She said, “My hair was cut in ritual, to separate me from all that bound me, so I could cross more easily between worlds. I am a wanderer but not an exile. However, it has been seven years since I saw or spoke to a kinsman.”
“Seven years!” Arel paused. “You must miss dancing the katra.”
This is a clever man, Zanja thought. A knife-dancer’s skill was impossible to feign. She stood up and waited for him to untie the holdfasts on his dagger sheath, then they drew their blades, struck a traditional opening pose, and began to dance.
Shortly after the hostile beginning of her difficult relationship with Norina, the Truthken had commented sarcastically, “You fight as though it were a courtship.” Zanja, though appalled by Norina’s efficient violence, also had learned that beauty and artfulness had no place in war. Yet she had continued to practice her solitary katra, the one that kept evolving with the changes of her body and character. And she had taught many of the traditional katra sequences to Emil during the five years they lived as a family. Thus she was not nearly as out of practice as she could have been, and she and Arel were closely matched. When she was able to cease worrying that she might cut him with her supernaturally sharp dagger, she began to enjoy herself.
They danced. The rhythmic ringing of their blades was the music they danced to.
And then the dance began to change. Arel improvised, challenging her to improvise in return. Zanja’s reactions became reflexive—and unavoidably self-revealing. And then she tripped on the edge of a carpet and fell, and Arel’s blade pressed lightly against her throat.
He was breathing heavily. His sculptured face glittered with droplets of sweat. His predator’s eyes were in shadow. She laughed out loud. “I protest! I was not defeated by you, but by the carpet!”
He grinned and sat back on his heels. They clasped left hands to left wrists and so counterbalanced each other as they rose up from the floor and slid their blades back into their sheaths.
“You’re recovering from an illness,” Zanja commented.
“You’re under an alien influence,” he replied.
“I doubt my own relatives would recognize me,” she said.
“I had an ailment of the lungs in the autumn. Would you like more tea?”
They returned to the fireplace and knelt again on either side of the tea tray, but now formality had become unnecessary. “I cannot account for you at all,” said Arel. “You call yourself a ghost, but you’re alive enough to make me bleed.” He gestured at his slashed sleeve, where some drops of blood now glowed.
“I’m afraid my blade is very sharp,” Zanja said. “I am a living ghost, alive but out of time. Half a month ago, I crossed a boundary of water into this world. I have been cold, wet, hungry, angry, and bewildered nearly every moment, and I understand no more about why I am here than I did when I first arrived.”
Arel grunted. “You are very good at replying without answering. You are indeed a Speaker.” He offered his hand—his right hand this time—and Zanja clasped it. “My sister, whatever world you are from, and whatever world you are going to, you are here now, and I am glad to welcome you. Stay with me—not as an outcast or ghost but as my guest. Perhaps I can help resolve your mystery.”
Zanja had to take a deep breath before she could reply, her heart was swelling so. “I wish I could give you an assurance that I will cause no trouble, but trouble seems to always follow me—”
“Trouble is good!” Arel’s face had come alive. “Your presence is wonderful!”
“It is?” Zanja gazed at this man, her forbear, her twin. His statement was like the sun breaking through the gray misery of rain. “It is wonderful,” she breathed. “Yes, it truly is.”
Zanja shared Arel’s bed, as she would have shared the bed of any katrim. In the morning, with her clothing sponged and pressed, her hair combed and her boots oiled, she walked beside him through the lively hallways, where young people rushed to their classrooms or duties, Paladins passed in energetically talking groups, and a wonderful mix of vague, intent, hurried, or aimless people made their way to and from the dining rooms. Arel assured Zanja that Truthkens, being jealous of their every privilege, did not eat in the less ornate dining rooms. So she went in with him, to take a bowl of hot porridge from a harassed cook, and to sit shoulder to shoulder with people who were the stuff of legends. Those to her left were loudly discussing the relative merits of two breeds of sheep. Those across the table seemed sullen over the continuing bad weather. At her right, Arel looked over the crowd with an interest as lively as her own, until he abruptly lowered his head and muttered, “Unfortunately, the house commander is approaching.”
Zanja nonchalantly ate her apple-studded porridge with genuine enjoyment until the commander’s hand closed painfully on her shoulder.
“Good morning, Commander,” said Arel.
“How did this woman get in?”
“She climbed to the roof and entered through a window, as any mountain person could have done. Not everyone walks only on flat ground like cows and horses.”
“This time she will leave under escort.”
“She will not leave at all, Commander.”
“No one enters this house without my permission, no matter who it is!”
“My sister regrets that she was forced to violate this custom. May I ask why she was not given shelter at this deadly time of year?”
In the crowded room all conversations had ceased as people listened with undisguised curiosity to this fiercely polite conversation. The Paladin commander glared around herself, and some of the people began to make a pretense of eating, but many did not.
A Speaker’s status was ambiguous: protected rather than elevated, under no one’s command other than the G’deon’s but expected to practice exemplary behavior. That flexible combination of expectations and independence, Zanja’s old master had said, was beneficial to everyone. Right now it was beneficial to Zanja.
Arel laid a hand on Zanja’s arm and said in their own language, “Don’t do anything that will cause me to laugh.” He looked up at the commander and said in Shaftalese, “I am explaining to my sister why I must promise you that she will behave properly.” Then he said to Zanja, “Pretend to be offended.”
“But I am a katrim!” Zanja said in Shaftalese.
“Still, you must accept my guidance in this matter,” said Arel.
Zanja made a rude gesture, which Arel pretended was a gesture of assent. He said, “Commander, I give you my word of honor that Zanja na’Tarwein will conduct herself honorably.” His expression was utterly serious, except for his eyes. The house commander abruptly lifted her hand from Zanja’s shoulder and stalked away, leaving Arel and Zanja to struggle to finish their breakfast without choking on their own laughter. And now, at last, she was free to walk in the House of Lilterwess by daylight.
Despite the malaise that commonly beset people at this time of year—a gloom, lethargy, or outright surliness of temperament—the House of Lilterwess bustled with energetic activity. Zanja felt as if she had gone from being a ghostly haunt in a nearly vacant city to being a holidaymaker caught up in a lively crowd. Everyone’s business seemed urgent, and most of it also seemed joyful. The purposeful activity was punctuated by unexpected entertainments: the intentional ones of musical performances and bits of staged dramas, and the unintentional ones of inexplicable behavior, intriguing conversation, and angry shouting behind closed doors.
Zanja and Arel were rare indeed, not just because they were the only border people in that wonderful place, but also because they had no burden of responsibilities. Arel showed Zanja his favorite places: a fountain, a gallery, a covered walkway where they could view the hills rolling away like ripples towards the distant sea.
“I have never seen the ocean,” Zanja said.
“You haven’t? Oh, it is a marvel. And it is
intoxicating, also. Anyone who lingers beside that vast water becomes either peaceful or silly. Yet it is very dangerous.”
Later they walked among the classrooms, where children of similar age, demeanor, and dress were variously learning their letters, reciting history, debating each other, practicing musical instruments and more useful tools, naming the bones of a wired-together human skeleton, and working sums on slates. Zanja was so drawn to more than one class that Arel had to pull her away.
“I myself have taken up several subjects over the years,” he admitted. “Currently I’m interested in history and mathematics.”
“Mathematics!”
“It is a mysterious and frustrating subject. But mathematicians can predict eclipses and the movements of the stars!”
Zanja could not see any use in that ability but didn’t say so. “Do they hold classes on interpreting glyphs?”
“Glyphs? Now there’s a peculiar subject.”
“I suppose so. But it has long interested me.”
“Well, every Speaker is an eccentric, they say. Most glyph masters teach at the university, of course. But we do have a Paladin here who teaches a kind of class.”
Soon, Arel went away to attend his mathematics class, leaving Zanja seated in a plain wooden chair in a group much smaller and less uniform than the classes she had observed. Many wore Paladin’s black but were of every age and rank. All were fire bloods. Zanja wondered if she had been foolhardy for letting Arel introduce her into so curious and insightful a group, but her arrival was scarcely noticed.
On an easel, illuminated by lamps, stood a large, stunningly beautiful glyph illustration. It showed a scene of mountains framed by fantastic vines and stylized clouds, with a sunset that seemed to glow with its own light, a light that was in turn reflected in the water of a lake that stood in the middle distance. In the foreground a weary traveler reclined against a tree, with his walking stick and knapsack beside him. Though the traveler was at the end of his life, he looked forward rather than backward, wondering what he would discover beyond the setting sun. Zanja was familiar with that glyph illustration, for it was included in her card pack, one of a group called the Four Directions that each illustrated a person in one of the borderlands of Shaftal. This glyph, the one titled West, was often also called A Traveler in the Land of Endings.
The group had already been discussing the illustration for some time when Zanja joined them. Soon the glyph master, who was younger than many of the students, removed the painting from the easel to carefully wrap it in a cover of soft leather. Its gilding flashed and glittered as it was turned before the lamp flame. She saw its unpainted side and realized it was a piece of copper, green with age.
The teacher unwrapped a new illustration and lifted it to the easel. He spoke briefly, giving information about the glyph’s relationship to other glyphs and the particular glyph group it belonged to, but Zanja lacked the knowledge to appreciate this learned commentary. It did not matter—even the name of the glyph was irrelevant. She gazed at the painting, stunned.
It was the glyph she had imagined: Clement’s name sign. A woman on her knees cupped a flower bulb in her hand. Its roots clasped and intertwined her fingers instead of earth, and its brilliant flower bloomed in the light that radiated like sun from her face. All around her a fantastic array of people and creatures intertwined, struggled with, and destroyed each other. But she heeded only the flower.
When the class ended, Zanja felt as though she were awakening from a lengthy and not particularly restful meditation. She stood up stiffly as the others also yawned and stretched and spoke a few muted words to each other. They left the room and paced dazedly away in various directions. For a few moments Zanja could not remember where she was, or where she should go. She felt drained of energy and ravenously hungry. She doubted that Arel’s mathematics class would leave him feeling this way.
“The class was odd—and marvelous,” she told him when they met in the fountain courtyard, where now a cluster of young flute players hooted and wailed on their instruments.
“Let us flee this racket,” said Arel. He added, as they turned down the hall toward the dining room, “Everything odd is marvelous.”
“Of course it is. But I have discovered that I accurately imagined a glyph, both its name and its meaning, though I had never seen or heard of it before. That is even more odd and marvelous than usual, don’t you think?”
She told him about Blooming, about its emphasis on the importance of the patient attention necessary to bring a dormant possibility into being, and of the danger posed by the constant distraction of more immediate demands that are more easily and less effortfully fulfilled.
“Ah, my sister, these glyphs are like the gods to you,” he said, as they joined the line of people waiting to enter the dining room.
“I do see the gods in the glyphs,” Zanja admitted. “To think that there are a thousand of these paintings, carefully stored somewhere nearby . . . I could almost remain here the rest of my life so I could study them all.”
Arel shook his head at her, benignly indulgent in the face of an enthusiasm he did not share. “But you cannot remain here, can you? For it is your doom to cross again to yet another world.”
After a midday meal of bean soup with bread, which was exactly what Zanja would expect to be served on an ordinary day in her own Shaftal, Arel took Zanja visiting. She sat quietly in one room while he discussed poetry with several friends, and in another room while he discussed vegetable gardening with some more. A gardener gave Arel a packet of seeds, a variety of green pea that would not drown even in exceptionally wet weather. “The seeds are for the farmers of the Asha Valley,” explained Arel to Zanja. “If the weather allows me to go home before the spring planting season is over!”
They had walked to the Perimeter Way, so Arel could take the daily brisk walk that a healer had advised. They were not alone in this activity, for as farmers exercise their plow horses to condition them for the hard work ahead, so also many people were conditioning themselves for the journeys and labors of the coming warm season. Paladins loped around and around in organized groups, and despite the fast pace still managed to converse with each other. Others made the circuit less swiftly, in pairs or alone. Zanja watched for the shorn heads and white robes of Truthkens, but saw none. Perhaps they were carried everywhere they went, and so did not need to harden themselves to travel. She found it difficult to imagine Norina requiring or accepting such treatment.
The setting sun seemed to have hammered a hole through the clouds, for on the western side of the building red sunlight was cast in slanted squares on the walls opposite the high windows. The light made the people who passed here seem ruddy with good health. Arel and Zanja had been discussing her situation as well as they could, considering that she felt reluctant to reveal any details. “I have never seen or even heard of a living water witch,” said Arel.
“I actually did meet one once—I didn’t spend much time with him, though.”
Up ahead, on the southern side of the perimeter near the front door, a confusion of people had clustered. Paladins who had loped past Zanja and Arel several times had come to a halt there, as had many others, who peered curiously around those in front of them.
“Oh!” exclaimed Arel. “But why has he returned so soon? That cannot bode well.”
Zanja’s faculties drew taut, like a bow being strung. She said regretfully, “This leisure has been so pleasant!”
The collected people began to move back as if in response to an invisible pressure from within the crowd. Then a hole broke open, and out squeezed a number of filthy Paladins in dripping rain capes, whose faces even at this distance appeared gaunt with tiredness. They pressed the people back to create a wider passage for more of their travel-weary fellows, who in turn added their bodies to the human wall. Finally a short, stocky man walked swiftly d
own the passage they had built. Behind him, in a neat choreography, the Paladins reshaped themselves into an escort. Others, perhaps out of curiosity or just out of habit, trailed behind the escort so that it was a group of twenty or thirty people that bore down on Zanja and Arel.
They stepped back to make room for this crowd. But the short man headed directly towards them. He was as muddy as his companions, but unlike them did not appear tired. His wide girth, Zanja realized, was an illusion created by muscle, not by fat. Even his hands looked powerful, with thick fingers, coarse skin, big wrists, and veins that popped out when he clenched his hands into fists. His momentum did not slow at all, so it seemed he were going to crush them up against the wall like a falling boulder. Then, within arm’s reach, he suddenly halted: a pugnacious figure with his feet apart, his chin jutting forward, his nostrils flaring and narrowing with each breath.
His glare carried the momentum forward, so that Zanja felt its impact like a blow. She had distantly heard Arel murmur a warning in their shared tongue, but already she stood frozen, with her hands well away from her dagger even though like Arel she had knotted the holdfasts.
The man uttered a growl of words: “What are you?”
She said, “Tadwell G’deon, I must talk to you in private.”
Then she cried sharply, as his hand reached as if to grasp her wrist, “Do not touch me!”
Chapter 14
Seth was not the only person seeking refuge in Garland’s kitchen. Though his operation was vast, complex, and highly organized, it still remained a place where farmers like Seth could find familiar, soothing work at any hour. She peeled a lot of vegetables: carrots, turnips, potatoes, and onions. The peels went into the broth pot and the rest would be chopped, fried, boiled, and used in one or another recipe, eventually winding up being fed to an unending, unpredictable, appreciative, and always hungry crowd. Karis came in every day to sharpen the knives and scour the pots, and Garland often cooked a meal only for her. The G’deon’s appetite seemed a measure of her state of mind, and she wasn’t eating well for a person so large and hard working.
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