Water Logic (26 page)

“Report—anyone,” Clement said. “I was shot—that’s all I know.”

Herme said, “After the Wilton soldiers shot you with the crossbow, they shot you with guns—and all the while, the gate captain was shouting at them to hold their fire. We carried you out of range, and the Paladins took us to this house. That Shaftali medic arrived the next morning and put his hands right into your belly to sew your bowels together with needle and thread. He forced a draught into you, but if it was for pain it didn’t do much good, or not for long.”

The horror stepped out of the shadows. She willed it back, but it lay down and watched her.

“What happened then?”

“The Paladins wouldn’t allow us to give you mercy,” said Efrat. “And they kept apologizing to us, the bastards!”

“The Paladins killed the raven,” Herme said. “They made a broth from its carcass and fed it to you. The bird told them to do it.”

“Gods of my mother!” cried Clement, appalled.

Mereth said, “With wounds like that, you shouldn’t have survived one day. But you survived six. And last night the G’deon came.”

“From Watfield? In six days?”

“In the middle of the night she slammed right through the door. The latch and lock broke into a dozen pieces.”

Another said, “Day and night she must have walked without rest. Her feet were bleeding—she was pale as death.”

“The local Paladins didn’t know who she was. They thought it was an attack.”

Sevan said, “Well, she’s better than a whole battalion, eh? Whose side is she fighting on, though?”

Clement said, “Why does it matter? We just have to make bloody certain we’re beside her, whichever way she happens to face.”

Thirty officers laughed, saying, “That’s right, general. It doesn’t matter. Not a bit.” Mereth fell silent first.

Clement remembered Saleen’s laughter, and his sigh as he collapsed so neatly to the wet cobblestones. “Commander Saleen was killed.”

Mereth nodded, quite expressionless. “And General Mabin.” Clement
remembered the old woman’s feral grin. A poor governor, maybe—but a great leader, justly revered.

Efrat said, “We could have been killed in retribution. But the Paladins we’d traveled with put themselves between us and the irregulars, and they’ve been protecting us ever since, I guess, keeping the Wilton Paladins away from us and standing up to the shouting mobs that have gathered outside the door.”

“And apologizing?”

Efrat grinned wryly. Sevan said, “They’ve been good friends to us, and that’s the truth of it. And after all this, Watfield Garrison’s gates are still closed.”

The horror gazed steadily at her. “What were you shouting about?” she asked.

“Oh, that was them, the Paladins,” said Denit.

“Bloody hell! Paladins never shout.” But with Mabin and Saleen both dead, the bitter Commander Ronal was the senior Paladin officer.

“That would be the Watfield Paladins, arguing with Ronal,” she said. “Have they been shouting at each other for six days?”

“Not all the time,” said Denit dryly.

“Someone bring Ronal and his officers to me,” Clement said. “In fact, bring all the Paladins you can find.”

Two of them went out, chuckling with anticipation, and returned with Ronal, some of his officers, and three exhausted Watfield Paladins.

“What were you people arguing about?” Clement asked Ronal.

“I will not answer to you,” Ronal said.

“I am the officer in charge of this operation!”

One of the Watfield Paladins said, “Clement, Ronal has mustered all the companies in the west—nearly two hundred Paladin irregulars and their commanders—and many have already arrived, with more arriving all the time.”

“Do you intend to violate the truce, Ronal?” asked Clement.

“Mabin has been killed by Sainnite guns! The truce has already been violated!”

“Mabin and Saleen defied my direct command and put themselves in the way of the bullets my people were shooting at me. At me!”

“The Watfield Sainnites concealed from us that they had not given up all their weapons—”

“The decision to renew the war is not yours!”

“The war is over,” said Karis.

She filled the doorway, red-eyed, dirty, dressed only in her limp longshirt. She held Gabian in one arm, and with the other supported herself against the alarmingly creaking door frame. The Wilton Paladins gaped at her. A Watfield Paladin said, “Ronal, this is Karis G’deon.” Ronal began to say one or another of those bloody Paladin courtesies, but Karis said impatiently, “Why am I hemmed in by sharpened edges? Does everyone in this city have a weapon?”

Ronal let his breath out. “Paladins are arriving from afar to defend Shaftal.”

“Oh, for land’s sake! Send them home!”

Ronal’s mouth opened. One of the black-dressed Paladins lay a hand on his shoulder and murmured to him in a tone that was urgent but kind. Ronal studied his feet. “Would you speak directly to the commanders, Karis?”

Karis sighed. “Yes.”

Ronal’s jaw muscles were working. “I’ll bring them to you.” He quit the room, and moments later the front door slammed shut.

“Give Karis a place to sit,” said Clement to her people.

A path was opened to a chair beside the bed. Karis glanced at the chair, handed Gabian to the nearest soldier, and sat on the floor. Her shirt was buttoned crookedly, and the hair on one side of her head was squashed. Rubbing her eyes, with her long legs folded beneath her, she looked like a gigantic child awakened from a nap.

As Gabian was passed from soldier to soldier, each of them in turn had to figure out how to hold the baby. At last Efrat handed Gabian to Clement. He blinked at her, clutched a bit of the wind-scented sheet, and fell back asleep.

“Well, General,” said Karis. “What now?”

Bloody hell, thought Clement. How could Karis have come this far and have no plan?

“Emil wonders if there are people in Wilton garrison whose hearts, at least, are in mutiny against Heras.”

“I’m certain there are—but it’s the officers that matter. Now it seems Heras may have people in every company whose orders come directly from her, and the officers know it now. And they know she tricked them into mutiny.” Clement felt something—a bit of hope—and then realized what it meant. The horror grinned at her.

Karis said wearily, “You’re not lying to me, are you?” At least she seemed too tired to be furious.

“Karis, if Heras had killed me, that would have ended her ambitions also. The commanders won’t accept as general anyone who kills her rival. Strategically, it was worth the risk.”

Karis said nothing. It occurred to Clement that Karis’s ability to lead had never been tested. She was a woman of strength—strength in many forms—but not of subtlety. Her decisions were made by aversion and instinct; people did as she asked because of devotion rather than persuasion. But to think through options, to make unappealing choices, that was unnatural to her. She was intelligent—intelligent enough to carefully deploy or inhibit her own impulses, intelligent enough to surround herself with and heed advisors who could make certain she never acted in ignorance, or on impulse.

Karis may have been thinking something similar, for she said, “I’m unable to consult with Emil. These Paladins—” She glanced at them, and they blinked owlishly at her, practically asleep on their feet.

Clement spoke hastily, fearful that the horror would leap out and grab her by the throat. “I must go back to the garrison.”

Efrat, apparently understanding Clement, cried in their own language, “They’ll shoot you again, General!”

Clement kept her gaze only on Karis, who gazed steadily back at her.

“Right now,” Karis said finally, “I couldn’t save you if they shoot you again.”

“Right now I can’t even walk by myself.”

“You just need to eat,” Karis said. “Tomorrow, then.”

It took three people to get the G’deon to her feet. The Paladins took her away.

As two of the women officers helped Clement to bathe and eat, she frequently heard the front door open and close, and there were voices and noisy footsteps in the hall. The women lay Clement down to rest in the room that smelled of roses, with Gabian in an improvised nest of blankets on the floor. Karis seemed to have brought nothing with her but the baby. When the more urgent business had been taken care of, Clement would ask a Paladin to fetch a bottle and diapers.

She started awake at the sound of the door latch. Karis, ducking her head, filled up the doorway as Mereth, on guard in the hall, saluted smartly.

Karis sat heavily by Clement on the groaning bed. “Norina can strangle people with their own opinions in just a few words. It takes me most of the afternoon.”

“Karis—my people told me about the raven.”

The lamp’s flame had become a dim red glow, and the light that filtered through the shutters was a dim haze. Karis dug her fingers into the tangled mess of her hair, and her features were lost in shadow. “My raven’s death hurt me,” she said. “But it condemned you.”

The horror smelled like rotting flesh. It dug its long teeth into her viscera and ate a leisurely meal. For six days it had eaten her. Six days.

Clement was shuddering too violently to speak.

“Clement—stop.”

Karis’s callused hand lay heavy on her forehead. The G’deon’s eyes were red and swollen; her hand was rough and cold. And the horror was gone. Clement took a deep breath.

Karis said, “In Lalali I awoke every morning knowing I would be raped that day. They gave me smoke to make me pliable, and I soon came to love the drug. Under smoke, being raped was quite ordinary and painless. So I ask you, was the drug a gift or a curse?”

“If there is no escape—”

“I would have escaped when I was old enough—if not for the drug.”

“I understand,” Clement said. “I am very, very clear.”

Karis’s hand still rested upon Clement’s forehead. And when she lifted it, the horror would return.

“My courage is gone,” Clement said.

“I know.”

“I can’t go to the garrison—not tomorrow, not any day.”

“I know,” Karis said.

She did not lift her hand, not even when the healer looked in. “Can you make a sleeping potion for the general?” she asked him.

“Yes, Karis. And for you also.”

Clement saw her gaze shift to something on the floor. The baby.

The healer said, “We’ve found a couple who are able to look after him. They have a son of their own, a few months older than he is. And she has plenty of milk.”

“Have someone bring Gabian to them,” Clement said. It should have been agony to say, but it wasn’t.

“I’ll drink your potion,” Karis said to the healer.

The healer left, taking Gabian with him.

“They’ll shoot you again,” Karis said.

“More than likely.”

“How many times will it take, to convince them you cannot be killed? More than two? More than three?”

“I don’t know.”

Karis lifted her hand, without warning.

Clement said, “You were making a joke.”

“A grim joke.”

The horror was there. Clement must talk quickly, for it soon would take her by the throat again. “What you did makes me clear—clear but stupid. The longer you did it, the stupider I became.” She must talk faster, faster, faster. “Can you change me, make me like that, so I continue like that, even without your touch?”

Karis said nothing.

“Answer quickly,” Clement said.

“I can do it. But down the road—”

“To hell with the bloody road! Do you want a hero tomorrow? Or a spineless coward? Bloody hell!”

It had her again. And then it was gone, for Karis laid a hand upon her forehead. Karis said, “Listen, while you are clear, before you get stupid. You will pay a price, a terrible price. Every day you’re without pain will give you a legacy of worse pain. This fear may be intolerable now—but later it will drive you insane.”

“I understand, Karis,” said Clement. “But only tomorrow matters. I’ll pay whatever price must be paid.”

Karis did not speak again. She stayed with her. Until the healer returned with a potion, until the potion began to take effect, Karis remained beside Clement, with her hand upon her, granting her that costly mercy.

Chapter 19

The roads were firm, the sky clear, the air cool but not cold, the inclines gradual. Zanja’s winter fat had sloughed off like the skin from a snake. Though her load of gear was not light, she jogged easily past other early-season travelers. Even a rich man on horseback with nothing better to do could not keep up as he attempted to engage Zanja in conversation. She ran most of the distance to Shimasal, where she left the highway and trotted along eastbound wagon tracks, waving to farmers in orchards and in fields, where the spring plowing and planting had begun. After she reached the Kisha highway her pace slowed somewhat as she climbed into the highlands, down into the Aerin River Valley, across the river and up into highlands again. She had outrun spring: Some few flowers had begun to bloom behind her, but here in apple and nut country the trees had scarcely awakened, and nearly the entire populace had turned out to repair the highway.

When Zanja told a friendly innkeeper that she intended to leave the road to go west, the innkeeper protested, “There’s nothing west of here. Nothing but rocks.” He was wrong, for there were more cultivated lands, but after one last night in a bed and one final generous breakfast, Zanja trotted right past the edge of Shaftali civilization. Now, far ahead of her, she could sometimes spot the hazy jumble of foothills that marked the meeting of western and northern mountains. Trees became sparse and stunted, and she had to slow to a walk so she could hunt for meat and collect firewood as she traveled. The pathless last leg of her journey was by far the slowest. Yet by the time Zanja was wading through the heather that in her time still would cover the rockscape of the northwestern borderlands, only fourteen days had passed.