Water Logic (30 page)

“We’re late to lecture!” Coles shouted cruelly.

“Ha, ha,” a sleeper mumbled.

“Jackass,” declared a second.

The third, having noticed Zanja’s presence, sat up in alarm.

“She’s not a prefect,” said Coles. “But she does act like one. Wake up, will you? It’s nearly midday!”

Zanja took a pile of dirty plates off a crate and sat on it cautiously. The three disarrayed young men blinked at her blearily.

“Allow me to present my friends—who are closer to me than brothers—and from whom I must soon part—forever!” Coles’s excess of feeling was greeted by groans. “This is Speck.” He gestured at a very slight, very pale man whose face was covered with freckles. “This is Briefly.” The alarmed man retired beneath his blankets without uttering a word. “And this is Legs.”

The third man rolled onto his back and cheerfully kicked his long legs in the air, like a colt having its first roll in the grass. “Aren’t exams over yet?” he asked.

“Not for six days,” said Speck gloomily.

“Then what were we celebrating last night?”

“Ourselves,” said Briefly, his voice muffled by blankets.

“We were celebrating having the wherewithal to celebrate,” said Coles. “And now we’re poor again: the same old tragedy. Oh, by the way, this woman—this oddity—this Paladin—”

Briefly emerged from under the blanket, freshly startled, apparently not having recognized Zanja’s Paladin habiliments in the gloom.

“—whose name I don’t even know—”

“Zanja.”

“This woman, Zanja Paladin, has declared I will be a poet of renown.”

“He will.”

The roommates gazed at Zanja for a moment, then began hooting with laughter.

“His stuff is unreadable!”

“He’ll starve!”

“Gibberish!” declared Briefly, and pelted Coles with the stockings he had been about to put on.

Coles said complacently, “She knows the future.”

They leapt out of bed and gathered around her then, demanding that she tell them all their futures. Although the exams they had been prematurely celebrating would mark the end of their last term at the university, not one of the four young men had any idea what he would do next. Zanja took out her glyph cards and made a show of shuffling them.

“Tell me I’m not going to be an accountant,” pleaded Legs.

“No,” said Zanja, drawing a card at random. “Or at least, not for very long.”

“Will I marry?” asked Speck rather anxiously.

Zanja could not determine if this were an appealing prospect or not, so she said, “Not until you can be a good husband.”

Briefly stood silent, scratching a flea bite on his ankle. Fleas were not yet dangerous plague carriers, but still Zanja’s skin crawled. She selected a glyph card for Briefly and silently showed it to him.

“The Secret!” cried Coles. “Tell, tell, tell!”

But Briefly shook his head and retrieved his socks.

Zanja said, “Incidentally, my predictions aren’t very reliable.”

“What good are you, then?” asked Speck in disgust. “If we can’t make a living we’ll all have to go back to farming.”

“You’ll manage the same way everyone does,” she said, much to their dismay.

“Does Briefly actually have a secret, though?” asked Coles.

Zanja glanced at Briefly, who was now strapping his shoes. “That’s for him to tell, I guess. Listen, before you go wherever you are going, I want some advice.”

All four of them sat happily on the floor, apparently glad for any excuse to delay going to class. Emil, whose only opportunity to be a student at Kisha had been stolen from him, would have been disgusted.

“I need to know something about the water tribes—those that live on the coast. I need the information quickly. What should I do?”

In the long silence that followed, Zanja began to regret attending to her impulses. At last Coles said, “I doubt anyone knows anything about the tribes. I’ve never heard them mentioned in a single lecture. And I do listen.”

Speck uttered a snort.

“Analytics, Anatomy, Botany, . . .” muttered Legs, apparently listing the fields of study in alphabetical order.

“Ale-itics, Animosity, Beerography, . . .” echoed Speck mockingly.

“History,” said Briefly.

“A historian might know something,” said Coles. “It depends on what you need to know.”

“I’m looking for a specific person, a water witch, who is with one of the coastal tribes.”

“Elementology,” suggested Legs.

“But Professor Sperling drowned himself,” said Coles. “And Esher is on leave. Who’s going to give the exams, do you suppose?”

“Geography, Glyphology . . .” continued Legs.

“Geography,” said Zanja.

“The geographers are all away on an excursion,” said Speck. “And all those who love them are so very lonely.”

“My mathematics tutor used to study geography,” said Legs. “He said it was nothing but wandering around the countryside looking at maps.”

“Why don’t you just look at a map?” Coles asked Zanja.

“Will a map might show where the settlements are?”

Two young men shrugged. Briefly said, “Librarian.”

“Madam Paladin hasn’t got a letter,” said Speck. “Or she’d not be wasting her time with us. And without a letter a librarian won’t even talk to her.”

Zanja didn’t bother to inquire about what kind of letter, or from whom, or even whether such a letter could be forged. She supposed she could go to the Paladins for an official document, but not without being recognized as an impostor. She said, “Will one or all of you go to the library with me and help me look for a map?”

“You think they’ll let mere students walk those hallowed halls? We can’t even get in the door! And neither can you, without a letter.”

Surely books exist to be read! Zanja thought. But in her own time few people could go in and take a book from Emil and Medric’s ever-growing library, and probably for much the same reasons: preservation and protection. In both past and future, librarians were guardians, and books existed not to be read, but to be copied.

The young men appeared to have reached the end of their suggestions. Yet they also seemed unsettled, as though each was wondering whether one of the others would say something he himself was determined not to say.

“So I can’t get in the door,” Zanja said.

“You want us to help you break into the library?”

“We would never attempt such a thing!”

“Such fragile and irreplaceable treasures as are housed in that monolith are not for reckless, shortsighted youths such as ourselves,” declaimed Coles solemnly. “It is instead our duty to save them in pristine splendor for those youths who will come after us, who in turn will be forbidden to step over the threshold—”

Briefly attempted to suffocate him with a bag of laundry. Soon dirty clothing was flying through the air, accompanied by many shouts and yelps, and a fellow boarder began thumping angrily on the wall.

“You’ve broken into the library before,” asserted Zanja, taking a very smelly undershirt off her head.

“Never!” Legs protested.

“Once or twice,” admitted Speck.

“Frequently,” Briefly corrected him.

“Well, we are curious fellows!” said Coles. “But we always leave everything as we found it.”

“Show me how to get in. I’ll take only what can be carried in my head.”

“You’re no Paladin,” said Coles. “At least not a very good one.”

“You’re right about that,” she said.

Chapter 23

Where the road to Hanishport, the road to Keneso, and the old road intersected, the ancient crossing-stone was still rooted in the earth. Damon paused to scrutinize its chisel-chipped surface. “What did the stones once say?”

Seth’s original journey to Watfield had followed the low road that parallels the Corber, a road that was now impassable due to the heavy rains. The Waystone at this crossroads was famous. The glyphs had been obliterated, but the memories had survived. “It used to say that Haprin lies to the east, Basdown and Keneso to the south, and the House of Lilterwess to the north.”

Damon glanced northward with a frown.

“People say the soldiers tried to destroy the road like they destroyed the House, but it couldn’t be done.”

“Very good. It is a beautiful road.”

Seth went with Damon to take a closer look at the road. Its stones were smooth and flat, its ditches clear of mud. Seth was abruptly reminded of the restless fallen stones that now ringed Watfield Garrison. She said, “I think this road will never fail. Just as the G’deon’s power can tear stones apart, so also it can hold them together.”

“I wish I had seen the House of Lilterwess.”

“It must have been like the Travesty, but a lot bigger. As big as a small town, the old people say.”

“You never went there?”

“No. This is my first time north of the Corber. I was a farmer, you know. Farmers don’t travel, as they can’t bring the farm with them. You were a boy when the House of Lilterwess was destroyed—you don’t remember it?”

“My father was there, at the battle.” Looking embarrassed, Damon rubbed a foot across the unworn surface of an enchanted road stone.

Seth pointed southward. “That’s our road.”

Damon scarcely said another word all morning.

They passed through Genton that day, where the nearest garrison to Wilton sat with its gates ajar but watched by armed Paladin irregulars. The next day, and most of the day after that, they were in the Barrens, where rock frequently broke through thin soil and the plants were all sturdy miniatures: tiny trees, tinier shrubs, and a scattering of early flowers that looked like blue-dyed dust. The rock fields were of solid black stone that appeared to ripple like water. Some people found the Barrens disquieting, but Seth liked the spare landscape and the mournful wind. Damon was restless beneath the open sky and kept looking anxiously towards the horizon as though to spy an enemy before he himself was spotted. “What’s that?” he asked sharply, pointing to the west.

“Oh, those are the Three Sisters. They’re hills, though they are oddly shaped. The man we’re trying to find was camped over near their base, but he’s gone now.”

“This is a strange place,” he said, in his simple, blunt way.

“Yes—but listen to the wind singing on the stones. You won’t hear that anywhere else.”

She pointed west. “We’re two days from the coast, where the rocks flow right into the sea, like a stone river. I have walked that way to the coast almost every year. In the spring, you can see huge fish swimming northward, and in the autumn you can see them swimming southward. Once, one of those fish washed on shore. It was seven times my length!  Now its bones are still there. I have spread my rain cape over the ribs and camped inside the skeleton.”

The land dropped gradually towards Basdown; the gray haze became a leafless forest that stretched from east to west as far as could be seen, frequently interrupted by long stretches of rich grassland, where the cows of Basdown grazed. Seth could have named each of these pastures or hay fields but did not subject Damon to that recital. Soon, their vista was delimited by trees. The road began to meander this way and that, though generally it went southeast. The Threeflowers were blooming: three-leaved plants with three-petaled white blossoms. Damon asked her to name the plants for him, and Seth explained, “They spread by roots, but it’s impossible to dig one up and move it. They shrivel up and die; they won’t accept any unfamiliar dirt.”

As they drew near a farmstead a couple of cow dogs appeared to keep an eye on them, and then a raven flew down from his hidden perch in a tall tree, to land nearly at Seth’s feet.

“You must be the G’deon’s raven,” Seth said to the bird. “You’ve been watching the road for us, I guess.”

The raven eyed her steadily, not at all like a wild bird. “Now you just have to follow us, and when I find the assassin I’ll tell you. I’ll put food out for you, also.”

The raven lifted off and disappeared into the overhead branches as abruptly as it had appeared.

It was late afternoon, and Seth’s bones ached from last night’s rocky bed in the Barrens. Her feet also hurt, and she was actually looking forward to a bowl of the salt-beef stew she was usually so tired of by late spring. But if she and Damon walked until dark, they could reach High Meadow Farm tomorrow. She gave the distant cow dogs a wave and continued down the highway.

Damon, who never questioned or complained, walked steadily beside her, and she named more flowers for him. He asked, “How does Karis-the-G’deon make the ravens?”

“I haven’t thought to ask her.”

“But since you are like her—you have the same center—”

“Element,” she corrected him.

“Element, yes. It is the same, so you think the same.”

“Somewhat,” said Seth, remembering Norina’s assessment of her elemental makeup.

Damon considered for a few paces. “How would you make a raven?”

“The ravens would make one for me. I guess I’d take and raise the hatching—maybe that’s what Karis did. But some physical part of her must be incorporated into the bird somehow. I know that one G’deon was able to halt a famine by scattering his blood in the fields, so maybe it’s Karis’s blood that the ravens have.” And that, also, Seth realized, explained how Clement had been kept alive until Karis could reach her.