The Foolishness Of This Popular Notion Must Presently Stand Exposed
Koshat, though modest in its extent, possessed enough spare housing to allocate a guest building for each of the visitors, though they might have their bodyguards closer if they wished. Poiskops Bodan-Tin had assured them there was no insult in that, since creatures did from time to time crawl from the salty sea on fin and squirming foot in the hope of adding variety to their diet. Moreover, the locals understood their claims concerning how seldom the monsters of the eastern marshes left their habitat in that season might not win the full confidence of the wary traveler.
Absolute accord existed between Stansolt and Dirant on that subject. The former did not want witnesses to his nocturnal arrivals or departures and the latter did not want to be a witness. Still less did he wish to be murdered while Stansolt was out as a message from some rival organization. For those reasons, Dirant soon was poking around his solo guest quarters.
It consisted of a single room divisible by a curtain when the occupier wanted, and that curtain by itself boasted more artistry than most places Dirant had slept possessed. Fully extended, it told a story about a magical well and its results without resorting to words Dirant would not have been able to understand. He may not have understood the picture either. The magic well part was just a guess. It looked nice regardless.
Aside from that, the single table lacked marble, but its composition of multiple woods laid out to create the impression they had been woven together forced him to wonder what the point of that was, thereby providing intellectual stimulation. It dominated the door-ward two-thirds of the room while the rear third boasted as its primary feature the essential bed. A translucent material shielded it from insects, to their anguish. Beneath all, a single orange rug bore no design, but its thickness allowed the guest to dream about sinking into an orange sea. Beads hung in the sole window.
Altogether, if some helpful fairy or god offered, Dirant would have accepted the proposal to lift the house from its foundations and haul it all the way to Fennizen where it might replace the floor he rented. Perhaps Onerid Paspaklest's ambitious project had something to it after all. Dirant was calculating what a room equivalently furnished would cost him back home when a man walked in, and if his panic in reaction to that seemed to justify every remark any foreigner ever made about Adabans and their bizarre standards of privacy, in his defense might be raised the possibility of his being kidnapped and tortured for information.
“I was requested to step in and find out as a fellow Ritualist if there were any peculiar needs not yet filled, Sajaitin.” The Drastlifar smiled in a way that gave it the air of a process as deliberate as the drawing of a ritual design on a bumpy surface after he rushed through that obviously prepared speech. “I am sorry if my visit was unexpected. I myself have trouble imagining what is meant.”
“Ah, it is because Ritualists must eat emeralds and drink lava or else our powers are lost. That is understood by everyone, and we must keep secret what we do with all the blood.” Dirant intended the flippancy to be at the expense of laymen and therefore acceptable. Certainly a jab at his visitor would not be, for in addition to not abducting or murdering Dirant, he was a much older man, one who no longer sought anything from the public square if he ever had. His left hand hung onto his gray beard in the manner of someone unsure what to do with his hands, usually a problem which afflicted politicians first out to gain a reputation for oratory. The younger Ritualist dealt with the older by his usual method of asking him to impart some portion of his irreproachable expertise as they both sat themselves at the table. “There is nothing of course. I must ask however, is it proper to address you as Sajaitin, and what does it mean in detail? I presume it refers to Ritualists, and often I am wrong.”
He thought the man did relax a bit. “Proper according to any authority. You may add Igwodan-Tin to it as well, Posmeterin Igwodan-Tin.” At last the venerable Ritualist gave the traditional double handshake, though his left hand hesitated to join and subsequently hurried to leave like someone unsure if he was up to seeing socially a woman who rejected his proposal, a circumstance occasionally leading to the advancement of ritualism as a whole, not to mention the culinary field. That done, he addressed the second question. “Windy and indirect as it may sound, when your familiarity with our strange, un-Egillenish Drastlimez increases you will discover sajaitin is, hrm, a moment. It is a person who draws up plans for a building.”
“Ah, an architect, or?”
“I am sure you understand it now. Well, the truth as anyone will tell you is that laymen in Drastlif prefer to have as little to do with rituals as possible. That is why the Stanops sent me here. This whole time you may have been wondering what he had in mind when nothing was there but a sort of awareness of how little he knows.”
“Is some aversion behind it?” While Ritualists could be likened to architects, the comparison rested on the shared professionalism of the two groups, no different from bankers, painters, and the makers of conveyances capable of transporting pianos. Posmeterin Igwodan-Tin seemed to be suggesting something more meaningful. Perhaps their profession was viewed in Drastlif as dangerous or even a subject of awe, as Dirant held it ought to be.
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“Few would say it that way. They think it unlucky, you see, to have expectations, or should I say sureness about how the ritual will go. So they learn nothing about the science, place in crates marked 'For Use by Special Architect' the items, and before the end of the ritual try not to look at the Ritualist. That person drawing figures on the ground has to be an architect, because who else would do such a thing? You see?”
“It is clear to me now, Sajaitin Igwodan-Tin, and that even though my poor skill forces you to speak in a simple way.”
Posmeterin shooed that away with his non-beard-twiddling hand. “I can hardly speak with any skill as it is. The years of instructing young Ritualists for the Bodan-Tins have ruined me.”
Dirant laughed and offered a foreign perspective. “It is the custom among us for the teachers to ignore the students as much as they can. They find it easy to do so, though I suppose it is different when family has to do with it. Speaking of that family and yours, is that Tin the same, or?”
“Oh yes. We would need an expert to trace all the little lines on the chart, but there is no doubt that the Stanops and I are cousins at a great distance. A few deals go different, and I might be on the Permissive Council today. What a disaster then, if I had to rely on the Bodan-Tins to give us Ritualists.” Posmeterin's laughter could barely be heard, but he shook with it all the same. If only those laymen knew what Ritualists thought of them, surely they would change their behavior and cede power and respect to those who deserved it. With that agreed, shop talk inevitably followed. It was late when Posmeterin Igwodan-Tin left the younger Ritualist.
“And when may I expect my emerald and my lava?” Dirant wondered as he prepared himself for sleep. He preferred that to wondering if he would wake up in a rival company's torture chamber, no doubt outfitted with the finest equipment.
Dirant arose before the lazy Drastlif sun, but nevertheless a small repast had already been placed on the table. That brought back certain ideas about kidnappings he had managed to suppress before, but as he no longer needed to sleep, there was no harm in that. Still, it disturbed him to contemplate such casual comings and goings in his bedroom, even if a curtain separated the dining area from the helpless Ritualist area.
He set out in good cheer even so because he had objectives for the day; a commercial Ritualist often lacked such clear purpose. A rendezvous with Onerid came first, and then a meeting with the client. He found her just outside her assigned quarters. She was engaged in a serious controversy with Millim Takki Atsa, who was saying, “But then how are we supposed to know who delivered it?”
“Is there a need to, my girl?”
“People like to be thanked.”
“Ah, that is so, but here the employer prefers to retain that privilege.” Onerid swept her fan around to indicate not just Koshat Dreivis, but the entirety of Drastlif. The action diverted attention from her yawning into her glove.
Takki must have noticed, but rousing a person or two before dawn meant nothing to her. “I know two isn't better than one in everything, but in gratitude I think it has to be. Oh, Ressi. Good morning. What do you think about phantom breakfasts?”
Dirant was not alone in the world after all, though his reasoning for disliking the practice lived on a different continent from hers. That was true of the excuse he overheard, and even more of what he suspected her actual discontent to be. He decided on a pointed implication. “It makes the questioning of servants more difficult, and furthermore may delay discovery of the inmate's disappearance or murder if a conscientious employee refrains from peeking through the curtain.”
“I knew you'd understand. I want to throw on top of that how unnerving it can be for more private people.” Rather than being wounded by the point, Takki took it as an invitation to form an alliance.
“You have it exactly.”
Onerid sighed, but then cut it off in the self-conscious manner of someone attempting to shed an unsightly habit. “All right, we will all agree the practice must be abolished. Mr. Dirant, will you do me the favor of dragging me to the Stanops's home? Please forget I said anything of the sort, for I realized a Ritualist cannot be assigned a hand's duties.”
“Ah, has company policy at last been changed? I must begin a petition to revert it. The occasional piano is not too heavy when weighed against paperwork. A single sheet may be light, but when the number is infinite, what consolation is that? It is only the spectacle of the thing which prevents me from conveying you bodily to take care of that untuned instrument in the orchestra.”
“Oh! Is that a saying?” Takki spun a full revolution, and if her vivacity so early in the morning nearly sent Onerid back to bed rather than invigorating her, that only proved a deeper sympathy was yet possible.
“It is. The spirit of the thing is that there is a matter which requires attention before a greater work may commence. The relevance is that I am yet unsure where to do the job.”
Onerid looked at her door with the air of a town's leading citizen, now aged, sitting on the porch of an evening and remembering those days climbing the apple tree on the family estate that seemed so tall then, its branches so wide. “Yes. I had better get started. Finding the person with whom we must negotiate often requires a shocking amount of time, particularly in cases of this sort when the customer is a widower. The relevant female relative must be found and inquires must be discreet. There's no good in your coming along for this part, Mr. Dirant, but will you act as my bodyguard again, Takki?”
“We both know that isn't really a question, my girl.”
Onerid and Takki walked off, leaving Dirant nothing to do but wait for their return or at least for Stansolt and Ibir to rouse themselves, lonely as a design with no Ritualist to recite the proper invocation.