Zanja said in a low voice, “I am not in the House of Lilterwess at all, am I? I am still outside.”
“I did all I could for you,” the young woman said.
“And now you expect me to assuage your guilt by acting more grateful.”
Orna set her mouth in a line. When they reached the guard room, where the commander impatiently awaited them, Orna said, “Here is your blade. I can’t imagine what you need it for.”
If Zanja told the young woman how many people she had killed in combat using that dagger or other weapons, she would have been appalled. In this Shaftal, where the doors had neither locks nor bars, where Paladins were unarmed doorkeepers and farmers were ignorant of what lay beyond their farm boundaries, Zanja may well have been considered a murderer even though she had never killed except by necessity. Musing on this unpleasant thought, she took her leave with cold courtesy and turned her back on the legendary House of Lilterwess.
Overhead the clouds had thinned enough to admit a diffused glare of light from the hidden sun. But from the northeast, where spring storms march hard on each other’s heels, black clouds crept ominously southward, extinguishing the landscape behind them. The tallow-cloth cape crackled in the cold wind as Zanja limped down the walled lane. When she reached the main road, she finally could view the spectacular pile of the House of Lilterwess. Perched on a hilltop, escorted by squadrons of leafless orchards, dressed in the ragged remains of summer’s blooming vines, the massive building seemed both grandiose and accidental: a mountainous, random configuration of towers and peaked rooftops wrapped in a package of tightly fitted stone. A thick haze of smoke trailed away from its multitude of chimneys, and here and there people were standing on balconies and rooftops, enjoying a few moments outside before the new storm arrived. The hillside was busy with activity: horses let out to exercise wheeled around a muddy field; carts hauling manure or big pots of night earth rolled away toward distant middens; laundry flapped in the cold breeze. Even the gardeners stood out in their walled plots, perhaps inspecting winter damage or arguing about where to plant the peas.
These people are all dead, thought Zanja—or I am not yet born. This Shaftal is just a memory—or my Shaftal is just a possibility.
She walked until the rain again began to fall. Then she turned around and retraced her steps.
The House of Lilterwess came into sight again: the laundry brought in, the horses stabled, the manure carts sheltered, the windows shuttered. Zanja could scarcely see the building through the driving rain. Certainly she, a small speck, shapeless in a cape the color of earth, was invisible to anyone who might be looking her way. She climbed the wall that edged the lane, circled the hill, and approached the pile through a park in which shapely pine trees overlooked straw-blanketed flower beds. The rope that she had stolen from the stable during the night still hung undisturbed from the chimney where she had secured it. She had chosen that spot carefully, and there were two window ledges and a balcony to support her vertical ascent up the outside wall. But even with the knots she had tied in the rope giving purchase, it was not an easy climb. When at last she hauled herself with trembling muscles over the roof’s edge, she sprawled there gasping, with rainwater runnelling past her down the gray slate. She had climbed sheer rock faces for the thrill of it when she was young and fearless, and this looming building was not much different from a mountain precipice. But she was neither young nor fearless anymore.
Barefoot, with the rope gathered up and wrapped around her waist, she crept across slippery, creaking slate. Sometimes she heard muffled voices behind the walls and shutters. Mostly she heard only the din of rain on stone. The rooftop was a mysterious, dangerous landscape, and the previous night’s landmarks looked unfamiliar now. Twice she fumbled her footing and fell, but no one seemed to notice the racket even when a slate broke and cut open her knee with its jagged edge.
The shutters, left unlatched, had blown open. In the room within, the blankets had been folded away in a cabinet and the ashes emptied from the stove. She stripped off her sodden clothing and wrapped it in the tallow-cloth cape to keep from dribbling telltale puddles down the hall. These remote rooms were unlikely to be used again until comfortable travel became possible. She picked the most inconvenient room, hung up her wet clothes, took the blankets from the cabinet, and lay down, groaning with exhaustion on the bed. She would sleep. When everyone else slept, she would go scavenging for food. If she was to be treated as a stray animal, she would act like one.
Weariness had replaced her anger and bewilderment. Loneliness echoed in a hollow behind her breastbone. She yearned for the sensation of Karis’s solid bulk pressed against her back. But Karis did not exist. Nothing Zanja loved existed, not even the Land of Shaftal itself.
Perhaps Zanja dwelt among a thousand people, but she shared the shadows only with the cats that patrolled the dark labyrinth. She did occasionally spot a distant Paladin on night duty, but otherwise, people kept out of the hallways after the lamps had been put out. She found the courtyard in the building’s center: a garden, overhung with balconies, where trees and fountains and blooming flowers would soon lure the long-confined residents out of doors. For now, though, it lay barren and under water. She learned that people generally lived on the second floor and worked on the first. She found three separate dining rooms: one ornate, one comfortable, and one plain—and three separate kitchens, all with locked larders—the only locks in that entire building. However, in the kitchen that went with the comfortable dining room, Zanja discovered that a kind cook set aside some food in a cupboard every evening for the people who could not sleep. It was usually bread and cheese; occasionally an apple or some butter; rarely a bit of meat. She drew all the water she wanted from cisterns, enough to bathe herself and wash her undergarments with stolen soap. She found firewood and kindling and even a candle. She had little need for light, though: she had nothing to read, and when she was not skulking through the hallways, she slept. She was so tired that several days passed before she even became aware of the tedium of those solitary days and nights.
During Zanja’s imprisonment after the massacre of her people, she had also been alone all the time, within yet isolated from the world. Then the time had passed strangely, sometimes in swift flashes of awareness with long black stretches between them, and sometimes creeping. Now she felt a similar displacement.
She had become accustomed to relying on the wit and intelligence of her friends. Now, with no one to talk to, she felt stupid as well as lonely. She imagined Emil: gray hair tied back with a thong at the nape of his neck, furrowed face and lively brown eyes, laugh lines deepening as he turned from his lamplit worktable to face her where she sat on the Ashawala’i rug by the fireplace. “Haven’t you bound that book yet?” Zanja asked him.
Emil glanced ruefully at the battered old book that still awaited his attention. “Poor Gerunt,” he said. “What arguments he and Zhiva must have had! I’ll get around to rebinding the book soon. I’ve had a number of distractions.”
He seemed to perceive the whole of her in that unique way of his, and continued, “My dear, you are in a pickle. Before you can resolve anything you must accept the reality of the place you are in.”
“But I don’t belong here!”
“How can you be so certain of that?” Emil asked. “And what choice do you have?”
The daydream ended abruptly. She sat up in bed, listening, but she heard only silence. The rain began a muted patter on the slates.
Her glyph cards, like her dagger and her rope, lay ready for her to snatch up should she need to flee out the window onto the rooftops. She took the cards out of their water-stiffened pouch, but she did not attempt to undo the bindings. She had tried to make herself both invisible and insignificant to the seers, intuitives, and sensitives that certainly lived here. A deliberate exercise of her fire talent, even in private, would make the presence of the s
ilent stranger living in the vacancies of that great house much more noticeable. She did not dare ask the cards whether she was in danger, or what that danger was.
Later in the night she padded down cavernous hallways, yearning to see these passages by daylight, to push through a crowd of air children or young philosophers, to see the councilors consulting gravely with each other, to be part of the bustle she distantly sensed during the day. The cook of the comfortable kitchen had actually put a small meat pie in the cupboard. She wished blessings on her benefactor and ate right there in the kitchen. Perhaps the cook imagined that a pregnant woman overtaken by unpredictable appetites was consuming so much food.
She lit her candle and made her way to the school rooms. In one, the students seemed to be engaged in the enormous, tedious project of hand-copying the Law of Shaftal. On each desk lay a similar sheaf of papers, filled on both sides with carefully numbered paragraphs of script. In this law school, apparently, the teacher stood at this lectern, reading out loud while the students wrote the teacher’s exact words, day after day. Air witches forget nothing, so this dreary method certainly guaranteed that the students knew their material. What tedium, though! Zanja sat at a desk and borrowed a student’s pen and ink to redraw the washed-out images on her glyph cards. She drew Nurture first, thinking of Mari, the rarity of whose kindness Zanja had not known to appreciate. Her version of the nursing mother was a cartoon compared to the original.
Now, Death-and-Life. She dipped the pen and drew the glyph, which was a plain pattern of overlapping lines. The ghostly shape of the half-burned woman’s skeleton had survived the water, and she could follow the pattern with the pen tip, remembering with a jolt of fondness the winter day J’han had drawn this card for her.
There was a sound, the slightest sigh of door hinges. Zanja’s hand jerked with startlement, spattering the stiff, warped paper with ink. She blew out the candle, scooped up her cards, and dropped to the floor.
“There is no other way out,” a man’s voice said reasonably to her. “You might as well step forward.”
So her night vision might be restored, she avoided looking at the light he carried—a bowl lamp with a sputtering wick. The little flame cast long shadows, and she slipped swiftly from one into the next. Rain pounded on the closed shutters, obscuring the small sound of her movements.
“You are in the front corner near the lectern,” said the man patiently.
Zanja drew herself into a squat. “I just wanted pen and ink,” she said.
“Most people need not steal supplies from hard-working students.”
Zanja did not reply. She did not move, either, as the man walked toward her. He moved like a blade fighter. He was armed. If Zanja clashed directly with him she might win, but not quietly. And any violence in this peaceful place would not be forgotten or forgiven. She must surrender again.
He paused at a distance. “Four nights you have been lurking in this house. I feel your restless, aimless presence in my sleep, and I awaken feeling that something important lies just out of reach.”
“My presence is not worth noticing, sir. And I am doing nothing wrong: The Law of Shaftal permits the starving to steal bread and the homeless to demand shelter when hospitality is denied them.”
“You were denied hospitality in the House of Lilterwess?”
“I was. But I plan to leave as soon as the sky clears. So I ask that you let me be; let me keep my secret, until the end of mud season.”
She heard a sound, but the man had merely set down his lamp on one of the desks. He walked away from the light. It was now possible to escape past him, but instead Zanja looked directly at him. The diffused glow made him a sculpture of light and shadow: cheeks and eyes were dark hollows; chin, cheekbone, nose and forehead were sharp with illumination. His black hair cascaded down his back in a hundred slim braids.
She felt that she could not breathe. She stood up.
He said with bland courtesy, “I would be honored if you would share tea with me.”
“It would be my pleasure to accept.” Zanja spoke as he did, executing the ritual of friendship that was only necessary between strangers. But through this simple exchange they had each implied a promise: I will not harm you. I will not betray you.
She picked up her candle, neatened the desk, and followed him.
Chapter 13
Zanja’s host’s lamp flame dimly revealed a room filled with the warm, soft colors of northern dyed wool: the brownish green that comes from the bark of a sturdy shrub that blooms with its roots still in snow; the reddish brown from the skin of wild onions; the black from the under-ripe nuts of a high-altitude tree; the bright green of a certain clay that in Zanja’s time had become difficult to find. Rugs, each of a different pattern, covered the walls and floor; the new piled on top of the old so that the floor was as soft and springy as the ground in a pine forest. The space was as like an Ashawala’i clan house as art could make it.
The man’s nest of blankets also were of Ashawala’i make, as was his tunic, the intricate red border of which told Zanja he was a na’Morlen, which was a fire clan like the na’Tarweins. From his belt, which was woven of deerskin strips in the same pattern, his dagger, tied in its sheath, hung at an angle across the small of his back. He had not taken the time to knot his braids, which hung loose to his waist. He knelt at the hearth to build up the fire. Noticing that Zanja still stood in the doorway, he said formally, “Enter and be welcome. Share my fire.”
There were tears in Zanja’s throat. She said hoarsely in the language of her people, “The blessings of the nine gods be upon this dwelling.” For seven years she had only spoken that language in her dreams, when she visited the land of the dead to be chided and accused by her murdered kinsmen. The first time she had visited there after her hair was shorn, the retribution-hungry ghosts had told her it was proper that she had short hair like an outcast, for she should be ashamed of her refusal to seek revenge.
She tugged her one surviving braid out of her shirt collar where she had tucked it so it would not drag in the ink.
The katrim looked at the braid, then at her face. Then he somewhat belatedly replied to her ritual greeting: “The nine gods bless your dwelling, also.”
Zanja took a seat beside the hearth. It was not proper for a guest to initiate conversation, but her host said nothing. As he certainly was the Speaker of the Ashawala’i, he also was a fire blood like herself, likely to accurately guess the answer to a puzzle, but unlikely to ask questions and demand explanations. So, as he certainly puzzled over the oddity—impossibility—of an Ashawala’i who was a stranger to him, she considered the question of why the Speaker of the Ashawala’i was here in the House of Lilterwess rather than where he should have been at this time of year, at home in the Asha Valley. Something must have delayed him in the autumn until snow closed the door of the pass.
Her presence would not be easy for him to account for. He gazed into the fireplace. Zanja shut her eyes and took a deep breath of the vegetable-dyed goatswool. It was the smell of home.
She did not want to lie to a katrim. But only to the G’deon did she dare tell the truth. How could she answer this man’s questions—the questions he wouldn’t even ask—without lying and without engaging his imagination? It was impossible. She should have allowed him to assume she was from another tribe; but, like many of her insights, this one came too late.
She took another breath of the familiar scent. When she had last stood in the Asha Valley she had smelled only blood and smoke. But this was the smell of a strong, proud, ancient people, a people whose skilled spinning and weaving allowed them to survive the harsh mountain climate. Fourteen days Zanja had wandered this alien Shaftal, but only now did it occur to her that in this Shaftal, her people were not yet lost beyond retrieval. She had not yet failed to protect them from the Sainnites—and she might finally lay down her dre
adful burden of culpability.
Medric spoke in her memory: All that happened because of that massacre would not have happened at all. Karis would be a smoke-addicted metalsmith. Emil would be killed fighting Heras in South Hill, and Medric’s visions would be what killed him. And Leeba would not have been conceived.
The Speaker had turned his gaze to her. She felt his attention but did not open her eyes. The teakettle began hissing and humming. She heard the man rise to pour the water into a stone pitcher so the ambient chill would cool it to the correct temperature. She heard him measure tea into a teapot and pour a small amount of water over it. He swirled the water and tea leaves. Zanja sniffed loudly to let him know the grassy aroma had reached her. He poured and swirled, again and again. She opened her eyes as he filled two tiny cups and set them on a tray between the two of them.
She matched her movements to his, taking up her cup at the same moment he did, holding it to her nose, then slurping noisily. The tea was perfect: hot but not scalding, strong but not bitter. Their empty cups touched the wooden tray at the same moment, with the same nearly inaudible ringing of rare porcelain.
He said, “I am Arel na’Morlen, the Speaker for the Ashawala’i.”
“I am Zanja na’Tarwein. Once I also was the Speaker for the Ashawala’i, but now I am a ghost.”
He did not blink; nor did he object or seem surprised. What a gift it was, that fire blood’s talent for absorbing and accepting the incredible!
Water Logic Page 15