Текст книги "Earth Logic"

Автор книги: Marks Laurie

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Текущая страница: 17 (всего у книги 26 страниц)

“Well, I’m the pudding.”

“Oh.” There was a long silence. “I do need eggs after all,” Garland finally said. “And I was wondering if you could–” He hastily considered his long list of chores. “If you could sharpen my knives. And don’t you need to figure out how that press works? And where to get some wood for sledges?”

“So much to do,” said Karis gratefully. “And I haven’t even chopped the firewood yet. I’d better get busy.”

Chapter Twenty‑Six

It was a howling night, one of those godawful storms that made Clement wonder how humankind ever managed to get a foothold in this dreadful land. She had been checking on the progress of her sledges in the carpentry shed. The armorers had finally finished the runners, which should have been simple enough to fabricate, and all that remained to be done was the harness work. Soon Clement’s soldiers, who had finally developed a sullen competence with snowshoes, would have something new to learn and complain about.

She built up the fire in her small, plain room, but unless she stood right on the hearth she couldn’t feel the warmth. The night bell had long since rung, Gilly would be deep in a drugged sleep, and Clement decided she might as well go to bed. Like all soldiers, she had saved up her housekeeping tasks for winter, and could have done some mending, or put a new coat of paint on her table. But it was too cold.

There was a knock at her door and she opened it with her tunic half unbuttoned. A man with snow thick on his hood gave her a shivering salute. “Lieutenant‑General, the storyteller is at the gate.”

“The storyteller? What is she doing here at this hour?”

“She says you must come with her at once. Bring the money, she says.”

They exchanged baffled looks.

“The storyteller can be a bit close‑mouthed,” said the gate guard. “So I thought you ought to talk to her yourself. I’m sorry, though. It’s a wretched night.”

“Here, stand by the fire for a bit, not that it’ll do you much good, since that wind is blowing directly down the chimney.”

After she’d bundled up in every warm piece of clothing she had, which she was certain would still not be enough, Clement left the guard still shivering by her poor fire and went downstairs to Gilly’s room. She didn’t bother to pound on his door, but simply went in and shook him vigorously by the shoulder until he mumbled. “What?”

“I have to go into town.”

“Clem?” He turned his head and blinked blearily at her. “That wind,” he said, articulating carefully, “will flay you.”

“Hell, I’m half frozen and I haven’t even been outside yet. Gilly–I think Alrin’s decided to accept my offer.”

“Congratulations,” he said dryly. “You’ve succeeded in completely mystifying me. And why areyou going out? Have you explained already, when I was asleep?”

“The storyteller’s been sent to fetch me, and she wasn’t too forthcoming with the gate guard. But–”

“Oh, Clem!” With his face muffled in the pillow, Gilly uttered a grunt of laughter. “You’re about to become a mother.”

“I’m afraid so.”

“Early.”

“Apparently.”

“Unprepared.”

“Desperately.”

“What do you expect me to do about it?”

“Explain my absence to Cadmar, will you? If I’m not back by morning.”

“Clem,” Gilly said, as she stepped away. “What are you going to do with it?”

“With what?”

“With the baby.”

Gilly was just a shadow in the darkness, but she stared at him. “What do you mean?”

“When Alrin hands you her baby,” Gilly said, “What are you going to do with it?”

She found herself incapable of reply. When she left Gillys room, he was still laughing, and she could hardly blame him.

*

When Clement finally reached the gate, having first awakened the garrison clerk to get her funds out of the lockbox, the storyteller waited in shelter, huddled by the brazier alongside the lone guard in the shack. At the sight of Clement, she rose quickly, wrapped a muffler around her face, and pulled on a pair of fur‑lined gloves.

They went out into the storm. Clement was still speechless, but in any case, the storm would have made conversation impossible. A miserable journey, staggering down narrow roads with the wind blasting like a river down a canyon. One step at a time, tears freezing on her lashes, face numb, feet like blocks at the end of her legs. A killing wind, flinging ice like daggers. Shutters banged, a piece of slate torn loose from a roof shattered at her feet. “Bloody hell!” The storyteller glanced at her, her eyes a smear of black, rimmed in white snow stuck to the wool that wrapped her face. They staggered on.

The wind was barred from Alrin’s house, but still it roared, only somewhat muffled by latched shutters, locked doors, and heavy curtains. A single lamp flame flickered in the hall; the house seemed empty. The storyteller pulled the muffler from her face. Clement followed her to the kitchen, where together they built up the fire and then unwrapped themselves. When Clement’s face had thawed enough, she asked, “How long until the child is born?”

The storyteller stomped snow from her boots. “I will ask the midwife.” She left the kitchen.

A chair was drawn up to the fire, with a work basket beside it. Clement sat down, shivering, and waited. She waited a long time. Once, she thought she heard a groan or cry, but it could have been the wind. The storyteller returned. “The midwife cannot say how long it will be.”

“But Alrin has borne several children.”

The storyteller held her hands out to the fire; her fingers were still gray with cold. “This one is different.”

She swung the kettle over the fire, and then went moving about the dark kitchen. Distracted, still thawing out, Clement stared into the fire until the kettle began to utter enthusiastic spurts of steam. Then she watched the storyteller make tea: a surprisingly fussy process of Pouring small quantities of water, waiting, swirling the pot, sniffing the steam, and adding more water. The rich, grass‑and‑flower scent of the tea brought Clement out of her daze. “I’ve never seen anyone make tea like that.”

The storyteller paused.

“Usually, they just pour the water and let it sit.”

“This is the way I know.”

“How do you know it?”

The storyteller poured some water, took another sniff, and put on the lid. She brought over the tea table, on which she had laid bread and butter, and a selection of cold foods: pickles, cheese, salt meat, jam. She poured the tea, and Clement took a sip. Whether due to the method or to the ingredients, it was delicious.

“I can’t answer your question,” the storyteller said. “I know many things but I don’t know how I came to know them.”

After a moment, Clement said, “I suppose having no memories could be a blessing.”

The storyteller said nothing, as though loss and gain were no more important to her than they were to a dumb beast. She drew a stool up to the fire, and took a cup of tea.

Clement sipped her tea and waited, and the storyteller never became impatient, never looked at her questioningly, never seemed restless at all. She held the teacup in her palms of her hands and warmed her fingers with it. Her solitary, remarkably long braid lay across her wool‑clad back like a mislaid piece of yarn. Her boots steamed in the heat of the hearth.

Clement said, “I haven’t even considered what to do with this baby when it’s born. I suppose I assumed I’d have time to … do whatever I am supposed to do.”

The storyteller said, “You must find someone to nurse it. A woman in milk, who will raise this baby beside her own, or whose own child is dead, or has been taken from her.”

“I have no idea how to find such a woman.”

“The midwife will know.” There was a silence, and the storyteller added, “It may be difficult.”

“You mean it will cost me even more money?”

“The Shaftali people do not raise children casually.”

While Clement watched in stunned silence, the storyteller sipped her tea until the cup was empty. “The child could die,Clement finally said. ”While I’m running around looking for a young, willing woman with milk in her breasts …“

The storyteller nodded indifferently. “The Laughing Man is doing his work tonight.”

“The Laughing Man?”

The storyteller reached into her boot and took out a pack of cards. Without looking, as though she knew the cards by feel, she took one out: a primitive woodcut of a man, laughing gleefully in the midst of a wrecked house. The storyteller’s fingertip touched the red symbol stamped on one corner. “This glyph means fate, or chance. The Laughing Man’s actions are so unexpected, and their effect is so profound, that his victims think it is a bitter joke. He destroys everything–even trust and hope. But there is one power that can counteract his.” She took out another card: a circle of people, arm in arm. “Fellowship,” she said.

Clement said, finally, as the storyteller secured the pack with a leather thong, “To own these cards is illegal. To use them, to know how to use them, to use them in front of a Sainnite officer… !”

Silent, serious, fearless, the storyteller tucked the cards into her boot.

The strangest aspect of this woman’s madness was how sane it seemed, how utterly coherent. If Clement asked the storyteller where she got her cards, or how she learned to read them, the storyteller certainly would respond that she did not remember. But she used them, as she used everything, as a tool for storytelling. She was not a friend or a lover, a member of a tribe, of a family; she had no past and neither feared nor desired the future. She was a storyteller only, and that was what both explained her coherence and defined her madness.

The storyteller gazed at Clement: a long gaze, incurious, unblinking.

Clement said, “Don’t let anyone else see those cards, or you will be a dead woman. Do I owe you a story now?”

“You told me a story already, a tale of a woman who contracted to buy a child without realizing that she also had to make a home for it.”

Clement snorted. “A ridiculous tale. Who wouldn’t realize–” I here was a sound from upstairs, a wrenching cry of a sort Clement had heard too often in her life, but always before on a battlefield. “My mother’s gods!”

She leapt to her feet, but the storyteller’s voice stopped her. Marga will not allow you into the room.“

“She’s dying!”

“Yes.” The storyteller picked up her empty cup from the floor, and refilled it.

The house again lay still, a silence wrapped around by howling wind. The Laughing Man leaves wreckage in his wake, inevitably, unstoppably. Clement returned eventually to the chair; there was nothing she could do.

Sometime before dawn, the storm began to lose its force. Clement was awakened by the storyteller building up the fire. She had slept in the chair, covered by a blanket, but the storyteller had perched unmoving on the stool all night. Now, she swung the kettle over flame once again, and began the ritual of making another pot of tea. Clement said, “Has something happened?”

Her reply was a faint rapping at the front door. The storyteller went to answer it, and quickly returned. “The Lucky Man is here.”

“What?” Clement leapt to her feet, snatched the corner of the blanket out of the coals, and then wrapped it around herself like a shawl. She went out into the bitter chill, into a city glazed with ice, with drifts of snow piled head‑high by the harsh wind. A snow plow, dragged by two massive, steaming plow‑horses, worked its way slowly down the street. At Alrin’s gate, which was half buried in a drift of snow, Gilly waited on horseback, attended by a red‑cheeked, shivering young soldier. The storyteller came out behind Clement, with cups of tea emitting clouds of steam in the chill. She gave one to Gilly and one to his aide, then disappeared into the house again.

Clement said vaguely, “It’s almost as if the storyteller knew that you were coming.”

“People with talents like hers often have some prescience.” Gilly gulped his tea. “Any word?”

“Not yet.”

Gilly looked grim. “And Alrin has been laboring all night?”

“The storyteller implies…” Clement took too deep a breath, and choked on the searing air. “Gods, Gilly, what are you doing here?”

“The storyteller says what?”

“Alrin will die.”

“Well.” He gulped his tea again, and handed Clement first the cup, then the basket that rested before him on the saddle. “I’ve made inquiries. But it will not be easy to find a nurse. Meanwhile, I think I’ve gotten everything you need, even some milk.” He spoke briskly, no doubt to cover his embarrassment.

She stared at him, speechless from gratitude and sleeplessness.

He continued, “Ask the midwife to show you how to care for the child. And offer her a commission for helping you to find a nurse. But don’t offend her.”

“How would I do that?” she asked humbly.

“By giving her orders as though she were a soldier.”

“Gilly … I can’t keep a baby in the garrison!”

“I’ll tell Cadmar it’s temporary. Now get inside.” He smiled a gruesome smile, twisted as always.

“I’m in your debt, I think.”

“Are you? I lost track several years ago.”

She reached up, and he reached down, and briefly clasped her hand.

Back in the kitchen, the storyteller took the empty cups from her, then examined the contents of Clement’s basket, and gave an approving nod. “Fellowship,” she commented, and went to put the bottle of milk in the cold cupboard.

Some hours later, Marga came into the kitchen, carrying a bundle wrapped so as to reveal a solemn, old man’s face and blue, unfocused eyes. Clement gave Marga the money, and Marga put the baby in her arms, like a shopkeeper handing over a sack of sugar.

“I need to speak to the midwife!” Clement said in a panic.

“She’s busy,” Marga said. “The storyteller will show you out.” She left the kitchen, hurrying, leaving Clement with a fleeting glimpse of her harried face and fatigue‑smeared eyes. The storyteller followed her out, and for some little time Clement was left alone to stare at the baby, who blinked vaguely at her, opened and closed a toothless mouth and made random movements in its bindings. Clement felt a swift, deep shifting in her heart. Everything felt askew, and yet this giddiness was not entirely due to fear.

The storyteller returned. “The midwife knows of a possible nurse. She’ll speak to her tomorrow, and send her to the garrison, if she’s willing.”

“But I need her to show me what to do!”

The storyteller said, “She cannot leave Alrin.”

Clement stood like a dumb animal, watching without seeing, as the storyteller put a few things in a basket: her silken performance clothes, a wooden comb. Then she took the baby so Clement could put on her coat. She gave the infant back, now wrapped in three small blankets from Gilly’s basket, and put on her own outdoor clothing. She got the bottle of milk from the cupboard, and picked up both the baskets in one hand.

The storyteller held open the kitchen door for Clement. On the table in the front hall, where the lamp had long since burned itself out, she placed a latchkey. She opened the front door, and Clement walked out into the blinding day, where a cold sun glanced around scudding shreds of clouds, and the street was busy with people, old and young, all wielding snow shovels. The storyteller closed the door firmly.

The infant stirred in the cold and uttered a small complaining sound. The storyteller arranged a fold of blanket to shield its face, then took Clement by the arm to steady her on the snowy walk.

“You’re coming with me?” asked Clement.

In a voice made rough by cold the storyteller said, “I will teach you to care for your son.”

“My son?” said Clement blankly. She looked down at the bundled baby. Then, the finality with which the storyteller had shut that door sank in. “Storyteller? Marga won’t tolerate you after Alrin is gone?”

“Marga will do what she wants, now.”

A silence. The street had been scattered with sand, and the storyteller took her supporting hand from Clement’s elbow. Clement said, “Gilly and I will take care of you, somehow.”

The baby in her arms seemed suddenly much heavier. She looked at him, and realized he was asleep.

Chapter Twenty‑Seven

In the dim, chilly cellar, Karis painted the blocks of type with viscous ink that Garland had cooked the day before. She took the sheet of paper from Garland, carefully checked the side that was already printed to make certain she oriented it properly, and laid it delicately on top of the plate. She screwed down the press, waited a moment, then swiftly unscrewed it and lifted off the printed sheet, to hand to Garland.

Both of them were covered with ink, their clothing stained, their fingers black, their faces smudged. Holding the sheet carefully by the edges, Garland felt so tired he could not summon up a comment, though it seemed to him an appropriate moment for ponderous statements. Karis dug her knuckles into the small of her back. “Is it right side up?”

Garland glanced at both sides of the big sheet, on which were printed eight pages of Medric’s booklet. “It’s right.”

“We’re done, then.”

He carried the page up the narrow stone stairs to the kitchen, which was strung with rope on which the drying sheets hung like tablecloths on a busy tavern’s laundry line. The entire household had gathered, and, as Garland came through the door, they clapped and uttered huzzahs.

Leeba, who ran giddily up and down the strung lines of paper, contributed a few shrieks. Though she had not been allowed in the cellar, she had managed to become an ink‑child more smeared than Karis, more stained than Garland. She chanted as she ran: “The last page! Of the last book! Of the last year!”

J’han captured her. “But not the last bath!”

She squealed like a piglet. J’han, who had proved to be the one of them patient and persistent enough to master typesetting, gripped her a bit more determinedly than usual. “We have gotto get her to go to sleep,” he said ominously.

Norina took the child from him. Leeba abruptly went limp and obedient, for which Garland, although he could now tolerate being in the same room as Norina, did not blame her. Medric took the last sheet of paper from Garland’s hands, and ceremoniously hung it from a line.

Karis had been wearing a shirt that belonged in the rag bag. Ducking paper, she stripped it off, tossed it to the floor, and, in her undershirt, lay face down on Garland’s table. “I need a healer,” she moaned.

J’han went to her promptly, and examined her back. With unconcealed appreciation he said, “You are a fine specimen! Look here,” he said to Garland. “You don’t often see a musculus trapeziusso developed. Even her musculus triceps brachiiis obvious. What an anatomy lesson she would be!”

Garland looked where J’han pointed, apparently surprising the healer by actually showing some interest. J’han happily explained the details of Karis’s construction, pulling aside her shirt to point out the connections of muscle to bone, to explain what each one did, and to speculate on why and how the muscles of her back had developed as they had.

“Blessed day,” said Emil in a muted voice.

Garland looked around to find that Emil, with Medric folded comfortably to his chest, was gazing at Karis’s amazing back with an astonished expression, as though it had only just occurred to him to be impressed by her. A deep man like him might neglect to notice the surfaces of things, Garland supposed.

Karis groaned pathetically.

“I’m done lecturing,” J’han assured her. His probing fingers paused. “Spasm. I guess that hurts.” He leaned all his weight into the heels of his hands and shoved the breath out of Karis’s chest.

Emil sighed. “The methods by which we divert ourselves are rather peculiar.”

“Eccentric, even,” said Medric.

“Desperate,” said Norina, who had gotten the abnormally passive child into the washtub.

Both men blinked at this. Emil said, “Desperate. And bookbinding is next. If you thought printing was dull…”

“I won’t do it,” Karis said, her voice strangled by the pressure on her back. “All that fussing. I need to move more.”

“Deliveries after that,” said Medric. “Lots of moving.”

“Oh!” said Karis.

“There,” said J’han in satisfaction, apparently addressing Karis’s anatomy. “That was very obedient of you.”

Karis took several deep breaths, but seemed disinclined to move otherwise. J’han began methodically to work on one muscle at a time, and Karis grew so limp that Garland wondered if she might simply slither off the table like a very slimy fish.

Eyes closed, she mumbled, “Emil, are you still there?”

“Still here, and still diverted. But now it’s by envy. Why has J’han never done that to me? Obviously, I’m not as beautiful to look at–”

“Where are we going?” Karis asked. “Have we decided?”

“Oh, while you were down in the cellar we did take a look at Norina’s maps, and we figure that we only actually need to visit some ten people–the right ten, of course, who know a lot of other people–but I’ve got a good idea of who the right ten people are. So we can walk right across the middle of Shaftal, west to east, with a certain amount of meandering north and south. The weather will be terrible, I suppose, but you’ll help us dodge the storms. Do you want to see the map?”

“I put them away,” said Norina, busy with the wash cloth. Leeba peered, rather trapped looking, from behind a mask of soap bubbles.

Garland fetched the map case, and took out a roll of several maps on heavy, sturdy paper, the most remarkable maps he had ever seen, for they appeared to be marked with every single road and path, village, hill, waterway, and stand of trees in the entire country or Shaftal. He held up the maps one by one before Karis’s eyes until she reached with an ink‑black finger to point at an undistinguished area. “What’s here? I can’t read it.”

Emil took the map from Garland to bring it closer to the lamp. “I think you were pointing at a sheep‑shearing station. It’s pretty far from anywhere, and surely it’s not even occupied at this time of year.”

J’han had switched his attentions to Karis’s shoulder blades. She had shut her eyes again. She said, in a heavy, exhausted voice, “No, Emil. Mabin is there.”

Mabin, Garland thought. Councilor Mabin, general of Paladins. The one with the spike in her heart.

“Do you want to visit her?” Emil’s tone was neutral, but Garland noticed a sudden liveliness in his face.

“Want?” Karis said. “No, of course not.”

“Ought,” Emil corrected himself patiently.

“Ought,” said Medric firmly.

The Truthken briskly rubbed her shivering daughter with a towel. “Karis will protect you, Garland, so don’t go into a panic.”

Garland realized then that panic was exactly what he felt.

“The earth will open its mouth and chew up that woman alive if she even threatens my people,” said Karis. “And she’ll begme to let her heart stop beating.”

Her tone was so hard, and so matter‑of‑fact, that Garland said in a small voice, “Literally?”

Emil said, “Earth logic, you, know, is awfully literal. And Karis, well, she’s always been a bit–” He paused, apparently to hunt down and capture the most exact term. “–Definite,” he said. “When she does something, she does it. And you know she’s done it. And you never forget it.”

“And it can really hurt,” said Medric.

Karis raised her head. She looked at Medric, and then at Emil. “You two can hardly wait,” she said.

The parlor had become a makeshift bindery, lit by the household’s entire collection of lamps. Norina stood in the corner, methodically folding and slashing sheets of paper. Emil sorted and ordered the pages and then, like Garland, plied a heavy needle and thread to sew the pages together. Finally, J’han and Leeba glued on the paper covers, and yesterday’s ink‑child had been transformed into a glue‑child. After an entire morning of sewing, Garland still could not quite believe that books are held together at their centers by needle and thread. Such a homely thing! His fingers hurt, and he was glad to abandon the sewing occasionally to check his stewpot.

In the afternoon, Medric came down the stairs, and Leeba, who had gotten very bored with painting glue on paper, leaped up with a cry. “Medric! I have a surprise!” She produced with a flourish a very crooked, glue‑blotted, ink‑smeared book.

“Is that it?” said Medric. “My book?” He swept her up, book and all, and went twirling up and down the hallway with her in a dizzy dance, while she recounted, between shrieks of laughter, her very important role in the construction of this first book. Medric said, “I know exactly where this one is to go.” He poked his head into the parlor. “Stop slaving away in the gloom! Let’s give this book a proper send‑off.”

But first the book had to be wrapped in oilcloth and tied with twine, and the knots sealed with red wax. The resulting package was carried outside in triumph, with Medric waving it proudly, and the rest of them following in grimy procession: J’han rubbing his sticky hands ineffectually with a rag, Garland sucking a needle‑pierced fingertip, Emil playing a riddle game with Leeba, Norina intent as a cat stalking a mouse. Out they went into the cold, bright day and Karis came up the slope to greet them, pulling a completed sledge. To get the wood she had dismantled every cupboard in the house, leaving Garland’s kitchen in complete disarray as a result. A hammer was tucked into her belt, and her pockets bulged with pegs or nails. Planes, a brace‑and‑bit, saws, and mallets scattered the porch where she had been working.

“What’s that?” she said, when Medric waved his package at her.

“A book,” he said importantly.

“Just one?”

“The firstone,” Leeba said.

“Well, put it in the sledge. And then go make four hundred and ninety‑nine more.”

“You have no sense of ceremony,” grumbled Medric. “Now listen! This book shall not be hauled across the snow. No weary journey ‘cross hill and dale, no hostile, porridge‑eating farmers to be tempted to use it to start their breakfast fires. No, that may be its brother’s fate, but not this one. Not this one!” He held it up, and shook it for emphasis. “This one shall be delivered by ravens!”

“Give it to me,” Karis said.

Medric came down the porch steps and handed it to her. She weighed it in the palm of her hand. “You should have written a shorter book. How far do you expect it to be carried?”

“To Watfield.”

The amusement faded from her cold‑flushed face. “Medric–”

Medric gave an elaborate shrug, that seemed to begin with his feet, and traveled upwards in a loose‑limbed movement that made him seem on the verge of collapsing into a pile of disconnected bones.

She looked at him, eyes glinting, mouth drawn tight, Garland suspected, to keep herself from uttering words that might at best be discourteous. When she spoke at last, however, it was to say prosaically, “Fortunately, Garland has been stuffing the ravens with corn bread.”

The ravens arrived as she spoke: dropping from the roof, from the treetops, from the cloud‑draped sky. “What–what–what?” they cried.

Medric turned completely around, a giddy man in a maelstrom of flapping wings. “You’re sending them all?”

“I have to, so they can carry your heavy book in relay.” With a very small, very mocking bow, Karis returned to the seer the packaged book. He lifted it over his head, balanced on his fingertips. The ravens rose up again in a flapping cloud that briefly cloaked him, and then he was empty handed, and one of the departing ravens dangled the package from its claw.

“Good‑bye!” Medric cried. “Good luck!” Leeba, and then the rest of them, joined him in shouting their farewells. But Karis stood silent, monolithic, with her hands jammed in her pockets, squinting in the light as she watched the ravens fly away.

Chapter Twenty‑Eight

The door latched softly. Clement, who had fallen asleep with the baby in the crook of her arm and a nippled milk bottle resting precariously on her chest, slitted open her eyes to see that it was the storyteller, slipping in unhindered and unescorted, pulling the hood back from her sharp‑edged face. Clement mumbled, “Is it day or night?”

“Almost suppertime.”

“Where have you been?”

“I owed Alrin a story.” The storyteller hung her cloak on a hook and began stripping off and folding her plain wool clothing.

“How is she doing?” said Clement with surprise.

“She’s dead. Since yesterday.”

The storyteller had been telling stories to a dead woman.

Clement looked down at her son, who blinked at her as though in abject amazement. She felt a sensation she could not put a name to; it seemed too unfamiliar to be called, simply, sadness.

The room was dark, the storyteller an indifferent shadow, doing up the buttons of her silken performance clothes. Clement had hardly slept in two days. And she was shaken by the enormity and suddenness of the catastrophe she had brought upon herself. Clement let a few tears fall, a luxury so long forbidden she wasn’t even certain how to do it. The storyteller, if she even noticed, offered no comment.

Before the woman left for the evening’s performance, though, she put a fresh bottle of milk on the windowsill to keep cold, then came over to the bed to check the baby. She had drilled Clement in feeding and diapering as determinedly as Clement had ever drilled a soldier. Clement said, “Do you approve?” Her voice was still rough with tears.

“I visited the midwife,” the storyteller said. “The nurse will come tomorrow morning.”

“What has taken so long?”

“She’s very young. Her parents are reluctant.”

Clement thought of a young woman, as young as Kelin, maybe, arguing angrily with an array of disapproving parents. “Hell,” she muttered. “Will you tell Gilly that she’s coming? And ask him to visit me after the night bell.”

After the night bell, Gilly arrived with the storyteller and an aide who was carrying a precarious supper tray. The stew had gotten stone cold on its journey from the refectory, but at least there was some meat in it. Clement ate, and Gilly said, “Cadmar complains that he is unattended.”

Clement crushed a fragment of frozen butter onto her cold bread. “He knows I’m leaving in just a couple of days. What does he want from me?”

The storyteller approached them and handed the baby to Gilly, who accepted the bundle with some surprise. She silently left the room.

“Where is she going?” Gilly held the baby awkwardly, looking unnerved.