![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
browngirlTitle: The Queen's Architect
Fandom: NUMB3RS
Rating: As it is: PG-13. As it would have been: likely not much more, at most light R.
Pairing: David/Colby, Don/Liz, Don/Robin, Charlie/Amita, Megan/Larry, one-sided Charlie/Ian.
Notes: The excessively vaunted Minoan AU that I couldn't quite pull together in the end. This one has a lot of notes and links after the text, including a bunch of my previous Minoan stories (so I could keep sight of the diction and flavor I wanted to evoke).
The Queen's Architect
Part One
"Col?" David called, in search of his new slave. "Col, where have you gone?" The lad surely could not have run off already with rope-burns still scabbed around his ankles and wrists, and David hardly having asked anything of him this last night and day. If he had run, he could not get far, and David could almost have worried after him.
To say nothing of how much he'd cost, rather above what David had meant to spend on some steady old woman to keep his little house. "Col!"
"Here, sir," came the answer at last from the upper level. David climbed the stairs, walked through his bedchamber to the alcove alongside, and found Col sitting on the pallet, arms around his knees and head bent. His hair was cropped and golden like a gleaned wheatfield, and David thought of brushing his hand over its appealing roughness.
Instead he asked, "Why did you not answer me?"
Col shook his head as he lifted it. "I do not know."
Col's water-colored eyes were clear and his words held no insolence, so though David said, "Would you have me beat you?" he only raised his hand to beckon.
Col obediently stood, gaze sinking. "I am sorry, sir."
"Just answer, next time." David looked at his new slave, and wondered once more why he'd bought himself some pale youth, a tribesman from the isles back of the North Wind, rather than an ancient grandmother with a face wrinkled and sweet as a raisin and an hundred recipes in her head. He found himself noting every freckle scattered across Col's sharp cheekbones, and held his hand back from tracing their dotted path. "Do you hear me?"
"Yes, sir." Col's nod seemed to spill down his back in a tremble, and David sighed, ever more weary of being feared. When he touched Col's sturdy shoulder, intending reassurance, the lad but shuddered harder.
David jerked his hand back as if from a flame. "Col. I have unbound you, I am glad to find you still in my house after my day's work. I trust you will not run."
Even so said it was as much question as order, and Col's nod lightened David's thoughts. "Where should I run to, sir?" He glanced up, eyes wide and beseeching for one brief moment before they dropped again.
"Well, then. Let me tell you of what duties you have here." David turned and Col followed him, through the bedchamber, down the stairs and into the main room. "This is my house, and though it is but little, I would have you help me keep it. Can you cook?"
"Passably, sir." Col crouched to poke at the hearth, stirring faint red glints deep in the ashes.
"You need not worry about bread," David said. "A daily ration is part of my wages, up at the Palace. I report to Daan the Captain of the Guard there. Some days I may call you to arm and aid me." Col glanced up in some startlement. "I'll also have my fellow lieutenants here of times, so I should tell you of them now." David waved Col on, and the lad obediently scooped up a handful of twigs from the fuel-basket and began tucking them amongst the embers. "Daan is the captain, and you'll know him on sight; he's not the tallest man, but all give way before him. My fellows are Pyrpeplos, a steady lad, and Daan's apprentance Zabet, new from the bull-dancers' ranks." Col nodded to show he followed, fanning the flames with his hand. "And there's Daan's younger brother Charlios as well."
"Another lieutenant?" Col asked, and David had to laugh at the thought of that spindly curly-topped lad guarding anything besides his scrawled figures.
"Ah, no. No, big-eyed and gangly as he is. He's a mathematician, one of the candidates seeking to earn the place of Queen's Architect."
*********************************************************
Charlios crouched beneath the radiant Sun, inscribing the beauty of mathematics in the dirt. The Sun made a changing angle with the land on its way across the sky, and he'd had a thought just now as he walked in the Palace gardens, a method of relating the angle to the hour. A half-eaten chunk of barley bread with white cheese held safely high, Charlios sketched angles and fractions with his writing hand in the soft earth beside a cypress.
Then firm fingers closed round his upheld wrist. "Not enough sense even to choose the shaded side," said Daan his brother, leaning down to bite a chunk from his cheese-and-bread.
Charlios glanced up displeased, unable to free his hand and rescue his food no matter how he tugged; even so he noticed Daan's manner of dress, his combed hair and necklace of small gold beads, his gleaming arm-rings and polished bronze dagger-hilt, his red leather belt and clean blue-embroidered kilt. "You've got yourself up like the Hunter of the Stars," he said, and Daan turned his eyes heavenwards just as he ever had in their childhood.
"I'm not so young, small brother." Brushing crumbs from his mouth, Daan paced a circle round Charlios, who was hard put to protect his work with outstretched arms. "Nor yet so old. But I am dressed as befits a man bound for audience with his Queen, which is more than I might say of you."
"What?" Charlios asked indignantly, rising swiftly to his feet. "I'm clothed, I'm brushed, if not as bedecked as you, o peacock." His kilt, red and blue spirals on cream, had not suffered when he bent to write, and his boots, well, they had but trodden sweet earth, they would do.
Daan snorted more eloquently than any speech and ruffled his hand through Charlios' hair, disarraying the curls further. "You might make the merest attempt; your hand's besmeared. And where's your pretty maiden?" Daan grinned, eyebrows waggling.
"My helper," Charlios said, edging his voice to emphasize Amitara's position, "is within with the other Palace maidens, and shall meet me at the audience."
"All the better for you to come in now, unless you would miss it." Daan gripped Charlios' arm, none too gently.
"But--!" Charlios balked, looking towards his figuring. "My meal! My mathematics!"
In answer, Daan plucked the remnant of Charlios' bread-and-cheese from his hand and flung it carelessly aside. "That's sauced with mud, and your jottings are as ever preserved within your wooly head. Now, come." Setting his mouth in a firm line, Daan tugged as if next he might bodily snatch Charlios up and bear him into the Palace, so Charlios surrendered and let himself be led away.
*********************************************************
"Today we have more than common business." The Queen's seven-flounced skirt rustled heavily as she stood from her throne and stepped glittering forward into a broad sunbeam. Light flashed from her gold-embroidered flounces and silver-strung girdle, gleamed from gold beads strung amidst her warm brown hair and the moon pendant upon her high brow, and most of all shone in her mild and knowing eyes. Beside the Queen's brightness, the tall hard-eyed stranger at her left hand was all the more travel-worn, all the grimmer. Amitara looked upon the stony planes of his weathered face, his broad shoulders and bandolier of little glinting knives, his short leather kilt and scuffed boots, and watched him glance across the assembled courtiers as a hawk might scan a clutch of mice. His hard eyes seemed to stop at her, making her wish she might duck her head; then she realized the stranger looked so upon Charlios standing just before her, and now she wished she might pluck his elbow and and warn him, for Charlios was likely figuring in his head and would never notice such a thing.
But then, the Queen had set them together as much for Amitara to keep watch over him as to help in his mathematics. And the Queen drew breath to speak, so Amitara turned her mind to the Queen's words and watched her extend a hand to the stranger. "This is Eian of Zakros, come from the dawn-edge of our island hunting a danger which may now lie among us."
[this scene Amitara's pov. Eian describes the fugitive as a daemon in the shape of a man. Charlios pipes up saying he sounds like a man; Amitara tries not to smile, secretly proud, watching Daan's eyelids twitch but his expression otherwise not change. Queen says "Peace, Charlios, we have heard you. Also, the houses for the Architect competition should be ready soon and we will look upon them in two days." She looks at Larron, who smiles at her and at Charlios. Queen dismisses them, Eian hits on Charlios, who says, "mathematics can prove this fugitive is but a man," Amitara roll her eyes at Eian, Daan who has come to scold him listens instead, and then all the architect candidates are summoned, so they go in to that.
Amitara stands two paces behind Charlios, not one like a wife.]
Next scene, Daan POV. Marshall eye-rollingly hitting on Amitara. One architectural student, Marshall's assistant, is missing. They describe him, he sounds to Eian like the man they seek. They go to his lodgings and Eian recognizes his stuff. Eian wants to set out but Daan goes to ask Charlios' advice.
Next scene: Charlios POV. He and Amitara are talking to Larron (put in larry-describes-galaxies line) when Daan arrives. After assignment is given, Charlios wishes for calculus and Amitara boggles.
Scene after that: David and Col talking as they prepare. Col recognizes David's Hebrew name, David talks about knowing Daan because their grandsires sailed together for Crete. Col reveals that the pirate-trader who raided his farm and took him kept him for awhile, until the forces of Cretan ships destroyed the pirate and Col was sold time and again on Crete. Then, hunting.
Daan argues against bringing Col, for he might run off; *he* left his housekeeper at home. Then a dove comes to Col and they figure him lucky. Using Charlios' instructions they find the guy.
Charlie uses math to prove the guy is human and not a demon, and Don's team track him down; Colby helps muchly.
The guy makes his threats. Meanwhile, Charlios recognizes something is wrong with one of the buildings ("that is not my angle") and he and Amitara go check it out.
The guy sabotaged a building and Charlie figures it out using math, and figures out how to shore up a building so it doesn't collapse before they can get people out. (Or -- dramatic idea: gets everyone else out, building starts shaking, uses math to see which corner is most stable, hides in as building falls.)
Don flirts with Zabet but weds a scribe named Robin at the end, and everyone is happy.
Last scene: Charlios wakes with Amitara, looks at her in sunshine, goes down to find Daan looking over construction. They talk, etc.
credit libitina:
One of the architects has rigged a newly constructed building in the palace by making the foundation only barely able to support the weight of the stone above it, but you'd have to tear them all down to find the weakness... or wait for people to die.
General plot: Several young mathematicians are competing to be the Queen's Architect now that Larry the Queen's Consort has retired from that position. (rebuilding after a major earthquake.) One is Charlie, protege of her consort Larry; the other is Marshall. Charlie's older brother Don is the captain of the Palace Guard. When the warrior prince Edgerton comes to Mallia hunting a dangerous criminal, fled from the other end of the island, they discover he is undercover in the group of architects, He flees, leaving behind at least one building that's boobytrapped; Charlie must use math to figure out which, while Don and his team must catch the man.
********************************************************
Cast notes:
Write Cast of Characters. CF:
http://rubynye.livejournal.com/259859.html
Amita is an Indian girl who came with the ambassador's entourage, and finds her place as Charlie's assistant.
Story set up by David telling his new slaveboy Colby about the people he can expect to see. Charlie is the eponymous Queen's Architect, Don Captain of the Palace Guard. When the warrior prince Edgerton comes to Mallia hunting a dangerous criminal, fled from the other end of the island, Charlie uses math to prove the guy is human and not a demon, and Don's team track him down; Colby helps muchly. The guy sabotages a building and Charlie figures it out using math, and figures out how to shore up a building so it doesn't collapse before they can get people out. Edgerton hits on Charlie, making his apprentice Amita roll her eyes. Don weds a scribe named Robin at the end, and everyone is happy. (work on plot some more.)
David * David * Second in command of the Palace Guard
Colby * Col * David's body-slave.
Don* Daan * Captain of the Palace Guard
Charlie* Charlios * Candidate for The Queen's Architect
Megan * Meagara * the eponymous Queen
Larry * Larron * her consort and sky-watcher, former Architect
Liz * Zabet * Don's new recruit
Redshirt * Pyrpeplos * Don's redshirt lieutenant, gets killed
Terry * Terrea * Don's mentor, possibly deceased
Alan * Abban * Don & Charlie's father, deceased
Robin * Robin (the bird) * a scribe with a soft spot for Don
Marshall * Hipparos * competing candidate for Queen's Architect
Ian * Eian * tracker from Knossos
Amita * Amitara * Charlie's assistant and beloved
Chilon * Chilon * The bad guy; Original character
Los Angeles* Agellos *the city
Nikki* Nikea * Replacement for Pyrpeplos, mentioned at end.
A note on David's background: his family is from Kush or further south. His father settled in Egypt; he moved to the Levant as a youngster, took the name 'David' there and then moved to Crete. He asnd Don aka Daan bond over that because....
a note on Daan and Charlios' background: their grandfather left his proto-Hebrew tribe, was a sailor who eventually settled in Crete.
Zabet never walks where she can jump, and she's got hennaed toes
********************************************************************
Assorted notes:
add lots more visual detail. Frex, describe David's cool little house with
its white plastered walls and red spiral up by the ceiling, and the round
hearth in the downstairs room; describe garden Charlie is in, at least to
identifying tree he's beneath, and how Don flings his bread into the "green
distance".
There was just an architecture contest where each of the five candidates designed a new building. The villain, who gave a fake identity, worked his way up from scribe to architect, and recopied all their designs into working copies, giving him the opportunity to sabotage them.
How does Charlie prove the Bad Guy is a man and not a demon? Demons cn fly, and he only travels at the speed a man can journey even when he has reason to go faster.
Near climax of story: Amita senses the earthquake coming, and gets grumpy at Charlie. Charlie storms off and gets into danger (trapped in building in earthquake? nearly trapped?) and afterwards Don huggles him/checks him for injury and Amita runs to him. Their fingers winding into a love-knot.
Don tells a story about how Charlie broke his favorite dish and then cried because it didn't break into even pieces, so Don made a dish from clay and carved it into equal pieces for Charlie. 6 and 11, and Don was surly about it, yet loving.
notes from reading 'notes from files'
Don polishing a knife: he thinks they lost to the bad guy, so he is polishing a blade and sulking when Charlie proves the bad guy is human and in X place. Don's team hurries there and catches him.
Birds, especially doves, are indicated as the manifestation of a divine being or epiphany.
Look at Maren Kuether-Ulberg's writing for descriptive ideas
Charlie tells Don he looks like the Hunter of the Stars and Don says, "I'm not so young, small brother."
Charlie calls Amita his "lily of the mountain" a title he's seen Don bestow upon a dozen women, but it makes her smile. Note her dancing, spirals in the swing of her hair, the revolutions of her body and math in every movement, and he is awestruck, thinking nothing ever so beautiful.
How it feels to hit one's head:
http://papersky.livejournal.com/255908.html
find the description of the palace, gypsum walls sparkling in the sun
A note on David and Colby:
David is attracted to Colby from the start, but doesn't want to compel him to have sex; slaves are seen as merely unlucky rather than lesser, fate as ruling us all, David could easily have been the slave, he thinks. Then Colby does something that signifies he's changed his luck and has the Goddess' favor, something accidental that looks like the hand of the Goddess.
Colby helps save someone, maybe David, and a dove flies up as part of the event. Dove seen as sign of the goddess, and sign of love.
9-8-08 plot update:
Story set up by David telling his new slaveboy Colby about the people he can expect to see. Several young mathematicians are competing to be the Queen's Architect now that Larry the Queen's Consort has retired from that position. (rebuilding after a major earthquake.) One is Charlie, protege of her consort Larry; another is Marshall. Charlie's older brother Don is the captain of the Palace Guard. When the warrior prince Edgerton comes to Mallia hunting a dangerous criminal, fled from the other end of the island, Charlie uses math to prove the guy is human and not a demon, they discover he is undercover in the group of architects, and Don's team track him down; Colby helps muchly. The guy sabotages a building and Charlie figures it out using math, and figures out how to shore up a building so it doesn't collapse before they can get people out. Edgerton hits on Charlie, making his apprentice Amita roll her eyes. Don weds a scribe named Robin at the end, and everyone is happy. (work on plot some more.)
Assorted evolving plotbunnies below:
"The Queen's Architect". Queen Priestess Megan and her consort the Chief Astronomer Fleinhardt rule the Minoan City-State of Mallia (I have to look up which is the westernmost major Minoan city, but I think it's Mallia). Her architect is Charles; his older brother Don is the captain of the Palace Guard. When the warrior prince Edgerton comes to Mallia hunting a dangerous criminal, possibly a demon, Charlie's mathematics prove that the criminal is a mere man and help Don's men capture the criminal. Oh, and Edgerton takes Charlie to bed sometime in there, which makes Charlie's apprentice architect Amita roll her eyes.
* "The Queen's Architect", as described here and I think elsewhere. Why I would write this: because I write Minoan AUs wherever I go. Why I haven't written this: I still haven't figured out a geometrical mystery, or how Amita gets there (though I suppose she could be part of an ambassadorial delegation); also, approximately three people would read it. And I likely should not let myself write a story where David owns Colby as a slave; that way lies far too broad a region of id.
Notes for TQA from reading
The queen wants the bull- court and some buildings integrated into a great palace.
She gives Charlie a ring with a spiral inscription.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_fraction
*********************************************************************
Minoan Math Notes:
Things Larry Says
"There are spirals [of light] in the sky, Charlios, far beyond human vision, reflections of the great pattern along whose lines all existence is constructed."
Which leaves Amita and Charlie nonplussed.
Things Charlie says
at one point make him wish for calculus without knowing it. Read the development of calculus to figure out how.
Charlie says in his "I wish I had Calculus" speech: "take a quantity that changes. The speed of its change may be constant, or it too may change. And what if that change is also changing? There must be a better way to determine the change of the change of the change." Amita just kind of stares at him.
When Charlie talks about wanting Calculus, Amita talks about (haltingly,
Charlie encourages her) how on the way from India her father's brother tried
to work out a new, briefer way of writing numbers, determining quantities by
place. But it didn't work out, and now here she is the last of her embassy.
Charlie is excited by the math notation she's described, and says how
beautiful she is, upon her face and in her mind, the beauty of
comprehension. She waits for him to kiss her, thinks that maybe he'll ask
her to marry her, but he whirls off on math and she sighs.
Charlie can do sums and divisions others can't. They have to see 7/8 as 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8; he can see it as 7/8 (well, this is an oversimplification. But he can deal with 351/400 and suchlike numbers).
Angles are given as fractions of a circle.
Think of architectural stuff. Colonnades and porticoes, etc.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Architectural_elements
*********************************************************************
Assorted links:
Charlie finds the corner that won't collapse, huddling beside a large item that created a void.
http://www.essortment.com/all/survivecollapsi_ttnf.htm
http://www.amerrescue.org/knowledge.htm
http://www.islamonline.net/servlet/Satellite?c=Article_C&cid=1157962471875&pagename=Zone-English-HealthScience%2FHSELayout
http://www.mail-archive.com/sustainablelorgbiofuel@sustainablelists.org/msg69102.html
Subject: more from limyaeel
character motivations:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/limyaael/369908.html#cutid1
authorialnitpicking:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/limyaael/368811.html#cutid1
http://www.livejournal.com/users/limyaael/369340.html#cutid1
interesting villains:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/limyaael/367974.html#cutid1
Transformative fantasy:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/limyaael/366131.html#cutid1
Earning Hell:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/limyaael/365539.html#cutid1
Balancing Cynicism
http://www.livejournal.com/users/limyaael/364268.html#cutid1
How people speak:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/limyaael/362666.html#cutid1
Complicated plotting:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/limyaael/362369.html#cutid1
Non-journey stories:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/limyaael/360528.html#cutid1
Stand-alone stories:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/limyaael/360112.html#cutid1
Gaining Reader Empathy:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/limyaael/359249.html#cutid1
Torturing Characters:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/limyaael/358897.html#cutid1
Begin:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/limyaael/354604.html#cutid1
Subject: grand list of overused SF cliches
http://enphilistor.users4.50megs.com/cliche.htm
Subject: showing your viewpoint chars as not always right
http://www.livejournal.com/users/limyaael/442378.html#cutid1
Subject: Rules for Writing Historical Fictoion
http://erastes.livejournal.com/101675.html
http://tinkertytonk.blogspot.com/2006/03/rules-for-writing-historical-fiction.html
my minoan stories
http://browngirl.livejournal.com/212436.html
http://browngirl.livejournal.com/220226.html
http://browngirl.livejournal.com/257137.html
http://browngirl.livejournal.com/324050.html
http://browngirl.livejournal.com/488567.html
http://browngirl.livejournal.com/595412.html
http://rubynye.livejournal.com/8904.html
http://browngirl.livejournal.com/639340.html
http://browngirl.livejournal.com/695522.html
http://browngirl.livejournal.com/900011.html
http://browngirl.livejournal.com/1086858.html
http://rubynye.livejournal.com/9059.html
http://rubynye.livejournal.com/144437.html
http://rubynye.livejournal.com/92549.html
http://rubynye.livejournal.com/209872.html#cutid4
http://rubynye.livejournal.com/171623.html?thread=2077543#t2077543
http://rubynye.livejournal.com/235082.html
http://rubynye.livejournal.com/236105.html
http://rubynye.livejournal.com/239451.html
http://rubynye.livejournal.com/259859.html
http://rubynye.livejournal.com/159534.html
http://rubynye.livejournal.com/239665.html
http://rubynye.livejournal.com/192651.html?thread=2323339#t2323339
http://rubynye.livejournal.com/192651.html?thread=2323595#t2323595
Fandom: NUMB3RS
Rating: As it is: PG-13. As it would have been: likely not much more, at most light R.
Pairing: David/Colby, Don/Liz, Don/Robin, Charlie/Amita, Megan/Larry, one-sided Charlie/Ian.
Notes: The excessively vaunted Minoan AU that I couldn't quite pull together in the end. This one has a lot of notes and links after the text, including a bunch of my previous Minoan stories (so I could keep sight of the diction and flavor I wanted to evoke).
The Queen's Architect
Part One
"Col?" David called, in search of his new slave. "Col, where have you gone?" The lad surely could not have run off already with rope-burns still scabbed around his ankles and wrists, and David hardly having asked anything of him this last night and day. If he had run, he could not get far, and David could almost have worried after him.
To say nothing of how much he'd cost, rather above what David had meant to spend on some steady old woman to keep his little house. "Col!"
"Here, sir," came the answer at last from the upper level. David climbed the stairs, walked through his bedchamber to the alcove alongside, and found Col sitting on the pallet, arms around his knees and head bent. His hair was cropped and golden like a gleaned wheatfield, and David thought of brushing his hand over its appealing roughness.
Instead he asked, "Why did you not answer me?"
Col shook his head as he lifted it. "I do not know."
Col's water-colored eyes were clear and his words held no insolence, so though David said, "Would you have me beat you?" he only raised his hand to beckon.
Col obediently stood, gaze sinking. "I am sorry, sir."
"Just answer, next time." David looked at his new slave, and wondered once more why he'd bought himself some pale youth, a tribesman from the isles back of the North Wind, rather than an ancient grandmother with a face wrinkled and sweet as a raisin and an hundred recipes in her head. He found himself noting every freckle scattered across Col's sharp cheekbones, and held his hand back from tracing their dotted path. "Do you hear me?"
"Yes, sir." Col's nod seemed to spill down his back in a tremble, and David sighed, ever more weary of being feared. When he touched Col's sturdy shoulder, intending reassurance, the lad but shuddered harder.
David jerked his hand back as if from a flame. "Col. I have unbound you, I am glad to find you still in my house after my day's work. I trust you will not run."
Even so said it was as much question as order, and Col's nod lightened David's thoughts. "Where should I run to, sir?" He glanced up, eyes wide and beseeching for one brief moment before they dropped again.
"Well, then. Let me tell you of what duties you have here." David turned and Col followed him, through the bedchamber, down the stairs and into the main room. "This is my house, and though it is but little, I would have you help me keep it. Can you cook?"
"Passably, sir." Col crouched to poke at the hearth, stirring faint red glints deep in the ashes.
"You need not worry about bread," David said. "A daily ration is part of my wages, up at the Palace. I report to Daan the Captain of the Guard there. Some days I may call you to arm and aid me." Col glanced up in some startlement. "I'll also have my fellow lieutenants here of times, so I should tell you of them now." David waved Col on, and the lad obediently scooped up a handful of twigs from the fuel-basket and began tucking them amongst the embers. "Daan is the captain, and you'll know him on sight; he's not the tallest man, but all give way before him. My fellows are Pyrpeplos, a steady lad, and Daan's apprentance Zabet, new from the bull-dancers' ranks." Col nodded to show he followed, fanning the flames with his hand. "And there's Daan's younger brother Charlios as well."
"Another lieutenant?" Col asked, and David had to laugh at the thought of that spindly curly-topped lad guarding anything besides his scrawled figures.
"Ah, no. No, big-eyed and gangly as he is. He's a mathematician, one of the candidates seeking to earn the place of Queen's Architect."
*********************************************************
Charlios crouched beneath the radiant Sun, inscribing the beauty of mathematics in the dirt. The Sun made a changing angle with the land on its way across the sky, and he'd had a thought just now as he walked in the Palace gardens, a method of relating the angle to the hour. A half-eaten chunk of barley bread with white cheese held safely high, Charlios sketched angles and fractions with his writing hand in the soft earth beside a cypress.
Then firm fingers closed round his upheld wrist. "Not enough sense even to choose the shaded side," said Daan his brother, leaning down to bite a chunk from his cheese-and-bread.
Charlios glanced up displeased, unable to free his hand and rescue his food no matter how he tugged; even so he noticed Daan's manner of dress, his combed hair and necklace of small gold beads, his gleaming arm-rings and polished bronze dagger-hilt, his red leather belt and clean blue-embroidered kilt. "You've got yourself up like the Hunter of the Stars," he said, and Daan turned his eyes heavenwards just as he ever had in their childhood.
"I'm not so young, small brother." Brushing crumbs from his mouth, Daan paced a circle round Charlios, who was hard put to protect his work with outstretched arms. "Nor yet so old. But I am dressed as befits a man bound for audience with his Queen, which is more than I might say of you."
"What?" Charlios asked indignantly, rising swiftly to his feet. "I'm clothed, I'm brushed, if not as bedecked as you, o peacock." His kilt, red and blue spirals on cream, had not suffered when he bent to write, and his boots, well, they had but trodden sweet earth, they would do.
Daan snorted more eloquently than any speech and ruffled his hand through Charlios' hair, disarraying the curls further. "You might make the merest attempt; your hand's besmeared. And where's your pretty maiden?" Daan grinned, eyebrows waggling.
"My helper," Charlios said, edging his voice to emphasize Amitara's position, "is within with the other Palace maidens, and shall meet me at the audience."
"All the better for you to come in now, unless you would miss it." Daan gripped Charlios' arm, none too gently.
"But--!" Charlios balked, looking towards his figuring. "My meal! My mathematics!"
In answer, Daan plucked the remnant of Charlios' bread-and-cheese from his hand and flung it carelessly aside. "That's sauced with mud, and your jottings are as ever preserved within your wooly head. Now, come." Setting his mouth in a firm line, Daan tugged as if next he might bodily snatch Charlios up and bear him into the Palace, so Charlios surrendered and let himself be led away.
*********************************************************
"Today we have more than common business." The Queen's seven-flounced skirt rustled heavily as she stood from her throne and stepped glittering forward into a broad sunbeam. Light flashed from her gold-embroidered flounces and silver-strung girdle, gleamed from gold beads strung amidst her warm brown hair and the moon pendant upon her high brow, and most of all shone in her mild and knowing eyes. Beside the Queen's brightness, the tall hard-eyed stranger at her left hand was all the more travel-worn, all the grimmer. Amitara looked upon the stony planes of his weathered face, his broad shoulders and bandolier of little glinting knives, his short leather kilt and scuffed boots, and watched him glance across the assembled courtiers as a hawk might scan a clutch of mice. His hard eyes seemed to stop at her, making her wish she might duck her head; then she realized the stranger looked so upon Charlios standing just before her, and now she wished she might pluck his elbow and and warn him, for Charlios was likely figuring in his head and would never notice such a thing.
But then, the Queen had set them together as much for Amitara to keep watch over him as to help in his mathematics. And the Queen drew breath to speak, so Amitara turned her mind to the Queen's words and watched her extend a hand to the stranger. "This is Eian of Zakros, come from the dawn-edge of our island hunting a danger which may now lie among us."
[this scene Amitara's pov. Eian describes the fugitive as a daemon in the shape of a man. Charlios pipes up saying he sounds like a man; Amitara tries not to smile, secretly proud, watching Daan's eyelids twitch but his expression otherwise not change. Queen says "Peace, Charlios, we have heard you. Also, the houses for the Architect competition should be ready soon and we will look upon them in two days." She looks at Larron, who smiles at her and at Charlios. Queen dismisses them, Eian hits on Charlios, who says, "mathematics can prove this fugitive is but a man," Amitara roll her eyes at Eian, Daan who has come to scold him listens instead, and then all the architect candidates are summoned, so they go in to that.
Amitara stands two paces behind Charlios, not one like a wife.]
Next scene, Daan POV. Marshall eye-rollingly hitting on Amitara. One architectural student, Marshall's assistant, is missing. They describe him, he sounds to Eian like the man they seek. They go to his lodgings and Eian recognizes his stuff. Eian wants to set out but Daan goes to ask Charlios' advice.
Next scene: Charlios POV. He and Amitara are talking to Larron (put in larry-describes-galaxies line) when Daan arrives. After assignment is given, Charlios wishes for calculus and Amitara boggles.
Scene after that: David and Col talking as they prepare. Col recognizes David's Hebrew name, David talks about knowing Daan because their grandsires sailed together for Crete. Col reveals that the pirate-trader who raided his farm and took him kept him for awhile, until the forces of Cretan ships destroyed the pirate and Col was sold time and again on Crete. Then, hunting.
Daan argues against bringing Col, for he might run off; *he* left his housekeeper at home. Then a dove comes to Col and they figure him lucky. Using Charlios' instructions they find the guy.
Charlie uses math to prove the guy is human and not a demon, and Don's team track him down; Colby helps muchly.
The guy makes his threats. Meanwhile, Charlios recognizes something is wrong with one of the buildings ("that is not my angle") and he and Amitara go check it out.
The guy sabotaged a building and Charlie figures it out using math, and figures out how to shore up a building so it doesn't collapse before they can get people out. (Or -- dramatic idea: gets everyone else out, building starts shaking, uses math to see which corner is most stable, hides in as building falls.)
Don flirts with Zabet but weds a scribe named Robin at the end, and everyone is happy.
Last scene: Charlios wakes with Amitara, looks at her in sunshine, goes down to find Daan looking over construction. They talk, etc.
credit libitina:
One of the architects has rigged a newly constructed building in the palace by making the foundation only barely able to support the weight of the stone above it, but you'd have to tear them all down to find the weakness... or wait for people to die.
General plot: Several young mathematicians are competing to be the Queen's Architect now that Larry the Queen's Consort has retired from that position. (rebuilding after a major earthquake.) One is Charlie, protege of her consort Larry; the other is Marshall. Charlie's older brother Don is the captain of the Palace Guard. When the warrior prince Edgerton comes to Mallia hunting a dangerous criminal, fled from the other end of the island, they discover he is undercover in the group of architects, He flees, leaving behind at least one building that's boobytrapped; Charlie must use math to figure out which, while Don and his team must catch the man.
********************************************************
Cast notes:
Write Cast of Characters. CF:
http://rubynye.livejournal.com/259859.html
Amita is an Indian girl who came with the ambassador's entourage, and finds her place as Charlie's assistant.
Story set up by David telling his new slaveboy Colby about the people he can expect to see. Charlie is the eponymous Queen's Architect, Don Captain of the Palace Guard. When the warrior prince Edgerton comes to Mallia hunting a dangerous criminal, fled from the other end of the island, Charlie uses math to prove the guy is human and not a demon, and Don's team track him down; Colby helps muchly. The guy sabotages a building and Charlie figures it out using math, and figures out how to shore up a building so it doesn't collapse before they can get people out. Edgerton hits on Charlie, making his apprentice Amita roll her eyes. Don weds a scribe named Robin at the end, and everyone is happy. (work on plot some more.)
David * David * Second in command of the Palace Guard
Colby * Col * David's body-slave.
Don* Daan * Captain of the Palace Guard
Charlie* Charlios * Candidate for The Queen's Architect
Megan * Meagara * the eponymous Queen
Larry * Larron * her consort and sky-watcher, former Architect
Liz * Zabet * Don's new recruit
Redshirt * Pyrpeplos * Don's redshirt lieutenant, gets killed
Terry * Terrea * Don's mentor, possibly deceased
Alan * Abban * Don & Charlie's father, deceased
Robin * Robin (the bird) * a scribe with a soft spot for Don
Marshall * Hipparos * competing candidate for Queen's Architect
Ian * Eian * tracker from Knossos
Amita * Amitara * Charlie's assistant and beloved
Chilon * Chilon * The bad guy; Original character
Los Angeles* Agellos *the city
Nikki* Nikea * Replacement for Pyrpeplos, mentioned at end.
A note on David's background: his family is from Kush or further south. His father settled in Egypt; he moved to the Levant as a youngster, took the name 'David' there and then moved to Crete. He asnd Don aka Daan bond over that because....
a note on Daan and Charlios' background: their grandfather left his proto-Hebrew tribe, was a sailor who eventually settled in Crete.
Zabet never walks where she can jump, and she's got hennaed toes
********************************************************************
Assorted notes:
add lots more visual detail. Frex, describe David's cool little house with
its white plastered walls and red spiral up by the ceiling, and the round
hearth in the downstairs room; describe garden Charlie is in, at least to
identifying tree he's beneath, and how Don flings his bread into the "green
distance".
There was just an architecture contest where each of the five candidates designed a new building. The villain, who gave a fake identity, worked his way up from scribe to architect, and recopied all their designs into working copies, giving him the opportunity to sabotage them.
How does Charlie prove the Bad Guy is a man and not a demon? Demons cn fly, and he only travels at the speed a man can journey even when he has reason to go faster.
Near climax of story: Amita senses the earthquake coming, and gets grumpy at Charlie. Charlie storms off and gets into danger (trapped in building in earthquake? nearly trapped?) and afterwards Don huggles him/checks him for injury and Amita runs to him. Their fingers winding into a love-knot.
Don tells a story about how Charlie broke his favorite dish and then cried because it didn't break into even pieces, so Don made a dish from clay and carved it into equal pieces for Charlie. 6 and 11, and Don was surly about it, yet loving.
notes from reading 'notes from files'
Don polishing a knife: he thinks they lost to the bad guy, so he is polishing a blade and sulking when Charlie proves the bad guy is human and in X place. Don's team hurries there and catches him.
Birds, especially doves, are indicated as the manifestation of a divine being or epiphany.
Look at Maren Kuether-Ulberg's writing for descriptive ideas
Charlie tells Don he looks like the Hunter of the Stars and Don says, "I'm not so young, small brother."
Charlie calls Amita his "lily of the mountain" a title he's seen Don bestow upon a dozen women, but it makes her smile. Note her dancing, spirals in the swing of her hair, the revolutions of her body and math in every movement, and he is awestruck, thinking nothing ever so beautiful.
How it feels to hit one's head:
http://papersky.livejournal.com/255908.html
find the description of the palace, gypsum walls sparkling in the sun
A note on David and Colby:
David is attracted to Colby from the start, but doesn't want to compel him to have sex; slaves are seen as merely unlucky rather than lesser, fate as ruling us all, David could easily have been the slave, he thinks. Then Colby does something that signifies he's changed his luck and has the Goddess' favor, something accidental that looks like the hand of the Goddess.
Colby helps save someone, maybe David, and a dove flies up as part of the event. Dove seen as sign of the goddess, and sign of love.
9-8-08 plot update:
Story set up by David telling his new slaveboy Colby about the people he can expect to see. Several young mathematicians are competing to be the Queen's Architect now that Larry the Queen's Consort has retired from that position. (rebuilding after a major earthquake.) One is Charlie, protege of her consort Larry; another is Marshall. Charlie's older brother Don is the captain of the Palace Guard. When the warrior prince Edgerton comes to Mallia hunting a dangerous criminal, fled from the other end of the island, Charlie uses math to prove the guy is human and not a demon, they discover he is undercover in the group of architects, and Don's team track him down; Colby helps muchly. The guy sabotages a building and Charlie figures it out using math, and figures out how to shore up a building so it doesn't collapse before they can get people out. Edgerton hits on Charlie, making his apprentice Amita roll her eyes. Don weds a scribe named Robin at the end, and everyone is happy. (work on plot some more.)
Assorted evolving plotbunnies below:
"The Queen's Architect". Queen Priestess Megan and her consort the Chief Astronomer Fleinhardt rule the Minoan City-State of Mallia (I have to look up which is the westernmost major Minoan city, but I think it's Mallia). Her architect is Charles; his older brother Don is the captain of the Palace Guard. When the warrior prince Edgerton comes to Mallia hunting a dangerous criminal, possibly a demon, Charlie's mathematics prove that the criminal is a mere man and help Don's men capture the criminal. Oh, and Edgerton takes Charlie to bed sometime in there, which makes Charlie's apprentice architect Amita roll her eyes.
* "The Queen's Architect", as described here and I think elsewhere. Why I would write this: because I write Minoan AUs wherever I go. Why I haven't written this: I still haven't figured out a geometrical mystery, or how Amita gets there (though I suppose she could be part of an ambassadorial delegation); also, approximately three people would read it. And I likely should not let myself write a story where David owns Colby as a slave; that way lies far too broad a region of id.
Notes for TQA from reading
The queen wants the bull- court and some buildings integrated into a great palace.
She gives Charlie a ring with a spiral inscription.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_fraction
*********************************************************************
Minoan Math Notes:
Things Larry Says
"There are spirals [of light] in the sky, Charlios, far beyond human vision, reflections of the great pattern along whose lines all existence is constructed."
Which leaves Amita and Charlie nonplussed.
Things Charlie says
at one point make him wish for calculus without knowing it. Read the development of calculus to figure out how.
Charlie says in his "I wish I had Calculus" speech: "take a quantity that changes. The speed of its change may be constant, or it too may change. And what if that change is also changing? There must be a better way to determine the change of the change of the change." Amita just kind of stares at him.
When Charlie talks about wanting Calculus, Amita talks about (haltingly,
Charlie encourages her) how on the way from India her father's brother tried
to work out a new, briefer way of writing numbers, determining quantities by
place. But it didn't work out, and now here she is the last of her embassy.
Charlie is excited by the math notation she's described, and says how
beautiful she is, upon her face and in her mind, the beauty of
comprehension. She waits for him to kiss her, thinks that maybe he'll ask
her to marry her, but he whirls off on math and she sighs.
Charlie can do sums and divisions others can't. They have to see 7/8 as 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8; he can see it as 7/8 (well, this is an oversimplification. But he can deal with 351/400 and suchlike numbers).
Angles are given as fractions of a circle.
Think of architectural stuff. Colonnades and porticoes, etc.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Architectural_elements
*********************************************************************
Assorted links:
Charlie finds the corner that won't collapse, huddling beside a large item that created a void.
http://www.essortment.com/all/survivecollapsi_ttnf.htm
http://www.amerrescue.org/knowledge.htm
http://www.islamonline.net/servlet/Satellite?c=Article_C&cid=1157962471875&pagename=Zone-English-HealthScience%2FHSELayout
http://www.mail-archive.com/sustainablelorgbiofuel@sustainablelists.org/msg69102.html
Subject: more from limyaeel
character motivations:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/limyaael/369908.html#cutid1
authorialnitpicking:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/limyaael/368811.html#cutid1
http://www.livejournal.com/users/limyaael/369340.html#cutid1
interesting villains:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/limyaael/367974.html#cutid1
Transformative fantasy:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/limyaael/366131.html#cutid1
Earning Hell:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/limyaael/365539.html#cutid1
Balancing Cynicism
http://www.livejournal.com/users/limyaael/364268.html#cutid1
How people speak:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/limyaael/362666.html#cutid1
Complicated plotting:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/limyaael/362369.html#cutid1
Non-journey stories:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/limyaael/360528.html#cutid1
Stand-alone stories:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/limyaael/360112.html#cutid1
Gaining Reader Empathy:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/limyaael/359249.html#cutid1
Torturing Characters:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/limyaael/358897.html#cutid1
Begin:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/limyaael/354604.html#cutid1
Subject: grand list of overused SF cliches
http://enphilistor.users4.50megs.com/cliche.htm
Subject: showing your viewpoint chars as not always right
http://www.livejournal.com/users/limyaael/442378.html#cutid1
Subject: Rules for Writing Historical Fictoion
http://erastes.livejournal.com/101675.html
http://tinkertytonk.blogspot.com/2006/03/rules-for-writing-historical-fiction.html
my minoan stories
http://browngirl.livejournal.com/212436.html
http://browngirl.livejournal.com/220226.html
http://browngirl.livejournal.com/257137.html
http://browngirl.livejournal.com/324050.html
http://browngirl.livejournal.com/488567.html
http://browngirl.livejournal.com/595412.html
http://rubynye.livejournal.com/8904.html
http://browngirl.livejournal.com/639340.html
http://browngirl.livejournal.com/695522.html
http://browngirl.livejournal.com/900011.html
http://browngirl.livejournal.com/1086858.html
http://rubynye.livejournal.com/9059.html
http://rubynye.livejournal.com/144437.html
http://rubynye.livejournal.com/92549.html
http://rubynye.livejournal.com/209872.html#cutid4
http://rubynye.livejournal.com/171623.html?thread=2077543#t2077543
http://rubynye.livejournal.com/235082.html
http://rubynye.livejournal.com/236105.html
http://rubynye.livejournal.com/239451.html
http://rubynye.livejournal.com/259859.html
http://rubynye.livejournal.com/159534.html
http://rubynye.livejournal.com/239665.html
http://rubynye.livejournal.com/192651.html?thread=2323339#t2323339
http://rubynye.livejournal.com/192651.html?thread=2323595#t2323595
