Sparkers (8 page)

He throws me a doubtful glance. I pretend not to mind in case I can't identify any of his mystery languages.

The first book is written in a twisting script I've never seen before. Even though I don't recognize it, its symbols are so marvelous in their strangeness I can't help lingering over the pages. I admire a graceful letter that stands alone, a word in itself, perhaps. It appears again a few lines down, and once more at the bottom of the page. This is what fascinates me about a new language: the tantalizing glimpse of a pattern in an otherwise incomprehensible text. Of course, the real excitement comes when I can decode enough to begin unlocking the contents of a book.

“I don't know what this is,” I say at last, setting the thick tome aside. Sarah looks disappointed.

In the next volume, I recognize a vertical script I've glimpsed at the Ikhad book stand, but Tsipporah never had a book that taught how to read it. Then I open a third book, which has a faded cover.

. . . Bezhir, the eighth king of the House of Agrav . . .

I look up at Azariah. “This is Hagramet.”

“It's what?” he says, startled.

“Hagramet. You know, the language of Hagram.”

According to Tsipporah, Hagram was a civilization that flourished in ancient times in what are now the north lands. Its people possessed unparalleled knowledge of medicine, mathematics, astronomy, and magic. But by the time our ancestors, the migrants from Xana, arrived from across the sea over seven hundred years ago, Hagram had collapsed. During the Erezai monarchy, scholars studied Hagramet texts preserved by the descendants of the fallen kingdom, but the ruins of Hagram have never been discovered.

“I know what Hagramet is,” Azariah says. “It's just . . . Hagramet books are banned.”

“Banned?” I say, frowning. “Why?”

“I don't know,” he says with a shrug. “I was talking once to Firem's rare book librarian, and he mentioned the law, and the fact that there are hardly any Hagramet texts left anyway. He said even he wouldn't recognize Hagramet if he saw it. How on earth did you learn it?”

“From a grammar,” I say, my heart hammering. I've broken a law. Unintentionally, but still.

“Where did you get it?”

I start to answer and then stop. Does Tsipporah know she wasn't supposed to sell me that book? Icy fear slithers in my stomach. I shouldn't be telling a kasir all this. Won't Azariah follow the law now that he knows?

He doesn't press me. “It'd be exciting to try some translation. Will you bring me your grammar some time?”

“Are you going to confiscate it?” I say warily.

“Of course not!” he says, appalled. “No one will know. The Assembly's probably forgotten about Hagramet anyway.”

I look down at the book lying open on his desk. For most Ashari, the name Hagram is synonymous with a lost civilization. Our teachers at Horiel spent almost no time on the history of the north lands before the Xanite migrations and the founding of the Erezai monarchy. But maybe it's different at kasir schools.

“What do you know about Hagram?” I ask Azariah.

He looks surprised. “Just what they've taught us. Nowadays historians can only study Hagram secondhand through texts dating from the Erezai era. Those scholars admired Hagram, especially its magicians, because Erezai magic—and thus our magic—was originally the magic of Hagram.”

He brushes the page of the Hagramet book with his fingertips. “This is incredible.”

“Well,” I say after a pause, “I should be going home.”

Azariah nods and looks at Sarah. “Find Channah, will you?”

“What does that say?” she asks, peering at the book and tapping a heading on the page.

“Later, Sarah,” Azariah says.

“It says ‘Day of the Rose.'” I point. “This is
zhikin
, ‘rose's,' and this is
enga
, ‘day.'”

Sarah's eyes light up, and she smiles at me before skipping out of the study.

My brief demonstration has made Azariah even more delighted. “I can't wait to find out what's in this book. The next time you come—”

“What do you mean ‘next time'?” I say.

He flushes. “I'm sorry, I shouldn't have assumed . . . I just thought, if you'd bothered to learn Hagramet, you might like to . . .”

I've never spoken to a humble kasir, let alone a mortified one. Azariah's curiosity is compelling, and the prospect of deciphering this rare volume is tempting. Still, I'm hesitant to embark on an illegal project, even one as harmless as translating a book. I don't like this kasir knowing something he could use against me. His willingness to break the law amazes me.

“I guess if you just want help translating, it's all right,” I say.

“My thanks, Marah,” Azariah says. “We'll keep it a secret between us, I promise. It'll be just for the sake of knowledge.”

B
y the time Channah drops me off, it's almost ten o'clock, and I'm afraid Mother will be upset with me for staying out so late on a school night. But when I climb up to the apartment, only Caleb is there, looking worried and forlorn at the kitchen table.

Isn't Mother home yet?
I sign, astonished.

He shakes his head. There is a plate of cold stewed squash at her place.

I join my brother at the table, and for a nerve-wracking half hour, we wait for Mother to return from work. When she finally arrives, her bun is coming undone, and there are two deep lines carved between her eyebrows.

“I'm sorry I'm so late,” she says, sinking into her chair across from Caleb and me. “You've been to Sarah's and back, Marah?”

I nod. “What kept you?”

She reaches into her cloak pocket and slaps a bundle of twelve- and sixty-stone banknotes onto the table. “The District Halls fired all the halani.”

I stare at the money and then back at her. “How can they do that?”

“The orders came down from the Assembly,” Mother says, her voice taut with anger. “They can do whatever they want. God knows how the government expects to get anything done without us. They'll probably hand our jobs off to young kasiri fresh out of secondary school. As if the halan unemployment crisis weren't bad enough.”

I feel frozen inside. I haven't seen Mother this furious in ages.

“We heard the Gishal District employees tried to protest,” she continues. “Refused to leave. The First Councilor's Corps was called in.”

“God of the Maitaf,” I say. “Was anyone hurt?”

“Do you think they want us to know?” Mother says.

In a daze, I cross to the stove to warm the leftover squash for her. Caleb offers Mother a slice of bread with her favorite raspberry preserves from the icebox. She smiles wearily at him.

Only after she has eaten a little do I dare ask, “What will we do about money now?”

She sighs, pushing a chunk of squash around her plate without bringing it to her mouth. “Let me worry about that, Marah.”

• • •

A
S
IF
THE
District Hall firings weren't shocking enough, the Second Councilor of the Assembly succumbs to the dark eyes later the same night. On Fifthday morning, the news spreads like wildfire through Horiel Primary. Copies of the
Journal
pass from hand to hand in the corridors between class periods, and teachers keep the newspaper on their desks, compulsively checking the headline in case their eyes have deceived them.

At morning recess, the schoolyard is abuzz. Though the Second Councilor's death is no calamity from our point of view, the fact that the dark eyes can take someone as powerful as him comes as a shock. It's been several days since I've visited Leah, and now I desperately want to see her. I'm sure she's holding up—children are safe, after all—but the councilor's death rattles me.

I overhear a few students suggesting the Assembly got what it deserved for ordering the firings. I'm not the only one with a parent or relative who worked at one of the halls.

Miriam and I join our friends at the back of the schoolyard by the spruce trees, whose boughs are frosted with new flurries.

“The councilors can't even protect themselves,” Devorah is saying. “The best drugs and healing spells counted for nothing.”

“Who cares about the Second Councilor?” Shaul says cheerfully. “Good riddance.”

“It's wrong to rejoice in someone's death,” Zeina admonishes him. “Even a councilor's.”

He rolls his eyes. “Anyway, it's no wonder they can't protect themselves. The kasiri have fallen into decadence.”

Everyone stares at him. Not only is his remark absurd, but there's also no way he came up with it himself.

“Where did you pick that up?” I ask.

Shaul scowls. “My brother has some friends who meet and talk in the back room of a pharmacy near the Ikhad. They look out for each other, loan each other money, get around the bureaucracy when they can to help each other out. Lately my brother's been letting me come. They're all secondary students except me, but they think I'm—”

“Shaul!” Devorah cuts in. “Do your parents know? I can't believe you're hanging around with a pack of subversives.”

“They're not subversives,” he scoffs. “It's not illegal to air your grievances in private.”

“What if you get hauled in for questioning?” Miriam says. “If you get arrested, you'll never get into engineering school.”

“Get arrested! They're not plotting the kasiri's downfall,” Shaul says, with a note of bitterness. “It's not like they'll ever do anything.”

“So why even meet?” I ask. It's these kinds of gatherings that land halani in prison. If his brother's friends are going to risk that, they might as well make a real effort to undermine the councilors.

Shaul glares at me. “We discuss important things.”

“Oh, it's
we
now,” Devorah says, but Shaul talks right over her.

“Like our right to halan representatives in the government. Think, if there were halan councilors, we wouldn't be shut out of the best secondary schools.”

A hint of longing stirs in Zeina's eyes, but Reuven snorts. “Halan councilors? Good luck.”

“Things can change,” Shaul insists. His tone has become a bit self-important, and I can tell he's just repeating ideas he's heard from his older brother's friends. “The kasiri aren't what they were. Three hundred years ago, when the cold times began and the monarchy fell, that's when they were truly great.”

“Because they saved us from starvation, you mean?” Reuven says with a crooked smile, offering a familiar refrain from history class. Nobody laughs.

“Nowadays, the kasiri rely more on technology than on magic,” continues Shaul. “They sit around watching sparker laborers lay bricks and build autos. But we're the ones who actually understand how all the factory machinery works because we operate it.”

“You can't say the kasiri do nothing with their magic,” Zeina objects. “They disperse and convert much of the smoke and ash the factories spew out, for one. And magic is useful in medicine—”

“Worked well for the Second Councilor, didn't it?” Shaul says, sneering. “The point is, magic used to make a bigger difference than it does today. Yoel—my brother's friend—he says we don't have to depend on the kasiri's magic the way we used to. Everybody has gas now, and he thinks we'll all have electricity soon too. Yoel told me halani are inventing and improving things all the time even if kasiri take all the credit.”

“That's just it, though, isn't it?” Zeina says, her expression sharpening. “The kasiri have the money. They own the factories. They control the gas supply and what little electricity there is. I know you want to be an engineer, Shaul, but what if it's not enough? Maybe it doesn't matter how smart we are if the kasiri have all the power.”

It's depressing to hear the brightest student in our year say it doesn't matter how smart we are.

Shaul gapes at Zeina. “Halan workers just need to
organize
,” he says. “And there's another thing we talk about at the pharmacy. The sparker intuition.”

I tense.

“What about it?” Miriam asks.

“The intuition is our power,” he says. “Like the kasiri's magic.”

“No, it's not,” I snap. “The kasiri wield their magic. The intuition is just something that happens to us.”

My friends look taken aback. I never told them about my intuition of Father's death; it was too painful.

Shaul looks mutinously at me. “It's more valuable than we think. One of the students I've met knows a woman who ran an underground press that printed banned materials. The police raided it a few months ago, but thanks to the intuition, she and her workers escaped beforehand. They even saved their stock.”

I hate stories like that. They fill me with a mixture of rage and envy that's hard to stomach. Since I don't want to lash out at Shaul again, I keep my mouth shut. I'm grateful when Reuven speaks up.

“For every time like that, there are ten times the intuition doesn't come when it'd be really useful,” he says. “It may be a gift, but Marah's right, it can't be harnessed.”

“You shouldn't involve yourself with these people anyway,” Devorah says. “Have you forgotten the steelworkers' massacre?”

Shaul clenches his jaw, and I stare at the ground. Devorah is referring to what happened three years ago when the government abruptly ended pensions for injured steelworkers and their families. Mother's widow's pension had long since run out, so the decision didn't affect us, but we were as outraged as everyone else. Hundreds of workers marched on the Assembly Hall and stormed the building. In response, the First Councilor's elite corps slaughtered dozens of steelworkers, some of them fathers and uncles and cousins of Horiel students. I sometimes wonder if Father would have marched that day if he'd been alive.

“And what about what happened last night in Gishal after the District Hall firings?” Devorah continues. “Three people were injured in the confrontation with the Corps.”

“How did you hear?” Miriam says, shaken.

“My uncle told me,” says Devorah. “He was a Gishal employee.” She turns back to Shaul. “Listen to me. You can't count on the intuition. Don't go back to that pharmacy.”

He smirks. “I didn't know you cared so much, Devorah.”

If it weren't for Zeina stepping between them, I think Devorah would punch him. Instead, she stalks off. Zeina follows, looking reproachfully over her shoulder.

“Well done, Shaul,” says Reuven.

I risk a sideways glance at Shaul. Once he was content to make mischief in the classroom and play handball in the street after school. Now he's beginning to move in dissident circles. Maybe this is what it means to grow up, but it frightens me.