“Gilly was your—the storyteller’s—friend,” said Clement.
“I am sorry I do not remember you, sir. But thank you.”
She handed the cards to Medric, who, declaring vehemently that he never wanted to see a glyph card again, hastily passed them to Emil. “These cards get resurrected as often as you do,” Emil commented as he knelt on the floor and began laying down the cards.
Zanja watched intently as Emil reproduced the pattern the storyteller had made for Clement in the gaol. When he finished, Zanja let out her breath in a huff. “It’s as bad as Koles.”
The seer collapsed in a paroxysm of laughter. Grinning, Emil collected and handed Zanja the pack of cards. Mabin, apparently as baffled by their amusement as Clement was, commenced a speech about the historical importance of this occasion. But she was summarily interrupted by the runaway cook, who led in a parade of self-conscious townsfolk carrying steaming hot, luscious-smelling dishes. Under the influence of this extraordinary meal, seriousness became impossible. Even the soldiers, who had been dutifully but grimly attempting to say a few words in Shaftalese, began to laugh a little as they ate standing up with their erstwhile enemies.
Gilly lay his gnarled hand over Clement’s. “With meals like this, the peace will last forever,” he said. “What fool would fight when he could be eating, eh?”
Clement gazed fondly at her old friend, who had the sleeping baby tucked into the crook of his arm. “A lot of work lies ahead of us, though.”
“Work worth doing,” he replied.
“At last.”
Clement looked across the table at Karis, who was poking distractedly at her beef in onion sauce over shredded potatoes. Zanja, who had eaten only some more bread and the richly flavored soup, now rested her head against Emil’s shoulder. The two of them could have been lovers, so delighted were they by each other’s company. But Zanja and Karis had not spoken to each other yet, had not even met each other’s gaze.
This had been a remarkable morning. But much yet remained to be resolved.
Only rubble remained of the wall that had divided Sainnite from Shaftali. On one side of the fallen wall, new timber frames had been established in the snow-covered ashes of burned buildings. On the other side, the stone and slate buildings of the Shaftali town seemed almost bereft without the garrison wall to crowd up against. The stones were still rolling; the rubble piles continued to spread and flatten until no stone lay atop any other. Soldiers and townsfolk stood watching the restless rocks—fearful, curious, or amazed.
This is Watfield,Zanja reminded herself: a prosperous midland city, fortunately situated on the River Corber, which was an important route for bringing goods into and out of Hanishport, six days’ journey to the east. Despite these facts, Zanja felt utterly dislocated and kept seeking the sun to remind herself that she was walking north, with the sun sinking westward and the Corber behind her to the south.
She wore a jacket of finely woven wool with silver buttons; she was wrapped in a thick cloak with a silver clasp at the shoulder. Her head felt light; her hair was gone. The people around her—her family—they also were changed. Leeba had learned some caution. Emil had become a Paladin general. Karis—
Karis and Clement had stepped onto the fallen gate piled with empty food baskets. Clement, m her begrimed leather coat and squashed hat, might have just come home from a bruising campaign. The baby Gabian was buttoned into her coat, with the top of his blue cap just under her chin and her gloved hand supporting the back of his head. Karis towered over her: her hair in a tangle, her red coat powdered with pulverized mortar. Leeba rode on her hip, asking question after question with no pause for the answers. Karis looked as ordinary as she could ever manage to look: a laborer in the midst of an exhausting building project. But her stance had a weighty dignity that spoke of the power of ten generations—the power of Shaftal’s seeds, stones, wombs, hands. And the power of finally knowing what to do with that power.
Karis crouched over to kiss Clement like a sister. The hoarsely cheering people who crowded the street seemed to swallow their shouts for a moment, and the soldier’s cheers also faltered. For a long moment Karis gazed gravely at the silent, frowning group that stood just beyond the gate, draped with white banners on which were painted names—the names of the dead?
Zanja’s heart clenched with the old guilt and sorrow. Surely, the ghosts of the Ashawala’i people would condemn her for making peace with their killers, just like these name-draped witnesses condemned Karis for it. And surely, by refusing to satisfy them, Zanja— and Karis—were condemning themselves to the unending haunting of other people’s unsatisfied angers.
What have I done to us? Oh, what have I done?Zanja dug a hand into her pocket and felt there the familiar, worn, warped pack of glyph cards. But even these could not comfort her. The storyteller’s glyph pattern had seemed not merely ambiguous, but unreadable. Had life become so momentous that all her answers would now be nothing but a tangled muddle of contradictory possibilities? She almost missed the clean clarity of those empty months—years, really—of walking the mountainous wasteland between life and death.
Then, she felt the strong grip of J’han’s supporting hand on her elbow. “You’re awfully tired,” he reminded her in his old, timely, pragmatic way.
They walked through Watfield down a street so crowded with people they sometimes could scarcely get through. At Zanja’s left, Medric maintained a continuous commentary. “Here come the town elders—they’re looking rather self-important, aren’t they? Are they telling Emil that they’ve found us another place to stay? That’s too bad. I rather liked that drafty, humble old house in the alley. Does Karis think she has to talk to every single person in Shaftal, starting with the people of Watfield, right at this moment? Well, perhaps she does! But surely she’ll wear out her voice again? There, Norina has put a stop to that nonsense. We don’t all have Karis’s supernatural energy! Emil is looking pretty worn, don’t you think? Still, we’ll be up talking half the night, just like the Sainnites will. Greetings, Garland, you’ve been busy! Is it possible that you and I are now Shaftali?”
This last was addressed to the cook, who was toting a basket of wax-covered cheese, dusty bottles of spirits or wine, and highly polished apples. Medric had predicted he’d find his way to them, and here he was, no longer lost. The cook said, “Well, weren’t we Shaftali already? Oh, there’s the man with the bacon.” He trotted off to add another package to his basket, to acquire a second basket crammed with bread, and to converse joyfully with a woman riding atop a wagon load of barrels. Everyone he talked to was left smiling in his wake, as though happiness were a contagion. His pockets were crammed with packages, and people pressed more items on him until his baskets overflowed.
Zanja stared about herself at the high slate rooftops, the extravagant lightning rods, the crowded shops of the prosperous city. And then they came to a square, with a wide park whose bare trees were exuberantly decorated with bright ribbons and paper flowers. At one end stood an ugly, looming, massive stone building. The Paladins had to press people back to create a passage. Karis followed her escort, and at least the wildly clamoring people had the sense not to mob her. So they reached their destination and climbed an impressive flight of stairs to the front door, where Karis turned and patiently let the people of Watfield look at her: a big, determined woman who knew exactly what to do. Finally, she stepped through the door, and her people followed her into an echoing, extravagant hallway.
Even Medric was astonished into silence.
Zanja said, “People live like this? Why, do you suppose?”
No one seemed capable of responding. “Here’s the cloakroom,” said a Paladin.
After Zanja had taken off her boots, she sat on the bench in that vast, warm, convenient cloakroom. As it filled with boots and coats, it emptied out of people, and soon she sat alone there, breathing in the rising odor of leather oil and wet wool. The puddles of slush melted into the mats. She realized abruptly that
she was waiting for the short night to end, and the swift sun to rise. She rubbed her face, and pressed her fingers to her aching eyes.
The door opened, and Emil looked in at her. “There are more comfortable places to be alone, if that’s what you want.”
“Emil, I’m afraid.”
“I’d be afraid too, if I could find the time for it.”
“This house—!”
He groaned. “Not you too! Everyone tells me that they can’t endure a single night here! And Karis has declared this place to be a travesty. No more complaining, please!” He entered the cloakroom and took Zanja by the hands. “If you love me—”
“If?”
“Because you love me,” he corrected himself, with a smile that could not quite erase the lines and shadows of weariness from his face, “I beg you to let me spend just one night of my life on a feather bed!”
“Feather bed?” she said, incredulous.
“Oh, my dear, you can’t imagine how soft—”
She began to laugh, and was still laughing as he pulled her to her feet and tugged her back into that overpowering hallway. He gave her a ragged handkerchief to mop up her tears. Her diaphragm hurt, but she felt relieved, as though she had in fact been weeping.
“Can I make a bargain with you?” he asked. “That you’ll never ask me to kill you again?”
“In exchange for what?” she gasped, still out of breath.
“Well, what do you want?”
Eventually, sobered, she said, “I don’t know how to answer you.”
Emil’s hand rested on the small of her back; she put her arm around him and they walked silently, apparently aimlessly, past clutters of dusty, grotesque furniture. The monstrous house seemed to have swallowed everyone into its echoing maze of rooms and hallways.
Emil finally said, “You are a hero of Shaftal, you know. You deserve to have whatever you want.”
He turned down another hallway—their path was so complicated Zanja doubted she could find her way back to the front door— entered a self-important anteroom, and went through that, into a bedroom full of gleaming furniture, thick carpet, and rich draperies. This room, at least, seemed recently cleaned.
Karis sat near the hearth on a cushioned stool, taking tools out of her tool box, unwrapping them, examining them, testing their sharp edges, rubbing them with an oily rag to protect them against rust. She said grumpily, as Emil came in, “But I’m not going to sleep in that awful bed.”
“You can stand out in the snow all night—I don’t care,” he replied.
Zanja found herself paralyzed in the doorway, unable to cross the threshold. Emil said to Karis, “What are you doing, anyway?”
Karis gently extricated a small plane from the box. Zanja could remember when Karis had shaped that plane’s body and forged its blade, but she could not remember what this particular plane was designed for. When Karis invented a tool, she also invented the need for it, and Emil went about the country showing the new tool to carpenters, who became better at their work by buying it.
The hand that does the work creates the tool; the tool creates the work done by the hand. By earth logic, action and understanding are inseparable.
Zanja said, “The tools remind Karis who she is.”
Karis looked at her. “Do yourtools remind you of who youare?” Her eyes had a deep, rather dangerous brightness to them. She reached again into her toolbox, and although the tool she had removed was swathed in leather, Zanja recognized it. Karis held up the little knife that had been her first gift to Zanja.
Zanja had come into the room somehow, had dropped to her knees on the lush carpet.
Karis said, “Clement confiscated this blade from you—from the storyteller. But then she gave it to a raven, to bring to me. That one gesture made everything possible.” She pressed the leather-wrapped blade into Zanja’s hand.
In a moment, Zanja said, “When they took the blade from me— from the storyteller—she felt a terrible loss. She knew that she had always carried the blade with her, though she couldn’t remember where it had come from or what it represented to her. But she treasured it anyway. It allowed her to keep believing that she had a past, that she was someone, and not merely a container of stories. But after they had taken the blade and the cards, she had nothing of her own.”
She looked up at Emil, who had given Zanja the cards, who now wearily leaned against a chair back but seemed unwilling to sit down. “She loved the glyph cards too,” she said, “for the same reason.” She added, “The storyteller’s memories are very strange.”
He signaled with his eyes, telling her to look again at Karis. She had taken Zanja’s dagger out of her toolbox and was holding it out to her.
“I left it lying on our bed,” Zanja said.
“Did you? When Norina brought it to me, she didn’t say where you had left it.” Karis paused, and added apologetically, “I’m as stupid as ever about symbolism.”
“I don’t remember feeling angry, but to leave the knife in the bed we had shared for five years, that was an angry gesture. I can’t believe I did such a thing.”
“I do remember being angry with you,” Karis said. “With you— and with our family—and with Harald. But it’s gone now.”
There was a long silence, during which the faint sound of Emil shifting his weight seemed awfully loud.
Zanja said, “The storyteller thought she had murdered her wife.”
“Will you take the blade,” Karis said impatiently. “Or not?”
“Of course I will!” Zanja took the dagger out of her hand.
Emil straightened up rather stiffly. “I’m going to bed. My only wish is that no one bother me before breakfast. Everyone else will eventually end up in the kitchen this evening, I expect, sitting on the floor and drinking beer like the rustics we are, and eating with our fingers whatever amazing thing Garland cooks up next. Oh, Karis, I suppose I should warn you that Garland has fallen in love with the kitchen.”
“What? No! Emil!”
But he was gone, the relieved liveliness of his voice already swallowed by the house’s maw.
“Now it’s inevitable that we’ll live in this ugly travesty,” said Karis gloomily. “This building is an affront—a waste of good land and good stone. How shall I endure calling it my home?”
Zanja put her head on Karis’s knee. In a moment, Karis’s hand stroked her head, and Zanja’s skin came alive, like dry tinder catching fire. Karis gave a gentle tug to her solitary braid. Zanja murmured, “You practically pulled it out by the roots already.”
“Ungrateful—”
“I am not at all ungrateful. Do you know, someone has mentioned to me that it’s the thirteenth day of the first year of Karis G’deon? How did that become possible?”
After a silence, Karis said, “Thirteen days? Surely it’s been thirteen years.”
Zanja raised her head, for Karis’s voice had been harsh in its center and ragged at its edges. “What’s so awful about that bed? Why can’t you bear to lie down in it?”
“Those bedposts are overbearing. The carving is grotesque. The whole thing is an ostentatious monstrosity.”
Zanja looked at the bed. It truly was an awful thing; she herself couldn’t imagine lying in it. “So take a chisel to it,” she said.
Karis blinked at her. “By Shaftal, I’ve missed you.” Eyes glittering, she reached for a chisel in its protective wrappings and a wooden mallet that lay nearby. Then she chose a crosscut saw, its handle darkened by oil and age. “This won’t take long,” she said.
Not much later, they made love on the feather bed, amid wood chips and sawdust, as the ornate bedposts burned briskly in the fireplace.
A new age in Shaftal had begun.
Laurie J. Markslives in Melrose, Massachusetts, where she gardens and corrects papers when she’s not writing in the Melrose Starbucks.
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Earth Logic
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Earth Logic el-2 Page 44