Air Logic

by Laurie J. Marks

  “Chickens?”

  “Come with me.” The Truthken pushed into the crowd of excited soldiers, who after the hot day’s hard work smelled less than pleasant. Though they knew nothing about Norina, the soldiers instinctively backed away from her. In the middle of the crowd, the combatants struggled in the grips of the company captains, shrieking curses at each other. Both women were bleeding from the nose, and their clothing was filthy from rolling in the dirt.

  The Truthken’s glance quelled even their furious shouts. “The behavior of these soldiers is shocking. Don’t they understand what an honor it is to guard the Gideon of Shaftal from her enemies? Don’t they realize that this mission is an opportunity to prove that all Sainnites can be of service to this land? It seems that they’re proving the opposite, that the Sainnites can be of no use.”

  Garland translated as exactly as possible for the captains. The two feuding soldiers breathed noisily, mouths open, blood dripping from their chins. Garland added, “Captain Washlan, since these soldiers are of your company, you must answer the questions of the—uh, the enforcer of the law.”

  “Why is this matter the enforcer’s business?” she asked stiffly.

  “She outranks nearly everyone, including General Clement.”

  Still offended, Washlan said, “She is correct that these soldiers put their own concerns above the honor of this company and our people.”

  Garland translated.

  “Will they be punished?” Norina asked.

  “Oh, yes.”

  “Their punishment must not be severe. Karis will feel responsible for every hurt suffered by every member of her company, including these undisciplined soldiers.”

  Garland said, “These captains will be angered if they are given orders by you. The orders should always come from Clement.”Norina already knew that the Sainnite social structure was shaped by hierarchy of command. But it seemed that she had needed to be reminded, for she blinked and said, “Then please make certain that the soldiers aren’t punished until I’m able to speak to Clement.”

  A short time later, Clement lied to the captains that Norina had apologized for interfering. Washlan reported the soldiers’ punishment: they had been required to move their beds to the least desirable position, which inconvenienced everyone in the company because all the beds had to be relocated. Also, they had been ordered to clean and mend each other’s clothing. Clement approved, and then explained that Norina had interfered because she was concerned about Karis, who was weighed down by worries that ordinary people couldn’t understand, and was offended by violence. Garland had never found Karis difficult to understand. However, after attempting for just a portion of a single day to explain these people to each other, he appreciated Clement’s skillful inaccuracies, which made sense to the officers and were only somewhat untrue.

  Garland made his bed in the first convenient place, and after a sleep that seemed no longer than a nap, awoke to a lightening sky. The Sainnite cooks were putting kindling on the coals of yesterday’s cook fires and would soon be making porridge. Across the camp, scattered sleepers were snoring. The horses moved slowly past, hunting for grass. A bird crowed in the distance and another replied nearby. Back and forth they shouted at each other: Are you still there? Yes, are you? An idiot’s conversation.

  What if Emil were dead? Garland’s heart was so heavy, he couldn’t bring himself to move.

  In the pale light, he saw Karis sitting with her back to a tree. A dog lay beside her, and the other was returning from an errand, with Clement following behind, buttoning her trousers. “You were awake all night?” she said to Karis in a low voice.

  “So was Zanja,” Karis said, as if that were an explanation.

  Clement sat beside her, and Karis handed her the baby, who seemed to have spent the entire night in her lap. With some fumbling, Clement got her son positioned on her breast. “By my mother’s gods, I wish you had done this to me months ago.”

  “You didn’t ask.”

  “Why would it occur to me to ask?”

  Now Seth came toward them from the direction of the latrines, and Clement said to her, “You could have slept a little longer.”

  “What, and sacrifice my only chance to kiss you today?” Seth and knelt beside Clement and kissed her fervently

  Garland forced himself to get up. He went to the latrines and then stole some water from a grumbling cook’s porridge pot to make tea. Now Norina also was sitting with Karis, yanking irritably at her bootstraps. “Tea?” Garland said, and all four women hastily found and held up their porringer.

  “Do you still have no idea where Emil is?” Norina asked.

  Karis seemed unable to reply.

  Seth said, “If you don’t know where he is, then he must be on water.”

  “Zanja is going inland,” Karis said.

  “But she’s also going northward. Maybe she’s going to the Asha River.”

  Norina got her map case and a blanket to protect the map from the dirt, and soon Karis had placed one of her bolts on it to show where Zanja was, and they tried to guess where she was headed. The Asha River did seem most reasonable: Emil probably was in a ship sailing up the coast, and Zanja, having intuited its destination, planned to intercept the ship in the region of Shimasal.

  Garland said, “Can’t you just ask Zanja what she’s doing? She can hear you, can’t she?”

  Norina said, “No, I’m reluctant for anyone to interfere with her, fire logic is composed of such fragile materials. Is Chaen still following her?”

  As a reply, Karis put the second bolt on Norina’s map.

  Norina said, “She’s fallen behind, but hasn’t given up. I suspect she can’t stop.”

  A blurred voice spoke from a tangled pile of blankets that Garland had not imagined might contain a person. “But she’s drowning.”

  Norina held up a hand to forestall anyone else from speaking and pointed a finger at Garland. As always when the Truthken noticed him, Garland felt a kind of panic, which was worse now because that pointing finger conveyed so little. Garland said, “Uh, Medric? What did you say?”

  “She’s drowning,” Medric said.

  Norina continued to point at Garland. He said, “Who’s drowning? Do you mean Chaen?”

  Of course the bloody seer wouldn’t answer simply, no matter how simple the question. “He killed her memories and left her to drown in time.”

  Since Emil or Zanja always had to explain Norina and Medric to each other, it was odd that Norina nodded as though she understood his nonsense. And still, the Truthken’s finger pointed at Garland. She didn’t want to speak, Garland thought, lest air logic interfere with Medric’s fire logic in some way. But what question should he ask? What did they need to know?

  Well, Medric was a bloody seer, wasn’t he? “What is Chaen’s future?” he asked.

  “Death,” said the seer.

  Chapter 29

  Dawn found Chaen lying on her back as the rising light distinguished tree from sky. She did not recall lying down. The light gradually revealed the peaceful woodland with which she had done battle all night. Birds went about their frantic business. A small red squirrel sprang over her arm. Insects buzzed through the air. A group of deer tread past, silent as cats, scarcely glancing at her.

  That day passed in flashes of brilliance and stretches of darkness. Night fell, and still Chaen lay in that place, sometimes sleeping and sometimes not. One time she awoke and saw the moon, floating beyond the treetops like a ship sailing past a peninsula.

  A wolf came out of darkness and touched her nose with his. He sat down and uttered a thin cry, and a second wolf came. A dead branch snapped like the breaking of a bone. The leaves of last autumn crackled. A bear, thought Chaen. Wolves and bears in the same glade. This seemed unusual. Like the wolves, the bear walked right up to her. This also seemed unusual. Perhaps Chaen was their dinner.
She didn’t care enough to ask.

  “Oh, for land’s sake,” the bear muttered.

  Beside Chaen’s head there was a sturdy boot, a bent knee, canvas breeches with a circular stain. “Shouldn’t kneel in mud,” Chaen said.

  “Mud’s cleaner than manure.”

  “Can’t I escape you.”

  “No, I guess not. Drink.”

  Cool metal touched Chaen’s lip. She turned her head, refusing.

  “I can force a sick cow to drink. But I don’t imagine it’s pleasant for the cow.”

  This statement seemed both irrelevant and obscure. After some consideration, it occurred to Chaen that Seth might be threatening her. She put her hand on the flask and accepted some of the water into her mouth. It was sweet forest water, only slightly flavored by tin.

  “You’re distracting Karis,” Seth said, “Lying in the woods like this, helpless as an infant. And she needs all her wits right now.”

  The dogs grinned amiably, teeth and tongues shining in the moonlight. Chaen sat up, and the night forest spun around her, so it seemed she was surrounded by fifty Seths and a hundred dogs. Well, there were worse things.

  Seth continued, “I know you think it’s intolerable for me to plant myself in front of you like a stubborn old donkey, but you really won’t like it if Karis comes after you.”

  “True,” said Chaen eventually. But she suspected there was much that she did not understand.

  “So you don’t get to kill yourself. Not today.”

  “I’m not.” Chaen considered. “Maybe I am.”

  Seth handed her something: a thick, dry biscuit. “Eat that.”

  “I’m contented,” Chaen said.

  “Indifference might look a bit like contentment, but I still know which is which. Eat the biscuit.”

  Chaen was feeling exceptionally stupid, but to comprehend the sheer stubbornness of this woman did not require intelligence. She bit the biscuit, and its dry fragments stuck in her dry mouth. She drank water because she had to. She tasted the salt with which the biscuit was sprinkled. Saliva flooded her mouth. She ate several biscuits, and drained the flask.

  “Why was I following Zanja?” she asked.

  “I guess it’s something to do with that son of yours.”

  “My son is dead.”

  “One son is dead. But the other has kidnapped Emil Paladin.”

  “I have no other son.”

  “His name is Maxew, and he’s an air witch.”

  “I think I would remember if I had a son who was an air witch!”

  Seth sighed. She seemed exasperated, but Chaen didn’t know why. “Let’s go.” Seth pulled Chaen to her feet. She picked up the knapsack, which Chaen was surprised to learn had been lying beside her. One dog barked impatiently. Seth wrestled with the pack straps, muttering, “What are you carrying—rocks?”

  “Pigments. Oil. Where are we going?”

  Seth gestured toward the right, which might have been eastward.

  “I’m not going back to Hanishport!”

  “Neither is anyone else. Untwist this pack strap, will you?”

  Chaen helped get the pack properly settled. Seth said, “We’re following Zanja, like you, but at a distance.”

  “She’s impossible to track.”

  “Well, that’s no surprise, I guess. She lived off the land for most of her life.”

  When Seth and the dogs started off, Chaen followed, unthinking and uncomplaining as a horse led by a rope.

  They walked along a deer path at a brisk pace, but could not keep up with the dogs. From time to time, one would come back to check on them, and disappear again.

  Then they found both dogs waiting for them. Seth said, “We have to leave the path, I guess.”

  The dogs led the way through the woods. Apparently, Seth saw well enough to follow them, but Chaen could scarcely see, and her right eye had become so painful that she could heed little else. The forest seemed less dense here, or else the dogs were more skillful pathfinders than she was. The moon set, and the darkness gradually became even darker. Chaen walked into Seth repeatedly.

  She walked into her again.

  Seth said, “I think we’re stopping here.”

  Chaen heard dry grass crackling as one dog and then the other walked in circles and lay down, panting. The sky stretched over them. Before them lay a rough, flat landscape. They seemed to have walked out of the forest. Seth set down Chaen’s knapsack, went off a little way to piss, and returned, grumbling about the stickers.

  Chaen said, “I tried to untie the bedroll, but I can’t bend over. My eye hurts too much.”

  “What’s wrong with your eye?”

  “I think it was scratched by a thorn.”

  “Keep it closed, then, and don’t rub it. I’ll look at it when we have some light.”

  Seth unrolled the blanket, and they lay down beside each other. The ground was hard; the wilted grass a poor cushion. Chaen’s throbbing eye filled her entire awareness.

  Then the dogs were barking and the sun was hot on Chaen’s face. She heard Seth grunt as she got to her feet. “Oh, it’s Karis.”

  Chaen shaded her face with a hand, but she saw only light, streaking and shivering as if on the surface of the river. Was this how a person went blind? She heard voices talking, footsteps crackling in dry plants, and the dogs yelping in welcome.

  Seth said, “Three more times? Why does Zanja keep switching directions?”

  “She hasn’t said a single word in Shaftalese.” That was the G’deon’s distinctive, raspy voice. Close by, boots rattled pebbles. “She shouldn’t talk to herself in a language nobody else knows,” Karis muttered. “She knows too many languages anyway.” The grass blades crackled under the weight of a knee. “All right, let me see.” Work-coarsened fingers roughly pushed Chaen’s fingers away from her eye.

  Then the pain was gone. Karis delicately pulled up Chaen’s eyelid. “Huh.”

  “Ouch,” said Seth in an admiring tone.

  “Can you pull it out? My big fingers—”

  Another voice, flat and lifeless as the clanging of a chain: “I have tweezers.”

  Karis’s big hand clamped Chaen’s shoulder. “Be still!”

  “Chaen, don’t be afraid,” said the Truthken impatiently.

  Chaen’s desperate terror became a peaceful calm, interrupted by flashes of resentment.

  “Go ahead, Seth.”

  Chaen felt a peculiar sensation in her eye.

  “That’s a wicked looking thing,” Karis muttered. Still lifting Chaen’s eyelid with her fingertip, she gave a kind of sigh. Warmth suffused Chaen’s eye. Karis’s face swam out of the light-blur: dusty, sweat streaked, red eyed. The golden land beyond her was glazed with light, but Norina Truthken was positioned so her shadow fell across Chaen’s face. Even in her calm, painless state, Chaen could not look at her.

  “This was in your eye.” Seth, kneeling beside Karis, gripped in the tweezers a thorn as thin as a sewing needle.

  Chaen’s breath came out of her as though she had been punched. Seth dropped the thorn and handed the tweezers back to the Truthken.

  Karis said, “Nori, please give Chaen something she can remember, so she doesn’t continue to run wild like this. Do it against her will, if you must.”

  Now I should be afraid, Chaen thought.

  The Truthken said, “Chaen, remember what I am about to say to you. You have a son named Maxew, who is an air witch, and was my student.”

  Chaen remembered. She remembered all the times people had told her she had a son, and she remembered why she had fled Hanishport, and why she had followed Zanja. Then she realized that her frantic flight and pursuit of Zanja had served no purpose, for the Truthken already knew what Chaen had been desperate to conceal from her. “Please don’t kill him,” Chaen said.

 
; “I serve the Law of Shaftal.” The Truthken added, “Be afraid again.”

  She stepped away. The sun that blazed above the horizon attacked Chaen with light. She sat up, crying, “But my son is all I have!”

  The Truthken, her back turned, began talking to a Paladin. Another fed pieces of dried meat to the dogs. Chaen’s heart thundered so that she couldn’t think, couldn’t imagine what to do, couldn’t even breathe. The G’deon rose awkwardly and heavily to her feet.

  “Haven’t you slept yet?” Seth asked her.

  “Zanja hasn’t slept; so neither have I.” Karis glanced down. “Chaen, come with us willingly, or else come as a prisoner.”

  Chan knew better than to test the G’deon of Shaftal. “I’ll come with you,” she said.

  Chaen and Seth rolled and tied the blankets, and one of the Paladins took the bedroll. He followed the other, who had already departed with Chaen’s knapsack on her shoulders. By the time Seth and Chaen had put on their boots, the others were in the distance. Chaen and Seth followed, never losing sight of them, and never catching up.

  A long while later, Chaen asked, “Was my son at my trial? Was he the one who read from the book?”

  “Yes, that was him.”

  “How old is he?”

  “Around sixteen.”

  “He must have been a little boy—six, maybe—when our family was killed.”

  Seth said nothing. Chaen supposed that pretending to be her friend certainly had been a wearisome task. She said, “It must have been three years ago, when my son was still a boy, that I gave him to Saugus. I don’t remember doing it, but I must have. The Truthken should kill me instead of him.”

  Still Seth said nothing.

  “Maybe what Saugus taught him was wrong, but what Saugus believes, I also believed. Now, Maxew is exercising his power in the service of those beliefs. If that makes him a monster, then Norina Truthken is one also.”

  Seth said, “Do you see where Norina’s walking?”

  The Truthken had run to catch up with Karis, and a brown dust cloud was settling behind her. Now, for every two steps Karis took, Norina took three. They were talking, and frequently glanced at each other, as people do in an intimate conversation.