synced with the tech should chime together so much, well, you would not be the onliest one. It was a thing that was oftentimes thought and sometimes said out loud. But no, Perliu said, it was not strange at all. The database told of times when there was other Ramparts. He said most of the families in the village had been Ramparts at one time or another, some of them using tech we didn’t even have now on account of it got lost, or using the tech that don’t wake no more for anyone. Those things all got names, so they must of worked at least once. They was called things like the light-and-dark, the wise doctor, the farsight, the swallow, the music, the mask, the signal. But nobody in Mythen Rood knowed what it was they used to do.
And back in the world that was lost, Perliu said, everyone was synced. Tech was wherever you went, in everyone’s houses or in their stow-sacks or even just out on the street. People was like trees in them days, taller than anything and striding over the world. They was so big and so strong, nothing could of brung them down excepting only their own selves, which was what done it in the end. Either that or the dead god or Dandrake struck them down for sinfulness, if you got faith in things of that kind.
So it was just hap and stance that all our Ramparts was Vennastins, Perliu said. It was different once, and would be again. In the meantime, he said, we had got to be thankful there was Ramparts at all, given how bad a thing it would be if there wasn’t none. Everyone got a try at waking the tech, and there wasn’t nobody had a better chance than anyone else. The testing was right in front of everyone and we all could see it was fair.
That much was true. What was also true, though Perliu didn’t say it, was this: Vennastins had got all the power in their hands, so why would you want them to be riled with you? Better to keep your head down, when all was said. Better to let things roll on in the direction they was going, since if you got in their way they was like to roll on anyway and leave you broke behind.
7
The testing was done in the Count and Seal, in Rampart Hold. At least, that was how it was in my year. When I was younger, I remember it happening outside, on the gather-ground. But then there was a time when a big horn-headed thing, one of the unlisted, got inside the fence and run into the crowd. Rampart Arrow brung the beast down before it killed anyone, but Deeley Pureheart got gored and two other people was hurt fending it off of him. Afterwards everyone said it was foolish for the whole village to meet out in the open, and we moved the testing indoors. We didn’t stop holding the Summer-dance or the Salt Feast though. There would of been great unrest if anyone had said to do that.
When testing day come, Haijon and me waked up to find our white testing shirts laid out beside our bunks. We put them on and went into the kitchen, where Spinner was already sitting down in her own white shirt, eating a plate of pancakes and honey piled up higher than I ever seen. There was twice as many left on the platter, along with bread and warm milk and duck eggs and slices of pink-white meat, hot and steaming off the stove-top.
“I started without you, sleepyheads,” Spinner said, through a mouthful of something. “You gonna have to race to catch up.”
“No need to race,” Shirew Makewell said. She was at the stove, frying up more meat. “You can have anything you want, and as much as you want. This is your day, remember.”
“Well then,” Haijon said, sitting down. “I think I’m gonna have some of everything, Shirew. Starting with this bread, which smells like it’s got spike-seed in it.” I sat down too. Haijon had took the seat next to Spinner, so I was opposite. That was okay though. It meant I got to look at her face while I was eating.
The bread did have spike-seed in it, and it tasted so good it kind of made you sigh through your nose when it was in your mouth. The meat was good too. I was thinking it