Water Logic

by Laurie J. Marks

The wagon awaited them, with the horses hanging their heads, shifting their weight from side to side. Karis said to one of the Paladins, “I’ll walk.”

  Zanja put a hand upon the Paladin’s arm before he could begin a pointless protest. “Master Paladin, she’s finished with pretending to be manageable.”

  He uttered a snort, the first sign of humor in any of these grim Paladins. At Zanja’s side, Emil said quietly, “If you please, Farber, drive the wagon.”

  “Of course, Emil,” he said.

  Karis and Emil began the tedious bidding of farewell, a Shaftali custom Zanja could participate in if she had to but would never understand. The Ashawala’i had merely bidden each other farewell, and only made a ritual of it when they knew they would never see each other again. Perhaps this was the custom of a people who expected every day to be their last. And when the Sainnites encountered it in this distant land, they had not recognized it as their own.

  Clement took Seth’s hand and spoke to her, bidding her a private farewell, Zanja thought. But they looked into each other’s eyes, and then Seth turned her head to say over her shoulder, “I’ll come to Travesty in the morning. Would someone call the Peace Committee together for breakfast with me?”

  “I’ll do it,” said Zanja.

  “That won’t be necessary,” said Gilly. “The committee is here in the garrison, all of them, scattered in various companies. I’ll send some notes around and have all of them meet you somewhere.”

  Seth stared at him, and then looked at Emil, as if to ask whether it was really true. Emil said, “I’ll have Garland send over some decent food for you.”

  “It took those two long enough,” Karis muttered, as they started into the city behind the rattling wagon, with the other Paladins walking close to her. Her bandaged feet were in slippers that someone at High Meadow Farm had hastily made for her. She was not limping, though she was walking very carefully. Her feet had bled all over Shaftal in the last few months, and many a farmer would soon be surprised by the inexplicable fertility of fields she had crossed.

  Emil took Zanja’s elbow. A lamp burned on a nearby corner, and she saw tears shining on his face. “Gods know you’ve got plenty to weep about,” she said.

  “Saleen,” he said. “Of course he’s dead. But I still expected to see him.”

  A raven must be killed and fed to the general so she will continue to live in agony. A tribe must be sacrificed to guarantee the survival of all tribes. The present moment comes to us through unnoticed actions of the past—too many to count, mostly unknown and unnoticed, and sometimes unavoidably terrible. We give ourselves up to the future, one drop of blood at a time, whether we choose to do it or not. That is the truth, Zanja thought, little though we can endure it.

  Karis said, “I might have sent for you right away. I might have stayed with Clement when I thought Zanja was dead.” She was talking, Zanja realized belatedly, to Norina, who walked beside her.

  Norina said, “I’m tired, not angry. You are the G’deon. You did what you did.”

  They took several careful steps, and the Paladins behind them, too exhausted to pay proper attention, began to outpace them, then realized what they were doing and fell back. Fortunately, their ineffectual protection was not necessary.

  Norina said, “If you had been more rational, we’d have had the same outcome, though perhaps with less anxiety and effort.”

  “You’re wrong,” Zanja said.

  “And the correct answer is?”

  “Only this moment can be changed, Madam Truthken.”

  “You’re both right,” Karis said. “At my next irrational moment, I’ll endeavor to behave rationally.”

  Travesty came into sight, so extravagantly lit up that Emil missed a step, perhaps appalled by the expense of all that lamp oil. Karis said, “Garland’s been baking, do you smell it? And J’han is with Medric and Leeba, waiting by the door.”

  Zanja said, “Well, let her run to you—running is what she does best.”

  The watchdogs began a glad barking, and Paladins rushed out, and a little girl came shrieking down the road into her mother’s arms. Medric, close behind her, clutched Zanja’s hands, crying, “What have you learned?” Then he turned around, ran to the wagon, and flung himself into it.

  Zanja turned to Emil, who was wiping his face on his sleeve. “Do you suppose that the people who believe the Sainnites are a blight on Shaftal will be surprised to learn that they themselves are Sainnites? Oh, and there’s a glyphic lexicon in the wagon.”

  She added after a moment, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you speechless, my brother. Is your heart still beating?”

  “I truly don’t know. By Shaftal—” With tears still on his face, but laughing, Emil went to the wagon, and Medric shoved the lexicon into his arms.

  Epilogue

  One day she realized Jareth was dead.

  She had been waiting for him for so long—ten days longer than the longest she had expected to wait.

  For months she had not thought about that night, had not thought what it meant. She had done her part, and after that she survived, as she had always survived, with her paints.

  Jareth was dead, though. And Senra, Charen, Tarera, and Irin were dead. And they had failed.

  She felt a moment of abject grief, and then terror. What if—? What if—!

  Her son.

  She was painting a new sign for the tavern, applying one last coat of lacquer. She did this work outdoors, in the alley behind the building, all alone. She lay down her brush. In a moment she looked at the sky. The afternoon was well on the way to becoming evening. A tree that bloomed in a nearby yard cast its petals across the rutted dirt. Spring was ending, and summer would come, and then what?

  She had expected to die. When she didn’t, she expected something else to happen—a plan, a message, something. She knew what she must not do, but was she to continue in this way forever? What if he didn’t know what to do? What if he had forgotten about her? What if her son—

  She could not think that. Must not.

  A flower petal had floated into the lacquer, and she carefully picked it out.

  A raven flew past, and she watched, her heart pounding, until it was gone.

  If Jareth is dead, well then, he is dead, she thought. There were others—she could find the others, couldn’t she? Or send someone a message? Not to him of course, but to someone else.

  She was not to do that. He had said—he knew—he was—

  What was wrong with her, that she was thinking such things? She would finish the sign, then she would decide what to do. She could wait for Jareth one more day. She could offer her services to the tailor, whose shop sign was practically blank, just a shadow and a few flecks of blue.

  The tree cast more petals her way. She looked up again, and saw another raven.

  The world is full of ravens, she thought.

  Acknowledgments

  One February day, a porch rail collapsed under me and I fell sixteen feet onto concrete. I broke seven bones, including a shattered vertebra, and when I regained consciousness I couldn’t inflate my lungs. I was passing out again due to lack of oxygen, but I remember my wife, Deb Mensinger, talking to me very, very calmly. Then she began breathing for me. Without her breath this book wouldn’t have been written—and I hope you appreciate reading it as much as I appreciate being able to write it. Thanks also to the hundred or so friends, relatives, and strangers, who stepped forward to keep my crisis from becoming a catastrophe, a few of whom were Don, Gretchen, and Rod Marks, Ellen Klages, Ellen Kushner, and Judy Goleman. The members of my writer’s group, Delia Sherman, Didi Stewart, and Rosemary Kirstein, steadily offered insightful and incisive commentary on my less-than-coherent first draft, which helped me to produce another, better draft for them to comment on, and another one after th
at, while, amazingly, their interest and intelligence never flagged. Additional friends of this book include Calie Voorhees, Anita Roy Dobbs, Jeanne Gomoll, Gesine Kernchen, Elizabeth LaVelle, Donna Simone, and Widget, my Welsh corgi. Finally, I have been more than fortunate to find an agent, Shana Cohen, who knows her business and yet manages to remain cheerful and humane; and my editors, Kelly Link and Gavin J. Grant, who from the day they said “yes” made it clear that they valued a lot more than my words.

  About the author

  Laurie J. Marks (lauriejmarks.com) is the author of eight novels including the Elemental Logic novels, Fire Logic, Earth Logic, and the forthcoming Air Logic. She lives in Melrose, Massachusetts, and lectures at the Department of English at the University of Massachusetts, Boston.

  Laurie J. Marks titles available from Small Beer Press

  FIRE LOGIC

  The martial Sainnites have occupied Shaftal for fifteen years. Every year the cost of resistance rises. Emil, an officer and scholar; Zanja, a diplomat and last survivor of her people; and Karis, a metalsmith, half-blood giant, and an addict, can only watch as their country falls into lawlessness and famine. Together, perhaps they can change the course of history.

  How does an occupying army make peace with those they have subjugated? Can a cycle of violence be broken?

  Earth * Air * Water * Fire

  These elements have sustained the peaceful people of Shaftal for generations, with their subtle powers of healing, truth, joy, and intuition. But now, Shaftal is dying.

  The earth witch who ruled Shaftal is dead, leaving no heir. Shaftal’s ruling house has been scattered by the invading Sainnites. The Shaftali have mobilized a guerrilla army against these marauders, but every year the cost of resistance grows, leaving Shaftal’s fate in the hands of three people: Emil, scholar and reluctant warrior; Zanja, the sole survivor of a slaughtered tribe; and Karis the metalsmith, a half-blood giant whose earth powers can heal, but only when she can muster the strength to hold off her addiction to a deadly drug.

  Separately, all they can do is watch as Shaftal falls from prosperity into lawlessness and famine. But if they can find a way to work together, they just may change the course of history.

  EARTH LOGIC

  With Earth Logic, Laurie J. Marks continues the epic of her stunningly imagined world of Shaftal, which she first introduced in Fire Logic.

  Shaftal has a ruler again, a woman with enough power to heal the war-torn land and expel the invading Sainnites from Shaftal. Or it would have a ruler if the earth witch Karis G’deon consented to rule. Instead, she lives in obscurity with the fractious family of elemental talents who gathered around her in Fire Logic. She is waiting for some sign, but no one, least of all Karis herself, knows what it is.

  Then the Sainnite garrison at Watford is attacked by a troop of zealots claiming to speak for the Lost G’deon, and a mysterious and deadly plague attacks the land, killing both Sainnites and Shaftali. Karis must act or watch her beloved country fall into famine and chaos. And when Karis acts, the very stones of the earth sit up and take notice.

  AIR LOGIC (forthcoming)

  The conclusion of the Elemental Logic series.

  Short story collections and novels from Small Beer Press for independently minded readers

  Georges-Olivier Châteaureynaud, A Life on Paper: Stories

  First translation from the French of “The celebrated Châteaureynaud.”—New York Times

  Karen Joy Fowler, What I Didn’t See and Other Stories

  “In all these stories, Fowler (Sarah Canary, The Jane Austen Book Club) delights in luring her readers from the walks of ordinary life into darker, more fantastical realms. . . Fowler’s closing story, “King Rat,” is a masterpiece.”—Seattle Times

  Greer Gilman, Cry Murder! in a Small Voice

  Ben Jonson, playwright, poet, satirist . . . detective.

  Elizabeth Hand, Errantry: Stories

  “Elegant nightmares, sensuously told.”—Publishers Weekly

  The Unreal and the Real: Selected Stories of Ursula K. Le Guin

  Two volumes: Where on Earth & Outer Space, Inner Land

  “No better spirit in all of American letters than that of Ursula K. Le Guin.”—Slate

  Karen Lord, Redemption in Indigo

  Mythopoeic, Crawford, Carl Brandon Parallax, & Frank Collymore Award winner

  “Filled with witty asides, trickster spiders, poets and one very wise woman, “Redemption in Indigo” is a rare find that you could hand to your child, your mother or your best friend.”

  —Washington Post

  Vincent McCaffrey, Hound

  “McCaffrey, the owner of Boston’s legendary Avenue Victor Hugo Bookshop, succeeds in conveying his love of books in his intriguing debut.”—Publishers Weekly

  Maureen F. McHugh, After the Apocalypse: Stories

  “Incisive, contemporary, and always surprising.”—Publishers Weekly Top 10 Books of the Year

  “An imaginative homage to the human ability to endure.”—Booklist (*starred review*)

  Naomi Mitchison, Travel Light

  “The enchantments of Travel Light contain more truth, more straight talking, a grittier, harder-edged view of the world than any of the mundane descriptions of daily life you will find in the science fiction stories.”—SF Site

  Sofia Samatar, A Stranger in Olondria

  “Samatar’s sensual descriptions create a rich, strange landscape, allowing a lavish adventure to unfold that is haunting and unforgettable.”—Library Journal (*starred review*)

  Our ebooks are available from our indie press ebooksite:

  www.weightlessbooks.com

  www.smallbeerpress.com