27 - A Lesson in Speed and Printing Knuckle-Suckers

I continued avoiding Ailadas, the next day, having a servant deliver the essay I did finish rather than hand it in personally. The only kind of peace I could get was on my skates and was on some number of circuit of Muunas Triumphant’s Hall when he hailed me from the balcony from the Ilirean level side of the hall.


“Ahem. Spark of the Sun’s Ray! You are required to study….” His call faded behind me as I ducked down the corridor away from him.


He actually anticipated where I should go and I had a glimpse of his raised glove, out of the corner of my eye, as he tried to wave me to a stop. He was much slower on foot than I on my skates. “If YOU WANT TO LECTURE, YOU HAVE TO CATCH ME, FIRST!” I shouted back over my shoulder and went down the Heir’s staircase in two jumps, to the landings, and bumped down the last five stairs to put me in a different wing of the Palace.


That would show the old fool. I didn’t want to listen and wasn’t going to sit still. If he wanted to complain to my father… I shrugged mentally. If father were in a good mood – likely with all the blood shed – he’d laugh and shrug it off. If he weren’t, he’d lecture me. It wasn’t enough of a defiance for a real punishment.


I felt smug and rewarded myself by skating back around to the Heir’s Library, in my section of the Palace, to the consternation of the librarians. When I was smaller I had sometimes grabbed scrolls and trailed them behind like flags. Father had laughed at that one but I still had to sit and copy scrolls for a whole week. I didn’t ever let on that I liked that punishment.


This time I didn’t do more than do a circuit of that library and then out, leaving a wake of pent-up sighs behind myself. I circled around the two level tall statue of ‘Solas Rising’ in the Yellow Rotunda and was considering going down and back to the kitchen levels when I heard the rumble of another set of skates. This was nowhere near the steel faibalitz floor. Who would dare?


I braked and looked around to see where the sound came from, but it echoed all around, bouncing off the stone. There were eight corridors leading off the Rotunda. As I turned someone whipped past me and around behind the statue and I was backwards so only caught the edge of a robe and hair as I turned all the way around. “Hey!”


“You required me to catch up, Spark of the Sun’s Ray, so now I, ahem, require you to keep up with me to hear your next lesson.” Ailadas? I scrambled after, wheels clacking as I struggled to get up to speed.


“Koren? Koren?”


“Many scholars consider the disastrous invasion of Rahina to be laid to the responsibility of two factors…” His voice was fading fast down the Black and White corridor. The old man was fast. Where had he learned to skate like that? Dried up old fart that he was?


I pushed hard to catch up. “Koren, could you repeat that?” I could see his robe and a flash of his skates… He stopped and waited for me until I had almost reached him, pushed off at almost right angles down the spiral ramp toward the Long Gallery. “Wait!”


“As I said, Spark of the Elemental Light, the Rahina Disaster could be blamed on two things, one of which was the High General Batajas’s inability to move his forces into place quickly …”


I was nervous of the spiral ramp because it was so fast. He spun to face me, still lecturing, still accelerating. I bent both knees to gain on him. He bent his forward knee in lunge position, the back leg outstretched and the drag slowing him slightly so I could catch up. “In other words… a lack of speed.” He straightened to race down the last turn. I was going to love this lesson.


"Another factor was the weather and the miring of his entire cavalry and its supply line in mud.” He braked, and spun to face forward into the Long Gallery, skating almost sedately with his hands thoughtfully clasped behind his back.


I grinned and copied his stance until he spun on one foot to face me, skating backward, hurling questions at me as if they were faibalitz discs. “What was the name of the General’s logistics officer? And what role did he play in the rout… ahem, strategic retreat? Was the Eighth Rejin a help or a hinderance? Why?”


Thank goodness I had read ahead.


***


“IF YOU SO MUCH AS SLIP, SLAVE, YOU’LL BE AN EIGHT-DAY DYING!” Father’s voice echoed all the way up to the Filigree gallery and then cut off as a slave closed the door of the Great Baths. Father would never be less than perfectly clean, so endured His bath every eight-day, pleased to be washed in between without having to be immersed in the devil element, that He was terrified of, in any quantity greater than a hand basin. It was not the time to call attention to myself.


I, very quietly, gathered up my books and tucked myself into one of the window alcoves of the Heir’s library, hiding behind the lined red silk drapes and finished ‘The Aitzas Paramour’ in only two tenths. The Pharmacist had better taste in knuckle-sucker romances than I’d thought he would, being Mahid. The book had a lot of completely naked people and gloves being ruined and having to be removed and injured fingers soothed. Lots of sex. I liked reading about that because it started a tickly, warm feeling below my navel, but no pain or blood. I suppose Amitzas got enough of that in his work. It was good to read about sex between people that didn’t hurt or kill either one.


But I was done reading all the books he’d had on his shelf and I wanted something new. I checked the time. Father would still be recovering from his bath with a massage… so I went down to the Press to see what books they were printing.


The Press Gate was faced with the stone removed from the cliff to make it so it was impossible to see, an idea of the First Imperators as part of its security. The entrance was actually in a barn-like building in front of the cliff at the start of Ink Road.


The inner door opened letting out the heat like opening a furnace, noises and smells of the press in a wave that I was always tempted to lean into as if it were a wind. The alcohol lamps were everywhere, making the vast cavern bright where I always expected a stygian darkness, though that was ridiculous considering the necessity of what they produced. The muffled thunder of the Press itself was like a dragon in its cavern, the black iron spokes of the enormous wheel showing spidery against the cavern wall.  They'd cleaned up the red mess I'd made last time.


The man running the Press was the prestidigitator who moved his hands in arcane and odd patterns like a dance. His clothing was perfectly tight with no folds of cloth or laces, his hands bare on the black and brass levers as though on the body of a lover. His brass-rimmed spectacles laced tight onto his head to prevent any disaster of them falling into the machine. He had a dozen men all along the length of the monsterous machine, each one doing his particular motion, his particular dance.


I could stand and watch the master pressman all day, the apprentices with him watching as well, standing with rags in their hands to wipe ink or oil. I stood with my fingers pressed into my ears because of the roar of the machine, the hiss and groan of hydraulic pipes that gave it its power, still made my head tremble and my ears throb, even through the blocking flesh.


The massive trays of tiny letters were being set up for the next Pages run, typesetters’ sitting in their cages fingers flying, making the clitter-clatter noises. The flat sheets were for specialty pages to be printed in the small lever presses while the enormous cylinder of the Great Press was set up in a very different way.


Intharas Terren, the Pages editor and the fessas who ran the whole place, sat in his glass box of an office overseeing the whole room just by looking up. I bypassed him today, rather than make his life more interesting. I wasn't going to yell ‘STOP THE PRESS!” to see the whole whirring, clattering, banging monster come to a screaming halt, today.


The book editor, Janas Fridas, fessas, did not rate such an office, rather an alcove with unglassed windows in his walls, his shutters also open wide.


His purview was the bank of small presses and lever presses each with one operator, each printing their own assignments, the completed stacks of paper hustled off, to be covered and sewn, by one of the rejin of binder’s apprentices.


Janas sat with his green eye-shade pushed back on his head, feet up on his desk, squinting at the spidery writing of a manuscript. “How in ink-sucking Hayel is one to decipher such crotch-crab scribblings? The first page seized me but the handwriting suffers later!” He always talked to himself when he was picking books and nibbled on the end of his pen, which left an ink-stain on his lower lip. He took the pen out of his mouth and scrawled a note to himself in handwriting not much better, as far as I could tell.


He didn’t notice the clatter of my jewellery in all the tumult. “Hey, Janas! I want this moon’s new knuckle-sucker!” He didn’t look up from his reading, just waved a dismissive hand. “Hmm? Not out yet…go to a bookseller…” He started hard enough that his chair shifted under him and dumped him on his back, manuscript scattering all over his chest and the floor. He blinked up at me as though I’d dragged an owl out of its hollow into the light.


“S… Spark…” He gaped, trying to get enough air back into his lungs to address me. He hadn’t noticed my accent, so hard he’d been concentrating; at least not immediately.


“Yes, yes…” I sat down in his visitor’s chair, ignoring the scramble as he managed to get untangled from his chair and the loose pages of the manuscript. “Like I said, Janas… I want to see the new books for this moon.”


“Of course! Of course!” His assistant showed up to help him up, bobbing a frightened bow at me. “This moon’s releases…” Janas had recovered his wind and his composure, raised a sharp whistle and a hand of apprentices materialized. “Get the Heir a viewing of the books ready to allocate! Jump!”