Unbound (5 page)

As I watched him, I began to have an idea about why he’d come to me. Of all the philosophers in the Grove—hell, maybe of all
people
in the Grove—I was one who held Bourne stories to be true. Anna had been taken there. And I’d once tried to go there myself.

“What do you want?” I asked.

“Simple.” The Velle turned and stared down at me. “You will argue against them. You will be sure the
existing
philosophical position about the Bourne remains in place.”

I forgot myself for a moment, and asked, “Why do you give a tinker’s damn what a bunch of high-minded philosophers thinks about the Bourne and all its beasts.”

A sharp pain erupted behind my eyes and nose. My eyes began to water. My nose bled. Then abruptly the stabbing sensation was gone. The Velle’s brief touch.

When I’d caught my breath, I reframed my question. “I would have thought you’d prefer we pay you no mind. Attentive men prepare better. You know, in times of rumor and threat and war.”

The Velle shook his head, and tossed his tobacco stem away. “We’re not concerned with your little armies. Or your Sheason, who render the Will as we do.” He paused a long moment, as if deciding whether killing me might prove a better course. After all, he was asking the Grove’s frail albino to make his argument for him. I was awfully damn good on the theater floor—no false modesty there—but that didn’t always matter in the ways it should.

“What we care about is the Veil,” he continued. “We want to understand it, scientifically.”

“That’s not been a focus—”

“I know,” he replied. “But you’ll get to it eventually. And the concerted effort of the Grove colleges in understanding how it works is something we care very much about.”

“Because in understanding it, you might be able to bring it down, that it?” The logic wasn’t hard to follow. “Why in every last hell would I want to help you, then?”

He looked past me, back the way we’d come. “Because we’ll find a way to bring it down, eventually. Because you might want to be considered a friend when we do. And because I can return Anna to you. Permanently.”

End the catatonia he meant. My silent prayer for so long.

“There are risks, of course,” he added. “Her mind has found a sanctuary. You’d be taking that away from her if I make her fully
awake
.” His resonant voice came low, deep, almost from the stones beneath me.

I stared at him.
To get Anna back . . .
And I had no love for the League. Still, could anything he wanted of me be the right thing?

“And consider . . . it’s the argument you’d have wanted to make anyway. You, of all people.” He cocked his head—the first human thing I’d seen him do, other than smoke a stem—and asked an odd question. “Why ‘Lour Nail’?”

It was a nickname. One I’d had since my youth. So long . . . that I didn’t answer to anything else. I took out my compass, placed it in the palm of my hand, and held it toward him. The Velle bent down, reading the needle.

“It’s out of true by a few degrees south,” he said matter-of-factly. Then he nodded. “‘Lour,’ the alternate for ‘lower.’ And ‘nail,’ the astronomer’s name for a compass needle. Clever. You have this effect on all compasses.” It wasn’t a question. He nodded again. “I felt it in you. Something in your blood. In your flesh. Heavier. Perhaps related to your white disease.”

“Albinism, thank you.” It wasn’t humor or anger. Just rote.

That’s when I saw the
most
human thing I’d seen from the Velle. An almost smile. In my experience, it takes practice to almost smile. It was a bitter thing. More mocking than amusement.

“Oh, that is poetry,” he said.

I shook my head.

“You’re wife. She walked into the Bourne with a slaver, didn’t she?” The Velle’s expression had already returned to indifference. “And you came to play the rescuer, but you couldn’t cross the Veil. Something about you . . . Lour Nail, kept you out. Not that a frail albino could have done much inside the Bourne. Still, at least you tried. And still, poetic.”

“I think you mean ironic,” I said. “And I got her out, didn’t I?”

The Velle pushed a wave of thought at me. It passed through my flesh, finding again those secrets I’d tried to hide. He caressed them a second time, making them ache and itch and burn. I clutched at my chest until he let go this resonant note. I felt something different that time, though. He could play this string long enough and loud enough that I’d drop for good. It was like poison already inside me. He had only to make it grow, make it the all of me.

And he was right. I’d have argued against this new position, anyway. Fool
new-thought
philosophers. It didn’t seem to matter to them if their thinking was sound or not. Just putting forward challenges to
existing
thought was sufficient in and of itself these days. Wiseacres looking to make names for themselves. Damn fools.

“You don’t need me,” I finally said. “Why don’t you go around to all the right sophists and clench up
their
hearts? I’m sure you can get them to agree with you.”

He drew a deep breath, as one who appreciates a good question. “Your people have a different strength in masses. Or think they do. Makes them foolish. Makes them think they can win at things. They band together for a cause, even if they
can’t
win. Besides,” and he began to stroll away, “I told you, there’s some poetry in having you do it, given what you are, and the wife I know you adore.”

“What if I say no?”

He stopped at the end of the alley, his eyes cast up at the Grove towers. “Just remember that I’m not asking you to do something you wouldn’t have done anyway.” He paused. “And remember Anna. There are worse things than catatonia. She’d tell you so, herself . . . if she could.”

* * * * *

The College of Philosophy discourse theater hummed with excitement. And not just from Grove philosophers. Members of
all
the Grove colleges were there. As were members of philosophy schools as distant as Naltus Rey. The annual philosophical position that would be published from this conference would stir debate in them all.

I sat in the first row of the circular theater, because I knew I’d be taking the floor at some point. I didn’t want to have to move too far. My wrist and leg were broken, bandaged tight, and the rest of me was sore as all hells from my little encounter with the Velle.

Hadn’t seen the bastard again, which made me happy enough. But I didn’t get the impression he was far away, either. Come to that, the discourse theater had several dozen rows. Big place. Lit with low-burning lamps. Good for thinking. But different than most of the other college theaters, which were brightly lit for demonstration. With his blank expression, the Velle could be sitting right here in the theater and it’d be hard to pick him out.

So, I didn’t try. Would have given me the shakes to find him here, anyway.

All the same, I’d brought a friend. Martin. A trouper-turned-astronomy-shop-proprietor. Long story, that. But Martin liked coming to the theaters. For him, there was precious little difference between a rhea-fol play and these debates. Today, though, I’d asked his company because he had a calming, encouraging way about him. Maybe because he had a story for everything. Maybe because he had an uncanny knack for the stars.

My job was simple today: issue a challenge. The debate to confirm, refine, or refute the Grove’s philosophical suppositions would happen later. Today, they would merely be stated. And either there’d be consensus, in which case, the panelists putting forward new thought would commit it to paper, or someone would call it to question, and a time for arguments would be set.

In some ways, this was very much like the Succession of Arguments the Grove used to establish new laws of celestial mechanics. The difference was that with Succession, one college put forth its hypothesis and defended it in successive debates with each college—so long as they continued to win.

But with the declaration of a new philosophical position, it was just Grove philosophers hashing it out amongst themselves.

Savant Leon Bellerex, who led the College of Philosophy, stood up from his seat—reserved in the first row. The hum of excitement quieted almost immediately. The doors were shut.

Two things I liked about Savant Bellerex. He wore the same robe as the rest of us. No gilding or color trim to draw attention to himself. Which isn’t to say you wouldn’t pick
him
out in a crowd. He had a presence about him. Gave you the feeling he’d read every book
you’d
ever read, and understood it twice as well.

The other thing I liked about him was that he didn’t force the college into his own views. In fact, he let others lead the thrust of new thought, serving more to weigh and shape it. That, and he made sure any objections didn’t go unheard.

He said, simply, “Let us begin. This year, Darius will be our lead panelist. He’s young, but no less wise for that.”

Laughter rolled around the theater, setting a nice tone for the conference. I smiled. We
all
did. No doubt that had been deliberate on Bellerex’s part. Because what would follow was . . . well hell, some would call it heresy. Not philosophers. Heresy’s not a word we use. But it would upset folks. That’s for damn sure.

“The show begins,” Martin whispered beside me.

Darius stood. All eighteen years of him. I almost laughed again. I don’t think the young man had even a passing acquaintance with a razor, and here he was, strutting from the panel table to the center of the discourse theater. His shoes tapped a light rhythm on the boards. Other college theaters had marble floors, stones of different kinds. Ours was old oak. Felt thoughtful.

He came halfway to where I sat. That’s when I saw it. The boy had to be this close for me
to
see it—in addition to all the rest, my eyes were bad. But there it was. Woven in dark thread against the black cloth of his robe—just below the College of Philosophy insignia—was the emblem of the League of Civility.

It wasn’t unheard of for a Grove man to bear two allegiances, so long as the first belonged to his Grove college. But it was rare. And in some ways it was a louder statement.

I’d told the Velle I didn’t “give a spit” for the League. That was true enough. But seeing their insignia woven to the robe of a man presenting new thought on the theater floor . . . troubled me. I couldn’t say why. I didn’t know much about the League. They apparently had a lot to say about reform. And if they moved beyond a probationary period in the Grove, they’d have the right to carry steel, as they did elsewhere. They’d have some policing duties, besides. Philosophers carrying blades seemed like a bad idea to me.

“Friends,” Darius called out.

I smiled again. He was new to this, not realizing the acoustics of the theater were engineered deliberately so that a normal speaking voice may be used.

“It’s a year of change,” he began. “Even for men and women like us, change can be difficult. It forces us to reexamine what we believe. And what
we
know—maybe better than most—is that we are, in fact, little more than our collection of beliefs.”

There was general assent to this sentiment.

I took a long breath to brace myself. Probably the thing I hated most about my own college was the pontification. I had an idea that it grew out of insecurity, since of the five Grove colleges we performed the least of the hard sciences. So, of course, we had to
sound
the wisest. Stupid.

“But that’s what we’re here to do: reexamine,” Darius went on. “And today, it’s one of the oldest stories that we will challenge. A belief that underlies faith-systems. A belief used to justify the wars of the First and Second Promise. A belief . . . without which we may well have to conceive new curse words.”

A rumble of laughter.

Martin’s laugh was cautious. He was a story man.

“My friends,” Darius pushed on, “I speak of an ages-old notion of enemies held captive in the lands we call the Bourne. I speak of a Veil that many believe holds them there. I speak of a fable that gods placed them in these remote corners of our world because they were . . . undesirable.”

All hells, this is going to get messy.

Muttering rose. General alarm at this new stance. Incredulousness. Some awe at the boldness of it. And underneath all that, a profound silence. Some few kept quiet, listening to a dangerous change being spoken with a civil tongue from the theater floor.

“Let’s take a closer look at these suppositions.” Darius began to pace, walking the ring and meeting the eyes of as many as he could. “If there are peoples in these far countries—and I think we can all agree that’s true—why do we assume they’re hostile toward us? Because a creation story tells us so?”

“Maybe because when they’ve come into the east, they’ve come in war.” It was Mical, seated not far behind the panel table. His question was clearly a plant. He’d just done a bad job of sounding like he had a convicted opinion. Damn ninny.

“Nations of the east fight among themselves on the
right
side of this restraining Veil,” Darius countered. “So, if these Quiet
are
, in fact, hostile, it’s not divinely inspired hatred or vengeance. At least, no more so than our own petty wars.”

A middle-aged woman seated halfway up the theater opposite me stood. She patiently waited for Darius’s attention.

“Meghan, you’ve something to offer?” Darius kept an even tone. Meghan was well-regarded. It wouldn’t do to antagonize her.

“Whether their hostility toward us is divinely inspired or not, I fail to see why we would challenge the idea of a Veil that keeps them from bringing war on us more often.” She waited for an answer.

Darius raised a hand to cup his chin. A thoughtful gesture I would bet three thin plugs he’d rehearsed.

“Our feeling,” Darius began, speaking as for the entire College of Philosophy, “is that we have no right to hold them there—”

“But we’re not
doing
anything,” Meghan countered. “If it exists, it’s been placed there by someone else—”

“The gods, you mean,” Darius jabbed back, while smiling.

“Does it matter?” Meghan softly challenged.