Weaves of Ashes

Chapter 536: Chapter 531: The First Article

Location:Obsidian Academy — The Old Armory

Date/Time:6 Ashwhisper, 9942 AZI — Later

Realm:Lower Realm

One of the two lit forges had burned down, and nobody had fed it; the armory had gone from too warm to merely warm, and Bai Shu had put her outer robe back on without noticing she was doing it.

Ryo pulled a stool to the end of the second bench where the light was still good, and opened the ledger, and everybody in the room recognized the gesture and went quiet for it.

”Then the number,” he said. ”I have been working to five thousand.”

”Five thousand is the force at the end of the first year, and it is not the order.” Jayde did not have to think about it. ”Seven thousand two hundred. Five thousand for the force. Twelve hundred for the first Military Academy intake, who will be standing in a flooded valley in year two because that is the entire point of the field service, and you cannot put a sixteen-year-old in a valley in his own clothes. Four hundred against loss, theft, fire, and the ones that come back unusable. Six hundred as a strategic reserve, held whole, in a dry building, and never issued to make a shortfall go away — because the first time somebody eats the reserve to look competent in year three, we have no reserve in year nine.”

Ryo wrote for a while.

”Seven thousand two hundred,” he said. ”Fifty-three items of kit, and four weapons on top of that, so fifty-seven. That is a little over four hundred thousand pieces in twelve months, before a single bolt.”

”Four hundred and ten thousand four hundred, before bolts.”

”Of course it is,” said Feng Lian.

”It is not one problem, it is fifty-seven problems,” Ryo went on, ”and about fifty of them are solvable, and I want to be clear that solvable means difficult.” He put the pen down. ”Boots are not solvable.”

”Properly.”

”Fourteen thousand four hundred pairs. Identical, in graded sizes, in a year.” He looked up. ”There is no bootmaker on this continent who has made a thousand pairs in his life. The good ones make forty a year; they fit them to the foot in front of them, they are proud of it, and they are right to be. You are asking for a thing that has never existed. Not once, not anywhere, not for anybody.”

”Cloth?”

”Cloth I can do, and I do not enjoy being able to. Cloth is eleven provinces with looms already running and nothing to do in winter.” Ryo tapped the ledger. ”It is the boots, the canteens, and the metal. Everything with a shape in it.”

”Your timeline is the impossible part and not your quantities,” Feng Lian said. ”I want that on the record, because in four years somebody is going to say the numbers were fantasy and they were not. Given nine years, I could build this out of this continent. You have given us one.”

”I have given you one because I have one,” Jayde said.

***

She pulled the tarpaulin off the end of the second bench.

Ten bundles. Black cloth, folded, tied with cord, a paper tag on each.

”Ryo. Read the tags.”

Ryo turned the top one over and did not say anything for a second.

”It has my name on it.”

He went down the stack while the room got very quiet, and when he had finished, he put both hands on the bench on either side of them.

”They all have our names on them.”

***

”Fits,” Meifen said. It was not a question. She had turned to look at Eden.

Eden turned a page over and did not look up from it.

”The morning after the forecourt,” she said. ”Every one of you. I told you it was for the record, and it was for the record, and it was also for this, and I am not going to apologize for either half.”

”You measured my arms.”

”I measured everybody’s arms. I measured Zhong twice because he stood at attention and told me that was standing.”

”It is standing,” Zhong said.

”It is standing at attention, and it cost you half an inch across the back, and if that coat binds tonight you will say so, and I will write down that you were right.”

Feng Lian made a sound she did not entirely cover.

***

Jayde took the top bundle off the stack and did not put it on the table.

She carried it around the bench and put it into Zhong’s hands.

He took it the way a man takes a thing he has not decided about, and then he looked down at the tag with his own name on it and said nothing at all.

She did the same for every one of them. Meifen. Ruifen, who did not look at it. Shenwei, who did. Feng Lian, who weighed hers on her palm out of pure habit and then looked embarrassed about it. Bai Shu. Hu Bing, who came two steps off the wall to take his and went back to the wall with it. Kiran, who put the satchel on the floor to have both hands free. Ryo last, who said ”Commander” very quietly and nothing else.

Eden’s she did not carry anywhere. Eden had picked hers up while Jayde was crossing the room, and had not needed to be told which one was hers.

Nobody in that armory had ever been handed anything by a commanding officer. On this continent, a soldier is a man who brought his own boots.

”Put them on,” Jayde said.

***

There was a moment where nobody wanted to be first, and then Bai Shu untied her cord, because she was the youngest and because Meifen had looked at her.

The coat came out black and heavy and smelled of new wool and something faintly bitter under it. There was a strip of stitched cloth above the breast with BAI SHU on it in plain block letters. She got a thumb over the letters and left it there a second longer than she meant to.

After that they all did it, and for a while the armory was nothing but the sound of ten people getting into unfamiliar clothing badly.

Ruifen found the shoulder seam sat wrong until she stopped holding herself square and let it fall, and then it did not. Shenwei got his arm through the wrong side and had to start again and nobody laughed, which was its own kind of remark. Zhong put his on the way he did everything, and stood in it, and rolled the shoulders once, and did not say a word about the half inch. Kiran’s fitted so exactly that he checked the tag twice.

Meifen did not put hers on at all until everybody else had, and then she did it fast, in one motion, the way you pull on something you have decided about.

***

”Then read each other,” Jayde said. ”That is the whole design, and you are wearing it. Nobody is going to explain it to a farmer in a flooded field.”

They looked.

Black, all of it, cuff to hem, the same black at both ends of the bolt. Leather at the shoulder and forearm. And at the edge of every collar, a thin line of cord in a color that was not black — and it was different on almost every one of them.

”Red,” said Bai Shu, looking at Meifen. ”And Ruifen.”

”Line. Red out of madder, which grows in four provinces and is the cheapest strong dye on this continent.” Jayde turned her own collar out. ”Green for Medical, out of woad and weld together. Ochre for Engineering. Blue for Logistics, out of woad alone. And Command wears undyed.”

Zhong looked down at his own, which was white and plain.

”No color.”

”No color. The branch that gives the orders takes none of its own, and it is also the cheapest cord in the room, and I would like both of those to be true at the same time.”

Meifen had gone quiet in the way that meant she was doing sums.

”You told us for an hour that we cannot dye seven thousand bolts of cloth.”

”We cannot.”

”No — you can do this, and I have just seen why.” She held the collar edge out between two fingers. ”A hand’s length per man is not a bolt. You could dye the cord for the entire force in one pot in one afternoon and have some left over. That is the difference between a coat and an army. The expensive thing is the acres of it. Not the inch.”

”That is exactly it,” Jayde said, ”and I would like it in the record that she got there off a collar and not off a ledger.”

Ryo was already writing.

+++

”And the metal,” Feng Lian said.

She had two small cast pieces on her collar and had been turning her head to catch them in the forge light since she put the coat on.

”Rank.” Jayde went around them without hurrying. ”Nothing on this uniform is script, and that is not for your benefit. Every person who ever puts this on will have come out of a school where letters came before anything else, and I am more certain of that than I am of most things I have said tonight.” She stopped at Ruifen’s collar. ”But it is not being read by the wearer. It is being read by a man standing in a flooded field at first light with his roof in the water and his son missing, who cannot read one word, and who has about four seconds to work out which of you to shout at. Everything on this coat is built for him. So it is shapes. Below officer, it is cloth chevrons on the sleeve, because a sergeant works with his hands in things, and metal on a shoulder is gone inside a month. Pips start at second lieutenant and count to captain. Above that, the shape changes rather than the number, because nobody counts six of anything under load.”

”And these?” Ruifen had one piece, not two.

”A major’s.”

Ruifen looked at it, and then at her.

”I am to run Operations for the whole force.”

”You are to run Operations for the whole force, and Operations is currently you, a list of eleven provinces, and two names you gave me an hour ago,” Jayde said it without any edge at all. ”Hu Bing’s division is a man and a rod. Bai Shu’s is a woman and a stack of paper nobody has written on. Feng Lian, your Ordnance is a broken badge and a promise about boots. If I put a general’s collar on any of that tonight, I have told my first lie, and I would have told it in week one, and about a thing I could have simply not lied about.”

Nobody argued with that immediately, which she took for what it was.

”So here is the rule, and it holds for every rank in this force forever. Nobody holds a rank larger than the thing they actually command.” She looked around at them. ”Ruifen, the day you have a thousand deployed, you are a colonel, and I will not need reminding. Meifen, when the Line has put four thousand through the common year, you are a general, and you will have earned it in daylight where four provinces watched you do it. Zhong is a colonel tonight because Zhong already commands something — he will be marking every instructor on this mountain inside a year, and they will not take it from a major.”

”Ten majors and a colonel,” Shenwei said. ”For a force that does not exist yet, and that we cannot count until the fourteen hundred have answered.”

”Yes.”

”How many do you think will?”

”I do not know, and I am not going to guess in front of you, because if I guess low I have insulted them and if I guess high I have to live in the number.” Jayde put her hand flat. ”Ask me in Emberrise. What I will say is that not one of them has to, and that every single one of them was told so in the forecourt before anybody was offered anything.”

”Yes. And in twenty years the same ten people will be generals, and nobody on this continent will be able to say the rank was given to them.”

***

Ryo had not written anything for a moment, which from him was an objection.

”Then I have a problem, and it is mine and not yours,” he said. ”I am to stand in front of magistrates and provincial stewards for the next forty years. Every one of them can read a collar. A clan sends a colonel to a land dispute over a well.” He turned his own collar out. ”You are sending a major to negotiate the founding of an institution.”

”I know.”

”They will read it as an insult before I open my mouth. Some of them will do it on purpose.”

”They will, and I am not going to fix it by giving you a rank you have not earned, because a lie that a magistrate can check is worse than a slight he can enjoy.” Jayde put her hand on the stack of smaller bundles that had been sitting at the end of the bench since she pulled the tarpaulin off. ”I am going to fix it with this instead.”

”What is that?”

”The thing that speaks when your rank cannot,” she said, and pulled the wrapping open.

***

Feng Lian had not stopped looking at her collar.

”Where did these come from?”

”The same place as the coat,” Jayde said. ”But that is not what you are asking.”

”No.” Feng Lian took the piece off and held it up. ”It is perfect. Two of them, both perfect, and they are the same. And there is not a die on this continent that will hold nine hundred strikes, and I have been standing here doing the arithmetic of fifty thousand of these all evening and getting nowhere.”

Jayde reached under the bench and put a flat wooden case on it and opened the lid.

Inside, in a bed of cloth, sat six bronze moulds. Rank pips. The plumb bob. Crossed spade and sword. The identity tag blank. The name plate. And one empty face with nothing cut into it at all.

Meifen came off her feet and got there first.

She picked one up, and turned it over, and went very still.

”This is a mould,” she said.

”That is a mould.”

”You are not giving me nine hundred badges. You are giving me the thing that makes them.” Meifen’s voice had changed entirely. ”Bronze. It will outlast me. It will outlast my apprentices. Cast off this in a village shed with a clay flask and river sand and you will get the same piece in Redwater as in Ironmarch, and I can copy it — I can cut a new one off this one in four days —”

”Then copy it. As many as you like, given to anybody who asks, and I want the sixth one in that case cut with whatever the units end up being called, by somebody who is not in this room.”

Meifen put the mould down very carefully, which for her was a statement.

”You have solved my year,” she said.

”I have solved four months of your year. You still have to find four hundred workshops and teach them and pay them and inspect what they send back.” Jayde closed the case and pushed it across. ”But you will not be starting from a cracked die, and nobody after you ever will.”

***

Ten smaller bundles. Black wool, folded tight.

”This force will have two orders of dress, and it will never have a third.” She put them down. ”Field order is what you are standing in. Dress order is what you are standing in, plus this, and nothing else changes — same coat, same boots, same collar, same name. No braid. No gold. No second-best coat kept clean for occasions.” She looked around at them. ”An army acquires its ceremonial before it acquires its rot, and the two arrive in the same cart. So it gets one object and no room to grow another.”

Shenwei picked his up and let it fall open.

A mantle, and a good deal more of it than any of them had expected out of a bundle that size. Black wool, cut to hang down the back from both shoulders and fall to the middle of the calf. No sleeves. No front to it at all.

He turned it over, and the lining was ochre.

”It is lined,” he said.

”In your branch. It hangs behind you, so it fouls nothing — not the sword arm, not the writing hand, not a man reaching for a rope.” Jayde shook her own out to show them. ”And when you turn, the whole of it shows, which is the point. A room can read where a man came up from before he opens his mouth.” Jayde looked at Ryo. ”And so that when a steward looks at your collar and sees a major, the next thing he looks at is that, and he does not know what it is, and he has to ask. A man who has to ask a question has stopped talking down to you.”

Ryo turned his over. The lining was blue.

”That is not an answer to the problem,” he said.

”No. It is a way of surviving the problem for twenty years until the rank catches up with the work, and I would rather hand you that than a lie.” She let him look at it. ”Also, no clan on this continent has one. Whatever they decide it means, they will have to decide it about us.”

Feng Lian had already found hers.

”You told us an hour ago we are majors.” She said it flatly. ”A mantle is a general’s. You have just handed one to a major, ten times over, and I would like to know which of the two things you said is the one you meant.”

”Both of them, and they do not contradict.” Jayde did not move. ”It is not a general’s mantle. It is the general staff’s, and the two are different words that this continent has never had a reason to separate. Your rank is what you command. The mantle is what you are in a room where somebody has to decide something for four hundred thousand people.” She looked around at them. ”You will be majors for twenty years, and you have been the general staff since the moment you signed. There is no version of that where the second one waits for the first.”

Ruifen turned hers over and found red.

”Then it is not a reward,” she said.

”It is not a reward. It is a costume for negotiating, and nobody below this table negotiates.”

***

Zhong had his open across both hands and had not said anything about it. When he turned it over, the lining was undyed — Command’s white, which was no color at all.

”And yours?” he asked.

Jayde turned hers.

It was white as well, and it was not the same white. No cord, no branch, nothing dyed and nothing chosen — the wool as it came off the sheep and out of the wash and nothing done to it since.

”The post came up through none of the five and belongs to all of them,” she said. ”And the clasps are a brigadier’s, and there is nothing above them, and there never will be.”

”At forty paces you will be indistinguishable from a brigadier,” Ryo said.

”At forty paces I will be indistinguishable from a brigadier, and so will whoever holds it after me.” She folded it over her arm. ”Nobody has ever assassinated anybody at a charter hearing. If they start, I will wear the coat.”

***

”Stand up,” Jayde said.

They stood.

She did not begin with Zhong.

She went to Bai Shu first, who was twenty-nine and a potter’s daughter and the youngest person in the room, and took the mantle out of her hands, and shook it out, and settled it across her shoulders herself, and closed the clasp at each one.

Nobody said anything about the order. Zhong looked at the floor for a moment, and then he looked back up, and Jayde saw him understand it and file it, and knew that everybody on this mountain would have it by tomorrow evening without her saying one word about it in public.

Then Meifen. Then Ruifen, who stood very straight and did not blink. Then Shenwei, who had to be told to stop trying to help. Feng Lian. Kiran, who had put the satchel down for the third time. Hu Bing, who came off the wall.

Then Ryo, who said ”Commander” again, exactly as quietly.

Then Zhong, who lowered his head slightly so that she could reach, which she had not asked for and which he did without any appearance of deciding to.

Then Eden, last, who looked at her for a moment while it settled, and neither of them said anything, because there was nothing either of them was going to say in front of eight other people about the last time one of them had put a uniform on the other, on the deck of a ship, in a life that had ended badly and was not on this world.

***

Jayde reached for her own, and Zhong took it out of her hands.

She let him.

He shook it out the way she had, and settled it across her shoulders, and closed both clasps with a certain amount of care — because they were a brigadier’s clasps with nothing above them, and he had clearly worked out what that meant.

”There is nobody senior to you,” he said, ”so it had to be the oldest, and I am the oldest in this room by a considerable margin.”

”Nobody is going to object.”

”Somebody will object. Somebody always does, and it will be in about two hundred years, and it will be somebody who has read that it happened and has opinions about how it should have been done.” Zhong stepped back and settled the shoulders of his own. ”And they may bring those opinions to me directly, because I intend to still be here, and I have found that most objections do not survive being made to a man’s face four hundred years after he has stopped caring what anybody thinks of him.”

***

They stood in it for a while.

Ten people in black in a warm room that smelled of quench water and new wool, ten thin lines of color at ten collars, ten linings showing when anybody moved.

Bai Shu was crying and not making any noise about it and not apologizing for it either, which Jayde thought was probably Meifen’s doing and did not check.

Nobody looked much like a soldier yet. The coats did not fit any of them properly and would not for a month. Hu Bing had his hands in the wrong place entirely.

It did not matter in the slightest.

***

”I will be at my father’s forge in nine days,” Meifen said.

She said it to the room and not to Jayde.

”I will tell him myself, before anybody in that province hears it from a clerk, and then I will come back here and start the common year, and by Ashbloom I will have the first drill written and Bai Shu will have told me which half of it is unteachable.”

Bai Shu wiped her face with the back of her wrist.

”By Ashbloom,” she said.

”Four workshops in eighteen months,” said Feng Lian, ”and I will name the provinces in Emberwane, and Hu Bing will have walked every site before I sign anything, because I have been sold flat ground twice in my life and it was not flat either time.”

”I have not agreed to that,” Hu Bing said.

”You have a division, a ledger and a horse waiting on it.”

”Then I will have forty fixed marks by midsummer,” Hu Bing said, ”and the first station sited before the snow, and I will not tell anybody what either of them is for.”

Ruifen said, ”Zheng Wei and Deng Hao by Kindleday. Companies formed inside a month.”

”Assessment standards in front of every instructor on this mountain before the amendment is filed,” Zhong said, ”so that nobody can say afterward they were not warned.”

”Refining as a compulsory fourth-year elective,” said Shenwei, ”and Daishan approached before Restday, quietly, by Zhong and not by the Commander.”

”The refusal clause in the founding instrument in my own hand,” Ryo said, ”and the ledger of houses opened tomorrow, with my own family at the top of it.”

Kiran did not look up. ”Routes doubled inside two years. Every entry kept. And I will find out who notices.”

”Every dose written down,” Eden said. ”Every reaction. A stop rule on everything that can kill somebody, in words a sergeant can read, before a single pill is issued.”

Nobody had asked any of them for that.

Ryo had written every word of it down, which nobody had asked him to do either.

***

”Read it back,” Jayde said.

He read it back. It took a while. It was nine sentences and a list of dates, and it was the first thing the Doha Defence Force ever put in writing that was not an order.

”Sign it,” she said. ”All of you. And me.”

They signed it on the end of a bench in an armory that smelled of quench water and new wool, in black coats that did not fit any of them perfectly yet, with the linings showing.

”That is not an oath,” Zhong said, when he had signed.

”No,” Jayde agreed. ”You have already sworn to me, and I have sworn to the charter, and neither of those is worth very much at three in the morning in year six.” She put the pen down. ”That is ten people telling each other a date, and me writing my name under it. It is the only thing I have ever seen hold when everything else went.”