The raven walked to the slim packet, hooked a claw into the loop of the string, and lifted off. In a long, gradual climb, the bird swam through bitter air to the rooftops, over the rooftops, over the garrison wall, and out of sight above the city, with the storyteller’s blade dangling from his claw.
Gods of my mother, thought Clement. The G’deon is already here.
Karis raised her head sharply from where it rested in the support of her palm.
Garland lifted his head from his arms. He had, though it seemed impossible, been dozing.
Karis said fiercely, “I need some milk!”
“If you’ll eat one of those dumplings, I’ll go get some,” said Garland.
Karis picked up a dumpling and took a bite. She raised an eyebrow at him.
“Chew,” he said. “Swallow. All right, I am going.”
Clement was the last to re-enter Cadmar’s room. She had a hot roll in her hand and a half dozen more crammed into her pockets. She gave one to Gilly, who had washed and shaved, but did not seem much improved. His gaze asked her a question she could not interpret. She offered one to Ellid, who appeared only more worried, now that she had taken some time to think.
Cadmar said sarcastically, “Well, Clement, what do you think we should do? Shall we send out our soldiers? To where? To attack what?‘
Clement said, “We don’t have to go out looking for the Lost G’deon. She’ll come in person to rescue the storyteller, as she did before when the storyteller was Mabin’s prisoner. And she’s going to do it soon, for she’s already in Watfield.”
Gilly gave her a startled look. “If the G’deon—the supposed G’deon—is in the city … and she wants to be sure of the storyteller’s safety—and you’ve made it impossible for that bird to keep an eye on her—”
“She’ll be at the gate at any moment,” Clement finished for him.
Ellid grunted with dismay, but Cadmar’s face lit up.
Clement said, “What will we trade the storyteller for?”
Cadmar said, “If a woman claiming to be the G’deon shows up at our gate, do you really think I’ll bargainwith her?”
Clement sat in a chair, tore open a roll, and made herself take a bite. Even fresh from the oven, the bread was dry and tasteless.
Cadmar said, “You thought it would be so complicated. But all we have to do is kill her.”
Frowning worriedly, Ellid looked at Clement. Although Ellid was an inadvertent ally, unused to this alliance, she already seemed to have learned that it was Clement’s job to contradict Cadmar.
But what could Clement say to him? Her son was dying, Kelin was dead, those children in the garrison would never see their homes again. Why was her heart still torn like this? Why not kill the G’deon? Why did she want to make an argument she herself did not believe?
She said nothing. In silence, she ate her roll.
When Garland returned, the room was cold with a recent draft, and Karis was forcing shut the window sash. The plate of dumplings was empty. Garland said accusingly, “You fed your meal to the ravens?”
Karis held up a glittering blade.
“The knife? How did the raven get it?”
Her smile was tight, and her eyes were a bit strange: focused, but also intensely preoccupied. Garland gave her the small bottle of milk he had purchased. She put it into the inside pocket of her long woolen doublet, lay the glittering little blade in her toolbox on the floor, and picked up Emil’s watch. She crossed the room, opened a door, and tossed in the watch. There was a startled exclamation. Emil came out with the watch in his hand, having apparently managed to catch it before it met its demise. He said, “Are we out of time? Or merely out of patience?”
“I’m going to the garrison now,” Karis said.
He blinked at her, rubbed his eyes, and blinked at her again.
Wild-eyed and gaunt with weariness, Medric came out of the room. Glancing in, Garland saw the glyph cards arranged carefully on the floor. Karis said to Medric, “Tell me how you read the storyteller’s glyph pattern.”
“So our torture is finally to end? Well, what shall we decide this pattern means, Emil?”
Emil looked very unhappy. “If we could have some semblance of certainty!”
“Pretend that you’re certain,” said Karis.
“We believe we need to kill someone, and we are only guessing who. Wouldn’t you rather we could be positive?”
There was a silence, but not a particularly long one. Karis said, “I have with me a very small assassin. Who shall I kill?”
Clement finally brought herself to say reasonably, “If the woman isthe G’deon, she may not be easy to kill. Isn’t that right, Gilly?”
“Not easy,” said Gilly morosely. “And certainly we would not be wise to try.”
Cadmar said, “But we are soldiersand I don’t see why this storyteller’s scars convince you of anything other than that she’s had a dangerous and lucky life.”
“A recovery from paralysis,” said Clement. “Regrown body parts.”
Cadmar snorted. “Impossible.”
“Well, general, that’s exactly my point.” Doomed to keep repeating the arguments that Cadmar would not ever become able to hear. Clement said, “This Lost G’deon may be able to do anything!”
“But we don’t know that.”
“If we let her demonstrate her power so that we become certain, then it will be too late to negotiate,” she said impatiently.
“What would you have me do?” His voice, gaining volume again, had also gained an edge of sarcasm. “The first woman who tells me she’s the G’deon, should I bow to her and give her the keys to the garrison?”
Clement cried recklessly, “General, if she is the G’deon, you’ll wish you had!”
Cadmar loomed over her, his face flushed red with anger.
Fists clenched, Clement forced her voice to plead rather than shout. “Talk to her first,” she said. “General, just talk to her first.”
“General!” The gate captain looked in the door. His expression was one of bafflement.
Cadmar’s big hand clenched Clement’s shoulder painfully. “What is happening at the gate?”
“General, three people are asking to speak to you. One is that cook who deserted some years ago.”
Of course it would be the cook, thought Clement wildly.
“He says one of the people with him is Councilor Mabin. And the other he introduces as the G’deon of Shaftal.”
Cadmar’s not inconsiderable strength was crushing Clement into her chair. “What do they want?”
“The cook says they are here to make peace.”
Cadmar snorted. “Captain, have someone fetch Gilly’s horse. Tell those people that I am coming. Do they have weapons?”
“I don’t see any, General, but I haven’t searched them—they’re still outside the gate, of course.”
“Don’t let them in. And Captain, let your soldiers be prepared for action.”
“We are always prepared,” said the captain stiffly.
As he left, Cadmar explained to Gilly, “I need you to translate.”
He was going to talk to the Lost G’deon.
Perhaps, thought Clement, we mightyet survive.
It’s a little late to be wishing I’d never heard the sound of Karis’s ax that day,Garland thought, as he stood beside Karis at the garrison gate. Or he should have left these odd people the day the raven first talked to him, when Karis gave him money and told him to go his way. But he had fallen in with them instead, and now here he stood, with a half dozen guns and crossbows trained on him by the armored guards in the towers.
“Ridiculous!” said Mabin, stiff and impatient at Karis’s other side. “How much weaponry do they think it takes to kill three unarmed people? Have they no skill, or art?”
She was comparing them to the stylish Paladins, Garland supposed. Certainly, these armored killers seemed no more subtle than an angry bear or a deadly avalanche. But he could not imagine why Mabin fo
und this fact surprising or worth commenting on. Perhaps, he thought, she was covering up her fear. He did not find this reassuring.
Since announcing she was going to the garrison, Karis had hardly spoken at all. Now she waited silently, with a gloved hand gripping one of the gate’s iron bars, as if she were about to utter a disparaging comment on its workmanship. She gripped the iron a bit too hard, though. Garland could see the tense muscles swelling under her coat’s heavy wool.
The dozen guards inside the gate, who bristled with guns, blades, and other weapons, and stood in a formation that seemed poised to go barging through the gate, snapped themselves into rigid attention. “The general is coming,” said Garland shakily.
Karis looked at him and then, very lightly, lay her left hand reassuringly on his shoulder. “The war is over, Garland.”
“I don’t think these soldiers have heard that news.”
“A big man, isn’t he?” commented Mabin skeptically as General Cadmar strode into view, with several soldiers trailing him, and his crippled Lucky Man riding behind on horseback. “Which one is his lieutenant?”
“That hungry woman,” Garland said.
Mabin peered through the gate at the rigid, hollow-eyed, weary woman, who kept a few reluctant paces behind her superior. “Hungry,” she agreed. “And worried. Very worried.”
By contrast, the general, though he kept his face schooled to an expression of grim severity, showed no sign of having suffered lately. “He is complacent at his good fortune,” said Mabin, with no little sarcasm. “He can hardly wait to see us die.”
Karis’s hand had tightened on Garland’s shoulder. He glanced at her worriedly, for his frail courage was entirely propped up by hers. She was breathing too fast, her face was pale, her expression startled and dismayed. She stared at Cadmar.
“Karis?” said Garland.
Mabin glanced at Karis. “What is it?”
Karis pressed her lips together and gave a slight shake to her head. The general was approaching, his people holding a few paces back. Lieutenant-General Clement was staring at Karis now, seeming to share her mysterious startlement. Baffled, Garland turned his attention to the general who so many years ago had demanded that Garland cook badly. His glance passed over Garland without any sign of recognition. “General Mabin,” Cadmar greeted his old adversary.
Mabin looked distinctly disgusted.
Garland said in Sainnese, “General, this is Karis, the G’deon of Shaftal.”
The bottom half of the gate was solid iron, but, like Karis, the general was so tall that the metal shielded less than half his body. The iron bars divided his upper body into vertical segments: gray uniform under a heavy coat of wool-lined leather, a furrowed face that may once have been handsome. Karis’s thicket of hair curled manically while his was straight and thinning, but his hair may have once been bronze like hers. Karis had his broad shoulders. He had her big hands. They stood eye to eye, and those eyes were blue, an eye color scarcely ever seen in Shaftal outside the southern grasslands.
“Gods of hell!” breathed Garland in disbelief.
Cadmar glanced blankly at him.
In Shaftalese, Garland said to Mabin, “He is her father.”
“Well, what do you have to say?” said Cadmar impatiently in Sainnese.
Mabin said, “Tell the general he’ll wish he’d been less careless with his sperm!”
Karis said, very quietly, “What difference does it make? Just tell him why we’re here, Garland.”
What differencedoes it make? Garland looked back at Cadmar. How could this dolt not see what stood before him? Cadmar had carelessly, indifferently, obliviously spawned his own salvation, the bloody fool! All he had to do was recognize what a great and terrible thing he had done!
But Garland, dizzy with wanting to shout at the man, desperately holding back the horror that lay behind his anger, forced himself to say, “General Cadmar, Karis G’deon and General Mabin are here to make peace with the Sainnite people.”
Looking amused, Cadmar gestured to the crippled man, who rode his horse up to the gate. The Lucky Man gave Karis a sharp, inquiring glance: the look of an intelligent man who desperately wished for the answers to the questions he could not ask. But, in stiff Shaftalese, he said, “Madam, the general wishes to know your terms.”
“Karis,” she corrected him. “Gilly, willhe make peace? On any terms? Or is he just playing with us?”
The ugly man looked like he wanted nothing more than to honestly answer her question. But he was on the Sainnite side of the gate’s iron bars, and that fact meant he had long ago traded his freedom for security. He said to Cadmar, in Sainnese, “She asks if you are sincerely interested in making peace on any terms.”
“Will the Paladins lay down their arms?” asked Cadmar loudly.
Garland translated.
“What is this, a duel of questions?” said Mabin. “Is giving a straight answer a sign of weakness?”
“I’m afraid it is,” said Garland.
Karis said, “Lucky Man, tell him that when the Paladins no longer need weapons, they will lay them down. Will the Sainnites lay down their arms?”
“Will the Shaftali people acknowledge the Sainnites as their rulers?” Cadmar countered.
Karis looked into his hard, mocking eyes. “Do you truly believe that people can be ruled?” she asked in amazement.
While the Lucky Man translated, Garland heard Mabin say, “This is just a game to him, Karis.”
“I need to be certain that it’s hopeless!” Karis said.
The general seemed to find Karis’s most recent question disconcerting, or perhaps merely irritating. “You offer me nothing!” he said. “Why should I make peace?”
“I am offering you something: a choice. I will make peace with you, General Cadmar. Or I will make peace without you.”
Mabin, who had been nonplused when Karis gave her the identical choice, seemed much amused by Cadmar’s bewilderment. Then, the general uttered a harsh, mocking laugh, and gestured—at the pistols and crossbows overhead, at the bristling soldiers that surrounded him. “You threaten me?”
“Surely the person who needs no weapons is far stronger than the one who does,” said Mabin. Perhaps it was a Paladin maxim. Garland was not certain who Mabin meant to address, but the Lucky Man translated her words, and Cadmar no longer seemed amused.
Karis said, “I will not give you this choice again. Will you make peace?”
Cadmar said, “You give me no reason to choose!”
Karis said to Mabin, rather blankly, “How could I possibly give him a reason?” Then Karis glanced deliberately at the tired, desperately attentive woman who stood several paces away, but well within hearing. “Reasons are created by the reasoner!”
The lieutenant-general looked jolted, and half opened her mouth as if to protest that a soldier, whose job is to obey orders only, certainly has no use for reasoning.
The Lucky Man’s translation was distracted and awkward. Cadmar glared impatiently at him.
Mabin was saying to Karis, “If the general is incapable of making his own reasons, he’s incapable of making peace. Is that what you’re thinking?” Karis nodded. “That’s a pretty piece of air logic, Mabin said dryly.
“It’s hopeless. By any logic.”
The Lucky Man had not missed this interchange. As he summarized it in Sainnese, he tried to soften it. But the general turned on Karis. “Incapable? Because I choose not to bow my head to a rabble of dirt-grubbing peasants? Because—”
Garland, beginning to translate, noticed distractedly that Karis’s often-mended glove had worn through again in the palm. Her soot-black skin showed through in patches framed by frayed red yarn as she lifted her left hand from his shoulder, took hold of the thick iron bar, and bent it neatly aside like a green twig. She reached through the gate, and took hold of Cadmar by the collar. The heavy wool of his uniform ripped like paper.
The general’s big hands pounded helplessly at hers. His shout b
ecame a gurgle.
The lieutenant-general cried sharply, “Hold!”
The silence and stillness that reigned there at the gate was a wonder. The fascinated, horrified soldiers stood rigid as stone, unable to shoot lest they injure or kill the general by accident. Then, Lieutenant-General Clement stepped forward. “Clement!” cried the gate captain. The Lucky Man grabbed for her shoulder, but missed. She heedlessly put herself within reach of Karis’s other hand, and said, “Let him go. Please. I beg you.”
Karis said, just as calmly, “Only a fool picks a fight with a blacksmith.”
Another maxim, thought Garland wildly. This one was probably from Meartown, where fistfights were said to be rare.
The lieutenant-general put her hand on the arm that was strangling Cadmar to death. She said reasonably, “Your strength came from him, though.”
“He left me to become a smoke-addicted child whore in Lalali. What strength I have certainly did not come from him.”
Cadmar struggled again in Karis’s grip. She tightened the garrote of his collar, and he stopped, his eyes starting to glaze.
Garland looked at the lieutenant-general. She seemed only distantly aware of Cadmar’s desperate, humiliating position. She seemed to be thinking of something else—something painful enough to make the soldier’s mask slip off her face. She said, “My people have forgotten how to take responsibility for a child, Cadmar among them. It is true.”
Karis gazed at her steadily, patiently, as though she were waiting for a wild bird to make up its mind to alight on her finger.
Clement said, “But do you want to be the kind of person who would murder her father because of his carelessness?”
“I will not murder your general for that particular carelessness,” Karis said quietly. “His personal failings are no longer important.”
Garland knew what Karis really meant, but Clement looked expectantly at her, as though she thought she had won something.
With her right hand, which had not let go of the gate, Karis bent another iron bar casually out of the way. The lieutenant-general, either very brave or very well-disciplined, did not flinch or draw back out of reach. Karis reached into her doublet and then put her hand through the bars of the gate. She offered Clement the bottle of milk. “This is your son’s life,” she said. “Give it to him, Clement.”
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