The storyteller had picked up the baby to quiet him. “It is fair.”
The raven told her a story about a woman whose spirit had been irretrievably split in two. Half her spirit was exiled to wander aimlessly in a distant dream-world. Half her spirit remained in her body, and could only tell stories. So those separated halves were doomed to continue, the raven said, without any alteration in their condition, as long as the woman’s body lived.
The storyteller stood by the stove with the infant in her arms. She said, “If I were telling this story, it would properly end with death uniting the two halves into a whole.”
After a long silence, the she added, “Ah, Raven, I understand! What a favor you have done!”
The raven said, “With your consent, I can arrange your death.”
“But you are a trickster. To what am I truly consenting?”
The raven said, “I will not trick you. In twelve days time, you will be killed. If you consent.”
“I do consent,” the storyteller said, without hesitation and without sorrow.
The girl in the next room asked an irritable question. The storyteller went silently to open the window, one-handed, with the baby starting to wail with hunger into her shoulder. The raven flew out, and was gone in the blaze of pale sunlight.
It was the first day of the first year of Karis G’deon. She huddled on the rough, unfinished boards of the shearing-house attic, weeping. Garland, his arm stretched across her broad back. Leeba, recently awakened, huddled with her arms wrapped around Karis’s bent legs, frightened into tears herself.
Emil had been the one who talked to the storyteller, through the medium of Karis and the raven, but it had been Karis who offered the storyteller her death. Now, Emil knelt beside Medric, who under Karis’s direction had laid out the glyph pattern on the floor, using cards borrowed from a sleepy and confused Paladin.
Medric said unhappily, “This is worse than reading Koles.”
“She was able to give us some clues of how to read it,” Emil said.
“But glyphs without context . . . !”
“The reader always creates the context.”
“We are not seeking a subjective truth, though. And to read these cards as though my experience of them somehow reflects a political reality is not just specious. It’s dangerous.”
Emil put his hand on the seer’s shoulder. His three earrings glittered briefly in a beam of sunlight. “We sent her out to explore the wilderness. Now she has found a way through, but it is up to us to read the trail markings so we can follow her.”
“What if we are too stupid?”
“Stupid? Oh come now, Medric!”
To Garland, this discussion was incomprehensible. He understood, rather vaguely, that Emil had thought it reasonable to let a casting of cards determine Shaftal’s future. He understood now that Medric, who would be responsible for interpreting those cards, thought that to read them reliably was impossible. But Medric’s explanation for his reluctance made no sense, and neither did Emil’s steady assurance that it could be done. What if Emil were as mad in his way as Medric was in his? Surely, Norina would not allow lunacy to continue. Garland glanced hopefully at her.
Norina stood with her arms folded, her back against a post that supported the center beam. She watched Medric fret over the incomprehensible glyphs. Her face was inscrutable.
When Norina killed the storyteller, it would be with that very expression on her face: passionless, impersonal. She was as mad as the rest of them.
Karis’s desperate, shuddering sobs had fallen silent. One of her clenched hands unfolded, to stroke Leeba’s head. J’han, who embraced Karis on the other side, dug out a preposterously clean handkerchief for her to use. Leeba made a fretful sound, and Karis said hoarsely to her, “I’m sorry I’m scaring you. But I’m just sad.”
“You’re always sad,” Leeba said.
Karis let her limbs unfold to take the child into her embrace. “I’m sorry. But you make me glad, you know.”
Emil said, “Karis, can you talk to me about politics?”
Karis, bowed over Leeba, did not respond.
Emil persisted. “I think I must call an assembly, and it will take two months at least to gather people together. I have the Paladins now to act as messengers, but I assume we won’t be bringing them to Watfield with us—”
“You’re going to visit the center of Sainnite power without any Paladins?” said Mabin, who had joined them earlier. “Well, this is certain to be a short-lived government.”
Karis looked up then. “That battle last night was the last. There will be no more bloodshed in Shaftal.”
Mabin looked blank, and Garland felt that blankness also. No bloodshed? How?
Norina said, “Under the law, the G’deon’s declarations are to be understood as fact.”
“Her words only sound like hope to me!” said Mabin.
Norina straightened from her post. “Break the law at your peril, Mabin.” Her tone was cold.
“Fact?” said Karis in a small voice.
“You speak for the land,” said Norina to Karis, as though that explained everything. “You’ll get accustomed to it.”
Not by accident, Norina’s foot sharply nudged Mabin’s. The councilor said, “If Karis says we don’t need an army to defeat an army, then she must be correct.” She looked like she had taken a mouthful of putrid fish and was trying to determine how to spit it out.
“For war cannot make peace.” Emil gestured at the cards on the floor. “And I see no war there. Do you, Medric?”
Medric said irritably, “This is not a predictive casting. It’s an advisory casting.” He sat back on his heels. “War, defeat, victory, none of these are advised.”
Abruptly, mysteriously, Garland understood all of them. Medric, who examined possibilities, could conclude that war might continue, despite the storyteller’s advice. Except Karis had said that it wouldn’t. And Mabin clearly thought that peace without victory would be impossible, and Norina might well have agreed with her, except that the law required her to agree with Karis, no matter what. So she agreed with her.
Karis said flatly, “The war is over.” A statement of fact.
Karis’s advisors all nodded distractedly: fire logic’s uncertainty was resolved; air logic shifted its entire rationale to match a new principle; earth logic remained inarguable. Emil, apparently the quickest to readjust his thinking—a dancer, that man, always poised on his toes—said, “Well, Medric will grumble over the cards, however long it takes. You and I, Karis, we need to decide what I am to do, if I am not re-establishing the old government.”
Karis shut her eyes. Emil began to say something apologetic, but a gesture from Norina silenced him. Garland, still embracing Karis, thought she might be analyzing the distribution of weight on that loaded food tray she had once described. Her desperate sorrow was not past—and would never be, perhaps. But Karis said sturdily, “Call an assembly, Emil, and name everyone who attends it a councilor of Shaftal.”
Emil blinked. “No council of thirteen? No Lilterwess council?”
“The Lilterwess Council is to be formed by the G’deon,” said Norina. “But if she chooses not to form one, and to transfer their power directly to the assembly, that does not contradict any law.”
“It contradicts tradition—” began Mabin, and got herself kicked again. Apparently, she was to endure a painful re-training, but Garland could not manage to feel sorry for her.
Karis said, “Master seer, what do you think?”
Medric looked up from his glyph puzzle. For once, he did not protest the formal way she had addressed him. And his spectacles seemed perfectly clear. “You are choosing the right way. Now leave me alone.”
Emil asked Mabin, Norina, and J’han to help him decide who to invite to the assembly, and how to compose the important letter that would coincidentally announce to all the people of Shaftal that, after twenty years of chaos, they had a G’deon again. Apparently, Emil would then re
cruit the entire company of Paladins to each simultaneously write dictated copies of the letter, which the Paladins would hand-deliver to the recipients. Garland cried, “Do you mean to tell me that every single Paladin carries pen and ink?”
Emil blandly produced a pen and a packet of ink from his waistcoat’s inside pocket. Mabin kept hers inside her black jacket, in a buttoned pocket that seemed designed for no other purpose. “I don’t believe it,” Garland muttered in Sainnese.
As Emil took his contingent towards the stairs, he said over his shoulder, “Garland, I know you’ll make Karis eat, but get her to rest also, will you?”
When they were gone, Karis commented, “Apparently, you’re the one who gets the impossible task, Garland.”
“I beg to differ,” muttered Medric.
Karis kissed Leeba’s head again. “Listen, Leeba! They’re singing the first-day song! Let’s go down and watch them put out the candle.”
Chapter 33
The second day of the new year ended prematurely as the weary sun was engulfed by advancing clouds. In the brief twilight the stars appeared to cast away their light with frantic haste before the clouds smothered them. By this frail, rapidly failing illumination, Clement led the company of soldiers down the hill, into the gently sloped grazeland of a river valley blanketed by faintly glimmering snow. The soldiers’ snow shoes crunched; they walked in a fog breathed out by their weary fellows.
Because Clement’s thoughts were in turmoil, she had given her company no rest that day. The morning’s chatter had long since given way to plodding silence. In the dark valley stood a cluster of buildings: an established ,successful farmstead that boasted a huge red cow barn.
A big, shaggy dog came out from underneath a porch to bark a sharp alarm, and in a moment the door opened to spill its light. An angular woman with a lantern in her hand examined the company of soldiers bearing down on her, quieted the dog with a command, then turned and spoke into the doorway.
By the time the soldiers had all reached the bottom of the slope, a dozen of the cow farmers had come out onto the porch. Clement stepped into the light.
The level look that the angular farmer gave Clement was a puzzlement. Seth turned and spoke to her family, words Clement could not hear, and then she came down the steps. She said, “Your people can sleep in the barn, in the milking room. There’s a stove, and fuel. Take straw to make beds. You do know the difference between straw and hay? And light no open flames, of course.” She added, “We’ll bring down some bread and cheese, or we can cook a hot meal if you want to wait for it.”
Clement heard words come out of her mouth: “No, all I ask is shelter and permission to draw from your well.”
“There’s a pump in the milking room.”
Both of them were performing parts. This performance was necessary. But the old illness came over Clement, a self-loathing that for two days had continually risen like nausea, only to recede in response to the counter-pressure of panic. The self-loathing was familiar; it arrived after every battle, and lingered longer every time. The panic, that was new.
Clement spoke some words that were not necessary or part of a performance. “My people will do no harm to your family or your family’s livelihood. I promise you.”
Seth’s right eyebrow raised, very slightly. “This is a rare assurance.” This neutral comment revealed something in Seth that Clement could not clearly see or make sense of. It was not what it should have been: not anger, nor resentment, nor hatred.
There was no reason why even a modicum of trust should exist between them, and Clement was wasting her time looking for it.
Clement’s company was conveying impatience by shuffling their feet, gasping loudly at the cold, and rocking their weight noisily in the snow. Clement said over her shoulder, “Captain Herme, take the company to that big barn, but don’t go in until I get there.”
When she could hear the company’s sledges starting to move behind her, she said to Seth, “We’ll be gone when you come down for the morning milking, and you won’t know we were there.”
“More promises?” Seth took a step forward. “Is Clem your true name?”
“Lieutenant-General Clement.”
Both Seth’s eyebrows lifted now, but still there was no visible revulsion.
Clement said, “I apologize for deceiving you.”
“Oh, I imagine that you thought honesty was impossible,” said Seth.
“I should have chosen not to pretend my way into your bed.”
A corner of the cow farmer’s mouth curled. “Make amends, then,” she said. “Come to my bed again—without pretense, this time.”
The sound of the soldiers’ snow shoes had become distant. The farmers had begun to go back inside the house, though some lingered to keep an eye on Seth. Clement noticed these things. She also noticed how the cold was seeping upward from her feet, how weariness crushed her earthward, how sounds echoed in the crisp air. But Seth’s words seemed beyond understanding.
“My fire is lit,” Seth said. “My family will let you come in. There is no lock on any door. You only have to find your way to me.”
“It is impossible,” said Clement.
“It seems simple to me.”
Clement heard crunching footsteps. Captain Herme, having complied with Clement’s command, apparently had now taken it upon himself to make sure of her safety. Fortunately, he did not understand Shaftalese. Clement said to Seth, “You’ve asked for an end to pretense. But if I came to you, pretense would be unavoidable. The pretense that we are not enemies.”
Seth said quietly, “You and your people are strangers. I and my people are offering hospitality, according to the traditions of Shaftal. We—I—choose to offer it. Now what will you choose, Clem?”
“Lieutenant-general?” said Herme tentatively.
She said to him, “Yes, I’m coming.” In Shaftalese, she said to Seth, “There is no choice.”
“There is,” Seth said. “I am giving you the choice.”
But Clement had already forced herself to turn and walk away.
Over thirty years ago, when Clement was first judged mature and skilled enough to go into battle, duty had become the fence that delimited the territory of her life. When she led her rested soldiers up the slope in the morning, leaving the milking room as pristine as it had been when they arrived, that was duty. When she did not raise a hand in farewell to the woman who stood watching from the porch, that was duty. That her heart rebelled was, and always had been, irrelevant.
Ten more nights, at ten more farms, Clement requested shelter for her company. Shelter was freely given, food was generously cooked and served. Clement continued to demand that the soldiers behave courteously, and that they accept this food and shelter as a gift and not a right. The soldiers gradually shifted from resentment to amazement. Clement herself was surprised by the cautious, awkward, but inexplicably friendly conversations initiated with her by their involuntary hosts.
“Is it true your people are refugees?” asked one old man.
“How can you survive without a family?” inquired a shy young woman.
A middle-aged woman with gnarled, work-hardened hands declared, “If you soldiers can make flowers bloom you can grow vegetables.” And when Clement and her soldiers were leaving, the woman tucked some packets of vegetable seeds into Clement’s pocket and urged her to plant them.
“What has come over these people!” exclaimed Herme.
Clement was unnerved. When and how had the Shaftali people become so well-informed? How did the woman know that soldiers grow flowers, for example? The members of Clement’s company, who could not understand these conversations, were mystified enough by the hospitality, but Clement felt that a monstrous disaster loomed just beyond the limits of her ability to see and understand it.
Even though the company slept warm and ate well, it was no easy journey. Clement participated in the rotation of hauling the sledges and sitting the night watch. When a storm blew in, or the wind t
urned particularly cold, or the trees took it upon themselves to dump loads of snow onto their heads, she cursed the hostile landscape as viciously and sincerely as the rest of them. When they were tired, or fighting their way up a hill, or wanting courage for crossing a frozen river, she joined with them in singing to raise their spirits or keep the pace—a breathless, harsh, and tuneless chorus, perhaps, but sometimes even she felt carried by the sound of it. She sat with them on straw or stone, and ate whatever they ate, and slept wherever they were sleeping, and by the third night of their return journey had acquired two bedfellows. “Should you sleep cold just because you’ve been promoted?” the soldier asked, when she and her partner hauled their blankets over to Clement’s solitary bed, in a very drafty barn.
“You’ve been good to us,” her partner explained vaguely.
“It’s a cold night.”
“And there’s that wind.”
“By the gods,” said Clement, with all sincerity, “I could use a warm night’s sleep.”
After that, every last one of the solders in the company, including Herme, seemed to forget who Clement was. They shouted at her when necessary, and did not take their cold hands from their pockets to salute, and even called her by name. She pretended to be oblivious to this deterioration in discipline.
The entire company recovered abruptly from their sloppiness when they entered Watfield. “I’ll pull that sledge, lieutenant-general,” one of her companions said, and she was gently, irresistibly forced into the proper position for a commanding officer, the center of the column. “Well, captain,” she said regretfully to the man she had been calling Herme for the last eight days. “I guess the journey’s over.”
“Yes, lieutenant-general.”
“I’d like to thank the company myself when we’re inside the gate. And I’ll ask Commander Ellid to give the company a few day’s rest before you return to regular duty.”
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