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 recruit the entire company of Paladins to 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 Thirty-Three
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 doknow 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 fanner’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 isno 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 girt 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 turned 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.”
“Thank you, Lieutenant-General. The company will certainly appreciate that.”
It was a gray day, and the bright colors of the city’s latched shutters and doors were further muted by a haze of chimney smoke. They walked between ridges of snow that walled either side of the road, and the sledge runners clacked rhythmically on exposed cobblestones. The garrison gate lay ahead. Clement could hear a distant cheer as the gate guards spotted them, and then a bugle pealed the news of their arrival. Suddenly the entire company walked in step, lined up, straight-backed.
By some unlikely piece of luck, Gilly was already waiting at the gate. Clement could see him, hunched like a crow on his exceptionally steady horse, exactly as he had been when she left. Had he been as haunted by anxiety as she had been, this last month?
Now they were passing the building that housed Clement’s small, peculiar family. The door opened; the girl-nurse came out onto the stoop with the heavily-bundled baby in her arms.
Clement had broken formation and climbed the stairs before it even occurred to her that now the entire company had no choice but to come to a disorderly and rather confused halt. She took her son in her arms. He seemed to be asleep. The small weight of his body simultaneously relieved and oppressed her. She kissed his forehead softly so as to not awaken him.
The girl-nurse looked pale. “Is my son well?” Clement asked. “Has Gilly looked after you?”
“Of course,” the girl said, looking flustered.
“Come into the garrison with me. Captain Herme—”
Clement gave the baby back to the girl, and the captain stepped forward to help her down the stairs. Now the door opened again, and the storyteller came out, carrying a basket, with her heavy cloak loosely wrapped around her shoulders.
Clement thought, Now it begins.
She said, “Storyteller, are you on your way into the garrison? You might as well come with us.”
The storyteller’s dark, narrow, sculpted face was beyond reading. Yet it seemed to Clement that the woman knew she had no choice but to comply. The storyteller followed the girl-nurse down the steps, and silently accepted the soldiers’ greetings. The company continued its progress, and was admitted with the usual fanfare into the garrison, as Gilly watched, his ugly face drawn and unsmiling.
Clement made a laudatory speech and dismissed the weary company. As the soldiers sorted out their gear and began to disperse, Clement took the gate captain aside. “Captain, I want you to take the storyteller into custody and keep her under guard in the gaol. Do it as quietly as you can. I don’t think she will resist.”
“Yes, Lieutenant-General. May I ask— ”
“No, I can’t explain.”
He gave her a stiff salute, signaled his company, and with several soldiers behind him approached the storyteller. She spoke a couple of words, and handed the captain her basket. Then she turned and walked off with the soldiers. It was a very quiet arrest, but the girl-nurse noticed and understood. Uttering a small moan, wild-eyed, she clutched the baby to her breast. What reason had she to fear she might be next?
Gilly’s stolid horse breathed out a puff of fog as Clement went to him, and took his proffered hand in a pretense of greeting.
“What are you doing?” he asked in a low voice.
“I believe the storyteller’s tribe is Ashawala’i, the tribe that would destroy us, a seer once said.”
Gilly said after a moment, “Seer’s visions are explanatory or tentative, not necessarily predictive. Even if she is a survivor of that unfortunate tribe …”
“She also may be the Lost G’deon’s lover.”
Gilly sharply turned his head to look after the departing woman and her respectful escort.
Clement said, “She might be fully capable of destroying us.”
“With a G’deon’s power behind her? Most certainly.” Gilly’s gaze became unfocused. Then he blinked, and said, “Clem, look up at the roof.”
Clement did. Two ravens stood together near the roof’s edge. One of them watched the departing storyteller. The other looked directly into Clement’s eyes.
“They can behave like natural birds when they choose to,” said Gilly. “At the moment, apparently, they don’t so choose. How long has that one been following you?”
“I don’t know.” Clement felt very cold.
“The other one follows the storyteller.” As Gilly spoke, the raven lifted up and flew over the rooftops, towards the gaol. “I think it would be safe to say that nothing you have done since the ravens first appeared a month ago, has gone unnoticed. If the storyteller is the Lost G’deon’s lover, then there seems little doubt whose supernatural agents these birds are.”
The remaining raven continued to gaze at Clement, an unearthly, unblinking stare. Clement, her face stiff with cold, said with difficulty, “Until this moment, I thought I was just guessing.”
“How will imprisoning the storyteller prevent our destruction? Isn’t it possible you might bring destruction upon us?”
“Don’t you think I have driven myself mad with that question already?”
“You lo
ok mad,” he said, with a frail shadow of his old sarcasm.
A soldier approached with the storyteller’s basket, which was crammed with the baby’s supplies. “She said to give you this, Lieutenant-General.”
Gilly said, “You’re taking your son back inside the walls?”
“Put the basket with my gear,” Clement told the soldier. “Gilly, how did you know I would arrive today?”
“The storyteller told me. Not just the day, but the hour as well.”
“Apparently, she expected to be arrested. Why didn’t she flee?”
There was a long, strange silence. “Well, here’s Cadmar,” Gilly said, as though that were some kind of answer.
Cadmar strode down the road briskly, with Ellid practically trotting behind to keep up. Clement said, “I’ll deal with him. I’ll meet you in your room, in about an hour. Will you get that girl and my son settled in my quarters?”
Gilly leaned over stiffly, to clasp her hand again. “What will happen to us?” he asked. Fortunately, he did not seem to expect an answer.
Cadmar was only interested in the success of Clement’s mission, and since all the attackers of the children’s garrison had been killed, with no Sainnite casualties, he considered it a success. Clement explained very precisely why and how this success could prove to be a disaster, but Cadmar would not hear of it. With Willis dead, he said, the movement he had inspired would surely falter. Cadmar also dismissed the importance of Medric’s book. “This Medric himself admits he is a traitor to his own people—and he obviously is a madman. Get Gilly to read some of it to you and you’ll see what I mean.”
It was without much hope that Clement explained to Cadmar why she had arrested the storyteller. By the time she was done, Cadmar appeared to doubt her stability. “There is no G’deon!” He went on to explain why, as though she were a particularly simple child who could not seem to learn anything. “This mission has been a trial,” he finally said patronizingly, and, dismissing her, told her to get some rest.
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