Air Logic

by Laurie J. Marks

  “Yes, and for reasons similar to yours.”

  “You don’t even know my reasons.”

  “Tell me, then.”

  “Name of Shaftal—I can’t believe I must explain when it is so obvious! She is a Sainnite, and she befriended the Sainnites. Therefore she is not and can’t be the embodiment of Shaftal.”

  “I will grant that your facts are accurate. However, her mother was a Juras woman; so why don’t you consider Karis to be Juras?”

  “She never lived with them.”

  “She never lived with Sainnites.”

  “But the smallest amount of Sainnite blood . . .”

  Again, the Truthken sat in silence, but the tendons in her arms looked like bow strings, and so also must the rest of her body be drawn, poised to let an arrow fly the instant her target came into view.

  Chaen was the target. The moment she had consented to her impulse to assassinate the pretender, this role had been designated for her, and everyone had subtly yet irresistibly forced her into this position and made it impossible for her to escape.

  In every catastrophe, there must be a moment that the victim, having learned the awful lesson that every possible action will only make matters worse, decides not to struggle. When this thought came to Chaen, she realized that the moment of acceptance had passed many hours ago. When she lay on the floor after the Truthken kicked her, she had given up but had not recognized the deadness in the core of her pain.

  Chaen said, “If what Seth told me about Zanja’s book—the lexicon—is true . . .”

  “It does seem to be true. People were here before our ancestors arrived—the border people we have called them, since we have forgotten that it was we who forced them to retreat to the borders. The work of our scholars so far has tended to support rather than disprove this history. Karis, thanks to her Juras mother, is more Shaftali than you or I.”

  Chaen scarcely heard the Truthken’s measured speech. A trembling—a peculiar, awful shudder—had begun in the core of her being, the marrow of her bones—and it became so violent that her chair began to rattle on the floor, and when she tried to grab the chair arm to keep from sliding off, her shaking hand yanked loose again. She fell, and the chair toppled, and still she shuddered so violently she couldn’t even sit up. A few words were jerked out of her, like entrails from a fish. “Karis is Shaftal.”

  The Truthken rose to her feet. For an awful moment, Chaen thought she would kick her again, or even touch her, which would have been worse. But the woman merely spoke. “Chaen of the Midlands, your sentence is finished, and you are free to go.”

  She left the room. Chaen heard her footsteps creak down the stairs. The door stood ajar, and the sea breeze washed through.

  Lying upon the floor, like a piece of debris blown in by the wind, Chaen wept.

  Chapter 23

  Chaen filled her knapsack and dragged it to her shoulder, and stepped out of prison. She had freedom—but it would curse what remained of her life.

  She felt her way down the dim stairs from one step to the next. At the second-floor landing, the sea breeze washed through a dim, barren hall. From below, there arose a cacophony of voices: angry argument, solemn discussion, stifled laughter. Spoons rang dully on pottery bowls, and the scent of food and bread floated up the stairs. Having no choice, she went down into a stair hall crowded with Paladins who ate standing or squatting with their backs against the crumbling plaster. She recognized their voices, but none of them heeded her.

  On her left, in a parlor so crammed with people that those on the edges were standing in the hall, people argued about what must be done and why it was not their responsibility to do it. Several talked at once, so angry that they seemed about to start shouting, but the room fell silent when one voice spoke: reasonable, patient, velvet over steel: Emil. “The people of Lalali are our people, and we abandoned them. For that wrong we must make amends.”

  On the right, in a quieter parlor, people huddled around tables by the windows where the last of the daylight lingered. Chaen felt the G’deon’s presence in that room: the weight of her.

  Seth squeezed out of the crowd on the left and took Chaen’s hand. “The government of Shaftal,” she said. “It’s enough to make me miss the cows.”

  “Seth, thank you for your kindness,” Chaen said.

  “You’re not leaving. Not like this, without food or rest.”

  “I can do what I like. The Truthken has released me.”

  Seth considered, her grip like a shackle. “I’ll go with you, then. I’m weary of these people.”

  “Seth, your assignment is finished. You need not pretend to be my friend any longer.”

  “Earth bloods don’t pretend.” Seth tugged on Chaen’s hand. “So, where are we going?”

  From the stairway Norina’s voice said, “She wants to speak to Karis.”

  Chaen remembered that she had wanted to do that, but during the journey downstairs her desire had begun to seem foolish.

  “Oh, for lands sake!” A cow doctor’s patients were large and stupid; far larger than Chaen, but perhaps not any more stupid. Seth easily dragged Chaen into the parlor.

  “She’s just a metalsmith,” said Seth, pulling Chaen into the center of the parlor as people stood up, gathered materials, and moved out of their way.

  “Seth,” Chaen protested wearily.

  “She loves food. She hates bridges. She can’t sew but is constantly wrecking her shirts. She nearly got into a wrestling contest with her cousin over who had the rights to a herd of goats. She’s incessantly tinkering with things.”

  Zanja na’Tarwein rose out of the shadows to move a table out of the way. Karis stood up, and Chaen stumbled and fell. Yet Seth remained beside her, still talking, her fierce whisper overwhelmed by the roaring wind.

  The G’deon hauled Chaen to her feet. Her big hand touched Chaen’s face, and it felt like a blow; then it felt like the sun. Chaen wanted to embrace her. She jerked away, and nearly fell again.

  Someone had lit a lamp and brought it near, and the G’deon’s eyes became brilliantly, shockingly blue. She said, “What did you hit her with—an ax handle?”

  “With my foot,” said the Truthken, her presence like a blade in Chaen’s back.

  “I think you had better keep your distance from her.”

  “Yes, Karis.”

  “Yet you remain?”

  “Karis, her memories have been damaged somehow. I probably can mend them, with time and her permission. But she’s injured in such a way that she can’t even remember that she has been injured.”

  The G’deon breathed in and out. “All right.”

  The knife in Chaen’s back withdrew. The Truthken had left. She could breathe, shallowly, lest the pain in her side become intolerable. Her head had cleared enough that she remembered what she wanted to say. “Karis, I’m sorry for my wrongs against Shaftal, and especially for my efforts to kill you.”

  The G’deon’s body had clenched like a massive fist. “Seven members of my household were murdered!”

  Chaen said, “I don’t expect to be pardoned. But I’d like to make some kind of reparation.”

  The G’deon, breathing quickly, gave no reply. Chaen turned to leave. Somehow, she would evade Seth.

  But Karis said, “No one leaves my house hungry and weary. You will eat, rest, and leave tomorrow if you wish. Or you can remain here and speak with the healers, philosophers, and visionaries who are gathered here. Perhaps they can help you.”

  Turning to face her, Chaen lost her balance again and was caught in a rough embrace, with her face pressed to the linen of a carefully made shirt sleeve. There was pleating at the shoulders, and gussets in the collar, and a fraying tear at eye level that someone had better mend before the shirt was washed again. The shirt smelled like dirt, mold, sickness, and sewage.

  “Yes, Karis,”
Chaen mumbled into the filthy fabric.

  Seth took her by the arm and showed her the way to the kitchen.

  Chaen dreamed that she was drowning.

  She awoke to a deep pain in her side where the toe of the Truthken’s heavy boot had left a hot, red bruise. Her good shirt had dried overnight where she had hung it in the window, but she could scarcely lift her arm to put it in the sleeve.

  She had slept very late; the house was silent and empty. When she started down the stairs, a dog came out onto the landing below and yawned noisily. On the first floor, another dog slept in the parlor, by a sofa on which sprawled a gray-haired Paladin with an open book resting on her chin. Both of them snored softly. In the kitchen, on the counter, there was bread and butter, cherries, and a teapot with the tea already measured into it.

  On a folded piece of coarse paper, weighted by a boiled egg, was written Chaen’s name. Chaen took the note and the egg outside and sat upon the steps, with the harbor and the road before her. The note, much blotted and spattered from the pen tip catching in the rough paper, read: “Please speak with Zanja about the card-casting. If you won’t permit me to correct the damage to your memory, it is hoped that the cards might reveal the knowledge that we lack. I will consider myself in your debt. Norina Truthken, Year 1, Day 208, of Karis G’deon.”

  Chaen tore the note to bits and scattered them on the steps, where she hoped the Truthken would discover them.

  She ate the egg and a slice of bread and thought about which way to go, right or left. To both options she felt equally indifferent.

  The door opened and Zanja came out with cups of tea. She gave Chaen one and sat beside her. Her feet were bare, and the dry, sandy soil sifted up between her toes. Her sturdy satchel had been on her shoulder and now lay beside her. Her face was austere and remote. A thin braid of black hair lay over her shoulder and looped over the satchel. Her much shorter hair, tied back in a tail, was wrapped with a leather cord.

  “The note from the Truthken,” Chaen began.

  “I know what she wrote. We sat up late, talking about you.”

  “I’m surprised.”

  “Norina and I are incompatible. But neither of us will leave Karis. So, with much practice, we have become able to tolerate each other.”

  “I see,” said Chaen skeptically. “About the glyphs—the lexicon you found contains all the lost glyphs?”

  “Yes, there are a thousand illustrated glyphs. But I didn’t find the lexicon—I stole it. I stole it at knifepoint and tied up a librarian.”

  “I would have stolen it also.”

  “Others have said the same.” She took out her packets of cards and shuffled through them. “After I came back to my own life, I showed the lexicon to some of the oldest soldiers of Watfield garrison.” She began showing Chaen some of the cards. “The soldiers told me that this mountain is climbed every year by mystics, and when they can’t climb it any more, they die. And this animal is like our ox, used for plowing. The flowers on this vine are used to infuse a spirit that’s an aphrodisiac. This building is a place to worship the gods. The fruits being harvested here each weighs as much as a small child. These towers are exactly like the towers in Lalali. Mountains, animals, flowers, buildings, fruits—all are from Sainna. The people who brought the book to this land were Sainnites.”

  Her hands fell still.

  Chaen’s hollowed-out sensation became intolerable. The austere border woman sat unmoving with the cards in her hands, looking outward, unseeing. Sometime later she seemed recalled back to herself. She found a card as if by feel and showed it to Chaen.

  Chaen recognized it as one of the cards Zanja had cast in the tavern. “The Brothers.”

  “We’ve been calling it the Quarrel.”

  Chaen studied the image of the two men, who stood back-to-back in the road, glaring in separate directions: one dark, one fair, one dressed in white, one in black.

  Zanja said, “This card reveals that you had two sons, and only one of them died in the fire. You can’t remember the son who survived, and you can’t even remember that you have forgotten him. Norina thinks the memory was destroyed by air magic.”

  “But if I still have a living son . . .”

  Chaen looked up from the card. Zanja gazed at her as if expecting something. “What?” Chaen said in confusion.

  Zanja said, “Maybe if you look at the card again?”

  Chaen looked at the card in Zanja’s hand and remembered what they had been discussing. “I have a living son? How do you know?”

  “By fire logic.”

  Stymied, Chaen gazed at the card, afraid to look away lest she forget again. “Will I have to look at this card forever?”

  “Norina may be able to repair the damage, if you consent.”

  “No.”

  “I wouldn’t be enthusiastic about the prospect either. Look at this card.” Zanja folded back the sleeve of paper that protected the card Chaen had painted. “This warrior on the riverbank is your living son, the one you can’t remember. The drowning woman is you.”

  “Are you interrogating me?”

  “No, I’m trying to understand a card-casting. These are things you don’t know either.”

  “But it’s knowledge wanted by the Truthken.”

  “That’s true, but to be owed a favor by a sworn Truthken is no small thing. Once, she made a mistake that nearly cost my life, and she has paid for it with six years of civility.”

  If Chaen were painting Zanja’s portrait, it would be a challenge to capture that remoteness, that exotic face, and the jarring juxtaposition with her plain clothing, her bare feet, and the cracked teacup in her hand. But most difficult to capture would be her profound, scarcely visible sorrow.

  “I’m going mad,” said Zanja. Her tone suggested that her condition was as ordinary as a splinter in a finger. “Therefore, I have nothing at all to do. Doing nothing is better than listening to the tedious discussions of Lalali’s sewage problem, but still . . .”

  Chaen laughed, and stopped because it felt so strange, and had to laugh again, and the laughter twisted into a kind of sobbing. Zanja politely didn’t notice.

  Chaen said, “Can a madwoman tell me how to make reparations? Possibly to gain the G’deon’s pardon?”

  “I’m just a presciant, not a visionary. I can find my own way through strange places, but I can only find your way with the cards.”

  “Then use the cards.”

  Zanja cast the cards as she had done before, except for the one she had given Chaen, that was upstairs in her sketchbook. She even used the Quarrel, but Chaen kept her gaze on the card and didn’t forget that she might have a living child. Zanja added the new card to the array. “Consider what you see, and then ask a question.”

  Their teacups were empty; the house’s shadow had crept to their shoulders; various people had passed up and down the road; and the blithe cook Chaen had met the previous night returned from shopping, carrying laden baskets, followed by a boy hauling fish in a hand cart. Chaen picked up the card she had painted two nights ago. Her thoughts scattered like dried leaves in wind, revealing a few words, like polished stones, that had been hidden beneath them. “Death of Memory.”

  “Death of Memory,” Zanja repeated. “Perhaps it tells the story of how you lost your memories, and why.”

  A company of soldiers carrying shovels walked past. Zanja called something in their language, and they looked startled, but a few smiled and one replied. Zanja pinched her nose and made a face, and he laughed. Chaen had never seen a soldier laugh.

  “Those soldiers are going to Lalali to dig new sewage trenches.” Zanja lay back on the stoop and covered her eyes with her arm.

  Chaen picked up the Quarrel again, so she could keep the image before her. “Does your head ache?”

  “It’s from an old injury.” Zanja took a slow breath. “Norina say
s that on the day you were arrested, as you were being brought to this house, you saw something that comforted you.”

  “Could my son be here? In Hanishport?”

  “That’s not a good question. The cards never answer yes or no. Let’s ask this instead: Where is Chaen’s son?” She immediately pointed at one of the cards already cast. “The Ship of Air.” The ship flew high above the earth: a fantastic, puzzling image.

  “Is my son an air witch?” Chaen asked.

  Zanja sat up abruptly. “If he is, then perhaps he destroyed your memories of him.”

  Chaen stood up. “Farewell.”

  “Chaen, wait.”

  “What should I wait for? For you to tell the Truthken? For her to restore my memories and use them to find and kill my son?”

  “You are free to do as you like. But give me my card.”

  If Chaen returned the card to Zanja, she would forget what she was fleeing and why.

  Perhaps the border woman’s gaze was not as dispassionate as the Truthken’s, but it still was calculating. Zanja said, “Ask where Saugus is, and you can keep that card.”

  “I would betray him gladly if I could do it without betraying my friends! But they will defend him, and die with him.”

  “Karis will do everything possible to avoid it.”

  Chaen, her heart hammering with urgency, tried to think. Zanja must have been considering the same questions: How much would Chaen give up to possess the glyph card? Would she betray the friends she did remember to save the son she didn’t remember? If Chaen did ask the question, would Zanja understand the answer? Chaen asked, “Will Karis pardon me? If I betray my friends?”

  Zanja did not immediately reply, and her gaze was quite blank. “Yes.” She jerked with startlement, then, and put a hand to her eyes. “Yes. Yes.”

  “Then—where is Saugus?”

  The fortune-teller cast a card.