Wherein excitement builds (Ch. 9)

“The comet will come again. Perhaps not to the same sky, dear Lin, but it cannot help but be the same comet. And I don’t know whether to despair my uselessness in stopping it or bask in the terrible glory I know it must bring.”

Excerpt from the Deathbed Clarities of Jin, the litany of days to come, second standard edition.

“There were times that demanded much of us. Times of true sorrow, true hardship, times that all seemed to be falling apart faster than any could keep track. But these are not such times, and anyone who tells you they are, is either trying to sell you something, or is being defensively pessimistic. Oh, there are schisms and there are debates, there are wars and there are perhaps even famines. Horror of horrors, there may even be moral failings! But the prophecies are not in danger. Recent foretelling is not erratic in frequency, nor does it hint at any great coming disaster. It’s confusing and messy because the world is confusing and messy. It’s only when the world seems simple and clean, the sides of good and evil painted in stark lines, that true danger awaits us.”

Remarks on the Sebastopol schism, chapter 1 lines 10 - 17, Eato the half heretic.

“You’re very strange, girl. I hope you don’t mind me saying, but it’s true. Just getting that out there because honesty really is the best way to build trust. Now, you say something honest about me. I won’t bite and I won’t be offended, really, I won’t.”

Wicker was no longer dead tired, perhaps now just that regular bone weariness that pervades the eternally productive. Gracchus had done all that could be expected of him, at least all that Wicker could’ve expected of him. He wondered who’d demand more of him in his hospitality and felt that such a person must exist, if only for consistency’s sake.

A sense of passing time must’ve eventually made its way through Wicker’s consciousness. Perhaps gratitude, perhaps curiosity, perhaps even social nicety would’ve worked for this first interaction. Instead, Wicker chose desperate anxiety, a tried-and-true winner of all first meetings.

“They’re going to starve you out! Every last scholar, every last guardian, you’re all going to die!”

Gracchus’ eyebrows shot up, shot right back down into a glare, then set busily to knitting and reknitting themselves until his forehead hurt.

“You are a strange one. Stranger than the last one at least, and he started off by assaulting me! What does it say about the state of the Pontiac that violence is more normal than insanity?”

Wit and sense tussled for primacy in Wicker’s beleaguered psyche, neither holding sufficient sway to sufficiently thwart the other for very long. By some confluence of neuronic activation, the conclusion was reached that Gracchus must be demanding a full accounting of her thought process and conclusions. Wicker gladly obliged the request, despite its nonexistence.

“So it all started… days? Weeks ago? Some time at the least. Called… I was called by Jen, to spy… spy on someone important… And he was very important! So much, so much! He said so much with every movement, with every word, with every assertion it became clearer and clearer that this stranger knows everything important, everything! And… and he said that there’s someone… someone special down here, the youngest Guardian he’d ever heard of! That must mean the youngest ever, no? Over a game of Tilping! He said this over a game of Tilping! A secret so important and yet so open to anyone not too serious as to want to play a game every now and then! He talked about it so many times, how did I and only I understand what he was saying? Oh but that’s not why I’m down here. The savior can be down here for all I care, why can’t I just sit at home? Because they’re going to kill you! They’re going to starve you to death! The Pontiac’s consort, her husband, her whatever, he’s going to kill you and everyone else below Pontiac’s point!”

Deranged, that was it. The girl must be deranged. Well, he’d already decided that she was insane, so what was derangement next to that? Still, she seemed adamant about her story, whatever it may mean to her addled mind. One thing he successfully deduced: this girl was not a traveler from a faraway land as his previous guest had been. Much to his disappointment and slight curiosity, this girl seemed to be from Pontiac’s point. The point is far less impressive to a young man’s eye than a backwards mud hut on the other side of the plains. Could it be that the peasant has that knowledge and wisdom only gained through arduous labor and constant heartrending effort? Or could it be that teenagers are so delusionary about the unknown to the point of lunacy? Perhaps it was only this one. Be that as it may, Gracchus was severely saddened by the revelation.

“You should rest, get your wits together-” Gracchus began to mumble his disappointment at the state of his guest out loud, but was intercepted: Wicker had decided to introduce herself, with as little pomp as could be expected of so bedraggled a creature.

“I’m Wicker, and you’re Guardian Gracchus. And we need to move.”

Gracchus may have considered that there it demanded a certain level of self-importance to make such a demand after so brief an acquaintance, but as most of us would, he was considering what an appropriately manly sounding reply could be. This pondering got him nowhere fast, so he simply sighed as he rose from his chair to pace his semi-prisonous dwelling.

Completely lacking an instinct to reflect upon her embarrassment, Wicker’s consciousness turned to observe Gracchus. A litany of possible observations spun right past her, culminating in the rather unimaginative musing upon the number of times Gracchus must’ve paced the room in every which way. Further study of the room’s topology revealed the most likely paths to pace were probably those between the tapestry in the corner and the desk near the east wall’s center, and that between the western door to the small passageway deeper into the caverns to the south. A central stack of books in the room’s center obstructed most alternative paths, and along with the varied mess upon the walls, the whole thing struck her as rather claustrophobic.

These inanely boring observations were put out of their misery by Gracchus’ mounting courage and curiosity. Both of these were amplified by the realization that Wicker already knew his name. Pacing back around the sheer cliff face of theological literature that occupied the center of his abode, he found Wicker staring right back at him in surprise.

“That’s a very strange path you took. From the desk to the hallway to the door and then back around? Why not complete the circle? That path has to be exponentially less likely than either of the ones I was considering. Do you think it can safely be neglected when calculating the expected value of your pacing? Maybe treated as a first order perturbation? Wait, is it the length I’m assigning probability, or the path? Get me a pen and some clean paper, we can figure this out.”

“You say the strangest things. I thought my previous guest was rude, but maybe rudeness is just relative. You’re the rudest guest I’ve had so far.”

Wicker blushed and cast her gaze to the pillar of uncertainty in the room’s center. Perhaps she was considering the counterintuitive fact that when pacing, one would prefer a longer path, slanting the probabilities in an unexpected manner. Despite her occasional single-minded obsession, more likely she was finally feeling the proper embarrassment one should feel for barging in and acting like an otherworldly invader.

“I… I’m sorry?”

“What? I… oh sure, apology accepted. Please, just a bit more than your name though. Which was…?”

“Wicker. Just Wicker. The hexmistress apprentices don’t get proper names until… well I don’t think we do until we’re no longer apprentices! So I’m Wicker, after the Wicker of a candle. Always such stupid, demeaning names. Always so strangely functional. One day they’ll call one of us Fertilizer or Scrubbing brush, and then… well then, they’ll get bullied instead of me, so it’ll all work out fine.”

Gracchus was staring at her in dumbfounded confusion. Could this girl not keep a single thread of thought long enough to let him react?

“I wonder how’d your walking pattern would change without this pillar in the middle. What would the adjustment time be? Would you find new optimal paths, or only slightly better versions of existing ones? What if instead of being removed all at once, we slowly moved the stack towards the least used corner of the room?” She reached for something to write on, an action which Gracchus could not so casually allow. He grabbed her wandering hand, finally refocusing her gaze upon him.

“Don’t grab me! I mean… just let me go please. What could worry you so much about… wait of course it would bother you! We have to get out of here so you can continue your research!”

But he didn’t let go. The haggard look in her eyes was nearing on derangement, the one thing a true scholar such as Gracchus could not allow into his study.

“This is a study! It’s the worst burning study of any Guardian in the history of Guardians, but it’s a study! And it’s sacred, you hear me? Sacred! So if you have something that you really need to say, just say it! I’m in danger, fine. Why? From whom? Who are you? What are you? How in eight futures did you find my crabhole of a room?”

The emotion in Gracchus’ voice came as a surprise but not a shock to wicker. Of course he was angry at her. Jen was angry at her, the hexmistress’ were angry at her, Hailey was angry at her, even Yead was shunning her. Why should Gracchus be any different?

Gracchus’ face of course betrayed more embarrassment than fury, but Wicker was not appreciative of the cue. The grip on her hand still firm, he softly asked this time:

“What are you, Wicker?”

Questions such as these are for most the hardest to answer. Perhaps not astonishingly then, it was the only question that Wicker felt comfortable answering. In a quiet, almost desperately pleading voice, she replied without even looking in Gracchus’ direction.

“I’m something you’re going to have to trust. I’m something that could save prophecy, but only if you help me.

Since when had prophecy been in danger? Could the statement even be evaluated as a meaningful one? Obvious thoughts, undercut only by reflection on his own recent discoveries. Tentatively, he grasped for a quote, one whose origin he couldn’t quite place. It must’ve been revealed in the tapestry. He spoke confidently despite the sudden sick feeling spreading within.

“But the prophecies are not in danger. Recent foretelling is not erratic in frequency, nor does it hint at any great coming disaster.” And for the first time, Gracchus saw a trace of positivity in Wicker.

“Eato the half heretic! Notes on the Sebastopol schism, chapter 1, line 15!”

She shouted it with such excitement that Gracchus wanted to make her do it again. But he didn’t know any other relevant Eato quotes. Instead, he chose the tried-and-true method of letting the other person assume you share the same obsessions. He liked those works of Eato that he had chance to read, but Wicker was obviously set alight by the mere mention of the man. The odds were in Gracchus’ favor this time, for Wicker pulled free of his grasp not to calculate some function of his pacing, but to partake in the activity herself. And as she paced, she talked. And as she talked, she grew ever more excited, shaking off the air of aimless insanity she’d had until that point.

“It’s not a very popular idea, but that’s what I should’ve expected of the savior. It’s a very Eato idea to have, to look at prophecy as a tangible resource, as a tangible ability that can wax and wane as any other specialty. There’s an economic argument he made at one point; I’d love to show it to you. But you probably already know it. You know things, more than you should. That’s how you got me this food, isn’t it? See, I can know things too! This place works in a very certain way, it does it does! A hundred scholars at all times, each tasked to preserve some obscura, some miscellany. The kind of thing that never makes its way into the litany of days to come. But why only a hundred? Eato objected, did you know? He objected with every possible fierceness! It’s only a minor story in his second exile, but it’s so fascinating you have to hear it! It’s the early days of the fifth Tellyphill council…”

Torrential, that was the word he was looking for. The onslaught was torrential. What was she saying now? The Tellyphill council? Now that was a story, he’d tried to get recorded. A real den of debauchery that was. Not that his barely teenaged mind quite understood every nuance of said sin, but he knew enough to understand that someone higher up was embarrassed by it. But what was the point? The story was a triumphant one for the Pontiac after all. It was the fourth Pontiac herself who’d led the investigation, who’d rooted out the corruption, who’d bullied the emperor into replacing his morally repugnant religious cast with a righteous one. Who’d want to undermine the Pontiac like that? The only people who could still be embarrassed by the story so many years later were either moral puritans uncomfortable with every earthly tale, or perhaps the current ruling class in Tellyphill. A real shame his supervisors blocked his every attempt to get the details into the annals. Why wasn’t Wicker going on and on about these stories? Instead, she was excitedly shaking him as she described a bureaucratic squabble over minor accounting details hundreds of years old. Yes, his stories were just as old, but at least they were stories!

“…so why didn’t he just ask the old guard to transfer the scrolls? Because they were linked! The hex linked the old records with the orders to give the Mylians command of reallocation! So, in order to prove they could access the old records, they’d need to overwrite the exact thing they were looking for to prove their claim! Really brilliant! Sadly, only fragments of the binding method remain, but I think the mistress Lea has come up with a good reconstruction of the basic structure. Anyways, Eato ended up in possession of the records even as his exile took him ever northwards. If only we somehow knew what he did on his second exile!”

Blah blah blah. If she wanted to know what Eato had done during his second exile, all she needed do was consult the tapestry. But who cared? No one debated or much cared what Eato had done on his exiles nowadays. There was no question to answer, no mystery to unravel. No one to feel superior to, Gracchus admitted to himself. But enough introspection, it was high time to break her diatribe. He waited and waited, and eventually Wicker paused, whether for breath or emphasis he never found out; it was an opening, one he didn’t miss.

“Wicker, why are you down here? And what’s so special about the food I brought you? It’s all just whatever rations are left over from last week’s delivery. All stale or soggy or slightly off too since this week’s been late.”

Her gaze snapped to attention at his mention of the delivery. The overly enthusiastic fan was gone, and the disheveled mess of a too thin girl was back. Gaze haunted and tone depressingly serious, cold eyes looked straight through Gracchus as Wicker reiterated that which she had said what now seemed so long ago.

“Like I said. You’re being starved. The eagle is trying to kill you, and he’ll succeed if you don’t just listen to me!”

The statement left little room for argument, but it left plenty of room for skepticism. Gracchus channeled his inner critic and immediately realized the futility. What Wicker needed was to be engaged with, not dismissed. Overcoming what could only be called a mental gag reflex, he engaged with dour sincerity.

“I’ll listen to you Wicker. Okay, I’ll listen to you. I’d have listened quicker if you had explained a bit more. Whatever, it’s all over now. You have my undivided attention. Who’s trying to kill me? How are you going to save me?”

Wicker looked at him despondently. But his spine straightened as he turned the conversation over in his head. He’d done no wrong, made no obvious transgressions. Yes, he’d even been patient! So there was nothing to be embarrassed about. So he could look Wicker in the eyes easily. No embarrassment necessary. None.

“The Eagle’s trying to kill you. And he’s gotten everything he’s ever wanted so far. I can only talk to you about this right now because the wall down here is on the rangers side for some reason. He’s going to starve you because it’s the easiest way to kill someone beloved by the wall.”

“The wall? You mean Heave? I don’t think he can do much to protect anyone. All he does is guard the kitchen.”

Wickers gaze grew ever more piercing. Should Gracchus not have been deep in conversation with her, should his resolve not have been steeled, the gaze alone would’ve probably sent him running. Her voice was not nearly as terrifying, and if anything was full of fear.

“The Eagle has a sense of humor then. Like I said, he’s going to starve you. And I… we’re going to run away. Up, down, I don’t know anymore. Somewhere where you’re free to probe the futures. Somewhere the Eagle doesn’t reach. But we need to move now. Today. Or else, we’ll both be too weak, and we’ll just die on the way.”

“That’s depressing. You’re depressing, Wicker.”

“I… I… I don’t… I don’t care. We need to go.”

Why he was pondering the logistics of escape was beyond him. But he was.

“Just one question first. And… and we’ll go.”

Wicker visibly relaxed. She sat down. Then she looked about for the cushion pile, latched onto it, and sank into the fluff.

“Ask away” She mumbled in exhaustion.

“Why does the Eagle want to kill me?”

“Oh. I thought you knew things. Well I guess that’s the problem, isn’t it? You know things. Things you shouldn’t know. And you demand things, things you shouldn’t demand. You’ll embarrass people who’ll really need their dignity very, very soon.”

Gracchus understood and elated with the understanding. Joy, and fear, and terror, and unbridled love burst into existence all throughout him.

“Well. We’ll need to leave then, won’t we Wicker? Let’s go! All we need is the tapestry if I’m to continue telling the futures. Wicker?”

But Wicker was fast asleep, a look of contented satisfaction on her face, the tension that had so far permeated her every nuance ever so slightly faded.

“I suppose I should organize some more supplies anyways” Gracchus whispered to himself. Departure could wait. He needed to figure out some way to take the tapestry with him.