And An Explanation Of Why, Despite The Impossibility Of Such Having Been Proved, Reports of Them Continue
“And is this how rituals are done today? Very dry, very clinical, but I am sure very efficient. It's just the same for us Duelists. We study treatises on proper mindset all while the instructors assure us winning an actual duel is a waste of time. The law agrees with them, but I haven't quite been able to dismiss a theory claiming that has more to do with wanting to avoid trouble than advancing the science of the duel. My habit of course is to believe everything I am told.”
Dirant looked up at the man looming over his desk to the extent someone of that height could. Black hair like most Adabans had covered his forehead, which current fashion regarded as an undesirable part of a man's anatomy, best hidden. No beard or mustache of course, but as for his sideburns, they extended well past the ears much like a pier jutting out past a warehouse over a river. That also was typical of current Adaban ideas about style, though Dirant had shaved his own sideburns shorter after returning home and seeing the impressive mutton chops his father had developed in his absence. He scried in that the end of current hairstyle trends.
“Silthree! Aren't you busy?”
“I choose not to be. Mr. Supervisor, I will be taking your underling to lunch. Tell me if there is real work for him to do later; otherwise, I must look on the return trip as something optional.”
“Nothing pressing, Mr. Silapobolt.”
“Depressing for our company, but we have other brothers to worry about that.” Silapobolt Rikelta yanked his little brother away from the desk and into the city streets.
How many states constituted the confederation known as Greater Enloffenkir? One hundred eighteen, and of those Kitslof was far from the least, and out of Kitslof's cities, Fennizen was the richest. Perhaps not the grandest, since its foremost citizens were too busy building warehouses to bother themselves about ornamenting their hometown with parks and concert halls, but probably the cleanest. Obstructions could not be allowed to impede the city's profitable traffic, and so pedestrians enjoyed nothing but immaculate paved streets as they passed the high and stout piles of brick and stone the Adaban people preferred. If it came down to a battle between cities, wags observed, Greater Enloffenkir's buildings could beat up those of any country on the continent. Most likely the enemy would flee the field at the mere sight of blocks upon blocks of the imposing structures.
Two young gentlemen strode through Fennizen, both sporting the fashion-favored vests that buttoned on alternating sides and pants that forbade the common crowd any sight of socks or leggings better kept private. Both also were equal in height, almost.
“I must insist that you slouch a bit in deference to your older brother.”
“And yet I must insist that you grow a couple inches before your younger brother begins to question the amount of respect you are due.” So the two siblings spoke, Silapobolt and Dirant Rikelta, or Silthree and Dirtwo in private. When one was brought into the world by a father with such a constrained sense of names as theirs had, a man who named his nine sons Silapobenk, Silapobant, Silapobolt, Silapobezor, Direnk, Dirant, Dirol, Direzor, and Ontirorant, one was forced to make independent arrangements.
As the third and sixth children, Silthree and Dirtwo had no controversies between them except for their heights such as sometimes alienate brothers from their natural bond of affection. For example, looking at the same girl or competing for the same seat in the orchestra. Each therefore was closer to the other than to the rest of his brothers, not that either bore any hatred for them. It was more a problem with remembering they existed and their many birthdays.
“Speaking of families . . .” Dirant began.
“Were we?”
“No. Speaking of families, is the rumor true that our Silthree is behaving like the fabled bekirbird that steals the young of its rivals, or?”
“Does the bekirbird have this merit, that it can negotiate with government officials without ever losing its temper? If so, I am that very bird made human. But enough about my work, which is faultless. How is yours, or rather what is your opinion of it now that you've been back for a few months?”
Dirant allowed the deflection out of tender consideration for his brother's feelings on a sensitive subject, to wit his suspected courtship of a lady whose father owned and operated a rival concern, and also because Silthree was paying. There was also the undeniable if unacknowledged fact that taller as the younger might be, the older surpassed him in handsomeness and most of their other brothers as well, though not Siltwo. Therefore Dirtwo preferred not to spend too much time on Silthree's love life for fear of building up excessive envy. He answered the question as posed after they established themselves at a restaurant.
“That question was a mistake. Your polite interest is enough excuse for me to unload my stockpiled grievances right here.” Dirant had a heart after all and paused to allow Silapobolt an opportunity to object, but his brother, equally solicitous, instead motioned for him to continue. “The earth is now dug. I must rely on your judgment to confirm whether my vision of the future is so clear and precise as I suspect it to be.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
“As a commercial Ritualist graduated from a prestigious school of such, I perform the Preservation Ritual. There are other rituals that offer advantages, but after a close accounting they are all found either to fail to justify the cost of the ingredients or to be in violation of some municipal ordinance. Out of everything I learned at Todelk, the sole ability I use is the Ritual Judgment I attained at level 1. As for rituals, there are none. Mr. Donnlink taught me the Preservation and Mold Prevention Rituals himself. Afterward I struggled with the unanticipated problem that my Receptivity was at times too high, as the perishables were to be delivered to customers before two weeks and the revocation of the ritual is a ritual, and therefore an expense, in itself. To that end I at times performed half or quarter versions till at last I learned the optional class ability Ritual Humility, which allows me to act at a lower Receptivity. That was not taught at the university of course. They wished for us to increase our potential rather than hobble it.
“I perfected commercial ritualism by that addition to my arsenal. Nothing remains but to perform a ritual every so often on oranges, yams, and so forth until my lack of mishaps earns me a promotion, at which point my schedule will be taken up more and more by ordering junior Ritualists to do what I once did myself. Eventually, if I continue being capable and the owner's son, I will reach a management position where I will never again be called upon to perform any rituals and my class will have not the slightest relevance to my career. Is that an accurate, perhaps even clairvoyant view of what is to come?”
Silapobolt held up a glass. “It is, and here's to your Discernment. I recall it took Silfour more than a year to predict the course of events as you have after a few months; I'll tease him about it later perhaps.”
“Tell me the results. So then. Is this life?”
“It is. Now you must choose one of these two options when you take your pay, which bothers me by being more than I made when I started. The ratio of Duelists to Ritualists in the workforce is against me. Either spend it all on the pleasures of the moment or else save a portion, denying yourself with a view toward results you hope will be greater. Today we must try out the pleasures of the moment; concoct a plan that requires saving while we do so.”
“A portrait of me that, when removed from the wall, reveals a map to the treasure. I must be getting back though.” Dirant retreated to a defensive position when Silthree grinned at him. “I know well there is a sense in which my presence or absence in the warehouse is irrelevant, and it is the one meaningful sense at that, but I still ought to return.”
“No, you ought not,” Silapobolt said. His argument won the day.
Although his supervisor most assuredly did not miss him, Dirant had outraged his own sense of propriety by his impromptu half-day vacation to such an extent that when a difficulty arose regarding a delivery that would put anyone who took it into overtime, unpaid of course, he reached for it as eagerly as the pious did some relic of the gods. Perhaps an inapt comparison, as said relics often possessed strange properties intriguing even to the modern skeptic, but the effort of coming up with a better analogy seemed unwarranted by the inconsequential nature of the incident.
“That is satisfactory,” the manager in charge of that particular delivery said. That manager happened to be Silone, or Silapobenk Rikelta at the office, and he resembled Dirant and all their brothers closely enough for none to doubt the relationship, with the main differences being his glasses and the reddish tint to his hair which he had inherited from their father's first wife. The Dirant edition had been produced by a later contributor. “Wholly suitable. The client will be pleased to receive the personal attention of one of the owner's sons.”
“And so I am to announce myself as such? It sounds gauche.”
Silapobenk smiled, and though Dirant thought well enough of all his brothers, he had always perceived a bit of cynicism or even cruelty in Silone's expressions which Silthree lacked. None of that affected his speech, though. Stadeskosken employees worked under him day after day without realizing their superior had a sense of humor at all, much less one tinged with sadism. “Entirely unnecessary. The client this time is no less a personage than Mr. Naolant Paslig. You can be sure that though his manor is outside the city, he keeps such attention on affairs that every one of his servants knows all of us by sight. Which I'm not sure I can say about our father.”
Dirant laughed and picked up the case. It contained a cello just arrived at an unexpected time from Pavvu Omme Os. Whatever could be said about that country, for instance the poor odds its buildings would be given in a bout against Greater Enloffenkir's, its artisans of stringed instruments were the exemplars for all others on the continent of Egillen according to everyone who had an interest in ranking cellos.
In the evening, when as much light was left as the last portions of a dish no one dared admit to wanting for fear of gaining a reputation for gluttony, Dirant ambled down the slight slope back to Fennizen proper past farms, orchards, and farms with orchard-like characteristics while he reflected on his errand to Inplikir House, the client's lavish manor atop the low hills south of the city. When the servant who opened the door saw Dirant, did his eyes indeed widen and his brows twitch before he composed himself enough to inquire in a condescending tone the identity of the visitor and his reason for visiting? Or did Dirant's imagination invent the whole thing because of what his business-savvy brother had said? Probably not. Maybe so.
Dirant considered resenting being reduced to nothing but Haderslant Rikelta's son before he discarded that in favor of indulging in speculation about the potential of getting people to do stuff for him without any effort on his part. Nobody at Todelk University had cared about his locally prominent family, and since his return to Fennizen, he had spent too much of his time perfecting a single ritual to realize he might have weight to throw around. He started to whistle.
“Did something good happen? The thanks, if so, are owed to me.”
In response to that unexpected voice, Dirant whirled around to search for the source, and there, just off the road on a stone placed to mark a territory boundary, he saw a god.