Ragdlock enjoyed making lists.

By the time he had reached the

seething steps of the arena, he had efficiently tabulated twenty-three
things he resented about his afternoon obligations, and it had only
been a fifteen-minute walk. Twenty-four ended up being the sheer
number of people blocking the way between himself and his
destination, every one of them as cheery as if they took distinct
pleasure in how vexingly obstructive they could be. You could move
literally three times as fast as youre moving, Ragdlock thought
violently at the elderly Vaporist shambling along ahead of him through
the representatives entrance. If thoughts could be felt, that one was
sharp enough to have embedded itself sweetly between her shoulder
blades. But the woman merely shook out her expansive sleeves, and
then paused to chat with a few of her Guildfellows who had
materialized out of the crowd to congratulate her on her latest paper
on the Sleeping Death, at precisely the one spot where it was
impossible for Ragdlock to step around her to get in at the door and
out of the withering sun.
Circumstances were equally as irritating within, so much so that
by the time the ceremony started nearly an hour late by the dial, that
particular inconvenience could take no earlier place on his list than
thirty-eighth. Even being permitted to don for the duration of the
ceremony the sun-white robes of a Guild Master did little for his
temper. The robes they had managed to find for him flapped around
his calves instead of sweeping behind him majestically, and shifted
ticklishly against the back of his neck in a mocking sort of way. It
wasnt Ragdlocks place to be wearing such a thing at all, but none of
the actual Masters ever seemed to feel like heaving themselves off the
lounges of their dotage to attend a lengthy event in the afternoon, a
prime time for napping. Nowhere in the guidelines for the Apprenticing
Ceremony did it stipulate that representatives needed to be awake, but
it had been politely hinted to the elderly Theoretician who had
attended the year Ragdlock himself had Selected that consciousness
was nevertheless recommended. Ragdlock had been sent along every
year since, and the event organizers asked no undue questions at the
sight of a thirteen-year-old slipping, scowling in awe at the grandness
of it all, into the high star-carved, crenellated seat of the
Theoreticians. They likely remembered Yanaes dozing too. Ragdlock
had been sent every year since, and by now, robe or no robe, this was
just one more of his endless chores.

He had already set down on the list his intense dislike of being
artistically arranged in a veritable throne of marble exquisitely chiseled
with crucibles and scarificators, the ancient symbols of the
Theoreticians Guild, and then stared at by a burgeoning crowd of
thousands. He wanted to be famous, yes, but not stared-at famous
more admired at a distinct distance through the medium of his
brilliant work. At the very most, he supposed, he would not mind too
much if people approached him in person to compliment it, the way
the Vaporists outside had. But this sitting in the concentrated heat of
the open-sky arena, the focus of ten thousand narrowed eyes, was
loathsome to him. He spent the interminable opening speeches longing
for the cool solitude of the Guild, a reverie disturbed only by periodic
gloomy attempts to wipe the worst of the gushing sweat from his
brow.
He tried to pay attention to the silvery voice, but it slid out of his
sweaty grasp like a slick fish, twisting and giving slip to understanding.
It reminded Ragdlock uneasily of the Song, and it was only after hed
made the connection that he realized there was good reason for it. The
speaker, the Guild Master of the Intelligencers, was well known for her
Gift of persuasion. Ragdlock had personally mistrusted her ever since
an evening party four years earlier that he had been compelled to
attend so that his Guild would not give offense. He had bitterly
occupied various corners and created an only slightly exaggerated list
of all the tasks he might have been able to finish if the time had been
his own, and then the Master of the Intelligencers had given a short,
impassioned speech, and Ragdlock had stumbled away having pledged
the entirety of his savings to the preservation of the northern coral
reef. He had been toweringly furious with himself, but he had not then
understood the power of Gift. He knew better now. As soon as he
became aware of the subtle power at work in the words, he decided he
could quit listening out of principle. The last thing that he needed was
more Gift-poison lacing his blood. So he settled for melting down
amongst his heap of white robes like an unhappy candle.
And at last, after more delays and diversions than even
Ragdlocks habitual pessimism had accounted for, the real ceremony
began.

Some miserable organizer was shooing child after child up the

steep flight of stairs that rose into the center of the sunken arena.
They emerged blinking and be-awed, and Ragdlock could have sworn
that one of them actually had to check a slip of paper in its hand
before setting off at a fair gallop for the vine-etched throne of the
Vintners. The Voice sent its rippling up the edges of the arena, the
name and selected Guild of each child echoing again and again as it
took its new place behind its chosen throne. And under each shining
declaration, like the shy leaf beneath a flower, there rose the soft
welcome of the Guild representative as they stood and gave their hand
to the youngest bud upon their ancient tree.
Possibly even the dimmer children had caught on to the game by
that point, or possibly the organizer had perished of sun exhaustion in
the tunnel. Ragdlock peered at the entrance of the tunnel as a pridepuffed child lumbered past in the direction of the Healers seat, but it
was difficult to make anything out through the foil-gold shimmer of
heat rising from the hard-packed dust. He made a halfhearted effort to
turn his attention back to the children themselves.
Subtalay Kannifa, for the Cantors.
Welcome.
Alizabeth Glimpse, for the Devisers.
Welcome.
Yana Tretch, for the Intelligencers.
Welcome.
On and on the announcements oozed, like molten silver in an
infinite crucible. A few children, their faces blazing with either religious
fervor or oncoming heatstroke, waltzed up to the representing
Devotioner, a small, sad-eyed man, who looked as if he would rather
have liked to advise them to throw their lot elsewhere. Ragdlock eyed
these boys and girls with particular derision. Gods-praise was perhaps
the most useless way to spend ones short and single life. He hoped,
scornfully, that they were enjoying the wretched sunlight as
Devotioner novices, they wouldnt be seeing it again.

But not many took that route. As in every other year Ragdlock
had witnessed, the steadiest streams flowed toward the Intelligencers
and the Lawmakers. The visual evidence belied the fact that these
were by no means the largest Guilds. That distinction belonged to the
Fishermen and Farmers, but the children who entered those trades
tended to do so automatically, at rather less ceremonial ceremonies in
the inlands. There was little prestige in fishing or farming, and the few
children who drifted toward those seats, Ragdlock could see very
easily, were Gifted who did so in the full expectation that they would
advance almost instantly to journeymen and then to masters,
bypassing real labor. Gift was not to be wasted in drudgery. Soon they
would be inventing ruthless new nets or breeding oranges as plump as
babies.
The silver voice and the golden sunlight stroked Ragdlock into a
trance, and there he drifted for some time. He half-dreamt through
half-shut eyes that the Song was a black snake of a river flowing
between the cobblestones up toward him across the arena floor. It had
followed him from the Guild it had found him here, and now
everyone would see he was frightened in the dim way of daydreams,
but then he realized that everything was alright after all. He had the
Song on his knee like a pet he soothed it, and it coiled up around his
wrist and flicked its long tongue over his forearm. And he had
published his paper on it, and the Master of the Intelligencers herself
approached him gravely to congratulate him on it, and
He might even have followed in the noble tradition of his
Theoretician representative predecessors, and sunk into a deep
slumber right where he sat, if not for the five words that slashed his
reverie into fragments.
Rasmaselika Zolu, the Voice silvered. For the Theoreticians.
Weapons on the barbarous mainland had ragged, serrated edges
cruel weapons, designed to prevent the wounds they tore in living
flesh from ever healing right. The Voices words pierced Ragdlock like a
Mainland knife. They left him sagging in his exquisitely carved seat,
bleeding disbelief.
There was someone standing in front of him, but it was not an
admirer. A plump, ugly child looked back at him. A girl whose black
hair was pulled back so tightly that it looked as though someone had
painted her scalp black. Her skin had an dull, healthless pallor to it. An
Undercity child.

Ragdlock sat motionless in his seat, and stared at her, and the
girl stared right back at him with pouchy, narrowed eyes, and neither
of them smiled. It took Ragdlock several long moments to realize that
he was meant to stand and formally accept her, and several more to
realize that he really did have to do that; he couldnt just stubbornly
sit there until the girl, unnerved, made a different selection. The choice
had been made she was already, really, his novice there was
nothing he could do to repair the damage that had been done. So he
rose to his feet, horribly conscious of the eyes upon him, and offered
the girl his fury-trembling hand, and said the word thousands had said,
and thousands now expected him to say. And with that word, he lost
the last traces of his joy.
Welcome.