Water Logic (4 page)

“Well, we are worried about you, General,” said Norina to her.

“So I have gathered, Madam Truthken.”

“Should I be offended by your resentment, or should I admire the skill with which you mask it? I can never decide.”

“Of course I’m skilled—I’ve had thirty years of practice. How are the governors of Shaftal today?”

“Working—some harder than others.” Norina gestured towards a hallway. “Karis is expecting you.”

In the meantime, Seth had been permitted to enter. As they started down the designated hall, she said, “What
was
that boy? And all those other intimidating children? And those monstrous books they were reading? I have never seen anything like it.”

“They say it’s a law school.”

“Oh, those are air children. They do make the skin crawl, don’t they. But that woman—!”

“That was Norina Truthken. Her duty is to locate and rehabilitate—
or else execute—the villains of the world. She seems to think I can be rehabilitated, though being executed would be less painful. Seth, I should warn you—”

They turned the corner, and there, standing in an open doorway, was the G’deon: tall, broad, big-shouldered, ham-fisted, dirt-smeared, dressed in much-mended work clothes, with a massive hammer tucked into her belt. It was Karis who had named the building Travesty, and who had set about destroying and rebuilding it, one wall at a time. When Clement first met her, she had been covered with pulverized mortar, and ever since then it had been plaster dust and dirt. No one would ever accuse Karis of keeping her hands clean.

“It took you long enough to get here,” Karis said. “Anyway, you’re staying for supper.”

She stepped back through the open doorway, beyond which Zanja na’Tarwein sat cross-legged on the hearth—her extinct people had lived without furniture, and she still preferred not to use it. Today she wore a restrained, meticulously fitted suit, as black as the slim braid that draped over her shoulder like a woven cord. Karis could not have chosen a lover more physically and mentally unlike herself: compact, sharp-edged, dark-skinned and dark-haired, quick and mystical, remarkably impractical.

The door closed. Zanja held out her arms and Clement handed Gabian to her, then sat on a footstool that was upholstered in needlework
so lovely it seemed wrong to use it for such a humble purpose. “I believe I’m the victim of a conspiracy,” she said to Zanja in Sainnese.

“You are—but it’s a conspiracy of friends,” Zanja replied in the same language, one of at least three in which she was fluent. “Emil advised Karis that some of the tasks he gives you are impossible to achieve; Norina warned her that you are under unendurable strain; J’han confided his concerns for your health; Medric dreamed of your cow farmer’s arrival; and Gilly declared that you would only take a day for yourself under duress.”

“You are dangerous meddlers, every one of you.”

“
Now
you realize this?”

“Oh, I will never doubt your own or your family’s ability to achieve by indirection that which cannot be achieved by force. And of course you act in good will. But what did Medric dream? Why is a soldier’s dalliance with a farmer worthy of a seer’s attention?”

“Our much-beloved madman rarely bothers to explain himself,” said Zanja. “You can be sure it’s important, though.”

“If it’s important, then you all should stop frightening her.”

“That one? Oh, no, she’s not likely to be frightened so easily.”

“Zanja—I’m feeling stupid again.”

“You have no idea what she is? Look!”

Clement looked, and saw Seth and Karis, clasping each other’s hands, speechless, seemingly entranced.

Clement said, “Bloody hell. What is she then?”

“It’s in their hands, Clement. My wife’s palms are coarse and seared by fire. Your cow farmer’s palms look like leather, and I think her grip would not be easy to dislodge. They enter the world hands first, both of them.”

Clement remembered how quickly Seth’s hands could find the way to bare skin; how Karis’s hands had bent the iron bars of the garrison gate; how Seth’s hands had clenched the porch post as Clement walked away; how Karis’s hand had reached ahead of her as she climbed towards Clement across the rubble.

“Earth in hands, fire in eyes, air in skin, water in voice,” said Zanja. “So elemental talent may be recognized. That old saying sounds much better in Shaftalese.”

“She’s an earth blood?”

Zanja quirked an eyebrow. “What, your interactions with her have not been memorable?”

It was common knowledge, Clement remembered, that earth bloods were excellent lovers.

The trance seemed to have finally broken, and Zanja stood up to greet Seth, and then she handed Gabian to Karis, who declared that she wanted to do nothing but hold him for the rest of the day. It appeared that Clement was destined to spend the afternoon as neither a general nor a mother. The prospect made her feel quite disoriented.

Seth knelt beside the stool and put her hand on Clement’s knee.

“She overwhelms everyone,” said Clement, “As I was about to warn you. And the others of her family—well, the full strangeness of this household is not easy to describe.”

Zanja said, “Greetings, I am Zanja, a fire blood, wife of Karis, Speaker for the Ashawala’i.”

“But—” began Seth.

“My tribe are ghosts,” Zanja said. “Sometimes I am one also.”

The communicating door to the library opened, and Emil, his gray hair tied back with a ribbon to expose his three gold earrings, peered into the room. “Greetings, General Clement.”

“Good afternoon, Emil. May I present Mariseth of High Meadow Farm, the councilor from Basdown?”

Seth leapt to her feet. Emil clasped her hand, and the lines that fanned out from the corners of his eyes deepened. “There must be a great deal of earth talent in Basdown, that they can afford to waste it on government.”

“They thought I could fix bigger problems than sick cows,” said Seth.

“Hmm. Fix problems, you say. Many new councilors seem to think their job is to punish. The people of Basdown are disinclined to punish the Sainnites for what they’ve done?”

Emil’s conversations were often like this, conducted in great intuitive leaps, efficient but sometimes baffling to his listeners. He had been a Paladin his entire life. But his eyes, the liveliest and most expressive part of his face, were nothing like the passively attentive gaze of a good soldier. Paladins
choose
—they make an art of choosing; they study and argue about it their entire lives. Clement’s anxieties again began to claw at her.

Seth said, “The people of Basdown are not united. Even those who see no value in punishing the Sainnites argue that our region has not suffered directly from their rule. So they think it might be wrong to prevent others’ vengeance.”

“It is a good point,” said Emil.

“But they’re wrong! And vengeance only leads to more vengeance! We should not allow our future to be shaped by anger and loss—that seems even more stupid than what the Sainnites have done to us.”

Emil smiled with his entire face now, not just with his eyes. “You’ll be making that argument more frequently than you like, I’m afraid. Welcome to Watfield, Councilor.”

He departed soon, for even with the aid of Zanja and Medric and numerous clerks and librarians, his work never seemed finished. Then Karis showed the way through the maze of dim hallways, up two hidden stairways, to the dusty and echoing third floor of the monstrous house. As they negotiated the way upwards, Seth and Karis exclaimed at every one of the building’s faults: the maze-like hallways, the uneven stair steps, the crooked walls, the creaking floorboards.

Zanja was as indifferent to buildings as she was to furniture. She asked about Clement’s progress at learning to read, for Emil wanted Clement to study Paladin ethics and make herself into an example, a soldier who became a Paladin. He could not believe that books had no effect on Sainnites, whether or not they could read.

“Ethics,” said Clement. “That’s about choices, isn’t it?”

“It was about one choice, according to the Paladins. An ethical person refuses to be a conduit for evil.”

They had climbed three more steps before Clement realized Zanja was being sarcastic. “Sometimes the evil lies far in the future! How can we possibly know the future effects of what we do now?”

“Oh, that’s the hard part,” said Zanja, with an edge of anger in her voice. “But sometimes evil is obvious.”

When the Sainnites massacred Zanja’s tribe, that had indeed been an evil act, and Clement was glad she could say she had argued against it, for all the good her arguments had done. That attack had also been unimaginably stupid, for it had unleashed Zanja—a crosser of boundaries, a hinge of history. The Sainnites, bloody fools, had set that woman loose upon themselves.

They reached the end of the last hall. Karis opened a door, saying what a wonder it was that one room in the building had nothing wrong with it, except for its remoteness. “Can you be comfortable so far above ground, though?” she asked Seth.

“I’m not that sensitive,” said Seth. “I can’t endure boats, though—or being dangled from ropes.”

“Can you cross bridges? I can’t—not wooden bridges, anyway. Stone bridges I can manage, if I move quickly.” Karis added briskly, “We eat by the clock here—Garland is a military man.” Without disturbing Gabian, who had fallen asleep in the crook of her arm, she reached back to clasp Clement’s shoulder and push her into the room after Seth.

The door closed, the floor creaked, and then there was silence.

The room was warm and well lit, with a brisk fire in the fireplace and a lamp burning atop a bureau. The rug was extraordinary, woven in a complex pattern of stylized flower bulbs, each one bravely opening its buds. And beside the window, which had a shutter bravely open to the weather, a dish of living flowers bloomed.
Hope
, said the room to Clement.

“Those people act as a family to you,” Seth said.

“They do?”

“Prying, interfering, protecting—that’s what families do.”

Seth was wandering the small room in apparent delight, and now paused at the flowers. “What are these?” she asked herself. “Such an extraordinary blue color! And that fragrance!”

“It’s a Sainnese flower which we call
spring-in-winter
. That plant is descended from my mother’s bulbs. Zanja declares that a blooming flower is my name-glyph. But I think she must be wrong, for all Sainnites love flowers. I am hardly unique.”

Seth was coming towards her, but she stopped now and glanced back at the blooming flowers, and down at the blooming carpet. “I’ve never heard of that glyph sign. But the G’deon’s wife is a famous glyph reader, isn’t she?”

“She invents her own glyphs, I think, and then they mean whatever she wants them to mean.”

Seth laughed. She had drawn close now and was hardly more than a step away. “Clem—can you come out from under all that brass and leather?”

Of course Seth remained undiscouraged. She was an earth blood—reliable as dirt, persistent as a weasel, and stubborn—like Norina said of Karis—as an old tree stump.

Clement undid her buckles and buttons. She took hold of Seth’s strong hands and helped them find the way inside her linen undershirt.

They entirely missed supper.

Chapter 2

Travesty squatted at the end of its snow-glazed square in the lightless winter night. Six ravens slept in an off-center gable, with their beaks tucked under their wings, satisfied like their mistress by the day’s work and dreaming hopefully of what might be accomplished tomorrow. The storm had passed, and bitter cold had arrived in its wake.

For six people who walked purposefully through the square, it was not too cold, nor was the hour too late.

Zanja na’Tarwein slept beside Karis, with their daughter, Leeba, tucked between them, and baby Gabian sleeping in a basket near the fire. Lately the ghosts had left her alone; and, unlike Emil, she didn’t write letters in her sleep. She slept peacefully, and then she started awake.

She slid out from under the covers and dropped to a crouch on the floor. Her dagger lay there as always, in its sheath, and now it was in her hand.

She heard the twang of a bowstring. An invisible projectile hissed overhead and thunked into the plaster wall. She sprang forward, and with a single blow at the darkness, slashed the intruder’s throat. Hot blood drenched her nightshirt and face.

She had not paid attention when it happened, but now she realized she had heard Karis awaken and reflexively grab hold of their daughter to shield her.

“Karis!” she cried. “What is happening?”

“There are strangers in the house. The one here is dead.”

“Obviously! How many?”

“Three more—all armed. How could—?”

“Are these three people together in a group?”

“No, separated. Hunting.”

“You’re the one they’re hunting for. And now I will hunt them.”

Karis said, “Take a raven with you.”

With a loud crackling of ice, Zanja opened a window, and a raven flew in. She stripped off her nightshirt, for her dark skin would make her invisible in shadow. With the heavy bird’s claws digging into her wrist, she left the room barefoot.

“The Paladin guards are dead,” said the raven on her wrist. “Others
are dead, too.”

Then the bird said, “Turn right here.”

Travesty’s hallways were such a maze that people often became lost in broad daylight. But the ravens, like Karis, were never lost.

“Emil is awake,” the raven said.

Karis would have sent another raven to tap on Emil’s window—Norina’s also, certainly. In moments Emil also would be armed and prowling a hallway.

The raven uttered a nearly soundless croak.

Zanja stopped, and listened. She heard and saw nothing, yet she sensed where her prey walked.

She set the raven down, turned right at the intersection, and ran, nearly silent, until the cursed house betrayed her with a creaking floorboard.

A solid shape in the softer darkness turned sharply. There was no light, no shimmer of metal. Only the swift lift of shadow arm and shadow blade. But the assassin could see even less of Zanja than she could see of the assassin.

Zanja struck low. She drove the deadly sharp edge through the flesh of hip and thigh, landed on the floor beyond, and scrambled back to her feet.

The assassin’s breath hissed through teeth. Zanja’s foot slipped in blood. The dark shadow swung at her. She parried the blow, then her own blade twisted into flesh and scraped bone. The assassin’s weapon clattered to the floor.

Zanja leapt out of range. “Yield!”

She heard a strangled sound, like choking. Heels drummed on the floor. Then silence.