“What’s she up to, that girl? Lately she’s seemed troubled.” Chance was a dear to care like this. Though he never seemed to be taking notice, nothing really escaped him.
“She has power, Chance. Power she may use, if she will. Power she fears using unwisely and thus fears using at all.”
“Looked on Barish, didn’t she?”
“Yes. Yes, she looked on my brother, Barish, and what Barish did. Jinian sees the implications of that, I think. She does see things like that.”
“But Barish took the hundred thousand for something greater. So you said.”
“Oh, yes. And now he must try to answer the question I’ve been trying to answer for these hundreds of years, Chance. The question those hundred thousand will ask when they wake. The question Jinian is trying to answer. Is there anything greater?” And there it was, of course. That was the thing that had been bothering me, and it didn’t help greatly to know that many others had wrestled with it as well.
We went out onto the dusty cobbles of Sheel Street, littered with torn banners and tangled worms of confetti.
Birds quarreled in the gutters over spilled confections.
Wagons were moving from corner to corner while weary crews filled them with the festival flotsam. Down the hill we went, twisting and turning to arrive at the yard before the mill. We got to work, Peter and me and a dozen carpenters and metal workers, toiling away on the roof.
When Queynt and Chance arrived in the wagon, each endless length of pink cloth that had spewed from the front of the building was drawn up like a great fustigar tongue, licking the nose of the mill.
Chance was astonished. “Now, by all my grandma’s teacups, what’re they up to?”
“Rollers, I should imagine,” said Queynt. “Drawing the stuff up the front, and across the top, and down the back into the hoppers. Saves all that using up in between.”
“Well, why didn’t the silly Bloomians think of that?”
“Religion, I imagine, friend Chance. Religion serves to prevent thought in many cases, and I’d say it had done so here. They started with the presumption that anything as complex as the mill must exist for a good reason. Then they spent all their time inventing a good reason—and some god to be responsible for it—rather than looking for a sensible solution to their problem. Jinian has merely substituted Drarg for whatever other deity they had involved.”
“Clever,” mumbled Chance. “Only I don’t think she’ll let herself enjoy it. By night she’ll be worrying whether it was the right thing to do.” He leaned back to watch the carpenters where they hammered away on high and saw that I’d been listening. He merely winked at me. Chance wasn’t at all shy about his opinions.
There was a cheer from the roof as the first of the cloth reached the hoppers in back. Queynt clucked to Yittleby and Yattleby, who strode off around the building to the rear. Wide bands of pink descended in a steady flow to disappear into the huge, shaking hopper.
Queynt got down from the wagon and came to meet me as I came down the ladder.
“They’re going to have to add some trash now and then, you know,” he told me. “The cloth alone won’t be enough.”
“It won’t? I thought if everything that came out went back in ...” In fact, I had been rather proud of thinking this up, and his corrections made me peevish.
“Not quite. It uses up some, you see. During the weaving. Better tell the workmen, or it may not work right.” He strode back to the wagon, pausing to take a bow to the group of council members who had just come around the corner of the building. Madame Browl was staring upward, face creased in concentration. Mergus frowned, at first unable to believe what he saw. Others murmured behind them, Philp among them.
“An excellent solution,” said Queynt in a loud, definite voice, winking in my direction. “Drarg’s representative is to be congratulated.”
“But, but...” Madame Browl seemed about to object.
“No longer the endless round of festivals!” cried Peter. “The people of Bloome may sleep of a morning.”
“No more uncomfortable clothes,” cried Chance, getting into the spirit of the thing. “No more being bedeviled by the Hundred Demons!”
“No more banners,” someone cried from the rooftop.
“No more pink stuff!” cried someone else.
At the reference to the pink stuff, there was a general cheer, under the sound of which Madame Browl’s disapproving voice fell silent.
“Leaving already, are you?” Philp asked Queynt, staring suspiciously at the great birds the while.
“Drarg’s ambassador will ride with me to Fangel,” he replied in an innocent tone, bowing in my direction. “It seemed impolite to delay her. Inasmuch as she has helped Bloome so immeasurably.”
“Well. Be sure you get back promptly. This”—he gestured at the mill—”is going to cause upheaval. Half the people in town won’t know what to do with themselves. Do we go ahead and arrange for Pickel-port-poh? I ask you, do we? And Shimerzy-waffle?”
“Oh, I would,” said Queynt. “Definitely. However, as Merchant’s man, I’d suggest Bloome should start looking into handlooms for your weaving. No reason you can’t use some of the stuff from the mill, here, if it ever produces anything you want, but for real quality, one wants the handwoven stuff. That will provide jobs for all those ousted as hopper fillers, and it will be better quality than you’ve had for centuries. That, in turn, should increase custom.
