugenia’s absence. Eugenia was planning their metaphysical transition when the Fight Below the Edge happened, and Order and Order’s students went to help with the First Valley armoury.
Now Eugenia is here, with the people who wrote the instructions Eugenia was trying to follow when their brain caught fire.
It’s officially a, and for now the, larhaus of the Line-gesith, though most people say ‘the Creek Armoury’. Eugenia hasn’t yet heard the Line artillerists say ‘the Foundry’ as though there could never be another one in the Commonweal, or the world.
Eugenia knows Order does not approve of the idea of a larhaus. That while Order’s formal argument relates to land tenure and agriculture and the inappropriateness of a gesith having the one without the other, Order’s true fear is about any social organization of sorcerers.
It wasn’t supposed to be some cyclopean fastness rising against the horizon. It wasn’t supposed to have black gates out of some fragment of history containing the utility of fortresses. Eugenia was expecting sparse and minimal, to make the cost of accident as small as could be arranged.
It looks more impossible than expensive, fifty kilometres of river-barge canal ending in square kilometres of dull black ramparts atop cliffs too steep and too smooth to be natural.
There are places with geography like that back in the sundered Commonweal, and it ate the resources of kingdoms for centuries to make it in the Bad Old Days.
Eugenia is certain they would have heard if all this had been there all along. And it is easy to note all the doors and steps are the right height for Creeks and nothing, absolutely nothing, looks the least bit worn. The barge’s heavy mooring cables show age, Eugenia’s got a muzzy sense that those are about half done their time of service, but the bollards the cables loop over could have been cast yesterday.
The floor is warm, when Eugenia’s shown to a room. There’s an extra pillow and a padded neck brace.
After two days on a waggon and a long day on a barge, after a troubled month of doubt attending on a dragging year of convalescence, there is a deep and welcome silence.
Chapter 2
Year of the Peace Established Five Hundred Forty-Four, Month of Vendémiaire, Eighth Day
Eugenia discovers that the floor is still warm, that the privy seat is too high, that the bathing room is immense, that the grab bar in the shower is not for show, and that they are not late to the second sitting of breakfast, before having a single coherent thought.
Their first coherent thought is coffee. It’s not the strongest smell in the dinning room but it’s there like a single bar of sunlight in darkness.
Eugenia’s second thought is coffee isn’t healthy for Creeks, and their third is there’s a sign.
The sign on the lid of the carafe says ‘Eugenia — this is safe’ in letters so neat Eugenia isn’t sure they weren’t printed with a press.
It’s not a large carafe. It’s next to a row of four fifty-litre tea urns, all of which have signs saying it’s wood-lettuce root tea and lethally unsafe for non-Creeks.
Eugenia had known that. Order had gone over it three times, and just what kind of cumulative neurotoxin wood-lettuce root is to anyone belonging to the Regular clade. Order hadn’t mentioned the smell, which fails to tempt.
Eugenia still doesn’t know what lettuce root tea looks like, and pouring any in curiosity will waste it and cause alarm, Eugenia’s awake enough to feel the watching eyes.
Coffee, coffee with cow-cream and honey to go with some glazed buns and soft sheep’s cheese and a thick slice of an enormous boiled egg with a dipper of warm mustard sauce over it and Eugenia feels as though there may be hope left in the world.
If there is hope left in the world, the Creek who comes up to Eugenia while they’re looking around for where to put their dishes has internalized some of it.
Quite a lot of it, Eugenia thinks. It’s a quantity of good cheer for just after breakfast.
“I’m sure you’re Eugenia, but I might be wrong?”
The person isn’t wrong, and Eugenia wonders later just how much quicker things could have gone if they’d been picked up by a material whirlwind.
The cheerful person asserts “Call me Tiggy,” and explains with slightly abashed cheer that even their grandmother did, no one can say ‘Antigone’ with a straight face. The dishes go where they ought, Tiggy ascertains that Eugenia doesn’t need anything from their baggage, and then they’re out and up some stairs and left and more stairs before they’re headed down a hallway. Eugenia is managing to keep up. Not being angry that Tiggy’s carefully going only as fast as Eugenia can manage is more work than the keeping up. Eugenia manages by not thinking about anything too much, not even the oddly absolute contrast between the black stone floor and the white plaster of the upper half of the wall. Eugenia can’t tell what the lower wall is, besides grey, but expects it’s something durable.
The entire edifice — Eugenia cannot make hall or building or even structure apply — gives a disconcerting impression of durability.
Every door is below a skylight in the corridor ceiling, but each skylight has only one door to one side or the other while the skylights go straight down the middle of the ceiling. The doors go left-right-left-right-left and Tiggy opens that one.
The room has windows and a lot of space and people.
Eugenia recognizes none of the people. Most of them are Creeks and they’re all standing; this side of the room is empty of furniture. The distant side has two long narrow tables and a shorter one, crossing but not in contact, to make a broken U-shape. Many sorts of meetings use tables set up like that; Eugenia has sat quietly in a place down one long arm when Order was asked for help or advice.
Three judges, with hats but not mantled; someone in a formal fylstan collar, and an independent who looks scarcely adult. Order disapproved of independents maintaining a youthful appearance. The independent looks regular-sized next to the person next to them, but when Tiggy walks past to stand with a block of fellow Creeks, the independent is Creek-sized.
Eugenia has hold of a shred of composure. They’re blinking, too uncertain to guess whom they might bow toward.
“I am called Doucelin.” The fylstan has taken three steps forward. The independent is shaking their head, once and twice and sorrowfully, or maybe — Eugenia isn’t sure about their intent. Tiggy’s cheer seemed familiar enough, but it’s a mistake and the word mistake echoes in Eugenia’s mind, rather than completing the truism. Accurate understanding of the body language of another ilk of folk takes long thoughtful practice.
Eugenia isn’t sure how they find themself in a chair. There’s an infuriating footrest at the correct height, perhaps less infuriating for noticing a stack of footrests in a comprehensive range of sizes against the wall behind the short table.
The fylstan’s still standing, neatly between the long tables; everyone else has sat down along the outsides of the tables. Tiggy’s sitting next to Eugenia, and left of Eugenia is the short table with the three judges and a clerk. There’s the glitter of a double pin in the collar of the clerk’s half-gown and Eugenia thinks clerk-actuary? in a kind of slow astonishment.
“I am the Galdor-gesith’s fylstan,” gets said directly to Eugenia, from the careful distance that does not require Eugenia to change their angle of view too much. “So in law you are here in my keeping.”
Eugenia meant to nod or bow before half a thought forms words. “I might have expected a junior clerk.”
“We expected,” the fylstan says, “someone less injured than we observe you to be.”
“I am more fragile than injured.” ‘My skull’s mostly scars,’ almost gets said. Eugenia has not yet formed an opinion as to whether or not they’re avoiding mirrors. They haven’t been out of a hospital bed for so long it seems they should have formed any such opinion.
“You’ve got strong unstructured circulation.” Tiggy’s cheer goes into abeyance. “The correspondence described you as having lost your Talent.” Eugenia realizes Tiggy sat next to them, and manages to look up and sideways enough to form the firm opinion that Tiggy’s expression has gone sad. “If you’re near forming shot like this, there’s going to be an event.”
“Not accident?” Eugenia thinks this voice could be too deep; too much like drowning. It’s the large person beside the independent behind the other table.
Tiggy’s cheer returns. “If you can predict it, it’s an event.” The large man nods and somewhere down from Tiggy along this table someone says “Bright light and expense.”
“I want to be useful.” Eugenia cannot direct their will to any one end and feels they must, to be understood. They’re looking directly at the fylstan, who does not move or speak.
“The fylstan’s duty of care begins with avoiding harm.” One of the judges. Eugenia doesn’t turn their head in time to see which one.
“I’m dead.” Eugenia can’t make either of their hands let go of the other one, can’t make themself explain.
“You cannot now pass the Shape.” It’s the independent, whose voice seems only kind. Those being examined for independents must exercise the Power.
“Can’t pass the Shape, can’t hit my head, can’t bump my head, can’t — ” Eugenia can feel tears starting and not stop them, nor keep their voice level when Order would praise their self-control, before — “do anything useful.”
“As a matter of record,” another judge says, “what happened?”
“Eugenia was a participant in a multi-person attempt to replicate the construction of flash for pointy sticks.” The fylstan isn’t consulting anything written. “The attempt was undertaken by all but one of the Independent Order’s current class of students, and of those participating only Eugenia survives.”
No one particularly reacts, not even the judge who asked. As a bare summary of facts, everyone here knows what happened.
“Eugenia’s survival lacks precedent.” Doucelin’s voice remains entirely dispassionate. “What was understood by correspondence to be a case of talent extinction is observed to be more complex.”
“Has this ceased to be a formality?” The third judge.
“It may be a question of what is safe for Eugenia to do.” The fylstan makes some sort of rhetorical motion, which the judges are not pleased to see. Eugenia concentrates on not shouting.
“I haven’t survived.” The fylstan and the judges must understand this. Eugenia does their entire best at maintaining a reasoned tone and formal composure. “I am trying to do one worthy thing before I die.” Eugenia is emphatic enough to get the attention of at least the two nearer judges and the fylstan, Eugenia can’t see the third judge if they don’t turn their head. “Safe hardly matters when I cannot pass the Shape.”
Only by being examined by the Shape of Peace may anyone be released from the ritual of becoming an independent. The ritual was designed with ancient skill to be inescapable. You may die of being examined, but those who do not return for examination in their allotted time shall surely die.
“We must be concerned for more than consequences to your person,” the middle judge says. Their tone is apologetic, and even dizzy with hopelessness Eugenia cannot hear a rebuke.
The far judge turns toward the other long table. Eugenia can’t see their face but can see the changed angle on their hat. “What is possible?”
“As a matter of art?” The independent’s tone is not approving.
All three judges nod.
“As a technical matter,” the independent’s voice takes on an inhuman compassion, “I could put Eugenia through a complete metaphysical transition while restoring their previous talent. I could give them another talent flavour, or a considerable degree of talent, or do all of those together.”
