The Giant's Almanac Andrew Zurcher (books to read fiction TXT) 📖

the Heresy, behind the smoke lifting from their chimneys and the evening sun where it glanced on their vanes and downspouts, lay the lawns and gardens, the great walls, the river, the valley, and green and rocky hills all around – the sea –

‘Before you go in there, you need to know what you’re up against.’

Dina stretched out her arms, as if she were a sorcerer summoning the vision before them.

‘These are the courts and halls of the Heresy. There are sixteen courts in all, and eight halls. Over each of the halls a single Officer presides.’ Dina moved to stand behind Fitz and, taking him firmly by the shoulders, steered him to the right. ‘The far courts to the east contain the Hall of the Sweeper. The Sweeper is a general, a planner, a surveyor. He deals in logistics, espionage, and on the financial side, everything from purchasing to investments. His hall is a giant arena called the Model, larger than a warehouse, ten times the size of the largest hangar you can imagine. It’s the biggest enclosed space in the world. And here he puts on simulations of every kind of system that interests him, from wars and diseases to financial markets and migration. He is shrewd, cunning, calculating, passionless. Never cross him.

‘Next to the Sweep, this side of the big court, there’s a much smaller court, dark and darkly towered. Do you see it?’ Fitz nodded. ‘That’s the Rackery. The Rack is basically a torturer, an artist of pain. He teaches all physical sports, along with the arts of fighting and of war. He teaches politics. He is mean, wary, violent. A tiger. You can trust poison; you can trust fire; you can trust a knife; you can trust him. His court is much smaller than the others, but he does all his work in the tower cells, which are these two towers just over there. In the tower cells or –’ Dina stopped, and raised her eyebrows. Fitz almost thought a smile touched her cheeks. ‘In other places.

‘Next over, the large court with the gorgeous brick palace, that’s the Registry. The Registrar you probably met when you arrived. He’s an archivist. He keeps records of everything that is, or has been, and his library – besides the seven storeys you see here – is mostly underground, built into the rock of the valley floor. The Registrar presides over all formal ceremonies in the Heresy, but we Apprentices know him more for the animals and fish he keeps. There are stables and stalls by the hundreds in his forecourt, and in the Registry itself a giant aquarium that rises six floors within the central staircase. Don’t fall in; it’s full of sharks.

‘The Master you know already. Truth is, we’ve hardly seen him for the last several years; he’s been off on Heresy business –’

Fitz cut her off. ‘He’s been living next door to –’

‘On Heresy business,’ repeated Dina. Her tone was final. ‘But all the central courts make up the Mastery, and they are all his – except for this one. His are the three towers in front of us; the far one, as you know, is yours.’

‘Who lives in the other two?’ asked Fitz.

‘He does.’ She tightened her grip on his shoulders, so hard he winced. ‘And I do. The Master is second only to the Heresiarch. He leads the Officers. He teaches all forms of play. Language is his province, and literature. Music. Stories. Poetry. Dreams. Ethics. He gets into other people’s heads. Believe me, he already knows you better than you know yourself. And so he cannot be trusted.’

Fitz recoiled from this as from a snake. He looked away, towards the west, towards the sea, to the far, light-spangled halls of golden stone, with their tall windows like a cathedral’s, and turned spires.

‘The last courts, on the west, are the Keeper’s. In the Keep she teaches arts of all kinds, anything to do with hands. She has a vast library, studios, galleries. Some of the Apprentices will tell you she dabbles in magic. But that’s nonsense.

‘The middle courts on the west side are the Jack’s. The Jackery is a place of illusions, paradoxes, impossibilities and contrafactuals. He’s a logician, a mathematician, a sceptic. You can’t imagine the things he knows – and neither can he, because he doesn’t believe any of them. The Jackery itself is in the court with the giant atrium, just there –’ she pointed to it, where the glass roof still glittered as the light finally dropped behind the sea cliffs – ‘but the Jack spends most of his time meditating, outside, under the plane trees. He’ll work anywhere, on any surface: paper, walls, blades of grass, whatever. You’ve seen him. He looks solid enough, but he’s slippery.

‘And last but not least – especially not if you’re as hungry as I am – the Commissar. Her main house is the Refectory, which is this huge beamed hall just below us here.’ She gestured to the steeply pitched leaden roof in front of them. ‘Technically speaking it’s the Commissary, but we usually call it the Lantern Hall. That’s where we have all our meals. The Commissar is in charge of food, stores, nutrition, health, everything to do with the body. She’s a biologist, really, and a chemist, and knows everything about the living and the physical world. She studies drugs and medicines, surgery, psychology, the brain, that sort of stuff. But she also knows everything there is to know about plants, trees, geology, whatever. She’s another one you can trust. You have to. If you don’t, she might poison you.’

Dina poked him, hard, in the back, and he startled, jumping, so that he teetered for a moment on the very edge of the steps, and thought he would fall. He spun round, meaning to protest, but the sight of the gorgeous temple behind Dina took his breath away. It was the only bright thing in the whole of the Heresy now,