The Company of Glass by Tricia Sullivan

Author:Tricia Sullivan [SULLIVAN, TRICIA]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction
ISBN: 9781473200784
Publisher: Orion Publishing Group
Published: 2015-12-30T16:00:00+00:00

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Kassien said they had gained so much time by using the H’ah’vah tunnel that they could afford to rest more, and though Istar didn’t like to admit it, she needed the reprieve as much as any of them except Anatar, who staggered along supported by Pentar, sometimes in a delirium. Eventually Kassien was obliged to remove Pentar’s blindfold so that the hapless pair wouldn’t go astray.

They rested at midday in a clearing beside the river, where Kassien tried to teach Xiriel how to catch fish with his hands. Xiriel bent his long body over a swirling backwater, hands poised to plunge, head bent as he focused on the dimly seen fish with total intensity. Kassien leaned against a rock and lay back, chewing on flatbread and chuckling. Pallo climbed around in the underbrush, examining the foliage minutely.

‘That,’ he said excitedly, making a great show of pointing out something attached to a red leaf, ‘is surely a northern cousin of the rusted nail flying beetle we see in the coastal forests of Pharice. There are some dozen variations depending on the type of vegetation where they live, but I have never seen one with such dark eye stalks. I wonder if it is camouflage meant to disguise the feelers as sunburnt pieces of grass – that’s what they look like, don’t they, Istar?’

‘Mmm.’ She wasn’t listening. Having abandoned the river, Xiriel bent over and took a closer look. ‘It’s a bug,’ he pronounced. ‘Whatever are you so excited about?’

‘I think it’s interesting, that’s all,’ Pallo said defensively. ‘Look how he moves. Look at the coordination of the legs, and look at the way the carapace seems to float over the body. All the bits that are sensing and feeling are on the underside, beneath this shield. All the soft parts are on the inside – the bone, the structure, like our skeleton, is on the outside.’

‘So?’ Kassien drawled.

‘So you could study it for combat. It’s got built-in armour. But mostly I’m just excited because it’s unfamiliar to me. I thought I had seen and catalogued most of the plants and animals of Everien but I was wrong! I have stayed too close to Jai Khalar. There is much to study.’

‘Is that why you keep pulling leaves off the trees as you walk?’

‘Yes, I’ll press them and try to catalogue them later.’

‘But … why?’

‘It’s how we study things in Pharice. We try to know as much as we can about the world, and write it all down, and learn from it. My teacher collected thousands and thousands of plants and insects to learn their characteristics. He had a room with hundreds of glass cases and everything he knew about each item was written beside it, and he could use these things to create new medicines or advise farmers how to control pests, or make poisons.’

‘My grandmother could do all that walking through the woods, tasting things and spitting,’ said Kassien. ‘Why make such a production of it?’

‘That is how they do things in Pharice,’ Pallo said.

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