6. N
Haldeen felt his temples throb with frustration.
“How long will she be sick? We are losing time.”
The physician sat on the couch in his outer office, playing with the fringe rope inset along the cushion with her hand.
It was a legacy of easier days, when people could afford the time and resources to ornament furniture.
Back when we could make art, music, with leisure for everyone, even the scrubs. A long time ago.
“Hard to say,” she replied. “It looks like a childhood disease, a sniffle from a guard perhaps, or a servant’s cough. She’s able to whine and gripe about it, so not too sick. I’d leave the bucket next to the bed for another night though.”
Haldeen rounded on Nora, who stood at a table. She had a piece of Triana’s clothing, and used a magnifying glass to study it.
“This is your fault,” he said, irritably.
Nora shrugged, clearly letting the criticism slide away. “I needed to get her clothing in a way that didn’t draw attention, and having her out of the room saved having a scene. Also, I wanted to make sure that the ambient magic sensors had been placed in key locations.”
He rubbed his hand against his temple, trying to ease the throbbing. He felt a headache approaching. “Please tell me you learned something that is going to be worth the days this is costing me,” he said.
Nora glanced at the physician, and back to Haldeen, uncertain whether he wanted her to proceed while the doctor could hear.
“She knows,” Haldeen told Nora. “It seemed appropriate to advise her of our accidental discovery.”
Nora tipped her head to one side. “Your decision.”
She gestured to the clothing. “And, yes, we’ve learned a lot. First, I’ve no doubt she’s being completely honest with us about being wealthy, and in the ruling class, both by her standards, and by ours. This is utility clothing, made to be worn in rough terrain,
and not normally deserving of ornamentation. But, if you come over here and look through the lens, tell me what you see?”
He complied, with ill grace. “What am I looking at?”
She pointed with a fingernail. “Some kind of decoration … grain sheaves of some kind, I think, woven into the fabric by some means I cannot even imagine. That sort of loom-work is incredibly complicated and impossibly labor-intensive … so, done by hand, by someone very skilled.
This should be common clothing, the sort of thing someone wears to exercise a mount-beast, for instance, or play with children—things even someone of rank would do, that requires hard-wearing outfits. The trousers, belt, and blouse … some kind of heavy woven fabric and leather …
all have this incredibly fine detail. The stitching is all done by hand, and it’s all top quality, the sort of thing you see on noble, antique garments here, and created by a very skilled artisan indeed. This is on utility clothing …
so the buyer is one wealthy woman who expects not only top quality clothing, but also top quality detail. To be absolutely clear, it’s the sort of thing we don’t do anymore, because we not only don’t have the resources to make such clothing,
we don’t have the time and resources to make clothing that is purely decorative. All our clothing is multipurpose, and has very little ornamentation. All our signs of rank are in the jewels passed down from the times before the Predators began attacking the cities.”
He looked again through the glass, not really understanding, but accepting her analysis.
She took the shirt, got the armpit right up under her nose and took deep sniff, then handed it to him. He took it reluctantly, a bit repulsed.
“Have a good deep inhale. A couple of things. A hint of perfume. Something fairly strong when it was first put on. I don’t think our girl is particularly subtle scent-wise … but it’s the other smell that’s interesting. That other note, a bit earthy.
I think she has been accustomed to eat meat every day, perhaps even at every meal. You eat meat, and then you sweat it out. I don’t think the king even eats meat every day. At least not anymore. So, rations must cost a fraction of what they do here,
if they have enough to feed animals just to eat them. Or … or it’s safe enough that you can put herbivorous meat animals outside in herds to grow. We haven’t been able to do that for—well, quite a long time.”
He took a cautionary sniff, then put the shirt down. He nodded along, even though he hadn’t smelled anything.
He made it a point to sound unimpressed. “And so? Anything else?”
Nora gave him a long look. “Yes. Look at these smallclothes. They’re pretty worn and sweat-stained from tramping around.” She held up a piece of delicate lace. “Not suited for cross-country walking or travel of any sort, really.”
“Doesn’t leave anything to the imagination, does she?” he replied.
Nora frowned. “Perhaps more suited to the boudoir for us, but everyday wear for her. Fine lace like this, well, maybe the queen can afford it, or perhaps your ladywife for special occasions, but making it takes a lot of rations. Again, it’s all done by hand.
Your ‘guest’ doesn’t need to worry about whether things like this are suitable—in fact, she might not even possess what we would consider ‘practical, everyday’ smallclothes. She can afford to ruin things, because there will always be more such things in her life to replace what she ruins.
I’ve seen that same attitude in what she eats and leaves, in how she treats the objects in her room. So, wealthy on the level of one of our city-kings. If not more so. She has good reason for her arrogance. By our standards, she lives better than a king.”
She picked a boot up off the floor. “And this, again well made … but that isn’t the interesting part.”
Haldeen was still focused on the smallclothes, and tried to imagine Andaleisia wearing something similar. “I don’t think most women here could get that up past their knees, much less ….”
“Yes,” Nora replied stiffly, clearly working to shut that thread of speculation down early. Not comfortable with even the faintest hint of sexual talk. Noted, I don’t want to intimidate my informant.
“The boots are new,” Nora continued, “hardly broken in, and the sole is made of some kind of material I’ve not seen before, flexible and pliant, but fairly tough. I dug this out of it.”
She held up a sliver of worked metal … gray and age-corroded. “This looks like the metal we used for grain-bins when I was a child, but it’s ancient. She stepped on something metal that was very old, centuries and centuries old, but it’s OUR metal. Isn’t it?”
Haldeen took the age-marked sliver and studied it.
It looked like sheathing metal, the sort used for the outer skins of many Machinas, but badly aged.
He tried to bend it with a thumb, and was surprised when it easily flexed.
This type of exterior skin should not have bent this way under any pressure he applied.
Nora had found only a single sample, and one sample was not proof, but it certainly suggested a lot of time had passed on the far side of the Gate.
He needed to think about that. He rubbed his temple again.
Questions were piling up faster than they could be answered.
One more “joyous” consideration. Metal this age-decomposed might impact his ability to restore the Machinas sent through and lost the last time.
His emerging plan required restoring at least a few to working order.
Now, one tiny fragment demonstrated that the entire line of reasoning had been placed at risk.
He needed to send the Probe through again, gather more material, more samples to study.
Verify whether the Machinas on the other side were even remotely functional.
He also needed Nora to focus on quizzing Triana on what was on the other side of the Gate, and probing her memories of what took place there. She remained the only witness.
He exhaled slowly, very aware of the physician. Time to see her out.
“Is there anything else?” he said.
“Yes,” the physician replied, clearly uncomfortable. “I took the opportunity to do an exam on her … a physical. I don’t think she has ever had one before, so explained it was standard procedure when sick. She accepted that at face value.”
“And?” he said, impatient.
She took a deep breath. “She was spell-sculpted as a child. Was never supposed to be this tall, slender, or willowy. Someone broke her legs and arms, very precisely. Then, they Healed her, lengthening the long bones to give her extra height and to make her arms roughly proportionate to that height.
Someone also removed her lower three ribs on both sides to give her a longer, slimmer waist, then—and I scarcely believed this when I saw it, but it’s true—then caused each vertebrae in her spine to lengthen a trifle, so the overall effect was that she became much taller. Disproportionately,
even freakishly, in our terms.”
The physician seemed quite agitated by all this, but Haldeen’s focus remind on the state of the Machinas. His Machinas, the ones he needed. He tried to summon some reason why he should care, but couldn’t. He waited for her to say her piece, and leave.
She read his silence as disbelief. “I counted the ribs, and felt when I came up short. I can feel the ridges in her legs from where the bone was spell-grown. The vertebrae don’t fit together the way they should. There are other things … subtleties … the eyes were moved apart a bit,
and greatly enlarged, the eyebrows lifted, the nose slimmed. She may look grotesque to us, but someone did this as part of a standard of beauty. It’s as if they were crafting a porcelain doll, not a person. As if her sole worth to her society lay in how attractive she was in their eyes.
And that ‘attractive’ meant ‘altered in ways only the wealthy could afford,’ and that in turn would result in someone who could not do ordinary labor.”
Haldeen didn’t quite know what to make of this, but he could see the physician’s nervousness by the way she played with the fringe.
“Go on,” he said.
The physician shook her head. “This would have been agonizing. Growing bone that way, reshaping, resculpting, is incredibly painful. And it was done repeatedly.”