Fire Logic el-1

by J. Marks Laurie

  “For bragging rights?” Karis sounded amused.

  “I was abandoned by my fellows in the middle of a firefight because they wanted me dead. That hardly seems a thing to brag about. But I’d rather not have to explain why I don’t have a scar to show for it.”

  “All right. I’ll try to restrain myself.”

  The violence of metalsmithing had not spoiled Karis for more gentle crafts. She almost made the healing seem as if it were not work at all, except that occasionally a drop of her sweat fell and landed on Zanja’s skin. Zanja worked to keep her breathing steady and her muscles relaxed; her old trainers would have been proud of her. When Karis’s warm hands lifted from her thigh, it was a relief but also a loss.

  “That’s better,” Karis said.

  Zanja pulled up the bloodstained remains of her pants. “How do you do it,” she asked shakily, “without being able to feel?”

  “I feel a little. It’s not much, but it’s all I have.”

  “When I think of what you could do …”

  “Don’t think about it.”

  “The man that got you addicted to smoke—”

  “He’s dead already, not that it does me any good.”

  “I’d like to kill him again.”

  “You’d have to wait your turn.”

  Behind the clear eyes, the powerful, passive muscles, the soot ground into her skm, and the quiet, waiting expression of her face, lay a deep anger. Zanja said, “Karis, you are not tame, merely caged.”

  Karis made a sound as if she had accidentally sliced a finger. “You know, talking to you is a bit like chewing on hot coals.”

  Zanja broke into a startled laugh.

  “My raven said you were in a black despair.”

  Zanja said grudgingly, “Norina has been as kind as I would tolerate, and I guess it’s done me some good. You must have done something dramatic, to force her to treat me so gently.”

  Karis showed her teeth. “Oh, I did.”

  “Did you threaten to come get me yourself?”

  “Threaten? No, she is immune to threats. I started to South Hill moments after I’d gotten your message, and I challenged Nori to give me a reason to turn back and let her go in my place.”

  Karis lay upon her back and gazed up into a sky as blue as her eyes. Her shirt collar was unbuttoned and sweat collected in the hollow of her throat. Zanja shut her eyes and begged the hot afternoon to anesthetize her. After a long time she said, “But Norina seems desperately worried, and much as I don’t like her I must respect her. I wish I understood what she understands.”

  “Mmm. This is what you sound like when you’re being diplomatic. It’s not chewing coals anymore, it’s more like—oh, I’m no good at metaphors. You tell me one.”

  Zanja tried to think of texture, for although Karis could not taste, she surely could feel enough to be able to tell soft from hard. “Those crisp cakes with chewy pieces of fruit in them,” she suggested.

  “They feed those to me when I’ve forgotten too many times to eat. They must be mostly butter. What are you laughing at?”

  “You don’t like those little cakes?”

  “I hate being treated like I’m an invalid.”

  “I apologize. It’s my own ignorance that makes me resort to indirection. I don’t know what I’m supposed to say or know. I don’t know what might hurt or offend you.”

  Unlike the sun-parched sky at which she gazed, Karis’s eyes were a bright, unfaded blue. She squinted them shut suddenly, as though sweat stung them. “When Norina takes you away, you won’t know any more than you do now.”

  “That’s not going to happen,” Zanja said.

  Karis turned her head. “Norina is my protector because she’s dangerous.”

  “Yes, but she has more to lose than I have.”

  “Are you going to make me demand that you obey her?”

  “Are you going to treat me like a servant?”

  “Are you going to make me choose between you?”

  “Why not? Norina makes you choose.”

  “She has a good reason.”

  “What good reason could she possibly have?”

  Karis said unsteadily, “I can’t tell you.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I’m bound by obligations I can’t explain to you. Why are you so cantankerous? Is it the heat?”

  Zanja said, “From beginning to end, this year has been a disaster. But I’ve learned something that you and Norina both don’t know: how impossible it is to really make a choice, when the best choice of all is an option you couldn’t even imagine.”

  Karis blinked up at the glaring sky. “Say that again, but fill it up with human experience and leave out the abstract words, and maybe I’ll understand it.”

  “The Sainnites defined my choices for me. And before that, the Ashawala’i did the same. Because I am a katrim, and because the Sainnites are fools, I am living a life that I hate. I’m thinking I should do something else.”

  “I see,” Karis said.

  “In much the same way, Norina makes it possible for you to live within your cage. And so long as she helps you tolerate captivity you never will break free. You’ll have no reason to try.”

  “Shaftal’s Name!” Karis sat up abruptly.

  Now ends our friendship, Zanja thought.

  “Oh, you are dangerous,” Karis said.

  She settled back onto her elbows, and in the heated silence the accuser bugs suddenly began to shrill. After a long time, she said, “Norina has insisted that you be left in ignorance, lest you do something disastrous. But now it seems that you have done something disastrous because of your ignorance.”

  “Names of the gods! What have I done?”

  “I can’t tell you—that’s Norina’s business. But I think I will point out to her that to continue to leave you in ignorance seems, at best, ill-advised,” Karis said. “And to treat you like a servant seems ridiculous, since you will not—cannot—act like one—except as a kind of play-acting. And to send you away has proven impossible since no matter how far you go I continue to hold onto you in spite of all advice and common sense. Norina insists that I must not—cannot—simply call you my friend. I am a smoke addict, and she is a Truthken. Only an idiot would trust my judgment over hers. So tell me what I am to do, Zanja, for I am at a loss.”

  Zanja said, “Why don’t you seek the advice of a seer? It just happens that I know one, and—”

  She had to stop, because Karis had begun to howl with laughter. Nonplused, she waited for Karis to recover from her mirth, which had a certain bitter edge to it, for she seemed almost to be sobbing by the end, and had to wipe her tears on the tail of her shirt. “You have no idea—” she gasped.

  “No idea at all,” Zanja agreed.

  “I’m sorry,” Karis said. “Tell me about your seer. Tell me how you met.”

  “I met Medric on Fire Night,” Zanja began. “Emil had sent me to find Annis, who had gone rogue after the Sainnites torched her family’s farmstead, and my search brought me to Wilton, where I found her. But along the way, something began to happen to me, and I began to do things that made no sense …”

  But at least one thing she had done did make sense. She opened the pouch that held her glyph cards, and shook out from the bottom, where she had nearly forgotten it, the pendant of green stone and silver wire. “That day I bought this for you, though I had no reason to even imagine that I would see you again. I thought I had lost my mind. I was starting to remember things in a way that seemed insane. But perhaps it was, after all, a kind of prescience. When the veil between present and past tore apart, so also did the veil between present and future. I hadn’t lost my mind; I merely knew something I had no business knowing.”

  She put the pendant into Karis’s hand. “You see, now I have given you the pendant. I look forward to someday understanding how everything I did that day makes as much sense as buying this pendant did.”

  Karis seemed dumbfounded, and said not a word as
Zanja resumed her tale, but lay back in the grass with the pendant in her fist, resting against her breast, until Zanja had described her last sight of Emil standing in the middle of the road, and then fell silent.

  Then Karis said, “Name of Shaftal, it does make sense. Norina has been wrong—wrong from the first moment I sensed your presence in Shaftal. Zanja—” She swallowed. She was breathing as though she had run a race. “Yes, I do want to speak to Medric, very badly.”

  “I can bring him to you. Unless I’ve sorely misjudged him, he would make himself easy for me to find. He wants nothing more than to do some good in Shaftal. It doesn’t bother you that he’s half Sainnite?”

  As Zanja talked, Karis had gotten to her feet. Now, she gazed down at Zanja, and her face seemed very far away, and shadowed suddenly as her height blocked out the sun. “What is it exactly that you think I am?” she asked.

  Zanja stared up at her. The people of the Juras tribe were yellow-haired, blue-eyed, extremely strong giants. But Karis’s Juras mother had been a Lalali whore. “Your father would have been a very big man,” she said.

  “And a Sainnite.”

  “No doubt. I suppose that would matter to some people.”

  “To some people, it is the most important thing about me.”

  “Well, Karis, you know some tremendous idiots.”

  Karis leaned over, and took hold of Zanja with both her hands, and set her on her feet. “So long as you’re not one of them,” she said, and Zanja saw that she was smiling.

  Beyond the inn-yard and the inn, behind the kitchen, grew an undisciplined garden where climbing roses and fragrant herbs tangled into a blooming thicket, over which bees operated in a hum of industry. The beehives stood at the garden’s edge, nearly half a dozen of them. Bees bumped into Zanja and Karis as they walked across the flight path, their feet crunching in the dried bee corpses that littered the ground. Zanja followed Karis into the tangle of roses, and Karis in turn followed a path to a lathe house overgrown with rich, green vines. The door had fallen off its hinges. Within, Norina lay upon a bench in a mossy shade garden planted beside a spring. The bubbling pond was filled with sodden wooden crates that contained bottles of milk and wine, kept cool by the cold water. The shade garden seemed damp and almost chilly compared to the sun-sodden outdoors. Norina lay on her side with her head pillowed on one arm.

  Zanja hesitated at the doorway as Karis knelt beside Norina and lay a hand upon her gravid torso. She smiled so sweetly that Zanja wondered how anyone could remain angry with her. Even Norina could be cajoled, for after a moment her scarred face creased with a rare smile. Bits of sunlight that came in through the lathwork speckled them with sparks of brilliance.

  Leaning upon the rotting door post, Zanja saw how it must always have been between them: bound by an affection sturdy enough to survive all the disagreements and power struggles that were inevitable between two such willful women.

  They talked in low voices, then Zanja heard Karis say, “Are you certain you want to know?”

  Norina opened her shirt and Karis put a hand inside to feel her belly like the midwife or healer she would no doubt have been, had the elements in her blood been less radically out of balance, and had the story of her life been less out of true. “It’s a daughter,” Karis said. “Ready and restless to come out of there. And a vigorous child she’ll be—how could she not be?”

  “How indeed?” Norina grumbled. “Conceived by an earth witch’s meddling—” Norina buttoned up her shirt. “It’s been a bittersweet year,” she said heavily.

  They both were silent then, until Norina said quietly, “Karis, it’s a terrible position you’ve put me in. Ten years ago, when I offered to help you, I never offered to be your jailer.”

  “You’ve given me ten years I wouldn’t have had otherwise. Nori, I want you to tell Zanja what you’re afraid she’s done.”

  Norina sat up. “No, Karis, I told you …”

  Karis looked over at Zanja, who would be just a shadow against the blaze of sunlight. “Zanja, come here.”

  The grotto smelled of mold and rotten wood, but it certainly offered relief from the heat. Zanja used her porringer to dip some water from the spring; it was so cold it made her teeth ache. She brought some more for Karis, who drank it with the air of one accustomed to doing as her caretakers told her. Karis said, when Zanja had squatted on the ground beside her, “Since Norina refuses to talk, perhaps you would talk to her instead. Tell her about Fire Night, and about Medric.”

  Zanja told her tale again. When she had finished, there was a silence. Norma gazed into Zanja’s face as though she were reading and re-reading an unexpected letter and could not decide if the news it contained was good or bad. Then she put her head into her hands.

  “Truth?” Karis said.

  “A fire blood’s truth,” Norina said grumpily. “As full of mystery and metaphor as a blasted book of poetry. I don’t know what to make of it.”

  “Well, I think it only sensible to accept this seer. In fact, if what you fear is as inevitable as you say, I don’t see what else we can do.”

  “You want to trust him?” Norina seemed appalled.

  “Put him through your Truthken’s meat grinder first if you want.”

  “A seer? His truths will change from one moment to the next. There is no point.”

  “There must be a way.”

  “No, Karis.” She sat forward on the bench, implacable. “No.”

  Karis said, “Nori, I can’t continue like this.”

  Nonna stood up abruptly. “Near fifteen years you’ve trusted me—”

  “Sit down,” Karis said.

  There was a silence. To Zanja’s surprise, Norina sat down. The spring made soft, lapping sounds, like a cat drinking milk. “You are not infallible,” Karis said. “I intend no insult by pointing this out, no more than you intend to insult me when you remind me of my many weaknesses. This time, I want you to trust me. Tell Zanja the truth. Let her find this seer and bring him to me.”

  “No.” Zanja had never heard a voice so cold.

  “If you don’t do it, I will.”

  “Then you have no further need for my advice. And I have no desire to either struggle with you further or to participate in your folly. You’ll go to your doom without my help.”

  In the dim light, Karis’s face seemed very pale, but this time she made no move to stop Norina from standing up and leaving. It was Zanja who leapt up and blocked the door.

  “Are you insane?” Norina said softly.

  “You’re making a mistake.”

  They looked at each other, eye to eye, more than long enough for Norina to figure out that Zanja was no threat to her, and her entrapment in the lathe house was an illusion. But Norina didn’t move to push past Zanja. She turned and said to Karis, “No matter what I do, I am forsworn. Only you could put me in such a position.”

  Karis said, exasperated, “You’re too angry to think. Even I know a way out of your dilemma.”

  It was unusual, and gratifying, to see Norina so taken aback. To see her cold face quirk with wry humor was even more surprising. “You’re getting very subtle for an earth witch,” she told Karis. And then her unnerving gaze shifted to Zanja’s face. “I assume you’re wondering why Mabin arranged your murder. It was to prevent you from delivering to the enemy one of Shaftal’s most guarded secrets. But you had already done what she most feared, when you crawled through Medric’s window on Fire Night.”

  “I had? What had I done?”

  But Norina apparently had said all she would say. She shifted her heavy, off-balance torso, pressed her hands to the small of her hack, and waited. Beyond her, Karis sat with her elbows on her knees and her chin in her hands. Whatever they were waiting for, they seemed prepared for it to take a while.

  Perhaps they expected Zanja to determine for herself whatever it was that Norina’s vows prevented her from telling her. Zanja took her glyph cards from their pouch. “You say I know an important secret, but what sec
ret do I know?” She looked down: in her hand she held the Woman of the Doorway. “Karis is Shaftal’s most guarded secret? Why?” She sorted through the cards, wishing for Emil’s insight. Her fingers stopped: she held the card called Death-and-Life. The G’deon’s glyph.

  She could not take a breath. Norina held her arm in a painful grip. She must have seemed on the verge of falling over. “But Harald G’deon didn’t—” she protested, and stopped. Who really knew the truth of what had happened the last day of Harald’s life? Not many people would have been in his sickroom, and almost everyone had been killed by the Sainnites soon afterwards. She looked up from the card to Karis, who was making a serious study of the dirt beneath her feet. “He laid his hands on you before he died. He vested you with the power of Shaftal.”

  Karis raised her gaze and said to Norina, “Now may I speak? I think she is under a misapprehension.”

  They waited rather long for Norina to calculate a grudging answer. “Yes.”

  “When Harald died, I was the only earth witch in Shaftal. They found me and brought me to him at the last moment of his life. As he died, he dumped his load of power into me. I did not know what was happening, and it was done without my consent. After it was done, and could not be undone, my unworthiness was discovered. It became apparent to everyone that Harald could not have intended to make me his successor, but only to use me as a receptacle.”

  “By the nine gods!” Zanja turned to Norina. “For fifteen years Shaftal has been in turmoil—”

  Norina said quietly, “Despite having been so foully treated, Karis serves Shaftal with more honor and consistency than anyone thought possible.”

  It was a statement amazing in its sincerity, for Zanja had come to think that Norina admired and respected nobody. Even Karis looked rather surprised.

  Zanja said, “I mean no disrespect, but I don’t see how.”

  “She accepts obscurity, she chooses not to exercise her significant powers, she resists the lure of smoke as much as she can, she lives when sometimes her life is unendurable, and someday she will pass on the power she carries, and give Shaftal a G’deon.“