To Believe In Mathematics: A Galantier Story (4.5)

By C. Z. Edwards

Rien’s Rebellion, book 4.5
Cedri loved the figment, The Lady Of The Dreams, even when he doubted she was real. Then she arrived in the Foreti. Everything they could never say can finally be spoken. Even their secrets.

A novella of the Rebellion, To Believe In Mathematics takes place during the sixth chapter of Wisdom's Fire, and contains spoilers for Kingdom, Repudiation and Refuge, and The Committed Ones.

• Language: English
• Publisher: C. Z. Edwards
• Release date: May 29, 2020
• ISBN: 9781732710863

C. Z. Edwards

C. Z. is a writer in Boulder, Colorado. She can often be found on Twitter, snarking about fashion, posting kitty pics, and word counts. She is a fan of the Oxford comma, epic fantasy, The West Wing, and cinnamon.

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© 2019 C. Z. Edwards

To Believe In Mathematics

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 or under the terms of any license permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.

Published by: CZEdwards

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Lafayette CO 80026

Original Cover Photo: Abhinaba Basu, 2014. Original image licensed under Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0

A CIP record for this book is available from the Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

ISBN-13: 978-1-7327108-6-3

Produced in the USA

To Believe In Mathematics

C. Z. Edwards

Rien’s Rebellion

by C. Z. Edwards

Book I: Kingdom

Book II: Repudiation and Refuge

Book III: The Committed Ones

Book IV: Wisdom’s Fire

Book 4.5: To Believe In Mathematics

Book V: Revolution and Redemption

Book VI: Foundation

Available at Smashwords and other ebook retailers

Contents

Five Days After Last Summer’s Night, 1139...1

Five Days After Last Summer’s Night, 1139

Cedri

She was always going to be the most beautiful woman in the world, for me. I know I can’t be objective about the Lady of the Dreams. For her heart and mind, I could appreciate any housing. Probably even a staff and jewels, though that’s usually not my inclination. She could have been three times my age, or stood a foot taller than me. I adore her, for all of eternity, because when we are together in our dreams, we are more than partners. We share a mind, a heart. What I want, she desires too, and what she needs I need. I can trust her with myself. It’s impossible to know someone from the inside that way and not love them.

Even if I wasn’t entirely sure she existed.

I’d taken our four newest — Sashi and Reya, Cotter and Karse — out to the big stand of berry brambles. Inside their protection, Bran planted mountain grape arbors the spring after he joined Quin and me. It took his vines four years to bloom, but now they produce heavy cascades of blushing yellow fruit that’s more like a soft, gold berry than a cluster of grapes. That day, both the berries and the grapes were sweet and lush. We picked everything, laying our haul on lengths of stout linen in a sunny patch, then covering everything with wide, light gauze. The birds could pick their own damned treats. We’d want our fruit soup and our fruit wine come middle of winter. It was hot, sticky work, but not without reward. A handful of either berries in your tin bottle made even warm water lively.

Still, by the time we heard Quin’s whistle to come in, we were more than ready to go, even if we still had three quarters of the bramble and arbors to pick. We’d be back in the morning, and for most of the rest of the tenday, I expected. Quin called us in early, given the long summer afternoon, and I wouldn’t argue.

The Foreti, then, was mostly old forest a couple decades past its last good burn, which meant not much direct sunlight reached the floor, except in places like the bramble patch, where a few old trees had died and fallen, and nothing had filled in. It made walking easy when we were all tired. Harvests are the only time I wish I was back on Dastorian, because a farm kid’s work on a well-managed langreve is lighter than being one of four or six or a dozen trying to keep ourselves fed and a forest from burning around us. The vintner’s brat I once was didn’t have to climb trees to sleep, and someone else saw to the cooking and the laundry.

I wanted food and a bath before sleep, but that was before I saw her. My stomach stopped gnawing on my spine, my scratches quit stinging, and sweat-prickles no longer made me itch. I wasn’t even especially tired. I kept walking, because she drew me.

Other men would call her beautiful, too. She was at least as dirty as me, and looked like she’d been walking for a season and sleeping rough for a tenday. After the last year of mostly seeing only Rien, who only wears mourning, it still felt a little exotic to see a woman dressed in colors. She wore a wide brimmed straw hat, dyed a pale blue, still on her head. She’d skipped her tunic and coat this morning, in favor of a plain collared, long sleeved shirt of faded pink linen. Her sensible breeches were light grey canvas, with the pockets down the side. She wouldn’t want dark clothes that would try to cook her, but when the sun beat down, she’d cover everything, because she would freckle and burn, would never tan. She had a few on her nose and cheekbones, but mostly, the skin I could see was the color of rich goat’s milk. I knew the texture of her hair, how it curled and disliked salt water, but I don’t dream in color, and often not even in images. I didn’t expect the woodpecker’s vivid red. She wore it long, but bound into plaits. And her eyes. They were the restless color we called hazel; sometimes green, or amber, or almost the dark brown of walnut stain, and fringed with brown lashes.

She was crouched near the fire pit with Rien when I first saw her. In one breath, I knew that despite all the years of existing as ghosts within each other, we were now made flesh for one another.

And that I wasn’t mad for loving the figment in my imagination.

She saw me, too, and stood. We would fit together well. I was at most two inches taller, which made her average for a woman, since I’m just barely above average myself. I wondered what she saw of me, beneath the dirt and smears of sticky juice. I’ve always been too brown to burn or freckle. Between us, we had enough hair for six people, maybe eight. Mine was waist-length, near-black, and straight, because it was easier to tail it once each morning than cut it every other tenday. That day, I was wearing old, faded, patched, brown sail canvas breeches and a collarless linen shirt that started the cool green of good pasture, but faded to the bluish-green-grey of winter juniper needles. Both were now streaked with dried blood and black berry juice stains, especially on my left sleeve and my right leg, where I wiped my fingers.

I’d known she would be graceful, because in dreams, we share the experiences of our bodies. I’ve climbed something like rigging with her. We swam in the warm salt sea far south of here. That she was built for strength and endurance, I knew; I just didn’t know if she’d be slim or ample. She happened to be precisely the middle. She was here, the Lady of the Dreams.

I was three steps from her when I saw the medal on the fine chain around her neck. Archilia¹’s flame, blue and gold enamel on a silver base. All of my delight cracked and fell in that moment. I could accept her faith, if she insisted, but she’d never accept my absolute apostasy.

You, she said, her smile blazing like joy as she looked into my face for the first time. I hoped what she saw pleased her. I was ordinary enough, neither big nor small. Face shaped face, with my mam’s long nose. But I too, was dressed for a hot, late summer’s day.

I can’t remember what gods my mother favored. She was Pantheist², in her way; she’d ask them all for help when the blood flowed or the fever burned, and she’d thank them all when everyone was recovered and well. I think she might have favored Iolantha³ and Lunaga⁴ a bit more, since she grew up shepherding and spinning, and got her Healing training from the Lunagans, but Mam always knew the difference between the grace of the gods and our work here. For most of my early life, that seemed to be my father’s way, too.

I was the middle kid of five, and the only boy, when Mam had my baby brother. I was eight when Jeron was born, and still eight when he died. Goosebite pox goes around, and almost all of us survive it, except the little babies. My parents took it hard, and that’s when my father started getting strange. By the time I was ten, my father had been consecrated as a Lethian⁵ lay priest, and he dedicated me. I wanted my father back, so I did what he wanted.

Thinking back now, I don’t think Mam approved of my father’s devotion to the god of death and decay, but Mam was both strong-willed and tolerant. She could agree to disagree with anyone, as long as they talked about it. I did get another sister after Jeron, so they weren’t entirely estranged, at least not then.

When a child is dedicated to Lethis, the first rite is to nick their finger and their tongue, because blood is our mortality, and shedding it unites us with the end of days. It’s horseshit, because when we’re all ash and dust, there won’t be enough left of us to give a damn about the mysteries of the universe, but I was ten. I craved my father’s love.

The first rite isn’t the only rite. Lethians believe that our souls are only lightly bound to our bodies. At every dark moon, the faithful donate more of our mortality, and the priests mark us, to contain our volatile souls. The