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

very close to him, so close that Fitz had to crane his head awkwardly to see the Riddler’s face.

‘Aren’t you forgetting something?’ asked the Riddler. Fitz’s stomach lurched. ‘Which has the clearer sight,’ the Riddler went on, ‘the bat or the eagle?’

He was so close, Fitz could smell aniseed on his breath. He was stunned. He flailed, looked at Navy.

‘The bat is blind, Fool,’ said Dina. She poured half a glass of water. ‘It sees nothing.’

‘Yet that saw is sharpest that cuts without teeth,’ said the Riddler.

‘Go hawk your riddles at another table, Fool,’ said Dina. She tore a chunk of bread with her teeth, and chewed it hard, as if she were trying to make a point. Fitz watched her, as they all did. She swallowed. ‘We’re eating,’ she said.

‘Not as well as I,’ said the Riddler.

‘Your reason, Fool?’ demanded Dina.

‘That maker makes best who makes without waste, and that artist who can coax a thing from nothing is nothing short of a god. Just so I, who eat nothing, eat best.’

‘Every word you say is wasted, and you turn even things of importance into purest nothing,’ said Dina. ‘Which makes you a sad old man.’ A smile was playing around her mouth, but her eyes remained cold.

‘More generous I,’ retorted the Riddler, ‘to furnish so much nothing for others’ crafty making. Read me therefore as you might a glass, and you may thereby make much of me. For my own part, being discontent, I find myself well contented with nothing. The man whom nothing satisfies feeds best, for he is past all waste.’

Dina seemed to be annoyed. She chewed fiercely.

‘Am I not the light of truth, son of the king?’ asked the Riddler. He had been walking slowly down the table, but now he came to stand behind Fitz again. ‘Am I not past all waste?’

‘This is the Riddler’s way of telling you he expects you at the Sensorium after dinner,’ said Navy, from the far end of the table. The Riddler squeezed Fitz’s shoulders, one hand to either side of his neck, and withdrew. The pain lingered, and Fitz wasn’t the first to speak – but the question must have been written large enough across his face. He had heard from the others about the Sensorium, of course: they seemed to spend half their free time complaining about it, in terms enigmatic enough that they both confused and fascinated Fitz. But he had assumed that training in the Sensorium – whatever it was – wouldn’t be required of him. The Master had said to go to lessons; he hadn’t mentioned anything about going down – down there.

‘Like I said,’ said Navy. ‘Don’t eat too much.’

‘Everybody throws up, their first time in the Sensorium,’ explained Dolly, sticking her finger in her mouth.

‘Barforium, more like,’ added Russ. Payne giggled, and was immediately embarrassed, putting her hand to cover her mouth while she frowned. This made Padge light up like one of the hall’s myriad lanterns, and he elbowed Russ hard in the ribs. Fitz could see this was a form of congratulation for a bad joke well timed.

‘You won’t last five minutes,’ said Fingal, without looking up from First Feeding. He was scooping rice with his spoon, a famished look on his face. But he laid his spoon down long enough to manufacture a taunting, hateful sneer.

‘He won’t be lasting any minutes,’ said Dina. Her words, stern and curt, did not interrupt the circular motion of her spoon, which continued with mechanical regularity to deliver soup to her mouth. ‘Fitz isn’t going to the Sensorium.’

‘Says who?’ said Russ.

Dina held her spoon at her mouth while she swallowed her soup. She was staring at the metal in her hand, focused and intense. Just at the edge, in so minute a movement Fitz was hardly even sure he had seen it, her upper lip quivered. ‘Says me, and I’m First Prent,’ Dina said. ‘When you’re First Prent, which will be never, you can do what you like.’

At this the table, already quiet, fell still.

‘Eat up, rabble,’ said Dina. ‘Feeding won’t wait.’

It was an uncomfortable meal. Something had shifted, and no one – not Fitz, not the other Prents – was sure what it was. Dina didn’t speak to anyone, but worked her way through First, Second and Third Feeding with a kind of professional efficiency that reminded Fitz of slaughter. After the meal he and Navy walked together back to the Master’s tower, both of them silent and lost in their thoughts.

‘You know who used to live here, before you?’ said Navy, when they had arrived at the entrance to Fitz’s staircase. The thought hadn’t crossed his mind before – but of course someone else had lived here. He hadn’t seen an empty room in all the buildings in the Heresy – the place was stuffed to bursting, teeming with children, adults, Officers, stores, archives, workshops, offices.

‘Dina?’ Fitz hadn’t yet figured out exactly where her room was. It suddenly seemed strange to him that he didn’t know.

It obviously seemed strange to Navy, too. She frowned at him. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Not Dina. The Riddler.’

Fitz had been about to say goodnight, and had already put his hand on the carved frame of the tower door. Now he stopped, and squeezed his eyes shut.

The Riddler?

‘The day before you came, he packed up his things and moved out. No one knew why, at the time. He took everything out to one of the sheds in the Sensory Garden, and set up there. Afterwards, Padge told us that the Master had arranged it with the Commissar, in advance, but I think he was making it up. Padge doesn’t like it when things don’t make sense.’

‘Why doesn’t Dina want me to go to the Sensorium?’ asked Fitz.

‘That doesn’t make sense, either,’ answered Navy, quickly, as if she had been dying to talk about it. ‘You’ve been here weeks, and usually the Sensorium is the first place a new Prent goes. “Assessment,” they call it. They sent