Mielitta trailed a hand along the walls as she walked the familiar passage from her chamber to the library. Newly conscious of the history contained in the stone, she reached out, seeking its wisdom. The witnesses’ reports had only added to her longing to explore the past, especially her own past. However many times Declan told the story of her finding, she felt anew the mystery behind her emergence from the wall as a baby like a bee-grub from comb. If only she could go into the wall and find out more. But the stone was dead to her touch, shutting her out.
She turned inwards, seeking the solace of the bees, but they too were quiet. With a sigh, she entered the library and sought the one comfort that never let her down. Work, she told herself and sensed a sleepy echo. Shifting and cataloguing books took on its usual rhythm while her subconscious worked on the problem of rescuing Drianne.
She kept seeing Rinduran’s hand gripping the young girl, the exchange of glances between him and Bastien. Drianne’s words uttered in Kermon’s voice had conveyed what the mages wanted to hear but was that really what Drianne felt? In spite of all the times they had used the archery yard together, Mielitta barely knew the girl.
What would Tannlei have said? If Drianne did have a crush on her, then Mielitta was in some sense her leader, however hard she’d tried to keep her distance. When she’d intervened to prevent Bastien bullying the girl or worse, she’d taken sides and declared her responsibility. For one follower. Tannlei’s words came back to her. Don’t ask how many followers make a person a leader. Ask what a person does to earn that title.
Facts. Drianne was mute. She was selected for the Maturity Test. Bastien wanted to ‘cure’ her and marry her. Rinduran thought it safer to suppress her. The Maturity Test would be in a week’s time and meanwhile Drianne was with the other candidates in their hall.
Assumptions – a different shelf in Mielitta’s mind. Drianne was in danger but probably not until the Maturity Test. Then she would either be forced to marry Bastien or she’d be suppressed: rape or ashes. Mielitta stopped her imagination pursuing either fate further and filed them both under Impossible. Her stutter had been ‘cured’ and her soul was no doubt next but for now, she was still Drianne.
If Mielitta could talk to her before the Maturity Ceremony, she could warn her, tell her of an escape plan. Drianne could nod, shake her head. Or Kermon could interpret her thoughts so Mielitta didn’t mistake them. That would mean trusting Kermon. Did she? How could she know that his soul-reading was the truth?
What if Drianne wanted to be forged, to be an adult, to belong? The Test and Ceremony would change her as they changed all girls. What if she was prepared to marry Bastien? This was the way of the Citadel. Hannah would be ecstatic if she were chosen by Bastien and she was not the only one. He would be a powerful mage and Drianne would be under his protection. He might mature, become less radical under Drianne’s influence, grow independent from his father. Bastien and Rinduran already disagreed.
She sighed. To be revisited. At least she had a few days to come up with a plan. Probably. She sighed again.
When the door creaked open, she was at the top of the stepladder, so she couldn’t recognise the visitor until he spoke.
‘The stones be with you, Mielitta.’
Jannlou.
‘Thank you, Mage Jannlou, Apprentice Mage Jannlou. And with you,’ she answered mechanically, concentrating hard on Fossils of the Neoplastine Era. ‘Is there a book you seek?’
‘No. I want to talk to you.’
She glanced down and immediately regretted doing so. Jannlou picked up the pile of books on the stool, put them on the floor and sat, immediately above the distortion in the woodette caused by the dead fly. What if the mage sensed the aberration? What if he moved that other pile of books, beneath the stool and saw the corpse and the ripple? He’d guess it was her doing.
Jannlou shifted restlessly.
She had to keep him distracted and looking up, so she stayed on the highest step, pretending to continue her work.
‘What do you want to talk about?’ seemed a simple enough question but apparently it wasn’t.
Silence ensued.
As if dragging the words out of the walls themselves, Jannlou said, ‘I know you don’t trust me, that you remember running from me, from us. I want you to know that it wasn’t like you thought.’ He finished lamely, ‘I never actually hurt you.’
She sparked. ‘Never hurt me? You think living in fear is nothing? You think the words you all shouted are nothing? You think a gang bigger than you, stronger than you, laughing and crowding round, prodding you – you think that’s nothing? And those so-funny practical jokes! You think humiliation is nothing? Pity you don’t get a bit more of it then!’ The moment she drew breath she realised how stupid she’d been. She should have been the one rendered mute, for her own safety.
‘You don’t need to bite my head off,’ he told her, looking puzzled rather than outraged at her disrespect. ‘I’m trying to say sorry. I’d like to explain–’ He shook his head. ‘But I can’t. It’s too dangerous.’
She’d already spoken too freely so she controlled her curiosity. ‘I told you before. Childhood matters can be left behind in childhood,’ she told him briskly and gave an inane smile for good measure. Blue eyes observed her steadily. Silver wriggling in the purple depths, like fish in the stream, like slippery thoughts. The male scent of sun-warmed earth rose to her flared nostrils.
‘That’s not the only thing,’ he continued. ‘You’re different. I believe you when you say the forging didn’t work properly with you. I feel like I can share my thoughts with you.’
She giggled nervously. The nerves were genuine. Different was not a word she wanted as a compliment. ‘I’m just an ordinary woman, Mage Jannlou.’ She allowed herself a touch of pride. ‘Though I am Assistant Librarian.’
As if she hadn’t spoken, he continued, ‘You must wonder, like I do, why we do all that weapons training, to excel at something which has no use, us with swords, you with your bow – I saw how good you were. Yet there is no real combat here and conflicts are solved by mages, with craft.’
Mielitta didn’t allow herself to think. She could do that later. ‘Perfection requires that children and men keep fit and have a harmless outlet for their competitive hormones so training and sports are required.’
‘But there is no point to them! We might as well run on a grassette treadmill for exercise.’
‘I do not question the wisdom of the stones and the mages in their Perfect choices.’ And neither should you, she thought, intrigued despite herself.
‘It’s not just weapons training. It’s everything about the way we live. Activities are random and pointless, to give the illusion of purpose. Artisans create objects we don’t need, that could be better made by magecraft anyway. We are told that such work exhausts mages, and yet the choice of what it’s used for makes no sense.’
‘It’s Perfection.’
Jannlou looked down his nose at her. ‘Perfection has become a creed that men follow blindly or manipulate to their own ends.’
Mielitta gasped. ‘May the stones forgive you.’
‘The stones.’ His tone was bitter.
‘You are a mage. You are so lucky to receive the wisdom of our ancestors directly. I wish I could!’ In case he hadn’t got the message, she added, ‘Maybe one day, I’ll be chosen as a representative and I could go into the stones. If a mage ever finds me worthy…’ Now she would find out how deep his interest in her really was.
His bitterness increased. ‘I can’t even–’ He shook his head and broke off, changed the subject to one just as shocking.
‘I don’t see why women can’t carry on with weapons training or any other activity they want to.’
‘Like smith-work.’ The words were out before she could stop them. If he were setting traps to expose her as a traitor, she could at least try not to fall into them.
He was kicking the books under the stool as he swung his legs to and fro. Any minute now, he would realise, move the books and discover the mess she’d made in the fabric of the floor.
‘Yes, like smith-work.’ He showed no sign of finding her reply odd. His legs stopped swinging. ‘And you shouldn’t be forged differently from men.’
Sidestepping making a treasonous reply was tricky as Mielitta had no idea what really took place apart from the vague hints she’d picked up from Hannah and her friends. ‘Perhaps your mother could explain Perfection from a woman’s point of view,’ she hedged.
His face darkened. She’d judged that wrong too. ‘My mother’s dead.’
‘May she return to the stones,’ Mielitta said automatically but then she was ashamed of giving him nothing but a platitude. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I don’t know who my mother was. Or my father. I’m a foundling.’
The set lines of his face softened. ‘I know. Everybody knows how Mage Declan found you.’ He smiled at her weakly. ‘It’s a great story. I’m not surprised you love the walls.’
‘When did your mother die?’ she asked, not sure whether it was better to let him talk or change the subject again. There didn’t seem to be any safe subjects.
‘Years ago. From allergy. I was eleven.’
Her heart sank. The dead fly. She’d let the Forest in and other mothers would die. ‘I-I-I’m sorry,’ she stammered again.
‘Don’t be. She wasn’t.’ The silence dragged and presumably he felt it would be polite to explain such an extraordinary statement. ‘She was allergic from babyhood and she told me–’ he swallowed. ‘She believed Perfection caused it, the Citadel, our way of life. She told me,’ he lowered his voice although only the two of them were in the room, ‘she told me the cure was in the Forest.’
Mielitta’s heart pounded and her gasp came a little late, when she remembered that ought to be her reaction. As lightly as she could, she forced herself to reply, ‘But the Council Mages told us there is a traitor here who has let the Forest in and more people have died of allergy. So your mother was–,’ she searched for the tactful word, ‘–mistaken. I’m really sorry she was so ill – but maybe the illness affected her mind.’ Dead fly, she thought.
‘Maybe,’ he conceded. ‘She never had the chance to test her theory so I don’t know. Maybe those dying now have had too big a dose of natural forces when they’ve lived too long in the Citadel. Survived, she called it. She said we weren’t meant to live like this, that there must be another way. We won’t know, will we, unless we try another way?’
Oh, stones. What should she say now? If he was trying to entrap her, he was doing a great job. She remembered Crimvert saying much the same as Jannlou’s mother, about existing not living; look what had happened to him. She said nothing.
‘I thought,’ he said slowly, ‘that you might be interested in what she thought.’
Hating herself, she replied, ‘It must have been very hard for you, a mage, to listen to such treason from your own mother. She must have suffered to speak so against Perfection.’
Jannlou’s expression closed down. ‘Yes, she suffered,’ he said shortly. ‘All her stunted life.’ He rose abruptly and left without any attempt to speak the formula of parting.
Mielitta backed down the steps, piled books on top of the stool again, and straightened the heap underneath so that the fly was well buried. She tried to focus on devising an escape plan for Drianne but Jannlou’s words refused to stay on their To be revisited shelf and reverberated round her head like bees.
