Fire Logic el-1

by J. Marks Laurie

  “That certainly sounds like air logic,” said Emil dryly. “But you and I, we know better.”

  Though the village walls were well guarded, it was not particularly difficult to breach them. Two presciants and a seer could hardly help but recognize the moment it was safe to climb the wall. They scrambled over and huddled in the shadows on the other side as a watchman passed, and then Zanja whispered, “This place has never been attacked, I gather, or they would not be so relaxed.”

  “It’s never even been discovered,” Emil said. “The closest Sainnite garrison is a long way from here, you know, and the Mearish folk are notoriously secretive. But the few survivors of the fall are housed here, and so I doubt anyone ever becomes complacent.”

  They set forth, walking in a group, like soldiers done with the day’s work, and what with the dark night and the unlit streets they were able to cross from one end of the small village to the other without attracting notice. They saw no taverns or shops, just a series of residential buildings that looked a good deal like military barracks, and a great exercise yard at the village center, with a huge horse stable. The settlement was even about the same size as the Wilton garrison, and Zanja noticed Medric shaking his head as though bemused.

  “I have no idea where your Karis is,” Medric said, when they had crossed the village. “She’s here, though.”

  “We’ve got the whole night to wander the streets,” Emil said. “And tomorrow night, and the night after that.”

  Zanja pulled the four glyph cards from inside her shirt, and shuffled at them while looking at the stars to establish a sense of direction. The card she chose told her to go south, back the way they had come.

  They paced back down the wide boulevard, pausing at every cross-street to shuffle the cards. “Now this is very conspicuous behavior,” Emil commented.

  Prescience had a way of fraying away into ambiguity and uncertainty if it was relied upon too deliberately. When, while standing upon one street corner without moving, the glyphs told Zanja to go south, then west, then south again, she was not much surprised. “I guess we’re finished,” she muttered, and stuck the cards into her shirt.

  Emil nudged her and pointed at Medric. He had wandered up against the wall of the tall corner building, which had no windows at all on the first floor, and he was gazing upward at a lit window. He gestured at them sharply, and they dove into the shadows against the wall as a big, slump-shouldered, shambling figure moved restlessly to the window, only to be eased impatiently away by another, smaller person.

  Emil put his hand on Zanja’s shoulder. She was, she realized, scratching at the mortared stone with her fingernails, as though to dig through into the building with her bare hands.

  Medric came up to them. “Just for a second there, I felt the mountains turn over in their sleep.”

  Emil grabbed them both by their sleeves and marched them a distance away. “There’s a good reason why nobody quite trusts us fire bloods. One minute we’re inspired visionaries, the next we’re drooling idiots. Don’t you two turn idiotic on me.”

  A black shape hurtled at them from out of the darkness overhead. Zanja snatched the raven out of the air before he plummeted into Emil’s stomach. The raven uttered a squawk, then settled down and let Zanja perch him upon her shoulder. “The good raven doesn’t see well in the dark,” she explained. Then, a thought came to her. “Karis, do you hear me?”

  “Yes,” the raven said, and Medric and Emil both jumped with surprise.

  “Lie down and pretend to sleep, and be patient. Can you do that?”

  “Yes,” the raven said.

  “Then do it now. We are coming for you, but you must wait for us.”

  They walked through the village and came back at the building from another direction. The building’s only door opened into a walled courtyard rather than directly to the street. The courtyard’s arched gate stood closed and locked. The wall was smooth, impossible to climb. Nor was there enough space to slip over the top of the gate even if it could be surmounted. In any case, the courtyard had an alert watchman, who paced determinedly from one end to the other, and paused every couple of rounds to peer through the gate and examine the roadway. The other three walls of the house presented blank faces, and offered no access to the roof, either, even if it were possible to get from the roof into Karis’ room.

  Zanja drew her companions away from the building again, to the shadows of another street corner. Emil was vigorously shaking his head, though she had not said a word. “We are not assassins,” he hissed.

  Zanja turned on him in a fury. “Well then, if we can’t attack the guard, what are we supposed to do? Rattle the gate and ask politely to be let in?”

  “Zanja, these are our people, not our enemies.”

  “It doesn’t matter!”

  “Right now it doesn’t. Later, when you can’t forget that once you were a warrior, but then you became a murderer, it will matter very much. You have a good reason for killing that young man. All murderers have a good reason for doing what they do.”

  Medric hushed them urgently. “This is not the place to argue moral philosophy.”

  “I should never have accepted your help,” Zanja muttered.

  “But you did, and now you’re stuck with me. Zanja, listen to me: If they were going to kill her outright, they would have done it by now. So let’s study the problem and come up with a solution we all can live with. We have time.”

  They found a sheltered place within sight of the walled courtyard, and settled down in the shadows. Medric promptly fell asleep, with his head upon Emil’s shoulder. Emil seemed to doze as well, but Zanja kept watch as the night settled into a stillness broken only by the ring of the guard’s iron-studded heels upon stone.

  The stars gradually disappeared, and there was a faint rumble of thunder. As lightning flickered suddenly over the village walls and the first scattered drops of rain began to fall, she heard hurried footsteps and a man in a rain cape came around the corner and rushed up to the gate, cursing. The guard in the courtyard came over, and they argued bitterly as the gate lock rasped open. The gate swung open and now both men stood outside of it, still arguing. A blinding flash of lightning illuminated their faces, distorted with rage and streaked with rain. The two men flinched from the light. Then they wordlessly traded places, one stepping into the courtyard, one starting angrily down the street.

  Zanja had braced her pistols, one upon each knee. As the angry guard disappeared from sight, she slid the guns back into their holsters. Emil, whom she had thought was asleep, said, “There will be a way in.”

  “Guns make killing too easy. It becomes a habit, like it has with Willis and with Mabin. It keeps us from thinking of other ways.” But she could not take her gaze away from the gate, which had been open, and now was closed. The new guard began pacing across the courtyard, in the pouring rain. She could hear his boots ringing on the stone.

  “Rockets!” Medric exclaimed suddenly, his voice blurred with sleep. “Who made the rockets? On Fire Night?”

  “You mean Annis?” Zanja said blankly. Then she said it again. “Annis.” She got hastily to her feet. “Of course. Mabin brought her here.”

  The raven leapt from Zanja’s shoulder and dove into the ram. They followed, but lost sight of him. They circled around into the alley, and finally spotted the raven, sitting miserably in the downpour upon a second floor windowsill, tapping patiently on the glass. The men ducked into the shadows, but Zanja stood in plain sight, with the rain running down her face. The raven tapped steadily, as though he meant to keep tapping until he drowned. Zanja stared up into the downpour, her eyes blurred and stinging. When the window jerked open suddenly, the wet raven fell off the windowsill with a squawk.

  Annis stared down at her.

  “Have you got a moment for an old friend?” Zanja said.

  “Zanja!”

  “Myself.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Emil’s in trouble. I think yo
u can help.”

  Annis disappeared, then reappeared to toss a rope out the window. Of course, Annis would never tolerate being shut up in a building, unable to come and go as she pleased.

  Knots tied regularly in the rope gave Zanja better purchase than she might have expected on such a wet night, but climbing the rope to the window was no easy task, and hauling herself over the windowsill was even more difficult. Annis dragged her into the room, and then helped her up from an ungainly sprawl. “How’s the rocket business?” Zanja asked.

  “I’m making big, nasty ones now.” Annis started to pull the rope up, but let it go when Zanja clasped her hand. “You’ve got quite a chill on you. You better get those wet clothes off.”

  “Would you make a fire for me?”

  “Oh, sure.” Annis knelt on the cold hearth to lay a fire. She had some big sulfur matches to light it with, but everything seemed to be a bit damp, and it took her some time to get a fire going. Zanja talked as she got undressed, so that Annis would heed her voice more than the sounds outside. She told Annis a tale of selfishness and betrayal in South Hill, a tale that ended with Emil imprisoned by his own company for treachery, with his life endangered by Willis’s assassins, who could not afford to wait for a Truthken to arrive and sort the whole mess out. The situation required Mabin’s intervention, Zanja said, and she had burned through three horses getting here ahead of Willis’s men.

  Annis blew the tinder into flame, then sat back on her heels. “You’re right; I’ve got to help him somehow. He’s been like a father to me. I suppose I have some influence with Mabin …” As she looked up, Zanja contrived to be taking off her last item of clothing, her shirt, which she innocently hung on the chair back. Then, feeling Annis’s gaze, she looked directly into her eyes. “I really have missed you.”

  It was easy, almost natural, to embrace her and kiss her. Annis wore only a hastily-buttoned shirt, and was more than willing for it to be unbuttoned again. Zanja took Annis to the bed and laid her down upon it, with a knee between her thighs and her tongue in her mouth. She dragged the shirt from Annis’s shoulders so it entangled her arms. Annis was entirely distracted when Zanja heard Emil grunt as he hauled himself over the edge of the window. She jammed a fistful of the bedsheet into Annis’s mouth, tossed her onto her belly, and twisted the tangled shirt into a fetter. Annis struggled, but Zanja held her face into the pillow until she fell still, no doubt half smothered.

  “Well,” Emil said, as he came over to the bed, breathing heavily, “an unconventional solution.” He helped Zanja to contrive to bind Annis more securely to the bedframe. Then he covered Annis modestly with the blanket and sat on the edge of the bed, admonishing her to behave herself, while Zanja hauled Medric through the window. Annis stopped fighting the tethers after a while.

  The raven flapped heavily on sodden wings to the windowsill. Zanja patted his feathers with a towel to sop up the worst of the wet. Medric had knelt on the hearth to take apart and clean his pistols and reload them with dry gunpowder. He did it as if he had an impatient commander screaming at him to do it faster. As Zanja came over to put on her wet shirt, he asked, “Now what?”

  “I don’t know. Any ideas, raven?”

  The raven shook his wet feathers and brooded.

  Karis lay rigid in the too-small bed, with the rain sound rushing past her. From far away, she watched three bedraggled rescuers crawl through an open window. One was like a knife blade white hot from the forge—one was like a knife blade tempered and honed— and one was like the forge itself. Fire and earth makes the forge; fire and earth makes the blade.

  She must not sleep. Oh Shaftal, she prayed. Oh Shafted I must not sleep. She could not remember why. Oh Shaftal I must not move lest the watcher awaken. Oh Shaftal.

  The raven turned his head and now she saw Zanja: wet and thin and grim as death. Zanja—implacably loyal— Oh Shaftal protect her heart, she is so true, the truest blade I ever forged. Zanja save me I am gone to smoke, I am gone.

  Karis. I know you can hear me. Karis, I am at your door.

  The rain whispered now. The voice whispered in her raven’s ear. Karis do you feel me I am here. Silence. Presence. Do you remember when I was imprisoned doubly imprisoned and you freed me. In bed, Karis remembered what a good night that had been, how tired she had been, and then the hunger that drove her was sated and she could rest for a while. She remembered Zanja, limp as an exhausted child, sleeping in her arms as the snow fell. For a few hours, for a night, the world had been as it should be, and her heart had been at peace.

  Now I am here for you but you must unlock the door.

  Awhisper: Unlock the door. Dear gods Karis unlock the door.

  Karis touched stone through plaster, the stone of the wall which was rooted in earth, and breathed in. Presence. She sat up in the bed.

  Dear gods Karis unlock the door.

  She stood up. Her body was stone. She could not move except when pushed. The white hot blade, the forge, the pumping bellows. Fire and earth makes the forge. The room swirled around her, dark and blurred with smoke. She stepped. The floor shall not creak. She stepped. The watcher shall sleep. She stepped. I am the key. Open. Oh Shaftal. And now she is looking at herself and the room is full of smoke and she opens her eyes and she sees the raven looking at her. Presence. Zanja has touched her. Dear heart.

  “Dear heart,” Zanja breathed.

  Karis opened her mouth. The raven croaked, “Zanja.” Emil whispered, “There is someone in the room.” With Karis’s limp, cold hand clasped in both of hers, Zanja listened. She heard even, deep breaths. She looked around the door-jamb. A candleflame flickered on a tabletop; a woman’s head rested on the table, her arms dangling, as if she had been hit from behind with a hammer. Zanja grinned into Karis’ vacant stare, and in a moment saw the faintest twitch of a smile. Slow-witted was not the same as no-witted.

  “Hurry!” Medric hissed. Then Zanja felt nearby, a faintest stirring, the restlessness of a time-tempered intelligence and a bitter, ruthless heart. Someone was awakening; someone had heard something. Mabin.

  Karis could not be hurried. One step at a time they took her down the stairs. When they came up they had climbed at a distance from each other to keep the treads from creaking, but now they could not be so artful. Karis had no shoes. Her steps were silent but her weight was not. The building sighed under the burden of her.

  On the floor above them, a door opened and there were footsteps. A moment later the four of them slipped into Annis’s room and Emil eased the door shut. “It has no lock,” he breathed, and began moving furniture to block the door.

  A shout echoed down the stairwell. Medric had already gone out the window and was halfway to the ground. Footsteps thundered up the stairs. How long would it take for the building’s occupants to figure out what had happened? The confused guard out m the courtyard would insist no one had come in or out. How long would it take for them to realize that rescuers must have come in through a window? Emil was pulling up the rope. They would have to lower Karis, who scarcely seemed able to place one foot in front of the other and certainly could not be expected to climb down a rope.

  Zanja abruptly took out her knife and hacked Annis’s bindings to tatter. Annis jerked the gag out of her mouth.

  “I need your help,” Zanja said.

  “After you made a fool out of me? I think I’ll just do the same to you. It seems fair!” Annis leapt off the bed and started for the door, clearly expecting Zanja to jump her.

  “Annis, this is no game. Karis is the G’deon of Shaftal. Settle with me later, if you must, but help her now.”

  Annis stopped short. “What? Is this another one of your tales?”

  “It’s the truth. Come and help us lower her to the ground— she’s too heavy just for the two of us. Come! There is no time!”

  Annis hesitated, but she had always been impulsive. “Oh, all right!” she said, but her face glowed with excitement.

  Emil was ready. Despite, or perhaps because of
the smoke, Karis looked panicked as they dropped her over the edge. The three of them popped their shoulder joints and burned the skin off their hands lowering her safely to ground, but then Medric had her, and Zanja could breathe easier. Annis went out the window, followed by Emil. Throughout the building, doors were being slammed open, but no one had yet been sent out to check the surrounding streets. Mabin’s people still thought that Karis was still somewhere in the building.

  Emil had reached the ground. The sky opened up in a fresh downpour. Zanja swung out the window and only then remembered the raven. His feathers were fluffed comfortably m the warmth of the fire, and he seemed disinclined to leave, but finally flew to the windowsill the third time Zanja called him. She slid down the rope as Annis’s door crashed open.

  There was a pistol blast, and the raven exploded like a feather pillow ripped open. In the street below, Karis uttered a terrible, wordless cry, and fell to her knees.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Annis said, “This way.”

  They ran, propelling Karis forward with one person pulling at each arm, and another pushing at her back. Annis darted ahead, light-footed, grinning like a child set loose to play. They ducked into a narrow back way. Behind them, Mabin’s people jammed the house’s single doorway, struggled into the courtyard, and shouted at the guard to unlock the gate. With no idea which way the fugitives had gone, Mabin would have to divide her forces at every turn. Soon, Zanja and her companions would outnumber the pursuers. Pistols would not fire in the rain; she and Emil might well be testing their long unused daggers before the night was done.

  “This way,” Annis called. They fled down an alley where garbage piles awaited the trash wagon. They trampled through a vegetable garden, where squash vines tripped them and soft mud clung to their ankles. They crashed through a gate into another garden, and then between buildings to more gardens, and at last to the wall.