Northlight

by Wheeler, Deborah

  Despite the illusion of safety, I double-checked the bar and hinges of the door. There were no windows, only a pair of narrow ventilation grilles that ran the length of opposing walls, and they were only about six inches high. I kept my long-knife right where I could reach it.

  The steaming water smelled herbal and astringent. I sighed and lowered myself inch by inch. The heat turned my skin red, except for the whitened knife scars. Straight and clean-edged — hands, arms, shoulders, chest, thighs. One fool’s cut low on my ribs. Behind my back, where I couldn’t see them, knotted ridges twisted like threadworms, strips of skin that had neither feeling nor memory.

  I should add that to my list of things that scare me. Remembering.

  Remembering Aviyya’s fingers, light and quick. Her indrawn breath. We weren’t lovers yet, when we took leave together at Darmaforge. I didn’t know why I let her talk me into the steaming rock pools in the hills above the public bath house. I told myself afterwards it was curiosity. I told myself it was the dark, only one moon and all those stars. The truth was, we’d been in three skirmishes that week and something in the still being alive, the hours and moments of fighting back to back with her, had left me half crazy and hungry in ways I couldn’t name. And there was something in Avi — a wildness, a secretness, a loneliness, Mother only knows. But it was hard to look right at her. I turned away, fumbling for the lantern, and she touched me.

  “Ahhh, Kardith...”

  I fled into the shadows. I couldn’t face her, couldn’t show her my back again. Her eyes — the color of rain, the color of steel — were wide and dark. It was my own soul I saw in her eyes. Her throat moved, jerking up and down. No words, only that whisper, as weightless and persistent as a feather.

  “You forget I’m not Laurean,” I said slowly, searching for words. “On the steppe, to the east, we call ourselves the Tribes.”

  I don’t remember what else I told her — learning knife-forms with my step-father, wrestling and laughing in the alkali dust with my half-brothers, the water-plague that took them all. All except me. The endless, formless days lost in a fog of ghostweed and endurance while that old ghamel the priests whored me off to dreamed himself into permanent oblivion. And the son whose father I must never name — no! I didn’t tell her that. I don’t remember what else I couldn’t say, the years and deeds I had no words for, only that it didn’t matter.

  Mother-of-us-all, take away those memories. How she cried for me, me who never cries.

  I must think only of what I have come to do, of the man I must find.

  I lay in the tub, the back of my head resting on the wooden rim, staring up at the grille on the far wall. Biting my lip. Gripping the hilt of my long-knife until my fingers cramped. Hearing my blood race through my ears.

  Out, I had to get out of the water. It was the heat making me think crazy.

  I wouldn’t get out. Not until my mind was clear of everything but my purpose here. Tonight I would sharpen my knives to steady my nerve. Tomorrow I would find him, Pateros, the Guardian of Laurea. Then, then, it would be safe to remember.

  Chapter 2

  I wore the long-knife in its thigh sheath and the leather vest with the Ranger insignia. In one of the vest pockets, I carried the folded single-edged knife I used for eating, skinning small game, camp work. A careful search would find two more knives, one in my boot top and the other in a forearm sheath. Maybe, if the searcher knew what he was doing, the one in the hollow belt buckle. Maybe not.

  After a breakfast of fruit and ripened cheese, and an easy round with the buckle knife to remind my hands of the heft and reach of a short, flat blade, I felt fit and awake. My shirt was clean, the worst of the trail dust scrubbed from my boots.

  The saddlebags stayed in my room along with the cloak. The packet of papers from Captain Derron — accounts, reports, Mother knows what — I weighed in my hand as I stepped into the morning sunshine and headed for the central square. Such a little thing, but enough to make my presence here official. All I had to do to follow orders was hand it to General Montborne.

  But it was Montborne who gave the command — no searching past our patrol limits, no forays into norther territory, no retaliation for raids. It was Montborne who set the penalty for insubordination at the loss of a hand. It was Montborne who drove me here.

  o0o

  So many flowers grow in Laureal City that the women wear them fresh in their hair. Everywhere I looked, I saw gardens, strips of blossoming herbs, borders around fountains and benches, pots crowded together on window ledges. Courtyards with vine-covered arches. Trees and more trees.

  The market stands were piled high with fruit and vegetables, grains and dried beans, cheese and yogurt, a dozen kinds of freshly-baked bread, fish from the rivers. People milled around, buying and selling, calling out their wares, pressing against each other, all going in different directions. They moved out of the way when they spotted my Ranger’s vest. A countrywoman with a tanned face said, “Free samples to you, magistra,” and handed me a plum from her cart. I bit into it and the tart juice squirted over my tongue.

  Past the market lay the merchant district, row after row of shops selling everything from spices and cloth to ceramics to books and musical instruments, even children’s toys. I paused to admire a display window of metals, wonderfully crafted knives set with semi-precious stones, belt buckles, bits and spurs, medician’s tools I didn’t recognize. All with their little square approval certificates from the gaea-priests.

  The plaza’s paving stones were light gray and so closely placed that not even a weed pushed through the hairline cracks. The plaza reminded me of the steppe, vast and flat and white with the bitter dust that nothing escaped.

  Terrible things happened in places like this. Lives were taken and then given back again.

  I’d been inside the Starhall before, seen in its ancient heart, the chamber lined in faded tapestries and wood carved with symbols no one knew any more. Here Pateros took my hands in his, according to ancient custom, and here I repeated the oath after him. Each word I said burned through me, over and over, until I was sure nothing remained of who I once was.

  I was wrong about that, but for all those years when I was a Ranger first and only, I had no idea how wrong I was.

  The Senate building faced the Starhall across the plaza as if they were born enemies. It was big — three stories — and flat-sided except for the balconies and columns along the front, all glittery pink stone. The Senate met in the Great Hall and important people had offices inside. No one lived there.

  The military wing stretched from the Senate building along the north edge of the plaza, two stories with a thin band of carved letters between them. I couldn’t read them the first time I was here; Avi told me later what they said.

  “It is better to plant a single seed than conquer a world.”

  And if Montborne believed that, then I was a flame-addled twitterbat.

  Inside the wide wooden doors was a foyer of sorts, a desk with an alert-looking officer. When I was last in Laureal City, the Rangers answered directly to the Guardian. Since the raids — the Brassa War they called it — Montborne commanded. I’d never been inside this building before and these people didn’t know me.

  To his credit, Captain Derron had prepared me well — what I was to do, the passes and how to use them.

  “Promise me, Kardith,” he’d said. It was the night before I left and we were sitting together in his office at the fort, drinking the last of his excellent barley-ale. The weather was cold, as nights are on the Ridge. “Promise me you won’t go off on any expeditions of your own and I’ll believe you.”

  I clamped my mouth shut. Anything I said, I said as a Ranger. “I’ll go right to Laureal City.”

  “And give the papers to Montborne.”

  “Yes.”

  “There may be a reply or orders to bring back. If not, take a few days, rest, enjoy the city. Cool off.” He paused. “Let go.”

  “Let go? Avi saved my lif
e at Brassaford! Shit, she saved yours a dozen times over. She could be hurt out there, dying, taken by the northers, I don’t know! How can you tell me to let go?”

  “Don’t fool yourself, Kardith,” he said. “Since when do northers take prisoners? I’ve lost one of my best people out there. And one is enough.”

  I downed the rest of my cup. If I tried to answer, I might say anything, do anything.

  “If you do go messing around out there,” he went on, “if you disobey Montborne’s orders, then I must enforce them.”

  Only if you catch me first.

  What was the use? With my right hand or without it, I’d no longer be a Ranger.

  But here I was, having come straight to Laureal City, just like Derron said and at a pace fit to kill my good gray mare, repeating to the officer that I’d deliver the packet to General Montborne and no one else.

  “The General’s in meeting with Pateros and the Inner Council,” he said, as if everybody knew that. “You want to wait here — ” a bench against the painted stone wall that made my rump ache just looking at it, “ — or outside? Maybe catch a sight of them as they come out?”

  A thrill for a know-nothing country girl, you mean, you with your fancy uniform and your little bat-sticker knife. Out on the Ridge it’s you who’d be a sniveling worm in less than a week.

  All those tough words to cover how scared I was. Mother-of-us-all, did I imagine this would be easy? I knew I’d have to face Montborne to finish my official mission here. I knew I’d have to somehow get to Pateros. But I hadn’t counted on having anything to do with the Inner Council, even in passing.

  The Inner Council. And she would be there, Esmelda of Laurea, who would have been powerful enough if she just spoke for the University. I’d heard of her, even on the Ridge. Who hadn’t? Twenty years ago, the story goes, a plague swept through Laureal City — pestis fever, they called it. Nasty stuff, all flux and oozing boils. They said the Guardian was near dead of it and half the Senate too, looting and wildfires from the solar foundries, people leaving to spread the plague to the countryside. They said Esmelda made a speech right there in the plaza and while she was talking, the rains came and put the fires out. They said she went everywhere, night after night, keeping people’s hopes alive until the medicians found a cure. They said no one died whom she’d touched.

  I’d never in my life met a woman like that, or a man either. But Pateros had lived and the city was still here.

  Esmelda of Laurea. Aviyya’s mother.

  Avi told me about her as we lay together under the stars, camped in the Brassa Hills or on Ridge patrol. Everything seemed sharper then, maybe more real, I don’t know, but different, that was sure — all the things inside of us that we could never say aloud. I came to understand that Esmelda had given her own life to the University and Laurea and expected her daughter to do the same. She kept pounding it in until Avi couldn’t tell who she was, so full of rage she had no place there. Avi finally left and carved out a new one in the Rangers. That part I understood very well.

  o0o

  From the top of the steps, I saw a knot of people filing out of the Starhall. First some kids — pages, they were called — running off on their errands. Then Pateros. I recognized his easy stride, even without the ashy-silver hair. Tall and gaunt in his green robe. Stooped over a little, talking to a man in a red and bronze uniform, who held himself like his spine was all one solid piece, a couple of military aides playing shadow — that had to be Montborne. Half a dozen older men and women with their own assistants. A gaea-priest in flowing rainbow silks who shuffled along as if his eyeballs were permanently rolled up in his shaven skull.

  They moved on to the plaza. The two City Guards, who’d been waiting at the entrance, strutted along either side, their hands on their batons. Montborne went off with one of his officers and a green-robed woman, gesturing as he talked.

  Whatever Montborne was up to, the woman wasn’t having any of it. A man still three parts boy, yet too old for a page, trailed behind her.

  The people who’d been waiting gathered around Pateros, their voices like the cries of rock-doves. They surrounded him, touching his sleeve and shaking his hand, each one in turn. Then they backed off, lingering. The few still scattered across the plaza began to hurry, to reach Pateros before he was gone. One of them caught my eye, like a raptor-bat in a coop of barnfowl. There was no outward reason he attracted my attention, maybe his dark blue clothes, overly somber by Laurean standards. I saw nothing in his hands.

  Suddenly a man in the crowd started yelling and waving his hands. The City Guards rushed between him and Pateros. The gaea-priest waded in, arms lifted, probably chanting something like, “Let me help you to attain cosmic attunement, my child.” The man skittered away, still shouting.

  The man in blue kept coming, faster now, right for Pateros. He disappeared into the crowd, working his way inward. But I felt him in my blood, not anything of who he was as a man, but what he was in this place, which was all that mattered. The breaker’s breaker, that’s what he was.

  No one else took any notice of him. The Guards were still busy calming the yelling man.

  I started yelling, too, some dumbshit like Stop him! or Watch out! and then I was pounding across the pavement, running on fire instead of breath. My riding boots slapped and clattered on the stones. No one heard me above the shouting, milling crowd.

  What’s wrong with them? Why can’t they see?

  A space opened in the crowd and I spotted him again, the man in blue — standing right next to Pateros.

  I needed only a few more moments, but I was still halfway across the plaza. I tried to scream again. The air whizzed by me. I couldn’t get a lungful.

  Pateros paused, bending his head toward the blue man as if listening intently. The blue man sidled closer. His right shoulder lifted. Montborne and his aides were already moving, the City Guards elbowing back through the crowd.

  I was too damned late and too damned far. There would be no Kardith’s Leap this time.

  The blue man twisted, a quick spiraling thrust, and Pateros’s long green robe rippled and jerked.

  Pateros fell slowly at first, as if he weighed nothing. Then he crumpled against Montborne, pulling him to the pavement.

  Someone screamed, high and light like a wounded pig. The blue man burst from the crowd. I swerved toward him. His teeth made a jagged line. Sweat stained his shirt. He spotted me and started to run. A woman from the crowd grabbed him hard around the hips. He pulled free, but a heavy-shouldered man in a military uniform was right on him and I caught the glint of a drawn knife.

  Pateros lay sprawled on his back, cradled in Montborne’s arms. I pushed my way through the onlookers and knelt by his side, still hoping wild and stupid hopes. It was a hurried thrust, a dagger I’d guess, and on the right side, away from the heart. It could have missed a fatal target. It could have. Liver or guts, yes, he’d bleed inside but this was Laurea, Mother damn it, Laurea! There were medicians and a hospital here, and there wasn’t a person here, me included, who wouldn’t empty their veins to have him live.

  There’s not enough blood, I thought dazedly.

  I caught a glimpse of the dagger — it was a dagger, with a hilt of bone carved norther style. It sat in the center of a spreading red stain like the heart of an aging, blowzy flower.

  Why didn’t I start running a moment sooner? Why didn’t anyone else see?

  The other Inner Council woman shoved me aside and bent over Pateros. Pale red hair parted along a line of sunburn but I couldn’t see her face. Her movements were quick and deft. She breathed into Pateros’s mouth, and his chest rose and fell as if he were still alive. Then she shifted to pumping on the breastbone over the heart’s great chambers. Montborne took over the breathing. People whispered and held on to each other, as if they could hold on to Pateros, too. The gaea-priest raised his hands, chanting more dumbshit.

  He’s gone, he’s gone. I felt this place without him, this vast and terrible plac
e.

  The red-haired woman kept pounding as if the pattern hadn’t changed.

  “How can that help now?” I whispered.

  “It’ll keep him alive until they get the unit from the hospital.” The voice was young and shaken, the eyes rainwater-gray. Black hair spiked out in all directions. It was the kid trailing the old woman who said No to Montborne.

  Not just any old woman, either.

  I slowly got to my feet. The military aides were still pulling people off the man in blue. Someone said, “He’s dead — his throat’s cut.” He should have been captured alive, and what for? Would knowing whatever crazy thing drove him bring Pateros back? Or give me someone else I could ask for help finding Avi? Or make Montborne take back his damned orders?

  Mother-of-us-all, here I am, thinking only about my own pain! Is that why you never answer me? Is that why you kept me from acting until it was too late?

  But I was praying to the wrong god. It was the demon god of chance, the god without a soul, who owned me now.

  Chapter 3

  The plaza filled with people who’d heard the commotion or happened to wander through on other business. Some of them stayed, caught like moths at a candle. Others darted away to spread word all over the city. Over and over I heard the same cries of No and Why? and the same throttled silences.

  The two City Guards and the military aides moved us, the original crowd, off to the side. Whether we were witnesses or suspects, they themselves weren’t sure. A uniform never made anybody think straighter, and there were too many people in authority here. Besides Montborne and the gaea-priest, there were the Inner Circle, each used to giving orders and not about to be herded around with a bunch of civilians.

  More Guards and military people came running, full scramble. Montborne turned Pateros over to an older officer and got to his feet. In a few moments, he had them all sorted out, some off to summon more help, some keeping us away from the newcomers and everyone away from the two bodies. The crowd settled a little.