Water Logic (16 page)

“This traveler has just arrived, half-dead with cold.”

“Could she communicate her business to you?”

“Yes, she is very well spoken. She is here to talk to Tadwell.”

The commander’s forehead creased. “What for?”

“It is my right, is it not?” said Zanja. “Is it necessary that I explain my reasons to you?”

Despite the novice’s assertion that Zanja could speak, the commander started with surprise. She turned to Zanja with her jaw set. “It is your Speaker’s business—”

“I am far from my tribe. I must speak for myself.”

She realized belatedly that she had imitated the commander’s tone, as if she were talking to a confused child. It took effort to erase the anger and sarcasm from her voice. “Pardon me, Madam Paladin. For many days I have been in dire straits, and except for this young woman, not one person has offered me kindness instead of insults.”

The commander cast a chiding glance at the young Paladin, as though her impulse to offer help to a traveler nearly dead with cold somehow indicated a character flaw.

Zanja said, “Madam Paladin, I was attacked by a rogue elemental. The G’deon must be told about this.”

“What?” exclaimed the commander. She turned to the novice. “Orna, fetch a Truthken.”

“I will not be in the same room with a Truthken!”

The novice, halfway to her feet, stared wide-eyed at Zanja.

“If you will just ask Tadwell—” Zanja said.

“The G’deon is not here to make that decision.” The commander turned away and said to the young Paladin, Orna, “This woman may stay one night only, in a room by the stable. Give her supper and breakfast and then expel her.”

Looking unhappy, Orna said in a muted voice, “Is seems wrong that she suffer because Tadwell is gone.”

“As she will not permit a Truthken to inquire into her virtue, we must assume that she has none. Sometimes the tribes exile their criminals.”

No matter how tired, injured, or crazy she might be, Zanja had always known when it was time to surrender. She unbuckled her belt so as to remove from it her sheathed dagger, which she offered to Orna. “Please guard the blade for me—it is my only treasure.”

The young Paladin might have never seen a weapon before, so surprised did she seem. Yet she said formally, “I accept this charge.” She took the blade and knotted the tie-fasts so the dagger could not easily be unsheathed, and tucked it into her belt rather than leave it here, where the commander might touch it. “I’ll show you to your room and fetch you some supper. Good evening, Commander.”

The senior Paladin said nothing. Apparently, at least one thing in Shaftal was as it was supposed to be: a novice need not display abject obedience, not even to her immediate superior.

Zanja followed Orna through the door, into the House of Lilterwess.

She found herself not in a hall, but in a roofed boulevard as cold here as it had been outdoors, but much drier. Black squares high in a wall suggested openings to the night, a necessary ventilation, Zanja supposed, in a building the size of a small town.

“This is the perimeter way,” said Orna. “It goes all the way to the stable, near the guest rooms.”

To be housed near the stables certainly indicated low status. “Will I at least have a fire?”

“Of course you’ll have a fire!”

They passed an occasional lamp hung over an ornate doorway, and by that faint light Zanja could glimpse the fine stonework, the soaring arches of the vaulted ceiling, the interior windows through which the breeze could blow. But most of the time they walked in near darkness, and she was so slow and limping that her guide had to stop and wait for her to catch up. “Should I fetch a healer for you?” she asked.

“I just need a few days of rest.”

The young woman gave her a guilt-stricken look.

Zanja said wearily, “Where must I go to find the G’deon?”

“Oh, he’s in Basdown again. I’m sure you’ve heard about the boundary disputes.”

“Basdown? To get there I must go through the Barrens, where there’s no shelter at all, not even a tree!”

“You could remain here and await him if you would talk to a Truthken.”

Should Zanja ignore her inexplicable aversion, to save herself from dying of exposure? She sighed. “If I start ignoring my own convictions, I’ll have nothing left. Even my self will be lost. It’s better to die.”

“If you’ve got nothing to hide—” the young Paladin began.

“There are other reasons than fear or shame for keeping something hidden.”

“What other reason could there be?”

“To avoid doing harm.”

Such a possibility seemed beyond Orna’s imagination, and she lapsed into silence.

Zanja’s nose told her they were drawing close to the stable, for even the best-maintained stable stinks in springtime. The Paladin showed her through a doorway, and they felt their way up a black, narrow flight of stairs. Standing in pitch darkness, Zanja could hear Orna’s hands rasping on wood, then a latch lifted and they entered a small, chilly room. The sound of rain had been muffled by stonework, but here it was suddenly loud. Orna said, “Oh, it’s turned to sleet. I love that sound. Ouch!” She had thumped into something. “I found the bed,” she said. “Why don’t you take off your wet clothes and get under the covers, while I fetch food and fuel for you?”

After she left, Zanja followed the sound of sleet on shutters to the window. She first had to remove a waxed cloth screen and then wrestle open latches that were stiff with rust, only to get a face full of sleet for her pains. She was looking out at a continuous wet rooftop, all angles, punctuated regularly by towers and dormers, rather like Watfield might look if all its rooftops were joined into one.

She could have climbed out and gone walking across the top of the city. Thoughtful, blinking ice from her eyelashes, Zanja gazed out into the rain.

Chapter 11

During spring thaw the snow melts to an icy slush, beneath which water flows along the hard surface of the frozen soil. As the soil slowly thaws it turns to mud as soft as batter, and the liquid that inevitably finds its way into the best-greased boots deposits a fine silt that must be removed several times a day. Walking in snowmelt, the feet become stone blocks that are dragged from step to step. The sun shines but is an unreliable friend, warming the shoulders while leaving the legs and feet in winter. A traveler’s most precious belonging becomes a pair of dry socks, tucked inside the shirt, protected by the rain cape until day’s end.

Her feet warm and dry for the first time since dawn, Clement lay on the floor of a farmhouse parlor near a collection of boots that steamed on the hearth. The farmers had put an iron kettle of wet socks into the kitchen oven to dry, and the entire building smelled of wet wool. It was kind of the farmers to make this effort, though the soldiers’ and Paladins’ feet would be wet again almost as soon as the day’s march began. Tomorrow was the day Karis had predicted that the rain would begin. The sun’s friendship, halfhearted though it had been, would be much missed.

Clement was trying to read the little book Emil had given her before she left Watfield. One of his clerks had hand-copied a portion of
Ethics and Attentiveness
by a long-dead philosopher named Zhiva, and Emil had bound these pages in waxed leather. Clement kept the book tucked in her tunic alongside her dry socks, and in the evenings she was reading it—so slowly that she lost the sense of the sentences and had to reread, over and over, until she unintentionally memorized entire paragraphs.

She would not have wasted a moment on Zhiva’s drivel, except that Saleen appeared to have been assigned her tutelage, and, much like Emil, he could be inexorable. Their company of thirty-seven was usually quartered in three or four households, but Saleen always contrived to share Clement’s roof so he could be nearby to help her read the bloody book. He violated the Sainnite tradition of separating the sexes at night, for Paladins had no such tradition, and he even refused several offers to share farmers’ beds, though the other Paladins quartered in other households were taking full advantage of that hospitality. Being a Paladin, one of Clement’s officers had enviously noted, was not all work.

Now Saleen and one of the officers, Mereth, who was destined to be a lieutenant commander, sat in nearby armchairs while several other women officers already slept on the floor. The Paladin and soldier were exchanging polite, often nonsensical statements in alternating languages.

“I want eating the bread,” said Saleen in Sainnese, though the farmers had been very generous with their food.

“Is this road for bakery?” asked Mereth solemnly in Shaftalese.

“Walk left at the—the big—”

“Fountain,” suggested Mereth in Sainnese. But it was a word Saleen did not recognize, and Clement drowsily translated it for him.

“Oh, yes,” said Saleen in Sainnese. “The fountain.”

“Are you hunger for butter?”

“I hunger for all things,” said Saleen. “Head-hunger.”

“Curiosity,” Mereth suggested. Her clipped hair looked as black and soft as cat’s fur, and she had a rather square, strong-jawed face. Like Saleen, she was young to be an officer, yet she kept the balance between authority and flexibility far more naturally than some of the more experienced people.

“Curiosity,” said Saleen. “That is head-hunger?”

Since the truce’s beginning, the Paladins had been making steady progress in understanding their enemy’s language, and now that Clement traveled with them, she saw how that progress was made. They constantly practiced with the Sainnites, and taught every new word to each other. By tomorrow all the Paladins would be using “fountain” and “curiosity” at every opportunity.

“What is this?” Clement grumbled. “A military mission? Or a training exercise?”

“We trade curiosity,” said Saleen in Sainnese.

“It is school!” said Mereth triumphantly in Shaftalese.

“Lie down and go to sleep,” Clement commanded twice, once in each language.

The next day, they plodded through a downpour. Once, the main roads in Shaftal had been passable from early spring to early winter, but during the years of occupation road repair had been neglected. Large sections of this road were now obscured by mud, and everywhere the cobblestones had been uprooted and overturned by frost. Clement found Mabin
plodding beside her and said to her, “We could repair the roads.”

Mabin’s rain hood obscured all her features but the cold glitter of her gaze. She said, clipping each word as though she were trying to conceal her anger—which was how she always sounded, angry or not, “Your comment lacks a context.”

“A disciplined force of people,” Clement said, perversely deciding not to give Mabin what she requested. “Accustomed to cooperative tasks. The bigger and more visible the project, the better.”

Mabin said sarcastically, “And not one soldier would feel demeaned by such brutal labor.”

“They need work that’s worth doing. And they’ll do as they’re told.”

“They need to learn to work from obligation,” said Mabin. “And they need to do it proudly. How will you engineer that, General?”

“How do you engineer it?”

Mabin said nothing for a few slogging steps. “We Shaftali used to worship the land, and still we treat it with reverence and humility. But you Sainnites are parasites—scavengers—and what is necessary to your survival is not that humble acceptance of the land’s power. Instead, you have an arrogant belief in your own power. Why should you fear, or even take into consideration, the winds and weather, the fertility and resources, the shape and the moods of this land? These things are irrelevant to you. You take what you think you need, and you let others worry about how to replenish what you have consumed.”

Clement said stiffly, “You may be right. But our history makes us what we are, just as yours does.”

“So a new history is what you need.”

Though Mabin had spoken sarcastically, Clement mulled over her statement long after they had parted. Since events of the future inevitably
became events of the past, to engineer a new history actually was possible. One merely need to choose one’s actions carefully, and allow enough time to pass.

Another Paladin, who in his rain cape looked much like everyone else, now walked beside her, picking his way across the tumbled cobblestones. “Saleen?” Clement asked.

“Yes, Clement.” In the Shaftali style, he did not use formal address except in formal situations. “Are your feet wet yet?”

“My boots are soaked through. I believe the leather is dissolving.”

“We’ll need many new boots by the time we reach Wilton. I hope they have good cobblers.”

“We’ll all need new feet, I think.”

“Yes, but there’s not much a cobbler can do about that,” said Saleen cheerfully. “The raven tells us to go cross-country here, to avoid high water. Towards that lopsided hill.” He pointed. Clement shouted at the people strung out ahead of her, and they stepped off the road into the sucking mud.

She had thought it might be a relief to walk among trees, but the leafless branches did nothing to ease the downpour. The leaf mold was soft and springy underfoot, though, and she enjoyed that until the seepage of cold water numbed her toes.

“This philosopher, when did he live?” she asked Saleen.

“Zhiva was a woman, I believe. She lived during the years of Sperlin and Tadwell. It was near the end of her life that it first became possible to print books, and before that, the books were all hand-copied, like that one you carry. Most people had never set eyes on a book at all unless they were scholars at Kisha. All knowledge was spoken. It’s strange to think of Shaftal without books!”