Текст книги "Earth Logic"

Автор книги: Marks Laurie

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“I feel like my head has been broken. When that happened the first time, I wanted to sleep all the time. But the Sainnites could not withstand the intelligence of my dreams.” Zanja got up rather stiffly to take a close look at the cards. She did not feel intelligent, but the cards’ meaning seemed clear as light, distinct as a voice speaking loudly in an empty room. “Why must I die? Here lies the owl, myself, beset by the past, by the Laughing Man, by war and truth, by unhealed wounds. I cannot fly under that weight, and only death can lift it from me.”

Emil said, “How should your death be accomplished? There I am, of course, the Man on the Hill, who will send you on a journey to the underworld. The Pyre belongs there, but it’s shared with the next pile, so I put the flame card there, to signify transformation as well as insight, and the raven card, which we say is the carrier of truth and you say is death. Your soul only will be consumed; your vacant body will survive, to be filled again somehow by your god. My duty is to empty you; and the card that signifies ceremonials suggests I am to enact your death through ritual.”

Medric said, seriously for once, “Call it by another name, define it as we like, it is still death, and not merely a metaphor. As for the future …” Medric took the owl from the first pile and moved it to the last. “Death‑becomes‑Life: for Karis, who will step through a door; for the Sainnites, who will be subject to the flame. Past‑Becomes‑Future: the old G’deon, I think this means. Harald, who first refused to destroy us Sainnites when it would have been easy to do so. The three of us always assumed it was to keep Shaftali from becoming destroyers, but here we have a card of preservation, which suggests that for all the evil the Sainnites have done, something about us is worthwhile. But the three of us have not named that thing, have we?”

“I have two names,” said Emil. “One is Medric, one is Karis. Oh, I mustn’t forget that cook in the woods. And many more Sainnites whose names I don’t yet know.”

In the silence, they could hear the ravens making a racket in the apple orchard, not warning of another neighbor’s approach, but uttering the harsh shouts of raucous welcome. Emil leaned half his body out the window, shading his eyes from the glare of sun. “I think there’s five ravens now. Yes, I see Norina and J’han together coming up the hill. He’s looking more than a little footsore, as if he never paused to rest during his entire trip from south to north. And Norina is as I’d expect her to be.” He drew his body back into the room.

“Emil… !” Zanja stopped herself, embarrassed that she sounded so beseeching.

But he said, “Medric and I will attempt to explain all this to them.”

Medric seemed inclined to object, but Emil gave him a look so grim that Medric followed him reluctantly out, glancing back at Zanja with an expression of comical terror.

Long before Emil thought to shout at the ravens to send for Norina and J’han, the ravens must have told them to come home and orchestrated their meeting along the way as well. Through the window, Zanja watched as Emil spoke, J’han wept, and Norina raged. She listened as they came into the house and, in the kitchen, Emil built up the fire and hung the teakettle. She went into the kitchen when it seemed the leading edge of the storm was past, but she was not surprised when Norina gave her a look she rather would have avoided, and commented, “So now you have finally found an excuse for suicide.”

Zanja said flatly, “I do not want to die.”

Apparently convinced and at a loss, Norina sat silently on a stool. Zanja had to turn away to escape that disconcerting, unrelenting gaze. Medric abstractedly wiped out the dusty teacups, and J’han looked bleakly around himself, seeking the daughter whose absence left the house achingly silent. His heavy pack, loaded with medicines and instruments of surgery, squatted in the corner, but J’han seemed unable to sit down.

Norina said quietly, “J’han, Karis will not keep Leeba from you.”

“But she iskeeping me from her!” J’han accepted a cup of tea from Emil, but did not seem to know what to do with it.

“You promised Leeba you’d be home by late summer, and she knows the seasons now, so she will not give Karis a moment’s peace.” Norina accepted a cup, sipped cautiously, and added to him, “The less you have to do with this fire blood business, the better. Perhaps you should leave right away, and ask that the ravens show you the way to Leeba. And be insistent.”

“Name of Shaftal,” said Emil, “the poor man is exhausted–”

“If Karis is angry, let’s make certain there’s one person she can’t be angry with. J’han, you think these fire bloods all have lost their minds?”

He looked surprised, for he was incapable of being so judgmental. But then he said, “Yes. All three of them at once. All right, I’ll go.” He swallowed his tea, and Emil went to get him some money. J’han fetched clean clothes and kissed them all good‑bye, Zanja twice, and was going out the door when he paused and said, “But what will I tell Karis if I find her? I am utterly confounded.”

“Oh!” Medric got hastily to his feet and fetched the book box from the parlor. Its pointed warnings to be careful with the contents were obscured by the twine Medric had used to secure it for its journey. “Just give this to her, and tell her to read it.”

“What is it?”

“A book, of course. It will tell her what she needs to know. You’ll see.”

Standing in the doorway, Zanja watched J’han, bowed under his heavy load, limp down the track to the apple orchard, where the apples were starting to become visible as they blushed red. She could hear, distantly, the swinging chant of the people cutting hay, who made a noise all day long so as to know where each other was without having to look. The sky was soft, hazy with warmth. The rich land moved languidly toward harvest.

In the orchard, J’han paused to shout at the ravens in their tree. Apparently hearing no answer, he continued down the road. He was out of sight when one of the ravens lifted up to follow him.

Zanja went back into the kitchen. Emil, frowning absently, sipped his tea. Medric, now that he had started to dust the dishes, was methodically emptying the cupboard. Norina, still on her stool, made a concentrated study of the blank wall.

It was possible, Zanja realized suddenly, that Norina might not ever see husband or daughter again. As though Zanja had spoken her thoughts out loud–and she might as well have, for the Truthken would know them soon–Norina turned to her and raised an eyebrow. Zanja said, “Don’t youthink that we’ve lost our minds?”

“The three of you have always seemed mad to me.” Norina added dryly, “It’s kind of you to pity me, Zanja. But it’s also a waste of energy. Unlike you, I know exactly what I’m doing and why.”

“But you’re supporting us and not opposing us?”

Norina smiled, very slightly. “How do you know I’m not opposing you?” she said.

Chapter Twelve

Before the Sainnites introduced smoke addiction to Shaftal, the land had surely not been entirely free of ne’er‑do‑wells. Yet, examining the wretched woman who had rowed herself in through the water gate in a leaky old boat, Clement felt the vague guilt she always felt in the presence of a smoke user. The people who know such things had informed Clement of the shocking amount a smoke user must pay nowadays for the drug, and Clement lay out on the table enough money to give her guest a week without worry. The half‑starved woman’s fingers twitched eagerly.

“Tell me what you know,” Clement said.

The woman leaned forward, and Clement simultaneously leaned away from her stink. “They said the G’deon was coming,” the woman said earnestly.

“I’ve been hearing that story for years,” Clement said. “If there were a G’deon, then why would she linger so long? If she bears the power of Shaftal in her flesh, then why hasn’t she laid her hands on me, or on you, and done whatever it is G’deons do? Kill, heal, whatever.” Clement put her hand out to gather up the coins. “You’re wasting my time.”

“One of them saw her. Talked to her.”

Clement held up a single small coin, pinched between her fingertips. “One of them? What is this group?”

“Death‑and‑Life, they call themselves.” The woman watched avidly as Clement lay the coin onto the table and pushed it towards her. A swift snatch, and the coin was gone.

Another coin: “And who is this one the G’deon spoke to?”

“Their leader, of course!” Seeing that Clement would not relinquish the coin, the woman added reluctantly, “His name is Willis.”

“Willis? What kind of name is that?”

The woman tightened her lips until Clement handed her a coin and held up another. “A South Hill name, I hear.”

“What does he look like?”

“Brown hair, muscular.”

“Like everyone in Shaftal. You never saw him, did you?”

“These were just people in the streets! How was I to know if I saw him or not? They gave us food, but only if we ate it while they watched. No money. The bastards.”

“No money,” Clement echoed, closing the coin in her fist.

“They say he was a vagabond,” said the woman desperately. “A vagabond from South Hill. And then he had a vision. How many people like that are there in the world? The South Hillers look after their own!”

Clement grunted and let her have the coin. She would send an inquiry to South Hill, which was too far away for a casual journey, and see if the name Willis was known to the garrison there. Perhaps she might even get a decent description. “What did this supposed G’deon say to Willis?”

“Ha! A lot of nonsense, I guess. That she was coming, of course. That she had chosen him to announce her coming and to mobilize her people. That there would be war, and you Sainnites would all die at her hand.”

“At her hand? How?”

“Well, not from pleasure!” The woman leered at her in a dreadful display of gums and occasional teeth. “By fire,” she said, “and plague, and floods. By mountains falling on your heads and trees crushing you under their weight. By freezing wind and heavy snow and–of course–by bloody battles.”

Sweating in her filthy uniform, Clement felt a chill. Wasn’t this in fact how Shaftal was killing them, quietly, steadily, irresistibly? She said, “Such things happen naturally in this bloody, bitter, hostile land.”

“Is that a question?” the woman asked. “You expect an answer?‘

Clement contemptuously tossed the coin to her. “Yes, do tell me why I should be afraid of this supposed G’deon’s supposed threat.”

The smoke user said, “Because the supposed G’deon can make these things happen onlyto you.”

“I’ve heard enough nonsense,” said Clement. “This soldier will show you out.”

But after the smoke user had gone, her stink remained. Clement had left the windows in Cadmar’s quarters closed to retain the cool of morning, but now she flung them open, and looked out over the wrecked garrison. As she watched, the crazy, tilted remains of a building collapsed in a cloud of ashes and dirt. Two months after the fire, debris was still being cleared, even as, here and there, a few buildings gradually rose, the construction fraught with error and delay. Ellid’s rebuilding strategy was dictated by the rapid changes of Shaftal’s seasons. On the foundations of the burned buildings, new timber frames were constructed, and on those went the roofs, so that the walls and windows could be built during the rain of autumn and even the snow of winter.

By freezing winds and heavy snow we’ll die,thought Clement, remembering the smoke‑user’s hollow, ravaged voice. To this drug‑addicted informant, there had been no reason to make a distinction between the acts of an individual, this supposed G’deon, and the acts of nature. Gilly had more than once called the abilities passed from G’deon to successor as the power of Shaftal, and what was Shaftal’s power, if not the very powers the smoke user listed, of fire and plague and generally rotten weather? Powers of irresistible destruction, whether slow or sudden. Looking out at the evidence of the burned garrison, remembering the horrors of that night, Clement saw the full scope of her own lingering despair.

The summer was already two‑thirds passed. At the main gate, a crowd of witnesses maintained their vigil, but their numbers were few enough now that the siege gate had been opened, and it was usually possible for a guarded wagon, or a company of soldiers, to pass in and out. Clement went out a postern gate, though, alone on horseback. The bored gate guard, an old man whose job it was to ring the bell for help if the iron‑banded gate happened to be assaulted, had no choice but to let Clement through. No doubt her exit would be reported to Ellid, who later would berate Clement as much as she dared. Clement went out into a lavender twilight that suffused the narrow streets of Watfield with an unearthly blend of vivid light and purple shadow. Late shoppers, hurrying home with baskets of bread and eggs, pressed themselves to walls decorated with blooming vines to let her pass. Drinkers in taverns, who escaped the outdoors into the cooling streets, looked at her askance and, scowling, nudged their neighbors.

By the time Clement reached Alrin’s pristine townhouse, the shadows had nearly overcome the light. In the spotless parlor, a painted screen concealed the cold fireplace, and the discreetly drawn summer curtains billowed delicately in the evening breeze. Here Alrin sat with her feet on a stool, dressed in clothing as light and loose as her billowing curtains. Her gravid belly, her rich breasts, these were discreetly displayed by the light cloth. She offered her hand, apologizing that she did not rise. Weak‑kneed, Clement bowed over her cool, delicately scented fingers, and said in a rough voice, “I trust that you are well.”

“I miss your company, of course.”

“Of course,” said Clement, trying not to sound skeptical. With the garrison tight as a lockbox and every last soldier working dawn to dusk on rebuilding, Alrin’s business must have suffered terribly. Clement did not quite know what to make of the message, passed on verbally through the gate guards, inviting her blandly to supper. Was Alrin resorting to unseemly recruitment? Yet Clement had come, and had even, with some effort, taken something resembling a bath, and put on a uniform that wasn’t as filthy as the others.

Alrin, never awkward, created topics of conversation from thin air. Over hot buttered bread and deliciously vinegared vegetables, she pretended interest convincingly as Clement obliged her with an account of the garrison attack. Over fowl in aspic and jellied fruits as lovely to look at as they were to taste, Alrin entertainingly described a disastrously bad concert she had recently attended. Over peaches and cake they both praised the fine weather and expressed hopes that it would be a late autumn. Clement turned down brandy, accepted tea, and sat sipping it by the window, stunned by such a quantity of tasty food after so many months of deprivation. Alrin asked her for the fourth time if she had eaten enough, and if she didn’t want a few biscuits or a nice piece of cheese.

Clement said, “If I ate any more I’d fall unconscious. It’s very kind of you to rescue me for a few hours–but the commander will go into a panic if I don’t return soon.”

The courtesan smoothed the cloth over her pregnant belly.

Clement, who had only observed pregnancy from a distance, caught herself examining Alrin’s round, taut abdomen with fascination. Alrin said complacently, “My last child.”

Clement glanced up at her face. “How do you know?” she asked. She had heard that Shaftali people knew some methods for preventing pregnancy besides the obvious one practiced by the Sainnites, of simply forbidding sexual congress between men and women. Clement herself felt no particular desire to do what men and women do with each other, but soldiers of both sexes would bless her if she could learn the Shaftali secret.

Unfortunately, Alrin’s answer was unrevealing. “You haven’t heard that I’m leaving Watfield in the spring? Marga wants to move south, where the winters aren’t so hard. So I’m going into the window and bottle business, purchasing a glassworks.”

“I hadn’t heard,” said Clement. “Windows and bottles?” she added, trying not to sound overly doubtful.

Alrin said gravely, “I do understand business.”

“Of course you do. You’ll be missed. I wish you well.”

“Thank you. Marga and I will be very preoccupied with running the enterprise, we expect. This child–it’s unfortunate, but we can’t possibly raise it. It will go to its father, as is proper.”

Quite belatedly, Clement realized, as Marga came in to clear the table, that the stout woman was not Alrin’s housekeeper, but her wife.

“If the father is interested,” said Alrin, as Marga left with a loaded tray.

Clement, feeling dreadfully embarrassed, poured both of them more tea to save Alrin the trouble of standing up, and also to give herself a chance to recover her own composure. “I heard there were several interested parties,” she said.

“Oh, well,” said Alrin vaguely. “Sometimes fate intervenes.” She accepted the teacup with a gracious smile. “It is presumptuous of me to even suggest you might help me a little. But I valued our friendship, Clem–”

Clement, though she was commenting to herself on Alrin’s acting ability, felt a brief surge of desire.

“–and I dare hope you might sometimes think of me fondly,” continued Alrin. With the teacup at her lips, she gave Clement a steady, suggestive look.

Clement said, “All officers are lonely. You gave me something I wanted, and I did appreciate it. Is there something I can do for you?” Of course there would be–Alrin had not invited her to supper out of compassion because the people in the garrison had nothing but slop to eat.

“A great man like the general must want a legacy,” Alrin said.

“Cadmar?” said Clement. “Good gods!” And she began to laugh, and could not stop herself. “I beg your pardon,” she managed to gasp at last. “This child is his, then?”

“It might well be,” said Alrin stiffly. “As you know perfectly well.”

Clement wiped her eyes. “I’ll mention it to him. But I can tell you now that you’d better find another candidate.” She set down her teacup and stood up. “I’m sorry I offended you. Thank you again for the delicious meal.”

“Must you go?” said Alrin. She offered her hand for Clement to clasp. “Must you?” she said again, pointedly.

But Clement’s flush of desire had evaporated. She bid Alrin farewell. She’d never see her again, probably, and she certainly would not even mention this absurd conversation to Cadmar when he returned. But it would be great fun to recount to Gilly.

Five days later, a bugle signal at the main gate announced Cadmar’s return to Watfield. Clement was in the middle of dividing, replanting, and top dressing her mother’s flower bulbs. She went down to the main gate with horse manure caked on her knees and her pockets bulging with bulbs. There was a scuffle outside the gate as soldiers forced back the crowd to allow a clear passage for Cadmar, who glared with fierce dignity from the back of his magnificent, nervous horse. Once or twice, Clement spotted Gilly, gray and drawn, mounted on a sturdy brown nag. Both he and his horse looked rather bored, though they were tangled in a knot of escorting soldiers who were busy with their clubs. She had missed that ugly man! When they were in, and the soldiers had gotten the gate shut, then the soldiers on the walls remembered belatedly to cheer the general’s arrival, though the angry shouts of the crowd outside the gate were louder, and less demoralized. Ellid had arrived, and stepped forward to make the official greeting. Cadmar dismounted and clasped the garrison commander’s hand with every appearance of geniality. But Clement heard him say, “Shoot the rabble.”

“General,” said Clement, stepping forward hastily. “We’ve tolerated these people’s presence–better a few people at the gate than a roused city. And the weather will drive them away soon enough.”

“Tolerate?”Cadmar’s gaze was without comprehension. “Are you a farmer now, Lieutenant‑General?” He wrinkled his nose at the manure stink she carried with her.

“I beg your pardon, General. You’ll find your quarters ready for you. And the stable has been rebuilt, so your horse will also be comfortable.”

Looking past his shoulder, she caught Ellid’s gaze. The commander looked rather pale, but at Clement’s glance she gave a slight nod. Clement soothed Cadmar until he allowed that he was tired, and let himself be convinced to go to his quarters and be looked after by his long‑suffering aides. When he was gone, Clement said to Ellid, “Give the citizens fair warning first, and then shoot over their heads. They’ll run out of shooting range, at least, and then you can send the guard out to disperse them.”

Clement turned and found that Gilly had been helped from his horse and was leaning unsteadily on his cane, observing her with a rather red‑eyed, dubious expression. She offered him her arm, and he leaned on her heavily. “The horsewill be comfortable?” he rasped, apparently in the throes of a summer cold.

Clement said, “Actually, the horses are uncomfortably crowded because the stable is now the barracks for the soldiers displaced by Cadmar’s arrival. We’ve cleared the soldiers out of your room, too, and I think I’d better put you to bed. You’re uglier than ever,” she added affectionately.

“You’re crabbier,” said Gilly hoarsely. “For a moment I thought you were going to clout him.”

“What does he think, that I’ve saved a clean uniform to wear for his arrival? The laundry hasn’t been rebuilt, and I gave Ellid half my clothing, since hers was burned.”

“You’ve been free of Cadmar for two months. You’ve got nothing to complain about.”

They moved down the road, Gilly leaning heavily on her arm, at more of a shuffle than a walk. The horses were led past them in a clatter of shod hooves on cobblestone. Behind them, Clement could hear the gate captain shouting orders. “I wouldn’t clout Cadmar,” Clement said. “His fists are twice the size of mine.”

Gilly chuckled, then coughed wretchedly.

Gunshots. Clement flinched. Fearful cries. She said loudly, “What is written on those pieces of cloth those people wrap themselves with? Did you notice?”

“It was names.”

Someone was screaming. Apparently, injuries had not been entirely avoided. “Gods of hell,” Clement muttered.

“Some veteran you are,” said Gilly dryly.

“Why don’t they give up and get busy breeding more children? It doesn’t take any particular effort!”

Gilly looked at her. “It’s not children they want,” he grated. “It’s those particular children. No, never mind–you’ll never understand it.”

She took him to his room and put him to bed. She told him about Alrin’s attempt to sell her child to Cadmar, but she could not remember why it had ever seemed funny.

Chapter Thirteen

In those days before autumn mud, Norina Truthken observed some remarkable things, and commented on them to nobody. She was famous for her acerbic tongue and quick temper: brutal weapons in the control of a subtle mind that no one underestimated more than once. In those days, she found herself exercising that subtlety without the weaponry, and though she saw much worth commenting on and even criticizing, she merely watched in silence.

Dust gathered in their half‑abandoned house; what vegetables had survived in the neglected garden went ungathered; their storerooms that should have been filling up for the long winter lay empty. Wherever Karis had gone, she had taken the household concerns with her, and had a neighbor visited their home he would have concluded that they were soon to become burdens on their community.

Karis also remained silent: present in her ravens, but speechless. She had removed herself beyond Norina’s ability to know her truths, yet that very act of removal signified to Norina a truth that the fire bloods could not perceive. They saw rejection and refusal, and perhaps even Karis herself thought that her absence meant anger. Fire bloods see in the heat of passion and imagination, and air bloods see coldly, clearly. Sometimes that dispassion was a distinct advantage.

Emil wrestled with himself in a way that was painful to watch. As commander of South Hill Company he had regularly sent friends to their deaths, but he and Zanja had an intimacy that could not be described as simple friendship, and to kill her with his own hand would kill him as well. This Norina saw, and as she watched him work his slow way to acceptance of this unacceptable, mad plan, she knew that in the end to fulfill his role would literally break his heart. Yet Norina held her tongue.

Medric, as always, was more enigmatic. Flippant and sorrowful by turns, he read his books of history frantically, looking for a fact or story that would trigger his insight and give him the broad vision that might explain their actions to themselves. So seers always spend their lives, seeking a perfect understanding that inevitably eludes them; some finally fall into madness, while others realize at last that their purpose lies not in the unachievable goal, but in the seeking of it. Medric was terribly young, still in his mid‑twenties, and perhaps he was too young to bear such a personal burden for the hopes of his friends. He grew haggard from forgetting to eat and sleep, and Emil and Zanja were too preoccupied to look after him. Norina started bringing him bowls of porridge and supervising while he ate, though he complained about her miserable cooking. She watched him flounder like a fish caught in the jaws of destiny, and wondered whether he would change his shape before he was swallowed. She made no comment, though.

Zanja waschanging, and this was the most remarkable thing Norina found to watch. If ever Norina, in all her skeptical life, had been tempted to believe in divine intervention, it was during those weeks of harvest as she watched Zanja’s metamorphosis. Zanja, oblivious to the changing season, appeared to be writing a book. Norina glanced at her work one day, and found that it was a collection of Leeba’s favorite stories, mixed in with other stories that Norina had never heard: more complex stories, stories that Leeba would love in a few months, or a year, or several years. One of these was an exceedingly strange tale of a woman who murdered herself to save her daughter’s life, and how her daughter never forgave her for it. Norina could imagine reading that story to Leeba one day, though she could not imagine how the world around them might have changed by then.

Except for her work on the book for Leeba, Zanja seemed–not aimless, for she was too quiet for that–but distant, waiting. Examining her, Norina saw a mindless preoccupation, like a caterpillar starting to weave a silken coffin around itself, or a bear getting ready to bury itself in a winter’s grave. But that peaceful purposefulness was always threatened by a pain as intense as Emil’s. Zanja called herself a crosser of boundaries: her gods had named her so. And every boundary crossing, she said, was a death. So she was accustomed to dying, and knew how to go about it. But she who had endured such terrible losses in her life could not endure any more, and so she kept pretending to herself that when she died, her lover, her child, and her dearest friends would not be lost to her. It was an extraordinary act of self‑deception: the kind of magic that fire bloods excel at. Norina was there when that self‑deception failed, and Zanja began to weep.

She wept for days. And then she took the dagger Karis had forged for her, and laid it on the bed she and Karis had shared all these years, and she roughly bound the pages of her book with a leather seam and set the book aside, and, as the apple harvest began, she started to go out walking, from before sunrise to past sunset. Every night, when Norina saw her at supper, she saw a woman who had become a little less familiar. And still Norina did not talk about what she saw, to Zanja or to anyone.

A letter came from J’han, much dirtied by its hand‑to‑hand journey, that told of births attended, bones mended, and lives ended, and finished with a sentence that his raven had begun to talk to him, occasionally. Norina wondered if she would ever see him, or her daughter, again. So even she lived through the harvest season in a state of loss, but she was never bewildered by it. She had never hesitated to sacrifice passion to principle; she was an air blood and she knew no more rational way to live. So, like Zanja, she was uniquely qualified for the task that lay before her.

Even as Zanja began the process of transforming herself, Medric and Emil began to discuss, painfully at first but with increasing fascination, how to make that transformation permanent. Fire logic is the logic of insight, of seeing in symbols and stories and events more meanings than an entirely sane person could see. To turn that seeing into an act of magic was rarely done, and there were no rules for how to do it. As the two scholars talked, their plans inevitably became convoluted. To enact in ritual a symbolic understanding was complicated. Soon, as Norina expected, they asked her to take a role in the ritual, and so she was able to start making plans of her own.

Zanja said that it must not happen at home, and so it must be done outside, and since they could not do fire magic without a fire, that meant it must happen before the rains began. Because the ravens no longer even offered weather reports, Norina kept an eye on the behavior of the local earth talents. Earth witches were rare, but every farmhold had people with earth talent, who, like J’han, had earned the reputation of knowing how to do things right, whose mundane advice about building and planting was often sought and always followed. When Norina noticed that the work of harvest had become frenetic, the four of them could delay their terrible act no longer.

The last day of Zanja’s life began with brilliant sunshine: a light that blinded them as they walked eastward, for the sun no longer rose quickly as it had during summer, and instead hovered along the horizon for half the morning. The four of them set forth in the dazzle of sunrise and stark, sweeping shadows that twisted away from the sideways lift of the sun. They were hailed from an apple orchard where battered baskets of red and green apples clustered under the yellowing trees, awaiting the wagon that would take them to the cider mill. Their pockets were filled with apples by the friendly, busy farmers, and later, a girl ran down from a dairy to give them a wedge of cheese and ask about the weather. Emil sighed under the burden of neighborliness, but Zanja crunched an apple as she walked and took the slender, beautiful blade out of her boot to cut them all pieces of cheese. She was as calm and remote as Norina had ever seen her and beneath the unruffled surface of her visage lay the drowned corpse of her vital mind.