Seth said, “For over twenty years she has walked beside her. She was there when Karis was vested with the Power of Shaftal, and if she dies it will be while defending her. I don’t know the word for that kind of steadfastness.
“Now, I don’t care what you think about Norina, and Norina certainly doesn’t care either. But Karis looks after her people—and she’s already furious with you.”
Chaen thought of a half-dozen ways she could reply, some of them irritable, and all of them dishonest. She said, “I guess I had better learn to guard my tongue.”
The sun had risen halfway to its peak when Chaen realized the people they were following had disappeared. Close to her the air seemed clear, but in the distance hardly anything was visible in the fog of dust. Seth stumbled, and Chaen caught her. The soil underfoot had the consistency of flour. They held hands, staggering in the soft soil. Seth had a strong grip, and her skin was leathery, gritty with dirt. Chaen saw shapes in the haze up ahead. Clumps of wire-grass appeared, and the soil became firmer. The distant shapes became a grove of trees. A group of horses, tearing at the tough grass, didn’t even look up as they trudged past. Seth said, “I wonder if they found the well.”
Chaen spotted another group of horses, and then, under the trees, four wagons. One wagon was being unloaded. It must have become impossible to haul wagons through that soft soil.
“Who are these people?” Chaen asked.
“Soldiers,” Seth said inattentively.
One of the people at the wagon was trotting toward them, and it was the Sainnite general: sunburned, sweat-shiny, shirtless except for a milk-stained undershirt. Behind the general came the G’deon’s cook, Garland, who had served Chaen the best fish stew she ever tasted. Since that meal, Chaen had eaten an egg and Seth’s biscuits. One meal in more than six days. Little wonder she had ended up on her back in the forest, listlessly watching the shadows move.
Garland walked around the two women, who had clasped hands but had not embraced.
“You’re starving again, Chaen,” he said.
“I can’t seem to catch the current of my life.”
“That’s not a reason to go hungry. Karis and the others went toward the cook-fire for some porridge. Not good porridge.” He seemed distressed, but got a grip on himself. “You can wash if you want—there’s a good well. Your clothes too, though we may not stay here long enough for them to dry. We only stopped to offload the wagons and organize a supply line, but Karis said just now that Zanja still isn’t moving, and since she has changed directions so many times, we’ll stay here until we know which way to turn.”
“How many Sainnites are here?”
“A hundred and four soldiers, five officers, and—well, Medric, if you count him as one.”
“Weapons are what you’re unloading over there.”
“The Paladins brought them out of storage, in case we need to arm the soldiers. But now that we’re abandoning the wagons, there’s no choice but to let the soldiers carry them.”
“I guess the peace is over,” Chaen said. “Give a soldier a weapon, and the weapon will be used.”
He gave her a strange look. “Pardon me, but that’s not only true about soldiers.”
“Captain?” The general had approached them, and seemed to be addressing Garland. “I’ll guard the weapons until one of the company captains can relieve me. These soldiers are too unruly. I feel like I’m riding an untrained horse in a parade.” She spoke without even the trace of an accent. Then she said a few words in Sainnese, and the G’deon’s cook snorted with amusement.
He was a Sainnite.
The general gave Chaen a concerned look. “You’re very pale.”
“I’m fine,” Chaen said. It was the first thing she had knowingly said to a Sainnite.
“If you say so.” The woman’s tone was skeptical. “Garland will show you where to eat and rest. You may not get much rest, though.”
If the general grew her hair longer, she could pass for a farmer. She even had a farmer’s cadence, sometimes.
The general added abruptly, “Chaen, I am sorry for what my people did to your family. I truly am. If it could be undone, I would undo it.”
She left Chaen affronted by her sincerity.
In the grove, wet clothing hung on laundry lines strung across every patch of sunshine, and soldiers were scattered everywhere, dozing in the shade. Later, when word was passed that they would camp there until morning, Chaen took out her sketchbook and pencils and drew a Paladin and a soldier who sat on the ground facing each other, drawing letters in the dirt. She joined a crowd of naked, laughing women who were pouring buckets of water drawn from the well over each other’s heads. Soldier and Paladin alike bore the scars of old wounds. With her own scars from fire and fighting laid bare, Chaen accepted a bar of soap from a soldier.
Chapter 30
Norina’s map indicated a well, and finally they had found it, situated in a large grove of trees and wrapped in an apron of grass. It was an island of solidity in an unstable sea.
All morning, they had staggered through soft, fine soil that lay concealed under a thin crust that crumbled underfoot, so that with each step a person sank ankle deep. The horses had groaned in the traces, and the soldiers had groaned also as they put their shoulders to the wagons, only to wind up on their faces in the dirt when the wagons lurched forward. When they reached the well, Clement had called a halt.
Garland had already explained to the captains that the area around a well was a protected place, and that they must not harm the trees. But he was kept busy telling the soldiers what wood they could use, where to build fires so that a much-needed second breakfast could be cooked, where to piss, and how to graze the horses. The scouts returned with discouraging reports of the landscape ahead, and Clement gave the order to abandon the horses and wagons and set up a supply line.
Norina observed dryly, “The Sainnites are better organized than the Shaftali because otherwise they wouldn’t survive.” She had returned from her side-trip to fetch Chaen out of the woods and was watching the soldiers re-sort the unloaded supplies.
Clement replied, “Perhaps. But it was always an advantage of the Paladin irregulars that they could find food and shelter anywhere.”
“Do we even need the soldiers?” Norina asked.
“You summoned us,” the general replied.
“I summoned you because I thought Zanja would follow Emil’s kidnappers to Saugus. But now I have no idea what she’s doing.”
“She’s not going toward the Asha River?” asked Garland.
“She’s going northwest again,” said Karis. “I can’t think of a reason for her to take this zigzagging route. It’s making her journey twice as long.”
Zanja had been traveling two nights and nearly three days. Like her, Karis hadn’t slept, but she was sustained by the Power of Shaftal. She needed to eat more, though—a big woman like her. The porridge Garland had given her waited on a nearby rock, untasted. She gazed away, toward the forest, as if she could see Zanja going steadily, stubbornly, through the woods. The weight of worry and fear was crushing her, Garland thought.
She said, “If we continue northward, we might intercept her. Let’s wait where we are, unless she changes direction again.”
Zanja didn’t change direction until late afternoon, when she turned northeastward again. It was decided to spend the night by the well.
The shadows began to stretch away from the trees like gravy dripping down the edge of a bowl, and the sun rested on the horizon. Garland joined Medric, Kamren, and the rest of the Paladins, who sat near the edge of the grove, passing a flask of excellent brandy that Kamren had been given by a woman of Hanishport. There certainly was more to that story, but Kamren didn’t tell it. They all had bathed in cold well water, and the men had shaved. Medric even had dunked his spectacles and set them nearby to dry. “It might be eas
ier to be completely blind than to see so little,” he muttered.
One of the Paladins asked why he had given Zanja his spectacles for far-seeing. Probably tired of answering the same question repeatedly, he answered irritably, “Because I myself couldn’t be folded small enough to fit in her satchel!”
Garland said, “If Emil was here, he probably could explain to us why Zanja is following such a peculiar course. Karis says she’s walking twice the distance, with all her back-and-forthing. Can any of you guess why she’s doing this?” That Medric was a fire witch seemed more of a disadvantage than an advantage lately. But the Paladins, with their better balanced fire talents, might understand Zanja.
“She’s not lost,” Medric said. “Not her.”
“But if she’s not in her right mind . . .”
“She certainly is not in her right mind. But it doesn’t matter.”
Lil absently offered Medric the flask, and he turned it away with an expression of revulsion.
Kamren said cautiously, “She’s following Emil, but what if—” He stopped awkwardly.
“Emil might be dead,” Medric said. “Do you think I don’t know that?”
“The fault is mine, Master Seer. I’m reluctant to say the words because I don’t want them to be true. If Emil is dead, then what is Zanja following? What are we following?”
Garland was feeling wretched, a condition they all seemed to share. “Zanja has visions of the dead,” he said. “Sometimes she doesn’t know where she is. She thinks she’s with her people, reliving the massacre. What if she’s leading us on a chase after Emil’s spirit?’’
Medric didn’t say anything, and neither did anyone else, until Seth said, “Then perhaps we’re wasting our time, but that’s no catastrophe, I guess.”
‘’No, but we have a worse problem,” said Kamren. “If Emil is dead, how do we manage without him?”
‘’How does Karis manage without him?” said Garland. “Those rogue air witches must know how much Karis depends on his counsel. They abducted him because they thought that without him, Shaftal was as good as lost.”
He looked at Medric, who always seemed blank and helpless without spectacles, but Medric’s eyes were narrowed as if he were aiming at a target.
Garland said to him, “But Shaftal isn’t as good as lost.”
Medric said, “The air witches may have found Karis predictable—she is an earth witch, after all. But if the air witches think they can predict Zanja, then they are mistaken.”
The Paladins gazed at him with some astonishment, but Seth said, “That’s either poetry or philosophy, and I think Garland meant a practical question. Can someone replace Emil? So that Shaftal isn’t endangered?”
“No one can replace him,” said Medric.
‘’But more than one can?” said Garland. “Norina has been trying to be him. She’s intelligent and she understands people, so that’s a start. Clement knows tactics and strategy and how to solve problems, and she’s trying to be him also, though I don’t think she knows it.”
Kamren said, “The Paladins can puzzle through ethics and strive for insight, as Emil always did. And Seth is pragmatic and understands government.”
Seth said, “Medric knows the past and is focused on the future. That’s the long view Emil valued. And Garland, you care for people like he does.”
‘’It’s an Emil committee!” said Kamren. “But to succeed, all of us must think together. Shall we try it?”
Garland could hear the Paladins straightening their backs and stretching out their legs, as though they were heartened by this peculiar exercise. But anxiety scurried through his mind like a stupid mouse in a pantry, which destroys everything it does not eat.
“First, decide what matters,” Medric said.
That was exactly right. Emil was always keeping people from focusing on the most immediate or irritating problem, such as a fly buzzing in the window. Garland said, “I don’t think anyone has thought about that. Instead, we’ve been yanked about like a pig by the nose ring. Even the Paladins have.”
Kamren said, “It seems more accurate to say that it’s Karis who has been yanked about, while we are merely following her—which means we have had a failure of philosophy.”
The other Paladins wanted to discuss that statement for a while, and for once Garland wasn’t impatient with their digressive habits. They were trying to be Emil in their own way, and he must try to be Emil in his way. What do people need? Well, which people? Not just the people in this circle, or the people who came to his kitchen, but the people of Shaftal, including the Sainnites and the border tribes. And ignore the fly buzzing in the window, he reminded himself.
The people need to trust that Karis acts for the good of the whole. But perhaps she was only able to be concerned about Zanja and Emil.
He said, “Those Death-and-Life people, they are wrong about Karis, but perhaps they’re not completely wrong.”
Kamren seemed to understand him immediately. “Because Karis is a border woman, a Sainnite, and a Shaftali, she is the only possible G’deon for our time, as Harold must have known when he decided to vest her with the Power of Shaftal. But it must also be true that in belonging to all these people she belongs to none of them, and that having grown up without a family she clings too tightly to the family she now has. For a woman of such strength, she has many weaknesses.”
Seth said, “So an air witch, one who knows her weaknesses, can use them to yank her about.” She sighed and then exclaimed, “But no one can stop her from doing what she wants, no matter how wrong!”
Kamren said, “Well, no one is born wise, and yet a few of us manage to become so. Emil certainly tutored Karis in wisdom, did he not?”
Medic uttered a snort. “He tried.”
Garland said, “Shaftal is tutoring her. The land speaks to her. She knows . . .” Even with two languages at his disposal, Garland struggled to express what he had occasionally perceived in Karis, a steadiness and balance, an astonishing ability to know every particular while also knowing the whole. “Her wisdom, it’s always under her feet.”
In the gathering darkness, he saw the movement of nodding heads. All had noticed those moments when Karis knew the whole and knew what must be done, not from conversation, books, or experience, but from paying attention. Was that what mattered at this moment in history? That Karis pay attention? If so, then an ordinary person, even one as ordinary as Garland, might convince her to do what was natural to her anyway.
One of the Paladins was saying, “If only we could tell her what this Saugus fellow is doing, or why.”
“But how can we know that?” Kamren asked, in that way Paladins have of sounding genuinely curious and generously willing to believe anything, no matter how absurd.
Medric said, “Norina is similar to the Saugus, so if she knew what his principles are, she could guess why he’s doing what he’s doing.”
“Principles?” said Kamren.
“All air bloods have principles by which they feel driven to order the world. That’s why those students of Norina’s cannot endure to be in the same room with a chaotic creature like myself.”
Kamren said, “What you’re saying was true about Councilor Mabin, who was an air blood. Mabin expected the world to conform to her standards, which made her a restless and dissatisfied Paladin. She hated Karis for being half Sainnite and a smoke addict. She hated Harald G’deon for allowing the Sainnites to become entrenched here. And she hated the Sainnites for not being Shaftali. In fact, if Saugus has read her book, he probably agrees with most of it.”
Garland didn’t know which book Kamren meant—but Medric certainly had read it, for he had read every written page that was to be found in Shaftal, and constantly hunted for more. Why he had given Zanja his far-seeing spectacles was impossible to explain, but that he had retained the pair he used for reading made sense, for Medric wit
hout a book was like Emil without a pen.
“What part of Mabin’s Warfare would Saugus disagree with?” Kamren asked.
Medric said, “I imagine he might hate the part where she advocates minor but persistent actions, designed to wear down the will of a stronger enemy.”
“What would Saugus think is true instead?”
“Well, he’s an air witch, so he’s a bloody egotist, isn’t he? He’ll embrace whatever truth makes him look important!” Medric made a sound, half sigh and half groan. “How can you keep thinking, without a picture to look at? I should have demanded that Zanja give me her glyph cards! If I must manage without my implements, then so should she. And don’t dig me with your elbow, Seth!”
“Then stop whining,” said Seth.
This was what happened when people engaged in difficult conversations without proper refreshments. They needed something cold and sweet to drink, but all they had was an empty brandy flask.
“Are we still trying to decide what matters?” asked Kamren. “Are you saying that what matters is that we understand this rogue air witch’s principles?”
One of the other Paladins spoke. “No, what matters is that we be able to tell Karis why Saugus is doing these things—why he ordered his subordinate to abduct Emil—so Karis will realize she’s being yanked about by her nose ring.”
Garland wondered whether, when Paladins converse, they each take roles, like spices in a soup. Perhaps that was how they managed to keep talking as they did, on the same topic, for hours—days—weeks on end. This Paladin kept reminding them of what had been said, while Kamren answered and asked questions. Perhaps another would do nothing but disagree, another would point out overlooked possibilities, another would remind them of tradition, and another would keep mentioning practical problems. Little wonder the Sainnites thought Paladins were peculiar.
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