Air Logic

by Laurie J. Marks

  “And you are choosing to protect the people who killed my family and hundreds of others!”

  “Yes. Do you think I’m untouched by this vile history?”

  From a distance, it had been easy to believe that this woman was a Sainnite at heart who had stolen the Power of Shaftal and now used it to defend Shaftal’s dreadful enemies. But Chaen couldn’t remember why the company members had discounted the woman’s history of enslavement by, exploitation by, and narrow escape from the attack by the Sainnites on the House of Lilterwess. Disoriented, she said, “I know you are colluding with them now.”

  “I am colluding with Sainnites,” the woman said, “as much as I’m colluding with you.”

  “Collusion? You tricked me, manipulated me, misused the Power of Shaftal . . . !”

  “Exactly,” she said. “The Sainnites felt what I did to gain peace, and they continue to feel it. You also will feel it, Chaen of the Midlands. And you won’t escape. Now that I’ve touched you, I’ll always know where you are, as long as you live. And I like this fact as little as you do.”

  “I doubt it,” Chaen muttered.

  The woman said, “Every day, I awaken angry. Every day, I let go of my anger, because I can’t expect the people of Shaftal to let go of their anger if I can’t do so. But I’ll let you go, with all your scars and pain and rage, and you can curse me in the streets for the rest of your life. Just one time, for one moment, set your anger aside and take the long view, as your parents certainly taught you to do. An unbounded air witch will destroy Shaftal.”

  “An unbounded earth witch is just as dangerous!”

  The woman’s fist clenched at her side, and Chaen remembered belatedly that only a fool picks a fight with a Meartown metalsmith. But the woman didn’t raise her fist, and she spoke in the same measured way she had been speaking. “Let go of your anger, Chaen, or you will be forced to let go of it.”

  “As you said,” Chaen said bravely, “I’ll die instead.”

  After the false G’deon left, Chaen paced the room, frantic. She kicked the walls and shook the grate. But she was trapped.

  Morning had become afternoon before the key once again turned in the lock. A woman came in, glanced at Chaen’s face, and said, “Oh, for land’s sake, I’m just a cow doctor.”

  She carried a tray, trailing the scent of hot bread, brown butter, and burnt onions; a lanky woman, dressed in a longshirt of plain linen, with an ordinary sort of face, and short, stiff, unevenly trimmed hair that kept escaping from behind her ears.

  “I’m Seth, the councilor from Basdown. I’m in the Peace Committee, that came here with Karis.” She set the tray on the table, then took Chaen’s knapsack from her shoulder and put it on the bed. “The Paladins looked through your bag and removed everything that could be used as a weapon. The rest of your things will be fetched from the tailor’s shop.”

  She waited. Chaen, who stood at the window, where her pacing had ended, said, “Do you expect me to thank you?”

  The cow doctor blew air out of her nose like a horse and sat down at the table. “That would be polite, for I’m your friend.”

  “What?”

  “That’s what I said when they asked me! Have an onion roll—they’re direct from the oven.” The crust crackled as she broke a roll open and buttered it with her fingers, as there seemed to be no knife. She had a way about her, a bluntness and an imperturbability that Chaen recognized.

  “You’re an earth blood,” said Chaen. “I suppose they thought I’d trust you because we’re elementally compatible.”

  “What would be the point in sending you a friend you couldn’t get along with?”

  “I don’t want a friend,” said Chaen.

  “Really? I think no one can have too many. Anyway, it doesn’t matter what you want. The law requires you to have a friend. Is there someone else who could be summoned?”

  Chaen said nothing. The cow doctor bit into her roll and shut her eyes with pleasure. When she had finished the roll, she offered the other to Chaen, then ate it as well. The silence didn’t seem to trouble her. “Do you want tea? It’s very good—a variety so rare that no one can afford to drink it.”

  “I just want you to go away.”

  “I will. I have a lot to do. But there are two things I have to tell you.” She sipped her tea, and its fragrance reached Chaen, like the scent of a meadow of wildflowers on a hot day. “First, I have to tell you about Jareth. You’ve been waiting for him every night at the tide clock, am I right?” Chaen didn’t answer, but the cow doctor said, “Well, he’s dead. He died two months ago, in a place called Essikret. First he killed my friend, Damon, and I fought with him, and he fell off a cliff and was killed.”

  Chaen supposed she should be startled or distressed. But nearly fifty members of Chaen’s company had been killed since autumn, and one more death was difficult to care about. She said, “So he’s dead. What is the second thing?”

  “I’m to tell you what will happen. Your trial will be in three days, and until then, no one is allowed to ask me about you, or even talk about you in my presence, and I’m not allowed to talk about you to anyone unless you specifically ask me to. I think that’s everything I’m supposed to say. What do you want? Food? Garland is a talented cook, and he’s terribly kindhearted. The garrison soldiers have started to work on the sewers in Lalali, and every day Garland sends a cake to whichever company gets the dirtiest and most disgusting job. His cakes are so delicious, and the soldiers are so desperate for good food, that the companies are actually trying to get the worst assignments. Are you sure you don’t want tea?”

  Chaen shook her head. To refuse food might accomplish nothing, but a symbolic resistance was still a resistance.

  “Well, what will help you pass the time?”

  “I’d like to finish painting the tailor’s sign.”

  “I’ll ask the Paladins to fetch it. But they may not let you have your tools and supplies.”

  “Do they think I can hurt someone with a paintbrush?”

  “Don’t ask me to explain the Paladins . . . their philosophy is exhausting.”

  Seth sipped the flowery tea. Outside, in the harbor, there was a glow of light beneath the waters, as though a cool twin of the sun swam in the deep. Farther away, ocean blended into sky, so it seemed a ship could sail upward and slide past overhead. A tiny sailboat with an orange sail scuttled past.

  Seth said abruptly, “Zanja’s glyph cards—surely you find them interesting, since you’re an artist and a fire blood—in fact, some people have become completely obsessed with them. They are the lost glyphs. Or rather, the ones that used to be lost. And it was Jareth who found them, though he didn’t know what he had found.”

  Chaen didn’t turn to Seth or show any interest, but the cow doctor began to tell her the entire, incredible tale. She was a leisurely and digressive storyteller, and when her teacup was empty, she had only managed to describe the ancient, lavishly illustrated lexicon, which in the ancient past, she said, had been brought to Shaftal from a distant country.

  Seth bade her farewell and departed with the tray. In the road below, people stood talking aimlessly. After a while, Seth appeared and took one of them into the house.

  More time passed. Then a two-earringed Paladin opened the door and politely asked permission to enter. He explained the conditions under which she would be permitted to paint. The tailor’s sign and Chaen’s supplies were carried in, and she painted until the light dimmed, while the Paladins took turns watching her from the doorway and the breeze washed through the room.

  Chapter 15

  In the weather-beaten house overlooking the harbor, there were two captives. One was confined behind a locked door and barred windows. One paced restlessly under the guard of three fire bloods, two of whom discussed glyph cards at a small table, while one dozed on the mattress. Karis swept aside the dark cloth that cove
red the window and looked out, much to the gratification of the people waiting patiently in the road. Karis waved politely. “Norina is returning.”

  As soon as Norina entered the room, Medric awoke with a start and located his spectacles by feel where he had wisely put them in a shoe. Zanja sat on the floor, and Norina sat in the chair, saying, “The poison was in a little pot with a wooden lid, sealed shut with beeswax. It was buried in an alley-yard that belongs to a family of rope-makers. They had no idea it was there. A couple of Paladins have taken it away to dispose of it. I hope they don’t accidentally kill themselves.”

  Emil asked, “Is it too much to hope that you have glimpsed the rogue air witch?”

  “If I had, our difficulties would be over.”

  “Except that you also would be dead,” said Medric. “Little though I love you—”

  “I share the sentiment!”

  The Truthken and the seer usually managed to avoid being in the same room with each other. Karis said hastily to Norina, “Then why do you think this person is in Hanishport?”

  “I saw Chaen’s face twice—once when I arrested her, and once by accident, when the Paladins were bringing her upstairs. Between the first time and the second, something had reassured her. Who else but the air witch could have given her that assurance?”

  “Suicide is a kind of escape,” Emil said.

  “Yes, perhaps she did think of a way to kill herself. But since I can’t interrogate her, I am reduced to speculation.” She added quickly, perhaps so the fire bloods wouldn’t take offense, “I don’t mean to undervalue speculation. But without information it has limited value.”

  Norina, while struggling to teach five young air witches to behave themselves, had herself become markedly better behaved. And Medric, whose rampant speculations Norina often checked with harsh impatience, lately seemed to be checking his own runaway tongue, at least in her presence.

  Emil said, “Surely the rogue air witch suspects that a direct battle with Norina is not survivable, though she can’t survive it either. Would an air witch risk coming near you?”

  “No,” said Karis, who since midwinter had been suffering greatly due to Norina’s caution.

  “But a considered risk—” Norina began.

  Emil said, “A risk for what purpose? To reassure Chaen, whom this air witch has allowed to be out of contact for many months? How could the air witch have known what Chaen intended to do? She didn’t have time to seek anyone’s permission.”

  “Unless she did it in a manner that my raven couldn’t observe,” Karis said. “Through those people she met with, perhaps.”

  “That seems unlikely. Norina, if you’re about to try to confine Karis indoors, I hope you’ll reconsider. Won’t it be enough for you to continue to guard her? You have work to do in Hanishport, but even you can’t accomplish much during a festival. Leave Maxew to keep the house secure during the day, and Medric will watch over Karis at night. No air witch will get past him unnoticed, and he’s the only person alive who can simply shoot our enemy dead with a pistol.”

  Zanja could see that Norina wanted to argue with him. But instead she looked at Karis and held her tongue.

  In Lalali, nearly the entire garrison of soldiers was hard at work, patching roofs, repairing fallen walls, and digging new sewers. Several wagonloads of the smoke drug, a gift from the House of Lora, had transformed the hospital into a quiet and orderly place, now dominated by a clock that marked each hour with a cheerful chime, announcing that it was time for another small group of people to come in for a slightly decreased dose of the drug. Zanja was called upon to translate an extremely stiff conversation between a healer and the garrison commander, which ended in the garrison commander’s admiring comment that healers were as organized as soldiers.

  The rest of the day she spent following Karis, Norina, and several Paladins and healers up and down the back streets, knocking on doors and talking with the residents. She usually waited in the street, trying to study the glyph cards, but she felt restless and unsettled, hemmed in by the narrow passageways, overwhelmed by the smells, and distracted by a sensation that someone was watching her.

  Once, when she stood up suddenly, she spotted the startled movement of a child taking flight. For a while, her secret observer stayed away, but then returned.

  Norina came outside, glanced at her, and said, “Something is troubling you, and you haven’t mentioned it to me?”

  “It’s nothing—a child is watching me from hiding, impeding my concentration.”

  “Well, I don’t see why you keep trying to understand the card-casting. In three days I’ll interrogate Chaen.”

  “But she can only tell you what she knows, which may be very little. The cards could reveal things that nobody knows.”

  Norina sat beside Zanja on the stoop. She scrubbed her fingers through her close-cropped hair. She wiped sweat from her face. “Well, here’s something nobody knows. I have been troubled lately.”

  Zanja looked at her in surprise.

  “You are the right person to discuss it with,” Norina said.

  Zanja was no longer disconcerted when Norina abandoned the pretense of normal human interaction. “If you say so. What’s troubling you?”

  “The rogue witch’s tactics seem oddly ill-considered. If this person . . . Oh, for land’s sake, let’s pretend it’s a man. If he is experienced in indirect warfare, as he must be, then his direct attack on us last winter was a peculiar waste of resources. I wonder if he expected the assassination attempt to fail, and if he intended the assassins to be sacrificed. Even Chaen was sacrificed. Emil is correct that she isn’t valuable to the rogue air witch. Her dual talent makes her difficult to maneuver or mislead. I expect that in a few days I’ll be using direct force on her—maybe quite a lot of it.”

  “I pity her.”

  “Yes, you know better than anyone what an unpleasant person I am.”

  “But for him to stage an assassination, just to get rid of unwanted people—”

  “I doubt that was his primary reason for the assassination attempt. He did it to manipulate us. He forced us to devote our resources to defending ourselves against an unsubtle but terrifying enemy. I’m afraid our attention was diverted while the rogue air witch was pursuing a more subtle strategy.”

  Unnerved, Zanja said, “That attack certainly captured everyone’s attention, especially that of Karis.”

  “Yes, and it also restrained her, to the point that she has been unable to exercise the Power of Shaftal. And it forced me into a role that degrades both of us.”

  Karis came out the door, talking in a harsh rasp—as close to a shout as she could manage—to a bewildered old man. “The building will fall down! You must move!”

  The man cupped a hand around his ear. Norina, whose piercing voice could slice through the dullest comprehension, rose up to help.

  That night, the dogs patrolled the garden, Paladins stood guard at both the doors, and Medric sat with his lamp, books, and pistol just a few steps away in the kitchen. Still, Zanja longed for the dagger she had lost in the ocean. Karis, living under such close observation, could not go outside to work at a forge. Yes, the assassination attempt had indeed prevented her from accomplishing anything of value.

  Karis had flung her filthy clothing onto the floor and lay naked upon the bed.

  The first time Zanja saw Karis without clothing, she had been so stunned by the beauty of her muscles that nearly a year passed before she understood how intensely and impossibly she wanted to lie down with her and press her skin to hers. But Karis had known.

  Karis said unhappily, “What kind of life is this, that we must wonder every night whether or not we dare go to sleep?”

  “It’s the kind of life we have.”

  “And none of us is living as we want,” Karis said.

  She gazed at or through the ceiling. Her
big hands lay open, revealing fresh cuts and splinters in her fingers and palms. Zanja took a pot of unguent from the table, knelt on the mattress, and lifted one of Karis’s hands. She smoothed the lotion over her scratches and bruises. She rubbed it into her palms and stroked it down each of her fingers. Even though Karis’s skin was coarse and hardened by work, her palms and fingertips were extraordinarily sensitive. Yet she never protected them, using them to greet thoughtful and careless people alike, sticking them heedlessly into brambles and nettles, subjecting them to the dirtiest imaginable tasks: scrubbing pots, digging sewers.

  Zanja massaged the greasy, sweet-scented unguent into the palm of Karis’s right hand, a hand that smashed and built, hurt and healed: a hand that might be empowered by Shaftal but also was empowered by strength, compassion, and intelligence developed under circumstances that would make most people mean and violent.

  She felt the hand quiver. Karis was not asleep—not even close to it. Their hands slid across each other in the slick oil, and Zanja’s own muscles contracted. A smile grew in the corners of Karis’s mouth. Zanja lay upon her, and kissed her. Then, quite abruptly, she was flat on her back, and the smooth muscles of Karis’s shoulders were sliding under her hands like molten rocks, and her breath was in her mouth.

  Give Karis your whole self, Medric had said.

  Zanja had not argued with him. She could have declared that she was Karis’s lover and not her servant, but she already knew Medric would never expect her to give up her independence or her will, without which she was of no use. He had meant something else.

  But it wasn’t enough to merely love Karis, was it? Give your whole self to her, Medric had said. Duty, independence, insight, language, rage, diplomacy, patience, life itself. All of it? But no, these Zanja delivered every day, in service of Shaftal. Surely nothing had been withheld?