Текст книги "Earth Logic"

Автор книги: Marks Laurie

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“She’ll sit on her heels in the hallway. Gazing into space.”

“Peculiar.”

“But it does give me some privacy. Are the soldiers now letting her wander the garrison unescorted?”

“I’ll look into it. She mentioned that the nurse is finally coming tomorrow. Are you thinking that the four of you can live in this one room, in harmony?”

“Won’t the nurse will take the child away?”

The baby was uttering rhythmic grunting sounds. Gilly looked down at him with a puzzled expression, as though the arrival of this small person were nearly as dismaying to him as it was to Clement. “A young woman, unmarried, no household of her own, apparently acting against her parent’s wishes? She’ll expect you to provide for her. She’s got nowhere to take a child.”

“Someone might have told me!” Clement smeared more butter onto her roll. “The storyteller could have told me, if she knew how to volunteer information.” Then she mumbled, her mouth full, “I feel like I’m eating frozen sawdust.”

“It goes well with that frozen mud puddle.” Gilly indicated the gelid bowl of brown stew.

Reminded, Clement swallowed a few chilling spoonfuls. “Fortunately, I know you’d never point out a problem until you’d thought of a solution.”

“There’s a place available not two buildings away from the gate.”

“Keep my own establishment?”

“I would hardly call two rooms an establishment.”

The baby uttered a cry, rather experimentally, but Gilly gave a start, which in turn caused the baby to cry in earnest. Clement shoveled in a few more mouthfuls, then took the baby, and admonished him, “Listen, little soldier, we’re strategizing your future, and strategy requires concentration.”

“The storyteller could also live there,” said Gilly, speaking loudly over the baby’s wailing. “I’ll help with the cost, of course. I’ve always wanted to be somebody’s uncle.”

Clement said, “I’m not sure I heard you, with that shrieking in my ear. Did you say you want to be an uncle!”

Grinning, Gilly stood up and leaned upon his sturdy cane. “I’ll check those rooms in the morning, and if they look passable, I’ll rent them on your behalf.”

She opened and held the door for him. Out in the hallway, the storyteller rose up lightly from where she had been squatting with her shoulders against the wall. “Let’s get some sleep if we can,” Clement said to her. “Will you be all right on the stairs, uncle?”

Gilly gestured crudely and shuffled into the shadows.

When Clement first set eyes on her son’s new wet nurse, she was flirting with the soldiers at the gate: a plain, thin, sullen girl, younger than Kelin had been. She unbuttoned despite the chill to display her swollen, milk‑leaking breasts. “Satisfied?” she asked sharply, then added placatingly, “Madam.” “What became of your own baby?”

“He went to the father’s family.” Winking at the goggling soldiers, the girl did up her buttons.

No doubt that this girl would be a trial to Clement, just as she surely had been to her recently discarded parents. In the rented rooms, though, where at Gilly’s instigation the plaster was being repaired and furniture was being delivered, the girl sat down beside the glowing coal stove and demonstrated that she could suckle, though the baby appeared to need some training. The storyteller squatted on her heels and watched this amateur performance with what seemed to Clement a healthy skepticism.

Clement squatted beside her. “If this were your son, would you leave him in this girl’s care?”

“I cannot answer that question,” the storyteller said.

Clement hired the girl only because she had no choice. That night she lay in her own room, alone, trying to convince herself that she appreciated the luxury of an uninterrupted night. At sunrise she was in the rented rooms again, holding her son beside the newly lit stove, having a quiet conversation with him while the nurse and storyteller slept.

“Acquiring a child is no different from acquiring a horse,” she said to him. “For every Sainnite but me.”

The baby lay in her arms, an unopened package, a blinking, sleepy stranger. “For me,” Clement said, “it appears to be a shocking occasion. Perhaps as much as it is for you.”

She glanced at the door that hung half ajar to let in the heat, beyond which the storyteller slept on a pallet on the floor. “You can thank the storyteller for this. Or curse her, if you like. Whatever you think she deserves.”

The baby uttered a small burbling grunt.

“No, I can’t make up my mind either,” she said.

The day of Clement’s departure for the children’s garrison had arrived too soon. “Where did all those ravens come from?” said Gilly from the back of his horse, as he escorted her to the garrison gate.

Black birds swarmed above the garrison gate. As Clement watched, their flying mass compressed together, then exploded upward, uttering eerily gleeful rattling cries.

The forty gloomy soldiers who awaited Clement at the gate watched the departing birds with undisguised anxiety. “Hell,‘

Clement muttered. Ravens were battlefield birds; Sainnites loathed and feared them. “They’ll be thinking those birds are an ill omen.”

Gilly was usually contemptuous of soldier superstitions, but now he looked worried.

The gate captain was approaching. Though he was one of the most dispassionate soldiers in the garrison, even he looked discomforted. He carried an unlabeled package wrapped in oilcloth, sealed with red wax, tied with twine, and smeared with bird droppings. “What is it, captain?” asked Clement sharply.

“Lieutenant‑General, this thing seemed to fall from the sky.”

Involuntarily, Clement looked again at the disappearing flock of ravens. One had separated from the group and now swooped down to land on the peak of a rooftop. Gilly’s voice spoke harshly. “Keep your imaginings to yourself, captain!”

It was what Clement should have said to the gate captain. She turned to him belatedly and said, “Morale is going to be tricky enough without the soldiers thinking we’re getting packages from ravens.”

“Yes, ma’am. But what should I do with this?”

“Give it to me,” Gilly said. In a low voice he added to Clement, “Go talk to your soldiers.”

She stepped forward to greet Captain Herme, and with him beside her walked through the ranks of the gloomy company, greeting every soldier by name, enthusiastically touting the inevitable success and importance of their venture. By the time she had finished trying to raise their spirits, she could see Cadmar and Ellid arriving for the official departure. She hurried back to Gilly.

Looking both unhappy and unwell, he briefly held up a slim book for her to see, then hid it again in its dirty oilcloth wrappings.

“A book?” said Clement. “In Shaftalese?”

“It purports to be written by Medric.”

“That’s a Sainnite name,” she said. Then she remembered who Medric was. “The one who claimed to be a seer? The one who disappeared from Wilton Garrison? He’s written a bloody book?”

“Not just a book, Clem. It’s about the Sainnites. And Medric is in fact a seer–a true seer.”

“How can you be certain of such a thing?”

“Because he knows the numbers.”

She stared at Gilly, dumbstruck. She knew perfectly well what numbers he meant: the secret numbers, which Gilly had ciphered only once and then had burned to ashes. The numbers that were only known to the two of them and to Cadmar.

Gilly continued, “This seer can cipher too. And he has a printing press. No doubt this book is right now being read all over Shaftal. And that seer is taunting us by sending us a copy! Because he knows there isn’t a thing we can do about it!”

Clement took in a breath and let it out. “There’s nothing we can do,” she said. “So don’t tell Cadmar.”

“Clem–”

“He’ll prevent me from going on this mission!”

They stared at each other, then Gilly said grimly, “And that would only compound the disaster.” He tucked the grimy package inside his coat. “I’ll give you a day.”

“Two.”

His gaze briefly focused over her shoulder, then he smiled stiffly at her, apparently trying to pretend this was a pleasant conversation. “He’s coming over to us.”

“Two days, Gilly. I can’t be out of his reach in one.”

“Right,” Gilly said. “Well, I certainly look forward to hearing about all your adventures, and wish you a safe journey.”

She turned around and found Cadmar and Ellid had come within hearing. “Well, General, will you wish us well?”

He did. She saluted. He saluted. Ellid saluted. The gate was opened. The soldiers marched out, snowshoes on their backs, dragging awkward sledges that would soon be gliding on snow. Clement followed them out the gate, reeling.

Ten days later, in the teeth of a howling snowstorm, her company arrived at the children’s garrison. As Clement explained to Commander Purnal why she had returned, and with such a large escort, his astonishment soon turned to sarcastic appreciation. “So, your bungling has turned our garrison into a symbol! And now you’re finally forced to take us seriously! Well, it’s six days yet until Long Night, and there’s plenty of roof repairs needing to be done in the meantime.”

“We’re going to remain invisible indoors. You will continue your business as though we were not here. And I’m placing those soldiers I left behind under Captain Herme’s command.”

“It’s only what I expected of you,” Purnal said bitterly, and stumped off in a temper.

An experienced Paladin commander who was planning an attack would keep a watch on his target for days beforehand, so to keep their arrival unnoticed Clement’s company had avoided roads and farmlands as they neared their destination. Snow‑covered streambeds had often offered the best paths as they navigated through the woods by compass and dead reckoning. One glorious day, they had followed a frozen river and had been lucky to find shelter in an empty building with its dock pulled onto the riverbank to keep the ice from destroying it. Most days, though, had been grueling, and at night they sheltered themselves in makeshift constructions of snow, branches, and tarpaulins. It took two days by the hearthfires of the children’s garrison for the soldiers to thaw out. But every night, once full dark had fallen, with an audience of fascinated children they rehearsed the battle.

As she endured the empty days, Clement desperately wished she could distract herself. Her room had one small window, and often she opened the shutters and peered out at the pristine snow, sunlit or starlit. Sometimes there were children out in the snow. Watching them, Clement felt a pulling in her chest, as though some physical pieces of her had been left behind in Watfield.

With the visiting war‑horses as allies, the children beat down a circular track along which they marched, or chased each other, or pulled each other on makeshift sleds. Around and around the garrison they went. So also Clement’s thoughts circled around and around, but they circled a distant place and time, five years in the past: the seer Medric’s most recent posting, Wilton Garrison, in South Hill, the summer after Cadmar became general.

That summer, Wilton garrison had been attacked and burned by rockets. The rockets had been invented by Annis, a Paladin woman of South Hill Company. Those same rockets had burned down Watfield.

The leader of Death‑and‑Life, Willis, had also come from South Hill. If he had learned from Annis how to make the rockets, he must have been a member of South Hill Company–the same company that had held firm in the face of what should have been an overwhelming force of soldiers.

Medric had been a resident of Wilton garrison when it was burned, an attack he inexplicably failed to predict, even though, according to Commander Heras, under whose command he had served, his previous predictions had been devastatingly accurate. Later that summer, he had disappeared.

Willis disappeared. Annis disappeared.

The longtime commander of South Hill Company–a formidable leader, respected even by Heras–disappeared.

Heras reported vague rumors of treachery, of a mysterious member of South Hill Company who Paladins thought was a Sainnite spy. But she also, it seemed, had disappeared.

Surely all these disappearances mean something!Wildly, desperately, Clement wore away the floorboards with her pacing. In the dead of night, in a building filled with sleeping children, she spoke aloud to her empty, solitary room: “What happened in South Hill?”

Some hours later, she asked the question again, differently: “What beganin South Hill?”

Then it came to her: in the autumn of the same year, a gigantic woman had supposedly plunged a spike into Councilor Mabin’s chest without killing her. She had done it because of a mysterious woman. And then the so‑called Lost G’deon had disappeared.

Had all these people disappeared together? Would they also reappear together? Annis had reappeared–or at least her devastating rockets had. Willis had reappeared as the leader of Death‑and‑Life. Medric had reappeared, to blithely publish the Sainnites’ most dangerous, most closely kept secret. And a mysterious woman was telling stories in Watfield garrison.

Some hours before dawn, Captain Herme sat up in startlement as Clement walked into his room. “Lieutenant‑General, what is wrong?”

She wanted to say, I am trapped ten days’ hard journey from Watfield, and I am going mad.

But instead she said apologetically, “I’m having a bad night, captain. And it’s occurred to me that we’ve got to capture the leader of this group alive, somehow.”

Herme groaned.

“I know–to kill a cage full of rats is easy. To kill all but one is practically impossible.”

He groaned again, his hands rasping loudly on his unshaven cheeks. “Can I ask why?”

“I need to ask the man a question.”

“But to try to keep him alive will risk our success. Is it that important?”

She wanted to say, Perhaps it will spare us from being completely exterminated.But instead she said, “Yes, captain, it is that important.”

Chapter Twenty‑Nine

They were huddled around Karis, in the single room that had been afforded them by the farm family on which they had imposed themselves. Leeba, on whom the great adventure of this winter journey had quickly palled, had whined herself to sleep. The rest of them, blistered, frostbitten, and still chilled to the bone, clustered together in their underclothes. A fire burned in the fireplace, but its heat was blocked by drying boots and breeches, long shirts and wool coats. Karis was on her knees before Emil, with his frostbitten foot clasped in both her big hands. His boot, having developed a leak, was in the kitchen being repaired by the farmstead’s cobbler.

“You know how still Zanja could be,” said Karis.

Emil said, “If Zanja were thinking, or waiting, or listening, she could almost seem absent.”

“She is like that all the time, now. Present, but absent. Visible, but invisible. Listening, and silent. I see her form, her flesh, but I don’t see her.”

Emil said, “Perhaps a part of her has replaced the whole.”

J’han, who recently had come in from attending an ailing member of the household, got under the covers with Norina and Leeba. Norina asked, “What else do the ravens see? What do they see this woman doing?”

Garland, against whose back the exhausted Medric had companionably curled, watched Karis shut her eyes so she could look through the eyes of her raven. She said, “She is inside the garrison, in a building, where the raven can’t see her now. But I can hear her voice.” A silence, and she said, “‘… Frost sparkled on the stones … The crack was wide as a hand … It seemed to go on forever.’”

“Apparently, tortoise‑woman has just noticed that the world is splitting in two,” said Emil. “The woman is telling stories to the Sainnites, as Medric dreamed she would.”

Garland wrenched some of the blankets from Medric so that Emil could tuck himself in. The three of them would share the single narrow bed, a feat they had accomplished several times now, in several different beds, though each time it seemed quite impossible. Karis, too big for the rooms, the doorways, and the furniture, had no choice for a bed but the floor.

Medric, his face buried in the pillow, mumbled, “What about the book?”

“The ravens dropped the book inside the garrison gate, like you said to do,” said Karis. “Zanja–or rather whoever she is now–was standing on the other side of the gate. On the garrison side, many soldiers were gathered, with sledges and snowshoes. A soldier picked up the book from the snow, looking puzzled. He gave it to a woman, who gave it to a man on horseback. A very ugly man, terribly deformed.”

“That must be the general’s Lucky Man,” said Garland. “He uses a tincture for pain for his twisted back.”

“He’s a Shaftali,” said Medric.

“But they say he’s privy to all the general’s secrets.”

“Still, he’s Shaftali.” Medric smiled smugly, with his eyes still tightly closed, his spectacles safely put away for the night. “Did he like the book, Karis?”

“He and that woman, they had an exceptionally dismayed discussion.”

“Oh, very good! And what is the woman doing now? That woman was Lieutenant‑General Clement, by the way.”

“She left the garrison with the soldiers. I don’t know where they went.”

“I think you’d better keep an eye on her,” Medric said.

The work of travel was far from easy. But neither was it as grueling or frightening as Garland had feared. Some of the ravens had returned from Watfield, but their aerial scouting was no real necessity, and only rarely were Norina’s maps unpacked. Because the land revealed itself to Karis, the travelers never took a wrong turn, and were never surprised by the weather, though their hosts were certainly surprised by their arrival. Day after day, the load of books grew lighter.

Leeba wore red, like most children, to make it easier to find her when she got herself buried in snow. Karis also wore red: a coat of red felt, exuberantly decorated with red tassels. She looked magnificent in it. When she first put it on, Garland thought such a coat contradicted everything he understood about her. Someone else must have bought the coat for her, someone who saw her differently from how she saw herself. Zanja, he thought.

“Yes, it was a gift from Zanja. I’ve never seen Karis wear it,” Emil said, when Garland finally asked. “Perhaps she was afraid she’d wreck it, as she wrecks all her clothes. Did you see the spot where Norina clipped off the tassel that she tied in Zanja’s hair? Oh, our Truthken was thinking like a fire blood that day!”

In his wandering years, Garland thought he had learned something about winning the trust of Shaftali farmers. A sober decorum and a distinct sense of shame at one’s landless state had proven essential. But this garrulous group strolled into a farmstead like a bunch of holiday‑makers: oblivious to danger, indifferent to their lack of food and shelter, radically unconventional and making no attempt to seem less so. Then Karis took out her tool box, J’han his medicine chest, and Garland his rolling pin. Leeba would make instant friends with the children, who knew a mischief‑maker when they saw one, Emil and Medric coaxed the elders to talk about the past, and Norina kept out of the way with her mouth shut. The skeptical farmers were more than won over: they were astounded. This visit became an event, a progress, a performance. Whole families stayed up late and wasted precious lamp oil so they could gape a little longer at their amazing guests. Sooner or later, Emil would read part of Medric’s book to them. Sooner or later, someone looked at Karis a little too long or deeply, and would suddenly find a Truthken whispering in his ear, and then there would be a pale and thoughtful silence.

Sometimes, though, the entire performance proved unnecessary. One day, with the wind coming bitter from the north, and the clouds piling up in the sky like dumplings in a stew, they reached the untidy edge of a sprawling town and slipped in under cover of an early twilight, dragging their sledges up a narrow alley from which no one had bothered to clear the snow. Leeba had lapsed into the incessant whining that was the warning that they had better stop soon. They paused at someone’s back wall, which looked like all the others except that it had a few stylized glyphs carved into the stone. Medric read the glyphs for Garland while Emil let himself in the gate, waded through the snow‑choked kitchen garden, and knocked on the back door. “It’s the owl glyph, which can mean searching or restlessness, and the glyph that’s called Peace, combined with Come‑to‑Rest. It’s pretty unambiguous, for a glyph sign. I guess that this used to be a healer’s hostel, or at least that this wall used to enclose one.”

“There was one around here once,” said J’han, who had plucked his irritable daughter from her sledge and was rocking her vigorously to make her be quiet.

The back door opened. Emil talked, with his hat in his hand, and then waited, and then someone flung open the door, crying, “Emil? What in the name of Shaftal… ?” There was much energetic embracing, and Garland caught glimpses of a stout, brightly dressed woman, who eagerly started for the back gate when Emil pointed.

“What’s this?” she cried. “A circus troupe?”

Karis, Medric, and Garland all started laughing and could not seem to stop. “Come in!” the woman said. “Books, you say? Well, say no more! Goodness, look at that bright little girl. I’ll bet you run your parents ragged, don’t you?”

“Yes,” said Leeba proudly.

“So did I, and look at how I turned out. Come in, will you? Well, I don’t know what we’ll do with all your gear, but we’ll figure something out. Quickly, since there’s a storm brewing. I guess you’ll be staying a while? I hope you don’t mind sleeping on the floor. Well, get busy. You look strong enough.”

This last she said to Karis, who was still struggling to compose herself, wiping her eyes on the end of her muffler.

The whirl of words fell silent. Norina took a step forward, but Karis lifted a big, black‑palmed hand and the Truthken stopped in her tracks. “I’m Karis.”

The woman put her hand in Karis’s: stunned, amazed, then suddenly in tears. She said to Emil, who had come up beside her. “I should have known she’d be with you! Where anyone with any sense would be! The one everyone is looking for, you already found her!”

“I found her before anyone started looking,” said Emil. He added somberly, “You need to keep this secret. Not even your family can know. Can you do that?”

The woman turned again to Karis. “Yes. Yes, but…”

“I am a Truthken,” Norina said, “and by your oath I bind you.”

The woman replied fearlessly, “May I not ask a single question? I will go mad!”

“A shame,” said Norina.

“Shaftal!” the woman breathed. “Well, what am I supposed to say?”

“Say, ‘Madam Truthken, by the land I accept the binding of an oath of silence.’”

The woman said her part, obedient, ecstatic, like an actor rehearsing a play.

Hers was a family of tailors, it turned out, who were as appalled by the state of their guests’ clothing as Garland was by the state of his hosts’ kitchen. When they left after the storm had passed, every last one of the travelers was wearing a new suit of clothes, though their old clothes had also been so finely mended that to replace them hardly seemed necessary. And they left behind at least a hundred books, which the tailors swore would be scattered through four regions by day’s end, and as far as the southern and northern borders within a week.

The travelers would soon run out of books.

The day before Long Night, they came through the hills on a sunless afternoon, a ragtag collection of wool‑dressed wanderers with chillblained, blistered hands. They had tied their snow shoes atop the sledges, for the snow had crusted enough to bear even Karis’s weight. Leeba had played like an otter all morning, sliding hilariously down every icy slope. She played without her regular playmate, for Medric was utterly worn out. Now, she rode in state in her sledge, blanket‑wrapped in a pillowy nest.

Medric wiped his frosted spectacles for the fiftieth time. “Maybe I’m just too old to play with Leeba. Maybe it’s time we had another child.”

Norina said, “I hope you’re volunteering to be the mother, little man. I’m sure Karis could alter your equipment.”

“Never mind,” said Medric hastily.

They had seen no signs of settlement since dawn, when they staggered forth from the abandoned shepherd’s hut in which they had spent the night. A barren land: open, rolling, practically treeless, with boulders poking through the snow like broken teeth. Sheep country.

The wind picked up. They wrapped their faces, tied down their hats, put a second pair of gloves on their already gloved hands, and faced the wind only when they had to. There was no more laughter. Karis stopped once, pointed at Medric, and pointed at the half‑empty sledge of books she hauled. He mutely took a seat in the sledge, and folded himself up against the cold, passive as a piece of luggage. Karis hauled him.

Later, she stopped again, and turned her back to the wind. They huddled around to hear her cold‑slurred words. “We’ve been seen.”

Emil tried to speak, vigorously rubbed his frozen face, and tried again. “How many?”

“Many more than us.”

“Armed?”

“Yes.”

“Paladins. They’ll try to head us off first.”

They sorted themselves out, with Emil in front now, Norina at his right, Leeba complaining in Karis’s arms, Medric afoot again, hauling the empty sledge, Garland hauling the sledge of supplies and J’han the sledge of books. Garland supposed Karis carried Leeba for the child’s protection–there was no place safer. But perhaps Leeba would also protect Karis, for the Paladins might go out of their way to avoid injuring a child.

Soon, a black‑dressed woman swooped down the hill, flying on her skis as the ravens swooped on the wind overhead.

She blocked their way. Two pistols, certainly loaded and primed, were holstered in the belts that crossed her chest. A dagger was sheathed at her side. “You’re lost,” she informed them politely.

Emil pulled open his muffler.

“Emil?” she said. “Shaftal’s Name!”

Garland thought, Is there anyone in Shaftal who does not know and admire this man?

“Greetings, Commander. Do you know Norina Truthken?”

The commander said after a moment, “By reputation.”

Garland could see only a part of Norina’s muffled face, but whatever Norina heard in the commander’s voice appeared to have amused her greatly.

Norina said, “We’re inviting ourselves to Councilor Mabin’s Long Night.”

Certainly the woman’s duty was to deny the Councilor’s presence, but that she apparently could not do with a Truthken two paces away. Her visible surprise became perplexity. “How do you know the Councilor is here?”

“Perhaps you would have one of your people carry a message to her that Karis wishes to speak to her.”

“Karis?” said the commander blankly.

“You weren’t there by the river five years ago,” said Emil, “but surely you’ve heard about what happened there.” He stepped aside–a small movement, but it brought the commander’s attention to the large, somber woman behind him, with the wide‑eyed child in her arms.

Norina said, “Karis G’deon.”

When something incredible must be said in such a way that it will instantly be believed, then certainly, thought Garland, that was the time for a Truthken to speak.

“I bind you,” Norina added, “to silence.”

The commander’s jaw shut with a click. She turned and signaled. A whole host of Paladins came flying down the hill.

They were as graceful, deadly, and powerful as any bird of prey. Impressed and terrified, Garland wrapped his arms around himself, shivering, thinking that at least if he were killed he would not feel cold anymore. Medric, swaying with weariness beside him, said in Sainnese, “If they’d had a few thousand more like that, you and I would have never been born, my brother. Think of it!”

“How can you even talk?” said Garland.

“I can always talk,” said Medric. “Gods of our fathers! What a sight!”

His spectacles had frosted over again, so Garland was uncertain exactly what he saw. The past? The future? Or even both at once?

The Paladins brought their swift approach to a halt in shining sprays of snow. One, designated to carry a message, skied away nearly as swiftly as he had arrived. The others formed a polite but impenetrable escort: one took Garland’s sledge, while he worried unreasonably what would become of his far‑traveling rolling pin. Soon after they had begun to walk again, one firmly pressed the stumbling Medric to become a passenger again. Leeba reacted with outrage when Medric curled into her nest of pillows, but he made faces at her, and soon it became a contest. Garland realized that he, J’han, Norina, and Emil had all drawn up around Karis like ribs around a heart. Around them skied the Paladins, ice‑masked, indistinguishable, wordless. If Karis stopped, they all would come to a halt. But she kept a steady, restrained pace, square‑shouldered, forward‑gazing, like a brave prisoner walking to her execution.

It was a long walk. At last, it brought them to a great complex of buildings near the edge of river, from which the snow had been cleared to make it a highway. As they approached, an ice skater could be seen in the distance, but he traveled so swiftly that he had passed before they arrived.

On the broad porch of the central building, an old woman, flanked by Paladins, awaited them. The sun was already setting. In the garish glare the shadows were long and black, but the old woman’s face was in the light and the three gold earrings in her right ear glittered as the harsh wind swept by.

She, too, had the blank look of a prisoner awaiting the executioner.

Karis gave Leeba to J’han. As she turned her head, Garland saw the white lines of tears, frozen solid on her cheeks. She walked forward, and stopped at the bottom of the steps. The wind tore at her hair, tried to rip off her cap. She jammed her hands into her pockets, and waited, stolid.

The old woman asked, “What are you doing here?”

“Aren’t you tired,” Karis said, “of the pain in your heart?”

“Yes, Karis.”

“Will you allow me to heal you?”

The old woman took a step forward. Then, stiffly, she knelt in the blowing snow. Her companions started forward too late to help her, then stepped back at her impatient gesture. The black‑dressed Paladins were folding back their masks, uncovering their faces, staring in bewilderment at the old woman unbuttoning her coat, her jacket, her shirt, to bare her breast to the wind’s deadly breath, and to reveal the dull steel of the spike embedded in her heart.