Air Logic

by Laurie J. Marks

  The boy seemed just a boy, for once: confused by contradiction, suspicious of his elders, and impatient with everything.

  “She was injured eight years ago, and the injury is healed,” explained the Truthken. “But to her, the past is always present.”

  Garland knew that Zanja felt this old pain again every year, on the anniversary of her people’s massacre, when for ten or twenty days she lost her mind. He had never witnessed her annual madness, for he had been in this family for less than a year. What a year, that contained the significance of a dozen or a hundred years! But he understood more about Zanja than her favorite food (cheese and bacon grilled on toast, with a cold cup of cider): she was a restrained person, often silent, very private. Norina might find Zanja exasperating, but she knew better than to mention her madness.

  Zanja had taken the glyph cards out of her satchel. Medric got up and walked eagerly across the mattress, fumbling to put the correct spectacles on.

  To Garland, written words were as mysterious as they were to Leeba. But he liked looking at the glyph cards. These particular cards had reappeared at odd moments ever since they arrived in Hanishport, sometimes studied by Medric, Emil, or other fire bloods in their company, and sometimes only by Zanja. But now she used them to illustrate a story: An assassin once had two sons. One son had died in a fire, and the assassin blamed herself for that, although it wasn’t her fault. The second son had grown up to become a warrior. Now the assassin was in danger of drowning, or being eaten by a monstrous fish, from which her son could rescue her. But instead of shooting the monstrous fish and pulling her out of the water, he would shoot her and let her die.

  “Is that all?” asked Medric

  “The boy heard the dinner bell and ran away.”

  “How do we get him back?” Medric asked.

  Zanja looked askance at Medric, and he said irritably, “Yes, I’m a seer and a scholar and all that, but I’m not useful.”

  Emil said, “You’re as useful as you need to be. You could think about the problem of getting the Lost Son to come back while you help Karis with the houses that are falling down and the sewers that don’t drain.”

  After everyone had left, Zanja fetched her little rug. It was the surviving corner of a much larger rug that probably had been cut into pieces when its center wore through. The fragment of pattern implied the whole, so that whenever Zanja carried it from one place to the next, she hauled a ghost carpet that only she could see. She sat upon the carpet piece and watched Emil tidy the bedding. “Why did Norina want everyone to be in the room while she examined me? Was it just to humiliate me?”

  “Zanja, my dear, she wasn’t examining you at all.”

  Medric had turned one corner of the tiny room into a rat’s nest of loose papers, books and candles, and clothing. In the opposite corner, Emil’s supply of paper was tied in a packet of waxed cloth, his well-used pens and bottles of ink were decently organized in a tray, and the letters that had caught up with him that morning were weighed down by a large seashell of remarkable beauty. Between these two shrines to ink and paper, the mattress on the floor seemed almost irrelevant.

  Now that Karis had eased the pain of the headache, Zanja felt dull and distant, as though she were walking in a fog or suffering from a fever. Her stupefied gaze followed Emil as he moved through Medric’s half of the room to pick up a book from the floor and use it to weigh down a pile of loose papers. Then he opened the window, and the room began to breathe. Air flowed through the open door, into the hall, and out the windows on the other side of the house, tangible as water. Emil sat at the table, which now glowed with sunlight, and looked down at Zanja with one iron-gray eyebrow cocked.

  “She wasn’t examining me?” Zanja said. “Then who was she . . .” But of course Norina had been examining all of them.

  Emil examined the nibs of his pens, one by one.

  She said, “You’re worried, my brother.”

  “You have a dream guide,” he replied, “which means you need guidance.” Zanja could hear the faint, rapid ticking of the watch in his waistcoat pocket. “I have been called any number of things in my life, but no one has ever said I’m unimaginative. Yet I can’t imagine the circumstance in which you would not know what to do. So, yes, I am worried.”

  After a while, Emil took a letter from under the shell and read it out loud to her. A man in Appleton, the city of bandits and thieves, had written at length about the wrongdoings of the Sainnites. He wanted Emil to visit there and see for himself. In fact, Emil planned to do that very thing later in the summer, but he wanted all of the residents to be taken by surprise. “Obfuscation?” he asked. “Or brevity?”

  She helped him draft the letter, and then another letter. So they spent the afternoon in a manner that had, for them, become routine.

  The light began to dim, and the house became noisy with people. Hanishport exclaimed with music, and at least two different companies of players raucously blew their horns, announcing the imminence of the opening scenes. Out on the water, to mark a historical event, skiffs were gathering to wait for sunset, after which they would tow a ship, decorated with a thousand burning candles, back and forth. The rowers, at least some of them, were not very sober.

  Zanja read Emil’s last letter back to him, and his pen moved in dry, rhythmic scratches as he wrote his own words in his copybook. Then she folded the letter for him to address and seal.

  “I’ve never wanted a child at all,” Zanja said, “and yet I have one, and I love her dearly. Why would I grieve a lost son?”

  Emil rested his chin in his hand, smiling down at her. “Because your sorrow is the sorrow of the ages.”

  “I have sorrow enough of my own!”

  “Oh, sorrow is rationed, is it?” He stretched his writing-cramped hands, and then his back. “Zanja, in our youth, you and I both accepted strictures that we continue, more or less, to live by. You still cross boundaries, though the tribe whose path you blaze is not your tribe of birth. And, despite the changes in Shaftal—and despite my failed efforts to retire—I’m still a Paladin, a valiant protector of the right to think bad ideas.”

  Despite her melancholy, Zanja laughed.

  “We choose to be what we are, and every choice entails regret. You and I are Leeba’s parents because at one time we thought we were free to choose her. But if Karis were to bring home a wailing baby from Lalali, we would unite in refusal to be parents again. We are unsuitable: I am doomed to grow ancient without becoming old enough to retire, and you are doomed to die, or disappear, or do some other inexplicable thing, every season or two.”

  “Why do you bother to guard me from that, if it is my doom?”

  “My dear, guarding you has allowed me to wrest a prize from the claws of the future: a quiet afternoon with you.”

  Emil’s indirect affection still was too direct for Zanja. She said, “If you met your lost son, would you grieve?”

  “Oh, my dear!” Emil began to laugh. “I wouldn’t even be surprised! I could have a dozen sons! To be a Paladin was once a very pleasant business.”

  “But no one entreats you into her bed anymore? Surely the women of Shaftal still want to bear a child of your character and intelligence!”

  “Flatterer.”

  “Braggart!”

  “Oh, no, no, no. Surely my dozen sons together aren’t the equal of your singular dream son. What true child would make himself so useful?”

  “Not Leeba.”

  “Certainly not! Our plans are irrelevant to that child, as they should be . . . Oh, was that the bell?” Emil sighed, but Garland’s bell rang again, and even the most important man in Shaftal could not ignore that summons. He rose from his chair, clasped Zanja’s hand, and lifted her to her feet, as he had done hundreds of times before. They went down to supper, Zanja dragging the ghost carpet behind her.

  Chapter 19

  “Did you a
sk that boy my question?” Chaen asked Seth in the morning, when another night had passed without a word from Maxew.

  Breakfast was fruit, pastry, and tea, which Seth ate with appetite. Ravenous, Chaen stood at the window looking out so she wouldn’t watch Seth’s every mouthful.

  Seth said, “Yes. It took work, though. He and Norina are usually together in the evening, attending one meeting or the other. I finally managed to catch him alone in the back garden, by the outhouse. I asked him your question, about whether the people who tricked you were violating the law. First he said he had to ask Norina. When I told him you didn’t trust her, he said that under the law there are degrees of responsibility. At the same time, he said, regardless of your circumstances or what other people do or say, you are responsible for your own actions.”

  Chaen had wanted to find out if Maxew was still in the city, and perhaps also to jog him into action by reminding him of her peril. But her son’s words were chilling. If they were a message to her, it was a message of blame, as if he criticized her for falling into the trap, even though he would have lauded her had she succeeded in killing the false G’deon. “But I didn’t ask him if I was responsible.”

  “And I told him I didn’t think what he said was relevant, but he insisted that he was answering your question, and that he had nothing else to say. Are you certain you don’t want me to ask the Truthken?”

  “She was there when they put together their plan to trap me! She either told them it was lawful or else she didn’t care if it was lawful or not!”

  “You sound a lot like a Truthken yourself. But you don’t understand very well what drives a woman like her, if you think she just uses the law as a tool for her own ends.”

  Chaen heard the distinct sound of Seth’s empty teacup being set in the tray. “Anyway, I doubt you’ll learn anything else from Maxew. Maybe he obeys Norina, and maybe he’s making an effort to behave properly, but he never does one little thing more than he’s required to do.”

  Chaen worked all day on the tailor’s sign, painting layers of color and applying gold leaf to the border while the paint dried. The scrollwork was gorgeous; the gold leaf would be brilliant on any sunny day; and the artisan conveyed a serene and tireless competence. Then she had finished it, and the Paladins carried it away.

  Now the day was ending, and she entered the eddy of time that most people filled with cooking and conversation. She heard the ringing of the supper bell. Through the window, she saw a distant players’ procession marching toward the stage on the quay, blowing horns and ringing hand bells to attract an audience to their performance. She saw a cluster of soldiers sauntering leisurely down the road from the garrison. One, not in uniform, walked beside a woman soldier who carried a bundle against her body as though it were a baby. It was the strangest sight Chaen had seen in many years.

  As they drew closer she could hear them speaking their odd, stuttering language. The ugly man made an expansive gesture. They laughed loudly, and the woman’s bundle uttered a shriek. It was a baby.

  Chaen sat down in the chair. In the garden, the dogs barked, then fell silent, and Seth’s voice said with pleasure, “You’ve come for supper.” Chaen looked out the window again and saw Seth clasping the soldier’s hand and kissing the baby on the head.

  When Seth came upstairs a short while later, Chaen would not talk to her.

  Seth sat down and ate—it was some kind of pie, its crust scattered with herbs, stuffed with vegetables in a brown sauce. As she ate, she told Chaen a great deal of trivial information. After she put down her spoon, she continued to talk, then said she was still hungry and ate Chaen’s pie as well. She discussed various meetings of the Council of Shaftal, gave a lengthy history of High Meadow Farm in Basdown, recounted some recent events that Chaen already knew about, and then began to discuss cow diseases.

  “Why did that soldier have a baby?” Chaen asked.

  “Now I know to start with the cow diseases next time!” said Seth. “The baby is Gabian, the son of General Clement. She got him in the usual way—the usual way for soldiers, that is: she bought him from a woman who could reasonably claim the child was fathered by a Sainnite.”

  “I thought Sainnites send their children to—” Chaen stopped, for the Children’s Garrison stood empty now, except for the ashes of forty members of her company who had gone there to rescue the children from the Sainnites. “That woman was the Sainnite general? The one who engineered the massacre at the Children’s Garrison?”

  Seth put down her spoon. “Yes. She’s done some terrible things.”

  “And you treat her as your friend?”

  “When I share her bed, that makes matters difficult and complicated. But being her friend is easy. When you meet her, you’ll understand.”

  “Meet her? Why would I do such a thing?”

  “How could you avoid it, since I’m both a friend of yours and a friend of hers?”

  Chaen had misjudged Seth. Anyone who could tolerate such contradictions in herself must either be very stupid or very deep, and Chaen had not thought she was either.

  Seth said, “I never finished the account of the lost glyphs. Unless you’d rather hear more about cow diseases?”

  Chaen said bitterly, “Do tell me more about that ancient, unreadable book for which people have taken impossible journeys, gone through all sorts of trouble, and even died.”

  “People do say the book is valuable and important. But if I could bring Damon and Jareth back from the dead, I would happily throw that book into the ocean.”

  Chaen thought two lives was a small price for such a treasure. And she would never even be in the same room with it. She was contradicting herself again, she realized: her air self dismissed the book while her fire self longed to see it.

  Seth continued, “When we looked at the book—Karis, Zanja, and I—we saw landscapes, people, animals and clothing, all alien to us. But Karis and I recognized some of the plants. Soldiers are mad for flowers—it’s an odd thing that most people don’t know, unless they’ve been in a garrison. Their gardens are full of flowers that they brought with them from Sainna—and some of those flowers are depicted in Zanja’s lexicon. So she showed the book to some old soldiers—she speaks their language, of course—and they told her that the places and landscapes are in Sainna.”

  “So the book came from Sainna,” said Chaen impatiently. She couldn’t see why it mattered.

  “The book has been in Shaftal for at least four hundred years. It didn’t get here by itself—Sainnites brought it here. They stayed here, with their book. And they became us.”

  Chaen turned and looked at Seth. Not only did Seth seem to actually believe this absurdity, but she found it amazing and wonderful. “Seth,” she said. It may have been the first time she had said her name. “You are not my friend. This is the last night of my life. Please go away and leave me alone.” Having said these pitiful words, she realized that they were true. Maxew was not going to rescue her, and tomorrow she would be executed. She was as good as dead already, and she had known it ever since she was captured. Throughout the dreary days, as the city drank, sang, and caroused within her hearing, she had been in grieving for her lost life.

  Seth picked up the tray and left.

  Restless, and miserably hungry, Chaen paced the room. She had gone hungry for much longer than this, usually because she had given her share to Maxew. But then she had deprived herself for a purpose, and now she just did it from petulance, or pride. Nothing she did—nothing she had ever done—none of it had made any difference. She might as well have eaten that pie Seth had brought upstairs for her.

  As the house fell quiet, the carousing city became even louder. Yet Chaen heard clearly the sound of the stairs creaking all the way to the third floor, then a murmur of voices, and a Paladin tapping on the door. “Are you awake, Chaen? You have a visitor.”

  The door opened and admitted t
he fortune-teller, the false G’deon’s wife. With the light behind her, the woman’s remarkable face was nearly all shadow, traced with light on her chin, the bridge of her nose, and one cheekbone. “May I have a lamp, Kamren?” she asked the Paladin.

  “No, Zanja, we can allow no flame.”

  “But it’s for a glyph card.”

  The Paladin spoke with his comrades, then gave Zanja a lit candle and stood in the doorway to keep watch on them.

  Zanja said to Chaen, “I need an artist. I will trade you, one glyph card for another.”

  She offered Chaen the glyph card, the one that depicted a solitary woman in a featureless landscape, framed by the events of her life. When Chaen didn’t take it, Zanja squatted down, spread the tail of her longshirt on the floor, and put the card there. Beside it she put a piece of plain, heavyweight artist’s paper. On it was a sketch, drawn with a dull pencil, and a glyph that had been added later, after the pencil had been sharpened.

  “You certainly are no artist,” Chaen said.

  “That’s why I need you. Will you draw this card? If I give you this one in exchange?”

  Chaen picked up the sketch. The three figures were badly placed, making the picture too static and balanced for so tense a scene. It depicted a struggle of indecision: The man wanted to shoot the fish and save the woman, but fear and hatred overwhelmed his love. The woman struggled not to drown, but her will was weakened by her longing for the peaceful stillness of the water.

  “What is this illustration called?” she asked.

  “I’m afraid we must write its text before we can read it. What would you call it?”

  Death of Memory, thought Chaen. But she would not speak such powerful words to a presciant who was her enemy. “What would I help you to accomplish, if I finish this card for you?”

  “I think it has been accomplished already. But I don’t want to carry such a poor drawing with my cards.”