Текст книги "Earth Logic"

Автор книги: Marks Laurie

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She sat down and buttered her bread with intense concentration as everyone, even Norina, lounging in the doorway, watched her. Garland had given Leeba some pastry dough and the rolling pin and it appeared that her poor lizard was becoming a lizard pie.

“But there’s other work,” Karis said, mouth full. “Like healing Emil’s–” she glanced inquiringly at J’han.

“Heart,” he said.

Emil said, “I do not ask for healing. What I need is your forgiveness.”

Karis set down her bread. “You’ll accept both,” she said, “or you’ll get neither.”

Emil said flatly, “Karis, I don’t forgive myself.”

With the small knife that usually dangled, along with a number of other small tools, from her belt, Karis had speared a sausage. But she eyed the sausage without interest, put it back on her plate, then stood up and went to Emil, and, with an abrupt, heavy movement knelt at his feet.

He looked at her blankly. She lowered her head to rest on his knee. His hand lifted as of its own will, to stroke the wild tangle of her hair. She said, her voice muffled, “Did Zanja think I wanted her dead? Because I did not stop her?”

Norina said from the doorway, “What did you hope she would think?”

Karis raised her head. “That I was trying to be worthy, maybe.”

She sat back on her heels. Garland could see only the back of Karis’s head, her exceptionally square shoulders, her arms at her sides with her hands apparently resting on her thighs. But whatever Emil saw in her face brought the life back into his. “You let her go?” he said, amazed. “Karis? You let hergo?”

“Not very gracefully.” Norina’s tone was cool, but when Karis glanced at her, Garland thought he understood a little of how rare and difficult–and satisfying–it might be to win a Truthken’s approval.

“You knew?” cried Medric at Norina, outraged. “You let us think Karis was angry? And you knew all along that she was–”

“–merely devastated,” Norina said.

Karis said quietly, “You know I loved her. And I let her die. What kind of person would do that?”

Garland, attempting to fill the pie crust with meat and vegetables without looking at his hands, saw a quiet descend on all of them.

“A remarkable person might,” Emil answered Karis finally. “A G’deon might.” He brought his hands up and began undoing the polished horn buttons of his heavy shirt. “Let me serve you a little longer, Karis.”

She said harshly, “How much longer do you think you can endure it?”

“As long as it’s interesting,” suggested Medric.

“As long as Shaftal requires it,” said J’han.

“As long as youcan endure it,” Emil said to Karis, smiling now.

“A very long time then,” said Norina dryly. They all looked at her, and she added, “Well, look at the evidence! She can endure anything, for any length of time.”

Emil’s unbuttoned shirt revealed that he had experienced his share of violence, and that he was fortunate for the armor of his ribs, which had turned aside more than one Sainnite saber. Karis put her hand to his scarred chest. Leeba, apparently not as oblivious as she had seemed, abandoned her rolling pin to run to Emil and lean on his knee. “Is your heart broken? Does it hurt?”

He put an arm around her. “Yes, dear one.”

“Karis will fix it,” she declared.

“It’s fixed,” said Karis, sitting back.

“Our child is growing up in some very strange circumstances,” said j’han worriedly.

Karis got heavily to her feet, and scooped Leeba up. “Are we having lizard pie for supper? That’s a very raredish, isn’t it, Garland?”

“Extremely,” he said. “Fortunately, for those of us who haven’t acquired a taste for lizard we have a more commonplace sort of pie also. But you,” he added, “should eat your breakfast, or you’ll never get any pie.”

“He’s very bossy, don’t you think?” said Karis to Leeba. But she set her giggling daughter down, and made quick work of the bread and sausage that she had before been unable to eat. Now maybe she finally would be able to gain some weight, Garland thought. As he was putting his meat pie in the oven and helping Leeba to put her lizard pie in as well–into the other oven, which was not very hot– it occurred to him that the most important people in Shaftal were gathered here in his kitchen.

He turned around and looked at them: sturdy J’han, who had brought Norina a cup of tea and was leaning companionably against the opposite doorjamb as she sipped it; Medric, who had somehow gotten into the chair with Emil, done up his buttons for him, and kissed him a couple of times with unrestrained affection; Karis, uncombed and unkempt, looking a bit unhappy that she had eaten all there was to eat, glancing up now at the two unlikely couples with the stunned sorrow of the newly widowed.

“How about an apple or two,” Garland suggested.

She looked at him, and he feared she might complain again about his pushiness. “Two,” she said.

When he came out of the store room shining the apples on his apron. She said, “Well, now you have an idea of what you’ve gotten yourself into.”

“I’ve gotten myself into a kitchen,” he said, endeavoring to sound as if the rest of it was of no importance to him.

The Truthken in the doorway uttered a snort. Startled, he looked at her–he had almost forgotten her intimidating presence. Had he said an untruth? Perhaps he had.

Medric said, “What did you think of the book, Karis? The Encyclopedia of Livestock!”He was grinning like a madman.

“It was Zanja who found it, wasn’t it?”

“She didn’t exactly know what she had found.”

Karis bit into an apple and held it in her teeth so her hand was free to take the little book out of her vest. She handed it to Medric, took the apple out of her mouth, and said with her mouth full, “There’s an old man in it, with a basket full of cabbages.”

“Oh, now at last I’ll dream of him!” Medric began leafing eagerly through the book.

“I found it,” Leeba said belatedly. “The baby book–I found it inside the big one.”

Emil had looked puzzled, but only for a moment. With one finger he stopped Medric’s enthusiastic page turning. “Mabin,” he said, and read for a while. Then, he uttered a sharp laugh. He looked up and explained to Norina, “Harald wrote it. To Karis.”

“Ah,” she said. “A misunderstood man attempts to explain himself to his greatest victim. I always wondered why he hadn’t.”

Karis said, “Victim?”

“Things do change quickly,” said Norina. “Sometimes it’s difficult to keep track of what’s actually true. Karis, I know something that will surprise you.”

Karis sat down on the stool, with an apple in each hand, and looked at her. The men in the chair looked up simultaneously from reading, like startled birds.

Norina said, “Zanja na’Tarwein isn’t actually dead.”

There was a shocked silence.

“Physically–” began Emil.

“Metaphorically–” Medric started.

They both fell silent as Karis said in her hoarse, hushed voice, “Nori, what did you do?”

“There were some deceptions,” the Truthken said.

Medric shut the little book. “Gods of bloody hell!”

Emil said in a shocked voice, “With my own hand … !”

“I sawher die!” said Medric.

“Fire logic,” said Norina dismissively.

Obviously untroubled by the outraged chorus, she gazed steadily at Karis. Karis said in her strained, raw voice, “You are the most underhanded, disagreeable, uncanny, hard‑hearted person in the world.”

“Do you know this for a fact?” said Norina curiously.

“You might be loyal, also,” said Karis grudgingly.

“These idiotic fire bloods, theyknow I’m sworn to serve you. You only–not their insane visions.”

“I take offense!”

Norina glanced at Medric, and he lapsed into a restless muttering that struck Garland as a kind of playacting. The odd man might actually have been amazed rather than angry–and if he was, then Norina’s expression of faint amusement made a kind of sense. But not one word in this obscure conversation seemed sensible to Garland, and these people, who had seemed so kind to each other, so remarkable, now seemed only very strange. The strangest thing of all was their apparent ability to understand each other.

Norina wasn’t even looking at Garland directly. But she apparently knew his thoughts anyway and said, “Master cook, we’ve learned to cooperate with and tolerate each other, so now we’re surprised to remember that our logics are incompatible. You understand, the elements shape how we think? They also determine what we can see. Air logic enabled me to see something that Zanja, Medric, and Emil could not.”

“You might have seen something,” Medric burst out, “But you had no vision.”

“Oh, no,” said Norina coolly. “Zanja thinks she’s dead.”

Norina stopped, for J’han had sharply kicked her foot. She glanced at him, then glanced at Leeba, who was raptly watching the action in the oven. Norina continued, rather obscurely, “So whatever you fire bloods thought to accomplish by doing what you did can still be accomplished.”

“Madam Truthken!” said Karis fiercely. “What did you do?”

J’han held up a hand to silence them, and went to squat by the oven with Leeba. He began talking with her about fire, lizards, and pies. Norina began to speak. She gave a quiet, precise, detailed, emotionless account of Zanja’s death. J’han and Leeba sang together a child’s song about the odd things that might be baked in a pie. They made up a verse about lizards. Norina concluded, “So Zanja thinks she’s dead, just as you thought she was dead. But those who deceive themselves, as she did, always know the actual truth, though often they do not know they know it, unless someone says it to them.”

Medric muttered, “And I thought I was obscure.”

Karis had covered her face. Garland thought he might see tears when her big hands lowered, but instead he saw something he did not expect: impatience. “Can we get her back?” she said. Then, more sharply, “Master seer! Is it possible?”

Medric said, “It’s extremely unlikely. Don’t call me that.”

Karis clenched her big hands, fingers interlocked. Fascinated, Garland watched her biceps swell. “How do we make it certain?”

“Ow!” Medric had been upset from his cozy berth and dumped summarily to the floor.

The gray man, who had come in seeming so frail, was on his feet, facing Karis, saying as ferociously as she, “Send your ravens, then! Tell her that her death was a farce! Bring her back to the certainty of a world in which change is impossible!”

There was a silence. Karis unclenched her hands. “No, I think not,” she said.

Emil said, more gently, “If you didn’t fail her when you were in despair, perhaps you won’t betray her out of hope either.”

“I need to do nothing?” she said unhappily. “Even more?”

Emil took two steps to her, and clasped her big hands in his. “With all your heart,” he said earnestly.

“How much longer?” she said desperately.

“Until Long Night,” said Medric, still sprawled on the floor. He sat up then, looking as surprised as Karis did. “Long Night? I have to write a book by then!”

Emil turned to him, still clasping Karis’s hands. “Better make it a pamphlet,” he said.

Chapter Twenty

Two days into the six‑day journey to the children’s garrison, the first snow fell: heavy, wet flakes that turned the roads again into quagmires, and forced Clement and her mounted escort of seven to spend a day and a night holed up in an abandoned barn. On the seventh day, when Clement should have already reached her destination and begun the journey home, it snowed again: real snow this time. The soldiers cursed, the horses stumbled and slid; in the tiny village that was the only settlement they could find, the people sullenly vacated an entire house for the soldiers, stabled their horses with the cows and sheep, and showed up at the door with placating offerings of cooked food.

In the cozy room she had commandeered, Clement cracked open a shutter and observed the villagers below, who went watchfully about their business as the snow continued to steadily fall. At this rate, it would soon be knee deep. She had been a fool for relying upon the reprieve in weather that usually comes between autumn mud and winter snow. Now, she was stranded, with eight horses too valuable to abandon. She watched angrily, enviously, as a villager strode briskly across the snow in snow shoes, pulling a sledge laden with firewood, atop which perched a laughing young child in a red coat.

And we sneer at them for going afoot,thought Clement. How hard is it to learn the virtues of traveling light? Apparently, too hard for us.

*

That poor village was the last before the wilderness. The road petered down to a mere path, snow‑veiled, invisible except for blazes on the trees. Horses and dismounted soldiers alike went floundering through the woods. The sun appeared for a few hours and the snow began to melt, which increased the journey’s misery. After sunset the snowmelt froze to ice, and the wind picked up. Eyes burning, tears freezing, Clement hoarsely reassured her company that there wasa shelter.

But when the soldiers at the head of the line shouted back that they had found it, Clement’s relief was short‑lived. The shelter had an unmended roof, walls of rough‑sawn planks with airy gaps between them, and a circle of stones for a hearth, with a hole in the roof above, that had allowed this hearth to be filled up with snow. For the horses there was corn and hay–that was a relief–but in place of firewood there was a half‑barrel of cider. Whoever ran the supplies up and down the mountain during the warm season had apparently valued some comforts over others.

They got what warmth could be had from huddling together as the wind whistled through every knot and crack. They ate their rations cold, and Clement, to much approbation, allowed them each two cups of surprisingly potent ice‑cold cider. Later, a few sleepers snored, but most of them sat awake like her, too cold to sleep, drearily awaiting dawn.

They spent the next day in a bitter, steep climb, up a path that the wind had now blocked with snow drifts. The soldiers cursed whenever they had breath to spare; the weary horses sometimes balked and had to be dragged or beaten. The sun used the snow as a reflector to blind them.

“Is that it?” someone asked.

Watery‑eyed, Clement stared up through a haze of light. There, at the top of the mountain, at the end of the path, in splendid isolation, stood the children’s garrison.

Someone, a hazy shadow, took a noisy sniff. “Woodsmoke!”

The company uttered a ragged cheer, and even the horses blundered forward with somewhat more enthusiasm. In the shadow of the building now, Clement’s scoured eyes could see more clearly, but the building still looked very strange. What had the sun done to her eyes? She rubbed them, and looked again. “The bloody thing is round! I thought I was losing my mind!”

It really was no garrison at all. A fortress, maybe, with narrow, out‑of‑reach windows and an unfriendly, arched entrance big enough for a small wagon to pass through, but barred quite decisively by a padlocked iron gate, through which the snow had drifted.

Clement peered between the bars. The dim passageway plunged into silent darkness. “Oh, hell,” said one of the exhausted soldiers who crowded up around her to take a look. “There’s no one here.”

“Quiet as a tomb,” said another gloomily.

“Not for long,” said Clement. She reached between the bars, and took hold of the frayed bell rope.

The clangor of the bell was jarring. The horses jumped, the soldiers cursed some more. Clement jerked the rope until her arm ached, and finally there emerged quite cautiously from the gloom a boy in heavy clothing that was much too big for him, wide‑eyed and clutching a knob‑headed cane as though it were a drawn sword. “Uh … ?” he said inquiringly. Insignias sloppily tacked onto his cap identified him as a lieutenant.

“Urgent business,” said Clement briskly.

He cleared his throat nervously. “Your orders?”

“I write the bloody orders!”

His gaze traveled to the insignias on her own hat, and he belatedly and confusedly saluted. “Lieutenant… ?”

“Lieutenant‑General. Let us in, sir!”

“I haven’t got the key.”

From the darkness of the passageway grated another voice. “Gods’ sake, boy, you’re a soldier! Stop wailing like a baby and open the gate.” The boy‑lieutenant scurried to meet the approaching old man, who limped on a wooden leg with the support of a cane. He gave the boy a big, rusted key, and stood leaning on his cane as the boy fiddled it into the snow‑clogged lock.

“Lieutenant‑General,” said the old man.

“Commander Purnal?” asked Clement.

The man uttered a bitter laugh. “Been a while since anyone called me ‘commander’ to my face. Well, it’s about time Cadmar sent you here! How many people you got with you? Six?”

“Seven. And eight horses. I hope you’ve got a stable and fodder.‘

“What do you think we do with the donkeys that haul supplies for us, eh? What’s taking you so long, boy?”

The padlock opened with a sullen groan. The gate squawked open. Purnal turned away and started thumping down the passage, shouting backward over his shoulder, “Send a couple of your soldiers to the kitchen and the rest of you follow me to the infirmary. Boy, you get the stabling crew together. Some real horses for once. Good practice for them. Anyone gets kicked and I’ll hold you personally responsible. Come on!” he bellowed, his voice much magnified now by the echoing passageway. “We’ve got some sick kids here!”

“Gods of hell,” muttered Clement.

The exhausted soldiers were looking at her beseechingly.

“You two.” She selected them at random. “See the horses are cared for, find your way to the kitchen, and make yourselves useful. The rest of you come with me. Not one more complaint!”

The arched passageway eventually emptied itself into a big, circular yard, with a center post thick as a tree in its exact middle, from which beams radiated out to support the massive roof. The horses milled anxiously in the shadows, then settled down, probably recognizing the familiar shape of an exercise ring, though this one was large enough to easily turn a wagon around in. To the left, a big double door likely led to the stables. Ahead, a more human‑sized gate hung ajar, giving access to the corridor that encircled the ring behind a sturdy half wall.

“This way,” said Clement. She could see little, but she could hear Purnal’s peg leg and cane, thumping down the hallway. The soldiers, muttering so quietly she could hear no words or distinguish one complainer from the next, followed.

They did not catch up to Purnal until he had nearly reached the end of the hall and they were, Clement judged, near the outer wall of the building again, on the far side of the entrance gate. “You’ve got some kind of winter illness here?” she asked, haunted now by a memory of the dreadful illness that had mowed the Sainnites down that spring. “How bad is it?”

“About as bad as usual. The older kids haven’t gotten sick yet. When that happens, my whole operation falls apart. So the adults are in the sick room and the kids are running the garrison. Good training for them. What are you doing here?”

Clement began to answer, but Purnal jerked open a door, and the stink of feces and vomit all but knocked her over. “Good gods!” she cried, gagging.

“You’ll get used to it,” he said.

*

They lay in darkness, like moles. No discernible warmth came from the smoldering hearthfire at one end of the big room. The sick children lay with nothing but thin straw pallets between themselves and the cold stone floor. Three exhausted men and women did what they could to care for them, but that was not much, since all of the caretakers were one‑armed. In the dim, stinking room, to the accompaniment of an incessant, dreary whine of hopeless misery, some forty kids were puking and excreting themselves to death.

“No worse than usual?” Clement said to Purnal, once he had given her the grim tour.

“I’ve seen a hundred kids in this room. And the rest of them trailing about like wraiths. Five years you’ve been lieutenant‑general–don’t you read the reports?”

Clement said hastily, “Every garrison is understaffed right now.”

“Because there ain’t no one growing up to replace us old and broken ones,” said Purnal. “And whose fault is that, eh? I got fifteen cripples looking after near two hundred kids. And as soon as the few survivors are old enough to be some use, you take them away and get them killed. Go ahead and demote me!” he added viciously. “It’d be a bloody mercy!”

“You won’t be that lucky today,” said Clement. “We’ll need some lamps.”

“Can’t have lamps around kids. They’ll burn themselves up quicker than you can stop ‘em.”

“Candles, then. And fresh linens.”

“You’ll have fresh linens after you’ve washed and dried them.”

“Broth, or weak tea?”

“That’s what your soldiers are in the kitchen for.”

“Warm water and soap,” said Clement evenly.

“You’ll find them in the laundry. But you’ll have to light the fires first, I expect.”

“After we’ve chopped the firewood,” said Clement. “No, that’s not a question, I understand the situation. Now you listen to me, sir. My soldiers are worn out. They’ll work until the night bell, and then they’re getting some rest.”

“Hell,” said Purnal, “what’s it take to make you lose your temper?”

“Plenty of people have tried and failed,” Clement said, but she was talking to his back. He stumped away, calling to the three sick‑nurses that they should get some sleep while they had the chance.

Clement washed and force‑fed children, emptied basins and packed fresh straw into stinking pallets until she couldn’t stand it any more. Then she took a turn at the wood chopping, and after that went to stir boiling cauldrons of laundry until the cold had been chased from her bones. Back she went to the sick room, where a soldier told her that two of the kids had been discovered to be dead.

Night had long since fallen, but there had been no night bell. She took up a basin of warm water and set to work again: she was so tired that every time she stood up from where she squatted or knelt on the floor, she practically fell over. Some of the kids who had been whining earlier had gotten quieter. Perhaps they too were dying.

Someone was calling her. Dim candle in hand, she made her way between prone bodies to the door, where a boy‑sergeant executed a crisp, startling salute. “Lieutenant‑General?”

“What is it?”

“Compliments of the commander! Would you care to join him for supper!”

In the sick room, two of Clement’s soldiers continued their dreary rounds. “My people have not been relieved.”

“Yes, ma’am! The night watch is at supper! They will come to the infirmary shortly! The rest of your people are eating with the senior officers! Then they will be shown to quarters!”

Feeling quite overwhelmed by the boy‑sergeant’s energy, Clement set down her basin and candle on the table. The boy, alert and over‑sprung, did not put even one toe over the threshold of the sickroom.

Clement’s uniform was wet and filthy, but her change of clothing had disappeared with the horses. In any case, she doubted she could eat, after such a wretched afternoon. She said to the boy‑sergeant, “I do need to talkto Purnal.”

He took this as an urgent command and set a military pace until she told him to slow down. They passed the open door of the refectory, where a crowd of children sat in size order at the trestle tables, watched over by youthful goons with knob‑headed canes in their hands. They went out to the circular corridor, where it was as cold as the outdoors and Clement wondered suddenly what had happened to her coat. Then they followed another hallway to an open door, where firelight flickered. A table was set by the fireplace, preventing Clement from getting close enough to those inviting flames. Purnal stumped out from his bedroom. “Well, sit down. I hope the food’s still warm.”

She sat, but it felt like a collapse. She wolfed down the stew the boy‑sergeant ladled into her bowl, and the bread he sliced onto her plate, and when he offered more, she ate that too. When the boy had cleared away the dishes, poured hot ale, and served a wedge of cheese and a bowl of apples, Purnal dismissed him.

“Cheese!” said Clement, cutting herself a slice.

Purnal gestured vaguely. “There’s a dairy.”

The cheese was astonishingly good with a slice of apple. No wine, though, and the ale was typically bitter. She said politely, “Your young soldiers are well disciplined. I’m quite impressed.”

“They want to learn their jobs so they can get out of here, the silly fools.”

Clement sighed, but Purnal had restrained himself during the meal, so she supposed she should be grateful.

He said, “What happened to Kelin, eh? She was a good girl! And I wrote to you personally!”

Clement cut another slice of cheese. “And I personally commanded her to stay out of action. But when the sky started exploding, I guess she got to thinking she could be a hero. I chased her halfway across the garrison, trying to stop her. So don’t you rage at me.”

He let her enjoy the cheese in peace, after that. And then he said, grudgingly, “I teach these kids to shoot a gun and swing a sword, but I can’t teach them any sense. She was a good kid,” he said again. “Smart, even‑tempered. Officer material.”

Clement eyed him in some surprise–had he been drinking? But then she felt the sting of tears–Gods, she must be tired! She hid her face by swallowing some ale. Kelin: she had managed to avoid thinking of her for months. She cleared her throat and changed the subject. “I’m here to find one of those kids I sent you from Watfield.”

Purnal took a deep, preparatory breath and uttered a roar. “A scandal! You sent me a wagonload of babies.Half of them couldn’t even do up their own buttons.What was I to do with them, eh? Use them for target practice?”

She cut him off. “I’ll take one of them back.”

“Good luck. A lot of them are dead.”

It had been a dreadful journey already, and Clement had no idea how she’d manage to get back to Watfield. To do it empty‑handed, to wait for Death‑and‑Life to do whatever they planned, to watch the Sainnites collapse into their own hollow center … “Gods,” she said wearily, and put her face in her hands. “All for lack of one little girl? A weight in the scale, indeed!”

“Eh?” Purnal looked at her blankly.

“Do you think I traveled here on holiday? You will produce the child, or give me an accounting of what became of her.”

“Or what, eh? You’ll hack off my other leg? You’ll exile me to some godsforsaken corner of some wretched land and order me to turn babies into soldiers?”

“How about if I blame you personally for the destruction of your people in Shaftal?”

He uttered a phlegmy snort, but followed it with a shout to the boy Sergeant in the hallway.

“Sir?” the boy stuck his head in.

“One of the Watfield children, a girl named–”

“Davi,” said Clement.

“Is she still alive?”

“I don’t know, sir!”

“Well, go ask your fellow officers. And then ask the clerk to check the death records. Report back to me in the dormitories.” He added to Clement, as the eager sergeant raced away, “The longer it takes to find her, the longer you and your company will remain. Don’t think I haven’t thought of that.”

“Apparently, you think your garrison’s interests are the only ones that matter.”

“Take some advice from an old man,” he suggested. “Stop trying to shame the shameless. Let’s go look for your girl.”

In the youngest children’s dormitory, a dozen older children were putting the younger ones to bed. They were able to point out the Watfield children, who huddled together in shared beds. Clement spoke to them in Shaftalese, and soon regretted it, for they cried out for their parents, siblings, and homes. She had thought they would have forgotten them by now. None of them was Davi.

The boy‑sergeant caught up with them in the hallway, and reported that there was no Davi in the death records. When Clement asked how accurate the records were, Purnal shrugged. “If we never knew her name, we couldn’t record it, could we?”

“I’ve only seen fifteen of the Watfield children. Where are the others?”

“Sick or dead. You know where the sick ones are.”

“You’d better hope she’s still alive, commander, or I’ll have you digging up the graves next.”

“We burn ‘em,” he said. “Sorry.”

Clement returned to the sick room. There, it smelled just as bad as before, but at least it was quieter. A bitter chill was setting in, and she stopped first to add fuel to the fire, for what good it did. The signal of a candle flame led her to a one‑armed soldier who bathed with cold water a child delirious with fever. He told her he had not noticed a child like Davi, but then who had time to pay attention?

She found a candle of her own, and started the dreary business of working her way down the rows of pallets, turning back blankets and pulling up nightshirts. If she had to leave this place empty‑handed, she would at least be absolutely certain that the child was indeed lost.

After the Battle of Lilterwess, Clement had assisted in the gruesome job of identifying the dead. The Sainnite corpses had been lined up on the hillside, while beyond them the soldiers methodically took the ancient building apart, stone by stone. It was the height of summer, and the flies swarmed, and the rooks noisily invited their friends and neighbors to the feast. Sometimes, Clement identified a soldier by clothing or gear, because the face was gone. Sometimes she stripped a corpse, seeking clues in flesh, in scars, in gender. Friends and lovers were thus revealed.

There was great celebration, that day, and the Sainnites called themselves conquerors. Twenty years later, Clement knelt in a cold, stinking room and searched the bodies of parentless children, and knew herself a fool in an army of fools.

The night was old when she found a very small girl with a mole on her knee. The illness had gone into the girl’s lungs, the sick‑nurses said, and she would not survive to morning. “She will,” Clement said, gathering up the child, blanket and all. “I won’t have my labors be for nothing.”

The one‑armed veterans, who surely thought that the labor of their lives had long since come to nothing, rolled their eyes at each other, and refrained from comment.

Chapter Twenty‑One

“Clement is no longer in Watfield,” said Gilly to Alrin, as she politely quizzed him at the door about why he had refused to be shown to the parlor. “The general needs me at his side, and so regrettably I have no time for tea. The woman is here? In the kitchen?”