Why should we care about Valentine's Day?

I may or may not be making a tradition out of misleadingly-titled posts about Valentine's Day...

I get really irritated every year with the Valentine's Day nay-sayers. The blog post linked above gives one reason why, but in debating the issue with a friend yesterday, I came across another thing that irritates me, or at least where I think received wisdom needs to be challenged.

Two clarifications before I start; first, I'm not defending the abrasive-to-outright-abusive tone of the marketing culture around Valentine's, any more than I'm in favour of the same culture when it pops up around Halloween, Easter or Christmas - but it's the culture that's the problem there, not the day. Secondly, I'm speaking as a near-terminally single person. I'm 25, and I've been non-single on exactly two Valentine's Days. It's been almost four years since I was last in a relationship, and I'm not single in the taking-home-a-different-girl-every-night way, I'm single in the hopelessly-introverted-and-shut-in way.

Why is that relevant? Well, the question I want to ask today is whether people like me should feel like St. Valentine is rubbing it into us. You hear people every year complain about 'singles awareness day', and arguing that Valentine's discriminates against, psychologically abuses or at least bullies the lonely. My question is; should it? Is this a problem with the day, or with lonely people (and again, I stress - no talking down to the 'lonely'; I very much consider myself among your number)?

There's no question, of course, that people do feel lonely on Valentine's. I can remember it, once or twice, being a very painful day, particularly in my adolescence. I've had the experience of facing Valentine's a week after a break-up, and I know someone who actually got dumped on Valentine's, so there definitely are painful circumstances where V-day makes things worse.


The thing is, though, that looking back, most of the time when I've spent Valentine's alone and feeling lonely, feeling that somehow this day more than any other makes the loneliness worse, that feeling has been born of my tendency to obsess over relationships. I wouldn't have felt that way had I not given a disproportionate weight to matters of romance when thinking about my own well-being.

In the last few years, as I've begun to grow out of that obsession, and to get my personal priorities much more in order, Valentine's has gotten a lot less painful. I actually quite enjoy it these days, in an abstract sort of way - it's nice to just think about love, to be able to joke with non-single friends about how gooey they're being without bitterness. Even in the abstract, love is one of the most positive and uplifting things we bring into the world - I'm more than happy to dwell on it for a day, however alone I might be (I'll admit it helps that I'm a shameless romantic).

And I think this is the right general principle to work with. Think about it like this; if, independently of Valentine's Day, a single and lonely friend of yours complained about a couple who walked past while you were hanging out somewhere, you'd think they were being bitter and self-absorbed. Okay, V-day is stuffed down our throats a lot more, but the point stands.

You can only be made to feel bad by Valentine's Day if you believe that there's something wrong with being single, and if you genuinely think that, then you are tying far too much of your self-esteem to other people. Your self-esteem should flow from within, and if it does, you'll never feel bad about not being in a relationship, because you'll always have at least one awesome person around to brighten up your life (i.e. yourself ;D).

Even if you'd prefer to be in a relationship (and however much I've stopped obsessing over it, I'd still prefer to have somebody), there's nothing intrinsically wrong with being single. There's no absolute moral duty to be in a relationship (though arguably there is an absolute moral duty to love in a more general sense). You're not sinning by being alone. Any wrongness you feel is something you have to bring to the party before the commercial shitstorm around an arbitrary mark on a calendar can rub it in.

I guess what I'm saying (and yes, this is an unkind way to put it) is that if you're single and Valentine's day is getting you down, you need to grow up a bit. Go out and celebrate love in whatever way you can - that's pretty good advice for any day, really.

The Freedom to Write: Muh Nee?

So, a few weeks back, I wrote this post in which I talked about what I think (most) writers actually want from their writing. Rather than talking in terms of 'making a living', I broke it down in terms of three kinds of freedom to write; financial, social/cultural and personal/psychological. I thought at the time there was more to be said, so I'm going to do a post on each of these kinds of freedom, and financial freedom is first up.

J.P. Sartre said that there are only two elements of the human condition which are truly universal; we all have to work (i.e. earn enough to sustain ourselves), and we're all going to die eventually. He was a cheery fellow.

But he's probably right that those two facts are as close as it gets to universal. What it means, in practice, is that we have limited time to play with. We spend a third of our lives asleep, and the better part of another third in work. Factor in all the millions of domestic tasks that make up life as well, and most of us as 'pre-career' writers have to make do with maybe ten hours a week of writing time (I'm actually quite lucky - albeit cash poor - in this regard).

And this is one case where time really is money. Somewhere between a sixth and a third of your life will be spent in money-earning activities. That's a huge slice. Every hour of writing that pays financial dividends comes out of that share rather than out of family time, or personal hygeine time, or sleeping time (or, if you do NaNoWriMo, all three...). To put it another way, every hour of writing time that pays is an hour that doesn't cost - it is, financially, a free hour in which to write.

Now, I've said before, and with all the persistence of a broken record, that writing to get rich is a bad idea. I fight that battle because I believe that getting into writing with primarily financial aspirations rather than literary ones is a painful, discouraging experience which at best wastes a lot of someone's time. That doesn't mean that I don't want to get rich from my writing, or that I don't want to make a living at it - it's just that the writing is the motivation, and the money (and the marketing activities that accrue it) is the means, not the other way round.

So my question is this; at what point are you financially free to write? What counts, from a financial perspective, as a career in writing? At what point do you feel like you can give up, or cut back on, the day-job?

The general question 'what does it mean to have a career in writing?' is a very hard one to answer, and ranges over a complicated set of topics. But the financial question, because it deals with a precise decimal quantity - the amount of money you want to be making - should at least be answerable. It's a simple question of what you want to be able to do in addition to writing.

This year is going to cost me a little under £5000 for rent, bills and food (I live pretty frugally, and in a cheap city). Being a writer means (to me) needing a computer on which to write, and an internet connection by which to distribute and promote my work. I also want to keep my musical instruments and consoles in working order. Call that, for just-on-the-safe-side purposes, another £1000. I want some sort of a social life (£10-20 a week, i.e. an extra £500-1000). Then there's the question of up-front costs for writing-related stuff (in particular, formatting for print and editing, both things I've largely dodged paying for so far - but this can't last), which could get quite high but which aren't at the moment featuring in my planning.

Call it £7500 total, and let's say that's a half-decent absolute minimum for one person to survive on. We can guess that I'll need to get somewhere between £10,000 and £13,000 in sales revenue, depending on the precise structre of tax and royalty calculations if I'm going to cover this year from my writing (I'm almost certainly not). But that's a baseline.

That's what it will take for me to think I can give up the day-job. The precise amount you settle on will probably be different, but it's unlikely to be smaller (I'm seriously not kidding about how frugal my living costs are). Want to run a car? Add at least £1000 per year for fuel, taxes and insurance. Buying a house? Several thousand, every year, in mortgage payments. Want to support a family? Add at least £10,000, plus a further £5000 for each child beyond the first - all per year.

This, ultimately, is why I don't like the idea of writing for the money - I feel like I've got a huge mountain to climb just to make my £7,500, and if I was measuring success by how close I got to that target rather than how much writing I get to do and how good I feel my writing is, I would probably have already had all the hope crushed out of me. Know your goal before you make a serious commitment to this business - and don't forget just how big a mountain you'll have to climb to get there.

WEIRD Industry

(WEIRD series introduction; Education; Riches; Democracy; Conclusion)

Is industry a good thing?

Or a bad?

For that matter, do you think the former photo represents anything better than the latter?

Does industry mean dark satanic mills? Sweatshops? Mass-production and mass-consumption? It certainly produces them. As ever, though, with this series, I'm more interested in the broad principle than the actual contemporary implementation. The ills produced by rampant industry are well-documented and well-understood.

What I'm interested in, though, is what it means to be industrialised. How and why do societies come to be industrialised? Given how ugly and repugnant the edifices of industry tend to be, both environmentally and culturally, why do we have so many of them? Why do people build them, and why do the builders and owners go on to become rich?

Let's look at two key aspects of industrialisation, economy of scale and specialisation. These aren't the be-all and end-all of industry, but any attempt to define 'industry' that goes beyond a simple dictionary definition is going to mention both.

Economies of scale are familiar to us all, of course. In essence, the idea is that the bigger a process is, the less wasteful and thus more efficient it will be. This is why bulk-buying works; products bought in bulk cost less per unit to package and distribute. It's also why you make muffins in batches; you have to heat the oven up to do any muffins at all, so you might as well do as many muffins as you can fit in the oven (I'm sure there's an innuendo in that sentence somewhere...), to make most use of all that energy.

Specialisation, in this case, means everyone you employ having one particular, well-defined job to do, making them a single cog in a much bigger machine. It's the underlying principle of the production line; rather than having each employee making a whole car by himself and thus having to know how every part of a car goes together with every other part, you have one employee for each step of the process, and every one of them does that step on every car. The key here is that you then don't need to train all your employees in all the jobs - each gets one piece of training. It's easier to replace an employee who leaves, too.

It's dehumanising, true, but it's efficient - it allows the production process to function with least lost time (at least, it does when implemented correctly). And that's what all the elements of industry ultimately come down to: efficiency. Making the most productive use of all available resources - money, time, skill, raw materials etc.

So, is efficiency a universalisable value, in the way that we saw education to be last week? Should we always want things to be more efficient? One of the easiest ways to define efficiency is as the reduction of waste, so yes, there is no circumstance in which greater efficiency is a bad thing.

Some of you are about to protest that sometimes it's nice to stop and smell the roses, take the road less travelled, or do things the hard way just for the challenge, but you're missing the point. If it's 'nice' - more technically, if there's some value in doing it that way - then the time isn't wasted (unless exactly the same value can be generated a more efficient way - so you might say that actually going for a walk in the country is a better way to experience the nature-appreciating value of stopping to smell the roses while trudging through suburbia, for example).

Efficiency, basically, means getting more of the things you value for less effort - less time spent doing things you don't value. So I think it's pretty clear that efficiency in general is always better. What about the specific subsets of efficiency which are captured as 'industry', though?

Well, the key here is that industrial efficiency is about reducing the amount of time we collectively spend on survival. Centralisation and organisation have saved a vast number of work-hours for most people over the last five hundred years or so. You might still work a 40-odd hour week, but most of the earning you do in that time isn't for the means to basic sustenance (okay, this depends on what your job is and how well it pays); you're not just eking out the means to survive, you're also affording TV, internet, all mod cons and so on.

Put more generally, the point is this: industry means more time and energy to be spent on the business of choosing and living out your own values. It's not as essential as education is, but it is still always a good thing. Yes, it can be dehumanising, it can create a materialist cultural bias - but it doesn't have to. Ultimately, it's as much a form of freedom as education.

Does anyone get into writing to get rich?

This is a response to this post by John Scalzi, in which he claims that he did get into writing to get rich. Since I've made rather a fuss of my resistance to the idea of doing so (though, for what it's worth, I may have mellowed a little since the earliest of those posts), I thought I'd better explain why I think Scalzi is wrong, why I think it's important to point out where he's wrong, and why he still has at least one very good point.

Let's start, though, by getting a clarification out of the way. The question we're asking shouldn't really be 'Does anyone get into writing to get rich?' It's obvious that some people do; people who see the success of Stephen King, or J.K. Rowling, or Stephanie Mayer, or John Locke etc. etc. and think 'Brilliant! I'll have a piece of that, it looks like an easy life with no heavy lifting.'

These people, of course, are idiots. I know this, because I was one in my teens (and how many of us can honestly say we weren't idiots about our careers at some point in our teens?). We're not really interested in whether idiots get into writing to get rich. What we're interested in is whether there's ever a situation in which getting into writing to get rich is the best or even a good way to get rich.

Scalzi's argument, as best I can reconstruct it, goes like this:
1. Scalzi is better at writing than at anything else he could be making money at.
2. So he'll make more money by writing than anything else he could be doing.
3. His best chance of getting rich thus comes from writing.
4. Therefore, it makes sense to say that he writes to get rich.

I don't actually contest any of these points as they apply to the current moment. Though I've never read a Scalzi book, he is widely reputed to be very good, and has been recommended to me by people whose judgement I trust. As such, I'm happy to accept that, given his abilities and market position at the moment, his best chance of getting rich is to keep writing and selling his work.

I'm also not going to argue that this makes him a hack or a shill. That would be a cheap shot and a long way from a useful comment on the debate. I see no intrinsic conflict between financial motivations and high art.

The problem I want to bring up is this: according to Scalzi's Wikipedia page, he has been a professional freelance writer for 15 years, and a published author for 11. He's been writing a long time, and our question is not 'Should writers stay in writing to get rich?', it's 'Should anyone get into writing to get rich?'

I suggest that no-one who has not yet 'got into writing' is a good enough writer that premise 1 of Scalzi's argument applies to them. More precisely, there are two skills needed to get rich from writing; the skill of good writing (yes, OK, that's lots of skills bundled into one), and the skill of getting people, one way or another, to pay you for your writing (also lots of skills bundled together, but you get the idea). I move that both of these skill-sets must be learned before premise 1 is true, and that you have to commit to the idea of writing as a life direction/career before fully developing both.

I'm assuming that no-one is so naturally good a writer that they don't need to study it in depth for some time before they get to professional standard at it. Equally, it's fair to say that most of the writers I know wrote for a long time before deciding to get into writing as a career, so maybe they can say that by that point they were better writers than they were at anything else. Very few of these people, though, in my experience, have had very much marketing experience or training.

The key point is this; that time they spent learning to market and sell their work could have been spent learning a more lucrative skill. Similarly, the time spent learning to put the professional polish on your writing ability could be spent learning something else. Anyone with the intellectual ability to be a successful professional writer has the intellectual ability to be a lawyer, a doctor, an engineer or some other job in that high-quality professional category.

Now, I accept that once you've got a career and platform as a writer, the cost of retraining is lost earning time that, quite feasibly, you might never earn back (top-quality jobs, after all, tend to require 3-10 years to get access to). But if you don't have a career and a platform, if you're just starting out, it's going to take you a similar amount of non-earning time to develop the skills and presence to make money from your writing, and you could use that time to get a better-paying, more stable job with better benefits.

I consider myself to be coming up to the 2-year mark on my attempt to treat writing as a career. So far, I've made something like $25. Of course, I'm not a particularly relevant case, in that through this whole time I've technically been in training for a different career (i.e. academic, due to my now-almost-finished PhD), and I'm also emphatically not in this to get rich (because if I was, the time-scale involved would kill the actual writing for me - I simply would not be able to deal with this feeling in my career). I'm in writing because I believe that, long-term, it's my best chance of making a rough-and-ready living without having to do anything that feels like a day job. The quirks of my psychology that make this plausible are a subject for another time.

The reason I think it's important to contest Scalzi's point is simple; if you say it's a rational decision to get into writing to get rich, you're going to attract a lot of the kind of idiot mentioned earlier, and that benefits no-one; it clogs up the marketplace with crap, it suckers in a lot of idiots who will fall for scams like Author Solutions, and it gives us all a bad name as irresponsible dreamers.

Ultimately, there are probably no jobs (apart from 'heir to the family fortune') which give a good chance of getting rich. Even high-flying surgeons and barristers aren't rich in the way that (say) J.K. Rowling is, and even she isn't rich in the way that Bill Gates and Warren Buffett are. It takes a healthy dose of luck to create that kind of wealth, and I don't think any of the people just named would deny that. Heck, Scalzi acknowledges himself that it took him a good helping of luck to get where he is today.

So, I'd discourage anyone from getting into writing 'to get rich'. Scalzi sees the question a bit differently. He argues that telling people that it's a bad idea to get into writing to get rich encourages a financial devaluing of writing, and he's almost certainly right. There's a fine line here - between 'writing to get rich' and 'writing to make a living' - but the kind of people who are out to exploit newbie authors' sense that you can't get rich from writing aren't interested in that.

Writing might be a bad way to get rich, but that doesn't mean that if you value someone's writing, you shouldn't do something at least to indicate that value. It doesn't have to be directly financial - a positive review or good recommendation is worth its character count in diamonds to a newbie writer, and even a simple expression of support or enthusiasm goes a long way - but it's worth remembering that as a reader, your best chance of getting more writing out of an author you value is to buy their time away from day-jobs and debts.

So ultimately, the question of good reasons to get into writing, and its answer, aren't really as important as the rhetorical stance you take. No-one should be using the fact that writing is a bad way to get rich to justify exploiting writers, but equally we writers should not mislead ourselves about the fact that writing is a bad way to get rich.

WEIRD Education

(WEIRD series introduction; Industrialisation; Riches; Democracy; Conclusion)

Okay, it's time (finally) to pick up this thread
. In that introduction to this series, I explained Jürgen Habermas' argument that human rights conflict with cultural relativism, and used it to justify, in principle, the idea of prescribing certain values as universal for all humans (indeed, all sentients, or at least all sophonts). I offered up the WEIRD quartet - Education, Industrialisation, Richness and Democracy - as possible examples, making the bold claim that I could defend their universal application.

Well, here goes. I'm starting with education because I think it's easiest to explain both the pitfalls and the ultimate defence of the topic, and it will set up quite nicely the pattern I'm going to follow throughout this series. I'm going to draw a distinction between how we actually practice education in Western culture today (and how we have practiced it for the last couple of hundred years), and what I see as the essence of the value; the latter being far more appealing than the former.

The problem with our 'old' concept of education (sadly, still prevalent today) is that it is focussed on the provision of information. For most of history, education has consisted of identifying some group of facts as important and then trying to get children to remember those facts. This becomes immensely problematic when trying to compare education between cultures - which culture should decide on what group of facts is important? Different cultures are going to advocate very different groups of facts, particularly cultural and historical facts.

Literacy and language present a great example. We can say that (with the exceptions of the authors of religious texts), Shakespeare is the most-studied and most culturally significant literary figure in history, and that therefore all people should learn about Shakespeare, but this ignores the fact that Shakespeare's prominence is really just the prominence of anglocentric culture. To force Brazillian or Kenyan children to study Shakespeare on these grounds is rampant cultural imperialism.

But you can't teach language without teaching some literature (much though my teenage self wished to deny this fact). An understanding of the relationship between literature and language is essential to seeing language as a feature of social context, rather than just words and grammar rules. So what literature should we prescribe the teaching of, if we are to universally teach literature?

The answer is to take as a principle of universal education that children should be literate, but say that the teaching should be adapted to teach culturally-relevant literature. There's no use in teaching Shakespeare to Brazilian children whose first language is Portuguese, even translated into Portuguese (for more on the idea of teaching literacy in culturally-sensitive ways, there's no better source than the work and methodology of Paulo Freire).

And there's a hint in here of the broader point. It's an entirely legitimate question to ask why we should hold the teaching of literacy as universally important. The answer is that someone who is not literate cannot evaluate, critically analyse and engage with the products of literate culture - and I mean 'culture' here in the broadest sense, including laws, government reports and so on. A person who is not literate is incapable of defending himself effectively against things that are written down, because he cannot know what has been written down.

I'm being a little melodramatic, but the idea of defense is key. There's a huge wealth of behaviourist psychological research showing how human beings can be conditioned and indoctrinated by authority figures; the ability to question authority, therefore, is an essential part of the freedom to be self-determined, and this goes just as much for the values authority imposes as for the figures of authority doing the imposing.

At the core of my concept of education, then (and, indeed, at the core of the concept of education that is now widely taught in teaching courses - for which critical pedagogy provides an excellent framework) are two ideas, the key traits that I consider to be the essence of being educated:

- The awareness that there are many conflicting values in the world.
- The ability to critically analyse values and choose among them for oneself.

It should be obvious that a person who is actually equipped with these two traits will be (in principle) immune to indoctrination and thus to cultural imperialism. Obviously, nobody can be expected to have a perfect record in these fields - I certainly don't - because there are all sorts of people in the world working to indoctrinate us in ever more sophisticated ways, but the more critical we are, the safer we are from indoctrination.

The final point to be made is that this concept of education is entirely self-defending. If we promote being educated (in this way) as a value, then anyone who is so educated will be capable of deciding for themselves whether or not to adopt the value of education, and repudiate it if they want to. Obviously, this is a level of self-awareness that is very difficult to teach or train, but we can hold it up as the ultimate goal.

I would also argue that without the awareness that one's values are a choice from among many, one cannot really be said to hold those values correctly, but only by blind faith (any holding of values is an act of faith; but no faith should be blind). As such, education thus construed is the ultimate universal value, because it is a necessary condition of the having of any values at all.

* * *

Some tangential remarks about the old concept of education while I'm here; fundamentally, at the start of the 20th century, the concept of education used more or less globally was that born from the English public school. These were institutions whose express principles, principles understood and recognised by almost everyone involved, parents, teachers and pupils alike, are almost diametrically opposed to the principles I suggest in this blog.

The principles of the English public school were authority, hierarchy and conformity; they existed, in essence, to prepare the children of the British elite for their work as the officers and officials of the British Empire. This included a degree of indoctrination in views like the inferiority of non-white races, the importance of obedience to one's superiors, and so on.

Fortunately, slowly, this concept is being wiped out (though ask me sometime about my experiences in a turn-of-the-21st-century English public - which actually means 'private' - school). In the educational studies lectures I work in as an amanuensis, concepts of critical pedagogy and the teaching of independence are emphasised.

Be very wary of anyone trying to defend the 'old' concept or denounce the new (as for example, in the decision by the Texas Republican Party to include a plank in its 2012 platform that discouraged the teaching of critical thinking skills). The only reason to support the old concept is if you want to be able to indoctrinate pupils rather than teaching them.

High Drama (part 2)

Remember this? I do occasionally come back and tie off loose ends...

In that blog post, I talked about a problem that arises when we try to define 'fantasy' as a genre; specifically, that it's hard to pick out the essential component of something being 'fantasy', when stories with fantastical trappings - dragons, swords, magic etc. - can vary from A Song of Ice and Fire to The Lord of the Rings to The Lies of Locke Lamora and all the way back again.

I phrased this in terms of a concept drawn from video game theory, the concept of a core aesthetic - defined as the underlying emotional reason that we go to a particular genre or category within a form. A core aesthetic is, ultimately, the experience we go to a work of art in search of. Today, I plan to outline what I think the core aesthetic of fantasy (literature) is.

First, though, two things it's not. In the first part of this post, I linked to this video, which outlines the theory of core aesthetics in videogame genres. Now, they actually offer a definition of fantasy as it applies to videogames, which is that fantasy is vicarity - fantasy, in videogames, is what allows you to become something you are not; a soldier, or a gangster, or a pilot etc. etc.

That works very well for videogames, but it's much harder to do in literature. Because when reading you don't have control over the choices that the characters make, it's very rare to find fantasy literature which involves fantasy in this sense. There is a degree of vicarity, to be sure, in our enjoyment of the heroic and exciting deeds of protagonists in all genres, but in literature I think vicarity is the province primarily of horror and (erotic) romance, which are the most visceral, experiential forms of writing - the genres most focussed on making you feel what the characters are feeling.

But, intuitively, lots of things that are quite definitely 'fantasy' aren't primarily about vicarious enjoyment - there's no better example than A Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones. No-one's getting any pleasure from vicariously living in that world (okay, psychopaths notwithstanding). Similarly, there are things that intuitively don't seem to be fantasy which are deeply vicarious - the aforementioned erotic romance, for example.

So vicarity doesn't make a good definition of fantasy. Quite separately, we need to make clear the distinction between 'fantasy' and 'magical realism'. Tempting though it is to uphold Terry Pratchett's charming quip that magical realism is 'like a polite way of saying you write fantasy', there is a key difference, and it's an illuminating one to discuss.

In essence, the difference is this: in a magical realist story, when the ghost or spirit or monster or whatever turns up, no-one worries too much about why, or how it works, or what the logic that governs its behaviour should be. No-one pays any attention to the system of the magic.

In fantasy, however, one key element is showing that there is some system to the magic. So, whereas in a magical realist story, a ghost would just be a character who was dead, when I wrote Heaven Can Wait, my fantasy novel about a ghost (which is coming back soon, I fervently hope), the story explored the mechanics of being a ghost and the spiritual implications of life after death just as much as the character dynamics of the protagonist trying to relate to the life he'd left behind (which would be the sole focus in magical realism).

That's not to exclude fantasy stories where the magic isn't what we call 'rules-based'. Heaven Can Wait is a rules-based magic story; what this means is that the reader should be able to figure out and sometimes predict things the magic system makes possible before they actually appear on-page (in fact, the very best rules-based magic systems will leave the reader thinking about all the cool things you can do with magic which there wasn't time to fit into the book). The Lord of the Rings, by contrast, doesn't have rules-based magic. Tolkein never explains how Gandalf's powers relate to or differ from those of the One Ring, for example.

But The Lord of the Rings definitely is fantasy, not magical realism. Why? Because things we know about the magic itself - that the ring is corrupting, that it must be destroyed to curb the power of Sauron - are significant to the plot. Put simply, there is a relation between character and setting which is essential to fantasy but not essential to magical realism.

Therein lies the key. Fantasy is about what fantastical settings allow you to do with characters, not in general (because other genres, like sci-fi, horror and magical realism also rely on setting-character interactions) but in respect of a particular core aesthetic, which I call high drama.

By high drama, I mean a particular feeling you get at the climax of a fantasy novel. Think about Frodo and Sam as they stand on the edge of the precipice in Mount Doom, as Frodo finally succumbs to the Ring's power. (Those of you who've read the final volume of the Wheel of Time, think about Rand at Shayol Ghul - this is probably the best possible example of what I'm talking about, but slightly less well-known as yet than the climax of LotR).

It's that moment where the whole world hangs in the balance of one character's decision; that is high drama. It puts the character under a microscope, shows you how all the stresses of a lifetime can shape morals and wisdom. It can be achieved any number of ways, in the everyman who finds a lost artefact of power (Frodo), or the destined hero who faces up to the ultimate trial (Rand in the Wheel of Time), or the crook who stumbles over a sinister plot (Jimmy the Hand in Raymond Feist's Riftwar trilogy), or the ruler who faces up to the corruption of her government and/or nation (Mara in Feist and Janny Wurts' Kelewan trilogy) and so on.

The heart of the matter, and the reason genre fantasy books and series end up so long, is that to give that one moment of decision weight, you have to feel the character's life adding up to it. Whatever the reputation of the genre for shallow, stereotypical characters, when done right it is more character-focussed than any other form of literature.

I can't think of a fantasy story that I've read that didn't supply this core aesthetic. I can think of books with magic in, some of them very fine (Balthasar's Oddysey by Amin Maalouf, arguably), which don't do this, but they don't feel like fantasy to me. Dragons, swords, stupid character names and hypersexualised she-demons (naming no names, Cersei Lannister) have nothing to do with it.

(Addendum: I realised after writing this post that high drama doesn't have to be reserved entirely for the climax of an entire series - there can be other moments of high drama in a series, as for example at the climax of season 1 of The Second Realm or even, arguably, in the red pill/blue pill choice in The Matrix. It's still that sense that everything we know about the character has a part to play in this crucial decision that he/she is making. I might need to do a full post expanding on this point at some later date; there isn't space to do it justice here.)

The Second Realm 4.2: The Sins of the Brother

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The Rabbit Hole

2. The Sins of the Brother

One glance at the wreckage of New Vessit took the wind right out of Pevan’s sails.

Hardly a building remained standing, and only a single mast bobbed at the wharf beyond. The town had been driftwood from the waist up anyway, but most of the houses had bits of their stonework missing as well as a pile of smashed timber where their roofs and walls should have been. The packed grit of the broad, cold street was spotted here and there with smaller debris, mainly clothing. Vessit was poor by the standards of the South, disorganised and fragile by the standards of the North. She hoped Federas had fared better.

She’d left Chag sleeping off the panic that had seized him during the quake. He’d barely been coherent when she dragged him into the hidey-hole she’d found, in the basement of a long, low building near the shorefront, in the old city. Hopefully he wouldn’t wake up while she was gone – he’d be hopeless if he did.

Early in the morning as it was, the road was deserted. The Realm hadn’t flattened out until the small hours, and probably at that point most of the townsfolk had collapsed from exhaustion where they stood. Lost and alone with Chag in the dark ruins of the old city, Pevan had certainly wished to do something similar.

A stiff spring breeze brought the sea’s cold whistling through the side-alleys and up her sleeves. She’d had to leave too much of their gear stranded up a tower-block to flee the quake, and when she’d tried to get back there, she’d run into a total block. Strong as she might be in her Gift, she couldn’t make a Gateway to a wall that was no longer there. Probably it, and their packs, were pulverised rubble on an old tarmac road surface somewhere.

For warmth, she broke into a jog, past the wreckage of house after house. Her legs weren't happy about running, and the grit of the road felt far too rough underfoot, but she held to the jog as long as she could. Morbid curiosity rose in her, surprisingly powerful. Were there corpses in some of those houses? She cast the thought aside, but kept her ears open. If someone called for help, it was help she could offer, perhaps better than anyone else nearby.

Some of the houses had weathered the quake better than others. Most, at least, looked more salvageable than those right on the outskirts of town. She passed a couple where walls had clearly fallen against each other, the woodwork light enough to stay upright rather than snapping under its own weight. On the other hand, one plot was a charred heap, a soot-blackened tin bath the only thing to show that the ring of stones had been a house the previous day.

Even knowing that this was a poor region, with no natural timber and little but the sea to provide food, the state of the architecture was troubling. The nearest Sherim to Vessit was almost a hundred miles away. Besides feeding themselves, what did they do with their time, if not build decent houses?

After a couple of minutes, Pevan slowed back to a stiff walk, letting her breath recover. Ahead, a boy of about her own age, sandy hair sticking out at all angles, emerged from behind a house that looked more or less intact. He walked slowly, feet shuffling, head down. Concussed, perhaps, or at least in shock. She didn’t blame him.

She called, "Excuse me!" and broke into a run again for a few steps. The boy stopped and seemed to wake up, standing straighter and squaring his shoulders as he turned to face her. He was skinny, scrawny even, still unmistakably a teenager. She’d expected Vessit’s youth to be thick-set, trawlermen types. His coat hung slack on him, slim fingers protruding from too-long cuffs.

He managed a fair impression of a sailor’s gruff response to a stranger, though. "Who are you?" His voice was harsh, clearly worn from his fair share of shouting.

"Pevan Atcar, Gatemaker of Federas," she answered briskly, preparing to get bossy if she needed to. Growing up under Dora's eye was a masterclass in certain things. "I'm looking for your Four Knot."

He flinched. "Um, she's at the Sherriff's." When he wasn't trying to sound hostile, his voice was light and a little weedy. She could still hear the tiredness in it. He pointed back the way he'd come. "Over there, the one with the blue door. But, uh... maybe you should wait a bit. He didn't survive." The boy looked down at his hands, then swallowed and pressed his fist to his mouth.

"The Sherriff? I'm sorry." And she was, too, even if a part of her was cursing the delay. She reached over and squeezed his shoulder. "I felt the quake on my way. It was bad here?" Stupid question, really, but she needed to be able to talk to the locals if she was going to find Rel.

The lad shrugged, tucked his chin down to his chest, and covered his eyes. His voice a sob, he said, "We thought he might make it, if he could just survive the night. But... I dunno."

Something in his stance cut through Pevan’s impatience. Automatically, she gathered him into a hug. It was what she'd needed most when Temmer had died. The boy shook, but didn't resist. How close had he been to the Sherriff? He seemed too young and fragile to be a guardsman, which meant he was probably a relative. His head felt like a furnace against her shoulder.

It didn't take him as long as she'd expected to pull himself together. He straightened, rubbed his eyes on the back of his hand and sniffled. When he looked up at her - they were the same height, really, but he just seemed shorter - his eyes, though red, were intent, direct. "Why are you here? What brings you to Vessit?" Maybe he was a guard, after all.

"I'm looking for my brother. Relvin?" She stepped back, let him stand on his own. Let him work, stop him dwelling. "He came here a while back and we haven't heard anything from him."

The lad's face darkened. "The Clearseer? The, um, the Wildren were holding him, but he got away... yesterday? Maybe the day before. We were out looking for him when the quake hit." His eyes flickered across her face. "Maybe I had better take you to Wolpan."

Inwardly, Pevan breathed a sigh of relief. The boy hadn’t heard of her, didn’t know the role she’d played in Rel’s release. Something trickled cold through her gut as she thought through what might have happened if he had known. She could handle the boy, but the townsfolk were her only potential lead on Rel. Fortunately, her face had fallen blank, rather than tensing. The lad’s frown spoke of clearer perception than a boy his age had any right to. Voice steady – another legacy from Dora – Pevan said, "I can find my own way, if you're needed elsewhere..."

He shook his head and swallowed. "I should be getting back. I just... needed some fresh air. But I should be in the meeting anyway."

"Meeting?"

"Yeah, Wolpan wanted to speak to the whole squad. About..." He paused, a puzzled frown on his face. Then he stuck out his hand. "Sorry, I'm Atla. I'm a Guide. Um, up from Lefal for training."

That explained it. He didn't look local, but he called the Four Knot by her first name. Rel hadn't spoken highly of Wolpan, but she sounded like the kind of person who'd rub him the wrong way. Pevan broke off that train of thought, trying not to let his judgement lean on hers. Atla was still staring at her expectantly, something pointed in his regard. Playing it blithely, she shook his hand. "Lefal... that's down South somewhere, right?"

"Um, more East from here." He gave an awkward chuckle. "But I guess it all seems like the South to you, right?" His hand lingered on hers a bit longer than felt right, but she nodded as amicably as she could. He mumbled something, then started to walk back towards the side-street he'd indicated. "Come on."

She fell into step with him. The Sherriff's office, when she looked ahead, was obvious. It was the only stone-built place on the road, still intact though the remains of a wooden porch were piled beside the blue door, and what looked like an old sail had been thrown across the roof, probably covering quake damage.

As they approached, the door opened and four figures stepped out. Three women and a man. The woman in the lead was speaking, loudly, but the wind took the definition out of her words. Probably the Four Knot. Vessit had a female Clearseer, Pevan knew, and one of the other two had to be the Guide responsible for Atla's training. The last would be a Warder, in all likelihood. Probably the man. He had the doughty physique of a blacksmith, a mite less windswept and wild than a seaman.

It was the shortest of the women who spotted her and Atla walking up, and waved. Pevan quickened her pace, then slowed again as Atla failed to match her. He was staring at the ground, his step reduced to a shuffle. She rolled her eyes. "Come on, they're waiting for us."

The boy looked up, face pale, but at least he did start moving again. She half expected to see his bottom lip trembling. Mind you, from the look on Wolpan's face, he might have some reason for fear. The Four Knot looked like she'd been chewing rocks.

Better to lead by example. Pevan strode ahead, heard Atla's boots pattering on the road as he hastened to catch up. The four Gifted had stopped talking to watch her approach; her step hitched as their attention landed on her. She took a deep breath and fixed her eyes on Wolpan. This was a conversation she could not afford to lose control of.

"Good morning." She nodded to the Four Knot, whose glare didn't waver. Pevan offered her hand to shake. "I'm Pevan Atcar, Gatemaker of Federas. Sorry, I know this is a bad time for me to show up."

Wolpan left her hanging. "Relvin's sister." There was no ambiguity in her tone; she thought anyone connected to Rel was bad news.

"Is he still here?" Pevan narrowed her eyes slightly. Wolpan's stare was barely a shadow of Dora's, but Pevan was tired and the sea breeze was stiff. "Atla said he'd gone, but I need to catch up with him. I'll be out of your hair as quickly as I can."

"Your brother is an escaped criminal, and this town wants a reckoning from him." Wolpan folded her arms as Pevan lowered her hand back to her side.

She had to be careful not to give too much away. Trying to buy a little time, she swallowed. Her throat was a little too tight to try playing the innocent card. Instead, she frowned. It wasn't hard to summon up exasperation. "Criminal? What did he do this time?"

That, at least, seemed to crack Wolpan's hostility, just a touch. Pevan tried to put on a face that said you’ve only had to deal with him for a month, I’m seventeen. When the Four Knot spoke, though, her voice was still hot and harsh. "Look around you. All this is his fault."

Wolpan waved her hand at the ruins, and Pevan’s gut clenched. For a moment, she struggled for words, to try to say otherwise, but the Four Knot was right, probably more right than she knew. What could Pevan say to that?

"Be fair, Wolpan." The man spoke up. Atla had gone to stand behind his shoulder, so maybe he was the Guide. He looked like a Warder, though. Guides were normally smaller. He spared a quick, weak smile for Pevan, keeping his voice cool and benign. "The Clearseer played a part, to be sure, but we don't know what happened down there yesterday."

Pevan, who did know, bit her tongue and looked down at her hands. She tried to encompass the whole squad with her shrug. "He's always been reckless. I'm sorry for his part in this. We really need him back in Federas, though. We can't afford to be without a Clearseer."

"The boy's a liability," Wolpan spat.

"That's uncalled for." The tiny woman spoke up. She barely came up to Pevan's chin, but her eyes were wide and attentive, the set of her face intent but not hostile. Up close, everything about her screamed 'Clearseer'. When she turned to glare at Wolpan, the roundness went out of her cheeks. "The poor girl's not her brother. Didn't their Four Knot come here with him, too?"

Pevan looked around the group again. The third woman - she had to be the Warder, though she looked a little precious for that role - slouched with her arms folded, a lopsided frown broadcasting her scepticism. The Guide and Atla both offered Pevan sympathetic looks, but Wolpan held their attention.

Well, at least they weren't all trying to melt her the way Wolpan was. Pevan said, "Not technically, but Dora's replacement wasn't properly trained before she left."

"A habit Federas could do with getting out of." Wolpan actually sneered at her.

Pevan tensed, heat rushing through her. What did a provincial Four Knot know about the North, and-

She held herself back, remembering how Dora would deal with Rel. A deep breath let her relax enough to get her voice back down and level. "Really? That's a cheap shot, Four Knot. If you want rid of me that badly, just tell me where Rel went." She turned, deliberately moving her feet around so that she had her shoulder to the Four Knot. It wasn’t good politics, but it was the best she was going to manage. Hopefully her cheeks were rosy enough from the cold to hide the hot shame flooding her veins.

The snub stunned Wolpan enough that the Clearseer got in first. "We don't know where he's gone. You can appreciate he's not been top of our priority list since he got away. We've not heard from any of the Wildren who were holding him, either."

"Actually, Ton said he thought he saw a Wilder heading East at speed after the quake last night, with a couple of bodies in tow." The Warder spoke up, her voice prim and high.

A lump of ice settled in Pevan's gut. "Bodies?" Shame vanished, taking its heat with it. If anything could kill Rel, it would be two Gift-Givers.

"Could have just been carrying them so they could travel faster," the Clearseer said, quickly. "I've seen Wildren do that before." She reached over, past Wolpan, to pat Pevan on the shoulder. "Our Sherim's about four days' travel East. She might have taken your brother to the Court for trial."

That certainly made sense. She couldn't think why Taslin might cart Rel's corpse all the way to the Second Realm, but that didn't mean much. At least it gave her a lead to follow.

"When was the last time you ate, love?" The Warder stepped forward and took her arm, interrupting her moment's reverie.

Pevan shook her head, her forehead loaded with the weight of the last couple of days. Besides the sudden weakness in her neck, she felt only the cold of the wind. "Um... before the quake, yesterday. After that I came here as quickly as I could."

Stiffly, Wolpan said, "Get her some food, Bersh, but come back straight away. Atla can look after her. Thia, Marit, you have your tasks."

The Four Knot turned on her heel and stalked off down the street. The Clearseer patted Pevan on the arm again before leading the Warder off in the same direction. Pevan nodded to the two Guides and let herself be led back towards the waterfront.



The Guide deposited her in a warehouse on the fringe of the old city that had been taken over by the townsfolk as a refuge. Partitioned down the middle, this half had been laid out with crude planks-on-bricks benches and trestles. At one end, a handful of women whose exhaustion had turned them ghostly or cadaverous staffed a bench, passing out rolls and cups of water. Every so often, someone would come through from the other half, with slack cheeks and grey eyes, and just lean on the partition. Most had blood on their clothes; that would be the hospital, then.

The looks on the faces of those taking sustenance at the tables around her were little better. Most of the motion she could see was automatic, mechanical. The only exceptions were where people moved around, into or out of the warehouse. They came in pairs, always, one, injured, leaning on the other – the lucky one.

After only a minute or two tearing at her own ration, Pevan lost her grip on the cold private shock of Rel’s possible fate. As a feeling, it was in too much good company. Vessit as a whole felt like that hard patch in the gullet that makes you desperate to cry but lets no tears past. Seeing the buildings had been bad enough, but the people showed too clearly that most of those buildings were homes.

Atla, propped up on his elbows, his chin resting on interlocked fingers, was clearly no less affected. He alternated between staring at her bread – had the lad had anything to eat during the vigil for the Sherriff? – and staring at her face, and if his eyes held their unnerving directness, his eyelids were tight, leaving a narrow strip of white at the top and bottom of his irises.

She took another bite of the roll – plain fare, but welcome – and lowered it to the table. Atla’s eyes followed it down. After a moment, his head dropped too, into his hands. He was trembling, and for a moment Pevan took it as a sign of crying, but no tears fell to the bare plank under his elbows. Down the other end of the trestle, a broad-shouldered man of about Rel’s age glanced at the Guide, his face sickly.

Pevan leaned forward a little, so she could keep her voice low. "Chin up, Atla." Even at a murmur, she made the words forceful. The boy’s head came up sharply, and she wondered if she’d misjudged, but those wide eyes of his clearly saw something in her face that checked him. He waited, and, still keeping her voice down, she explained, "You're Gifted. These people need to know you're keeping them safe. Sometimes, all that means is not looking beaten when you feel you are."

He looked around, flinching away from actually looking directly at anyone at all. When he spoke, his tone was sullen. "You weren't here."

"But I do know my job." She took a sip of water, trying to pretend it wasn’t brackish. The kid was so green. "It's hard, I know. And sometimes it feels like it can't make a difference. These people need you, more than they realise." Hard though it was, she forced herself to crack a lopsided smile. "It's okay to doze, everyone knows you were up all night. But prop your head up when you do it."

"I can't do much for them as a Guide." Atla bounced a fist very softly off the tabletop.

"So?" Pevan ripped another bite from the roll, spoke around it. "Do what you can for them as a person."

He looked around, head up and neck straight, like a puppy alert to a strange new sound. His eyes settled on something behind Pevan and before she could turn to see, he was half-way out of his seat. The fellow at the other end of the table, and his similarly-sized companion, turned to look, even as Pevan hauled Atla back down.

She used his moment of bewilderment – again, like a puppy knowing it’s done something wrong, but not what – to get the first word in. "Okay, lesson two." A chunk of bread threatened to catch in her throat for a moment, but she coughed it clear. "Wolpan told you to stay with me for a reason. What was it?"

The boy glared at her, jaw set. Then he looked around, noticed someone looking back from the next bench, and his cheeks reddened. He lowered his eyes to the table, bit his lip. When he spoke, he took a long time over it. "She... thinks you’re a danger to us? To Vessit?"

Pevan grunted, smothering a chuckle with another drink of the too-warm, stale water. In Atla’s eyes, probably everything Wolpan did indicated some threat or other. The Four Knot was definitely of the angry stripe. Small wonder Rel and Dora hadn’t thrived here. She frowned at the trainee Guide. "Wolpan doesn’t like me much, but she’s smarter than that." Keeping the gesture small, she indicated the rest of the room. "You’re here because to everyone else, I’m a stranger. At a time like this, that makes people nervous. You’re not here because Wolpan thinks I’m dangerous, whether or not she actually does. You’re here because she knows the civvies will worry if I’m not watched."

That gave him pause. While he fiddled with his hands and tried to look around the room again without moving his head, Pevan took another bite of the roll. The water was grim, but the bread wasn’t bad, all things considered.

She felt Atla’s eyes land on her despite the fact she was peering into her cup at the time. His attention was powerful, unsettling, but without a hint of threat or anger in it. He said, "You aren’t angry about what she said?"

What did she say? More importantly, which of several possibilities did Atla have in mind? At least he was looking less beaten now. It couldn’t hurt the weary mood of the town to see the lad holding his own against her. She let herself frown, puzzled. "What do you mean?"

He swallowed, but she let him get away with it. The uncertainty didn’t carry into his voice. "What Wolpan said... I know she doesn’t like your brother very much."

"I don’t like my brother very much, some of the time." Pevan rolled her eyes. "I’ll be living with his reputation the rest of my life. He doesn’t bend his neck easily. I don’t like it when Federas gets a bad name because of... because of what happened." Better not to try saying it out loud, really. She’d end up defending Rel more than he deserved. Instead, she moved on. "No, Wolpan’s a fair judge of character and she knows her job. I’m sure she’d like to never see an Atcar again, but she doesn’t have to like me to see that I get what I need."

Atla ran a hand through his hair. Quietly, he said, "I don’t think she likes me much, either."

"She trusts you." Pevan put some effort behind the words. She could almost see the result play across the little Guide’s face. Nothing specific, but he seemed a little healthier. "At least, she thinks the civvies will trust you, and she believes you can hold that trust."

"I... really?" He looked around again, those relentless eyes studying other faces intently.

As if he was looking for some visible sign of trust, she realised. No-one had said a word to him in greeting, or even given him a wave of recognition, since they’d come in. She’d taken it as a sign of how traumatised everyone was, but maybe he hadn’t integrated well. He was a long way from home for training, which spoke well of his Gift, at least. Well, she was going to need a Guide if she was going to follow Rel to the Court.

"You think so?" Atla’s voice drew her out of the beginnings of a plan.

She nodded, bought time for more thinking by burying her face in her drink. It was so unpleasant as to be almost rancid, but she choked down as much as she could. No-one in Vessit was going to have any time for working on Atla’s training for a few days, and she needed a Guide to get her to the Court. The resident Guide would be needed here, or at least not off chasing Rel, since the townsfolk would almost certainly take that as a sign of Rel’s guilt. There was precedent for Gifted in training to have a stand-in mentor, for a few days or even longer if necessary.

It wasn’t going to be possible to get the grimace off her face when she lowered the cup, but she couldn’t drink any more. Hoping to cover, she stood as sharply as she could the moment the cup was back on the table. She fixed Atla with the glare she used back home when taking charge of incursions. "Come on, I want to speak to your mentor. What was his name?"

"Bersh." Atla got to his feet, stepping over his bench and catching a toe on it. He flinched, glanced at the men at the far end of the table, who’d lost interest, and turned back to her. His face was pained. "His... his house collapsed in the quake. This might not be the best time..."

A detail from the confrontation with Wolpan surfaced. She’d set the Clearseer and the Warder to tasks, but left Bersh at a loose end. A cold fist curled around her waist, and she could feel the shape of her frown changing. To Atla, she said, "His family?"

"Enlie – his daughter – is fine. Vanna broke her arm." The lad’s eyes flickered away, and he folded his arms. It took him a moment to pull himself together, but he nodded toward the partition. "They’re in the infirmary."

Not too bad, then. But for a Gifted used to his family being safe at home... Well, with any luck, Bersh would want Atla out of his hair all the more. Pevan glared at the table for a moment. If Atla hadn’t adjusted well to the town in general, how had he gotten on with the Guide’s family? He’d have been living with them. Maybe it would help keep his mind off it. She nodded once, curtly. "Alright. Take me to him."

"Um..." Atla glanced around. Well, people were starting to stare at them, upright and unmoving in the middle of the room, and the kid was obviously self-conscious. Twitching muscles in his jaw and neck betrayed his nerves, but he found the will to face up to her. "What’s this about?"

Something better discussed without anyone else in earshot, that was for sure. Time to work on his discipline rather than his public relations. Growing up with Dora had made everything a lesson, one way or another. Rather than answer him, she set off, briskly enough that she heard his boots scuff through a couple of skipped steps to keep up.

She looked back at him as they left the warehouse, amused to see him ducking under the wide roll-up door despite the fact his head had several feet of clearance. Trying to keep laughter from her voice, she said, "How long have you been in training?"

He actually stumbled at the question, meeting her eyes only clumsily. Self-conscious didn’t begin to cover it. She let him catch up, matched her step to his. Even then, he spoke slowly, cautiously. "I, uh, I came to Vessit last autumn."

"Gifted back in the summer?"

The question seemed to scare the boy for some reason, and he flinched away before mumbling, "Um, yeah."

Better to press on than give any more rein to his nervousness. If she was going to take on his training, even for a few days, the one thing that needed more work than anything else was his confidence. Remind him of what really counted. "You've had some time in the Second Realm, then. Any actual incursions?"

"There was an incident not long after I arrived. But... um, I wasn't involved." He looked away, cheeks colouring. She recognised the expression; she'd felt the same way half a dozen times during her training, when Temmer had ordered her to stay home.

"Chin up," she said again, and reached over to squeeze his shoulder. "I need a Guide, and Bersh is needed here. He's not going to have much time for looking after you with his family in a bad way."

Atla's eyes widened, then narrowed again, sharply. For once their penetrating directness was reversed - she could watch opportunity and suspicion fight within him in near-perfect clarity. Predictably, the result was uncertainty. He said, "I don't know if I'm..."

"You'll be fine." Pevan made the words as firm as she could. No point getting Bersh on-side only for the boy to go to pieces from fear. "I just need to get to the Court and check some things. Nothing fancy. You can't tell me you don't feel a bit useless here at the moment."

"I-" His hesitancy was endearing, if a little irritating. Still, he straightened a little before finishing, "Yeah. We'll see what Bersh thinks, anyway."

"That'll do. Lead on." She waved him forward. Atla picked up his step, though whether through enthusiasm or just the wish to not linger amidst the ruins any longer, she couldn't tell. It was more than a little sobering to follow the trainee she was all but plotting to abduct through the battered town. There were some blocks where so many of the houses were flat that she could see the next street.

She saw no other people, though, until they reached Bersh. The Guide stood statue-still by the ruins of his house, hands clasped atop his head, face pale. Pevan found a hitch in her step as she approached. He'd seemed warm, the friendliest of Vessit's squad, earlier. What change might seeing his ruined home by daylight have wrought?

Atla fell behind, unease clear on his face - well, the place would have been his home, too, for the last half-year or so - as Pevan approached Bersh. She moved as gently as possible, trying to be only a quiet presence in the big man's awareness. She couldn't afford to seem bluff or insensitive to his suffering. Still, before she could be accused of sneaking around, she stopped short. Her voice tried to flutter slightly against sudden unease, but she held it steady. "Excuse me, Guide?"

It was the correct formal address, but the flicker of a frown across Bersh's face told her it wasn't something he was used to. Probably still preferable to the presumption of using his name though. He blinked his way out of reverie quickly enough, at least. "Hm? Oh, sorry. What's up?" His voice was hoarse and stiff, with none of the resonance his barrel chest should have supplied.

She bowed her head. "Sorry, I know this isn't a good time. Atla mentioned your lady was injured." Still looking down, she wrung her hands together at her waist, trying to seem as awkward and apologetic as possible. A niggling tickle of unease somewhere just under her diaphragm made the act easy, but speaking just that little bit harder. "I need to make a trip to the Court, um, to see if Rel's there. I was hoping I could borrow Atla. Take over his training for a few days, if you like."

Now she did look up, not wanting to seem too shifty. She missed meeting Bersh's eyes, though, as the Guide turned to frown at his apprentice. There was no sense of chill in the air between them, though, except for the wind. Bersh frowned at her, just slightly, and said, "He's got a way to go before I'll pass him."

"I can't let the trail go cold, and I can't ask you to leave your town and family at a time like this." She didn't need to pretend any of the compassion she put into her voice. A half-step forward, on the other hand, was a calculated gesture of camaraderie, and she could see the slight shift in Bersh's cheeks as he relaxed. Pressing the gain, Pevan rolled her eyes and finished, "Besides, as people will insist on reminding me, I have some experience of working with unqualified Gifted."

That drew a dry chuckle from the Guide, and Pevan wondered if he could see the tension flooding out of her. Some of the warmth came back to his voice as he said, "Sorry about that. Wolpan's under a lot of strain right now."

"I can sympathise with that." Pevan smiled, leaned forward a little. "Let me tell you a little secret, something only Gatemakers travel enough to realise." She glanced back at Atla, jerked her head for the boy to step forward. Wouldn't hurt to let him feel included with the grown-ups. "Four Knots are as territorial as tomcats."

At that, Bersh outright laughed, close to roaring. Only the slight gasp at the end of the sound betrayed his exhaustion. "I'll take your word for it, lass."

"It's true." She straightened, folding her arms. "Dora's the same."

"Well, she and Wolpan definitely didn't get on." The Guide's face sobered, rounded edges flattening out, as he turned to face Atla. "Are you up to this, lad?"

Another unfortunate test. The boy really needed something to prop him up a bit. He cringed before answering, "I... uh, I hope so?"

Better not to let him stand on his own confidence just yet. Pevan shifted her feet slightly, moved a little way towards interposing herself between mentor and student. "I trained alongside a Guide, sir. I can look after him for a quick trip to the Court. The experience will do him good, don't you think?"

Bersh raised one eyebrow, and there was very little humour in the gesture. "It's your risk, love."

"I'll take full responsibility." She put a bit more weight into the words, let her gaze go distant, poking through the Guide. "I'm not messing around. We could all do with learning what Rel's been up to."

When she met his eyes again, she had him. He looked from the ruined house, to Atla, then back to her. His voice, when it came, was gruff, tightly-held emotions shifting in its depths. "True enough. True enough. Good luck to you both."

He didn't immediately turn away, so Pevan offered her hand. He shook, and she said, "Thank you. Best wishes for your lady, too."

At that, the conversation was over. She could tell by the way Bersh's attention went back to his house, leaving behind most of the brief burst of humour she'd drawn from him. Pevan shared a glance with Atla, and they withdrew as gently and silently as feathers on a breeze. As soon as they were far enough away for it to be polite, she accelerated, dragging the boy along in her wake.

She kept up the sense of urgency while badgering bread and a canteen of water out of the lady who was managing the town's food. The faster she went, the less chance Atla had to raise an objection or lose his nerve. As it was, he stayed quiet, simply nodding in mild bewilderment when people looked at him for confirmation that she wasn't a thief.

It was only as she asked for blankets that she realised Chag would present a problem. The stout, stone-faced woman in the refectory accepted the excuse of wanting a third for wrapping the food up in, even though Pevan floundered for a moment before coming up with it. The woman's eyes drilled into her as she left the old warehouse with the 'spare' blanket tied into a sling across her chest, bread and water tucked carefully inside.

The problem, though, was going to be explaining Chag's presence to Atla. Fingers of ice probed tentatively through the tangle of her guts as she wondered how the lad would react. Would he assume Chag was responsible for the catastrophe of the previous day? Try to turn them in? He had little enough foundation for trust, though he didn't protest when she led him into the old city rather than West towards the Sherim.

He didn't protest, either, when she didn't use a Gate to spare the mile or so of walking to reach the building where she'd left Chag. A clear sign of the boy's inexperience - anyone who'd worked with a Gatemaker regularly would have complained. Chag certainly did when she made him walk anywhere. Still, the walk bought her time to think.

It also justified the decision to pick up blankets as well as food. Along the unsheltered shorefront road, the wind tore in off the bay, laden with salt and cold mist, and even with a blanket pulled tight around her as a crude cloak, she could feel the heat being leeched out of her. Her cheeks and eyes began to sting, which only made it harder to think about broaching the subject of Chag with Atla.

Finally, the sight of the low row of gutted shops where Chag would be waiting brought her thinking time to an end. She stopped, and Atla, half a pace behind, froze instantly. There was fear in his voice as he said, "Is- uh, is everything alright?"

She took a deep breath and, despite herself, looked around before answering. Not the way to seem trustworthy, but there was something disquietingly attentive about the battered, lumpen, leaning towers of the old city. Meeting Atla's eyes was no more comfortable - the boy had definitely sensed something amiss. How to put him at his ease?

"I haven't told you everything yet." She held her voice steady by force of will, knowing it made her sound constricted and tense. Atla started to reply, but she shot up a single finger in the space between them and he paused. "I haven't lied, mind. We're going to the Court to find my brother and try to figure out what happened with the quakes. But, well..."

He stepped round to stand facing her, frowning. His eyes disappeared into shadow, which made it easier to press on. Trying to ignore how panicked she sounded in her own ears, she said, "There are factions among the Children of the Wild. Rel's caught up in a feud between two of them, and either one of them could have caused the quake." True enough, one way or another. She gave in to the tension that was pushing her words faster. Let Atla think she was afraid; in all fairness, she probably was. "At the moment, I just don't know enough to know which faction is on our side, if either of them are. We could be walking into anything at the Court. I was working with one of the factions, but now I'm not sure about them, and, well, I'm here with a... a colleague."

For once, to his credit, Atla didn't flinch. He did grow noticeably paler, though. "A Wilder?"

Now that she'd stopped speaking, it was hard to start again. The wind sucked away what little moisture was left on her tongue, and she almost gagged before she managed, "Worse. Chag Van Raighan."

"What-?"

"Caught up in the feud," she cut him off, somehow thrusting the words past her half-closed throat. Atla waited, ashen and slack-jawed, while she swallowed and licked her lips. "I'm not asking you to like what Chag's done. I don't and neither does he. But if you're going to be a Gifted, even this far South, you need to remember that dealing with the Second Realm is never simple. Until we get to the bottom of everything that's happened, I want you to treat Chag as a victim of Coercion. Understood?"

He didn't nod. Instead he swallowed, his gaze beginning to waver. "But..."

With the truth out, it was easier to summon up a glare. "If necessary, you can consider it an order." Atla blanched at the words, or maybe her tone, and she forced herself to soften, slouching just a little and folding her arms. "Look, I'm not asking you to like it. Give the man a chance. Right now, we need his contacts more than justice."

The words had the desired effect on the boy, but a vision of Dora's face rose in Pevan's mind. If she'd said the same in the Four Knot's presence, she doubted she'd have survived. If Chag turned out to be wrong, if Dora's judgement of the Separatists was fair, if Rel had almost destroyed the Realm, what then? How would Wolpan greet Vessit's next guest from Federas?

She almost missed Atla's muted, "Okay." He turned to look along the shorefront. "We're meeting him here?" Concentrate on the task at hand. Don't think too hard about facing Dora again, wherever she was. Pevan suppressed a shiver, nodded in the direction of the old shopping arcade. "Over there. Come on." She set off, jaw fixed tight, face tensed against any sign of inner doubt. Atla needed a leader far more confident than Pevan felt.

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