Fire Logic el-1

by J. Marks Laurie

  “In some places they turned to old methods of slavery, which is why the drug the Shaftali call ‘smoke’ first arrived here. Enslaving the farmers was a failure, for farming is far more complex and difficult to learn than we ever imagined it to be, and once the smoke killed the knowledgeable and experienced farmers, we were worse off than we had been. Perhaps some ten years had passed by then, and at last the Carolins realized that they were not going to survive except by making war upon Shaftal, and so it happened that we became what we are today: we ourselves are warlords now, and I have to say that the whole history of the Carolin relations with Shaftal has been characterized by a kind of ignorant incompetence brought about by our inability to break with the past. We can only do what we have always done, even though it is destroying Shaftal and ourselves along with it.”

  He stopped to sip some spring water. Because he seemed to expect that Zanja would make some comment she said, with genuine astonishment, “Although I have fallen in with learned friends, not one of them knows this history. And you talk about ignorance on the part of the Sainnites!”

  “Well, here is an example of it. The Carolins teach their children that the Shaftali are better off because of us—that we’ve released them from servitude to the Lilterwess magicians, and that most of the Shaftali secretly love us for it. At the very least, it is argued, the Shaftali have exchanged one bondage for another, which surely is no more onerous. They have no idea that the Shaftali were never subject to the Lilterwess, but that all of them were subject to the law. They can’t imagine that Shaftal had no lords. It doesn’t help that the Shaftali and the Carolins speak different languages,” Medric continued. “Even my parents could barely communicate with each other.”

  Zanja rummaged in the basket, but she had eaten all the grapes and she didn’t like the sweetmeats. She cut herself another piece of cheese, thinking about how much more likely it seemed that Emil might accept Medric, not because of everything he had told Zanja but because he clearly was, or should be, a scholar.

  The silence had lasted quite some time. She glanced at Medric, and found him staring blankly over the top of his spectacles. She did not disturb him from whatever vision he was having, but in a moment he shook himself out of his reverie and murmured in his father’s language, “Almost I can see it—an ordinary winter day, writing my book by the fire—except that it’s in a Shaftali cottage and the windows open into vast spaces.” He sighed.

  “What are you saying?” Zanja asked, so he would not know that she understood Sainnese.

  “I’m sorry, I was talking to myself.”

  “Your mother must have had fire blood, didn’t she? Did she fall in love as fire bloods do, for no good reason, and pay a high price for it?”

  Medric said quietly, “Well, she always said there was a reason, a good reason that she herself could not explain, but I always had the feeling it had something to do with me. Certainly, if ever a fire blood felt herself driven by a sense of destiny and obligation to a future she could not wholly envision, that person was my mother. You’re a bit like her, I think, else why would you be here?” He smiled his tentative smile, like a man too accustomed to receiving a hostile reception. “You know the old saying, fire bloods are the hinges of history.”

  Zanja did not know the old saying, but she replied with odd bitterness. “You will not lay your mother’s project upon me, Medric. You must open and close your own doors.”

  “I know.”

  After a moment, Zanja picked up his battered book and leafed through it. The book surely had been through the war before it ever made its way to the hands of a man who could actually read and use it. Much of it seemed to be philosophy, but it also contained whole chapters of practical advice on how to live. One phrase struck Zanja: “Live for the future or not at all.” She shut the book and gave it back to Medric, who had been anxious during the whole time she held it.

  “All my books have come from the bottoms of soldiers’ footlockers,” Medric said. “They keep odd things sometimes. The soldier who sold this book to me had it from a Lilterwess school that she helped burn down.”

  Zanja said, “Do you happen to know why the Carolins attacked the Ashawala’i? They were a peaceful mountain people, famous for their woolens …”

  “Oh, I know all about it. That whole incident is infamous, you know. But it was particularly important to me. There was another Shaftali-bom Carolin seer, a year or two older than I. She had a dream that she interpreted to mean that the Ashawala’i were going to defeat and destroy the Carolins. Not one of the Ashawala’i could be left alive, she said, or her prediction would come true.

  Medric opened his book and said, as if reading from it, “Such dreams should cause self-examination, reassessment of purpose and intention. But to simply react to dreams like puppets on strings leads to panicked, superstitious insanity. The best seer in the land sees only a very small part of the truth.” He shut the book. “The Carolins don’t understand that, and neither did the other seer until perhaps she realized, after the Ashawala’i had been destroyed, that the insane enterprise itself might be the cause of the Carolin downfall. We lost an enormous number of soldiers on that one campaign, and you cannot imagine what an impact such a loss had on a practically childless people. Anyway, she killed herself.”

  There was a silence. “I don’t know why I didn’t learn from her mistakes,” he added. “Why do you want to know about the Ashawala’i?”

  “They were my people,” Zanja said.

  She felt the presence of the ghosts: the infants burned in their baskets, the children massacred in the arms of their parents, the old people shielding the young, the katrimwith their light weaponry broken in their hands. Medric studied her through lenses glazed with light, and said quite softly, “So now you are the arrow in the bow we ourselves have strung.”

  “Tell me how I am going to destroy the Sainnites. I am very curious.”

  He gazed at her steadily, long enough that she began to feel uncomfortable, and finally said, “I don’t know what you are going to do. If I did know, I would not tell you. But I will tell you this, for what it’s worth: The elemental flame either transforms or destroys, and we fire bloods have the power to choose which of those it will be. I have made my choice. When you have made yours, I will meet you here again.”

  He took a folded piece of paper from where it was tucked between the pages of his book, and gave it to her. It was a map, roughly sketched, though it was easy enough to identify Wilton, and the river, and the fens, and the location of South Hill Company’s encampment, which was clearly marked, along with the locations of the pickets. It wouldn’t have been too difficult for the Sainnites to locate such a large encampment, but still it was a shock to see it all neatly laid out like this. “We’re going to attack tonight,” Medric said. “We’ll come up the river, here, and through the woods.” He traced a path with his fingertips. “And we’ll surround you, trapping you between us and the swamp. We won’t attack until near dawn, so we’ll have enough light to shoot by.”

  He took the map and put it back in the book. “Zanja, now I ask your mercy. It’s hard enough to live with the betrayals I’ve already committed, the deaths I’ve already caused. Please don’t use this knowledge to ambush the Carolins.”

  Zanja could think of nothing to say, no promises she felt able to make.

  Medric wrapped his precious book in linen and packed up the basket. He looked very tired. “I have been acting as my own enemy, finding ways to undermine my own plans. Our gaol is full of South Hillers who I insist must not be harmed. I have allowed you to burn down the garrison. Now, tonight’s attack will surely go awry. As you might well imagine, my position among the Sainnites will soon become impossible. But I will no longer dream for them, no matter what disasters result. I must find my way with a larger vision.”

  He stood up. “I wish the same for you.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  During the half day of furtive travel along back ways and across plante
d fields, and finally across a portion of the fens which entailed much wading hut at least was passable, Zanja had plenty of time to consider and reconsider her situation. Now, as sunset approached and she stopped on firm ground to strap her boots on before starting the last climb up the slope to the overlook, she marveled at how visible the campfires were. As she approached the camp her wonder only increased. No picket challenged her, and she walked into the heart of the encampment practically unnoticed.

  There was much distracted hustle and bustle, with goose being roasted on spits, the mess of occupation being tidied up, and many excited people clustered in arm-waving conversations, for there never was a South Hiller who could talk without gesturing. At the smoky heart of the encampment, though, there was a stillness where Emil bowed and poured tea from his porcelain teapot. His three lieutenants flanked him, their faces pink with washing, dressed in their cleanest longshirts, their heavy boots tucked up close to their stocky farmer’s bodies. Annis sat among them, charmingly flushed by something being said to her by the erect, gray-haired woman who sat beside her upon Emil’s stool. This woman was boldly dressed, like the three other strangers who sat somewhat behind her, in Paladin’s black. Even from a distance Zanja could see the flash of three golden earrings in her left earlobe. The three earrings of Right, Rank, and Regard had once been worn only by a high commander, a general. Only one such person remained alive now, in all of Shaftal.

  Zanja felt a great weariness, a heaviness so overwhelming she could not continue forward, and scarcely could continue to stand. Transfixed by this exhaustion, she did nothing when Councilor Mabin turned her attention to Zanja, as though, of all the gazes that were turned on her, it was Zanja’s that mattered. For a long, strange moment they looked into each other’s faces across the distance that separated them. Then she spoke to Emil, who hastily set down his teapot and walked over to Zanja.

  “What’s the matter?” he asked her.

  “The Sainnites are going to attack us tonight, here at Fen Overlook.”

  It seemed a measure of their friendship, or perhaps of Emil himself, that he did not even make her explain further, thus making it possible for her to avoid directly lying to him.

  He said, “Well, our watchers would have noticed if a company had left the city gates yet—it’s still light enough to see. So we have some hours at least in which to decide what to do.”

  “I think so.”

  “You look weary to death.” Emil gripped her by the shoulder and somehow she became able to walk with him up to the smoky fire.

  The general had never taken her gaze from them. Now she rose to her feet. “Zanja na’Tarwein?” All the other conversations around the fire fell abruptly silent.

  “Madam Councilor,” Zanja said, “you may not remember, but we have met before.”

  Mabin said, “I remember you. You are much changed in fifteen years.”

  Zanja scarcely could fumble a reply as Mabin, the legendary author of Warfareand the head of Shaftal’s shadow government, expressed her sorrow over the massacre of the Ashawala’i and welcomed her formally into the Paladins. It was, or should have been, a triumph for Zanja to be greeted like this by the councilor herself, with all the company watching. But her status in South Hill no longer seemed relevant.

  “Norina Truthken has written to me about you several times,” Mabm said.

  Zanja felt quite witless. Emil said quietly, “Sit down—maybe some tea will help.”

  Zanja sat beside Annis and held up her porringer for Emil to fill with tea, for he had distributed all six of his teacups already. She drank too quickly, scalding her mouth, while Emil said to everyone at the fire, “Zanja thinks the Sainnites are going to attack Fen Overlook.” He added, for those who did not know, “She is a presciant.”

  Silence greeted Emil’s announcement, and then a fierce argument and discussion which Zanja could not heed. In the midst of it Annis put her mouth against Zanja’s ear and whispered, “Mabin’s taking me away with her, to make rockets for the Paladins!”

  “That’s good,” Zanja said, then realized, when Annis pulled away sharply, that she should have said something else. “I’ll miss you,” she added belatedly.

  Annis showed her teeth. “Sure you will.”

  Zanja tried to pay attention to the discussion that swirled around her. Willis argued that South Hill Company should set a trap for the Sainnites, if Emil was so certain that Zanja’s prescience was dependable.

  “We must not attack them!” Zanja cried. They all looked at her, but Zanja couldn’t think of an explanation for her reluctance to ambush the Sainnites. She put her head in her hands and wished desperately that her skull would simply explode. “If we attack them,” she said, “it will be a disaster.”

  Emil said, “Annis, please find Jerrell and tell her to bring a remedy for a headache.”

  “Are we to spend the entire season running and hiding from a figment of the imagination?” Willis’s big fist had clenched. In the twilight, with the light of the flames moving across it, his fist seemed monstrous. It pounded upon his knee in a fever of frustration and Willis’s voice rose to a shout. “It is a coward’s way!” His fist opened up, and he pointed across the fire, at Zanja. “Before this—foreigner—came to South Hill, we were not cowards! Here we have a perfect opportunity— shesays—to do the Sainnites some damage. But no, we dare not—because she says no. Prescience is nothing but an impulse—an instinct—and maybe it’s the instinct of a warrior who has lost her nerve!”

  Emil’s hand pressed down heavily upon Zanja’s shoulder. She had not even noticed him coming around to her side, but the hand on her shoulder shored up her disintegrating discipline. Emil said,

  “Willis, since you hold fire talent in such contempt, perhaps you might be happier in a company that does not have a presciant as its commander.”

  Willis sat back, his face flushed. “I’m just sick and tired of missing our opportunities. Now that you have new counsel you pay no heed to the old.”

  Emil could seem astonishingly harmless, but he did not look harmless at that moment. “You question my judgment, the councilor’s judgment, and gravely insult a fellow Paladin who has repeatedly risked her life this season, and this is all you have to say?”

  There was another silence, then Willis, his face bright red, said, “I beg your pardon—sir. I meant no insult. I was overzealous.”

  Emil said nothing. His hand still lay heavy upon Zanja’s shoulder.

  Willis looked directly at Zanja and said, “I hope you will pardon me as well.” There was no mistaking the hatred with which he said these words.

  Zanja wanted desperately to challenge him to a duel and win a more sincere apology on her own terms. But this was not the Asha Valley, and Willis was no katrim. She said, as stiffly as he had, “Of course I will pardon you.”

  Everyone began to talk then, as though nothing had happened. But no one else suggested ambushing the Sainnites. The discussion focused on the logistics of retreat, for their fifty fighters had swelled to a hundred, and they had precious equipment to protect.

  JerrelPs infusion did little for Zanja’s headache. When Emil’s circle dispersed to spread the word that they were breaking camp, Zanja got to her feet and nearly fell over.

  Emil caught her and said, “What is it? Are you ill?”

  She said, “Willis thinks you are ripe for replacement and is just biding his time, waiting for you to prove yourself incompetent. But my precipitous rise in your esteem has made him think that I am a pretender to a position that he considers rightfully his.”

  “Yes, yes,” Emil said patiently, and felt her forehead.

  “You trust me because I’m so much like you. Even a fool like Willis can see it.”

  “No, I trust you because I know you’re trustworthy. What is the matter with you?”

  “Last summer, a Sainnite war horse kicked me in the head. I was like this for months afterward.”

  “Sit down. I’ll have someone get your gear. I want you
to stay with me tonight.”

  By full dark, South Hill Company had dispersed, with a third of the Paladins under the command of each lieutenant, hauling gear and supplies to new encampments on the various overlooks. Zanja traveled in the smallest group, which consisted of Emil, the distinguished guests, and a few fleet-footed couriers. They traveled m a wide circle, north through woods so thick that the dignitaries had to lead their horses, west through farmlands, then south upon the dark road, back to the end of the lowlands, just to the southwest of Fen Overlook.

  Mabin had insisted on accompanying Emil, though Emil was concerned that the Sainnite seer might detect her presence and send the soldiers out hunting her. The two of them sat awake while the rest of their small company slept, though Zanja was only pretending. Without witnesses surrounding them, the two commanders acted less formally, and it seemed apparent that they had a long acquaintance, though they did not act like friends. After a while they walked away, and Zanja was able to doze upon the hard ground. When she woke up later it was still dark, and her head seemed ready to finally split open and spill its contents.

  No doubt Emil was keeping watch upon the stone overlook, waiting to know for certain whether Zanja’s prescience had been accurate. She could go to him and tell him the whole truth: that she had lied to him, that she had twice failed to kill the Sainnite seer, that she feared she was being tempted into treachery by a man who understood her better than she understood herself.

  She got up and made her way through a haze of darkness and pain, until she could actually see him, a thin, still silhouette against the stars, the Man on the Hill. Her affection for him washed over her and brought her to a standstill. Wasn’t he already making his precarious way between the fragile and competing loyalties that held South Hill Company together? Already, he had to know the minds of his people, the minds of the enemy, and his own mind. Surely it would do him no good if she imposed her burdens upon him, in the selfish hope that somehow they would become easier for her to bear.