Wherein Kadyp falls to ruin (Ch. 14)

 “11:00 – Gertrude berates the princes for their slobishness and the maids for their tardiness in organizing the hall.

11:12 – Berrington and Prince Danneff have resolved never to drink again. The Danubian diplomat has made no such promise, though he seems chastised. Perhaps if he spoke Neptic his feeling would be clearer.

11:15 – Berrington, Prince Danneff, and the Danubian diplomat have been instructed to clean up the mess they made last night. Gerturde has failed to point out exactly what this mess was. That girls were involved is neither secret nor unexpected.

11:17 – Gertrude has informed me this is not the kind of meeting I am to keep minutes for.”

-Discarded note from records of meetings of the twenty ninth tri-annual Danubian – Kargian cooperation summit. I assume nothing good happened to the minute taker.

Pilly’s boredom grew logarithmically with his anxiety. And since his anxieties seemed to compound in on themselves, each feeding off each other in horrible coexistence, boredom ended up growing rather linearly. This was of great delight to the various councils and factions of Kadyp who’d spent the better part of the past month prying him for any scrap of insider knowledge he may have had of the workings of Netk.

Despite having dedicated his life and his passions to just that, if truly forced to explain, he’d come up sorely lacking. The bureaucracy, its relation to the royal family, the strain of legitimacy inherited from the days of empire, all mixed and matched in just such a way as to allow the state the function, but no more. Secretly, most people expected the kingdom of Karg to collapse in on itself any moment due to just these complications. A man such as Illdo could perhaps discern that questions of legal legitimacy were hardly relevant when it came to the very existence of the state. Unfortunately for Pilly, the elders of Kadyp were no such cynics.

With a dogged belief in some higher legal fiction, they hounded him day and night. Conversations he’d prefer not to relive all went along similar lines:

“Have the Kargian councils laid out their hierarchy yet?”

“No sir, different royals have different favorites at court. Depending on the royal and the particulars of the time, different factions and interest groups will have different influence and resources.”

“But then how does anything get done? Why, you’ll decide to build a palace one day and the next the fundings gone to build a bridge to Gelton!”

“Well, funds are reserved ahead of time. When a project or policy is approved by the royal chamber the funds are allocated and added to the ledgers. Then, those in charge of the project can withdraw some amount of the funds if they have the seals to prove they’re acting on the part of the legitimate party.”

“Does that work?”

“Of course it does!”

The truth was that it never worked and that almost invariably the there were some budget overruns. It did not help that the way things stood it was the clerks who held most of the economic power of the kingdom. He’d illustrated the point to Eva with a story, almost a parable among those in the know.

“It is told of a prince, early in the days of the legitimacy.”

“A weaselly opening for a tale if ever there was one. Told by whom?”

Pilly had learned to incorporate and reflect upon Eva’s criticism when it came to handling the councils and when it came to stories. Even so, this criticism felt more akin to the mindless cynicism one might expect out of a lout or a mercenary. With he felt was an air of mature serenity, he had ignore the jab.

“The prince wished to purchase some symbol of the savage north. After much deliberation, he decided on a sword inscribed with the runes of a great Shaman. Considering himself wealthy, he spared no expense in the scouring of the markets and the towns for just such an item. Having made myriad promises to all manner of conniving characters, he’d finally secured a meeting with a trader who promised him his heart’s desire in exchange for some large sum. The prince assured the trader the sum would be his. Well, when it came time to collect the sum, the clerks regretfully informed the prince that he didn’t properly own a thing. As things stood at the time, his expenses were the responsibility of a certain council of wisemen. He begged and pleaded with these wisemen to release the funds, but as they saw him not as their employer or benefactor, they saw no reason to head his implorations.”

Eva had shaken her head and muttered something or other about the story being poor and missing some crucial part, but Pilly found it plenty meaningful as it was. That Eva couldn’t see the drama, the irony, was for once not a failing on Pilly’s part, but on hers. Or so it seems likely he told himself.

As there had been for nearly every day the past month since he’d reached Kadyp, Eva had organized a petition with some council or other. This was the source of one of Pilly’s worries. A more thoughtful man would have taken some stock of Eva’s worries, but such compassion would probably have disqualified Pilly from his chances at the bureaucracy years ago.

For what felt like the ten thousandth time, he climbed out onto the branch directly below what he had come to call his house. In truth it was a box with some furniture and a waste hole, but Pilly insisted on the terminology. The wind never reached this place, deep in the canopy, surrounded by layer upon layer of root and branch and leaf. The foliage was so thick he half suspected he could jump into the mass of green and float his way down. Such notions were of course never acted upon. As a member of the Kargian regime, Pilly had much practice at inaction towards an impulse. It was, in a sense, the driving philosophy of Netk.

Working his way down the regular route, people began appearing around him. The morning heat was already misting up the dew formed during the nights condensation. That it wasn’t constantly raining may have confused Pilly had he grasped the nature of atmospheric dynamics, but such frivolities were beyond him.

There a Danubian merchant passed by, marked by a series of emblems around the collar. Each emblem meant something, be it house loyalty, class, income, familial status, and a myriad other such things that the Danubian delegations always insisted were very important. It had always been the prince who’d known how to handle the Danubians anyways, so Pilly had felt no need to learn. He was the Kadyp expert, or at least so he told himself. When Eva had learned of this the previous year her head had gone as red as her hair in amusement. Pilly wondered whether he should reminisce of such things that would put him at odds with his fellow conspirator. He couldn’t decide which was just as well, as bureaucrats seldom tend to come to particularly lucid conclusions on such matters.

Perhaps he’d been staring, but just as likely the Danubian had been as well, so Pilly felt no need for shame. Reflecting he felt little need for anything. Such a carefree attitude boded unwell for the scheduled conference of the day.

The day was hot. Deep in the recesses of his psyche, what was once an animal in the savannah, red in tooth and claw, told Pilly that he should seek shade. Pilly wanted to scream at that part of him, to scream that Kadyp was nothing but layers upon layers of deep shade, so much so that here towards the ground it could get rather dark at times, even at midday.

And finally, he reached ground level. The scrambling and cutting of branches no longer impeding his way, he struggled to find a reason to go as slow as he was. Searching for some distraction, his gaze set about to the stalls and sights of Kadyp. What he found may not quite have been what he’d been looking for, but it’d do for a distraction. Massive trees, the tops obscured by a dense covering of natural and man-made structure, lined the boulevard. Smaller constructions were built on ground level, these including such denser materials as stone and metal, crafted in a manner that to Pilly seemed utterly unremarkable. Had he known that such metallurgy was possible only in Worstone, perhaps he’d have been more impressed. Instead, he assumed, as most did, that all such marvels were remnants of empire. That Kadyp had in fact been the greatest hold out against all thing imperial did not bother this merry delusion. Again, a rather common attitude.

Instead, his interest was seized not by the throng of life human and wild, but by a building, a structure. “Eva and her structures…” he may have thought. The structure was grand, far grander than anything so high up should’ve been. He’d noticed it before, but only today did he give it the full attention it deserved. It was a beautiful building, all ivory and glass. Windows that caught the light and reflected it back towards the onlooker gave it a heavenly glow. Images he couldn’t quite make out were etched in wood and gemstone all around what he supposed was some kind of rim, jutting out from the base. Then he noticed the most stunning thing of all: the building was suspended. At the very least, he couldn’t see what branch it rested upon. And it was very high up indeed, what must’ve been a quarter hour climb away. In truth, those more athletic than Pilly could probably make the distance in closer to five minutes, but the added distance only added to his awe.

He sat, though upon what he was not sure. Whatever it was, it neither growled at him nor did it explode. Pilly took this for a good sign. He forgot about the conference and stared.

Eva had not forgotten about the conference, though she was no more eager than Pilly. Instead of showing up, she’d decided she’d cave to a demand of the council of stories: she was going to train a new keeper. The old one had run away, after all. Eva contented herself with the thought that she never aided Opal in her pursuit of freedom. All she’d done was quietly encourage her for years. And that hardly counted for anything, didn’t it?

The search for a successor began with those already engaged in the art of storytelling. Eva was eager that the next keeper be slightly more emotionally attached to the stories than young Opal had been. While it was Eva’s fault that Opal viewed tales in terms of structure and formula, Eva found it convenient to blame the girl. After all, she wasn’t there to contradict her.

Someone innocent and pliable, that’d be good. And maybe someone who didn’t need to be isolated for their own good. With these vaguest of notions in mind, Eva set out to find a worthy successor to the height of Kadyp’s culture.

The task was much hampered by context and routine. As the keeper’s ward, it was her job to do most of the administration needed to maintain the myriad of tales and stories the libraries held. Unlike the great library of the point, there was no one repository of knowledge. Despite years of organization and effort, the vast body of knowledge and lore remained mostly a mess, distributed messily and in disorganization throughout the many halls and libraries of Kadyp. To add to the task of upkeep and maintenance the task of teaching one girl the lessons and ideas of all such recorded stories was too much ask.

Eva knew it was too much to ask and went about the task anyway. She knew all too well what would happen if she let someone else in at this level of operation. It was a process that had come to define Kadyp, more so even that its great cultural heritage or historical uniqueness.

She’d taken to the archive of far eastern legends. It was a small and ramshackle place by the standards of Kadyp’s libraries, but it was high in the trees. So high in fact that sunlight danced its patterns from a skylight adorning the main hall. So it was called, to Eva it seemed the whole building: a round room lined with benches, a circular bookcase lines the exterior walls and interior central support pillar. She estimated there were perhaps only some few thousand compendiums. Even that was perhaps too much for any one person to absorb, but luckily most of the volumes were either redundant, beyond repair, or simply mistranslated into a hundred languages. There couldn’t have been more than maybe a few hundred distinct stories from beyond the silver sea, and of those there were maybe some few dozen ideas truly worth instilling in the new keeper.

Sunlight sprayed and sprinkled the hall; the aura could perhaps be called majestic by those of a more romantic bent. To Eva it was cool and light, the babble of children arguing with the archivists forced into an educational role was music to her ears. They were arguing about structures and themes, a thing that Opal had made sure was encouraged.

Eva was only saddened, though why she could not have said. Instead, she retreated, and worked her way down the trees to a place as yet uninfected by Opal’s perversions; Jennept’s archive of northern stories.

And Pilly wasn’t bored. Should it have occurred to him, he’d have found it amazing. Why, he was just sitting, letting the morning pass in quiet contemplation of a building. There were sounds and smells and sights galore, and each filled some part that completed the picture. More than a picture, a scene. More than a scene, a cutout: an idealized moment, all the more idealized for the place it held for the miserable and mousey Pilly.

Languages from farther than he could imagine, wares of nature mysterious even to Worstone’s industry, and above all these was the light, dancing, and dancing, flitting from surface to eye, gleaming off the livestock and the shimmering pools of water trapped between great canals of root and stone. And above even that, above the light itself, was the building. Suspended and gleaming, there seemed to be a light of life emanating from the place. Almost not of his volition, he thought of what must be occurring in there.

Naturally, his thoughts skimmed the space of possibilities and landed on that which was familiar. But that which was familiar had been warped by the very being of Kadyp. And it had been warped by the proximity to Eva. That which should’ve been was replaced, and instead of a library or a place of learning, he imagined it as an idle refuge of youth. Of a place to which promising young scions and prodigies made their way. Structures, of belonging and unbelonging, of mysteries uncovered benign and malicious, all these crossed his thoughts and found safe landing. He had become rather enamored with this picture of the place. The accuracy of this picture seemed at once unimportant by the time it was contemplated. A pretty picture was painted, and it seemed to matter little that the artist had taken liberty with the subject.

The council of foreign social policy should’ve been stewing in its juices. Pilly and Eva were scheduled for petition the better part of two hours since. Tardiness of such magnitude by a foreign diplomat and a member of the council of central culture ought to have been either insulting or concerning. By most miserable coincidence, the itinerary for that day had gotten into a heated debate with the clerks parakeet. Though the clerk had tried all the tricks of sophistry he knew to convince the parakeet, whatever personal insult the slip of paper had made towards the bird was unforgivable. As such, the processed slab of dead tree bark ended its existence as part of a bird nest. Though this was undoubtedly a much nobler calling, the clerk was still embarrassed to no end. As such, the clerk had failed to inform the council, and so the council convened without timetable. As the timetable only seemed to stress the members out, this was widely seen as an innovation in bureaucracy and office work. Many congratulations were given and many more such proposals to ease the lives of the civil servants were raised. So popular did the change turn out to be that in time the councils Kadyp would all adopt such similar reforms. The state would’ve collapsed under the weight of itself had it not been that such an ending would’ve lacked the proper ironic tinge that a civilization such as Kadyp would require before properly putting itself to bed. Such a thing decided, the state of Kadyp shambled on a while longer, unaware of what was lost that day and what could’ve been avoided had only Eva and Pilly saw to their morning appointment with a semblance of diligence and gravitas.

The best stories are not fables nor are they parables. The best stories are not mindless nor are they cliché. The best stories straddle the line between jadedness and naiveite. You cannot point to the message or the lesson, and yet you know that it is there. And could you point to the message it’d be less special. The best stories look you in the eye, acknowledge the world in all its complexity, and yet still wrap themselves up, weaving the open threads into a knot of coherency. And from the coherency perhaps we try to draw lessons.