Zanja said, “You are both wrong. I have been a katrim since I was twelve years old, and I am a katrim now. But a katrim is similar to a Paladin, and it is easier for you to see me as familiar than as strange.”
“Apparently none of you realize how weary I am of philosophy,” said Tadwell grumpily.
The two Paladins walked ahead, showing the way to the front door. A few people began to trail behind them—perhaps curious, or wishing to speak to Tadwell should there be an opportunity. They kept a polite distance, and Tadwell and Zanja managed one last private conversation. He said, “ If there are any water witches in Shaftal, they are very secretive and they are invisible to me.”
“There’s a lake northwest of Kisha that I know as Otter Lake. I once met a water witch there, in an entire tribe of water people. It was an excellent place to live, so perhaps that tribe is also there now. I speak their language somewhat, so I’ll go there first.”
“You won’t find any farms in that region,” said Tadwell. “It’s rough country.”
“I’ll live off the land, then.”
“Only if you have the right gear!”
Tadwell called Orna back and quizzed her on the contents of Zanja’s pack. Soon she ran off to find fish hooks, rabbit snares, and a light bow for fowling. When they reached the exit Tadwell gave Zanja some coins, irregular blobs of silver or copper stamped with the assayer’s mark. In Zanja’s time some of these ancient coins would still be in circulation, for, primitive though they looked, their weight would still be accurate. She stood with Tadwell in the balmy sunshine, waiting for Orna. By the time the young Paladin arrived, out of breath, her arms loaded with gear, Tadwell’s face had softened with pleasure in the glorious day.
And why not be glad? Zanja was being set loose in a marvelous land that history had turned its back on during her lifetime. The earring meant that she would no longer suffer from hostility and suspicion. The foul weather was over and would not return until autumn. This adventure might well have a terrible ending, but why should she not enjoy it while she could?
“Farewell, Orna. Farewell, Tadwell.”
“Safe journey,” they both replied.
Suffused by eager curiosity, Zanja started down the road.
Chapter 18
When Clement isn’t screaming, and isn’t unconscious, she demands that her officers be brought to her, for she knows they will give her the last mercy. But the stranger who looks after her refuses.
“Endure,” he says. “Endure for the G’deon, and for Shaftal.”
“Shaftal’s arse!” Her voice has broken like the frayed rope of a catapult.
Sound: horrific, monotonous, unrelenting. It tortures her, reminding her she has not managed to die.
A lukewarm broth is dribbled into her mouth. She closes her throat against it.
“Swallow.”
She spits it out.
“It will help the pain,” he says. “Swallow, Clement. I beg you.”
How strange that her torturer has been weeping.
A warmth is rising in the back of her throat. Her jaw goes slack. He spoons more broth into her mouth. The warmth spreads from neck to shoulder to arm to fingertip. But the rhythmic, humble, horrid sound continues.
She wakes up, screaming. As in a nightmare, her torturers hold her down. The stranger’s hands are bloody. “Give her more,” he says.
The broth. The warmth.
The ordinary factuality of the horrific, rhythmic sound.
“Clement, endure. You’re stronger than you know.”
“How long?” she cries. “How long?” But she makes no sound.
Thud-thud. Thud-thud. The clockwork jerks mindlessly on. Each second lasts an hour.
Her guts are rotting. Her heart spreads the poison throughout her body.
The clock ticks on.
Clement heard someone breathing. She heard a wagon rolling past on a cobbled street. The faint, far-away carol of a rooster. The sturdy, rhythmic ticking of a distant clock. A baby yelping joyfully in her ear.
She opened her eyes in startlement. Scarcely a hand-span away, her son gave her a toothless, helpless, utterly joyful grin.
“You smiled!” Her voice sounded like tearing paper. “Gabie!”
She raised her hand with great difficulty, but then it seemed to float away, gaunt and bloodless, tethered to her heavy body by a wasted arm. She dragged her floating hand downward. It flopped nervelessly onto Gabian. He grabbed her finger, brought it to his mouth, and began sucking it happily.
A weight shifted. A sweat-sticky body, she realized, was pressed against her—the entire length of her. The hand that had been a weight on Clement’s belly moved to her throat. Clement coughed, and coughed again.
A voice only somewhat less hoarse than hers said, “That son of yours will suck anything.”
“Karis,” Clement said. Her voice had become clear.
The hand moved down again to Clement’s belly. “No more pain,” Karis said. “Go back to sleep.”
Clement’s boy sucked her finger ecstatically, drooling, kicking his splayed legs. His tongue was soft as melted butter, but his suckling had amazing strength. Clement shut her eyes, and milk flowed from her fingertips in her dreams.
When Clement awoke next, the distant clock was still ticking, and muffled voices were shouting at each other. Gabian and Karis both were asleep. With much trouble Clement extricated herself from between the giant and the helpless infant. Then she fell off the bed. Her legs were so weak she could scarcely sit upon the chamber pot. She dragged herself into a cushioned chair and sat there, panting from effort.
She occupied a plain room with unpainted plank walls that were orange with age. Its one window was shuttered, though the air smelled quite foul. On the floor lay gray wool, shredded, black with old blood: her uniform. Beside it was a pile of blood-rusty bedsheets and bandages, and a quarrel with its iron head removed.
She looked down at her flat belly. A few flakes of dried blood were there, but no wounds and no scars.
She breathed deeply. Her heart beat. She felt the horror that crouched in the shadows.
The door opened. The stranger from her nightmares entered silently. He tucked the baby under Karis’s arm and pulled the sheet to cover her. Clement noticed the soggy pile of Karis’s discarded clothing. The bottoms of her cast-off boots had so little leather left that they hardly looked like boots at all.
The stranger asked, “Would you like to wash, General Clement?” His voice was quiet, respectful, gentle: not the voice of a torturer.
“Master healer,” she said, “I must talk to my people.”
“They will be glad of it, I think. But I’ll take you to another room so the G’deon can rest.”
He lifted her skillfully and walked her out the door, into a hall, where the shouting became very loud, and through another door into a room as plain as the last, but where the air smelled of rose petals and mold, not of death. He sat her in a chair and brought a bedsheet for her to wrap herself in. The sheet had been scented by wind.
“The rain has stopped?” asked Clement.
“The sun has been shining for two days now.” The healer left.
The shouting ceased, and Clement heard booted feet hurrying down the hall. Soldiers filled the doorway and froze there, staring as though she’d risen from a bier with her rotting flesh sliding off her bones. Then Herme flung himself forward, clasping her hand in both of his and crying, “General! General!”
They crowded in after him, taking turns touching her, grinning crazily, furtively rubbing their eyes.
“Report—anyone,” Clement said. “I was shot—that’s all I know.”
Herme said, “After the Wilton soldiers shot you with the crossbow, they shot you with guns—and all the while, the gate captain w
as shouting at them to hold their fire. We carried you out of range, and the Paladins took us to this house. That Shaftali medic arrived the next morning and put his hands right into your belly to sew your bowels together with needle and thread. He forced a draught into you, but if it was for pain it didn’t do much good, or not for long.”
The horror stepped out of the shadows. She willed it back, but it lay down and watched her.
“What happened then?”
“The Paladins wouldn’t allow us to give you mercy,” said Efrat. “And they kept apologizing to us, the bastards!”
“The Paladins killed the raven,” Herme said. “They made a broth from its carcass and fed it to you. The bird told them to do it.”
“Gods of my mother!” cried Clement, appalled.
Mereth said, “With wounds like that, you shouldn’t have survived one day. But you survived six. And last night the G’deon came.”
“From Watfield? In six days?”
“In the middle of the night she slammed right through the door. The latch and lock broke into a dozen pieces.”
Another said, “Day and night she must have walked without rest. Her feet were bleeding—she was pale as death.”
“The local Paladins didn’t know who she was. They thought it was an attack.”
Sevan said, “Well, she’s better than a whole battalion, eh? Whose side is she fighting on, though?”
Clement said, “Why does it matter? We just have to make bloody certain we’re beside her, whichever way she happens to face.”
Thirty officers laughed, saying, “That’s right, general. It doesn’t matter. Not a bit.” Mereth fell silent first.
Clement remembered Saleen’s laughter, and his sigh as he collapsed so neatly to the wet cobblestones. “Commander Saleen was killed.”
Mereth nodded, quite expressionless. “And General Mabin.” Clement remembered the old woman’s feral grin. A poor governor, maybe—but a great leader, justly revered.
Efrat said, “We could have been killed in retribution. But the Paladins we’d traveled with put themselves between us and the irregulars, and they’ve been protecting us ever since, I guess, keeping the Wilton Paladins away from us and standing up to the shouting mobs that have gathered outside the door.”
“And apologizing?”
Efrat grinned wryly. Sevan said, “They’ve been good friends to us, and that’s the truth of it. And after all this, Watfield Garrison’s gates are still closed.”
The horror gazed steadily at her. “What were you shouting about?” she asked.
“Oh, that was them, the Paladins,” said Denit.
“Bloody hell! Paladins never shout.” But with Mabin and Saleen both dead, the bitter Commander Ronal was the senior Paladin officer.
“That would be the Watfield Paladins, arguing with Ronal,” she said. “Have they been shouting at each other for six days?”
“Not all the time,” said Denit dryly.
“Someone bring Ronal and his officers to me,” Clement said. “In fact, bring all the Paladins you can find.”
Two of them went out, chuckling with anticipation, and returned with Ronal, some of his officers, and three exhausted Watfield Paladins.
“What were you people arguing about?” Clement asked Ronal.
“I will not answer to you,” Ronal said.
“I am the officer in charge of this operation!”
One of the Watfield Paladins said, “Clement, Ronal has mustered all the companies in the west—nearly two hundred Paladin irregulars and their commanders—and many have already arrived, with more arriving all the time.”
“Do you intend to violate the truce, Ronal?” asked Clement.
“Mabin has been killed by Sainnite guns! The truce has already been violated!”
“Mabin and Saleen defied my direct command and put themselves in the way of the bullets my people were shooting at me. At me!”
“The Watfield Sainnites concealed from us that they had not given up all their weapons—”
“The decision to renew the war is not yours!”
“The war is over,” said Karis.
She filled the doorway, red-eyed, dirty, dressed only in her limp longshirt. She held Gabian in one arm, and with the other supported herself against the alarmingly creaking door frame. The Wilton Paladins gaped at her. A Watfield Paladin said, “Ronal, this is Karis G’deon.” Ronal began to say one or another of those bloody Paladin courtesies, but Karis said impatiently, “Why am I hemmed in by sharpened edges? Does everyone in this city have a weapon?”
Ronal let his breath out. “Paladins are arriving from afar to defend Shaftal.”
“Oh, for land’s sake! Send them home!”
Ronal’s mouth opened. One of the black-dressed Paladins lay a hand on his shoulder and murmured to him in a tone that was urgent but kind. Ronal studied his feet. “Would you speak directly to the commanders, Karis?”
Karis sighed. “Yes.”
Ronal’s jaw muscles were working. “I’ll bring them to you.” He quit the room, and moments later the front door slammed shut.
“Give Karis a place to sit,” said Clement to her people.
A path was opened to a chair beside the bed. Karis glanced at the chair, handed Gabian to the nearest soldier, and sat on the floor. Her shirt was buttoned crookedly, and the hair on one side of her head was squashed. Rubbing her eyes, with her long legs folded beneath her, she looked like a gigantic child awakened from a nap.
As Gabian was passed from soldier to soldier, each of them in turn had to figure out how to hold the baby. At last Efrat handed Gabian to Clement. He blinked at her, clutched a bit of the wind-scented sheet, and fell back asleep.
“Well, General,” said Karis. “What now?”
Bloody hell, thought Clement. How could Karis have come this far and have no plan?
“Emil wonders if there are people in Wilton garrison whose hearts, at least, are in mutiny against Heras.”
“I’m certain there are—but it’s the officers that matter. Now it seems Heras may have people in every company whose orders come directly from her, and the officers know it now. And they know she tricked them into mutiny.” Clement felt something—a bit of hope—and then realized what it meant. The horror grinned at her.
Karis said wearily, “You’re not lying to me, are you?” At least she seemed too tired to be furious.
“Karis, if Heras had killed me, that would have ended her ambitions also. The commanders won’t accept as general anyone who kills her rival. Strategically, it was worth the risk.”
Karis said nothing. It occurred to Clement that Karis’s ability to lead had never been tested. She was a woman of strength—strength in many forms—but not of subtlety. Her decisions were made by aversion and instinct; people did as she asked because of devotion rather than persuasion. But to think through options, to make unappealing choices, that was unnatural to her. She was intelligent—intelligent enough to carefully deploy or inhibit her own impulses, intelligent enough to surround herself with and heed advisors who could make certain she never acted in ignorance, or on impulse.
Karis may have been thinking something similar, for she said, “I’m unable to consult with Emil. These Paladins—” She glanced at them, and they blinked owlishly at her, practically asleep on their feet.
Clement spoke hastily, fearful that the horror would leap out and grab her by the throat. “I must go back to the garrison.”
Efrat, apparently understanding Clement, cried in their own language, “They’ll shoot you again, General!”
Clement kept her gaze only on Karis, who gazed steadily back at her.
“Right now,” Karis said finally, “I couldn’t save you if they shoot you again.”
“Right now I can’t even wa
lk by myself.”
“You just need to eat,” Karis said. “Tomorrow, then.”
It took three people to get the G’deon to her feet. The Paladins took her away.
As two of the women officers helped Clement to bathe and eat, she frequently heard the front door open and close, and there were voices and noisy footsteps in the hall. The women lay Clement down to rest in the room that smelled of roses, with Gabian in an improvised nest of blankets on the floor. Karis seemed to have brought nothing with her but the baby. When the more urgent business had been taken care of, Clement would ask a Paladin to fetch a bottle and diapers.
She started awake at the sound of the door latch. Karis, ducking her head, filled up the doorway as Mereth, on guard in the hall, saluted smartly.
Karis sat heavily by Clement on the groaning bed. “Norina can strangle people with their own opinions in just a few words. It takes me most of the afternoon.”
“Karis—my people told me about the raven.”
The lamp’s flame had become a dim red glow, and the light that filtered through the shutters was a dim haze. Karis dug her fingers into the tangled mess of her hair, and her features were lost in shadow. “My raven’s death hurt me,” she said. “But it condemned you.”
The horror smelled like rotting flesh. It dug its long teeth into her viscera and ate a leisurely meal. For six days it had eaten her. Six days.
Clement was shuddering too violently to speak.
“Clement—stop.”
Karis’s callused hand lay heavy on her forehead. The G’deon’s eyes were red and swollen; her hand was rough and cold. And the horror was gone. Clement took a deep breath.
Karis said, “In Lalali I awoke every morning knowing I would be raped that day. They gave me smoke to make me pliable, and I soon came to love the drug. Under smoke, being raped was quite ordinary and painless. So I ask you, was the drug a gift or a curse?”
Water Logic Page 21