The clangor of the bell was jarring. The horses jumped, the soldiers cursed some more. Clement jerked the rope until her arm ached, and finally there emerged quite cautiously from the gloom a boy in heavy clothing that was much too big for him, wide-eyed and clutching a knob-headed cane as though it were a drawn sword. “Uh … ?” he said inquiringly. Insignias sloppily tacked onto his cap identified him as a lieutenant.
“Urgent business,” said Clement briskly.
He cleared his throat nervously. “Your orders?”
“I write the bloody orders!”
His gaze traveled to the insignias on her own hat, and he belatedly and confusedly saluted. “Lieutenant… ?”
“Lieutenant-General. Let us in, sir!”
“I haven’t got the key.”
From the darkness of the passageway grated another voice. “Gods’ sake, boy, you’re a soldier! Stop wailing like a baby and open the gate.” The boy-lieutenant scurried to meet the approaching old man, who limped on a wooden leg with the support of a cane. He gave the boy a big, rusted key, and stood leaning on his cane as the boy fiddled it into the snow-clogged lock.
“Lieutenant-General,” said the old man.
“Commander Purnal?” asked Clement.
The man uttered a bitter laugh. “Been a while since anyone called me ‘commander’ to my face. Well, it’s about time Cadmar sent you here! How many people you got with you? Six?”
“Seven. And eight horses. I hope you’ve got a stable and fodder.‘
“What do you think we do with the donkeys that haul supplies for us, eh? What’s taking you so long, boy?”
The padlock opened with a sullen groan. The gate squawked open. Purnal turned away and started thumping down the passage, shouting backward over his shoulder, “Send a couple of your soldiers to the kitchen and the rest of you follow me to the infirmary. Boy, you get the stabling crew together. Some real horses for once. Good practice for them. Anyone gets kicked and I’ll hold you personally responsible. Come on!” he bellowed, his voice much magnified now by the echoing passageway. “We’ve got some sick kids here!”
“Gods of hell,” muttered Clement.
The exhausted soldiers were looking at her beseechingly.
“You two.” She selected them at random. “See the horses are cared for, find your way to the kitchen, and make yourselves useful. The rest of you come with me. Not one more complaint!”
The arched passageway eventually emptied itself into a big, circular yard, with a center post thick as a tree in its exact middle, from which beams radiated out to support the massive roof. The horses milled anxiously in the shadows, then settled down, probably recognizing the familiar shape of an exercise ring, though this one was large enough to easily turn a wagon around in. To the left, a big double door likely led to the stables. Ahead, a more human-sized gate hung ajar, giving access to the corridor that encircled the ring behind a sturdy half wall.
“This way,” said Clement. She could see little, but she could hear Purnal’s peg leg and cane, thumping down the hallway. The soldiers, muttering so quietly she could hear no words or distinguish one complainer from the next, followed.
They did not catch up to Purnal until he had nearly reached the end of the hall and they were, Clement judged, near the outer wall of the building again, on the far side of the entrance gate. “You’ve got some kind of winter illness here?” she asked, haunted now by a memory of the dreadful illness that had mowed the Sainnites down that spring. “How bad is it?”
“About as bad as usual. The older kids haven’t gotten sick yet. When that happens, my whole operation falls apart. So the adults are in the sick room and the kids are running the garrison. Good training for them. What are you doing here?”
Clement began to answer, but Purnal jerked open a door, and the stink of feces and vomit all but knocked her over. “Good gods!” she cried, gagging.
“You’ll get used to it,” he said.
*
They lay in darkness, like moles. No discernible warmth came from the smoldering hearthfire at one end of the big room. The sick children lay with nothing but thin straw pallets between themselves and the cold stone floor. Three exhausted men and women did what they could to care for them, but that was not much, since all of the caretakers were one-armed. In the dim, stinking room, to the accompaniment of an incessant, dreary whine of hopeless misery, some forty kids were puking and excreting themselves to death.
“No worse than usual?” Clement said to Purnal, once he had given her the grim tour.
“I’ve seen a hundred kids in this room. And the rest of them trailing about like wraiths. Five years you’ve been lieutenant-general—don’t you read the reports?”
Clement said hastily, “Every garrison is understaffed right now.”
“Because there ain’t no one growing up to replace us old and broken ones,” said Purnal. “And whose fault is that, eh? I got fifteen cripples looking after near two hundred kids. And as soon as the few survivors are old enough to be some use, you take them away and get them killed. Go ahead and demote me!” he added viciously. “It’d be a bloody mercy!”
“You won’t be that lucky today,” said Clement. “We’ll need some lamps.”
“Can’t have lamps around kids. They’ll burn themselves up quicker than you can stop ‘em.”
“Candles, then. And fresh linens.”
“You’ll have fresh linens after you’ve washed and dried them.”
“Broth, or weak tea?”
“That’s what your soldiers are in the kitchen for.”
“Warm water and soap,” said Clement evenly.
“You’ll find them in the laundry. But you’ll have to light the fires first, I expect.”
“After we’ve chopped the firewood,” said Clement. “No, that’s not a question, I understand the situation. Now you listen to me, sir. My soldiers are worn out. They’ll work until the night bell, and then they’re getting some rest.”
“Hell,” said Purnal, “what’s it take to make you lose your temper?”
“Plenty of people have tried and failed,” Clement said, but she was talking to his back. He stumped away, calling to the three sick-nurses that they should get some sleep while they had the chance.
Clement washed and force-fed children, emptied basins and packed fresh straw into stinking pallets until she couldn’t stand it any more. Then she took a turn at the wood chopping, and after that went to stir boiling cauldrons of laundry until the cold had been chased from her bones. Back she went to the sick room, where a soldier told her that two of the kids had been discovered to be dead.
Night had long since fallen, but there had been no night bell. She took up a basin of warm water and set to work again: she was so tired that every time she stood up from where she squatted or knelt on the floor, she practically fell over. Some of the kids who had been whining earlier had gotten quieter. Perhaps they too were dying.
Someone was calling her. Dim candle in hand, she made her way between prone bodies to the door, where a boy-sergeant executed a crisp, startling salute. “Lieutenant-General?”
“What is it?”
“Compliments of the commander! Would you care to join him for supper!”
In the sick room, two of Clement’s soldiers continued their dreary rounds. “My people have not been relieved.”
“Yes, ma’am! The night watch is at supper! They will come to the infirmary shortly! The rest of your people are eating with the senior officers! Then they will be shown to quarters!”
Feeling quite overwhelmed by the boy-sergeant’s energy, Clement set down her basin and candle on the table. The boy, alert and over-sprung, did not put even one toe over the threshold of the sickroom.
Clement’s uniform was wet and filthy, but her change of clothing had disappeared with the horses. In any case, she doubted she could eat, after such a wretched afternoon. She said to the boy-sergeant, “I do need to talkto Purnal.”
He took this as an urgen
t command and set a military pace until she told him to slow down. They passed the open door of the refectory, where a crowd of children sat in size order at the trestle tables, watched over by youthful goons with knob-headed canes in their hands. They went out to the circular corridor, where it was as cold as the outdoors and Clement wondered suddenly what had happened to her coat. Then they followed another hallway to an open door, where firelight flickered. A table was set by the fireplace, preventing Clement from getting close enough to those inviting flames. Purnal stumped out from his bedroom. “Well, sit down. I hope the food’s still warm.”
She sat, but it felt like a collapse. She wolfed down the stew the boy-sergeant ladled into her bowl, and the bread he sliced onto her plate, and when he offered more, she ate that too. When the boy had cleared away the dishes, poured hot ale, and served a wedge of cheese and a bowl of apples, Purnal dismissed him.
“Cheese!” said Clement, cutting herself a slice.
Purnal gestured vaguely. “There’s a dairy.”
The cheese was astonishingly good with a slice of apple. No wine, though, and the ale was typically bitter. She said politely, “Your young soldiers are well disciplined. I’m quite impressed.”
“They want to learn their jobs so they can get out of here, the silly fools.”
Clement sighed, but Purnal had restrained himself during the meal, so she supposed she should be grateful.
He said, “What happened to Kelin, eh? She was a good girl! And I wrote to you personally!”
Clement cut another slice of cheese. “And I personally commanded her to stay out of action. But when the sky started exploding, I guess she got to thinking she could be a hero. I chased her halfway across the garrison, trying to stop her. So don’t you rage at me.”
He let her enjoy the cheese in peace, after that. And then he said, grudgingly, “I teach these kids to shoot a gun and swing a sword, but I can’t teach them any sense. She was a good kid,” he said again. “Smart, even-tempered. Officer material.”
Clement eyed him in some surprise—had he been drinking? But then she felt the sting of tears—Gods, she must be tired! She hid her face by swallowing some ale. Kelin: she had managed to avoid thinking of her for months. She cleared her throat and changed the subject. “I’m here to find one of those kids I sent you from Watfield.”
Purnal took a deep, preparatory breath and uttered a roar. “A scandal! You sent me a wagonload of babies.Half of them couldn’t even do up their own buttons.What was I to do with them, eh? Use them for target practice?”
She cut him off. “I’ll take one of them back.”
“Good luck. A lot of them are dead.”
It had been a dreadful journey already, and Clement had no idea how she’d manage to get back to Watfield. To do it empty-handed, to wait for Death-and-Life to do whatever they planned, to watch the Sainnites collapse into their own hollow center … “Gods,” she said wearily, and put her face in her hands. “All for lack of one little girl? A weight in the scale, indeed!”
“Eh?” Purnal looked at her blankly.
“Do you think I traveled here on holiday? You will produce the child, or give me an accounting of what became of her.”
“Or what, eh? You’ll hack off my other leg? You’ll exile me to some godsforsaken corner of some wretched land and order me to turn babies into soldiers?”
“How about if I blame you personally for the destruction of your people in Shaftal?”
He uttered a phlegmy snort, but followed it with a shout to the boy Sergeant in the hallway.
“Sir?” the boy stuck his head in.
“One of the Watfield children, a girl named—”
“Davi,” said Clement.
“Is she still alive?”
“I don’t know, sir!”
“Well, go ask your fellow officers. And then ask the clerk to check the death records. Report back to me in the dormitories.” He added to Clement, as the eager sergeant raced away, “The longer it takes to find her, the longer you and your company will remain. Don’t think I haven’t thought of that.”
“Apparently, you think your garrison’s interests are the only ones that matter.”
“Take some advice from an old man,” he suggested. “Stop trying to shame the shameless. Let’s go look for your girl.”
In the youngest children’s dormitory, a dozen older children were putting the younger ones to bed. They were able to point out the Watfield children, who huddled together in shared beds. Clement spoke to them in Shaftalese, and soon regretted it, for they cried out for their parents, siblings, and homes. She had thought they would have forgotten them by now. None of them was Davi.
The boy-sergeant caught up with them in the hallway, and reported that there was no Davi in the death records. When Clement asked how accurate the records were, Purnal shrugged. “If we never knew her name, we couldn’t record it, could we?”
“I’ve only seen fifteen of the Watfield children. Where are the others?”
“Sick or dead. You know where the sick ones are.”
“You’d better hope she’s still alive, commander, or I’ll have you digging up the graves next.”
“We burn ‘em,” he said. “Sorry.”
Clement returned to the sick room. There, it smelled just as bad as before, but at least it was quieter. A bitter chill was setting in, and she stopped first to add fuel to the fire, for what good it did. The signal of a candle flame led her to a one-armed soldier who bathed with cold water a child delirious with fever. He told her he had not noticed a child like Davi, but then who had time to pay attention?
She found a candle of her own, and started the dreary business of working her way down the rows of pallets, turning back blankets and pulling up nightshirts. If she had to leave this place empty-handed, she would at least be absolutely certain that the child was indeed lost.
After the Battle of Lilterwess, Clement had assisted in the gruesome job of identifying the dead. The Sainnite corpses had been lined up on the hillside, while beyond them the soldiers methodically took the ancient building apart, stone by stone. It was the height of summer, and the flies swarmed, and the rooks noisily invited their friends and neighbors to the feast. Sometimes, Clement identified a soldier by clothing or gear, because the face was gone. Sometimes she stripped a corpse, seeking clues in flesh, in scars, in gender. Friends and lovers were thus revealed.
There was great celebration, that day, and the Sainnites called themselves conquerors. Twenty years later, Clement knelt in a cold, stinking room and searched the bodies of parentless children, and knew herself a fool in an army of fools.
The night was old when she found a very small girl with a mole on her knee. The illness had gone into the girl’s lungs, the sick-nurses said, and she would not survive to morning. “She will,” Clement said, gathering up the child, blanket and all. “I won’t have my labors be for nothing.”
The one-armed veterans, who surely thought that the labor of their lives had long since come to nothing, rolled their eyes at each other, and refrained from comment.
Chapter Twenty-One
“Clement is no longer in Watfield,” said Gilly to Alrin, as she politely quizzed him at the door about why he had refused to be shown to the parlor. “The general needs me at his side, and so regrettably I have no time for tea. The woman is here? In the kitchen?”
He stumped down the hall, refusing to even let her take his snow-dusted coat. Alrin bobbed ineffectually in his wake, saying, “I’m truly sorry for putting you through such trouble. But her answer to your note asking her to tell stories in the garrison was so … complicated! I urged her to give you a plain reply, but—well, she’s got some peculiar ways.”
She added, surprisingly, “Clement is traveling? The snow can be heavy, even so early in winter.”
“She is a soldier,” growled Gilly.
He opened the kitchen door to find the storyteller standing in the exact center of the room, utterly still. Her clothing shimmered in
the flickering light: silk, a deep red vest over a rich purple blouse, and trousers black and glossy as her hair.
“Don’t you look fine!” Alrin sounded more nervous than complimentary. “Those deep colors, they suit you!”
The storyteller turned her head as though to seek the object of Alrin’s admiration somewhere behind her, and Gilly noticed for the first time that, though her hair was chin length, a single slim braid hung down the center of her back, black as a burn, with a coal-red tassel dangling from its tip. It was no more strange than the rest of her: peculiar but not frivolous. Alrin certainly had known how to dress her.
Gilly said to her, “It’s foolish and dangerous to dicker with Sainnites over price. All we’re paying for is a few tales.”
The woman turned, and slowly said, “What does it mean, to be the General’s Lucky Man?”
Alrin made an anxious sound. “Oh, sir, you see! She’s not right—she’ll say something to offend.”
Gilly said to the border woman, “I’ll explain that to you, if you tell me why no one knows your name. A trade, tale for tale.” She nodded her assent. “Well, then. The Sainnites say there’s a certain allotment of suffering that the gods set aside for each one of us. Some few are given all their life’s curses at once, when they are still in the womb. They are born monsters, but they are lucky, for all their allotted ill fortune has been used up already. Powerful people have monsters beside them, as barriers against the ill will of the gods. So, I am Cadmar’s Lucky Man.”
As though she did not quite trust her finery, the storyteller sat cautiously on a kitchen stool. She said, “A curse has taken away my name, and made me a gatherer of stories. The witches of my people took my weapons, and cut my hair, and burned all my belongings, and destroyed my name, and with my name they destroyed my memories. I know this is what happened, but I don’t remember it. Now, I am just a storyteller, and have been for many years.”
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