Air Logic

by Laurie J. Marks

  “It doesn’t matter. The man’s a fool. It doesn’t take magic to see that.”

  “But the false G’deon possesses the power of Shaftal, and could use it against us.”

  “Emil makes all the difficult decisions—without him, she won’t know what to do.”

  “And if something goes wrong?”

  “Whose fault is it that we’re sitting here, doing nothing?”

  “I warned you about the weather, and I told you it was important!”

  The miserable wait continued. Finally, the tell-tale in the oak tree, which had long hung limp, began to flutter. Maxew followed Tashar to the land side of the barn, where two masts were stepped in deep holes, stabilized by piles of rock, with a rope strung between them like a 30-foot-high laundry line. Earlier, the two of them had hoisted the huge silk bag to hang from that line while Tashar attempted to explain the conveyance to Maxew. The giant wicker basket was shaped like a boat; therefore, the bag was a sail. But Maxew insisted that it looked like a bladder balloon such as children play with on butchering day.

  It’s a sail, Tashar insisted silently, and the wind will move us, just as it does on water. As with a ship, its fire was contained in an iron stove, with wire grates across the chimney to catch the sparks. Fire was a necessary danger, because the silk bag must be filled with smoke or it would not sail. But the silk, painted with many layers of varnish, could ignite like a torch. When Tashar had practiced filling it over a fire last year, on a cold, dry autumn day, it had been an anxious business. But now, with two people to hold the bag over the fire, they could control it better.

  Do not be impatient, the instructions said, at least ten different times. Unfortunately, Maxew had not read those instructions.

  “The bag has a leak. Smoke is escaping.”

  “There is no leak. I’ve checked every inch of its seams.”

  “Then we should build up the fire. This is taking too long.”

  “I told you it would be slow!”

  “Why didn’t we just take the boat? We could go north and then up the river to Shimasal.”

  “The boat is too small for the open ocean. We’d be swamped before we left the bay.”

  “And you never saw fit to tell me that?”

  Nothing had changed between them. Maxew blamed Tashar for everything, as always.

  The bag began to swell, and then it came alive, just like a sail that has filled with wind. Even with the light breeze, the inflated bag strained against its tethers. They must move quickly now, and Tashar was glad he had insisted they practice, although Maxew had sneered through the drills: quench the fire, hitch the wicker boat to its sail, leap in, feed fuel to the stove, then climb out to fetch their prisoner. But transferring the man to the boat, which they had hadn’t been able to practice, proved nearly impossible. They struggled in the sweltering heat, trying one method and then another, while the man grunted and writhed in their grasp. All the while, Tashar was painfully aware of the untended stove and the bobbing sail of silk, tethered only by slipknots. Finally they managed to tilt the man over the edge and scrambled aboard. Tashar yanked loose the tethers.

  And waited. He felt nothing. The day was too hot; the wind had died, and they were becalmed; the sail was weighed down by too heavy a load. They would simply hang there until they ran out of fuel.

  He noticed that the telltales were fluttering downward. A down-blowing wind? Tashar looked over the gunwale and saw the roof of the barn as if from a low hilltop—a hilltop that gradually grew higher. They had risen so silently and gently that he hadn’t even known they were flying.

  Maxew actually gave him a look of surprise.

  Tashar had long comforted himself with tantalizing fantasies, in which he imagined himself flying across Shaftal in his sky boat, waving to astonished people below as his boat’s passenger exclaimed in amazement. Now Tashar stood in the gently creaking boat of woven wicker, gazing over the gunwale at the barren, rocky landscape. No one waved at him; no one murmured compliments. He could only compliment himself, which was distinctly unsatisfying. The barn had disappeared into the bleached landscape, and the ocean faded into a blue haze. He could still see the contorted shoreline of the bay and the haze of smoke that marked Hanishport.

  It took a while for him to notice that the telltales flowed upwards now, undulating gently. He reached for the tiller and grabbed nothing; he clasped a line to trim the sails, but this boat had no rudder and no boom. Trust not the eyes, nor the skin, nor the deep of the gut—trust only the ribbon. When a sky boat’s ribbon points at the sky, it is traveling to earth; and when it is pointing at earth, it is traveling to sky. When Tashar read those lines, he had wondered if the translator had made a mistake. But now he understood: just as they had risen without sensation, so also were they now falling. He opened the stove door to add a piece of firewood, then gazed up at the interior of the bag as it began to fill with smoke again. The sunlight, colored red by the ruddy varnish, gave the appearance of sunrise—sunrise captured in a silken bag.

  He looked over the edge, at the long guide rope that dragged below and behind them. The red silk ribbons that fluttered from the guide rope had the same meaning as a sailboat’s telltales: they showed the direction of the wind. According to Tashar’s document, winds might blow in different directions at different heights, and so it was possible to find a more favorable wind by flying lower—or higher, he supposed. But those ribbons all seemed to be in agreement: their northwesterly course would continue until the wind changed.

  Maxew said, “Teach me how to guide this thing, as you promised.”

  “First tell me where we’re going, as you promised.”

  “We’re going to the House of Lilterwess.”

  Older people sometimes mentioned the House of Lilterwess, but their description seemed a child’s tale: a house the size of a town, where flowers bloomed and music played year-round, from which a benign and powerful earth witch governed a peaceful land, while talented youngsters learned the arts of the orders they aspired to join, and the wandering servants of Shaftal—Healers, Truthkens, and Paladins—found convivial shelter each winter. “Ridiculous,” muttered Tashar.

  “No, it lies just west of the Shimasal Road, and north of the Wilton-Hanishport road.”

  “Are you referring to the pile of rubble where it used to be?”

  “That is where old Shaftal ended. There the new Shaftal will begin.”

  Tashar felt a rising excitement. “And what we’re doing now, is that part of it? Part of the new beginning?”

  “It is essential! Now tell me how this sky boat works. We need to turn it toward the south.”

  Tashar looked at his pocket compass, but they were still going northwest. His heart sank.

  Chapter 26

  In the distance, Garland saw the gates of the garrison standing ajar. Then he spotted a gate guard standing in a strip of shadow near the wall. He couldn’t see any longer and stopped to wipe his burning eyes on his apron. He ran again, but the gate guard didn’t move or look at him. She was dozing on her feet, propped against the wall. “Soldier!” he yelled.

  She swung her fist at him. He dodged the blow, and she stumbled sideways from the momentum of her swing. He flapped his apron at her, crying, “What are you fighting me for? I’m a bloody cook, you lunkhead!”

  She blinked at him. “How come you talk Sainnese?”

  “I used to be a soldier.”

  “You’re the deserter?”

  “You’re sleeping on duty?”

  “What do you want?” she said sullenly.

  “Urgent message for the general.”

  She waved him in, then shouted after him, “Hey, cook! Why don’t you send me a cake, eh?”

  Because you’re a bloody idiot, he thought.

  The garrison was long and narrow, like the spit of land on which it had been built. Within its ancient
, salt-rimed walls, the only sound was the shrieks of birds that fought over offal in an alley. The garrison’s entire population seemed to be away, working in Lalali.

  Garland spotted movement to his right. “Hey! Which way is General Clement?” The old woman continued to limp slowly away from him. She was deaf from cannon fire, maybe. But ahead, a familiar figure stepped out into the road: Bothis, captain of Clement’s personal guard. At least General Clement’s safety didn’t depend on that stupid gate guard!

  “Message for the general!” Garland yelled. The captain signaled his people, a door was opened, another beyond it, another at the top of the stairs, and a fourth at the room where General Clement sat beside a mess of papers, rocking a cradle with her foot, the windows open to the harbor. She took the pen from her mouth. “Master cook?”

  “General, early this morning Emil was abducted by an air witch.” Garland’s eyes began burning again. “Norina Truthken asks that you immediately send a mount to Karis on the Lalali road. And prepare to send a hundred soldiers on a rescue expedition.”

  “Captain Bothis,” Clement said. The captain, who had waited outside the door, stepped in to hear her orders. Then he was outside, calling to his people.

  “Sit down, Garland.” Clement poured him a cup of water. A muscle bunched and released in her jaw. He drank, and she waited. Garland had told her the problem and what needed to be done. Now she expected a more detailed report.

  He told her what had happened, and how. He said that Norina was sending an urgent note to Watfield by raven, was summoning the Paladins and councilors from Lalali and Hanishport, and would come to the garrison as soon as she could.

  “Is Norina putting my soldiers under her command?” Her tone was neutral; her face revealed nothing; but Garland spoke cautiously:

  “All Sainnites are Shaftali now, and all Shaftali must heed her commands.”

  “What does that mean, to heed? Must we obey? Or must we merely listen? Well, I’ll ask her when she gets here.”

  Clement paced to the window. “What plan is this rogue air witch pursuing? For what purpose? Whatever he gains, his way of gaining it seems extraordinarily indirect. Perhaps he dares not confront us directly. On perhaps this is typical of air witches? Did Norina say?”

  He said, “Norina Truthken is too angry to think clearly. No one is thinking clearly.”

  ‘’Well, we have been protecting the wrong person. Emil is the one everyone turns to, and he knits us together.”

  Garland cried, “I should have told Norina about the spoon! She would have known something was wrong. She would have known I had I let him into the house. But why would I mention something so stupid when she was so busy and burdened? And I kept forgetting about it, anyway!”

  “You let him into the house,” Clement repeated. “The rogue air witch, you mean?”

  “I don’t remember doing it, but the only way he could come and go without being seen by the air children was through the kitchen.”

  The general said, “Norina, well, she’s honorable, but still a sideways glance of hers could make an old soldier faint. No one will blame you for what a man of her sort did. So don’t take somebody else’s evil and put it on your own head.”

  Garland wiped his face and took a breath. “What should I do now?”

  “The companies I’ve sent for from Lalali—I want the supply wagons loaded by the time they get here. Can it be done?”

  “I don’t know if the garrison cooks can do it, but I could.”

  She took an insignia badge out of a bag and gave it to him. “Put that on. For now, you’re my quartermaster. Captain Bothis will take you to the kitchen.”

  Garland had met his father on the day he came to fetch him from his mother’s house. He was seven years old—Leeba’s age—when he became a soldier, knowing not one word of his father’s language, and his father knowing not one thing about raising a child. One day, to chide Garland for being too hurried, his father had told him that cooks never run, just as they never fight. In a retreat, cooks often were left behind and became cooks for the enemy. In a protracted war, cooks might change sides several times. Through many dreary years, Garland had hoped to be left behind in a retreat, until, one day, a couple of years after his father’s death, Garland had simply walked away from the garrison. From the day he was brought there until the day he left, he had hated being a soldier.

  I’m doing this for Emil, he told himself as the startled cooks opened the storehouse for him and started collecting the hand-carts. For Emil, he surveyed the supplies and allowed the disused millstones of his soldier’s mind to grind. He opened his mouth, and orders spilled out like flour.

  Clement’s signal-man had summoned every soldier in the garrison, and soon a second crew outside was staging the supplies for loading.

  “That’s too much dried meat,” said the chief cook.

  The extra meat rations were for the dogs. “Follow your orders,” Garland said, and the cook stalked resentfully away.

  Karis arrived and began hauling sacks of cornmeal on her shoulder, too impatient for a handcart. Garland’s millstones finished grinding, and he went outside to supervise the loading. Three wagons, twelve soldiers, and a couple of dozen soldiers were waiting outside for him. At the far end of the orderly piles of bags, boxes, bottles, and tins, Karis waited, looking away, her arms wrapped around her belly as though it hurt her. The Paladin at her side watched her worriedly. Clement arrived, and a one-legged soldier tried to tell her something, but she sent her away. Then Norina arrived, and Clement looked around until she spotted Garland and gestured with a rocking motion: Mind the baby.

  “Bloody hell,” Garland muttered and went to take the basket in which Gabian slept like a kitten.

  Someone was yelling his name—the one-legged soldier. “Anybody know Captain Garland?”

  “He’s right here!” yelled the chief cook.

  The woman staggered around the piles of foodstuff. “I’m to report to you. There are twelve horses here and another eight to come, all fit, rested, and newly shod. The three heavy wagons you see here are sturdy and in good condition. There’s a wagon at the barn being loaded with feed, and another that Captains Bothis and Kammer took to get weapons from the lockhouse.”

  “Uh,” Garland said, “Captain Kammer?”

  “One of those Shaftali soldiers.”

  “Kamren, you mean.”

  “Yeah, Kammer.”

  “Very good,” he managed to say, and the woman limped back to her wagon.

  Garland stared blankly after her, stunned and dismayed. The Sainnites had been disarmed for months, and not even Clement wanted to re-arm them.

  The chief cook said, “Captain, do you want to review the supplies?”

  Every battle, and every other idiotic thing that people did, started like this, with a person telling the others to get started. Garland swallowed. “Start loading,” he said.

  He had found a shady place for the baby and given him a piece of hard tack to suck on. When he heard Gabian cry “Yow!” he turned and saw Clement bent over her son, tickling his stomach. At Garland’s side, the chief cook muttered, “Soldiers don’t have babies. It just ain’t right.”

  Garland fumbled at the clasp of the insignia as he hurried to Clement. “General, why did the Paladins fetch weapons? Are soldiers going to be killing Shaftali people again? After all the work we’ve done to gain peace? It’s not right!”

  “Norina’s orders,” said Clement.

  “And you’re obeying her, like a good soldier?”

  She gave him a long look. The feed wagon, laden with bags of grain, rumbled past them. The loaders, their work finished, had clustered in the shade to cool off, while the chief cook checked the wagons to make sure the job had been done right, so the tarps could be tied down.

  Clement said, “In public, please treat me as a general, and I will treat you
as a captain.”

  He finally managed to yank off the insignia. “I’ll talk to you as one citizen to another. Every time someone calls me captain I get the jim-jams!”

  She didn’t take the insignia from him. “To answer your question, Kamren and I both objected to the decision to fetch the weapons. But until we have time for discussion, the weapons will he controlled by the Paladins. Now, regarding your jim-jams . . .”

  Garland’s heart sank.

  She said, “Norina is assigning Gilly to be some sort of captain of Hanishport, and I’m without an adjutant. A hundred soldiers I hardly know are following me on a mission that includes a Truthken, a dozen Paladins, a seer, and the G’deon of Shaftal. I must have someone who speaks both languages and understands both peoples. That person is you, Garland.”

  In a crisis, a soldier could have said just one thing: Yes, General Clement. Garland said, “Like bloody hell!”

  As Garland left the garrison, a company of hot, grumbling soldiers was arriving from Lalali, with the garrison commander riding behind them and another company of soldiers in the distance. He walked angrily away from them.

  When he was still a good distance from the old house, he could hear it groaning from the urgent activity within. As he stepped in the door, a bedroll went bouncing down the stairs. He found Norina in the room she shared with Seth and several other councilors, laying a shirt, underclothing, and spare socks upon a folded blanket. On the table, her map case and various miniature devices were ready to be slung over her shoulder, tied to her belt, or stuffed into her pockets. Emil’s dagger hung at her side.

  She was trying to be Emil, but she certainly knew she couldn’t do it, because she didn’t have his heart.

  Garland said, “Let me help you with that.”

  They rolled and strapped the bedroll. Norina said, “You do deserve to remain as the G’deon’s cook. You shouldn’t have to return to soldiering, not even temporarily. But none of us is doing what we want, or even what we’re skilled at.”