Edited by Ken Scades.
*****
The walls of Endowment Hall shifted and flickered as the flames in the myriad fire pits danced in all the hues of orange and yellow. The scent of incense mixed with the aromas from the overheated flesh of hundreds of women. In every colour of clothing, they had come out after a night of Service to sing and drink and regale each other with the tales of the bells they had spent with the men of the city.
Not all took in the merriment, however. Off in a corner, the unsteady light of the flames failed to beat back and the shadows and four girls in white took advantage of the relative darkness to sit with their heads together.
"Are you sure this can work?" Illya wrinkled her nose in doubt.
"Zhair'lo is sure," Talla answered firmly.
"Yeah, but, come on," Illya pleaded, turning to look at Tina and Yua for assistance.
"What?" Talla's lips thinned in frustration.
The three girls looked at each other, cringing.
Talla titled her head with impatience. "Spit it out."
Yua and Illya, by way of of refusing to look at either each other or Talla, elected Tina to speak on their behalf.
"Have you ever worked with a furnace?" Tina asked.
"No," Talla shook her head in confusion.
"So how do you know this will work?"
"I told you," Talla repeated slowly. "Zhair'lo is sure."
"And how does he know?" Tina made her voice as gentle as possible. "I mean, he's not an engineer, is he? He's a boy."
Talla's brow lowered and her eyes hardened.
"He's pretty smart," she kept her voice cold and slow. "He's been a blacksmith, a baker and he's even made roof tiles."
"I know, I know," Tina held up her hands defensively. "I'm sure he's made a lot of fires."
"Listen, Talla," Yua slipped in softly as Tina turned her eyes aside. "You're asking a lot here."
"No, I'm not! We were all willing to go down in those sewers every night to find the Synergist room's vent. What makes it different now?"
"Now we'll be carrying wood and straw," Illya mimed carrying heavy loads under her arms. "It's a lot to sneak around with."
"As long as one of us carries the wood and the other carries the torch," Talla dictated in her best Sorceress voice. "There shouldn't be any accidents."
Her co-conspirators cast their eyes down.
"None of those are the real problem, though, are they?"Talla put a heavy dose of accusation in her question.
"Talla," Tina sighed. "He's still a man. Men are really good at doing things we've already worked out for them. We do the thinking. They do the work."
The axioms the Temple taught its girl children died hard, and the one Tina had just pronounced marked one of the most fundamental divisions of labour.
"Maybe if we could find a couple of engineers," Illya supplied helpfully. "Present it to them as a problem from a school test or something. See what they say?"
"If I did that, one of them is bound to recognize the room," she took in a deep calming breath before speaking again. "Yua, am I your Mistress or not?"
Yua recoiled as if slapped . "I - I - . Of course you are."
"Illya? Tina?"
The girls nodded in turn.
"Well, then," Talla flattened her voice, using the tone she'd heard Teachers, Officers and Sorceresses use. "Your Mistress is telling you this will work . I've been inside Zhair'lo's head and he sees these things in a way I don't. He knows it will work. So I know it will work. Clear?"
"Yes, Mistress," they murmured back.
"We'll start bringing wood in tomorrow," she instructed. "The straw will go in last, since it's the most dangerous to have around. Let's do this."
Despite the worries they'd expressed, Talla found herself rewarded with resolute smiles from her companions.
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Fin'la entered Principia Form as the morning sun's rays slanted past the horizontal blinds on the east facing windows. In her role as the investigator of the recent bouts of unconsciousness, her Queen had assigned her a privileged place in Principia Form. Her space included a bulletin board on which she had tacked numerous pieces of parchment listing those affected by fainting spells. Her Queen had also awarded her a modicum of privacy in the form of a low wall of stretched sheets of fabric, and a single assistant of the rank of Keeper. That assistant, a petite blonde girl with a perpetually bored expression, waited patiently for Fin'la to give her instructions.
'She's twenty-two, though,' Fin'la thought. 'I ought to call her a woman.'
"Sheila," Fin'la gave the woman a nod.
"Mistress."
"Our medical records have arrived, then," she nodded wearily at the piles of parchment on the desk.
Sheila hadn't touched any of the files because Fin'la hadn't left any explicit instructions for her to do so. No spark of initiative lit inside the girl and Fin'la couldn't help thinking of her in the childish form. At first, Fin'la had wanted to make a project of building her assistant a spine, but had given up the effort shortly after beginning. Some people, she had determined, the gods cast in bronze and no help could remold them.
"Let us make ourselves useful, then," Fin'la resolved aloud, setting a pile of the documents on each side of the desk. "The ones you've read go in the middle when you're done."
"Yes, Mistress."
'At last the girl has found something she'd be good at,' Fin'la held her sigh inside. 'A mountain of tedium.'
Watching Sheila set to work, Fin'la found herself annoyed that anyone could attack such pointless work with such contentment and devotion. With a twist of her lips, Fin'la set upon her own stack.
Nearly two bells into the brutal slog through the dry medical records, Sheila looked up.
"Mistress," the Keeper's voice came out flat and dull.
"You found something?" Fin'la asked.
The girl's tone made it impossible to tell if she had discovered the secret to the universe or merely needed to void her bladder.
