The Command struck the man. His face shot back and was eaten by the soil.

  The snow touched and coolled the man's bones. The metal struck his cheek and it came undone. The signs worked to fix it, but they were little and cautious. A knee fell to his chest, and more metal followed. It was too much for the little words to help.

  His jaw was blown apart. The woman and her thrust watched. Everything fell apart. In his I, Disorder. The end of Harmony, vanished in the shake of a feurkun gapman.

  His vision blurred. The Command struck him twice, and once again, until their eyes disappeared and for a little while, darkness was complete.

  The days and weeks proceeded. Sometimes an agony surfaced, a part which was not him, and he called it back. That was night. But these times were eased by what he saw.

  A knowing thing could see it all in the dark. Sight, in his eye of possibility, gave repair where words did not. He watched others from his darkness, came out from it, and thrust himself into the little ones. A warm stream of hope ran across his body.

  With his great displeasure, one night- his sights grew small and messed, and were reduced to a sound.

  Creating one.

  Creating one.

  Answer me… for I have fallen hard and far.

  He stirred. Who are you?

  A man.

  A man does not shiver so.

  I am a man. You were the lower of my point. The lower one of mine…

  A lower thing I am.

  No. Your offerings are ended. He is never coming back.

  My offerings, ended? I do not believe it. How would it appear?

  It will not… I am open to you, Joyborn one. A man has his needs… I believed I could move again.

  A man does not shiver so.

  These feurkun ones. They are a growing kind. There shall be no positions inside Harmony. There shall be but movement, and no firm for it. Every man shall fall. I am open to you. I want to be your friend.

  Only a friend is my foe.

  The voice recoiled. Look at your seat, it said. Are you now a man? The firm is thrown. The firm is torn back. What thunder do you have for it? A lack, and the cantfowkat will cover all. There will be no firms, no points. The pointless things will eat us!

  There was a laugh.

  Gap! Sweet, wayward gap! What thunder have you to offer? All this you say is a shining wind. Whatever your shape, sweet gap, your fear is my joy.

  I will bring in good to our mouths by it. When Partless stands, if one is gone, he will create another. What was De to you? The firm made him from a stone. Thrust his words into another. Sett, Sett, Sett! We will Thrust them into the whole cantfowkat!

  The whole heart shall be our body. That is a simple task. And when it is done, I will eat you up. I will see your taste. I will hunt your frame with thunder. There are always new tastes and shapes for a gapless man. And a man does not shiver. Now come.

  …

  Come.

  The voice did not speak again.

  The eyes of the man stayed closed. For a while, his work continued only there, and brought him warmth.

  They opened.

  Joyborn's mouth ached. The bed he was on was stuffed with a feather whose texture and density he kept a memory of, and would be pleased to sit on. When he tried to see, he was weighed down by heavy rocks. He lifted them.

  He threw himself up and out of repose. Light streamed in from a viewlet, where the busyness of a Larun fortress provided itself in part. He grabbed the shouts of men, the rumbling of wheels on stone, and metal banging metal.

  A basin cut from smooth white stone was given gleam by the dawn. He walked over to it and looked down, taking his reflection, and the image of himself.

  He was without cuts or blemishes. He had been shaved, and hair-cut. He put a hand on his face and inspected the edge in the light. Looking closer, he found a small, ragged black tuft, which crawled past his ear and blew in the gentle breeze enabled by the viewlet. He wished to frown then. But his face became his face, and it did not.

  His eyes bulged. The right side of his mouth was hauled up by its corner. The bones and muscles and bent and contorted into a scratched ascent that fixed in place a smile. He released his hand from it.

  He plunged down into the water and sucked. It entered him in snarling, spitting gulps. His hands gripped the edge of the pool and cut in to the stone.

  When it was empty, he swallowed once more and stood up.

  -

  The door to Joyborn's room was heavy and wooden, at the end of a long hallway, filled with stone vases and hanging lanterns. All was covered grey and blue, with a moist sheen in the air as the fog based by a long court-garden that the hallway opened into.

  Three men, Joyborn's Seeds, sat and stood by the door, dressed in metal plates that were too big for them, but which they carried the weight and straps of with great emphasis. Their chins were hairless, and their dark skin glowed in places it was not struck or scarred.

  One of the Seeds, standing closest to the door, asked one who was sitting by the wall, "Cord, when will the Housepoint stand up?"

  Cord replied, "Soon. The signs touch him now. They do their fixing work."

  "He has so few. I wish he would be given more by the Firmpoints."

  The other Seed, who stood in the garden smelling a white-yellow flower, spoke back, "He will take parts for his work when we reach Herdetopp. They have the tools there; the parts will bring him signs."

  The door to the main hall opened. The Seeds fell silent and to their knees, in the direction of the doorway, when his shadow entered the frame.

  "Goodmen," Partless said. He coughed and a hand reached out, beckoning. "I need one. The haircutter, please. Come, come. There is work to do."

  The youngest boy stood and followed Partless into his room. The door closed and its bolt locked in.

  When it grew silent, the bolt slid back and the door opened fully, letting in the gray morning light. His voice moved out from his features, which were soaked and dripping chin down. The drops traced his shape.

  "The more of you now," he said. "Please, sons. We have much to say."

  The Seeds did not hesitate to enter, but when they had, there was nothing to be said.

  Joyborn had seated himself on his bed.

  "Close the door," he said. Blood flowed from his chin as the words left his body.

  After they had, Joyborn wiped his mouth one a sheet.

  "How long have I laid down?" he asked his Seeds.

  "Sixty days, Housepoint."

  "What is this Firm from which I rise?"

  "Awes Couth, Housepoint. Beyond the marked cantfowkat. Three days away from Herdetopp."

  Joyborn nodded. He held his head.

  "I am not a beast," he said. His hands, chest, pelvis, mouth, and teeth, all red, moved into them. "I am a man, and I regret the work done here. I did not mean to hurt him."

  He clasped his hands. A few hesigns crawled along his bare arms. "To make me seem a feurkun thing, as this man did, was a wrong of his, and it could not go by. That, too, works hurt. So please do not worry about this. All of you are blameless ones. But even if I had not been so strong, I would have needed to send out this false-speaker from our house. We did not want him to present us to our friends, who price high their own company. Their punishments are expensive and shameful."

  "Yes prodda."

  "Yes, prodda."

  Joyborn wiped more blood from his chin.

  "The heartless things will get rid of this," he said. "Now dress me, and bring me to the points of this house."

  -

  The Seeds assented, and Joyborn was clad in a bright silver bryst. He and his unders pervaded the short wooden shafts of the Couth's papersquare, descending steps in a file.

  Joyborn picked a red drop from his cheek. "Where are your brothers, Second?" Joyborn asked. "Have they been offered a different cell?"

  "The section is dropped, Producer," a Seed with a firm jaw replied. ‘The mass of us keeps in the soil of Partplant. There were many tippers, and they were very strong."

  "That blocks us," Joyborn said. "Go to the seat's wing-house. Send word to goodpoint Aldark. Have him follow us with further groups. Enough, twice, to refresh your number."

  "There are but two hundred Seeds that keep, Housepoint. With this, Lowcliff would be halved."

  "Then see it halved. Where is The Cane?"

  Joyborn's third, a boy nearly as tall as he, said, "He is departed from us, Producer. He was called away at the moment of our coming. We have not been told where he is."

  "Ask."

  They reached the base of The Couth and a pair of black doors, which Joyborn threw open. They emerged into a broad, sunny core, which fluttered with bodies. Freemen, Laruns, Goals and roadpeople roamed in discrete sectors of pits and tents and the gapped, peaking trailers where they kept meat and drink. Groups of nivmen sparred in their quarter, and others received lecture from green-cloaked majams reading paper. Smoke and the musty smell of spirits moved out from all of them, camps laid with carts and tarps and roundseats.

  Joyborn looked out at it, and said, "I want his eye on me."

  His Seeds moved back into the papersquare.

  Joyborn moved, his boots crunching splashes of melted frost, toward the Couth's large gate, which faced North and all Goalish country. At its foot, a man in a plated, gem-trimmed bryst looked on from the side as a train of carts was ported through by his men and Freemen. The nivmen marked each visiting cart, took parts from the pilots, and guided them to free squares where other carriages were unloaded by more hunchbacked porters.

  "Ha, friend!" Partless cried. The bryst-covered man turned, and his features recoiled when they came in view of Joyborn's mouth and chest.

  "K-Kontor Joyborn," he exclaimed.

  "No, Firstpoint," Joyborn said. He reached out and took the Larun's wrist, sending a shock through him that his grip stilled. "I am not Kontor here. This is your seat. And it does find a high price."

  Silver bands stamped in the kontor's cheeks stretched out as he produced a smile. "It is a shining one," he said. "But what is this water, point? Are you hit? Your face is covered over."

  "I am stood up, Kontor Couth," Joyborn said. "I am like Sharpness, after his Right-Handed night in Sunmass. Let me go to your rooms. There is much to speak about."

  He did not release the kontor's wrist until his head had dipped down, into a slow, shaking nod.

  -

  The paperroom of Kontor Awes was small. Joyborn's quarters in he same building might have been larger, and his own spots in Lowcliff could surely fit it in their own twice over. Its tables were tilted. Bowls of ink, unwashed, and splotched, where host to brushes that lounged around their edges. One had been scattered to a corner. The white-green sheets of transmission, passed from rider to rider and wing to wing, were bent, old and cracked. Many dangled from rolls at the kontor's station.

  A Freemen, heeding Awes' pointing, moved to a tray on that table and dispensed ochre fluid from a silver pitched into two smoothstone cups, and these features were the only ones with marks where they had been watered, scoured, and scented. The Freeman brought them to his Firstpoint, who brought them to his Firstpoint, who brought them nothing, as he was fixed a place they could not reach.

  Partless' looked moved out from a wide viewlet located on the room's far wall, draped by dark grey curtains. The warmth streamed in and blew them apart. His eyes ran over the swarms of road people inhabiting the center of the Couth, the shades of their skin mixing as they tore apart and destroyed the snow and its single pleasance, in like with the day of green beyond the walls of the fortress. But he did not see that.

  "Drink some Bright, Kontor Lowcliff," Awes said. The corner of Joyborn's mouth flicked around and he moved his eyes to the liquid being proferred. "You have seen only night so long."

  "I have. You are kind, Firstpoint, but I don't drink spirits."

  Awes' grin departed. He moved back to his table and set the cups on it.

  "It is awful to hear what happened," he said. "The attack of your own son… that this pain has not taken you- it speaks to a high place with Sett."

  "I price high all my children, and I do not remove it from this one. The cantfowkat is a Right-Handed Place. Even now, it sweeps over these walls, and its air swings us about. That is what would bring him such an aggressing way."

  "I hope your cut is fixing," he said. "The majams were going to have eighthroot prepared. For your pain."

  "I do not drink spirits."

  Awes was silent then. Joyborn turned away from the viewlet.

  "I wished for its report," he said. "Our path, my Kontor De, the advance of our tell. Have words missed me in my night?"

  "Your Kontor has returned to the rounds. He has gone in search of The Dry Man."

  "Gone?" Joyborn's brow furrowed.

  "Yes, it's true. Eight days, by sunset."

  "I cannot see it. He was told- to stand my work, to keep me in his eye."

  "There was a new tell." Awes laid one hand over another. "It was… this word. This word we received. From higher points."

  "From who, Kontor Couth?"

  "Firstpoint Teller."

  Joyborn nodded. "Do you have the papers?"

  Awes fumbled through his table and removed a short note from a stack of them. He passed it to Joyborn, who took it up. and read it. His brow lifted.

  "Have you returned a wing?" he asked.

  "Yes, Firstpoint. To tell them of your coming."

  Joyborn's eyes did not leave the message. "Prepare many more. No fewer than twenty. Prepare, too, an inkist and writers. Do it by sunset. In the morning, I will go to Herdetopp and receive its command."

  "I will gather a group as well, Firstpoint," Awes said. "We will not leave the cantfowkat until he-"

  "What is it?" Joyborn said. He looked up and put a finger to his ear. "I'm sorry, Goodpoint. I took a blow from the tippers."

  "Ha." Awes cleared his throat and spoke up. "Your Kontor- we will follow him. He has been gone since your arrival- the tells-"

  "No, point- where is your head?" Joyborn replied. "It is I who will have these men. The Cane is a perfect weapon, and nothing can strike him. And besides that, even if his pain and turns should bring him down, that is not where we would find her."

  "Where we- where would we-"

  "The feurkun, she cannot be false. I see now she poses it, but that is wrong. I took the shade of her my way. She told me that she sought to destroy the Dry Man; now I see, it is herself she spoke of. Thus, she is too a Coster's, as she inked it - although not the one we know. She said it herself: she is going to Herdetopp."

  Awes bowed his head. "I will arrange it," he said, retreating from the room.

  "Do you know why they called him The Cane?"

  Awes halted. He took out a star-marked cloth and ran it across his forehead.

  "The Cane? No, Firstpoint. I never asked it."

  "Most do not know as much as yu," Joyborn said. "They would say it concerns nivs. A Cane is a niv – the Cane hits – he is a niv. The Otiseran's niv. Truth from position, but it is really more right-handed than right."

  Joyborn twirled the edge of hair that he had snipped.

  "Firstpoint Teller – he liked me, for my speaking to them. The hillfaces, the Goallandish. If you see the paperseats, in any of of Larunkat's big masses, goodpoint- partsfull and breath-heavy- you can find copies of the work we did, and the sights given me. There are those who will say sight cannot be taken from the Goallandish- not with parts or pleas. If it has a face it will speak. It is with the Goallandish. The only extra piece needed is discovering the kind of part they seek, and how at last to create the part they will give out for. Nothing that knows likes it, as the work is more of them than it is of us. It is full of burning waters, cuts, and stinging beasts. The smaller shape roads one toward fear. But, for that shape, they do take sight. And after, in my speaking with them, it was never that one spoke of but one cane."

  He looked up. "These Goals have growing canes. Wooden canes, with hearts and branches. There are canes of men, and canes in clouds. That is their word for it too, this limb of it: ‘cloudness'. It's a good word, if you want to know their shade. It captures, in whole, the lack they have. Their entire type is near-sighted ones. All is a fog to their faces."

  "What did they say?" Awes asked.

  Joyborn released his hair. He looked down and turned to the kontor.

  Awes continued. "For Cane? F-for The Cane? For what he is?"

  Joyborn held his face. "I am in the Wild." He laughed. "Goodpoint, you could hardly hear it, even if it were shouted by the Otiser. What he is, is this: their producers- their ‘batas', their birthmen- they take a branch, and will strike their boys. Out of fifty, that was the word of forty! Their Cane. Gird produced them – struck them with his stick… and they called him a heartless thing."

  Awes' mouth opened.

  Joyborn smiled and turned to the viewlet.

  "There was a name for me too," he said. "Once."

  "A name, Firstpoint?"

  Partless' gaze did not shift from the courtyard. A bead of sweat ran down his brow.

  "F-Firstpoint?"

  He smacked his lips.

  He went to Awes and took his wrist again. "I price you high for your efforts, Goodpoint Couth. And I have a great belief in this machine of yours. These orders shall be delivered simply and soon; there is no question."

  "Yes. They will, Firstpoint."

  Joyborn exhaled, patted his hand and released him.

  "Then I will wait," he said, going to the door. "Seek out every piece I said. The cut needs every one."

  -

  The inkist was the first piece delivered.

  He was brought to Joyborn's room. When one of his Seeds comported him in, Joyborn had already been standing, his brow sweaty and his hands shaking. He stopped, mid-step, at the sight of them.

  "Thank you, Quell," Firstpoint said. "Go now."

  The inkist sat down and assembled his paper and brushes. Firstpoint sat before him, on his large, billowing mass of sheets and cushions.

  "What is the tithe, Firstpoint?" the inkist asked.

  Joyborn paused and did not answer immediately.

  "I am sorry that I must make you see a wrong," he said. "And bring its shade to more. It has the power of plague and the shape of a woman. My first word, not solid, is that she rises out from a Right-Handed Family. It walks with the name of Hillmeasure, and its type moves out from Shaminkat."

  The inkist nodded. "I have seen a Shamin face."

  He dipped in his brush and began to draw. Joyborn rubbed his hand.

  "The wrong," he said, "is taller than me."

  "Did she have any wounds? Ones she would keep."

  "Striations, Point Ink – four, on its lower lip, and cuts set along her brow. Twelve of these- I would say, the words of a Right-Handed offering, all bound with threads. Nine threads. Her hair was five lengths of the lowest order, shaded between the fifth and sixth-"

  "Please, Firstpoint," the inkist said. "My hand."

  "Ha!" Joyborn sat back in his chair. "Please, say when you are ready."

  The inkist took some time laying in the details of Joyborn's work.

  "Was the tipper armed?" the inkist asked. "I can show sticks and shots and blades."

  "Yes." Joyborn rubbed his chin. "She carried a niv. A chop."

  The inkist raised his brow, but said nothing.

  Soon he had recovered his brushes in a boarded box. He offered the drawing to Joyborn.

  "If you wish, we can refinish the work," the inkist said, "unless you are satisfied."

  Joyborn took it in his hands and stared at the image of Hill-Measure. The Dry Man.

  There was water in his mouth.

  "Firstpoint?"

  "We have no days," Firstpoint said. "So this must be the work."

  He handed the portrait back.

  "I will keep this issue and carry it with our gathering. Deliver your friends to my place, that they might prepare as many pieces as possible."

  He extracted five silver coins from his belt and handed them to the inkist. "Such will be distributed in thanks for each portrait produced. My promise is good for today and tonight; at midnight, the parts will stop."

  The inkist's eyes widened and he nodded hurriedly. "Yes, Firstpoint. Thank you, Firstpoint."

  -

  More inkists were soon delivered to Joyborn's quarters, so Joyborn left their crowd. Again he descended the steps of the papersquare and threw open its doors, slipping into the yard of the Couth.

  He walked between the nivmen there. He moved toward one crowd, covered by fabric raised up by a pole, where a majam presented papers and their discovered principles to the Laruns. They sat around, their eyes and mouths locked open at the shapes the majam read from, and bid them reproduce in the wet dirt with twigs and knives.

  Near the back, Joyborn placed his hand on the shoulder of a nivman, handed him a coin, and whispered to him.

  He moved away from that one, toward a second covering, where an exclamation and rattling and slaps broke from. On a tarped patch of dirt, men and boys wrestled one another. The shaking and scars produced by each fight were received with fear of their disruptive, Right-Handed tone.

  Joyborn addressed a fighter, handed him a coin, and chatted. He continued this circuit between the different venues still available.

  A platform at the center of the Couth was raised up between the different coverings, cart parks and store sheds; the nivhouses, salons and paperrooms. Joyborn positioned himself on it, and his Seeds accompanied him. Nivmen broke from their associations and formed a new one around his perch. It was small. The sun shined on some metal they held.

  For some time Joyborn did not speak. He stood still with his hands folded by his waist and his eyes shut.

  "Who are you, point?" asked a nivman. He held up his coin. When Joyborn did not reply, the call grew. "Who is this one?'

  "What do you need, goodpoint?"

  "What is your call?"

  Joyborn opened his eyes and swallowed. "I am a Kontor, friends," he said. "I am now Firstpoint here."

  The men looked at each other.

  He continued. "A work has been brought in to this section of Harmony, by the Firstpoint who I see. Tomorrow we will step into it. I am its teller; its bringer is the highest of us all. So I am here today to ask: what have yu seen?"

  There was no reply from the Laruns. He looked into the eyes of one, and then another.

  "I ask it truly," Joyborn said. "What have you seen? Tell me your sights, points and housepoints. It is my body's aim to take them."

  One of the nivmen stepped forward. "I have seen the plant-valleys, Firstpoint."

  "The plant-valleys!"

  "Yes. In the cantfowkat, To-Sidelight. I see them each night. The Cloudson Couths. The one who made me was there. She saw the work, and she shouted on me."

  "You have seen work," Joyborn said. He took a coin and flipped it to him.

  "What else have you seen?" he asked.

  An older Larun stepped forward. His hair was white, and his skin was covered in boils. "I saw a cleaning time come, Firstpoint. I have seen myself placed in metal and led into the eye of Sett. Like a Pointer, I have seen each work accomplished, and that this calls my due. I have seen myself punished with a group of ropes."

  "You have seen work!" Joyborn cried. He gave him two coins. The Larun took the silver and looked up to him.

  "What else!" Joyborn roared. "Speak what have you seen!"

  Another nivman stepped forward. He was tall, with a heavy chest, and a bryst that was too small.

  "I did not see, Firstpoint," he said. "My sights were thrown out by my work, and its weight."

  Joyborn's eyes stood up. He jumped, and the crowd flinched. Some heads were drawn by the jittering motion.

  "You have seen nothing. The weight has thrown it out. This seeing of nothing is, too a sight of work. The weight you carry throws itself back on us, goodpoint. The work we go to tomorrow is an important part of this other work you have done. It is your work, and the work of those from whom you descend, but it is not only that. The work will now be, too, a creator of parts for each one."

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  The tenor of his speech drew some ears and the crowd grew.

  "Parts for each one's son," he said. "Parts for each man's house. For the points of each man's house will this work bring in poise and plenty. This is because I price high the taste of each mouth that is upon mine. And that is because yours is the higher kind of our type. The keeping of our tells is, itself, a left-handed affair. This is a gift, and it should be taken like one! Its enjoyment has the pace of our long purpose: the movement and delivery of Sett's preference: the walls of Harmony, into which cold may seep – into all these eyes, and all these I's."

  New fighters grouped about the face of the platform, and it was thick with people. When he stepped down from the platform they parted, only for him to bound forward. He began to lok them in the eyes. They looked back. The eyes of ome moved to his jaw, but many were fixed by his gaze.

  He put hands on his sides. He picked through the crowd with his look until he fell upon a young man, a small Larun with no beard-hair. He reached out a finger.

  "Goodpoint," he said. He pointed to a taller nivman with a shaved beard. "And you, Goodpoint." He pointed to another. "And you, Goodpoint. Please." He beckoned.

  The men looked around. Paths formed for them from their places in the crowd toward the Firstpoint, and they began to walk in. The smallest of them looked with wide eyes at the ones nearer Joyborn, whose brysts were thick and full and covered with heavy badges.

  Joyborn put his hands on all of these selected, lining them up before the assembly.

  "While I have your ears-" Joyborn said, "-I wish to bring a body to your eye." His voice grew softer. "This is an extraction. From it, you will take the best form of us. You should keep its words, which I have dragged here from the Aldir in Hubun, for yourself and for others. These are roads paved by wise men."

  The nivmen in the crowd turned to one another. They crossed their arms and drew closer.

  Joyborn threw out his arms to the three. "We have three nivmen here, of different root features. While there is complementarity in the roots, they are delivered to your points by the Firm, and there is no shift from them. Sett delivers all things that are needed, and all of the things that are needed are good in Sett's eye- and so, this employment, and this learning of one's root features, is the first part of knowing and therefore of Harmony. All action towards this finish is seen and on-line."

  He pointed to each man. "This one is small. He can get places the others cannot. His root feature is that of the house-keeper, and so there is a fight in him, but in matters of fighting, he would surely give to the higher ones in his company. We do not appoint one over the other for his size."

  He raised a finger. "We do not appoint one over the other for his works. Individually, these men have a hit in their groups that breaks more than each apart, and in a different way too. The teller cannot breath without these doers; by the way, the doers cannot tell without their tellers. And this is the second part of Harmony: this rising synchrony of hands. For a synchrony of hands is a synchrony of places. With all places placed in synchrony, which is the work of the fight, the fight itself will be abolished, and our days shall fall apart."

  He placed his hands on the shoulders of two nivmen, the short kind and his taller neighbor, and pushed them at each other. They knocked against one another and gasped. The watchers whisperd.

  "However, see this too!" Joyborn placed his palm between the point where the nivmen joined. "One does not go into the other. As we are telling figures, our synchrony is not collectivity. That is the change between yourself, and the stones. Oneness is a root feature in the part that breathes. We must work one another, each for each. That is the third part of Harmony."

  He placed the men in a circle with himself.

  "Hold the wrist of your friends," he said. "And by this, know your synchrony."

  They held each other's wrists.

  Joyborn looked at the short man. "What is your name?" he asked.

  The man shivered. "I am Blessedone, Firstpoint."

  "And yours?"

  "Inspeak, Firstpoint."

  "And yours?"

  "Given."

  He looked at the last man.

  "My name is Partless," he said. "And as long as you can see me, I shall see your needs. They shall be invented. They shall be brought in."

  -

  After his presentation, Joyborn was lead to Awes' tithechest by a Freeman soldier. A long row of hoofs was set out before him, in coats of brown and orange and red. Its selection was small, and The Freeman watched Joyborn move down the line and try each out. He wrapped his fingers around their necks and squeezed, ran his fingers through their hair, and pushed on their hoofs. None attacked him for it. He frowned.

  "Did you price high your tithe, Firstpoint?" asked the Freeman.

  Joyborn turned.

  "When a Freeman loses one," he continued, "there are not days of crying, Firstpoint. But I have seen some men do it, Firstpoint. I have heard it is because some choose to price them high, Firstpoint. Was it yours?"

  "I have not cried for a fallen cannotfollow," Joyborn said. "I have done it for fallen followers, since they are not so simple. One much like me would prefer your type."

  "What is my type, Firstpoint?"

  He looked back to the tithes and held the nose of one. He checked each of its eyes with a turn of his head. "You are a Freeman."

  "You do not like me?"

  "I do not regard you. Yours is too far from the tell. The Firm is in you. You are the ground I walk on. It does not even help to look on your shape – as once I did, for my Seeds."

  He released the tithe and moved on. "All you are is movement. And an unusual problem. I believe, one day, we will be better rid of it. Until then I need your hands."

  He squeezed a grey Stonehoof on the nose. "This one," he said.

  The Freeman stepped over and laid a harness into place onto the hoof, guiding its metal scrapes away from the hoof's bare coat. He slowly tied a ribbon around its ear, in a thick spot, and pet it into place.

  Joyborn removed a silver coin from his bryst and handed it to the Freeman. "Prepare this one for me. Bring it in when we leave. If you do not, the coin will be retrieved."

  "Yes, Firstpoint." The Freeman slipped it in to his robe with a quiet eye. Joyborn turned to go.

  "The Cane was a Freeman," said the tithepoint. Joyborn stopped.

  "Was he a problem?" the tithepoint asked.

  He turned. He stepped back toward the Freeman and his hand moved out.

  It slipped into the Freeman's robe. It found, with no fumbling, the fold where he had placed the coin, near his heart. Joyborn deposited a second one there.

  "You old Freemen," Joyborn said. "Some are written in a way we need more."

  "Yes, Firstpoint."

  Joyborn caressed his cheek and left.

  -

  The sun was falling down, and it confronted Joyborn with another hunger. As happened each day, he knew the urge, and he had had his meals earlier. But his stomach spoke with fresh breath, so he gathered up his Seeds and went up to the rooms of Kontor Awes, from which the scent of roast roothead and tusk wafted out from the wide viewlets that marked his segment of the papersquare.

  He wrapped his arms around the man who answered the door, an Awes himself, squeezing him tight. "What sort will we be eating?" Joyborn asked. "All this rush has made me empty. I hope for a weighty cut."

  Awes was pale, looking at Joyborn's teeth and his Seeds. "Whatever you wish, Firstpoint."

  They were seated at a table. Three more places were prepared, and spirits poured for two of them, which were sent back. The firelight of the Couth beyond the papersquare shined in through the diner's gaps, grasped easily by the room's own shadow, which was in majority except for where a few wax lights, housed in white shades, illuminated the space between the walls and the table.

  Joyborn took the meat's smell from far away. His pulse quickened and beads of water raced down his head. Awes noticed the silver light shining there. The Firstpoint began an excited lecture about a new number-based, methodical determination of the most productive working time for craftsmen and artisans. In the middle of it, Awes' interjected, "Kontor, your brow pours. Are you well?"

  Joyborn smiled. He felt over his head.

  "I have found many delights in eating," Joyborn said. "I have long had a special preference for it. My kind prices high its moment of arrival. A meal is the best kind of woman, Kontor Couth, and it is their type that I enjoy."

  Neither of the Seeds had spoken. "Offer in, Secondpoints," Joyborn said to them. "Speak to me and my friend of our pleasant journey. He knows none of it, and I know but half."

  He leaned toward Awes. "Each cut of meat fills twice itself when it is washed with a call. The little ones must be made with it- that is how they feed us, if you can see it. It is all in one position, that way. Bring it out, Cord."

  The tall Seed looked at Awes. He had a full brow with no hair, dark, sunburned skin and brown eyes.

  "My rise was made of storm and thunder," he said. "It was from this that the Otiser called out my name. From then proceeds all things… and my look for the Dry Man. For it, I snatched the tells of Housepoint Joyborn- they are with no readable price, and are the best kind of niv for throwing down a Right-Handed kind. I moved and carried his others down through the cantfowkat. Past masses of the head-eaters, and all those other works had by the feurkun hillkind, I moved to a Couth like your own, kontor. That was in the grip of Freemen, who we now know were no less hurtful than she."

  "Hurting Freemen?" Awes asked.

  "Yes, Kontor. It was with their words that we were kept from knowing."

  Joyborn slapped his knee. "The place with the heartless things! It all comes back. A good way, Cord – it must be spoken of. Bring it out."

  Cord continued. "I have jumped past the start of the path, and that was this: the base of it was mean and low of firm, Kontor Couth, from the first point – from my rise and the storm of it. She did it when she called me in from the koropole, and placed it on my head, striking apart the chest of Whiteeye, a good helper of the Firm here, and his gathering of fifty knowing ones. She cut these powers away from me, and we struck back, even as she was clad in words and names false even to a cannotfollow, let alone any Left-Handed view. Her attack, at last, severed me from my kind after Partplant. Beyond that mass, which lies at the edge of Goal, her hillfaced friends shot at me with metal and knives. We shot them all down too."

  His eyes were still.

  "By this false fight," he said, "we were pressed back to the masses. The body of our Housepoint was broken by the fighting. Kontor De looked on it for many days. I shine still that each man breaths, and has tells that I might still grab. But from this, our days in the rest of the cantfowkat proceeded. We moved across many more hills, believing that the Dry Man had been thrown apart, since we had brought down everyone in her company. We moved between shells, where we were not welcome. In the cantfowkat, we were faced with beasts and storms. We told Kontor De many stories, that he might measure and enjoy our works. When our day was finished, we were faced by this place, where our Housepoint is raised up again. It is only so by your present parts and kindness."

  He stopped speaking.

  "Yes," Awes said. He squeezed his fingers. "Will you go back? To fight the woman who wounds you?"

  The Seed's eyes were still. "It is the cantfowkat that wounds. The woman is from it, a right-handed part. There is a whole mass of them. They mix together, and have no ambition. That is the figure of feurkun kinds. We will return there if it is told. If it is told, they will too be driven out. That is the cause of this."

  His breath subsided, and Awes looked into him. The Seed's gaze flickered and he looked down at the engravings on the table.

  A bang was heard as the door to an adjacent chamber opened up, into the dark, far end of the room right beside one of the curtained viewlets. A thin, gowned silhouette stepped through an approached. It was revealed a woman, older than them all. Her sudden appearance tilted Joyborn.

  "Who is this?" the woman asked Awes.

  The kontor's jaw was still low and he had not heard the entrance or expression of her. When he did, he sprang to his feet and guided her in to her seat. "This is Firstpoint Joyborn, housepoint," he said. "He is a Firstpoint from the light. He sits in Lowcliff, and has the tells of our kontor. Firstpoint, this house is Quieing. She is mine."

  Quieing looked at Joyborn. "What have you seen, Firstpoint?" she said.

  Joyborn held up a finger. "Your house is well-jewelled, kontor," he said. "To see this one is to receive a coin."

  Quieing grimaced when the lantern's fire flickered and gave her full view of Joyborn's face.

  She and Awes sat beside one another. The kontor's brow did not run with sweat as much, and he seemed more complete than he had been.

  The food was brought outto them by a Goalish worker. It was set in front of Joyborn and his Seeds on smooth dishes of shining white stone. The light moved over the char-marks on Joyborn's cutlet, and the Seeds did not move to eat it. They only watched Awes and his partner, who watched Joyborn.

  "Will you take your parts-bite, Firstpoint?" Awes asked.

  Joyborn took a silver knife to the left of his platter and sawed off a piece of meat. In his eye, blood spilled out from it, and it leaked into a tuft of hair. He stopped midway and set his plate aside.

  "Before this," Joyborn said. "It is needed that I ask further. Is it from the Roots and Cliffs you come, House Quieing?"

  He asked this in the Rootcliff language.

  The House said in Sprak, "I am of that kind, Firstpoint. I am born of the Windwater Column, Firstpoint."

  Joyborn continued to speak in Rootcliff. "That is good. It is my word that the good part of Larunkat, and the Otiser's hopes, come out from the joining of our skins. And of the kin underneath. The two of you are seated in the branch of an old and knowing work."

  Quieing nodded. "Thank you, Firstpoint," she said in Sprak.

  Joyborn folded his hands on the table, and quit her tongue. "How were you obtained?"

  Awes looked between them. "I was sent in To-Sidelight, as paper-speaker, Firstpoint," he said. "Between my brothers, I received my Housepoint's post. Quieing was the daughter of a fighter there. We met at a meal at the Cold House."

  Joyborn looked at him as he told the story. "It is good that the Otisrat can still receive such good help."

  He looked back down at his food. The blood was gone, and he took a bite.

  -

  The meal ended and Joyborn cast himself out. He laid in his bed.

  He shut his eyes and waited for the retreat of mind. It did not arrive. Images remained and swam on the edge of his black. A split, severed tongue; a slender back; a bright spark.

  There were no parts of his mind to press on, so he remained there in silence, stilling and trying to sleep. The lights were intolerable, along with his hunger.

  In spite of he work, his mind was silent. As one can peer upon a body, one can peer inside its mind. The parts of him where words jumped, played and ran together did not play then. To speak was to offer peace to an enemy uninterested in tells or rights.

  When he said nothing to them, they were not there.

  He was seized by a burning in his lowers. More images flooded in from every place. A tunnel of tears and possibilities was brought to him by the new loveliness of a word.

  The quarters of him considered it a good enough dream in lieu of true ones. But it was not enough, and after some time he rose from his bed and drank more water.

  He leaned over the pool, searching the water for a considered eye.

  -

  First, he visited Kontor Awes in his rooms. Quieing was there, and she was as loud as she had been. A talk with his friends might soothe him.

  The soothe came, but there was a strange difference between the end and its time before. He was feeling like, if nothing else, he did not know where he was.

  A visit to the Aldir and a speak with a matam was in order. A reading too, from The Base of things. He descended the papersquare into the root of the Couth, and moved toward the Aldir. Sunrise Couth's house of offering was small, but it breathed with the light of its type, and put out a golden shine from its pores. It had a line of trees beyond its entrance, and the sign at its peak glowed in the night sky. It looked like a gray sun.

  He went inside. He knelt in the chamber of convocation, on a little cushion where he could gaze at the waters from afar. He was its sole occupant. He closed his eyes and whispered.

  The stars moved in the sky. After they had turned twice, a padding of quiet feet came to Joyborn's place, and a hand rested on his shoulder.

  "Goodpoint," a voice said. Joyborn opened his eyes. He found a young matam addressing him. The hair on his face was unshaven. He was dressed in robes that were green and red, and his little eyes matched them.

  "You need not lie by Sett, point," the matam said. "If you wish, I would lie out here, and you in my own place."

  "Ha!" Joyborn chest erupted. "I am sorry for my strange type, Firmpoint. In truth, if I could lie, I have a partsfull spot for it. I came hoping Sett would see, and bring me quiet."

  He gestured to The Base. "It is just how high I price this piece, and all its friends, Firmpoint. I like to look upon it – but perhaps I should not. With all my rough commands, I am a tipping one. That he sees to employ me at all for these left-handed tasks, and never refuse my eye- it brings me still. More than still… a smile. If there is a dirt from my view, he would be riverred with it."

  The matam's eyes widened. "Your view is devote, goodpoint. I do not say he would throw off its touch."

  "It's all the same."

  "Perhaps it is an ear that can bring in your ease," said the matam. "I have spoken to many of your friends in the nivhouse, point. The Right-Handed work that fights your type is not your own problem, and its weight has been met by others. Is there something that weighs on you? A cut you have made, or taken?"

  Joyborn shut his eyes and lifted his head. He breathed in.

  "Weight? I know not weight, Firmpoint," he said. "My feeling is a different sort. Every piece of me is delight, and leaps up and down, but will not say why. It is a meat whose flavor I cannot place."

  "When did this leaping begin?"

  "The moment I learned that my fellow had been destroyed. A nivman, like myself."

  The matam's face fell. Tears came to his eyes. "I have known many who do not know the way after such an effort," he said. "Take order from the order of your Firstpoints. They are older, and have seen many go; it is a fever, but these grow hot, and then pass."

  "That is not all," Joyborn said. "It is this feurkun who has destroyed him. His image will not depart me."

  Joyborn's fingers curled and he began to salivate. "Every moment it is in my mind, my body drops away."

  The tears fell onto the matam's cheeks when he saw Joyborn's expression. "The shaking on an enemy is a tell we have such trouble with," he said. "The feurkuns do not know what it is. Let Sett carve his path for the movement; it guides toward their learning. That is how he is erased. And only in this way; not by cuts."

  Joyborn nodded. "But that is not all."

  "What else cuts on you, goodpoint?"

  "All of it," Joyborn said, "each point, from the first day I saw- I have felt in the way of Sett's path. Today, I feel as though that path has ended. I feel that there is a step waiting for me… and that when I approach- it shines- but I do not know its consequence."

  The matam did not reply immediately, so Joyborn turned his head.

  "Ah!" he cried. "My friend, what has struck you?"

  The matam's shakes were violent. "Do not see it, goodpoint," he said. "It is your hurts that are in the first place."

  "My hurts? Tell me of them."

  "It is the greatest cut, the work of this project," the matam said. "This dragging, by wrong seers, of young men into a place by their eyes and by their stomachs. The Wrong Sayers do not have any sense of the firm, but this is a sight of theirs. It calls little ones like yourself from Sett's paths and does not offer them a way – not even when it has taken its parts from your hands, and plucked them from your mouths. But I call on you to remember the paths Sett has provided, and to certainly never take a blade into your heart. The others of my type who do this, I cannot follow- but it is only because each of you is so partsheavy. There is such a shine in you, which is wasted in all destruction."

  "Ha!" Joyborn exhaled. "My discovered, partsfull Firmpoint. You have me all twisted up. I am not some pathless jumper, who a little strange can call plague into! I wish you would not feel a bit of this hurt- for none of it is there to have!"

  The matam's tremors subsided. He wiped a hand over his face. "Your eye is of great direction, goodpoint. I have never met one to take on his fights so well."

  "I have met," Joyborn said. His gaze returned to the Base. "That is the road for this thing."

  He paused, his mouth open. "You see- Firmpoint- it is not so much the hurt on this friend that turns me. It is his empty space. I know it, in my chest, that it is my Firstpoint, and Sett, who all bring me the gift of their words. And yet, I have it that a foundation has been pierced. It has been blown apart. There is some new piece I cannot see, and it is filling up... but I cannot see it either."

  A hand fell on Joyborn's shoulder. He turned his head toward the matam.

  "If you recall your anatomisms-" the matam said, "these, provided us by Peerless, a very steady and knowing goodpoint- you will know that each piece of the Firm lies too inside the other. The worker that you lost lays in you. His cut falls, by some measure, upon us all. We now lack his hand, his smile. His offerings, and his works, given to us for his own delight. For all elevation of the Firm's positions. Azad Kadra- the first anatomist, despite his different word- he made a promise with Sett. A promises of two tells - the foundation of all points. It was by that promise that the firm was built. The firm that the Otisers conceived in turn. A second promise was made by Otiser Gird. It is that promise upon which we stand."

  "I can recall. But still the ground shakes, Firmpoint… it is as though that which is below- is not."

  The matam pointed toward the center of the chamber, at the pedestalled papers which lie past the pool of water.

  "See it there," the matam said. "What word do you see that names those tells? Those tells of such price."

  "Ahm…" Joyborn squinted. "It is The Base, firmpoint."

  "It is. It was not called ‘The Top'."

  Joyborn rubbed his chin. He rested his hands on his knees.

  The matam continued. "It was a man who touched Sett himself. And Sett himself pushed out that name. It is a sign from the highest in everyplace."

  The matam pushed his fingers to the sky.

  There was quiet. Joyborn turned to observe the gesture and back where the papers lay.

  His eyes widened. He stumbled to his feet, away. The matam looked back and stood up too, reaching out for Joyborn's shoulder.

  "Goodpoint?"

  "A vision," he whispered.

  Joyborn looked back at The Base. "Thank you for your talk," Joyborn said. "And for your eyes. Your eyes so sharp. Perhaps now, firmpoint, I will be seen."

  "I believe it is already so, friend nivman."

  Joyborn bowed his head, and then he retreated from the Aldir.

  -

  Joyborn stumbled from the Aldir's passage, his head turned from the globe and into the night. He did not look to see where he was going. The road was cut for him by senses that did not see, and which did not smell, which Sett had not imagined, and by what those others gave him of the Couth's dim, sleeping yard. Past the Couth's walls was a firmness that he had not known before, and the ground was sinking underneath him, so he walked that way.

  A nivman holding a white lantern, walking alone by the limits of the Couth, rubbed his eyes when he saw a flash and gray skit over the tall stone divide between his path and the cantfowkat. The movement was consumed by wind running through the trees.

  Partless walked into the bushes and branches. He blinked; his eyes did not work. He could feel the Hesigns burning on his back. His stomach was empty, and he was hungry. Blood roared in his ears, and the hair on his chin buzzed. His skin breathed with many organs.

  He looked up at the stars and loosed his tongue. The air tasted crisp and cool. His knees dug into the warm soil and he took handfuls of it. The ark filled his eyes with nothing and possible, roaming received blots that formed and unformed where could see. There was nothing safe or set and nothing told. A tell had brought him there, and where it lay was still covered up. When he galloped forward, he found no firm on which to stand; there was liquid around his feet, and the soil shifted.

  He walked deep into the water. It was running past him and its bluster brought on a tilt. His knees were swallowed, and his waist was swallowed. Then it began to flow around his chest. It reached his neck when it flushed him over, gulping up his mouth and throwing him away.

  The water's path poured him past rocks and over falls. His eyes were wide and white and cut with bloody red streaks. Sweat cut a way up from his skin and was eaten by the water. He flailed and struck around, but had no control over the place he was or the path he had.

  It crashed him against its far shore, leaving him still on a bed of sharp points. He crawled out from it, covered with cold mud and cold. He placed up his foot on the bank, which was cut and bled by the rocks. The wind wrapped around his naked flesh as he stumbled among the woods again.

  A crowd of hot, wet bodies ran past his twisting head. They squawked when he came by, fleeing into branches that snapped and rattled. He sat down at the base of a high stalk, which bled thick, sticking juices that leaked onto his back. He rubbed his eyes and his mouth.

  Air was flapped and a soft spring of tweeting, which were accompanied by many other springs in a bough of twigs and branches high above. His mouth was dry and his stomach was empty.

  He climbed the stalk, rising above the wood. The noise grew louder. He jumped out and seized one of the springs between his teeth, causing the others to move and outrage. As his teeth munched on it, his tongue went looking for its wings, but did not find any. His brow raised.

  His appetite was whet. There were no stars to measure one's movement, and his hands moved around a rock in the forest floor, which was sharp. He took a second and knapped it; with his knife, he cut open the trees he went past, spilling their water and wetting the weapon. He made his marks and made paths, and found more warm bodies again. The dark made it impossible to name them, and impossible to speak. He was in shadow.

  With his knife, he snapped off a branch, and shaved it down into a long stake. Then, there was the knowing and the leaping, as he thrust into it, and stabbed it apart. There was another burst of flight as he took a bite from its stomach.

  He found more rocks. There were sparks, and the sun exploded. The dark was gone. His eyes were created by fire, snapped up by more hits of firm stone. He kept the stones close, and tried to breath them in. The ground was filled with forms and organs.

  As he cooked his body, the fire brought more forms into itself. A group of snouts emerged from the dark. The light played on their features, bring out the color in flesh and bone.

  He put aside his bites, and lifted his sticker against them, the red-pelted legs and mouths with their teeth bared.

  They growled, he bared his teeth, and the howls did it too.

  His sun was hot enough that it had blue at its base. It leapt into the eyes of the largest howl, and Partless fixed on it.

  He jumped, thrusting his point into the thing's neck, and all were scattered. The howl pawed at the wound, struggling to breath, and he repeated the motion. It grew still.

  He fell to his knees. His chapped, splintered hands felt around the soil. It was as loose as it had been, but the blood stuck it up, and put a firmness to it.

  He opened the howl's mouth and ripped the teeth from it. He took, too, its thruster. And he exited the cantfowkat.

  -

  Back within the walls of the Couth, its many nivmen, all sweating and blood-stained and stumbling, their hands rough and chapped and bitten by boards, and licked over by the sun, were given retreat by their points to the nivhouses that lay to the side of the Couth, away from the roadpeople and the papersquare both.

  The nivhouse was a hall, and at its base was a section filled with seats and tables in a smoky, sloped wing. Once inside, the nivmen kept apart from one another, parted in their own groups when they were not alone, and quiet. The greater part of them soon retired to the lower wings, beneath the ground, where they slept on the floor, on a cushion or with a blanket to warm them beside the fire. The whole space of the upper wing was saturated with the dim grey light of hanging lamps.

  One group around one table in the upper wing whispered among themselves, their brysts opened, around bowls of milksit that they sipped from.

  "What do you see in this Firstpoint?" one asked his companions.

  "He seems not like the others," one said.

  "Did you see his mouth? That is a great wound."

  "I have heard of Partless," one said. "He is enjoyed by some. And he comes from no sticky birth."

  "I too have heard of him," one said. "He is not enjoyed by all. And otherwise, I am not sure he was born of man."

  "Are we going into the Cantfowkat again?" one asked.

  "Yes, certainly."

  "What will it be like?"

  "Talk from your view of the Cantfowkat, old one." A Larun addressed one of his companions. "I price high your word. It is too cold a night for halfwarmth."

  The old one in question was a nivman, a fighter with white hair who had shaven all of it. It was the one who Joyborn had selected earlier that day. He drank from a cup of milksit and placed it down.

  "What part of it do you seek?"

  "The whole part, from the head down, so that even this little one will know."

  "From the head," the old one said, "this Cantfowkat, this Goal land, is a hurting place. It is one with every shade of pain. This is from its faults… and nobody knows what to do with it. The tellers of the firm know nothing. They seek to hold it in their hands; if they knew its shade, they would take out its breath completely. They would strangle the cannotfollows, and cut the hair of all their little ones."

  The younger nivman looked at him in shock. "That is a shaking word, eldbrother," he said.

  "I tire of that which does not shake. The land shakes and we in it. I hope this Partless will shake us now, in this way, as he has said."

  Apart from them, the door to the nivhouse opened, and a pair of heavy boots stepped inside. The nivmen who stood around drinking and eating meals, turned their heads at the bryst-clad warrior and stumbled back, jaws opening. They did this because it was not a bryst that the warrior wore.

  A roothead's covering, chopped out with the edge of a rough blade, draped over the man's shoulders. Beneath it, he wore no other clothing except his boots. The skin was still wet, and he left a trail from his mouth and fingers. In his right hand, the teeth of a howl pierced his knuckles. Blood tapped from it onto the floor.

  He went up to the association's table. They looked up at him.

  "Firstpoint?" whispered one.

  "I would like a drink," he said. "A spirit, goodpoints."

  "A cup," the teller of the story said. "Pour a cup."

  They pulled out a seat for Joyborn, who put himself down as his drink was prepared.

  "Firstpoint," one man said. Joyborn turned his head to the nivman, who was on his knees. "What has happened to your hair? Your face?"

  A cup of milksit found Joyborn's spot and he raised the white to his lips. The rim met with fuzzy bristles. His fingers felt around his chin and cheeks, and below them, and the cup's contents fell to the floor with report.

  "Goodpoints," Joyborn said. One handed him a cloth and he wiped it across his brow. "I am so weary. The fears of the cantfowkat give me such plagues. I wished to go out, to find someone to speak with. To shut down the place between sunrise and our spot. That is what brings me to your house, this night."

  The men looked at him and now saw all; the rare muck of his boots, and the teeth in his hands.

  "Firstpoint," one man said. "You have cuts. Have you been attacked? Have the hillfaces hit?"

  "I do not know it," Joyborn said. He lifted his hand, where the howlsteeth lay. "This was taken from a knowing one. That is my delivery."

  "How did it occur?"

  "I took an unshaven fight," he said.

  He looked out at them. "I ventured," he continued, "that it is an unshaven fight you want. A fight beyond Harmony."

  The nivmen looked at each other.

  "I have found it," Joyborn said. He stood. "I have found the aim, which Sett delivers us toward."

  "What is it, Firstpoint?"

  Joyborn looked at his hand. "I believe it is an end. But it is also a beginning. An end of all mediations. A going-back to the base of his preference. A retrieval of parts, not of metal, but of the meat they stand for. There shall be none but what is your tell. By this, the base shall be built up. And by it, the base shall be born a second time."

  The nivmen watched as he wrapped his fingers around one of the howlsteeth in his hand. When it was dislodged, his water was driven into the floor. Some gasped.

  "Is it as I say?" he asked. "Is it an unshaven way you seek?"

  The nivmen were silent. They looked among their friends.

  "Yes," one said.

  Joyborn turned to the speaker. It was the storyteller.

  He approached the old nivman. With the howlstooth in hand, Joyborn made a cut atop his own wrist. The watchers gasped.

  "If you would say it," he said, "share the water with me."

  There was no movement from this. The eyes of the nivmen were all wide.

  He raised up his fist. "Points. This, the night ere our new and distant duty, is, in line with its whole kind, the night of a new promise. This promise is between Sett, and the body of us. The height of you is a pillar, bringing up this new process. If it is something unshaven you seek, a path of true feelings, the first movement to it is through the embrace of this water. It must be- it is the water's disaster we fear, and the true one is paved with it. But you all know that the fear is wrong. With this water's running, a new firm shall be made tough in it. Each should have his fill. All shall hurt, for that is Sett's preference. All shall be seated, without call to the points of old. The best parts of the old shall be brought up to the new promise, and the best parts of the new are contained only within the old ones. This is my declare. This is my offering. I offer to you."

  He waited.

  The storyteller came forward. He took Joyborn's tooth and cut open the top of his wrist. He touched the Firstpoint.

  After him, many men followed, as many little ones as they were tall, and each made the promise. Joyborn looked down at his feet, where the ground was firm, and did not shift or melt.

  -

  When Joyborn returned to his chamber, his eyes shut, and the right side of his face matched his left.

  In the morning, he stood up. Red-orange light spurred the wind's rise, casting itself over the nivhouses and the cart parks and the tents of the roadpeople. His Seeds entered his cell and fit his armor to him. Upon his left arm, he was equipped with a thick painted diamond, sealed with the seventeen-sided sigil of the Otieran.

  They moved to the courtyard. A crowd of nivmen had gathered around the foot of the papersquare. Joyborn stopped in front of it.

  "What is this mass, goodpoints?" Joyborn called. "What have you seen?"

  The men in the crowd turned to him and parted, giving him the way. He moved forward with his seeds, laying before the steps of the square, Kontor Aws, along with three members of his Goalish Staff.

  There was whispering among the nivmen as Joyborn approached. Kneeling at the foot of the bodies were a number of matams, including the one who Joyborn had spoken with. All wondered at the hungry movements that could have created the victims' particular way of death. The color of the stains was an array of fluid that the light caught and sparkled on.

  Joyborn looked over Awes. He cried out and the matams turned to him. The face of his friend grew in shock.

  Joyborn pointed to the sections of Awes that were carved out and missing, and to the gape where his heart had been. "This is what is in them," he said. "If you did not know, goodpoints, look here and see it. This work stands in their heads. It stands in every shade we have not had."

  The crowd looked between his mouth and the bodies.

  "This is not only a style of destruction," Joyborn continued. "It is the want, all surrounded of a feurkun kind. This is their response."

  He turned to them. "Your kontors must ready your groups. A new one must be brought out for this Couth. A shaking will not stop us; it shall drive us more quickly to Herdetopp than the feurkun droves can believe. The greatest shakes are now our steel. Between every root and tree, we will unsow the plague that sits beneath this land."

  The nivmen barked out affirmation. He shouted so the ones behind could hear.

  "I shall bring you this fire! By it, you shall bring yourselves, your houses, parts and regeneration! I shall grant you the most right of limits, you men. Each of you stands at the foot of a family's founding. Know your self, that it sits within the eye of Sett!"

  The nivmen roared. The matam froze behind Joyborn, his eyes wide and his mouth ajar. They packed up.

  Joyborn was seated atop his hoof, and his Seeds sat at his sides. The Freeman who handed the hoof to him kept his coins.

  The gates of the Couth opened. The Laruns gathered atop their wagons and groups, marching from the stone and iron into the trees and soil, where their boots tramped underfoot. They sang a jolly song about the thrust of the land, the shine of the laws, and the filth of the enemy. Joyborn rode for some time, and then marched on foot alongside them, his face blush and smiling. The teeth sank themselves into his hand, fixed around by his signs. The tongue rattled around his neck.

  From a viewlet in the papersquare, Quieing watched as the columns massed and departed in their great waves of gray and silver. When they were gone, she saw the Freeman set her partner aboard a funerary wagon. The Seed who had attacked Joyborn was dragged outside the walls by more workers, and she did not see what they did with him.

  Even from such a distance, the rocks and walls of the Couth trembled under the step of the nivmen, and under the roll of their joyborn wheels. All sorts of programs were standing up in the Firstpoint's highly industrial eye. The howls of Goal, falling, as they had by his Seeds. Death brigades and body offerings awaited the bright shine of this new promise and its partitions, which rose from the breath of his bosom alone. With each breath he took, Goal removed, and itself and its taste crept back into possibility.

  A creator of ones walked into the light of Halfwarm. Ice was in flight from the feurkun hills, and the work of it had fallen down to him. Him and his Partless things.

  To cut them open, and push it back in.