After a moment, Medric added gloomily, “I’m better at being silly in Shaftalese.” He sipped his milk, and raised his eyebrows in surprise. “How did you do that?

“It just takes patience.”

“I’ll never be able to do it, then.”

They sat a long time without talking. The smell of baking bread began to suffuse the kitchen. The ravens on the rail outside cried hoarse curses at each other. Medric said, “This milk is making me sleepy.”

“It’s supposed to. What wasthe dream that woke you up?”

“I dreamed that the lieutenant‑general was making love with a Shaftali cow farmer.”

“Huh!” said Garland after a long silence. “Are you sure?”

“I may be an addle‑pate, but when a couple of people take off their clothes and tangle in a bed like that, it’s difficult to mistake what it is they’re doing.”

“What does your dream mean, though?”

Medric put on his spectacles, found them clear, and blinked at Garland quite sleepily. “She’s loyal to her people, isn’t she? Not confused, like us?” He didn’t wait for an answer, but shook his head sympathetically. “She doesn’t even realize what’s happened to her yet.”

Chapter Twenty‑Four

Clement noticed Gilly on horseback at the garden’s edge, watching her and Captain Herme put the reluctant soldiers through their drills–familiar drills, except that they were done in deep snow, wearing snow shoes. The soldiers floundered and lost their tempers. After Clement had dismissed them, she went to stand at Gilly’s stirrup. He said, “I really do admire your persistence. But what idiocy!”

Herme’s company trailed ignominiously off the field, most of them dangling their snow shoes distastefully from their hands. They would return to the work of building themselves a barracks, and no doubt they would complain about her all afternoon.

She said, “So you too believe that Sainnites are naturally unable to cope with snow? Just like Shaftali are naturally incapable of fighting?”

“No. I am a man of facts.”

“Fact is, those soldiers would die rather than learn something new.”

“Fact is, like anyone, they’d rather be incapable than incompetent.”

“It’s hard to blame them, when observers call them idiotic. Well, it doesn’t matter. I need for them to learn to walk and fight on snow. And I outrank them.”

“You outrank almost everyone, from sheer endurance.”

“At least you have no illusions about my native abilities.” She grinned up at him. The unflappable, sure‑footed horse pushed her gently, and she scratched his forehead as well as could be done in heavy gloves.

Gilly added, with a trace of genuine concern, “Oh, but the soldiers do hate you today.”

“Everyone hates me, lately. But not you, for some reason.”

“Make me wear snow shoes and I’ll hate you too.”

“What areyou doing here?”

“The storyteller’s coming to hear some stories, and I’ll be supervising, as usual. Come with me.”

“Any particular reason?”

“None at all.” Under her suspicious examination, his face remained bland as his horse’s, though much uglier.

“Give me a moment to undo these bindings,” she said.

Since her return to Watfield, Clement had frequently glimpsed the storyteller, whose red silk clothing could hardly be missed in a world of white snow, gray slush, and even grayer woolen uniforms. And in the bitter evening cold, while walking past the refectory, Clement had sometimes heard the storyteller’s voice. Perhaps a few words, so crisply articulated they hardly seemed words at all, but notes of music, might linger in Clement’s ear. More often, she heard at a distance the roar of soldier’s voices, and the pounding of their hands and feet, which signaled another story told and now owed.

Walking at Gilly’s stirrup, Clement commented, “I don’t know that I’d want to spend so much time in that woman’s company as you’ve been spending. See that icicle?” She pointed at an extraordinary one that dangled from the eaves of an unfinished building. “That’s her. Not human at all.”

Gilly gazed at the icicle. “But her stories don’t make us cold,” he said.

The storyteller was waiting in the guard shed, huddled with the soldiers around the brazier, watching a game of cards. The soldiers started guiltily as Clement looked in the door, and leapt to their feet in a tangle of salutes. “Lieutenant‑General,” said the captain. “Gilly was late, and we thought the storyteller shouldn’t be left standing in the snow.”

Clement said mildly, “You shouldn’t have let her in.” In fact, the discipline of the gate guard was not her concern, and the soldiers were probably confident that she wouldn’t report them.

The storyteller greeted her with cool courtesy, and as coolly said to Gilly on his horse, “Good day, Lucky Man.”

“Good day, storyteller. I trust you are well.”

“I am. You owe me ten stories.”

“You will be paid.” Gilly added, as they started down the street, “I have a question for you. Do you ever repeat a story?”

“No, never.”

“So what will you do, when you have told us all your stories?”

The storyteller walked beside Clement, sure‑footed and precise on the slick paving stones that here and there emerged from ice. “It will not happen.”

“Never? You know, they’re taking bets on how long you can continue without repeating yourself.”

The storyteller seemed unamused. “Your people’s stories will run out, but mine will not.”

Clement protested, “We Sainnites have a long history!”

“No histories,” said Gilly. “Forbidden.”

“By command? Or by the storyteller’s preference?”

“I hear whatever tale people choose to tell,” said the storyteller. “So long as it is new to me.”

“If I told you how I got my flower bulbs,” began Clement.

“No personal tales,” interrupted Gilly.

“I hear whatever tale people choose to tell,” said the storyteller again, in a tone so neutral that a listener might not even notice that she was contradicting Gilly.

Clement said, “But if you heard a story about flower bulbs, that isn’t the kind of story you would then tell, is it?”

When at last Clement turned to see why the storyteller had not answered, she noticed first that the woman continued to find her balance on the slippery stones, as easily and unconsciously as a dancer. Then she noticed that the storyteller was not even looking at her feet, but at her. Her attentiveness and silence both were deeply unsettling.

Clement felt irresistibly compelled to speak. “This kind of story: The fighting had been incessant, and it was the first time I had seen my mother in days. We had just heard that the enemy was coming over the wall. She came to the barracks, took me out into the garden, and we began digging. She wore a coat like this one I’m wearing, with big pockets. We filled her pockets with bulbs–all different kinds–until we couldn’t cram any more in. Then she picked me up, and ran with me. I looked over her shoulder and saw the enemy coming down the road. I could hear my mother gasping for breath. I could feel the great lump of bulbs in her pocket, and I remember hoping that none of them would fall out.”

She stopped. She felt Gilly’s gaze, but did not want to look at him. The general’s Lucky Man had been a child beggar in a ditch when she first met him. There was not much doubt that Cadmar had abused the boy, those first few years. There were many topics that Clement and Gilly never discussed with each other, including both their childhoods.

It was time for one of her listeners to ask a question, to rescue Clement from embarrassment. But Gilly was silent, and the storyteller did not appear to be capable of asking questions, or of engaging in anything resembling a normal conversation. She said, “Your mother’s power came to you through those flower bulbs. Because she loved you, she rescued that power for you in the face of disaster. When I tell this story, I will tell how you rescued that power for yourchild.”