In the death field outside the city, where hundreds of Watfielders had gathered to return the seven murdered people to the elements, the commanders clustered around Clement like gray fence posts in the snow. Some twenty garrison soldiers were also present, but they had dispersed into the crowd. Most of them were talking to Paladins now, expressing their condolences in phrases Gilly had drilled into them, or, if they knew enough Shaftalese, venturing into the unfamiliar terrain of conversation. Perhaps the soldiers would ask polite, bewildered questions, and would secretly conclude that these Paladins were simply crazy for examining so closely the natural, obvious, unquestionable fact that injury begets injury, and when one is hit, one hits back, harder. But later, soldiers and Paladins both might puzzle over their own incomprehension, and might take one more slow step towards understanding, just as Clement’s many bafflements were slowly becoming comprehensions.
These visiting commanders, however, did not even realize there was something they did not understand. They stood silent, giving Clement only their obedience.
“It is not nearly enough,” she muttered to herself.
Beside Clement stood Ellid, a wry, hard-working veteran, the only garrison commander whose friendship Clement could still rely upon. Misunderstanding Clement, Ellid said, “It seems like enough mourners to me. If the number of mourners determines the status in the afterlife . . .”
“Do the Shaftali even believe there’s an afterlife?”
“Well, why so many people, when these seven dead were strangers to the city?”
Gilly seemed to be getting tired of explaining the Shaftali to Sainnites. Perhaps he found his task too absurd, given that most Sainnites had lived among the Shaftali for most of their lives. He said somewhat impatiently, “I’m sure it’s out of sympathy for those who did know them.”
“It’s to shame the murderers,” said Clement. “It’s what Watfielders do with their anger.”
“You’re getting to understand them better than I do.”
She glanced at him and as always was surprised to see her twisted, crippled friend straightened by the G’deon’s hand. At least his ugly old face was the same.
For some time, people had been filing somberly past the seven biers, decorating them with flapping funeral flags. Gilly and Clement had made some flags that morning, and he had helped her to shape the Shaftalese words: regret, senselessness, sorrow. Now the afternoon bells rang, and nearby, people began whispering and craning their necks. Shaftal’s new G’deon was making her visible way through the parting crowd, with her vivid red coat unbuttoned to reveal an embroidered green tunic. Mabin and Norina walked at her right, and at her left trod Zanja, like a preternaturally alert, indescribably exotic black hound. Beside Zanja walked a Basdown cow doctor.
“Gods of hell,” Clement muttered.
“They’re coming towards us,” said Ellid.
Clement and Ellid stepped forward to clasp hands with these governors. Karis’s cold, bare hand conveyed a burning sensation that made Clement catch her breath. Zanja said quietly, “Ellid can introduce us to the commanders, can’t she?” She passed Clement to Seth.
Clement could hear Zanja talking to Ellid, in her clear, precise Sainnese, then greeting Gilly as they moved towards the gray posts of the commanders. Clement fumbled to take Seth’s ungloved hand.
Seth said, “You’re always walking away from me, it seems.”
“I apologize. Gilly told me I should write you a note at least, but I don’t know all the letters yet.”
“So you thought of me once,” said Seth.
Clement had thought of her—many more times than once—midsentence sometimes, or lying awake on her hard bed, or snatching a hasty moment with her son. But her armor was the only thing keeping her standing right now; she could not take it off. She said, “I hope for my son that when he is grown he can choose his lovers freely.”
Seth gazed at her—and Clement couldn’t guess what she was thinking. She excused herself and returned to the commanders, who like stringed puppets each in turn looked startled and astounded as Karis’s palm pressed theirs. Norina, from behind the shelter of Karis’s broad shoulders, seemed to be assessing the character of these strangers. Perhaps she would be able to tell Clement something useful about them. Zanja and Gilly were translating, though all of the commanders spoke some Shaftalese, and some were as fluent as Clement. Some commanders managed to utter stiff compliments on General Mabin’s leadership, for which she was legendary, even among her enemies.
Seth had gone away. A cold line trickled down Clement’s cheek. She wiped it away casually, as if her eyes were just watering in the cold wind.
Finished, Karis held out a hand to Clement, and when she approached put a hand on her shoulder and bent to say in her ear, “Will it hurt you if I make a show of my regard for you? Zanja says I should.”
“Regard—but not affection.”
“I actually do approve of you, but I hate performing. And I’m bad at it.”
Norina, apparently close enough to hear, said quietly, “You’ve done enough, Karis.”
Karis did not lower her hand, though. “You’re looking rather harrowed, if you don’t mind me saying so.”
Clement said, “My commanders won’t accept me as their general, though my G’deon commands it. Try to imagine what a position that puts me in.”
Norina said, “Those officers are so angry with you, they can’t think clearly about what’s in their own best interests. But that Taram fellow is already more than half willing to change his alliances. You have a history with him? You can use that to win him back to your side. And he and Ellid could win over some three or four of the others, if there are no more disasters.” Norina then named the potential supporters, a surprising list of unsuspected friends. “That would give you six, anyway, six out of fourteen. Where are the other five?”
“The western commanders haven’t arrived yet.”
Norina glanced at Karis. “Are they on their way?”
Karis’s gaze became unfocused for a moment. Then she said, “They’re nowhere on the Wilton-Hanishport Road.”
They had entered the thick of the crowd. People slowly made way for Karis, until the first bier loomed. Shaftali words of pain flapped from the wooden frame and from the firewood piled beneath it. A funeral flag unfurled in Zanja’s hand. It seemed incredible that the cloth could float so lightly on the breeze when it was so burdened by the heavy black strokes of glyph signs.
Clement took a flag from her own pocket, but without paying much attention. What had become of the western commanders?
Karis pressed forward to gaze at a gray-haired dead man whose forehead and cheeks were marked with squint lines as though he had been peering in the dark all his life. Karis reached up and touched him briefly, as though to confirm that he was indeed dead.
A bridge had collapsed, a road was impassible. The western commanders had turned back, unable to even send Clement a message. That was all.
Karis had begun to weep. Clement tied a flag to a bier. The Shaftali words she had written with such difficulty looked like a child’s scrawl: Regret. Senselessness. Sorrow.
Waste. Regret. Sacrifice. Three nights ago, Clement had become confused about where her body ended and Seth’s began. In the warm hollow of their breasts, their hearts beat on both the palm and back of Clement’s hand. Seth had stroked her head, kissed her eyes, told her what she had been thinking since they last saw each other. Clement told Seth some small pieces of her history—important only because she had never before had anyone to tell them to. And there had crept over her a sense of rest and rightness that was deeper and more important than mere sleep.
Value. Suffering. Service. A Paladin lay on the bier, peaceful, black-dressed, with a gold ring in her earlobe.
Thirty-five years ago, Clement had been a terrified nine-y
ear-old, who with the other few children on the ship had been left to fend for herself while the adults battled a violent storm. Clement had comforted and been comforted by a girl she scarcely knew as the boat twisted and plunged. They had warmed each other when sea water soaked them. Years later, she and the girl had served their first year as soldiers together in Cadmar’s company, and had been devoted lovers until they became rivals. Their first disagreement had been over Gilly, whom Clement befriended when others were cruel to him. When Clement and Heras met again, both of them were commanders, and Heras had become notorious across the land when she razed the region of Reese. Now she commanded Wilton garrison in South Hill, a region that had proven impossible for even Heras to defeat.
Heras had not seen fit to obey her new general’s command. She had convinced four other commanders to join her in what must be an insurrection.
“So that was the G’deon,” said Taram, as they walked back from the death field. “She does look like Cadmar.” Ellid and Gilly had managed to herd him so he ended up beside Clement, where he could no longer avoid speaking to her.
The smoke from the pyres lifted up in columns that must have been visible for miles around.
Clement said, “She also has his temper.”
“Is it because she’s like him that you were so willing to accept her rule?”
After two steps Taram added grudgingly, “—General.”
Clement still did not speak. She was weary of trying to convince these rock-headed people both that there had been no choice but to accept peace, and that peace was a good choice. She was weary of such contradictions, sick of having to do what she did not want, tired of the whole bloody mess: Loss. Betrayal. Hopelessness.
“Why doesn’t she fight us if she’s so strong?” Taram asked.
“Bloody hell, have you entirely lost your imagination? Can’t you see that a person who needs no weapons is invincible? Can’t you see how fortunate we are that she doesn’t want to fight?”
“Fortunate!”
Well, she had goaded him into overt anger, at least. “You think I’m a coward?” she asked.
“Anyone who’s fought beside you knows how you hate to fight! But it was your lack of vainglory that made you a great commander. You took care of your people, and you didn’t let their lives be wasted. But now you have commanded every soldier in my garrison—in the entire country—to lie helpless and exposed to our enemy!”
“I commanded you to disarm because the Shaftali proved their honor to me right here in Watfield, where not one soldier has been harmed. Now your garrison is just as vulnerable, and your soldiers, too, are unharmed. Tell me, Taram, what will it take to convince you of their determination to win our trust? Perhaps I’ve become stupid, but you have become even more stupid.”
“I’ve become a commander,” Taram said, sounding very stupid indeed.
She looked at him, but she could no longer remember their friendship. He was the most likely of all of them to turn, according to Norina, but Clement couldn’t think of what it would take to change one man’s mind, even a man who had been her friend, as Heras had once been.
“You know better than anyone how little I wanted my last promotion,” she said. “So instead of standing in the road preventing all of us from going forward, why don’t you offer to be general? I’d vote for you.”
“Bloody hell, Clem—” Taram began. But she walked away from them all, not even bothering to signal Gilly or Ellid. She would never escape—eventually they would find her.
Chapter 5
The dawn bells rang. Clement had scarcely slept, and as she walked with the grim garrison commanders through the sleepy city to Travesty, only Gabian, chortling inside her coat, seemed happy. Earlier, when he suckled his bottle beside the fire, she had gazed into his eyes, but her baby’s peacefulness and joy did not infect her. Surely child rearing made taking the long view more natural to Shaftali, but for her it required effort—an effort that seemed only more taxing with every passing day. Today, all across Shaftal, people would celebrate the first council meeting of this land’s resurrected government. But for Clement it could only be another dreadful day.
Gilly walked at her elbow, sometimes missing a step, for he was still learning how to walk straight-backed. Ellid marched at her other side, also silent, having dutifully tried and failed to engage Clement in a practical conversation. Taram kept five commanders between himself and Clement, yet his silence pressed between her shoulder blades like a sword’s point.
At Travesty, arriving councilors and departing night-watch volunteers so crowded the entry that Clement despaired of getting in the door. But the Paladin commander spotted them, and in a moment ten Paladins had politely but firmly cleared the crowd and then stood on either side of the path, greeting the arriving garrison commanders in Sainnese as they passed. “Good morning, General Clement,” said Saleen, at the top of the stairs.
She took his hand. “Commander Saleen, I was just thinking that you people can’t sensibly organize yourselves.”
“Then you will be many times surprised today,” he said. In Sainnese. Like Zanja, Saleen seemed to have the fire talent for languages. He had made it his mission to learn Sainnese and seemed to be constantly teaching whatever he learned to the Paladins in his command.
As Clement’s party entered the door, children hurried forward with towels to dry their boots, then a line of young people divested them of their coats. Saleen led the way to the big parlor, where Emil stood casually, sipping tea by the hearth. Immediately, a crowd of people paraded in to serve breakfast, and Clement’s companions, lured by the promise of sweet pastries and hot tea, abandoned her.
“Good morning, Emil,” said Clement, and Gabian uttered a joyful yelp.
Emil picked up a tray of pastries from a nearby table and offered it to her. “Will you eat something, Clement? You’ll be wanting to be fortified.”
“I fight better on an empty stomach.”
Emil set down the tray. “Do you think this day will be so—” He fell silent, riveted by something that appeared to have just come in the door.
Clement turned. The woman at the door was dressed in a surcoat of heavy embroidered silk, in a blue that exactly matched here eyes. The draping fabric parted when she moved, revealing trousers and under-tunic of shimmering purple. She lifted an arm, corralling Garland, the cook, in the doorway. The fabric, drawn back, revealed her muscular forearm. “What’s become of our humble G’deon?” murmured Emil.
“It’s only pastries!” Clement heard Garland protest, and then he escaped. Karis turned, noticed their stares, and joined them, saying grumpily, “What?”
“You combed your hair,” said Emil blandly.
“Give me that baby, will you, Clement? Maybe he’ll spit up on me.”
Emil hastily flung a napkin across Karis’s shoulder. Karis glared at him, but then smiled sweetly at the baby as Clement put him in her arms. “Greetings, little brother. What nonsense all this is!”
“I understand your commanders are being difficult,” said Emil to Clement.
“Five are missing entirely and haven’t provided an explanation.”
“I know. I should hear from Wilton soon—I have people watching the garrison, and they can get me a message by the ice road in a matter of days.”
Clement felt an uprush of anger. “You’re spying on my garrisons?”
“Now, General, don’t bristle at me. I trust you—it’s Heras I’m worried about.”
Of course. The first year Heras commanded Wilton garrison, Emil had still been commander of South Hill company. Medric had served directly under Heras, and Zanja under Emil. The razing of South Hill had scarred and educated all three of them.
Gabian, apparently fascinated by the crisp, shimmering fabric of Karis’s clothing, grasped a fold and endeavored to drool upon it. Emil
intervened, then said to Clement, “Does Heras think she should be general? Is this an insurrection?”
“Of course she thinks she should be general. She’s astute, decisive, uncompromising, and doesn’t suffer from divided loyalties. She’d be a better general than I would be.”
“She’s manipulative, ruthless, and closed minded!”
“She has all sorts of admirable qualities.”
“Oh, you’re being sarcastic,” said Emil with relief.
Fortunately, Norina and her law students were busy elsewhere, for surely it would have been obvious to an air witch that Clement’s statements had been more truthful than Emil seemed to think.
“This baby of yours is not cooperating,” said Karis, whose astonishing outfit remained unstained. “Clem, this Heras had better remember that it’s not you she is opposing, but me. And I’m not much impressed by bullies now that I am one myself.”
Emil choked on a swallow of tea.
“And am I just your puppet?” Clement said. “No, never mind—I know what I am.”
Karis began to reply. “Tomorrow’s problem,” Emil said.
“Tomorrow’s problems are accumulating,” said Karis. “What is wrong with that seer?”
“Maybe Zanja can do something with him.”
They exchanged serious glances, and Clement felt a moment’s pity for them. Then Emil said, “If you won’t eat, Clement, then perhaps you will introduce me to the commanders, as I missed my opportunity to meet them yesterday.”
Emil exercised his geniality on the commanders, with great brilliance but little effect. Clement delivered Gabian to a parlor that now was a playroom, where Leeba officiously instructed several children in the rules they all must follow. Then she and her commanders followed Emil and Karis into what she remembered as a vast, echoing, very cold room at the back of the monstrous building. But now its floors had been muffled with carpets of many sizes and colors; it was filled with chairs of many styles and heights, and the fire that had probably been blazing in the fireplace since before dawn had made it somewhat less chilly. People milled nervously through the space, talking to each other and staring about as though they feared they’d miss something. Clement caught herself wondering when these soldiers’ captains would get them to quiet down and line up.
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