[Fic] "Pebble on a Mountain" -- original story, Firsthome

[edenfalling]

Here is some more Estarian history, this from... around the year 2235, I think, which means roughly five centuries before Ekanu's birth. The Three-Day Revolution that breaks the Estarin Empire erupts in 2250 FF, instigated by the Inner Ring in response to a summer of ratcheting tension, starting with an army draft, a rebellion in Merua, a tax increase, and a drought. Eventually a protest outside the Imperial Palace turns into a riot, in the course of which the Imperial Guard kills several dozen people. And the city explodes.

(There's a lot of other stuff going on in other regions of the Empire -- the draft was to suppress a rebellion in Kerabada, for example -- but the Revolution essentially decapitates the Empire by killing the Emperor, the High Priest of the Church of Three, and an awful lot of the nobility and high military bureaucracy. Nobody ever quite manages to get control again as the provinces break away and/or disintegrate, though the Empress Consort gives it a damn good try for several years.)

But this is about fifteen years earlier, when Tallo Nashialle and Svedanya sin Alar (two of the central figures in the Revolution) first meet as young teens in the slums of imperial Estara. (575 words)

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Pebble on a Mountain
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The skinny, black-haired girl picked herself up off the cobblestones and shoved her finger into Tallo's chest. "Watch where you're going, you son of a splay-footed ox!" Her voice and the set of her face were so fierce that Tallo took a half-step backwards before he remembered he was taller, stronger, and also he'd tried to swerve around her instead of bulling straight through the narrow alley.

"You ran into me," he said.

"Like that matters? I'm smaller, so it's your responsibility to not hurt me. Lady Eloriel said so herself: Hymn to the Star, number thirty-six, verse five." The girl grinned, all teeth and angles. Her tangled hair flapped in the wind, a few strands whipping across her face.

Tallo rolled his eyes. "I'm not Trinitarian. And anyway, I don't see a cuff on your wrist." He held his own out by way of demonstration, pulling up the pale cotton sleeve to show the iron band. "Free citizens are responsible for slaves."

The girl blinked. Then her grin sharpened further. "Nice counter. Of course, that doesn't explain what a house slave to a rich family is doing down in the slums, and it's just asking for me to report you for insolence, but nice."

In the back of his head, carefully separated from what he let show in his face and posture, Tallo winced. Yeah, getting the last word in an argument wasn't worth the kind of trouble he'd just let himself in for. Then again...

"You don't seem all that eager to find a guard," he said. "You're still standing here, and you've been keeping your voice low."

The girl had the nerve to laugh at him. Tallo waited her out; he had no particular need to be back at Lord Sintarris's villa until sundown, since he'd written today's chore roster to give himself a free afternoon.

"You're sharp," the girl said. "Yeah, I don't want the guards noticing me either. They're not especially fond of Mockers." She crossed her wrists over her nonexistent chest, fingers spread wide in mimicry of the Raven's wings, and gave him a little bow. "I'm Svedanya sin Alar. My family runs the Three-Spoked Wheel; we're playing the life of Eloriel this month. You?"

"Tallo Nashialle, third-generation slave, in service to the Sintarris family," Tallo answered.

"Obviously not very strenuous service," Svedanya observed slyly. "Or are you running away?"

Tallo shrugged. "I write the chore roster. It's not hard to give people a day off now and then -- we can run the estate one or two hands short unless there's a feast or a crisis. This is my free afternoon."

"And what your master doesn't know won't hurt him," Svedanya concluded. Her sharp grin slid across her face again. "I like you. Say, if you don't have anything else to do, would you like to come to the theater and watch the afternoon show? There are salted nuts and watered beer if you're hungry, and I could use someone to look over my spelling on the playbills."

Tallo thought about his empty pockets and the annoyance of stealing food from street vendors, and about the way Mockers were almost lower than slaves in the eyes of the Empire. And it was always nice to be appreciated.

"Yeah, sure," he said. "If the play's good, I may even come back in a few sixdays. But don't get your hopes up."

"You're not fooling me," Svedanya said, but she grabbed his hand and pulled him down the alley without mocking him further.

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Inspired by the 7/19/10 15_minute_fic word #144: collide

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Funny; I'd thought those two didn't meet until they were adults. Which goes to show you how little I know about my own world sometimes. *wry*

Comments

[theodosia21]

I think I like them!

[edenfalling]

I am rather fond of them myself. :-)

I'm curious, though -- how much of the context came through in the ficlet? Because there's a lot of implied world-building about slavery, religion, and social organization going on -- and an awful lot more that shapes and supports the visible bits despite remaining unwritten here -- and I always wonder how the knowledge in my head does or doesn't translate onto the page.

[theodosia21]

I think you've got a fair amount coming through here- society that accepts slavery, but has the ideal that free citizens take care of them, and even when that ideal isn't lived up to, slavery isn't *necessarily* terrible. That is, Tallo can get a free afternoon off here and there if he wants too. The main local religion isn't universal, but it also includes the expectation that the strong will protect those weaker than themselves. Actors are referred to as Mockers- perhaps they provide an acceptable form of social criticism? Not necessarily popular, but tolerated. And they're performing a religious tale- that's interesting. Possibly meant to be ironic? Compare the ideals of the religion to the actual practice? Or maybe I'm just reading to much into it. Still, Svedanya doesn't seem to be taking it too seriously.

Um, there probably is more in there I should notice, but it's late and my brain is going fuzzy. Hopefully I didn't completely misinterpret something!

[edenfalling]

Oh good, that is pretty much what I was trying to get across! *is relieved*

Some stuff I couldn't get into the ficlet: Svedanya is not taking the religious stuff seriously because she's not actually Trinitarian either. :-) The Mockers are a religious and cultural subgroup of Eastern Estarians, and as such are Akhite. More specifically, they are members of the Raven-cult, which gets them a lot of grief from the Empire, since the raven was the symbol of Selindra, the city-state that ancient Estara fought against for several centuries. (Roughly speaking, if Estara is Rome, Selindra was Carthage.)

So "Mocker" refers to a person who is "mocking" part of the founding myth of Estara and the Empire, though really Raven-the-Akhite-god has nothing to do with the battlefield symbolism of Selindra's ravens. A lot of Mockers have gone into acting because it's a "low" profession and therefore one of the few open to them in the Empire. A lot of others are wanderers, a bit like the Romany or the Irish Travellers. But they have taken the name and made it their own, and now they do, as you guessed, provide a semi-acceptable form of social criticism. So yeah, Svedanya's family's choice of play is both a way to make themselves look harmless (they're glorifying the Empire's official religion!) and a way to make a pointed comment about the hypocrisy of people who don't live up to Eloriel's example.

Also, in the days of Estara's elected kings and even the early imperial era, slavery was mostly a time-limited way of working off debts -- more like indentured servitude, really. Later on it became more institutionalized, such that slavery could be inherited (at least for a couple generations), and war captives also became slaves. But there are still rules, though they're often weaseled around by the time of the Revolution. Also, slavery is not racially-based, though given the enslavement of war captives, there are a lot of non-Estarian slaves in Estara and other major port cities. Tallo himself is a halfbreed; his mother was Sheng, from Yanomy.

[theodosia21]

Interesting! Are you planning to post more from this era?

[edenfalling]

Actually, yes! Against the Flood, in which Empress Consort Maranea de Colleua mourns her husband's death.