Fire Logic (29 page)

Zanja felt so strange, so empty, so tired, that she wondered how she could still be present in this strange place. Norina said, “Zanja has merely exercised a fire blood’s usual foolhardiness. As for Willis, it is most ambiguous. Willis meant to shoot Zanja, but he meant it as a blow to you. So in the eyes of the Law, perhaps it might be argued that you were his true target. In any case, I would refuse to hear him as Zanja’s accuser, for he only loves the justice that serves his interests, and only sees the Law as a tool to achieve his desires. He is untrustworthy, but technically he is not a traitor.”

“Let Willis go,” Emil said. Willis was released. “Get out of my sight,” Emil added. “And get out of my company. If you want to complain to Councilor Mabin, you are free to do so. The rest of you, please step away. I wish to talk to the Truthken alone.”

Reluctantly, they left. Emil sat heavily on the bench beside Zanja. “This is a fine mess!”

Across the green, Willis had already reached his people, and no doubt he quickly began to explain his version of what they had seen. But they stood back, apparently uncertain whether they wanted to be known to be his supporters any longer.

Norina said quietly, “Shall I leave?”

“If you don’t mind, Truthken, I think it best that I avoid the appearance of conspiring with Zanja and so it would be most useful to me if you remain. Zanja —” Emil folded his hand and rested his forehead upon them in an attitude of utter weariness. “You and I are at cross-purposes, of course. I am much more interested in saving your life that I am in saving my position. At the same time, you are trying to save my position and seem little interested in saving your life.”

Zanja said, “My brother, you have died for me a hundred times. I could not endure it anymore.”

Ransel looked at her blankly.

“Don’t be a fool,” Zanja implored him. “Every time you try to help me, you die. Do not burden me with the terrible memory, I beg you! If you do not die, you cannot blame me for failing to avenge you.”

Ransel took both her hands in his. “My sister,” he said gently, “The past is done and cannot be changed. Come forth out of the Underworld.”

Emil was holding her hands. He said quietly, “Madam Truthken, this must be the anniversary of the massacre of the Ashawala’i.”

Norina’s eyes narrowed, as though she had been handed a package that might or might not be a gift.

“I think she’s half out of her mind,” he added, “And she certainly cannot recover here. I ask you to take her under your protection, and bring her to a healer.”

Norina stood up. “I will, of course. But first, I think I’d better guarantee that the rogue lieutenant of yours can’t get his forces organized, or we may find it difficult to get safely out of South Hill. I’ll leave my man here, to give you the appearance of propriety. I don’t think any of your people have noticed that he’s deaf.” She picked up the bag from beside Zanja and gave her a handful of the dried fruit. “What became of your blades? You don’t know? All right, I’ll find them for you. Is there anything else you own that’s too precious to leave behind? All right, eat that. Come, raven.”

The raven flew to her shoulder, and, gesturing to her man to remain, Norina walked over to the knot of people that had formed around Willis. The knot loosened as Willis’s people stood back to let him face the Truthken on his own. No doubt she would use her substantial powers and authority to make his present and future life as unpleasant as he deserved.

Emil commented, “A formidable woman, even for a Truthken.” He took some folded papers from his doublet’s inside pocket. “My first letter from a seer. He devoted most of it to successfully convincing me to spare your life at any cost. As for the rest, he says he had a dream that the land would recognize him as her son, and so he’s going forth into Shaftal on his own. He wrote that he has left me all his books—had them shipped downriver to a storehouse in Haprin for me to pick up. I feel like I’ve been bequeathed a child by a total stranger.”

Zanja said, “I wish you could have met him. You would have liked him.”

“I admit I find his letter both intelligent and convincing. It’s a very strange sensation to be saying such things about a man who has helped to kill so many of my friends.”

“But he was trapped. When the walls of the House of Lilterwess fell, the Sainnites themselves were buried in the rubble. And we all are buried there with them, crushed and suffocating under the stones.”

“Hmm. Now you
are
talking treason. Good thing there’s no one but me to hear.” Emil unfolded his letter from Medric again, and Zanja saw how creased and smudged the paper was. This letter had forced Emil to subject it to uneasy and intense scrutiny, and perhaps its contents still were being delivered to him as he glanced at it once again, still seeming uncertain how to read it. “He wrote some glyphs here at the bottom, do you see? It seems like a message to you. At least, here is your Owl, your Raven, your Door.”

In fact, Medric had written at the bottom of the page each of the glyphs from Zanja’s frantic card reading the day after Fire Night. But now, no madwoman lay at the center of the circle, holding together or being torn apart by contrary forces. Instead, there was a glyph Zanja did not know how to read. She touched it with her fingertip, and Emil said, “That’s Fellowship, the union of friends to serve a grand design. What do you think he means by it?”

“I think he’s nineteen years old and hasn’t yet lost his hope.”

“Zanja na’Tarwein,” Emil said, “May that hope one day be yours and mine as well.”

When Norina returned, Willis walked behind her, carrying some of Zanja’s gear, including her missing blades. One of his people also followed, leading the horses like a servant. Truthkens must be obeyed, in small things and in large. Zanja hastily chewed and swallowed the dried fruit. It lay within her, warm as earth in summer. The wound in her leg stopped seeping blood, and when she stood up, her vision remained clear.

Emil buckled her weapons belt onto her and put the knife into her boot sheath, and helped her mount one of Norina’s horses. She must have looked a ruin as she rode out of that place, tired unto death, with her breeches blood-crusted and her face marked and swollen from Willis’s fist. When she looked back, she saw Emil, standing serenely alone in the middle of the roadway. He lifted a hand in farewell. So long as he stood there, Zanja knew, no one would dare chase after them. He was still standing there when the road took a turn, and he was gone from sight.

Part Three: The Hinge of History

All love is made of insane hope.

—
Mackapee’s
Principles for Community

The past is always with us. For the blood that soaks the earth cries out for justice. And without justice we never will have peace.

—
Mabin’s
Warfare

Between victory and defeat, between offense and revenge, lies a third possibility: neither a compromise nor an abandonment, but a marriage.

—
Medric’s
History of My Father’s People

Chapter 19

Like a great wheel the year turned; and now the sower dropped to the horizon, and up rose the gatherer with her arm outstretched to capture the ripe stars and put them in her basket. All day, in kitchens across Shaftal, the ripe fruits had been cut up to be dried in the sun, or cooked with sugar to make preserves, or covered with hot syrup to be baked into pies during the dark half of the year.

Now it was night, and in the most northwestern borderland, the general of the Paladins sat awake in her lamplit study with a bowl of golden apricots untouched upon her desk. The aging general of the Sainnites also sat awake, drinking wine and pacing restlessly as he made the messenger from South Hill explain again and again how the South Hill garrison had managed to lose track of the Sainnites’ only seer.

Somewhere between these two generals, in a silent glade well away from the road, Zanja lay staring into the darkness, and did not flinch or even seem to notice when Norina began to peel the bandage from her wounded leg. And on the river which runs east past Wilton, Emil stood at the bow of a boat that lazily rode the current towards Hanishport and the sea. After fifteen years as the Commander of South Hill Company, he had left South Hill, and never would return.

How could he continue to command, when his general had proven herself such a fool? Norina Truthken had told him quite forcefully that Mabin had valid reasons for her actions that would never be explained. But whatever Mabin’s reasons, no matter how valid they might be, that did not make it any less impossible for Emil to continue as commander. He wrote Mabin a letter, he delivered South Hill Company to Perry’s capable command, he bid his friends farewell, and he left South Hill.

His lifetime of service had left him impoverished by Shaftali standards, for he had no family to go home to, and the friends who had served as family in the old Paladins were dead or fighting in the war. Still, he could not seem to bring himself to be concerned about his own future. He felt only his freedom.

The boat reached Haprin at mid-afternoon. He made his way to a storehouse near the docks, where he showed a woman his letter from Medric and she waved him into the building without even looking at it. “It’s four big trunks, halfway back on the right side,” she said. “You’ll be needing a wagon.”

Once beyond the light of the doorway, he walked through a darkness that rustled with mice and bats. He hoped that the trunks were good ones and he would not find the books chewed to pieces. Halfway down the long, dark building, a sudden light flared as though someone had lit a match. The flare became a lamp wick’s steady glow, and the flame disappeared, though Emil could track it by the light it cast. In his recurring dream, he had followed that glow of light through shadows just like these. He remembered these half-seen crates, the dusty, dim shadows, the rustling of the mice. His heart’s desire waited for him here.

The crowded shapes would form an open space here, which would be filled with light. And so he found a glowing nest of blankets tucked among the massive trunks. The man from Emil’s dream sat quietly beside a small brass lamp, which did not illuminate his face. Upon his knees lay a plain, flat wooden box with a broken latch that once had locked with a key. The man said nothing, but held the box up to Emil.

Emil knelt and took the box. He opened the hinged lid, and laid the box down upon the floor so that the lamplight shone inside. The papers carefully preserved within were padded with small pillows of down and silk. On the top page was written, “Principles for Community,” and underneath, scarcely readable in faded ink, the name “Mackapee.”

Emil did not touch the fragile paper, but he bent his face close to it, and breathed deeply. He could smell, so faint it scarcely was there at all, the scent of peat smoke. The Mackapee manuscript had not been burned after all.

He saw that his life had been a spiral, first veering away from loss, but now turning back to a new beginning. He had done his duty. Now, at last, he could follow his heart.

“You can only be Medric,” he said.

“Sir, can you return this manuscript to its rightful place?”

“It belongs at the library at Kisha, which has been destroyed.” Emil carefully closed the lid of the manuscript box. “I’ll have to build a new library, and a new university. And first, I’ll have to make Shaftal a place in which libraries and universities can be built.”

The young man said, “That’s not a bad idea.”

“It’s an undertaking so large I doubt anyone alive now will live to see the end it.”

“Oh, no, I think you’re wrong. But in any case, ‘What’s worth doing is worth merely beginning.’”

“So wrote Mackapee, the first G’deon of Shaftal. Have you read the manuscript?”

“The manuscript? No, sir, it has not been removed from its box. I’ve studied a printed copy.”

Emil took up the little traveling lamp by the handle, and lifted it so it illuminated Medric’s face. The seer’s lenses glowed with flame. “You
are
young,” Emil said.

“I suppose. You’re exactly as I dreamed.”

“You dreamed of me? What did you dream?”

Medric’s gesture took in the dark warehouse, the glowing lamp, the fortress of books. Emil set down the lamp rather sharply, and sat back on his heels. When two fire bloods share a dream, it is said, their fates are linked forever.

Medric peered at him. “Are you all right, sir?”

“You’ll help me build that library.”

“You’ll accept my help?”

“Why wouldn’t I? Oh.” Emil began to laugh. “That’s right; you’re the enemy.”

It seemed to also strike Medric as terribly funny, and his hilarity didn’t run dry until his spectacles fell off and he had to retrieve them by feel.

Emil said, “A few days after Fire Night, when Zanja was on her way to meet you—though I didn’t know it then—she said she was trapped in the past and needed to cross over into the future. I foolishly asked her to take me with her. So here I am, bewildered mainly by my lack of regret.”

Medric smiled. “I crossed over also, knowing and willing. But what became of her?”

“I managed to get her safely out of South Hill. That’s all I know. But let me thank you now, while I’m thinking of it, for your letter. It helped me to do what was right, and I needed that help desperately.”

“Well, I’m glad I’ve done some good for once.”

“Have you eaten? May I buy your supper?”

Medric gathered himself up and rose to his feet. “I confess, I haven’t eaten in a day or two, and not because I’m fasting for a vision.”

“You’re penniless, of course, which is why you’re sleeping with your books.”

“
Your
books.”

“My books, if you insist. Yet it seems that you accompany them.”

“Sir, the books are not a bribe. Ever since I began to collect them, I knew that I would have to deliver them to a proper caretaker. I simply could not bear to leave them unguarded.” Medric offered his hand to help Emil rise.

Emil took Medric’s hand and let himself be helped. Medric was slightly built and had a soft hand, but he was not without muscle. Only a fool would underestimate him: no accident had brought them to this place, but the active, determined intervention of a gifted seer. His air of uncertainty was merely an affectation.

Emil said, still holding his hand, “My name is Emil. If you call me ‘sir’ again, I’ll start calling you ‘Master Seer’.”

Medric looked appalled. “Please don’t, Emil.”