Water Logic

by Laurie J. Marks

  She has reached the gate. The quarrel that had pierced her is in her hand. “Soldiers of Watfield Garrison!” she cries. “Tell Heras her general has returned her quarrel!”

  She flings the bolt up into the light, over the wall, over the barricade.

  Up on the rampart she hears exclamations, and the creaks and thuds of hurried movement. Now scuffling, grunting, the whack of a fist. A gun blast. A ball of lead smacks into a building’s stone wall. These soldiers need target practice, Clement thinks.

  The plan: Clement pulls back the rags from her unscarred belly. “Shoot me!”

  She waits. She observes the spyholes and glimpses movement. The soldiers are peering at her. She reviews again what she had told herself before, before Karis made her so clear. A new captain, for Megert had not been loyal enough. New orders. Heras thought Clement was dead. Heras realizes that Clement has won. She might kill her again, but then Clement will win again.

  Heras has always been clear.

  Clement waits. A shutter slams down the street. A dog barks. A vendor sings. The sun has risen a little more.

  “A long wait is good,” she had told Karis before dawn. “It means someone is fetching Heras, which means the gate captain doesn’t know what to do. And that means Heras is beginning to lose her people.”

  From the other side of the gate there comes a clangor. The bars that secure the siege gate are being removed and dropped. The gate begins to vibrate and utter a squawk as a dozen soldiers grab handholds and endeavor to break loose the rust-frozen rollers. An officer shouts a cadence. In short jerks, with many an ear-splitting squeal, the gate opens. A palm’s width, an arm’s length. The breadth of a single soldier. Clement sees, through the bars of the primary gate, the new captain squirting oil into the massive lock. He begins wrestling with the key.

  Clement waits.

  The lock opens with a squawk. Two soldiers step out to swing the gate upon its shrieking hinges. The narrow opening in the siege gate frames a person on the other side. She is waiting. It is Heras.

  “The soldiers will think I’m a ghost,” Clement had told Karis.

  The two soldiers stare, wide-eyed. Clement steps forward. She had once thought of Heras as a predator. She had realized she herself was the prey. To be with her had become terrifying. Yet Clement had never ceased to want her.

  Speak so the captain can hear. No one else will matter.

  “I am your general,” Clement says. “I am taking command of this garrison.” She makes her voice loud. She speaks clearly.

  “Welcome, my general,” Heras says.

  Clement steps forward. Heras looks at her closely. But Heras is not important. Clement steps into the garrison. The primary gate clangs shut behind her.

  “Heras will lock me in,” she had said to Karis, “to prevent me from being dragged to safety again.”

  Loudly and clearly, Clement says, “The G’deon is here.”

  “Is she?” Heras says. “Will she rescue her puppet general? Will she knock down our walls? I’d like to see that—but this G’deon is an impostor, isn’t she?”

  Clement says, “Captain, take Heras into custody for mutiny.”

  The captain doesn’t move. Heras draws her saber. Saleen’s dagger is a weight on Clement’s belt. To draw it is not in the plan.

  “I will not spill Sainnite blood,” Clement says. She is speaking to the captain. “But if my blood is spilled, this garrison’s walls will fall down.”

  Clement drops to one knee. The saber slashes in air where her throat had been.

  “Draw!” Heras cries. “Draw, damn you!”

  “I would rather die,” Clement says.

  Heras lifts her arm. Clement has seen many a dummy decapitated by the blow. “I can’t put your head back on your body,” Karis had said that morning. Clement is looking into Heras’s eyes. Heras does not blink. The saber begins to sing.

  There is a dissonant clang of steel on steel. Heras’s saber flings itself upward over her head. She snatches it out of the air. The blade that blocked the blow rings on stones. It will have to be resharpened.

  “Guard your general!” someone cries.

  Soldiers fling themselves between Clement and Heras. Clement stands up. The gate captain is now beside her. He has no weapon. He shouts up at the rampart. Soldiers grab at each other. Weapons are drawn. The captain shouts. The resisting soldiers are overwhelmed.

  The gate captain says, “General, please pardon that I didn’t act sooner, but they had to see that she would kill you with her own hand. Shall I have myself placed under arrest?”

  This was not in the plan. Clement does not know the answer to the captain’s question. She ignores it. “Heras and all the lieutenant commanders are to be arrested. Open the gate. Your new commander is waiting outside.”

  “Yes, General.” The captain pushes through to Heras and tells her to surrender her weapon.

  Heras places her saber point over her heart, and falls. The blade plunges through. The soldiers cry out.

  Heras has missed her own heart. She is silent, grappling with the saber. She puts a leg out, but cannot rise. She pulls the saber. She slashes her hands upon its edge.

  Clement draws Saleen’s dagger and cuts her old friend’s throat.

  Chapter 21

  At a settlement in the north, a woman is standing outdoors under the vast awning of an ancient oak tree. The tree is bare, not even budding yet, and the raven normally would not come so close to the woman. However, several other ravens have gathered here to dispute possession of the tree, and the raven is able to hide in this small crowd of black-dressed hoodlums.

  The assassin is painting a portrait on a piece of wood that has been cut and planed as thin and smooth as human hand can manage. The central figures are complete: the two youngest children of the family, dressed in their best clothing and holding favorite toys. It is odd to see them remain so neat and still, for in life they are neither. Now that the rain has ended, the assassin has begun to paint the background. Having sketched in the shapes of the hills and trees, the fields and buildings and orchards, with her brush she now lays down layers of color. But her colors are not the grays and browns of the muddy landscape before her: she dresses the hills with grass, the trees with flowers, the sky with birds. She paints the spring that has not yet begun.

  In the Barrens north of Basdown, not even a raven can find sustenance at this time of year. The fast-moving voles survive on the grass hay they gathered in autumn. The crickets have not emerged yet, nor have the lizards and snakes. Little else can live in this wasteland. Every evening the raven flies the long distance to the nearest farm in Basdown, where the cow dogs permit him to share their supper, and then flies back in darkness to continue his surveillance of the assassin.

  Now that the rain has ended, the assassin cooks outdoors, and as he nurses his small fire he whittles sticks into snakes, or deer, or birds. He throws the shavings into the fire, and then the finished carvings as well. He has very little wood.

  One night, the raven arrives from his usual scavenging journey to find the camp as usual, the man in shelter, probably already sleeping. Not until morning does the raven realize his quarry has slipped away. He flies to a great height and surveys the empty landscape but sees no movement in any direction.

  The door of sunset creaked each day to a close, and the dawn bells marked the opening of the next door. Ten times this happened. After Seth’s duties with Prista’s company ended each day, she sought out Gilly, whom she usually found in Ellid’s work room. He would look up from whatever he happened to be reading or writing and say briefly, “No news.”

  Only three people in the garrison knew that Clement was probably dead.

  Several times, Seth visited Travesty to meet with the Peace Committee, and changed clothes before she went, folding her handed-
down uniform into the nearly empty chest, putting on her wrinkled breeches and longshirt. This changing of clothing helped her to move from one culture to the other, but it became increasingly difficult, and then nearly impossible, to change back to being a soldier again. Yet she was merely pretending to do the thing they hoped to ask these soldiers to do in earnest.

  When the rain finally ended, some things improved and some things grew worse. Prista’s company went for long, brisk marches through the countryside, and Damon often was removed from interminable guard duty to join them. During off-hours, many soldiers fussed over the flower garden, and Seth took over the care of Clement’s bit of garden. She lifted the mulch to reveal hundreds of green fingers poking through the heavy brown soil in which they had wintered. Damon told her to look in Clement’s quarters for more bulbs, bulbs that were too tender for Shaftal’s hard winter. She found baskets of them, clean, dry, packed in straw as if they were precious glassware. Damon taught her how to plant them, and she managed to not weep until he had left to pursue his own tasks in his precious bit of earth.

  They opened up the barracks to the breeze and scrubbed everything, including their uniforms and themselves, and Seth no longer felt ill from the stink of twenty-two women living shoulder to shoulder all winter. She no longer had to wake up in dead of night to watch over the stove for an hour; its fire had been allowed to burn out. But now there was battle practice, which Seth loathed; the seething angers of barracks-weary soldiers became an aimless bewilderment that no one knew how to manage; and the food became even worse.

  One day a note, grimy after having been passed from hand to hand all over the garrison, was handed to her. On a small square of paper was written a single word, followed by Emil’s glyph. “Healed,” it said. On her knees in wet earth, with a basket of stable muck beside her and a cultivating tool in her hand, she stared at that note for a good quarter hour. She had expected Emil to confirm that Clement was dead. She didn’t know what to do with the fact she was alive.

  When she visited Gilly as usual that day, she found him alone in Ellid’s work room, with tears on his face. She sat with him, and he talked about Clement: how when they were young she had protected him from Heras; how after battle she always was ill; how she had detested Cadmar; how haunted she had been by her crimes against Shaftal.

  “She told me this mission was going to kill her,” he said, “and I’m the only one she told. But she’s alive. She killed Heras with her own hand. Four more times, she must do something similar, or worse.” He rocked with pain upon his clerk’s stool, still holding his pen upon which the ink had long since dried. “It will destroy her,” he said.

  Emil sent for her. At Travesty, Seth greeted the off-duty dogs and noticed that the floor was clean. The walls also had been scrubbed, the lamp hooks were polished, and the furniture was dusted. In the big foyer, where random people had always hung about, the furniture was turned topsy-turvy. Three people hoisted a rolled carpet to their shoulders. Several others carried armloads of cushions and draperies. A half dozen people with buckets and scrub brushes worked their way across the dingy stone floor.

  “Keep those dirty dogs away!” A man approached, armed with two feather dusters and a basket of cleaning rags.

  Seth grabbed the dogs by the collars.

  “There’s a mountain of laundry to be done,” the man said. “Fireplaces, ash cans, windows, . . .” He listed tasks, his gaze flicking about the room as though he trusted no one to do the work properly.

  Seth said, “I’m Mariseth of Basdown. I’m a councilor.”

  He put his hands on his hips and subjected Seth to a minute examination. “Apparently, you can sew. So why does everything want mending?”

  Astonished, Seth said, “I’m learning how to govern the country!”

  “How can you govern when this place is so filthy?” He stalked off.

  “Goodness!” said Seth to no one. “He needn’t be so brusque about it.”

  One of Norina’s young students admitted her into the restricted part of the house. Here the dark corners still housed dust kittens, and the walls were gray with old soot. The dirt from Karis’s demolition work lay thick on the ornate furniture. The dining room, though, was pristine as always, and unusually empty. Seth looked into the kitchen, where a crowd of cooks were chopping, frying, kneading, trimming, mixing, and talking loudly and cheerfully as Garland moved briskly from table to stove to storeroom, murmuring commands and compliments. He spotted Seth and came over to give her a kiss, with his floury hands clasped behind his back so he could not use her as a hand towel.

  “Did you know you’ve got an army of housecleaners in the front half?” she asked.

  “No, but blessings on them, I say.”

  “I’m sure they’d do the rest of the building also, if the Truthkens let them in.”

  “I’ll have to feed them too,” Garland said happily. “And are you hungry?”

  He gave her a generous plate full of food, which she brought to the library with her. There, Emil sat at his worktable with his back to her, and she could tell by the stink of glue that he was repairing a book. Deep within the bookshelves, she heard a shuffling, a sigh, and then silence. Emil turned his head, though she had not spoken. “I’m almost done, Seth. How have you been?”

  “Living with the Sainnites is a misery. Why must they eat such swill? And why must they sleep in such uncomfortable beds?” She sat in one of the armchairs, which was not as cozy as it looked. “Why must they be informed of my position and authority before they’ll talk with me? Why must they always stand as though they have beanpoles rammed up their butts?”

  “Because they do have beanpoles rammed up their butts,” said a muffled tenor voice from within the maze of books—Medric.

  “It’s a good idea, though,” said Emil. Medric laughed sharply. Emil clarified, “To live with them. Don’t let a librarian see that you’ve brought food in here.”

  After dealing with angry and listless soldiers, Seth thought she could manage a librarian. She sat in an armchair by the fireplace, where a low fire burned day and night to protect the precious books from damp. She ate a piece of meat pie, vegetable patties, stewed dried peaches, and a fat slice of butter cake. Emil finished his gluing and wiped his hands on a rag. “Medric, have you got a map yet?”

  Medric, who must have been the source of the shuffling among the books, didn’t answer.

  Emil sat in the chair opposite Seth, glanced at her empty plate, and said, “No crumbs. You even eat like a soldier.”

  “Or like a starving animal.”

  “We must get those people better food.”

  “And worthwhile work. By now they would normally be running around the countryside, collecting taxes and fighting Paladins. The captains keep us busy, but everyone knows it’s just empty activity. That’s not good for people. We have to believe we’re doing something worth doing. And since soldiers only value fighting—” She sighed.

  That hollow in her belly had not been helped by food. Perhaps it wasn’t hunger at all. “They’re teaching me to kill people,” she said.

  “That can’t be an easy job for them.”

  She glanced up at his face. Yes, it had been a wry joke. “Gilly thinks that Clement won’t recover from what she has to do.”

  “Why don’t people tell me things when I can do something about them?” Emil seemed more weary than angry. He shut his eyes for a moment.

  “Can Norina help her, do you think?”

  “I don’t know. Norina had to settle for half measures with Zanja.”

  Medric spoke, startlingly close. “What a couple of gloomy people you are. Your map, General Emil.” He delivered a Sainnite’s salute, mockingly exaggerated, and handed Emil a rolled piece of parchment.

  Emil glanced at the notations on the outside of the document. “It’s two hundred and t
hirty years old. A Truthken’s map—Norina might be interested in it. It’ll work, I suppose.”

  He carefully unrolled the crackling, ancient parchment and held it open across his legs. “Where is our missing assassin, Master Seer?”

  “Don’t call me that,” Medric said.

  “But you called me ‘general.’ ”

  “Oh, revenge is it?”

  Medric pointed at the map. Emil turned it so Seth could see what Medric was pointing at: Basdown.

  Seth felt the gorge rise in her throat. Medric promptly handed her a cup half-full of cold tea, which may have been sitting on Emil’s table. She swallowed a mouthful. It may have been old, but it settled her stomach. “This work is too hard. I think I’ll go back to cow doctoring.”

  “Will you? I’ll be a librarian, then.” Emil gestured at Medric. “And my husband here—”

  “I can shoot. It’s my only useful skill.”

  “Useful in war. Too bad we’re at peace.”

  “I’ll starve, then,” said Medric cheerfully.

  The two men smiled at each other. This silly banter made Seth impatient. “So there’s an assassin in Basdown,” she said.

  “Karis finds us tiresome, also.” Medric wandered back into the books.

  “I’ve been terrified for Karis,” said Emil. “I’m sure you think I’ve been parsimonious with information, but I would have told you more had I known anything. The ravens stopped talking a day after she left for Watfield. I only knew Karis was unharmed because of that one note a couple of days ago, and it was chary with detail—she doesn’t much like writing. But I guess it occurred to her that I might be worried by the ravens’ silence, and she sent another note. She had the Paladins kill a raven to save Clement, and now she can’t make the ravens talk. She can’t be in them, though she still knows what they know. So she told me that a raven had lost track of one of the assassins, and that it had looked for him in Basdown but had been unable to find him. So I need you to go to Basdown to locate our man and tell the raven where he is.”