She learned the hierarchy, too. She and her tentmates were the bottom of the heap. Above them were the senior graders. Above them were the stonefitters and then the stonecutters. Above them all was Big Arnando, the foreman, and above him, Boss Gen. The surveyor ranked with Arnando, but he couldn’t reprimand anyone except through the foreman.
The geologist stood apart from everyone. He wasn’t part of the crew, Felix explained, but had been brought in specifically to deal with this hole. “Dunno why he’s still here, honestly,” said Felix, on the third day of detour grading. “We’ve stopped messing with the hole.”
But that wasn’t entirely true. Tess had seen the geologist, called Nicolas, visit the edge after dark when Boss Gen wouldn’t notice him. He lay on his belly like Pathka and gazed into the depths, his face dimly illuminated by a lantern he’d lowered on the end of a string.
He was the first learned man Tess had encountered in her travels, and she found him unduly fascinating. Not that she found him handsome, to be clear: his face was heavily weathered, like a bit of craggy cliff. It was more that his quirks—reading at the mess table, getting impatient and snappish when the other men said stupid things—made her oddly nostalgic.
She liked scholars. They’d been the best thing about her youthful misadventures. Surely it was possible to talk to one without everything going bad?
She needed to prove this to herself. After dinner on the fourth evening, Tess eschewed the card game and went out to the hole. Nicolas was on his stomach; the hole glowed eerily.
“Spot anything?” asked Tess, nearly startling him into dropping the lantern.
“Don’t sneak up like that,” said the geologist, scowling. “Who are you?”
“Tes’puco,” said Tess, seating herself carefully beside him, letting her feet dangle into the yawning chasm. “I like geology.”
“Oh you do, do you?” he said, as welcoming as blackberry bramble.
She was going to bump right up against the limits of her Ninysh, talking about rocks. “We’ve got caves in Goredd, worn away by water. I’ve crawled through lots. They’re beautiful, and sometimes they collapse. This, though…” She tossed a rock into the depths; it made sharp, sweet echoes. “I can tell this is different. Water didn’t make this hole. What do you think?”
“Nothing could have made this,” said Nicolas, raising himself on all fours. He began reeling his lantern up. “That’s solid basalto, no sign of erosion. We’re not mining this part of the shield.” His tone softened slightly: “I’m fascinated and baffled in equal measure.”
Tess smiled to herself: he was a quintessential natural philosopher, prickly until he realized she was interested. Nobody else had cared about the basalto, evidently.
“At least we’re not still trying to fill it,” said Tess, looking down the hole.
“Who told you that?” said Nicolas.
“Well…why the detour, then?”
He shook his head. “That’s temporary. They don’t even have the landowner’s permission. They’re trying to make it passable until the boulders get here.” The lantern was up at last. “The gravel slides aside, into the depths of the cavern, so they’re hauling in some very large rocks from the quarry at Dulouse. It should take about a week.”
“That seems like a waste of stone,” said Tess, although in truth she worried about Pathka being sealed in. “Wouldn’t it make more sense to build a bridge over it?”
“A…bridge?” said Nicolas, confused, as if he’d never heard of such a structure.
“If this were a river, that’s what they’d do,” said Tess. “Not fill it in.”
“Filling a river would have consequences,” said the geologist. “Filling this hole—”
“Would have consequences,” said Tess. “You’d never learn what made it.”
“You have some crackpot theory,” said Nicolas shrewdly, eyeing her sidelong.
She did. He was going to think her mad, but Tess found she didn’t care. She had nothing to prove to this man, and there was a certain pleasure to be had in shocking him. “Ever heard of the World Serpents?”
The geologist laughed. “Oh no, not this. Don’t tell me this mania has reached all the way to Goredd. It’s bad enough that some of the Academy’s best and brightest have gone tearing off after the one in the Antarctic, but—”
“Since when do naturalists take World Serpents seriously?” asked Tess, put out. She and Will hadn’t convinced anyone, but Nicolas was claiming the Ninysh were interested? Never.
Nicolas shrugged. “Only in the last few years. Countess Margarethe of Mardou is on a voyage as we speak, scouring the waters around the Archipelagos.”
Tess emitted a bitter sound, halfway between a laugh and a snort. It figured. The countess had said megafauna, and Tess had fallen down a hole in her own mind. If she’d said World Serpent…would it have made a difference? Was there really any chance that Tess could’ve been sailing the Antarctic right now? She probably would have found a way to stab herself in the foot no matter what. She’d been so resentful that day, biting everyone indiscriminately.
“What’s this Academy you mentioned?” said Tess, pushing away her regrets.
“The Academy of Segosh, older and more reputable than your St. Bert’s,” said Nicolas archly. “We’re ahead of Goredd in most endeavors, but even our finest minds may fall prey to fads and manias. Before this, they were trying to replicate St. Blanche’s mechanical marvels. They made some inroads, and Ninysh clockwork is now superior to any in the Southlands, but in the end, no one could do what St. Blanche does. She’s a Saint; she puts a piece of her soul into everything she creates. Mere humans simply can’t.”
“The quigutl accomplish a great deal without involving, uh, souls,” said Tess, pulling Pathka’s insectoid thnik out of her jerkin.
Nicolas turned it over in his hands. Wires protruded at strange angles. “I’ve never seen such an ungainly one.”
“It was made on the road,” said Tess, taking it back and stashing it again, wary that he might want to dismantle it. “The quigutl didn’t have his usual tools along.”
“That device would interest the Academy very much,” he said. “That we could learn from. If you’re ever in Segosh, consider donating it.”
“And you should consider taking my bridge idea to Gen,” said Tess, standing up. “If the hole is left open, you could come back later with proper gear and explore its depths yourself.”
Nicolas raised his lamp and stared into the black pit. Tess left him to his considerations.
* * *
“You’re a clever bastard, I’m told,” said Boss Gen the next day. She’d called Tess into her office, to the unexpected envy of Felix and Mico; the sun was particularly strong that afternoon. “Vessi the surveyor loves your bridge idea. Now the road can run tediously straight, like his imagination. Count Pesavolta will send another crew with an engineer and masons, which suits me fine. Once we finish the detour, we can get back to doing our job, which is filling potholes, not the earth itself.”
“Do I get some kind of cleverness bonus?” asked Tess, cocky from the unexpected praise.
“You do not,” said Gen, “and this isn’t really why I called you in. I wanted to ask”—she lowered her voice—“one woman to another, whether you’re adequately prepared for your monthlies. I don’t know how you’ve been taking care of yourself out on the road—”
“Moss,” said Tess.
“—and I don’t want to know,” said Gen, glowering at the interruption. “But now that you’re among men, pretending to be one, laundry becomes an issue.”
“Moss works surprisingly well in a lunessa, and you can burn it in the fire,” said Tess.
“There is a dearth of moss here in the wheat country,” said Gen, clearly regretting this conversation. “I have proper wool lunessas in that trunk. Use them as needed, and wash them in privacy, here in my tent. That’s all I wanted to say. You’re welcome.”
“Won’t there be gossip? They’re going to think young ’Puco is your lover.”