Water Logic (23 page)

That was the true stuff of soldier’s courage. It was not so impressive, really, stripped of its ritual and romance. What the Shaftali would find to sing about she really could not imagine.

She walked briskly up to the garrison gate. The siege gates were closed, and she could not see in. She shouted in her commanding voice, “Gate captain! I am your general! Open the gate!”

The raven could probably see what was happening, but she could only imagine the consternation that these nine words caused. The members of the guard peered at her through the balustrade overhead, then turned to each other, agitatedly confirming that she wore the general’s badge. Eventually one person looked over the barrier and said, “I am Megert, captain of the day watch. Please pardon the delay, but no one in my company knows your face.”

The bloody duty rosters, for years the most onerous of Clement’s duties, would prove to have some value after all. “I know you, Captain. You’ve been captain of the day watch in three different garrisons, and six times you’ve been commended for swift action that spared the garrison from infiltration. I know that you have never been promoted above captain because you let it be known you didn’t want it. You’ve followed Heras for over twenty years, though, since you were assigned to her company just after the Battle of Lilterwess, when she and I both made captain. I can recite every battle you’ve fought in, every injury. Shall I do it?”

“General Clement, I—How did you come here?”

“On my own two feet, Captain. What did you expect would happen when I learned that five entire garrisons were in mutiny?”

“Mutiny? But Commander Heras—”

“I am your commander’s superior officer, Captain. Open the gate!”

“Yes, General. Lift the siege gate!”

My luck has held again, thought Clement.

And then she heard the crossbow twang, and the bolt’s blow knocked her backwards to the ground. Sitting on the road, vaguely surprised, Clement looked at the bolt’s fletched end sticking out of her belly. “Oh, hell,” she muttered. She must move—get out of the way—for they’d use guns now . . . a crossbow requires too much skill . . . any bloody fool can shoot a gun . . . and even hit something . . . something fairly near, not moving . . . assuming they’d managed to keep the powder dry. Clement felt very tired.

Someone grabbed her arms. Saleen. Mabin lifted one leg. They carried her.

Bloody Paladins can’t follow orders.

Mabin grinned like a tiger. She fell, still showing her teeth. So failed anger.

Saleen had been laughing. But now he sighed, and knelt, and bowed over a scarlet puddle that steamed in the chill air. So failed philosophy.

Roadstones slammed into Clement’s back. Pain, now. Only pain.

They lay, the three of them, on the cobblestones.

Part Three: Transported

Chapter 16

The raven in Wilton stands on the rooftop, his wings half-raised. The Paladins, those in black and those in dun, are frozen in the alley. The three bodies in the courtyard have a different kind of stillness. Scarlet stains fill the gaps between the coarse granite cobbles.

A voice shouts something in Sainnese. The thirty soldiers in the alley jerk into motion and within two steps they are running—a mass of sodden gray, their water-rotten boots nearly silent on the stone, their fighting hands feeling for weapons they do not have. They splash into the street, into the line of fire.

The raven can see over the tower barricades. A few of the garrison soldiers are rushing to reload their guns and wind their crossbows. The gate captain is shouting at them. The raven does not understand Sainnese.

The thirty soldiers lift the fallen by the arms and legs, and run back to the alley. No one shoots at them. The raven leaps up and catches hold of the sodden air with his rain-wet wings.

The garrison gate drops away behind him. He swoops into the alley and lands on a Paladin’s shoulder. She jumps with startlement. “Are they alive?” the raven asks.

The Paladin begins pushing into the huddle of shocked people, shouting, “Let the G’deon through!”

The fallen Paladins lie side by side. People kneel beside them, pressing on wounds with bare hands, feeling for heartbeats, holding a little mirror to Mabin’s mouth.

“Mabin is dead,” says Karis, in Watfield. The people sitting with her are silent. Emil covers his face with his hands.

Saleen is taking his last breath. The raven knows this but cannot change it: he lacks the G’deon’s powers. In Watfield, Karis clenches her hands in her hair. The Paladin relaxes into death.

“Saleen is dead,” says Karis. Emil flinches.

The Watfield Paladins reach blindly for each other, weeping. The Wilton Paladins, who stand further away so they can watch the garrison, utter cries of anger. “A hero of Shaftal!” bellows one at the blank face of the garrison.

“Bring me to Clement,” the raven says.

But the Sainnites have barricaded their general with their bodies, and even though the Paladin shouts at and pounds on them, they remain resolute, impermeable.

The raven jumps across them, from shoulder to shoulder, then soars to the ground beside Clement. Rifle balls have burned two black holes where they entered her flesh. The fletched end of the quarrel juts out of her belly. The soldiers roll her onto her side, revealing the blood-soaked back of her tunic, the smear of blood upon stones. The Paladin must have passed her knife across the barrier of bodies, for it is handed to Herme, who is on his knees and slices open the wool tunic to reveal the gaping wounds where the balls exited. She is still bleeding, therefore is still alive.

“Herme!” says the raven. “Mereth!”

Herme ignores the raven, but Mereth looks up at the raven and speaks a few words in Sainnese, then switches languages. “General lives,” she says. “Need house now.”

Karis has ceased to narrate events to the people in the room. She
rises to her feet and reaches blindly for the baby in the basket at her feet.

“Take these Sainnites to shelter!” says the raven, who has traveled again to the Paladin’s shoulder. “Clement is alive!”

The Paladin turns, notices the Paladin irregulars behind her, and utters an exclamation of dismay. The Wilton Paladins have weapons in their hands, and they are facing the Sainnites. But now the Watfield Paladins have put themselves between the armed irregulars and the unarmed Sainnites.

Ronal steps forward, holding his people back with his open hands. He and one of the black-dressed Paladins begin a shouted argument.

In Watfield, Karis has blundered out the door and down a hallway. Emil lunges after her, saying something, but she does not heed him.

In the garrison they were still on winter rations, which meant they were hungry all the time. Seth dropped her entire roll of rock-hard bread into her stew to soften, then with her fingers fished out a piece of meat. Beef? She put it in her mouth and began to chew. It was like trying to eat a wet piece of cheesecloth. Day watch had finally ended. Prista’s company, except for a handful of people on guard duty, had spent most of the watch indoors, oiling the floors in a nearly finished barracks. Then a freight wagon of furniture had arrived, and they had hauled beds on their backs from the gate to the building, for the passage across the restless remains of the wall was too cluttered for a wagon to pass. Now every last one of them was soaked to the skin, and the refectory smelled more of wet wool than it did of food.

Koura and Stel were arguing again. Prista came over and bellowed at them. Both women stood up and moved to either end of the refectory but continued to glare at each other. Stel had given Koura a black eye two days ago, but three days ago they had been lovers—and had been wildly noisy about it, also.

Seth swallowed the hard lump of meat and tried to pick up a piece of carrot, but it dissolved. By the time the bread had soaked up most of the broth, the bowl would contain a pap of carrot mush. The potatoes, however, held their shape well enough to be picked up.

After dinner, they would go to their barracks and entertain each other for a few dull hours, while Seth studied a book by lamplight—she brought her own lamp oil from Travesty, for that, also, was rationed here.

Her stomach growled, and she ate to quiet it.

She thought she heard someone shout her name outside. The people sitting near the door picked up the cry: “Seth!” She left her half-eaten dinner—someone else would finish it—and went outside into the rain.

A soldier—Damon, whose shift at the gate often ended late—and a Paladin, both breathing heavily and wearing rain capes, awaited her. Her heart sank. “What has happened?”

“Please come with me,” said the Paladin.

She started away with him, then remembered she was supposed to be a soldier, and turned back. “Damon, will you explain to Captain Prista—”

Damon gave her an ironic salute. “Yes, Councilor!”

The Paladin said in a low voice, “Emil asks that we keep this matter private. Clement has just been gravely wounded by her own people in Wilton.”

After a moment the Paladin took her arm. “Shall we sit down somewhere?”

“No—no, I must go to Travesty.”

She began walking, though her legs worked like the stiffly jointed legs of a puppet. “What happened?”

“I have told you all I know, Seth. Emil was in a hurry.”

“I see.” In Travesty, she could put on dry clothes and eat a decent meal, she thought stupidly. But Emil probably wanted her to do something. To help bring the news to Ellid and Gilly? They would be—the entire garrison would be—Clement is dying, Seth thought, with a jolt of dreadful clarity. Her stiff legs stumbled her feet awkwardly over the cobblestones. She focused her attention on them, in order to make them move faster.

In Travesty, the Paladins directed Seth to Karis’s bedroom. There Gabian lay on the unmade bed, gabbling happily as clothing was flung over him. Emil stood nearby, talking loudly to Karis, who seemed oblivious to him, to the happy baby she was burying in shirts, and to Seth. “Wagah!’ said the baby, as Seth plucked him out of the clothing. He showed her his pink gums.

Karis pulled a heavy wool shirt over her head without unbuttoning it. She reached for her belt, from which dangled a pencil, a ruler, a small knife in its sheath, and a pouch of the sort that usually contained flint and tinder.

“If we lose you, we lose everything!” Emil cried. “Have you forgotten about the assassins?”

She turned to him: plain face, hard eyes, square chin. “Do you really think I can’t protect myself?”

“But when you sleep—”

“I won’t sleep.” Karis sat on the bed and jammed her feet into heavy boots. Emil sat in the big chair by the fireplace and put his head in his hands.

“What’s happened?” asked Seth.

“Clement went to the garrison, and it seemed they were going to admit her, exactly as she said would happen. But then a member of the guard shot her.”

Karis, buckling her boot straps, said angrily, “Clement lied!”

“Oh, I don’t think—” said Emil.

At the same time, Seth found herself blurting, “Of course she lied—she had to lie—you made her lie!”

They both looked at her in surprise.

“The third choice, remember, Emil? You kept insisting—” Seth tried to stop herself, but the words kept coming out. “She told you there wasn’t a third choice; but you wouldn’t accept that. So what did you think she was going to do?”

Emil put his hands over his face again. “I thought she’d argue with me,” he said. “Like a Paladin.”

Karis said in her harsh voice, “Put that baby in a sling.”

“You’re taking him with you? In mud season?” Seth cried.

“She is his mother,” Karis said. She came around the bed and took the baby. “He is a child of Shaftal.”

Something in Karis’s voice stunned Seth into silence: a coherence, a resolution. She lined a silk shawl with diapers and used it to secure Gabian against the broad chest of the plain-faced, wild-haired woman who had the power of Shaftal in her forge-blackened hands.

Karis went out. Seth and Emil chased after but could not keep up. The dogs barked anxiously. Paladins appeared from all directions—and then Medric was there, clutching his spectacles with one hand to keep them from falling off, grabbing Emil’s arm and crying, “Let her go!” And Norina, arrow-swift, strode beside Karis for a few steps, saying a few precise words. A woman rushed in the front door with Leeba in hand. Everyone came to an abrupt halt. Karis scooped Leeba up onto a hip so they could talk eye to eye. As always happens when children are urged to be brave, Leeba began to cry.

And then Karis handed Leeba away to J’han, who also had arrived suddenly from somewhere, and he dazedly answered the sharp questions she asked him as she was going down the front steps, past the Paladins, while the people who hovered around the building stared after her in dismay. “Is that Karis?” someone asked. “Has another person fallen under the ice?” said another.

Karis strode into the pouring rain. Medric held Emil steady at the top of the stairs. Karis was gone.

Seth said to Emil, “I’m so sorry—I was—”

“You were right.” Emil sounded calm now, terribly calm. “Come inside, Seth.”

Leeba’s cries echoed in Travesty’s huge hallway. Emil said to the Paladins, “General Mabin and Commander Saleen have died. They died trying to save General Clement, who is alive, but with the kinds of injuries no one survives. Karis is going to Wilton, alone because companions would only hamper her now.” He fell silent.

Norina said, “For now, keep these matters to yourselves. Emil will come and talk to you later.”

The shocked Paladins managed small nods. Seth, her thoughts again in tumult—Mabin dead!—followed Emil, with Norina and Medric, scarcely aware of her own existence until Emil closed the parlor door behind them. “Seth, I’m sorry to have to say this so bluntly—Clement is going to die, and it’s better for her if it’s soon.”

Seth sat—dropped—into a chair. Medric sat next to her and patted her knee in an awkward, ineffective way. Emil said, “We need to discuss what to do. What to tell Ellid.”

Norina said, “Well, it isn’t finished, yet.”

Seth looked at her in dull puzzlement.