Air Logic

by Laurie J. Marks

  “—You don’t think anyone should ever do what they’re told—” That was Minga.

  And Arlis, whom Anders had never heard speak at the same time as Minga, unless he was saying the same words, said simultaneously, “Sometimes obedience might be wrong.”

  Their efforts to tell the healers what happened also seemed to have failed.

  Serrain said in astonishment, “The Two are disagreeing with themself!”

  Anders said, “Are you all finished arguing yet? I’m going to Hanishport to find Norina. And I’m leaving right away.”

  “I apologize for wasting your time,” Serrain said. “Of course I will go with you.”

  “She won’t kill all five of us,” said Braight.

  “She will, if we deserve it,” said the Two.

  Lacking horse and wagon, the air children followed on foot a road that none of them had ever taken. Even the Two, who had traveled up and down the Corbin River their entire lives, had never set foot on the road that paralleled it. They walked until darkness fell, and slept in a roadside campsite they shared with other travelers, who gave them the remains of a roasted chicken they had eaten for supper.

  The next day they walked in the blasting heat of summer, with the sun first in their faces, then burning on their backs. They were learning many lessons about foot travel: wear hats, carry water, don’t bring their Books of Everything, which they had thought they needed and soon regretted. They passed the Shimasal crossroad and were blinded by the light glaring from the white stones of that famous road. They swam in an inviting pond, and then were too tired to continue, even though several more hours of daylight remained. The next day, they begged a ride in an empty, jolting wagon. The day after that, they were hailed by a soldier who was watching the road from concealment. They knew him, one of the general’s guards, who had accompanied her to Hanishport.

  The soldier, who knew only a little Shaftalese, pointed northward. “Not Hanishport. That way.”

  All the air children turned to Anders—even Braight—and waited for him to tell them what to do.

  Chapter 33

  Chaen hated that she sometimes couldn’t distinguish Shaftali from Sainnite. She hated that the Paladins, while teaching some of the soldiers Shaftalese, were being helped to compose a dictionary of the soldiers’ language so they and anyone else who desired to could learn to speak it. She hated that Seth had lived with soldiers in their barracks at Watfield Garrison.

  Chaen separated herself from all of them, in spite of Seth, who, like a Basdown cow dog, kept finding her and herding her back toward the crowd.

  To avoid the soldiers, who made their beds in regimented rows, separated by sex, Chaen lay among the people who orbited or were attached to Karis: the Paladins, the Truthken, Seth, the seer, and usually the baby.

  On Chaen’s second night as an unwilling member of that strange company, she was awakened by the sound of someone jerking upright. “Zanja,” Karis said, not in fear, but casually, as one says the name of a family member, to ask where a piece of clothing is, or whether the chickens have been fed.

  Chaen lay a good distance from her, but the night was extraordinarily silent, and the moon had not yet set. She could see the G’deon’s shape—tall, even sitting down—and her face, a silhouette against the summer stars. The Truthken lay still, as would anyone accustomed to dangerous living, using darkness for concealment; but of course Chaen recognized her voice, even though she spoke too quietly for her words to be distinguished.

  Karis answered, “I heard a voice in the sky.”

  “A dream,” said the Truthken.

  “No. I heard it with Zanja’s ears.”

  Another disturbed sleeper had sat up, muttering and feeling around in the darkness.

  “Your spectacles are in your shoe,” said Karis.

  The seer, who never seemed to have anything sensible to say, exclaimed, “How clever of me! Unless I happen to put the shoe on my foot. But I couldn’t, because I couldn’t see well enough to find my shoe, could I?”

  The lenses of his spectacles became visible, dimly reflecting faint and distant starlight.

  Norina said, “What voice? What did it say?”

  Karis said, “An angry voice, saying, What’s the good of a vessel that can’t be steered?”

  “An argument in the sky? It’s nonsense.”

  “It was Maxew’s voice.”

  Medric said, “It’s a mutiny, a mutiny in the ship of air. That is the vessel that can’t be steered. And the one who can’t endure lack of control is the air witch.”

  Norina said, “If I accept the absurd premise of a ship that flies!”

  “Be quiet,” Karis said.

  A profound silence followed, and Chaen did not know what it meant, whether Karis was frustrated by the tension between the incompatible witches, or whether she was paying attention to something no one else could perceive.

  Karis said, “I don’t know how a ship could fly. But if there were a flying ship, I know why it couldn’t be steered. A ship in water chooses its direction through the opposition of water and air. If the ship of air has sails, or something like them, it lacks an opposing force to brace itself against. It can only go passively, wherever the wind goes, no differently from clouds or smoke.” She paused as though thinking again, then said, “I can’t remember the wind’s changes of direction these last few days. But what if Zanja has been changing her direction with the wind: back and forth, northwest to northeast? And yesterday, when she started to go due north—even though the wind was more easterly—that was when she figured something out. She’s trying to intercept the ship, but she may not realize it’s passing overhead.”

  “Like shooting at a moving target,” Medric said. “She’s aiming at where it—whatever it is—will be.”

  “A flying ship is still absurd,” Norina said.

  Karis said, “Absurd or not, if it’s a ship, it can be wrecked. Medric, how can we do that?”

  Norina said, “If it’s a ship of air, the seer can’t know how to wreck it.”

  Karis said, “A ship that floats in water isn’t made of water. It’s earth floating in water. What we’re chasing is a ship of earth, which is floating in air.”

  “It’s of fire also,” said the seer, “though I can’t explain why or how.”

  Karis said, “And wind, which belongs in the province of water, carries it and determines its direction.”

  “So it’s in air and on air, but not of air at all!” cried the little man. “All along, we have been using the wrong preposition!”

  “I don’t care what you call it. How can I wreck the ship without harming Emil?”

  The seer said, “Whatever threatens the ship threatens all its passengers, both good and evil.”

  “Emil is endangered,” Norina said, “whether his ship is wrecked or not.”

  Karis said, “Yes, but I refuse to be the one who endangers him.”

  “Karis, I’m speaking to you as Emil’s friend. He is a Paladin. He would be the first to remind you that one person’s life is not more valuable than the whole. Not even his life.”

  Karis seemed to have become of earth, a boulder beneath the trees that sheltered them. “What should I do?” she said in a low voice. No one answered. Perhaps she was asking the plants, the dirt, the creatures that went abroad, all the powers of her realm.

  She spoke again, but now her voice was the gravel that slides ahead of an avalanche. “Master seer, tell me, by what means can a ship of air be wrecked?”

  “By water magic,” Medric said.

  That company of enemies and strangers, roused by a bugle at first light, had broken camp so quickly that the cooks served breakfast from steaming pots carried on poles. They had abandoned the wagons and a number of soldiers at the well, but a supply line was being spun behind them. Two of the horses were gone, with two Paladins ridi
ng them.

  Chaen tried to walk beyond the edge of the main company, but of course Seth found her, gave her a steaming porringer that she said was from Garland, and commended her for walking upwind of the dust cloud.

  The porridge was thick and sticky, with a lot of chaff in the grain, but Garland had done something to make it delicious.

  Chaen said, “I was awake when the two Paladins left before dawn. Do you know where they’re going?”

  “I do know, but I can’t believe it,” Seth said. “Not three months after she warned Grandmother Ocean not to meddle in her business ever again, Karis is asking her for help.”

  “Grandmother Ocean? That’s the water witch? The one who—”

  “The perfidious, untrustworthy, wily, ruthless old woman who practically drowned Zanja right in front of me—twice!”

  “But she’s far away, isn’t she? South of Basdown?”

  “She’s far south, in protected lands.”

  Even on horseback, Chaen thought, it was a journey of at least ten days. “What is Karis asking her for?”

  “Oh, I don’t know! I don’t think you can ask a water witch for anything in particular. And don’t ask me why not, because just thinking about water magic gives me a headache! She’ll regret asking that dreadful woman for help.”

  Chaen, who was unable to escape her own elemental contradictions, thought Seth’s aversion was extraordinary.

  The sun rapidly grew hot. Somehow this entire company, except for Medric, had neglected to bring hats. The Paladins had head scarves, and many others tied their shirts around their heads, as Chaen and Seth did. But they all wore undershirts, for Garland had warned them that Sainnites never went shirtless.

  The dirt underfoot was so dry that the water Chaen spilled when rinsing out the porringer lay on its surface like drops of quicksilver.

  Garland came puffing up to them, his captain’s badge pinned sloppily to his undershirt and a wooden spoon tucked into his belt. He waved his hand vaguely toward the back of the column. “Seth, general meeting,” he said. “Strategy, or something.”

  “In that dust?” Seth asked.

  He gestured helplessly. “She suffers with the lowest soldier.”

  Seth started glumly toward the rear, but Garland remained. When he had gotten his breath back, he said, “The general asks if you would mind joining her also.”

  “No!”

  “Well, don’t pelt cannonballs at me! I’m just giving you a message. She says, if you think all Sainnites are evil and you’ve got to protect your friends from them—or us, I guess—she understands, even though you’re wrong. But if you want your friends to get a chance at mercy, maybe it’s time to forget about which side you’re on and start trying to make things right.”

  “Make things right!”

  “It’s your choice,” he said and departed without another word.

  In solitude, finally, Chaen could not think about the question that always preoccupied her, how to protect Maxew from the Truthken. Instead her thoughts became stuck in an argument between her air self and her fire self. She should have been relieved, she supposed, by this familiar paralysis, which gave proof that she was still herself in spite of the meddling of air logic. But she was out of the habit of deciding things: her choices had seemed so clear for so long that they hardly qualified as choices at all.

  Perhaps she never had chosen. Perhaps she had merely delivered herself to a way of thinking that had taken her captive. Perhaps Saugus had brought her into Death-and-Life Company because she already agreed with his views, and so he needed not trouble himself to control her. She had been impatient with the fanatics in the company, nearly all of whom had been betrayed by Saugus and killed on First Night. But how different was she if she made her decisions based on assumptions and principles she had never examined or questioned?

  Her fire self was telling her to go to the general’s meeting. If she listened without speaking, her air self would be satisfied. She turned her steps toward the rear of the column and soon found herself in the midst of filthy, sweating, swearing soldiers who paid no heed to her except to avoid colliding with her. Every last one of them was limping. Some were white-haired, some had lost hands or arms in past battles, and some coughed in the dust wearily and constantly as though they had a fever in the lungs. Although many soldiers were as big as Karis, none of those giants were in this pathetic, trailing end of the column, and so Karis was easy to spot. Chaen headed toward her and arrived at the same time as Garland and Kamren, who had joined them by standing still while the soldiers walked past them.

  “Greetings, Chaen,” Kamren said, and added ruefully, “I was trying to make the other day’s bath last longer.”

  “It is a filthy march,” the Sainnite general said. She was walking backwards so she could face Karis, and Kamren did so also. Chaen put both the earth bloods between her and the Truthken. She saw that Karis and Clement had recently been arguing. Usually, Chaen was the only one to perceive this sort of thing, but the Truthken certainly perceived it also.

  General Clement said, “This is our fifth day. I’ve got a hundred armed soldiers who must believe they’re working toward a goal. Otherwise, they’ll invent one, which is sure to be stupid and likely to be dangerous.”

  She certainly had a low opinion of her people. But Garland, nodding in agreement, said, “They don’t carry weapons merely to remind themselves of a philosophical problem.”

  Kamren laughed so sharply he choked on dust and had to be rescued with a drink of water.

  “What am I to tell them?” Clement asked.

  Kamren managed to say, “How much time do we have, Clement?”

  “Before what? To do what?”

  “Before your people break discipline. Without a common language, we can’t teach the soldiers to consider the ethics of bloodshed. But we probably can show them how to avoid bloodshed, if we have some time with them.”

  He and the general talked back and forth for a while. Kamren listened attentively, as fire bloods sometimes do. Both of them continued to walk backwards without looking, Kamren because he was a fire blood, the general, possibly, because none of her soldiers dared to be in her way. Clement finally said, “You certainly would entertain them. What do I tell them this teaching is for?”

  “They are learning how to be of service to the G’deon. Chaen, do you know how many people Saugus can muster?”

  Chaen had expected someone would ask her a question like this. Still, she felt disarmed by Kamren’s tone of casual curiosity. “Those who follow Saugus aren’t evil people,” she said. “I won’t help you slaughter them.”

  “That’s exactly what we wish to avoid,” said the general.

  “Return to your garrison, then!”

  The general answered mildly, “The Sainnites of Shaftal are the G’deon’s to command.”

  Chaen decided to say nothing more. But after a silence, the Truthken said, “He directly controls forty people at most.”

  “And how many could he control indirectly?” asked Karis. The baby in her arms uttered a faint yelp, and she lifted the hat that now served the baby as a sun shelter and began fanning him with it.

  “It’s impossible to say how many are following Saugus by their own wills, and how many are willing followers of the people he directly controls. I know nothing of this man’s character, but I suspect that these secondary followers would be kept at a distance, as with the potato farmer in Hanishport who gave Chaen her weapon.”

  Karis said, “Then I want the soldiers to stay with us. Clem, can’t you tell them the truth?”

  “You want me to tell the soldiers that we’re wandering the hot countryside because we’re chasing a flying ship that can’t go where it’s pointed? They’ll think we’re all lunatics.”

  “Blame me for our wandering,” said Medric.

  Chaen had not even noticed the see
r’s presence. He trudged so tiredly behind Karis that Chaen had taken him for an infirm soldier who was sheltering from the hot sun by walking in her shadow. He said, “Tell the soldiers that my visions are deciding our direction of travel, and that I keep changing my mind. It’s nearly true, isn’t it?”

  The general blinked at him. “I will tell them that,” she finally said.

  Chaen thought the Truthken was puzzled by something, for she had begun paying extremely close attention to each person. She seemed about to speak, but Karis said sharply, “Clement, call a halt.”

  The general took a tin whistle on a chain from inside her undershirt and blew three shrill peeps that few of the soldiers could have heard. But a moment later, the bugler sounded the same signal.

  “Alert? Or at rest?” Clement asked as the soldiers shuffled to a halt.

  Karis was peering fruitlessly into the brown haze behind them.

  Norina answered Clement, “It’s nothing dangerous. Let them rest.”

  Clement peeped on her whistle, the bugler repeated it, and some soldiers rushed toward the shade of a few nearby trees while the rest dropped their burdens on the ground and sat on them. Four had begun to walk quickly in the general’s direction—the officers, Chaen suspected.

  Seth grabbed Chaen’s arm.

  Karis said in a cracked, strained voice, “It’s water magic.”

  Norina said, “I’ll go with Kamren, and you can stay here.”

  “That’s very kind of you,” said Karis, but she handed the baby to Clement and started walking toward the south, with the seer still at her elbow, and Kamren and Norina behind them.

  Then Seth said, “I’d rather see what’s coming than stand and wait for it! Come with me, Chaen, will you? To hold me up if I start to fall over?”

  They walked southward out of the dust cloud. A pair of horses emerged from the heat waves in the distance and all of a sudden were practically on top of them. The riders staggered as they dismounted, and one fell to her knee. They looked at Karis as though they didn’t trust their senses. She took each of them by the hand, and then it was she who staggered, so Norina leapt forward but then stopped when Karis found her balance again.