Eventually, he thought it would be a kindness to the Kuh’taenium. Not long now and she would be weak enough to die. Perhaps she deserved it. She had served humankind for so long. Empathy was not one of Sventhan’s strong suites, but he could imagine just how tired he would be if he had been born to think, and to remember, and had done so for a thousand years or more.
He was tired enough now, and he had only been thinking for a day. But while he knew he might not be a great thinker, he did understand the meaning of duty as few others.
Sventhan followed the Omerteran. He followed it in his every action, his every word. But he knew also what it did not preclude, what it allowed, and how far he could traverse within its iron-bound code. The Omerteran was a way of life, handed down from generation to generation. Over the years it had been spread far and wide, the family growing, but still always able to trace their roots back to the beginning when they had been builders. The knowledge was part of the code — a way to make a building live. There was no magic. It was geometry, in the lines, and the stone. The stone was rare now. There were no more quarries. But far from becoming forgotten, the knowledge of how to build was entrenched in a widening family of builders. There was no call for it any more, but it was the rules. It was never written — and no body outside of the family knew what they knew. It had survived for a thousand years, survived the exile of some of their members across the western ocean, and but two examples of their works remained, the rest lay in ruins, and a few forgotten, or taken over by beasts, converted to a lair, granting those beasts a measure of intelligence. One of the remaining buildings was in Beheth, its name forgotten, because the people who used it were too busy reading books they forgot to use the writing on the walls. The other was the Kuh’taenium.
Sventhan and his family did not know, but there was an older example — Sybremreyen, the home of the Sard. But that predated the Kuh’taenium.
Sventhan took up his quill for the last time and dipped it in dark ink. A solitary drip hung from the tip while he paused for thought. The pause was, to an outside observer, overly long. But sometimes it takes a ponderous man to take the right action. Anyone can be rash, or intelligent. It takes a special kind of breed to be smart, whether they come to their conclusions swiftly, or with the patience and planning only a builder could bring to bear.
At last, the quill joined the paper. The Kuh’taenium was under attack…and it was time for the family to do their duty. The builders were going to war. Their name would be remembered again.
Sventhan wrote as he thought, with great care. It was this attention to care that ensured his family had survived through the ages — it pays to heed caution when creating tower structures from blocks of stone.
He could sense movement in the fabric of society. The Protectorate becoming overly bold, a sense of cowering among the people of the street, a darkening of the soul of the city. The buildings spoke to him, as they spoke to all his family — and they were afraid. The souls of people soaked into them, and the buildings felt their fear. He should have heeded the warnings long ago, but now there were no more excuses for inaction.
Gurt was family. While Reih did not know the builders, they knew her. She had asked Gurt for help, not knowing what she had set in motion, but now events were out of her hands. She must live. She was twinned with the building. There was no other way.
Duty was clear. Protect the Kuh’taenium, at whatever the cost.
The family might be simple builders who knew no other trade, but they could still wield the hammer, and the blade.