“Gods of my mother!”
The little girl, jam-smeared, looked worriedly at Clement.
“Zanja surprised me,” Clement explained to her. “Your mother is a very surprising person.”
The girl said, “But she just wants to be your friend. Why, Zanja?”
Zanja stroked a hand affectionately down the child’s tangled hair. “She needs a friend to teach her how to be Shaftali.”
“She won’t be a soldier any more?”
“Maybe she’ll be a different kind of soldier.”
“I do need your help,” Clement began.
Zanja interrupted her. “In Shaftal, no one’s judgment overrules the judgment of a Truthken—except the G’deon’s, of course—for a Truthken represents the law. Therefore, general—”
“Won’t you be one of the people who calls me Clement?”
“Yes, Clement. I advise you to do whatever Norina tells you to do.”
Clement turned her head and found the Truthken standing beside her. The woman gave Zanja a keen look, then, in a swift glance at the healer, seemed to ask and receive an answer to a question. She turned to Clement and said, “General, Karis has asked to speak to you.”
“Of course,” said Clement.
She was able to stand, and began to follow the Truthken, but then turned back to clasp Zanja’s hand in farewell.
“You are becoming a Shaftali already,” said Zanja’ na’Tarwein. In the black center of her dark eyes there was a flame.
While Clement had been preoccupied, the room had become crowded: soldiers and Paladins in what appeared to be equal numbers were standing against the walls. The Paladins, all of whom seemed to possess extraordinarily graceful manners, were attempting to engage the uncomprehending soldiers in conversation. In the center of the room, the G’deon’s people formed a constantly loosening and tightening knot around Karis, who was kneeling at Gilly’s feet with his hands clasped in hers. No one appeared to find her behavior unusual.
Herme hurried over when she beckoned him. “Tell your people to ask the Paladins to teach them Shaftalese,” she said.
Herme managed to maintain his bland countenance. “Yes, general.”
The Truthken murmured, “Watch Karis, general. See how he refuses, she insists—There, it’s over already.”
Karis had risen. Her big hands stroked down the twisted, hunched line of Gilly’s back. Then, she stood talking to him casually, with a hand on his shoulder. Clement’s cynical old friend stared up at Karis with an expression of bedazzled adoration.
Clement said, “Very instructive. But I think I’ve already studied that lesson.”
The Truthken said, “Save yourself some trouble, then. Ask her what Shaftal needs of you, and promise to do whatever she says. Call her by name, look her in the eye—thought it makes your neck hurt—and don’t mince words.”
“I will. Thank you.”
Clement wiped her sweaty palms on her trousers, and stepped forward to clasp the G’deon’s hand. “Karis, what have you done to my friend?”
She replied blandly, “Nothing, really. I just made his back stop hurting.”
Well, for her perhaps it was nothing, thought Clement. By the gods, the woman was big, and wildly disordered, as though she had come in from a storm wind and had not yet caught her breath. But her devastatingly gentle handclasp was still warm. “I thought we should discuss Shaftal,” she said, as though the problems they faced could be dispensed with in a single conversation.
“Karis, I want my people to become Shaftali. Do you think that would be possible?”
Karis gave her a very surprised look, then cast an amazed glance at the Truthken, who said dryly, “Zanja is already doing what she does best.”
“Oh,” said Karis. Her face crinkled up as though she were suppressing a sneeze—no, a laugh—and she said with exaggerated disgust, “Fire logic!”
“Oh ho!” cried the peculiar little man in spectacles. He peered at Clement with intense curiosity, as though he could scarcely wait to see what she did next. Councilor Mabin, who remained excessively upright under these very strange circumstances, gave the little man a look of withering approval—a wasted effort.
Clement bent to mutter in Gilly’s ear, “You’ve never looked at me the way you were looking at Karis.”
“Of course not, Clem. You never deserved it.” He added, straight-faced, “Has anything important happened?”
Gabian announced his presence with a loud yelp. Clement lifted him out of his basket, and he flapped his arms enthusiastically. “Don’t make me giddy,” she admonished him. “Gilly’s obviously lost his mind, and one of us must keep a clear head.”
Karis held out her big hands, and Clement put her son into them. Competently cradled, Gabian blinked at Karis with dim-witted devotion.
Then Emil pushed his way in, assured Clement that they all certainly hoped the Sainnites could become Shaftali, and introduced Medric, who said cheerfully, “I imagine you hoped you’d never hear of me again. What did you make of that cow farmer, eh?”
“Watch out,” Karis interjected. “You are completely surrounded by dangerous busybodies.”
Clement suddenly had to sit down again, she was so dizzy with trying not to laugh, and her face hurt abominably. Karis sat next to her, with Gabian in the crook of her arm. So gently that Clement could hardly feel it, Karis nudged Clement’s broken nose into better alignment. The pain went completely away.
So the seven of them sat knee to knee, passing Gabian from lap to lap, arguing vehemently about what to do next. Medric said that transforming Sainnites into Shaftali was possible but not easy, for they would have to neither hurt the soldiers’ pride or arouse the Shaftali anger. The Truthken reminded them that it was human nature to escalate conflicts and hold grudges. Emil thought they might counter old bitterness with intelligence, insight, hope, good will, generosity, self-interest, education, and wisdom.
“And coercion,” Clement said.
“Persuasion,” said Karis.
“Oh, persuasion,” said Medric. “Like iron before your hammer? That kind of persuasion?”
“I doubt it will be that easy,” said Karis.
Clement said, “If my people aren’t attacked or forced to go hungry, they’ll follow my orders—for a time. But eventually I’ve got to win their consent, not just their obedience. I think it’s the same problem you’ve got, Karis, only worse. I have to give them a reason to surrender the only thing they’re proud of, in exchange for something they’ve always scorned. Right now, I’ve got no idea how to do that.”
Medric peered at her and said, quite unnervingly, “The same way it happened to you, general.”
So Clement found herself thinking what had happened, really: the plague, Alrin, the fire, Kelin’s death, the kidnapped children, the storyteller, Davi’s rescue, Seth’s embrace, Gabian’s birth, Medric’s book, Willis’s death, Cadmar’s fist, and the madness of the last two days. Each situation had been accidental or unpredictable, yet together they had changed her, so that when Zanja insisted that she confront the last, radical truth, she had been prepared to do so.. Clement shut her eyes, pressing her fingers against her eyelids, trying to remember the storyteller’s glyph card pattern. In the middle, there had been a wall. A pile-up of images leaned against it, one after another.
“The wall fell down,” Clement said.
“Ho!” cried Medric triumphantly. “Exactly!”
Emil put a restraining hand on the giddy man’s knee. “By the land, general, you do astonish me. You would not believe how many nights we spent studying those cards.”
“Which cards?” asked Zanja. Supported by the healer at one side, and the child at the other, she was standing shakily at the edge of their close-crowded circle. As they hastily put Zanja in the chair the Truthken vacated for her, Gilly produced the storyteller’s card pack out of a pocket. She accepted the cards as if they were old friends she had feared lost, but gave him a puzzled look.
“Gilly was your�
��the storyteller’s—friend,” said Clement.
“I am sorry I do not remember you, sir. But thank you.”
She handed the cards to Medric, who, declaring vehemently that he never wanted to see a glyph card again, hastily passed them to Emil, . “These cards get resurrected as often as you do,” Emil commented as he knelt on the floor and began laying down the cards.
Zanja watched intently as Emil reproduced the pattern the storyteller had made for Clement in the gaol. When he finished, Zanja let out her breath in a huff. “It’s as bad as Koles.”
The seer collapsed in a paroxysm of laughter. Grinning, Emil collected and handed Zanja the pack of cards. Mabin, apparently as baffled by their amusement as Clement was, commenced a speech about the historical importance of this occasion. But she was summarily interrupted by the runaway cook, who led in a parade of self-conscious townsfolk carrying steaming hot, luscious-smelling dishes. Under influence of this extraordinary meal, seriousness became impossible. Even the soldiers, who had been dutifully but grimly attempting to say a few words in Shaftalese, began to laugh a little as they ate standing up with their erstwhile enemies.
Gilly lay his gnarled hand over Clement’s. “With meals like this, the peace will last forever,” he said. “What fool would fight when he could be eating, eh?”
Clement gazed fondly at her old friend, who had the sleeping baby tucked into the crook of his arm. “A lot of work lies ahead of us, though.”
“Work worth doing,” he replied.
“At last.”
Clement looked across the table at Karis, who was poking distractedly at her beef in onion sauce over shredded potatoes. Zanja, who had eaten only some more bread and the richly flavored soup, now rested her head against Emil’s shoulder. The two of them could have been lovers, so delighted were they by each other’s company. But Zanja and Karis had not spoken to each other yet, had not even met each other’s gaze.
This had been a remarkable morning. But much yet remained to be resolved.
Only rubble remained of the wall that had divided Sainnite from Shaftali. On one side of the fallen wall, new timber frames had been established in the snow-covered ashes of burned buildings. On the other side, the stone and slate buildings of the Shaftali town seemed almost bereft without the garrison wall to crowd up against. The stones were still rolling; the rubble piles continued to spread and flatten until no stone lay atop any other. Soldiers and townsfolk stood watching the restless rocks—fearful, curious, or amazed.
This is Watfield, Zanja reminded herself: a prosperous midland city, fortunately situated on the River Corber, which was an important route for bringing goods into and out of Hanishport, six days journey to the east. Despite these facts, Zanja felt utterly dislocated and kept seeking the sun to remind herself that she was walking north, with the sun sinking westward and the Corber behind her, to the south.
She wore a jacket of finely woven wool with silver buttons; she was wrapped in a thick cloak with a silver clasp at the shoulder. Her head felt light; her hair was gone. The people around her—her family—they also were changed. Leeba had learned some caution. Emil had become a Paladin general. Karis—
Karis and Clement had stepped onto the fallen gate piled with empty food baskets. Clement, in her begrimed leather coat and squashed hat might have just come home from a bruising campaign. The baby Gabian was buttoned into her coat, with the top of his blue cap just under her chin, and her gloved hand supporting the back of his head. Karis towered over her: her hair in a tangle, her red coat powdered with pulverized mortar. Leeba rode on her hip, asking question after question with no pause for the answers. Karis looked as ordinary as she could ever manage to look: a laborer in the midst of an exhausting building project. But her stance had a weighty dignity that spoke of the power of ten generations—the power of Shaftal’s seeds, stones, wombs, hands. And the power of finally knowing what to do with that power.
Karis crouched over to kiss Clement like a sister. The hoarsely cheering people who crowded the street seemed to swallow their shouts for a moment, and the soldier’s cheers also faltered. For a long moment Karis gazed gravely at the silent, frowning group that stood just beyond the gate, draped with white banners on which were painted names—the names of the dead?
Zanja’s heart clenched with the old guilt and sorrow. Surely, the ghosts of the Ashawala’i people would condemn her for making peace with their killers, just like these name-draped witnesses condemned Karis for it. And surely, by refusing to satisfy them, Zanja—and Karis—were condemning themselves to the unending haunting of other people’s unsatisfied angers.
What have I done to us? Oh, what have I done? Zanja dug a hand into her pocket and felt there the familiar, worn, warped pack of glyph cards. But even these could not comfort her. The storyteller’s glyph pattern had seemed not merely ambiguous, but unreadable. Had life become so momentous that all her answers would now be nothing but a tangled muddle of contradictory possibilities? She almost missed the clean clarity of those empty months—years, really—of walking the mountainous wasteland between life and death.
Then, she felt the strong grip of J’han’s supporting hand on her elbow. “You’re awfully tired,” he reminded her, in his old, timely, pragmatic way.
They walked through Watfield down a street so crowded with people they sometimes could scarcely get through. At Zanja’s left, Medric maintained a continuous commentary. “Here comes the town elders—they’re looking rather self-important, aren’t they? Are they telling Emil that they’ve found us another place to stay? That’s too bad. I rather liked that drafty, humble old house in the alley. Does Karis think she has to talk to every single person in Shaftal, starting with the people of Watfield, right at this moment? Well, perhaps she does! But surely she’ll wear out her voice again? There, Norina has put a stop to that nonsense. We don’t all have Karis’s supernatural energy! Emil is looking pretty worn, don’t you think? Still, we’ll be up talking half the night, just like the Sainnites will. Greetings, Garland, you’ve been busy! Is it possible that you and I are now Shaftali?”
This last was addressed to the cook, who was toting a basket of wax-covered cheese, dusty bottles of spirits or wine, and highly polished apples. Medric had predicted he’d find his way to them, and here he was, no longer lost. The cook said, “Well, weren’t we Shaftali already? Oh, there’s the man with the bacon.” He trotted off to add another package to his basket, to acquire a second basked crammed with bread, and to converse joyfully with a woman riding atop a wagon load of barrels. Everyone he talked to was left smiling in his wake, as though happiness were a contagion. His pockets were crammed with packages, and people pressed more items on him, until his baskets overflowed.
Zanja stared about herself at the high slate rooftops, the extravagant lightning rods, the crowded shops of the prosperous city. And then they came to a square, with a wide park whose bare trees were exuberantly decorated with bright ribbons and paper flowers. At one end stood an ugly, looming, massive stone building. The Paladins had to press people back to create a passage. Karis followed her escort, and at least the wildly clamoring people had the sense not to mob her. So they reached their destination, and climbed an impressive flight of stairs to the front door, where Karis turned and patiently let the people of Watfield look at her: a big, determined woman who knew exactly what to do. Finally, she stepped through the door, and her people followed her into an echoing, extravagant hallway.
Even Medric was astonished into silence.
Zanja said, “People live like this? Why, do you suppose?”
No one seemed capable of responding. “Here’s the cloakroom,” said a Paladin.
After Zanja had taken off her boots, she sat on the bench in that vast, warm, convenient cloakroom. As it filled with boots and coats, it emptied out of people, and soon she sat alone there, breathing in the rising odor of leather oil and wet wool. The puddles of slush melted into the mats. She realized abruptly that she was waiting for the short night
to end, and the swift sun to rise. She rubbed her face, and pressed her fingers to her aching eyes.
The door opened, and Emil looked in at her. “There are more comfortable places to be alone, if that’s what you want.”
“Emil, I’m afraid.”
“I’d be afraid too, if I could find the time for it.”
“This house—!”
He groaned. “Not you too! Everyone tells me that they can’t endure a single night here! And Karis has declared this place to be a travesty. No more complaining, please!” He entered the cloakroom and took Zanja by the hands. “If you love me—”
“If?”
“Because you love me,” he corrected himself, with a smile that could not quite erase the lines and shadows of weariness from his face, “I beg you to let me spend just one night of my life on a feather bed!”
“Feather bed?” she said, incredulous.
“Oh, my dear, you can’t imagine how soft—”
She began to laugh, and was still laughing as he pulled her to her feet and tugged her back into that overpowering hallway. He gave her a ragged handkerchief to mop up her tears. Her diaphragm hurt, but she felt relieved, as though she had in fact been weeping.
“Can I make a bargain with you?” he asked. “That you’ll never ask me to kill you again?”
“In exchange for what?” she gasped, still out of breath.
“Well, what do you want?”
Eventually, sobered, she said, “I don’t know how to answer you.”
Emil’s hand rested on the small of her back; she put her arm around him and they walked silently, apparently aimlessly, past clutters of dusty, grotesque furniture. The monstrous house seemed to have swallowed everyone into its echoing maze of rooms and hallways..
Emil finally said, “You are a hero of Shaftal, you know. You deserve to have whatever you want.”
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