Chapter 35

The Paladins arrived by boat, the falling tide pulling them eastward out of the wetland, just as the water people who went out the day before to meet them had been carried westward on a rising tide. Seth was sick to death of water and water logic, and gladly left behind the floating town, the lovely harbor, and the cheerful people. Soon their small company struggled through woodlands so dense they often had to cut a path for Karis’s litter. The Paladins had chased after Karis with nothing but whatever they happened to be holding, and it was fortunate that one of them had been holding a hatchet.

At least Karis was behaving herself, Zanja commented during that first grueling day. The Paladins had chased their G’deon the entire width of Shaftal, and arrived with sore feet and raw tempers. Karis was apologetic and obedient, though in an obviously insincere and utilitarian sort of way. At the Han Road, when they finally reached it, two Paladins who had gone ahead by boat now awaited them, with the lexicon safely stowed in a wagon confiscated from a farm family. Karis meekly crawled into the wagon bed and lay down in the straw. “Deliver this baggage to Watfield in twelve days,” she said.

The Paladins took turns driving the wagon, and the rest of them walked. This far south, the road was in terrible repair, and those who went afoot suffered much less than those who banged and bounced all day across displaced cobbles and through potholes. After two days of slow, bone-jolting travel, Karis sat up one afternoon. “What happened to the road?”

Seth, surprised out of a daze, noticed the smooth stretch of road before them. “Oh, we’re in Basdown.”

“Basdowners take good care of the highway.”

“Of course we do. It’s our only road.”

Some time after sunset had given way to full darkness, Seth heard the High Meadow cow dogs begin barking in the distance, but when the small company reached the wagon track to the farmstead she was tempted to pretend she had missed it in the darkness. They turned down it, though, and the dogs rushed out and surrounded them. A horse kicked at an agile cow dog and missed, of course. “Hold up!” said Seth. “Land’s sake!” The wagon rolled to a stop.

The lead dog immediately stood on his hind legs and began scrabbling noisily at the side of the wagon. “What is wrong with you?” Seth asked. “Tell the pack to let us in—we’re hungry and our feet hurt!”

He barked excitedly at her. “Karis, he wants to meet you.” Seth leaned over to boost him up into the wagon bed, and he rushed impetuously into Karis’s lap, put his paws on her chest, and cried an eloquent welcome with his nose nearly touching hers.

“Greetings, sir,” said Karis. “Your whiskers are quite tickley. Did you know you’re a magical dog?”

The dog uttered a sharp bark, then returned to Seth to be hoisted out of the wagon. He and his pack sped into the looming darkness, barking with the kind of enthusiasm that was certain to bring out the entire household. Seth hoped they wouldn’t stare at the G’deon of Shaftal as though she were a two-headed cow.

“Our dogs are magical?” said Seth as the wagon started down the track, which was too narrow to allow people to walk beside it.

“Get in,” Karis said. Seth did so and encountered Zanja on the other side, doing the same. Every time Seth saw Zanja unexpectedly her heartbeat paused, for she would remember buying the longshirt and breeches for Damon, the shopping trip he had designated their first adventure.

“They won’t offer us seaweed for supper, will they?” asked Karis, as Seth and Zanja settled beside her. The wagon bed, despite its carpeting of straw, smelled strongly of onions.

“No, sand porridge,” said Zanja.

“Or roasted bugs,” Karis retorted.

Seth supposed that these were private jokes. The dogs barked wildly in the distance. A branch scraped along the side of the wagon, and the Paladin who drove them muttered an apology, though she wasn’t certain whether he apologized to the wagon or to the branch. The other Paladins trailed wearily behind them.

Zanja said, “Seth, what is it about the Basdown cow dogs that makes them famous?”

“They have very rigid ideas. I know what you saw in the past, but I can’t believe the Basdowners once fought each other over their farm boundaries, for the dogs would never have permitted that.”

Karis grunted, covered her face, and began rocking from side to side uttering muffled choking sounds.

“I guess I have made a mark on history,” said Zanja.

“You two are conspiring to tease me.”

Karis lowered her hands from her face. In a strangled voice, she said, “Tadwell resolved the problems in Basdown by working magic on the cow dogs. Those dogs have been herding the people of Basdown for two hundred years.”

“What?” said Seth.

Karis seemed to have gotten her mirth under control, but Zanja was holding her breath. Seth supposed she should be offended and outraged, but she felt something unexpected erupting in the hollow of her sorrow. “We need more dogs, then,” she said. “A lot more. One for every person in Shaftal. To bite their ankles every time they misbehave.”

Karis began heaving with stifled mirth again, then gave up. All three of them were roaring with laughter as their wagon trundled into the yard, where the entire family had come out of the house, and the children danced in the dirt with the joyful dogs.

Seth slept in her old bedroom, with her familiar old quilt and the cushioned bench where she had first put her hand on Clement’s knee. She awoke in early dawn, hearing the creak of stairs as people began going out to milk the cows. Last night, Mama had agreed to bring the news of Damon’s death to Ten-Furlong Farm, and Seth awoke to a sensation of relief. She also felt Clem’s ghost awakening slowly in the bed beside her, blinking in sleepy surprise as though Seth were no more strange to her than the stranger inside her own skin. Perhaps, thanks to Karis, Clement would always be a ghost: a hollow imbecile, a devastated wraith. In neither state could she have the peace she deserved.

For peace, thought Seth, is not merely an absence of war. It is all the things that war displaces, the things that war makes not merely unachievable, but unimaginable. Only peace makes peace possible.

She got up, dressed hastily, and went to the room that had the biggest bed, where a Paladin dozed in the hall. Zanja opened the door before Seth tapped on it. “I’m glad you’re here. You can help put the mattress back on the bed.”

“The bed wasn’t big enough?”

“It was, except that Karis kept hitting her sore feet on the footboard.”

Karis yawned prodigiously, sitting in a chair by the cold fireplace. Seth and Zanja wrestled the mattress back onto the bed frame. Karis, who seemed to find it a trial to watch others struggle to accomplish something she could have done easily, loudly reminded herself that she was just baggage.

“You’re too unwieldy and willful to be baggage,” said Zanja.

Seth said, “Karis, can you undo the magic of the cow dogs?”

“Why, when it has worked so well?”

“Because people who are accustomed to being herded become cows. When the Basdowners made me their councilor, they wanted peace with the Sainnites. Then Jareth came, and immediately they hated Sainnites and wanted war. People who just do what they’re told aren’t being good—they’re being cows.”

Karis began working her fingers through her hair, which every day seemed even more wildly tangled. Bits of straw and chaff floated from her head. “Maybe,” she said finally. “Maybe it was Tadwell’s error of mercy.”

Zanja picked up the wooden water vessel she had carried with her from Essikret, and slung its seaweed cord crossways over her shoulder. “Ten days,” she said.

Karis nodded.

“I’ll tell the Paladins you’re ready to go.”

“I need to think about this,” Karis said.

Seth realized Karis was talking to her. For a moment, she had been heeding something else, the creak of Clem’s ghostly foot in the hallway.

Karis added, “Perhaps you’re right about the dogs, but I need to fix my old mistakes before I start making new ones.”

“The Basdowners have been like this for two hundred years,” Seth said. “So there’s no reason to hurry, I guess.”

Seth’s family had offered to load the wagon with fodder for the horses and food for the people, for by tomorrow they would be in the Barrens. “I’ll go make certain the wagon is ready,” Seth said. She went out, following a ghost.

Clement is in her quarters. She sits on the bed. Occasionally, she can hear the soldier in the hall, shuffling her feet, clearing her throat. Some soldiers stand guard quietly. Some are never quiet. This room is frigid in winter and sweltering in summer. It contains a chest of proper size and shape, in which is stored everything Clement owns. On the windowsill are the remains of the bulbs she forced into bloom when the garrison was still buried in snow. The rest of her bulbs, Gilly told her, were planted at the correct time and are now breaking ground. Every year she has watched for that first growth. Why? She has been pondering this question for hours. She has not gone to the garden, and now it is dark.

Gilly ran to greet her, and then he did not smile. Ellid clasped her hand and called her “General.”  Ellid said that seven of the garrison commanders had arrived, then looked at Commander Euphan and her face became quite still. Euphan had talked to Clement a great deal during their journey to Watfield. She still could not remember why she had not trusted him.

Ellid said, “The rest are expected tomorrow. What are your orders?”

Sevan murmured to her. Sevan had not gone to Appletown Garrison—she had returned to Watfield with her officers. She said it was the G’deon’s orders.

“Pardon me, General,” said Ellid. “Of course you must rest.”

“I must rest,” Clement said. She is the general. She knows she is, for people address her as general. A general’s duties are a general’s duties. Now she waits in her quarters for someone to tell her what a general’s duties are.

She hears something in the hall. The soldier clears her throat. She shuffles her feet. She says loudly, “The general is not to be disturbed!”

Why? Clement wonders. She stands up. Perhaps whoever is coming will explain why she has always looked at the garden every day to see if her bulbs have broken ground. She goes to the door and opens it. The hall is dark, and full of people.

“I’m sorry, General,” says the noisy soldier. Her face is not right. The soldier turns to the crowded people and begins to argue with them. Zanja na’Tarwein is talking to her. Zanja used to be dead. She used to be in history. She is not dead or in history any longer. Her voice is quiet and steady. “I understand this,” she says. She is fluent in Sainnese, and this is a very useful thing. “However, this is Karis G’deon. She is your general’s general. She goes where she pleases.”

The soldier breathes. “I am ordered—”

“Commander Ellid’s orders, I assume. Karis outranks her.”

It is wrong for these people to arrive without warning. Clement feels certain of this. She looks up, and up further, for Karis has pushed the soldier out of the way, and it is proper to look into a person’s eyes no matter how tall she is. Karis puts her hand on Clement’s shoulder. Clement is in the room. She is walking backwards. Other people come in behind them. Clement is sitting again on the bed. Karis’s hand is on her shoulder. Clement realizes that Karis has pushed her across the room, which certainly must be improper. She begins to object.

“Be quiet, Clement,” says Karis. Clement’s shoulder hurts. She is quiet. “Zanja, go find them.”

Zanja puts something on the floor beside the bed and leaves the room. Several Paladins are here. Among them is Seth. Seth is breathing. She stands where she is. She is steady. Her hands are at her sides. It is not right for them to be here, Clement thinks.

“Wait in the hall,” Karis says. She is not talking to Clement. The people leave the room. Seth stands where she is.

Karis says, “Seth. She has not asked for you.”

Seth says, “Clem, do you want me to leave?”

Clement says, “It is not right for you to be here.”

Seth breathes. She turns and leaves the room.

“It is not right for you to be here,” Clement says.

Karis says, “I decide what’s right, little though I like it.” Her hand is on Clement’s shoulder, and it is heavy. Her shoulder hurts. Her other hand is undoing Clement’s buckles and buttons. Karis puts her hand inside, on Clement’s skin.

Clement remembers Seth, how Seth was, how she was, how she could not hold her. And she cries out.

Norina Truthken enters the room.

“Don’t let her—” says Clement. “There is a horror—”

She remembers. The pain. The thundering clock. The healer-torturer. She remembers. Gabian gazing solemnly at her, awaiting the answer to a question, his soft face against her breast. Will we be or will we not be, and will we be able to choose our lives? We will, Gabe, but I never will. She remembers. She cuts her friend’s throat. Her friend’s hot blood pours onto her hands. She watches her die, and loves her, and hates her. When she betrays the betrayer, she betrays herself. Loyalty is all she has, all she has ever had. Without loyalty, she will now betray them all. She has betrayed them.

The horror gnaws her entrails, and she screams.

“Drink this,” says Karis.

“Talk to me,” says the Truthken.

Norina and Emil had arrived with Ellid and Gilly and an officer Seth did not recognize. When Clement began screaming, they took the lamp that was in the hall and retreated to a room in which were stored several dozen soldiers’ chests. They sat on chests, and Gilly put his hands over his ears.

Emil said, “Commander Ellid sent for us after Commander Sevan explained to her what had happened to Clement. We were meeting downstairs, trying to decide what to do.”

Seth would like to have been there when Zanja appeared out of the shadows and said—she didn’t know what she had said, probably something courteous and mundane.

After a long silence, Gilly said, “How long will take for them to fix what’s wrong with her?”

Emil said, “I don’t know.”

“The time we have must be enough,” Zanja said, “for we won’t get any more.”

Seth would rather have been in the room with Clement, fruitlessly holding her hand. At least that hollow, weary screaming wouldn’t be echoing inside her head, yanking at her will: do something, do something, do something now. If Clement had been an animal, Seth would have ended her suffering already. Would that be an error of mercy?

“How much longer?” cried Gilly.

Seth sat down beside him and took his hand. He said, “I’ve nursed her through some painful injuries. Her mouth might draw tight, and if it was particularly bad, she might make a sound, like a grunt, very quiet.”

“This is a different kind of pain, I guess.”

Ellid said something in Sainnese. Gilly replied with harsh, barking words. Seth didn’t know what it was about, but no one spoke in this way to a commander, certainly not a clerk like Gilly. Yet Ellid replied quietly to his angry words, and Gilly rubbed his ugly face with his hands and replied in reasonable tones. The other commander, Commander Sevan, spoke also. They were discussing how to solve a problem, Seth thought. She heard a name, Euphan, several times.

Zanja and Emil sat quietly with their arms around each other, not telling each other what had happened, not talking at all. Seth had never seen Emil so unworried.

She began to feel like she was alone in the room.

Clement’s awful cries fell silent. The people waiting in the storeroom stopped talking. The flickering light of the lamp—a plain, practical object, like most soldiers’ things—illuminated their faces but surrounded them in shifting shadows. Seth became aware of her throbbing feet, her aching legs, the dragging weariness of tension and travel.

The hallway outside their door heaved a sigh. Emil stood up hastily, then the door was opened, and Karis filled the door frame. “Emil, don’t,” she said.

“Don’t what? Kiss you?” he said.

Karis let her breath out, and they embraced, and Emil murmured, “Oh my dear, you’ve done so well.”

Seth had never found a family in Basdown, had never found a place she wanted to be more than she wanted to be in High Meadow, and she had not much wanted to be there either. Now she had finally chosen, and kept choosing and rechoosing the same thing, over and over, in all different kinds of ways.

Speaking over Emil’s shoulder, Karis said, “Seth, she wants to talk to you.”

Seth stood up and went out into the silent hallway. Then she turned back and said into the room, “Gilly, do you think she’ll want Gabian?”

He bounded to his feet. She continued down the hall, to the door to Clement’s room, which was ajar. The Truthken stood guard outside, where a soldier ought to be. Norina glanced at Seth without speaking. Her shoulders were resting against the scarred, unfinished plank wall. She leaned her head back, and shut her eyes. Whatever she had done in there had been exhausting.

Seth went in the room. Clement was standing, peering into a tiny metal mirror no larger than the palm of her hand, smoothing her cropped hair. Seth turned up the wick of the lamp that stood on the tabletop, and the barren room’s shadows retreated. The vessel Zanja had carried from Essikret to this room now lay on its side on the floor, empty, its cork halfway across the room. It contained water, Zanja had said. And it contained time.

Clement turned. Before, she had looked healthy but lifeless. Now she looked drawn and exhausted, and her eyes were hollow with pain.

“Gilly’s getting Gabian,” Seth said.

“Will he remember me?” Clement looked around the room as though wondering how she had gotten there, or whether it was the right place. Then, she looked down at the wreck of her boots. She said, “They’ll make me general tomorrow. What they needed me to prove, I’ve proven now. Bloody hell.” She took a breath. “A while ago you were here, and I made you leave.”

There was a silence. Seth said, “I wanted to be the one who tells you that I’ve let one of your soldiers be killed. Damon, of Prista’s company.”

Clement’s mouth grew tight. She made a small sound, like a grunt. Out in the hallway, Norina stirred.

Seth said, “He was a kind, funny man, and I was lucky to be his friend. He was becoming a flower farmer. He died protecting me, but it shouldn’t have happened.”

“We need more people like him, not fewer.” After a moment Clement added, “Very little has been explained to me yet.”

“Probably because it would take hours.”

There were voices in the hall. Norina said to someone, “Not yet.”

Seth said, “I won’t let go of you again.”

Clement took a breath. “Seth—”

“I understand that you can’t make room for me—I understand why that’s impossible. So I’ll make room for myself. I know how to help the Shaftali love soldiers, and how to help the soldiers love peace. And the Peace Committee will find other people to help, and there must be other soldiers like Damon. One day soon, you’ll realize your people are safe. You’ll notice that you’ve gone an entire week without worrying.”

Clement turned away. Seth had said too much. She should have waited, waited for other things to be settled. The general put on her hat, which was clean, with its insignia polished to glittering brilliance, but destroyed by weather, so shapeless Seth doubted it could even be reblocked. Clement glanced down at her wrecked boots again.

She turned to Seth at last, and there she was: not the general, but Clem. But it was the general who said, “I’ll give you whatever you need.”

Seth nodded, and turned towards Norina, to tell her that the next person could come in. But Clem said, “Seth.”

She turned back.

“It takes two to hold on. You’ll have to teach me how, probably.”

Seth went to her, and put her arms around her. She felt a surprise in that lean frame, then a relaxing. Clem’s head became a weight on Seth’s shoulder. Her hat fell off. The back of her tunic was damp, sweat-soaked from her ordeal. Seth felt Clem’s arms lift, felt her hands take hold of her. They held on.