The Giant's Almanac by Andrew Zurcher (black female authors .txt) 📕

‘The fool,’ she said, and went back to Second Feeding.

‘We call him the Riddler,’ Payne said, from his left. She spoke softly, and with crisp articulation. ‘He isn’t an Off, but he does this and that in the Sensorium. He is not –’ she paused – ‘exceptionally bright.’

‘He’s bright enough to truss you like a pig, rip you neck to toe, and turn you out on the table,’ said Fingal, hardly looking up from his plate.

‘That’s disgusting,’ said Navy, leaping to the defence of Payne, who looked appalled.

Padge put down his book. ‘The language may be colourful,’ he said, ‘but Fingal has a point. The Riddler presides over the most ancient Office in the Heresy, the Sensorium. Up here he doesn’t make much sense, but down there – when he’s in his element – let’s just say he can find your pressure points pretty quickly.’

‘Nonetheless and moreover,’ said Dina, still occupied with her food, ‘the fool.’

Around them the food was changing again. The Serfs moved with incredible agility and speed between the tables and the kitchens, which were situated at the end of the hall, furthest from the Prents’ table. As they had been eating, the night had darkened, and Fitz looked again with wonder at the lamps that lit the hall, now retracted high among the beams of the pitched ceiling, hanging on their chains. Now he noticed, as he hadn’t before, that each of the lamps had a variety of coloured glass panes – red, blue and green – that seemed to wash through the air above the tables with floods of mingling hues.

‘It’s pretty, isn’t it,’ said Navy. She was still watching Fitz’s every move.

‘Don’t get used to it, though,’ said Dina. ‘They only light the lamps on a wedding night.’

‘Is there a wedding tonight?’ asked Russ, looking up for the first time from Padge’s book. ‘I hadn’t realized.’

‘They hold weddings, here?’ Fitz was incredulous. Somehow the Heresy had seemed so closed, so withdrawn from the world.

‘Not weddings like that.’ Fingal was sneering again. ‘A Black Wedding. It’s the ceremony in which a student or an apprentice formally and finally renounces the world and all that is in it.’

‘You should know,’ said Navy.

‘Enough,’ said Dina, severely. From the stunned look on Navy’s face, Fitz thought Fingal might have kicked her under the table. To her credit, she didn’t protest. She didn’t make another peep.

A gong sounded, nearly knocking Fitz off the bench. When he turned round, he saw why. The massive brass gong – still vibrating from the tremendous walloping one of the Serfs had just given it – stood only a few feet behind him. He had just begun Third Feeding, but he put his fork down, and stood up with the rest of the room.

The Fells filed out of the hall, one row after another, in silence. Almost everyone had been interrupted in their meal – some were in the midst of Second Feeding, others not yet done with Third. The plates lay as they had been left, the food in places still steaming.

Fitz half whispered, half mouthed to Dina, ‘No one’s finished eating!’

Dina raised her eyebrows.

‘But everyone has finished,’ she said. And added, ‘Don’t worry. The food won’t be wasted.’

No sooner had the Fells left the room than the Serfs took their places and began to eat from the half-finished plates. Dina gave a twitch of her head, and Fitz realized that he was supposed to do something. For some reason he looked at Navy, who was gesticulating wildly with her hands for him to go, out through a door on the dais beyond where the Offs were sitting, back out into the room they called the Porch. He and Dina led the two short columns. As soon as they were through the door, all the Prents pulled off their gowns and hung them on the hooks from which they had taken them on their way in.

‘Where do I put mine?’ asked Fitz.

Padge hung it for him on the last of eight hooks. It was covered in dust, and on a wooden plaque above the hook he read a name: ‘Nazir’. He must have been staring at it. He’d seen the name before. But where?

‘My grandfather,’ said Dina. ‘He died the month before last. He was – special.’

‘I’m very sorry,’ said Fitz, coming to himself. The other Prents – even Navy – had already dashed from the long, low room, and only the two of them were left.

‘No, I mean, he was special to the Heresy. No one has used any of his things for a long time.’

Dina held the door for him as they stepped back into the dark courtyard. Only one lamp hung from an iron fixing outside the hall, five or more metres away, and the stars cast little light. As Fitz brushed past Dina, he smelled that warm scent of leaves that he had noticed when he first met her – like the Bellman’s Wood in September, full of must and rain. For a few instants, disorientated in the dark, he thought he could see by the light of that fragrance, and the trees of the wood reared all around him.

Fitz was brought back to his senses by a mewling sound. It came from the centre of the courtyard. He peered into the darkness, and saw the outlines of a heavy cage, the sort of reinforced box in which they moved animals in cartoons, or in zoos.

‘Is that a cage? What’s in it?’

‘It’s a kind of broad-nosed lemur,’ said Dina. ‘It’s rare – one of the rarest animals in the world. We were studying it today with the Registrar.’

‘If it’s so rare, why is there one here?’ Fitz had approached the cage cautiously, but he need hardly have worried. It was tiny, not much more than a baby, and was sucking its thumb.

‘Search me,’ said Dina.

Fitz could barely make out the shape of the animal’s body where it cowered in the back of its cage; but its