Air Logic

by Laurie J. Marks

  “What was their task?”

  “To kill the false G’deon, to make way for the true G’deon.”

  Now came a silence, and Chaen gradually realized that she had been restored to her body, and she was bitterly angry: angry at herself for her weakness, and angry at the Truthken for doing that horrible thing to her so casually.

  The Truthken said, “Chaen of the Midlands, I condemn you of murderous actions. By the Law of Shaftal, you now must choose your penalty. You may be executed now, by my hand. Or you may submit yourself to me, to be changed.”

  Chaen said, “I choose death.”

  The Truthken drew her blade.

  Seth cried, “No!”

  “Get out of the way,” Chaen said.

  Behind the two somber, silent generals, there rose a shadow. Its head brushed the ceiling, then turned to the light. Karis. Her voice rasped in the horrified silence. “Madam Truthken, Shaftal requires that Chaen live, and be changed.”

  “The choice is mine, by law!” Chaen cried.

  The Truthken said, “But at any time, for any reason, the G’deon’s word supersedes the law.”

  “But if the G’deon is false, then her word must also be false!” Chaen turned to the young man who she supposed to be a law student. Surely, since he was young, he would perceive this illogic and injustice! But he put a finger on a page in the book and read from it: “At any time, for any reason, the G’deon’s word supersedes the law.”

  The Paladins took Chaen out of that place, and the sunlight struck her in the face. Her trial had not lasted much longer than it takes to eat a turnover.

  Once again in the bright room with the grated window, the Paladins stranded her like flotsam on a rocky shore. A bell was ringing in the far distance, and the ship that had been standing off shore with its sails furled hoisted a flag. Nearby, Chaen heard muffled voices and a restless creaking of the old bones of that weathered old house. In a storm of glowing dust motes, a spider spun a shimmering thread.

  The lock turned, the door opened, and the Truthken said, “Sit down.”

  Chaen sat in the chair by the window. She did not know whether or not she obeyed by choice, or because she had no choice.

  The Truthken sat in the other chair, at the table, between Chaen and the door that stood ajar. Beyond it, Chaen thought, the air student might be listening, but the Paladins had left. This woman did not need the aid of those armed philosophers.

  Chaen said, “I know you can force me to betray my friends. If you do that, you might as well kill me.”

  The Truthken crossed her feet at the ankle. Her face was pulled awry by an old scar, and she looked as hardened as Shaftal’s many vagabonds. She had a dagger in a very old sheath buckled at the thigh. She said, “The task that is assigned to me by the law is not to interrogate you, but to change you.”

  “Change me into what?”

  “That has yet to be decided. My task would be easier if I could reassure you that you will still recognize yourself at the end of this day. But you may not.”

  “And how is that different from killing me?”

  “It is different,” said the Truthken, “because you’ll be able to start your life again. But this is a waste of time, for you can’t persuade me to abandon my duty. Tell me, Chaen of the Midlands, do you have a family?”

  Chaen doubted, then, that she was still under the Truthken’s compulsion to answer, for she didn’t and couldn’t reply. Yet the woman said, immediately, “It was the Sainnites that killed them? All of them?”

  With the passing years, Chaen had become able to say what had happened so it appeared as if she was done grieving. But this Truthken would see—already had seen—that Chaen lived within her loss like a wild animal lives in the ashes of a burned forest.

  “I will never forget what happened to them,” she said. Apparently, she could reply without answering, a simultaneous compliance and resistance.

  The Truthken said, “Why do you consider remembering to be such a virtue?”

  “It gives meaning to their deaths.”

  “What is the meaning?”

  “Meaning comes from intention.”

  “What informs your intention?”

  “Rage.”

  The Truthken’s hard, scarred face and terrible eyes revealed a mild amusement. “What is the source of your rage?” she asked.

  Back to the same question—and still Chaen must give her some sort of answer. Perhaps her despair could be a kind of armor? She said, “My entire family was burned alive by the Sainnites.”

  She felt a vertigo. She had declared that she would not forget. And she did remember standing in the children’s room beside her son’s empty cradle—smoke-smothered, horrified—but how had she survived? How had she escaped when she was trapped like all of them, in the same building and the same fire?

  Chaen said, “My son was six months old. I forgot that he was in bed with me, and I went to the nursery to save him.”

  But she didn’t remember what had happened after that awful realization.

  The Truthken said, “Your rage has neither matured nor faded, for the air element makes you inflexible, while the fire element makes you unreasonable. Had you not been paralyzed by your dual nature, your vengefulness could have taken another form. In some people, such anger is transformative.” So complex and lengthy a statement would require a normal person’s full attention, and yet Chaen felt—feared—that most of the Truthken’s attention was on something else.

  “I am not vengeful!” she said. “I simply want justice!” But this truth seemed insufficient.

  The Truthken asked, “Who is the leader of Death-and-Life?”

  Chaen froze. She would not betray him. She would not even speak his name.

  “I see.” The Truthken leaned forward very slightly. Her restraint was horrifying. “Your leader still controls you, but that hold will be unfastened. Everything you believe will collapse. In the wreck of the life you created after the wreck of your first life, you will be a lunatic.” She eased back in her seat. “Or, speak freely to me, so I can determine what to preserve, and you will remain a whole person. These are your choices, Chaen of the Midlands.”

  The room became stifling as the morning passed. Chaen gasped for breath by the open window. The Truthken, impervious to discomfort, sat entirely still, her attention never wavering. Chaen talked listlessly about her life. Occasionally, when Chaen stopped talking, time would pass before the Truthken asked another question. Each silence was excruciating: Chaen’s words no longer mediated the terrifying study that the Truthken subjected her to. Surely this cool predator was playing with her.

  “And yet you believed your little army could defeat the Sainnites?”

  “It’s not hard to believe. If one Shaftali out of forty killed only one soldier, we would be free.”

  “There is nothing simple about your mathematics. As you know.”

  Chaen felt a trembling, a weakening wall that must not collapse. But she didn’t know how to shore it up.

  “Were you at the attack on Watfield garrison last summer?”

  Chaen answered: she had been stationed in the garden at the outer edge of the garrison, while the bulk of their fighters, hidden on rooftops and in alleyways, guarded the perimeter. In the garden, Chaen had ferried the rockets to the launchers, who seated them carefully in brackets jammed into the ground, aimed them, and held a slow match to their fuses. Hissing like monstrous serpents, the rockets flew upward, dragging long tails of sparks, and exploded, scattering burning rain across the rooftops. Annis’s Fire that burning fluid was called: water could not put it out, and whenever it splattered upon a person, it burned to the bone. They burned down half the garrison that night, but when the soldiers attacked the rocketeers in the garden, Chaen and a handful of others could not hold them off and were lucky to escape.

  The Tru
thken said, “That attack was dramatic but unwise; it used more gunpowder than the irregulars normally use in a year, not to mention the rare and expensive ingredients in the liquid fire. Some fifty Sainnites died that night, but so did thirty members of your company. It was a wasteful, impatient attack. Until then, Willis’s strategy had been cautious and incremental. What had changed?”

  Chaen wiped at the sweat that was dripping from her eyebrows into her eyes. “That was a year ago.”

  “You disagreed with the plan!” The Truthken almost seemed surprised. “You never ceased to oppose it? Were you the only one?” She paused. “You were.”

  “Why do I need to speak at all?” said Chaen bitterly.

  “And the attack on the Children’s Garrison—”

  “The massacre, you mean!”

  “You make my point for me. An entire company of soldiers was there, expecting Death-and-Life Company to attack on that very night. Do you think that was an accident?”

  “Someone must have betrayed us.”

  “Someone did betray you. And afterwards, even though Willis was dead, his followers did not abandon their cause. They had believed he was chosen. Now he was dead, yet they continued to believe.”

  Even after the passage of many hours, Chaen continued to be taken aback by what this woman knew—things that should have been secret, that she knew with detail and accuracy. In fact, the remainder of Death-and-Life Company, devastated by the loss of half their fellows in half a year, had practically been destroyed by Willis’s death. Even Chaen, always cynical about Willis’s supposed vision, had been stunned. Perhaps she had become a believer without realizing it. Like the others who had yearned for the lost G’deon of Willis’s vision, she had detested the G’deon who actually did come out of obscurity, and who, with neither weapons nor army, terrified the Sainnites into submission. That they refused to accept her was a strange contradiction. But that Chaen had been heedless of the contradiction until this moment was the strangest thing of all.

  Her voice rasped shamefully. “Who betrayed us?”

  The Truthken, remote and indifferent, did not answer.

  “Who betrayed us?”

  The woman crossed her booted feet and stretched back in the chair, rubbing her eyes. For Chaen to be the subject of her unwavering attention was exhausting, but surely the Truthken also was weary with frustration, heat, and attentiveness. Her leg was extended; her dagger practically out of reach; her weight resting precariously on the edge of the chair. If Chaen had ever been so sloppy with an enemy so close, she wouldn’t have lived this long. Then the woman reached across her body for the water pitcher.

  Chaen launched herself from the chair. Her left foot landed precisely and propelled her forward. Her right kicked the woman’s chair out from under her. She grabbed for the dagger—but the woman was not there. Something kicked her ankle. She fell hard to the floor. The woman kicked her in the stomach.

  Her vision fogged. She curled around her belly, gagging, whining like a mongrel. In the fog, she saw the Truthken’s foot, half an arm’s reach away. The woman stood with her weight slightly forward, on her toes, daring Chaen to try again.

  She had lured Chaen into attacking her, and Chaen had responded, as stupid as a fish.

  “Sit up.”

  To comply was excruciating. The Truthken regarded her. “You’ll live. Go back to your chair.”

  Chaen crawled. She dragged herself into the chair. She found the Truthken seated again, with a cup of water in her hand. The woman said, “Hadn’t everyone in the Death-and-Life Company sworn not to return home? To have no friends, no contact at all with anyone not in the company?”

  “Yes,” Chaen gasped. She no longer dared to remain silent.

  “And yet despite those oaths, one man, who last year was injured in the attack on Watfield garrison, was permitted to return home to die. His home was in the region of Watfield—a family whose young daughter had been taken by the Sainnites in retaliation for the attack, and who were willing to trade information to get that daughter back again.”

  Chaen vomited a string of yellow mucus to the floor. The Truthken sipped her water, waiting. Chaen said, “Is that what happened? Is that how the Sainnites knew to ambush us at the Children’s Garrison? Is that how Willis and the forty were killed?”

  The Truthken said, “Yes, that is how it happened. But how was it made possible?”

  It was Saugus who had argued that the man should be allowed to return home. He had accompanied him, and had promised Willis that he would make it impossible for the dying man to betray the company.

  “None of us had bidden our families farewell,” Chaen said. “Few of us even had families any more. We wanted him to be able to go home.”

  “An emotionally compelling argument.” The Truthken’s tone was dry as sand.

  “Saugus betrayed us,” Chaen said.

  Expressionless, the Truthken gazed at her.

  Chaen said, “Saugus arranged for forty people—members of his own company—to be killed.”

  Still, the Truthken said nothing.

  Chaen was trembling with pain, struggling not to vomit again. “Why?”

  “I am a Truthken, tested by Truthkens, bound by vows that I will never break. Do you think I am ruthless?”

  “Yes.”

  “And if I were not bound by vows, what would I be like?”

  Fortunately, Chaen needed not answer, for the Truthken continued. “Long before the air witch found Willis, he had made and learned from many mistakes. In Death-and-Life Company, he developed his powers, learned subtlety, discovered his limits, gathered his resources, and planned. When he had what he needed, he began removing impediments: he removed Willis, his inner circle, and any other person in the company who proved troublesome to manage—eventually including you. What remains is a manageable number of fanatical devotees.”

  Chaen stared at her, hating her, but unable to ignore her logic.

  “It’s what I would do,” said the woman. She filled the cup with water. “For you to faint would be inconvenient. I’m going to give this to you, for you to drink.”

  Even with this forewarning, Chaen’s self-control was tested as the woman stood up to give her the water: The closer she drew, the more Chaen wanted to throw herself through the window, regardless of the iron grate. The Truthken sat down. Chaen drank the water.

  The Truthken said, “With too many followers, he would spend all his time managing them, which would be tedious. It’s far more interesting and satisfying to control a smaller number of selected people, and, through them, to control events. So Saugus culled the company.”

  Chaen’s trembling fingers dropped the cup. She had said his name? When had she said his name? Then she laughed bitterly. Why should she feel guilty for betraying a traitor?

  Suddenly, the sea breeze began to blow, and slammed the door shut. The Truthken blocked the door open with a wedge from the hall. A dust bunny tumbled out the door, and Chaen heard the squawking and banging of a shutter. She heard no voices, no barking dogs, no creaking footsteps or closing doors.

  The Truthken poured her another cup of water, and there was the whisper of her breeches and the creak of the chair as she sat down.

  Chaen said, “Aren’t we finished yet? I gave him up to you!”

  “You told me his name. But where is he?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “He may be here, in Hanishport.”

  Chaen muttered dully, “If he is, I guess he’ll kill me.”

  “You don’t remember that you saw him in the crowd, the day you were arrested? As you were being escorted to this house?”

  Chaen vomited. All the water she had drunk spewed onto the floor. “Don’t make me think about it!” Chaen was begging, weeping. She felt a loss—an unendurable loss—but of what? Her awareness spun around a vacancy, sucking into emptiness, like
water emptying from a sink.

  “Don’t think about it,” the Truthken said.

  Her quiet words yanked Chaen free of the vortex, gasping. “What’s wrong with me?”

  “Your memories are unstable. You can hold on to nothing. I don’t know why. Not yet.”

  She left the room and returned with a towel that she tossed to Chaen. Chaen wiped her face and dropped the towel on the mess on the floor. She couldn’t remember what had upset her stomach, and she didn’t want to remember.

  Time dragged the afternoon forward, like an old donkey with a heavy cart. The breeze cooled the house; the dull city became noisy for a few hours, and Chaen imagined a thousand brooms wielded without enthusiasm, sweeping up the dirt and debris after the end of a very large party—a party that today was more resented than loved. Chaen curled herself in the chair, trying to ease the ache in her gut.

  The Truthken was telling her about Karis, and it became clear how much and how long their lives had been intertwined. The Truthken was the last surviving witness of the moment Harald vested Karis with the Power of Shaftal. She had helped Karis to escape the attack on the House of Lilterwess and had kept her alive, in obscurity, for the next fifteen years.

  The Truthken said, “I am only two years older than Karis, but I was given the task of managing her smoke addiction and keeping her alive until someone more worthy to bear the power of Shaftal could be found. Every resource that had survived the Fall was gathered to complete my education, while for Karis nothing was done. They neglected her for reasons that were logically sound but were based on false assumptions. No one seriously considered that Karis might be worthy to bear the Power of Shaftal, not even me. Like Mabin, I was trapped in reality, and when the visionaries told me what was possible, I could not hear them. Well, I learned to listen—but those weren’t easy lessons.”

  She fell silent. At first, Chaen, weary with pain, weak with hunger, bewildered by the shifting landscape of her understanding, could not imagine why this formidable, terrifying woman had decided to deliver this account. Then her sluggish mind managed to have an idea, and she said dully, “To you also she was a false G’deon.”