In the summer, of course, the experience of walking the corn maze would be very different, and I had always avoided it. But now I needed to walk to stay wakeful, and I needed wisdom, if Orshan cared to offer any. And in these empty fields, if it became too much or too wrong, I could always simply walk back to the sanctuary. It was plainly visible and there was nothing to stop me.
“Fear not, Celehar,” I muttered to myself, “and walk the maze.”
I set my foot carefully over the perimeter of the cornfield and began walking, following the line of milky white pebbles and the broader path of bare flat earth.
I walked slowly, knowing that hurrying was considered an affront to Orshan. And I did not need to get through this quickly. The white line of pebbles twisted and curled, and I followed it doggedly, even though I had to stop periodically to look at the cornfields around me until I stopped feeling dizzy. I didn’t know any of the Orshaneise meditations, but after a while I found I was saying an old Ulineise prayer under my breath, a prayer that asked for quiet—for peace and for silence—and itself twisted and turned around the line strength in tranquility and tranquility in strength. I’d always understood “strength in tranquility” and taken “tranquility in strength” to mean that if one was strong, one could make the tranquility one needed. But now, twisting and turning through the corn maze, I began to see it differently, that “tranquility in strength” meant having the strength to keep one’s tranquility of mind, no matter what the world brought. It meant being tranquil—peaceful—even when one was strong, not bullying or picking fights. It meant, I thought with a flash of asperity, not being irritated with one’s prelates for things they had not done and could not help.
I would never be able to bring myself to say it to anyone, but I knew the Amal’othala had been wrong to call a trial by ordeal.
I came to the center of the maze, where the pebbles made a cross, and over the cross was a four-legged bowl containing a great heap of the milky white pebbles. I chose one carefully and put it in my pocket alongside the tile from the Hill of Werewolves.
And then I began carefully to follow the pebbles along the twisting path out of the maze. A glance at the sky told me Brother Cenethis had judged correctly. I should be stepping out of the maze again around sundown.
* * *
Dinner with the Orshaneisei was a strange combination of my memories of family dinners among the Velverada and my memories of the long, echoing refectory in which we ate at the sanctuary where I had undergone my novitiate. The tables were long, and people sat on benches, handing platters of food down the row and each taking what he or she needed, but the conversation was general, sometimes loud, and frequently punctuated by laughter.
Strength in tranquility and tranquility in strength, I said to myself and did my best with the conversation along my part of the table. Although I was guarding my tongue, the elven woman next to me managed to box me into the admission that I had not slept the night before.
“Does that happen to you often?” she said.
Thankfully, no, I thought, imagining for a second having to go back routinely to the Hill of Werewolves at night. “I rarely sleep well,” I said instead.
“Goodness,” she said. “I’m no Csaiveiso, but I’ve often found that warm milk before bed helps me sleep.”
“Don’t listen to that milk nonsense,” the goblin man across the table said cheerfully. “My father swore by brandy.”
And then somehow the whole table was offering remedies for insomnia, a bewildering array of things I’d tried and things I’d never heard of. The man across the table laughed at the look on my face. “Welcome to Orshaneise hospitality,” he said.
The others laughed, too.
“But we do hope you sleep well tonight,” said the woman next to me, and somehow I was sure it was true.
* * *
The walk back from the Orshaneise sanctuary to my building seemed endless, but when at last I could drag myself into bed, I did sleep well. In the morning, after meditating, I went to my office in Prince Zhaicava. The newspapermen, Goronezh, Thurizar, and Vicenalar, were there waiting for me.
“Good morning, gentlemen,” I said, as placidly as I could. Strength in tranquility and tranquility in strength.
“Good morning, othala,” said Goronezh.
“Now will you tell us about the Hill of Werewolves?” said Vicenalar.
“And the ghoul,” said Thurizar.
“Oh, definitely the ghoul,” Goronezh agreed.
“We will tell you what we can,” I said, “as long as you agree to print it without … inflation.”
“We never inflate,” said Thurizar, who was the worst of the lot.
“We are seekers after truth,” Goronezh said solemnly.
“Besides,” said Vicenalar, “we have a feeling your story will not need exaggeration to appeal to our readers.”
“That is most likely true,” said Goronezh. “Come on, othala. Tell us what happened.”
“We will do our best,” I said, unlocking my office. “Come in, please. We regret that there is only one chair.”
“Seniority,” said Thurizar, and claimed it.
“That’s all right,” said Goronezh. “We stand around for a living.”
“Your story, othala, please,” said Vicenalar.
I told them as best I could about the ghoul of Tanvero, although I could not find words that truly expressed its grotesque and terrifying presence. Thurizar wanted me to show them the gashes in my shoulders, but I refused. The Hill of Werewolves was no easier to convey, although there at least I could tell them about the Wolves of Anmura and what happened to them that left their ghosts so indelibly printed on the hill.
The newspapermen were there, asking their prodding questions, for an hour and a half. When they were finally gone, I read my post, read the papers—cringing at every mention of the Duhalada and feeling more and more exposed as the articles discussed my success at the trial by ordeal and went into horrible detail about the reasons for it. None of them was vulgar enough to say it directly, but there really weren’t very many ways to get that allegation of “misconduct” wrong.
At noon, I went to the public baths, where no one looked at me twice. Afterwards I went to the Hanevo Tree for the indulgence of a plate of steamed buns.
Then back to my apartment, where I changed my coat for the dark green one with the mostly picked-out embroidery of verashme blossoms, swept the floor, and turned to my next responsibility: delivering Osmer Thilmerezh’s letter. He had written the address on the outside of his package, and I unwrapped the oilskin to read it carefully:
MIN AMIRU CHONHADRIN
GENERAL TARAVAR STREET
3rd house west from the corner with Summer Street, north
I recognized General Taravar as being a street near the Amal-Athamareise Airship Works; the stop at which one got off, if one was visiting the company, was in fact Taravar Ostro. That was a good starting point.
On my way to the tram stop, I took the mustard-yellow coat to Estorezh’s secondhand clothing shop. I had no use for it as it was, and I suspected that it would not dye well. That mustard yellow looked all too likely to streak through even the best black dye—and the best would cost me more than the coat was worth. But Estorezh would take it and no doubt sell it, and in return, although he did not currently have any frock coats that fit me, I could procure a shirt and trousers to replace the ones ruined in Tanvero, plus, as it turned out, another set of smallclothes to replace the set so threadbare I was embarrassed to give them to Merrem Aichenaran, who did my laundry. I also bought five new handkerchiefs and restrained myself from wondering whose signet had been picked out of them.
I left my purchases to be picked up on my return and headed for the tram stop to start on this errand I had perhaps unwisely agreed to undertake.
I rode the tram south to Taravar Ostro and began looking for Summer Street. This not being an official matter, it would have been incorrect to consult the cartographers’ office
. And in any event, Summer Street was not difficult to find. The first hawker I approached was able to tell me it was only three blocks west.
The problem was that it wasn’t houses along General Taravar. It was workers’ barracks. The third building from the corner was identical to its neighbors on either side, and there was no way to tell which room belonged to Min Chonhadrin, except by asking for her, and she might not thank me for the gossip that would spread like fire in dry grass.
There was no good option. I took a deep breath and started knocking on doors.
It took me five doors to find someone at home, but that young elven woman, a filing clerk, was able to tell me that Min Chonhadrin was fifth floor back. I climbed the central staircase, narrow and twisting, to the fifth floor, where the landing had two doors, one to the front, one to the back. The back half of the building, which had eight rooms around a lightwell, seemed deserted. I knocked on the door nearest me, and a young elven woman answered. She had dressed her white hair in cable-thick braids around her head. She wore airmen’s trousers tucked into heavy boots, and a patterned calico shirt under a laced leather vest.
“Min Chonhadrin?” I said.
Her eyebrows went up. “Yes. How can I help you, othala?”
“I have a letter for you,” I said, and offered her the package.
She looked at it dubiously. “I don’t understand.”
“It is not my business and not my story to tell,” I said. “I will answer your questions to the best of my ability, but please read the letter first.”
The same dubious expression was directed at me. “You don’t look like a prank.”
“I swear that it is not a prank.”
“Well, all right. Come in and sit down and I’ll read your letter.”
“Not my letter,” I protested, but feebly, and I sat where she directed me, one of two chairs at a small table. Chonhadrin sat in the other, broke the seal on Osmer Thilmerezh’s letter, and began reading. I noticed that she kept her nails brutally short and that her knuckles were dark with engine oil.
She read quickly, surprise shifting into a baffled frown. “What is this?” she said. “Who is this man claiming my grandfather is not my grandfather?”
“I expect he has told you more in the letter than I know,” I said. “He is an exile living in Tanvero and serving—semi-officially, as it seems—as its historian. I know no more than that.”
“You agreed to bear his letter,” she said.
“He asked me.”
“Do you think what he says is true?”
“I am certain that he is not lying,” I said. “Only you know whether he has found the right person.”
Her scowl deepened. “What am I supposed to do? My grandfather is still alive.”
“You need not do anything. It is Osmer Thilmerezh’s hope that you will write back to him. But it changes nothing about your childhood and the people who raised you.”
“Except that they were lying to me,” she said bitterly.
I had no answer to that. “I am sorry,” I said.
“You have no reason to be sorry, othala. You have done a kindness for an old man, but that does not make you responsible for the results.”
“Doesn’t it?” I said. “I knew what the letter contained.”
“You certainly had no right not to deliver it,” she said, almost indignantly.
“I suppose not,” I said.
“I’ll forgive you for the one,” she pointed out. “I wouldn’t for the other.”
“I am glad of your forgiveness,” I said truthfully.
“Properly,” she said, “I should thank you.”
“You need not. I was glad to do Osmer Thilmerezh the favor.”
“You are a very bad liar,” she said, amused. “But if you do not wish to be thanked, I shall refrain.”
“Doing this thing for Osmer Thilmerezh involved no hardship,” I said, being this time more careful of the truth.
“You are a good man, othala,” said Chonhadrin. “Will you give me your name?”
“Of course,” I said, for I should have done so to begin with. “I am Thara Celehar, a Witness for the Dead.”
“The new Witness? The one who—”
“Yes,” I said without waiting to find out what she had heard. “I am.”
“Then I am honored that you have judged this small story worth your time. If you do not wish to be thanked personally, is there something I can do to thank Ulis for this kindness?”
She had quite a turn of phrase on her for an ashenin, an airship girl. And her question was a fair one.
I was groping for a suitable answer when the explosion happened.
It rattled the windows in their frames, and Chonhadrin and I both grabbed at the table. “Merciful goddesses,” she said, “that came from the A3 Works. Othala, will you come with me? There may be people there who…”
“Yes,” I said. “I’ll come.”
A3 was what the airmen called the Amal-Athamareise Ashenavo Trincsiva, and indeed I could think of nowhere else such an explosion could have come from. I followed Chonhadrin out and down the stairs and through a tangled snarl of alleyways with other people coming to their doors and saying, “Was that…?”
To which Chonhadrin replied breathlessly, “Yes, it must have been, please come help!”
As we drew closer to the airship works, the air got steadily smokier. I said, “Something’s on fire.”
“Well, it would almost have to be,” Chonhadrin said, and coughed. “Considering that the entire compound is made of metal scaffolding and flammable materials and nothing else.”
When we reached the gates of the compound (flung wide open with no guards in sight), it became painfully easy to see where we were going. The thick plume of smoke was rising from a building much like a barn, only bigger. I knew it to be the main hangar, where the Empire line of airships were built.
“It must be the Excellence of Umvino,” Chonhadrin gasped, and set off again, this time at a dead run toward the point where the smoke was thickest. I followed her. Near the hangar, we found men frantically organizing bucket lines. Chonhadrin joined them immediately. I saw a goblin man lying on the ground and went to him.
He was terribly burned, and there was no doubt he was dying. “Othala,” he whispered, panting with pain.
“I’m here.” I would have taken his hand, but both his hands were raw with burns. I put my hand on his shoulder instead. I began to say the prayers of hope for the dying. I kept saying them, carefully, attentively, as his breathing grew more and more labored and eventually stopped.
I sat back on my heels and looked around. The bucket lines had been joined by people making teams to go in and search for those trapped but still alive. There were other people laying the wounded and the dead in rows on the ground. Already there were more than a dozen.
I said the prayer of compassion for the dead and the prayers of hope for the dying over and over, dozens of times, while people in agony clutched at my hands, sobbing; while people near them screamed, for there is no pain like the pain of burns; while other people lay still and silent as their bodies began to cool. Bits of information floated around me, being denied, being confirmed, and gradually as I worked, I began to piece together the story of the disaster.
They were “floating” the Excellence of Umvino, which was what one did to an airship before one launched her, and something had happened. Someone had been careless or clumsy or horsing around—and since that someone was now among the burned and mangled dead, some people were speculating freely while others were unwilling to speculate at all. But it was terribly simple to ignite eisonsar. And surely no one could deliberately wish on themselves such a terrible death.
Surely this was an accident.
The explosion had started fires in at least three different places. Many people not instantly killed by the explosion had been trapped by the fire. Some of them had been rescued and lay, now, sobbing on the muddy ground, but some could not be saved. Sometime
s when I came to one of the dead, I would recognize them, for I had worked among the airmen for a time. Sometimes when I came to one of the dead, the widow would already be kneeling by the body, and then I had to do my best to be of comfort, although the idea seemed nonsensical surrounded by the dying in the choking gloom of the fire still destroying the Excellence of Umvino.
Finally, hours later, a voice at my elbow said, “Othala?”
I looked around. Chonhadrin, covered in soot from head to toe and with an ugly scorched patch on one sleeve, was regarding me with some anxiety in her bloodshot eyes. I wondered how many tries it had taken for her to get my attention.
“Min Chonhadrin,” I said.
“Come have a cup of tea,” she said. “You need to rest.”
At first the words seemed incomprehensible, but she waited and finally the sense of what she was saying reached me. “All right,” I said. There were other prelates of Ulis working up and down the rows, and a number of Csaiveise clerics, although I could not remember when they had come; I could be spared for a few minutes.
I followed Chonhadrin away from the lines of the wounded, across the open quadrangle that would usually make the A3 compound seem airy and pleasant, but that was now rapidly becoming a bog, to a long, low building that I recognized once we were inside as the A3 Trincsiva teahouse. It was called the Red Ruby Fox after something in a mountain folktale, and was itself quite pleasant when not filled with the smell of burning and death. It was crowded, though not quite to the point of discomfort.
I sat at the only small square table that was empty and watched Chonhadrin get two cups of tea from the young goblin woman minding the giant samovars. Chonhadrin came back to the table and said, “I apologize for the tea. It’s what they call their A3 Blend, meaning that it’s made out of the leftover bits and pieces of all their other teas, I wouldn’t ordinarily touch it.”
The tea was bitingly bitter and tasted like the dregs of an old woman’s tea cabinet. But it was hot and strong, and at the moment that was all it seemed reasonable to ask for.
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