Weaves of Ashes

Chapter 538: Chapter 533: The Nine Hundred

Location:Obsidian Academy — The Old Armory

Date/Time:6 Ashwhisper, 9942 AZI — Later

Realm:Lower Realm

”And the first entry in either column is retrospective,” Jayde said, ”and it goes to the nine hundred.”

The room changed temperature in a way that had nothing to do with the forges.

”Their families have them,” Meifen said. ”The bodies. We brought them home.”

”Their families have a box and a road and nothing written down. Nobody outside four provinces knows what any of them did, and in ten years nobody inside them will either.” Jayde kept her voice flat because it was the only way to get through it. ”So it is written down, and it is the first thing this force ever does officially, before a single recruit swears anything. Every name. What they held and where. Signed by whoever is sitting in my chair on the day, in perpetuity, and read out loud once a year for as long as the institution exists.”

”That is a lot of years,” Ryo said.

”That is the point of it.”

”It will not be nine hundred forever,” Shenwei said.

”No.”

”That is my whole objection, and I want it written down before anybody agrees to this.” He had his hands flat on the bench. ”In two hundred years it is nine thousand names. In five hundred it is a number nobody in this room can picture. The reading takes a morning, and then a day, and then two — and somewhere in there a sensible man is going to stand up and propose that we read only the last century, and he will not be a villain; he will be a man with four thousand people standing in the rain.”

”Then it takes two days, and everybody stands there while it does,” Jayde said. ”And that man can explain, out loud, in front of all of them, which names he is proposing to leave out. He will not get past the fourth one.”

Shenwei thought about that.

”No,” he said. ”He will not.”

***

She had one more thing under the bench, and she had left it until last because she had not worked out how to put it down.

Two objects, on a square of cloth.

The first was a disc of dark metal about the width of a thumb joint, hung on a plain cord. It was heavier than it needed to be.

”This one is not worn,” Jayde said. ”It goes to the family.”

Nobody moved.

”The name is cut on the back. Where they held, and when.” She turned it over with one finger so they could see the blank field waiting for it. ”It goes into a mother’s hand, and it goes into a drawer, and it comes out on bad days, and it weighs something, because a thing that weighs nothing gets lost inside a year, and this one is not going to be lost.”

Meifen picked it up before anybody else and did exactly what Jayde had built it to do, which was close her fist around it.

”It is heavy,” she said.

”Deliberately. A thing you can feel the weight of in a closed hand is a thing that does not end up in the back of a drawer.”

The second object was a strip of cloth about the length of a finger and no wider than a thumbnail. Grey — the flat, unlovely grey of the thread in Eden’s wooden case. Worked into one end of it, small and plain and without any flourish at all, four figures.

9942.

”And this one is worn,” Jayde said. ”Sewn flat above the breast, under the name, by anybody who went into that mountain.”

Feng Lian had it up to the light.

”It is nullite.”

”It is the same grey. It is not the thread, and it does not do anything. It is only that color.” Jayde let her look. ”That is the whole of it. It is small, it is grey, it is cloth, and in fifty years a boy in a market will see one on an old woman’s coat and know exactly what she is and exactly which year she went.”

Bai Shu had the other one and was looking at the figures.

”There is no name on it.”

”There is no name on it, and there is no grade on it, and it says nothing whatsoever about what anybody did.” Jayde turned it flat on the cloth. ”It says you were there and it says when. That is the entire claim, and it is the only one I am prepared to make on behalf of fourteen hundred people I did not watch every hour of.”

***

Ruifen had been silent through all of it.

”Nine hundred,” she said.

”Yes.”

”A hundred and ninety-seven of them went home in caskets. I carried four of those down the mountain myself, and I know exactly what those families have, because I stood in a forecourt in the snow while they came and got them.” Ruifen’s voice was completely level, which was worse than if it had not been. ”The other seven hundred and three have nothing.”

Nobody said anything.

”Two hundred-odd we could account for and could not carry. Somebody saw where it happened, and there was nothing left to put in a box.” She had not raised her voice once. ”And five hundred we never found at all. No body. No kit. Not one thing. Those families have had a name read out in a forecourt in a province they have never been to, by a man they have never met, and then they went home.”

”Yes,” Jayde said.

”So we are late for a hundred and ninety-seven.” Ruifen looked at the disc on its square of cloth. ”And for the other seven hundred, that is the first object anybody will ever have put in their hands.”

***

”We are late for the caskets, and we are two months late.” Jayde did not look away from her. ”A hundred and ninety-seven doors have been knocked on once already, and somebody has to go back and knock on them again holding a thing that should have gone the first time.”

”And the seven hundred?”

”Have never been knocked on at all.” She said it flatly, because there was no version of it that was not flat. ”Nobody went. There was no protocol for it, and there has never been one in ten thousand years, because the Harrowing dead have always stayed in the Harrowing, and the families were told, and that was the whole of what anybody did.”

Meifen said, very quietly, ”My aunt got a letter.”

Nobody asked her which year.

***

”Then the five hundred,” Zhong said, ”because you are about to put where they held, and when on the back of a disc, and for five hundred of them nobody knows either.”

”They get the same disc as everybody else.”

”Saying what?”

”The last place they were known to be standing, and the last day anybody is certain they were alive.” Jayde put her hand flat on the cloth. ”Not missing. Not a blank. Not a smaller object, and not a different one — a mother comparing hers to the one next door is going to find them identical, and she will find that out because she will compare them.”

”And if we are wrong about the place?”

”Then we are wrong on the record, in writing, with the name of the person who wrote it,” Jayde said, ”and if a better answer ever comes, we cut a new one and go back to the door. There is no version of this where I hand five hundred families a piece of metal that says less than the others.”

”A courier cannot do that.”

”A courier is not going to do that.” Jayde put her hand flat on the cloth. ”All nine hundred are delivered by hand, by somebody who was in that mountain, and where it can be done, by somebody who knew them. The hundred and ninety-seven get a second visit. The rest get a first. It will take a year. It will take people off other work. It goes in the ledger as work, and it is paid as work, and nobody volunteers for it out of guilt, because guilt runs out at about door forty and I need all nine hundred.”

Ruifen put two fingers on the disc and did not pick it up.

”I will take the western provinces,” she said.

”You have Operations.”

”I will take the western provinces,” Ruifen said again, in exactly the same tone, and Jayde looked at her for a moment and then let it go, because there are arguments that are not worth winning in front of eight other people.

Meifen said, ”Redwater is mine. I know four of those houses.”

”Then it is yours.”

Zhong did not say anything at all. He simply put his hand out for the list, and Ryo gave it to him.

***

”And the rest of us,” Meifen said.

She said it carefully, the way a person raises a thing they are not sure they are entitled to raise.

”There are fourteen hundred and three of us who came back up that road, and you have just written the nine hundred into a book that will be read for a thousand years, and I am not asking you to put me beside them.” She kept her eyes on the table. ”But it is going to be asked. Somebody in the forecourt is going to ask it in front of everybody, and I would rather you had an answer than that you had to make one up standing there.”

”The founding entry covers everybody who went into that mountain,” Jayde said. ”Dead and living. One entry, one mark, every name in it.”

Meifen looked up.

”Both.”

”Both. The nine hundred are read out and the fourteen hundred wear it.” Jayde put her hand on the sheet. ”And it carries the year, and that is not decoration.”

”Why the year?”

”Because there will be another one in fifty years, and another after that, and the mountain does not stop.” Jayde looked around at them. ”Everybody who goes down there gets one. Every time. It is not a thing you earn once and shut the door behind you — it says where you were and when, and nothing else, and it is the same strip for a cadet in nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-two as it is for you.”

Bai Shu turned it over.

”Then it is not ours.”

”The strip is not yours. The year is.” Jayde said it without softening it. ”Nobody will ever wear that year again — not because I have forbidden it, but because the year is over. In fifty years there will be a girl standing next to you wearing one that says ninety-two, and she will look at yours and work out the difference, and the difference will be fifty years and a written method and two hundred staff and every argument this room has had tonight.”

”And what do I tell her?”

”The truth. That hers is better, and that you are glad, and that you would rather she never understood why.”

***

Kiran had gone back through his own ledger and stopped.

”There is a problem with the roll,” he said, ”and it is not one of mine.”

Jayde waited.

”You are not on it.”

Everybody looked up.

”The Merit Hall list. Every one of the fourteen hundred is on it — name, bracelet, points, what they spent them on going out.” Kiran turned the page around so Ryo could see. ”There is no bracelet under your name because there was never one issued. There is no entry. As far as that hall is concerned, Commander, neither you nor Eden was ever in that mountain.”

Nobody said anything for a moment.

”That is correct,” Jayde said.

”You came out of a year down there with nothing. Not a point. Not an artifact. Not a line in a ledger.”

”I came out of it with fourteen hundred people, which is a considerably better return than anybody else got, and I do not want the argument you are about to have with yourself about this.”

”I am going to have it anyway.” Kiran’s voice did not rise at all. ”You wrote a founding entry an hour ago that covers everybody who went into that mountain, and then you wrote it in a way that includes you, and I have watched you refuse things all evening. So I would like to hear you say the reason out loud.”

Jayde was quiet long enough that Ruifen shifted.

”Because if I take myself off it, I have decided who counts,” she said. ”That is the first power I told you I would not hold, and it would be the first thing I did with it, and I would have done it while everybody was feeling warm about me.” She put her hand flat. ”I was in that mountain. So was Eden. Put us on the roll with everybody else, at the bottom, in whatever order a clerk writes them, and never once move us.”

Ryo wrote it exactly as she said it.

***

The door opened at the start of the second hour, and Bai Shu came in walking badly.

She got the pack off before she got the coat off, and she did it with her left hand, and her right shoulder was doing something Eden noticed from across the room and crossed the floor for.

”Report,” Jayde said.

”The coat is fine.” Bai Shu was breathing through the cold in her chest. ”Warm. Too warm for the first quarter of it, and then correct for the rest, and I would not change it. The cuffs are wrong the way Meifen said and right the way Ryo said, which I do not understand yet.” She rolled the shoulder and stopped rolling it. ”The pack is not the problem either. The frame is good. On the walk out it was better than good.”

”Then it is the strap, and it is the right shoulder, and it went at about the second hour.”

Bai Shu stopped.

”...Yes.”

”Sit down before you say the rest of it.” Jayde pulled a stool out with her foot. ”And say it anyway, because I want it in your words and not in mine.”

”The strap sits on one place and does not move, because I do not move.” She sat. ”Half an hour, nothing. An hour, an ache. Two hours and my hand went stupid, and I could not have drawn anything with it, and I would have told you I was fine because I would not have known.”

”That is the oldest complaint there is,” Jayde said. ”A man standing still under a load is not carrying it; he is being pressed by it, and every force that has ever put a sentry on a wall has found that out. The frame is built for walking. It fails at standing, and it fails at exactly two hours, and I have known that since before I drew it.”

Ruifen’s head came up.

”Then why is it on this coat?”

”Because knowing the fault is not the same as knowing the number.” Jayde put her hand flat. ”Two hours on what body? Every dimension in that drawing came out of somewhere else — a shoulder that is not her shoulder, a spine that is not her spine, a man who does not weigh what she weighs and does not carry it where she carries it. Bai Shu is Mid Sparkforged. There is not a measurement in existence taken off a body like that, because there has never been a force made of them to measure.”

***

Eden had two fingers on the shoulder and was pressing along the line of it.

”Compression,” she said. ”Not damage. Gone by tomorrow.” She looked at Jayde. ”This time. Eight hours a night for a winter and it will not be gone by tomorrow, and every one of them will tell you they are fine, because that is what it feels like.”

”How much of it is the tier?”

”All of it, or none of it, and I cannot tell you which until I have measured forty of them doing exactly what she just did.” Eden did not soften it. ”Her frame carries better than yours would. She is denser through the shoulder than the drawing assumes, and there is more of her under the strap, and I would have said that made it easier, and it plainly does not. I do not know why yet. I will.”

”That is the answer, then,” Jayde said. ”Not the fix. The answer.”

”And the fix?” Zhong asked.

”The fix has been known for a very long time, and I could draw it in four minutes — the load comes off the shoulders and sits on the hips, and the shoulder straps do nothing but keep it upright.” She turned the frame over on the bench so they could see where it would have to change. ”What I cannot do is put a number on the belt. Where it sits, how wide it is, how much of the weight it takes before it starts doing its own damage. On a village-born body I would know all three tonight. On hers I would be guessing, and if I guess, I will be guessing the same way for seven thousand people at once.”

”So the pack comes off on a post,” Zhong said.

”The pack comes off on a post, and there is nowhere to put it, and it is full of everything he owns,” Meifen said. ”You will get seven thousand men standing sentry beside a sack. I have seen exactly that. It is how kit gets stolen, and it is how a sentry ends up thirty feet from his own water.”

”Which is why it is a belt and not a rule about putting it down.” Jayde looked at the three of them. ”Shenwei, Meifen, Bai Shu. Build the belt. Eden gives you the bodies and the numbers as she gets them, and you do not make seven thousand of anything until she has forty.”

”You want us to fail at it,” Bai Shu said.

”I want you to fail at it here, in a warm room, in front of each other, where the entire cost is a bad afternoon.” Jayde put her hand on the coat. ”Every single thing on this bench is going to be worn by somebody standing somewhere cold in forty years, in a valley none of us has walked, where not one person in this room can reach him. There is no version where we get it right by thinking about it.”

***

”One more,” Jayde said, ”and then you can all go and be tired somewhere else.”

She unrolled it along the bench, and it took most of the length of it.

Black cloth. Nothing woven into it but a single device in the middle, in grey — the crossed spade and short sword, the same mark as a general’s collar, made large enough to read at four hundred paces on a bad day.

No name on it anywhere.

Ryo saw that first and said so.

”There is no house on it.”

”There is no house on it, and there is not going to be, and that is the entire reason it looks like that.” Jayde smoothed the corner down. ”Every banner on this continent tells you whose men are underneath it. A beast, a mountain, a name. Somebody owns them, and the cloth says who. This one says what the people under it do, and it does not say who they belong to, because they do not belong to anybody.”

”A spade and a sword,” Meifen said. ”On a flag.”

”The same mark that is on Zhong’s collar, made large enough to be no use to anybody standing close.” Jayde put two fingers on it. ”If a man can read it on an officer at four paces, he can read it on cloth at four hundred, and he does not have to be taught it twice.”

***

”Then what is it for?” Feng Lian said, ”because if it is only a statement, I will put it in the budget as cloth and think no more about it.”

”It is not a statement, and it is not for a battlefield either, and this is the part I want in the manual before anybody writes anything poetic about it.” Jayde put her finger on the middle of the black. ”It is a marker. Every relief station raises one. Every camp. Every bridge site. It goes up first, and it comes down last.”

Ruifen understood before the rest of them and sat up.

”So they can find us.”

”So a man who cannot hear an order can still see where to walk.” Jayde did not decorate it. ”A river comes over the flat at first light and a man is standing on his own roof with his children, and he cannot hear anything and cannot see anything except that one thing above the water. That is what it is for. Everything else it ever does is second.”

Nobody said anything for a moment.

”That is not what a flag is,” Zhong said slowly.

”That is exactly what a flag is. Everybody else forgot, and then they built a religion on top of it.” She looked around at them. ”So: rules, and they are short. Every station carries three. A torn one is replaced the same week, and the old one is burned without ceremony. Nobody stands and holds it. Nobody dies for it.” Jayde’s voice did not change at all. ”If a man in this force is ever killed keeping cloth off the ground, I will have failed at something I said out loud in an armory in front of nine people, and I want that sentence in the manual with my name against it.”

Bai Shu was looking at the grey device.

”And if it falls?”

”Then somebody picks it up because a village needs to see it, and that is the whole of the reason, and if there is no village then leave it where it is.”

***

”You have decided this on your own,” Ryo said. It was not an accusation; he had his pen up.

”I have, and it is the one thing tonight I could not put off, because a force cannot muster under something that does not exist yet, and I have four days.” Jayde rolled it back up. ”So — one change. The council may alter this once, in the first ten years, on the record, by vote. Once. After that it is fixed, and nobody touches it again, not in five hundred years, not for a better artist.”

”Why only once?”

”Because a flag that can be changed is a flag somebody will change to mean something, and the first man who does it will have a very good reason.” She put it under her arm. ”Ten years. Then it is nobody’s to improve.”

***

”The families,” Bai Shu said.

Jayde stopped with the roll half under her arm.

”Nine hundred doors.” Bai Shu had not raised her voice and did not look up from the bench. ”Seven hundred of them have never been knocked on, and somebody who was in that mountain is going to walk up a path nobody has walked up, holding a disc of metal with a name cut in the back of it, and put it in a woman’s hand and say something, and then leave.” She finally looked up. ”Give him one of those to carry as well.”

Nobody spoke.

”You have just heard me spend ten minutes telling this room it is cloth,” Jayde said. ”Three to a station. Burned when it tears. Nobody dies for it.”

”I heard you say nobody dies for it. That is not the same as it meaning nothing, and you know the difference, or you would not have put a device on it.” Bai Shu did not back off an inch, which, from her, was extraordinary and which Meifen visibly noticed. ”It is the same cloth her son stood under. Not a holy thing. The same cloth. That is all it has to be, and there is nothing else we can put in her hands that is.”

Jayde was quiet for long enough that Ryo stopped writing to see what she would do with it.

”Yes,” she said.

***

”Then the rules for that one, and they are different.” She put the roll down and spread a hand on it. ”Smaller. Made for the purpose and never cut down from a station flag, because a family will know and should. Folded — and folded the same way every time, by a written fold, so that in three hundred years a house in Ironmarch and a house on the eastern flat have been handed exactly the same object in exactly the same shape.”

”Who folds it?” Meifen asked.

”The person carrying it. By hand. At the door, in front of them, and not before.” Jayde said it flatly. ”Not a clerk in a room. Not folded in a cart on the way. He stands there and does it while they watch, because it takes about a minute, and in that minute nobody has to say anything, and I have never found anything better than a minute where nobody has to say anything.”

Meifen put her hand flat on the bench and left it there.

”I will write the fold,” she said.

”Write the fold.”

”And I will do the four in Redwater myself, and I will not send anybody a written note about it first, because a note gives them a week to be frightened of a knock.” She was looking at the black cloth. ”They will just see it coming up the path.”

They were still at it when the light went.

Ryo took the mess problem away with the ledger and a list of eleven provinces and a note in his own hand about the village women — the plan he had arrived with and had not raised until the arguing was finished, which Jayde had noticed and had let him do. Every relief station, every barracks, every school: cook it locally, hire locally, and hire the women nobody else in a village had any use for.

”They will feed four hundred people better than the Academy feeds a hundred,” he said, ”for less than the Academy spends, and every one of them will tell her entire family what she thinks of us. Which is either the best recruiting instrument on the continent or the worst, and it will be whichever one we deserve.”

”Do it in one province first.”

”I intend to do it in the one where they will be hardest on us.”

”Good.”

They filed out. Meifen went past the lit forge on the way and slowed and did not stop.

Jayde stayed behind with the ugly coat.

Nobody had settled what the companies would be called. It had come up twice and gone nowhere both times, because Zhong wanted numbers and Kiran wanted names and Bai Shu had said something about birds that had made Meifen laugh out loud for the first time since the mountain, and then Ryo had come back to the cuffs and it had all gone away.

It could wait. It would probably be settled in ten years by four hundred people who had never been in this room, which was more or less how she wanted it.

Later, in the Pavilion, she put the prototype on the workshop bench under the good light and stood back from it.

”It is not pretty,” Isha said, from the wall and the floor and the air.

”It is not supposed to be.”

”I did not say that was a criticism.” A pause of the kind he used deliberately. ”It is the first object you have made on this world that is intended to be copied badly by people you will never meet.”

Jayde looked at the shoulder strap where it had sat on Bai Shu for two hours and done its quiet damage.

”Then it needs to be better,” she said, and got the light in closer.