Chapter 581 - 580: The Hand Absent

Chapter 581: Chapter 580: The Hand Absent

Location:Wild Confederacy — Settlement Windbreak; The Screening Shed; The Pavilion

Date/Time:TC1858.01.07 – TC1858.01.09

The sand glass was cold enough to hurt when Mei picked it up that morning, and she held it anyway, in both hands, until the glass warmed and the sand inside it stopped being a thing she could feel through her gloves.

She had done that every morning since the eighth month. Nobody had told her to. It was the one thing she did in the shed that was not on the sheet, and she had decided at some point in the autumn that one thing not on the sheet was allowed, as long as she knew which one it was.

The rider came in while she was still holding it.

She knew the rider. He had carried for Seven Peaks since before she was a disciple, and he did not come to the shed; he went to the pavilion, to Speaker Kael-Ren, and then to Naida. He had never once come to her.

He came to the shed. He had two letters, and he held out the one with her name on it, and did not hand over the other.

"That one’s for after," the rider told her. "She said you’d know when."

***

Raven’s hand. Short.

You are the only person from Seven Peaks at Windbreak. Nobody else can get there. That is all of why it is you.

I am not sending you as anything. I am not sending you at all. You are already there, and the Compact says whoever has knowledge goes toward it, and you have knowledge — you have the count, which is in the other letter, and you have five months in that shed, which is more than anybody at the table.

They are going to ask what the signature line means with my hand not in the room. Somebody is going to ask whether you are what comes after me.

You are not. Say so. Say it plainly and say it first, before they can make it into a question, and then read them the count.

Everything after that is yours. I am not going to tell you what to say, because anything I tell you to say is me in the room, and the entire point of the ninth is that I am not.

You can refuse. If you refuse, tell Speaker Kael-Ren, and he will read the count himself, and Seven Peaks will have been represented by a letter, and that is also an answer, and I would not think less of it.

She read it three times. Then she put it inside her coat, against her shirt, where she had kept the dead woman’s sentence since the summer, and went and found Naida.

***

"You’re going to do it," Naida observed.

She was at the survey table in the pavilion’s side room, which was hers now in the way that rooms in the Confederacy were anybody’s who used them every day, and she did not look up from the peg sheets.

"I haven’t said."

"You came to me before you went to Speaker Kael-Ren. You’d only do that if you’d decided and wanted somebody to tell you it was a mistake." Naida put her pen down. "It’s not a mistake. It’s the only thing on the table. Everybody else is nine days away."

"They’ll think I’m her heir."

"Some of them will."

"I’m fifteen."

"You’re fifteen, and you’re her direct disciple, and you’ve been standing in a shed in a foreign country for five months telling mothers a number and then saying I don’t know to their faces." Naida looked at her properly for the first time. "They’ll think you’re her heir because that’s the easiest thing to think. What you’re going to do is make them think something harder, and it’s going to cost you, because the easy thing is always cheaper to believe."

"How do I make them think something harder?"

"You already know. It’s in her letter." Naida went back to the sheet. "Say no before they ask. And then give them a thing that isn’t you."

***

The Empire came in on the eighth, on foot for the last part like the Confederacy had at Seven Peaks, because the carts could not get past the flats in winter.

Kael Xuán was at the front of it. Mei had not expected that, and saw Naida at the pavilion door not expect it either — Naida’s face did nothing, which was how you knew.

He was thinner than he had been at Seven Peaks. His coat sat straight on both shoulders now. He saw Mei at the edge of the yard and stopped, and she watched him work out why she was there, and she watched him understand it in about the time it took him to take off one glove.

"Mei," he said.

"Lord Kael."

"You’re standing for her."

"I’m standing because I’m here." She said it before she could decide not to. "Nobody else could get here. That’s the whole reason. I’m going to say that in the room tomorrow before anybody asks, and I’d rather you’d heard it first."

Kael Xuán looked at her for a moment.

"That’s what I would have told you to say," he said, "if anybody had asked me, which nobody would have. I’ll be glad to hear it said." He put his glove back on. "The Emperor has sent me with the renewal and nothing else. No instructions on the signature line. None. I have been trying for eight days to decide whether that is because he does not care, or because he wanted me to have to stand in the room without any, and I have concluded that I will never know, and that it does not matter."

***

The Assessor arrived last and alone except for a clerk, and went directly to the room she had been given and did not come out until the morning.

Mei did not sleep much. She lay in the cold in the room behind the shed with both letters under her pillow and went through the count in her head the way the girls at Seven Peaks went through their numbers, in order, out loud under her breath, until she had it without the paper. Then she went through Raven’s letter the same way. Then she lay there and tried to work out what she would say if they asked her something she had not thought of, and could not, because a thing you have not thought of is exactly the thing you cannot think of in advance.

Somewhere around the fourth hour she understood that this was the same problem she had in the shed every morning. A mother at the door asking what nine meant. The only thing you could do was say what you had and stop.

She slept after that.

***

The pavilion at Windbreak was not a hall. It was a wooden roof on posts over a floor of packed earth, with hide walls let down on three sides against the wind, and a long table that had been a door, and it was colder inside than out because the wind came under the hides and had nowhere to go.

Four sides.

The Confederacy. The Federation, one woman with a small book. The Empire, the Imperial Heir and one secretary. And Seven Peaks, which was a fifteen-year-old in a coat that was too big for her, with two letters against her shirt and a sand glass in her pocket that she had not meant to bring and had found there on the way in.

And the fifth side, which was not a side. Speaker Kael-Ren had had the Northern sheet copied, both languages, the common tongue smaller, and it was on the table in front of an empty stool, weighted with two stones from the flats.

The border clause went through in under an hour. Six months, publication, without standing on failure. The Assessor read out the returns for all four signatories for the six months past, in order, with the dates, and there was one late return on the whole page and it was the Empire’s, from the ninth month, and she read that out in the same voice as the others and did not look at Kael Xuán, and Kael Xuán did not look away from her while she read it.

Then Speaker Kael-Ren turned the page.

"The signature line for Seven Peaks," Speaker Kael-Ren announced. "Reviewable at the first renewal, in her own words." He read it out. "For herself, and for those at Seven Peaks who choose to be bound by her hand, so long as they choose it."

He put the page down.

"The hand is not in the room. Seven Peaks has sent—" and he stopped, and started again, because Mei had already stood up.

***

"I’m not what comes after her."

She said it into the cold, to all three of them, and to the stool.

"That’s the first thing. I’m saying it before anybody asks, because I was told to and because it’s true. I’m here because I’m the only person from Seven Peaks who could get here in nine days. If the shed had been in the Federation, it’d be somebody else standing here. That’s all it is."

Nobody said anything.

"She sent you a count instead of a person." Mei took the second letter out of her coat. "I’m going to read it. Then you can ask me what you like, and I’ll answer what I can, and anything I can’t answer I’ll say I can’t. That’s the only way I know how to stand in a room."

She read it.

The number of answers. The Corps counted separately, with Sera Vahn’s line about people who could have walked away. The things that came up most, in order. The linen. The frame at dawn. The count by name. The return. The next hand on the wall. The north road in spring. The record.

The Corps column, with its one word written a dozen ways.

And the line that came up twelve times in twelve hands.

Keep the fourth column empty.

She put the sheet down.

"That’s the answer," she said. "That’s everything Seven Peaks sent. It’s not a person. It’s what people said they’d still do on the day after."

***

The Assessor spoke first, which nobody had expected.

"May I ask a question of the representative?"

"I’m not a representative. I’m the person who’s here."

"Then of the person who is here." The Assessor did not smile. Her voice was ordinary. "The count says what people would continue to do. It does not say who would decide, when two of those things conflict. The linen and the north road cannot both be staffed if there are not enough people. Who decides?"

Mei had not expected that question and had not prepared for it, and she stood in the cold with the sheet in front of her and her hands at her sides and found that she knew the answer anyway, because she had been living inside it for five months.

"The people doing them," Mei answered. "Standing there. With what they know." She heard her own voice and made it go on at the same speed. "That’s what the Compact says. Whoever has knowledge goes toward it. It doesn’t say who’s in charge. It says who’s there. I’m here because I’m there. The Corps went to the Millford road because they were there and had the sheet. Nobody decided. They went."

"That is not a succession."

"No." Mei did not look away from her. "It’s what she built instead of one. I don’t know if it’s enough. Nobody does. I’d put that in the fourth column if I was allowed to, and I’m not, so I’m saying it out loud instead."

The Assessor wrote for about four seconds.

"That is a complete answer," the Assessor allowed, "and I will write it as you said it and not shorter."

***

They renewed the line.

Not as it was. Kael Xuán proposed it, and Speaker Kael-Ren seconded it, and the Assessor, after a long moment with her pen above her book, nodded once, and Mei watched the clerk write it into the renewal in the same size as everything else.

For herself, and for those at Seven Peaks who choose to be bound by her hand, so long as they choose it.

Reviewed at this renewal in her absence. Seven Peaks answered by a count of what its people would continue to do, read into the record by the person present. The signatories accept the count as the answer for this term and will ask the question again at the next.

"It’s not a yes," Kael Xuán told her, when it was done, standing in the yard with the wind coming off the flats. "I want you to know that. It’s six months."

"I know."

"You did it correctly."

Mei found that her hands had gone into her coat, to the sand glass, and that she was holding it, and that it was warm now. "I’d rather have done it badly and had something to give them."

She had said that sentence once before, to Naida, at the back of this same shed, about a herder’s boy who read nine. It was still true. Kael Xuán did not know that and did not ask.

Then he went to find his people.

Speaker Kael-Ren came out of the pavilion a little after, with the renewal under his arm and the wind taking his coat, and stood beside her looking at the flats.

"You stood up before I’d finished the sentence," he said.

"I’m sorry."

"Don’t be. I was going to say Seven Peaks has sent, and I didn’t know what the end of it was." He did not look at her. "You gave me the end of it. Nobody. The person who’s here. I’ve been trying to say that to my own settlements for a year about the anchors, and I’ve never once said it that plainly."

"It’s her sentence. The Compact’s."

"It’s in the Compact because she argued for it for a year. It’s out loud in a room because a fifteen-year-old said it in the cold." He hitched the renewal under his arm. "Those are different things, and I’d like you to know I noticed."

***

She wrote to Raven that evening, before the rider went south.

Not a report. There was a clerk for that; Speaker Kael-Ren’s clerk was writing the return now, badly, the Seven Peaks way, and Naida was making him do it twice. Mei wrote the other thing, the thing Raven had asked Naida for in the autumn — the letter that arrives because somebody sat down.

It was four lines.

I said no before they asked. Then I read the count. The Assessor asked who decides when two of the things conflict, and I said the people who are there, and she wrote it down and said it was complete.

They renewed it for six months, and they’ll ask again.

I was frightened the whole time. I don’t think anybody could tell.

I held the glass until it was warm. I’ll tell you about the glass when I’m home.

Then she went back to the shed, because it was the second hour after noon and there were eleven more on the list, and she set the glass and said the four sentences from the sheet and put her hands in her lap and said nothing whatever for seven minutes while a herder’s daughter sat opposite her and got frightened and stopped being frightened and got bored.