Air Logic

by Laurie J. Marks

  “She did feel it.”

  “All of us felt it. I’m thinking Emil won’t be impressed by your diplomacy.”

  “Zanja is right,” Norina said. “Which way?”

  Karis pointed, and they started down the hill. Kamren, walking beside Zanja, said with comic disbelief, “Did the Truthken just say you’re right? We should tell Medric to put that in the book he’s writing.”

  “Was that a pistol you had?” asked Karis.

  “I took it from one of the Loras—Tashar, his name was. He carries it for protection from thieves.”

  At the Lora warehouse where the smoke drug was stored, the warehouse boss started to argue with Norina and then came to his senses and unlocked the door. By the time a wagon had been fetched from the garrison, several members of the Lora family had arrived. Norina instructed them in the Law of Shaftal while the Paladins loaded the wagon with bales from the warehouse.

  Zanja managed to get the attention of one of the Loras, the one who had earlier explained why the family imported smoke. “The House of Lora would look better if they donated the smoke drug to Shaftal,” she told him.

  The man said, “We discussed it. Aunt won’t permit it.”

  “Could you offer half of what Karis is demanding?”

  “I’m Nevan of Lora. I didn’t hear your name earlier.”

  “Zanja na’Tarwein.”

  “The G’deon’s wife?”

  Zanja would be referred to as the G’deon’s wife for the rest of her life, but she said, “I am the Speaker for the Ashawala’i.”

  Nevan looked confused. Perhaps he knew as little about the mountain tribes as Zanja did about the far countries of the world.

  “The border tribes used to send Speakers to the House of Lilterwess, to address the G’deon on matters that concerned them.”

  The man said, “I left my family in a state of disorder. Aunt said that, since the contents of the warehouse are Shaftal’s, I was to tell the warehouse boss to dismiss the guards. Shaftal can protect its own belongings from thieves, she said.”

  “Does one person make the decisions for everyone in your family?”

  The man sighed. It did seem unlikely that the awful woman referred to as Aunt had assets beyond a loud voice and an absolute certainty in the truth as she perceived it. Zanja couldn’t imagine how such persons came to be accorded even a superficial respect, but she doubted that it would make much difference that Norina had bared her fangs at the woman. She said, “If you suggest a compromise to her, I don’t think it will make matters any worse. Can we at least have an agreement that the warehouse will be kept under guard until tomorrow?”

  “And then what, Madam . . . uh . . . Speaker? You don’t have an empty warehouse to move it to.”

  “We do,” Zanja said. Storage space could be found in the garrison, which also would solve the problem of keeping the smoke drug secure.

  So they agreed that they each would try to convince the obstinate people in their families to give and accept only half the smoke drug in the warehouse. The next day, when Zanja, with Gilly and a gang of Paladins and soldiers, arrived at the warehouse with their wagons, Nevan, rather harrowed looking, was waiting to give Shaftal half the smoke drug in the warehouse, as a donation from the Lora family.

  Chapter 11

  According to the Hanishport clock, it was the 201st day of the year; the waxing moon was half full, and the tide had recently turned. Chaen waited, leaning against the clock’s stone base, feeling its rhythmic ticking vibrate against her shoulder like a heartbeat. The long summer day had faded into blue night, and watchman’s lanterns on the anchored ships cast undulating worms of light upon the moving water. On the quay, sailors carrying bags that they had filled in Hanishport’s shops waited in clusters for skiffs to their ships. They talked loudly in their ship-tongue, eating suppers bought at food stalls, passing a brown bottle from hand to hand.

  Tashar appeared, stepping around a knot of sailors on the corner. He walked briskly across the quay, a sturdy young man in a rather fussy suit, his coat pulled askew by the weight of the pistol in his pocket.

  During the previous winter, most of the Death-and-Life Company had occupied a drafty, ramshackle building in the poor section of Hanishport known as Leeside. Tashar had been a frequent visitor, bringing money for food and rent, and occasional comforts, such as woolens, sweets, and liquor. He always seemed to expect more gratitude than he was offered, and people sneered at him behind his back. A few people had been in the direct command of Saugus even before Willis was killed, and Tashar had been one of them. But Chaen and Tashar greeted each other as though they were strangers.

  “I beg your pardon for my tardiness,” he said. “It has been a peculiar day.”

  They walked together along the quay, talking stiltedly about ships, weather, criminality, and the sorry state of the roads. Chaen saw a few distant lights where the garrison, crouching on a peninsula, kept watch on the harbor like a massive cat watching a mouse hole. That peninsula pointed its finger at a tiny island where a fire burned atop a light-tower to warn ships of the shallows. Every day, the city’s skiffs rowed to that island with more firewood and returned laden with ashes.

  Chaen and Tashar turned onto the Marketway, where the ditch-clearer had shoveled the day’s accumulation of manure out of the ditches to be scooped into a wagon. Tashar picked his way fastidiously, but Chaen didn’t pay attention to her feet: her boots had walked through much worse. The market yard lay to their right, an open space, well cobbled and clean swept. The young man hopped a mound of manure by the roadside and stepped on the wheel bridge to cross the ditch. They entered a dark yard, climbed a rickety outdoor stairway, and stood on the landing while he fiddled with a key. A warped door squalled open.

  Chaen forced the door shut, fighting its stiff hinges.

  The shutter of a covered lantern slid open.

  Chaen rubbed her light-burned eyes. Two others awaited her on broken-down chairs, where they seemed to have been sharing a large mug of beer that had stamped circles into a dust-furred table. Chaen said, “I am a portrait painter.”

  “Teamster,” said a young woman with big shoulders, turning her face into the light. The man, older, sun-hardened, and bulky with muscle, was a stevedore. Tashar, as always, introduced himself as a sailor, though everyone knew he was the scion of a rich merchant family. Tashar brought some packing crates from the corner, and they all sat around the table. Chaen asked if anyone had anything to eat, for she had missed supper at the tailor’s shop. The stevedore grubbed in his pocket and handed her a wizened apple and the dry heel of a bread loaf.

  Chaen had not felt her loneliness half so exquisitely as she felt it now, as she participated in the fellowship that only she knew had been forbidden to her. She said, “Is it a fact that the false G’deon is here?”

  The stevedore said, “I saw her on the quay with my own eyes.”

  The teamster said, “She’s living with some twenty people in the old house on Harborway just to the north of here, the one that’s stood empty these five years because those vicious Sainnite parasites killed two of the family, and the rest couldn’t bear to look at the garrison any longer.”

  “And some of her companions are Paladins—true Paladins, not irregulars.”

  “Yes—and don’t forget the Sainnites,” said the teamster. “The entire garrison is at her service, since the general is here also.”

  Stevedore, sailor, and portrait painter looked at the teamster with surprise. Chaen said, “General Clement, you mean? The one that killed Willis?”

  “Yes, the murderer herself is here, with an armed guard of eight.” Chaen felt a wave of rage, for she had seen the bodies stacked in the snow after that massacre. But she scarcely noticed anger anymore, she had been in such a fury for so long. The teamster added, “Today the G’deon’s entire company, Paladins and Sainnites included, went to Lalali
.”

  “Lalali? Whatever for?” said the stevedore with disgust.

  Tashar turned to Chaen. “Portrait painter, what does our leader need from us?”

  She should tell them that she was barred from contacting any member of Death-and-Life Company, lest she inadvertently lead the enemies to them. At least, she should tell Tashar that she had not been sent by Saugus, whom he idolized as fervently as the others had idolized Willis. But she didn’t.

  The city had begun to fall asleep when Chaen left the office, creaked down the rickety stairs, found the way back to the road, and cut across the market yard the long way, so she wound up on the downhill corner, with a vast, empty stretch of courtyard between herself and the dark loading yard. Hidden by darkness, she sat among pieces of junk that had collected around an old shed. She watched the refuse wagon work its slow way down the hill as two tenders scooped and flung the muck, and the horse, unbidden, moved forward a few steps every time it heard a shovel’s contents thud into the bed. The wagon had turned the corner, the noise of the quay faded to silence, the sea breeze picked up the sweet, rotten scent of low tide, and still Chaen saw no sign that she had been followed. She stood up and slung the knapsack onto her shoulder.

  At the tailor’s shop, the doors were locked and no light glimmered, so she wrapped herself in her threadbare coat and lay down in the doorway. She had slept in worse beds.

  Tashar kept his hand on his pistol as he went from the warehouse to an alley that was noisy with music and drunken sailors. On Artisan’s Way he climbed the hill, where, above closed shops and workshops, the windows of the second-story living quarters were open to the cool night air. He reached the stately, level road of Captain’s Way, where the gardens lay silent and fragrant, and a solitary musician was playing a flute, perhaps preparing to entertain the houseguests who soon would arrive.

  Even at this late hour, the road was well lit, and the walled gardens and locked gates offered nowhere for an assailant to hide. As Tashar hurried toward the House of Lora, he considered whether he was too tired to eat, and whether he’d be able to sleep if he didn’t eat.

  The sky’s darkness clotted into a hard scab, and became a man standing before him. Tashar shouted with surprise.

  “You still shriek like a baby, Sailor Boy.”

  “Fuck!” Tashar cried. “Why are you here?”

  “Why not?” The boy had grown at least a head taller since Tashar last saw him, yet he remained thin as a grass blade. “I’ve been waiting for hours,” he said. “Don’t you come home for supper?”

  “I’m doing that right now. And I won’t invite you to share it with me either.”

  “I’ve eaten. But you won’t eat anytime soon.”

  Members of the company called the young air witch “Little Wind” behind his back. No one except Saugus liked Maxew. And his mother, Tashar supposed. “Well, what has happened?” he asked.

  “The false G’deon visited your family today—and the Truthken was with her. It’s fortunate that you weren’t home.”

  “I was home. I eavesdropped from a closet. The false G’deon stole a warehouse full of smoke from the Loras. Does our leader know that she’s in Hanishport?”

  A moment passed. When Maxew spoke, he sounded more irritated than usual, probably because Tashar had ruined his unpleasant surprise. “Of course he knows she’s here.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I’m keeping my own secrets,” said Maxew loftily. “Your parents are extraordinarily stupid. If they had given some of the smoke willingly, she wouldn’t have taken all of it.”

  “They never should have imported that foul stuff in the first place. Could you tell me whatever it is you’re here for so I can go to bed before sunrise?”

  Tashar was several years older than Maxew, but people had assumed the two youngest members of the company would be friends. Maxew had practiced air logic on Tashar—harmless tricks, he insisted, apparently believing that humiliation was harmless. His mother had noticed, and discussed the matter with Saugus. The tricks stopped, but there was no hope at all of the boys becoming friends, if there ever had been.

  Maxew said, “You haven’t hidden any contraband in the warehouse, have you?”

  Tashar thought he might be referring to the snake poison that had been used in the assassination attempt. He had in fact hidden it that winter under some floorboards in a warehouse but had moved the remainder as soon as the ground was soft enough to for him to bury it. “There’s not much left, but it’s not in the warehouse.”

  Maxew said, “What about that other thing? Our leader said it’s some new kind of conveyance. That must not be discovered either, for we will be needing it soon.”

  “We?”

  “You and I, and a passenger.”

  Tashar had hoped that the first passenger on the maiden voyage of Tashar’s marvelous ship would be Saugus. Instead it would be this obnoxious ass? “It’s not in the city,” he said.

  “Must you be so sullen?”

  Tashar started walking again, but the boy kept pace with him. “If it’s not in the city, it’s not very useful.”

  “We can get to it by sailboat.”

  “Yes, that will work. We will depart sometime after tomorrow, but I don’t know exactly when.”

  “I must have a day’s notice, to get ready.”

  “Be ready every day,” Maxew replied.

  Tashar turned to retort that he only took orders from Saugus. But the boy wasn’t there.

  As Tashar lay in bed trying to sleep, it occurred to him that Maxew might not even be aware that his mother was in Hanishport.

  Chapter 12

  The weather turned cloudy, and it took hours for each layer of paint to dry. Chaen killed the time by wandering the city, looking for interesting things to draw. She drew a vine with sky-blue flowers that twisted open like spills of paper, a broken wagon wheel that leaned tiredly against a stone wall, and a handcart filled with bright red potatoes in the market yard. The potato farmer left his stall to look at the drawing and offered to trade a sack of potatoes for it. She then traded the potatoes for a shirt the tailor had made for a sailor who had never collected it. With the bow and darts that had been concealed among the potatoes, she practiced shooting a sack of fabric scraps in the empty shop at night, and the skill she had developed during the winter with a similar weapon quickly returned.

  The sky cleared, and in warmth and sunshine she painted the face of the tailor’s mother. When the tailor saw it, he exclaimed, “Every day of her life I saw that very expression on her face! I half expect her to chide me for my sloppy stitches!” He was so delighted that he gave Chaen some pennies for the Fair, and a key so she wouldn’t be locked out again.

  People from near and far began to arrive for the Hanishport Fair. Marketway and Seller’s Way were closed so the vendors could camp there with their goods, and on the day before the Fair, horses and wagons were not allowed on any seaside roads except the quay. Chaen thought the quay would be a good place to set up her stools and easel, so she waited in a long line at the harbormaster’s office to get a license.

  Fair Day dawned. Soon after sunrise, she wended through the clutter of flimsy market stalls with her easel and stool under her arms and her knapsack heavy on her back. Vendors folded away their beds, a troupe of jugglers sat drinking tea by their baskets of implements, puppeteers carefully hung their puppets behind their stage, and a food seller arranged kindling in a firepot.

  No one had been allowed to set up early on the quay, and now it was a frantic tangle of stalls being constructed; hand carts of pastries, fruit, trinkets, and game pieces being unloaded; musicians arguing about the order of performance; and the harbormaster ignoring all of them as he serenely wound the tide clock with a giant key. Chaen claimed her spot on the waterside, filled sacks with rocks and sand at the water’s edge and tied them to the easel’s fee
t so it couldn’t be easily knocked over, and placed a portrait on the easel for advertisement. The portrait, painted on wood, had been a gift for her mother, which her mother returned to Chaen after she lost everything in the fire. It depicted a solemn baby, surrounded by artifacts of contentment and prosperity: a basket of corn, a hand-woven towel, a piece of slate chalked with Chaen’s records of which chickens were laying and which weren’t, and, drooping in the baby’s hand (for he would never show any interest in toys), a wooden rattle that his father had carved for him the winter before he was born. Beyond that solemn baby lay a sunlit field in which the entire family was at work harvesting wheat, and beyond it could be seen the scarlet and copper woodland, and a few softly curved golden hills. For years, Chaen had scarcely been able to look at the painting.

  The musicians settled their dispute and began to play. The debris was swept away, and the vendors set up their displays even as fairgoers began to wander past. The juice seller to Chaen’s left began enthusiastically shouting his wares. Chaen wouldn’t have any customers that morning—people never bought portraits in the opening hours of a fair. She took out her sketchbook and drew the red-faced hat seller who paced up and down the quay wearing a stack of nearly thirty straw hats. Occasionally people stopped to look at her painting, or at the pencil drawings in her sketchbook. She told them the cost for one person or two, done in pencil or paint, and the potential customers said they might return later. It seemed like any other fair.

  No one was alone, and some families traveled like geese, with a line of children suspended between the poles of supervising adults. Chaen did notice one solitary, shabby old man who bought a straw hat from the hat man, put it on over his grimy head scarf, and stood blinking with pleasure, a point of stillness in the unceasing flow of people. With a few swift strokes, Chaen added him to her sketchbook and continued to draw him from memory long after he had disappeared in the crowd.