“What document?” said Gilly with great surprise.
“The storyteller’s body: her skin, her bones, her scars.”
Gilly rubbed his furrowed face again. “You must be awfully frightened, Clem,” he said. “Terror brings out your genius.”
The storyteller waited, as she always waited, in silence and stillness, without impatience or fear. Gilly entered the cell behind Clement and sat heavily on the stone bench.
The walls of the cell were shiny with ice. A barred window, as big as a hand, let in a little gray light. When the wind picked up, it blew in a cloud of fresh snow. A few flakes decorated the storyteller’s shoulder.
Clement said, “Take off your clothes.”
The storyteller commented, “This is a strange conclusion.”
Gilly said sharply. “What do you mean?”
In the silence that followed, the storyteller stood up and undressed. Under cloak and jacket she wore her close-fitted suit of heavy gray wool. Under that there was silk, and linen, and under that nothing. Her skin, even the skin that was never exposed to sun, was brown, almost black. She had a light build, a deep chest, and powerful legs. It was not at all difficult to imagine her running lightly up and down the vicious ridges of the high mountains, or sneaking into a heavily guarded camp to cut the throats of sleeping soldiers.
Clement lay her hand on the woman’s bare shoulder. She felt a shudder, but the storyteller only seemed to be shivering from cold. Clement put a hand to the woman’s coarse, stiff hair. She dug her fingers to the skull, and her fingertips encountered the hard ridge of a healed fracture. She felt how the woman’s hair tangled there, where it grew out crooked from a ragged scar. “How long has it been since your head was broken?” Clement asked.
“My head was broken?” the storyteller asked.
Surely this flat curiosity was feigned? Exasperated, Clement said sharply, “Turn around so I can see your back.”
The storyteller turned impassively.
“Good gods! Gilly, hold up the lantern!”
The storyteller’s back was a shocking patchwork: a disease, or a terrible burn, had left large pale patches in her skin. But when Clement touched the pale skin, she found it soft, healthy, unweathered as a child’s. What could cause such a thing?
Gilly said, “Lying a long time on the back in an unclean bed can cause the flesh to be eaten away, I’ve heard.” He was speaking with difficulty; the lantern trembled in his hand.
Clement said, “Did that happen to you, storyteller?”
The storyteller said nothing.
“Hold still.” Clement pressed her fingers down the length of the woman’s backbone. When she found the lumpy mass of a healed bone in the woman’s lower back, she felt no surprise, only relief. She knelt, taking the lantern from Gilly to illuminate the woman’s bare feet. Some of her toes were brown, others were pink. And then, as Clement raised her face, she found right in front of her nose the distinct, round scar of a gunshot wound in the side of the storyteller’s thigh.
“You must have taken that gunshot when you were in South Hill,” Clement said. “When you were a Paladin. But a wound like this would have putrefied. It wouldn’t be a clean scar like this—in fact, you should have lost your leg entirely.”
The storyteller looked down at her. “What a story my skin is telling you.”
“I read here that you are longtime enemy of my people, an Ashawala’i warrior whose back was broken six years ago.”
“ Katrim”she said.
“What?”
“You believe I am an enemy of your people, a Paladin, and a katrim!”
“I believe you are the last survivor of the Ashawala’i. I believe your injuries were healed by the Lost G’deon.”
The storyteller said, “May I get dressed?”
“Oh, for gods’ sake! What possible purpose can your pretense of forgetfulness serve?”
“I do not pretend.” Without permission, the storyteller began dressing.
Clement sat next to Gilly and put her head in her hands. Her relief had given way to crushing exhaustion. Like a wanderer lost in a dark night, she could see no further than her next random step. After a night’s desperate work, she could prove that the Lost G’deon existed. And now she had no idea what to do with that knowledge. “Gilly, help me.”
Gilly said, “I have always believed the storyteller to be telling the truth as she understood it. Storyteller, will you tell us what is your purpose in Watfield?”
“I am collecting stories,” the storyteller said.
“It occurs to me that a fire blood could probably make a great deal of sense of us, just by hearing our stories.”
The storyteller looked up from doing her buttons. “A fire blood can make sense of anything. Perhaps I could also, were I more than half a person.”
“You are half a person?” said Gilly blankly.
“That is what the raven told me.”
Clement lifted her head from her hands. “Gods of hell!” she breathed.
“You’ve been talking to a raven?” said Gilly casually. “What did you talk about?”
“You must ask the raven, Lucky Man. I do not owe you a story.”
Clement was nonplused, but Gilly apparently had overcome the lingering mental dullness caused by his pain draught, for he promptly said, “But you do owe a story to Clement, now she has read to you the story in your skin.”
Prompted by a jab of Gilly’s elbow, Clement said politely, “I would very much like to hear this tale.”
The storyteller covered her once-mutilated feet with heavy wool socks. Then, she reached into her left boot and took out her packet of glyph cards. “The raven told me that I am part of a whole, and that the remainder of my self is lost. In return for this story, he asked me to cast the cards, to answer a question. The question was, Hew can the Sainnites be overcome without destroying the spirit of Shaftal?This is how I answered him.”
As she lay fifteen glyph cards on the bench in a complicated arrangement, Gilly said in a low voice, “To read the glyphs with any depth requires long study—and I thought this arcane knowledge was lost entirely. How a tribal woman learned it is difficult to imagine.”
Apparently finished laying out the cards, the storyteller put on boots, jacket, and cloak. She pulled the hood over her head, and sat on the bench with her knees tucked to her chest and her cloak wrapped around herself against the cold. The illustrated people on the glyph cards variously spoke, shouted, screamed, or wondered— but they were all speechless, and the odd situations the cards depicted seemed meaningless. Gilly said, “Ask her to explain, Clem.”
Clement said, “Explain these cards to me, as you explained them to the raven.”
“I could not explain the pattern to the raven, and I cannot explain it to you.”
“You cast the cards without understanding them?” said Gilly in dismay. “What good do you suppose it did the raven?”
The storyteller said, “The raven did not seem disappointed.”
The dawn bell began to ring. Its crisp sound could be heard clearly in the small cell. The storyteller said, “This is the twelfth day of the new year. Now I am done telling stories.”
And, though Clement and Gilly both asked increasingly frustrated questions, the storyteller remained as implacably and unreadably speechless as her cards.
Chapter Thirty-Five
In one of four rented rooms, in the center of a table, there lay a small, bloodstained file. A raven had filched it from a dead woman’s pocket and had brought it to Karis, who had carried it in her own pocket for the last five days of their grueling journey to Watfield. Next to the file lay Emil’s pocket watch, ticking merrily, oblivious to its exile from the little room where Emil and Medric studied, questioned, and argued over a pattern of glyph cards laid out on the floor. The twelfth day of the first year of Karis G’deon had dawned—and Karis sat at the table with her head in her hands, still waiting for her two wise men to tell her what to do.
Near
ly six years had passed since Garland left Watfield to become a wandering exile. Last night he had returned, hauling a sledge packed with blankets and cooking gear, surrounded by a dozen companions, including Councilor Mabin and six of her Paladins, plus one bored and irritable little girl, and a raven too tired to fly. To find shelter at that late hour for such a number of travelers had proven quite difficult. Garland had heard the midnight bell ring in the garrison as they finally built up the fires in their rented rooms.
Just past midnight, Norina had sat beside Karis at this very table. “It is time for the storyteller to die.”
Karis said, “The Sainnites imprisoned her this afternoon. She’s safely out of your reach.”
Norina had silently studied her, until Karis hid her face in her hands and told her to leave her alone.
Norina said to Garland, “Has Karis slept at all since Long Night?”
“She’s slept a little, some nights.”
“She has a sturdy constitution, but she can’t continue like this.”
Karis said, “Leave the nagging to your husband—he does it better. And go away.”
Norina had complied, but not for long. The Paladins, sent out to locate some specific townsfolk, began to return with them: more of Emil’s numerous friends, Mabin’s agents, members of the local Paladin company—all confused by this abrupt summons from their beds, and inclined to react with amazed tears when they were introduced to Karis. She endured their adulation with a certain graceless patience. Mabin and Norina talked with these people all night, and Emil’s incomprehensible work with the glyph cards was frequently interrupted as he was asked to greet newcomers, or to answer questions.
Soon after dawn, when the city elders arrived, Garland went out to purchase a nearby baker’s bread as it came out of the oven. But Karis could not eat anything. Now, the two of them sat alone, waiting.
Clement and Gilly arrived in Cadmar’s quarters a few moments behind Commander Ellid. They walked in on her complaint about not having been forewarned of Clement’s actions, but Cadmar was still too dumbfounded at what he was hearing to have yet become angry.
Clement attempted to explain herself.
Ellid, who knew nothing of the political matters that concerned Clement, lapsed into a bewildered silence, which she broke only once to comment, “Well, perhaps there was some justification.”
But Cadmar scarcely seemed able to hear what Clement was saying. “I told you to rest!”
“Yes, general.”
“And instead you took it upon yourself—”
Gilly said, “General, in this one case, perhaps …”
Cadmar roared, “I will not overlook it!”
In the past, Clement’s frequent disagreements with Cadmar had always been resolved by a combination of persuasion and manipulation in which Clement and Gilly had usually collaborated. Clement knew better than to oppose Cadmar directly: Cadmar loved to fight and delighted in displaying his superiority, and she could not possibly win against him. Now, the flood of Cadmar’s rage washed over her, and she could only endure the shouting, seething at the waste of time.
At last, she was able to say, “I apologize, general.”
But to Clement’s surprise, Ellid said, “General, if I may speak, it does seem that what Clement has learned is quite urgent.”
Cadmar glared at her, then turned a suspicious look on Gilly, who managed to be preoccupied with trimming a pen. Cadmar said reluctantly, “Tell me again what you’ve learned, Lieutenant-General.”
Clement told him again. When she finished, he was staring at her with such disbelief that her heart sank. She had thought she was prepared to battle him into comprehension, but her will simply failed her.
She said hopelessly, “Whether I’m right or not, general, we must have some kind of plan—”
At that moment a shame-faced soldier came in, carrying a glittering knife that was cautiously wrapped in a piece of leather. Gilly had taken custody of the storyteller’s glyph cards, and Clement had told the soldiers on guard there to search the storyteller, and to block the cell window to prevent any further conversations with ravens. The soldier gave Clement the knife he had found on the storyteller’s person, saying, “Careful, Lieutenant-General. It’s got a wicked edge on it.”
As the soldier left the room, Cadmar, still in a temper, began vehemently stating the various reasons why it was impossible to develop a strategy without any solid information about the enemy’s plans. Of course he was correct; but that their task was impossible did not alter the fact that they needed to do it. It would be easiest if Cadmar could argue himself into accepting that fact, so Clement pretended to listen to him, while with feigned abstraction she unwrapped and examined the little knife.
It was the most beautifully crafted blade she had ever set eyes on. The metal shone like polished silver, and though its surface was smooth as glass Clement could see wavery lines, like ripples in sand on a beach, as though the molten metal had been folded and hammered flat, over and over. Clement was no expert in metal-craft, but the skill displayed here seemed, simply, beyond possibility.
Clement stepped over to Gilly and showed the knife to him. He stared, and muttered, “No mastermark? A metalsmith of such skill, working in secret?”
Cadmar paused in his argument to glare at them. Clement had not taken off her coat, so she dropped the blade into her pocket. And then she noticed a stinging in her fingertip, and a swelling bead of blood. She could have sworn she had not even touched the blade’s edge.
One of the Paladins had brought in a plate of hot dumplings for Karis, but the plate remained untouched. Garland picked up Emil’s teapot and refilled Karis’s cup: a bit of porcelain the size and weight of an empty egg shell.
Karis gave a flinch. “How hard is it to avoid cutting yourself?”
“What?” Garland said.
“Zanja’s knife. Every time someone touches it, it draws blood.” Karis poked the raven-scavenged file with her fingertip. “Even an act so innocent as making a knife, or a file, isn’t innocent at all. Blood is shed. People die.”
The file, rolling away before her fingertip, struck Emil’s watch with a metallic ring.
“And yet I must act,” said Karis heavily.
The door opened. Mabin, apparently immune to weariness, came briskly in. “How long does it take to read a handful of symbols?” Karis did not even look at her.
The old councilor sat down, and looked at the ticking watch. “When do we run out of time?”
Karis said, “When I go mad.”
“A little beforethat, I hope.” Mabin picked up the file and rubbed its rough surface lightly with her fingertips. She said, “Karis, it’s not your fault: they could have cut through the padlock with any file.”
Karis turned to her. She said in some astonishment, “Are you trying to be kind to me?”
Cadmar seemed to think he was making a speech. “Over twenty years have passed since our people in a decisive victory became the rulers of Shaftal. At great risk we destroyed every last one of these so-called witches—fire bloods, dirt bloods, and all the rest of them. There’s been not a hint, not a whisper, of magic as long as I can remember!” Clement watched him pace and gesture. No doubt he was imagining the shouts of praise and bursts of applause that would greet his resonant words. Willis was dead, and Cadmar was not particularly clever, but she could think of no other important difference between the two leaders.
Gilly sat on his stool, gray-faced with pain. His hooded gaze was hard, bitter, and even contemptuous. He had been a desperate street beggar once, and Cadmar had ridden past on a fine horse, and noticed him, and given him a ride, a meal, a place to shelter from the cold. For such minimal kindness, a crippled child might sell his soul and not be blamed for it. Clement could not so easily excuse herself.
She said abruptly, “General, I’ve neither slept nor eaten since yesterday.”
Cadmar glanced at her, then at Gilly who had not yet been able to take his morning tincture, then at
Ellid, whose breakfast was probably congealing in her quarters as her lieutenants wondered what had become of her. “Come back in half an hour, all of you,” said Cadmar. “And I want to hear what you imagine might be done to avert this supposed threat.”
Dismissed, Clement started for the stairs. She heard Gilly’s door close quietly, and then the distant slam of the outer door behind Ellid. But Clement remained at the foot of the stairs. She could not take the first step up that long climb to her quarters, where the hysterical girl watched over the dying infant. She simply could not do it.
She finally walked back down the hall to the outdoor door. The soldier on duty opened it with a smart salute, and politely advised her that since it was bitter cold she had better button her coat.
She did so, standing at the top of the steps, squinting in the pallid light. The rising sun could be spotted between rooftops. The road was empty, the construction work halted by cold, everyone not on guard duty huddled indoors. She went down onto the ice, which made secret, crunching sounds under her boots.
After a few steps, she could not continue. She could not see. She stood in the blank, cold light of day where anyone could have observed her, with tears scalding her cheeks.
Something black flapped across her vision. Wiping her eyes on her sleeve, she said harshly, “Tell the G’deon I’m a weakling. I don’t care.”
The raven gazed at her through one eye, and then the other. The bird’s lack of expression and attentive energy seemed to invite her to further explain herself. Clement said, “My son is five weeks old. He doesn’t even have a name. And he is dying.”
The raven maintained its illusion of interest.
Clement tried to imagine what the bird might want from her. And then, she reached very cautiously into her pocket for the storyteller’s knife, found a bit of string in another pocket, and used it to bind the leather around the blade. She lay it on the snow, and stepped back.
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