The stitcher and the mut.., p.26
The Stitcher and the Mute, page 26
He came to the huge sandstone rock, and there he stood for a few moments, looking out over his listeners. Not just the masked Audience who would cast their votes on his tale, but everyone at First Wall. Still there was no noise. Still the Mute was with them. Then the Storyteller turned to face the rock, reached up and found handholds, and then he began to crawl up the rock at speed, to gasps from everyone. In seconds, the storyteller had scaled the rock and stood on its highest point, far above the seated listeners. He put his hands to his face and pressed the mouthpiece that sat across the lower part of his face, where the burning tornstone kept his lungs working in Fenest’s thin air. And then, he lifted the mouthpiece away. The gasps of those in First Wall came again, but louder.
A Torn risking the air of Fenest, air so different to that of the Tear it could kill him, all to tell his realm’s story.
This election wasn’t like any other Cora could remember.
The storyteller took a deep breath, and then he began, his voice crackling – a voice like tornstone. Warm, lit, burning through the words.
‘Aris watched Mattina lay her eggs.’
The Torn Story
Aris watched Mattina lay her eggs. This was something Aris had seen hundreds of times; Mattina was not a young ash beetle. She had been in the family a long time. How long, Aris did not know. She might ask her father, if she remembered to, or she would not trouble him. But the question of who came first, Aris or Mattina, brought a smile to Aris’s face – as it would to his. He needed more smiles in the hot nights.
Aris was a breeder of ash beetles; a lucrative yet dangerous trade looked down on by many of the Torn. Aris, who bred beetles but had still to try coupling with her own kind – the Audience were waiting. Her father was a breeder of ash beetles, as was his mother before him. To understand the story of that family is to understand the breeding of ash beetles.
An ash beetle lays eggs meticulously. It knows the dimensions of its enclosure. It has prepared the ground. Like Mattina, it puts its mate to work to clear rocks, hardened ash-fall, fossilising bones, and all the scattered offerings of a year in the Tear. Offerings from the sky, offerings from the earth. An ash beetle has much to tell the Affable Old Hand.
This ash beetle shuffled a precise distance and then speared the ground with her foreleg, exactly so. Quick, otherwise the hole would fill once more with ash, she turned and squatted. An undignified beginning. She walked herself upright – all three feet of her length – balanced, and then burst with light. A light she had deep within herself, burning only as an ember until her laying ignited the flame. Then it flared, not the colour of fire, but the green of Seeder grass. Green, in a place that only knew black and orange. Beautiful and bizarre. Aris had seen the light many times, and often wondered what it meant. Was it a warning, telling the Tear these were guarded eggs? Or a firing of joy at a new life? Or something Aris had not thought of yet.
This was why Aris watched. That, and it was her work.
The ash beetle matriarch fell forward and was off to dance the dance another twenty-five times. There was half a grid of egg holes behind her, half ahead. Fifty eggs in total – no more, no less, and all registered with the Commission – every year since Mattina had come to her maturity as an imago. The beetle made no complaints, but Aris did. To register them was something better done by her father.
Aris ran her tongue over her teeth and spat black. The ash clouds were heavy, and they spoke of cinders and clasts to come. But she knew enough to trust her ash beetles: Mattina would not have started her laying if there was not time. Aris’s task was to check the tarred fences and be vigilant against tatterwing bats, which would dig in their limbless way and make off with eggs. She kicked each fence post with her heavy boots. If it did not jar her leg, from toe to hip, she stopped and asked it why. At the corner of Mattina’s enclosure one post told a story of heavy skyfall, not struck directly, but a gouge from the ash-layered earth undermined it, and allowed for a wavering.
She fetched her shovel. A glance for Mattina, still occupied.
‘You are digging holes. I fill in others,’ Aris said to the beetle. A flash of green, another egg in the ground.
Aris bent to her work. Her shovel was worn and pitted, but reliable. After clearing some of the loose ash, she stopped. For a choking moment Aris thought she saw a thin line of Wit’s Blood – lava – under her shovel, beneath the fence post. Wit’s Blood this close to the breeding grounds would be beyond catastrophe. But her eyes played tricks on her, did they not? One shaking breath later she looked again. There was nothing there, except hot soil turning to deadened grey. She helped it on its way. With the hole filled, she stamped it solid and found the post improved. Elsewhere, she repaired one of the lower beams. A protest from Mattina’s mate, Mir. They did not always get along. What lovers did?
Mir, now in a separate pen, waited with all the impotent patience of a new father. He scraped and jabbered when Aris approached.
‘You should know better, old man,’ she said.
He tensed, low, and then thrust his horn at her. She forgave this.
‘Leave the fence out of your arguments.’
She would walk him back to Mattina when the matriarch’s grid was complete. There, beginning his sentry duty, Mir would not rest nor eat nor attend his mate until the eggs hatched. In this he would be insufferable. She threw him a dead rat from the pouch she carried at her hip. Her inspection finished to the tune of crunching bones.
Nine rows of neat black holes, and Mattina starting on her last. Was her climb to the vertical slower now? Her flash any dimmer? Not that Aris could tell. But it would come, one day, and they would stop breeding her. Aris would have no say in this. That was how time worked.
This time was passed by watching the ash clouds, or else gazing at home. Aris did not want to go back, not yet. But there was no escaping it. Nowhere to go but to her ailing father and fussing mother. She could feel them, lurking behind the pitted balconies and walkways and tunnels of Hadun-Har. So far away from here, at the breeding fields, only the shadows of the tunnel mouths made any impression on the cliffside. It was called many things: warren, burrow, survival. Everything in the Tear did what it had to, or the Widow welcomed it.
And so Mattina struggled her way to the corner of her enclosure, where Aris waited. The matriarch’s plated legs shook as she pushed her way upwards one last time. Aris was too slow in closing her eyes. Brilliant green blinded her, but in that blindness she saw a transformation. The Tear blanketed by grass, not ash. Rocks that didn’t burn to touch but had cooled over countless years. Rain that was not black, no colour at all. A vision of Mount Hadun no longer telling jittery stories to the Wit, but slumbering deeply enough to please the Child.
The call of the exhausted matriarch cut through her silliness. There was only the grey ash fields. The orange glare of Hadun. The darkening clouds.
‘All right then, Mattina, I will fetch him.’ She stepped off the fence. ‘You are sure you want him back?’
The call continued by way of an answer. Aris envied another woman’s certainty. She imitated it when she could.
Mir was just as determined as his mate. He scraped his horn against the fence as he followed Aris’s progress. She did not waste breath on telling him to stop. There would be no explaining that his display was lost on her, that it only created more work, not intimidation nor admiration. At least the old bull knew not to charge when she opened the gate. The younger males learned that lesson eventually, flailing at their mate’s enclosure until they had no choice but to drag themselves back to where Aris waited with the lead. Mir did not test her.
She knelt and affixed the lead around his dull elytra, the straps firm but not too tight. He would pull – he had to show willing, even as old as he was. She walked him from one enclosure to the other. Such a separation was essential; he would only have fussed and worried during the laying, been no help at all. She could feel his whole body vibrating through the lead. She smiled and said nice things to him.
As they drew close, Mattina’s call turned to clicking. Mir matched her, as if their separation had lasted years, not hours. He strained those last few paces and bashed the gate as Aris unwound its ties. When he could squeeze through, she knew enough to drop the lead. She would recover it when he had settled into his duty. Mir rushed to his mate along a path of right angles, not once disturbing an egg hole. The pair, reunited, stood side-by-side and pulsed. That they did so, in time, reaffirmed their bond.
After a while Mir’s responsibilities pulled him from his mate. His ritual began. First, he checked each and every egg hole. At every one he looked back at Mattina: acknowledging its existence, that he would guard it, and – Aris always felt – that he was awestruck by what Mattina had achieved. Another! And another! And so on. It was not swiftly done. For her part, Mattina began to burrow into the ash until only the top of her wing-cover could be seen.
‘Rest. Keep safe,’ Aris said.
It had been a long day. An important day. This was her family’s livelihood. Ash beetles were the only beetle bred and then sold for fighting in the whole of the Union. Pits from the Tear to the Northern Steppes paid good money for ash beetles. Though their grubs were edible, each grub in the frying pan was one fewer champion for the chequers. And not every beetle made it to adulthood. Even for feisty knee-high beetles, the Tear was a dangerous place.
*
She was packing her things when Natalia Geirsdattir hailed her. It was customary to do so from a distance on the breeding fields – not a place for sneaking nor for snooping. Natalia was a long friend of Aris’s father. As friendly a rival as the Tear could know. She bred good ash beetle.
‘Look at this old horn,’ Natalia said, resting her huge frame on the enclosure’s fence. Beetle breeders spent their days on a fence, the beetles inside one. The years had made it so – Aris wondered if she could go dawn to dusk without leaning on something. ‘Have children, Aris. See Mir? It makes you young again. You are looking too much your age.’
‘You are not,’ Aris said. She pulled up her heavy cloak’s hood. The Painter would let loose the sky soon and it would burn anything soft.
‘Little Sturri runs me to ruin,’ Natalia said. ‘What could be better?’
‘How are your pairs this year?’
Natalia cleared her throat as a panogar roars, and spat. Mir braced himself to defend his unhatched brood. ‘None so fierce as these two.’
‘You sound worried.’
‘Worried was last year.’ She shrugged. ‘This is worse.’
‘And yet the north still buys our beetles,’ Aris said.
‘What do they know of good beetles? As long as it fights to live – not too well, not too poorly, and looks different from the feathers.’ She waved dismissively.
Mir stabbed his horn at the giant of a woman, fearless, reliving his ringside glory. He had cost Aris’s father half a year’s earnings to buy. In his prime he was the Brawler’s favourite. He missed those days, that was obvious.
‘Looks like rain,’ Aris said.
‘As if life was not bitter enough.’ Natalia raised her hood. ‘Tell your father he is a villain for having you out here. Seeing to beetle broods when it should be your own.’
‘I will own it, too soon I think.’
‘That is not what—’
‘When you tickle little Sturri’s feet, tell him I told you to. Aris told you.’
Natalia clapped a huge hand on her shoulder and then lumbered away, watched by Mir.
Aris collected her shovel and satchel. Needlessly, she checked the gate ties again. Then looked to the two other breeding pairs her family owned. Kraki and Kata, their youngest pair, were still days from ready. Father cursed them from his bed for being shy; told the Fishwife of the misfortune she had brought them in beetles that refused to mate. He looked right at Aris when he told those stories. Doari and Dyrley were ready. But where Mattina had worked all day to lay before the rains, Dyrley preferred to wait, full of eggs as she was. Doari was impatient, but what male was not? He marked their enclosure as she burrowed in for the night.
It was a little over an hour’s walk from the breeding fields to Hadun-Har. It was not an easy hour. Though the path was well-worn, there were many steep climbs. At points she had to haul herself up large, black rock ledges, and up the sides of gullies carved by streams of Wit’s Blood. Some streams still ran hot and that heat pressed her against the cliffs, dried out her mouth and nose and eyes and made her skin tight. They were her favourite parts of the walk home. They at least defied the rain.
When it came, the ground steamed. The top-ash turned to mud and her boots were soon covered. Another chore – if left overnight, the mud would eat through the soles. Left long enough it would eat through everything. Against the rain, her cloak and gloves, so thick and thickly treated – heavy beyond the Union’s understanding – were fair protection. Better to have a shell like her ash beetles, but the Audience had not seen fit to give her one.
She hurried to the relative shelter of a cliff. She searched her satchel, twice, slow and thorough. But she could not find her rain-veil: a heavy treated cloth that attached to the inside of her hood and protected her face. It was not in her satchel, where it was supposed to be. She cursed the Latecomer for her misfortune in losing it.
She could wait out the rain, but the Painter was lazy not just in name – in what stories was the rain ever in any hurry? And night was not so distant. The worst kind of fool was out of their har at night, in the Tear. A mistake only made once.
No, better to risk a scar. She had her fair share already. She pressed on. Somewhere distant, a firecat howled, a chilling sound amongst the fire-blooded mountains. Aris listened hard – the echoes would tell her just how distant. The sound died quickly. Perhaps it was howling from the mouth of its cave, as frustrated by the rain as she was?
Mir, Mattina, and the others would be fine, of course. Adult ash beetles were so poisonous to eat that everything in the Tear avoided them. Their eggs and larvae, however… Aris preferred trumpet beetle larvae, fried with dried holen. Mir guarded the eggs now, and in a matter of days the pair of beetles would guard the grubs together. Her father might demand some for the table, or he might say they could not be spared, risking her mother’s disappointment. Such small uncertainties kept the year interesting.
An old blood flow, now hardened and smoothed, forced her to turn back on herself briefly. The breeding fields stretched out below her along the relatively smooth slopes of Hadun-Valley. There were a handful of ash beetle breeding families in the western Tear. Talk was of eastern families doing well these last years; that it was cooler there and the pairs had managed the change even better than their breeders.
‘Too big, too slow, they will not last,’ her father said to any who brought eastern beetles to a conversation. Hadun-Valley had lasted longer than many thought it should. Generations longer. And it would still be there tomorrow.
She turned back towards home and slipped. Some of the valley was smooth underfoot, and she had forgotten the rain. She did not forget to catch herself before falling. But she clung to an outcrop of blood flow, too close, and the Painter took her chance. A fat drop bounced from stone to Aris’s cheek.
The burning came quick.
A reflex nearly ruined her: she raised her wet glove to wipe the drop away, but that would only smear more scarring across her face. Instead, she leaned forward and willed the water to fall from her as it did the sky. Nothing to do but grit her teeth as it made up its mind; the black earth proved irresistible. Finally, she dabbed at her cheek with the inside of her hood. Quick and light or she risked taking skin instead of water. There was no stopping the stinging, nor the scar to come, but it could have been worse. An eye. Lips and nose blistered in a bad way. A burn on the tongue made eating a cruel thing.
How had she misplaced her rain-veil? She called herself all manner of names. That helped the frustration and the pain, but then there was nothing to be done. She would tell her stories to the Painter, or perhaps the Bore – thanking him for not sending his winds that day. They both had Seats in Hadun-Har, though neither close to her family’s rooms.
Merciless Audience, the rain eased as she reached home.
*
She presented herself at the main gate of Hadun-Har. Preparations were being made to close it, but she had made good time – less than an hour, even with the rain. The huge, solid metal gates were ponderous but well-oiled in their closing. As black and pitted as anything in the Tear, they kept many troubles out and many troubles in. A bored sentry nodded her through.
‘Rain today,’ he said.
With her cheek still stinging, she did not waste breath on a reply.
All of Hadun-Har was carved into the black rock of the cliffside. While not directly below the volcano Hadun, it was impossible to tell where one stopped and the other began; perhaps the bats, the flies, or the Rustans could see – looking down when the ash clouds broke. But nothing earth-bound could. When Hadun grumbled and the Wit bled, the har felt everything – even as it was safe from the bloodtrails. Last week a shake had thrown the salt jar from the shelf; Mother flew to her knees and saved half of it. She wept at her dusted fingertips.
At the modest gatehouse she approached the Commission clerks sitting at their desks. Aris had heard stories, dull stories, that said the Commission was so situated all across the Union. She only knew Hadun-Har, and Hadun-Har had its share of northerners who counted and recorded the necessary and unnecessary alike. Not even the Tear was safe from them. And, like a beetle lived in its shell, a clerk lived in its desk – and never did so alone. The first, a woman with a dangerous amount of grey hair on her head, squinted at Aris in the lowlight. The Commission was not generous with its candles.
‘Name?’ the woman said. Her tone made for an accusation, but it was deadened by her mouthpiece. Northerners wore them in the Tear – weak-lunged, none of them could breathe there without coughing and spluttering until they brought up blood. The mouthpieces were made of delicate northern layers of cotton and some Seeder plant’s leaves; they were so big they covered mouth and nose and chin. They looked ridiculous.
