Water Logic (2 page)

But then there were broadsheets, carried from farm to farm—and Seth had examined an etched illustration of the G’deon and the new general standing upon a pile of rubble, clasping hands: Clement, general of the Sainnites in Shaftal, and, towering over her, Karis, G’deon of Shaftal. The etching was titled, peace between our people. Isn’t that—? said Seth’s family. Surely not!

Later, a Paladin had come to Basdown, bearing a letter addressed to an elder who had died earlier that winter. Soon the letter also made the rounds of the households, grimy and softened from being passed from hand to hand, carried through wet weather, read again and again at one or another farmstead. There would be a government in Shaftal once again. A person from Basdown must be named councilor and must travel to Watfield, to speak for the people of the region.

The elders of Basdown asked Seth to go to Watfield and speak for them.

Air

Whatever
he
said, she knew it was truth, knew it in her bones, where it transformed to steel the human stuff that broke too easily and never healed right: Meertown folded steel, which no one had seen but everyone knew about, that never lost its edge and never rusted, not even in salt water.
His
truths gave her bones that did not bend, that supported her changeable, fragile spirit in such a way that she was strong. Such strength she had now!

All will be well,
he
said. Now she had come here, fearless in this fearsome place, this city where all that was wrong was embraced, where people went about with their eyes glazed, some bewildered and some enchanted and most waiting in doubt for their hopes to be fulfilled. She had traveled here with the others, Senra, Charen, Tarera, Irin, and Jareth, her brave companions. Her son had left, for he had his own calling. His absence freed her. She had nothing to do, and the empty hours begged her to fill them with her pigments and brushes. So she painted them: her son and
him
, whose name must never be said or even thought, both of them in one face. Not even the others recognized who it was! Yet to her heart the two of them had always been the same.

She painted, in a cramped, dirty room, in this notorious city, where no one suspected her presence. How delicious that ignorance was. The evil ones, the bringers of violence and destruction, here was their center, their ruler, their locus of power. The soldiers, yes—but not only the soldiers, mere animals after all, hardly worth the time and effort required to exterminate them. Their leaders, for leaders they must have—they cannot decide anything for themselves, not even where to dig their latrines, for land’s sake. One might almost pity them in their stupidity if they weren’t such brutes.

If they hadn’t—if they hadn’t . . .

Her thoughts stopped there, as they always did, ever since
he
put a bulwark in her spirit to protect her from the memories. The past did not matter,
he
had said, and it was true. She looked to the future, to the one who was coming, whose way must be cleared, whose pretender must be eliminated, whose beasts must be butchered, so that the true people of Shaftal could see clearly! Their task had seemed impossible, until
he
showed them the simplicity of it. Small actions have massive results. So simple!

She painted. Her companions could not abide the smell and left her alone, which was a relief, though she adored them. The two faces gazed out as one face, and she felt full, satisfied, fearless. She might die soon, and the prospect filled her with gladness. Whether she lived or died, those united faces would gaze at her always: solemn, confident, approving.
You have done well
.

Senra came in, saying, “Phew! How can you bear it?”

She was making a color, a tricky business in the gloom of late winter, when even sunlight looked gray. She did not look up from her palette. Senra, holding his nose (he was always playful, that Senra) went to the painting. From the corner of her eye she watched as his casual glance turn to a shocked stare, a repelled glancing away. She smiled, working carefully with her muller and the precious pigments that
he
had declared must be bought, though she had expected to sacrifice everything, even—especially—this joy. And of course her son. But
he
had been wiser than she—there are no sacrifices,
he
had said.

Senra said, “Why does he have no eyes?”

“He does have eyes,” she said.

“They are holes! Right through his head! You can see the hills behind him!”

She continued to work the pigment into the oil, and Senra went away, shaking his head, muttering something. He was amusing, but not very imaginative. He might die soon. Well, what of it? His death would rescue them all! She went back to the painting and began putting flames on the forehead of her son-leader, flames in the shape of that ancient glyph, the one that means Death-and-Life. Tonight on her own forehead that glyph would be drawn with a fingertip in a paint made of grease and soot. But on
them
it burned always, a pure flame, not golden and red like the hot fire of passion, but white and blue, burning with a cutting, clear cold: flames of air.

She thought of the impostor, the pretender, and her hand painted with anger—anger pure and selfless as the flame. In that perverse, degraded town of whores the evil of Sainna had merged with the solidity of Shaftal—that was disgusting. The bastard child had risen up out of nothing and declared herself the G’deon—that was intolerable. Oh, the painter’s skin crawled with rage and horror, but her hand painted true. She had never painted so well as she painted now, waiting in this city, where the pretender also waited for the people who were coming from every corner of the land, coming to be infected by her foulness, and then to carry that foulness outward to the whole. But one simple act would mend all.

It had become too dark to paint. She slid the unfinished painting into the case that made it possible for her to transport her work with the paint still wet. She packed her pigments, her oils, her turpentine, corking the bottles and sealing them with wax, for if she did not die tonight she would flee, bringing her paints and painting with her.

Her companions came in, and at last it was time to draw straws.

Part One: The Region of Reconstruction

Chapter 1

By winter’s end, the field of rubble had become famous. The new councilors
of Shaftal had begun to arrive in Watfield from far and near, and all came to view the remains of the destroyed wall. Seth went there as soon as she and her Paladin companion entered the city, even before they sought a place to lay down their heavy packs and thaw their frozen fingers.

The massive wall had surrounded Watfield Garrison. Now the stones lay in a swath through the city. Seth squatted down, took off her gloves, and with numb fingers broke a small stone loose from its icy mortar. She set it atop a much larger one, the surface of which had been flattened by the stone mason’s chisel. The small stone shuddered sideways off its wide base, to impinge upon another, which cracked free from the ice that pinned it down, and rolled away. Now, that stone touched two others, which also hitched themselves sideways. The chain reaction quickly spread, from a few stones to many, until noisy waves of movement rippled ponderously in both directions, between the buildings, out of sight.

Seth had stood up to watch. She felt cold air on her teeth and realized she was gaping. Everyone spoke of this wonder—but she had not truly believed it.

“You’d better put your gloves back on,” the Paladin said.

It seemed impossible Seth could still be in her familiar world. Yet she pulled on her gloves, which like her hat and jerkin were tightly knit of unwashed, undyed wool. The grease that repelled snow and rain from her hat and gloves still smelled like dirty sheep, and the busy city continued to clatter, shout, slam, ring, and rattle even as the crack and thud of the supernatural stones faded into the distance. Seth said, “The wall can’t be rebuilt. These stones will always refuse to remain one on top of the other—to even touch each other.”

The Paladin, as pragmatic as Seth but even less talkative, shuffled her feet, as if to remind Seth how cold they were and how welcome a hot meal would be. “The G’deon lives in the city center, in a house called
Travesty
.” She gestured towards a busy artisan’s district, where an oversized shoe advertised a cobbler’s shop, a normal-sized wheel the wheelwright’s, and a gigantic needle and thread the tailor’s. Seth felt offended by the asymmetry of these displays.

“You go,” she said to the Paladin. “I’ll find my own way.”

They parted ways, in the manner of strangers thrown together who had never become friends. Alone now, Seth walked along the edge of the rubble, following the mostly obscured road that once had abutted the garrison wall. On the opposite side of the restless debris stood what once had been an orderly group of garrison buildings. Some were fire-scarred, and others were heaps of charred beams and wrecked furniture. Many were being rebuilt. She could hear the carpenters chanting breathlessly as they pulled on the ropes that lifted a center beam. The banging of hammers punctuated the racket of the city. Roofers swarmed over the top of one building, shouting cheerful curses at each other. At another, the carpenters were hanging clapboards as fast as they could drive in the nails. Some of them wore soldier’s gray, but most of them wore Shaftali longshirts, several layers, so they could take them off and put them on again depending on how cold the day became and how vigorously they worked.

The main gate lay flat on its face, embedded in dirty ice. There, two soldiers were gathering stone blocks that had begun to clutter the passage. In their wheelbarrow, the stones banged the wooden sides as they struggled to get away from each other, but the soldiers seemed accustomed to this extraordinary behavior.

The woman soldier looked up as Seth began picking her way through the passage. “Carefulness,” she advised. “Rocks move much.”

The man soldier had stopped his work to watch a grinding wave of movement he had inadvertently instigated in the field of stones. His wave encountered another coming from the other direction, and there was a brief confusion. A raven that had been perched on one of the stones flew up in startlement. The waves separated and continued on, and more rocks rolled into the passageway he had just cleared. The soldier rolled his eyes comically. The raven landed nearby and began preening its flight feathers.

“I would like to speak to the general,” said Seth. “Is that possible?”

“The general is in quarters,” said the man soldier. “Will I—I will show you the way.”

Seth followed the soldier in dumb surprise, feeling as if a door she’d expected to stick had swung easily open, without even a squeak of the hinges. The soldier said, “I am Damon. You have traveled far?”

“I’m Seth, a Basdown cow doctor. Now I’m a councilor.”

The soldier said, “A councilor? Your mission will be difficult. I follow orders only—easier, eh?” He gestured meaningfully at the sky.

Puzzled, Seth looked up. The raven she had noticed at the gate now floated overhead. Why did this soldier find the bird significant? She said, “Is that a G’deon’s raven?”

“That one has not talked today, so I am not certain. Still, I have been polite to it.” He grinned.

When Seth first realized Clement was a soldier, the woman’s darkness of spirit, her bouts of formality, and even her ravening hunger had made sense to Seth. But this soldier’s friendliness and humor were as surprising as the supernatural raven. Fortunately, the sound of hammers and saws rose around them in such a din that Seth could not have answered the soldier had she been able to think of something to say.

On both sides, new buildings rose up out of ashes and charred debris. Seth had entered the region of reconstruction.

Damon led Seth into a smoke-stained building, down a hall that was being swept by an old, one-legged woman in a ragged old uniform, to a nondescript door that stood ajar. He called out in the soldier’s language and received a brisk answer from within.

“We wait,” he explained to Seth.

Looking over his shoulder, she could see only a coat tree on which hung a much-worn, felt-lined leather coat, and part of a homely laundry line, hung with woolen stockings and . . . diapers? She shifted sideways, and now she could see a large window with its grimy upper panes unshuttered to let in dim light from the rapidly darkening sky. Beneath the window, at a scarred table surrounded by battered chairs and piled with dirty dishes and waxed-leather envelopes, sat the ugliest man Seth had ever seen, reading aloud from a stiff sheet of paper.

She shifted sideways again, and now her heart gave a hard thump. Clement sat across the table from the ugly man. She appeared to be listening to him read, while also reading another document to herself as her leg moved rhythmically in a motion familiar to everyone in Shaftal who’d ever looked after an infant: the Sainnite general was rocking a cradle. Seth heard the unseen baby utter a small, happy yelp and Clement glanced downward, smiling, with all the joy and pain of a new parent’s exhausted adoration. Then she yawned prodigiously, rubbed her eyes, and said to the ugly man, “That can’t be what it says. It has too many letters!”

He murmured something, and she replied, “No, once was enough! Who wrote that drivel?”

The ugly man grinned. “Mackapee.”

“Mackapee, the first G’deon? Hell!”

“Drivel it may be, but don’t say so in public.”

“What would they do to me?” Clement muttered. “How could they punish me more than I’ve already been punished?” She pointed at the page Gilly had been reading. “What is that word again?”

“Humble. ‘Humble acts of kindness . . . ’”

“‘ . . . Are like glue in the furniture of our community.’” She read the words haltingly. This was a reading lesson, Seth finally realized. Clement could read in the soldier’s language, but not in the language of Shaftal.