Crecheling Read online

  “Kind of it does,” Deek muttered.

  Cheela smiled teeth. “I’ll dedicate my second kill to you,” she offered, “my lowly Magister friend. My first kill, of course, I’ll have to dedicate to my Crechemate Shad.”

  “Kill or capture,” Shad reminded her. “Kill or capture.”

  They reached the far side of Capitol’s broad lanes and found Magister Zarah waiting. Around and beyond her, foot traffic continued to flow upstream along Buza River, into Rose Plaza where the Gallows Tree was. The sun was in its afternoon zenith and uncomfortably warm, and Dyan envied neither Cheela in her hat and coat nor the Magister in her ankle-length black cloak.

  “You’re almost late, children,” Zarah said. Her face was stern, its usual expression, made sterner by the way she wore her iron-gray hair back in a bun at the nape of her neck and wore no cosmetics. Dyan thought of herself as sparing in the use of make-up, and even she had painted her lips.

  Wayland grinned. “Isn’t almost late better than almost on time?”

  Zarah arched an eyebrow at him and turned to walk into Rose Plaza.

  “Why are we children?” Dyan asked. “We’ve had our Lot Letters.”

  “You’re not Blooded yet,” Magister Zarah said. She seemed unusually terse, so Dyan let the matter drop.

  “After the Hanging, then,” Cheela said with satisfaction.

  The Magister didn’t answer.

  Rose Plaza lay along Buza River in the heart of the System. It was a large array of rose bushes of every color, part of the Garden, arranged in a symmetrical pattern that wasn’t a maze but vaguely hinted at one. In the center of the Garden was the Yard, in the center of which stood the Gallows Tree, a five-armed scaffold, arms pointing out and spaced evenly around the central column. The Gallows Tree was the image reproduced on the Guardsmen’s tabards, in the badges of the Outriders, on the medallion that every Magister wore on her or his breast, and anywhere else the Council and Buza System needed to mark its most solemn authority.

  On every day of the year but four, the Garden was open to any Urbane who wanted to take a stroll, and Dyan and her Crechemates had taken many lessons from Magister Zarah there. In the grassy fields beyond the Garden, the Greenbelt, they had even practiced with whip and bola, a fact that explained many of the tree stumps, scarred limbs and blasted patches of grass-less earth along Buza River. On those four days, though, the Yard was off-limits. No one physically blocked access, but Crechelings were taught from a very young age that they were not permitted access to the Yard until they were Creche-Leavers, and then only on one day a quarter.

  Dyan followed Magister Zarah past two tabard-empowered Guards, who frowned at the Creche-Leavers but nodded them through. Crowds filled the grassy spaces in the Garden and the ceramic paths, all facing inward towards the Tree, but at the sight of Magister Zarah’s cloak and medallion of office and her five charges in tow, the crowd parted to let them pass.

  At the front of the crowd, arrayed in a ring around the Gallows Tree, were knots of Creche-Leavers, each with an accompanying Magister. Zarah stopped.

  “I guess we get a front-row seat.” Cheela smiled like she was talking about getting the drumstick off a game bird. “Just this once.”

  “Hopefully just this once,” Wayland said softly. “The other front row seats look a lot less comfortable.” He nodded at the Gallows Tree itself.

  Five condemned criminals stood on the platform of the Tree, one under each arm. They wore white trousers and tunics, and Dyan recognized none of them. There was no reason she should, of course. She knew the Magisters she had had during her life, and other Crechelings, Urbanes who were important enough to have been identified to her by her Magisters and guest instructors in the Creche. None of those people was likely to be standing on the Gallows Tree. Still, the sight of women and men with nooses around their necks and armed Guards behind them, as prepared as Dyan had thought she was for it, unsettled her.

  “Magister,” someone said behind her.

  Zarah didn’t move.

  “Magister!”

  Magister Zarah stood motionless, staring at the Tree. Dyan tugged respectfully at her cloak, but she stayed frozen.

  “Magister!” A Guardsman struggled to push past the Creche-Leavers. “You’re blocking the path!”

  Magister Zarah snapped out of her reverie. “Come, children,” she said, and started moving again. She led them across the Yard, close enough to the Tree that Dyan could have touched it if she’d wanted to, and into a vacant spot between two other Creches.

  Shad nodded at other Creche-Leavers he knew well, from the boys’ dormitory and from various joint exercises, and former Crechemates. Dyan knew others, too, especially other girls, but she couldn’t look at them. Electricity held her captive, a jolt of something that seemed to flow out of the Tree itself and sting her in her heart and stomach. It was the realization of the moment, the delivery of the promise of the morning’s nerves and excitement. Maybe that was what had made Magister Zarah pause, too, she thought.

  Maybe that was how death always was.

  She knew, in a way that she suspected her Crechemates did not, that she was being brought here this day to confront the great mystery of death, and thereby become an adult. She thought that her sense of this necessity, and her Crechemates’ obliviousness to it, was why she had been Called in her Lot Letter to be a Magister, and they had been summoned to other occupations. Not less important Callings, not less worthy ones, but roles that weren’t so entwined with the growth of the soul, weren’t so tightly wound into the fabric of the family that was Buza System.

  She trembled, though the sun’s rays were warm on her skin.

  The Hangman pushed through the ring of Creche-Leavers and climbed the wooden steps onto the Gallows Tree’s platform. The Hangman was a woman, burly and square. She wore a Guardsman’s tabard, but her face was obscured by a hood, like a sack over her head, with holes for eyes.

  She passed the lever that operated all five traps and stepped to the edge of the platform.

  At the sight of her, all the crowd’s ordinary murmur and rumble ceased, as if its collective windpipe had suddenly been stoppered.

  “These five criminals die!” she shrieked. Her voice was surprisingly shrill, coming out of her barrel-like body. Shaped ceramic walls at the edges of the Plaza bounced the sound back so that everyone could hear her words, but Dyan had no need. She stood directly in front of the Hangman, and in her imagination the hooded eyes looked right at her.

  Then she heard a tune.

  “Death shows no mercy!” the Hangman continued. “The System can afford no remorse!”

  Tension rippled through the crowd. Dyan looked at Magister Zarah, looking for an example of how she should hold herself for this experience. Expecting dignity and reserve, she was shocked to see a tortured look on the Magister’s face and a single tear on her cheek.

  Was this the reaction that was expected of her, too? She realized, to her surprise, that she felt a thick lump in her throat. Her eyes stung and she looked away. She looked randomly at anything, trying not to see the Tree and the condemned man on it, and when she looked into the crowd she found herself looking into a stranger’s face.

  The woman wore a Magister’s robe and medallion. Her jowls and nose drooped in a matronly way, and one eye fluttered slightly. It was not a strange or a frightening face, but where every other face in sight was turned towards the tree, this unknown Magister focused squarely on Dyan.

  Beside the Magister stood a man, and the sight of him made Dyan’s breath catch in her throat. His face alone was striking—he was tall, with a strong, pointed nose and smallish ears—but that wasn’t what caught Dyan’s attention. The man wore a white tunic and trousers, and Dyan thought, seeing him in the Yard, how similar that clothing made him look to the condemned criminals. The difference was that on his chest, in black, was emblazoned the sign of the tree, and around his shaved head he wore a tight-fitting silver circlet, like a plain ring just above his thick
eyebrows.

  He was a Cogitant, a member of the Council. Dyan had never seen one of them so close, and this man stared at her.

  And his eyes and face were cold.

  Dyan heard the melody again, and she realized that one of the condemned criminals was whistling. She looked back at the Tree, which was the source of the melody, and then stared even harder. She hadn’t noticed it before, but the man about to die looked familiar. He was a tall man, slightly stooped, with a thin beard. He looked out into space and whistled his tune.

  And then Dyan realized she had heard the melody before. She felt her heart beat faster. What was that? She ran through all the songs she knew from the Creche in her head, martial songs, marches, hymns, nursery rhymes … none of them matched the melody, the familiarity of which now seemed eerie, haunting.

  “These die, but the System lives!”

  Was that it? Maybe Dyan didn’t know the man at all, but she had heard the melody before, and in recognizing it she had convinced herself that she recognized him.

  Dyan sniffed. She looked up at Magister Zarah in time to see another tear fall.

  Then, with a loud CHUNK! the Hangman pulled her lever.

  The condemned fell.

  ***

  Chapter Two

  Dyan’s horse ate up the miles without effort, carrying her out of the Treasure Valley of Buza System and into the wild wilderness beyond. She was trained to ride—they all were, as they were all trained to fight with bola, whip, and vibro-blade, like they were all trained in basic engineering skills, shooting a bow, and reading and writing, because you didn’t know what your Calling was going to be until you got your Lot Letter. So all Creche-Leavers had to be capable of entering into the first stages of any Calling. Crechelings were apprentice-everythings in the System.

  But horses, and tracking and hunting, and knowing the habits of animals, were more Shad’s special gift than hers. It had been no surprise to Dyan that he had opened his Lot Letter and read “Outrider” to all his Crechemates. No surprise to her, but a great thrill to him. He’d picked her up off the ground and spun her in a three hundred sixty degree circle before putting her back down again. She was small, and he was a big man.

  Cheela’s assignment to the same calling was more surprising. She hadn’t ever shown the same gifts. Or maybe, Dyan reflected as she watched Cheela ride easily over the tall yellow grasses and gray-green sage, slouched comfortably in the saddle, Dyan simply hadn’t wanted to admit that Cheela was good at the same things Shad was.

  And better at some. Dyan had once seen her shoot the jackrabbit out of a soaring hawk’s talons from two hundred feet away. She hadn’t needed the rabbit; she had only wanted to show Shad that she could do it. In front of Dyan.

  The memory made Dyan want to grab Shad’s elbow again, but on horseback she couldn’t do it.

  They passed a heavy Collector’s wagon, inbound for the System. The wagon was ten feet tall at least from its bed to the tops of its poles, and all that space was piled high with sacks and bales of harvested crops contributed by Landsmen farmers. The Collector rode with a whip across his lap; one Outrider rode ahead and a second behind; and the wagon was flanked by four Guardsman. It was the fourth Collector they’d seen since leaving the System—the harvest was being brought in.

  “An adult has choices,” Magister Zarah said, snatching Dyan’s attention back from the wagon. The Creche-Leavers rode shoulder to shoulder, a little ragged in their line, and she rode behind them, so they could all hear her voice without shouting or straining their necks. They had all read the maps, and the road to Ratsnay Station was well marked, so any one of them could have led the party. “You children have not had to choose anything. Your dormitories and food have been provided for you, you have had no say in your education, and even your Lot Letter designated each of you for a Calling without any decision on your parts.”

  “We’re still children?” Cheela muttered, shooting a sidelong glance at Shad and shaking her head slightly.

  The Magister continued as if she hadn’t heard. “No decision,” she intoned, “means no commitment, no risk, no price.”

  “Just the way I like it,” Wayland added. He spoke loud enough to be heard by the Magister.

  “Tomorrow, children,” Magister Zarah said, “you will make your first real choice.”

  Shad rolled his eyes at the word “children.” He rolled them at Cheela, and Dyan felt a cold impact in the pit of her stomach, like she’d been punched by an icicle. Her jealousy warred with an intense curiosity at the Magister’s words, and a sense of mild surprise. Something was happening here, something that felt large and inevitable but that she hadn’t expected.

  “Is it our Callings?” Deek asked. “Do I get to choose what kind of Mechanical I’ll be?”

  “Every single choice you ever make,” the Magister said, “beginning tomorrow and for the rest of your lives, will have two attributes.”

  The sun, beginning to drift down on Dyan’s right shoulder, was warmer than could really be comfortable, especially since Dyan was dressed in an Outrider-style traveling coat and hat. They all were. She took off her hat and wiped sweat off her forehead, squinting against the yellow glare.

  “First,” the Magister continued her lecture, “every choice will exact of you a price.” Dyan had heard many explanation from Magister Zarah—and from earlier Magisters—while walking or riding, so in one sense this discussion of choices seemed very normal, very run of the mill. On the other hand, Zarah’s words implied that everything was changing in the Creche-Leavers’ world. Which, of course, it was.

  Dyan gulped, remembering the sight of the unknown, whistling man falling to his death, his neck snapping instantly and his feet jerking for a few seconds, like the body of a slaughtered chicken.

  “You mean in Scrip?” Deek asked.

  “Some choices cost Scrip, yes,” Magister Zarah agreed. Her voice was always stern and tough, but now it sounded truly hard, even bitter. “But for everything you choose, you pay a price by turning your back on all the other things you might have chosen.”

  “That’s what Coolers are for,” Wayland chuckled. “So I can have the iced cream today and still choose the berries tomorrow.”

  “Consider Love-Matches,” Zarah said.

  Dyan looked instantly at Shad. He looked down at his saddle, adjusting something with one hand, but he looked up and caught her glance after a moment. And smiled, a little.

  “Oh, I consider them all the time!” Cheela snapped.

  “A Love-Match is an exclusion.” Something in Magister Zarah’s voice made Dyan turn around and look at her teacher. The brim of her rider’s hat obscured Zarah’s eyes, but her mouth seemed to be twitching slightly at the corners as she spoke. “A Love-Match says I choose this one and none other, and no other may choose me.”

  Dyan settled back into her saddle, facing forward again. “All those other possibilities are the price you pay for love,” she said, understanding.

  “The price I pay for being Called to be a Healer is that I won’t be riding the canyons of the Wahai with bola in hand, looking for runaways,” Wayland said. “Though that sounds like it’s really a price paid by the Outrider Corps.”

  “All the other Callings are paying a great price for your gift to Healing,” Dyan joked, and Wayland laughed. His whole body shook when he did so, which set the others to laughing, too, and spooked his horse. It broke into a jittery canter and rattled ahead several lengths before he could rein it in.

  Dyan thought about the Magister’s words while Wayland struggled, and when the Creche-Leavers had regained their formation, she shared her thoughts. “But that means that we’ve been paying prices all along,” she concluded. “Only instead of prices of our own decisions, we’ve been paying the prices of the decisions of other people … of the Magisters, I guess. Of the Council.”

  She looked back again and was pleased to see the Magister smiling. “That’s right, Dyan,” she said. “Your Lot Letter obviously marked you f
or the right calling.”

  “Yes,” Cheela drawled, running fingers through her hair. “We’re all pleased that Dyan gets to stay with the milkmouths.”

  “But I would have said that until now you have been paying the prices of the System’s decisions,” Zarah added. “Some things simply are the way they must be, with no question of fairness or how it might have been.”

  “Is that the second attribute of choices?” Deek asked. “That doesn’t sound quite right.”

  “People,” Zarah said, “are not as predictable or as regular as machines.”

  “They’re not as dependable, either,” Deek added.

  “I’m glad to see your Lot Letter also reached the right recipient.” Zarah laughed, a rare sound, and it made Dyan smile. “The second attribute of all your choices—beginning tomorrow—is that every choice you make will affect your relationship to Buza System.”

  Dyan felt a shiver down deep inside her, like the string of a musical instrument connecting her neck and her tailbone had just been plucked.

  “For instance,” Cheela yawned, “you could run away. And then the System would send Outriders to hunt you down.” She patted the whip on her belt affectionately.

  “You mean like the criminals this morning,” Dyan said.

  “Yes.”

  They rode in silence for a minute. This was the Magister’s way, Dyan knew, of giving her Crechelings—her Creche-Leavers, now—time to consider and absorb a new point.

  “The Hanging is an extreme case,” the Magister picked up where she had left off, “as are outlaws captured by Outriders.”

  “Killed,” Cheela said.

  “Captured or killed,” Shad added.

  “But every single choice you make strengthens the System or it weakens it,” Zarah continued. “Or it strengthens one part of the System at the expense of another.”