Текст книги "Fire Logic "
Автор книги: Marks Laurie
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I should have put up a fight and gotten myself killed, she thought, now that it was too late.
Willis struck her. She fell, and the earth did not catch her. She fell into the darkness, into the vortex of that catastrophic year.
A grinning Sainnite forced her to watch what he did to her, even though she could not feel it.
The Paladins lifted her up, and he struck her again.
He cut off her toes, one by one. His companions held her head by the hair, so she could not look away.
“Tell me where you have been!” he cried. He raised his fist.
A war horse’s hoof struck her in the head. She fell.
Ransel jerked her up by the hair. His familiar, battered war blade shone in a light too vivid to be sunlight.
“You are a traitor!” he cried, triumphant. The Paladins, startled and bewildered, or angry and jeering, gathered around.
“You are no longer one of the people!” Ransel cried. The Ashawala’i people stood silent, accepting his judgment.
He struck her, and she fell. She did not know anymore who was her brother, or her companion at arms, or her enemy. She fell, and she fell.
She opened her eyes, but could scarcely see. Upon bare ground, she lay bleeding, unwatched. It was a contemptuous inattention, for they certainly knew that she could not flee: she had no toes; her back was broken. Ransel had cut off her hair, thus rejecting her from the tribe. Why had they not brought her the suicide drink? The Ashawala’i had given all other outcasts that mercy: why not her?
She felt blindly for her weapons. The dagger was gone, and the pistols. But her small knife was still tucked into her blood‑smeared boot.
She held the blade to her own throat, but could not cut deeply enough. She began to weep. “Lord Death, now I choose you.” Her fingers were painted with bright red ink. She wrote a message to him upon the shining metal of the blade. Then someone noticed, and with an exclamation snatched the knife out of her hand.
At the height of a stroke, Karis dropped her hammer. The red hot piece of iron fell from the tongs, and those also clattered onto the stone floor. A boy rushed over with the water bucket, but she dropped to her knees upon the stone floor, and swept her hand across it to clear the debris. With a scrap of iron she scratched a line upon the stone, then another crossing it, then a third.
“That’s the Raven,” said the boy helpfully, water sloshing out over his feet.
“What?”
“That’s the Raven glyph. Isn’t it?” The boy peered down at the marks she had made. “Your mastersign!” he said, apparently trying his best to make sense of her crazy behavior. “The messenger of good and bad fortune. It just came to you, right? And you wanted to write it down before you forgot, right? And now you can be a forgemaster, and you’ll take me to work for you?”
“The Raven.” Karis looked again at the marks she had drawn on the floor. “Something has gone terribly wrong.”
Zanja lay paralyzed in a bloodstained hay cart. At a distant mountain peak, the moon lifted her pale face to the starry sky. Except for the occasional calls of the soldiers on watch duty, the Sainnite camp lay silent. Zanja watched the sky, able only to wait, now that all choices had been taken away from her.
A slight sound made her turn her head, and a slim shadow separated from the darkness: lithe and silent, grinning teeth shining with moonlight. “Oh my brother,” she breathed. “Why do you risk your life for me? I am already dead, but you can still live.“
He came to her, though, silently laughing his raven’s laugh. “You trickster,” she said. “You have come to take my life in mercy at last.”
Yes. His blade was in his hand. She smiled at him, her courageous friend. “Come, then,” she said. And then a Samnite uttered a warning shout, and they rose up and killed him.
It had happened again. It would happen again, again, and again, while she lay hopelessly screaming, and Ransel’s sturdy heart pumped his lifeblood onto the ground. Over and over, he came to deliver the mercy blow, and over and over they killed him.
A heavy door grated open. There was a terrible blaze of light and a flapping shadow, like a big bird’s wings. “Come out of there,” Willis said.
“She’s been unusually quiet the last few hours,” another voice said doubtfully.
Emil’s voice, low and quiet, said, “She has been shouting and you left her unattended? She has a serious injury!”
For Emil, quiet meant angry, angry almost beyond speech. “I’m going in after her,” he said. But Zanja had managed to get to her feet by then, and shakily walked into the light. Emil was just a shadow she could see even with her eyes closed, and surely she was no more than a shadow to him, a being of the Underworld, a house habitated by memory.
“Give me your hand,” he said.
He should not be merciful to her, or he would die. But she took the hand he reached down to her, and let him haul her out of the darkness, into the dusty, milling chaos of a hot and sunny farmyard.
Through a blaze of tears brought on by sunlight, she saw farmers in their summertime work clothes, come to see who had been locked in their cellar and why. She saw each of Emil’s lieutenants, who had never, even at a funeral, seemed so grim. She saw many other Paladins, some who had jeered at her, some who might eventually have become her friends. All of them stared at her, and at the dignified man she’d had the temerity to call her brother, not so long ago.
His rage was masked, but she felt it like knife on bone. “You have made friends with a Sainnite,” he said.
She knew what she had to do. “Yes, sir.”
“And you went out the other night to meet this person?”
“Yes, I did.”
“What for?”
This time, he would not die. He would not help her as his enemies lay in wait. Better for him to hate her than to die because of her. She said, “I went to lead an attack on Willis’s unit, but they said they were not ready.”
His hand rested on his pistol. This close to her, he would get a good shot, and even in anger would shoot well, kindly, remembering his affection even as he knew it was betrayed. But then he sighed, and all was lost. “I know that is a lie,” he said.
A voice spoke behind Zanja. “She intends her lie as a gift.”
Zanja did not have to turn to know who had spoken. A black shadow flapped upon the ground in front of her. Her frail courage faltered.
Emil said, his voice still soft with anger, “A misguided gift.”
Zanja said, “Sir, it is my calling to transgress, but it is my duty to cause no harm by that transgression. Let me do my duty.”
Emil gazed into her eyes, expressionless, unblinking. And then he turned away, to speak to his lieutenants. “This matter will not turn out the way any of us might expect. It seems ill‑advised to do this so publicly, when so much damage already has been done to our community.”
Willis said, “No,” as though he already was the commander. This was, certainly, his spectacle.
Emil smiled oddly, without amusement. “Well then, at least let’s get into the shade, for courtesy to our guest.” He gestured toward an arbor of flowering vines, where there were some inviting benches in the shade.
Zanja turned then, and looked into the scarred, sun‑browned face of Norina Truthken. “What are you doing here? It is not your business.”
Norina said, “Who did you think would come?”
Though Zanja had lived with her until four months ago, she’d had no idea that Norina was pregnant. Even the heavy clothing of winter could not have concealed it now. Though her dust‑stained clothing and red‑rimmed eyes suggested a heroic journey had brought her here so quickly, her jutting belly hinted that at any moment she might deliver a child. Just the thought of her as a mother made Zanja’s head hurt.
Karis’s raven rode upon her shoulder. It was a most uncanny sight.
Zanja could barely walk the short distance to the arbor. The bullet wound in her leg had not healed at all as she lay helpless in the Underworld. At least she could escape the sun and sit upon a bench, though everyone else except Norina remained standing. A man‑at‑arms stood beside Norina, bristling with weapons like a brigand.
Willis began, “I found Zanja’s bed empty shortly after dark, and–”
Emil said, “I know what happened, Willis.”
“But the Truthken–”
“If Madam Truthken wishes to know something, she may ask.”
The watchfulness of Norina’s gaze, and the black bird on her shoulder, hardly seemed calculated to set anyone at ease. She said, “Lieutenant–Willis is your name?”
Willis jumped, and Zanja felt something, the faintest prickle of anticipation. “Madam Truthken,” he said belligerently.
“You have not told the truth.”
“I am not lying! Anyone who was there will confirm–”
“You wanted Zanja dead, and were desperate for an excuse. That is what you have not said.”
His face went white, but his chin came up. “I admit I had my men abandon her in a firefight. But I did that because I knew she was a traitor, and Emil would not see it, just as he will not see it now. I did it to save the company.”
Norina gazed at him, expressionless. “So you named yourself commander.”
Dazzled and bewildered by the vivid shine of truth in the midst of this nightmare, Zanja said, “He acted under Mabin’s command.”
She heard the faintest sound from Emil: a grunt of pain or surprise.
Norina’s gaze on Willis’s face never wavered. “She says the truth?”
“Yes,” Willis said, with more apparent pride than fear.
Norina blinked, once, and turned to Emil.
Emil said in a strangled voice, “What did she offer you?”
But Willis, seeming to think he had the upper hand, said loftily, “That’s between me and the councilor.”
The bloody fool would get command of South Hill Company. Zanja could feel no more horror; the betrayals had accumulated until she hardly noticed them. But the look on Emil’s face was worse than her own pain.
Norina stood up. “Commander, I need to speak to you alone.”
They stepped aside. The five lieutenants, two of whom Zanja scarcely knew, shuffled their feet and muttered to each other. The man‑at‑arms stood stolid as a plowhorse, but his gaze never ceased to flick from one person to the next. Zanja ached in every part of her body. She felt her face with her fingers, to find her eyelids swollen, her lip split, her cheekbone raw and bruised. Her leg hurt with a dull and insinuating pain. She kept forgetting where she was, and the faces of the lieutenants and the observers kept changing, from Paladin to Sainnite to Ashawala’i.
Norina and Emil returned. Emil said somberly, “I will communicate with Mabin on what to do with you, Willis, but meanwhile you are relieved of duty.”
Willis’s face turned red with anger. “And the traitor? You’ll let her go unpunished, of course!”
“We have not yet addressed the problem of Zanja,” said Emil evenly. “But I have relevant information that I doubt any of you have yet heard. The Shaftali prisoners were set free from Wilton garrison last night. Some of those from Annis’s family came direct to me and told me about how they’d been freed by a Sainnite man, who unlocked the doors and escorted them safely out of the garrison and out of the city itself, all under cover of darkness.”
“A Sainnite?” repeated Willis in disbelief.
“Yes. In fact, the freed prisoners carried a letter to me from him.” Emil turned to Zanja. “What did you tell this Medric, the night Willis found your bed empty?”
Zanja said, though it took a great effort, “I never saw him that night.”
Emil glanced at Norina. “Madam Truthken?”
“Truth,” Norina said.
“What were you intending to tell him?”
“I was going to bring him to you, to have you meet him.”
“Truth,” Norina said.
“Why?”
“He wanted to join the Paladins.”
Norina said, “I can’t judge the truth of hearsay.”
“Ah, yes. But Zanja believes what he told her to be true?”
“I can’t be certain, Commander. She wants it to be true, but for this very reason she does not trust her judgment–and for other reasons as well,“ Norma added, as though she were reading words being written as she spoke. ”I think she is unbalanced. How long has it been since she ate, or drank?“
“Just two days,” Willis said defensively. “Maybe three.”
“Wounded and bleeding. And your man says he heard her screaming.”
“What matter? She’s a traitor!”
“You believe that she’s a traitor,” Norina corrected him. “The truth, however, has yet to be determined, and cannot be determined when she is scarcely even in her right mind. Commander, I am here for my own reasons, but since you have asked me to arbitrate I must insist that you at least get her some water.”
Emil sent someone for water, and while that was being brought, Norina took a cloth bag out of the pocket of her doublet and tossed it to Zanja. It contained some kind of old dried fruit, gone hard as rawhide and practically as tasteless. Zanja held a piece in her mouth, and as it softened and dissolved a sudden clarity came to her: enough at least for her to realize how weak she was, how worn out with despair and horror. With the second piece the pain in her leg was eased, and with the third she sat erect and pushed some loose strands of hair from her face, and thanked the girl who had brought a dipper of water for her.
She said, “I met Medric on Fire Night. And though I was and am still half afraid that he might be engaged in some kind of elaborate trick, I took the risk of talking to him, because I thought the benefits could be great. It’s he who told me that the Sainnites were going to attack us at Fen Overlook.”
There certainly were some huge gaps in this story she’d told, but Emil at least seemed able to fill them in. He glanced at Norina, who said, “Clearly the truth.”
“What have you told him in return?” Emil asked.
“He asked only to meet you, Emil, and I told him nothing.”
“Truth,” Norina said.
Willis exploded. “What does it matter! She spoke to a Sainnite! She did it in secret!”
There was still something Zanja might do. She said, “Medric is a better man than you, Willis.”
Norina said, “Zanja, be quiet.”
“He said he would prove his trustworthiness to me, and he has proven it. Meanwhile, you have proven that nothing matters to you but your own ambition.”
Norina said, “Silence her!”
But Zanja cried, “There is just one traitor here, Madam Truthken!”
With all her strength, she flung herself at Emil’s weak knee, and he toppled like a rotten tree at exactly the moment of the pistol blast.
Zanja lay across him, gasping, terrified that she might have flung him into the line of fire rather than away from it. Then, Emil raised a hand and gently laid it on the back of her head. “Quite a display of prescience. What in Shaftal’s name do you think you’re doing?”
She said, for his ears only, “That man just guaranteed that he would never command South Hill Company.”
His chest heaved: was he laughing? She could not tell, he was otherwise so solemn. “Careful!” Linde had rushed over and seemed ready to disentangle them by flinging Zanja wildly out of the way. “Calm down, Linde, I’m not hurt. But she already was injured and it’s only worse now.”
Linde lifted Zanja and set her on the bench, then helped his commander to his feet. Linde’s face was white with shock, but not so white as Willis’s, who half stood and half hung within the grips of the other lieutenant and Norina’s man‑at‑arms. “I did not aim at Emil,” he said desperately to Norina, who had not moved from where she sat, and if anything seemed uninterested in the chaos before her. “I would never shoot my commander! It was her, the traitor–I lost my temper, is all!”
Emil walked over to him and hit him, a contemptuous blow that scarcely left a mark on Willis’s face, but silenced him effectively enough. Across the yard, that contemptuous blow registered in the faces of a dozen or more people, who although they had not heard what was said, surely could read the language of the scene, like any other staged drama.
“And you think that a man who cannot command himself can command a whole company?” He added, “Madam Truthken, is there a traitor here?”
Zanja felt so strange, so empty, so tired, that she wondered how she could still be present in this strange place. Norina said, “Zanja has merely exercised a fire blood’s usual foolhardiness. As for Willis, it is most ambiguous. Willis meant to shoot Zanja, but he meant it as a blow to you. So in the eyes of the law, perhaps it might be argued that you were his true target. In any case, I would refuse to hear him as Zanja’s accuser, for he only loves the justice that serves his interests, and only sees the Law as a tool to achieve his desires. He is untrustworthy, but technically he is not a traitor.“
“Let Willis go,” Emil said. Willis was released. “Get out of my sight,” Emil added. “And get out of my company. If you want to complain to Councilor Mabin, you are free to do so. The rest of you, please step away. I wish to talk to the Truthken alone.”
Reluctantly, they left. Emil sat heavily on the bench beside Zanja. “This is a fine mess!”
Across the green, Willis had already reached his people, and no doubt he quickly began to explain his version of what they had seen. But they stood back, apparently uncertain whether they wanted to be known to be his supporters any longer.
Norina said quietly, “Shall I leave?”
“If you don’t mind, Truthken, I think it best that I avoid the appearance of conspiring with Zanja and so it would be most useful to me if you remain.” Emil folded his hand and rested his forehead upon them in an attitude of utter weariness. “Zanja–You and I are at cross‑purposes, of course. I am much more interested in saving your life than I am in saving my position. At the same time, you are trying to save my position and seem little interested in saving your life.”
Zanja said, “My brother, you have died for me a hundred times. I could not endure it anymore.”
Ransel looked at her blankly.
“Don’t be a fool,” Zanja implored him. “Every time you try to help me, you die. Do not burden me with the terrible memory, I beg you! If you do not die, you cannot blame me for failing to avenge you.”
Ransel took both her hands in his. “My sister,” he said gently, “the past is done and cannot be changed. Come forth out of the Underworld.”
Emil was holding her hands. He said quietly, “Madam Truthken, this must be the anniversary of the massacre of the Ashawala’i.”
Norina’s eyes narrowed, as though she had been handed a package that might or might not be a gift.
“I think she’s half out of her mind,” he added, “and she certainly cannot recover here. I ask you to take her under your protection, and bring her to a healer.”
Norina stood up. “I will, of course. But first, I think I’d better guarantee that the rogue lieutenant of yours can’t get his forces organized, or we may find it difficult to get safely out of South Hill. I’ll leave my man here, to give you the appearance of propriety. I don’t think any of your people have noticed that he’s deaf.“ She picked up the bag from beside Zanja and gave her a handful of the dried fruit. ”What became of your blades? You don’t know? All right, I’ll find them for you. Is there anything else you own that’s too precious to leave behind? All right, eat that. Come, raven.“
The raven flew to her shoulder, and, gesturing to her man to remain, Norina walked over to the knot of people that had formed around Willis. The knot loosened as Willis’s people stood back to let him face the Truthken on his own. No doubt she would use her substantial powers and authority to make his present and future life as unpleasant as he deserved.
Emil commented, “A formidable woman, even for a Truthken.” He took some folded papers from his doublet’s inside pocket. “My first letter from a seer. He devoted most of it to successfully convincing me to spare your life at any cost. As for the rest, he says he had a dream that the land would recognize him as her son, and so he’s going forth into Shaftal on his own. He wrote that he has left me all his books–had them shipped downriver to a storehouse in Haprin for me to pick up. I feel like I’ve been bequeathed a child by a total stranger.”
Zanja said, “I wish you could have met him. You would have liked him.”
“I admit I find his letter both intelligent and convincing. It’s a very strange sensation to be saying such things about a man who has helped to kill so many of my friends.”
“But he was trapped. When the walls of the House of Lilterwess fell, the Samnites themselves were buried in the rubble. And we all are buried there with them, crushed and suffocating under the stones.”
“Hmm. Now you aretalking treason. Good thing there’s no one but me to hear.” Emil unfolded his letter from Medric again, and Zanja saw how creased and smudged the paper was. This letter had forced Emil to subject it to uneasy and intense scrutiny, and perhaps its contents still were being delivered to him as he glanced at it once again, still seeming uncertain how to read it. “He wrote some glyphs here at the bottom, do you see? It seems like a message to you. At least, here is your Owl, your Raven, your Door.”
In fact, Medric had written at the bottom of the page each of the glyphs from Zanja’s frantic card reading the day after Fire Night. But now, no madwoman lay at the center of the circle, holding together or being torn apart by contrary forces. Instead, there was a glyph Zanja did not know how to read. She touched it with her fingertip, and Emil said, “That’s Fellowship, the union of friends to serve a grand design. What do you think he means by it?”
“I think he’s nineteen years old and hasn’t yet lost his hope.”
“Zanja na’Tarwein,” Emil said, “may that hope one day be yours and mine as well.”
When Norina returned, Willis walked behind her, carrying some of Zanja’s gear, including her missing blades. One of his people also followed, leading the horses like a servant. Truthkens must be obeyed, in small things and in large. Zanja hastily chewed and swallowed the dried fruit. It lay within her, warm as earth in summer. The wound in her leg stopped seeping blood, and when she stood up, her vision remained clear.
Emil buckled her weapons belt onto her and put the knife into her boot sheath, and helped her mount one of Norina’s horses. She must have looked a ruin as she rode out of that place, tired unto death, with her breeches blood‑encrusted and her face marked and swollen from Willis’s fist. When she looked back, she saw Emil, standing serenely alone in the middle of the roadway. He lifted a hand in farewell. So long as he stood there, Zanja knew, no one would dare chase after them. He was still standing there when the road took a turn, and he was gone from sight.
Part 3
The Hinge of History
All
love is made of insane hope
.
–
MACKAPEE’S
Principles for Community
The past is always with us. For the blood that soaks the earth cries out for justice. And without justice we never will have peace.
–
MABIN’S
Warfare
Between victory and defeat, between offense and revenge, lies
a third possibility: neither a compromise nor an abandonment, but a marriage.
–
MEDRIC’S History
of My Father’s People
Chapter Nineteen
Like a great wheel the year turned; and now the sower dropped to the horizon, and up rose the gatherer with her arm outstretched to capture the ripe stars and put them in her basket. All day, in kitchens across Shaftal, the ripe fruits had been cut up to be dried in the sun, or cooked with sugar to make preserves, or covered with hot syrup to be baked into pies during the dark half of the year.
Now it was night, and in the most northwestern borderland, the general of the Paladins sat awake in her lamplit study with a bowl of golden apricots untouched upon her desk. The aging general of the Sainnites also sat awake, drinking wine and pacing restlessly as he made the messenger from South Hill explain again and again how the South Hill garrison had managed to lose track of the Sainnites’ only seer.
Somewhere between these two generals, in a silent glade well away from the road, Zanja lay staring into the darkness, and did not flinch or even seem to notice when Norina began to peel the bandage from her wounded leg. And on the river which runs east past Wilton, Emil stood at the bow of a boat that lazily rode the current towards Hanishport and the sea. After fifteen years as the commander of South Hill Company, he had left South Hill, and never would return.
How could he continue to command, when his general had proven herself such a fool? Norina Truthken had told him quite forcefully that Mabin had valid reasons for her actions that would never be explained. But whatever Mabin’s reasons, no matter how valid they might be, that did not make it any less impossible for Emil to continue as commander. He wrote Mabin a letter, he delivered South Hill Company to Perry’s capable command, he bid his friends farewell, and he left South Hill.
His lifetime of service had left him impoverished by Shaftali standards, for he had no family to go home to, and the friends who had served as family in the old Paladins were dead or fighting in the war. Still, he could not seem to bring himself to be concerned about his own future. He felt only his freedom.
The boat reached Haprin at midafternoon. He made his way to a storehouse near the docks, where he showed a woman his letter from Medric and she waved him into the building without even looking at it. “It’s four big trunks, halfway back on the right side,” she said. “You’ll be needing a wagon.”
Once beyond the light of the doorway, he walked through a darkness that rustled with mice and bats. He hoped that the trunks were good ones and he would not find the books chewed to pieces. Halfway down the long, dark building, a sudden light flared as though someone had lit a match. The flare became a lamp wick’s steady glow, and the flame disappeared, though Emil could track it by the light it cast. In his recurring dream, he had followed that glow of light through shadows just like these. He remembered these half‑seen crates, the dusty, dim shadows, the rustling of the mice. His heart’s desire waited for him here.
The crowded shapes would form an open space here, which would be filled with light. And so he found a glowing nest of blankets tucked among the massive trunks. The man from Emil’s dream sat quietly beside a small brass lamp, which did not illuminate his face. Upon his knees lay a plain, flat wooden box with a broken latch that once had locked with a key. The man said nothing, but held the box up to Emil.
Emil knelt and took the box. He opened the hinged lid, and laid the box down upon the floor so that the lamplight shone inside. The papers carefully preserved within were padded with small pillows of down and silk. On the top page was written, “Principles for Community,” and underneath, scarcely readable in faded ink, the name “Mackapee.”
Emil did not touch the fragile paper, but he bent his face close to it, and breathed deeply. He could smell, so faint it scarcely was there at all, the scent of peat smoke. The Mackapee manuscript had not been burned after all.
He saw that his life had been a spiral, first veering away from loss, but now turning back to a new beginning. He had done his duty. Now, at last, he could follow his heart.
“You can only be Medric,” he said.
“Sir, can you return this manuscript to its rightful place?”
“It belongs at the library at Kisha, which has been destroyed.” Emil carefully closed the lid of the manuscript box. “I’ll have to build a new library, and a new university. And first, I’ll have to make Shaftal a place in which libraries and universities can be built.”
The young man said, “That’s not a bad idea.”
“It’s an undertaking so large I doubt anyone alive now will live to see the end of it.”
“Oh, no, I think you’re wrong. But in any case, ‘What’s worth doing is worth merely beginning.’ ”
“So wrote Mackapee, the first G’deon of Shaftal. Have you read the manuscript?”
“The manuscript? No, sir, it has not been removed from its box. I’ve studied a printed copy.”
Emil took up the little traveling lamp by the handle, and lifted it so it illuminated Mednc’s face. The seer’s lenses glowed with flame. “You areyoung,” Emil said.
“I suppose. You’re exactly as I dreamed.”
“You dreamed of me? What did you dream?”
Medric’s gesture took in the dark warehouse, the glowing lamp, the fortress of books. Emil set down the lamp rather sharply, and sat back on his heels. When two fire bloods share a dream, it is said, their fates are linked forever.
Medric peered at him. “Are you all right, sir?”
“You’ll help me build that library.”
“You’ll accept my help?”
“Why wouldn’t I? Oh.” Emil began to laugh. “That’s right; you’re the enemy.”
It seemed to also strike Medric as terribly funny, and his hilarity didn’t run dry until his spectacles fell off and he had to retrieve them by feel.
Emil said, “A few days after Fire Night, when Zanja was on her way to meet you–though I didn’t know it then–she said she was trapped in the past and needed to cross over into the future. I foolishly asked her to take me with her. So here I am, bewildered mainly by my lack of regret.“
Medric smiled. “I crossed over also, knowingly and willingly. But what became of her?”
“I managed to get her safely out of South Hill. That’s all I know. But let me thank you now, while I’m thinking of it, for your letter. It helped me to do what was right, and I needed that help desperately.”
“Well, I’m glad I’ve done some good for once.”
“Have you eaten? May I buy your supper?”
Medric gathered himself up and rose to his feet. “I confess, I haven’t eaten in a day or two, and not because I’m fasting for a vision.”
“You’re penniless, of course, which is why you’re sleeping with your books.”
“ Yourbooks.”
“My books, if you insist. Yet it seems that you accompany them.”
“Sir, the books are not a bribe. Ever since I began to collect them, I knew that I would have to deliver them to a proper caretaker. I simply could not bear to leave them unguarded.” Medric offered his hand to help Emil rise.
Emil took Medric’s hand and let himself be helped. Medric was slightly built and had a soft hand, but he was not without muscle. Only a fool would underestimate him: no accident had brought them to this place, but the active, determined intervention of a gifted seer. His air of uncertainty was merely an affectation.
