Water Logic (37 page)

But when she lay on her belly to look cautiously over the cliff’s edge, she saw what separated her from them. Shrieking white birds had found nooks in the vertical cliffs in which to lay their eggs, and they fought viciously to protect these perilous nests. Lower down, the sea spray began, and the wet rocks looked like black glass. Lower still, waves smashed against black boulders. These waves and rocks would destroy most of the Sainnites’ flotilla, leaving them with enough people to survive, but not enough to decisively conquer this new land.

A large ship with a huge, square sail appeared—it had been sheltering behind one of the small offshore islands. Zanja watched with fresh astonishment as it sailed directly towards the inhospitable coast, followed by a soaring retinue of long-winged white birds. At a distance the ship seemed to move by its own mysterious will, but as it drew closer, Zanja could see figures working frantically upon its deck and crawling up and down its rigging. Then the ship seemed amazing in a different way, in the precise coordination of those many sailors, in lovely harmony, effort, and effrontery.

They sailed directly into the cliff. The sailors seemed too busy to notice their peril. The spray and froth seemed to consume their ship. It disappeared. It had slipped impossibly into an invisible gap in the cliff face—the harbor entrance.

Zanja’s route along the ragged cliff soon came to seem nearly as precarious as the ship’s—and frustrating, for she repeatedly encountered impassible ravines and rock falls from which she could only retreat, with the baleful donkey dragging behind. She expended many steps but made little progress, and it was well past midday when she could finally see Secret Harbor. To the east, at the narrow harbor mouth, the booming ocean muscled through the cliff’s narrow doorway. To the west a waterfall poured over the cliff, a floating gauze scarf that seemed an unlikely source for the distant, ominous roar. Yet, despite all this agitation, the waters pocketed between the cliffs lay smooth and still. Here in that protected harbor, the water people had built their floating town.

In some folk stories Zanja had heard and told, there was a city of boats, where a person might live from birth to death without setting foot on solid ground. Now she saw it, not a city, but a tiny village of floating houses. Down narrow avenues between clusters of houses, boats were rowed briskly to the anchored sailing ship, where laden baskets were lowered to them by rope. The rowers returned to the town to deliver the goods to the houses. People worked busily on the decks as wheeling birds dove after the offal tossed into the water. Smoke trailed cozily from stovepipes. There would be fresh-caught fish for dinner tonight.

But unless Zanja could discover how to reach the floating town, she would eat hard bread and salted beef again. “There must be a path,” she muttered to her reluctant companion, the donkey, who was unable to find any grass in the rocky soil and uttered a hopeless snuffle. “They might get drinking water from that waterfall somehow—but they also need wood for burning and building. They must be able to climb up to where the trees grow.”

The day had ended by the time she found the pathway she knew must be there. The twilight sky’s blue was turning to black, and lantern light from the village lay across the water in restless, fractured reflections. She had traveled nearly to the waterfall, and its roar filled her ears and mind, silencing her worries and impatience, filling her with a giddy exhilaration. She recognized it now: water magic.

A string of rowboats and a flat barge were tethered below at the base of the path. Above, near the cliff’s edge, was a curing yard for messy piles of firewood and neat stacks of stickered lumber. Zanja led the donkey to the river for a drink and learned that the path followed its rocky bank, beside the plunging water. She followed the path, away from the water roaring into that harbor deep in its cliff pocket. In the dusk she spotted a shadow of forest and a faint prick of firelight. Hauling the weary donkey behind her, she walked towards the light.

She passed more boats moored on the rocky shore of the river. She heard distant laughter at the campsite and took a side path that was soft with leaf mold. She walked among knee-high saplings, until the young trees began to dance in the firelight. She called out to announce herself. People leapt up to greet her. “Sit with us, traveler! Share our meal!”

Even without the expansive gestures, Zanja would have understood them, for they spoke the same language as the Otter People. She stepped forward, saying her name.

Amid stripped logs, sawpits, and woodpiles the ocean people had built a canopy of woven lath, under which a thick stew simmered in an iron pot on the fire. People drew Zanja into shelter and put a pottery bowl of cooked fish in her hands. Others unloaded the donkey and took him to grass. They all ate until the food was gone, then smacked their lips and patted their stomachs to show gratitude to the cook. Zanja dazedly thanked them for their hospitality.

“Traveler, we saw your traveling,” said one.

“On the cliff’s edge you walked, seeing,” said another.

“You were yearning for a shelter.”

“You are most welcome here.”

This cooperative, musical way of speaking made it difficult for Zanja to know who to address, what to say, or how to say it. Their ages and sexes were various, but in the balmy night all of them wore similar coarse skirts and shell necklaces. She said, trying to make her voice lilt as theirs did, “I have been seeking the people of the—the large water—for many days.”

“This is true,” they all said, but in various ways, using various words.

“Do the people of the large water know why I seek them?”

“The wind carried you,” said a soloist. “For here you can rest.”

“The current lifted you,” said another. “For here thirsts are quenched.”

“A voice spoke to you,” said a third. “For here you may listen.”

The others turned in startlement to this speaker. The eldest among these water people, her white hair glowed in the shadows. She had not been there before, and she had arrived without arriving.

Zanja said, “Grandmother, what shall I hear?”

The old woman said a word Zanja had never heard before. Its meanings were like light on the never-still surface of wind-ruffled water. Depth, and mystery and richness, and terrible power.

Zanja feared to look at the woman but dared not look away. “That word is your name. You are Ocean.”

“She is,” confirmed some, while others said, “She is not,” and still others equivocated, apparently not caring what they said, so long as the words sounded beautiful.

The water witch laughed. And then she was not there.

Chapter 28

A packet has arrived.

The soldier who carried it is unknown to Clement. When he calls her “general,” his tone is unusual, not like the others, who mention her rank on the way to saying something else. He pauses before and after the word.

It might mean something, but Clement can’t imagine what.

“He is from Appletown, General,” says Sevan.

Her tone is not as usual either, Clement notes. “Oh, Appletown, a small but well-fortified garrison. There was never a town at all, just a place for teamsters to load up their freight wagons. The farmers did grow apples. But it wasn’t apples the teamsters came for, it was brandy, and cured pork. The farmers fed their pigs on apples, and smoked the meat with apple wood, and made apple brandy in the winter.”

“Yes, General,” says Sevan.

“Cadmar liked brandy. Euphan sent him a great deal of it.”

The soldier says, “Commander Euphan sent the brandy because he admired Cadmar. General Clement. He mourns his loss. General Clement. And yet he is glad to see an experienced leader rise to his rank. General Clement.”

“How peculiar,” Clement says. “Cadmar thought the brandy was a bribe.”

The soldier laughs in a manner that must strain his throat, then stops abruptly.

“We are going to Appletown garrison next,” Clement says.

There is more to recount: that Appletown is the only one of the five rebel garrisons that lies south of the Corber, that crossing the river will be difficult since Karis refuses to get in a ferry, that marching to Haprin and crossing the river on the bridge there will take at best thirteen extra days, and that they will not then be able to quell the rebellion before they must return to Watfield for the gathering of the
commanders. It is a difficult problem.

All this and more, Clement might have said, but Sevan speaks before she can begin, louder than is usual for her. “Will you read the letter from Commander Euphan?”

Clement unties the knotted bindings, unfolds the waxed, waterproofed leather envelope, and then breaks the seal on the folded sheet of paper within. All these are things she has done many times before. As Cadmar’s lieutenant, she had read everything, and all routine matters she had dispatched without even mentioning them to Cadmar. (Cadmar could not read, and could not learn.) How had she decided which was routine and which was not? It had always been an obvious decision, but she can’t remember now what factors had made it obvious. She begins to ask Sevan.

“Shall I read it, General?” asks Sevan and takes the letter from her. She glances it over, and then says to the soldier, “Go to the refectory and tell the cooks the general wishes you to be fed.”

It does not seem normal for Sevan to give orders in Clement’s name. Sevan is not even a commander yet—she will take over the command of Appletown garrison, after Euphan kills himself. But there will not be enough time for that, unless Karis agrees to get in a boat. Clement will ask Karis again, at the next opportunity, for it is abnormal to refuse to cross a river. She has never known anyone to be so adamant about so commonplace a thing.

Sevan says, “I will read the letter to you, General.”

Clement notices that the soldier has left. He has gone to the refectory, though it is long past midday, and the evening bells have not rung. No one should expect to eat a meal at this hour.

Sevan reads the letter. Euphan expresses shock at the conspiracy of Heras and the other three commanders, who are all dead now.

If Euphan is shocked to learn of the conspiracy, then he did not know about it. Therefore, he must not be guilty of mutiny. Clement is surprised, for she remembers being certain that Euphan was part of the plan. She also remembers that she called him a corrupt criminal who lived like the lords of Sainna. It is wrong to live like that, but she isn’t certain why.

Sevan, continuing to read the letter, says that Euphan has not contacted Clement and was unable to attend her in Watfield as commanded, because Appletown garrison has been under siege. How astonishing this is! For Clement had been certain there are no Paladin irregulars in that region. Now Sevan reads that bands of brigands had attacked the garrison. The brigands had always been Euphan’s friends, for he permitted them to collect and sell the farmers’ brandy so long as most of the money went to him. Or at least Clement had thought this was the case, but apparently had been mistaken. For her errors to be corrected was good—she had told her subordinates this many times. But why was it good?

Sevan reads, “The thugs seem to have hoped to mollify the new G’deon’s anger at their criminality by attacking and massacring us. But they have recently abandoned the attack, because they learned that the G’deon is actually a friend to the Sainnites. My patrols cannot find them now, and I believe they have scattered.”

Sevan snorts, which is odd behavior. “I see why you always declared Euphan to be a dishonest, lying thief,” she says. “Does he think you won’t guess that he has been rounding up and killing the brigands, so they won’t be there to give him the lie?”

“Of course,” Clement says. “Of course not.” One of these answers will certainly prove to be correct.

Sevan says, in that tone Clement does not recall having heard until recently, “Euphan certainly has learned the fate of the other four commanders. He knows you are too wise to believe this fiction, for you even predicted that he would try to lie his way out of trouble—do you remember?”

“I do remember that I told you he would lie. But how did I know that?”

“You didn’t explain that to me at the time, General. But I assume it’s because you know he is without honor and is loyal only to himself. And Euphan knows you know this, and he knows you are not stupid.”

That peculiar tone again. “I am not stupid,” Clement says. She often repeats what other people say, for she frequently is expected to speak, but when she tells them all she knows, they behave in ways she finds perplexing.

Sevan says, “No, General, Euphan knows he can’t trick you. In this letter he is telling you what he wants you to pretend that you believe. If you pretend, then he in turn will act like he supports you as general. He will give you his vote.”

Clement is amazed. “Why did I think that winning their votes would be difficult? A great deal of what I thought was true is not true at all.”

“General, that is not correct. Before Wilton, you knew what was true and what was not. Now you believe everything anyone tells you.”

“That is extraordinary, is it not?”

“Karis took away your fear, so you could go to the gate and challenge Heras again.”

“Yes, she did. I am glad of that, for fear has no use. I could not endure to suffer any more, and it is much easier to do my duty without suffering.”

“I’m certain it is easier, General. But what is your duty?

“You know the answer to that question,” Clement says. Yes, that is why Sevan’s question seems absurd. “A general’s duty is to do a general’s duties.”

“Of course, General. Why would accepting Euphan’s bargain be a bad decision?”

“A bad decision,” Clement says.

“Yes.”

Now Sevan says nothing, and Clement waits for her to give the answer, but she doesn’t. “To accept his bargain would be a bad decision,”
Clement says.

“Yes, general.” Sevan’s tone is unusual.

At the gate, which stands ajar, guarded by a mix of armed Paladins and unarmed soldiers, the bugler sounds a brassy call: Honored Guests Arriving.