Wherein Opal's legacy is discussed (Ch. 23)

 “2 and 11:21 – Acting head of league proceedings Lawful declares emergency meeting to be in session.

2 and 11:23 – Treasurer of the west wing and league accountant Gertrude is found to be missing. Brief commotion ensues.

2 and 11:24 – Snide remarks by league representative to the King’s council Berrington promptly shut down by acting head of league proceedings.

2 and 11:25 – First correspondence with minor league affiliate Pilly read aloud by acting head of league proceedings. See footnotes. No such footnote survives. See appendices for possible reconstruction.

2 and 11:31 – Minor semantic argument over the use of the subjunctive quelled by league accountant.

2 and 11:34 – Edited copy of first correspondence with minor league affiliate Pilly read aloud by chief of operations Bold.

2 and 11:36 – Reading of the correspondence interrupted by appearance of Prince Wilk.

The page is torn, see appendices for possible reconstruction.

3 and 00:04 – Prince Wilk assents to the continued operations of the league pending further correspondence from minor league affiliate Pilly. Prince leaves the room in discontent.

3 and 00:05 – Discussion on the manner of correspondence.

3 and 00:19 – Consensus reached that a single member should handle correspondence and diplomatic emissaries.

3 and 00:21 – League representative to the King’s council Berrington selected by majority vote to act as such an intermediary until a new member can be found to fulfill such a role”

Minutes of emergency meeting of the Reconstitution league. Timing hints at the nature of the emergency, but exact details elude us. The hourly notation of the above document is unique, probably amounting to little more than a failed experiment of timekeeping.

Everywhere Pilly went, there was ceremony. There had been ceremony to get into the halls of the bureaucracy. There had been ceremony in performing the functions of state. There had been ceremony of a sort in his partnership with Miles. There had certainly been ceremony in his relationship with his apprentice and the reconstitution league.

“It’s dreadfully exciting, I know. And the girl has proved herself more than worth the extra time, wouldn’t you say?” Eva asked, though little hope shone through her distracted ramblings. Ever since she’d found her candidate, Eva had paid him less and less mind.

An inarticulate part of himself felt that ought to have been more bothered by this. That he ought to be desperate, depressed, lonely, emasculated, anxious. It was a strange feeling, the feeling that if he’d heard a story where a character was in a similar situation, he’d expect them to feel so. And he’d expect to feel deep sympathy for them as such. But the circuit was somewhere severed, and whatever it meant to feel, he didn’t. This too was an oddity, but not one he’d paid much thought.

“You’re a dour fellow, young buck” was what an elder on the council of maritime trade had insisted after a particularly fruitful afternoon of politicking. “I’m a functional fellow” he’d replied to no one’s amusement, least of all his own.

“So exciting that it’s worth a season and summit?” Pilly spoke to the open air, his head and arm dangling in the warm air of the canopy. The sea wind, broken by dense foliage, was but a soothing stroke, so soothing he didn’t feel like turning to face Eva. Besides, he suspected she was as uninterested in him as he was in her at that moment.

“It’s a once a lifetime event. Well, it ought to be, at least. If nothing goes wrong” again, Eva spoke to the wall or to the embroidery or to whatever she might’ve been doing that Pilly refused to care about. Unspoken went the sentiment ‘unlike last time’.

Time passed unacknowledged. The privations of body and soul hammered their way through the pair. Despite the nearness, there was little of companionship between the two. Perhaps some furious thoughts worked their way through Pilly’s head. But all he mused about aloud was the shabby state of his clothing. Eva would’ve thought it strange that his Kargian cloak, official stamp of middling bureaucrats, was falling apart. She would’ve, if she’d mind to pay to such trivialities.

“It’s not as bad as all that, Pilly. We’ll have a remembrance service for Miles, we’ll select a new keeper, we’ll get you your place in the reconstitution league. So don’t mope, and let’s get to work”

Stirred from a thoughtless reverie, Pilly found himself surprised at how much the notion enthused him.

“Where do we start then?”

Eva stepped outside, with a familiarity that Pilly couldn’t help but still gawk at. For Pilly had built up muscle memory and familiarity, but he could not scorn the heights in the same way Eva did. And as much as he knew that other libraries and facilities hid far in the canopy, the most real manifestation of Kadyp’s nature was still Eva’s casual manner. As they worked their way across the branches, Pilly found himself recognizing offices and town houses, seemingly hanging at odd angles between ancient branches of mismatched coloring. A horticulturalist would wonder at the carefully cultivated exteriors of these buildings, at the smooth gradient between wild, tamed, and domesticated.

A keener observer would’ve wondered at Eva’s agility, the unpracticed ease with which she navigated what in other cities could be called back alleys. Pilly instead found his eyes drawn to glinting blue glass in the distance; through canopy and air, it leapt at him like Leviathan’s eye, a mesmerizing glow of reflected and refracted light. It was Jennept’s archive of northern stories, and he’d have said his soul wandered there if he’d believed in any such thing.

Eva danced. It was a light dance, a calm dance, a dance of wind and leaf. Young women envied her elegance, and old men envied her freedom, her love of the air. Even as she passed the most crowded of midday markets, the most suffocating of crowds, she shone. At the very least, she believed she did, and as only she’d care enough to remember what kind of impression she’d made on the populace, this was well enough.

Pilly meandered. Though he’d deduced the route they were taking, it did him little good, at least in terms of navigational skill. For high level navigation could not help but be rather trivial once one reached the central markets of Kadyp; every important office or institution was visible, each marked by its own brilliantly colored reflection in the day, and unique starlike glow in the night. That the colors of day and night did not match up bothered few, for in Kadyp one was either a night person or a day person, and besides when the same few dozen monuments fill your spatial sense for years, you can’t help but build some sort of instinct.

But Pilly was like a magpie, dazedly drawn to the greatest jewel of them all. Every leap or two Eva would look back at him to make sure he was still following her, that he hadn’t stopped to stare into space, or, more likely, into Jennepet’s archive. A particularly excruciating lull occurred when Pilly momentarily lost sight of Eva as she ducked beneath what looked to be a wall of leaves. Inspection revealed it to be no more substantial than a curtain, but the hesitation had taken long enough to prompt Eva into criticism.

“Opal would’ve said you’re cursed!” she shouted at him, already at a walkway two thistle bushes higher. She shouted with a smile, and from far enough away that he wouldn’t have noticed the annoyed edge, even had he the will or the inclination to look for it. “And maybe she’d be right! But there are no curses south of Sebastopol, so what should I call it? Enchantment?” it was the pedantry, not the insult, that got to him. “It’s the diplomat who gets cursed, not the envoy! And I’m not even that, really, I’m just a guest, aren’t I?” Eva’s knowledge of northern stories may not have been as encyclopedic as Opal’s, but the notion still struck her as strange. Did the two concepts even have separate words? In what northern languages? Surely not all of them, from the river folk who practically lived in Sebastopol and Karg to the painted men of the Corvid mountains. She suspected some Imperial scholar of the past millennia had some kind of agenda, and had subsequently flattened the tribes and stories into a monolith.

Had she the time and the inclination to verify the theory she’d have discovered its flaws. The most obvious was that the she was guilty of that which she suspected: projecting unity unto division. For there had been many scholars, secularly imperial and divinely spiritual who had for one reason or another deigned to translate northern stories into what had once been the holy tongue of the Pontiacate cult, and had since grown into a linguistic glob referred to as ‘High speech’, though there was nothing high about it. Various motives had driven them, from anthropological curiosity to proto-scientific inquiry into reality’s workings. The scale of these had of course paled in comparison to the political projects that Eva so suspected, and it was from these that the most complete works arose. The crucial flaw was the assumption of unity. For in different times, and with different patrons, these projects indeed set out to form a narrative. But the narrative was not a constant! Ripe converts, otherworldly strangers, exotic foreigners, friendly neighbors, existential threats, all these were narratives pushed at one point or another. The north, a world of its own, happily supplied as many tales and eyewitness experiences to confirm whichever story was most convenient at any given time. Ironically, all the disparate attempts came together to form a rather well rounded and nuanced picture of the north.

Eva hadn’t cared enough to check and subconsciously tallied another notch against the old empire. There was some element of beating a dead horse to it, but it would be a little while longer until said horse was properly buried.

As delightful as Pilly might have found the trip across the city, all good things must come to an end. An unusual building by Kadyp’s standard, the pair came to a stone tower barely tall enough to reach the first elevated paths of the trees. As they stepped inside, the sights and the smell hit Pilly with brazen suddenness. Specifically, the lack of sight, and the pungent smell of salt and fish.

“We’re nowhere near the sea, why would you store fish in here?” Pilly asked. “Nowhere near the sea? Kadyp’s easternmost edge doesn’t reach the marsh, and that edge is less that a redwing’s flight from the fisheries. Or is the salt in the air too subtle a tell for you?” Eva replied, her voice strangely resonant in the small tower. “Then why would this building be distinctly awful?” Pilly pressed the point. “I’ll tell you later, should you still care. Wouldn’t you prefer to wonder as to why I brought you here?”

He didn’t recall being brought, more so that not following Eva hadn’t even seemed an option. Unwilling and unable to dwell on the thought, he obliged Eva’s request.

“It’s dark” Pilly began. This elicited no responses, as it oughtn’t’ve. Sound filled the void that sight had left, and two jumped out at him immediately. “Your little spiel about the sea, why lie by obfuscation?” he pointed to an unilluminated corner “I can hear the crash of waves, distorted and echoed, but waves all the same” Eva, still standing in the light, flashed him a quick raise of the eyebrows, in mock surprise. “And there’s at least two other people here” Pilly finished, in a tone something between resignation and terror. This was rewarded with Eva’s genuine shock, a prize he’d have valued more had he known her generally tepid regard for his intelligence.

“Every darkness must fall, I suppose. Come out then, seems we’ll need more testing if there’s at least two of you left” Eva said, the turn of phrase she used unfamiliar to Pilly’s ear. He wondered if something was lost in translation between the various regional dialects of High speech, but Eva was just being obtuse for its own sake. Had his eyes adjusted to the darkness, perhaps he’d have noticed the fragrantly horrified expression she flashed as it became evident there were not two additional breaths, but five. “Mother never dealt with anything like this…” echoed impossibly in the confined space. The five, which Pilly could now see were fresh faced and barely postpubescent, emerged from the shadows and formed a semicircle at the back edge of the room.

They seemed very pleased with themselves, camaraderie writ large in their confident poise. Eyes adjusted to the dark from hours of patient recluse, they noted each other more than they noted either Pilly or Eva. Eva was too busy being distraught to much notice this. Luckily, Pilly was more than aware of this which could be perceived as a slight. Himself unsure whether disrespect was the intention, he took it upon himself to inspect the five closely.

The most striking of their features was their youth. Little more could be discerned with certainty, though some was confidently guessed at; they were lean, they were somewhat athletic in that way which the verticality of Kadyp enforced on any but the most isolated of its citizens. They’d be pale, skin and hair unbleached by the sun, which they’d have seen little of even had they not been mostly cooped up in study. Apart from these vague generalities that’d apply to most of Kadyp’s youth, Pilly found nothing of note to lodge in his mind. He’d had many systems to categorize and efficiently memorize faces and names, and these had served him well in his sycophantic path to greatness. These systems, honed on the whetstone of blandly indistinguishable functionaries and pompously class dignitaries, were utterly unprepared for the task of committing the foibles of rambunctiously naïve youths to memory.

A quick minute of an increasingly intense staring contest was all that was needed to draw Eva into speech, though it was neither the upbeat, almost flirtatious mocking of her private discourse nor was it her solidly stable neutral cadence used for the many councils of Kadyp. “All in a row then, children. Who are you? What’s brought you to this hole when your peers are either at the fisheries or the libraries?” It was a standard tactic. She knew why there were there, and they knew she knew why they were there, and she knew they knew she knew why they were there. Eva almost entertained the notion that Pilly would be confused by the question, but if anything he seemed perfectly in tune to the new developments. If anything, Eva may have thought he seemed bored, already having guessed the broad strokes of the exchange to come.

No one interrogated Pilly’s response so far though, and so he was left to the side, forgotten for the moment as Kadyp worked out its future.

“I’m Collect, first of Jennept’s circle. I know that which has passed, see the path I must walk to set all things in their place, and shall give all I have to walk that path. I am the point” said the first of the five, audibly male if not quite with the deepness of a man fully grown. It took the span of breath for him to step back into line, inversely lockstep with his neighbor’s claim to attention as she took a step forwards. “I’m Tautle, second of Jennept’s circle. I feel the fears and hopes of the audience. The highest delight I can dream of is to guide those turbulent currents of emotion that arise in a crowd. I am the vanity” and again, coordinating as stage actors, the next boy stepped forward as the girl faded back into line. “I’m Fard, third of Jennept’s circle. I see the lines and patterns in all there is. I see the parallels, the lessons, the structures, in the world around and in the worlds of the libraries. I am the counterpoint” again, one in the next out, this a third boy: “I’m Faerdyer, fourth of Jennept’s circle. I have read a thousand stories, a hundred biographies, and not a symbol has faded from my mind. I am the blunt” finally, another girl rounded out the roster. Such an equal balance of gender would’ve been enough to clue Eva into the travesty she was witnessing, but such deduction was unnecessary, for the children were stating plainly their folly! “I’m Glow, fifth of Jennept’s circle. I am not as the rest, but I am. I have passed all they have, pleased the masters and mistresses. I cannot see as far as Collect, but I can see far. I cannot lose myself in others as Tautle, but I can read the emotions off a face as few can. I cannot see the parallels as swiftly or clearly as Fard, but I can see the subtleties of connections once I know of them, as even Fard cannot. I cannot claim to have read as widely as Faerdyer, nor to have recalled with perfect clarity that which I have read, but I can recall the strokes, the texture, the beat and emotion of every tale I’ve encountered, and is that not more important than mere words?”

She paused, as none of them had until that point. Pilly supposed she was planning to present her monicker in dramatic fashion, and he was correct, though a deep breath was the only drama the girl allowed herself. Admiration and support were etched in the lines of her companions faces, a fact which bothered Eva to no end, despite already having deduced the entire situation’s development from the moment Collect named himself ‘the first’.

“I am Glow, and I am the whisper” Glow, appropriately, whispered, but loudly somehow, as if projecting her voice towards the back of a theater hall.

In the dim light, Eva’s red hair shone through like a festering wound. The children, awed by Eva’s presence, took it as the halo surrounding all great men and women upon their arrival on stage. Pilly, for the first time, considered that she must at some point be dying her hair, and that such dye could not possibly have been produced in Kadyp. This detail clawed into his psyche and began eating away at the reverie threatening to consume him and his purpose.

Much more was notable about Eva than her hair though. For one thing, she was shouting. “Five! Five! And you think of working together? Of calling yourselves something as grand as ‘Jennept’s circle’? Has Opal’s mind worm worked its way through our elders and teachers so thoroughly that our most promising youths are all taught it as the only interpretation? Or did she skip a step, did she take it upon herself to lift her self-imposed isolation and spread her ideas directly to the babes? Don’t answer that, don’t answer any of that, I don’t want to hear it! I’ll hear more of Opal’s nonsense, and it’ll hammer away at me, as it always does!”

Shock, horror, pain, a decade of weariness that Eva was trying to unpack. It had nowhere to go but the five children. Pilly could no more take up the slack than a hollowed-out table leg could guide an electromagnetic wave. They gabbled then, silence not yet their custom, as it was the custom of sensible adults in positions of power the plains over. “Opal is the greatest story keeper in two centuries!” “The teachers? The teachers???” “But you chose Opal! Isn’t that what the princess does? Who else would select the story keeper?” “Why is he here to witness this? This is sacred, sacred, sacred, sacred!” “But we can all just stick together!” “Stick to what?” “I never did agree with any of it, I swear!”

Pilly had no measure of how long they gabbled, for he had left the building. Eva, composing herself, let them wear themselves ragged. Her glare, an uncommon sight even for her friends and acquaintances, was that much more terrifying to those unfamiliar with it. It won her their attention and their silence, if not quite their love. In the days and years to come, they’d swear she’d looked into their depths then, looked into their eyes, through their eyes, through their hearts and minds and souls. Surely though, it couldn’t have been more than a few seconds that she spent on each of them.

An eternity, an adventure, five lifetimes, twenty seconds later, Eva finally broke the primal silence.

“There is a question I could ask you, a question whose answer determines all. Should I ask this question and should more than one of you provide the correct answer, I’ll play along. I’ll do the impossible, I’ll move forwards with all who succeed, do all I can to make you all story keepers. I’ll start with you, Collect. The rest of you, well, seems you know the order. Go find Pilly, I don’t want him wandering too far on his own”

Delight shone briefly upon their faces, as they raced out to search for the Kargian. When all was quiet, Eva grabbed Collect’s face between her palms and asked him the question. He answered immediately, and with confidence. She ordered him to send for the next. His answer had taken him but a moment, and the others were easily spotted and found, for they were still searching for Pilly, and fretting over the question. They gathered, and, with that wit they’d expected Eva to expect of them, they realized she’d never ordered them not to share the question between themselves, nor had she barred them from discussing and collaborating. After all, was that not the essence of that which they were aspiring to?

So they discussed, but it quickly became apparent there was little to say. Still haunted by Eva’s stare, their discussions came to nought, ultimately shifting no ones answer even a hair. Still, it was some ten minutes before Tautle took her turn to answer Eva’s question. It took her ten minutes more, ten minutes of long articulation, to answer the question to Eva’s face. Next was Fard, who answered in fits and starts, eventually begged pardon and gave in brief the answer he’d intended to begin with. Penultimately came Faerdyer, who seemed not to answer the question at all. Rather, he rambled and rambled upon points seemingly unrelated. At one point he began recalling his life’s tale, which moved Eva to utter boredom, the first proper emotion she’d felt since her outburst. Last in some sense least, came Glow. Unlike the others, she did not begin speaking immediately as Eva finished her question. Instead, she sat in silence a while, the woman and the girl mirrored masks of blank composure. Eventually, the heat of the day working its way through her brain, Glow gave her answer. Satisfied, she sent the girl away, and sat in silent contemplation, for how long no one could say, for none were around to record it; the children, content that the excitement had passed and that their story would continue, made their way back to the city proper and to adventure they were sure awaited them. In all the excitement of Eva’s question, of their future hinging upon one woman’s temperament, they’d completely forgotten her order to find Pilly.

He too had found his way back to the city proper, if only just to a spot from which he could marvel at Jennept’s archive. The thought the he could go to the place never crossed his mind.

What is the role of stories? Why are they told? Lakes of ink have spilled, and tracts of forest felled in service of thoughts on the subject. But two kinds of answers present themselves; Either stories serve some purpose, or they don’t. If stories serve some purpose, whatever it may be, can that purpose not be better distilled into creations molded specifically to cater to said purpose? And if stories serve no purpose, if they merely persist as ghosts of the mind, told and retold for no better reason than that they easily latch onto the human consciousness, then what depth is there to be ascribed to them? For surely stories are not merely tools, for then surely the best course would be to take them apart, extract the use in simpler form, and discard the rest. But if they serve no purpose, no goodness, no higher goal, why persist in caring? Why tell them at all?