Fire Logic

by Laurie J. Marks

  “I’ll come with you.”

  “Medric, my dear, if Karis ever needed a seer beside her, now is the time. I’ll find Zanja without your help. You know I can. And I have Norina, who is the equivalent of an entire battalion.”

  “But it’s an awfully big river.”

  “You forget about our friends the Otter People. Surely the water witch will know what’s happened on his river.” Emil kissed Medric, not too hastily, and then he kissed him again. Before he could stand up, he had to disentangle himself from the fist gripped in his hair. For the first time in days, it was not just weariness that made him so dizzy.

  And so the next day Emil and Norina found the empty cave and fresh blood splashed across the stones, and then the Otter People came and took them to the island, where they showed them Annis’s body. They had laid her in a little boat with her knees drawn up to her chest like an infant curled in the womb, and they had filled her boat with journey gifts: a net and fishing spear, tiny people of twisted reed to accompany her, a bottle of good spring water, a supply of dried fish, and many small items of great value: knives and beads and pieces of worked fishskin, the kind of gifts that are given to a beloved friend when bidding her good-by. At sunset they all escorted Annis across the lake to the river outlet, and they let her boat go and watched until she’d slipped out of sight. They uttered encouraging shouts to send her on her journey, but many of the people seemed devastated with grief. They’d loved her more, and better, than her family ever had.

  Emil had seen many a Paladin killed or maimed, but always had been able to explain the death as having served a cause. This death could only be explained as a betrayal. When he wept for Annis, he wept also for himself, for an entire adulthood spent serving under the command of a leader who would kill an innocent like Annis simply for being in the way.

  Emil understood perhaps three dozen words of the Otter People’s language, which was not enough to ask the question he needed to ask. But the old water witch was dismayed by the terrible, sudden violence that had occurred on the shores of his lake, and told what had happened using story dolls, like the little reed poppets that had accompanied Annis on her last journey. The doll that had Zanja’s long hair was in a boat two day’s journey to the east of Otter Lake.

  Emil and Norina left at dawn to journey to the Paladin garrison where all that remained of the old traditions of Shaftal were preserved, all except the traditions of honor and open-handed generosity. These traditions were not even mentioned in the letter of the Law, but without them the Law was just a mindless formula. Emil had dared to read a little of the Mackapee manuscript before he carefully put it away in a mouse-proof chest, in a dry attic, in a stone building unlikely to burn down. And what he’d read there was the spirit of a man who valued change. “The peaceful speech of strangers transforms the world,” Mackapee had written in his crabbed handwriting. If Emil had laid eyes on the manuscript fifteen years before, he’d have hurried past those words, looking for more subtle revelations, words to argue about in the university.

  Zanja na’Tarwein had lived by and nearly died for that transformation. Mabin Paladin, the hero of the people, had chosen another way, the shortsighted way of the bitterly conquered, the vengeance by which the wronged becomes the wrongdoer and the whole world gives way to war. When Emil lay down in love with a son of the enemy, he had abandoned that vengeance, and he was only now beginning to realize what that meant for him. And Norina Truthken, whose devotion to the Law had not been able to keep her from betraying her dearest friend, what was she going to do now?

  Norina had scarcely spoken a word on this entire journey. She was far from recovered from childbirth, and her bandaged, milk-swollen breasts must have hurt her greatly. She took the powders her husband had given her: reliably, publicly, as though she was doing a kind of penance. In fact she was doing the only thing a person of honor could do in her position: accepting disgrace, humbling her pride, making reparations. She would put her life at risk to do these things, and her life wouldn’t be worth much if she could not accomplish them.

  When they stopped to rest the horses and eat their dinner of cold fish and flatbread, Emil said, “I’m curious how the Law would resolve this paradox we’re in.”

  Norina snorted in bitter amusement and passed him the jug of water. “Everyone who breaks the Law does it for the same reason: because her own desire, she believes, should take precedence. The question is, which of us is in fact the lawbreaker, when our governor under the Law falls into the error of thinking she rules the Law rather than being ruled by it? Are we right, for serving Karis’s personal interests and thus opposing Mabin? Or are Mabin’s followers right for serving Mabin’s personal interests and thus injuring Karis? This situation is a judge’s worst nightmare.”

  “But if Karis is G’deon...”

  Norina lifted her head, as though genuinely surprised at the idea. “That has never even been a possibility. But now that she is no longer addicted to smoke, perhaps everything has changed. If Karis is G’deon, that certainly resolves the moral difficulty. The G’deon’s role is and always has been to protect the land, to remember the people, even if that means going beyond the Law. And we are required by Law to serve the G’deon first. However—”

  “She’s not the G’deon.”

  “It’s not as if we had the power to decide such a thing.”

  “So we have a paradox, a puzzle that defies resolution. But not a dilemma, for we both know exactly what we must do, and we intend to do it. That is what intrigues me, you see. It’s a purely philosophical problem.”

  Norina groaned, as people often do when they hear the word “philosophy,” for the Truthkens are always wanting their truths to be unarguable. So she seemed to be curing herself with self-mockery, the only cure for the obsessiveness which is the bane of all Truthkens, and no doubt she was practicing it as deliberately as she was taking her husband’s powders. A woman of her age and experience could hardly expect to be re-schooled by anyone except herself. But if she had a true community such schooling would be the service her people provided. And if Karis were to lack such a community as well, who would then school her in the right use of her power?

  Oh, but if there was one thing Karis did not lack, surely it was wise and strong-willed friends. And they all would be well advised to not get into the habit of servicing her whims, even now, when she was so desperately ill. To do her will without question was no service at all, but an abdication.

  “What are you thinking that makes you so happy?” Norina asked.

  “Just when I was thinking with despair of a dishonorable and unappealing retirement, I realize that I may yet have an interesting few years ahead of me. Madam Truthken—”

  “Oh for pity’s sake, call me Norina.”

  “Why don’t you lie down and rest for a while, and I’ll make a good report to your husband.”

  She was not so humorless as she had seemed. She was still chuckling when she lay down on the blanket he brought her, and shut her eyes.

  Before dawn the next day, the two of them stood on the canyon’s edge overlooking the Paladins’ Valley, and waited for sunrise. They actually had slept for most of the night, and awakened before first light to travel the last mile on foot, leaving their horses and gear hidden in a glade. If there was an additional watch being kept on the valley, somehow they’d managed to avoid the trap, and they sat peaceably upon stones overlooking the magnificent landscape of the canyon. As the sun lifted, pink and gentle light set the stones to glowing like coal. Norina took a spyglass out of her shirt—she was astonishingly well equipped—and scanned the valley below. Without a word she handed the spyglass to Emil.

  The boat was anchored in a deep eddy near the walled village, which had been built on high ground to avoid being destroyed in the periodic flood times. The river still lay in shadow, and even at this distance Emil could see a spark of lante
rn light upon the deck. As he watched, the sunlight hit the river, turning it to glowing amethyst, and he saw the figure pacing on the boat deck, back and forth, like a lion in a cage.

  He thought of Zanja, being hauled from a rowboat onto the deck of the riverboat. Considering her recently broken bones, it was an unpleasant thought. He gave Norina back her spyglass. “She’s on that boat,” he said, as certain as he’d ever been of anything.

  Norina peered down at the river, muttering, “I all but gave Mabin the bait for this trap. What am I going to do about it now?”

  “We,” Emil corrected. “It’s a boat because Karis can’t endure boats?”

  “Over water she’s an ordinary mortal and a seasick one, at that. No doubt Mabin will demand that she come aboard, however. And she will comply, if that will save Zanja’s life. We’ll have a sorry time trying to stop her, for now that I’ve lost her regard she won’t listen to my advice.”

  “I think Karis will listen to me. Certainly, Zanja would want us to prevent her from putting herself in Mabin’s power.”

  “That’s one argument that might dissuade Karis,” Norina said wryly. “Let’s think up a few more on the way back, shall we? We’re going to be needing them.”

  When they returned to Otter Lake, they were greeted with an astonishing sight: black smoke billowing from a crude chimney made of gathered stones, boatloads of ore and coal drawn up to the shore, a line of Otter children taking turns at pumping a monstrous bellows, and Karis in the middle of it, swinging a huge stone hammer to shatter the ore and keeping an eye on Emil’s cookpot, which had now become a smelting pot.

  “She always was incorrigible,” Norina said.

  J’han came across the beach to greet them, a harried and frustrated man. “Are all elementals so willful?”

  “Some of us are worse than others.” Norina stopped at the edge of the beach and would proceed no further, but her gaze yearned to the hammer-swinging, half-naked giant standing spread-legged on the stones. It was a magnificent sight. Then, Karis turned and looked at her, and Norina turned quickly away. “I’m not welcome here. I’ll stay at the top of the trail with the horses.”

  “No, you stay right here until I’ve talked to her.” Emil walked across the stony beach to the amazing, cobbled-together forge and the rock-shattering woman. From the midst of the smutty, laughing children, Medric grinned at Emil, his face black with soot, his eyes afire with joy. Emil wanted nothing more than to embrace him, soot and all, but he went to Karis instead, and said, “By our land, you’re a beautiful sight.”

  There probably was nothing he could have said that was more likely to stop her in her tracks. She all but dropped the gigantic stone hammer.

  “Such beauty lifts the heart,” Emil declared, and knelt. “Dear Karis —”

  “Emil—”

  “Dear Karis,” Emil persisted, “Your lifelong friend and I have found Zanja, but rescuing her will not be easy. However, we have some ideas that you might like, when you care to hear them. But for now let me ask you on Norina’s behalf what else she can do to make amends—”

  Karis stepped over, took him by the shirt, and lifted him bodily until he stood once again on his feet. She was not particularly gentle. “Kneel to me again and I’ll make it so you’ll have no choice but to stand.” And then she stopped, breathing heavily from her exertions, and added after a moment, “I suppose you want me to realize that if I don’t want to be treated like a sovereign I’ll have to avoid acting like one.”

  “I’m so glad I succeeded in getting your attention,” Emil said. “You were looking rather dangerously single-minded.”

  Karis gazed at him, suddenly just a tired, wasted woman whose great strength seemed about to fail her, fueled as it was by a rage that surely could not sustain her much longer. “I want to hold my love in my arms,” she said. “She doesn’t even know—”

  Emil said, “This is Zanja na’Tarwein we’re talking about, not some fool.”

  “But when she gives up hope—”

  “I have seen her under the most desperate of circumstances, and she does not surrender.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

  “She would want you to listen to your friends,” Emil said.

  There was a silence. Karis said bitterly, “I’m listening to you. Just don’t ask me to insult Norina with a false forgiveness. If you want to tell her something, tell her I have no respect for someone who can’t cherish what I was willing to die for.”

  “I’ll tell her,” Emil said. “But she can’t make peace with her husband when she feels like she has to sleep with the horses to avoid irritating you with her presence.”

  “She doesn’t have to sleep with the horses,” Karis said. “Just tell her not to talk to me. I’m going to kill someone, and I’d rather it wasn’t her.”

  Emil stepped back involuntarily.

  “Medric already has talked me out of tearing Mabin’s precious village to pieces, which I could do.”

  “I do not doubt it,” Emil said. “I’m glad you heeded him; I don’t think I could endure it if the House of Lilterwess were to fall a second time. Can I ask what you’re working on?”

  “A hammer,” Karis said. “A hammer for working steel.”

  He waited, but she explained no further. She did add after a moment, “Let me finish with this, and then I’ll stop and rest, which will make J’han happy, and we can talk about what to do.”

  She turned back to her rocks, and the sound of them shattering under her hammer followed Emil back to the edge of the beach.

  “What is she making?” Norina asked. She had sat upon the ground and was reorganizing her clothing, having perhaps submitted to an examination of some kind.

  “She’s making a hammer. What she’ll make with it I can’t imagine, but she’ll tell me. What I want to know is where she got coal. That’s not the sort of thing that can be picked up off the ground.”

  J’han shook his head. “The water witch and she are like hand and glove. Who knows how they’re doing it.”

  Norina, seated among the stones, said, “By tradition, the people of the borders are protected by the G’deon. If the water witch recognizes her, no doubt he thinks he owes her a certain fealty.”

  “That bodes well,” Emil said.

  “Doesn’t it though.” Norina stood up. “Well, am I an exile?”

  “No, but you should not talk to her.”

  “I guess that’s an improvement. Why did you kneel to her?”

  “I thought she needed to be taught a lesson. She is very teachable.”

  Norina smiled, though not with a lot of vigor. “I know this all too well. But some lessons, I fear, she will never learn.”

  “Norina—” Emil hesitated to say this in front of J’han, but it would have been too awkward to ask him to step away. “Karis says to tell you that she has no respect for someone who can’t cherish what she was willing to die for.”

  Norina accepted this fresh censure with surprising equanimity. “I thought as much,” she said. “J’han, is there any hope she’ll recover her physical sensations, or is that damage permanent?”

  J’han said irritably, “My impulse is to say that it’s permanent, but what do I know? She’s still having convulsions at sunset every day—one of the strangest things I’ve ever seen. Maybe this is as well as she will ever get.”

  Norina looked at Karis as her heavy hammer once again smashed into the ore. “She deserves better,” she said.

  There was a silence. Emil took the reins of the horses, to unload their gear and take them up to graze. Norina said to J’han, “How do I keep my milk from drying up?”

  J’han looked at her in some astonishment.

  Of course there was a way, but lacking a spare child to give suck to, this seemed like a husband’s prob
lem. Emil left them to work it out.

  That night, he seduced his beloved Sainnite seer and did not care when their groans became cries that anyone trying to sleep upon the beach could hear. If Karis was awake, she’d know that at least two of her companions knew how to cherish what they had.

  Chapter 26

  When Zanja opened her eyes, she lay in a shallow, strangely shaped wooden room, which was lit by a gently swinging lamp that hung from a hook. “She’s awake,” said the man who sat near her upon the steeply sloping floor. He held a pistol.

  Mabin came in. The ceiling was so low she had to walk crouched over. The entire room seemed to move. The lamp swung as if in a breeze. Zanja had never in her life been in a boat, and had not guessed that they might have enclosed rooms like this, not a place for people - it was not shaped right - but apparently for storage. Now, except for the pallet upon which Zanja lay, it was empty as a coffin.

  “Give me the pistol,” Mabin said to the man. He handed it to her and went out, closing the door behind himself. Mabin squatted upon the floor, grunting with tiredness.

  Knife fights often are won and lost in the first moments of battle, when in the first movements and first contacts of blade on blade, the fighters discover whether or not they’ve met their match. A good strategist learns to use those moments to deliberately mislead the opponent into misjudgments that there is no time to recognize.

  Zanja hastily considered her situation. Annis was dead. Mabin had assumed that Karis was still alive, in the company of Norina and J’han. Although Mabin could not know that Karis had won back many hours from smoke, she would not be confident of Karis’s subjugation to the drug, because even under smoke Karis had been able to use her power to aid her own escape. Mabin could not know about Emil, and she had expressed no interest in Medric, so perhaps she assumed that Zanja had rescued Karis unassisted.