“The storyteller? What is she doing here at this hour?”
“She says you must come with her at once. Bring the money, she says.”
They exchanged baffled looks.
“The storyteller can be a bit close-mouthed,” said the gate guard. “So I thought you ought to talk to her yourself. I’m sorry, though. It’s a wretched night.”
“Here, stand by the fire for a bit, not that it’ll do you much good, since that wind is blowing directly down the chimney.”
After she’d bundled up in every warm piece of clothing she had, which she was certain would still not be enough, Clement left the guard still shivering by her poor fire and went downstairs to Gilly’s room. She didn’t bother to pound on his door, but simply went in and shook him vigorously by the shoulder until he mumbled. “What?”
“I have to go into town.”
“Clem?” He turned his head and blinked blearily at her. “That wind,” he said, articulating carefully, “will flay you.”
“Hell, I’m half frozen and I haven’t even been outside yet. Gilly—I think Alrin’s decided to accept my offer.”
“Congratulations,” he said dryly. “You’ve succeeded in completely mystifying me. And why areyou going out? Have you explained already, when I was asleep?”
“The storyteller’s been sent to fetch me, and she wasn’t too forthcoming with the gate guard. But—”
“Oh, Clem!” With his face muffled in the pillow, Gilly uttered a grunt of laughter. “You’re about to become a mother.”
“I’m afraid so.”
“Early.”
“Apparently.”
“Unprepared.”
“Desperately.”
“What do you expect me to do about it?”
“Explain my absence to Cadmar, will you? If I’m not back by morning.”
“Clem,” Gilly said, as she stepped away. “What are you going to do with it?”
“With what?”
“With the baby.”
Gilly was just a shadow in the darkness, but she stared at him. “What do you mean?”
“When Alrin hands you her baby,” Gilly said, “What are you going to do with it?”
She found herself incapable of reply. When she left Gillys room, he was still laughing, and she could hardly blame him.
*
When Clement finally reached the gate, having first awakened the garrison clerk to get her funds out of the lockbox, the storyteller waited in shelter, huddled by the brazier alongside the lone guard in the shack. At the sight of Clement, she rose quickly, wrapped a muffler around her face, and pulled on a pair of fur-lined gloves.
They went out into the storm. Clement was still speechless, but in any case, the storm would have made conversation impossible. A miserable journey, staggering down narrow roads with the wind blasting like a river down a canyon. One step at a time, tears freezing on her lashes, face numb, feet like blocks at the end of her legs. A killing wind, flinging ice like daggers. Shutters banged, a piece of slate torn loose from a roof shattered at her feet. “Bloody hell!” The storyteller glanced at her, her eyes a smear of black, rimmed in white snow stuck to the wool that wrapped her face. They staggered on.
The wind was barred from Alrin’s house, but still it roared, only somewhat muffled by latched shutters, locked doors, and heavy curtains. A single lamp flame flickered in the hall; the house seemed empty. The storyteller pulled the muffler from her face. Clement followed her to the kitchen, where together they built up the fire and then unwrapped themselves. When Clement’s face had thawed enough, she asked, “How long until the child is born?”
The storyteller stomped snow from her boots. “I will ask the midwife.” She left the kitchen.
A chair was drawn up to the fire, with a work basket beside it. Clement sat down, shivering, and waited. She waited a long time. Once, she thought she heard a groan or cry, but it could have been the wind. The storyteller returned. “The midwife cannot say how long it will be.”
“But Alrin has borne several children.”
The storyteller held her hands out to the fire; her fingers were still gray with cold. “This one is different.”
She swung the kettle over the fire, and then went moving about the dark kitchen. Distracted, still thawing out, Clement stared into the fire until the kettle began to utter enthusiastic spurts of steam. Then she watched the storyteller make tea: a surprisingly fussy process of Pouring small quantities of water, waiting, swirling the pot, sniffing the steam, and adding more water. The rich, grass-and-flower scent of the tea brought Clement out of her daze. “I’ve never seen anyone make tea like that.”
The storyteller paused.
“Usually, they just pour the water and let it sit.”
“This is the way I know.”
“How do you know it?”
The storyteller poured some water, took another sniff, and put on the lid. She brought over the tea table, on which she had laid bread and butter, and a selection of cold foods: pickles, cheese, salt meat, jam. She poured the tea, and Clement took a sip. Whether due to the method or to the ingredients, it was delicious.
“I can’t answer your question,” the storyteller said. “I know many things but I don’t know how I came to know them.”
After a moment, Clement said, “I suppose having no memories could be a blessing.”
The storyteller said nothing, as though loss and gain were no more important to her than they were to a dumb beast. She drew a stool up to the fire, and took a cup of tea.
Clement sipped her tea and waited, and the storyteller never became impatient, never looked at her questioningly, never seemed restless at all. She held the teacup in her palms of her hands and warmed her fingers with it. Her solitary, remarkably long braid lay across her wool-clad back like a mislaid piece of yarn. Her boots steamed in the heat of the hearth.
Clement said, “I haven’t even considered what to do with this baby when it’s born. I suppose I assumed I’d have time to … do whatever I am supposed to do.”
The storyteller said, “You must find someone to nurse it. A woman in milk, who will raise this baby beside her own, or whose own child is dead, or has been taken from her.”
“I have no idea how to find such a woman.”
“The midwife will know.” There was a silence, and the storyteller added, “It may be difficult.”
“You mean it will cost me even more money?”
“The Shaftali people do not raise children casually.”
While Clement watched in stunned silence, the storyteller sipped her tea until the cup was empty. “The child could die,Clement finally said. ”While I’m running around looking for a young, willing woman with milk in her breasts …“
The storyteller nodded indifferently. “The Laughing Man is doing his work tonight.”
“The Laughing Man?”
The storyteller reached into her boot and took out a pack of cards. Without looking, as though she knew the cards by feel, she took one out: a primitive woodcut of a man, laughing gleefully in the midst of a wrecked house. The storyteller’s fingertip touched the red symbol stamped on one corner. “This glyph means fate, or chance. The Laughing Man’s actions are so unexpected, and their effect is so profound, that his victims think it is a bitter joke. He destroys everything—even trust and hope. But there is one power that can counteract his.” She took out another card: a circle of people, arm in arm. “Fellowship,” she said.
Clement said, finally, as the storyteller secured the pack with a leather thong, “To own these cards is illegal. To use them, to know how to use them, to use them in front of a Sainnite officer… !”
Silent, serious, fearless, the storyteller tucked the cards into her boot.
The strangest aspect of this woman’s madness was how sane it seemed, how utterly coherent. If Clement asked the storyteller where she got her cards, or how she learned to read them, the storyteller certainly would respond that she did not remember. But she used them,
as she used everything, as a tool for storytelling. She was not a friend or a lover, a member of a tribe, of a family; she had no past and neither feared nor desired the future. She was a storyteller only, and that was what both explained her coherence and defined her madness.
The storyteller gazed at Clement: a long gaze, incurious, unblinking.
Clement said, “Don’t let anyone else see those cards, or you will be a dead woman. Do I owe you a story now?”
“You told me a story already, a tale of a woman who contracted to buy a child without realizing that she also had to make a home for it.”
Clement snorted. “A ridiculous tale. Who wouldn’t realize—” I here was a sound from upstairs, a wrenching cry of a sort Clement had heard too often in her life, but always before on a battlefield. “My mother’s gods!”
She leapt to her feet, but the storyteller’s voice stopped her. Marga will not allow you into the room.“
“She’s dying!”
“Yes.” The storyteller picked up her empty cup from the floor, and refilled it.
The house again lay still, a silence wrapped around by howling wind. The Laughing Man leaves wreckage in his wake, inevitably, unstoppably. Clement returned eventually to the chair; there was nothing she could do.
Sometime before dawn, the storm began to lose its force. Clement was awakened by the storyteller building up the fire. She had slept in the chair, covered by a blanket, but the storyteller had perched unmoving on the stool all night. Now, she swung the kettle over flame once again, and began the ritual of making another pot of tea. Clement said, “Has something happened?”
Her reply was a faint rapping at the front door. The storyteller went to answer it, and quickly returned. “The Lucky Man is here.”
“What?” Clement leapt to her feet, snatched the corner of the blanket out of the coals, and then wrapped it around herself like a shawl. She went out into the bitter chill, into a city glazed with ice, with drifts of snow piled head-high by the harsh wind. A snow plow, dragged by two massive, steaming plow-horses, worked its way slowly down the street. At Alrin’s gate, which was half buried in a drift of snow, Gilly waited on horseback, attended by a red-cheeked, shivering young soldier. The storyteller came out behind Clement, with cups of tea emitting clouds of steam in the chill. She gave one to Gilly and one to his aide, then disappeared into the house again.
Clement said vaguely, “It’s almost as if the storyteller knew that you were coming.”
“People with talents like hers often have some prescience.” Gilly gulped his tea. “Any word?”
“Not yet.”
Gilly looked grim. “And Alrin has been laboring all night?”
“The storyteller implies…” Clement took too deep a breath, and choked on the searing air. “Gods, Gilly, what are you doing here?”
“The storyteller says what?”
“Alrin will die.”
“Well.” He gulped his tea again, and handed Clement first the cup, then the basket that rested before him on the saddle. “I’ve made inquiries. But it will not be easy to find a nurse. Meanwhile, I think I’ve gotten everything you need, even some milk.” He spoke briskly, no doubt to cover his embarrassment.
She stared at him, speechless from gratitude and sleeplessness.
He continued, “Ask the midwife to show you how to care for the child. And offer her a commission for helping you to find a nurse. But don’t offend her.”
“How would I do that?” she asked humbly.
“By giving her orders as though she were a soldier.”
“Gilly … I can’t keep a baby in the garrison!”
“I’ll tell Cadmar it’s temporary. Now get inside.” He smiled a gruesome smile, twisted as always.
“I’m in your debt, I think.”
“Are you? I lost track several years ago.”
She reached up, and he reached down, and briefly clasped her hand.
Back in the kitchen, the storyteller took the empty cups from her, then examined the contents of Clement’s basket, and gave an approving nod. “Fellowship,” she commented, and went to put the bottle of milk in the cold cupboard.
Some hours later, Marga came into the kitchen, carrying a bundle wrapped so as to reveal a solemn, old man’s face and blue, unfocused eyes. Clement gave Marga the money, and Marga put the baby in her arms, like a shopkeeper handing over a sack of sugar.
“I need to speak to the midwife!” Clement said in a panic.
“She’s busy,” Marga said. “The storyteller will show you out.” She left the kitchen, hurrying, leaving Clement with a fleeting glimpse of her harried face and fatigue-smeared eyes. The storyteller followed her out, and for some little time Clement was left alone to stare at the baby, who blinked vaguely at her, opened and closed a toothless mouth and made random movements in its bindings. Clement felt a swift, deep shifting in her heart. Everything felt askew, and yet this giddiness was not entirely due to fear.
The storyteller returned. “The midwife knows of a possible nurse. She’ll speak to her tomorrow, and send her to the garrison, if she’s willing.”
“But I need her to show me what to do!”
The storyteller said, “She cannot leave Alrin.”
Clement stood like a dumb animal, watching without seeing, as the storyteller put a few things in a basket: her silken performance clothes, a wooden comb. Then she took the baby so Clement could put on her coat. She gave the infant back, now wrapped in three small blankets from Gilly’s basket, and put on her own outdoor clothing. She got the bottle of milk from the cupboard, and picked up both the baskets in one hand.
The storyteller held open the kitchen door for Clement. On the table in the front hall, where the lamp had long since burned itself out, she placed a latchkey. She opened the front door, and Clement walked out into the blinding day, where a cold sun glanced around scudding shreds of clouds, and the street was busy with people, old and young, all wielding snow shovels. The storyteller closed the door firmly.
The infant stirred in the cold and uttered a small complaining sound. The storyteller arranged a fold of blanket to shield its face, then took Clement by the arm to steady her on the snowy walk.
“You’re coming with me?” asked Clement.
In a voice made rough by cold the storyteller said, “I will teach you to care for your son.”
“My son?” said Clement blankly. She looked down at the bundled baby. Then, the finality with which the storyteller had shut that door sank in. “Storyteller? Marga won’t tolerate you after Alrin is gone?”
“Marga will do what she wants, now.”
A silence. The street had been scattered with sand, and the storyteller took her supporting hand from Clement’s elbow. Clement said, “Gilly and I will take care of you, somehow.”
The baby in her arms seemed suddenly much heavier. She looked at him, and realized he was asleep.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
In the dim, chilly cellar, Karis painted the blocks of type with viscous ink that Garland had cooked the day before. She took the sheet of paper from Garland, carefully checked the side that was already printed to make certain she oriented it properly, and laid it delicately on top of the plate. She screwed down the press, waited a moment, then swiftly unscrewed it and lifted off the printed sheet, to hand to Garland.
Both of them were covered with ink, their clothing stained, their fingers black, their faces smudged. Holding the sheet carefully by the edges, Garland felt so tired he could not summon up a comment, though it seemed to him an appropriate moment for ponderous statements. Karis dug her knuckles into the small of her back. “Is it right side up?”
Garland glanced at both sides of the big sheet, on which were printed eight pages of Medric’s booklet. “It’s right.”
“We’re done, then.”
He carried the page up the narrow stone stairs to the kitchen, which was strung with rope on which the drying sheets hung like tablecloths on a busy tavern’s laundry line. The entire h
ousehold had gathered, and, as Garland came through the door, they clapped and uttered huzzahs.
Leeba, who ran giddily up and down the strung lines of paper, contributed a few shrieks. Though she had not been allowed in the cellar, she had managed to become an ink-child more smeared than Karis, more stained than Garland. She chanted as she ran: “The last page! Of the last book! Of the last year!”
J’han captured her. “But not the last bath!”
She squealed like a piglet. J’han, who had proved to be the one of them patient and persistent enough to master typesetting, gripped her a bit more determinedly than usual. “We have gotto get her to go to sleep,” he said ominously.
Norina took the child from him. Leeba abruptly went limp and obedient, for which Garland, although he could now tolerate being in the same room as Norina, did not blame her. Medric took the last sheet of paper from Garland’s hands, and ceremoniously hung it from a line.
Karis had been wearing a shirt that belonged in the rag bag. Ducking paper, she stripped it off, tossed it to the floor, and, in her undershirt, lay face down on Garland’s table. “I need a healer,” she moaned.
J’han went to her promptly, and examined her back. With unconcealed appreciation he said, “You are a fine specimen! Look here,” he said to Garland. “You don’t often see a musculus trapeziusso developed. Even her musculus triceps brachiiis obvious. What an anatomy lesson she would be!”
Garland looked where J’han pointed, apparently surprising the healer by actually showing some interest. J’han happily explained the details of Karis’s construction, pulling aside her shirt to point out the connections of muscle to bone, to explain what each one did, and to speculate on why and how the muscles of her back had developed as they had.
“Blessed day,” said Emil in a muted voice.
Garland looked around to find that Emil, with Medric folded comfortably to his chest, was gazing at Karis’s amazing back with an astonished expression, as though it had only just occurred to him to be impressed by her. A deep man like him might neglect to notice the surfaces of things, Garland supposed.
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