Wherein Gracchus is motivated (Ch. 22)

 “A smallness in the spring cannot devour a monster of the morning. For what is more powerful, the beat of a griffin’s wing or a dragon’s? Perhaps it does not matter, for both fly for miles, and neither can catch the Eagle”

Excerpt from Ayela’s wistfulness, the litany of days to come, second standard edition.

“And now you come to me, to hear of my wisdom and my folly. Yet that which I am sure you know me for is that which requires nothing of me in particular. You may wonder then, if so revolutionary a man as I has nothing in particular to teach, what hope could you have to ever think a thought worthy of the future? But you misunderstand me, scholars though you may be. For there is much I have to teach and much I have to say that indeed few know. Stories and legends, from long ago. Lores and histories of those who are either north of Sebastopol or have forgotten what they were. You do not want to hear these stories. You do not want to learn these histories. Most of all, you are thinking that with so little time left, I ought to expand and elucidate on that which I’ve said over the years. But all these things have already been written and copied. By hand, by hex, by the great rolling printers of Meyrkopp and Ofvwich. If truly what you care to learn are my thoughts, they are either recorded or easily deducible. No, you want to hear me recant. Like a whipped beast, you want me to see me broken, if only on my deathbed. It has happened before to many thinkers and philosophers. Wanting to be remembered fondly, their words and works profligated and spread, they set aside their most controversial ideas and renounce them as the folly of youth. Those in power are then happy to spread what work was uncontroversial, the broken man another notch in their belt. Perhaps in a different time and a different world, so too would I go. But it’s too late now, I am too well known, too infamous, too respected, too published to be so silenced. Don’t pout! Since you’re already here, you might as well record that which will otherwise be forgotten, even if it’s not what you wanted to hear. And just in case one of you is truly curious, truly adventurous in thought and spirit, take heart! I am sure to have been wrong in much I’ve said, and there are worlds of thought and experience I’ve never seen. So interrogate my works! Interrogate the world! They’ll give you more to wrestle with than a weary old man”

His last address, Introduction, Eato the half heretic.

Gracchus was far too young to question his life decisions; he hadn’t had the time to make many of them. He most certainly felt grateful for that fact, as he deeply regretted those few he had made. Tracing the lines of causality, he could only point to two major ones, the latter of which had taken place not a month prior. Had he felt like tracking the time properly he’d have known it had barely been three weeks, but he didn’t feel like tracking the time.

He didn’t feel like following orders either, but it was what he found himself doing anyways.

“Boy! Bring Finch around, why don’t you? And the shovel, and the whistle, and the necklace!”

“How about I keep the necklace, leave you the shovel, and go tooting the whistle up and down the crags?” After a moment of thought wisely utilized to swipe the muggy sweat from his brow, Gracchus finished the thought “and pick any sheep, nothing special about Finch”

Wavel shook his head, disgust and pity mixing in this most unwilling of guardians and masters. He thought to argue with Gracchus, but recalling the circles the boy had talked around him the previous day, he opted for the last refuge of the incompetent. Wading through sheep and sheep’s manure to get up to Gracchus, the full-time sheepherder and part time husband to the resident holy woman smacked him over the head with his staff. In the dazed confusion, he snatched the necklace away from Gracchus. This, not the smack to the head, sent the young Guardian into retching convulsions. The sheepherder’s thick beard twitched uncertainly, and had Gracchus had the fortitude to look up instead of down, he’d have seen a flicker nearing concern under those bushy eyebrows.

“You’ll get used to the smell soon enough. And just think, that soon enough these manure producers will be manure product instead. That always comforted me when I was a boy on the plains”

Gracchus had a lot to say to that, but as he opened his mouth to say that lot the smell hit him twice as hard. Instead he shut his mouth, grabbed the whistle off the nook and danced a step or ten back, to the edge of the sheep pen that until mid-spring had been called an alley. Not much of one at that, what with each side consisting of a grand total of one building.

“There, I’ve got the whistle, you’ve got the necklace, can we head out now?”

“You’ve missed the sheep and the shovel, boy”

But Gracchus wasn’t budging, and there were only four days until the summer prophecy, and Wavel needed a modicum of goodwill from Gracchus for the day. He let the matter drop. But not so far as to give Gracchus the necklace back.

Wicker felt herself just as hard at work as Gracchus, though when pressed the night before, she’d made it clear that Gracchus was simply incapable of doing the work she did. Though this was no doubt true, she had been unusually vehement when arguing the point. Gracchus supposed it was a form of the female hysteria he’d heard so much about from Wavel and his fellow sheepherders.

Wicker was not privy to these banal witticisms. She was not privy to much of anything, as Vague was not the most talkative of mistresses. Instead, her day had started with a long list of tasks pinned to the inn door, alongside a complicated point system assigning value to each task. Some scribble about a certain number of points being necessary to earn another night of shelter was promptly ignored; there were no pilgrims, no foreign dignitaries, no old guardians and scholars who found the way down from halfway village just that much easier than the way up to the point. Not a ship in dock and not a ray of sun to pierce through the sweltering gloom of the perpetually cloudy pier. No, it was just Wicker and Gracchus for the few residents to entertain themselves with. Them, and the concerning overabundance of sheep.

To Wicker’s delight, the tasks of the day were just as the tasks of the day before and the day before that: eminently achievable. The best kind of task, the one you could do and no one else could, not as well as you could at least. The kind of task that’s just easy enough to make one feel competent while just hard enough to assure yourself that you are indeed skilled and valuable, and not that everyone else is merely inept.

Vague found excuse to stroll by and inspect Wicker’s work. As with all else Vague did, Wicker was not informed of the excuse, only of its outcome, that being a carful eye turned on the delicate circular hexes lining the inn’s entrance. Looking up from no doubt essential work in the kitchen, Wicker looked upon the holy woman hungrily. The hunger was that of the cub waiting to be fed, not the hunger of the predator waiting to pounce. Unaware, or perhaps uncaring, Vague traced the lines of the hexes. Wicker saw her only from a distance, and was not truly observing at that, and yet still she found it in herself to obsess over every minute twitching of the woman’s hand, as if she herself could so learn the art of evaluation.

Had Wicker thought of Gracchus with more fondness, she’d have been reminded of his tracing of the tapestry, and perhaps have determined to interrogate him on his usage of the thing.

Of course, she thought of Gracchus with very little fondness indeed, and so instead determined to finish her tasks before he came back, just to show him she could. She thought this would make her productive, thought spite is rarely an efficacious motivator. In this case it worked, though let that not be a lesson.

“Why bother taking the sheep out so far if it’s just as barren way out here?” Gracchus asked, genuine interest buried somewhere in the bored complaint. “Because Curou gets the nearer lands today” answered Wavel. Gracchus glanced around at the dirt and the stones, at the truly staggering mass of livestock they led, and at the pitiful brambles and bushes that yet remained. Gracchus couldn’t imagine that even that would remain by the end of the day. This was partially a failure of imagination on Gracchus’s part: there’s always something growing. But the land had indeed been overgrazed recently. Still, he exaggerated; it was not nearly as bad in the more conducive grazing lands nearer the pier.

That Wavel had competition in the sheep herding business in the town that was but a street ought not to have surprised Gracchus, but it had anyways. He’d traced the lines of the tapestry in response to the revelation though and had discovered all about comparative advantage and such basics of economics. He saw there was logic in competing businesses occupying nearby venues and was much pleased to see the theoretical models so blatantly put to use even in so relatively marginal a setting as the harbor.

Of course, opportunity cost was another of those core concepts he’d gleaned, and so he wasn’t actually confused as to the reason they were out in the barren stretches. Wavel had seen him trace the lines of the tapestry as he’d gained the knowledge and had been captivated. Despite Vague’s warnings that Gracchus and Wicker were to be kept at some distance, he couldn’t help but prod.

“The willow there on the northern coast, I’ve seen the tide climb the rocky shore to all but engulf its roots. Tell me, what brought it there? Why does it stand alone for turns and cycles, a solitary pillar among a sea of crags and thistle?”

Gracchus turned from untangling the messy knot of the whistle’s cord to ascertain the veracity of Wavel’s claim. And there it was, perhaps the northernmost point of the island, a willow indeed stood.

“Trees don’t work that way! Only a select few can survive on saltwater, not to mention the poor soil! No wonder there’s only one. And even the one! It shouldn’t be cold enough for it to have reached any kind of size! Turns and cycles? How has it lasted a month?”

It may have seemed to Wavel that Gracchus was becoming genuinely angry at the willow, for its daring to defy climate and edaphology. Had Wavel stopped to consider this, he’d have realized Gracchus most likely had some kind of agricultural background. There had been a time this would have been utterly unremarkable, a time when food was grown in the empire and the lowlands were the breadbasket of the plains. There had been many more mouths to feed back then, and many more feeders. Had Wavel known or cared, he’d have been able to pinpoint Gracchus’ home to the Longitude. Had he taken another conceptual leap or tow, the Latitude was not beyond his reach either.

Instead of any such brilliant but thoroughly useless insight, Wavel had only the sheep and the rocks and the waves to occupy his mind. A man of little imagination, he seized upon the theme, hoping to push Gracchus to more insightful lines of inquiry.

“The waves are quiet this year, though the winds blow strong as ever. Good trade-winds, sell the wool fresh, the sheep still living to Gelton and Netk. All the gold of the mines, and all the artistry of the palaces, side by side to the tribute of pilgrims.”

Wavel had been looking out to sea as he said this, confusing Gracchus only a bit. For Gracchus had known of pilgrims, but not of tribute. Too young to know better, he assumed Wavel was recalling some grander days of youth. But something itched, a feeling familiar to one who’d interrogated the mass of historical narrative and account. Already regretting his leaving of his study, the opportunity for research glimmered irresistibly, and the determination to be sulky and uncooperative wafted away, all but unnoticed.

“From where was the gold and from where was the artistry? Were these offered as additions to tribute, as part of tribute, or as separate trade?” Gracchus asked, unable and unwilling to hide the pique in his voice. Wavel’s gaze stayed on the sea, and Gracchus could not have known of the triumph in his voice as he answered with a confidence Wavel had not known he’d possessed.

“Gold from Gelton and art from Netk. But Netk had the upper hand, for all the flowers of the mountain ended up there; sky silver, lake dancer, cloud shaper, wind taster, all of them adorned the art of Netk, stained glass alone was not enough for them!”

Gracchus wondered whether those were all truly flowers or exotic names for certain gems and precious metals. Despite his curiosity, he still wanted to seem knowledgeable, and so did not ask. Instead, he pursued a line which ought to have caused him more shame, in his ignorance, yet strangely did not.

“Are we lonely only this year?”

“We’ve been lonely for a while, child. I haven’t known pilgrims such as those of old. Still there were great ensembles of noble and wealthy. All proving something to themselves. Barons, generals, warlords, second sons and entrepreneurs. Captains and merchants hoping to secure routes or alliance. And of course, those simple folk who found the coin for a berth and the freedom to take a season away from fields. From families. From home. I’ve always thought it a sad dilemma”

Wavel paused then, and looked out to sea, his stratagem forgotten. For Gracchus would either talk or he wouldn’t, and four days were not enough to gain the kind of trust he needed from the boy.

Much to both of their surprise though, the stratagem had worked, for Gracchus had determined to figure out the truth of what Wavel had said.

Evening was slow in coming, for Wavel had given up the conversation and Gracchus had retreated to his memory of the tapestry in vain hope of getting his answers early and privately. When imagining the tapestry there were only two outcomes. He was either focused purely on the problem at hand, the shape of the known and the unknown. Working from his experience, lines and shapes would come to mind. He’d trace the lines on a plank of wood or the stone of the caves. And something would always be wrong, for the lines in his mind never matched the lines of the stone or the wood. He’d never known whether to blame the object or his mind for this, so to be safe he blamed the inanimate, which couldn’t take offence.

The second outcome was that he got distracted by what he saw. His mind turning to an old tune or the hum of the wind or the texture of a page. Trapped in the caves there had never been much to see, but as he now discovered visual stimulus worked too. And he could not form the lines in his mind, the neat geometries and varied topologies of nested loops and loops within loops of thread and thought needed to model reality. And so though the lines felt right, they spoke sweet nothings; the ancient grinding of sea on rock shelf, the pain of the bear awakening to find spring has not yet come, the boredom of the scribe transcribing the book. Nothing useful, and nothing of the future.

Such was the outcome now. The sea’s churning foam, the clouds rolling and shifting, yet somehow presenting nothing of a picture. Above it all, the sheep, and their stench, now that Wavel had the necklace. There was a line between the great tributes of old and the nothing which now faced the point, a line of reasoning, of logic, of people and things that did that which they must. And what’s more, they were, or had been, the people of the point. Struggling to grip the shape of the decline, for he had not asked Wavel that last question: ‘where are they now?’, for the answer would’ve done him no good.

And for once in his life, he’d truly have known the future; sometimes a trend just continues.

Evening was faster in coming for Wicker. Mid afternoon saw the inn receive custom from the old and the crazy and the sick and the lazy. For a town that was but a pier, there were rather a lot of people idle during the hours a decent hard-working sort wouldn’t be. One of these Wicker recognized as the one who’d assailed Gracchus upon their arrival, but she paid him not mind. She paid none of them any mind, for she was busy at her work around the inn, inspecting the runes, tracing their lines, refining their connections, warding the place against disease and death and infection fungal or bacterial. But, as on the point itself, most warding was against the weather; against the overwhelming stench of salt and fish, against the constant assault of dampness upon all surfaces of wool and wood. There were hexes she’d only learned about here; hexes against termites and ants, against the wild things that still roamed the sea.

These hexes were all very complicated and difficult, and she was sure that both Vague and the patrons were well aware of the fact. She sketched calculations and symbols in the papers she’d brought, just to make sure the job was done well. And she brought these with her as she toured the inn, inside and out, again and again, ensuring all effects would last.

And Gracchus would seem ever the petulant child when he finally got back with Wavel, and once again refused to trace the lines of the tapestry.

And surely, Vague would see just how much Wicker could do.

As evening fell and the shepherds returned, someone was moving down the mountain. But even the rangers struggle to make the way down in just one day; the traveler turned in for the night, unbothered by the wind – if anything, the night was too hot.