Earth Logic

by Laurie J. Marks

  The baby was uttering rhythmic, grunting sounds. Gilly looked down at him with a puzzled expression, as though the arrival of this small person were nearly as dismaying to him as it was to Clement. “A young woman, unmarried, no household of her own, apparently acting against her parent’s wishes? She’ll expect you to provide for her. She’s got nowhere to take a child.”

  “Someone might have told me!” Clement smeared more butter onto her roll. “The storyteller could have told me, if she knew how to volunteer information.” Then she mumbled, her mouth full, “I feel like I’m eating frozen sawdust.”

  “It goes well with that frozen mud puddle.” Gilly indicated the gelid bowl of brown stew.

  Reminded, Clement swallowed a few chilling spoonfuls. “Fortunately, I know you’d never point out a problem until you’d thought of a solution.”

  “There’s a place available not two buildings away from the gate.”

  “Keep my own establishment?”

  “I would hardly call two rooms an establishment.”

  The baby uttered a cry, rather experimentally, but Gilly gave a start, which in turn caused the baby to cry in earnest. Clement shoveled in a few more mouthfuls, then took the baby, and admonished him, “Listen, little soldier, we’re strategizing your future, and strategy requires concentration.”

  “The storyteller could also live there,” said Gilly, speaking loudly over the baby’s wailing. “I’ll help with the cost, of course. I’ve always wanted to be somebody’s uncle.”

  Clement said, “I’m not sure I heard you, with that shrieking in my ear. Did you say you want to be an uncle?”

  Grinning, Gilly stood up and leaned upon his sturdy cane. “I’ll check those rooms in the morning, and if they look passable, I’ll rent them on your behalf.”

  She opened and held the door for him. Out in the hallway, the storyteller rose up lightly from where she had been squatting with her shoulders against the wall. “Let’s get some sleep if we can,” Clement said to her. “Will you be all right on the stairs, uncle?”

  Gilly gestured crudely, and shuffled into the shadows.

  When Clement first set eyes on her son’s new wet nurse, she was flirting with the soldiers at the gate: a plain, thin, sullen girl, younger than Kelin had been. She unbuttoned despite the chill to display her swollen, milk-leaking breasts. “Satisfied?” she asked sharply, then added placatingly, “Madam.”

  “What became of your own baby?”

  “He went to the father’s family.” Winking at the goggling soldiers, the girl did up her buttons.

  No doubt that this girl would be a trial to Clement, just as she surely had been to her recently discarded parents. In the rented rooms, though, where at Gilly’s instigation the plaster was being repaired and furniture was being delivered, the girl sat down beside the glowing coal stove and demonstrated that she could suckle, though the baby appeared to need some training. The storyteller squatted on her heels and watched this amateur performance with what seemed to Clement a healthy skepticism.

  Clement squatted beside her. “If this were your son, would you leave him in this girl’s care?”

  “I cannot answer that question,” the storyteller said.

  Clement hired the girl only because she had no choice. That night she lay in her own room, alone, trying to convince herself that she appreciated the luxury of an uninterrupted night. At sunrise she was in the rented rooms again, holding her son beside the newly lit stove, having a quiet conversation with him while the nurse and storyteller slept.

  “Acquiring a child is no different from acquiring a horse,” she said to him. “For every Sainnite but myself.”

  The baby lay in her arms, an unopened package, a blinking, sleepy stranger. “For me,” Clement said, “It appears to be a shocking occasion. Perhaps as much as it is for you.”

  She glanced at the door, that hung half ajar to let in the heat, beyond which the storyteller slept on a pallet on the floor. “You can thank the storyteller for this. Or curse her, if you like. Whatever you think she deserves.”

  The baby uttered a small burbling grunt.

  “No, I can’t make up my mind either,” she said.

  The day of Clement’s departure for the children’s garrison had arrived too soon. “Where did all those ravens come from?” said Gilly from the back of his horse, as he escorted her to the garrison gate.

  Black birds swarmed above the garrison gate. As Clement watched, their flying mass compressed together, then exploded upward, uttering eerily gleeful rattling cries.

  The forty gloomy soldiers who awaited Clement at the gate watched the departing birds with undisguised anxiety. “Hell,” Clement muttered. Ravens were battlefield birds; Sainnites loathed and feared them. “They’ll be thinking those birds are an ill omen.”

  Gilly was usually contemptuous of soldier superstitions, but now he looked worried.

  The gate captain was approaching. Though he was one of the most dispassionate soldiers in the garrison, even he looked discomforted. He carried an unlabeled package wrapped in oilcloth, sealed with red wax, tied with twine, and smeared with bird droppings. “What is it, captain?” asked Clement sharply.

  “Lieutenant-general, this thing seemed to fall from the sky.”

  Involuntarily, Clement looked again at the disappearing flock of ravens. One had separated from the group and now swooped down to land on the peak of a rooftop. Gilly’s voice spoke harshly. “Keep your imaginings to yourself, captain!”

  It was what Clement should have said to the gate captain. She turned to him belatedly and said, “Morale is going to be tricky enough without the soldiers thinking we’re getting packages from ravens.”

  “Yes, ma’am. But what should I do with this?”

  “Give it to me,” Gilly said. “In a low voice he added to Clement, “Go talk to your soldiers.”

  She stepped forward to greet Captain Herme, and with him beside her walked through the ranks of the gloomy company, greeting every soldier by name, enthusiastically touting the inevitable success and importance of their venture. By the time she had finished trying to raise their spirits, she could see Cadmar and Ellid arriving for the official departure. She hurried back to Gilly.

  Looking both unhappy and unwell, he briefly held up a slim book for her to see, then hid it again in its dirty oilcloth wrappings.

  “A book?” said Clement. “In Shaftalese?”

  “It purports to be written by Medric.”

  “That’s a Sainnite name,” she said. Then she remembered who Medric was. “The one who claimed to be a seer? The one who disappeared from Wilton Garrison? He’s written a bloody book?”

  “Not just a book, Clem. It’s about the Sainnites. And Medric is in fact a seer—a true seer.”

  “How can you be certain of such a thing?”

  “Because he knows the numbers.”

  She stared at Gilly, dumbstruck. She knew perfectly well what numbers he meant: the secret numbers, which Gilly had ciphered only once and then had burned to ashes. The numbers that were only known to the two of them and to Cadmar.

  Gilly continued, “This seer can cipher too. And he has a printing press. No doubt this book is right now being read all over Shaftal. And that seer is taunting us by sending us a copy! Because he knows there isn’t a thing we can do about it!”

  Clement took in a breath and let it out. “There’s nothing we can do,” she said. “So don’t tell Cadmar.”

  “Clem—“

  “He’ll prevent me from going on this mission!”

  They stared at each other, then Gilly said grimly, “And that would only compound the disaster.” He tucked the grimy package inside his coat. “I’ll give you a day.”

  “Two.”

  His gaze briefly focused over her shoulder, then he smiled stiffly at her, apparently trying to pretend this was a pleasant conversation. “He’s coming over to us.”

  ‘Two days, Gilly. I can’t be out of his reach in one.”

  “Ri
ght,” Gilly said. “Well, I certainly look forward to hearing about all your adventures, and wish you a safe journey.”

  She turned around and found Cadmar and Ellid had come within hearing. “Well, general, will you wish us well?”

  He did. She saluted. He saluted. Ellid saluted. The gate was opened. The soldiers marched out, snowshoes on their backs, dragging awkward sledges that would soon be gliding on snow. Clement followed them out the gate, reeling.

  Ten days later, in the teeth of a howling snowstorm, her company arrived at the children’s garrison. As Clement explained to Commander Purnal why she had returned, and with such a large escort, his astonishment soon turned to sarcastic appreciation. “So, your bungling has turned our garrison into a symbol! And now you’re finally forced to take us seriously! Well, it’s six days yet until Long Night, and there’s plenty of roof repairs needing to be done in the meantime.”

  “We’re going to remain invisible indoors. You will continue your business as though we were not here. And I’m placing those soldiers I left behind under Captain Herme’s command.”

  “It’s only what I expected of you,” Purnal said bitterly, and stumped off in a temper.

  An experienced Paladin commander who was planning an attack would keep a watch on his target for days beforehand, so to keep their arrival unnoticed Clement’s company had avoided roads and farmlands as they neared their destination. Snow-covered streambeds had often offered the best paths as they navigated through the woods by compass and dead reckoning. One glorious day, they had followed a frozen river, and had been lucky to find shelter in an empty building with its dock pulled onto the riverbank to keep the ice from destroying it. Most days, though, had been grueling, and at night they sheltered themselves in makeshift constructions of snow, branches, and tarpaulins. It took two days by the hearthfires of the children’s garrison for the soldiers to thaw out. But every night, once full dark had fallen, with an audience of fascinated children, they rehearsed the battle.

  As she endured the empty days, Clement desperately wished she could distract herself. Her room had one small window, and often she opened the shutters and peered out at the pristine snow, sunlit or starlit. Sometimes there were children out in the snow. Watching them, Clement felt a pulling in her chest, as though some physical pieces of her had been left behind in Watfield.

  With the visiting war-horses as allies, the children beat down a circular track along which they marched, or chased each other, or pulled each other on makeshift sleds. Around and around the garrison they went. So also Clement’s thoughts circled around and around, but they circled a distant place and time, five years in the past: the seer Medric’s most recent posting, Wilton Garrison, in South Hill, the summer after Cadmar became general.

  That summer, Wilton garrison had been attacked and burned by rockets. The rockets had been invented by Annis, a Paladin woman of South Hill Company. Those same rockets had burned down Watfield.

  The leader of Death-and-Life, Willis, had also come from South Hill. If he had learned from Annis how to make the rockets, he must have been a member of South Hill Company—the same company that had held firm in the face of what should have been an overwhelming force of soldiers.

  Medric had been a resident of Wilton garrison when it was burned, an attack he inexplicably failed to predict, even though, according to Commander Heras, his previous predictions had been devastatingly accurate. Later that summer, he had disappeared.

  Willis disappeared. Annis disappeared.

  The long-time commander of South Hill Company—a formidable leader, respected even by Heras—disappeared.

  Heras reported vague rumors of treachery, of a mysterious member of South Hill Company who Paladins thought was a Sainnite spy. But she also, it seemed, had disappeared.

  Surely all these disappearances mean something! Wildly, desperately, Clement wore away the floorboards with her pacing. In dead of night, in a building filled with sleeping children, she spoke aloud to her empty, solitary room: “What happened in South Hill?”

  Some hours later, she asked the question again, differently: “What began in South Hill?”

  Then it came to her: In the autumn of the same year, a gigantic woman had supposedly plunged a spike into Councilor Mabin’s chest, without killing her. She had done it because of a mysterious woman. And then the so-called Lost G’deon had disappeared.

  Had all these people disappeared together? Would they also reappear together? Annis had reappeared—or at least her devastating rockets had. Willis had reappeared as the leader of Death-and-Life. Medric had reappeared, to blithely publish the Sainnites’ most dangerous, most closely-kept secret. And a mysterious woman was telling stories in Watfield garrison.

  Some hours before dawn, Captain Herme sat up in startlement as Clement walked into his room. “Lieutenant-general, what is wrong?”

  She wanted to say, I am trapped ten days’ hard journey from Watfield, and I am going mad.

  But instead she said apologetically, “I’m having a bad night, captain. And it’s occurred to me that we’ve got to capture the leader of this group alive, somehow.”

  Herme groaned.

  “I know—to kill a cage full of rats is easy. To kill all but one is practically impossible.”

  He groaned again, his hands rasping loudly on his unshaven cheeks. “Can I ask why?”

  “I need to ask the man a question.”

  “But to try to keep him alive will risk our success. Is it that important?”

  She wanted to say, Perhaps it will spare us from being completely exterminated. But instead she said, “Yes, captain, it is that important.”

  Chapter 29

  They were huddled around Karis, in the single room that had been afforded them by the farm family on which they had imposed themselves. Leeba, on whom the great adventure of this winter journey had quickly palled, had whined herself to sleep. The rest of them, blistered, frostbitten, and still chilled to the bone, clustered together in their underclothes. A fire burned in the fireplace, but its heat was blocked by drying boots and breeches, long shirts and wool coats. Karis was on her knees before Emil, with his frost-bitten foot clasped in both her big hands. His boot, having developed a leak, was in the kitchen being repaired by the farmstead’s cobbler.

  “You know how still Zanja could be,” said Karis.

  Emil said, “If Zanja were thinking, or waiting, or listening, she could almost seem absent.”

  “She is like that all the time, now. Present, but absent. Visible, but invisible. Listening, and silent. I see her form, her flesh, but I don’t see her.”

  Emil said, “Perhaps a part of her has replaced the whole.”

  J’han, who recently had come in from attending an ailing member of the household, got under the covers with Norina and Leeba. Norina asked, “What else do the ravens see? What do they see this woman doing?”

  Garland, against whose back the exhausted Medric had companionably curled, watched Karis shut her eyes so she could look through the eyes of her raven. She said, “She is inside the garrison, in a building, where the raven can’t see her now. But I can hear her voice.” A silence, and she said, “‘. . . Frost sparkled on the stones . . . The crack was wide as a hand . . . It seemed to go on forever.’”

  “Apparently, tortoise-woman has just noticed that the world is splitting in two,” said Emil. “The woman is telling stories to the Sainnites, as Medric dreamed she would.”

  Garland wrenched some of the blankets from Medric so that Emil could tuck himself in. The three of them would share the single narrow bed, a feat they had accomplished several times now, in several different beds, though each time it seemed quite impossible. Karis, too big for the rooms, the doorways, and the furniture, had no choice for a bed but the floor.

  Medric, his face buried in the pillow, mumbled, “What about the book?”

  “The ravens dropped the book inside the garrison gate, like you said to do,” said Karis. “Zanja—or rather whoever she is now—w
as standing on the other side of the gate. On the garrison side, many soldiers were gathered, with sledges and snowshoes. A soldier picked up the book from the snow, looking puzzled. He gave it to a woman, who gave it to a man on horseback. A very ugly man, terribly deformed.”

  “That must be the General’s Lucky Man,” said Garland. “He uses a tincture for pain for his twisted back.”

  “He’s a Shaftali,” said Medric.

  “But they say he’s privy to all the General’s secrets.”

  “Still, he’s Shaftali.” Medric smiled smugly, with his eyes still tightly closed, his spectacles safely put away for the night. “Did he like the book, Karis?”

  “He and that woman, they had an exceptionally dismayed discussion.”

  “Oh, very good! And what is the woman doing now? That woman was lieutenant-general Clement, by the way.”

  “She left the garrison with the soldiers. I don’t know where they went.”

  “I think you’d better keep an eye on her,” Medric said.

  The work of travel was far from easy. But neither was it as grueling or frightening as Garland had feared. Some of the ravens had returned from Watfield, but their aerial scouting was no real necessity, and only rarely were Norina’s maps unpacked. Because the land revealed itself to Karis, the travelers never took a wrong turn; and were never surprised by the weather, though their hosts were certainly surprised by their arrival. Day after day, the load of books grew lighter.

  Leeba wore red, like most children, to make it easier to find her when she got herself buried in snow. Karis also wore red: a coat of red felt, exuberantly decorated with red tassels. She looked magnificent in it. When she first put it on, Garland thought such a coat contradicted everything he understood about her. Someone else must have bought the coat for her, someone who saw her differently from how she saw herself. Zanja, he thought.