New Enemies
Chapter 8
Contegons who serve on the Fronts know that Disciples could, at any time, burst out from Moenian Forest, their unholy weapons spewing fire and destruction. For them, death was a constant. Most rarely went more than a few weeks without seeing someone die: an old Shield joke said, 'A Front is the line which Pyres are held behind.'
Chain knew she was lucky in many ways. With a young daughter to look after, she did not want to fight at the Fronts. And living in a quiet town like Buckle, even with its Mine, death was rare. But the rarity of death made it harder to face, made it an unexpected foe.
That day, she went to face death.
Though it was not proper, everyone called the old woman Grandmother Grass. She was eighty-five, an astonishing age to achieve, especially for a Miner, which made it just about acceptable for her to have a title of sorts. She had earned it by being hardy… until recently.
For months, Grass had been bed-ridden, a terrible affliction eating her. Doctor Marsh said it was a disease of the elderly, a malady expected to end someone of Grass' advanced years, and he could only make her comfortable. Grass had taken it well, by all accounts, and continued to be as vital and loving as possible.
Yesterday, Grass had a fit, had to be held down by sons old enough to be on their Rest, as their Doctor was summoned. Marsh had sedated her, but claimed these would be her final days, much to Buckle's grief: it felt to many like the Doctor had predicted the Family's death, so ever-present was Grass in their lives.
Chain heard all this when the Doctor came to see her that morning. Generally, a Doctor made the local Contegons and Clerics aware when he predicted someone's death so they could prepare a Pyre... but that hadn't been why he came to see Chain.
“She has asked you to perform a ritual for her,” Marsh said. “She says it's called Attendance, an old custom for Contegons to soothe the dying that was thrown aside following the First Invasion. If anyone could remember such a thing, it'd be Grandmother Grass.”
Even if she'd been mistaken, Chain couldn't deny a venerable woman her attention. She had pawed through the Contegon tomes anyway, curious to find some references to Attendance. There was no information accompanying the entries she located, as though the reader was supposed to know what an Attendance was, so she would have rely on Grass' memory of what was required.
Grass lived alone: Buckle traditions dictated that you stayed in the house you built until you died, and only then could another move in. Grass' home was small and neat, big enough for a family if they loved one another. Stationless wives and husbands swept, tidied, and cooked when Chain arrived, ensuring Grass would not die mortified at her home's condition. No doubt more were upstairs, sorting the bedroom Grass once shared with her husband.
Chain stopped peaking in through the window and knocked. Rumble, a Stationless husband, answered the door, then immediately acquiesced. “Sire Contegon.”
“Stand, Rumble,” Chain replied. “I am here to see Grass.”
“She's upstairs,” City said. He was Tissue's husband, a gnarled, smiling man who always pitched in when a new home was being built. “And she's thrilled that you're here.”
“What is an Attendance?” one of the wives asked. Her name escaped Chain.
“It's an honour that may never be bestowed again,” Chain replied simply.
A narrow, rickety staircase rested at the back of the living room. Chain climbed it carefully, not wanting to ruin the mystery or power surrounding her Station by falling through a broken step. At the top was an open trapdoor. Sol's light echoed around the bedroom beyond it, allowed entry by windows artfully set into the roof. A bookshelf stood beneath the roof's peak, trinkets and children's drawings filling its shelves. Fresh flowers rested on vanity tables, bedside cabinets, and even the floor, almost covering the stench of Grass' illness. Chain had to duck to enter properly, the slanted roof limiting her head room.
“Contegon,” someone rasped. “You came.”
Chain turned to the bed and smiled. “Of course I did, Grandmother.”
Grass smiled at her title. She had once been a thick woman, stout but handsome. Age and disease had made her a skeletal figure with thin skin, the very picture of death. Her eyes were red with burst blood vessels, her lips cracked and scabbed, her straw fingers bruised. Most of her nails had fallen off. But, still, she could enjoy a Contegon using her unofficial title.
“I think I'm okay, Bottle,” she said to the Stationless woman who fed her a thin soup.
Bottle nodded quietly and set the soup aside. She knelt under the bed to grab a sloshing chamber pot before leaving the room.
“Close the door, would you, Contegon?”
Chain nodded and gently shut the trapdoor after Bottle. There was a murmur from below, but no one came to knock or question why she'd closed them off.
When she looked back up, Grass' smile had faded. She looked weaker, even more frail, without it. “I don't know what's harder: fighting the disease or keeping myself strong for the people who look after me.”
Chain walked across to the woman's bed. “You don't need to be strong, not now.”
“Don't I? I helped raise half of those who look after me, cradled them when they were this big.” She held her shaking hands about a foot apart. “They thought I was immortal; I see it in their eyes. If I can die, well, so can everything else.”
“Sol calls everyone back eventually,” Chain said.
“So he does. So he does. But people don't like to remember that, do they?”
Chain shook her head. She waited for Grass to say more before saying, “I've got to tell you something.”
“What's that?”
“I don't actually know what an Attendance is.”
Grass chuckled, which brought on a fit of coughing. She leant forward, hands out to steady herself, and sprayed blood across her pale sheets. Chain looked around and found a blood-spotted handkerchief, which she pressed to Grass' mouth until the fit passed.
“Ow. I oughtn't have done that,” Grass rasped. “It just kills me that you've come here to perform a role you don't know. I guess I'm old-fashioned. Did you know, my Grandmother was among the first children born after the Cleansing. Number seventeen, she was. My Grandfather always used to call her Seventeen. They'd stopped counting by the time she had my mother... or they'd stopped releasing the count.”
“I had no idea they kept count of births,” Chain said, fascinated.
Grass nodded. “Of course they did. The Clerics count everything, don't they? Everything.” Her eyes fogged for a moment. “But what was my point?”
“That you're old-fashioned.”
“Yes, I am. As old-fashioned as they come. I remember my Grandfather demanding an Attendance. He was only fifty, but he'd been crushed by a cave-in. They dug him out and brought him home, carefully, knowing he'd die there. Our Contegon at the time, Contegon... oh, I forget her name. Anyway, she wouldn't do an Attendance because the Lords had ruled it a waste of time, what with the war going on. Grandfather had none of it. He used the last of his strength to win the argument, then died two minutes into the ceremony. Since then, there's been few Attendances in Buckle, and they were more than fifty years ago, favours from ageing Contegons. It doesn't surprise me that you don't know about them. Gone the way of many things from before the First Invasion.”
Chain gripped the old woman's hand. “Tell me what's involved.”
“Attendance,” she whispered, her strength fading already. “You Attend me with stories. I want to hear about you. Contegons are our everyday connection to Sol, his voice amongst the people. It was your duty to come to people like me and tell us stories about your ascension, your struggles, what brought you close to Sol. That way, we'd find it easier to rejoin Sol.”
“Of course. Of course I'll Attend you.”
“Good,” she said. “Because I think you'll have a most interesting story. You opposed Acolyte Councillor Maya in her Hereticum, didn't you?”
Chain tensed. She had not spoken
about the Hereticum before, despite many, many inquiries. But she had just promised Grass an Attendance.
“I did.” Chain gathered her thoughts, which Grass seemed willing to indulge. “You need the context to understand why. The Acolyte Councillor was my best friend in the Academy: we were closer than I have been with anyone besides Carmen. And then, one day, she turned Heretic. She denied Sol, mocked him; fled. I was told that my failure to stop her was Sol's will, that my status as a stay-at-home was his design, but I doubted it. Until the Second Invasion.”
“Where you were a hero,” Grass said.
“Of sorts. I led the fight against the final few Disciples, but the Acolytes had already won the battle. When I saw that the only surviving Acolyte was the Acolyte Councillor, I snapped. Even at her Hereticum, I was still snapped. I lost my sense and defied Sol's will, attacking her. She retaliated by foretelling my pregnancy at the hand of a man I hate, breaking me further.” She sighed. “It took me a while to recover from that. I couldn't reconcile what I thought I knew with the creation of the Acolyte Station and her ascension to the Solaric Council. But the Guardian and the Lords ratified everything, it was all Solaric law and creed.”
“But you didn't agree.”
“No. The Stations often disagree. Lords, Contegons, and, presumably, Acolytes were put on Geos to speak for Sol in different ways. I believe we filter him through our experiences and knowledge. The lower Stations have their own views, their own areas of expertise, which they must add too. But all of this leads to arguments, struggles. The Council exists to come to Sol's consensus. After all, why else would the Guardian be elected to provide a ruling if not through Sol's will?”
Grass gave Chain a small smile. “That's the decision you came to, Contegon?”
“I did,” Chain whispered. She realised that was unfair on the dying woman, so she raised her voice. “I decided that what I felt and thought had to be wrong. It was the hardest thing I've ever done, letting go of what I thought I knew: every Contegon is told they know best, that they act in Sol's interests, and yet I misconstrued Sol's will simply because I felt betrayed by someone who had once been my best friend.”
Grass closed her eyes. “Even Contegons can be pigheaded.”
Chain laughed. “Yes. Yes we can. Everyone can. I guess that was what I learned from my own Heresy: that everyone, regardless of Station or status, can be misled by Lun.”
Chain closed her eyes. Even now, she felt enmity toward the Acolyte Councillor. She had come to accept that she represented Sol, that her powers were a gift to help Geos face the Disciples, but that didn't mean she had to like it: Sol was brightness, but he was also fire. And no one enjoyed the fact that fire burns.
“I told the Guardian this after some times,” she said after a while. “He had put off meeting me following the Hereticum so as to not sour the celebrations of the Battle for Aureu, or the Geos-wide joy at the creation of the Acolyte Station. No one wanted to face a hero of the Second Invasion being a Heretic. When I told him what I just told you, he gave me an odd look and said, 'We all find ourselves tempted by Lun.' Those words, more than anything else, have stayed with me and determined the kind of Contegon I wanted to be. The Guardian showed me compassion, understanding, in letting me keep my Station, and he shared with me that he too was tempted: what else could I do but show that same compassion to everyone else?”
Chain looked up. Grass was asleep, a smile on her face.
The Contegon wiped her eyes and pulled the blanket further over Grass. She considered what to do next, and decided to leave one of her hand axes beside the woman's bed as a promise that she would return.