‘Mention away.’ Tasmin stretched out on his bedroll, feeling through his pack for the flask of broundy he usually carried.
‘Right at the moment I’m mainly concerned that Wendra Gentrack will still be single when I get back to Deepsoil Five. She was madder than anybody I’ve ever seen when I told her … told her I had to go.’
‘Ah,’ Tasmin murmured. Wendra Gentrack was a very social young lady. Daughter of Celcy’s friend Jeannie and of Hom Gentrack, one of BDL’s Agricultural Section Managers. ‘You have an understanding?’
‘I have had what I regarded as an understanding, yes. She seems to have whatever seems to be most fun for her on any given day.’
‘I told Jamieson he was brou-dizzy,’ the girl said from her place beside the fire. ‘Wendra is virtually brain dead.’
Jamieson poked the fire viciously, pulled the kettle off and set out three bowls. ‘Are you ready to eat now?’ he asked Clarin in a poisonous tone. ‘Would that activity possibly occupy your mouth with something besides giving me advice I didn’t ask for?’
Oh, marvelous, Tasmin thought. All I need. A juvenile feud. Without thinking, he said, ‘There are relationships that strike others as being inappropriate, Clarin, which are, in fact, very rewarding to those involved.’
She flushed, and he realized with sudden shock what he had just said. He felt his face flame, but kept his eyes locked on hers. ‘We’re evidently going to be traveling together. There is only one way I can see that this will work. From this moment you both have equal acolyte status. I expect citadel courtesy between the two of you as well as toward me. Right?’
They nodded. He thought Clarin had an expression of relief, although perhaps it was more one of quiet amusement. Amusement? At what?
Doggedly, he went on. ‘And, Jamieson, I do understand how you feel about leaving ’Five just now. Believe me, I do. I would send you back if there were any way to do it.’ And I will keep trying to think of a way, he told himself grimly.
‘Now, what have you fixed for our supper?’
They sprawled near the fire with their bowls, a savory dish of fresh vegetables and grain served with scraps of broiled meat. A little wind came down the slope behind them, bringing the scent of Jubal and the sound of viggies singing. ‘I had a viggy once,’ mused Tasmin. ‘For a few hours.’
‘No joke? I didn’t know anyone could catch them.’
‘No, they can be caught. They just die in captivity, is all. But this was a young one that was found with broken legs along the caravan route. Somebody splinted the legs and kept the viggy and it lived. Later they sold him to my father.’
‘Did it sing?’ Clarin asked, her voice hushed.
‘Not while I had it. It might have. It … got away.’
There was a long silence, interrupted only by the sound of chewing, the clatter of spoon on bowl.
‘Master?’
‘Clarin.’
‘You know I transferred in from Northwest.’
‘Yes. I never knew why.’
‘Oh.’ She seemed to be searching for a reply that would be appropriately impersonal. ‘My voice was too low for a lot of the scores up there. Nine out of ten of them are soprano scores, and I’m no soprano. The Masters thought I’d have a better chance of being steadily employed down around Five or even Northeast, over toward Eleven. It wasn’t until I got to Five that I ever heard much about the Crystallites. And then you mentioned Crystallites a little while ago. Are they really set on killing off all Tripsingers, or is that just a horror story?’
‘Well, there was that one notorious assassination on the Jut about six years ago,’ Tasmin replied. ‘I’m sure you’ve heard of that, even though you’d have been very young at the time. It was no campfire tale. All twelve Tripsingers at the local chapter house were killed by a band of Crystallite fanatics. The Jut has no food source of its own. The Jut Tripsingers made regular trips to bring in supplies by caravan, but there had been bad weather and food was already short. They were killed just as they were about to leave on a provisions run. There were about one hundred people there, and when they tried to get out between the Jammers, they all died but two. We have their accounts of what happened, and some accounts found on the Jut, written by people who died …’
‘And the Crystallites?’
‘They got away, clean away. As far as I know, no one has ever found out how. They had to have had help, that’s certain. Help from outside, somewhere. Anyhow, that was really the first occasion when anyone heard much about Crystallites.’
‘I don’t understand them!’
‘They seem to have picked up Erickson’s beliefs and carried them to a ridiculous extreme,’ Tasmin said. ‘Erickson believed the Presences are sentient, and by that he meant conscious, capable of understanding. He believed when we do a PJ we actually use meaningful words, even though we don’t know what the meaning is. He started the Tripsingers as a quasi-religious order – the Worshipful Order of Tripsingers – and we’ve still got a lot of the old religious vocabulary and trappings left.
‘The Crystallites picked up the belief in the sentience of Presences and built on it. In their religious scheme, the Presences are not merely sentient but godlike. The Crystallites believe either that Tripsinging is diabolical or that all Tripsingers are heretics, I’m not sure which. Quite frankly, their theology doesn’t seem to be very consistent or well thought out. Sometimes I think two or three people just invented it without bothering to do a first draft. At any rate, they seem to consider it blasphemous for people to speak to the Presences at all. Not up close, at any rate. If we do so, we’re tempting the gods who may, if they grow sufficiently agitated, destroy everything.’ Tasmin smiled at her. Stated thus baldly, it sounded
