Air Logic

by Laurie J. Marks

  “No—it wouldn’t be right,” Chaen said absently.

  To fit so complicated an illustration into so small a space, Chaen would have to use an ink pen for the details. Once again, the Paladins would have to watch her work, but they had proven unobtrusive before, which was surprising since she could hear their voices constantly when the door was closed.

  “Can I leave this sketch with you?” Zanja’s question had been carefully worded, so Chaen needed not promise to do anything.

  “You may leave it with me,” Chaen said. And she would do the drawing, she knew.

  Zanja stood up, and the candle flame was extinguished by its movement through the air.

  Chaen worked on the tiny painting by lamplight late into the night. When she finished, the Paladins took her pens and brushes and left her alone. She sat awake beneath the window as the waning moon sailed in a sea of rippled clouds. By the time it sailed out of her sight, the festival racket of the city had fallen silent. Chaen should have been leaving Hanishport in the caravan of vendors heading for the next fair. But even if she hadn’t been tricked and arrested, she still wouldn’t have escaped, for the false G’deon’s raven would have continued to follow her. She would have continued in a state of suspense, like an unfinished painting, until she became too peculiar to live among people and finally died of cold or hunger, another of winter’s nameless casualties. Perhaps it was better that she die now.

  The night grew old, and the starlight-silvered harbor ceased its restless rippling and lay quiet as a mirror, reflecting the face of the sky in a frame of dark, rocky coastline.

  She heard the distant tide clock ring for low tide. The Paladin named Kamren quietly opened the door to check on her. “Oh, pardon me. You’re still not sleeping? May I bring you a tisane?”

  “No.”

  “Would you like a lamp and your pencils?”

  “Yes, if you’ll then leave me alone. Do you really think I’ll stab myself with a pencil, or set the house on fire?”

  “We don’t know what you’ll do,” he said reasonably.

  “But I want to draw, and I want to be alone.”

  “I regret to say that you cannot have both.”

  “You regret it? Then why not allow it? Haven’t you sworn to follow your conscience? Especially when your conscience contradicts what you’re commanded to do?”

  She wanted him to argue with her, but he laughed. “Everyone knows better than to command a Paladin. I do regret this necessary cruelty, but we have agreed that you must not escape or kill yourself. One of your companions did die in our custody. All of those who guarded him had been present on the night of the assassinations, and perhaps we let him die because we were angry, and not because it was right. To exercise judgment, Paladins must be detached, even when we’re grief-stricken, or angry. It’s very difficult to do.”

  Chaen thought that she herself was insufficiently detached. But how could she not be angry with her own people—and especially with her own son—for failing to rescue her? To Kamren she said, “I should have known better than to ask a Paladin a question.”

  “May I ask you a question? Many Paladin irregulars like yourself have said they want to study philosophy and take the Paladins’ vow. Will they be able to abandon bitterness?”

  “They should be proud for having bravely fought the Sainnites during Shaftal’s years of darkness!”

  “Yes, they certainly should. But now the G’deon, who speaks for Shaftal, expects us to return to the old way, the way of judging people by their merits, and not only by their failures. Do you think that would be possible, for someone like yourself?”

  “Leave me alone,” Chaen said.

  Perhaps she fell asleep, or perhaps when the key turned in the door again, she was so despondent that she could not raise her head from her arms.

  In Chaen’s memories Maxew was a child, but he spoke to her now with a man’s voice. “Mother?”

  She leapt to her feet. She could scarcely see the slim, blurry shape that stepped into the room and set down a candle. “Max!” She ran to him, and he suffered her embrace. “I knew you would come!”

  “It is conventional to say so, when a hope has merely been realized.”

  “I hoped, then. What have you done to the Paladins?”

  “They think they’re awake, and won’t realize they’re sleeping.”

  “Max, I don’t know what to do. The false G’deon put her hand upon me, and she said she’ll always know where I am.”

  “You can’t ever escape her,” he said without apparent concern.

  “So you’ve come to tell me that I must die tomorrow?”

  “You know that already. Mother, why did you remain in Hanishport? Why did you make that foolish attempt on Karis’s life?”

  “If I had succeeded you wouldn’t call it foolish!”

  “Three fire bloods and a Truthken were guarding Karis. You could never have succeeded.” He had never learned to control that scornful tone, though it gained him only enemies.

  She said, “Our leader thought it was possible this winter past, when he commanded us to kill her.”

  “You’re like the others,” her son said abruptly, with inexplicable bitterness. “To be convinced to do anything, you must be told a tale in which you are the only one who can make the world right.”

  She couldn’t see his face clearly in the flickering light of his candle. “Why do you say that? I always did my part as willingly as I could, and you know that more certainly than anyone!”

  “Willingly? Resentfully, you mean.”

  She drew back from him, dismayed. How many times had she reminded Max that what mattered most was how people acted and not what they thought? Yet he raged at Chaen’s impure purpose as though she intended to offend him. That she had always told her son the truth, even when the truth seemed unspeakable, should have been enough. Had their mutual understanding been a fabrication? How many times had he concealed the truth from her? Was he doing it now?

  Max surveyed the room until his candle illuminated the painting of him as a child, which lay on its face on the table. Chaen had used it as a drawing board, and the glyph card of the drowning woman, drawn with ink and painted with watercolors, was still pinned to it. He glanced at the card without interest, then looked at the baby on the other side. “The Truthken hasn’t seen this portrait of me, has she?”

  “No.”

  If he noticed her dull tone, it didn’t seem to trouble him. “She’ll know it’s a portrait of an air child. I’ll take it with me.”

  “Leave the glyph card,” she said. “If it’s gone, Zanja will wonder.”

  “And yet you don’t understand why I’m angry with you!” He yanked out the pins and held up the card, pointing at the image of the warrior on the riverbank. “This card told her that you have a son!”

  “She hasn’t even seen the card!”

  “But she imagined it because you allowed her to do a card-casting!”

  “I didn’t even know who she was! And she did the casting without—”

  “Be quiet!”

  Chaen’s lips moved without sound, not even the whisper of air. Never before had Max used his power on her.

  “Zanja will tell Norina Truthken what the cards reveal to her. And the Truthken will ask you questions, which she can compel you to answer. I can only be safe if you forget me. You will forget me now.”

  Inside her skull, a screaming began. Yet her son’s voice said, “Forget me. Forget that you gave birth to me. Forget that you nursed me and raised me. Forget that you saved me from the fire.”

  He named every event, and every year. Inside the curved walls of her skull, she screamed with pain, and then forgot what caused such agony. His eyes became darkness, and he became a stranger. Then she was alone, and had always been alone. The door was and had remained locked. She lay upon the floor, abandone
d by her memories. The empty room spun around her.

  The door opened later. Paladins came in. Cool fingers pressed her throat, then felt her head. “I think she just fainted,” said the woman. “She hasn’t eaten or drunk anything for days.”

  They lifted her onto the mattress and covered her with one of the heavy linen sheets. Her flesh was leaden, her thoughts spinning fragments, debris in a dry wind. The Paladins discussed whether they should awaken someone, Karis or Seth. In the end, though, they left her to sleep.

  Chapter 20

  How to Initiate a Conversation:

  1. Select a topic/condition that’s mundane, commonplace, and affects everyone, such as: (a) Weather (ranges from terrible to lovely); (b) the roads (usually bad, sometimes surprisingly good); (c) the season (compared to past years); (d) the fruits and vegetables (flavor, freshness, ripeness).

  2. Shape an inquiry so the answer is implied, such as: (a) Did you notice (topic/condition)? (b) Don’t you think (topic/condition)? (c) I/we experienced (topic/condition)—did you also? (d) Isn’t (topic) (condition)?

  3. The conversation partner first replies with a direct answer, then asks a return question that mentions a previous subject but turns it into another direction. Then, the first speaker responds in a similar manner. Example:

  Person 1: Isn’t the weather dreadful today?

  Person 2: It’s terrible. But the cold should be good for the cabbage crop, don’t you think?

  Person 1: I hope so. Wasn’t the cabbage soup awful?

  Person 2: It wasn’t as bad as the tomato soup. What do you suppose made it taste so bad?

  From Book of Everything, by Anders of the Midlands

  “Don’t you think those blackberries were delicious?” Anders asked.

  Of course, the Two groaned, and Serrain answered, “Yes, they were delicious. Do you think that they were bought at yesterday’s market?”

  “They probably were from the market,” said Anders. Now he must ask another question. Why had Serrain asked where the berries came from? Oh, of course. “Did your family pick their own blackberries?”

  “Yes, we did—every year. The children and old people used to go out in a big group, and we would come home with a tremendous amount of berries. We would sugar them to preserve them, and the next day we would make jam.”

  Then she said, “Isn’t it wonderful to eat jam on Long Night?”

  The Two could not endure this inane conversation any longer. But an exercise in polite conversation must be politely interrupted, so one of them said sarcastically, “Oh, yes, it’s wonderful!”

  Then the other said, “Has anyone else noticed that something is wrong with the Paladins?”

  The Two might sneer at Anders’s gambits, but they also had used one.

  It had been a hot, dull day. After the early morning blade-fighting exercises, a Paladin named Corvil had read philosophy to them, and then an old woman who had once taught in the university, before it was burned down, lectured to them about history. A healer demonstrated how to splint a broken limb, which they then practiced on each other. Serrain and Anders had studied law and kept watch on the nearly empty house while Braight and the Two went out riding with a horse master. Then came evening blade-fighting exercise, and they ate supper cooked by two of the artists who were engaged in the enormous task of copying the lexicon. Braight had been in a foul temper and had taken her plate to the schoolroom, where she had stood watch alone while the rest of them ate supper and practiced civility on the people who remained at Travesty while the government of Shaftal was decamped or dispersed. After eating, they had clustered at the western windows of their workroom, cramming history for an examination until the light faded. Now the lamp over the table was lit, and soon the Paladin who had the first night watch would walk past and tell them to go to bed.

  Braight was still in a foul mood. Anders didn’t know why; perhaps she had fallen off her horse and the Two had laughed at her. She said, “You two would do anything to avoid studying. Are all boat people as lazy as you are?”

  Norina had assigned Braight the discipline of generosity, and Anders didn’t think she was making much progress. If they were to form the new Order of Truthkens, though, they must help each other to learn. He said, “If the Two suspect something is wrong, they are right to tell us about it.”

  Braight glared at him. He glared back at her until she turned to the Two and said sarcastically, “Arlis and Minga, how brilliant of you! Do explain more about your intelligent insights!”

  The Two spoke antiphonally, which normal people found disconcerting.

  “Something about the Paladins’ thinking isn’t right,” said one.

  “But it’s not that their thinking is bad,” said the other.

  “It’s more like they’re avoiding a certain sort of thinking.”

  “Or maybe they’re not supposed to think about certain topics.”

  “But they don’t seem aware that they’re doing it.”

  They seemed to be trying to be brilliant and insightful, a reaction to Braight’s sarcasm that Anders had never expected. Apparently, implying incompetence could inspire people to prove their critic wrong.

  Serrain said, “I noticed something odd about the Paladins also, but I just thought they had a secret of some kind.”

  The Two said, “A new secret? A secret that they keep from themselves?”

  “I know, I should have thought about it further.” Unless Serrain knew someone was lying, she didn’t tend to interrogate people or problems; therefore she had been assigned the discipline of skepticism. She added, “But it didn’t seem a guilty secret—it seemed more like a duty.”

  Braight said, “No messages have come from Hanishport. Whatever this new duty is, the Paladins have taken it upon themselves.”

  “Oh, and you notice every little thing that happens!” said the Two.

  “She does,” Anders said, which was true. Also, saying so prevented Braight from starting another squabble. He asked, “Do you two think the Paladins received a message?”

  “No,” they said.

  “Then what has happened to make the Paladins assign themselves a new, secret duty?”

  “Whatever it was, it happened yesterday.”

  Serrain said, “Well, what things happened recently that seem out of ordinary?”

  This investigation was merely an exercise, but when Norina read about it in their books she would commend them for it. And it was a game—the only kind they actually enjoyed playing. Serrain had already been writing in her book, so now she dipped her pen and began a list, saying, “The milk delivery was late.” The others said what they could remember, which was quite a lot, as they were observant and had excellent memories. A councilor who still resided in Travesty had come down with a cold. At supper, one of the librarians had complained about the glue they were using for book repairs. One of the artists had asked if anyone had remembered to request that the Hanishport party bring them some more gold leaf. The second–story floors had been washed. There was a thump in the night, like a heavy book being dropped. When the list nearly filled a page, Serrain read it back to them.

  All of these trivial events could signify something important, but to investigate such a long list would require several days.

  “What didn’t we see?” Anders asked. To observe the absences, the vacancies, the things that should be there, the questions that weren’t being asked, the gaps and the silences, this much-hated exercise had frequently been assigned to them by Norina as a tool for causing a pattern to become clear.

  Serrain began a new list. Many events were not happening because the government of Shaftal had moved to Hanishport, and they agreed that they wouldn’t try to list them. Then they discovered they couldn’t list the questions that weren’t being asked, because they spent nearly all their time with each other and had no idea what anyone else was discussing
.

  “That’s why we should spend more time with stupid people,” said Braight, and wrote it in her book.

  They listed the people they hadn’t seen, and then crossed out those whose absence they could explain. They were left with three: J’han the healer, Leeba, his intolerable daughter, and Bran, the housekeeper.

  Braight began reading from her book. “J’han is aged forty-three and is Norina’s husband of eight years. He gets along with her because he has an earth talent, like most healers. He is one of fifty-two true healers in Shaftal. He didn’t go to Hanishport because someone had to stay home with the brat, but he certainly wanted to, because the transformation of Lalali was his idea. Should I tell you about his mutual obligations? Are they relevant?”

  The Two said, “He’s probably on an errand for the Healer’s College and took the brat with him.”

  “We can ask one of the healers,” said Serrain. “The Two should do it, because they need to practice politeness.”

  “Braight is more impolite than we are,” they said.

  Braight said, “That was an extremely impolite thing to say.”

  Anders suggested that they draw lots. The Two drew the slip of paper with the dot on it and immediately began to complain, even though there was nothing more equitable than drawing lots. Anders warned them that they were wasting everyone’s time, and then Serrain suggested that they talk about Bran, the housekeeper.

  Braight said, “The floors have been washed, so he must have been in the house. Why have none of us seen him?”

  There was a silence.

  “How did he get in?” asked the Two.

  “None of us are shirking guard duties.” They all knew this to be true.

  “During the night watch?”

  “Too dark for house-cleaning.”

  They looked at each other, baffled.

  Braight stood her book up, facing outward, so they could see Bran’s chart. In its center, Bran’s name was in a circle, with the names of Travesty’s residents scattered around it, with their relationship to him described by symbols that Braight had invented. It appeared that every resident of Travesty was either obligated to Bran, or answered to him, except Norina and the five of them. It was not unusual for air witches to avoid obligation, but it was odd that Maxew had not avoided it.