“A remarkable person might,” Emil answered Karis finally. “A G’deon might.” He brought his hands up and began undoing the polished horn buttons of his heavy shirt. “Let me serve you a little longer, Karis.”

She said harshly, “How much longer do you think you can endure it?”

“As long as it’s interesting,” suggested Medric.

“As long as Shaftal requires it,” said J’han.

“As long as youcan endure it,” Emil said to Karis, smiling now.

“A very long time then,” said Norina dryly. They all looked at her, and she added, “Well, look at the evidence! She can endure anything, for any length of time.”

Emil’s unbuttoned shirt revealed that he had experienced his share of violence, and that he was fortunate for the armor of his ribs, which had turned aside more than one Sainnite saber. Karis put her hand to his scarred chest. Leeba, apparently not as oblivious as she had seemed, abandoned her rolling pin to run to Emil and lean on his knee. “Is your heart broken? Does it hurt?”

He put an arm around her. “Yes, dear one.”

“Karis will fix it,” she declared.

“It’s fixed,” said Karis, sitting back.

“Our child is growing up in some very strange circumstances,” said j’han worriedly.

Karis got heavily to her feet, and scooped Leeba up. “Are we having lizard pie for supper? That’s a very raredish, isn’t it, Garland?”

“Extremely,” he said. “Fortunately, for those of us who haven’t acquired a taste for lizard we have a more commonplace sort of pie also. But you,” he added, “should eat your breakfast, or you’ll never get any pie.”

“He’s very bossy, don’t you think?” said Karis to Leeba. But she set her giggling daughter down, and made quick work of the bread and sausage that she had before been unable to eat. Now maybe she finally would be able to gain some weight, Garland thought. As he was putting his meat pie in the oven and helping Leeba to put her lizard pie in as well–into the other oven, which was not very hot– it occurred to him that the most important people in Shaftal were gathered here in his kitchen.

He turned around and looked at them: sturdy J’han, who had brought Norina a cup of tea and was leaning companionably against the opposite doorjamb as she sipped it; Medric, who had somehow gotten into the chair with Emil, done up his buttons for him, and kissed him a couple of times with unrestrained affection; Karis, uncombed and unkempt, looking a bit unhappy that she had eaten all there was to eat, glancing up now at the two unlikely couples with the stunned sorrow of the newly widowed.

“How about an apple or two,” Garland suggested.

She looked at him, and he feared she might complain again about his pushiness. “Two,” she said.

When he came out of the store room shining the apples on his apron. She said, “Well, now you have an idea of what you’ve gotten yourself into.”

“I’ve gotten myself into a kitchen,” he said, endeavoring to sound as if the rest of it was of no importance to him.

The Truthken in the doorway uttered a snort. Startled, he looked at her–he had almost forgotten her intimidating presence. Had he said an untruth? Perhaps he had.

Medric said, “What did you think of the book, Karis? The Encyclopedia of Livestock!”He was grinning like a madman.

“It was Zanja who found it, wasn’t it?”

“She didn’t exactly know what she had found.”

Karis bit into an apple and held it in her teeth so her hand was free to take the little book out of her vest. She handed it to Medric, took the apple out of her mouth, and said with her mouth full, “There’s an old man in it, with a basket full of cabbages.”

“Oh, now at last I’ll dream of him!” Medric began leafing eagerly through the book.

“I found it,” Leeba said belatedly. “The baby book–I found it inside the big one.”

Emil had looked puzzled, but only for a moment. With one finger he stopped Medric’s enthusiastic page turning. “Mabin,” he said, and read for a while. Then, he uttered a sharp laugh. He looked up and explained to Norina, “Harald wrote it. To Karis.”

“Ah,” she said. “A misunderstood man attempts to explain himself to his greatest victim. I always wondered why he hadn’t.”

Karis said, “Victim?”

“Things do change quickly,” said Norina. “Sometimes it’s difficult to keep track of what’s actually true. Karis, I know something that will surprise you.”

Karis sat down on the stool, with an apple in each hand, and looked at her. The men in the chair looked up simultaneously from reading, like startled birds.

Norina said, “Zanja na’Tarwein isn’t actually dead.”

There was a shocked silence.

“Physically–” began Emil.

“Metaphorically–” Medric started.

They both fell silent as Karis said in her hoarse, hushed voice, “Nori, what did you do?”

“There were some deceptions,” the Truthken said.

Medric shut the little book. “Gods of bloody hell!”

Emil said in a shocked voice, “With my own hand … !”

“I sawher die!” said Medric.

“Fire logic,” said Norina dismissively.

Obviously untroubled by the outraged chorus, she gazed steadily at Karis. Karis said in her strained, raw voice, “You are the most underhanded, disagreeable, uncanny, hard‑hearted person in the world.”

“Do you know this for a fact?” said Norina curiously.

“You might be loyal, also,” said Karis grudgingly.

“These idiotic fire bloods, theyknow I’m sworn to serve you. You only–not their insane visions.”

“I take offense!”

Norina glanced at Medric, and he lapsed into a restless muttering that struck Garland as a kind of playacting. The odd man might actually have been amazed rather than angry–and if he was, then Norina’s expression of faint amusement made a kind of sense. But not one word in this obscure conversation seemed sensible to Garland, and these people, who had seemed so kind to each other, so remarkable, now seemed only very strange. The strangest thing of all was their apparent ability to understand each other.

Norina wasn’t even looking at Garland directly. But she apparently knew his thoughts anyway and said, “Master cook, we’ve learned to cooperate with and tolerate each other, so now we’re surprised to remember that our logics are incompatible. You understand, the elements shape how we think? They also determine what we can see. Air logic enabled me to see something that Zanja, Medric, and Emil could not.”

“You might have seen something,” Medric burst out, “But you had no vision.”

“Oh, no,” said Norina coolly. “Zanja thinks she’s dead.”

Norina stopped, for J’han had sharply kicked her foot. She glanced at him, then glanced at Leeba, who was raptly watching the action in the oven. Norina continued, rather obscurely, “So whatever you fire bloods thought to accomplish by doing what you did can still be accomplished.”

“Madam Truthken!” said Karis fiercely. “What did you do?”

J’han held up a hand to silence them, and went to squat by the oven with Leeba. He began talking with her about fire, lizards, and pies. Norina began to speak. She gave a quiet, precise, detailed, emotionless account of Zanja’s death. J’han and Leeba sang together a child’s song about the odd things that might be baked in a pie. They made up a verse about lizards. Norina concluded, “So Zanja thinks she’s dead, just as you thought she was dead. But those who deceive themselves, as she did, always know the actual truth, though often they do not know they know it, unless someone says it to them.”

Medric muttered, “And I thought I was obscure.”

Karis had covered her face. Garland thought he might see tears when her big hands lowered, but instead he saw something he did not expect: impatience. “Can we get her back?” she said. Then, more sharply, “Master seer! Is it possible?”

Medric said, “It’s extremely unlikely. Don’t call me that.”