Stephen Baxter: Bronze Summer

He led her to the stone table on which her mother’s remains lay, a jumble of bones under the bronze breastplate.

The dignitaries solemnly gathered around, lit by lamps of whale oil that flickered in alcoves cut into walls rubbed smooth by generations of passage. All the great and ancient Houses were represented here. The Annids, of course, in their cloaks of owl feathers like Teel’s — all women save for Teel, for few men would pay the price of joining the Order of those who governed Northland. Then there were the priests with their mouths made grotesque by the teeth of their own Other, the Wolf, and the Beavers and the Voles, workers of Wall and land, and Jackdaws, the traders — even a few representatives of the lowly but essential House of the Beetle, who cleaned drains and dredged canals and shipped waste, resplendent today in their carapaces of polished black leather. Most exotic of all to Milaqa’s eyes were the Swallows, the wayfinders, the sailors and navigators and surveyors, men and women who mapped the world in their heads and knew the shape of it. Her own uncle Deri, Teel’s brother, was a Swallow, but today he was out on the ocean. Of all the Orders, Milaqa longed most of all to be a Swallow, to be standing there in one of those black shaped capes, so like graceful swallows’ wings. But her strength was languages, speech, not numbers and maps.

None of these dignitaries would speak to her. Milaqa had a right to say goodbye to her mother, Kuma Annid of Annids. She had a right to be here. But she was not an Annid, and never would be, and so nobody gave Milaqa more than a passing glance.

None save Voro. The young Jackdaw, tall and ungainly, approached her, shyness and self-doubt covering him like a shadow. ‘Hello, Milaqa.’

‘Voro.’ She puckered her lips and blew him a kiss.

He almost crumpled, blushing. She tried not to laugh. This boy had had a crush on her, she knew, since they had both been younger than Jaro. He was easy to chase away. But today he stood his ground. ‘I’m sorry about your mother.’

‘Well, that’s why we’re all here.’

‘You know I was there. When she died in Albia.’

‘There was nothing you could do.’

‘Perhaps we could talk about it. I always thought-’

‘No.’ She felt impatient, irritated. Her mother’s interment was no time to be dealing with what sounded dangerously like it was going to be some kind of declaration of affection. She wheeled away, leaving him standing.

Teel walked with her. ‘What did he want?’

‘Nothing important.’

‘All right… There are some family here. There’s my father, your grandfather Medoc.’ A big man with a booming laugh, dressed in walrus fur. ‘Come all the way from Kirike’s Land to say goodbye to his daughter. You should talk to him.’

‘All these people, all this finery — all for my mother. It’s a shame she couldn’t have been here to see it. I heard what they said about her when she was alive.’

‘That’s a mark of greatness, the quality and number of your enemies.’

‘I have no enemies. I suppose I will never be great.’

‘But you must find your place. ‘‘Everyone in Etxelur is a hunter and a scholar.’’ You know that’s the rule, Milaqa. You know it’s your duty, you must find your place. And if you haven’t made your House choice by the appropriate Family Day, which I remind you is the spring equinox of your sixteenth year and will be here soon, the choice will be made for you.’

He was right, of course. Northlanders were comparatively few, and their very land survived only through continued and dedicated maintenance. Everybody had to play a part. ‘You sound like my mother.’

‘Good. My sister was a great Annid of Annids.’

A priest stepped forward now, murmuring a prayer to the little mothers, and the babble of conversation hushed. The priest scattered a salty incense over Kuma’s shrunken corpse. Then, gently, he lifted the damaged breastplate away from her chest, and handed it to a member of the House of the Owl. The plate would be passed on to the next Annid of Annids, when she (or, just possibly, he) was chosen. Now the priest reverently wrapped up Kuma’s bones in a cloth blanket and lifted her up. Milaqa saw her mother’s head loll, the fleshless jaw gaping. Carrying the corpse the priest made for the door. There he was met by a senior Annid, a severe older woman called Noli, and a procession began to form up behind them.

‘Walk with me,’ Teel murmured to Milaqa.

The two of them took their places at the rear of the group of Annids, who in turn led the priests and the wayfinders and the others, with the humble Beetles bringing up the rear. Then, to the soft beat of a drum, they shuffled forward, along a candlelit passage that led deeper into the Wall. They turned corners, and soon the last of the daylight was excluded. The corridor was musty and dry. When Milaqa glanced back she noticed the Beavers looking around, sniffing the air for damp, instinctively checking the walls for crumbling and mould. One of them carried a pot in which liquid growstone sloshed.

‘We’re walking very slowly,’ she whispered to Teel. ‘I wish we could get this over with.’

‘Have you not been to one of these ceremonies before?’

‘Not since my father died, and I was very small then.’

‘Not even for the family?’

‘I always chose not to come. I suppose you’ll say that’s me running away from my responsibilities again.’

‘There are men and women younger than you who are already in their Houses of choice, training as wayfarers or builders — even as priests and Annids.’

‘I have no skill.’

‘Your languages are good. Everybody says that.’

‘I only learned them because of getting drunk with traders and sailors in the taverns in the Scambles, and nobody approves of that.’

‘It doesn’t matter how you learn. What matters is ability. With a skill like that you could become a Jackdaw.’

She sniffed. ‘Like Voro? Haggling over tokens of clay? Travelling to mines in Albia, or stinking farms on the Continent? I don’t think so.’

‘Nevertheless you must do something. Actually I have an idea,’ Teel said. ‘Something that might help you decide.’

‘I’m wary of your ideas.’

‘You’re probably right to be. Call it an assignment.’

‘What assignment?’

But he had no time to reply, for they had reached the Hall of Interment.

In the weak glow of smoky lamps this long, shallow room extended out of sight to left and right. The wall opposite was a smooth growstone surface with small alcoves cut into it in rows. Milaqa was reminded of a sandy river bank, the burrows of sand martins above the water. All the alcoves nearby were open, those further away blocked off, their shapes clearly visible in the discolouring of the growstone. There was a soft breeze. Somehow air reached this place, feeding the lamps, and the people who quietly spread out into the room.

The priest stepped forward, lifted the slight bundle in his arms, and slid it into an alcove at chest height. He chanted a series of numbers: ‘One. One. Five. Four. Four. Two. Four. Two. Three. Five. Two.’

A mason, clad in a cloak of beaver fur, armed with a shaped chisel, stepped forward. Briskly he stamped the priest’s number into the wall below Kuma’s alcove, using the ancient concentric-circle number symbols of Etxelur. The priest began to chant, in a language so old it was unknown even to Milaqa.

Teel murmured, ‘Do you remember this place from your father’s ceremony?’

‘I remember the holes in the wall. They scared me.’

‘Yes… The priest has recited the number of the day. Do you know about that? We began the counting from the very day Prokyid saved us from the Second Great Sea. Prokyid left us a system of cycles, based on the number five.’ He spread his hand in the gloom. ‘For five fingers. The last of the priest’s eleven numbers was two; we are in the second day of the current eleventh cycle of five days. The second last number was five. We are in the fifth element of the current tenth cycle of five fives, which is twenty-five days. The third last number was three. We are in the third-’