They all had turned to Norina, possibly expecting one of her famous rages, but the Truthken, apparently not insulted by this piece of unflattering history, said, “Air bloods can’t understand fire bloods either.”
“Oh, I’m a lunatic to you, of course,” said Medric. “Now what about this air witch?”
Norina said, “I can’t be certain, of course. But I think that he—or she—was young, or not even born, at the Fall of the House of Lilterwess. She developed her beliefs in a lawless land, without guidance. This young witch directly experienced some of the worst of what the Sainnites can do, and now in the air witch’s mind the Sainnites are evil, and anyone who thinks otherwise is evil also. Any action to destroy these enemies is justifiable—especially killing Karis, for she’s showing mercy to the enemy rather than destroying them as they deserve, and—worst of all—she’s half Sainnite.”
Clement had gritted her teeth, but held her silence, for Zanja had shifted her gaze to Karis, not to her. Karis stood stock still, but her muscles bulged as though she were wrestling her own powerful self into submission. “I’ll forge a spike.” Her damaged voice grated unpleasantly on the ear. “Whose heart do I drive it into?”
Norina’s eyebrows rose. “I don’t even know how to find this air witch, or how to seek the information. When that assassin is put on trial, when I can question him, I’ll learn nothing more than I know now.”
Karis said, “I’ll learn something. My ravens are following two people—two who waited outside the building during the attack. And now they’re fleeing Watfield on separate roads, in separate directions. Eventually they’ll return to their leader, this air witch. And after that she—or he—will be unable to avoid me.”
Clement did not know what Karis was capable of—Karis herself didn’t always seem to know. But anyone who chose to be her enemy was a bloody idiot. Mabin had once made that choice, and had lived with a spike in her heart for years, and during all that time, each one of Mabin’s heartbeats had depended on Karis’s will.
Emil said, “Well, at least this air witch has lost the advantage of surprise. Let your ravens be extremely cautious, Karis. No one in Shaftal sees a raven without wondering whether it might be your servant.”
Karis was nodding impatiently. Now, finally, Zanja’s swift gaze turned to Clement. “I’m sorry for all my people have done in ignorance,” Clement said. “We feared that Truthkens could make people into puppets . . .”
“Oh, but we can,” said Norina.
“. . . and we didn’t understand the Order’s function. But now, in the present moment, what am I to do about my people’s safety? Our truce is composed only of words! Perhaps my people deserve to be destroyed by this monster we’ve created, but if that’s our doom, at least let me go and warn the garrisons.”
Karis and Emil began speaking at the same moment. “Tell your people—” they both said, then Emil gestured and Karis finished, “—I’m watching over them.”
“Even you must sleep,” said Emil. “Tell your people I am dispatching armed Paladin irregulars to reinforce the garrison guards.”
It was an outrageous idea—but a good one. While the garrison commanders certainly would resent being ordered to accept the direct protection of the very people they had fought for so long, one more reason for resentment hardly seemed important. Clement’s offenses against tradition, honor, and even propriety had begun to accumulate as soon as Cadmar took his last breath. If the commanders did accept her as their general, it would not be because they approved of her, but because they were convinced of what she knew. And if she failed to convince them, then the hostility she had earned would still be unimportant. She would have failed to save her people. She wouldn’t experience that self-destruction, of course, for she would be the first to die.
She told Emil she agreed to his plan and left for the garrison. But before she reached the front door two Paladins had been summoned to join her, and as soon as she stepped outside a raven swooped down, then disappeared in night. She did not think to even send a message to Seth, for she did not think of her at all.
Chapter 3
That night, Seth had not stirred from sleep until a chill crept into the vacancy where Clement had been sleeping. She opened her eyes to see Clement at the bedroom door, yanking on her trousers while asking sharp questions of the Paladin who stood there with a lamp. The flame was trembling violently. Thus their sweet night together had ended, and any more such nights soon began to seem beyond possibility.
People die all the time, and Seth had laid a daughter, a son, a wife, and several parents upon the pyre. But she had never before scrubbed puddles of congealed blood from a floor, nor had she helped to lay out the bodies of people she did not even know—seven of them! Paladins, clerks, librarians—people who had traveled far from their homes to offer their services, people like Seth. Now they had died among strangers, and among strangers they would be burned.
Seth could not endure this prospect. In Travesty and in the city, confusion became fear, and fear became anger. Though Seth certainly was as distressed and angry as anyone, she set about making friends, something she had never before done so deliberately. Three days after the assassinations, she knew the names and life histories of at least thirty people, which was the typical size of a farm family. Then she felt as if she could die without feeling too alone; and her desire to return home to Basdown, to her family, while it did not disappear, at least became less desperate.
Her friends included councilors, Paladins, tradespeople, cooks, all the children she could find, various animals in the immediate neighborhood, and even the agreeable soldier Damon, whom she visited when he was on guard duty. Seth brought him and his partner treats from Garland’s kitchen. The Sainnites were not starving but were being fed swill, according to Garland, and they lusted after hot bread, fresh meat, and anything with sugar in it. Damon told her that the garrison commanders had arrived from all across Shaftal, and they were in foul tempers. “They are like old horses who only know how to go down one road,” he said.
Seth asked her councilor friends if they knew what their duties were to be. No one had told anyone what they were supposed to be doing, but soon they determined that their first duty must be to invent themselves. The night before the funerals, they all went together to a tavern, ostensibly to figure out how making themselves into councilors was to be accomplished. Unfortunately, the tavern keeper was extremely generous with the beer, and more and more people kept arriving, all discussing the same topic in an outraged roar that overwhelmed all else: the attack on Travesty, the attack on Karis. Purposeful, sensible conversation became hopeless.
Seth began to have a headache. When the tavern keeper tapped Seth’s shoulder and told her some people wanted to speak to her in private, she stood up, saying, “I was about to leave, anyway.”
“I know these,” the tavern keeper assured her. “The cobbler’s shop is right across the street there, and the butcher has supplied my meat for twenty years.” He forged a path through the tavern, and she stuck close enough to nip his heels, for the people kept trying to close the way before she had made use of it.
The tavern keeper took her to a room down the hall, and she heaved a sigh of relief as the door was closed and the racket was shut out. “I’m Mariseth of Basdown,” she said to the four gathered there, and also to the tavern keeper, who seemed to have decided to remain. “I don’t know what you want of me—but you should speak to the Watfield councilor, shouldn’t you?”
“Oh, we did talk to him,” said a woman whose big arms and red face made Seth think she might be the butcher.
A man, the cobbler maybe, because he squinted at her as though she were a shoe, said, “You live at Travesty, the councilor told us.”
Another, who for no good reason seemed a greengrocer, said, “Is it true that Karis has not slept since the attack?”
It seemed like the kind of question people ask, not because they are curious, but because they want to help. Seth sat down and allowed the tavern keeper to pour her a cup of tea. “No one is sleeping well in that house,” she said.
“But we’ve heard that she won’t allow the doors to be locked.”
“Is it true there’s less than ten Paladins guarding her?
“And that she sits awake in a hard chair all night?”
“And no one can persuade her to lie down?”
“Is she frightened? Is she heartbroken?”
The people peered concernedly at Seth.
She said, “The doors are not locked, and there aren’t very many Paladins. As for the rest of your questions, I don’t know the answers. I did see her at breakfast this morning. She doesn’t talk—and she looks very tired. But—”
She had intended to explain that she didn’t know whether or not Karis was always tired or quiet in the morning. But she could not finish, for the butcher cried, “It is not right!”
“We must do something!” said another.
With the frightening resolve of solid citizens, they rose up and strode out, leaving Seth alone and quite startled. Should she follow them? Should she rejoin the other councilors in that angry din? Or should she go to the garrison and demand to see their hard-working, heroic, desperately lonely general? How did anyone know what to do in such a dreadful tangle of complications? The same way a mess of yarn is untangled, she thought. Choose a strand, and never let go of it.
Clement. But surely that strand led to the hopeless center of the tangle—the sort of place where a person inevitably felt required to reach for the scissors.
Seth put her head in her hands. She could not help but feel driven to fix things, for she was an earth blood. But that did not mean everything could be fixed.
The lamp flame had dimmed, and Seth’s tea had become cold before she could convince herself to stand up. Not until she opened the door to the hall did she notice the silence. At the end of the hall, she discovered that lamp flames flickered in an empty public room. The chairs were shoved back from the tables, ale cups rested in spilled puddles, and someone’s late supper of bean stew and black bread had been abandoned with the spoon resting in the bowl and a single bite taken out of the bread. Seth’s coat hung by itself on the hook.
Outside, the night air had turned bitter cold. Buildings loomed on either side, shop shutters were closed, and only some light leaked through the upper windows, where people were not yet abed. Mystified, Seth looked up at clear sky, at brilliant stars, at the moon, slim as an apple paring. She heard a distant laugh. She wrapped her muffler around her face and made her way towards Travesty, forging a meandering path between patches of ice and mounds of horse dung. She considered how differently people lived in the city and wondered whether she would ever get used to it. Then she became aware that a low sound she had been hearing was a melody, and as she emerged from the street into the square, she realized the singing came from Travesty. That horrible building crouched in the night like a monstrous toad with numerous glowing eyes where a few windows stood unshuttered. A dark, swaying chain wrapped the base of the building, decorated here and there by lantern light and puffs of white breath that glittered and dispersed in the patches of light. The gathered people were singing an old lullaby.
Blow, wind, blow—for there is no cold
when the fire on the hearth burns so brightly.
Sleep, child, sleep—for your fears will keep
when the fire on the hearth burns so brightly.
Someone called out in an affectionate, if drunken slur, “Sleep, Karis, sleep!”
Seth stood still, amazed. She couldn’t tell how many people had gathered there, but those who had been in the tavern seemed to have collected a number of others on the way to Travesty, so now there were more than enough to entirely encircle the massive building. The people of Watfield were watching Karis’s house tonight.
The Paladin at the door was the same one with whom Seth had traveled from Basdown. She had been a somber companion, but she was laughing as she let Seth in. “Is that lullaby working?” Seth asked her.
“Surely it must!” said the Paladin. “Anyway, I hope so. Are you hungry? Garland always sets food out for the night people.”
“I’ve got a headache—I’m going to bed.”
“It’ll feel better soon,” said the Paladin.
Seth doubted it. But she had not even reached the staircase when she felt the pain disperse so abruptly that she mistook the emptying sensation in her skull for a wave of dizziness, and grabbed a doorway to keep from falling over. Someone spoke behind her. “Seth—who are those people? Do you know?”
The G’deon’s wife had a distinctive way of articulating—saying each word so cleanly and precisely that it sounded unfriendly to a Basdowner’s ears. Seth said, “I think they’re just regular people. Should I tell them to go away?”
“Could you?” said Zanja. “Could anyone?” She was laughing.
“I may be responsible—”
“I hope they come back tomorrow night. Karis fell asleep before they finished the first song.” Zanja stepped forward and touched her arm. “Let’s get some pie.”
Another friend, Seth thought, surprised. Zanja was usually closeted with Emil or Karis, but when Seth did see her, usually in the massive dining room, she had seemed distant and preoccupied. Seth walked with her through the maze of hallways, following the route the Paladins kept lit with hanging lanterns. In the kitchen the cookfires had been damped, but the fireplace bricks continued to release their warmth. Suspended over the glowing coals a couple of giant stewpots steamed quietly, giving forth the delicious scent of chicken and onions. Several dried-apple pies were set on a worktable along with a neat stack of pottery plates, and someone had already eaten a slice out of one. Garland’s pies were unbelievably good; Seth doubted anything would be left by morning. Zanja cut a slice for each of them, and they stood at the table, eating with their fingers, talking—not about assassins, or Clement, or tomorrow’s funerals, or the Council of Shaftal the day after. They discussed the nearness of spring, the way Basdowners thought about things, and Zanja’s peculiar life history. It was an enormous relief to have such an ordinary conversation.
Seth eventually remembered the topic with which their conversation had begun and said, “I think the Watfielders will keep coming for a few nights, anyway. They’ll get more organized, and work in shifts, so no one stays up the entire night. A butcher, a greengrocer, those are the instigators, and they’re organized sorts of people.”
Zanja had licked her fingers, licked her plate, and now looked consideringly at the pies. “We’ll have a few days of rest, then,” she said. “I wonder if those assassins just intended to make it impossible for us to sleep.”
“Dogs!” said Seth.
“What?”
“Watchdogs. A couple of good watchdogs posted outside will forewarn the Paladins that someone is coming. Karis will learn to trust them, and to heed their voices in her sleep. That would be enough, wouldn’t it? She doesn’t need to be protected, does she? Doesn’t she just need to know she can’t be taken by surprise again?”
“We’ve never had dogs,” Zanja said, sounding rather astonished. “Can you find out from that butcher or greengrocer where to get some?”
“I’ll find out from somebody.” Seth felt much better, and suddenly quite tired. “But now I’m going to bed.”
As Seth located and climbed the building’s various oddly located, crazily constructed staircases, she mulled over a puzzle: Was it possible that large problems were just massive accumulations of unresolved small problems? Was it possible that what was needed was just an awful lot of ordinary solutions all at once? A circle of drunken people singing lullabies, some watchdogs, and a slice of dried-apple pie—surely that wasn’t all
Shaftal needed. Yet she fell asleep in that lovely room, untroubled for once.
Karis had awakened late and then remained in bed for another hour, trying to eat the tea and pastries Zanja had brought her on a tray, while Leeba crawled over, jumped upon, and danced around her. Lately her parents called her “Hay Child” and “Ink Child,” nicknames that memorialized two recent occasions of spectacular dirtiness, both of which Zanja had missed due to being dead. After she came back to life again, she found that her daughter had not yet outgrown the old nickname, “Little Hurricane.” Leeba could not be still, and never ceased to wreak havoc.
“I hate this bedroom,” Leeba declared.
Karis had gotten covered with crumbs without eating anything, and now her plate lay on the floor, filled with bits of shredded bread. She asked, “Why do you hate it?”
“It’s blue.”
“Zanja hates it, too.”
This strategy diverted Leeba’s attention to Zanja, who was painting glyphs with an ink brush on strips of crisp linen to make funeral flags.
“Let me help!” Leeba demanded, for the fourteenth time.
“Keep away from this table, Little Hurricane, or I’ll tie you up and put you in the storeroom with the kegs of cider.”
“You will not!”
“Then I’ll send you away to live with the rabbits in the woods.”
“You will not!”
Zanja dipped the brush in ink and began the first stroke of a new glyph, watching Leeba from the corner of her eye, poised to stabilize the table with one hand while lifting the brush out of reach with the other. “Then I’ll give you a pair of red wings and make you fly away with the birds.”
Water Logic Page 5