The Walls of Westernfort

by Jane Fletcher

  The pair of them stared eye to eye, motionless. Rohanna could not go around Natasha without leaving Kim a clear path to the door, and Natasha had no intention of stepping aside. The confrontation had only one possible outcome.

  *

  Natasha’s attack on Cal was the spur that got Dani thinking and moving again. She followed the direction of Kim’s eyes and saw the sword belt hanging nearby. Dani scrambled over and grabbed it off the peg. A tug at the hilt pulled the sword free of the scabbard. Briefly, she considered the sharp edge, but she knew she did not have the skill to use it. She bent and skated the weapon across the tiled floor to Kim. When she looked up, she was just in time to see Rohanna draw back her arm and thrust her sword deep into Natasha’s gut.

  Dani wanted to scream, but her throat felt blocked. She watched Natasha crumple to the floor and Rohanna step over her body. Then Kim snatched up her sword and leapt forward to meet the Guard. The sound of metal on metal rang out as blades clashed. Dani began to edge around the room toward where Natasha lay. A nearby door opened, and the face of Kim’s fourteen-year-old daughter appeared around it. The voices of younger children were raised in the background.

  “Ardis, get back in the room, and keep your sisters there!” Dani barked. Her voice must have held sufficient authority, as Ardis obeyed instantly.

  Dani turned back to the battle. Her knowledge of sword fighting was hazy, but it seemed that Kim was getting the better of it despite having only a sword against the two weapons her opponent wielded. Natasha was not moving. The combatants maneuvered around her, although Rohanna, in dodging an attack, tripped on an outflung leg and stumbled. Kim seized on the blunder, and Rohanna was forced to retreat farther down the room.

  Kim swung her sword up a little too high, leaving her front open—an obvious mistake, or so it looked to Dani. Rohanna drove her sword at Kim’s exposed body, but nothing was there; Kim had started to swing around even before Rohanna moved. The trap was perfectly executed on Kim’s part, stretching her opponent too far forward and leaving her with neither sword nor dagger in position to defend.

  Kim’s blade sliced down—a short, chopping blow hitting at the point where neck met shoulder. Rohanna stumbled back, and Kim struck again—a final, fatal thrust.

  “Oh!” A gasp of relief came from the rear of the room.

  Dani’s head jerked toward the sound. Lynn was standing in the doorway of her bedroom. Dani did not know how long she had been there. The Imprinter took one hesitant step forward, and then another, her attention fixed on Kim.

  Suddenly, Dani saw movement out of the corner of her eye. Before she could shout a warning, Cal launched herself off the ground and grabbed Lynn from behind, wrapping an arm around her throat.

  “At least one enemy of the Goddess will die!” Cal howled. Her short sword was held pointing upward, close in front of her victim. The elbow at Lynn’s neck moved, forcing her chin up and exposing the underside of her jaw to a stab from the sword—one that would go straight up through her brain.

  The attack was swift. Dani took a half step forward, but neither she nor Kim was close enough to have any hope of intervening. Dani watched in horror as Cal’s hand clenched on the pommel, the precursor to the upward thrust of the sword. She could hear Kim charging across the room in a futile race. Lynn herself seemed to be too surprised to struggle.

  Cal’s arm twitched. The sword point started its drive—and then stopped dead, as though it had hit a brick. Cal also froze. Without any sign of injury, the Guard slowly toppled over and crashed to the floor.

  “No!” Lynn screamed the denial.

  “What happened?” Kim sounded as stunned as Dani felt.

  Lynn did not reply.

  “Lynn! What happened?”

  “I killed her.” Lynn buried her face in her hands. “I killed her.”

  Kim moved forward, reaching out. “How?”

  Dani’s attention shifted. She did not know what had happened to Cal; neither did she care. Natasha was lying on the floor where she had fallen. Dani skidded to the ground beside her, heedless of the liquid that soaked through the knees of her pants until she realized that it was blood.

  The gag in Natasha’s mouth prevented Dani from checking for breath. She looked around frantically. Rohanna’s dagger lay a meter away in a patch of moonlight. Dani grabbed it and sliced through the rag and then the cord around Natasha’s wrists. A faint rattle sounded at the back of Natasha’s throat, and her fingers clenched spasmodically. Her eyes were open, but it was doubtful that she was truly conscious.

  Dani looked up. Lynn was wrapped in Kim’s arms, crying. Her words were incoherent. Kim was murmuring to her.

  “Lynn.” Dani’s voice broke over the quiet sounds. “Lynn. Natasha’s alive. You’ve got to help her.”

  Lynn looked in her direction but showed no sign of seeing anything. Her eyes slipped around the room, not fixing on anything. Her expression was horrified and utterly desolate. She made no move to come to Natasha’s aid.

  “Kim! Make her help!” Dani pleaded, bewildered by Lynn’s inaction.

  Kim, at least, seemed to understand the situation. Gently, she urged her stumbling lover to Natasha’s side. Lynn looked vacantly at the body on the floor while tears rolled down her face.

  “Please, do something!” Dani cried out. “I don’t have enough of the healer sense to deal with this.”

  “No.” Lynn stared at her own hands and shook her head. “I can’t...I can’t. I killed her with it. I’ll never—”

  “Lynn!” Dani cut her off. “Please. Help her.”

  Lynn slumped to her knees on the other side of Natasha. Her eyes met Dani’s, but without recognition. “The healer sense...Cal was touching me...I just...I...” Lynn’s voice faded and then rose again. “It’s supposed to heal, not kill. I abused—”

  Dani had no time for the rambling. “Don’t let Natasha die.” She began sobbing. “Please.”

  Nobody moved. Even the jerking of Natasha’s fingers stilled.

  “Please.”

  Then, slowly, Lynn’s face lost its blankness. Her eyes and jaw hardened. She looked down at Natasha as if she was really seeing what she was looking at, and then raised her face to Dani’s once more. Dani could feel the tears spilling from her eyes, but Lynn’s were dry now. Again, Lynn’s gaze lost its focus, but this time in the purposeful trance of the healer sense. Wordlessly, Lynn stretched out her hand and placed it on Natasha’s forehead.

  Chapter Twenty-Three—Visitors

  Natasha opened her eyes. The ceiling above her shifted around for a few seconds before dropping into focus. Reflected sunlight glowed on speckled white plaster. A wooden candle holder hung in the center of the room. The sight of it brought back a rush of memories and rising confusion. The ceiling looked far more mundane than anything she had imagined for Celaeno’s Halls of Judgment. Pillars of light and infinite fields of stars would be more in keeping.

  Someone was holding her hand. She turned her head. Lynn was sitting on a stool beside her bed. Two other narrow bunks were made up with fresh bedding, although they were currently unoccupied. The tiled floor was clean scrubbed and glinted in the sunlight. The walls were plain white plaster, like the ceiling.

  “How are you feeling?” Lynn asked.

  “I’m alive.”

  Lynn smiled. “Is that a question or an answer?”

  Natasha tried to sit up and felt a stinging tightness in her stomach. Lynn put her free hand on Natasha’s shoulder. “You should lie still. I’ve had you sedated for the last three days, to speed up the healing process. You’re doing well, so I’ve let you wake up, but you must try not to move too much.”

  Natasha nodded. At last, she recognized her surroundings as one of the sickrooms in the infirmary. “What happened?”

  “How much do you remember?”

  “Rohanna and Cal took me to your house. They were going to kill you. Then Dani came in. I did my best to stop Cal, but Kim didn’t have a sword, and Rohanna was going for her. S
o I...tried to help, and she stabbed me. That’s about it.”

  “That’s pretty good. People sometimes lose their memories of the last few minutes leading up to a major injury.”

  “So what happened after?”

  “Dani took advantage of the delay you caused and tossed Kim her sword. Kim fought Rohanna and...” Lynn hesitated.

  “Kim killed her?”

  “Yes.”

  Natasha squeezed her eyes closed. Emotions ripped through her. Rohanna had been wrong. Rohanna had let her certainties drown out the voice of her conscience. Rohanna had been going to kill her. But once, Natasha had loved her like a mother.

  Lynn’s hand tightened on her shoulder and then released. “I’m sorry. I know you...despite everything, I know you were close.”

  Natasha nodded. “And Cal? Did Kim kill her too?”

  “No.” Lynn paused. “I did.”

  The surprise snapped Natasha’s eyes open. “But how?” Cal was a veteran fighter. Surely Lynn would have had no chance against her.

  Now it was Lynn’s turn to look distressed. “I followed Kim into the room. I watched her fighting. I was so frightened for her, I didn’t pay attention to anything else. Cal recovered from the knock you gave her and grabbed hold of me. She was going to kill me. I panicked and hit out at her.”

  “With what?”

  “The healer sense.” Lynn’s eyes fixed blindly on her hand holding Natasha’s. “Cal had me by the throat. There was skin-to-skin contact, and that’s all it takes. I’m so used to stepping into someone else’s body—adjusting the heart rhythm, mending tissue, setting bones. When Cal grabbed me, I dived into her, and...” A tear rolled down her face. “It’s just as well that no one has asked for a report on the cause of death. There’d be about twenty things to choose from.”

  Natasha stared at the weeping Imprinter. “You had no option. Cal was going to murder you.”

  “That’s what Kim says. She’s been talking me through it...she has the experience.” Lynn wiped her eyes. “Sometimes, when I saw her agonizing over old battles, I’d wondered what it must be like to kill a woman. I guess when I’ve thought about it, I’ve imagined times like when the Guards were camped outside the valley. Back then, I was occupied with the wounded. I didn’t get to send as much as a filthy look over the wall. But if the Guards had gotten inside, I wouldn’t have sat wailing while they butchered everyone. I imagined grabbing a sword from the smithy, or something like that...not that I’d have posed a threat to anybody with one. But the healer sense...I’d never thought how easy it would be to kill with it. And even if I had thought it, I’d never have done it...not on purpose, regardless of the danger.”

  “Even if you’d done it on purpose, it was the only option you had.”

  “Except now I feel as if I’ve corrupted something holy. I’ve been with the heretics for seventeen years, and I was never a devout believer, even when the Sisters were smothering me with theology in the temple. But I guess somewhere deep inside, I still thought of my ability as the Goddess’s gift of life.”

  Of course, Natasha thought, the healer sense could be used as a weapon—a very deadly weapon. And Lynn was not alone in never before considering the possibility. Nothing in the Sisters’ teachings even hinted at the idea. But was that deliberate? Had someone decided that they did not want to risk putting the idea into people’s heads, in case the Imprinters might realize that they did not have to meekly accept all the restrictions put upon them? Or was it just doctrinal blinkering? The Book of the Elder-Ones explained the religious significance of the healer sense, and the Sisters could not think of it in any other way.

  Natasha’s frown cleared as she remembered what Ash had said to her. The Goddess in the Chief Consultant’s books was not the one she believed in. Or cared about.

  “Cal was in the wrong, not you. Back in the barn, when I was going to kill you, the reason why I didn’t was that I knew you stood in the grace of the Goddess—more than Cal or Rohanna or the Chief Consultant ever would. It was true then, and it still is.”

  Lynn squeezed her hand. “Thank you. But you didn’t kill me because you’re not a murderer.”

  “Neither are you.”

  “Maybe it’s when things reach a crisis point, that’s when you find out what you really are. You didn’t kill, and I did.”

  “No. We both did the right thing for the situations we were in. Anyway, it’s not the same. It wasn’t my life in danger when I drew the sword on you in the barn.”

  “But it was when you stood in Rohanna’s way.” A faint smile returned to Lynn’s face. “Kim says it was the most suicidally brave thing she’s ever seen.”

  “I’ll settle for simply suicidal.”

  “Why did you do it?”

  “Partly it was because, before Cal and Rohanna took me down into the town, we’d been talking, and I realized that it wasn’t just that I had doubts. I was totally opposed to them and what they stood for. I knew what they were planning was evil, and I wanted to demonstrate my opposition.” Natasha’s mouth twitched up at the corner. “And partly, I was feeling very guilty.”

  “About what?”

  “Because I was the one who’d said Rohanna and Cal would head back to Landfall. If it hadn’t been for me, Captain Coppelli might have caught them, and then you wouldn’t have been in danger at all.”

  “It still sounds pretty brave to me, standing up to an armed woman with your hands tied behind your back.”

  “Not just any armed woman. It was someone I knew very well. In an odd way, a stranger would have been far more threatening.”

  “Did you think that Rohanna wouldn’t kill you?”

  “Oh, no. Quite the opposite. I was very sure that she would. The biggest surprise was when she hesitated two seconds before doing it. From what you said, without the delay, she might not have been killed herself.” Natasha stared at the blankets as memories of Rohanna teased her. “I wish there could have been another way to work things out.”

  “You can’t blame yourself.”

  “No, but...we were comrades. More than comrades. She was acting the part of my mother, and I don’t think it was entirely an act. I think she felt genuine affection for me, or had once. I know I felt...” Natasha shrugged awkwardly.

  “She was going to kill you, even without the fight. She was going to hang you.”

  “And she would probably have hesitated two seconds before doing that as well. Two seconds may not sound like much, but it’s more time than my real mother ever had for me.”

  Lynn leaned over and kissed Natasha on the forehead. “Then your mother is a fool. And you deserve better.”

  Natasha dropped her eyes. It was a maternal gesture, one that she remembered Rohanna making on many occasions. If I could chose my mother? The words shot through her head. Tears threatened. To head them off, she pushed her thoughts onward. “If I can’t move around much today, what can I do to keep away boredom?”

  Lynn smiled. “One of the reasons I’ve let you wake up is to get all the people off my back who want to visit you. If you don’t mind, you’re in for a day of visitors.”

  “Who?” A sudden hope routed thoughts of her ex-comrades.

  “Ash insisted on being first on the list. Kim wants to see you, but she’s been dragged off to inspect the side gate path and won’t be back until late. Shelly has been asking at least five times a day. Also, Tanya, Madra, and Jenny...” Lynn continued down the list. Dani was not on it.

  “Oh.” Natasha forced a smile, not that she minded seeing any of them, but the burst of excitement faded. Of course, Dani would not want to see her, would not care whether she was hurt or not. But it did not mean that she felt the same. “Um...Dani was in your house that night. She didn’t get injured at all, did she?”

  “No. You were the only one.”

  “Oh.” Natasha licked her lips nervously. “Do you know what she was doing there?”

  “She was awake and saw you being taken through the town, but didn’t recogniz
e Rohanna and Cal. She thought they were Rangers who’d arrested you for breaking parole, and she went to see what was happening.”

  She wanted to gloat. Or maybe she was frightened that Kim would have me hanged on the spot, and didn’t want to miss out. For the second time in two minutes, Natasha choked back tears.

  “Would you like to see Dani?” Lynn asked softly.

  Natasha shook her head. “No, not really...not if she doesn’t want to see me.”

  Lynn stood up, squeezed her hand again and let go. “OK. Then we’ll start with somebody who definitely wants to see you. In fact, I’m amazed that Ash isn’t banging on the door, asking when she can come in.”

  As predicted, the elderly Ranger was waiting impatiently outside. Ash strolled into the room without needing an invitation. Her face held a broad smile. “Hey. So how’s the hero doing?”

  Lynn slipped away.

  *

  The spinning wheel slowed gradually and finally came to a halt. The jug in the center was perfectly formed, with a long, graceful neck. Dani stared at it dispassionately. With one clay-encrusted finger, she pushed the wheel round, examining the jug from all sides. It was the first decent pot she had thrown for days. She lifted her fist and smashed it down on the soft clay.

  Dani continued to stare in the direction of the wrecked lump on the wheel, but her thoughts were far away, her eyes no longer focused. Clay was so easy to mold. Why could her emotions not be the same? Dani toyed with the image of taking her own heart and slapping it on the potter’s wheel. She could form it into the shape she wanted. Then I could carve my mothers’ names into it and fire it, so it would never change. Dani rested her head in her hands, heedless of the clay that clung to her face. But do I really want that?

  When the clay began to dry, it tickled her nose and forehead. Dani poured a bowl of water from the urn and washed the major part of it off. Did she know what she wanted? She stared at the clouds of terra-cotta in the water. Or was it just that she could not bear to admit what she wanted? Shelly thought that she knew.