He was learning patience, at least.
The stretches of uncultivated country between the villages grew wider. There were fewer flooded fields and more ruined tombs, overgrown with creepers and moss amidst rustling stands of bamboo or clumps of date or oil palms, or copses of dark green swamp cypress. Then they passed the last village and the road widened into a long, straight pavement. It was like the ancient road that ran between the river and the edge of the Silent Quarter downriver of Aeolis, Yama thought, and then he realized that it was the same road.
It was the third day of the journey. They camped that night in a hollow with tall pines leaning above. Wind moved through the doffing branches of the pines. The Great River stretched away toward the Galaxy, which even at this late hour showed only the upper part of the Arm of the Warrior above the horizon, with the Blue Diadem gleaming cold and sharp at the upflung terminus of the lanes of misty starlight.
Halo stars were like dimming coals scattered sparsely across the cold hearth of the sky; the smudged specks of distant galaxies could be seen here and there.
Yama lay near the little fire on a soft, deep layer of brown pine needles and thought of the Ancients of Days and wondered what it might be like to plunge through the emptiness between galaxies for longer than Confluence had been in existence. And the Ancients of Days had not possessed one hundredth of the power of their distant children, the Preservers.
Yama asked Prefect Corin if he had ever seen the Ancients of Days after they had arrived at Ys. For a long time, the man did not answer, and Yama began to believe that he had not been heard, or that Prefect Corin had simply ignored the question. But at last the Prefect knocked out his pipe on the heel of his boot and said, “I saw two of them once. I was a boy, a little older than you, and newly apprenticed. They were both tall, and as alike as brothers, with black hair and faces as white as new paper. We say that some bloodlines have white skin—your own is very pale—but we mean that it has no pigmentation in it, except that it is suffused by the blood in the tissues beneath. But this was a true white, as if their faces had been powdered with chalk. They wore long white shirts that left their arms and legs bare, and little machines hung from their belts. I was in the Day Market with the oldest of the apprentices, carrying the spices he had bought. The two Ancients of Days walked through the aisles at the head of a great crowd and passed by as close to me as you are now.”
“They should have been killed, all of them. Unfortunately, it was not a decision the Department could make, although even then, in Ys, it was possible to see that their ideas were dangerous. Confluence survives only because it does not change. The Preservers unite us because it is to them that each department swears its loyalty, and so no department shows particular favor to any of the bloodlines of Confluence. The Ancients of Days have infected their allies with the heresy that each bloodline, indeed every individual, might have an intrinsic worth. They promote the individual above society, change above duty. You should reflect on why this is wrong, Yama.”
“Is it true that there are wars in Ys now? That different departments fight each other, even in the Palace of the Memory of the People?”
Prefect Corin gave him a sharp look across the little fire and said, “You have been listening to the wrong kind of gossip.”
Yama was thinking of the curators of the City of the Dead, whose resistance had dwindled to a stubborn refusal to yield to the flow of history. Perhaps Derev would be the last of them. He said, trying to draw out the Prefect, “But surely there are disputes about whether one department or another should carry out a particular duty. I have heard that outmoded departments sometimes resist amalgamation or disbandment, and I have also heard that these disputes are increasing, and that the Department of Indigenous Affairs is training most of its apprentices to be soldiers.”
“You have a lot to learn,” Prefect Corin said. He tamped tobacco into the bowl of his pipe and lit it before adding, “Apprentices do not choose the way in which they serve the Department, and you are too young to be an apprentice in any case. You have had an odd childhood, with what amounts to three fathers and no mother. You have far too much pride and not enough education, and most of that in odd bits of history and philosophy and cosmology, and far too much in the arts of soldiering. Even before you can be accepted as an apprentice, you will have to catch up in all the areas your education has neglected.”
Yama said, “I think I might make a good soldier.”
Prefect Corin drew on his pipe and looked at Yama with narrowed eyes. They were small and close together, and gleamed palely in his black-furred face. The white stripe ran past the outer corner of his left eye. Eventually he said, “I came down here to execute two men because their crimes involved the Aedile’s private life. That is the way it is done in the Department. It demonstrates that the Department supports the action of its man, and it ensures that none of the local staff have to do the job. That way, there is no one for the locals to take revenge on, with the exception of the Aedile himself, and no one will do that as long as he commands his garrison, because he has the authority of the Preservers. I agreed to bring you to Ys because it is my duty. It does not mean I owe you anything, especially answers to your questions. Now get some sleep.”
Later, long after the Prefect had rolled himself in his blanket and gone to sleep, Yama cautiously stood and backed away from the fire, which had burnt down to white ash around a dimming core of glowing coals. The road stretched away between hummocks of dry friable stone and clumps of pines. Its paved surface gleamed faintly in the light of the Galaxy. Yama settled his pack on his shoulders and set off. He wanted to go to Ys, but he was determined not to become an apprentice clerk, and after the final dismissal of his worth he thought that he could not bear Prefect Corin’s company a day longer.
He had not gone very far down the road when he heard a dry rattle in the darkness ahead. Yama put his hand on the hilt of his knife, but did not draw it from its sheath in case its light betrayed him. He advanced cautiously, his eyes wide, his whole skin tingling, his blood rustling in his ears. Then a stone smashed onto the paved road behind him! He whirled around, and another stone exploded at his feet. A fragment cut his shin, and he felt blood trickle into his boot.
He gripped the knife tightly and said, “Who is it? Show yourself!”
Silence, and then Prefect Corin stepped up behind Yama and gripped the wrist of his right hand and said in his ear, “You have a lot to learn, boy.”
“A clever trick,” Yama said. He felt oddly calm, as if he had expected this all along.
After a moment Prefect Corin released him and said, “It is lucky for you I played it, and no one else.” Yama had never seen Prefect Corin smile, but in the blue light of the Galaxy he saw the man’s lips compress in what might have been the beginning of a smile. “I promised to look after you, and so I will. Meanwhile, no more games. All right?”
“All right,” Yama said.
“Good. You need to sleep. We still have a long way to go.”
Early the next day, Yama and Prefect Corin passed a group of palmers. They soon left the group behind, but the palmers caught up with them that night and camped a little way off.
They numbered more than two decads, men and women in dust-stained orange robes, their heads cleanly shaven and painted with interlocked curves which represented the Eye of the Preservers. They were a slightly built people, with pinched faces under swollen, bicephalic foreheads, and leathery skin mottled with brown and black patches. Like Prefect Corin, they carried only staffs, bedrolls, and little purses hung from their belts. They sang in clear high voices around their campfire, welding close harmonies that carried a long way across the dry stones and the empty tombs of the hillside.