Fire Logic el-1

by J. Marks Laurie

  “She needed to go to Leston.”

  Karis raised her head. “Did she sleep last night?”

  J’han opened his mouth, then closed it again.

  “No,” Karis said for him. “Shaftal protect us.”

  Apparently having decided that Karis’s mouth had been released from its paralysis, J’han distractedly served her some breakfast. She ate carefully, dutifully, without apparent appetite. Watching her, Zanja remembered something she had heard once about smoke addicts, but had not heeded because it seemed absurd: that they lived in lack of pain, and die for lack of pleasure. Karis ate as though she had been trained to do it; smoke surely had destroyed her sense of taste, just as it had her sense of touch. And so, Zanja realized with a shock, Karis would indeed be deprived of both desire and agency, since the earth bloods understand through physical sensation. It must have taken an enormous talent indeed for Karis to have healed and rescued Zanja with so little apparent difficulty.

  “Is there a place where I can sit in the sun?” Zanja asked.

  J‘han had returned to his labors at the table. He said with some surprise, “It’s bitter cold out there.”

  “I’ve been in the dark for months.”

  “Well, there’s a bench out by the barn. I’ll let you use my shoes, but I doubt you can walk in snow, considering the trouble you had with walking on a solid floor.”

  “I’ll go out with you.” Karis fastened her bootstraps, and Zanja put on J’han’s shoes and his doublet of quilted wool that he had worn the night before. On the way out the door, Karis asked for a slice of bread, which she held in the air as soon as the door was closed, and the raven swooped down to snatch it out of her hand.

  Supported on Karis’s arm, Zanja made it to the frost-encrusted bench without falling. The light reflected from the snow was bright enough to make her eyes tear up. She said, “I don’t know how much you remember. But last night I frightened you, and I owe you an apology.”

  Karis frowned as if she were trying to remember a dream. “That’s right, you did.”

  “I should have explained first what I was doing. It didn’t occur to me.”

  Karis sat down beside her. “Smoke and rape go together,” she said, “like bread and butter. It’s a lesson hard to forget, once learned.”

  Zanja felt a searing shame, for she understood far better than she should have the attraction of that helplessness. “You never should have taken me with you, and I never should have forced you into it.”

  Karis said, “But your oath was good.”

  “Of course my oath was good. But how could you have known that? And still, we nearly died of cold.”

  Karis closed her eyes to the bright sun, and murmured, “You sound so like Norina, it’s almost funny. And you’re even wearing her clothes.”

  Zanja did not find it funny at all, for she might admire Norina’s genius and yet have no desire to imitate it. “She and I know the truth in different ways,” she said. “My way is much more messy: confused and hazardous. I’ll never have Norina’s certainty, but I’ll never want it, either.”

  Karis began to laugh, and seemed to find it hard to stop. “Blessed day,” she said at last, wiping her eyes upon her sleeve, “You dismay me. What did Norina do to you last night, to leave you so bitter in the morning? Not that I can’t imagine it, mind you, since I’ve known her half my life.” When Zanja did not—could not—speak, Karis looked over at her and said more gently, “You must have put her in a panic. I wish I could have seen such a rarity.”

  “You flatter me.”

  “I dared hope that once she’d seen beneath your skin you might become friends somehow. A fond hope, I know; but still, Norina can be a fine friend. She does it in her own way, but she’s appallingly reliable.”

  “Did you wonder if we might be adversaries instead?”

  There was a silence. Karis said in a muted voice, “I confess, that is a novelty that hadn’t even occurred to me. I want to ask, adversaries over what? But that makes me sound naive.” She leaned her head back and shut her eyes again, wearing her sadness like an old and familiar shirt. “But if you had wanted to try to control a wild power—” her voice was heavy with irony “—you missed your opportunity when you had my smoke purse in your hand and didn’t take it. So it’s not power you and Norina are adversaries over, and what else is there?”

  Sitting beside Karis, with the warmth from her powerful left arm soaking into the wasted flesh of Zanja’s right shoulder, Zanja abruptly found herself unable to answer; unwilling, in fact, to continue down this path of conversation that she had embarked on so boldly. She said, knowing that she had intended to say something quite different, “I have sworn you an oath of friendship, and I have foreseen that I am destined to serve you. But Norina says that my visions and passions would be poison to you, and she threatened to kill me if I don’t stay away from you.”

  She felt Karis’s muscles twitch, but when Karis spoke, Zanja heard nothing in her voice to explain that spasm of shock or pain. Without emotion, she said, “Norina often takes it upon herself to teach people their duty.”

  So, Zanja thought, I am to lead an empty life.

  But Karis continued after a moment, her voice straining, “When I was young, not twelve years old, my master thought that smoke would make me a better whore. He’d gone through great expense to raise me from infancy, because he knew that my mother’s size and strength had made her popular with the Sainnites. But I was such a disappointment to him: willful, disobedient, tearful, rude to the clients. And perhaps, as he realized how large I would grow, he also began to fear my eventual strength. So he made me into a smoke addict, to ensure my compliance.”

  Zanja felt Karis’s weight shift, and she turned to find her peering into her face. “What would it take to shock you?”

  Zanja said steadily enough, “You found me paralyzed and mutilated and lying in my own shit, yet you never shamed me for it. Surely I owe you the same courtesy.”

  Karis looked away, and for a long time neither of them said anything. In her full strength and clarity of mind, Zanja might have been able to interpret this silence, turning its raw material into a thread of her own spinning. But now she could only wait, until Karis took a breath and continued, “That I have a purposeful life now, in spite of smoke, is largely thanks to Norina’s overbearing, cold-hearted, unscrupulous meddling.”

  Zanja said, “You owe me no explanations, Karis.”

  “No, I am trying to explain to myself why I would follow her advice in opposition to my own—wisdom.” She paused again, as though astonished to hear herself use such a word. When she continued, it seemed she was arguing with herself. “I know it was wisdom, to save your life. And I would have done it much sooner, if not for Norina’s interference.”

  Zanja said bleakly, “But now you will accept her interference once again. And what am I to do with this life, now that you have given it to me? If I am not to serve you, then what am I to do?”

  Karis said, “Serve Shaftal, if you must serve.”

  “I am just one warrior… .”

  “Is it an Ashawala’i habit, to display a false humility? It makes me wonder if you take me for a fool.”

  Zanja sat silent, and then, as Karis began to apologize, interrupted her to say, “I am not often admonished for having too little self-importance. But I might admonish you for the same thing.”

  “Oh, I know that I am important,” said Karis bitterly. “Not a day passes that I am allowed to forget it.”

  When Norina came into sight, skiing behind the raven that flapped ahead of her like a black rag blowing over the snow, Karis walked part of the way to greet her, and they stood for a long time, leaning in each other’s arms, as though, without the other, neither could stand.

  Almost as soon as they ended their embrace, they began to shout at each other. Zanja, able to hear the tone of their voices but not the words, turned again to look at them only when they both fell silent. The sun shone full on Karis’ stark fac
e. Norina, in shadow, seemed grimly resolute. She had taken off the skis, and carried them on her shoulder. Karis bent down and took the satchel Norina had dropped upon the ground. It seemed a gesture of capitulation.

  They turned, and started down the snowy hillside. Norina’s head came to Karis’ shoulder, and she took two steps to Karis’s one. She wore a leather doublet over her sweat-stained wool longshirt; from a distance, it looked like armor. Karis plodded beside her, head down.

  “I’m taking Karis away tomorrow.” Norina’s voice was tight with controlled rage. “You’ll stay here for the winter, with me and J’han.”

  “That’s very kind of you.” Zanja made no attempt to conceal her irony. She had half-expected the command, for, much as Norina might hate it, she had no choice except to shelter Zanja. But there was no point in pretending to be happy about such an uninviting prospect as a winter spent in Norina’s company. Little wonder Norina was so ill-tempered, Zanja realized. Even politeness, which was sometimes the only thing that made human company tolerable, was completely transparent to her.

  “She has asked me to help you find a place,” Norina said.

  Zanja glanced curiously, not at Norina, but at Karis, who had pressed her lips together as though she didn’t trust what might come out of her mouth. “A place in what?”

  “One of the Paladin companies, perhaps.”

  “South Hill Company,” Karis said.

  Norina took in her breath and released it. “Karis—”

  “The commander has a good reputation.”

  “Have you put this matter into my hands or haven’t you?”

  Karis replied just as sharply. “Are you going to do as I ask, or aren’t you?”

  There was no capitulation here, and Zanja was hard put to sort out which of them was giving orders to whom. She did not know enough about the old Lilterwess rankings, but a Truthken, as far as she could understand, outranked everyone, for in contested matters the law must take precedence. But there was no place in that old system for earth or water elementals; their very rarity precluded the creation of an Order to restrain them. No rule or way existed for Karis to follow, no law that gave Norina dominance. Karis could do as she liked.

  “You should think,” Norina said, “of what you’re doing.”

  “I have. It makes no sense.”

  There was no possible reasonable response to senselessness. Karis could not be physically restrained, either. Norina seemed nonplused.

  Reluctant to put herself in the middle of a dangerous disagreement that she did not even understand, Zanja spoke cautiously. “ Serrainim, I beg you not to sacrifice your friendship over so unworthy a cause.”

  They both looked at her as though they had forgotten her. Then Norina seemed to come to her senses and said quite prettily, “I beg your pardon. Of course you may not wish to join the Paladins or to concern yourself in any way with Shaftali troubles. What is it you want to do?”

  “The Sainnites themselves have made this my war. But my first concern is that Karis endanger herself no further on my behalf. Last night, I placed myself under your command, and so I must agree to whatever you say, regardless of what Karis demands. So the two of you have nothing left to argue over.”

  Norina said, with scarcely a hesitation. “Perhaps I might reward your acquiescence.”

  At this point in a negotiation, Ashawala’i protocol required endless protests of one’s unworthiness. But such insincerity in the presence of a Truthken would have been absurd.

  “Karis?” Norina prompted, with somewhat less exasperation.

  “I’ll behave myself so long as you take care of her,” Karis said.

  “For what your promises are worth—”

  “It’s you who have sworn to make my life possible—”

  “And how was I to know—”

  “You’re the Truthken!”

  Norina threw up her hands. “But you are beyond comprehension!”

  It was, Zanja realized, a truly astonishing statement for a Truthken to make. Not until Karis collapsed onto the bench beside her and roared with laughter did Zanja realize it had been a joke.

  “It wasn’t that funny,” Norina said after a while. She had leaned against the barn wall, and seemed almost despondent. “It was the truth.”

  “And whose fault is that?”

  Karis took Zanja’s hand again, not to hold it, but to measure it against her own. “You’re being very patient with us,” Karis said to her, “While we fight like—”

  “—A couple of sisters,” Norina said dryly.

  Karis glanced over her shoulder. “Loan me your dagger, Nori.”

  Zanja had noticed the night before that Norina’s knife could serve as a substantial dowry. Now she saw that her fighting blade would have become an heirloom among Zanja’s people, a blade with a genealogy, passed among the generations of the katrimas lovingly and devotedly as any story of heroism and self-sacrifice. Norina gave the dagger to Karis, and Zanja would not even touch it until Norina impatiently nodded her permission. It was a subtle weapon of austere beauty, with a blade deceptively slender and of startling substance. The metal had been folded upon itself, over and over, leaving a wavering, overlapping pattern inlaid in its shining steel, like ripples on sand. An extraordinarily skilled and patient metalsmith had sweated over, meditated upon, and lived with that blade, day in and day out, until it welded into the smith’s very dreams and became itself a vision.

  “You’re cutting yourself,” Karis said.

  Zanja had involuntarily closed her hand around the blade, and it had casually parted the fabric of her palm. It could have sliced all the way to bone by weight alone, and she might never have even felt it. It seemed amazing, impossible even, that the blade had no Mearish mastermark. Surely only in Mear did the smithery exist to produce such a blade. But even a Mearish mastersmith might well have been awestruck by such workmanship, unable to reproduce it or even to say exactly how it had been done.

  Zanja said shakily, “It is—an artwork. I’ve never seen its like.” She returned the magnificent blade to Norina, who sheathed it absently, seeming preoccupied with a Truthken’s arcane calculation.

  Karis said, “Perhaps you’ll accept a blade like it, as a poor substitute for the friendship we’ll never have.”

  Only then did Zanja realize whose vision the beautiful blade embodied, and whose hand had held the hammer that folded that bright molten blade into its final form. “I’ll send it to you by midwinter,” Karis said. “Have you had enough sunshine? I think I might be feeling cold.”

  Norina’s bundle contained bread and ham and a pair of new boots that fit Zanja as though they were made for her, though in fact they had been made for Norina. Norina sent J’han away to attend a difficult birth she had heard about while in Leston, and the three of them had a surprisingly peaceable day. Zanja slept and ate for most of it, and once when she awakened upon the kitchen hearth she found herself covered by the sheepskin jerkin, which smelled, she realized now, of coal smoke and the forge. Karis and Norina were chopping vegetables for a ham stew and discussing a book of political philosophy. Norina said something that Zanja could not understand, and Karis burst out laughing and put her arm around her. They stood so for a while, leaning against each other, silent, mysteriously united by ideas, knowledge, and experiences that Zanja did not, and could not share.

  The na’Tarweins were infamous for their jealousies, but Zanja had so far managed to avoid that well-worn path. It seemed intolerable that Karis would leave, that Zanja would spend the winter here with this admirable but unlikeable woman, that these few hours she’d spent with Karis were all she would ever have. Norina was the barrier that stood between them. Unfortunately, thanks to the oath that Zanja had sworn to Karis, that barrier was permanent.

  Zanja would have to make a life for herself alone, on the other side of this barren winter. But now she might steal a few more moments with Karis before sunset and smoke took her away, and so she sat up and asked Karis to explain wha
t philosophy was, and what it was good for. That question took the rest of the day for Karis to answer. The sun set too soon.

  Thus ended their brief and strange two-day friendship, for the next morning’s brief and inarticulate goodbyes hardly counted as anything more than empty ritual.

  Part 2

  Fire Night

  Without courage, there would be no will to know.

  Without the will to know, there would be no knowledge.

  Without knowledge, there would be no language.

  Without language, there would be no community.

  —MACKAPEE’S Principles

  for Community

  Who is seen to speak to the enemy must be silenced. Who

  sympathizes with the enemy must lose their heart. Who dreams of

  peace must dream no more. Those who ravaged the land will be

  eliminated: without compromise, without mercy.

  —

  MABIN’S

  Warfare

  When I first met my enemy, she was a glyph, and it was I who

  chose to read her as my friend. When my enemy first met me, I was

  a glyph, and it was she who chose to read me as her friend. So all

  people are glyphs, and every understanding comes from choice.

  — MEDRIC’S

  History of My Fathers People

  Chapter Seven

  Emil habitually wintered in a shepherd’s cottage in the highlands, a place so solitary and forbidding that he rarely saw another living being, animal or human, between first snow and spring thaw. The cold became tiring, but he never grew weary of the solitude or the silence. When weather permitted, he would walk on snowshoes from one end of the highland to the other, and the austere and terrible beauty of that wild land would take root, and create in him a serenity all the more precious because he knew from experience how ephemeral and fleeting it would prove, come spring. When the wind howled and the falling snow made of the vast expanses a small and restless blank, he stayed indoors and read yet again by candlelight the words of the great Shaftali philosophers until whole passages became as palpable to him as a single word, a single thought. Every moment, every breath of frigid air, every flicker of candle and crackle of ice became precious. For most of the year his life belonged to the law, but in winter, his life was his.