Chapter 24
The empty cup of Zanja’s skull was filled to overflowing by a pitcher of pain.
“Will Karis pardon me? If I betray my friends?”
Zanja saw a large room, dimly lit by high windows. Her hand rested on the shoulder of a starving woman who should have been young but was not. She touched the worn, greasy texture of the woman’s ragged silk shirt. She felt the dust of a thousand other people, living and dead, trapped there in the dirty silk. She tasted the salt of distant oceans. She sensed the scalding fingertips of slave children unwinding the silk from the cocoons; the tiny lives of the silkworms; the lives of the trees whose leaves they ate; and the life of the soil that fed and stabilized those trees.
“Yes,” Karis said with Zanja’s mouth and Zanja’s breath.
Zanja opened her eyes. Chaen was wending through an appalling labyrinth, one dreadful turn at a time.
“Yes,” Zanja said. “Yes.”
“Then—where is Saugus?” Chaen asked.
Dazedly, Zanja chose a card.
It was a card from the original casting. It depicted a luxurious room, walled with tapestries, in which a woman sat upon a chair that had no back but had curved armrests nearly as high as her shoulders. Her rich robe covered the entire floor like a carpet. A narrow, winding staircase led to a door that was set in a hillside. The roots of a tree buttressed the walls of the room.
Zanja said to herself, in her native language, “How can I understand this picture?”
“Speaker? Did you call me?”
The boy had been swimming in the Asha River. The city grime had dissolved in its cold, fast-flowing water. He had put on a summer tunic with the woven border pattern of the na’Tarwein clan. His black, wet hair hung nearly to his waist.
“I did call you,” she said.
“What is your will?”
“Tell me what this picture means.”
The boy examined the glyph card. “It is a burrow.”
“Like a rabbit’s burrow?”
“It is for those who live among us, underfoot.”
“Yet we don’t see them. Why is that?”
“Because they keep out of our sight, or they pretend to be what they are not.”
Chaen was staring, and well she might, since Zanja was speaking with an invisible boy in an unknown language. Zanja said in Shaftalese, “Chaen, ask me where is this underground room.”
Chaen glanced in the direction of Zanja’s apprentice, but to her, he was not there. “Where is this underground room?” she asked.
The boy offered Zanja a page from the lexicon. That page showed a farmer, walking behind a plow pulled by the peculiar oxen of Sainna, whose horns covered their heads like helmets. In the turned soil immediately behind the farmer’s feet, plants were already sprouting. A river bordered the four sides of the field, floated upon by strange ships, swum in by sinuous fish, and settled by elaborate houses along its shore.
The details may have been wrong, but it was the Corbin River. This farmer could be Waet, plowing the field after which the city of Watfield had been named.
She said, “How can this person be in Watfield? After we have watched for him, sought him, with every power at our disposal?”
“You never looked underfoot,” said the boy.
She reached to take the page of the lexicon from him, but her hand closed on empty air.
Chaen said, “I don’t understand.”
Zanja said, “I know where Saugus is.”
“Then I am leaving.” Chaen walked away, with the glyph card still held in her hand.
Zanja pounded up the stairs to Chaen’s room, grabbed her knapsack, and ran downstairs again to awaken Lil Paladin and ask her to chase Chaen with it. “Then fetch Norina. Tell her to come immediately.” She ran back up the stairs, slammed into Emil’s and Medric’s room, and shook the sleeping seer by the shoulder.
“Mmmph.” His eyes cracked open. “What.”
“Saugus is in Watfield, in Travesty!”
“Bloody hell,” he muttered in Sainnese. “I can’t see. Do you see my—”
She shoved his spectacles at him, but he took them off as soon as he put them on and handed them back to her. “You’ll need these. For far-seeing.”
Zanja put Medric’s spectacles in her satchel. She noticed that she had thrown the cards into it without wrapping and tying them. She forced herself to sit at the table to put them right while Medric put on the spectacles for close-seeing and got dressed. Seeming half in a dream, he kept interrupting his progress to give her more things to put in her satchel: a tinder bag, a roll of twine, a mending kit.
The dogs barked. Through the window, Zanja saw Norina running down the road toward the house. Medric was fumbling vaguely with buttons. Zanja did them up for him and then pushed him ahead of her, into the hall and down the stairs, not much caring that he might stumble and fall in his sleepy daze. Norina came in, with the agitated dogs behind her. “Where’s Maxew?” she asked. “He’s supposed to be watching the door.”
Medric sat on the stairs. “Where’s Emil? He didn’t say good-bye like he usually does.” He looked in bewilderment at the sheathed dagger in his hand—Emil’s dagger.
Zanja ran down the hall and slammed into the kitchen. “Garland! When did you last see Emil?”
Garland was doing something complicated with a chopping knife, a pile of herbs, and a bowl of salt. “Yesterday.”
“He didn’t come in this morning for a cup of tea?”
Garland looked up from his work, puzzled, then dismayed.
Zanja left the bright kitchen. The hall seemed shockingly dark. She cried in a panic, “Maxew is Chaen’s son! He is colluding with Saugus! And he has taken Emil!”
The ravens lifted off with hoarse cries. One flew up from a branch in a tree near the road to Lalali. One took off from the fallen wall at Watfield garrison. And one flew down from Travesty’s rooftop and began croaking at the Paladin who was pulling weeds in the front garden. But the ravens had lost the power of speech, and the Paladin offered the bird a worm plucked from the soil.
She was running down the road, and each step was as heavy and implacable as the rolling of boulders over a cliff’s edge. A Paladin ran beside her, imploring her to explain. They were passing the pond where the soldiers usually swam after a day of dirty work in Lalali.
Karis gasped, “I don’t know where Emil is!”
“Norina, stop that!” Medric cried.
Zanja staggered. Back in her own skin again, she saw the two of them, mere shadows in the dark hall: Medric sitting on the stairs in a huddle, Norina driving her dagger into the plaster wall, over and over.
Norina stopped. She glanced at Zanja and said, “Karis is speaking with your mouth now.”
“Why doesn’t she know where Emil is? She always knows!”
“I should have noticed!” Norina began stabbing the wall again.
“Give Zanja your dagger,” Medric said.
Norina was never without her dagger, not even when walking from one room to another.
Medric said, “She needs it. The sheath also.”
Norina handed Zanja the dagger. Plaster dust shimmered in its rippled surface, where Karis had delicately folded and re-folded the molten metal.
Garland had come out of the kitchen, but kept his distance, as Leeba did when Norina was in a temper. Zanja said, “Garland, I need travel food.”
He ducked back into the kitchen.
“No!” cried Karis.
Norina said, “If an air witch has hidden Emil from you, only fire logic can find him.” She handed Zanja her belt and scabbard. She was calm now, wound tight as an instrument of war.
Zanja said, “Norina, listen. Saugus has been living with us in Travesty. I don’t know how long.”
“Then Maxew let him in. And I never set eyes on hi
m. Nor did any law student. He must have entered through the kitchen.” She breathed deeply. “The housekeeper, Bran. Bran is Saugus. Karis, did you hear me? I’ll write a note immediately for a raven to carry to J’han.”
“It’s two days’ hard flying,” Karis gasped.
“Still, it’s twice as fast as riding.”
Garland rushed out of the kitchen and began stuffing Zanja’s satchel with fabric sacks of food. He gave her a water flask with a long strap to loop across the shoulders, and a porringer to hang from her belt. “What kind of blanket, wool or linen?” he asked.
“No blanket.” Zanja bent down to check her bootstraps, then Norina caught her arm to keep her from falling.
“Headache?” She knelt to check the straps for her.
Karis made a choking, sobbing sound in Zanja’s throat. “Zanja, you must not go into danger! Not when you’re losing your mind!”
Norina said, “Madness makes Zanja impervious to air logic. Would you rather send Medric?”
Medric gave her a bewildered look, then seemed to realize that she was being sarcastic.
“How many people will I lose today?” cried Karis.
“You’ll lose yourself if you keep running in this heat,” Norina said.
“We cannot,” Karis gasped. “We must not fail.”
“Then send Zanja!” cried the seer on the stairs. “Send her, Karis! Send her!”
The Paladin was asking questions again, in a tone both polite and exasperated. They were walking now, and Karis was coughing from the dust in her throat. “Go,” she gasped.
Zanja slung the laden satchel across her shoulders and ran out of the house.
Part Three: Fire
The way of fire is to see and know
Fire with earth can be renewed
Fire needs water to ease its woe
Four elements for balance.
Chapter 25
Tashar’s sailboat waited, rocking gently in the quiet water. He packed away the deck covers, stepped the mast, and checked the sail and lines. He made certain the supplies were still in the hold: blankets, tins of water, bags of food. They must travel very lightly. Could they manage with less water? Did they really need blankets? Well, they could always jettison excess gear.
The glassy smooth water began to glow like a lamp chimney of blue glass lit by a brilliant flame. The rising light revealed the hazy city. When the city’s business resumed, its loveliness would go unnoticed in the heat and racket. But how beautiful it was, as the white sandstone blushed pink and illuminated flowers flowed like silk over the shoulders of a house. Atop the hill, the House of Lora and the other great houses flared with light, while in the east, not even the edge of the rising sun could be seen—then it appeared, the tiniest shred of brilliance, and sunrise ignited the city. The water’s glassy surface crumpled, and the clutter of small boats began to shift restlessly, thumping each other’s sides. Tashar heard shoe soles scraping stone. There were his passengers: Maxew, straining like an eager dog, dragging a staggering companion behind him.
It was not Maxew’s mother. It was a stranger, who gazed about in childish delight and confusion. Tashar hurried down the dock to help Maxew steer the balky man to the boat. He seemed a witless and ungainly collection of disconnected parts. When told to step into the boat, he stared blankly. When pulled, he pulled in the other direction.
“Just hold the boat there,” Maxew said, and, while Tashar held the boat steady with the boat hook, Maxew gave the man a shove. He sprawled into the boat, with his head against the wall of the cockpit and his flailing legs stuck out over the portside gunwale like fishing poles.
“Gah,” he said in bewildered surprise.
Three gold earrings in his left ear caught the light.
Tashar said, “We’re abducting Emil Paladin?”
“It used to be him,” said Maxew.
“But what about your—the portrait painter? Doesn’t she need rescue?”
Maxew said bitterly, “Whatever happens to her, she deserves.”
The light breeze pulled them slowly outward from Hanishport into the bay. Except for a couple of distant fishing boats and two ships that lay at anchor, they were alone. With the rippling water lapping the windward beam, they poked along, running with a luffing sail until they were free of the harbor and could turn more to the north. Then, with a broad reach, they gained some speed, and the ripples of the sheltered harbor became waves that thumped the hull like rough friends.
Maxew, having listened impatiently to Tashar’s instructions, perched on the rail when the boat began to heel, and leaned back over the water. The breeze freshened, and the boat raced across the bright harbor, quick and light as a butterfly. Sea birds shrilled, chasing the boat and wheeling away. Tashar asked, “What did you do to him?”
“Broke him,” said Maxew.
“Why not just kill him?”
The air witch glanced at Tashar, who didn’t like being looked at in that way. He began fussing with a line that had nothing wrong with it.
“Pity, horror, curiosity.”
Tashar turned his attention to the streaming telltales. “What are you talking about?”
“Your irrelevant emotions. Our duty is to bring this man to Saugus, without any part of him touching ground, not even once.”
Tashar thought for a while, but some of the things he was thinking made him feel wretched, disconcerted, uncomfortable, confused, even nauseated. The more he tried to determine why he felt so awful, the worse the feelings grew. Only when he said meekly to Maxew, “Whatever you say,” could he return to his enjoyment of being on the water.
They had a southwesterly breeze, and sailing toward the northeast required some skill and attention. One time that they came about, Tashar, half hoping that the swinging boom would dump Maxew into the cold water, didn’t warn him. But Maxew ducked the boom anyway, crawled over the prisoner to sit on the opposite gunwale, and gave Tashar a mocking glance. I know your thoughts, he might have said.
One last change of tack brought them to skirt dangerously near the shattered shoreline. Here, where waves broke on black boulders, two ancient buoys wallowed, marking the entrance to a nameless cove. Rocks lurked in the shallow water of the cove entrance, a worse threat than the crashing waves. Tashar used the sight flags planted on shore to navigate. Some of the flags were decoys to wreck or drown unwanted visitors, but he knew which were which.
Now the highland blocked the breeze, and Tashar had to row to shore. He scrambled to raise the keelboard, and they ground into the gravel beach. He said, “I’ll go hire some people to carry him. Take out his earrings so they won’t be able to guess who he is, not that they’ll care.”
Tashar took some money from his pouch and waded to shore. Some people of the small, nameless settlement stood at the far end of the beach, watching him with closed expressions. He didn’t know their names, and they didn’t know his, but they had received and stored his secret shipments over the years. They certainly weren’t his friends—but in every bargain Tashar had ever made with them, they had kept their word, and kept his secrets.
“I’ve got a man in my boat that must be carried to the barn,” Tashar said. Immediately, they began to discuss the price.
Tashar wished they weren’t standing so close to the drying racks, which were festooned with seaweed and filleted fish. “The man must not touch the ground at all,” he said.
These people were completely without curiosity. On his visits, Tashar sometimes had sex with one or another of the women, and they also never asked him a question. A man said, “It’s a good four furlongs, I guess, and all uphill. If we can’t put the man down to rest, we’ll need six people so we can spell each other.”
That raised the price by a third. Tashar took out his money and paid them the first half. The six waded into the water, rolled the old man onto a blanket, and lifted him out of the
boat in this makeshift sling. Keeping his prisoner in sight seemed to be all Maxew cared about, and he started after them, but Tashar yelled at him to carry some gear, and he hastily grabbed a load of supplies and trotted away with heavy tins of water suspended from his shoulders and baskets of food in each hand.
Tashar dragged the boat ashore, stowed the sail, and secured the decks. It was a sweet boat, the best he had ever sailed. Tashar patted it affectionately to wish it luck and turned away. Laden with supplies, he trudged across the gravel beach, up the steep, winding cliff path, then up the slope of a barren black hillside. Eventually, the smugglers came down the path toward him, and Tashar paid them the other half of the money. Then he found Maxew’s water tins abandoned by the trail, and he carried them until he met Maxew coming back for them. The path leveled out, and a barn came into sight, a weathered, sideways-leaning old wreck in the wasteland of an abandoned farm. The smugglers had slung the prisoner from the petrified remains of an oak tree that stood watch near the barn, and he was writhing in this hammock like a sailor in a nightmare.
Maxew wiped his face on his shirt, squinted at the brilliant sky, then looked across the rolling wasteland. “Where are the horses?”
The ribbon of silk Tashar had tied in the top of the tree fluttered weakly in the direction of the ocean. He said, “We don’t need them. All we need is a westerly wind.”
Their preparations complete, they sat in the narrow strip of shade by the north wall of the barn, waiting for the wind to change. Whenever the man hanging in the tree began to struggle or utter garbled complaints, Tashar would return to worrying about the catastrophes that could befall them. It was like an intermittent fever.
One time, he said, “What about the G’deon’s seer? Won’t he know where we are?”
Maxew said, in a tone of long suffering, “No, because air and fire are incompatible.”
Later, Tashar said, “But if he can’t know what you’re doing, you also can’t know what he’s doing.”
Air Logic Page 21
