“What’s it doing now?” I asked Ursala.
“What I told it to. Only it’s run out of bullets. Ceasefire.”
The gun spun to the rest position and settled down in its cradle. Ursala started walking, and the drudge followed.
“It can make more bullets though,” I said. “Can’t it?” I was looking back at the treeline, hoping not to see anyone else coming out of there.
“Given time,” Ursala said. “It will take a few hours, at the very least.”
“What if something comes on us before then?”
“Let’s hope it doesn’t.”
The grass had edges to it, like it was made of knives, but the drudge pounded it down with its heavy tread and we walked along behind it, in a line, so we was not much hurt.
Spinner
6
There ought to be a rule in the telling of stories, my husband complained to me once, after I had brought him some dismay with a sad one. You ought to say before you start whether things will be brought in the end to a good or a bad case. That way them that are listening can gird themselves up somewhat, and be ready when the ending comes.
I told him I was sorry for the hurt to his heart and promised to give him fair warning next time. But I thought more thereafter, and in the end I came to this thinking on the subject. There can’t be any rules in the telling of stories. They’ve got to go where they go, which is not always where you would want them to. And as to the happiness or the sadness of it, that depends on where you’re standing. A happiness for one is sometimes a sadness to another. Or it might only be a happiness when you squint one eye. Or you might not know, even after it’s all done, whether it came out well or badly.
What there is – all there is – is a language. When you tell the story, you don’t talk the way you do the rest of the time. You put on the storytelling voice, and the storytelling way, which sets you at a distance from what you’re saying even if you’re aiming to pop up in the story as your own self. That’s what I’m doing here, because I don’t know how else to go about it. Anyone who knows me and hears this may believe they spy a falseness in my voice. To any such, I say: you’re right, and then you’re wrong. I’m talking to you as straight and honest as I can. But I’m being a storyteller when I do it, and that’s why I use strange words from time to time, and a strange way of putting them together. This is me, not as I am in my own life but as I am in the story of that life, which is a different thing than the living of it. When I come into the story as a character, you’ll hear the words I spoke at the time, which will not be nearly so fine and polished as these words.
My name is Spinner. Spinner Vennastin. I am of Mythen Rood. On testing day, that fact is spelled out as plain as plain can be. Woman of Mythen Rood you are and shall be, under what name you choose. Maybe that means less now than it used to. Maybe, to you, it means nothing at all. Well, that’s no sin, and nothing to say sorry for, but it’s the main reason why I’m telling this. I am not ready yet to let our story be nothing. I don’t agree to it. I lived through great things and terrible things, and played a part in both. I will tell them to you exactly as I remember them. That might make me loom larger in the telling than I have any lease or leave for. I can’t help it. You’re free to listen to what others have to say on the matter.
I said my name was Spinner, but the name I had in growing up was Demar. Demar Tanhide, the daughter of Molo Tanhide and Casra Ropemaker. Why am I not a Ropemaker then, instead of a Tanhide? I was at first. But Casra died when I was still very young, and after that I took my father’s name.
I do remember Casra, and I think in some sense she shaped me. She was a sickly woman, and thought herself sicker than she was. In most of the memories I have of her, she is complaining of aches or cramps or fevers, screaming at my father to bring Shirew Makewell as quick as he could.
“But we brought her last night, Cas, my love,” he would say.
And she: “Bring her again now, Molo, if you don’t want to watch me die here in front of you.” Then she would curse him, calling him all the heartless bastards and cruel monsters that ever were.
I saw my father every day, humouring Casra and comforting her and doing everything he could to please her. And I saw my mother digging in with her heels, refusing to be humoured or comforted or pleased. In a way, I think, the sickness itself was her solace. “Oh, I won’t live much longer,” she cried most nights. “I can’t last with this suffering.” In the long run of it, she killed herself, opening up her veins with one of my father’s knives, and so proved her point.
This was my understanding of marriage. That one would be sensible and the other mad. One would work, and one would lie back and be carried. Both would weep, but only one would mean it.
On the day when Casra was laid in the ground, I became a Tanhide, though I did not take my other name, Spinner, until my testing day. It was a childhood nickname I liked enough that I chose to keep it.
I was my parents’ first child, and their last. Molo never wed again, nor even tumbled again that I knew of. There were just the two of us when I was growing up, and we were happy enough. He was a kind father and a gentle man, and he tried in all things to keep me safe and content. That was not an easy task, in Mythen Rood and in those days. But has it ever been easy anywhere?
Molo died when I was sixteen, leaving me alone in the world. But I had known the day would come, and made such preparation as I could. I had set myself to win the love of Haijon Vennastin, whose mother was Rampart Fire.
Perhaps that name, Rampart, is strange to you. In times of great change and great trouble, the remembering of past times is often cut off short. Rampart was the name we gave, in my village, to the people who could wake the tech of the ancient world, and make it work for them. It was a rare thing. The tech itself was rare, most of it having been lost or broken long since, and the skill was rarer still.
In Rampart Hold, under the guard and watch of the Ramparts themselves, there was a room where we kept such tech as we had. There were hundreds of strange tools and workings there, whose purpose was mostly unknown. And out of all of them, there were only four that still worked: the firethrower, the bolt gun, the cutter and the database. Our Ramparts took their name from the tech that waked for them and obeyed them.
Rampart Fire.
Rampart Arrow.
Rampart Knife.
Rampart Remember.
These were our protectors, our champions. They lived in the great keep of Rampart Hold, which was made not of wood but of stone. They were first to speak in the Count and Seal, and decided many things on their own authority without troubling the Count and Seal about the reasons. They took no part in share-works since their labour, all the same and everlasting, was to keep us alive.
From the day I was born, and for a long time before that, all of our Ramparts had belonged to one single family. The Vennastins. If a Vennastin died, another was always ready to take up their name-tech right after, having waked it at their testing. All of us were tested when we reached the age of fifteen, but somehow only Vennastins were ever found to be synced to the old tech. And Vennastins never failed.
Well, they did, just once. Vergil Vennastin, Rampart Fire’s own brother, did not succeed at his testing but was allowed to live in Rampart Hold just the same. He had only one arm, having lost the other to a choker seed, and was seen as slow besides. His kin feared he would not thrive alone. And one time too, a man of the Stepjacks, Gendel, tested well and became second in line to Rampart Arrow. He also became Rampart Arrow’s husband very soon after.