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“It is true to say that there are no unexplored regions. Every square mile of the Greater Continent has at least been flown over, and all of the flatter areas have been inhabited at one point or another. However, even if we are generous and include the era of the Old Alliance, surprisingly little has been peopled during anything you could call ‘the modern era’.”
-Atlas of the Greater Continent, Circa N.D. 500, collector’s edition.
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Chapter 21:
It’s in a Book
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#21.1 – Monday, the 7th day of the 10th month…
“Hey, Scarlet, I know a joke that’s so funny, it’ll knock ya flat! …Oh, I see you’ve already heard it.”
Scarlet ignored the jab and dragged her heavy backpack into place beside her seat. She’d found an old Crimson Blade Dragoon Lancer* pack at a second-hand store, the kind designed to carry weeks’ worth of food, water, and a full battle-kit. Into this, she’d stuffed all seven of her new textbooks. Her locker had been seized by the enemy, and she had no intention of reclaiming it.
Only one small problem: the backpack felt like it weighed nearly as much as she did. Fortunately, Scarlet’s ever-present array of personal books carried in a satchel acted as an effective counter-weight.
School made her miserable as ever. After getting caught ditching, her parents asked the school to send daily attendance and behavior reports. If she wanted to keep her research lab for at least as long as her membership lasted, she needed to play nice.
Her grades were slipping worse than before. Mrs. Winkledorff informed Scarlet that she would be failing no matter what she did and not to even bother turning in assignments. Math formed an incomprehensible miasma. With all the new teasing every period of phys-ed could best be described as two waking nightmares interrupted by some light running.
And then there was Literature.
“Scarlet, I’m impressed,” Mr. Bright said.
Scarlet glanced up as her literature teacher cleared his throat to get her attention. He dropped the graded homework assignment on her desk, with an altogether unimpressive but fairly normal C+ scrawled across the top.
Looking at the grade, Scarlet forced a smile.
“You usually do your current event assignments on archeological digs, museum openings, the like,” Mr. Bright explained. “Admittedly the Battle of kho-Sun isn’t entirely ‘current’, but it’s a lot newer than anything else I’ve seen you write about. Good work on stepping outside your comfort-zone.” Bright put his back against the classroom wall and slid down a little to get more at eye-level with Scarlet when he spoke, his voice nearly a whisper. “And, really, work on the spelling?”
Scarlet forced another smile as the bell rang, and other kids filled in. Mr. Bright resumed passing out homework, and Scarlet leaned her head on her bookbag. She liked Mr. Bright quite a bit, but didn’t think he much cared for her. Being incapable of breaking the B- barrier would do that; you had to be a good student to be the teacher’s pet, right?
“Ok, students! Open your textbooks to page one hundred eleven…”
Grimacing, Scarlet got her book out of the lancer bag and laid it on top of the pile of reference manuals. Literature was far and away her favorite class on many levels, even if she hated half the assignments.
As she opened her textbook, something caught her eye. Like most teachers, Bright decorated his classroom with lots of posters relevant to the subject matter. He taught literature, so mostly reading and books. Since Scarlet never bothered with fiction, she found the majority of it confusing and foreign, but one poster stood out.
The image was of a Mage Tower, half buried in sand and tilted to one side. All around the outside, inhabitants had attached ramshackle wooden huts and ladders. They had turned the only high-point for miles around into a fortress.
“Now, today, we are discussing literary genres,” Mr. Bright continued.
Scarlet listened to the lesson with half an ear. Her whole past felt like a novel. Even today, she had a distant ancestor living in the poster. Figuratively speaking, anyway. Naomi Jusenkyou, youngest daughter of the last Pendragon, now wore a cloak of immortality. She lived in the last functional Mage Tower in all the known worlds, a citadel deep in the desert. Three and a half thousand years had passed since she became immortal, in the years Echbalder became lost.
“I know how much you all love The Dragons of Darkmoss. Of course, the question is always: with magic and dragons being actual things, how do we separate ‘realistic fiction’ from ‘magic-fiction’. Well, that generally comes down to…”
As much as Scarlet generally enjoyed Mr. Bright’s class, she couldn’t begin to pay attention. Emmerich’s dues were paid up until the middle of next year. She had until then to find a solution.
Not that there appeared to be one.
The lesson dragged on for what felt like an eternity. Eventually, class ended, not that Scarlet tuned in for much of it. She gathered up her books as Mr. Bright stopped by her desk.
“Why did you choose that battle?” Bright asked casually. “Just curious. I know you’re a bit of a Lancer fan-girl and all,” he tapped her backpack “but is there more to it?”
Scarlet didn’t know what to say. After her conversation with Esperanza at Emmerich’s funeral, Scarlet took some time to read up on the ongoing ConFed civil war. At the Battle of kho-Sun, two hundred Lancers fought a delaying action against twenty thousand ConFed marines. All in a desperate bid to buy time so half a million civilians to evacuate. Scarlet would like to say that the battle, which happened just six months ago, reminded her of the great campaigns of old when valiant paladins charged against overwhelming opposition. Scarlet would like to say that, because it was a very Scarlet thing to say. In truth she’d read the newspaper article when her dad showed it to her, then hastily scribbled the homework assignment from memory. “I kind of… I guess I’ve been thinking a lot about what’s going on, lately?” Scarlet suggested. “I mean, with the ConFeds and all…”
“Well, you’re Scarlet Jusenkyou, history genius, or hadn’t you figured it out by now?” Bright smiled.
Scarlet stared at him.
“Listen, if I’m not mistaken, you look like a girl with a problem,” Bright said.
“You mean besides the C-minus I’m getting in your class?” Scarlet forced a smile and tried† not to sound too snippy.
“Well, I know about the fight, obviously, the suspension, the destroyed books—which frankly does not seem like your style.”
“It’s a very long story,” Scarlet looked away. Bright blocked her into her desk(sort of, he was actually a good four feet away, but Scarlet maintained a very big personal bubble).
“I know it’s a bit cliché coming from me, but if the answer isn’t in a book, you’re asking the wrong question,” Bright said. “Take a look. You read more—and better—than any four people I know.” Bright tapped one of the books in Scarlet’s open backpack. “You spend all your time in here,” he said, then tapped his forehead. “Looking for things to fill up here. But maybe, what you need, is to spend a little more time,” he tapped his chest over his heart. “In here.”
Bright waited a moment, then smiled at her. “All right, school rules say you have to listen to me, no one ever said you had to talk to me. Come on, let me get you a note. I’ve made you tardy.”
Scarlet finished gathering her things and followed Bright over to his desk. Seeing as she had history next, she wasn’t in any hurry to be on time.
“You know, you really are a terrific writer,” Bright commented.
Internally, Scarlet composed a quip about how all the greats struggled to maintain a C-average in their eighth grade literature classes, but to Bright’s face all she could do was nod. He scrawled a note for her and she reached to take it, but stopped when Bright didn’t remove his hand. “Now, you’ve got a poem due in next week,” he reminded her. “Five lines, minimum, and I won’t grade you on the spelling if you can prove all the words were spelled differently at some point in history, deal?”
Scarlet grabbed the note and nodded emphatically, then raced out of the room. Somehow, despite not having a single clue what her problem actually was, Bright had possibly handed her the solution. She needed to get the day over with and get it started.
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* #21.2 (Monday 7/10) *
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With a loud ‘thwap’, Scarlet slammed a book down on her desk. “I know what you’re thinkin’, Jayce: ‘that crazy human went alllll the way out to the Great Library of Arindell, and only brought back ONE book?’ Yep. But this is no ordinary book.”
Scarlet scooted her chair in and opened the tome. “This is the bylaws of the Antiquarian Society. If there’s a way to get free membership—and there had better be—it’ll be here. Like Bright always says: take a look, it’s in a book.”
Scarlet then remained at her desk, flipping pages, nearly motionless, for the next six hours.
Around nine that night, her bedroom door opened and startled her out of her trance-like state. Flipping around her chair, she saw the confused face of her father. “Have you been home this entire afternoon?”
“Maybe?” Scarlet said meekly.
“We thought you were at the lab and just not answering the phone,” Roy said. “Scarlet, kid, you need to do better at letting us know where you are. I know you’re having a rough time, but what if the house caught fire and we didn’t know you were in here?”
Scarlet hung her head. “Sorry.”
“Come on, let’s get you some leftovers,” Roy said. “Get some meat on those bones.”
Scarlet followed her father into the kitchen where he got out a plate and dished up the food they’d saved her, then popped it in the microwave. “What were you so intensely and quietly reading today?”
“The Antiquarian’s rulebook,” Scarlet sighed. “Trying to find something in there about free memberships—I know they exist.”
Roy took the plate out and escorted Scarlet to the table, where he sat with her while she ate. “And what did you find?”
“Well, there’s a membership for the Pendragon, which is not being used. Then they reserve a number of high-level memberships for the Pendragon to give away, which he can’t because he isn’t a thing.”
“Can’t the Light Bearer give those out?” Roy suggested. “Eat the green parts, too. Isn’t that in his proverbial ‘wheelhouse’?”
Scarlet scowled. “They’re mushy! And yeah technically he can. But that is NAUGHT going to happen.”
“Well, what else did you find?”
Scarlet thought a while as she moved the food around on her plate. “The only other way to get a free, lifetime, high-level membership is to become an ‘explorer in residence’. There’s only been maybe six of those since the new society formed. To get that, you need to make a really huge discovery—like way beyond pure research. You need to find a lost library or a primary source for something real ground-breaking.”
“Hmmm, probably not going to find anything like that,” Roy commented.
“Yeah not with my luck so far,” Scarlet shoveled a last forkful and struggled to swallow, not really wanting to chew. She thought briefly about the sword, but almost chocked laughing at the absurdity of presenting such a claim. Yes, I’ve found the location of Echbalder! Where is it, you ask? Well… No, her research into the sword didn’t break any sort of new ground. Until she could hold it in her hands, her theory was no different from the thousand others out there. Scarlet supposed she could always just ask to have the dues waved and have them vote on it. But with Druet Young on the board, she didn’t suspect her admissions vote had been a landslide.
Roy took Scarlet’s finished plate and put it in the sink for her. “Any homework tonight?”
“All done,” Scarlet lied.
“All right, get washed up and get to bed, you’re not at your best when you’re not sleeping.”
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* #21.3 *
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#21.3 – Early in the morning, Tuesday, the 8th Day of the 10th Month…
With a start, Scarlet awoke.
In her pitch-dark room, the light of the first night of the new moon shined in through her window. Fighting back the covers, she struggled out of bed and felt her way over to her desk. Finding both pencil and paper by touch, she scrawled three words in large letters so she was sure to see them the following day.
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* * *
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#21.4 – Tuesday, the 8th Day of the 10th Month…
“Listen, I don’t pretend like you’re normal, or anything, but why exactly did you scribble ‘mage towr’ and ‘na-O-m-eye’ on your homework?”
Scarlet busily copied from Jeremy, trying to work around her hastily scrawled note. “Well, I just assumed that’s what kids were into these days.”
Scarlet gave Jeremy back his paper and retrieved her history homework from him.
“So, ya know, I got an A-plus on the last assignment,” Jeremy commented.
“Yep,” Scarlet nodded. “I bet you did.”
“How’d you do?”
“Worse.” There was only one reason for Scarlet to do her history homework anymore: trade. The bell rang and she headed for class, satisfied that at least she would be passing math.
The school’s ‘computer lab’, where they were going for one of her classes(Scarlet didn’t rightly know or care which) consisted of twenty dusty, noisy, outdated machines. Since there were thirty kids per class, a sizeable number of them had to double-up. For Scarlet, this meant standing by idly while the kid who knew what she was doing took care of the assignment.
Today, it was a girl named Heidi.
“If we get some time at the end, can I use it?” Scarlet asked.
“What for?” Heidi replied.
“I need to internet?”
“Why don’t you do that on your phone?”
“I don’t have a phone.”
“What about your computer at home?”
“I don’t have one.”
“Must suck to be poor.”
Scarlet clenched her teeth and balled up her hands into fists. In point of fact, her parents made quite good money and the family lived well. Scarlet just didn’t own a computer because they never seemed to work for her.
When they finished out the lesson, Heidi spent the rest of the class period looking at a virtual book of people’s faces. At home that afternoon, Scarlet considered braving her father’s office but figured she was in enough trouble already. Fortunately, she always had the option of asking permission*.
“Ok,” Roy said when he got home from work. “But let me back up my files, first.”
Scarlet followed him into his office, which was technically adjacent to her bedroom. The two rooms shared a common bathroom, but Roy had put a book case in front of the door to give Scarlet extra privacy.
“You know we can get you your own computer if you want,” Roy offered.
“I’ve needed one four times in my life and broken three,” Scarlet replied.
“True,” Roy agreed. “You are my daughter and I love you, but if I didn’t have this backup drive I would have to kill you and hide the body.”
Roy finished doing… something, and then disconnected some sort of external storage device, which he deposited into a drawer and locked. “How about just some lessons? They give computer literacy classes down at the rec center.”
“I just need to internet,” Scarlet explained.
“Internet is not a verb, child,” Roy pushed the rolling office chair over to Scarlet and gestured for her to sit down. “…unless that’s the way you kids are saying it these days. Anyway, click in the icon.”
Suspicious, Scarlet reached out and touched the screen.
“Honey, don’t touch the monitor, please? It’s not a touch screen. Use the mouse.”
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* * *
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#21.5 – Thursday, the 10th day of the 10th month…
One frustrating evening later, Scarlet had enough notes, and Roy had an excuse to buy a new computer for his office. Scarlet spent all the next day using the home telephone, and on the third day she broke out the poster boards and construction paper.
“What is she doing?” Ann asked.
“I am… not sure,” Roy admitted. “The last time she got like this we had to sit through an hour-long presentation on why we should buy her a bookcase to put in her closet. When she asked to use my computer a few days ago she seemed to be looking at train time tables or something. There was a lot of swearing. You probably shouldn’t let her kiss you with that mouth for a while.”
“Why do you let her do that?” Ann glared at Roy.
“I only guessed they were curse words because of the context,” Roy said. “Had to look most of them up—did you know they had some very inventive swearing during the Golden Age?”
Ann pushed past Roy and walked into Scarlet’s bedroom. “Little Bird, what exactly is it you’re up to?”
Scarlet threw her hands over the poster and tried very ineffectively to look innocent. “Its, eh… I’m working on a thing?”
“Out with it, child, you have no secrets in this house,” Ann warned.
“That’s a lie and you know it,” Scarlet retorted.
“I said you have no secrets, not that we have none.”
“Fine,” Scarlet said. “Mom, dad… I want to visit Naomi.”
Roy and Ann looked at each other.
“Not to dissuade your notions, daughter, but why?” Roy asked.
“I suppose she could ask Naomi for money, couldn’t she?” Ann suggested. “In person is a bit presumptuous but—”
“Not that,” Scarlet lifted up her poster board. “Naomi Jusenkyou was born in the thirty-first year of the Age of the Dragon, the last age before the Long Night. She became immortal around thirty years later, and is still alive today. That makes her three thousand, six hundred-and-fifty-seven years old.”
“I do hope she started a savings account at your age,” Roy said.
“Don’t you get it?” Scarlet gestured. “Naomi Jusenkyou is a walking, breathing, living primary source. She’s the daughter of the last Pendragon, she knew… all of the surviving Slayer Dragons at that point, she lived all through the Long Night, she trained Conri Jusenkyou herself—and no one has ever gotten to hear her story. As far as they know, she’s just happily living comfortably in her own private city with its own private army out in the middle of nowhere.”
Scarlet picked up a poster board covered in an actually quite accurate hand-drawn map. “And I can go there.”
“I’m not certain I follow,” Roy said. “Your plan is… how does this work?”
“I interview Naomi,” Scarlet explained. “I get her to tell me everything she knows, I write it all down, maybe get some of her journals, I bring it all back… and…”
“And?” Roy pressed.
“And then the Antiquarians make me an Explorer in Residence,” Scarlet turned away to keep her parents from seeing the tears on her cheeks. “I-I know its n-not much…”
“Actually quite a brilliant idea, if you think about it,” Roy said, turning back to Ann. “The academic community goes nuts over that stuff. Remember that girl who grew up with a dragon best friend, wrote all those books? That kind of inside access is huge.”
Ann pinched the bridge of her nose. “How would this work, exactly?”
Scarlet took out her map again and laid it on her bed were her parents could see. “Train to Boarder Watch, airplane to Sun’s Beacon, train to a ferry terminal on the Biswon Delta, riverboat to the town of Gau, then passage on the Porters Trade Caravan to Naomi’s Citadel. I can book it all online.”
Roy raised an eyebrow. “You figured this out yourself?” He took a knee next to Scarlet’s bed and looked at some of her poster boards. “So you did… time tables, flight estimates… I’m really impressed, daughter.”
“Exactly how long does something like that take?” Ann asked.
“Uhm… three, maybe four weeks?” Scarlet hazarded. “Each way? I’d leave in a month, and stay at the Citadel for six.”
“You’d be gone eight months?!” Ann gaped. “Little Bird, aside from vacations with us you’ve never so much as spent a night outside this house. You barricaded yourself in this bedroom when we asked if you’d like to go to sleep-away camp.”
“You threatened to send me to horse camp,” Scarlet gritted her teeth. “They’re an abomination against nature that walks on its toenails!”
“I didn’t threaten—” Ann paused and drew a deep breath to calm herself. “Let’s not get into that argument again.”
“Scarlet,” Roy said. “How about we’ll think about it?”
“But—”
“Ah,” Roy raised a finger for silence. “We will think about it, ok? This was never a decision we were going to make in thirty seconds. Not like that bookcase thing.”
“I was eight, how was I supposed to know?” Scarlet replied. “I thought book cases were really expensive because that’s where books live.”
Roy took Scarlet’s various notes and visual aides away for review while Ann set off to make dinner. Confident she had at least been heard, Scarlet finished her letter to Alabus Norman outlining what she wanted to do, then settled in at her desk.
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End:
Chapter Twenty One
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