Текст книги "Earth Logic"

Автор книги: Marks Laurie

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Medric said unhappily, “This is worse than reading Koles.”

“She was able to give us some clues of how to read it,” Emil said.

“But glyphs without context… !”

“The reader always creates the context.”

“We are not seeking a subjective truth, though. And to read these cards as though my experience of them somehow reflects a political reality is not just specious. It’s dangerous.”

Emil put his hand on the seer’s shoulder. His three earrings glittered briefly in a beam of sunlight. “We sent her out to explore the wilderness. Now she has found a way through, but it is up to us to read the trail markings so we can follow her.”

“What if we are too stupid?”

“Stupid? Oh come now, Medric!”

To Garland, this discussion was incomprehensible. He understood, rather vaguely, that Emil had thought it reasonable to let a casting of cards determine Shaftal’s future. He understood now that Medric, who would be responsible for interpreting those cards, thought that to read them reliably was impossible. But Medric’s explanation for his reluctance made no sense, and neither did Emil’s steady assurance that it could be done. What if Emil were as mad in his way as Medric was in his? Surely, Norina would not allow lunacy to continue. Garland glanced hopefully at her.

Norina stood with her arms folded, her back against a post that supported the center beam. She watched Medric fret over the incomprehensible glyphs. Her face was inscrutable.

When Norina killed the storyteller, it would be with that very expression on her face: passionless, impersonal. She was as mad as the rest of them.

Karis’s desperate, shuddering sobs had fallen silent. One of her clenched hands unfolded, to stroke Leeba’s head. J’han, who embraced Karis on the other side, dug out a preposterously clean handkerchief for her to use. Leeba made a fretful sound, and Karis said hoarsely to her, “I’m sorry I’m scaring you. But I’m just sad.”

“You’re always sad,” Leeba said.

Karis let her limbs unfold to take the child into her embrace. “I’m sorry. But you make me glad, you know.”

Emil said, “Karis, can you talk to me about politics?”

Karis, bowed over Leeba, did not respond.

Emil persisted. “I think I must call an assembly, and it will take two months at least to gather people together. I have the Paladins now to act as messengers, but I assume we won’t be bringing them to Watfield with us–”

“You’re going to visit the center of Sainnite power without any Paladins?” said Mabin, who had joined them earlier. “Well, this is certain to be a short‑lived government.”

Karis looked up then. “That battle last night was the last. There will be no more bloodshed in Shaftal.”

Mabin looked blank, and Garland felt that blankness also. No bloodshed? How?

Norina said, “Under the law, the G’deon’s declarations are to be understood as fact.”

“Her words only sound like hope to me!” said Mabin.

Norina straightened from her post. “Break the law at your peril, Mabin.” Her tone was cold.

“Fact?” said Karis in a small voice.

“You speak for the land,” said Norina to Karis, as though that explained everything. “You’ll get accustomed to it.”

Not by accident, Norina’s foot sharply nudged Mabin’s. The councilor said, “If Karis says we don’t need an army to defeat an army, then she must be correct.” She looked like she had taken a mouthful of putrid fish and was trying to determine how to spit it out.

“For war cannot make peace.” Emil gestured at the cards on the floor. “And I see no war there. Do you, Medric?”

Medric said irritably, “This is nota predictive casting. It’s an advisorycasting.” He sat back on his heels. “War, defeat, victory, none of these are advised.”

Abruptly, mysteriously, Garland understood all of them. Medric, who examined possibilities, could conclude that war might continue, despite the storyteller’s advice. Except Karis had said that it wouldn’t. And Mabin clearly thought that peace without victory would be impossible, and Norina might well have agreed with her, except that the law required her to agree with Karis, no matter what. So she agreed with her.

Karis said flatly, “The war is over.” A statement of fact.

Karis’s advisors all nodded distractedly: fire logic’s uncertainty was resolved; air logic shifted its entire rationale to match a new principle; earth logic remained inarguable. Emil, apparently the quickest to readjust his thinking–a dancer, that man, always poised on his toes–said, “Well, Medric will grumble over the cards, however long it takes. You and I, Karis, we need to decide what I am to do, if I am not re‑establishing the old government.”

Karis shut her eyes. Emil began to say something apologetic, but a gesture from Norina silenced him. Garland, still embracing Karis, thought she might be analyzing the distribution of weight on that loaded food tray she had once described. Her desperate sorrow was not past–and would never be, perhaps. But Karis said sturdily, “Call an assembly, Emil, and name everyone who attends it a councilor of Shaftal.”

Emil blinked. “No Council of Thirteen? No Lilterwess Council?”

“The Lilterwess Council is to be formed by the G’deon,” said Norina. “But if she chooses not to form one, and to transfer their power directly to the assembly, that does not contradict any law.”

“It contradicts tradition–” began Mabin, and got herself kicked again. Apparently, she was to endure a painful re‑training, but Garland could not manage to feel sorry for her.

Karis said, “Master seer, what do you think?”

Medric looked up from his glyph puzzle. For once, he did not protest the formal way she had addressed him. And his spectacles seemed perfectly clear. “You are choosing the right way. Now leave me alone.”

Emil asked Mabin, Norina, and J’han to help him decide who to invite to the assembly, and how to compose the important letter that would coincidentally announce to all the people of Shaftal that, after twenty years of chaos, they had a G’deon again. Apparently, Emil would then recruit the entire company of Paladins to simultaneously write dictated copies of the letter, which the Paladins would hand‑deliver to the recipients. Garland cried, “Do you mean to tell me that every single Paladin carries pen and ink?”

Emil blandly produced a pen and a packet of ink from his waistcoat’s inside pocket. Mabin kept hers inside her black jacket, in a buttoned pocket that seemed designed for no other purpose. “I don’t believe it,” Garland muttered in Sainnese.

As Emil took his contingent towards the stairs, he said over his shoulder, “Garland, I know you’ll make Karis eat, but get her to rest also, will you?”

When they were gone, Karis commented, “Apparently, you’re the one who gets the impossible task, Garland.”

“I beg to differ,” muttered Medric.

Karis kissed Leeba’s head again. “Listen, Leeba! They’re singing the First‑Day song! Let’s go down and watch them put out the candle.‘

Chapter Thirty‑Three

The second day of the new year ended prematurely as the weary sun was engulfed by advancing clouds. In the brief twilight the stars appeared to cast away their light with frantic haste before the clouds smothered them. By this frail, rapidly failing illumination, Clement led the company of soldiers down the hill, into the gently sloped grazeland of a river valley blanketed by faintly glimmering snow. The soldiers’ snow shoes crunched; they walked in a fog breathed out by their weary fellows.

Because Clement’s thoughts were in turmoil, she had given her company no rest that day. The morning’s chatter had long since given way to plodding silence. In the dark valley stood a cluster of buildings: an established, successful farmstead that boasted a huge red cow barn.

A big shaggy dog came out from underneath a porch to bark a sharp alarm, and in a moment the door opened to spill its light. An angular woman with a lantern in her hand examined the company of soldiers bearing down on her, quieted the dog with a command, then turned and spoke into the doorway.

By the time the soldiers had all reached the bottom of the slope, a dozen of the cow farmers had come out onto the porch. Clement stepped into the light.

The level look that the angular farmer gave Clement was a puzzlement. Seth turned and spoke to her family, words Clement could not hear, and then she came down the steps. She said, “Your people can sleep in the barn, in the milking room. There’s a stove, and fuel. Take straw to make beds. You doknow the difference between straw and hay? And light no open flames, of course.” She added, “We’ll bring down some bread and cheese, or we can cook a hot meal if you want to wait for it.”

Clement heard words come out of her mouth: “No, all I ask is shelter and permission to draw from your well.”

“There’s a pump in the milking room.”

Both of them were performing parts. This performance was necessary. But the old illness came over Clement, a self‑loathing that for two days had continually risen like nausea, only to recede in response to the counter‑pressure of panic. The self‑loathing was familiar; it arrived after every battle, and lingered longer every time. The panic, that was new.

Clement spoke some words that were not necessary or part of a performance. “My people will do no harm to your family or your family’s livelihood. I promise you.”

Seth’s right eyebrow raised, very slightly. “This is a rare assurance.” This neutral comment revealed something in Seth that Clement could not clearly see or make sense of. It was not what it should have been: not anger, nor resentment, nor hatred.

There was no reason why even a modicum of trust should exist between them, and Clement was wasting her time looking for it.

Clement’s company was conveying impatience by shuffling their feet, gasping loudly at the cold, and rocking their weight noisily in the snow. Clement said over her shoulder, “Captain Herme, take the company to that big barn, but don’t go in until I get there.”

When she could hear the company’s sledges starting to move behind her, she said to Seth, “We’ll be gone when you come down for the morning milking, and you won’t know we were there.”

“More promises?” Seth took a step forward. “Is Clem your true name?”

“Lieutenant‑General Clement.”

Both Seth’s eyebrows lifted now, but still there was no visible revulsion.

Clement said, “I apologize for deceiving you.”

“Oh, I imagine that you thought honesty was impossible,” said Seth.

“I should have chosen not to pretend my way into your bed.”

A corner of the cow fanner’s mouth curled. “Make amends, then,” she said. “Come to my bed again–without pretense, this time.”

The sound of the soldiers’ snow shoes had become distant. The farmers had begun to go back inside the house, though some lingered to keep an eye on Seth. Clement noticed these things. She also noticed how the cold was seeping upward from her feet, how weariness crushed her earthward, how sounds echoed in the crisp air. But Seth’s words seemed beyond understanding.

“My fire is lit,” Seth said. “My family will let you come in. There is no lock on any door. You only have to find your way to me.”

“It is impossible,” said Clement.

“It seems simple to me.”

Clement heard crunching footsteps. Captain Herme, having complied with Clement’s command, apparently had now taken it upon himself to make sure of her safety. Fortunately, he did not understand Shaftalese. Clement said to Seth, “You’ve asked for an end to pretense. But if I came to you, pretense would be unavoidable. The pretense that we are not enemies.”

Seth said quietly, “You and your people are strangers. I and my people are offering hospitality, according to the traditions of Shaftal. We–I–choose to offer it. Now what will you choose, Clem?”

“Lieutenant‑General?” said Herme tentatively.

She said to him, “Yes, I’m coming.” In Shaftalese, she said to Seth, “There isno choice.”

“There is,” Seth said. “I am giving you the choice.”

But Clement had already forced herself to turn and walk away.

Over thirty years ago, when Clement was first judged mature and skilled enough to go into battle, duty had become the fence that delimited the territory of her life. When she led her rested soldiers up the slope in the morning, leaving the milking room as pristine as it had been when they arrived, that was duty. When she did not raise a hand in farewell to the woman who stood watching from the porch, that was duty. That her heart rebelled was, and always had been, irrelevant.

Ten more nights, at ten more farms, Clement requested shelter for her company. Shelter was freely given, food was generously cooked and served. Clement continued to demand that the soldiers behave courteously, and that they accept this food and shelter as a girt and not a right. The soldiers gradually shifted from resentment to amazement. Clement herself was surprised by the cautious, awkward, but inexplicably friendly conversations initiated with her by their involuntary hosts.

“Is it true your people are refugees?” asked one old man.

“How can you survive without a family?” inquired a shy young woman.

A middle‑aged woman with gnarled, work‑hardened hands declared, “If you soldiers can make flowers bloom you can grow vegetables.” And when Clement and her soldiers were leaving, the woman tucked some packets of vegetable seeds into Clement’s pocket and urged her to plant them.

“What has come over these people!” exclaimed Herme.

Clement was unnerved. When and how had the Shaftali people become so well‑informed? How did the woman know that soldiers grow flowers, for example? The members of Clement’s company, who could not understand these conversations, were mystified enough by the hospitality, but Clement felt that a monstrous disaster loomed just beyond the limits of her ability to see and understand it.

Even though the company slept warm and ate well, it was no easy journey. Clement participated in the rotation of hauling the sledges and sitting the night watch. When a storm blew in, or the wind turned particularly cold, or the trees took it upon themselves to dump loads of snow onto their heads, she cursed the hostile landscape as viciously and sincerely as the rest of them. When they were tired, or fighting their way up a hill, or wanting courage for crossing a frozen river, she joined with them in singing to raise their spirits or keep the pace–a breathless, harsh, and tuneless chorus, perhaps, but sometimes even she felt carried by the sound of it. She sat with them on straw or stone, and ate whatever they ate, and slept wherever they were sleeping, and by the third night of their return journey had acquired two bedfellows. “Should you sleep cold just because you’ve been promoted?” the soldier asked, when she and her partner hauled their blankets over to Clement’s solitary bed, in a very drafty barn.

“You’ve been good to us,” her partner explained vaguely.

“It’s a cold night.”

“And there’s that wind.”

“By the gods,” said Clement, with all sincerity, “I could use a warm night’s sleep.”

After that, every last one of the solders in the company, including Herme, seemed to forget who Clement was. They shouted at her when necessary, and did not take their cold hands from their pockets to salute, and even called her by name. She pretended to be oblivious to this deterioration in discipline.

The entire company recovered abruptly from their sloppiness when they entered Watfield. “I’ll pull that sledge, Lieutenant‑General,” one of her companions said, and she was gently, irresistibly forced into the proper position for a commanding officer, the center of the column. “Well, Captain,” she said regretfully to the man she had been calling Herme for the last eight days. “I guess the journey’s over.

“Yes, Lieutenant‑General.”

“I’d like to thank the company myself when we’re inside the gate. And I’ll ask Commander Ellid to give the company a few day’s rest before you return to regular duty.”

“Thank you, Lieutenant‑General. The company will certainly appreciate that.”

It was a gray day, and the bright colors of the city’s latched shutters and doors were further muted by a haze of chimney smoke. They walked between ridges of snow that walled either side of the road, and the sledge runners clacked rhythmically on exposed cobblestones. The garrison gate lay ahead. Clement could hear a distant cheer as the gate guards spotted them, and then a bugle pealed the news of their arrival. Suddenly the entire company walked in step, lined up, straight‑backed.

By some unlikely piece of luck, Gilly was already waiting at the gate. Clement could see him, hunched like a crow on his exceptionally steady horse, exactly as he had been when she left. Had he been as haunted by anxiety as she had been, this last month?

Now they were passing the building that housed Clement’s small, peculiar family. The door opened; the girl‑nurse came out onto the stoop with the heavily‑bundled baby in her arms.

Clement had broken formation and climbed the stairs before it even occurred to her that now the entire company had no choice but to come to a disorderly and rather confused halt. She took her son in her arms. He seemed to be asleep. The small weight of his body simultaneously relieved and oppressed her. She kissed his forehead softly so as to not awaken him.

The girl‑nurse looked pale. “Is my son well?” Clement asked. “Has Gilly looked after you?”

“Of course,” the girl said, looking flustered.

“Come into the garrison with me. Captain Herme–”

Clement gave the baby back to the girl, and the captain stepped forward to help her down the stairs. Now the door opened again, and the storyteller came out, carrying a basket, with her heavy cloak loosely wrapped around her shoulders.

Clement thought, Now it begins.

She said, “Storyteller, are you on your way into the garrison? You might as well come with us.”

The storyteller’s dark, narrow, sculpted face was beyond reading. Yet it seemed to Clement that the woman knew she had no choice but to comply. The storyteller followed the girl‑nurse down the steps, and silently accepted the soldiers’ greetings. The company continued its progress, and was admitted with the usual fanfare into the garrison, as Gilly watched, his ugly face drawn and unsmiling.

Clement made a laudatory speech and dismissed the weary company. As the soldiers sorted out their gear and began to disperse, Clement took the gate captain aside. “Captain, I want you to take the storyteller into custody and keep her under guard in the gaol. Do it as quietly as you can. I don’t think she will resist.”

“Yes, Lieutenant‑General. May I ask– ”

“No, I can’t explain.”

He gave her a stiff salute, signaled his company, and with several soldiers behind him approached the storyteller. She spoke a couple of words, and handed the captain her basket. Then she turned and walked off with the soldiers. It was a very quiet arrest, but the girl‑nurse noticed and understood. Uttering a small moan, wild‑eyed, she clutched the baby to her breast. What reason had she to fear she might be next?

Gilly’s stolid horse breathed out a puff of fog as Clement went to him, and took his proffered hand in a pretense of greeting.

“What are you doing?” he asked in a low voice.

“I believe the storyteller’s tribe is Ashawala’i, the tribe that would destroy us, a seer once said.”

Gilly said after a moment, “Seer’s visions are explanatory or tentative, not necessarily predictive. Even if she is a survivor of that unfortunate tribe …”

“She also may be the Lost G’deon’s lover.”

Gilly sharply turned his head to look after the departing woman and her respectful escort.

Clement said, “She might be fully capable of destroying us.”

“With a G’deon’s power behind her? Most certainly.” Gilly’s gaze became unfocused. Then he blinked, and said, “Clem, look up at the roof.”

Clement did. Two ravens stood together near the roof’s edge. One of them watched the departing storyteller. The other looked directly into Clement’s eyes.

“They can behave like natural birds when they choose to,” said Gilly. “At the moment, apparently, they don’t so choose. How long has that one been following you?”

“I don’t know.” Clement felt very cold.

“The other one follows the storyteller.” As Gilly spoke, the raven lifted up and flew over the rooftops, towards the gaol. “I think it would be safe to say that nothing you have done since the ravens first appeared a month ago, has gone unnoticed. If the storyteller is the Lost G’deon’s lover, then there seems little doubt whose supernatural agents these birds are.”

The remaining raven continued to gaze at Clement, an unearthly, unblinking stare. Clement, her face stiff with cold, said with difficulty, “Until this moment, I thought I was just guessing.”

“How will imprisoning the storyteller prevent our destruction? Isn’t it possible you might bring destruction upon us?”

“Don’t you think I have driven myself mad with that question already?”

“You look mad,” he said, with a frail shadow of his old sarcasm.

A soldier approached with the storyteller’s basket, which was crammed with the baby’s supplies. “She said to give you this, Lieutenant‑General.”

Gilly said, “You’re taking your son back inside the walls?”

“Put the basket with my gear,” Clement told the soldier. “Gilly, how did you know I would arrive today?”

“The storyteller told me. Not just the day, but the hour as well.”

“Apparently, she expected to be arrested. Why didn’t she flee?”

There was a long, strange silence. “Well, here’s Cadmar,” Gilly said, as though that were some kind of answer.

Cadmar strode down the road briskly, with Ellid practically trotting behind to keep up. Clement said, “I’ll deal with him. I’ll meet you in your room, in about an hour. Will you get that girl and my son settled in my quarters?”

Gilly leaned over stiffly, to clasp her hand again. “What will happen to us?” he asked. Fortunately, he did not seem to expect an answer.

Cadmar was only interested in the success of Clement’s mission, and since all the attackers of the children’s garrison had been killed, with no Sainnite casualties, he considered it a success. Clement explained very precisely why and how this success could prove to be a disaster, but Cadmar would not hear of it. With Willis dead, he said, the movement he had inspired would surely falter. Cadmar also dismissed the importance of Medric’s book. “This Medric himself admits he is a traitor to his own people–and he obviously is a madman. Get Gilly to read some of it to you and you’ll see what I mean.”

It was without much hope that Clement explained to Cadmar why she had arrested the storyteller. By the time she was done, Cadmar appeared to doubt her stability. “There is no G’deon!” He went on to explain why, as though she were a particularly simple child who could not seem to learn anything. “This mission has been a trial,” he finally said patronizingly, and, dismissing her, told her to get some rest.

Clement had expected nothing else from him. As long as she had known Cadmar, what he could not understand or imagine he had always declared impossible. She went to her quarters to change into a fresh uniform, to reassure the nearly hysterical girl‑nurse, and to pick up her sleeping son. “I’ll watch him for a while. Why don’t you take a nap? You look tired.”

The girl’s bleak stare followed Clement out the door.

In Gilly’s room, the fire had been built up and a lamp had been lit, and now he sat in a sturdy chair near the fireplace, waiting for her. “Well, I have to find some kind of proof that even Cadmar will accept,” said Clement wearily as she sat down beside her old friend. “He treated me like an addle‑pate, of course.”

“Of course,” said Gilly. “And if not for those ravens, I’d agree with the general. This is another puzzlement, Clem: you wonder why the storyteller did not try to flee; I wonder why the ravens want us to realize they are watching us.”

“Or why Medric wanted us to know the contents of his book.” “Or why a woman whose power can shift the very foundations of the land has done nothing at all for twenty years.”

“Well, as far as Cadmar is concerned, that inaction proves that she doesn’t exist.”

Gilly said quietly, “Cadmar can only imagine her as a general, like him. And you and I also have fallen into that error, up until now. But if we now imagine that this woman’s inaction has been intentional, then, suddenly, we must reconsider everything. When the old general sent a battalion to eliminate an entire people from the face of the earth, did he never once think that his actions might well be causing the very fate he intervened to prevent? Surely this Ashawala’i woman, this storyteller, has pursued our destruction for nearly six years becauseof what we did to her people.”

“Yes,” Clement said. She had considered this possibility so often that it had finally lost its ability to dismay her.

For a long time, the two of them sat side‑by‑side by the crackling flames as though they had nothing of importance to do. Clement, who for nearly a month had worried about the son she had abandoned to the care of a callow girl, allowed herself a little while to think of him. He did not seem much bigger; but would he be livelier now? Would he recognize her at all, or would he mistake the one who fed him for his mother?

Gilly had asked earlier what would happen to them. And now Clement wondered what would happen to her son, should the Lost G’deon exercise her destructive power as Willis claimed she would.

She said musingly, “My mother saved me and her flowers… but after all, she was merely running away from soldiers much like her, and she knew that a ship was waiting, and the tide was turning. All she had to do was reach the boat before the people chasing her did.”

Gilly said, “Welt, your problem is much more complicated. If you can confirm the storyteller’s identity, will that prove the Lost G’deon’s existence?”

Clement said sadly, “The storyteller will soon explain everything. She will not be able to help herself.”

“Don’t torture her,” Gilly said.

She looked at him–her monstrous friend, whose sympathy for this monstrous woman would only be more acute, now that he had an inkling of what her life had been like. She said, “One woman’s life gives us the lives of six thousand soldiers.”

“Exactly,” grated Gilly. “Her life, not her death. And after all she has survived, you won’t be able to frighten her with mere pain, not unless you torture her beyond recovery.”

“I must prove something, somehow!”

“Fine. Torture the storyteller, get your proof, win Cadmar’s approval… and what have you really gained? You’ve hardened the G’deon’s determination, and you’ve thrown away an extremely valuable hostage. I’m starting to think you areaddle‑pated.”

“No, I’m cornered.”

“At this moment, it is only your thinking that is cornered.”

“Bloody hell, Gilly! Get me out of the corner, then!”

“Is it possible you will not–cannot–respond defensively to this threat? This seer, Medric, seems to think it’s possible.” Gilly stood up stiffly, and went to the lamp table to leaf through the crudely constructed little book that lay there.

Watching him, Clement felt a darkness descend on her. What if Medric’s book had been a weapon? And that weapon had reached its target: not her, not Cadmar, but the Shaftali man who advised them both? What if Medric had won Gilly’s heart?

Gilly found a page he had marked, and began to read out loud. Clement could hardly pay attention. But the words were rhythmic, the sentences clear. Dismayed as she was, Clement began to listen.

“‘What has always distinguished the Shaftali people is their hospitality. The great historians have written of it repeatedly: of the effort the Shaftali people go through, to treat every stranger as a member of the family. They say, perhaps rightly, that this tradition has an element of self interest, for to feed and shelter the homeless wanderer prevents crime and theft. But in fact this custom goes much deeper than self‑interest.

“ ‘The Land of Shaftal is unforgiving, a place of harsh winters and brief summers, where sometimes only luck might decide the difference between death and survival. In such a brutal land, it seems the people should also become brutal. That once was the case, long ago, in the time of the first G’deon, Mackapee. But as Mackapee sat in his isolated cave by a peat fire, watching over his sheep, he imagined Shaftal as a community based on mercy. Kindness and generosity, he wrote, can never be earned and will never be deserved. Hospitality is not an act of justice, but of mercy–a mercy beneficial to everyone, by making it possible to depend on and trust each other.

‘“But now, Shaftal has again become a merciless place. I do believe the Sainnites more than deserve the destruction that even now bears down upon them. But the Shaftali people will one day regret that they allowed their land to be transformed by rage.’”

He interrupted himself. “Why are you looking so desperate?”

“Those farmers,” she said.

“Which farmers?”

“All of them! Seth, the woman with the vegetable seeds, the man who knew the Sainnites are refugees.”

“That is in the book.”

“That we don’t have families?”

“In the book.”

“Hell! I knew there was something ominous about those people’s behavior! They all had read the book!”

Clement had left Gilly in the dark, she realized, but in a moment he had achieved his own understanding and was saying, “They offered you hospitality, I gather. And you find it reasonable to conclude that the hospitality was actually threatening. Does it not occur to you that if Medric is with the Lost G’deon, and published this book with her consent, perhaps with her participation–”

“You wantto believe this man is sincere. And you want to believe that what he wrote, the G’deon agrees with.”

He looked at her a long time before he looked away and said regretfully, “I do want to.”

“But in fact they have much to gain by making us believe they don’t intend to destroy us. If we lower our defenses–”

“No, a G’deon is not a general! She does not think this way.”

“Whatever she is, that doesn’t change what I am. When my people landed here on the shores of Shaftal, perhaps we couldhave thrown ourselves on the mercy of the Shaftali people. But we made ourselves criminals instead! How will we escape that culpability, Gilly?”